Sweet Sorrow(97)

‘It’s like Braille.’

‘What does it say, Niamh?’

‘It says … hold on … it says “what … kind of dick … steals garage glasses?” Aren’t they free anyway?’

‘That’s what made it the perfect crime.’

‘Stealing something no one wants?’

‘Well, there was a certain amount of cash involved too.’

‘Ah. From the till?’

‘Yes, though it was more complicated than that. I mean I was stealing scratch cards, not cash, so no one lost out. It was a victimless crime because the money didn’t exist until you scratched the card. It was like that cat in a box. Philosophically speaking.’

‘And is that what you told them?’

‘Yep.’

‘And how did that go down?’

‘Not well.’

‘My God. A master criminal. I’m appalled.’

‘Oh, and you’ve never stolen anything?’

‘Me? No!’

‘All that time, working in restaurants, not a bottle of wine? A steak from the freezer?’

‘No!’

‘A coffee you’ve not rung through the till?’

‘Well. Maybe. Once or twice, but my upbringing means I’ve always felt shit about it.’

‘Well, I felt shit about it too. Especially getting caught. It was a bad time. And the stupid thing is, if I hadn’t made a run for it, I’d have been fine.’

‘So why did you run?’

‘Well – you’ll like this.’

‘Go on …’

‘It was for love.’

Niamh lay back on the sand. ‘Oh, bloody hell. Not her again.’

I think I was in shock for a while. Certainly I couldn’t stand or stop my hands from shaking and so we just sat quietly on the kerb in the fading light.

‘We only wanted a word, silly boy,’ said Mike.

‘We were just putting the frighteners on, that’s all,’ said Mr Howard. Already I could feel the blood on my back chilling and stiffening so that when I rotated my shoulders, the skin seemed to stick unpleasantly to my T-shirt. Mr Howard, who had, I was fairly sure, killed people, reassured me that it was nothing to some of the things he’d seen, but the blood had turned my fingertips to a dark brown that flaked like rust, turning black as night came on.

‘We’ll take you to hospital. See if there’s any glass still in there.’

I had already rehearsed the phrase ‘I want to speak to my solicitor!’, though where I might find such a thing remained a mystery to me. Did a solicitor handle Dad’s bankruptcy, or was that an accountant? ‘I want to speak to my accountant!’ didn’t sound right.

‘But why did you try to get away? Silly, silly boy.’

I allowed myself a few words now. ‘I had to be somewhere. That’s all.’ And that was when the police turned up.

It was not in Mike’s interests to involve the law, but a shaking, bloodied boy on a quiet road at night must have attracted the attention of a passer-by and now here was the patrol car, blue lights illuminating the plantation behind us. ‘Oh, fuck. We don’t need this.’ Mr Howard was already standing, hands outstretched, palms outward placatingly, and I felt an awful fear. Police stations. Magistrates’ courts. Criminal record.

But before prison, the hospital. We drove for twenty minutes to the place where my mother had worked when we’d first moved to town and I sat on the edge of a plastic chair while a weary policewoman asked me questions – where had I been heading to? To see a friend. Had the driver run me off the road? No, it had been an accident. Had I been put in danger by the gentleman’s driving? No, we’d been talking. Through the window of a moving car? Only for a second, then I’d lost control. What was I doing with all those glasses in my bag? Here I stumbled. I could see Mike, ashen-faced and fearful at the other end of the corridor, pressing down on his moustache as if it might come unstuck.

‘I want to speak to my solicitor.’

The policewoman laughed. Were they allowed to do that, laugh at us? ‘Do you have a solicitor?’

‘No!’ I said, indignant.

‘Then how about we call your parents?’

‘No. No, you can’t do that.’

‘I’m sorry, son, you’re sixteen and you’re in shock. We’ve got to let them know.’

‘You can’t. They don’t live together.’

‘Well – who do you live with?’

‘My dad.’

‘And his number?’

‘We don’t have a phone.’ Exhausted, the policewoman let her head drop forward. ‘We can’t afford it,’ I said, halving the lie: we did have a phone and we couldn’t afford it.

‘Well, can your mother afford a phone?’

‘Yes, she has a mobile phone.’

‘And …?’

‘I don’t know her number.’ This much at least was true. The scrap of paper was kept in my bedroom and I’d not used it often enough to memorise it.

‘Come on, son, don’t waste my time. Her address?’

‘I know what the house looks like.’

‘The landline then.’