Blood Family Read online

  And they had clearly done a bit of homework first. A series of unmarked cars sat there all morning, then through my lunch-time snack. They knew enough to wait till Harris had gone. I saw him leave while I was steeping tea, sometime around two. He shambled over the yard as usual, the giant oaf, and less than ten minutes later another squad car cruised to a halt in front of B flats. I saw the five of them go through the door.

  And then I waited. It was seventeen minutes by the clock before two of them led the mother out. My Christ, she was a mess. The woman could barely keep her feet shuffling between them, although they held her up. Her scalp was bald in patches, perhaps from the stress of living with that bully. More likely he had torn it out in one of his famous flare-ups. The car ticked over for a minute or two, and then, as if it had been waiting for yet another squad car that drew up behind, it did a turnabout, and left.

  From then on I was sure – sure as I’m writing this – that what I’d see next would be one of the other officers carrying out that poor boy’s body, wrapped in a filthy blanket. I never touched the tea. I just stared, worried that if I even blinked I might miss what was happening.

  Then this plump, balding, fatherly man led out the boy. The child came through the double doors and startled like a horse. It wasn’t even all that sunny, but he blinked hard in the light. I don’t believe he could have been much more than seven years old. He looked about the sort of height my Harry was when he moved from the infants to the junior school.

  Someone inside the squad car swung the door open as the two of them came close. I knew the bloke who’d fetched the boy out of the flats could not be a policeman because he didn’t shove the boy’s head down as he pushed him in the car, the way they do. (You learn a lot about police habits when you live round here.) The boy clambered in the back as clumsily as if he wasn’t even sure which way he would be facing when he got inside.

  The car door shut as one last officer rushed out of the flats to join the driver in the front. And then they drove away.

  ‘Job well done, Betty!’ I congratulated myself and, looking down, reckoned that I deserved a brand-new mug of tea. One hot and fresh, not stewed and stone-cold like the one sitting in front of me.

  I put the kettle on again then, trembling, sat at the kitchen table and wept my heart out with relief.

  PC Martin Tallentire

  I won’t try saying that I’d never seen the like before, because I had. By then I’d been in the police force for eleven years. I’d been the first to reach road accidents. I’d seen boys who’d been daft enough to tangle with rough-house drunks, and I’d rolled tramps and homeless druggies over in doorways, only to find them frozen stiff. I’d held down the flap on a girl’s bleeding face after a trivial cat fight turned into a full-on duel with broken bottles, and was at Mr Templeton’s the day the housing officers finally managed to winkle him out. (That was an object lesson in how much filth and garbage one mad man can fit in a one-bedroom flat.)

  But I had never seen a sight quite like that woman. She was barely human any more. That bastard had ripped out so much of her hair that she was halfway to scalped. I thought at first the thin, weird keening I could hear was coming from that armchair – as if someone had left one of those joke rubber bags leaking under the cushion.

  Then I saw her leg move. I didn’t recognize it as a leg at first, because of the way it twitched. And it was black. Christ knows, I’ve seen some bruises in my time. Nursed some myself, after the odd weekend round-up of revellers at the far end of Marley Road. But livid flesh like that – green, blue, purple, yellow, black. The woman was a rainbow in herself. That Harris must have gone at her pretty well every night. Small wonder she was just a cowering bag of torn clothes in a chair.

  Strange job, this. We deal with all types, all ages. Posh ones who ask you in and patronize you as they make you tea. Loudmouths who jeer as you pass. Toe-rags who hurl rocks at the car from around corners. You have to learn to keep the world from getting under your skin. But every now and again you’ll see a small kid breaking his heart in a doorway, or some poor sod who just walked down the wrong street at the wrong time and had his head kicked in. And you’ll just want to pack in the whole boiling, go home and weep.

  That’s how I felt that day. Partly the stink of the place! Hard to believe those two had lived in that flat, hour by hour, day by day, with that reek up their noses each breath they took. I nearly gagged. I watched that social worker – Rob, was it? – prowl round the poky place, looking for something better than that manky T-shirt and those raggy bottoms to cover the kid from prying eyes. And all I could think was, ‘Get a move on, mate! I just want out of here. You can come back some other time to trawl around for your report.’

  But, no. We had to wait while he peered into every cupboard. What he was looking for I couldn’t think.

  And then he pounces. On a book.

  A book! I ask you. In that benighted, stinking hole.

  I wonder about these social workers sometimes, truly I do.

  Eddie

  Outside hit me in the face, the slap of it against my skin. I had forgotten. And it smelled – oh, I don’t know. Hard, somehow. Almost harsh. Like crystal. I think air shocked me almost more than light, and once or twice since, smelling chlorine as I’ve walked past swimming pools, I’ve been swept back to that strange moment when Rob opened the downstairs door.

  I shan’t forget the police-car ride: how big and wide the world looked. The road ran through the park, and all I could think of was my old nursery because there’d been a patch of green there. It was like seeing something half-forgotten. Of course there are trees and grass on television all the time. But seeing half a park of it on either side of you is something very different. My head was swimming with green.

  And sky. Even before Harris covered up the windows, we were far enough down the flats that I had to twist my head to see even a slice of sky. The window in the car was closed, but if I leaned against it and looked up, I could see masses of blue.

  Everything rushed past so quickly. And everywhere was so bright.

  Because it was a police car, I thought that we were going to the station. (Mr Perkins once went to the station.) When the car stopped, Rob Reed said, ‘We’re here.’ And when I didn’t move, he leaned across to push the car door open. After I got out, he let me stand and stare a little while before he said, ‘Come on, Eddie. Time enough for that later.’

  This time I wasn’t so slow because I knew for certain that he meant me. (I know that probably sounds as if I was thick as a brick. But Harris had only ever called me ‘Stain’ or ‘Toe-rag’, and Mum used to call me ‘Sweetie’ when she still spoke at all, so I had half forgotten that my name was Edward.)

  Rob Reed led me to a glass door that startled me when it began to open before he even touched it. Behind it were more people than I had ever seen in my whole life. And not a single one of them was looking at me.

  ‘Come on, Eddie,’ Rob Reed said. ‘We go this way.’

  And then he led me down a corridor so long I thought we’d never reach the end.

  Dr Ruth Matchett, Queen Anne Hospital

  It was astonishing, really, how well he seemed. When I was told, before I went into the cubicle, that the boy had not been out of his flat for years I do remember thinking, ‘Here we go. Vitamin deficiencies. Possible stunted growth. And no doubt so mentally impoverished he’ll be halfway to retarded.’

  There were a few faint bruises on his lower legs, as if the brute who kept on kicking him couldn’t be arsed to raise his foot far from the floor, or put much effort into it. (I heard a different story about his mum. She’d been kicked halfway to pulp and was apparently so addled she could no longer speak.) The child had got off lightly. He did have one or two scars. But nothing you could pin down to a cigarette burn, or anything like that. I’ve seen far worse. Indeed, kids come in here looking a heap more battered than that after a rugby match.

  He didn’t speak. But he would answer questions, so it was cle
ar his brain still worked. Mostly he shook his head, or nodded. But when an answer was necessary, as when I asked him, ‘Can you tell me your name?’ he shot a look at his minder – that nice, tubby, half-bald chap called Rob – and then came out with it all right. ‘Eddie.’

  I ran my eyes over his clothing. The shirt was huge and close to clean. But I couldn’t even tell what he was wearing over his arse because it was such a rag. So I just said, ‘Well, Eddie, I’m afraid we have to take this shirt away from you now.’

  Rob muttered, ‘He won’t be sorry about that,’ so drily that I guessed the shirt must have belonged to this Bryce Harris bloke that they’d arrested.

  I eased off Eddie’s clothes. That’s when I thought I’d see real damage. These household bullies aren’t daft. They often concentrate on places no one sees. But there were no marks on his trunk or buttocks. Rob Reed stretched out a hand to stroke his head while I did all the private checks that children hate – especially the kids who think they know what’s coming after. Eddie did shrink from my touch. But I would guess that could be simple modesty. And I must say that I saw nothing on his body anywhere to lead me to assume he’d been abused that way.

  He didn’t even have nits.

  We did take photographs, although I couldn’t see them helping in any court case.

  ‘No paperwork, I suppose?’ I asked when we’d gone through the tests. ‘No medical card or name of a family doctor, or anything?’

  ‘Fat chance,’ said Rob. ‘They will send someone in tomorrow to take a better look. But I’m not hopeful. The place was a tip.’

  ‘If you find nothing, then we’ll have to start his shots again.’ I made a note. ‘He may have had his first few before his mum took up with Sunshine.’ I spoke directly to the child. ‘Eddie, do you remember a doctor or a nurse ever giving you any injections? Sticking a needle in your arm and telling you that it would only hurt a tiny bit and it would soon be over?’

  Either he didn’t understand or didn’t answer. He was staring at the polished floor. So I said, ‘Never mind,’ and peeled off my protective gloves. ‘I think that’s it for now.’

  I wrapped the boy in one of our little furry dressing gowns so he could be taken along to the unit for something to eat and a bath while one of the hospital volunteers looked him out some fresh clothes. But at the door Rob stopped and looked back enquiringly. I shrugged. We do try not to talk about these children over their heads as though they were dead or unconscious. But Rob’s a good man and he takes his job to heart, so I did want him to know that, so far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t see for himself. A few old bruises. That was it. I only wish that all the kids that poor man’s brought in here had been so lucky.

  Mind you, it’s not my job to check the damage to the poor child’s mind and sense of self.

  That often never heals at all.

  Eddie

  When we came out again, the sun was so bright that it hurt my eyes, and I kept blinking. Rob Reed noticed that. (He noticed everything.) ‘If that keeps up,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have to take you to have your eyes checked right away.’

  That seemed to make him think of something else. ‘Ten-minute break in the park?’ He grinned. ‘Might as well seize the chance to start on the sunbathing.’

  He stopped the car. ‘Don’t move,’ he said, surprising me because I hadn’t thought of it. ‘I’m coming round to let you out the other side.’ I could see why. The cars went whizzing by so fast they made me dizzy.

  He took my hand and led me over lumpy grass. ‘Sit facing this way.’ He put me with my back to the sun. And when I felt my head and neck get hotter, I thought it was because the nurse who’d put me in the bath and cut my finger- and toenails must have done something odd to my hair when she was washing it. The things I didn’t know back then, or put together wrong!

  But I knew one thing. ‘Shouldn’t I have sun cream on?’

  Rob raised an eyebrow – just a tiny bit; but if there’s one thing I had learned, it was to read a face. I put my head down and picked at the grass.

  It was a bit of time before he said, ‘You think you should?’

  It just popped out. ‘Well, Mr Perkins said you always should.’

  ‘Who’s Mr Perkins?’

  I recognized the over-casual voice. Seeing my mum with Harris had taught me well enough how one tiny thing let drop could be drawn out, and then blown up and up till even she believed she’d earned the kicking. So I said nothing, hoping he would let it go. But he persisted. ‘Who’s Mr Perkins, Eddie?’

  Well now, of course, I know full well what he was probably thinking. So it is almost a laugh to think I felt so nervous about answering, ‘You know. On telly.’

  ‘On telly?’

  ‘Yes. His show.’

  ‘I’ve never seen it.’

  And of course he hadn’t. Those tapes were thirty years old. I don’t know who had left them in that cupboard, but there they were, in piles of unmarked boxes. Mum and I put on the first tape one day when I was very young. Harris was still bad-tempered from the move, and he’d slammed out. Mum made me cocoa because I was upset from all his shouting. ‘Maybe it’s a film,’ she said.

  But it was Mr Perkins. Episodes of some old telly show. He came in, singing a song about feeling good because it was a new day, and there were all these things that we could do together.

  ‘Happy days, and happy ways

  I hope you know how glad I am

  To see you here with me today

  We’re going to have great fun.’

  While he was singing, he was taking off his jacket. It always started like that. Then he’d switch on the kettle and tip food into the cat’s dish. (‘Here you are, Sooty-Sue! My, weren’t you hungry!’) He’d show us what he’d been making out of toilet-roll holders and glue, or paper and string and some old plastic flowerpot, or something. Mr Perkins could use anything. And after that, we all went on a visit. Each show was different, but it was always interesting things. Mr Perkins would take us along to the fire station, or a farm, or a pizza parlour. (‘Off we go. Jump on the bus with me.’) We met a lady who shoed horses, and someone who drew cartoons. We saw how oranges were picked by huge machines with arms, and visited hospitals, and learned how they made spaghetti in a factory. Sometimes I worried that we would run out of people and places to visit, but we never did. And everywhere Mr Perkins took us, he asked a hundred questions. ‘Why do you do it that way?’ ‘Do you ever get scared?’ ‘Is it difficult?’ ‘Have you ever burned yourself by mistake?’ ‘How long does it take to cook?’

  He never ran out of questions. Sometimes he’d turn to us. ‘Do you ever help with the cooking?’ ‘Have you ever had bad sunburn?’ (That’s how I knew about the cream.) I’d always answer, even if I had my mouth stuffed full of pie or cheese. But in the end we’d say goodbye to whoever it was we had been visiting that day, and wave, and he would take us back to his house. Then he would sing another song about how we could grow up to do anything we wanted – anything at all. All it would take was for us to want to do that thing enough.

  ‘Because you’re strong and brave inside

  But most of all, of course, because you want to,

  Want to, want to

  Because you’re strong and brave inside

  And really, really want to.’

  When we had finished watching that first time, Mum rubbed the tear stains off her cheek and pressed a button so the tape slid out. She put it back in the box. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we put it safely back in the cupboard, out of sight, so we can watch it again some other day?’

  I think, even back then, I must have known she meant, ‘away from Bryce’. (She called him Bryce. And it was only after the hammerings on the door began practically every night – ‘Where’s Harris?’ ‘Harris, you bastard! Open up! You owe me money!’ ‘I know you’re in there, Harris!’ – that Mum got frightened and weird in her head, and then stopped talking, and I almost forgot his name used to be Bryce.)
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  I put the tape in the box. I was so proud to work out that it had to go in facing the right way before the plastic case would shut. Mum put the box back on the pile in the cupboard and dropped one of her blouses on top. I suppose she thought, if Harris saw the tapes, he would record his own stuff over them. And even after Harris brought home his brand-new telly with the DVD, I kept them carefully in there and only played them on the old machine when he was out. I don’t think Harris even realized that the box he dumped his six-packs on so they would be in reach still actually worked. If you’re the sort of person who hasn’t moved the body of your own dog out of the flat in weeks, why would you notice some out-of-date machine still gathering dust in the corner?

  Robert Reed, Social Services

  It was the first time we’d sat down to chat, there in the park that day. He looked all washed and clean. That nurse had done a brilliant job with Eddie’s hair, disguising the bit he’d hacked away at the front by making the whole cut shorter. Not elfin. It was too much of a mop for that. But cute. (If I had a bit more hair, I’d go to her instead of to Luigi.) They’d put Eddie in a pair of grey trousers and a plain white shirt. I swear that, sitting there in dappled sunlight, we must have looked just like a normal little boy and his grandpa, chatting about nothing.

  Except that Eddie kept craning round to look at everything. A bird pecking the scruffy grass; something that rustled in the leaves above us; a toddler on a bike, over towards the swings. The raucous melody that came from the ice-cream van confused him till I told him what it was. (I doubt if any ice-cream vendor in this town is daft enough to take a van near to those flats.) Even the daisies amazed him.