Summoning the Dead (DI Bob Valentine #3)(11)
The bus carriage rattles on the bumpy road. I’ve no idea where we are or why I’m sat up at the back by myself with the horsehair from the burst chair poking at my bare legs. Shorts – what manner of dress is that for a boy of my age? I’m nine and haven’t worn shorts for years – at least two anyway.
The man with a nose like a hawk keeps turning round to look at me. He takes a quick glance, without so much as a smile, and then turns back to the driver. They talk about the football like it’s a subject for grown-ups only, but I know about the World Cup.
I want to say about the lad Rossi who plays for Italy, how he always scores the winner. I want to say about the Polish players, Boniek and Lato, the deadliest strikers in the finals. And I want to say about Norman Whiteside, the Irish lad from the north, who was only seventeen when he pulled on the green jersey for the first time.
Mammy was Irish, the man with the hawk nose told me. He said it made me the stock of navvies and whores and then he said he’d call me Taff because of my name. Donal Welsh is my name, but I don’t think I’m really Welsh at all.
The coach leaves the road and starts up an even bumpier one. I thought the first road meant we were in the country, but now I see it only meant we were on our way to the country. This is the country; the branches of the trees scrape the windows as we go by the bright green fields.
The beak told me I was going to be sent here. He had a name for the place, a fancy one, but I wasn’t listening. I find it hard to pay much attention to grown-ups when they’re giving out at me. I switch off; that’s what they say anyway.
That was after the hospital. I don’t know how I got there, not really anyway. But I remember Mammy had passed by then. It was me that found her with the needle in her arm at the squat. I told a grown-up there but he only swore and left. I think he was Mammy’s boyfriend.
In the hospital they had a needle in me too, in my hand though, feeding me they said. They sheared off my hair too. I don’t know why they would do that. I remember the hospital well. I loved the tight white sheets, the smell of the soap on them, and the feeds they gave you. Sometimes I had custard. I didn’t want to leave but they made me.
‘The boy is a delinquent,’ the woman said. She was talking to the beak, but I don’t know who she was. ‘By any definition of the word.’
‘Is it your opinion that the boy is in danger of criminality?’ said the beak.
‘It’s not a matter of opinion; it’s a matter of fact. The boy has already engaged in criminality. Would you like my colleague to expound?’
‘If you consider it useful.’
That’s when the Old Gannet read from his notebook; they called him that because he used to take scoops off your plate if you didn’t eat fast enough. He didn’t need the food, the size of the belly on him, but he took it to be a bastard.
‘ . . . And that, your honour, is when the assault occurred, occasioning the cut above my left eye, which required stitching at the hospital.’
He’d asked for it. How was I to know the plate would break? I wouldn’t do it again, not after the bruising I got. No, sir. I wouldn’t repeat that mistake twice.
‘Are charges pending?’ said the beak.
‘No charges have been placed.’
‘And is it your opinion the boy could make use of normal community facilities?’
‘Not immediately. In time he could attend school. We are confident enough that he has some faculties.’
‘Very well. Your charge is to be placed in a community school deemed suitable by the local authority, preferably an agricultural colony where he can work off any excess energies prior to eventual schooling.’
‘The authority has a place in mind that might just fit the bill.’
The coach struggled over the hill, the engine wheezing, and all the colours changed. The grass was still as green as can be – that would be with the rain – but the sky was grey now, some purple clouds blackening at their edges. Out the window looked like the kind of picture you’d see in old movies about werewolves or Frankenstein and the like. I didn’t like the look of it – not one little bit. I didn’t want to be here at all.
7
DI Bob Valentine sat in his office and stared out of the window. The sky was its usual overcast shade of gunmetal, with a pink smear along the horizon. The commuter traffic was building on the King Street roundabout, and the sound of impatient drivers blaring horns echoed all the way from the town centre. It was a picture of normalcy he knew the town of Ayr usually occupied, but somehow nothing was as he had once known it.
Something drew Valentine from his chair and he approached the large window, staring further into the scene he knew so well. A ship was docked in the harbour, an unusual sight at the best of times, but the tall, elegant vessel spoke of simpler days. It would be a tourist ship, some kids on an adventure outing perhaps; he’d read about it in the Post eventually.
His thoughts were drifting again, to hopes the kids on the ship were being looked after. It was an adult’s responsibility, to care for children. It was every adult’s responsibility. Children were the most precious gift we had. They were everything – our joy, our pleasure, the very symbol of our love. Children were to be treasured. He thought of Clare and the girls. And he thought of two children, unknown to him, with their hands cable-tied, crammed into a rusty oil drum.