Split Second

CHAPTER TWO

Louise

When her phone went, Louise didn’t recognize the number. She wondered if it was someone from the agency. It was late, but not impossible: some of the work was respite care, staying with people whose regular carers needed a break, most often elderly people with dementia, and on rare occasions the agency worker allocated would have a problem and need replacing.

‘Hello?’

Ruby came downstairs in her pyjamas.

‘Who am I speaking to, please?’ a woman asked.

Louise was suspicious, some sort of spam call maybe, but she replied anyway, watching Ruby put her homework back in her school bag. ‘Louise Murray.’

‘You’re related to Luke Murray?’

Her blood ran cold. ‘Yes. His mum.’

‘This is Manchester Royal Infirmary. Luke was involved in an incident earlier this evening.’ Louise felt the slap of shock, a thump in her guts that forced her to step back, murmuring, ‘Oh no, no.’

She saw Ruby turn and freeze, alarm enlarging her eyes.

Luke! Oh, God. ‘Is he all right?’ Dread flared through her.

‘He’s stable,’ the woman said, and went on to give her instructions as the pressure built in Louise’s chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to concentrate.

‘I’ll come now, yes.’ She ended the call, her hand shaking. Panic fluttering at her back like wings.

‘Mum?’

‘It’s the hospital. Luke’s there. Get your coat.’ Ruby nodded, fled.

‘Please,’ Louise prayed, ‘please, please let him be all right.’

The car door was frozen, the key wouldn’t turn.

The de-icer was inside the car, so she hurried to fetch the kettle and ran hot water over the lock. The metal made a chinking sound.

It worked, and she got the de-icer and the plastic scraper and scoured away at the ice on the windscreen, her breath great puffs of mist. Beneath her feet the grass verge was lumpy, unyielding. Everything was frozen solid, brilliant and brittle.

They drove through the snow. The middle of the main road was clear, but everything else, the pavements, hedges, roofs and trees, was smothered in a layer of white. Smudging the edges.

Ruby spoke. ‘What happened?’

‘They didn’t say, just that he was stable.’

‘Maybe there was an accident? Like a crash?’

Incident, Louise thought, they said incident. ‘I don’t know, love.’ Thinking only that he was hurt, whatever it was, he was hurt. Alcoholic poisoning? Drinking himself stupid. Would that be an incident? Or if he’d been messing with drugs. Something else reckless? Trespassing on the railway line. He wasn’t a bad kid, not nasty, just daft at times, taking risks. Better lately, though, much better. That didn’t matter, not now. All that mattered was getting there. Make him better, make it better. She wouldn’t let herself imagine how he might be injured, fought against the pictures rearing up inside her head. Not going there. Just do this, just get through this.

He’d always been a handful; the number of times she’d been summoned into school: Luke giving cheek, Luke not showing up. He was bright and bored. He couldn’t wait to leave. She’d been the same at that age. She had tried talking to him about A levels or doing a BTEC. Something to give him a chance of a decent job, not end up like her in the poverty trap, no qualifications, everything a struggle.

‘No way,’ he’d said. And she knew there was no shifting him. Stubborn as a mule, never knew when to back down or back off. Could be a good quality at times, that persistence, but at others he’d back himself into a corner and brick it up.

Days later he came in from town, put a pizza in the oven and announced that he wanted to join the army.

Over my dead body, Louise swore to herself. She hadn’t spent sixteen years raising him to have him go off and get blown to bits by a roadside bomb in a godforsaken desert. ‘Thought you didn’t like people bossing you about,’ she’d said. ‘That’s all you get in the army: rules and regulations.’

‘So?’

‘C’mon, Luke, you’re not exactly hot on authority, are you?’

‘What you saying?’ He was truculent, ready for an argument. ‘Someone’s got to fight for their country.’

She stifled a sigh, didn’t want to alienate him, wondered where the sudden interest in soldiering had come from. ‘What’s the attraction?’

‘Best training in the world, isn’t it?’

Then what? Kill people, be killed. Eight years ago, Louise had dragged him on the anti-Iraq war march, him and Ruby both. He’d loved it, shouted himself hoarse, enjoying the novelty of mass protest, the whiff of disobedience, transgression, marching down the middle of the road between the police lines, waving the flag he’d made. Ruby had cried, fearful that planes would come and bomb them any minute. Not understanding that this was a war where only the children of the ‘enemy’ would lose life and limb. An unequal and illegal war fought for duplicitous reasons.

‘Grandad was in the army,’ he said. Meaning Louise’s grandad, his great-grandad.

‘That was different, he was called up. He’d not have wanted you fighting in Afghanistan. He was a communist, I’ve told you that. He’d have known exactly what it was down to: oil and economics.’

While Louise’s mother had been roaming the world entertaining passengers in her glittery gowns and long black gloves, Louise and her dad Phil had lived with her grandparents. Grandad was a docker, a union man and a lifelong Party member. The only paper that came into the house was the Morning Star. Louise’s dad was a liberal, if pressed. Wishy-washy, according to Grandad. The house rang with political arguments and debates. Louise got dragged along to fund-raisers for Cuba and Angola, or commandeered by her grandad to give out leaflets for pickets during the miners’ strike, but once grown, she’d never joined a party or got involved. Her political activity ran to voting every election, paying union dues, even though the agency wasn’t unionized, attending the occasional demonstration and peeling racist stickers off lamp posts.

Maybe the army thing was a reaction against her and her views. Luke rebelling, thinking of something to put her back up. She decided not to give him any more ammunition. ‘Okay,’ she said steadily, ‘how about this – you still want to join up in a year’s time and you can go.’

He frowned at her, wary. ‘Why wait?’

‘You’re only sixteen, you’ll need my consent if you’re under eighteen, but I’d like you to give something else a go first.’

‘Such as?’ He leaned back on the chair, rocking it on its back legs, arms folded.

‘A trade – you choose.’

‘Not college,’ he insisted.

‘An apprenticeship. You’d be earning. There’s usually day release.’

‘What?’

‘You do a day a week at college, the rest on the job.’

‘You just don’t want me to join the army,’ he objected.

‘No, I don’t.’ She kept her voice level. ‘But I can’t stop you, once you’re old enough. People die, Luke, they get injured, lose limbs; or they get stressed out, can’t settle again. Why would I want that for you?’

‘I won’t change my mind,’ he said, his eyes fixing on hers. His lovely fine brown eyes

She nodded. ‘But give it till your next birthday. I’ll ask around, see if anyone knows anyone.’ She waited, tense. Hoping to God she could find an opening. Half the kids in Manchester were on the dole, a lost generation, they were saying. What would Grandad make of this? Cameron and cronies finishing Thatcher’s job. Privatizing everything that moved, dismantling the public services, the NHS, crushing the north, where no one ever voted Tory, penalizing the poor.

‘’Kay.’ He let the chair fall back in place, got to his feet. ‘Not doing plumbing, though – skanky, man.’

Emma

Her flat was across the other side of the dual carriageway, next to the railway station. She was on the second floor, her windows level with the platforms. Sometimes she got the train to work, though if she did, she had a fifteen-minute walk across town at the other end.

Emma liked being near the line; the sound of the trains was reassuring, somehow, telling her that there were all those people out there going places, coming back. Growing up in Brum, the railway had run at the end of their terraced street, so it was probably in her blood.

She fed the fish and went into the kitchen. She hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch, but with all that bother on the bus, she felt queasy still. Maybe something light? She opened the fridge and got out the Philadelphia cream cheese, put bread in the toaster and went to change out of her office clothes.

She settled in front of the telly with her plate and a mug of cappuccino. She kept flicking the channels, but there was nothing that held her attention. There was a repeat of A Place in the Sun: Home or Away on, but it was one she’d seen first time round. The couples were so choosy, and didn’t ever seem to actually settle on a place. They never liked the places that Emma did.

Sometimes Emma thought about working abroad. The sort of job she had, working in the claims office of an insurance company, meant she had quite a lot of transferable skills, for other office work at least, but she didn’t speak any other languages. ‘Barely speaks English,’ her dad would say. ‘Don’t mumble, girl.’

He’d always been impatient with her, impatient and disappointed. Because she got tongue-tied, because she was shy, he decided she was stupid. She sometimes wondered when it had started: had he been critical even when she was a baby? Because she was chubby (in other words fat), because she slept a lot and didn’t walk until she was eighteen months old, and because when she talked, her speech was whispered, hesitant. Had she been born like that, or grown to match his expectations: someone with no guts, no gumption, no wit? Feeble, worthless.

Emma texted her mum as she did every night, told her that work had been busy and town had been frantic. She paused, thinking about the bus: the hard face on the lad who hit the mixed-race boy, the girl’s thin giggle, that awful feeling, tight and sick, making you want to close your eyes and block your ears. She couldn’t have done anything, could she? She thought about telling her mum, but then her dad would want to talk to her, and she couldn’t face him now. She shook away thoughts of the bus; she was home, it was done with. She typed that it was snowing and sent the text.

Unable to settle, she turned off the lamp and pulled the curtains open. That way the velvet blue light from the aquarium cast a glow in the room. Outside, she could see the snow falling: rhythmic cascades of flakes, quick and quiet. The roof of the ticket office was cushioned in snow, as was the fence and the platform. Everything looked softer and cleaner somehow with the white covering.

Watching the fish usually helped her relax. Hypnotic or something. She didn’t know how it worked, but following them as they drifted to and fro would calm her down. The stripy green discus fish darted and turned swiftly in the tank, and the shoal of little neon tetras, sparkling blue and silver and red, wove in harmony through the weed. Emma stared for long enough, but her stomach was all knotted up. Maybe she was just too tired tonight. She’d feel better after a good long sleep. And it was Saturday tomorrow – a lie-in.

Andrew

Andrew and Val sat in the waiting area for close to an hour. The place was quiet, just the faint background shush of air-conditioning, and now and then the squeak of footsteps as someone in scrubs or overalls wandered past along the corridor. The lights were harsh, recessed behind shiny silver grids in the low ceiling. At either end of the space, cheap foil banners proclaimed Merry Christmas, and someone had taped a sprig of plastic holly above the big round clock.

Andrew was thirsty; his tongue felt rough and too large for his mouth, his throat ached, peppery, but he would not move to go and find a drink. Someone would come. They must wait here.

Every few minutes Val spoke to him, often repeating herself. ‘They must have had a knife but he didn’t know. He didn’t even know he’d been hurt. He walked inside, you saw him. He was so worried about the one they’d set upon, he didn’t even think about himself. Why didn’t he ring the police instead of charging in like that?’ They weren’t questions to be answered, just asked over and over like penance, a chant of angry disbelief flung to the Fates or the Gods, falling on stone-deaf ears.

In the silences between, Andrew watched the long, slim black hand on the clock edge past the minutes. He got up and walked to the double doors, left ajar, and stared at the map of the hospital on the wall. The garish blocks of colour indicating different wards, a bewildering key below organized alphabetically by complaint rather than numerically by ward, starting with the emergency department: adult emergency. They were somewhere there.

He’d done some sessions in the rehabilitation unit here for one of his placements when he’d been training. He still did some NHS work alongside his private practice, but almost all of it at Wythenshawe Hospital, a few miles south, on the edge of the city. That had been a tough time – his training. He’d left his job in the local authority planning department after six months on sick leave with work-related stress. Val, also at the town hall, working in training, had wanted him to sue for constructive dismissal, furious at the insidious bullying by his manager, but Andrew hadn’t had the energy or the emotional wherewithal to do anything more than limp away. He was close to cracking up completely, and just the thought of confronting his manager, of statements and meetings and tribunals, made him panic. His health was more precious than winning the argument.

Training in speech therapy had been a random choice really, prompted by a radio documentary. It meant two years as a student on a bursary then a not very good income afterwards. Certainly less than he’d have made climbing up the civic ladder. But Val, now a team leader, was on a good salary, and with only one child, they were reasonably well off.

‘Andrew?’ She’d been repeating his name.

‘Sorry,’ he turned from the map, ‘what?’

‘Do you think we should go and find someone? Find out what’s going on?’

Who? Where? He felt completely inadequate. Before he had a chance to frame a response, a man appeared, his scrubs rumpled, his head covered with a patterned hat. Val stood up and quickly crossed to join Andrew. Her jaw was trembling.

‘Mr and Mrs Barnes?’

Andrew nodded. Val said, ‘Yes.’

Andrew watched the man close his eyes, a slow blink before he spoke, his lips parting, an intake of air.

That was all it took, and Andrew knew.

They could not go home. The police officer apologized, but the house had been sealed for examination. It was a crime scene. They could be taken to a hotel and a family liaison officer would meet them there. After tonight, perhaps they would rather stay with family?

Stupefied, they let themselves be shepherded from the room where Jason lay and along to the exit. The officer kept talking, a meaningless burble. Andrew wondered if he was doing it to comfort himself, like a child whistling in the dark, or if he thought it might help them.

As they reached the automatic doors, Val stopped and turned to Andrew. Her face contorted and tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘Not on his own.’ She shook her head, her voice thick.

It was half past four. They had sat with their son in the anteroom in the bereavement suite since ten past midnight. Andrew had held Jason’s hand, tracing the lines on his palm, lines of destiny now met, rubbing the calluses on his fingers made by the guitar strings, noticing the fine golden hairs on the back of his wrist.

The policeman stopped and cleared his throat. ‘If you need a bit longer…’

A bit? How about another fifty years?

‘… but the pathologist-’

‘Start work at four in the morning, do they?’ Val snapped, and shivered.

Andrew took her arm and led her back, along to the lifts, up to the room.

At quarter past eight the sun rose crimson over the snow-covered city and the pathologist came for Jason.

Louise

Louise held Ruby’s hand; her daughter’s touch was warm, the skin smooth and soft, unlike her own, roughened from chores and her habit of biting the skin around her nails.

The doctor was young, Oriental-looking, Chinese or Japanese, maybe Korean. Dr Liu. She spoke softly and Louise had to crane her neck to hear her above the white noise spitting in her head.

‘Luke is still unconscious,’ the doctor said. ‘There’s a fracture to the skull so we want to do a scan to check on that; there is a chance we will need to operate, to reduce any swelling and alleviate the pressure on the brain.’

Louise felt her nose burn, bit her cheek; the tang of blood made her mouth water.

‘He’s breathing on his own, which is a good sign,’ the doctor went on, ‘and there is nothing to signify damage to any other internal organs.’

‘Will he be all right?’ Louise asked, the words sounding brittle and dusty. Broken leaves.

‘We’ll know more when we have the scan results.’

Which was no answer at all really.

‘Can’t you wake him up?’ Ruby asked.

‘The body can better repair itself in the unconscious state. It’s best if he wakes up naturally. He is being hydrated with a drip. You can go in to see him before we take him up. It looks bad.’ Her eyes held Louise’s, black like jet beads. ‘It may be a big shock.’ She glanced sideways at Ruby, then to Louise, an unspoken question.

‘Rube, if you-’ Louise began.

‘I wanna see him.’

Oh God. Louise barely knew him. His face was misshapen, swollen and still bloody. A lump the size of an orange on his left cheek and his right eyelid torn, the lashes, his long curling lashes, gummy with blood. His lips cracked, slightly parted, his front teeth at the top missing. The ferocity of it ripped through her in a wash of terror and rage. Oh my poor lamb. How frightened he must have been.

‘Oh God,’ Ruby breathed.

That he should suffer so. Someone had done this to him, her blessed, troubled boy. Louise turned away, her hand shielding her eyes, her chest aflame. Ruby was crying quietly, sniffling. Louise hugged her, murmured words of solace, then stepped away, studied her son. She wanted to scoop him up, cradle him on her knee and sing to him, comfort him. Or shake him awake, force him to his feet, clean his wounds. She wanted to kiss him, stroke his hair, but his head was so raw, so exposed, she was fearful she might hurt him. His hands lay at his sides, the drip going into his left arm; she picked up his right hand, hot and limp, pressed her mouth against his palm, tasted salt there, smelt iron. She tried to replace the bloated face with his usual profile, that of his father Roland. The Nigerian student who had spent a summer working in the care home where Louise had her first job. Roland, who broke her heart. Wooed her with his flirting and his patter, promised her the earth, then when she fell pregnant told her he was engaged to a girl back home and he’d be marrying his intended as soon as he graduated. Roland the rat, sleek and smooth.

‘He’ll be going up for the scan in a moment,’ Dr Liu said. A knock on the door made them all turn. It was the police.

He took them into a side room. Louise hated leaving Luke, but the police officer said it would only be for a few minutes.

‘What happened?’ She had agreed to tell the officer anything she could to help, but she was also frantic to know how it had come to this.

‘He was attacked by three youths earlier this evening,’ the man said.

A sea of fury swelled inside, the waves smashing against the rock of her heart. ‘Where? Why?’

‘Kingsway. We don’t know why yet.’

‘Because he’s black?’ Louise said. Pity and grief and hurt swirling through her. Laced with guilt too, because her first thoughts had been that Luke had done something silly and got himself hurt. But someone had done this to him. Deliberately battered him.

‘We’ll be looking into that as a possibility.’ The man had his notebook open; he twisted his wrist and read his watch, jotted down the time. ‘I just need all the formal details out of the way: name, address, date of birth and so on.’

She gave him those, then he asked her when she’d last seen Luke.

‘Tea time. Half six. Then he went out.’

‘Where was he going? Did he say?’

‘He’s a teenager; “out” is all I get. Sometimes he goes into town with his mates, but he wasn’t dressed up or anything.’

‘Where else?’

Round Declan’s getting stoned, she thought, or in the park. But in this weather? Mind, they didn’t feel the cold, did they, kids; image was more important. ‘Perhaps just with his mates.’

‘I’ll need their details.’

She nodded. ‘The people that did this. Who are they?’

‘We’ve not identified them yet.’

‘Do you think they knew him?’ She was desperate for answers, for meaning, for sense.

He took a breath, scratched his head. ‘I don’t think anything; I’m just asking the questions we need to ask. Has Luke been in any trouble recently?’

‘No,’ she said. He had settled on an apprenticeship as an electrician. One of Carl’s mates had taken him on. He didn’t like the college part, but he’d gone along each week so far. And he’d wired some outside lights for Christmas. Rigging them up in the sycamore tree at the corner of the garden. It looked great – big, soft white globes, way better than the tacky flashing Santas and cartoon reindeers on the house opposite. She’d been so proud of him, and excited at the prospect that he might find his footing working in the trade. Make a good living. Settle into his own skin and forget about the army.

‘Any history of trouble in the past?’ the policeman asked her.

She sighed, worried that her answer would influence how he thought of Luke and what effort they’d put into catching his attackers. ‘A couple of cautions for antisocial behaviour and criminal damage.’

The officer waited, his pen poised. ‘Why was that, then?’ Did she imagine it, or had his tone changed, the warmth leaking away?

‘Messing with fireworks,’ she said, ‘and some graffiti.’ He could find out anyway – she didn’t want to appear uncooperative and add to any impression he might have that her family was a bad lot. ‘But he’s turned things around now,’ she said as brightly as she could manage. ‘He’s got an apprenticeship, as an electrician.’

He wrote it down. ‘Anything else you can tell me?’

‘He said he’d be back about eleven.’

‘Ruby?’ The man shifted his attention to her. ‘Anything else?’

She shook her head.

Louise swallowed. Sat up in her seat, determined to keep on top of it all, to just do what had to be done. To fight the impulse to withdraw into sorrow and shut down.

‘There was another victim,’ the policeman said. ‘Jason Barnes, do you know him?’

Louise shook her head.

‘He didn’t make it.’

‘What!’ She tried to untangle what he was saying. Saw the resignation in his eyes. ‘Oh my God. Oh no.’ She couldn’t stop trembling. Thinking that could have been Luke. Dead. Killed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to respond. ‘Can we go now?’ she asked, rising. Her head spinning, her knees weak as straw. She had to get back to him. Dread pooling in her belly, between her shoulder blades. ‘Please?’ She had to be there, watch over him, keep him safe.

He nodded, and she held on to Ruby’s arm for support and numbly retraced her steps.

Andrew

The light on the snow was blinding, Andrew winced and narrowed his eyes. Two men were clearing the paths; the clang of shovels on the stone rang loud in the air. The snow muffled the other sounds, shushing the city.

He had moved the car in the middle of the night, sweeping clods of snow from the windscreen, the frosty air stinging his nostrils and nipping at his ankles; he had pulled on shoes but not socks in the race to get to the hospital.

Now they walked to the car park. ‘You’d better ring your parents,’ Val said.

This could kill Dad, he thought, already battling high blood pressure and angina. ‘I’ll tell Colin.’ His older brother lived close to the family home. ‘He can go round there.’ He pulled out his phone.

‘In the car.’ Val frowned.

He didn’t understand.

‘Less noise,’ she said dully. There was nothing for him in her expression, no affection, no compassion. She was exhausted.

Colin answered. ‘Andrew, hi. How you doing?’ Upbeat, bright.

Andrew closed his eyes, cleared his throat, a noise like a whimper.

‘What’s wrong?’ Alarm now, and Andrew felt the hair on his neck stand up and the bottomless swirl in his guts.

‘It’s…’

‘Andrew?’

He forced the words past his tongue, through his teeth. Into the air, in the car, in the car park, let them loose to fly across the glittering roofs, up amid the skyscrapers and towers and bridges, across the city to the whole wide world. ‘Jason was stabbed last night, a fight on the street.’ He heard Colin gasp at the other end but he kept going. ‘They took him to hospital, they couldn’t bring him back. Can you tell Mum and Dad?’

Colin was saying things, shock, can’t believe, sorry, and Andrew clung on, his fingers a vice around his phone, answering the questions while he watched the city sparkle and wondered if they had the old sledge and if Jason might fancy a go.

‘Andrew.’ His father was in the kitchen doorway, his face whey-coloured, eyes wounded. ‘There’s someone here from the police.’

Andrew dipped his head. Three people came in; two men and a woman. His parents had knocked their kitchen through years ago, combining the old scullery with the bigger room and creating space for the family to eat in. Introductions were made, condolences given, and the man doing the talking asked for Val.

‘She’s upstairs with my mother,’ Andrew told them.

‘She witnessed the fight?’ the man asked.

‘Yes.’ The word rustled in his throat. He’d drunk a cup of tea, but it hadn’t touched the dryness when he swallowed. The man turned to Leonard, Andrew’s father, still hovering in the doorway. ‘Is there somewhere we could talk to Mrs Barnes?’

‘The living room.’

‘We need to get a statement from each of you,’ he explained to Andrew.

There was no rushing any of it, as people were rearranged and notebooks and forms produced. They must know, he thought, that we can’t function any faster, that everything is slow motion, gravity’s shifted. All at sea, unable to resist the current. A container ship had shed a load of plastic ducks a long time ago, in the Atlantic; years later, bleached and blinded by sun and salt, they were still washing up, teaching climatologists about the currents.

‘Mr Barnes?’

‘Sorry.’ He laid his arms on the table, tried to clear his head. His back ached, the whole of his spine, as though the snow had got in there too, crystals of ice fusing the bones and burning the nerve endings. He felt a jolt of surprise when he saw an outlined plan of their house and garden, the houses either side, the dual carriageway. He recalled filling in car claim forms after a bump when Jason had been a toddler. The diagrams: X marks the spot. Jason’s maps, ‘Why is it X, Dad?’

The questions came at him and he replied as best he could: Jason was home from uni, back two days, gone out to meet friends for a drink. Andrew was in the shower when… Jason was so concerned about the other boy… No, they didn’t know him… No, they didn’t know them either…

‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’

What? he thought. That he was a lovely young man, he was frightened of heights and moths. He wouldn’t get on an aeroplane or learn to drive because of global warming. He fell off his bunk bed and broke his wrist when he was ten. He hates jazz. The only thing he can cook is bacon and egg. He’s ticklish. He is dead. He is dead and cold and I will never hear him laugh again. He has a tattoo of a dragon on his shoulder. He can’t change a plug or build a shelf but he plays music like an angel.

Andrew shook his head and put his face in his hands.

The woman was their family liaison officer, Martine. She told them it would be a couple more days before they would be able to return home, and they might want to consider staying on at Leonard and Jean’s anyway. There would be a great deal of media interest in the case. The police would work in partnership with the media, but it was important that the family didn’t talk to anyone without running it past Martine, who would check things with the press office.

‘It’s already in the lunchtime edition.’ She laid the Manchester Evening News on the table.

Val grabbed at it, her lips moving round the words of the headline. Have-a-Go Hero Stabbed to Death. Teen victim fights for life. ‘How did they get his picture?’

Andrew stared at his son, a recent image, his hair tangled, muddy blond, almost shoulder-length. He’d grown it over the summer. ‘YouTube,’ he told her. He felt sick. The doorbell went, and then his brother was there, with his wife and the kids. Everyone was there. Everyone except Jason.