iBoy (22 page)

She nodded. “I’d better get to work myself.”

“How’s it going?” I asked her.

“Not bad . . .” She smiled at me. “Maybe my publishers might even give me a
bonus
for this one.”

“Very funny,” I said.

She grinned.

I got to my feet. “I’ll see you later, OK?”

“OK . . . but don’t stay out too long. You
are
looking tired.”

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” I said, heading for the door. “I promise.”

“And, Tommy?”

I stopped and looked back at her. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry . . . sorry I doubted you.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Gram. Honestly . . . it’s OK.”

“I know. But I
am
sorry.”

I felt too bad to say anything else to her. What could I say? She was apologizing for not trusting me, but she had every
right
to mistrust me. I was lying to her. I was betraying her trust. I should have been apologizing to
her
. . .

I very nearly told her the truth then.

I was so sick of lying to her and making her feel bad about herself that I’d just about decided that no matter how difficult it would be, I simply had to tell her the truth.

But then, just as the words were beginning to form in my mind, the doorbell rang, and before I had a chance to say anything, Gram had got up from the table, gone out into the hallway, and opened the door.

“Oh, it’s you,” I heard her say. “What do you want?”

“Good morning, Ms. Harvey,” a vaguely familiar male voice said. “Is your grandson in?”

It took me a moment to recognize the two men who followed Gram into the kitchen. The last time I’d seen them was at the hospital, when I’d only just woken up from another dream that wasn’t a dream, the non-dream about Lucy —
A 15-year-old girl has been raped by a gang of youths on the Crow Lane Estate
— which, understandably, had left me feeling slightly confused at the time. Now, though, as the two men stood there looking down at me, smiling their supposedly comforting smiles, I wasn’t too confused to remember them. The tall, fair-haired one — the one with the tobacco-stained teeth and bad skin — was DS Johnson. The other one — who was so unremarkable-looking that he didn’t really look like anything — was DC Webster.

“Hi, Tom,” Johnson said. “How’s it going?”

I looked at Gram.

She half-shrugged. “Sorry, Tommy . . . they want to ask you some questions. You can say no, if you like.”

I looked at Johnson. “Questions about what?”

Without asking, he sat down at the table. “So, Tom,” he said, overly casual, “how’s the head? That’s a nice-looking scar you’ve got there.” He smiled, winking at me. “The girls are going to like that, you know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They all love a guy who’s had brain surgery, don’t they?”

His smile faded, and for a moment he looked a little embarrassed. He sniffed and cleared his throat. “All right,” he said. “Well, the reason we’re here . . .” He looked up at Gram. “Would you like to sit down, Ms. Harvey?”

“Nice of you to ask,” Gram said, “but I’m all right here, thanks.” She looked at Webster, who was standing behind Johnson with an open notebook and a pencil in his hands. “Would
you
like to sit down?” she asked him.

“No,” he mumbled, glancing at Johnson. “No . . . I’m all right here, thanks.”

Johnson frowned at Gram, not sure if she was being sarcastic or not, then — after a quick glance at DC Webster — he turned back to me. “So, as I was saying, the reason we’re here . . . well, basically, we’d just like to ask you a few more questions about your accident —”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“No, I know . . . well, actually, we
don’t
know if it was an accident or not, but we’re assuming it wasn’t. We think the mobile phone that caused your injuries was probably thrown out of the window during the attack on Lucy and Ben Walker.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was.”

“You saw it being thrown?”

I nodded. “I couldn’t see who threw it, though. The sun was in my eyes. All I could see was someone at the window.”

“Can you describe them?”

I shook my head. “They were too far away.”

“Was it a man? A boy?”

“A boy, I think.”

“Black or white?”

“I don’t know.”

“How old?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“OK . . . but you definitely saw a boy at the window, and you think he threw the phone at you?”

“Yeah.”

“What time was this?”

“Ten to four.”

Johnson raised his eyebrows. “That’s very precise.”

I shrugged. “I remember looking at my watch just before it happened. It was ten to four.”

He nodded. “Right. So you’d just left school?”

“Yeah.”

“And where were you going?”

“Home.”

“Right . . . you were coming here?”

“Yeah.”

“OK.” He glanced at Webster, who was busy writing down everything I was saying, then he looked back at me. “Were you aware at the time that an assault was taking place in a flat on the thirtieth floor?”

“No.”

“You didn’t find out until later?”

“That’s right.”

“Remind me again how you found out about the attack.”

“It was when I was in the hospital,” I told him, looking him in the eye. “I was in the bathroom and someone had left an old copy of the
Southwark Gazette
behind. There was a report about the attack in the paper.”

Johnson nodded, looking at Webster. Webster flicked through his notebook, checked something, then nodded back at Johnson.

Johnson turned back to me.

I said to him, “Have you caught them yet?”

“Sorry?”

“The kids who raped Lucy — have you caught them?”

He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’m afraid we can’t reveal any details of an ongoing investigation —”

“You haven’t caught them.”

He sighed. “We’re doing our best, Tom. But with these kinds of cases . . . well, it’s difficult. You know what it’s like around here. People won’t talk to us. They’re afraid.” He looked at me. “You know Lucy Walker, don’t you?”

I nodded. “We grew up together.”

“I believe you’ve been visiting her recently. Is that right?”

“Who told you that?”

“How is she?” he asked, ignoring my question. “How’s she holding up?”

I shrugged. “As well as can be expected, I suppose.”

He looked at me. “Has she talked to you about what happened?”

I glanced at Gram, not sure what to say.

She turned to Johnson. “Whatever Lucy and Tommy have talked about, that’s their business. Now, have you got any more questions? Because if you haven’t —”

“I’ll let you know when we’re finished, Ms. Harvey,” Johnson said, turning away from her and looking at me. “I’d like to ask both of you about a series of incidents that have occurred in Crow Lane over the last week or so.”

“Incidents?” Gram said. “What incidents?”

Johnson kept looking at me. “A number of the individuals that we suspect were either involved in or have information about the attack on Lucy and Ben have recently been subjected to varying degrees of assault.”

I frowned at him. “Can you say that again, please? In English.”

Johnson stared at me. “You heard me. Someone’s been taking the law into their own hands. Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” I said.

He looked at Gram. “Ms. Harvey?”

She looked puzzled. “You mean someone’s been attacking the boys you suspect of raping Lucy?”

“Well, it’s not quite as simple as that . . . and because no one’s talking to us, most of the information we have is sketchy to say the least. But we think that someone, probably someone local, might be targeting anyone who has connections with the local street gangs.” He looked at me again. “So we think it’s probably someone who has some kind of grudge against the gangs . . . someone seeking revenge, perhaps.”

I laughed quietly. “What? And you think that might be me or Gram?”

Johnson shrugged. “I’m just asking if you know anything, Tom. That’s all. You’re friends with Lucy . . . maybe you know someone who might want to punish the people who hurt her. Can you think of anyone like that?”

I slowly shook my head. “No . . . no one springs to mind. And, anyway, how would they know who did it? I mean, how would they know who to punish?”

Johnson shrugged again. “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Lucy told them, or Ben . . . or maybe they witnessed the attack themselves but are too afraid to tell us. Or perhaps they’ve just been listening to all the rumors going round the tower blocks. Or maybe they
don’t
know who did it, they’re just assuming it was the Crows or the FGH —”

“This is all getting a bit ridiculous, isn’t it?” sighed Gram.

Johnson looked at her. “You think so?”

“I do.”

“Why’s that, Ms. Harvey?”

“Well, firstly . . .” Gram held up a finger. “The gangs are
always
fighting each other. It’s what gangs do — they beat each other up, stab each other, shoot each other. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years, and they’ll carry on doing it until they’re all gone . . . which won’t ever happen. So I don’t see why you suddenly seem to think that any of it
means
anything. I also don’t understand why you’re wasting your time looking for someone who’s attacking the bad guys, when you still haven’t found the bad guys yourself.”

“Well . . .” Johnson started to explain, “as I said before—”

“And secondly,” Gram said, holding up another finger, “even if there
is
some kind of vigilante out there, which I very much doubt, I don’t see what that’s got to do with us.” She stared at Johnson. “Do I
look
like I’m capable of terrorizing gangsters?”

Johnson shook his head. “I never said —”

“Do you think Tommy’s capable? I mean, he’s still recovering from a life-threatening operation, for God’s sake. And even if he wasn’t . . . well, look at him. He couldn’t terrorize a fly.” She smiled at me. “No offense, Tommy.”

“None taken.”

She turned back to Johnson. “So, unless you’ve got anything more relevant —”

“A number of youths were assaulted near Fitzroy House yesterday evening,” he said sternly, turning to me. “Two of them are still in the hospital, one in a critical condition. During the assault, a van was set on fire. We have a witness who saw you at the children’s playground minutes before the attack. Do you deny being there?”

“No, I was there.”

“Hold on, Tommy,” Gram said. She turned to Johnson. “What’s going on here? You can’t just —”

“Yes, I can, Ms. Harvey. Your grandson is a potential witness to a very serious assault that may end up as a murder case. I need to ask him some questions. All right?”

Gram looked at me.

“It’s OK, Gram,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

Johnson said to me, “Did you see what happened?”

“No.”

He tutted and sighed. “Come
on
, Tom . . . you were there. I
know
you were there —”

“Yeah, I was at the playground,” I said. “But I wasn’t there for long, and I didn’t see anything happening at Fitzroy House. I didn’t go anywhere near there.”

“You didn’t
see
anything?” he said incredulously. “How could you
not
see anything? There were about a dozen FGH boys, and six of them got knocked out, so there must have been a hell of a fight . . . and even if you didn’t see that, a van was set on fire, for God’s sake. Do you seriously expect me to believe that you didn’t
see
anything?”