The Child Who

4

They were being watched. It was part of the agreement. The investigating team – the police – were excluded but the social worker, the boy’s parents: they were watching and listening to everything that was being said. Which, in practical terms, was very little: questions but no answers; prompts but no replies; a lopsided conversation, then, that had toppled, momentarily, into silence.

Leo glanced again at the security camera. He wanted to stand and to pace but standing and pacing was what the police had done, what Daniel’s parents had done, what the social worker had, after more than an hour alone with the boy, finally resorted to. So Leo sat. When his foot tapped of its own accord, he forced it flat. When his fingers took up the beat instead, he wrapped them in a fist. He was, would be, patience personified. He and Daniel: they had all day.

They had, in truth, a deadline that was fast approaching. Leo did not want to look again at his watch because the boy had caught him last time and that single glance, Leo estimated, had cost him far more than the split second it had taken. Instead, on a blank sheet of notepaper and with the pen Meg had bought for him for Felicity Forbes’s final Christmas, he drew.

A stick figure, at the base of the page. He considered giving the figure more substance but the fleshless lines, given the boy’s build, seemed appropriate. He gave it shoes, which became trainers when he added the swoosh: blue on white, just like Daniel’s. He gave it ears and on one of them he planted a full stop. The head he left hairless, except on top: here he drew a succession of spikes – sharp, as the boy’s would have been had he not spent seventeen hours without access to a tube of hair gel. Knowing how sensitive his daughter was about the freckles that spotted her own fair skin, Leo resisted dotting the stick-boy’s cheeks and ignored, too, the silvered scratch lines around his throat. Instead he drew a mouth: a line, straight across, which he stitched shut with a string of smaller lines a pen-nib apart.

‘Not a bad likeness,’ Leo said and spun the page so Daniel could see. He caught the boy’s eyes as they leapt from the piece of paper to a point on the table beside it. ‘This is you: now, here,’ Leo said. ‘And this…’ He turned the page again and worked quickly. He drew a man beside the boy: the same earring and fastened mouth; the same hair but with a gap this time on the crown. ‘This is you in twenty years’ time. Here,’ he repeated, and directed his chin around the interview room. ‘Or in a cell a bit smaller.’ To make the point he drew a box around both figures, so that the stick-man’s head brushed the ceiling, and sectioned the box with bars. Then he turned the page once more and thrust it across the table. He clicked his pen and stared at the boy. Daniel ignored the picture. With his chin tucked against his collarbone, he kept his rinsed-denim eyes fixed on the tabletop.

‘You need to talk to me, Daniel. This – ’ he used his pen to tap the picture ‘ – is what will happen if you don’t talk to me.’

Nothing.

‘I’d like you to trust me, Daniel. I’d like you to trust me but it’s not important that you do.’ He paused. ‘Shall I tell you why?’ Again he waited but the boy, unsurprisingly, gave no answer. ‘Because I couldn’t tell anyone what we discussed even if I wanted to. If I did, they’d put me right in here with you.’ He gestured once more to the page he had ripped from his notebook. ‘I’m on your side, Daniel. Not because I want to be. I’m on your side because I have to be.’

The table that divided them was drainpipe grey: unmottled, unmarked but perhaps it was that absence of anything at which to stare that continued to draw Daniel’s focus. Leo was reminded of his first impression of the boy: that Daniel, despite everything, seemed timid, almost shy – not like a killer at all.

‘You could tell me… I don’t know. That you’d robbed a bank. The NatWest on the high street, say. You could tell me and I’d have to keep it secret. Or that you’d stolen a car. A Porsche, say. A Lexus. You…’ Leo was about to carry on but something about the boy stopped him. He had moved. Had he moved?

‘What?’ Leo said. He waited. What, he was about to say again but the boy spoke first.

‘No way.’

Leo fought an impulse to lean forward.

‘No way? What do you mean, no way?’

‘No way I’d steal a Lexus.’

Leo swallowed. He nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘A Porsche, then. Would you…’ steal, he was about to say, but the word – the direct question – did not seem appropriate ‘… how about a Porsche?’

Daniel rolled a shoulder.

‘Not a Porsche either?’ Leo slowly shook his head. ‘You’re a hard man to please, Daniel.’ And this, the ‘man’ Leo would have bet, earned a twitch of Daniel’s pale, cracked lips.

‘So what would you drive? Free choice. You’re in a forecourt with every car ever made and you get to take one home. What would you choose?’

The boy did not hesitate. ‘Subaru Impreza.’

Again Leo nodded. ‘In blue. Right? Like…’ Like? Like whom? The rally driver. Scottish bloke. Or was he Irish? ‘McRae.’ It came to him. ‘Colin McRae.’

Daniel, though, made a noise. ‘In white.’ He seemed to contemplate, then bobbed his head. ‘Yeah, white.’ He gave Leo a fleeting, bashful look. Leo, in response, picked up the drawing and crumpled it into a ball.

‘Just another half an hour.’

Detective Inspector Mathers strode on. Leo skipped to keep pace.

‘Inspector, please. He’s talking to me.’

‘He told you – what was it, Mr Curtice? The car he’d most like to steal. What next, would you say? His favourite serial killer? His top ten genocides?’

‘That wasn’t… That’s not what…’ Leo dropped back to avoid a phalanx of uniforms. He caught up with the inspector at a fire door. ‘The point, Inspector, is that he said something. His first words in seventeen hours. That’s progress, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Curtice.’ Mathers stopped mid stride and Leo’s soles screeched. ‘That’s not the kind of progress I’m looking for. Either he co-operates now or we proceed right away to pressing charges.’

‘But half an hour, Inspector. That’s all. What’s another half an hour when you’ve already told the world you’ve caught the killer?’

‘Come now, Mr Curtice. We’ve hardly—’

‘Oh no? Shall we ask the mob on your front steps and see how they interpreted your announcement?’

The detective inspector, a chiselled man far too ruddy for the season, made a motion with his mouth like he was sucking a boiled sweet.

Leo stepped close. ‘Be frank with me, Inspector Mathers, and I’ll be frank with you. This boy, my client: we both know the truth. You’ve got DNA that will turn out to be a match and you’ve got a witness – a fine, upstanding PhD student – who saw him fleeing the scene. He did it. We both know he did it.’

The policeman could not quite hide his satisfaction.

‘What we don’t know is how it happened,’ said Leo. ‘And we won’t, not until Daniel starts talking to us. Wouldn’t it be easier – for me, certainly, and for my client, yes, but also for your investigation – if someone could get him to open up? To give an account of himself?’

‘Mr Curtice. I hardly need remind you how time-sensitive this operation is becoming. It’s been four weeks since Felicity went missing; two weeks since the body was—’

‘Half an hour, Paul! That’s all! I don’t want Daniel to fight you any more than you do because we both know how that will end. It’s in everyone’s interests that he talks to me, that he trusts me. At the moment he’s tired and he’s scared and—’

This time it was Mathers who leaned close. ‘Do you think I give a fuck how scared he is? Do you think I give a fuck if he had a sleepless night?’ He pressed a fingertip to Leo’s chest. ‘How much sleep do you think I got last night? Or the night before? Or the ten, fifteen nights before that? How much sleep do you think the Forbes family got, or every other officer working this case?’

‘Look, Paul, all I meant was—’

‘You’re damn right we know the truth, Mr Curtice. You’re damn right we caught the killer and the world, as far as I’m concerned, deserves to be told.’ The detective inspector paused: a dare, seemingly, for Leo to fill the silence.

Leo said nothing.

‘Have your half an hour,’ said the inspector, waving a hand. ‘Come up with some story if you can. Just don’t try and kid me. You’re not here to do the world any favours. You’re on nobody’s side but your own.’

They were back, it felt like, where they had started. Yet Leo, this time, let his fingers drum.

‘Daniel?’ Leo watched, waited. ‘Daniel, please. They will charge you. You understand that, don’t you? You understand what I’ve told you? Unless you give an account of your version of events, they’ll decide for themselves what they think happened.’

The boy sat with his shoulders hunched. He shrugged, as much as his posture would allow – which was communication, at least, of a kind.

‘This refusing to speak. It does you no favours. I thought I’d made that clear. Did I not make that clear?’ His tone would not help, Leo knew, but it was becoming harder to resist. He looked at his watch, openly.

‘I can’t help you if you don’t let me. Your parents – ’ Leo tipped his head to the security camera ‘ – they won’t be able to help you either.’

A noise this time: something between a sniff and a snort.

Leo stood. He turned away and clutched his forehead. He turned back, a rebuke half formed, but Daniel was now sitting upright.

‘What’s…’

Leo waited.

‘What’s… that thing.’ The boy, for an instant, met Leo’s eye. ‘That thing you said. The thing with the letters?’

Leo shook his head. ‘I… DNA? You mean DNA?’

The boy did not say no.

‘It’s a genetic…’ Leo stopped himself. ‘It’s us. It’s tiny pieces of us. It’s incontrov… It’s proof, Daniel. Like fingerprints. They take samples at the scene and try to match it to their suspect.’

‘But it doesn’t mean…’ The boy glanced at the camera. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. That… that I did anything.’

‘It… No, not in the sense I think you mean. But unless somehow—’

‘And no one saw me. Like… there. Doing, you know. What they say I did.’

‘No,’ Leo said. ‘No, that’s true. But the DNA—’

‘She was my girlfriend.’

Leo stared. ‘Sorry?’

‘She was my girlfriend. She, you know. Loved me and that.’

For ten, twenty, thirty seconds, Leo made no sound. Then, ‘Were you there, Daniel? Is that…’ He breathed. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘I… Yeah. Sort of.’

‘Sort of?’ Leo stepped towards the table. He held the back of his chair but did not sit down. ‘What happened, Daniel?’

The boy shuffled. ‘We… we kissed and stuff.’

‘You kissed. Meaning, she consented?’

Daniel frowned.

‘Did she let you kiss her?’

‘I told you: she was my girlfriend.’

‘Daniel, I—’

‘We did it all the time. And other stuff. Proper stuff. Like in films.’ The boy’s expression was a challenge but as he spoke he seemed to flush.

‘Proper stuff? What do you mean by that?’

Daniel, this time, looked away. ‘Sex,’ he said and he slid a little deeper into his chair.

This time it was Leo who glanced towards the camera. ‘Did you have sex with her, Daniel? Is that what you’re saying?’

The boy took a moment to answer. ‘Loads,’ he said, concentrating now on his hands. ‘But, um. Not this time. She… she was worried. She didn’t wanna kid.’

‘She didn’t want to get pregnant?’

‘Right. So instead, this time, we did other stuff. Like, with sticks and that.’

Leo covered his mouth with his hand.

‘But…’ Daniel shifted straighter. ‘There was someone watching. A perv or whatever. She spotted him. The girl… er… Felicity, did. She told me to get off and when I didn’t cos I didn’t see the perv she did this.’ The boy pointed to the marks on his neck. ‘By accident.’

‘By accident.’

There was a silence.

‘And then?’ Leo sighed. ‘What happened then, Daniel?’

Daniel jerked a shoulder. ‘I left.’

‘You left.’

The boy nodded.

‘And this man. The one you saw—’

‘I didn’t see him.’

‘You didn’t see him?’

‘Uh uh.’

‘What then? Only the girl did. Felicity. Is that what you’re saying?’

Daniel nodded again.

Leo dragged his chair further from the table. He lowered himself onto it and caught his elbows with his knees. He looked at the sole-stained linoleum. ‘You said you left.’ He raised his head. ‘Why did you leave, Daniel?’

Once again the boy shrugged.

Leo waited. ‘Okay,’ he said, after a moment. ‘What about Felicity?’

The boy, this time, turned away.

‘When you left,’ Leo persisted, ‘was Felicity…’ He coughed. He tried again. ‘In what state did you leave her?’

Silence.

‘Was she alive, Daniel? Was Felicity alive when you left her?’

This time the boy spoke but Leo did not catch the words.

‘I’m sorry, Daniel, I didn’t hear what you—’

‘She was alive. Okay? That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’ There was something in Daniel’s expression that reminded Leo all of a sudden what the boy was capable of.

Leo backed slightly away. ‘No, I know, I just wanted to—’

‘You don’t believe me. Do you? You’re just like all the rest of them.’

Their time was almost up. DI Mathers and DC Golbas would by now be gathering their notes, their props, their wits, ready to settle things one way or another but quite unprepared, Leo suspected, for what they were about to hear.

‘Look,’ Leo said, ‘Daniel. All I can say, as your solicitor – as someone who is here to help you – is that if you did what the police think you might have done, it would be better… it would be better for you to admit it. If you lie, and they catch you in that lie, the consequences – the punishment – will be all the greater.’

‘I’m not lying.’ The boy’s voice was taut to the point of tears.

Leo showed Daniel his palm. ‘I’m not saying… No one’s accusing you of that. Not yet. But things get confused. They get mixed up. It’s perfectly natural that you should be worried, that you should be scared, that you should be looking to find some—’

‘I’m not scared either!’ Daniel’s hands, Leo saw, were curled and bloodless. His cheeks were blotched with red.

‘I’m sorry,’ Leo said. ‘I’m not putting this very well. What I’m trying to say is, when they come back in here, the police are going to charge you. It’s either that or let you go and they’re not going to let you go. They have evidence, Daniel. Solid evidence. And your story… This story… It will only make things—’

‘You asked me what happened. Didn’t you? And I told you. Didn’t I?’

‘I did. You did. But—’

‘So why can’t you just tell them?’ the boy said and the door behind Leo clicked open.