A Thousand Cuts (20 page)

‘I was saying,’ said Elliot’s father, ‘that I work here. I have to work here. If we could leave London we would but we can’t afford to. And because we can’t leave, we have to make the most of where we are.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Property. Public services. Schools, Inspector. We don’t have a great deal of choice so we do what we can with the choices that we have.’ He paused. He sighed. ‘It’s a good school. The results, the tables: compared to the alternatives it’s the best we could manage for him. That’s why we bought a house in the catchment area. For Elliot’s sake. For Elliot’s sake and also for Sophie’s.’

‘For Sophie? You said she was nine. Isn’t that what you said?’

‘She’s nine but she’s getting older. Children do that, Inspector. ’

There was scorn in his tone, which Lucia ignored. She tapped a fingernail against the side of her cup.

‘It’s changing status,’ Elliot’s father continued, less aggressive now. ‘The school is. Did you know that? They’re talking about private funding, more autonomy. It’s on some government scheme.’

‘Scheme?’ said Lucia. ‘What kind of scheme?’

‘A pathfinder scheme, they call it. A public-private partnership. The school: it’s one of the first. So it’s the best that’s available to us and it’s going to get better. And it will be more selective. It will be able to pick and choose. If we took Elliot out, there’s no guarantee we’d be able to get Sophie in.’

Lucia shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘They’re siblings. If the brother is in already, they have to admit the sister.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Lucia said. ‘What I mean is, I don’t understand why you would want to. Academically, it’s a good school. Fine. But your son was attacked. He was beaten and cut and he was bitten. Why would you want to send your daughter there as well?’

Elliot’s father raised his hand to the bridge of his nose. She noticed that his eyes, already bloodshot and ringed by shadow, were glistening now. He screwed them tight, then stretched them wide. He brushed away the single tear that escaped.

‘We thought . . . ’ he said and stopped. He cleared his throat. ‘We thought, after what happened. I mean, the boy who died, the boy that teacher killed. He was one of them, wasn’t he? I know, I know: no one saw anything. But everyone knew about him, didn’t they?’

‘Donovan,’ Lucia said. ‘Donovan Stanley.’

Elliot’s father nodded. ‘We weren’t going to at first. Send him back, I mean. But after what happened . . . We thought that would be the end of it.’

‘You thought he would be safe.’

He nodded again, emphatically. ‘And when we looked at the alternatives, Inspector. The other schools. Some of them . . . You just wouldn’t. You just couldn’t. And there was Sophie of course. We had to think of Sophie.’

 

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‘Cuts. Bruises. Nothing he might not have got from playing football.’

‘Did he play football?’

‘No. He didn’t. But that’s not the point.’

‘What is the point?’

‘The point is, it was nothing serious.’

‘So you did nothing?’

‘No! Christ. What do you take us for? Of course we did something.’

‘What? What did you do?’

‘We spoke to Elliot, for one thing. We spoke to the school.’

‘What did Elliot say?’

‘Nothing. He wouldn’t say anything. I mean, he said he fell over.’

‘And the school? Who did you speak to at the school?’

‘We spoke to the headmaster. I did. I told him what we thought was happening. I asked him to keep an eye on Elliot.’

‘And what did the headmaster say?’

‘He said I shouldn’t worry. He said, in his experience, all kids get into arguments at Elliot’s age. All kids have their little scuffles.’

‘Scuffles.’

‘That’s right. But he said he would keep an eye on things. He said he would ask his staff to keep an eye on things.’

‘And what happened?’

‘I don’t know. Not a lot, I guess. Things didn’t get much better but they didn’t get any worse. They didn’t seem to anyway. We didn’t know about the text messages.’

‘And later? What about later?’

‘Later?’

‘After Elliot was attacked.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘What did the headmaster say then?’

‘Nothing really. I mean, what could he say? What could he do? There were no witnesses, Inspector. Remember?’

 

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He was on his feet. There was nothing to prevent him leaving yet he lingered. His hands clasped the back of his chair. Lucia noticed the skin around his fingernails. Strips had been gnawed away, leaving tracks of exposed flesh and traces of blood.

‘There’ll be publicity,’ Lucia said. ‘The press, the reporters. They’ll latch on to this. They’ll latch on to you.’

Elliot’s father nodded.

‘Because of the school mainly,’ Lucia said. ‘Because of what happened.’

‘The teacher. The shooting.’

‘That’s right. You should warn your wife. Your daughter too.’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘I have.’

Lucia bobbed her head. She waited. Still Elliot’s father did not move.

‘It will die down eventually,’ Lucia said. ‘If they can’t find an angle, if they can’t find a link. They’ll move on to something else.’

‘Yes. I expect they will.’

‘But if I can help. In the meantime. I don’t know what exactly. But you know where I am.’

‘Thanks. Thank you.’

Lucia stood. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Really, I’m most desperately sorry.’

Elliot’s father cleared his throat. He patted his pockets. He scanned the table. ‘Right then,’ he said. And he left.

 

The room was dark again, this time because the shadow of the building opposite had reached outwards. It had worked its fingers through the gaps in the blind and wrapped the furniture and the floor and the walls in its grip.

we R watchN U. evN f U cnt c us we cn c U

Lucia sat alone. She held out the mobile phone in front of her, her thumbs resting on the keypad. She scrolled.

do aL gingrs smeL of piss?

She imagined Elliot, seated in the same room as his family but wrenched by the words on the screen into a place of loneliness and terror.

wot hapnd 2 yor fAc? how lng til U dI of cancer??

She tried to decide what she would have done in his place. She tried to decide but she realised that in fact she had already decided. Like Elliot, she had chosen to trust in denial, to confide only in herself, to try to cope with what others inflicted upon her without help of any kind.

f U dont wash dat tng off yor fAc we R goin 2 cut it off

And why? Because the help that was on offer was no help at all. Elliot had been wise to the reality in which he was caught. His parents were well meaning but ineffectual. His friends, if he had any, were probably just as well meaning but weak. There was the school of course; just as for Lucia there was the chain of command. But like Lucia, Elliot had known better than to even try.

f U ask any1 4 hlp we wiL burn yor hows

Samuel Szajkowski had tried. He had tried more than once. That he had tried was perhaps the only thing that might have slowed his soul on its descent.

Njoy yor vzit 2 d hospital. I hOp dey mAk U beta so we cn fck U up agen

More than alone, Elliot had been forsaken. Why should he have had to ask for help? Why had help not been forthcoming? It was no secret, after all. Those who had the power to intervene: they knew. Why was the onus always on the weak when it was the strong who had liberty to act? Why were the weak obliged to be so brave when the strong had licence to behave like such cowards?

not a wrd. kEp yor gingr mouf shut

It wasn’t over. She would not accept that this was over. Fuck Cole. Fuck Travis and the whole fucking school. It wasn’t over.

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The room was dark but it was not late. There was still time. For what Lucia had in mind, there was still time.

A blog.
You know what a blog is, right?

Well my mum doesn’t and she must be almost as old as you. She’s got no idea. She thinks I’m being foul when I say it. She tells me to chew on soap. I’ve got one, you see, and I write on it most days. I write about animals mostly. Birds and that. Things I see. I haven’t told anyone at school about it though. I don’t use my real name either. Jesus. Can you imagine? I call myself Firecrest. It’s a bird. It’s stupid, I know. Please don’t tell anyone, will you?

Anyway, that’s what it was. A blog. Supposably it was written by him. Bum—I mean, Mr Szajkowski. They called it the BumLog. You know, like blog but also like Bumfluff.

At first it was pretty funny, what they wrote. It was supposed to be him in hospital - you know, after he broke his leg. You’re supposed to imagine him like lying on his bed with his laptop, and his blog is all the stuff he’s thinking about and everything that’s going on around him. Like day one is him in pain and that but also he’s thinking about all the shots he should of saved in the game and worrying cos he wasn’t wearing his best pants when Donovan Stanley pulled down his shorts. He’s thinking about his girlfriend - you know, Miss Mullan - and he’s afraid that she saw his, um, I mean, well, us kids, we call them skid marks. I don’t know what the medical word for them is.

Anyway, that’s day one. And there’s other stuff, like when TJ - Mr Jones - when Mr Jones comes to visit and he’s mad cos the teachers got beat and he’s taking it out on Bumfluff and whacking his leg and that and trying to pull the plug on his life-support machine.

Which is a bit stupid really cos he wouldn’t of had a life-support machine, would he? I mean, thinking about it, he probably wasn’t even in hospital for more than a few hours.

But that’s not the point. You’re not meant to take it seriously. Although this kid I know, Gareth his name is, he read it and he was like, why does Bumfluff call himself Bumfluff, does he not know what it means? And, how does he manage to type if he’s all hooked up to a life-support machine? And this other kid I know, David, he’s like laughing at Gareth and going, I dunno, Gareth, maybe he dictates. And Gareth is like, oh. Which is like, duh.

So anyway, it was funny at first and everyone was reading it. Miss Parsons, she caught a bunch of us looking at it during ICT and at first she was like, what’s that you’re looking at, you’re supposed to be researching news stories not messing about in the webosphere. She calls it the webosphere. She thinks it makes her sound cool. And she reaches past us and takes the mouse and she’s about to close the browser but she sees what we’re looking at and starts to read. Us lot, we’re sort of hanging back a bit but when we see that she’s reading it we crowd in and start reading again too. And Miss Parsons, when she scrolls to this bit about how this nurse is trying to shave Bumfluff but can’t find his face cos it looks exactly the same as his arse, she gives this little snort and brings her hand to her mouth. Someone else laughs too, I think it was Owen, and that’s when Miss Parsons realises the rest of us are gathered round her. And she’s like, right, that’s enough, get back to your desks, that’s enough now, and she hollers at us all to sit down. But I’m watching her. When she gets back to her computer at the front of the classroom she turns off the overhead projector so none of us can see her screen. She types something in on her keyboard and then she just sits there reading, smiling, shaking her head. When the bell goes, she doesn’t barely notice. All she says is, quietly now, keep it down, and still she’s staring at her screen. I leave my PE kit behind so I have to come back for it during lunch but Miss Parsons, she won’t let me in. She opens the door just a fraction and says, what is it? I tell her and she says, not now. I say, but Miss, I’ve got PE, and she says, not now! And I don’t argue but I know what’s going on. I see them. The lot of them. Mr Daniels, Mr Boardman, Miss Hobbs, Mr Jones. They’re all in there, reading it just the same as us. And they’re laughing. I can hear TJ - sorry, Mr Jones - I can hear him laughing cos he’s got this really distinctive laugh. It’s like he’s choking on a wad of phlegm.

It got nasty though. The blog did. I mean, people still read it and that. I did too. But it wasn’t funny. It was gross, really gross. I wouldn’t of read it at all but I had to cos everyone else did and you look like an idiot if everyone’s talking about it and you can’t even go, yeah I know, or, what about that bit, did you read that bit?

I don’t want to say.

Please Miss, I really don’t want to.

What should I call you then?

Okay but I still don’t want to say.

What if I showed you? It’s probably still up. I doubt there’s anything new on it but it was definitely up three weeks ago cos I heard Tracey Beckeridge tell Gabby Blake that Meg Evans peed in her pants when she read it.

Oh yeah, it’s been going on all year. The football match was February, wasn’t it, so yeah, three or four months.

Do you want me to then? Do you reckon that computer over there is working? We’re not supposed to use the computers without permission so if anyone says anything will you tell them that you said it was okay?

Where’s the button?

Oh yeah.

These computers are really slow. They’re like jurassic or something.

God. It sounds like it’s gonna take off.

My dad’s got this brand-new computer and he says it’s like the Lambogenie of all computers. It’s got this blue light on it, like it’s a spaceship or something. He doesn’t let me use it.

God, come on.

Come on come on come on come—

Right, here we go.

Look. See, I told you. And it’s in the history, which means someone’s been looking at it in here. It would of been a teacher probably. I bet it was a teacher.

This is it. Look, the last post was on 6 June. So that was like what. A week before the shooting.