Devil You Know (11 page)

Claude was in the last bed, by the window. He was lying flat on his back with his plastered legs raised on two white pillows. Any other time we would have made a joke of that, had a laugh about it. Nobody laughed now.

All I could see was the side of his face, but Claude looked sick. His skin had a waxy greyness to it. He was turned away from us, staring out of the window. I wondered what he was thinking.

Gary ran round to the other side of the bed. He waved his arms, trying to make his mate smile. “Hi Claude.” Claude wasn’t smiling. “What happened, Claude? Your sister said you never saw who did it,” Gary looked at Claude hopefully. “Is that right, Claude? You don’t know who did it?”

“Was it the Young Bow?” I asked him, wanting a ‘yes’. Desperate for a ‘yes’.

It took Claude a moment to answer us, and when he did, he didn’t turn to me. He didn’t even look at Gary, just kept staring out of the window. His voice was only a whisper, as if he was afraid someone might be listening. He didn’t even swear – that was a really bad sign.

“I told the police I didn’t see who did it, told them I didn’t have a clue why anybody would do this to me… That’s what I told them. But that was a lie.” He let out a long sigh. Gary flopped onto the seat by Claude’s bed, but Claude just kept whispering to the window. “This guy,” he went on. “This guy, he just came out of the dark behind me. I thought he wanted past. I moved to let him go by me and he slammed me up against the wall. That’s when I saw there was two of them. One on either side of me. I tried to turn
round to see who the second guy was, but the first guy just grabbed me and threw me down. He was all dressed in black, like a ninja. Then I saw a baseball bat coming down on my legs.” His voice shook with the memory. “I passed out.”

“Was it someone from the Young Bow? Had to be,” Gary asked.

At last Claude turned and I saw his face, drained of colour, still looking frightened. “No, it wasn’t anybody from the Young Bow. One of them said something just before he hit me. He bent down and he said, ‘Take your medicine like a man, little boy, and pass on a message to your friends:
Nobody messes with us. We’re coming for the lot of you
.’”

The blood in my veins went ice cold.

Claude blinked back tears. “Know what else he said to me? He said, ‘And when the cops ask, you don’t know who did this. Ok? You or your friends say a word, and we’ll make it even worse for you.’” His voice broke then. He looked from me to Gary. “So promise you won’t tell anybody what I said.
Promise!
” His voice was a whisper and a scream all at the same time. “They’re not finished. They’re coming after you as well.”

We left the ward in a daze. “They’re coming for us.” Gary’s voice was a whisper. “That’s what he said. They’ll get the lot of us.” I held his arm, felt it tremble under my fingers. “You heard what Claude said. They’re going to get us all. And we
cannot
tell anybody that.”

I knew he was right. “Well, if we’ve got to tell the police anything, we can say we think it was the Young Bow.”

If I’d hit him with a brick he couldn’t have looked more shocked. “Do you know nothing, Logan? We can’t grass up the Young Bow!”

“So we just don’t tell the cops anything? Is that what you’re saying?”

Gary shook his head. “It’s as if these gangsters know us. Know everything about us. They knew Mickey loved his dog. They knew where they could find Claude, the way he walked home. They know about us all.”

“All this because we were there when their warehouse was torched? I don’t understand. They got Al Butler. Why come after us?”

Gary shook his head. “We messed with their property. Nobody does that to the Machans, Logan. And I heard my dad and my uncle talking: they said there would have been more in that warehouse than just carpets. It would be a cover for something else, drugs probably. Remember Al Butler patting his pockets, talking about his stash? He stole drugs from them, and they might think we did as well. And as if that’s not bad enough, we sent the whole place up in flames. They’re gonny teach us all a lesson. Take our medicine. And they know we can’t say anything, because if we do, it’s not just us that might suffer. They might go after our families as well.”

“We’ve got enough to deal with without worrying about that, too.”

I said it to make him feel better, that was all. He didn’t take it that way.

He turned on me. “You wouldn’t worry about your family anyway, would you? You’ve got no time for your mum, or her man. I mean… what do you care about, Logan? Eh,
who
do you care about? Nobody, as far as I can tell.” He was sorry he said it almost as soon as the words were out. He pushed his fist against his mouth as if he could stuff the words back in. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just so scared, and if anything happened to my family because of me…” He shook his head. “I’d rather be dead.”

His words hurt more than I can tell you. But why shouldn’t he believe that? I was always talking about my mum, always talking about Vince. Never saying anything good about them. Never mentioned all the good things my mum did for me. Was that why he thought that I didn’t care about her, about anyone? Did the other boys think that about me too? That I cared about no one? I must seem like a right scumbag to them.

Gary left me as soon as we came out of the hospital. Running for his bus, not waiting for me, with hardly a “Goodnight.” He wanted away from me. He wanted the safety of home.

“We better not see each other for a while,” was all he said before he was off.

“Call me if the cops visit you!” I shouted after him. I didn’t know if he would or not. Don’t even know if he heard me. Gary was scared. I was scared too. Scared of what he would say if he did talk to them. Phrases like ‘loose cannon’ and ‘weakest link’ came to mind.

I called Baz on the way home. “You should have come to see Claude,” I said.

“Don’t like hospitals,” he said. No apology. Baz never apologised. “Did he say who did it?”

“A couple of guys in black came after him on the way home.” I was
dying to tell him what Claude had told us, “But wait, Baz, wait till you hear what they said to Claude…” I didn’t get finished. He cut me off, dismissed it. I could imagine him flicking his hand as if he was brushing away a fly.

“Don’t want to hear anything about it. I tell you, it’ll be the Young Bow. We should get them for this. We could go over there tomorrow night. Face them. Confront them.”

It was the last thing I wanted, and I was sure it would be the worst thing to do. “No! I think we should keep a low profile. The polis will probably be interviewing all of us.”

“Yeah, well, ok,” he said reluctantly. “But, see when this is over, we are going to get right into that crowd.”

“I know, definitely,” I said quickly, glad he was at least pushing aside the idea of another confrontation for the moment. “I’m just worried about Gary, he’s dead scared. I’ve never seen him like this.”

“Scared enough to grass on us?”

“Naw! Naw!” I blurted it out. I was afraid of Baz’s reaction if Gary did grass. “Gary’s no grass. You said that yourself.”

“I sometimes think I don’t know the boys at all, Logan,” Baz said. “I know you. I trust you.”

I felt my heart lift when he said that. Baz trusted me. The other boys thought I had no feelings for anyone. But not Baz. He knew me. I never wanted to let him down. “You can depend on me, Baz,” I said.

I imagined him nodding, agreeing with me. “Hey Logan, let’s face it, the cops are coming. We’ve just gotta keep our heads. Get our stories straight. Ok?”

I wasn’t so scared when I spoke to him. I could draw my courage from him.

I switched off the phone and hurried home.

There had been something else scaring me that I didn’t dare put into words. I had been thinking about it since Gary had left me.

First Al Butler dies, then Mickey’s dog, and now Claude. Who had
been first into that warehouse the night of the fire? I re-ran the scene in my head. It had been Al Butler. I remembered him, turning his face to the cameras, daring them to see him. Then Mickey had run in. And then Claude. I remember how he fell back over one of the boxes and we all laughed. And that was the sequence they had been attacked. Al Butler, then Mickey and now Claude.

Gary had run inside next. I could see it all as if I was watching the rerun of an old film. Gary was next, then finally me – and Baz almost at the same time.

Was I making all this up? I didn’t know any more. But if anything happened to Gary… Then I’d be sure I was right.

The next day at school, Lucie knew all about Claude. How did she always find out these things? His story hadn’t hit any papers. Word travels fast on the streets, I suppose.

“So what happened to him?”

I wasn’t going to tell her what Claude had told us. Saying it out loud would make it true somehow. Sharing it with someone outside our circle just wouldn’t be the sensible thing to do. Maybe I had told Lucie too much already. Couldn’t risk putting her in any more danger. I just shrugged. “Random attack. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Sure about that?” she said, as if she didn’t believe me.

“What else could it be?”

She didn’t answer that. She changed the subject. “Cops been to talk to you?”

“No. Have they come to talk to you?”

That made her laugh. Her face changed completely when she laughed. Dimples appeared on her cheeks, her small white teeth seemed to shine. She should laugh more often. “And why would anybody want to interview me?”

“You’re like that Miss blinking Marple. Always asking questions.”

“And never getting any answers,” she said, smiling. “Not from you anyway.”

“It happened after we left him, Lucie. I couldn’t tell them anything. But I suppose you’re right. The police will come.”

Sure enough, two policemen were waiting for me in the house when I
went home. To make things worse, my mother wasn’t there. Only Vince. They all stood up when I went in to the living room. First time I noticed how tall Vince was. As tall as the two cops standing beside him.

“It’s about Claude,” Vince said.

I didn’t sit down.

The two policemen introduced themselves. Then they sat down again. They seemed to be studying my face. It was Vince who spoke first: “Sit down, Logan.”

Don’t normally do what he tells me, but I sat down on the sofa beside him. Now I was face to face with the officers. It was as if they were waiting for me to speak. I tried to stay silent, but I know I looked nervous.

“Ok, who’s the good cop and who’s the bad cop?” I tried to sound funny. Don’t think it worked.

Neither of them smiled. Vince tutted, annoyed at me.

“So, this is about Claude?” I said.

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“He doesn’t know who did it,” I said. “That’s what he told us.”

The younger one took out a notebook and began writing down what I said.

“That’s what he’s saying,” the other one said, “but the boy’s scared. We think maybe he does know.”

“I was at the hospital last night. I saw him. He doesn’t know who did it,” I began to rattle on. As soon as I started talking, it was like a cork coming out of a bottle – everything came pouring out. “He says he never saw who did it, could have been anybody. Just somebody in black. There’s loads of gangs around here. Had to be one of them.” I was careful not to mention the Young Bow, but that was the first thing the policeman picked up on.

“You’re saying it could be that gang you had the trouble with a couple of weeks ago?”

It was the last thing I wanted them to think. “No! No! I didn’t mean
that.”

“We will be questioning them anyway,” he said.

“Don’t tell them I said it was them. I’m not saying that.” I know I sounded panicky but I couldn’t help it. I remembered what Gary had said about grassing. I didn’t care about the Young Bow or what they might think of me. But all at once, in that moment, I realised I didn’t want to let Gary down.

The policeman shook his head. “No. We won’t mention you. Don’t worry about that.”

After that they said nothing, as if they were waiting for me to tell them more. “Oh come on, you know there’s always trouble here. I don’t get what you expect me to know anyway,” I tried for a laugh. “I mean, you’re making me feel guilty here.”

“
Are
you guilty of something?” the younger one said.

Honest, you could have knocked me over right then. What was he saying that for? Did they know about the trouble I’d got into in Aberdeen? What were they trying to make me say? “Me? I didn’t do anything. Claude’s my mate. He didn’t say it was me, did he?”

The boys didn’t like me – that thought wound through my mind like a snake... They only tolerated me because of Baz.

“No,” I was told after a long pause. “Of course we don’t think you’re a suspect. Claude isn’t saying too much actually. We know he’s hiding something. He knows more than he’s telling. We’re trying to protect him here. Trying to protect you all. We’re trying to find out who did it. If you know anything you should tell us.”

“No! He never saw who did it. That’s what he told us.”

“You tell the truth now!” Vince snapped at me. He got to his feet, towering above me. “If Claude’s told you who did it, you speak up. It’s for your own good.”

I flinched away from him. I hoped that would make the cops think I was expecting him to hit me, was used to it.

“I don’t know who did it.” Did I shout? I might have. I looked back to the policemen. “If I knew I would tell you. Claude’s my mate. He didn’t tell us anything either.”

I had to go over everything that had happened the night Claude was attacked. There was nothing I could tell but the truth, and it’s funny how relaxed you feel when you know you are telling the truth.

Finally they left saying I was to contact them if I found out anything more, and that they might be back with more questions.

As soon as they’d gone, Vince turned on me. “They’ll be back, don’t doubt it. They know you were lying. I know you were lying. You know who did this to your mate.”

“I suppose you took great pleasure in telling them all the trouble I got into in Aberdeen.”

“No. I didn’t tell them. But only for your mother’s sake, not for yours.”

He held me back as I tried to leave the room. “Logan. Tell me what’s wrong. Your mum and I both know you’re worried about something. Tell me; I want to help you.”

What a joke! “YOU! You can’t even help yourself.”

And I pulled away from him and ran out of the room.