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  Then he grinned at Callum. ‘Hello,’ he said, extending a large hand. ‘I’m Wesley Stephenson. I’m the duty solicitor and for now I’m in charge of your case.’

  Callum shook the proffered hand with apathy.

  He’s losing hope, Shelley thought. Already he’s giving up.

  ‘I’m Callum’s mother, Shelley,’ she said. She would not go down the path of despair.

  The solicitor turned to the police. ‘I’ll have a quiet word with my client, if that’s OK. Is that all right with you, Callum?’

  ‘’Spose so.’

  Callum looked down at the floor.

  For a brief moment no one spoke.

  In the end it was Shelley who broke the silence.

  ‘DreadNought was bullying him,’ she said roughly. ‘He’d been picking on my lad for nearly a year now. Callum was only defending himself.’ She plucked a phrase from the newspapers. ‘I thought that was justifiable.’

  ‘Reasonable force,’ the solicitor said calmly, his eyes moving from Callum to his mother. ‘I understand that Roger Gough was not carrying a weapon.’

  ‘There was more of them,’ Callum said truculently. ‘How else was I going to make them see I meant business?’ He tried a joke. ‘I’m not exactly built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, am I?’

  The solicitor took the top off his fountain pen, drew the notepad nearer to him. ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’

  ‘All right. It was a couple of years ago,’ Callum said. And dulling his tone was the conviction that no one would believe him. ‘My asthma was bad and DreadNought started picking on me. Him and his gang. Will Morris, Gareth Sigley and the rest.’

  The solicitor started writing, looked up. ‘I shall need all their names.’

  Callum nodded grumpily.

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Mainly took my schoolbag so I never had the right books or schoolwork and got into trouble. Then they started chucking things at me, tearing my clothes, asking for money like they do some of the others. But I never seemed to have enough money so they got more nasty.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They pushed me in the river once, off the Porthill footbridge.’

  ‘My lad doesn’t swim,’ Shelley said, pressing her lips together. ‘He might have drowned.’

  ‘Did no one see this?’

  Callum gave him a look of pity. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Plenty of people saw it. But they didn’t see what was happening. What they saw was a load of rowdy lads fooling about.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So – someone fished me out and never stopped rollicking me for being stupid and drunk. I wasn’t either, Mr Stephenson.’

  Wesley Stephenson gave Callum a reassuring smile and an encouraging nod.

  ‘Then they’d start threatening me. Telling lies, saying I’d flashed at one of the girls in the class. She’s DreadNought’s girlfriend and she knows as well as me that I did nothing of the sort. She just made it up to fall in with her boyfriend.’

  ‘The girl’s name, Callum?’

  ‘Katie Ashbourne. She lives a couple of doors away from me.’ Callum flushed right up to the roots of his mousy hair.

  ‘Is she a good-looking girl?’

  Callum looked down at the table, nodded miserably.

  And Shelley could see it all. Callum had fancied the very girl who had furthered the myth. The love of his enemy.

  And looking at Wesley Stephenson she could see that he had understood this too. There was a moment of empathy between them as they exchanged glances.

  ‘So this went on for a year or two?’

  Callum nodded.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Over the weekend I was walking in the Quarry and I saw them walking towards me. I started to run away and they just laughed. I knew then that they’d won. They’d made me into a coward – someone who runs away so…’

  ‘You went into town and bought a knife.’

  Another miserable nod.

  ‘On the corner of Roushill there’s one of those shops that sells everything. You know – it’s old-fashioned. It’s got coal-scuttles and doormats and things hanging up outside. I just went in and said my mum had asked me to get a carving knife for the Sunday joint. The old lady got all sorts out and I chose one.’ He looked furtively into the corner of the room, head dipped, shoulders up defensively.

  The solicitor had noticed the action too. ‘And?’

  ‘I bought a sharpening stone, too.’

  Shelley’s heart smashed to the floor. This was the worst part. She was intelligent enough to translate the action into legal terms. Not only intent but malicious intent. She looked helplessly at Stephenson. They would get him for this.

  Stephenson was staring abstractedly at the wall. She could almost hear him cursing.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I put it in my schoolbag ready for when they came at me again.’ Callum paused. ‘And they did – today – after school. They started like they always did, shouting after me, calling me names. So I got my knife out and threatened him with it. DreadNought just laughed.’ He paused to think. ‘It was that really. Even with a big sharp knife in my hand they didn’t take me seriously so I went for him. I stuck it in.’ He looked pleadingly at his mother then at the solicitor. ‘It went in easily,’ he said. ‘Like a knife into soft butter.’ He smiled. ‘I read that once, that the knife actually slips in quite easily and I didn’t quite believe it. In fact I can remember I was thinking, I can’t believe it’s not butter. I was laughing. Then DreadNought started gasping. I saw the blood. People were screaming and looking at me as though I had gone completely off my rocker. I think someone grabbed the knife off me. Someone else got hold of me and wrestled me to the ground. The police came – and an ambulance. I’m sorry. I don’t remember much more.’

  The solicitor took off his glasses and stared at them. Then he put them back on his nose. ‘You don’t have to tell me this, Callum,’ he said, ‘but what was in your mind? What did you intend to do with the knife?’

  ‘I don’t know. Make them afraid of me like I’d been afraid of them. Prove to myself and to them that I wasn’t a coward.’

  The solicitor sighed. ‘You must have had some idea what you were going to do with it. Let me help you. I’ll give you some ideas. Did you think you’d wave it at them and frighten them so they’d stop?’

  Callum stared at the floor. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Did you think, I just want him to stop?’

  Callum eyed the solicitor. He knew full well what Stephenson was asking.

  ‘Or did you intend to kill him? The defence,’ he continued smoothly, ‘will make much of the fact that you sharpened an already-sharp knife. Also that the injury was near the heart. You could be on a murder charge. As it is you could well be on a charge of attempted murder. We might get it reduced to grievous bodily harm but the charges are serious.’

  Shelley’s mouth was dry. They would take her boy away from her. He would be sent down. No community service charge this one. He would be incarcerated in a place which was full of DreadNoughts and their gangs.

  ‘I don’t know if I meant to kill him,’ Callum said. ‘I think even at the time I didn’t know.’ He looked away from them both, weighing up the choices, almost fascinated by the different interpretations of the same act.

  ‘Right.’ Stephenson wrote rapidly in his notebook. ‘Let’s get the police in. If there’s anything you don’t want to answer just say ‘No comment.’ Don’t volunteer information. Let me do most of the talking.’

  Callum nodded, his lips pressed together.

  He’d got the message.

  Stephenson called the two policemen in. He made a good case, explained about the continuing assaults.

  While the two policemen watched, their eyes hard and narrow and disbelieving, they didn’t even try to hide their scepticism.

  And they asked the questions that she dreaded in the ponderous, pedantic language of the law.

  ‘Was anyone a wit
ness to these alleged attacks by the injured boy?’

  ‘Plenty of people.’

  The policeman sat, pen poised.

  ‘No one what’d say.’

  The policeman sighed. ‘Just give us some names.’

  Callum pressed his lips together even harder. ‘You don’t get it, do you? They’re frightened he’d turn on them. They won’t say a word to you.’

  The lawyer pushed his pad towards the youth. ‘Just write the names.’

  In a slow, ponderous hand, Callum Hughes wrote:

  Katie Ashbourne, Chelsea Arnold, Charmaine Nash, Will Morris, Gareth Sigley. He thought for a minute then continued, Roberto Pantini and Dave Arrett. Then he looked up.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said. ‘They’re all in the gang. You won’t get one of them to say anything good about me.’

  The lawyer persisted. ‘Who’s your best friend?’

  It drew the evasive look again. ‘Haven’t really got one,’ Callum muttered. ‘Once you’re out of it you’re too dangerous to make a friend of.’

  ‘Do you get on well with any of your teachers?’

  Callum shrugged.

  ‘Well what’s your favourite subject?’

  ‘History.’ At last there was a spark of life in the boy. ‘’Specially World War One.’

  ‘Any particular aspect?’ The solicitor asked more out of curiosity.

  ‘All of it.’ A tentative, hesitant smile. ‘That’s why I gave DreadNought his name.’

  ‘I see.’

  Martha shouted up the stairs. ‘Time to go, Sam.’

  ‘OK. Bye, Sis.’ The valediction was accompanied by thunderous footsteps down the stairs which suddenly smote a pang at Martha’s heart. Oh, but she would miss him. The noise, the dirty football strip, the ever-playing football reruns, the cocky boyish comments. ‘He could have got that one.’

  From now on they would be an exclusively female household.

  And how would Sam fit in with the others at the academy?

  She couldn’t resist it. She rumpled his hair as he passed, provoking an objection, ‘Mu-u-m.’

  Bobby, tail wagging, was licking Sam’s hand. He gave a little woof of approval and Sam bent and kissed the thick, black fur. ‘Goodbye, old chum,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’m going to miss yer. Be good. Don’t catch too many rabbits.’

  Bobby gave another soft, sad bark.

  Together they loaded the two suitcases into the back of the car and Sam strapped himself into the passenger seat. Martha slammed the door behind him, got into her side, started the engine and accelerated down the drive, Sam giving his home one last, long look, waving frantically as he spotted Sukey and Agnetha in an upstairs window.

  Bobby chased them enthusiastically down the drive for a hundred yards or so before giving up and merely sitting forlornly in the middle of the lane, his brown eyes following them until they disappeared round the corner, when he stood up and trotted back to his sentry post, outside the front door.

  Sam gave a deep sigh and settled back in his seat. Martha sneaked a look across at him. He was frowning hard, trying not to be a baby, hoping she would not notice. ‘Bit of music?’ she asked and switched on the car radio – low – in case he wanted to talk.

  CHAPTER TWO

  8 p.m.

  The police didn’t believe a word of it. Or if they did it didn’t make any difference to Callum’s assault. Shelley could see that. She watched both their faces very carefully, saw them exchange glances, smirking as the solicitor explained that Callum had been provoked, that this had not been an attack out of the blue.

  She felt like saying out loud, challenging the coppers, making them understand that her son was not a psychopath, that he was simply a youth who had been pushed too far.

  They saw Roger Gough as innocent, her son as the guilty one. It riled her.

  ‘With respect,’ the burly one, whose name, she learned through the taped introductions, was Sergeant Paul Talith, ‘can anyone verify this tale? I mean…’ He leaned far back in his chair, meaty thighs wide apart, double chin bulging. ‘We’ve been taking statements and no one’s said anything about Roger Gough. They all say…’

  His cynicism fired Callum into action. ‘What a nice boy he is?’ he sneered. ‘What a little saint he is?’ He glared at Paul Talith. ‘It’s bullshit. Believe all that crap and you’d believe Jack the Ripper was a Sunday school teacher. He was beating the shit out of me a couple of times a week.’

  The policeman leaned forward and locked eyes. ‘Prove it,’ he said.

  And Shelley watched her son wither.

  Martha was driving north out of Shrewsbury, along the A49, towards Whitchurch. It should have been a fast road but there seemed always to be a slower car in front of them holding them up so Martha barely touched 45mph. When a tractor pulled out right in front of them Sam became impatient. ‘They said to try and get there before nine,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be late. It wouldn’t look good.’

  ‘We’ve got ages.’ Martha’s eyes left the road for a split second to look at him. How young he seemed. With more than a little essence of Martin. She steadied herself and gripped the steering wheel. ‘When do you come home next?’

  ‘There’s a couple of days off next month.’ Sam spoke nonchalantly, kicking the floor with his trainers.

  Martha rose to the bait. ‘Oh, that’s good. I can come and get you. It’s not far anyway.’

  ‘It’ll just be for a weekend,’ Sam warned. ‘I expect I’ll have to come back on the Sunday night.’

  ‘You can have a late lunch with us, maybe a bit of a walk with Bobby. You know.’

  ‘Mum,’ he said, suddenly urgent, ‘what if I don’t like it? What if I absolutely hate it? What if the other guys are beasts? What if I want to come home?’

  ‘Then we shall have to discuss it,’ Martha said, eyes now fixed firmly on the road. ‘But you have to give it a chance. I have an idea,’ she said, as she paused at the roundabout, ready to take the A49 north. ‘What about if we have a secret code?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sam sounded far from convinced.

  ‘Well,’ she said, warming to her subject. ‘I read somewhere that Wilfred Owen, the poet,’ she glanced across maybe Sam wouldn’t appreciate the analogy, ‘you know that he went away to war – the First World War?’

  ‘Ye-es?’

  ‘He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone where he was or where he was going’

  Sam was watching her.

  ‘In case his letter fell into enemy hands.’

  ‘You mean the Germans?’

  ‘Yes. So he and his mother devised a Mistletoe code. If he used the word mistletoe the letters of the next few lines spelt out where he was going, like Serre, in France. So how about if you text me to say that you hope Bobby is fine I know that you’re OK. If, on the other hand, you say that you hope he isn’t catching too many mice then I know there’s a problem and I should either give you a ring or pop up sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Ace,’ Sam said, with satisfaction, sinking back into the seat, a wide grin across his face. ‘It can be our own, special private mistletoe code so we can communicate and no one will know what we’re really saying.’

  Isn’t it strange how most young males love their spot of intrigue?

  She looked at him, suddenly swamped with a wave of affection.

  Courage was mine, and I had mystery

  Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery.

  ‘Tell me about the knife.’

  It was the younger, skinny policeman who asked this. PC Gethin Roberts, according to the taped introductions. ‘Where did you buy it from?’

  ‘At Birch’s – the shop on the corner of Roushill and Smithfield Road.’

  To the right of Callum, Stephenson started rubbing his neck. He always did this when he didn’t like the answer his client was returning. And Hughes’s answer couldn’t have been worse. He knew the shop. It was not a busy, bustling supermarket store where Callum Hughes might have slipped in, made
his purchases and slipped out again without anyone remembering, but a family-run business which prided itself on personal service. The name was painted in huge, black letters on a whitewashed wall, C.R.Birch&Son. They would remember the boy and they would also remember that at the same time as he had bought the knife, he had purchased a sharpening stone. So that little bit of evidence was bound to come out – and be made much of by the prosecution.

  Stephenson heaved a big, private sigh. He always got landed with them, he reflected, these naive ones. The quiet ones. The weirdoes, the still waters who ran so deep and lashed out without warning. His gaze landed back on the boy and he wondered what was going on inside that strange head of his?

  Maybe Callum picked up on the solicitor’s sigh. He turned his head and stared at him. For a split second they exchanged something – some empathy. Stephenson cleared his throat and for some unaccountable reason was reminded of his two-year-old son, Dylan, who sometimes stared at him with the same perceptive and unabashed absorption.

  He took his glasses off and wiped them on a tissue he drew from his pocket. It wouldn’t do to feel pity for this soul or to connect him too closely to his own child. And yet… He turned his attention towards Shelley. Callum was her son just as Dylan was his and Andrea’s.

  Both the police were watching him impatiently. He read their minds.

  Get on with it.

  ‘You were seen…’ PC Gethin Roberts was reading from some notes he’d made earlier ‘…by many witnesses getting the knife from your bag and approaching Roger Gough with it in your hand. Do you deny that you took the knife with the intention of assaulting your schoolmate?’

  Callum shook his head. Even he could work out that it would be pointless. Everyone had seen it in his hand, for goodness’ sake. He supposed he could have said he’d found it, in his schoolbag, by chance. But that was so weak. And for once in his life he didn’t want to be weak.

  ‘For the record defendant has shaken his head.’ PC Roberts spoke.

  ‘Why did you have a knife?’ Paul Talith’s style of questioning was very different. Truculent and confrontational.