Table of Contents

Chapter one  home

DETECTIVE Inspector Merrill Ellingham stood at his garden gate with unusual hesitancy. It was ten minutes to two in the morning, he had just finished a very long shift and he had just realised every other house in the street had a wheeled bin outside on the pavement.

He had forgotten to put out his bin, for the second week in a row. His home would be overflowing with waste, unless he wheeled the bin to the front of the house now. But if he did that, he would risk disturbing the neighbour’s dog. And if he disturbed their dog, the dog would wake their baby.

Why did they have to have such a boistrous dog and a young baby in the same household? Ellingham tried to avoid disturbing either. When the baby was awake all night, so was Ellingham.

Noise or overflowing bin, which was the worst nuisance? He ran his fingers over his front door key and approached the front door, deciding to drive to the tip the following day. The  sound of a bark from the back of their house made him halt. The dog was already disturbed. He could fetch his waste bin with impunity.

He had a shared access to the back of the house via a pathway that went between the terraced properties. The gate was left open again, which meant their dog would escape in the morning. He would have to remember to shut the latches after pulling the bin through the passageway, or he would be woken early by the sound of his neighbours calling their dog.

The alsation was still barking. It was in their kitchen. They had their light on and -

Ellingham flattened himself against the house wall, not even allowing himself the luxury of a softly-muttered curse. A light was on, but it wasn’t the neighbour’s light. It was coming from his own kitchen.

Crouching, he edged his way carefully along the concrete path, his soft-soled shoes not making a sound. Ellingham saw a shadow first, then a hooded figure at his kitchen door. He heard the back-door key turn in the lock, and realised someone was going to leave his house.

Ellingham ran forward. The hooded figure saw his movement too late. The intruder tried in vain to slam the door shut, but Ellingham was quicker and far, far stronger. The DI caught a glimpse of a young, white face, snarling in fear and rage. There was a shout, the flash of a blade, then a mad flurry of flailing arms and kicking legs and shouted obscenities. Ellingham knocked the knife out of his hands, then the intruder to the ground.

The intruder, who looked no more than a child, wriggled with astonishing speed. He caught the kettle, and flung it at Ellingham’s face. Then he was reaching out, grabbing anything he could and hurling it - chopping board, tea pot, spice rack. Ellingham lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s wrist - and had his hand bitten. He drew back involuntarily, the lad was reaching again for something else to throw at him. They dived once more into a sprawling mess upon the floor, upturning the laundry basket, kicking over a stool, and causing some saucepans to crash off the top of the cooker.

But being a boy, and only a young one at that, the intruder was swiftly overpowered. He stiffened abruptly as he felt a cold ring of a handcuff close around his wrist, apparently recognising it immediately for what it was, and recoiling almost as though he had just suffered an electric shock. Their eyes locked, dark black eyes of a big man in control, and the panicky bright blue eyes of a boy who Ellingham reckoned to be about nine or ten years old.

“You ain’t supposed to cuff me!” the boy yelped.

Which was true, but Ellingham continued relentlessly to feed the link behind a rail on his oven and to grab the boy’s free wrist. He snapped the other part of the handcuff around the boy’s limb with a sense of grim satisfaction.

“You know it all, don’t you?” He growled, sliding the handcuffs down towards the boy’s hands to check he could not slip out of them.

The boy’s stare was full of disbelief. After his initial shock, he began to twist and wriggle to see if he could pull himself free, rattling the cuffs noisily against the bar.

“Let me go!” He shouted, his voice gritty with emotion.

All the boy’s struggles served to prove was how effectively he was trapped, and Ellingham paused to watch the spectacle with mild surprise.

The boy began to curse, much of it racial abuse. His range of vocabulary was surprising, even to Ellingham, who was well used to hearing such curses. But there was no racial insult in the world that had the power to ruffle Merrill Ellingham. The detective turned his back and walked away, making a quick check of his house to make sure the young burglar was alone.

The front door was dead-locked and bolted. The young burglar was obviously relying on a few seconds’ getaway time if he heard someone trying to open the front door. No windows were broken, but Ellingham found black dust on the landing. He looked up and found the attic hatchway open. The neighbours, besides the twin sins of a noisy dog and noisy baby, also had noisy building work being done on their roof. The boy must have broken in up there.

Ellingham went back into the kitchen and surveyed the wreckage. Saucepans, kettles, clothes and spice jars were strewn everywhere. The young captive was still wriggling, trying to squeeze out of the cuffs and swearing with all his might.

“Get them off me, Mister, or I’ll tell everyone you was touching me up!” He threatened.

“No-one would believe you.” Ellingham answered levelly, stooping to pick up the boy’s knife from the floor. It was an ordinary boy scout camping knife, complete with a range of different gadgets. Maybe not a lethal weapon, but a pensioner would have been scared by it.

He tucked the knife into an unused cellophane freezer bag and tied the top, then reached for a holdall among the mess that he did not recognise.

The boy had quietened, and Ellingham glanced up. He wondered what the youngster was so scared of. His face was white. He now leaned quietly against the oven, his face sullen.

He was just a skinny scrap who looked no different to hundreds of other young criminals that Ellingham had seen. He was very thin, with dirty brown hair straggling around his mucky face. He wasn’t even four-and-a half-feet tall, Ellingham guessed, with black worn jeans, good running shoes, a black hooded sweat shirt that hung almost like a dress — Ellingham’s sweat shirt. The detective’s eyebrows rose as he recognised it.

Ellingham glowered at the boy. It was incredible to him that he, of all people, should fall victim to a burglary. The house was alarmed throughout, he had window locks in use, and his home was not an easy target for an opportunist.

“Let’s see what else you’ve nicked,” he muttered, unzipping the bag and upending it so that its contents slipped to the floor.

He was a skilled man at not allowing his face to register his emotions, but his surprise was undisguised when bread, cans, milk cartons and cheese rolled onto the floor, scattering noisily in all directions.

“Food!” He could not even choke back the word.

For a terrible moment no-one spoke. The boy would not even bring himself to look up and meet Ellingham’s shocked gaze, apparently ashamed that he should be caught stealing only food, and not something more glamorous. He recovered quickly.

“Let me go, Mister,” he began wheedling. “I ain’t really much wrong, have I? I only nicked food. I didn’t take nothin’ valuable.”

“Shut up.” Ellingham commanded, but he was shocked. The last thing he expected to find in the bag was food. It was a complicated process to break into a house. Why not just go shoplifting?

He frisked the boy’s pockets. The boy flinched at the initial contact, but did not voice a protest. There was a torch, a superstore loyalty card signed by P Baker, Ј50 in cash, probably taken from Ellingham’s sock drawer, a pair of gloves and two sticks of gum. Nothing else. Not even a key.

The boy began whining and pleading again. To rid him of any hopes that Ellingham might turn him loose, the detective told him he was under arrest for burglary and assault with a  weapon and told him his rights.

The young burglar looked sullen again.

“Big deal.” He scoffed.

Ellingham should have known that would be his reaction. Boys like him had no respect for the law, and no wonder. He had seen hundreds of juveniles act the same. Even if he were ten years old, and old enough to be charged, hours and hours were often spent processing the paperwork every time a child like him was arrested, with a plethora of reports compiled by all manner of professional people. The magistrates were powerless to deal with them, and the same cocksure kids carried on as they were before, vandalising, stealing, breaking into cars, and tormenting their neighbours.

Irritated, Ellingham did not move to his phone immediately to contact his colleagues about the young burglar. Since the youngster seemed to know police procedure, and had only seemed ruffled when Ellingham deviated from it by using the handcuffs, the detective guessed he would be upset by any other small break in procedure.

He didn’t intend to scare the youngster badly, just enough to wipe that smirk off his face. He wasn’t going to detain the kid very long either, it would be professional suicide. He only wanted to scare him, just a little.

So, instead of doing what he should have done, he got some bread from his cupboard and put four slices into his toaster, then opened the fridge and took out eggs and milk.

If pressed, he would have admitted that he enjoyed his moment of power. He was aware that the youngster was suddenly very still, and was watching him intently.

“You want some scrambled eggs?” He drawled, pleased at the boy’s reaction.

The young burglar was startled. “Ain’t you taking me down the nick, then?”

“Nope.”

“You’re letting me go?” The boy didn’t quite believe it.

“Nope.”

Ellingham paused as he took out a little glass mixing bowl from his cupboard and looked at the lad. The boy’s face was drained of all colour and his eyes were busy, rapidly scanning the kitchen, all the work surfaces, the distance to the sink and its contents. It was obvious he was looking for anything that might help him escape.

He must be getting old, terrifying a kid like that.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Ellingham demanded, no longer pleased that he had used his superior strength against somebody so tiny. “I’ll take you down there when you’ve had something to eat.”

The boy was staring, obviously not reassured. Ellingham was irritated. He cracked his eggs open with unnecessary force and knew a moment’s self-disgust. Why had he thought it clever to scare a child?

“We’ll go now if you like.” He offered.

The smell of toast was permeating the air, and the boy was looking hesitantly at the eggs. His eyes were huge, and even though his face was liberally smeared with dirt, Ellingham could see the palor in him.

“I’m - v-very hungry,” he stammered. But he still looked worried. He was eying Ellingham uneasily. He looked back at the handcuffs around his wrists and swallowed.

“Relax.” Ellingham drawled, refusing to let his guilty feelings show.  “I’m not into little boys.”

The youngster turned his head sharply, as though stung. Ellingham observed the movement, but stayed quiet. He put the bowl in the microwave, cooking the meal as fast as he could. He reckoned he could get away with his breach in procedure, even if the lad found a smart lawyer — which wasn’t likely. Still, he had better not delay in calling uniform to pick up the kid. He would do that as soon as the meal was served.

Ellingham buttered the toast in silence, not bothering to waste his breath by asking the kid any questions. He did not believe he would receive honest answers.

He released one of the boy’s wrists to let him eat one handed, watchful in case the boy went for him. He did not.

Ellingham closed the spare part of the handcuff around the rail on his oven and pushed the boy a plate, but no knife or fork. The youngster picked up the food with his fingers and began to bolt the food down, not caring how hot it was.

“You’ll choke if you carry on eating like that,” Ellingham observed.

The telephone rang. At first, Ellingham ignored it.  He knew who it would be: work. Only a member of his team would ring at this time of the night.

Sure enough, as his answerphone clicked, and began playing its message, Ellingham heard Mick Rooney’s voice talking over his message.

“Guv, can you pick up? It’s urgent.”

Grumbling, Ellingham strode to the phone in the hallway and lifted the handset. Rooney had to be the biggest windbag he had ever worked with.

To be fair to him, the query was urgent and complex. The DC’s investigations had crossed over into another colleague’s work — and a case that Ellingham had dealt with only days before. Rooney was seeking advice on the liaison, and what he would need in his application for a warrant which had to be sought immediately.

It took more than 20 minutes alone for Rooney to outline the query. Ellingham picked up his cordless phone and went into the kitchen to check on his captive while he listened to Rooney’s rambling descriptions. He answered his subordinate’s comments only absently, watching the boy with a frown. The kid had not only eaten his own scrambled eggs, but Ellingham’s too.

The young captive had managed to reach the laundry basket and fashion a makeshift bed with its contents along the kitchen work surface. He had climbed up and was lying full-length on it, with a rough pillow on top of the hot-plates of the oven. Ellingham turned off the oven at the mains, fearful his young prisoner might accidently nudge on one of the switches and burn himself.

He couldn’t have been very comfortable, with his cuffed hand dangling near the oven rail, but the boy was fast asleep, and even snoring gently.

All the time Ellingham was talking on the phone, he kept watching the boy, frowning. There was something that was bothering him, and if Rooney would just shut up for a moment he might have been able to figure out what it was. Perhaps it was the very pale colour of the child’s face. When asleep the captive looked younger than before, and oddly vulnerable. For a reason Ellingham could not have pinpointed, he touched the boy’s neck to check his pulse. It was fine. As Ellingham looked down, he even felt envious of his state of sleep. The DI felt drained and he was struggling to concentrate on what his colleague was saying.

He didn’t mention the break-in at his home, nor the young burglar in his kitchen. Later he asked himself, why not? He supposed it was because Rooney would only have become side-tracked, and it was hard enough to stick to only relevant details as it was.

Ellingham’s legs were weary, and he strolled with the handset into his living room, satisfied no harm would befall his young prisoner. He flopped down into his comfortable sofa, still responding absently to Rooney’s monologue. His eyes were stinging with the effort of keeping them open, and his hair was growing sticky around his left ear, where it had been in contact with the telephone handset for too long. He swapped over, grunting an acknowledgement to Rooney’s woes.

Within a few moments he had to remind himself to listen more carefully to Rooney’s conversation as his attention was wandering. And a few moments later, he jerked himself awake with a start, realising he was actually nodding off.

Rooney realised what was happening and chuckled. “Don’t go to sleep on me!” he complained.

“Yuh, I’m tired.” Ellingham confirmed, slurring his speech. It had been a long day. He must have worked for more than 12 hours solid. As he spoke, he was frowning. He could remember thinking the one thing he must not forget to do later was sort out that kid in his kitchen.

After what seemed an interminably long time, Rooney shouted down the line.

“Guv!”

“Huh?” Ellingham jerked open his eyes.

Rooney laughed. “I’m going.”

He had said that before, but this time the phone clicked and went dead.

The handset slipped out of Ellingham’s hand and he leaned back with a huge sigh of relief. Within a few moments a sharp tone woke him, reminding him that he had not replaced his handset properly. Ellingham’s fingers slid over the off-switch. He did it correctly this time.

He frowned, still with his eyes shut. He had a niggling feeling he had forgotten something, and he felt too exhausted to move. Sleep washed over him, gently carrying him to oblivion.

He was woken at 5.30 by the sound of shouting and his oven door banging. He sat up with a start, wondering what the noise was.

That kid in his kitchen!

Horrified, he moved too quickly from his sofa and nearly fell over. Curses streamed from his mouth as he stumbled across the living room. He was wondering how the hell he could have fallen asleep and not remembered a juvenile handcuffed illegally to his oven. He staggered to his kitchen, almost drunk with tiredness.

“Hey!” The kid was bellowing. “Hey, I need a crap. C’mon, man. Get these cuffs off me!”

“All right! Quit your noise, will you?” Ellingham snapped, aware of the dog barking next door. “I’m coming!”

He had no time to think, no time to plan what he intended to do with his captive. If he had two more minutes to wake up, he would have told the child he was going to let him go. Far easier to do that, than to explain to his colleagues why he had chained up a juvenile in his kitchen for several hours...

As he stumbled into the kitchen, drunk with tiredness, he was only aware of the rising pitch in the boy’s shouting. The kid was banging the grill door to stress his sense of urgency.

The moment the handcuff was released around the boy’s wrist, his free hand flung something into Ellingham’s face. The DI flinched, unsure what the boy had thrown, but his eyes were stinging and he felt the wetness on his face.

He heard a smash and managed to catch a glimpse of what was happening. The boy had broken his vinegar bottle against the oven and was preparing to glass him with it.

Still he had no time to think, to plan, to reason with the boy. He might have shouted something like, "Now, hold on - !", but he was also realising it would do no good. He had no choice but to defend himself. The boy must have thrown vinegar into his eyes and he was momentarily blinded.

At the time, it was only a blur. Later he forced himself to remember what his actions had been. He had pushed the lad back against his fridge freezer, grabbing his wrist and pointing it inwards until the broken bottle had been dropped with a startled yelp. Next he had delivered a harsh shoulder throw. The boy had landed heavily on his back with Ellingham’s weight following down swiftly onto his chest.

At that point, the boy’s kicking, screaming and swearing fell into an alarming silence. The youth shut his eyes and lay limply, his face suddenly very white.

Ellingham eased the pressure quickly and knew a moment’s panic. He had hit the kid too hard on the kidneys, he thought. Had he passed out?

The boy moaned softly and turned his head to one side, and Ellingham felt relief rush through him. No. He hadn’t passed out.

“C’mon,” he growled. “Get up, kid.”

He reached down and grabbed the back of the sweatshirt, ready to haul him to his feet.

Ellingham felt moisture. He lifted his hand. Blood.

“Fu-!”

The boy’s clothes were black and the blood hadn’t showed up, but now Ellingham could see there was loads of it. Had the boy landed on the broken vinegar bottle and cut himself?

“Where’re you bleeding?” Ellingham growled. “Where’s it coming from?” He lifted the boy’s shirt to pinpoint the source.

He recoiled with shock.

There were lines across the little body. Dozens of them, all bleeding. It looked as if someone had slashed him repeatedly with a knife, but the cuts were too thick in width for that. It looked more likely that someone had whipped him with something like a car aerial.

They went from shoulder to waist at least. Ellingham touched the back of the boy’s jeans. They were soaked with blood too.

What shocked him most was that he had no idea, simply no idea at all, that the boy had been injured. He recalled now that the youngster’s face had looked so white, but other than that there had been nothing in his demeanour to even suggest it. He hadn’t moved stiffly or painfully - except the once. He had flinched when Ellingham frisked his pockets.

Cursing his stupidity at leaving a child chained up in his kitchen, Ellingham left the boy lying on the floor and rushed to the phone. He called an ambulance, but still hesitated before calling his colleagues.

Later, he was ashamed to admit his first reaction was selfishness, and not compassion. He was gripped by fear. He remembered the boy threatening to tell everyone Ellingham had “touched him up”. Those marks were so recent the boy could claim Ellingham had wounded him, and though nobody would think it likely, it would nevertheless be a case of only his word against the boy’s.

This crazy thing that he had done! Why hadn’t he called uniform straight away and got the kid hauled off? Then this mess would be left for someone else to discover.

He went back into the kitchen. The boy was gone, leaving red smears on the lino floor.

God! It just got worse and worse, didn’t it? Ellingham raced outside, wearing only socks on his feet. It was too dark to see anything. He went back for a torch, searching his garden quickly but thoroughly. His feet were soaking and cold. He saw nothing.

He began searching his neighbour’s gardens, but carefully. He didn’t want to wake them and have to answer awkward questions. Still nothing.

Exasperated, he went back to the phone and cancelled the ambulance, explaining he was a policeman and the patient had absconded.

Was that the end of it then? He could call the station, start a search. He would use a lot of manpower and face some very awkward questions... and the kid would still be running away from care next week.

Or the youngster might be found somewhere, and then it would all look ten times worse. Did he want to risk that? Surely not!

He mopped his kitchen floor and then went out for another search. It was 6am by now and the milkman looked at him curiously. Neither of them spoke. The milkie probably thought Ellingham was a nutter looking for his cat or something.

Exhausted, the DI abandoned his search. The kid would have holed up somewhere and would probably soon continue on his normal thieving way. His cuts had looked as if they needed hospital treatment, but they weren’t life threatening. He wouldn’t be found dead in a gutter somewhere.

Back home, Ellingham flopped once more into his sofa and dozed fitfully. He kept waking and thinking about his young burglar. In his mind, he was already beginning to piece together a picture of the boy. Ellingham guessed he must usually do his thieving for an adult, a latter-day Fagin. Fagin must have beaten him with something — God knew what! He must have been some kind of an animal, flogging a child that badly.

The kid must have taken off after the beating. He had taken no CDs or watches or cameras because he had no contacts to sell them to. Fagin would have managed that side of things. And the boy had chosen to break into a house to steal food because he was in no fit condition to run away if he was seen shoplifting.

There was no doubt the youngster was used to house breaking. The way he had dead-bolted the front door was the obvious clue. If it hadn’t been for the dustbin, the kid would have fled, and got away, at the first sound of the key in the front door.

The dustbin! Ellingham had still forgotten to put it out.

He sprang from his chair and wrenched open the door, then stood, blinking in surprise. The kid was standing in his hallway, holding a steaming mug of coffee.

CHAPTER TWO home

Man and boy jumped at the sight of each other, each momentarily stupefied to see the other there. It was the boy who recovered first, holding the mug out towards the DI.

“Drink?” He offered politely.

“What are you doing back here?” Ellingham snapped.

“I hid in your roof space, man.”

He had a pseudo-American accent that grated on Ellingham’s hearing. He didn’t talk like that because of any American connection, the DI guessed, but because the boy thought it sounded ‘cool’. It seemed odd, and slightly pathetic.

But no matter how stupid he appeared with his sloppy speech, there was nothing wrong with that kid’s brain. Ellingham realised in stunned silence that the boy had hidden in the last place he had thought to look — in the house he should have been running away from. The detective had been outsmarted by someone at least three times younger than he, and the realisation was galling.

He stared down at the hot drink in the boy’s hand so hard that the mug seemed to have taken on a hideous shape of its own.

“You boiled my kettle?” Why hadn’t he heard it?

“Nah. Thought it might click and wake ya. I boiled the water in a saucepan.”

The longer Ellingham stared in amazement, the more red mists of rage were swelling inside him. He had been out combing the streets for this brat. He had even been unable to sleep because he was so worried about him. In the meantime, the boy had been here the whole time, wandering around his house, helping himself to coffee. Why hadn’t Ellingham heard him moving about his house, or in his kitchen? No-one could move that quietly!

“You gonna take me down the nick now then?” The lad asked.

Most young criminals had the cheek of the devil, but now Ellingham thought he had seen everything.

“No.” He answered curtly. He had already cooked his goose, hadn’t he? Whatever harm he had caused to his career by having hours of unexplained time, alone with a handcuffed child, was already done. Glowering, he muttered, “You should be in a hospital.”

“I ain’t going to no ‘ospital.” The boy protested indignantly. “I’ve seen too many people die in them places.”

“Very sick people have a tendency to do that.”

“Well I ain’t very sick and I ain’t going,” was the response.

Ellingham sighed. “What’s your name?”

“Conway.” As an afterthought, the boy presently added, “Prest.”

He took a sip of coffee and nodded to Ellingham’s graduation portrait on the wall. “You looked cool in your dreads, man.”

Ellingham felt in no mood to discuss family pictures, but he couldn’t help glancing at the photograph of a fresh-faced black youth with dreadlocks tumbling about his shoulders.

“I thought so too, at the time.” He answered, in a tone which implied he didn’t think so now. He turned his attention back to the boy.

“What are you doing in my house, kid?”

“I like it here.” The boy smiled brightly.

“You’ve done a bunk from somewhere. Who did you run away from?”

The youngster looked amused. “Who d’you think?”

Ellingham’s black eyes looked on in disgust. “Go back there.” At the boy’s startled look, he added, “I don’t mean the animal who cut you. You haven’t spent long with him, or you wouldn’t still be breathing. You’ve run away from council care, haven’t you? Where?”

The boy laughed. “I ain’t tellin’ you that!”

“I’ll find out anyway.”

Conway Prest looked angry. “I ain’t stayin’ in care no more.”

There was something in the boy’s tone that made Ellingham glance up into his face. He didn’t like what he saw. He hesitated, then decided it was worth investing his energy in trying to get the lad to see sense.

“Believe me,” he spoke softly. “It’s better than living on the streets.”

“You ever been in care?”

“No.”

The boy scowled. “Then what do you know?”

Ellingham shuddered the softest of sighs. “I worked in vice. I’ve seen what happens to kids on London streets.”

He gave the youngster his sternest look. “Heroin’s the biggest danger, probably. Beware of the creeps who give you a shot without even telling you they’re going to do it. They’re hoping you’ll get hooked on your first one. Some people are. They become slaves.”

“I know that.” The boy’s blue eyes met his confidently.

“And?” Ellingham frowned.

Conway Prest grinned. “I’m a great actor. I’ll make out I’m already hooked. That way I stay in control.”

He was speaking in such a relaxed manner Ellingham could almost believe he was stoned already. How come the lad was able to move about so freely with injuries like that? They were fresh. Less than a day old, Ellingham reckoned. He eyed the black sweatshirt the boy was wearing. It was stiff with dried blood.

He glowered at the kid. “If you’re so damned clever, how come someone’s cut you like that?”

The boy scowled. “I wasn’t - so damned clever.” He was still cocky enough to imitate Ellingham’s accent, putting a deliberate sneer on the phrase ‘so damned clever’.

The DI snorted in disgust. “And are you telling me Social Services treat you worse than that?”

“No.” Conway Prest hesitated, thought better of what he was going to say, and clamped his mouth shut. For the first time his gaze slipped, and he looked lost in his thoughts.

Ellingham spoke as kindly as he could. “I’ll give them a call.”

The youngster suddenly, impatiently, smacked the cup down on the stairs, spilling some coffee.

“D’you know what ‘secure accommodation’ means?”

Ellingham froze, panic hitting him for the first time. This kid wasn’t just trouble. He was seriously screwed up, and that meant shedloads of hassle. “It means you’re a very disturbed boy.”

The very disturbed boy in question pulled a face and sat down on the stairs. He was pale, and his hands fumbled for the cup. He sipped, then blew on the drink because it was steaming.

“It means I got on the wrong side of someone, that’s all.”

Ellingham doubted that. “They don’t lock up kids for no reason.”

The boy said nothing. He continued to sip his drink. “I kept running away,” he spoke at last. “I made one of them look a fool, and his mates won’t admit he was a fool, or they can’t count on him to cover for them when they mess up, can they? So instead they all gang up and say I’m - uncontrollable, and that saves them the bother of trying to do their jobs properly, don’t it?”

“Bull.” Ellingham snorted. He wasn’t going to swallow this nonsense.

The boy seemed to sigh, but he made no sound. He stared broodingly into his drink.

“I can’t be what they want me to be.” He admitted. “They move me on every six weeks or so. I can’t live like that. Can’t make friends. Can’t do school. They hope each time they move me it will work out different, but everywhere’s the same.”

He smiled whimsically. “I’m kinda like a piece in a jigsaw. They keep turning me round, pushing me, prodding me, trying to suss out where I fit in, but I’m in the wrong puzzle. I ain’t even part of their stupid picture. I ain’t nothing, really.”

Ellingham studied the kid with slightly narrowed eyes. He hadn’t expected such a young child to express himself so fluently. Clearly not a stupid boy, but a deeply troubled one.

“How old are you?” The detective demanded.

The boy looked startled, but he could see no harm in answering. “Twelve.”

Undersized, skinny and undernourished, Ellingham noted grimly. He had seen seven and eight years who were taller and bigger, but they were all fit, healthy, well-loved kids. He knew the pattern. He had seen it so many times before. But he wasn’t personally responsible for it and he couldn’t think what lay in his power to change it. All he could think to say was what he had already said before. “Life on the street is an early grave for kids.”

“I know.” The boy spoke quietly.

His acknowledgement was all the more shocking. Ellingham had expected denials, or a claim that he could look after himself. Instead the boy was quietly admitting that he was being stupid. It seemed he had considered the risks already, and still thought them worth it.

Ellingham rubbed his hair. “I’m going to put the bin out.”

The boy said nothing as Ellingham turned away, but he was looking thoughtful. Ellingham felt more optimistic. Perhaps he was going to see some sense after all.

Ellingham’s lighter mood turned to disgust as he wheeled the bin through the passageway between the houses and found the garden gates latched. It meant the neighbours had been up, tramped noisily — they always tramped noisily — along the side of his house, and still hadn’t woken him.

So many late nights recently! His shift last night should have ended at 6pm, but he was still working at 1.30. He couldn’t remember when he had last left work on time. No wonder he was so exhausted. But that tiredness had led to the most stupid mistake of his career.

How could he have kept a juvenile locked up in his kitchen overnight? It was crazy. If any of his colleagues knew he could kiss goodbye to his career at once. He’d be lucky to escape being charged.

He knew no way out of the mess he was in. The only option he could think of was to go to his superiors at once and confess. Perhaps he could limit the damage at least, but Ellingham doubted it. He suspected the kid enjoyed stirring mischief. The moment he suspected Ellingham was at a disadvantage — and he was too quick-witted not to realise it — he was likely to spin all sorts of lies.

“I’ll tell everyone you were touching me up”. Isn’t that what he said?

Ellingham audibly groaned as he paused by his bin to think about his situation. Whatever was he going to do? What was he going to say to the boy’s social workers? Social workers were a difficult group to deal with at the best of times, always aware of the worst possible scenario, always unwilling to give the benefit of the doubt. They couldn’t afford to.

That kid was going to have a field day!

Heavy-hearted, he went back inside the house and found the boy sitting on his sofa. He was flicking through a motoring magazine, humming tunelessly. He looked very relaxed. That struck Ellingham as incongruous.

“Are you on drugs?” He asked, curiously.

The boy looked up and smiled. “Nah, don’t do ‘em. They rot yer brains, don’t they?”

“So.” Ellingham was growing increasingly puzzled. “How come you get moved on every few weeks? An intelligent boy like you, who knows to steer clear of drugs?”

The boy shrugged.

Ellingham sighed. He knew there had to be a big problem, but the boy wasn’t going to tell him about it.

“Tell me about the guy who cut you.”

“You must be joking!” Was the retort. “You’re a copper, ain’t you?”

“I don’t mean his name. I meant, in general terms. Why were you hanging out with him?”

The lad shrugged again. “Part of a crowd.”

“So you haven’t just split with him. You’ve lost all your contacts, right? A guy alone stands out, you know. You’ll be a target.”

The boy’s jaw hardened. “I still ain’t going back to Essex. They’ll label me with a personality disorder and I’ll get locked up for years. I might never get out.”

His eyes held a steely glint. Ellingham studied his face in silence, noting absently that the boy must have been previously been in the care of Essex Social Services, and grateful at least for that titbit of information.

“Personality disorder, huh?” He drawled.

“That’s what they say if they want to lock you up,” the boy explained. “You don’t have to have done anything wrong. They just say it and you can’t prove otherwise.”

There was no doubt he believed what he was saying. Ellingham felt chilled. He wondered who had threatened the child — someone who appeared to Conway Prest to have a knowledge of the law, he guessed, and someone who ought to know better.

“So, what happens now?” Ellingham wondered. “What were you planning?”

“I’ll be all right,” the boy shrugged.

Ellingham knew bravado when he saw it. “Sleeping rough in London?” he scoffed.

“I’ll be all right,” the boy repeated. But he looked uneasy.

“Maybe you need time to think about it,” the detective mused aloud.

“You what?” Conway looked startled.

Ellingham took a moment to think about what he was saying. It was madness, but he still found himself saying it anyway. “Take some time out and mull it over. You forget I’m a policeman. Maybe I forget I’m a policeman. I’m just some guy you’ve met who can see you’re in a fix. Stop a night or two here and think about your next move, okay?”

Madness. But the damage to his career had already been done, he reminded himself. He couldn’t do it any more harm than what he had done already. Nevertheless, he hated himself for inviting the lad to stay. Every instinct warned him the kid was nothing but trouble.

The boy was staring, suddenly tense. “And what do you expect for that?”

He was even more streetwise than Ellingham had realised. The DI felt cold anger running through him as he saw the way the boy was looking at him. There was a cautious, speculative look, the way prostitutes looked at punters before getting in a car with a kerb crawler.

“Not what you’re thinking, that’s for sure.” Ellingham grated.

The boy tossed his magazine to one side. “When a copper tells me he’ll forget about being a copper, I start getting jumpy.”

Ellingham smiled wryly. He couldn’t blame the kid for that. This was even more crazy than handcuffing the brat. He was saddling himself with a responsibility he didn’t want or need. The boy was big trouble.

He supposed he was sick of stop-gap solutions. He knew how ineffectual it would be if he just made a phone call and passed the boy over to someone else to sort out. He wanted a lasting solution to the boy’s problems, and the only way there would be one was if Conway Prest chose one. Surely sooner or later he would realise which option made the most sense? He wasn’t a stupid boy.

Ellingham told himself he was a fool. He couldn’t play God. This was not a situation that required a few neat, simplistic solutions. He was waiting for the boy to admit Ellingham was right and decide to go back to Social Services — secure accommodation or not.

So he told Conway Prest that he could come back to his home at night. The boy could have a meal, a hot bath, and a bed to sleep in. But he wasn’t allowed in Ellingham’s house during the day, and during the day, when he was out wandering the streets, he was to steal nothing, to steer clear of drugs, and to tell no-one where he was sleeping.

“Do you agree?”

The boy was still suspicious, but he was trying to mask it. “Yeah, I agree.”

“You can stop seven nights, and that’s it.” Ellingham warned him. “At the end of that time you either clear off, or I’ll call Social Services. Either way, I don’t ever want to see you again. Understood?”

The boy nodded, but Ellingham decided he didn’t understand careless charity. He didn’t understand adults who were willing to help a little without putting themselves out too much. Perhaps he had only ever encountered extremes of caring and not caring. Whatever. The kid didn’t quite seem to know where he stood with Ellingham, even though the DI felt he had spelled it out bluntly enough.

Ellingham peeled off a Ј10 note from a small wad in his wallet. “You can take this and scram.” He told the boy. “I don’t want to see your face a minute before 9pm. Clear?”

The boy nervously snatched the note. “Clear,” he muttered, and then he ran out.

Ellingham was sure to leave his shift on time and was ready for his house guest when the boy arrived at 9pm. His resolve wobbled on seeing the youngster. The boy wasn’t so relaxed now. He was in unbearable physical pain. An explanation was stammered out of him that had Ellingham cursing his naivety. The boy said he didn’t “do” drugs, but someone had given him an injection right after the wounds were inflicted. The boy suspected it was heroin. It had numbed the pain, but now it had worn off.

“Let me take you to hospital.” Ellingham urged. “Those cuts will scar if you don’t get them stitched.”

But the boy refused. And Ellingham, reluctant to face the barrage of questions if he sought medical help for the kid, did not insist.

The bargain he made with the boy was broken from the start, although Ellingham grudgingly conceded that it wasn’t Conway’s fault. He spent the first night nursing the child, squirming inwardly at having to help him strip out of his clothes and help bathe the badly-cut little body. The brute had even cut the boy’s groin area, which bought Ellingham out in sweats — not with sympathy for the boy, but for how his actions could be misconstrued. It was as though he could already hear his colleagues calling him a pervert. He tried to avoid as much intimate contact with the boy as he could, and his efforts to allow Conway Prest a scrap of dignity were strenuous.

The boy seemed to sense it. Once he grinned. “You like my dick, Mister Policeman?”

“That’s not funny!” Ellingham snapped.

The boy laughed, but said no more.

For the first week, turning the boy out of the house during the day was out of the question. He was a gutsy little kid, never once uttering a single word about his pain, but the agony was evident in the way he moved and in the whiteness of his face.

Ellingham found himself having to leave the boy alone in his house while he was at work. He could barely concentrate. It was probably illegal to leave a child that age unsupervised for such long periods of time. He cried off his dates with his friend Caroline for the limpest of excuses. Just as well for him, perhaps, that Caroline said she wasn’t feeling well, anyway.

He found himself having to buy Conway new clothes. The boy’s reaction to them was stunned silence.

“Cool!” He murmered, when running a critical eye over the jacket. The boy was fashion-conscious, and though he was clearly dubious about the T-shirts he was given, the jacket met with his approval.

He flushed a little as he looked back at Ellingham. “Thanks.”

What little he saw, Ellingham found much to like in the boy, but he purposely tried to avoid the boy’s company or to be drawn into conversation with him. He instead spent much of his time measuring up the whole situation, and wondering how it would look to outsiders. He felt confident the boy wouldn’t resort to making up lies about him now. He would have some idea of the havoc he would cause if he told anyone Ellingham had “touched him up”, and he would surely have no reason to do Ellingham harm. Now would be the best possible moment to turn him over to Social Services, so the DI did his best to persuade Conway it was a good idea.

The youngster was horrified. “You said I could think about it.”

“I said I’ld give you a week.”

“But I ain’t been in any condition to think about anything.” The boy protested indignantly. “I need another week.”

Ellingham sat in silence, still wondering what was best for his career. He thought he could escape most of the flak if he handed the boy over now, although there was still the thorny issue of having handcuffed a child overnight. He wondered if he could escape the need to explain anything if the boy simply ran off again. But if the facts emerged at some later date, it would look far worse.

“It’s all a bit academic, isn’t it?” the DI suggested. “I think you’ve made up your mind already that you’re not going back.”

“I ain’t!” The boy protested.

“Okay then.” Ellingham spoke with the finality of someone who had made up his mind about something. “I’ll give you one more week.”

“You promise?”

The DI sighed. “Yes.” But he didn’t mean to keep his promise and the boy must have sensed it, because when Ellingham woke the next morning the boy was gone, along with Ј80 from his wallet.

CHAPTER THREE  home

Weeks passed. The early days were the hardest. Ellingham spent much of his time brooding about the boy. He felt as if he had accomplished nothing from the whole exercise. He wondered where the boy was, and if he was all right. He fretted about the youngster’s progress, alone and friendless in London. Ellingham wished he had braved the worst that would have happened to him and confessed to his superiors the morning after he had handcuffed the boy to his oven. At least if he had done that, the child would have been cared for.

Gradually, as the weeks passed, other things began to claim priority in his mind, the surest sign that things were going back to normal. At his section at work, a female officer had made a complaint of sexual harassment against a detective sergeant. He suspected it was true, but he wasn’t sympathetic to the officer who made the complaint. It didn’t seem such a big deal, just a few coarse jokes, when some of the dangers they faced were life-threatening.

Perhaps she felt betrayed. Perhaps because he was black, and had been the butt of subtle racist jokes for years, she hoped he would understand. He realised other female members of his team felt strongly about the issue, but it seemed all she had achieved by complaining was to split the team down the middle. It took all of his energy to try to promote co-operation between them.

He had begun to believe he would never see Conway Prest again, so a late-night visit - ironically as Ellingham was putting out his bin once more - took him by surprise.

He had just rested the bin outside on the pavement, dusted down his hands, then gone back to latch the gate. Glancing up, he spotted a slight figure in the passageway. The boy smiled and moved out of the darkness.

“I spy a DI.” He mocked.

Ellingham wasn’t sure if the boy had intended to make his presence known all along, or whether he had stepped forward because he realised he had been seen. Whatever.  It was the second time Ellingham had been caught out by the boy being so light on his feet and the detective didn’t care for it. He had literally only just hauled the bin through that very same passageway, which meant the kid had stepped there when his back was turned, and it had only been turned for a moment.

But seconds later, that was forgotten. The change in the boy’s appearance was startling. He had been a skinny scrap before, but now he looked almost skeletal. His eyes were shining with excitement.

“You on a high, kid?” He asked curiously.

The boy laughed and said nothing.

Ellingham felt a prickle of disappointment. He was being confronted with the evidence of his failure. The kid was living on the streets, and Ellingham knew only too well where he was likely to end up.

“You want to come in?” The DI offered.

“For a moment.” The boy answered. “I’ve got something for ya.”

“If it’s the money, you can keep it,” Ellingham said curtly.

The boy laughed wildly. “It ain’t the money.”

Ellingham opened the door in silence and led the youngster through to the kitchen. Now they were in the light, the DI could see a large bruise on the child’s face, and he couldn’t help but stare at it. He put on the kettle in a pretence of acting normally.

“What did you have for me, then?” He wondered aloud.

“Information.”

Ellingham glanced up sharply. He didn’t like the sound of that. “Information?” he echoed, tonelessly.

“A heist. Vauxhall bank depot. Thursday at 11am.”

Ellingham made no attempt to disguise his surprise. He had never dreamed that the child would tell him something so dramatic.

“Where d’you get this information from?” Ellingham demanded.

The boy smiled mysteriously. “You know. I bet you’re glad I didn’t go back to Essex now,” he boasted. “I could be useful to you. Very useful.”

“You could be very dead at this rate!” Ellingham snorted, his panic bursting through. “Where did you get this information?”

“It’s good.” The boy taunted. “But mind you don’t use radios ‘cos they’ll be tracking you with scanners.”

“Christ! You crazy kid!” Ellingham almost groaned. “What the hell are you getting mixed up in? Tell me this is just a sick game!”

The boy’s eyes glittered. He was definitely on something. His face drew back into a snarl. “That’s gratitute for you, that is! Fuck you, man!”

He was turning.

“Conway, wait!” Ellingham ran, chased him down the hall. The boy weaved this way, then that. He reached the front door, and jerked it open. Ellingham stopped,. He couldn’t chase the boy into the street. It would attract too much attention to themselves. The lad looked round.

“Watch out,” he added, menacingly. “They’ll have shooters.”

“Come back, kid.” Ellingham pleaded. “Talk this over with me.”

But he was gone. He was so light on his feet Ellingham couldn’t even hear him run. Through the open door he could see the soft-soled shoes making contact on the pavement, but there was no noise.

He shuddered. A little voice niggled at him to give chase, but the boy had plenty of pace, and he had weaved and dodged and darted so neatly Ellingham doubted he would catch him.

He sank back, weak with depression, thinking bleakly of the changes he had seen in that little kid in just six short weeks. Merrill Ellingham knew so much about the slippery slope. He had seen so much when he worked in vice.

He had once come across a kid of 13 who had Aids because she worked as a prostitute. She didn’t look like a child aged 13. She looked like an old hag, and no younger than 50. The image of her preyed on his mind even now.

With every passing day, there was a greater likelihood that little Conway Prest would end up like that. It was hard to push away an image of him stretched out on a trolley in the morgue. He had seen a couple of kids end up that way.

That first night he spent was pure torture. He was worried out of his mind, even if he kept telling himself he owed no responsibility to Conway Prest at all. He fretted about whether to pass on the tip about the heist. He could only imagine the kid must have become mixed up with some very ugly people. Surely suspicion would fall upon the child if all their plans went wrong?

In the end, he said nothing, but his silence achieved nothing. The heist happened, exactly as Conway had said it would, but it still went wrong. Perhaps the police had been tipped off by someone else, because there was a police helicopter in the vicinity already. Three of the four-strong gang were caught, leaving one still on the loose. Ellingham’s worry deepened.

Why hadn’t he handed that kid over to social services care when he had the chance? Useless to tell himself Conway would have only run away again. He knew that, of course he knew that. But he had acted like a wimp. He had been more worried about his career than the welfare of a child. God! He was so selfish!

Ellingham began to read custody records and dead person reports more carefully. He even drove around some streets on a couple of nights. He saw plenty of pathetic people he could help if he was so keen to be a good Samaritan. He didn’t see Conway.

One day he picked up a magazine for police officers. Perhaps because his mind was so keenly attuned to Conway, a headline about a 12-year-old caught his eyes at once. It turned out to be a report about a young have-a-go hero. A 12-year-old had apparently calmed a disturbance - by using hypnotism. The lad was Spanish, a permanent student at a boarding school in Suffolk. Ellingham wondered how he had managed to calm the situation, given his language difficulties.

Ellingham scanned all the written material he could. But he found no reference in any newspaper or police report that could have referred to Conway Prest. He was left alone to cope with his guilt as best he could.

His next meeting with Conway Prest was as unexpected as the last. About two months after the boy seemed to have vanished, Ellingham was making the most of a rare day off and decided to have a lie-in. He was drifting in and out of sleep, dreaming vividly, when suddenly he came awake with a jolt. What was he dreaming about? He was still dreaming, surely?

No! He sat up suddenly and stared with disbelief at the figure who stood silently by the end of his bed. Ellingham had changed his locks after Conway stayed with him. There was no way he could have had a spare key cut and used it to gain access now. But there he was, actually standing in Ellingham’s bedroom, watching him sleep.

“How d’you get in here?” He demanded.

The boy had been startled when Ellingham sat bolt upright, but now he smiled. “Your bathroom window was open, man.”

Only one section of the bathroom window could open. It was a top strip, probably no taller than six inches and less than three feet wide. And the bathroom was on the first floor. Ellingham could think of no footholds to it.

The shock of waking up and finding someone in his room was so violent Ellingham felt nauseous. He had a habit of sleeping in the raw. Once more, he was very aware of being alone with a child, and that his state of undress was inappropriate.

Unable to reach for any item of clothing, he stiffly requested the boy to pass him a pair of shorts from the top of his trouser press. Conway was instantly aware of his embarrassment.

“Fetch them yourself.” He retorted, enjoying himself. He grinned. “But don’t worry about me seeing your willy. I had a peep while you were sleeping.”

Ellingham had no idea if that were true, but heat flooded his face all the same. “Just pass them over, will you?” He snapped.

The boy laughed, turned as though about to comply with the request, and instead managed to catch the corner of the quilt and twitch it away. He exploded into giggles as Ellingham cursed and gripped enough of the material to halt the boy making off with it.

“I don’t know what you’ve got to feel so shy about,” Conway teased, then added casually, “You’re a big boy, aren’t you?”

Ellingham was filled with confusion and and a sense of helplessness, so it was just as well for him that the boy did not persist with the joke and threw the shorts instead. Ellingham pulled on the clothing as discreetly as he could, uneasily aware that the boy was watching his every movement. He could not help but boggle at the boy’s teasing. It was the second time he had initiated a conversation about sex, and gave an alarming hint as to just how disturbing his background was.

He was not reassured when he studied Conway. The boy looked healthier than when Ellingham had last seen him. His hair was long, surprisingly clean, and swept back into a ponytail. He wore a leather jacket and fashion jeans, and a gold chain. There were no bruises on his face this time.

DI Ellingham pulled a face. His immediate conclusion was not a pleasant one to contemplate. He decided the boy must have become someone’s ... companion. He shook his head sadly, sub-consciously. He wanted to say something, but he just couldn’t. He was too disappointed.

“How are you?” His polite inquiry sounded odd, even to his own ears. The boy giggled and imitated a cut glass accent.

“Oh, I em absolutely splendid!” He announced.

He was grinning so much Ellingham threw his pillow at him. The lad ducked laughingly.

“What are you doing here?” Ellingham demanded.

“That’s more like it!” The kid was still laughing. “Don’t be a white nigger, man. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Humph!” The DI didn’t care for the racial remark. He glowered at the boy. “You were about to explain why you’ve come here?”

“I know where some bad shit’s going on, man.”

“I take it you’re pursuing your career as a police informant.” Ellingham felt a prickle of fear, but he was better at hiding his feelings this time. “Go on then. Spit it out.”

“This geezer I know. He sells heists, man.”

Ellingham had heard about this practice, but he repeated slowly, “He sells heists?”

“Sure. He stakes out places, transport, companies and stuff. He bugs them, finds out the best way to hit ‘em, then he sells his consultancy skills to the bad guys.”

A chill, like an icy hand, ran over Ellingham’s flesh and made him shudder. What sort of company was this child keeping? If they knew what he was up to they would snuff out his life without a second’s thought.

He made a big show of taking down some details, but he was also frowning. He had no intention of taking advantage of a child’s dangerous friendships. His only thought was to protect the boy, and the craziest idea had suddenly struck him as to how he could do it, but it was so wild he wasn’t sure if he could pull it off.

“How would you feel about helping me with something else, Conway?” He asked curiously.

The boy looked slightly taken aback, but Ellingham could see that he had all of his attention.

The detective nearly laughed. How could he say this without sounding totally ridiculous? He began to pace up and down the bedroom floor. He had never felt so silly in all his life.

“I - er - “ he ran a hand over his fuzz of hair. “This is kind’a hard to explain.”

The boy was intrigued. “What is it?”

“I work with another unit besides one in CID.”

He looked directly into the boy’s eyes. It took all of his energy to remain straight-faced, but he could see the youth was taking him seriously.

“Sometimes things happen without a logical explanation for them,” Ellingham spoke slowly. “Situations may need watching for a while, a check kept on things.”

“What sort of things?”

Ellingham heaved a very deep breath. Nothing for it, but to try, he thought.

He spoke slowly. “There’s this boy who attends some kind of private school in Suffolk. He claimed he calmed a disturbance using hypnotism. But his explanation sounded a little odd to us. We’ll be keeping a watch on him for a while.”

“Hypnotism?” Conway breathed, his eyes fascinated.

“Uh-huh. Like I said, it seemed a bit odd to us. We’re just organising a surveillance now.”

Conway sat slowly on the bed, trying to conjure up an image of what it must be like, to watch someone being hypnotised. “Is he dangerous?”

Hook, line and ... Ellingham shook his head. “I don’t think so. I certainly wouldn’t want you to become involved in anything dangerous. I just need the situation to be monitored, that’s all. If anything else unusual happens, I’ll need to be kept informed.”

Conway was blinking. This was so totally unexpected. He had never been asked to help with anything like this before. They must have planned to send a “teacher” to the school and keep a check on the boy. But arranging a teaching vacancy at the school, ensuring the right person secured the job...Conway could see it would be a lot easier simply to send another boy to the school.

Ellingham was looking grim. Conway wondered if there was something else about the whole situation that he wasn’t letting on. Maybe this guy was more dangerous than they wanted to acknowledge. Overpowering people with hypnosis. That sounded amazing. How much of a threat was this boy? How powerful was he?

But he wasn’t being asked to do any more than go there, watch him, and report anything unusual. He didn’t have to tackle the guy.

“Suppose ...” Conway fumbled for the right words. “Suppose this guy is - kind’a like a freak of nature. He goes around hypnotising people at will. What’s the big idea? Would he be regarded as - like a sort of weapon?”

Wow, ethics! Ellingham hadn’t expected that. He wondered if Conway’s apparent empathy stemmed from being the same age as his alleged target.

“No.” Ellingham was thinking on his feet. “But we’ll have to protect him from anyone else who might get the same idea.”

“How long do you need to watch him for?”

“A term should do it.” Was one term long enough for Conway Prest to settle and start to act like a normal boy? Ellingham thought even if it wasn’t, it could prove to be a good start.

Conway considered the matter for nearly a full minute, silently weighing the proposition in his mind. “Okay, man.” He told the detective at last. “I’ll do it.”

The DI was amazed that it had been so easy to trick such a streetwise kid into attending a school of any kind, but he was determined to take advantage of it. He decided he had to move quickly, before Conway began to have second thoughts, so he began planning right away.

First off, he gave the kid Ј30and told him to get a haircut. “It’s got to be posh,” he warned. “Tell them you need to look like a public schoolboy nerd, okay?”

Conway pulled a face and nearly rebelled.

“It’s important,” Ellingham interrupted quickly. “You’ll have to blend in.”

Unused to being told anything he did was important, Conway’s rebellion crumpled. “Okay,” He took the money and nodded at Ellingham’s instructions to rendezvous at 5pm.

As soon as he was gone, Ellingham rang Suffolk Constabulary’s Press Office and gained details of the Spanish boy’s name and school. He rang the school and spoke to the school secretary, giving a false name. She advised ‘Mr Wallace’ that he would have to speak to the headteacher regarding whether his ‘stepson’ could start school immediately, but she could confirm what he needed. A birth certificate, proof of guardianship, and Ј3,000 per term.

The cost was the first thing to make Ellingham hesitate. He would have to fund it personally, and it felt to him like a massive undertaking. He had the money, but he wasn’t used to spending it frivolously.

He paced anxiously, wondering about the wisdom of the exercise, and whether he could instead arrange to pass the boy over to social services that day. In the end, he decided against it. Even if the boy was not condemned to a spell in secure accommodation, his association with armed robbers might justify protective custody, and that would feel almost as restrictive. What was important was that the boy felt a taste of normality, or he would continue with his wild ways forever. Except “forever” wouldn’t be a long time. The boy would die before the age of 20, Ellingham guessed. Either that, or he commit such a serious crime that he would spend most of his adult life in prison.

He rang back and spoke to the headteacher about an hour later. The headteacher at once began to fire off a volley of questions, and it was apparent that Ellingham knew the answer to none of them.

“I don’t think he’s done too well at school,” Ellingham admitted vaguely. “But he’s not stupid.”

“Do you suspect him to be dyslexic?”

“Ah... No, I don’t think so.””

“What levels did he reach at the end of his key stage 2 SATS?”

After a long hesitation, Ellingham said he would have to ask his ‘stepson’. The headteacher lost his temper.

“It seems clear to me you’ve never taken an interest in the boy at all!” He snorted.

Ellingham feigned indignation. “What am I supposed to do when his mother’s run off and dumped him on me?”

There was a long silence. The headteacher spoke wearily. “Mr Wallace. If you can meet the fees, bring the boy to me as soon as you like. If you cannot, don’t bother.”

CHAPTER FOUR  home

The surname “Wallace” was born out of Ellingham’s awareness that he would need fake ID. Being a man well acquainted with the criminal element of his district, he knew exactly how he could obtain fake documents.

He telephoned a prostitute and employed an elaborate process to make sure she did not meet him directly, asking her to act as a go-between with a counterfeiter and to leave the documents in a telephone box. He sent Conway to leave the money for her, and to pick up the documents afterwards. Soon he was the proud possessor of a fake birth certificate and child benefit documents, naming Joseph Wallace as the legal guardian of Connor Flynn.

The boy was tickled by the subterfuge, and embraced it all with relish.

Whoever had cut his hair had excelled themselves. It was a haircut worthy of royalty. Half a day later, with new uniform and a change of clothes bought on Ellingham’s credit card, and he was almost unrecognisable.

“Watch the way you speak,” he warned Conway. “Don’t say ‘ain’t’, okay? And make sure you say the letter ‘T’ correctly.”

“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” The kid retorted, in his cut-glass accent.

“There aren’t any ‘T’s in that one.”

“No, there ain’t.” Conway agreed unthinkingly, then burst out laughing.

He was often quick like that, full of comic humour, and Ellingham frequently found himself laughing out loud during the drive up to Suffolk - except immediately after he had drawn the school fees out in cash. Then he sat in brooding silence. He had drawn out the money at a bank in Essex, and the temptation to drive the boy straight to County Hall in Chelmsford was nearly overwhelming.

He stiffened his resolve. The boy would only have run away again. He decided to give his experiment a chance.

Conway had fallen into silence as they drove through Essex too. It was clear to Ellingham from the youngster’s hooded gaze that he recognised where he was. On one part of the route he expelled a sudden, shuddering sigh, causing Ellingham to look sharply round at him.

“All right?”

“Yeah.” The boy rubbed his face with his sleeve and looked miserable.

Ellingham asked no questions, and the mood lightened when they had got Essex behind them.

“It’s pretty up here.” Ellingham remarked, looking at the open fields on either side of the dual carriageway.

Which left him unprepared for the magnificence of the Endeavour School.

It lay in the grounds of a beautiful Georgian mansion on the banks of an estuary. The front drive was a long avenue, lined with lime trees and with neatly mown lawns on either side. A lanky boy, whom Ellingham guessed was a pupil, was sitting on a mower, cutting the grass. Alongside the main house, there was a farm and stables, with sunshine sparkling on the river sweeping majestically behind the buildings.

Man and boy fell into a stunned hush. Conway shot Ellingham an uneasy look.

“Is this for real?” he asked.

“I suppose.” Ellingham replied, visibly taken aback.

As they got out the car, a man in a dark suit came out of the main house.

“Mr Wallace, I take it?” he inquired politely. “I’m Huw Williams.”

Ellingham hadn’t expected the headteacher to greet them at the front door. He thought they would be shown to a stuffy waiting room somewhere and eventually seen. He decided there was little that went on in the school that the headteacher didn’t know about and politely moved forward to shake the man’s hand. It was pumped vigorously.

The man’s appearance was startling. Though not very tall, he had an energetic manner that commanded attention. His eyes were fierce, bright, and dark, while his eyebrows, in contrast to his disordered silvery hair, were jet black and so bushy that people couldn’t help but stare at them. In doing so, they could not fail to be aware of the man’s penetrating gaze.

Conway was over-awed. He greeted the man with a politeness Ellingham didn’t know he was capable of producing. The headteacher beamed at him, apparently taking to him at once.

“Right, well, come on in.” he suggested.

As they entered the mansion, Mr Williams was telling them a little about the school. It had only 160 pupils, all boys, between the ages of 11 and 16. About 100 boys boarded, the rest were day pupils only. The school had numerous sporting and academic achievements, an excellent record in teaching music, a new technology suite and science lab.

They were shown to a small study, and sat down with the headteacher to “partake” - he enjoyed using that word “partake” - of tea and biscuits.

“Mr Wallace seemed unsure as to your academic progress.” The headteacher remarked. “Perhaps you’ll enlighten me, Flynn, regarding your SATS results?”

The boy flushed. He glanced uneasily at Ellingham.

“I didn’t take ‘em.” He hesitated, then blurted, the flush deepening. “I can’t read or write.”

Ellingham painfully rubbed a hand over his eyes, but the headteacher was undaunted.

“I’m glad you have been so honest with me and didn’t waste my time, Flynn. Rejoice! A wonderful world is about to be opened up to you.”

Conway looked dubiously at Ellingham, who did his best to give a reassuring smile.

The headteacher was continuing to praise the wonders of the written word and the hours of pleasure he had gained, simply by quietly reading books. He broke his monologue unexpectedly.

“Is it not possible for you to see your mother at all?”

The boy’s mouth fell open in startled shock. He recovered quickly, but gulped.

“No sir,” his voice wobbled. “Th-that would be difficult.”

He began unexpectedly to mop his face with his sleeve, unaware of Ellingham watching him with suddenly narrowed eyes. The DI had assumed Conway had spent most of his life in care, but it dawned on him now the boy had known his mother and was upset by the mention of her. What happened to her? Why hadn’t he ever thought to ask Conway anything about himself?

The headteacher, with great applomb, handed the boy a box of tissues. But Conway didn’t cry, he merely kept wiping his face. He was making an effort to control his emotion and was ably assisted by the headteacher, who began to detract attention away from Conway to describe the sleeping arrangements at the school. There were five houses, with each house sleeping about 20 boys, and usually there were two boys to each room. When they had finished partaking of their tea, he would show Flynn round.

Presently, they went on a small guided tour, with both the DI’s and the boy’s eyes growing rounder and rounder. They were allowed to unpack Conway’s things into a room in house C and a few moments alone for them to talk.

“This place is amazing.” Conway spoke almost in hushed tones.

“Yeah!” But Ellingham’s heart was soaring. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it hadn’t been anything like such a magnificent environment. He felt a burst of confidence. He had given Conway a motive for mixing in and settling down. He had found him a secure, safe place, well away from the undesirables the boy had been associating with in London. For the first time in months, it felt to Ellingham as though a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He would sleep soundly tonight.

“How long has National Security been here, man?”

Ellingham smiled ruefully at his young companion. National Security was the boy’s nickname for the Spanish boy, Terencio Otoma, on the grounds that he should in theory be regarded as a threat to it.

“I don’t know, since Christmas, I think.”

“And I can call you any time on your mobile, right?”

“Yeah.” He gave Conway a playful punch on the shoulder. “Remember, don’t scare this kid, all right? If he does anything strange, don’t get involved. All I need is for you to report anything weird back to me, not to be heroic. Leave that sort of thing to the experts.”

He thought the boy would take him seriously if he said something like that.

The boy nodded. His brief was to avoid letting the Spanish boy know he was being watched at all costs.

“I’ll come and see you in three weeks, okay?”

“Sounds cool.” The boy was taking a long look round. “I think I’ll like it here, man.”

“I should think so too.” Ellingham answered, but he hoped he wasn’t grinning idiotically. “I’ve got to get going soon, kid.”

“Sure. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, yeah?”

“Great.”

It was all so much better than Ellingham had dared hope for. He waved the boy goodbye, almost skipped back to the school office and willingly paid the fees, then drove off, feeling utterly relaxed.

He had already sensed they were coming.

The boy was easy to read. He was clear in his purpose. The man was like a dark shadow. It was impossible for him to make out what the man’s intentions were.

He was consumed with icy anger, but he didn’t know what enraged him most. The fact that they sent a mere boy, that the hounding was to start over again, that they seemed to know so much about him already, when he had been unaware of their plotting. They called him a threat to National Security. How could they know that?

He knew the journal for police officers was the catalyst. He had managed to quell interest in the public incident everywhere but there. It was only three paragraphs. Editorial had withdrawn it. A printer, someone unconnected with editorial, took it upon himself to use it because an advertisement had been scrapped at the very last moment. It shouldn’t have happened if proper work procedures had been followed.

He couldn’t wipe out people’s memories of what had happened, he could only influence the level of importance or interest they attached to it. But not the shadowy man. Somehow the detective - and he knew that the shadowy man was a real detective - had evaded him. He had acted the whole time as though the event was not important to him, yet at the same time he had managed to mastermind a surveillance operation.

The boy was very clear. His instructions were clear. There was no hidden agenda with him. He intended to spy on him, but undertake no direct action. The boy was not an immediate threat, but Teri did not want to be spied on.

The spy had made reports on other people. He had risked his life doing so - that’s what the shadowy man believed, anyway. Not just a mere boy then, but no match for Terencio Otoma.

His own rage was his worst enemy. He could do so much, if it pleased him. His constant battle was for strict self-control. He wanted to punish the world because he was such an outcast, but if he did as he was frequently tempted it would only attract unwelcome attention to himself. So his punishments were small-scale, petty, spiteful things. Like a boy who snapped the legs off insects, he did it because he could, because it alleviated his boredom, and because he took pleasure in cruelty.

Like a cat flexing its claws, he turned his attention to the boy with two names, his thoughts absorbed with gradual disintegration.

His confidence was short lived. On the morning the spy arrived he was instantly aware that the headteacher was planning a pairing. It made sense at the time, since the boy with two names could not read or write, and Terencio’s knowledge of English was poor. He saw nothing menacing in Huw Williams’ suggestion that they be put together to study.

It was an ordinary Tuesday morning when the spy became ready for lessons. He could absorb the spy’s every movement as he toured the school, and could hear every word they spoke as though he were in the same room as them. He was taken off for a personal interview with the headteacher. The headteacher liked doing that. He called each boy in, once a term, for a “chat”.

It was a friendly interview, with milk and cake. Huw Williams liked to know what each boy was interested in, and whether any of them had formulated any career plans. He liked to know if they liked sport, or music, or drama. The boy with two names had few interests. After a long hesitation, he said he liked motorbikes. In a few brief sentences, it was quickly ascertained that the boy had an extremely thorough knowledge about them, including mechanical workings. Huw Williams was pleased to have found something Flynn was good at.

But then it was time to begin lessons. The school secretary was delegated to bring Flynn to Class 7HJ. Teri could see him walking, almost in slow motion, as approached the classroom. He could hear the matron asking him what part of London he came from. The spy was striding along, smiling pleasantly, answering her questions politely. There was no nervousness. Only smiling self-assurance.

Teri could not be the same. His heart thumped as the door squeaked open. He looked up, saw the boy enter the room.

Their eyes clashed.

Conway knew at once he was looking at National Security. His fleeting impression was of someone small and slight, very thin, with dark eyes, dark skin, black hair. What struck him most was the Spanish boy’s mouth. It turned downwards. This was someone who didn’t smile.

The brief introduction from the school secretary to the teacher seemed to pass them both by. Neither noticed the polite greeting or the invitation to sit down. Conway was registering the way National Security was staring straight at him. Almost as if he knew why he was there.

Worse, the teacher asked him to sit next to Terencio. The miserable face spooked Conway as he pulled out the chair at the empty desk next to the Spanish boy, but he wasn’t going to show it. Instead, he nodded.

“All right?” he murmered, by way of greeting. He sat, then twiddled with his brand new pencil case and its contents. He forced himself not to look back at weirdo-features, but at his teacher.

He looked very calm, and self-assured. But Terencio could feel turmoil bubbling within. The boy with two names was thinking, remembering the stares of another time, when six people were watching. He was ... he was being hit with something.

Teri flinched. He saw the snake-like thing swing through the air, heard it whistling, heard a man shouting and cursing. The boy was being beaten ... with cable, perhaps? A single blow bloodied and felled him. Red cuts were splattering up across the whole of his body, looking like red paint was being splashed on him, but it was the cable, snapping through clothes, ripping his skin. The boy was threshing wildly on the ground, trying to dodge the blows, screaming in agony. In the chaos, he absently noticed the others were just standing, silently watching.

The violence shocked him. Teri could not feel the pain directly, and he was careful to inch his chair away from the boy with two names. He sensed the memory of pain. But it wasn’t just ... not only that time.

The spy’s mind was a corridor full of half open doors, but behind each one, there was more ghastly, horrendous, sickening violence. It stretched back, way back, even beyond his memory. He had even been conceived in a rape. The whole of him, all of his being, seemed to reek of sickening savagery. How long could anyone study the scenes, when each one peeled back was just as bloody as the first? Could anyone really carry on opening each door, or would they eventually become too afraid and too sickened to keep looking? Terencio Otoma could not keep looking.

The sensation for him was similar to sitting next to someone who smelled disgusting. It was so overpowering he thought he would retch. He did his best to try to block it out, to turn his face away, to stop inhaling the vile presence until eventually he was gasping for breath.

He vomited.

The classroom at once erupted into chaos, with people scattering almost in panic. He could see the spy looking around in surprise. Teri staggered to his feet. In his mind’s eye he saw how the spy had tumbled when he was struck by the cable, he heard the scream of agony. He was replicating it, like a tape stuck in his mind.

“Hey!” Unlike his classmates, the spy did not recoil away. He was heading straight for him, looking shocked, but concerned. He stretched out a hand.

“Don’t touch me!” The words burst from the Spanish boy involuntarily, a cry of terror.

“Calm down, man.” Conway drawled, putting a hand on his arm.

The teacher explained later to the class that Terencio had suffered an epileptic fit. There wasn’t a single boy in the class that remained unaffected by what happened. Tables, chairs, books, papers were strewn everywhere while the Spanish boy threshed on the ground, screaming and sobbing.

The staff - many others came running - sent the boys outside while they waited for the fit to subside, hurriedly moving obstacles from the Spanish boy’s path. The pupils of 7HJ were sent to the gym when it was apparent the immediate crisis was over. They almost slunk away, trying not to stare at the Spanish boy as he lay moaning weakly on the ground.

In the gym, class 7HJ were given a talk on epilepsy, and the sensible things they should do if they saw anyone suffering a fit. And though it seemed inappropriate, the teachers couldn’t help the school’s timetabling arrangements, and the boys were sent to lunch.

It started off as a sober, subdued affair, but in the manner of all robust boys, some of them started to giggle and think up some sick jokes about what they had just seen. Soon they were laughing raucously and creating all sort of cruel theatrical replays. Conway was sitting among the worst culprits, and looked on in bemusement.

“What have you done to Oatmeal?” They demanded. “He was fine before you came along.”

Conway received all the teasing with unruffled amiability, which continued when a small group began to pick on the surname Flynn and think of the most irritating connections with it.

“Errol Flynn, is that?” One asked. “Are you an actor, then?”

But unlike most people confronted with a barrage of jokes about their names, Conway joined in laughing, because he hadn’t heard them before. The boys about him seemed to accept that he was an “all right sort of guy”, and he was quickly admitted into their circle.

He learned from the teasing that National Security was not a popular boy, and that many of his classmates thought he was weird and took everything too seriously. The hypnotism event was common knowledge among his classmates, but when Conway tried to ask more about it, he was surprised at the lack of interest they displayed.

Conway found nothing sinister about the epileptic fit. He reported it to Ellingham, but thought nothing further of it. The only thing he wondered was why, at that particular time, he had been thinking about Travis.

He didn’t often think about it. He preferred not to. And if he allowed himself to think of it, he fretted about Travis. He couldn’t imagine how he was coping. But Conway knew he couldn’t go back and find out. Not after something like that.

Travis had hit him many times before, but not so that Conway thought he was going to die. He thought he would die that day.

Why had he sat there thinking about it, instead of listening to his teacher, or concentrating on what he should have been doing, blending in? So many times he forced himself not to think back, but inexplicably, he had been sitting there in the classroom thinking about it, recalling the beating with chilling clarity.

CHAPTER FIVE  home

For three days Terencio Otoma skulked alone in his room. He was deeply afraid.

For the first time for many years, he had lost his inner feeling of superiority. He had to face the possibility that the detective had managed to study him in secret, that he had somehow known exactly the sort of personality would be able to destabilise him. He was terrified of the spy and the levels of pain he was able to inflict.

The pain had exploded into him because of the physical contact. It was the curse that Terencio Otoma had to suffer. All physical contact with people carried the same risk, if they happened to be remembering an incident in which they had suffered physical pain. Whatever that pain had been, it would somehow ‘jump’ into Terencio’s own nerve endings. He had suffered many harrowing ordeals, but that beating that the spy had endured must have been the worst. It had only subsided after the spy was outside a range of fifty feet.

Left alone, sinking in a pool of terror, Teri at first concentrated on trying to persuade Huw Williams to change his mind about putting the two boys together to be study partners. But Huw Williams thought it an excellent idea and was unreceptive to change, especially as he had already notified all his staff about the proposal.

Next, Terencio knew a wild impulse to flee. He had to run away, far away, where the spy would never find him.

But that was impossible. Someone had sent the spy to keep watch on him. The only way to avert suspicion was for the spy to observe only an ordinary pupil. If Terencio ran away now, their suspicions would be confirmed.

Panic-stricken, he wondered how he would be able to tolerate the spy’s proximity to him, and even assuming that he could, how he could stop the spy from touching him.

Initially, only one approach was immediately actionable for Teri. Following the spy’s progress for the rest of the afternoon, he became aware that the boy with two names was a tactile person. He allowed the other boys to suspect him of being homosexual. One even made the suggestion openly to his face, and Conway was at once careful to control his habit of touching people. He was already on a sharp learning curve, and it required little effort for him to absorb this change.

From the sanctuary of his room, Teri emerged from his state of terror to become slowly more amused by the spy as he followed his progress.

One of the first things he became aware of was the boy’s fears. There was one thing the spy was painfully aware of, and which the detective had completely forgotten, and that was the cuts the boy had sustained from that beating months earlier had scarred him.

The scabs from the beating had all but gone, with only a few remaining, but in their place was a series of pink and silvery criss-cross lines over his flesh. They glistened in the light, looking curiously like a collection of snail trails.

In Conway’s normal environment, he could show them off and act tough. He would win the respect of other kids and lots of sympathy from adults, and adults who pitied him were easy to manipulate.

But here, it took Conway less than half a day to realise that the other boys at the single sex school were the sons of very rich people and nothing like the other children who had been in care with him. He could not show off his scars to his peers here. He was totally outside the sphere of their normal existence.

The spy had never met rich people before. One of his first shocks was their range of personal possessions, the like of which Conway had only seen while carrying out burglaries. He gazed in silence, and had the sense to say nothing.

“Where’s all your stuff?” asked his room-mate.

“Oh, - er - my stepdad’s bringing it up later,” Conway lied.

The other boys spoke differently too. They didn’t say “ain’t”, and tended to pronounce their ‘T’s clearly, just as Ellingham had predicted. He had to practise copying their precise speech without them realising it. Sometimes, he found himself practising while using the toilet.

He was so quick-witted he rarely betrayed his difficulties, at least, not glaringly. And he had the sense to keep his scars hidden, rising early in the morning to be the first in the showers - so early that the water hadn’t even heated through and he shivered beneath an icy spray. He adopted a habit of only changing his clothes while in bed, convincing his room-mate that he was too lazy to get up. When changing for PE, he was never barebacked. He always put on one shirt before taking the other off. It was a tortuous procedure, involving him have to twist and wriggle out of the sleeves of his clothes, but he did not dare reveal his scars.

His first PE lesson, the first afternoon at the school, was a culture shock for everyone. They were playing basketball, and the new boy stood hesitantly as the captains selected their teams. He didn’t know how to play, and his reluctance to take part was visible in his face for all to see. He was picked last - a mark of dishonour that normally fell to Terencio.

The Spanish boy, full of empathy and as one who detested the weekly humiliating ritual, was both amused and peeved when play began. The new pupil surprised all at once with his ability to weave, to dart, to feint, and with his unexpected pace. Caught flat-footed, boys who were accustomed to thinking themselves the best basketball players in the class were rapidly forced to re-align their perceptions.

The only thing to spoil the new pupil’s moment of glory was a lack of understanding of the rules, which led to a conflict with his PE instructor. Conway fired off a volley of foul language that caused everyone present to stare in astonishment. At once aware of his faux pas, he apologised, pink-cheeked.

“I dunno how to play,” he confessed, haltingly.

The teacher at once led him off the court for a quiet word, but since he was eager to see what the new pupil could do, his telling-off was quick, and his explanation of the rules thorough. Honour was satisfied in that the boy appeared to have been spoken to severely, when in fact he had not at all, and Conway was given the chance to reveal just how quickly he had grasped the rules.

He enjoyed the game, but was completely oblivious to the fact that his instructor was watching him appreciatively. All he cared about was that the other boys accepted him.

His classmates had become aware during the first afternoon lesson that Conway was still learning the alphabet. His fellow pupils enjoyed their astonishment and a good many jokes at his expense. But when they saw how good he was at sport it seemed to them a natural equation: that people who were good at one thing were not necessarily good at another. And since Conway also had an ability to tell jokes, his standing among his peers was at a tolerable level, even if he were not completely thought of as one of them.

Conway watched his companions carefully. He copied their punctilious manners, obeyed the rigorous disciplines and petty rules that he privately thought ridiculous and did his best to be just like any other boy in school.

As is customary with any new student, Conway became the butt of some practical jokes, the most famous being called to the side of the school pond by one lad, and being pushed in by another. Conway had sharp ears and eyes and an unerring instinct for not getting caught out, but he ended up getting a soaking.

He accepted the joke in good spirit. It was done for a laugh, there was nothing personal about it. He treated the culprits to an impressive string of bad language, but unusually he was laughing as he said it. However, that didn’t mean he shouldn’t retaliate.

The two lads responsible for the pond prank were called St John and Glenn, and they shared a room on the top floor of House C, where Teri was based. Conway’s room was in House A, and he had no access to their room or their house, but that didn’t deter him.

He spent his third evening at the school with a draw-string bag, in which he had collected an assembly of small insects in a variety of old margarine tubs. In all, there were about 20 earthworms, ten slugs, 20 snails, and five huge spiders. More carefully, he also collected some frogs, whom he regarded as “cute little fellas”.

Year seven students were supposed to be in bed by 10pm. At 9.35pm, Conway, dressed in black, took his draw-string bag and stood at the foot of the east side of House C.

Teri knew he was at the foot of the building. He stiffened, almost in panic, for he knew him moment of truth had come. It was time to discover if he was able to tolerate the spy being close to him, without suffering an echo of the agony that had occurred before.

He sensed Conway’s presence, but did not hear him. Puzzled, he approached his window and looked out. He just caught a glimpse of a figure entering a window above him. He counted slowly to 30, then saw the shadow pass back down, gaining a foothold in his open window.

They spotted each other at once, their expressions mutually suspicious and hostile. Conway recovered first.

“Yo, man. Feeling better?” His voice was very soft.

Teri held himself rigid, expecting an assault of physical agony to clutch at him. None came. Conway wasn’t focusing on any violent images. He was listening to the creak of the plastic drainpipe. It wasn’t quite strong enough to support his weight. He was planning his next foothold.

It was incredible the way he moved, as though he was in harmony with the building itself. There wasn’t a sound. He moved gracefully, like a cat or a shadow, and quickly, reaching the ground in mere seconds. If he hadn’t witnessed it with his own eyes, even Teri would never have believed it.

Teri could have caused him to fall. The most powerful weapon he had was to turn people’s memories against themselves, cause the nerve endings to ‘remember’ previous pain, in a similar way to how his own nerve endings had been able to receive them.

That would have been his course of action, for it was such a neat solution to his problems, that the spy should die in an accident such as a fall from a high building. But Terencio hesitated. He was unsure if he would feel an echo of pain from those bad memories.

He had just met the spy again face to face, and discovered he could be in proximity to the spy without being sickened by him and without feeling any more pain.

Perhaps it was all his fault that he had suffered both in the first instance. He had summoned that violent aura in the spy, by opening the doors in the corridor of his mind.

And anyway, it shocked him to acknowledge the fact, even to himself, but he always loathed himself for making people feel pain. To ‘remind’ people of their previous ordeals was as bad as if he had done the original act. Of course, it differed. He would always get away with it.

Nearly always. His own mother never forgave him. She knew, somehow, always knew, it came from him. His own mother was the most stark example of how the rest of the world would treat him, if only it knew.

She wanted to kill him. She would never be at peace until he was dead. She said he was evil. Was she right?

So many times, he had asked himself, was she right? Was he evil? Sometimes he thought yes. Sometimes he was kinder to himself. No. It came down to discipline. He had to learn discipline, like all children, but it was hard when he felt so powerful. He lived in constant dread of what he could do, of betraying himself, of being hunted and eliminated. He feared being feared.

Conway’s bedroom ‘gift’ had its desired effect, though he might have refrained from including the spiders if he had realised Glenn was genuinely terrified of them.

St John, the biggest practical joker, had flung himself into a bed filled with wildlife without even checking under the covers. Glenn, slower to get into bed, would have avoided the most of the unpleasantness had he not spotted so many spiders, running idiotically over his bedcovers in all manner of directions all at once.

They yelled in unison and the uproar sent the matron scurrying to the room. After the immediate panic, and following the evacuation of the wildlife from Glenn and St John’s room, the rest of house C’s occupants were summoned to their recreation room, lectured on their foolish pranks, and placed under curfew for a week, leaving most of house C bemused, indignant, but also half amused at the effectiveness of the joke.

Having satisfied himself that he was able to tolerate Conway’s presence, Teri dared to come out of his sanctuary the following day. He proceeded with caution, and although he did not find it easy to be in the same room as the spy, he was able to cope with it.

But it was a fragile peace, and he realised how delicate it was the following day, at their next PE lesson.

After PE it was customary for the boys to have a shower. There were always a few boys who didn’t want to have one, and there were differing attitudes among the staff about it. The master who took Tuesday’s class was more relaxed. Friday was different.

Mr Howsden took it upon himself to touch each boy on the back of the neck, deciding he could tell by this method who had showered, and who had not. He was devastingly accurate, and both Teri and Conway were sent back, along with about five others, to the showers.

Mercifully, Mr Howsden did not actually elect to stand guard over them while they went to the cubicles. He delegated this task to Dean, Conway’s room-mate, a basketball fanatic, and easily the class favourite.

There were some cubicles in use. Most boys didn’t bother with them, but Conway did, anxious to try to ensure his scars weren’t seen. He betrayed a painful shyness that the other boys found amusing.

Teri was aware of a disturbance in the atmosphere. He turned in time to see St John and Paul whispering. St John climbed up the side of the cubicle and looked over. At once he gasped on seeing the scars, and swore. Within seconds Conway had an audience.

There was an awful silence. Conway was struggling to tug on a T-shirt. St John was the first to speak.

“I didn’t know you were related to zebras, Flynn.”

Conway said nothing. He was still dripping wet but he continued to pull on his clothes furiously. All he wanted to do was cover himself as fast as he could.

Teri felt his legs buckle beneath him and hurriedly sat down. The memory of the violence was like a sickly smell assailing him. But no-one else in the room was immune either, despite the front St John put up.

“Who did it, mate?” Dean asked, climbing up to look over the cubicle door. “Who did that to you?”

Conway’s bright blue eyes were furious. He just looked at his room-mate and said nothing.

The door swung open. Mr Howsden entered the changing rooms. instantly he sensed the tension in the atmosphere.

“What’s going on?” He demanded.

Dean, shocked because he couldn’t believe he had shared a room with ‘Flynn’ and not noticed anything so dramatic, looked round.

“Someone’s hit him with a horsewhip.” He blurted, as Conway unlocked the cubicle and stepped out of it.

Conway spat in his face.

In a moment, Mr Howsden was moving forward. Conway retreated, trying to go back to the cubicle and bolt it. The PE teacher was quicker, catching him by the arm.

“Let me see,” he growled.

“I ain’t a fucking exhibit.” Conway snarled.

Mr Howsden hesitated for the barest moment, then gestured towards the door. “The rest of you get dressed and get out.”

In the silence, Conway kept glaring at Dean. Their friendship was over. Dean was just a normal, happy-go-lucky guy who had never faced a serious problem in his life, but Conway was outside of all that.

He slumped against the cubicle door with something like a groan. Back home, in Essex, in several tiny remote villages, there had been a sensation that he had thought of as the ordeal of a thousand stares. On at least three occasions the foster parents were known by the whole community. His story seemed to be known by everyone, with private details spread among complete strangers. “Is he the one who - ?” started the whisper. “Shhh! Yes.” was the reply. Other mums and dads told their children not to play with the crazy new kid, and adults watched him as he walked by with guarded expressions on their faces. If anyone had to speak to him, they did so in oh-so-careful, patronising tones.

It felt to him now he would never escape from who he was. Life just didn’t seem to be worth it.

He glowered up at Mr Howsden as his classmates silently trooped out, but he felt depressed.

“Tell me what happened, Flynn.” Mr Howsden suggested gently.

Conway didn’t speak. He could feel the rage simmering inside him. What he despised most about these busybodies was the way they believed everything they did was right. They acted shocked. They believed they were better people than the likes of Travis. It wasn’t true.

Mr Howsden slowly lifted Conway’s top. Conway dared not meet his eyes. He looked away and stared determinedly at the coatpegs, breathing the smallest sigh as he felt the material fall back down again.

The teacher’s voice roughened. “Who did this to you? Someone at home?”

It was as well, since Conway couldn’t think what to say, that they were interrupted by someone coming into the changing rooms. They both looked up towards the door, and were surprised to see Terencio Otoma standing at the entrance.

“I told you to get out!” Mr Howsden snapped.

“Por favor, senor, the next class wait outside. I tell them to wait, but they are not patient.”

His words recalled Mr Howsden to his situation. “All right. Tell them to come in.” He turned to Conway. “Come with me.”

Conway, still angry, but grateful for the interruption, slipped on his shoes without bothering with the laces and followed the PE teacher. It took him time to realised National Security was tagging along too, and next to realise they were heading for Mr Williams’ office.

“I didn’t ask you to come, Oatmeal.” Mr Howsden had no qualms about using Teri’s nickname.

“Profesore,” Teri spoke indignantly. “Imagine you are talking not to nino but a woman attacked. She would be allowed friend for moral support, no? And would you talk so roughly to her, like all is her own fault? No. You would be muy simpatico, verdad?”

Mr Williams had emerged from his office to hear to the tail-end of this speech, and was amused by it. He had long suspected the boy’s English was better than everyone supposed, and that he tended to use more of the lingo when he wanted to confuse people. He reckoned this exchange confirmed it.

“Creo que si.” He replied, wryly, with a fixed eye on Terencio as if to say, ‘you can confuse my staff, but you won’t fool me.’ He nodded to his office. “Come in,” he invited, “and I shall be muy simpatico.”

His demeanour remained unchanged as he listened to his staff member describe the disturbing marks on Connor Flynn’s body, and pugnaciously suggest his guardian should be made to account for it. Instead of wanting to see the scars for himself, much to Conway’s relief, he showed more interest in polishing his reading glasses. After a long silence, he gave a surprising pronouncement.

“Maybe I agree with you, Mr Howsden, but whatever has happened to our young friend is unlikely to happen again while he remains on the school premises.” He put on the reading glasses and pushed them to a midway point on his nose, so that the frame hid the pupils of his eyes from his PE teacher’s view, but still with all his attention apparently focused on him.

“I am as curious as you to know how our friend has acquired these disturbing marks you describe, but I am confident if he needs our help he will ask us for it. I hope he realises that I would put his personal interests about those of anyone who may or may not be paying his school fees. I don’t think there is any more we can say at this point.”

There was a startled silence. Conway’s face split into a huge grin. “Man, you’re priceless!”

The merest hint of a smile flickered across Huw Williams’ face. He directed his cool gaze next at Terencio Otoma.

“Esta bien?”

“Si senor, muy bien, gracias.”

“Bueno. Hasta luego.” The headteacher looked pointedly at the door.

Teri smiled thinly, got up, and left. Mr Howsden did too, but he was slower to take the hint, and looked aggrieved.

Conway hesitated, then stayed behind. He wanted to be certain Mr Williams would not contact Social Services as soon as he had left. He had already thought of what to say in the eventuality of his scars being discovered, having already been warned by Ellingham to say nothing about National Security.

“If you let me use your phone, I can tell you what this is about,” he suggested.

Mr Williams waved his hand politely, but languidly. “Be my guest.”

Conway took hold of the phone, but delayed lifting the handset for a moment. “I’m a police informant.” He enjoyed using the phrase. He had rehearsed it in his own mind, having heard Ellingham use it. “If you speak to DI Ellingham, he’ll explain everything.”

He dialed Ellingham’s mobile number, heard it ring twice, and passed the handset to the headmaster, who raised one eyebrow before accepting it.

“DI Ellingham.”

The name, and the fact that Mr Williams recognised “Joseph Wallace’s” voice, should have been confirmation enough for the headteacher, but he chose not to hang up. He cleared his throat noisily. “Ah, good afternoon, Mr Ellingham. It’s Huw Williams from the Endeavour School.”

There was a long pause while Merrill Ellingham absorbed the departure from “Mr Wallace.” The DI could be heard saying to someone in the background, “Can you give me a minute?” Another long pause followed, broken eventually by, “How can I help?”

“It’s come to my attention that your - er, stepson - has some serious scarring, which was noticed during the course of a PE lesson.”

At the long silence that followed, he frowned. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.” The line crackled. “Excuse me for a moment.”

Ellingham twiddled with the mobile’s scrambler, supposedly provided to ensure the mobile could not be picked up on a scanner. He didn’t have much faith in its effectiveness, but he already knew Conway’s unpleasant associates used them. He was sweating all over. “Go on.”

“Your - stepson - and I have had a little chat. He now tells me he’s a police informant, apparently seeking some sort of protection from you. Is this true?”

Ellingham swore. “Who else knows about this?”

“So I gather it is indeed quite correct?” The headteacher asked icily. “There’s been a certain lack of communication, don’t you think? It seems highly irregular, and somewhat discourteous.”

“He’s not under official police protection,” Ellingham responded quickly.

“Oh?”

Ellingham could detect a fierce bite in the headteacher’s icy tones and began to talk rapidly. “Look, I apologise for not being entirely straight with you before, but I can promise you I was only thinking of the boy’s welfare.”

“Quite.” Mr Williams cleared his throat noisily again. “But whereas you, sir, have the comparative luxury of worrying over the welfare of just one boy, I must worry about considerably more, some 162 of them, to be exact. And I must tell you, sir - “ he worked up to an even icier crescendo - “if any harm, whatsoever, befalls a single one of my pupils because of this situation, I shall hold you personally responsible. I trust I make myself plain?”

“Very.” Ellingham spoke bleakly.

“Good day.” The headteacher hung up.

Conway sat motionless, noting every hint of displeasure in the headmaster’s face. Guilt flooded him as he realised what a strip he had torn off his very best mate. Conway hadn’t really been so clever, after all.

Mr Williams rose swiftly to his feet, and saw the boy do the same.

“No. You stay there. I haven’t finished with you.” He yanked open his office door. “Mr Howsden!”

What a bellow he had, like a lion’s roar, echoing through the jungle. He was somewhat displeased to observe Mr Howsden still in the corridor leading to his office, hanging about apparently through idle curiousity, although his bellow would have been easily heard from the school gym if the games master had been there.

“Ah, there you are!” The headteacher spoke with apparent surprise, shut the door and waddled up the corridor until his face was a mere few inches away from Mr Howsden’s. He spoke quietly, but firmly.

“I want every boy who saw those marks on Flynn in my office in five minutes.”

He turned smartly, made his way back to his office, and eyed Conway with disgust. “Now then. Connor, isn’t it?”

He could have barked, ‘attention!’ Conway’s back stiffened involuntarily.

“Someone’s out to get you, Connor. Is that the correct parlance among your acquaintances?”

Conway blinked and looked confused. The headteacher didn’t even bother to explain what parlance meant. Instead he eyed Conway almost with disgust.

“I think we have some ground rules to go over, don’t you?”

His voice was almost a snap. He moved to the front of his desk and leaned against it. Cold, dark eyes glinted as they fixed intently on Conway’s face. He began to speak, slowly, deliberately, and awfully.

“During your stay at this school, you will under no circumstances whatsoever leave the school grounds. You will not go wandering on the farm, nor horse-riding, nor walk along the banks of the estuary. You will tell absolutely no-one else why you are here. You will in your leisure time observe a strict curfew and report back to your house-mistress on the hour, every hour. Understand?”

Conway gulped. He was could see that Mr Williams was spooked and understood why. He could respect the reasons why the rules were being made, but they still sounded daunting.

“You’re privileged to be here, Flynn. I intend to educate you. While you’re in my school you will work assiduously at your studies. You will not waste even a second of your time here. You will be able to look back and say ‘The Endeavour was a bloody excellent place. Thank God I went there.’ And by God, you better never let me hear any of my staff say you’ve been rude to them. Clear?”

Conway nodded hastily.

The headteacher paced, frowning heavily. Presently, he thought of even more rules that Conway should follow.

“I don’t want you to use the swimming pool. I don’t know how you managed to conceal your scars when using the showers, but I want you to carry on hiding them. No taking off your shirt in hot weather or anything stupid like that.

“If you see any stranger in our school grounds you will not allow yourself to be seen by them. As you know every three weeks parents are welcome to visit the school and on those occasions you will stay in your room unless you are accompanied by - who is it? DI...?”

“Ellingham.”

“Quite. Now I’m told you’re not a stupid boy. What a pity you’ve not used all the opportunities that availed themselves to you. If you had, I’m sure you wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

He drew nearer, so close his flinty eyes were only inches away from Conway’s face. “Don’t waste any opportunities in this school, Flynn, or you’ll regret it. I repeat, you’re privileged to be here. Understood?”

“Sir.”

“Hm.” The headteacher looked him up and down, almost contemptuously. “Perhaps not muy simpatico.” he spoke drily, and moved back behind the desk to sit down on his seat.

In the awesome silence that followed the headteacher merely sat and watched Conway with a face that could have been set in stone. Perhaps a full minute ticked by, without either of them speaking or moving.

When Conway looked up into the headteacher’s face, he was reminded of a lizard he had once seen at a foster parent’s house. That lizard had remained as still as a rock for nearly three hours, not even blinking. Suddenly it moved with incredible speed, but just once. Then it remained in exactly its next position for another 45 minutes.

He wiped his face. He had received some thrashings in his time, but never verballed with so much dramatic effect.

There was a knock at the door. Six boys, including Teri, Dean, St John and Paul trooped silently into the room, accompanied by Mr Howsden.

The headteacher’s eyes scanned their faces and looked at his colleague. “Just the six?”

Howsden nodded.

“Then, perhaps you would care to sit down?” He spoke with apparent, mild-mannered politeness. There was nothing in his demeanour to indicate that his mood or thoughts were ruffled even remotely.

They sat. The headteacher looked first at the Spanish boy, then at Mr Howsden.

“After you left my office a short time go, Connor decided to tell me a little more about the marks on his body.” Then he addressed them all.

“You will be very surprised to learn, as I was, that these marks are in fact caused by a form of birthmark. Connor tells me he has spent years undergoing corrective treatment without success, and that time these marks have caused him a great deal of personal distress. He feels extremely self-conscious about them, and is easily upset by any questions or personal remarks. I’m sure we must all sympathise with his situation - “ His voice carried just the tiniest hint of veiled sarcasm, detectable only to Conway, then he fixed his gaze back with particular intensity at St John, whom he knew to be a practical joker.

“I’m sure you will appreciate it must be upsetting for Connor. He seems to have been going through much of his life, finding people get the wrong idea about him. Perhaps one day he will face up to being more open with people, but until then, I shall be grateful if none of you mention it. That’s all.”

They were unmistakably dismissed, only to hear the headmaster call out, as an afterthought while they were leaving, “Ah, Flynn. I understand you made some kind of outburst to your classmates in the changing rooms. I think a written letter of apology would be appropriate to all concerned, please. By the morning, if you would be so good.”

Terencio Otoma had never laughed so much in all his life.

It had been a tumultous day, with so many emotions wrung from him. He had initially leapt forward to Connor Flynn’s defence because he was shocked to recognise how much they had in common: the feelings of being outside, of never feeling normal, a dislike of being feared. Teri knew all of that. He knew what it was like to suffer the same.

Only when Flynn was left alone with the headmaster did the rage consume him again. The boy lied to conceal his mission, and he was not going to be deterred from it. Terencio Otoma reminded himself that although they shared similar experiences, they were enemies, like soldiers at war.

The telephone call to the shadowy man puzzled him. For a minute, Teri could really believe the spy was under police protection. But he was not. Teri knew he was not. The shadowy man was still outwitting him, it seemed.

The unexpected pleasure was the outrage he detected in Mr Williams. He had a territorial instinct. His school. His boys. He wasn’t going to let anything or anybody disturb his kingdom.

Teri was shocked, but touched, to realise how deeply Mr W cared. He was there to protect his boys. He was there to make great men from them. He wanted them to live peaceful, fulfilling lives. They were at the Endeavour to learn how to become respected citizens, considerate husbands, responsible fathers. Society no longer appreciated its young men as it should. He had nothing against equal rights for women, he merely thought today’s young men needed more guidance, and better role models.

Teri was amazed. It was as if Mr W had come from a different century. He was the sort of guy who epitomised old Blighty and would have helped to create the British Empire, wasn’t he?

Best of all was Mr W’s disgust at police informants. To be a witness, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time one was thing. Of course such unfortunate people had a duty to fulfill and assist British justice.

But Mr W hadn’t believed Flynn to be an unlucky witness. He thought the boy was a foolhardy young scamp with little common sense. He believed Flynn had courted danger and got a kick out of it. Fine, it it were only him who had to suffer the consequences. But it did not concern only Flynn. He could bring danger to any one of his fellow pupils.

Teri was aware of the exasperation welling up in the headteacher. “I don’t want to have to deal with this,” the man was thinking.

The headmaster checked himself. No, he would do his duty by the boy. He must.

But after a moment, Mr W was angry. Must he? Why must he? What about the other boys? Was he being fair to them, to allow this particular boy to remain in school?

If it were just that Connor Flynn could not read nor write, Huw Williams would overlook everything, but not someone who revelled in danger, and surely Flynn must? What more proof could there be than the scars he bore? He had slipped up once and paid a devastating penalty. It gave a clue as to just how far the boy was prepared to go. High stakes. He liked to risk everything.

He was a nutcase.

Surely the Endeavour owed nothing to a boy like that?

He fell into dark brooding. He reminded himself he had never expelled a pupil in his life. Nor would he now.

Still in his mind the sea-saw tipped the other way. No, he had never expelled a pupil, but he had found ways to ensure they left.

Some would call it bullying, but Mr W had little compunction about the methods he had employed. The undesirables had lacked character. They did not have the toughness to persist against the odds. They turned tail and ran at the first whiff of difficulty.

The headteacher’s lip curled. He did not rate Connor Flynn. He predicted the youngster would fold within a day.

Immediately after eating his evening meal, Conway reluctantly sought the advice of the house prefect, a year 11 pupil who was nominated as someone younger students could turn to.

Being unable to write, he was forced to dictate what he needed to say in his letters of apology, with the older boy writing it down so that Conway could copy it out later.

The house prefect was matter-of-fact about the whole exercise, but Conway, who had never made a formal apology before, stumbled on his words and stammered out his sentences. He was very red-faced, and felt very silly indeed.

When he arrived back at his room he found Dean packing.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not going anywhere. You are. Mr W told me to pack your stuff.”

“Where am I going then?” Conway was puzzled.

“You?” Dean hesitated, then grinned. “You’re going to hell, mate. I reckon the cheque must have bounced.”

“The cheque?”

“Yeah, you know how you read it in the papers all the time? The kid gets chucked out of school in the middle of his A-Levels because Daddy’s gone bankrupt and can’t pay the school fees? Mr W never chucks out anybody.”

“He doesn’t?”

“Nope. He just makes your life not worth living any more.”

“But - !” Conway sat on the bed. The one thing he had noticed, more than anything else, was Dean’s friendly, open manner. That stare he was used to seeing, the ‘handle with care’ look that everyone usually had when they spoke to him, was gone.

“Dean, about earlier. I’m sorry for gobbing at you, man.”

“Yeah?” Dean studied his eyes, but still showed no hostility. “Well - “ he spoke reluctantly. “Guess it must be a bummer, those birthmarks and all. They won’t stop calling you Zebra now though. The whole school knows about it.”

Conway smiled. Dean knew those marks were no skin blemishes from birth. But they were all going to play along with the story. Somehow, Mr Williams had wiped the slate clean. If the scars were cool with Mr W, it was going to be good enough for everyone else. For Conway, the relief was tangible.

“So,” his smile grew wider. “What happens to the ones who bounce cheques?”

“Oh, you’re a challenge,” Dean turned, reached for a pillow and pushed it up the inside of his shirt to make his outline fat. “A challenge, Mrs Smedley, that’s what young Master Flynn will be to us,” he boomed, in an easily recognisable impersonation of the headteacher. “Sometimes it is good for us to face a challenge, don’t you agree?”

Conway laughed, but Dean laughed more.

“There won’t be any smiles on your face for the next week, mate. It’s like the modern-day equivalent of being put in the stocks.”

“It is?”

“Uh-huh. Tomorrow you’re going to be feeling so darned helpful you’ll feel like cleaning out a toilet block. If you’re really energetic you might end up doing more than one. Or you might suddenly find the urge to do a spot of gardening and spend hours shovelling horse shit on his roses. Then there’s mucking out the animals on the farm, or soft-soaping the horse tack. He’s big on shoe-cleaning. Everyone in the house will appreciate it if you cop that one, and end up cleaning 20 pairs of shoes.”

Conway was blinking. “Is this for real?”

“Cross my heart and swear to die, mate.”

The new pupil pulled a mock face. “What should I do now?”

“Buy some rubber gloves, mate, and get your old man to honour the cheque.”

Conway was moved to a room on his own on the top floor. As he moved his stuff, he became aware that the house was running a sweep on what sort of chore he would be allocated by Mr W.

“How do you know this is going to happen?” he asked, puzzled.

“We heard Mr W tell Mrs Smedley about it. He called you an Undesirable.”

“Always a sure sign,” another boy chipped in helpfully.

A third wet his finger and dramatically enacted a slit across his throat, while a fourth respectfully moved his hat, as though in mourning.

“I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, Zebra,” another confessed.

“You’re about to become the biggest spectator sport of the year, boyo.”

Bemused, Conway gave a theatrical shrug and walked along a corridor lined with people, all waiting to get a look at him. He was aware of everyone’s excitement, but there was an undercurrent of sympathy that puzzled him. He eyed them suspiciously, wondering if this was a gag his house-mates had created. Somehow, he didn’t think so.

Deciding there was little he could do until the storm broke, he sat down upon reaching his room and attempted some maths prep. He became aware of Mr Williams approaching long before the headteacher reached his room. He was making a majestic sweep of House A, with his voice booming. When he burst into Conway’s room the boy scrambled to his feet.

“Ah, Flynn.” was the brisk greeting, as Mr Williams stepped into the room and closed the door. “I’ve just called to pick up your guardian’s mobile telephone number. I only have his number for home.”

“Sir.” Conway wrote it down in a clumsy scrawl, in the style of someone who was still learning how to write, and handed the slip of paper to Mr Williams. The headteacher took it, studied it, then tucked it into his top pocket. More quietly, he continued, “I should like you to be aware of why you have been moved to a room on your own. It could be you are a target, and I don’t want a room-mate getting involved in your troubles.”

“Sir.”

“When you report to your house mistress every hour I shall need you to sign your name in a book. I’ll have to demonstrate that we have been keeping an eye on you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Humph.” Mr Williams cast a critical look around the room, but found it spotless. “Very well, I shall leave you to it.”

“Sir.”

The headteacher opened the door, then examined the handle critically.

“Door handles, Flynn.”

“Sir?”

“They get so grubby, don’t you agree? Look at the fingermarks there.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Just run down to the kitchen, will you? Get something to buff it up.”

Conway obliged, quickly fetching a damp cloth from the kitchen. He was uneasily aware he was being watched, and whispered about. He felt baffled, but somehow relieved that Dean had warned him about this.

Back upstairs, he rubbed the paintwork around the handle. Black fingermarks were gradually erased. “There you go, sir.”

“Hm. It looks better, but that’s still not quite right,” was the headmaster’s verdict. “Go and ask Mrs Smedley for some brass polish, would you?”

The brass police was fetched, applied and buffed off. The door handle gleamed.

“Splendid!” Exclaimed Mr Williams. “Most excellent! You’ll need to do the other side, of course.”

“Sir,” Conway did the other side, only to be aware Mr Williams was pacing the corridor, studying all the door handles critically in turn.

“It’s a lamentable fact, Flynn. Every door handle in this corridor is dirty. Lamentable, that’s what it is. Absolutely lamentable. Would you clean them all, please? Shouldn’t take you long.”

“Sir,” Conway moved to the next door. “Both sides, sir?”

“Oh yes, I think so, don’t you? Rub off the fingermarks first, then polish the handles.”

There was a silence as Conway began working. Mr Williams could be heard plodding his way down the stairs. Presently, he returned.

“Do you know, Flynn, every single door in this house is dirty? Every single one! I really do think we should remedy this situation.”

“Will you ask somebody else to come and help, sir?”

“Oh no, I don’t think so. You seem to be doing a splendid job on your own.” Another long pause. “I’m sure you’ll get them done by bedtime. Goodnight.”

Conway paused to look directly at his face. Mr W caught the movement from the corner of his eye. Surprised, he returned the stare, his steely dark grey eyes glinting with challenge. He wondered if the Undesirable was about to make a protest.

Instead, Conway smiled. “Goodnight, sir.” He bowed his head deliberately over his work, and began rubbing vigorously.

Nettled, but inexplicably amused at the same time, the headmaster walked away, realising Flynn had accepted a challenge.

CHAPTER SIX  home

As soon as the headteacher had left, the whole house erupted with the sound of 18 boys laughing, cheering, clapping, whooping and cracking jokes, with Mrs Smedley standing exasperated at the bottom of the stairs, shouting up at them to stop their nonsense.

It was okay for the first half hour. Conway had an audience. There was plenty of banter, and plenty of company for him.

“Since none of you guessed door handles, do I get to keep the sweep?” He inquired, of organiser Robin.

“No way! We’re doing it now on how many handles you do.”

“Does both sides count as one, or two?”

They argued the point, and settled on two.

“Glad you’re counting them,” Conway said.

“Glad you’re cleaning them,” Robin retorted.

Someone called Conway simply a-door-able, while another sang a song with the lyrics Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, but after a while, most of Conway’s house-mates disappeared to watch television, play basketball, or listen to music. Sometimes he would enter a room, and hear a friendly greeting.

“Yo, Zebra! How’s it going?”

“You missed a bit, there, Flynn.”

“Hey, Zebra. You wanna borrow my Walkman for a bit?” This latest offer was made by Russ, and accepted gratefully.

“What did you do to wind up the old man, then?” Russ asked.

Conway shrugged. “Something to do with a bounced cheque, they tell me.”

Russ gave Conway an even stare. “My family got in trouble for a spell, but Mr W didn’t do that to me. He only does it to people he wants to get rid of.”

Conway recognised genuine sympathy in the other boy’s face. He wondered if Russ feared this would be his fate when his family ‘got into trouble’.

Conway laughed, and pulled a comic face. “That’s really cheered me up, Russ. Thanks.”

“Sorry, mate.”

The Undesirable worked doggedly at cleaning the doors and had plenty of time to rue the moment he had claimed to be a grass. He knew better than most how dangerous it was to be mistaken for one. He did not blame the headteacher for trying to drive him out. There was no option left open to Conway now but to dig in and take all the flak.

He did two corridors worth of doors before being asked by Mrs Smedley to go to bed, He could do the rest the following day, she suggested.

Conway wrote his letters of apology before going to sleep, which took a long time. As he undressed, he paused to reflect on his day.

It had been dreadful, really. He had been such a prat, letting on about Ellingham’s real name, and saying he was an informant. He had antagonised Mr Williams, he had over-reacted in the changing rooms to other people’s perfectly reasonable shock, he had spent the entire evening being the butt of everyone’s jokes, and he ached along his fingers, wrists and shoulders.

And it all happened because of his scars.

He should have gone back to Essex Social Services after Travis did that, but the thought of being put in a mental health unit was terrifying. It wasn’t just the extent of absolute power that the staff would enjoy over him, but the unpredictability of the other patients. He thought about the sick old man who had once been his neighbour and shuddered.

He wondered if his cuts would have scarred if he had accepted Ellingham’s advice to have hospital treatment. He lifted his top and studied his rear view in the mirror. Zebra was an apt nickname, he decided, with disgust.

It was so different here, at this school, a different world to anything he had known before. It was a radical change from the unloving experience called “being in care”. And it seemed a world away from Travis and his drug-crazed rages, or from pimp Pete Waterman, and his spooky customers.

Among those customers had been a group of men, tracing his scabs with their creepy fingers. They didn’t hurt him, but what they did was unpleasant, and they got a real kick out of it. They took a video of him, and they asked him to describe what he was beaten with, and how bad the pain was. They especially wanted to hear about the pain. Travis was just a normal angry guy, compared with them.

Conway wiped his face, as though hoping to wipe away the ugly memories that threatened to overwhelm him. All those crazy things he had done: thieving from pensioners, picking pockets, doing burglaries and the sick sleazy activities at Pete Waterman’s. He had done them just to get by, just to get enough cash to survive, but he must have been mad to do any of them. All he had done, thinking about it now, was to prove exactly what everyone said about him: that he was wild, crazy, beyond anyone’s control.

It was so different here, in this safe cocoon called the Endeavour School. He knew the headteacher had intended to humiliate him, but there was a big difference between schoolboys laughing and teasing, and a gang of weirdos taking a video of his naked body, getting off by touching his scabs. Ugh! He shuddered, his mouth twisting in disgust as he remembered the eyes of the men who had stroked him. Ghouls, they were. Bloody ghouls!

Saturday’s lessons at the Endeavour School began at 10am and ended at 1pm. Most pupils spent Saturday afternoons visiting the local towns, or going home.

Upon wakening, Conway felt pretty much resigned to his lot. He guessed today and the next day would be much the same as the previous evening. He got up before six to finish the doors in House A, working on the ground floor where no-one slept.

“Hello Connor. You’re up nice and early,” was Mrs Smedley’s cheerful greeting.

He stood up at once at her approach, as was the custom at the Endeavour when any boy was spoken to by an adult. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“You’re making such a lovely job of those doors. Mr Williams came round last night to see how well you were progressing. He said they were wonderful.” She spoke with a soft Welsh accent. Strange. Mr Williams, who was also Welsh, did not.

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“In fact, he thought they were so nice - “ she broke off. She never liked this sort of thing. It was a female instinct. Lads jeered and joked and teased. They enjoyed the pantomime. But Mrs Smedley had not met a single female member of staff who was not disgusted by Mr W’s cleaning assignments. Females had too much empathy with the person doing the cleaning, no matter how highly deserved the punishment.

“ - Mr Williams would like you to clean the handles in houses B and C this afternoon.”

Conway nodded. “Yes Ma’am. I thought he might.” He smiled at her.

“If you see me after lunch I shall give you some more polish and cloths.”

It was only the third time Conway had shared a sit-down lesson with National Security since the epileptic fit. They were teamed up for practical science lessons.

He was surprised to find Teri’s English so fluent. He had no difficulty in understanding him at all. He was also easy to work with. He had a knack for apparently second-guessing what Conway would say even before he could get round to saying it.

Conway praised his companion frequently. “You’re good at this, man.” “Your English is amazing! I could never speak Spanish that well!” Later he asked, “How d’you say ‘clean’ in Spanish, man?”

“Limpio.”

“Yeah? Your house will have limpio door handles soon. I’ve gotta come round and do ‘em this afternoon.”

Teri nodded. “I hear about it.” He spoke curtly. “I was told, all handles in school.”

Conway’s eyes widened. “All of them? Every door in the whole school? Who d’you hear that from?”

“Very good source.”

Well, it would be, since Teri was about to implant the idea into the headteacher’s mind.

Conway groped for a chair and sat down for a moment, blinking in disbelief. “He’s potty!”

“He wants you to leave.”

“He does this all the time?” Conway shook his head. “No way! He’ld be done for child abuse!”

“Other kids all leave. No-one is forced. You choose to do it or leave.”

He looked intently at Conway, but had to remind himself not to read the other boy’s conscious thought for fear of rousing bad memories. Conway was mulling over the phrase ‘child abuse’ and his sickening violent aura was discernible.

“Per’aps you leave now?”

Conway wasn’t listening. He was frowning, fiddling with his pen top.

“Per’aps you will leave?” Teri pressed again.

“Perhaps.” came the reply.

Teri nodded, pleased with his morning’s work.

Conway, in the meantime, spent the rest of his classroom time studying doors. Everywhere he looked, in every direction, he couldn’t help but notice them, and to start thinking about them. He kept shaking his head in disbelief. Sometimes he laughed. It had to be a joke, right? Perhaps you will leave now? Well, maybe, if he had any sense. What would Ellingham think? Conway wasn’t sure. It wasn’t exactly dangerous, was it? A bloody hard slog, and he would definitely feel silly. It was an ordeal similar to that of a thousand stares, but different. It was similar in that everyone was looking at him. They knew his business. It was different because they laughed, both at him and with him. People were friendly to him. He would have to be a pretty big wimp, to call off his mission over polishing door handles.

So he shrugged off the jokes from the other boys and duly reported for polishing detail that afternoon. House B was deserted. Everyone had gone out for the afternoon. He saw but just two Year 11 students who had come back to the house to fetch a fishing rod. They gave him some chocolate, ‘for extra energy.’

“Handles look great,” they told him.

“Yeah. Don’t let the old man get you down.”

It was a pleasant sunny day, with every window open in the house. Conway worked in total silence, listening to the birds outside. One wood pigeon was cooed particularly frequently.

Conway had built up a method to his door cleaning. Mrs Cooper, House B’s matron, showed his how quickly the paintwork buffed up with a little bleach and gave him some gloves to protect his hands, which were becoming cracked and blistered. He went through the house bleaching the woodwork first, then followed with the brass cleaner, making the handles gleam. He finished House B by teatime.

On his way back once to sign his curfew papers, he saw two boys sunbathing on the grass.

“Is it true that guy has to clean every handle in the school?” he heard one say.

“That’s what I heard,” was the sleepy reply.

“It must have been a massive cheque.”

Conway was stiff by teatime, to the extent that it was an effort for him even to use a knife and fork. His shoulders and his fingers were aching even more badly than the night before, and the smell of the polish had got up his nose, making him sneeze repeatedly.

“Connor.” Someone called him as he rose from the table. It was a slightly built Chinese boy nicknamed Mouse. Legend ran that he was as quiet as one.

“Hello Scott.”

Mouse handed him a bottle. “Peppermint oil.”

It smelled strong. Conway sneezed, then eyed the small brown bottle suspiciously.

“Herbal medicine, for aching muscles.”

Conway was touched. “Hey, that’s great. Thanks, man.”

But there was no answering smile in Scott’s eyes. “You must pause more often. Relax the muscles, do stretching. Flop your hands like this, shake, stretch your arms like so, roll shoulders, like this.”

“You sound as if you know what you’re talking about.”

“My mother is physiotherapist, specialising in repetitive strain. Tenosynivitis. Tennis elbow. It’s a common problem. Let me show you.”

He began to massage Conway’s neck. It felt a bit strange, and they were attracting surprised stares from other guys. Conway remembered the snigger about him possibly being a homosexual, and would have pulled away, but Mouse persisted. Conway felt himself relax more. “Hey, this feels good.”

Scott applied the peppermint oil, talking the whole time about exercises to help Conway relax.

“Are you going to do this for a living, Mouse?”

“No, I want to be a Formula One driver.”

Conway laughed. “Don’t we all?”

“If you do cleaning tomorrow, come and see me afterwards. I shall help you some more.”

“That’s great man. I appreciate that.”

Conway felt considerably more relaxed as he left for House C. It really was amazing how many people had showed him kindness.

Conway discovered the flip side of the coin at House C.

The occupants had been on curfew. Nineteen boys of all ages had been confined to the school grounds all afternoon. They had already felt their confinement keenly. The day was warm, they all wanted to be somewhere else, out having fun. Instead, they had spent most of the time being sick of each other and quarrelling.

By the time Conway arrived he found they had made glue by boiling a mixture of flour and water and were applying it to the door handles. Most had hardened on the mixture by using hairdriers. They greeted Conway with cheers and jeers, and bombarded him with flour, eggs, water-filled balloons, itching powder, sneezing powder, and handfuls of food waste that was due to be delivered to the pigs on the farm.

They spat at him with peashooters, stole his little chair, knocked over his polish, hid his gloves and pushed his head down the toilet while flushing the chain, chanting taunts as they did so.

What a riot! Conway was stunned at the apparent spite of it all. He was left on the floor of the toilet block to collect his thoughts, then he caught a glimpse of Terencio Otoma smiling and thought he understood. The Spanish boy must have told everyone it was Conway who planted the insects in St John and Glenn’s room and was responsible for their curfew.

This was all fair play in the unwritten code among the school’s pupils. He recognised that he had transgressed against them, and it was pay-back time. His every instinct was to run out of there, but as he rinsed his hair and face in the sink, he found himself thinking, “Is it dangerous?”

No. Not dangerous. Just unpleasant.

He braced his shoulders and went back into the corridor, mentally prepared for some serious mickey-taking.

The following half hour was every bit as difficult as the first. He defied his tormentors by laughing with them, but was careful not to goad them, pleading with them jokingly to give him a break.

By the end of an hour, all but St John and Glenn had decided he was punished enough. He might have even earned the grudging admiration among the boys of House C for not losing his cool. He had an audience for a while as he scoured at the sticky mixture they had coated on the handles, making his task so very much more difficult.

St John decided it would be great to make mud pies. He followed Conway for a while, pressing mud-slicked hands over the doors Conway had just cleaned.

“There’s always one, isn’t there?” Conway remarked good-naturedly, as he went back to reclean them.

St John eked out the joke by smearing half a dozen more doors. Even he tired of it eventually and went to watch television.

Conway worked doggedly, his muscles by now so unused to the effort that it felt like torture. He muttered curses frequently about Merrill Ellingham as he worked, deciding the big man owed him a lot of favours and trying to work out how he would call them in. Top of his list was to call off the social workers whom he had overheard talking about his future. They had planned to ask a psychiatrist to assess him. Someone else said they thought he should be sent to a closed ward at a mental hospital.

Conway frowned. If he failed in his mission he wasn’t sure if Ellingham would be inclined to be his advocate. Unlike Travis, Ellingham was a hard guy to figure out.

Conway had expected Mrs Yates, the matron of House C, to tell him to stop at 10pm, but she did not. Eventually he realised this was probably because bedtimes were later on Saturdays, with year 11 students staying up past midnight. Conway finished all of the doors in House C at about half past midnight, then staggered to his bed.

He was disturbed shortly after 1.30am, by which time he was in deep slumber. When he answered the door he found Mr Williams standing there, smiling rather unpleasantly.

“Ah, Flynn. Perhaps you would be so good as to come with me?” He requested, politely.

“Sir,” Conway had pulled on a pair of jeans to answer the door, now he reached for a sweatshirt. He was amazed to be disturbed at this hour. He followed the headteacher in silence for a while, but presently asked. “What’s this about?”

“It’s about doing a job properly, Flynn. That’s what this is about.”

“Doing what job properly?” Conway mused aloud.

“The doors, boy! The doors! What else have I asked you to do?” Mr Williams demanded.

“I did do them properly,” Conway muttered.

“Pardon?”

Conway was aware of the man’s icy stare. The headteacher was furious. Conway couldn’t think why.

“I said, I cleaned the doors, sir.” He spoke quickly, and far less aggressively.

They were at the approach to House C, and the headteacher took the stairs two at a time.  “Then I’m afraid you will have to clean them again, won’t you, Flynn?”

“Clean them again?” Conway repeated, stunned.

“Certainly. I don’t think we can leave them like this tonight.”

They entered House C. Conway could only stare in astonishment. Every door had mud on it, from top to bottom, not just smeared on, but caked on. The place stank, while the mud had trailed and dripped onto the floorboards and hall carpets.

A small audience was gathering, growing bigger all the time. Conway stared at their faces, unable to comprehend why anyone would want to do such a cruel prank.

He spotted St John and looked at him accusingly. St John looked upset. “Honest, Flynn,” he blurted. “I swear to you. I didn’t do it.”

“Well?” demanded Mr Williams curtly.

Conway looked back at the man warily. “I cleaned the doors, Sir. Ask anyone. Someone’s come back and done this.”

“You’ld better get busy then, hadn’t you?”

Conway’s mouth dropped open. “Tonight?”

“Yes, why not?”

“But - I’ve been cleaning non-stop for nearly 11 hours, Sir.”

“How very disagreeable for you.”

“But - “ Conway shook his head in disbelief. This simply could not be happening. “Don’t I get any sleep?”

“Certainly, Flynn. When the job’s done.”

“But I’ve done it once already, Sir. Suppose I do it again and someone puts mud on the doors again?”

“Then you must carry on until they get tired of it.”

In the silence, Conway gazed up at eyes of pure steel. “Did you put mud on the doors, Sir?”

“Certainly not.”

“You can’t - “ Conway began. He paused, inhaled deeply. Plainly the headteacher thought he could. It was unwise to start sentences with the words ‘you can’t’. He had a sensation which felt like the world was closing in on him. He was so tired! He ached everywhere. He couldn’t absorb the attitude of the man. “This is abuse, Sir.”

“My dear boy. I haven’t touched a hair on your head! But suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is abuse. You can stop it any time you want. Ring your guardian, and go home.” He held out a mobile phone.

Conway stared at it. He could do that, of course. He knew Ellingham would be outraged. He would come instantly, and not begrudge the journey. But the word Conway heard most was ‘home’.

What exactly was ‘home’? Was it being stripped naked in a room above Pete Waterman’s shop, being touched and stroked by four men? Or in a mental health unit, perhaps, where patients dribbled while eating their food and messed their underwear and spent hours in their own filth, shouting at imaginary devils?

A shiver convulsed him, followed by a seeping rage. “This turns you on, does it?” He glowered at the headteacher. “You get off on doing this to little boys, right?”

“I’m not doing anything to you.” Mr Williams replied dismissively. “Rid yourself of the notion that I am a monster preying on my pupils. Whoever sabotaged your efforts intended to make life unpleasant for you, Flynn. I suggest you ask yourself why. In the meantime, observe the tools of your labour on the floor to your left, or the means by which you can avoid employing them in my hand. Ring your guardian, and this stops at once.”

Conway wiped his face. His throat was dry and his eyes were stinging. It was ridiculous. This was abuse, there was no mistake about it. Surely everyone must see that?

He looked up and stared at the faces of the boys who were watching the scene in stunned amazement. And as he looked up, he thought how different to them he was, and how their futures were also likely to be so different. Conway knew a stab of envy. Were any of them likely to be beaten so harshly their bodies streamed with blood? Did any of them ever have to worry about the possibility that they would receive electric shock treatment?

Conway did. ‘Bats’ Bereford had been a psychiatric nurse before working at one of the council homes where Conway was living for a short time. He had enjoyed giving Conway a blow-by-blow description of the procedure, leaving no doubt that he expected Conway to be ‘zapped’ one day.

Conway shuddered.

“You think this is as bad as it gets?” He was asking the question initially of himself, to remind himself it was not. He glared up into the headteacher’s eyes, trembling violently. In the heat of some kind of madness, he snarled. “You’ld better think of something worse to do to me, Mister, ‘cos this ain’t the worst thing to happen to me!”

The headteacher’s bushy black eyebrows drew sharply together. He observed the boy shrewdly in silence for a moment, then abruptly put away the phone with a little snap.

“I never believed it was.”

Everyone stood in startled silence while Mr Williams stared at Conway, with the headteacher looking very much as if he were wrestling with a difficult problem. The man glanced up and noted the sea of faces. The boys were stunned. They didn’t understand. All they could comprehend was that Flynn had to clean the doors again. Now.

“It’s a little crowded in here.” Mr Williams observed conversationally.

Everybody moved. Within seconds the boys were back in their rooms, closing their mud-caked doors behind them.

They stood alone in the hall, a boy glowering, and a pensive lion-like figure, looking sadly down.

“You know what I think?” The man asked.

“No.”

“You’re at that place on a Monopoly board. Just visiting.”

Conway said nothing.

The headteacher began to pace. Within a few moments he began to pronounce his words of wisdom, like the summing up of a High Court judge.

“You’ve had a miserable, useless life which has so far amounted to nothing. It’s likely to stay that way. But you’ve had a diversion, and you can see a different life for the very first time. Since you have expended many hours diligently cleaning doors, I assume you want to stay at this different place, but I doubt you’ll achieve it.”

He paused, waited for a comment from the boy, but none was forthcoming. He began to pace anew.

“You’ve wanted everything too easy all your life, haven’t you, Flynn?” he sneered. “Unfortunately nothing is ever easy. You have to work at things if you want to achieve anything. You made life difficult for yourself because you thought you could take a short cut. You chose the wrong path, Flynn. You’re a stupid little fool. You can’t keep running from difficulty.”

Conway was listening to the headteacher’s lecture intently, trying to think if the words could be applied to his own situation. Typically, he plucked at the part that didn’t.

“I didn’t choose this path,” He blurted indignantly. “They died. I couldn’t help that.”

Mr Williams’ eyebrows snapped together. “Who died? Your parents?”

“Adoptive ones.” Conway’s eyes dropped. “They adopted me when I was a baby. They thought they couldn’t have children of their own, but they had two girls after adopting me. When they died, Nanna wanted them.”

“But not you.” Mr Williams spoke the obvious with crushing brutality. “How old were you when they died?”

“Eight.”

“Hm. Unlucky.” Mr Williams eyed Conway with little evidence of sympathy. “But lots of people are unlucky, Flynn. They don’t end up like you. Look back honestly over the years and you’ll realise you should have worked harder at things, stuck at situations for longer, been a lot more co-operative with people.”

He paused and observed the stricken look on Conway’s face. He softened his tones. “It’s not a crime. None of us are perfect. Anyway, you can’t change the past now, but you can change your behaviour. It’s time for you to start tackling obstacles with a different attitude.”

He paused again. He was still waiting for the boy to speak, but he didn’t, so eventually Mr Williams continued. “I don’t know how long your guardian intended you to stay here, but wherever you are in life, whatever you’re doing, you will need to get better at tackling problems. Don’t think life is cushy here, Flynn, because it isn’t. Everyone encounters plenty of obstacles.”

“And - “ Conway looked up, catching his breath. “Did you - ?” he gulped, intimidated by the headteacher’s cool stare. “Did you put mud on the doors to present me with more obstacles, Sir?”

Mr Williams opened his mouth, then shut it again. “No. You’ve upset someone else. You’ll have plenty of time to work out who while you get to work.”

“Can’t I -?” Conway gulped again. “I’m so tired, Sir! Can’t I do it in the morning?”

“No, I don’t think so.” The headteacher retorted, shocking Conway to the core. “Someone obviously believes you’re getting your just desserts, Flynn. I think I’ll give that person the benefit of the doubt.”

He waved a vague hand. “If you don’t want to do them, go to bed. We’ll ring your guardian in the morning. But if you’re in earnest about staying here, I suggest you make a start. I’ll be back at six to monitor your progress. Goodnight.”

CHAPTER SEVEN  home

Conway sat on the steps. His legs felt weak and trembling. A massive weariness washed over him. He sat blinking in the hall’s half light, staring at the mud-caked doors.

There wasn’t a sound.

He wiped his face. Nervous habit. He had a thing about his face. When he was younger he used to take off his T-shirts and feel the soft material pressed against his eyes, but he needed to feel the softness all over his face, and used to wipe at it repeatedly, without a clue as to why he kept doing it.

He didn’t know how long he had the habit. His earliest memory was at the funeral, pressing the material against his dry eyes. He remembered Nanna scolding him, telling him to put his top back on. She was very cross.

She had often become cross with Conway. She had never seemed to like him. Even before his parents died, he knew Gemma and Amy were Nanna’s clear favourites. His mum once argued with Nanna and told her to stop carping at him. Everyone got very upset, that day.

He hadn’t realised until after his parents died that he was adopted. Gemma came rushing to him, saying they were going to live with Nanna, but it never happened. Conway was sent away to live with a foster family. He used to fret all the time because he wanted to see Gemma. He had started to think she must have gone to Heaven as well, and he needed to make sure she had not.

He saw her once, but even then, things had changed. She had lots of exciting things to talk about. She listed all the nice things Nanna had bought for her and when she asked what new things Conway had, her excitement flattened when he told her he had received nothing.

He sensed even then that although he needed to see her, it had only upset her. He reminded her of the old days, and she got upset when she thought about them. Or maybe she had grown worried about what she perceived as her big brother’s Cinderella existence. He was worried too. He began to grow increasingly puzzled as to why he had to live in a different place from Gemma at all. Then one fateful day, he overheard his foster parents talking to someone else, and he discovered the truth. He wasn’t one of his mum or dad’s ‘proper’ children, and Nanna wanted nothing to do with him.

The shock to him was overwhelming. Back then, he couldn’t grasp why Nanna should only want Gemma and Amy, and not him. He didn’t understand why being a blood relative should make a difference. He thought it was because he must have been bad.

Later, a girl at school told him that he would never understand it, because he didn’t have any blood relatives, so he didn’t know what it felt like. Her mother bred dogs, and the girl tried to explain to him the difference between pedigree dogs and strays. It all sounded very hurtful.

Although he never wanted to accept what the girl had said, he had come to believe that what she said was true, and he realised then just how alone he was, that he had no blood relatives at all.

Perhaps he was being silly, but he missed Gemma until he ached. He kept wanting to see her, but it seemed as though everyone thought he shouldn’t really like her any more, because she wasn’t even a proper blood relative.

Conway didn’t know how long he sat on the steps, repeatedly wiping and wiping his face. He knew it was his substitute for crying. He never cried. He couldn’t. He tried to force himself to sometimes. He thought if he could cry Travis would be sorry and stop hitting him. But he just couldn’t do it. Nothing would come.

The beatings didn’t start with Travis. It had started with a weird old man who lived next door to his first foster home. He wrongly believed Conway had thrown stones at his window. - and he had a thing about foster children. He thought having them living next door would affect the price of his property. He began a campaign to terrorise the children and drive them away.

He was just a crazy, sick old man who was smelly and scary to a timid child like Conway. He used to lie in wait for him as Conway walked home from school. At first, he only ranted, then he built up to a point where he would shake the little boy or push him to the ground.

For a long time, Conway was the only foster child living there, and the only child of the household who was privvy to the man’s rages. For a long time, no-one believed Conway. Then after another grown-up witnessed one incident, people did believe Conway, but for a reason he didn’t understand they didn’t seem to think it serious enough to do anything about it. People ignored Conway’s pleas to be moved, thinking only that he was asking to live with Gemma again, and gently explained that this was no longer possible. He was left to face his terrors alone.

One day, completely without warning, the old man hit Conway on the back of the head with a spade. He fractured Conway’s skull. The boy was in a coma for more than a week, and he stayed in hospital for months.

And that was it. That was when he changed. He felt angry. He had been betrayed. He had bad headaches all the time and there were days when the pains were so violent he felt crazed. He could remember a time when he wouldn’t believe the worst things in the world could happen to him. But now he had crossed a line, and he had no faith that the worst things in the world would not happen to him.

More than that, he could remember a time when he was a clever Conway. He was sitting on his mummy’s knee reading to her. And she would smile and hug him and tell him all the time that he was reading brilliantly. He was such a bright boy.

But when he came out of hospital he was a stupid Conway. He could remember none of his letters, or how to hold a pencil, or how to write his name. The doctor told him kindly that this often happened after a knock on the head. He would pick it again. But Conway didn’t want to learn it all again. It seemed to him that by losing the skills his mother taught him that he had lost his final link with her, and everything she was, everything she did, had been overlapped, and her significance could not be seen by anyone else. It was as though they felt she never mattered. But she mattered to Conway.

When he came out of hospital, he was wild. He had enough balance to know, even then, that he was behaving badly, but he enjoyed it. It seemed the more people were shocked by what he did, the better he felt. Perhaps there were a few occasions when he tried to be nice, but not many. He could not control his temper. And he took advantage of those who pitied the tragic little boy who had survived such a traumatic attack. The truth was, no-one knew how to discipline him. They didn’t know where to start. And he liked being a puzzle they couldn’t unravel. The more they tried to reason with him, the funnier he thought it all was. It seemed like a game.

He got to know Travis while he was living in Romford. Travis lived in a squat and Conway went there while a truant from school. When they met Travis was a mechanic, passionate about motorbikes and a man with enough time to spare to listen to the rantings of a furious little kid. When Conway railed against having no blood relatives, the man sliced a cut into Conway’s hand, cut his own, and they mixed blood.

“There y’are. You’s my blood brother now.” Travis boasted. And from then on, Conway was his little bro’.

Conway adored him, more deeply than he remembered loving anyone before. He wanted to belong to Travis, and when the man got into trouble at work, he took off, taking Conway with him. They became travellers, and lived in an old ambulance.

There were some blissful times, but they were mainly at the beginning. Travis had shielded Conway from his dark secret. He was on crack. In the months that passed, it became evident he was a complete addict. He gave Conway some too, but to Conway it only felt like those desperate days in hospital when he was trying to regain control and co-ordination after fracturing his skull. The drugs terrified him. He was never tempted to sample any more.

Remaining clear-headed, while Travis and everyone else around him was not, the little boy began to assume the role of a parent. It was he who cooked, washed up, did laundry, stole food and burgled houses, supplying them with enough money to live on. The others called him bitch, because they said he nagged like an old woman. And Travis would beat him more often than he ate, only to feel full of remorse when he had calmed down. He used to blame the drugs for his behaviour, and he would weep. He’ld tell Conway he loved his little bro’ and beg the boy not to run out on him because he needed Conway so much. And it was true. Travis was like a little baby. Conway felt the burden of looking after him increase as months passed.

The social services found Conway three times, and three times they forced the blood brothers apart. They tried to lock Travis away, but couldn’t make charges stick. They tried to hide Conway away from Travis. Silly people. It was easy for them to find each other. All Conway had to do was visit any motorbike shop in any town and talk enthusiastically about motorbikes. The staff remembered Conway when Travis asked around about him, and a meeting was always arranged.

As time wore on, social services staff tried to reason with Conway. They knew Travis was beating him. They tried to tell him this was no good. But Conway would never admit they were right. He would never tell them anything. Maybe he was silly to keep going back to Travis, but Conway felt he had to. Travis needed him. He could not turn his back on his blood bro’. To him, the only way forward was to persuade Travis to stop using drugs.

One day Conway heard about a clinic that would help people get off drugs. He went to a drop-in centre and opened his heart to a drugs counsellor. He was trying to get a place reserved for Travis at a rehab clinic. He knew he would get in trouble for it, but he thought the risk was worth it.

And maybe it would have been, had the police not carried out a dawn raid at their roadside camp the following day, saying they were acting on ‘information received’ about drugs on their site.

Whoever supplied the information had got it wrong. Travis was clean out of supplies and was suffering already because of it. The memory of Conway’s betrayal - that of daring to speak to outsiders about themselves - was only a day old, and Travis was still nursing his grievance.

The police did searches all the time. It was probably their way of trying to pressurise them to move on. Locals hated travellers. Everyone on the camp knew that, but this time, Travis believed the timing of the raid was not just a coincidence.

He caught Conway’s eye even before the officers had left. Conway knew with pounding heart and dry mouth that he was in trouble, just by looking at Travis’ face. He used the protection of the officers’ presence to get ready, pulling on his clothes and a pair of running shoes. As soon as the police car had pulled away he started to run. Travis waited until the car was out of sight before chasing him across a cow field.

The only true gipsy among them was a man called Nick, who used to run a market stall selling household items like hoover bags and tools. Travis paused to clip off a length of net curtain wire, then he chased the boy across the field. He caught up with Conway as he was trying to wriggle through the fence. Conway could hear the cable whistle even before it landed. He even saw the wire snaking towards him. A single blow felled him.

Nothing could adequately describe the depths of his agony, nor of his terror. Within seconds Travis had pulled him from the fence and got two fellow-travellers to hold Conway upright, splaying his arms at full width. He ripped the shirt off the terrified boy, and then the beating began. Within seconds Conway was writhing helplessly on the grass, seeing his own blood spattered on it. He had screamed piteously, a noise that still haunted his sleep, but none of the pleadings that gushed from his mouth had the power to move any of the group. They stood in a loose circle around him, silently watching.

And then Conway seemed to swoon. He fell somewhere into time, with a rushing noise drowning out all his awareness. He wasn’t sure if he screamed, or only whimpered, but he was aware of Nick’s voice, from a very long way away, speaking as though bored, “You gonna kill him, Travis?”

That stopped it. Someone else told Travis that “scum like that weren’t even worth it”, and they persuaded the addict to go back with them to the camp.

A while later, Conway couldn’t say how long, Nick returned. When the police did their search, they couldn’t have been very thorough, because Nick drew a new needle from his jacket pocket and undid the wrapper.

Conway became aware of his intention as Nick came closer and lifted his left arm. He could barely lift an eyelid, but he managed to murmer a protest.

“I don’t do ‘em.”

“Shhh!” Nick smiled down at him. “Don’t worry, mate. You ain’t sharing. I picked up new ones from the needle exchange yesterday.”

“Don’t!” Conway croaked.

Nick ignored the protest and pushed the needle into the boy’s vein. “It will ease the pain. When it kicks in, get going. Don’t come back here, kid, or you’re dead. Even you have to call it quits sometime.”

He stood up, carefully put the needle away in a little box, chucked something else down on the grass and walked off.

Conway didn’t know how long he lay there. When he finally did move his head he realised Nick had thrown down a pair of jeans. Conway had only been wearing a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms before the attack. They were now ripped and sullied beyond description.

Nick was a heroin user, and Conway assumed he had been given what he called smack. Whatever it was, it had a powerful kick.

At first, Conway crawled. It seemed to take years. He fell in the river. He couldn’t swim, but didn’t care. He didn’t panic, didn’t scramble or fight for breath. He just floated away, staring at the cloudy sky above him, and clutching his pair of jeans by only one belt loop.

The river widened. The flow slowed, and Conway realised he could sit up in the water. He had reached a natural ford, and crawled out. Later he was able to stagger to an industrial estate about half a mile further on. He was so light-headed he was singing and talking nonsense to himself like a drunk.

He broke into an empty unit at the industrial estate and holed up there until nightfall. He systematically raided six different units, ignoring the burglar alarms. So, it seemed, did everyone else. He managed to start a car in a workshop and drove off. It broke down after maybe an hour, so Conway got out, took a holdall from the car, and went housebreaking. Ellingham’s was the first place he saw - an easy target because of the roofing contractor’s scaffolding next door, and because the roof was covered only with tarpaulin. There was no fire safety wall between the two attics. It was easy to access Ellingham’s home.

Merrill Ellingham was a big-framed man and over 6ft 6” tall. Conway thought he was one of the biggest men he had ever seen. He was also an enigma. He never revealed what he was thinking, and Conway couldn’t begin to suss him. He panicked when Ellingham cuffed him, was reassured when Ellingham cooked him a meal, only to be plunged into sheer terror when he woke several hours later to discover he was still handcuffed in the man’s kitchen.

Maybe he was not a copper then. Maybe he was a perv. Not just someone who liked to persuade little boys to do things, but a serious nut. Conway could be imprisoned for days, weeks even. He was going to be the man’s plaything - raped, tortured, and probably killed.

Stretching, wriggling, he was able to reach for the vinegar and grimly prepared to do whatever he needed to defend himself.

His reassurance came just as he raced for the back door, and he overheard Ellingham requesting an ambulance. In a split second, he switched his ideas again. The man wasn’t a nut. He was a regular cop. Maybe Conway was being reckless, but his urge to get away was not so desperate from that moment. He took a few risks, and was unafraid when the big guy caught him in his hallway.

But still he couldn’t figure Ellingham out. He seemed to bend rules, but only up to a point, and Conway could sense him weakening over his promises. Convinced the DI was going to call Social Services, Conway had no choice but to run. Yet he kept going back to Ellingham’s home. It was his safe place.

He had sneaked into that house so many times he was able to use the upstairs bathroom window as easily as a door key. Time and time again he raided the fridge, lifted the odd coin or two, warmed himself by the gas fire, or even by having a bath. Sometimes he even watched the DI as he lay sleeping. They even had a conversation once. The DI was sleep-talking and asked Conway if he was all right. He said he was.

Yet he could never be sure of Ellingham’s reception if he was caught. He had told Conway he never wanted to see him again, so Conway always had an excuse prepared in case Ellingham sussed him. He wanted to make the DI believe it would be in his interests to let Conway stay in London and not hand him over to Social Services, so he told him the things he had overheard while hiding in the ventilation shaft of a fancy club. No end of interesting things went on in that place, and yet for all the owner’s insistence on high security not one of the gorillas ever figured out Conway was there.

He anticipated that Ellingham might ask him to find out more about the people at the club, and their dodgy dealings, but he never expected Ellingham to ask him to get involved in something else. It took Conway a moment to adjust. He didn’t relish the idea of getting tangled up in somebody else’s private war.

It was Ellingham’s insistence that he didn’t want Conway to be involved in anything dangerous that swayed it. It was just a little favour, but the rewards were likely to be big. He could find a champion in Ellingham, someone who would argue his case with social services and go to court to state the boy was sane. Secure accommodation Conway thought he could deal with - maybe. The closed ward of a mental health unit he could not. If he went there, he would die there, Conway had no doubts about that. He couldn’t survive alongside a group of people as crazy as that old man had been.

After Conway agreed to help Ellingham, they became more relaxed with each other. Conway began to understand the big guy’s humour, and although he did not trust Ellingham to always act in Conway’s interests, nor did he feel Ellingham would let Conway suffer any serious harm. In fact, out of all the adults he knew, Ellingham seemed the least likely to tell him a lie.

CHAPTER EIGHT  home

Conway woke suddenly. His neck was agony. He had fallen asleep on the stairs.

He had fallen asleep! He sprang up, his throat suddenly tight with panic. What time was it? Twenty to five. An hour and twenty minutes away from an inspection by Mr Williams. Could he do all those doors in just one hour and twenty minutes?

He sprang up and nearly fell over. He stumbled, recovered, and ran to the kitchen with the bucket and sponge that Mr Williams had earlier set out for him. He rattled through the cupboards for the bleach. He was all fingers and thumbs, dropping things, nearly falling over.

He wouldn’t be able to do this. There was no way. He didn’t have enough time.

That was what he was thinking one minute. The next it was: “Yes, there will be. If you’re quick you’ll get it all done. Come on! Come on! Hurry! You can do it!”

He filled the bucket with water and found a chair to stand on. He ran upstairs with half of his equipment, back down to fetch more, and up again, with his feet pounding on the treads. Top floor. Start at the top and go down. Come on. Come on. You can do it. Fancy falling asleep like that. Bloody fool. Bloody stupid fool.

He had a round-bladed knife in his hands and banged it on the door. The mud cracked and fell off, almost in big clean lumps. Yes, yes. This was easy. He could do it. It would be fine. He would knock off the dried mud, then pick up blocks of mud and put them in a bin liner.

He was rubbing at the door to wipe away any residue of mud when it was yanked open, and he nearly fell inwards. A year 11 student stood there, looking murderous.

“What the fuck’s going on?” he barked.

Conway steadied himself, but still nearly fell. He had forgotten people were sleeping. He had been clattering about, talking out aloud to himself, banging on the door. Now he stood like a rabbit caught in the glare of a car’s headlamps, looking transfixed at the huge student who matched Conway’s height even though the younger boy was standing on the chair.

“The d-doors,” he stammered. “I have to do the doors.” He was barely coherent. Lack of sleep, feeling stiff and sore all over, and one of his crushing headaches all combined to drive out every sensible thought in his brain.

The big guy relaxed his shoulders slightly. “Oh, it’s you. Why are you doing them now? I thought you had to do them hours ago.”

“I fell asleep.” Conway was gabbling. His teeth was chattering. He couldn’t stay talking to this buy guy. He had to move on. He pushed his chair forward and began to scrape at the mud with the knife. He eased it between the mud and the door, and cleaved it away with a loud crack as the mud split. He winced at the noise, almost cowering at the thought of another student’s anger at being disturbed.

“I fell asleep,” he muttered again. “I was so tired, I couldn’t help it. I fell asleep. I have to do them by six.”

The big guy stared. It was as though he was Alice waking in Wonderland. Here was the big white rabbit, panicking about being late.

“Are you serious?”

Conway didn’t answer. He was picking up more blocks of mud. His silly fingers dropped some and he dropped to his knees, scooping to pick up as much as he could. He was looking back at the door and eyeing the traces of mud that still stuck there. They looked harder to clear from this door.

Exasperated, the year 11 student leaned against the door jam and watched Conway’s face intently as the younger boy began rubbing frantically.

“Will you just take a look at yourself? You’re being ridiculous! You’ll never get them done by six. Think about what you’re doing.”

“I’ll think later,” Conway panted, without looking round.

“Yeah, and realise what a prize wally you are!”

Conway said nothing. He was rubbing.

“What’s the big deal? Why’s it so fucking important? Jeez! Give it up. Go to bed.”

Still Conway said nothing.

“The old man will wake up this morning and realise he was way out of order last night. Everyone knows how stupid it was, cleaning at that time of night! I still can’t believe he insisted on you doing that.”

Another door done. Conway moved his chair and other equipment, almost tripping in his haste. If he had enough time to think he too would have thought it senseless, but time was a luxury he didn’t have. His capacity for thought was shrunk by the crushing headache. Perhaps if the big guy had just shut up it would have sunk in. He would have realised what sort of a pathetic state of mind he had been reduced to. But his mind was locked only on one target, and there was no dislodging that target, no matter how silly it was.

The bigger lad, practically a man, ran a hand through his hair. The whole situation was surreal. He couldn’t believe the old man was serious last night, and he couldn’t believe this stupid kid was treating it seriously either.

“Okay, let’s suppose the old man did mean it,” the lad suggested. “It will be because he wants you to leave the school. He’ll carry on doing it, won’t he? Will you do this tomorrow? The next day? The day after that? Will you just listen to me?”

Someone else opened a door and looked out. “Hey Boulder, what’s going on?”

Boulder did not at first reply. He was the prefect of his house, and all he had ever done up until now was think it amusing and to accept the privileges. He had never been called upon  to be an advocate for any of the boys in House C, but that was one of his roles.

He frowned, thinking he was only supposed to look after the boys of House C. But the injustic was happening in House C, right in front of his eyes.

Suddenly, impulsively, he banged on the door nearest to him, cracking the mud and sending lumps crashing to the floor. “Wake up!” He shouted. “Come on! Get out of bed.”

He looked at the other student who had woken. “Come on, Chris, Give me a hand. Get everyone up.”

Within moments, the whole house had the same conversation reverberating through it.

“What’s going on?” “What’s the matter?” And less politely, “What?”

And the reply: “The kid from House A overslept. He hasn’t got time to clean the doors. Will you help?”

They did help. Every single one of them. They cursed. They grumbled. They declared Flynn to be ‘sad’. None of them would have tried to stay up all night cleaning doors, they said. All of them, that was, except St John, who kept saying to anyone who would listen, “I didn’t do it, I swear. Ask Glenn. He’ll tell you. I did it in the afternoon, but not last night.”

Teri helped to clean up the mess he had made four hours previously. He was not pleased with the outcome. Last night, he thought he had planned it so well, and so effortlessly. He had opened his window and summoned sludge from the estuary. It slicked along the ground until he opened his bedroom door, then it took flight, like a swarm of bees, and splattered onto each door. It had taken mere seconds.

Then he had gently pushed the headteacher over his natural parameters. That hadn’t been so very hard. The man had an unshakeable faith in children’s sense of natural justice. He had reasoned that the quantity of mud was too large for one child alone to have moved it. The whole house had colluded against Connor Flynn. Why, he didn’t know. He didn’t even want to know. All he knew was that if they intended Flynn to suffer, he would oblige them.

There had been shock, disbelief and compassion for Flynn among the boys of House C the previous evening. Perhaps some of them might even have felt tempted to give him a hand, or at least to talk over the situation with him. So Teri had induced a wash of sleep, lest their compassion translated into action. But the possibility that anyone would wake at dawn and organise help just simply hadn’t occurred to him.

The only consolation to Teri was the boys’ outpouring of contempt for Flynn. He cut a sorry figure. The boys weren’t helping him because they liked him, or even because they felt sorry for him, but because they wanted him to go away. Both Flynn and this crazy situation made them feel uncomfortable. It was degrading, and they were angry at being associated with it.

They finished by 5.30. Some went back to bed. Others sat around playing cards. Boulder and his mates decided to go fishing. Conway sat on the stairs, deciding to keep watch in case his work was sabotaged once more. He was feeling unwell, and he hugged a bucket between his knees in case he was sick. He had taken off his sweatshirt and was repeatedly wiping his face with it.

Occasionally, one or two boys would approach him, and pull faces or mimic Conway’s face-wiping movements. They thought he was weird and had cracked up under the strain. The kinder ones asked, “Are you all right, Flynn?” but Conway didn’t reply.

Conway became aware of someone watching him and looked up. Boulder was standing there, holding his fishing gear. He had paused when he noticed the marks on Conway’s back, and he eyed them almost with revulsion. Flynn was outside his range of experience, Boulder reflected. He came from a world he knew nothing about, and he would rather not know.

“Thanks for helping me,” Conway said.

Boulder stepped past without even looking back at him. “Get some self-respect,” he muttered, and walked on.

Conway was sick. Mr Williams stepped into the hall of House C in time to witness it. He walked over to the boy without preamble and studied him from the foot of the stairs.

“Good morning. You had some help last night, I understand. Mrs Yates has been telling me.”

“Sir.” Conway did not stand. He was too weak and his stomach hurt.

“It’s good to know you haven’t upset everybody.”

Conway wasn’t so sure about that. The scorn of the other boys had stung. It would hurt for a long time. “They didn’t want to help me.”

“Then why did they?”

“They thought I was pathetic.”

“Well, Flynn, perhaps you are pathetic,” the headteacher said at once. He paused, pacing with a frown, then snapped his eyes back on Conway. “Justice often prevails, Flynn. I believe it has on this occasion.”

“Sir?”

“If you had deserved to be up all night cleaning doors then no-one would have helped you.”

“No, sir.”  Conway leaned further into his bucket. His face wasn’t just pale. It was grey. The headteacher watched him with hard eyes as he began to retch again, and when the worst of it was over, he spoke less harshly.

“You’re obviously unwell, boy. I suggest you go to bed. I shall talk to you again when you’re better.”

Conway had difficulty standing up. The headteacher helped him to his feet, his eyes as watchful as ever. He walked alongside Conway as the boy made his way back to House A, but only stretched his hands out to steady him once as Conway seemed about to lurch on the steps.

On reaching House A he summoned another pupil to help Conway to his room, while he and Mrs Smedley watched suspiciously from the foot of the stairs.

“That poor boy looks terrible,” she observed.

“Yes. Best call a doctor out, I think. I don’t like the look of him.”

Mr Williams was nowhere to be seen upon the doctor’s arrival, or during her visit to the patient, but he apparently met her by chance as she was on her way out.

“How is Master Flynn?” he asked, after exchanging pleasantries.

“A migraine. He seems to be over the worst of it now though.”

“Is he prone?”

“He fractured his skull two years ago. It can be common in these circumstances.”

“Indeed? A most dramatic accident.”

“Certainly dramatic,” she agreed drily. “But no accident.”

The headteacher said nothing, but one bushy black eyebrow rose sharply.

“He was attacked by a neighbour, apparently.”

“Is that how he got those marks on his back?”

“No. I was going to ask you about those. They’re recent. Only three or four months old.” She stared a little harder at him. “You don’t know how he came by them?”

“He only came to the school within the past week. Seems to have had a chequered history.”

“Let’s hope he’s over the last of his problems.”

“Lord, yes! I don’t think I can stand the strain of anything else.”

But although she laughed, she was looking worried. “You know, I’ll have to say something about those scars.”

“Do so.” Mr Williams invited at once. “You will be adding your voice to my own, I assure you.”

Reassured, she bade him goodbye and left, laughing at an observation of the headteacher’s as she waved farewell.

But Mr Williams was in no mood to laugh. On returning to his office he telephoned DI Ellingham.

Merrill Ellingham recognised the bark on the telephone instantly. He was about to go to bed, having been up most of the night on a difficult operation. “How can I help?” he asked, guardedly.

“I really need to know more about this boy’s background. He fractured his skull two years ago, I understand. Attacked by a neighbour?”

Ellingham felt weak about the knees. “I had no idea!”

“Well, how long have you known him?”

“I met him for the first time about four months ago.”

There was a long silence. Eventually the headteacher spoke softly, and grimly. “I think it’s time you spoke more frankly with me, Mr Ellingham.”

Ellingham knew he could no longer hope to evade the issue. Wearily, he agreed to meeting the headteacher later that day in Chelmsford, the half-way point between them. Upon meeting Mr Williams, he at once told the headteacher the whole story, even confessing that he had falsely imprisoned the boy in the handcuffing incident, and how he had sent Conway on a ‘surveillance mission’, which had the headteacher barking with laughter. Mr Williams, realising there was less risk to his school then he feared, relaxed, but it was clear from his stern manner that he was less than impressed with Ellingham’s generosity.

“You’ve picked yourself a handful of trouble, I must say!”

“I was hoping he would settle at your school. It seemed an ideal environment.”

“Indeed it is a wonderful environment, but he’s not ideal for my school. Too much of a drain on my resources!”

There was a short silence. “Has he been very badly behaved?” Ellingham asked, almost timidly.

“I work on the assumption that all boys are badly behaved. They rarely disappoint.” Mr Williams took a gulp of tea and frowned. “Actually, it’s not that. I can’t possibly have him  without liaising with Essex Social Services. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

“And if they agree, can he stay at your school? I’ll be willing to meet the fees.”

“Can’t help feeling you shouldn’t. Essex will probably stump up for it if they think the arrangement suitable.” He rattled his spoon, lost in thought. “It’s too early to say what will happen. It depends on a lot of things. I can tell you he’s been at my school for less than a week and caused no end of difficulties, some of them not necessarily his fault.”

“He came across to me as a pleasant lad.”

Mr Williams considered this. “Yes, but a little impetuous, I think. There are some weak spots in his character.”

Since Ellingham found the headteacher to be forceful to the point of being exhausting he was unsurprised to hear him recant weak spots in anyone’s character. He kept his opinions to himself, however, with them both agreeing to contact Essex Social Services later that day.

CHAPTER NINE  home

For Terencio Otoma the headmaster’s agreement to meet Ellingham in Chelmsford was an utter vexation. The closer he was physically to his subjects, the better he was able to influence people and understand what they were thinking. Mr W’s conversation with Ellingham was a series of snatched messages that could have amounted to anything.

More satisfying were the signals from Conway when the boy joined him for lessons the following day. Everywhere Conway went, he felt he was being whispered and sniggered about. He was, but not as much as he imagined. Conway’s manner was subdued. He felt he had slipped back into the ordeal of a thousand stares and he had no idea how to shake it off.

The headteacher’s liaisons with social services had not been smooth, though Mr Williams had not expected them to be. He drew the line at being spoken to as though Essex Social Services was granting him a personal favour by allowing Conway to stay at the school.

“My dear fellow. Take him away as soon as you like!” The headteacher retorted.

There was also a battle over Conway’s cleaning assignments, for Mr Williams had no intention of easing up the pressure on the boy. The social worker he spoke to disapproved of such assignments, and Teri heard the headteacher quite clearly say: “It is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether he goes or stays, but if he stays he obeys the rules of the school.”

On Monday evening Conway was summoned to the headteacher’s study.

“I hope you’re feeling well enough to continue with your cleaning duties.”

Conway’s heart sunk. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. From tomorrow, please, every weekday evening between six and eight. I have some other news for you. Some people from Essex Social Services will visit you tomorrow.”

Conway stood in stunned silence. “To visit me? Why?”

“To offer you a jungle safari, I expect.”

“What?” Conway said blankly.

“Pardon, Flynn. A wonderful word in the English language. Please use it.”

“Yes sir.” Conway answered at once.

“It would please me greatly if you would address Mrs Graham with a modicum of civility. I understand you were gratuitously abusive the last time you met.”

Conway’s composure broke. “Are they gonna lock me up?” He burst out.

The headteacher fixed his beady gaze on him. “Should they?”

“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.” Conway admitted distractedly. “But will they send me to a closed ward, or use ECT or - ?”

“Use what?” Mr Williams barked.

Conway flushed and said nothing. He found the anger in the headteacher’s face too terrible to look at, and he looked down.

“Sit down.” The headteacher ordered.

Conway sat.

“What do you think ECT is?”

“Electro-Convulsive Therapy.”

The headteacher stared a little harder. “And what,” he asked bitingly, “makes you think ‘they’ will use it on you?”

Conway didn’t answer. He didn’t dare confess to the sort of things he had done.

Mr Williams paced. The silence was broken only by the sound of his footfalls on the carpet. The headmaster would have loved to have forced the truth out the boy, but he sensed it was going to be an emotional process, and he hesitated to proceed with it. Eventually, he remarked, almost conversationally, “My knowledge of certain things might be hazy, Flynn, but there are two things you should know. First, a child of your age is never “locked up” as a punishment unless you have appeared before a court on a charge of murder, or something like that. Secondly, I don’t know if ECT is still in use, but even if it were, and assuming ECT was used on children, which I am sure it is not, I can tell you that it is never used without the patient’s consent.”

That was something “Bats” Bereford had not revealed. “Never?” Conway repeated.

“Never.” The headteacher replied firmly.

There was one last item for them to discuss, and the heateacher moved swiftly onto the next topic while giving Conway scant chance to absorb the last one. Mr Williams had realised by now that Connor Flynn was not Conway’s real name and asked the boy how he wished to be called. Confused, Conway thought about his mission. He thought a name change would only arouse National Security’s suspicions, so he said Connor Flynn would be fine. With that, “Flynn” was unmistakably dispatched, and left to wonder what fate would befall him the following day.

Conway’s case worker, Mrs Graham, had known him, on and off, since he was eight. If asked what he thought of her, he would have said, “okay, I guess.” If asked what she thought of him, she would have said he was a intelligent but manipulative personality with sociopathic tendencies and a capacity for violence. Yet she could remember the child he had been at eight years old. He was chubby and timid. He spoke with a stammer, and he was, according to newspaper clippings in her file, a child genius who represented his county at chess. He had been to a tournament on the day his adoptive parents died, and was travelling back with them when the accident happened. He was the only child in the car at the time, his sisters having been left in the care of his maternal grandmother.

Mrs Graham knew full well why Conway was obsessive about wiping his face. It had been splashed with his mother’s blood during the collision, and the boy, whose mind had blanked out the whole incident, had been wiping and wiping his face ever since. It was little wonder the grandmother felt unable to cope with such a traumatised child.

Mrs Graham had recommended many times that Conway be sent to secure accommodation for his own protection. She had less reason to recommend it now.

Three months before there had been a disturbance in the building where she was based. The man she knew as Travis Beales had sought her out to demand to know where Conway was. She was unused to this scenario, since Beales had a habit of knowing Conway’s whereabouts long before her. From the disjointed conversation which ensued, she realised Conway was missing, that Beales believed he had fallen in a river and drowned, and that he had come hoping to at least hear reassurances that Conway was alive.

She could give him none, and any hopes of finding out more were quickly dashed when Beales ran off. She had requested a police search, both for Beales and the last known whereabouts of Conway. Both searches proved fruitless. In the intervening months, she had begun to suspect that Conway must have drowned. And although surprised that he had now turned up alive and well, she felt confident that his harmful association with Beales was over.

The smartly-dressed boy who knocked on the door and entered the room where she sat with colleague Stuart Ashby was barely recognisable from the Conway she knew. She was unaccustomed to seeing him with a clean face, let alone spotlessly attired in pristine school uniform and neatly combed short hair. But the bright blue colour of his eyes, at least, was familiar.

“Hello, Conway. How are you?” She asked politely.

Conway flushed a little. He had no difficulty in recognising that this was going to be what he called a performing poodle session. People didn’t actually converse with him. They asked him his viewpoint constantly, as though he were not allowed to keep his thoughts private. It was as though they unzipped his brains and picked through everything they could find. Yet they did it without ever telling him anything.

“I’m very well.” He announced, and wondered why he always sounded like such a twit during these sessions.

She smiled brilliantly, without her smile reaching her eyes, but she betrayed her surprise. “Well, that’s good!”  She enthused. She introduced her colleague. Conway hesitated for the barest moment, then stepped forward with an outstretched hand.

“Pleased to meet you, sir.”

They shook hands, and for the first time in his life Conway discovered an effective way to talk to these people. They were surprised by politeness, and he could hide behind it.

He stood as a soldier might if he was standing ‘at ease’, with his hands behind him and his back straight.

“Sit down, Conway,” Mrs Graham invited, daunted by his manner. “It’s been some time since we saw each other. Perhaps you’ld like to tell me what you’ve been doing.”

Another one of those open-ended questions. Conway detested them. He knew she was really asking why he wasn’t with Travis. In the past he would have evaded the issue, and their conversation would have danced and weaved insipidly, as though it were a contest to see who could bore the other most.

But Conway decided it was time to stop playing games.

“I fell out with Travis, Ma’am. He cut me and I will never dare go back there. I have scars. Do you want to see them?”

“Only if you want to show them to me.” She was trying to be mild and not show her reactions, but Conway knew she was surprised at his directness.

He unbuttoned his shirt with trembling fingers, speaking to disguise his nerves. “I want to apologise for not listening to you when you warned me about Travis, Ma’am. You were right, and I was stupid.”

He peeled off his shirt and turned his back to her. He could feel the shock ripple through her as though she were an extension of his own muscles. He glanced up at her face, then looked away quickly.

She was too well trained to betray any reactions at all. She only said quietly. “I see. Thank you for showing me, Conway.”

He nodded and put his shirt back on. “After I got away from Travis I lived rough in London. A policeman caught me breaking into his house and asked me to come here. I haven’t been at this school even a week yet, but I like it.” He hesitated. “I’m learning my letters, so I’ll be able to read, Ma’am.”

“I’m very pleased to hear that, Conway.”

Conway waited. He had given her so much to work with. There was any number of topics that she could choose to ask his opinions on: How he felt about Travis now (He didn’t know), how he felt about being scarred, how he had coped in London alone, what he had done in London, why the policeman sent him to the Endeavour School. She had plenty of nice, juicy bits of information to get her teeth into, and all of them things he would rather not discuss with her.

“Tell me about door handles, Conway.”

He almost lurched with shock. Out of all the subjects she could have chosen to talk to him about, he didn’t anticipate that one. What did she know? That he had been forced to clean at the dead of night, even though he was exhausted from his efforts the day before?

“Ma’am?” Conway found himself reverting back to former tricks. He had to dodge this issue.

“I understand you’ve been cleaning some.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Why?”

Conway wondered how Mr Williams would have explained such a thing to outsiders. Conway certainly couldn’t tell her it was the headteacher’s method of driving pupils he didn’t like out of his school. Flushing madly, he stammered, “T-To learn how to overcome obstacles, Ma’am.”

“And do you think it is helping you?”

Of course not, you silly cow! But he didn’t say the words. His face still suffused with colour, he nodded, squirming inwardly at the thought of telling her he wanted to keep doing them. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“How do you think it helps you, Conway?”

“Well -”

Oh God! Why did she have to keep asking such humiliating questions? He was practically saying, ‘I love cleaning door handles. Give me some more!’

Such an agonisingly long silence. He was aware that he must have looked like a total idiot.

“Well - “ he began again. He wanted to wipe his face. “People know you have to do ’em.”

She was nodding politely, listening intently.

“It’s not like you can just leave ‘em, and go and play football, ‘cos - you have to do ‘em.”

“What would happen if you didn’t do them?”

“I don’t know, Ma’am. I think I’ld be asked to leave the school.”

“What do your friends think about you cleaning these door handles?”

“They give you encouragement,” Conway lied. “They say, ‘Hey! Handles look great!’ and things like that.”

And so it went on. The interview seemed to last forever, but it probably only went on for half an hour. She did ask some questions about Travis, London and Ellingham, but without doubt the most difficult topic for Conway was door handles. He had wanted to present the school in a flattering light so that he could stay there and help Ellingham, but it hadn’t been easy to say he should be forced to do things he didn’t like.

And when he resumed his cleaning duties he received no encouragement at all. People walked by and started sniggering. No-one ever spoke to him now. He was a complete outcast.

A week went by. Each day saw Conway being studiously ignored by the other pupils around him, so much so, they could have turned their determination not to speak to him into an art. They told jokes about him within his hearing and kicked his cleaning things along the floor if they saw him working, giggling about how ‘sad’ he was.

Conway was alone again, cloaked in his misery, with each moment feeling like a dull day in February. The contempt of his fellow pupils cut him to the quick, and there was no-one he felt able to talk to. All he could do was work.

He worked hard at lessons. He worked hard at prep. He worked doggedly at his cleaning. And he struggled to maintain a working relationship with Teri, since they spent every lesson in each other’s company.

But Teri was strange. Conway couldn’t work him out. He alone seemed not to join in the name-calling, looking impatient at the whole exercise. On the other hand, he made no effort to be friendly, speaking to Conway in a brusque manner. He seemed perceptive, but uninterested. And Conway couldn’t understand what the boy did in his spare time. He claimed to read books alone in his room, but never seemed able to describe them in detail. That was hardly surprising, since Teri spent all of his spare time tuning into other people’s lives, without realising that he had no life of his own.

The weekend brought more cleaning misery for Conway. Having finished the houses, he was despatched into the school classrooms and corridors. They were indeed correct when ‘they’ said he would have to do every handle in the school.

On the following Monday as Conway began cleaning, Boulder sneered at him, while walking past, “You sad bastard. Why don’t you leave?”

“I ain’t had a privileged upbringing, you toffee-nosed git!” Conway retorted.

Boulder, and the small group of about six boys who were with him, were caught by surprise. All except Boulder erupted into giggles. They crowded round Conway, mimicking his outburst, and before he knew it, he was the subject of 20 questions multiplied several times over.

“Hey, Zebra. How d’you get those marks on your back?”

“Someone hit me, what do ya think?” Conway snorted.

“Did they? Did they really hit yer? What did they hit you with?”

“Dental floss.”

Hilarity. The little group began thinking up jokes, none of them witty. One interrupted.

“No, seriously, right. What did they hit you with?”

“Wire.” Conway had to push the word out between stiff lips.

“Did it hurt?” “Why did they do it?”

The two questions came in one breath. Conway looked up balefully.

“Nah, didn’t hurt at all.” He responded, with heavy sarcasm.

“Were you scared?”

Conway looked up, and realised he had a captive audience. He studied their faces and saw how eagerly they awaited his reply. He grinned, then boasted. “I shit myself, didn’t I?”

He launched into an extremely graphic account of his lack of toiletry control, re-enacting what had happened in a comical way, and pulling cross-eyed looks as he described how the wire had come into contact with his genitals. Since what he said was dramatic as well as amusing, his audience listened to every word. They laughed, partly in embarrassment because they could hardly believe anyone would reveal such personal things, and partly because he was so extravagant in his acting that he was amusing. He ended his account with the jibe, “Spike’s creaming his pants.”

Only Boulder understood the reference, but because he laughed unexpectedly, everyone else did too.

It was like hanging out with Travis and his friends again. They had spent hours in a group, messing around on motorcycles, thinking up scams and telling each other stories. The more obscene they were, the better. The more you poked fun at the others, the more they laughed.

During the rest of the week, word must have got around that Conway was good for a laugh, because he faced a barrage of questions about his ordeal, about social workers, about his parents, drugs - anything. Conway replied to them all in much the same fashion, with caustic humour, with frankness, with a rawness that warned the listeners he was speaking the absolute truth. No subject was off-limits.

From being the most contemptible object in the school, he progressed in a few short days to being the most entertaining, the most knowledgeable, and even the most trusted. A few dared to approach him alone and tell him a few shocking secrets of their own. He proved to be a good listener.

His new role soaked a lot out of him. He could talk all day about extremely personal things, but at night he found it impossible to switch off. His words and memories came back to haunt him. He felt the urge to roam about.

A fortnight after Conway arrived at the school, at about 11.30 one night, Mr Williams was standing out in the open, looking up at the stars. He was looking for a comet, which had been the subject of numerous media reports, but the headmaster decided it was too early to be seen just yet.

How or why he didn’t know, but he became aware of a shadow scaling down the side of one of the buildings. At first he was absolutely astonished. With gathering wrath he approached the figure and recognised him just as his feet touched the ground.

“Flynn. How nice of you to drop by.” His voice was like snapping twigs.

Conway jumped, gasped, then started to run. A hand clamped painfully on his shoulder. Another yanked his ear.

“Hold hard. You’re not going anywhere.” Fingers twisted fiercely on Conway’s lobe. The boy cursed weakly as he was dragged bodily to the entrance of the house. Mr Williams eyed him with extreme displeasure.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Flynn, if, when you left the Endeavour, you could do something a little more worthwhile than burglary?” He gave Conway a contemptuous shove.

Conway didn’t know what to say. “I wasn’t stealing.”

“Convince me.”

“I just wanted to go for a walk.”

“It’s a very odd fact, but did you know, Flynn, I have never started an evening stroll by scaling down walls in the middle of the night? How remiss of me! I wonder what excitement I have foregone.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have got through the door,” Conway protested lamely.

“No, indeed. What a salient point, Flynn. Why wouldn’t you have got through the door, I wonder? Could it be because you are forbidden to walk about at night on the grounds of safety? What a selfish reason to keep you inside!”

“I couldn’t sleep.” Conway protested.

“Couldn’t sleep? I obviously haven’t kept you preoccupied enough.” There was a short silence. Conway had run out of excuses. Mr Williams let out a loud snort.

“Windows, no doubt. You are greatly concerned about the windows at our school, are you not?”

“No, sir.”

“Ah, but I think you are, Flynn. I have seen your pained expression - forgive the pun - at the filthy state of the windows in this school - all of them.”

There was a short silence. Conway’s shoulders started to sag. “But, I’m still doing the doors,” he muttered, resentfully.

“Yes, indeed, Flynn. What a wonderful person you are, rectifying so many problems around our school grounds. I am sure we must all be most thankful.” Mr Williams drew himself up for his finale. The sugary coating departed from his voice and his face looked fierce.

“Get in your room, boy, and get some sleep, because when you have finished all the doors in this school, you’ll be cleaning every last window!”

“Sir.” Conway slunk glumly up the stairs, leaving Mr Williams, with wide-eyed astonishment, to address his exasperation to Mrs Smedley, who had come to see what the commotion was.

“That foolish boy! It’s a wonder he’ll have any fingers left!”

CHAPTER TEN  home

Conway couldn’t remember a time when he had felt more depressed. He had absolutely no doubt that he was going to have to clean every window on the school grounds. A rapid calculation of how many windows there were kept running through his mind, and a stress migraine threatened.

He didn’t know what was worse, to be punished for a somewhat hazy reason, or to have something definite to recriminate himself for. He was glad it had happened in that order, he supposed. He could accept he had done something foolish, and a penalty would have to be paid.

Initially he lay flat on his back on his bed, covering his face with a towel and literally groaning out aloud. “You stupid prat!” He moaned to himself. “Stupid! Stupid prat!”

Presently he felt the urge to begin his face-wiping routine, but he noticed he was about to use a pair of clean socks. He must left them behind earlier after sorting out some clean laundry on the bed.

A smile touched his lips. He unbunched the socks and drew each one over his hands, forming a toy mouth with his fingers.

“Tell me about windows, Conway.” said his left sock mouth, in a remarkable imitation of Mrs Graham’s voice.

“Windows, Ma’am?” said his right sock mouth.

“You’re going to clean some, I understand?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“And why is that, Conway?”

“Because I’m a total fucking stupid prat, Ma’am. And I just love to be humiliated, Ma’am. Please punish me some more. I get such a buzz out of it.”

His left sock attacked his right sock. His right sock attacked his left. He tired of his game eventually and put them away, resorting to pacing around his room instead, with his hands linked behind his head and massaging his neck. He considered the possibility of running away, and was surprised to find he no longer had the taste for it.

“You getting soft, Prest?” He demanded of himself, looking in the mirror. “You like some food in your belly and a nice bed to sleep in, huh?”

Maybe it was the company he liked, too. In London, on the streets, he shunned everyone unless he hoped to con some money out of them. In three months he had barely spoken a word to anyone. It was a tough life.

He also considered whether he should contact Ellingham and confess he was too much of a wimp to carry out the mission. With a heavy sigh he shook his head.

“It’s your mess,” he told his reflection sternly. “You fix it.”

Oh, but the thought of yet more cleaning! And all those windows. It would take weeks! He groaned aloud at himself again and sank into a gloom. He fell asleep eventually as dawn broke.

When he woke up the whole place was buzzing with it. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, and why he had climbed out of his window, and what Mr W had said, and whether he was really, truly, actually going to have to clean every single window in the whole school? The eyes of all the boys around him were huge, and getting rounder and rounder with each passing moment.

Conway played the clown. He pretended to look depressed and smiled ruefully as everyone in the breakfast room collapsed with laughter. They laughed so much tears rolled down their faces. They clutched at their sides, gasping,

“Oh, God! It hurts!”

“You must be the unluckiest bloke I know, mate,” Dean said.

“Yeah, but then, you are a hermit, aren’t you, Dean?” Conway shot back.

“I bet you think that’s a pane in the neck, Zebra,” essayed someone, who fancied themselves as a wag.

“I can see through jokes like that.” Conway replied, getting up from the table and walking away. But his humour was too quick and too subtle for many of his companions. It was several moments before he heard someone repeat, “see through it, get it?” And the laughter began afresh.

They did much to restore his good humour, even though the thought of his labour depressed him. Wryly, he realised he must have achieved celebrity status, because everywhere he went someone had something to say to him - even the teachers. They managed to pepper their lessons with references to windows, or burglars, or idiots. He smiled at people’s jokes but in quiet moments he studied all the windows in one direction, and then another, and then another, and then he would sigh quietly, hoping that no-one would notice.

He openly accused some boys of enjoying some kind of sexual excitement out of his predicament, which they hotly denied, but he only suspected one person of actually experiencing it, and that was Teri. There was something about his manner, the odd smirk, a strange sly glance. The Spanish boy could barely sit still.

‘He really likes this,’ Conway could remember thinking. ‘He’s practically jerking off.’

The thought ran through his mind that Teri was an easy target for cruel teasing, but Conway knew he would never do it. There was something fragile about him. No-one liked Teri, and he seemed to like no-one. He didn’t appear to have a single friend. There was no way Conway would ever target a boy like that.

One day, he turned to his classroom companion. “How come you never smile, man? What are you frightened of?”

“Everything.” Teri spoke involuntarily, before he could stop himself.

He snared Conway’s interest. “Yeah? Like what?”

Teri hesitated. “Mostly of people asking awkward questions.”

Conway laughed. “Hey, that’s better!”

It was not intended as a joke, exactly, but Teri supposed it was one. He was shocked at himself, and careful not to give Conway the satisfaction of hearing him make another that day.

On the Friday before his third weekend at the school, Conway finished the door handles. It was a great excuse for a party, and his housemates organised one. All but one or two of the boarders went to it.

“It’s time to eat, drink and be merry, Zebra, for tomorrow you start on the windows,” House A’s prefect announced, with malicious relish.

Conway looked dismayed. “You mean, you guys aren’t helping me?” He asked, in apparent surprise.

Uproar. The whole place fell about. Conway couldn’t help grinning. It was so easy to make them laugh, and so much fun to do.

The party was a deliciously riotous affair with plenty of high spirits and silly pranks. At some point, they tried to make “lemonade bottle rockets” where they loaded washers and small metal objects in empty lemonade bottles, pump air in them up with bicycle pumps and saw them shoot off along the ground. It was incredibly silly, but safe and harmless. Conway had to keep reminding himself that he was here, that it was real, that there was another world from the misery he had experienced outside this school. No-one here took drugs. They didn’t even drink. He wished he could stay here for ever.

Ellingham was due to visit Conway the following afternoon.

He wanted to call it off. It was going to be so hard to face that kid and not show his revulsion.

Vice had picked up a group of paeds earlier in the week. During a visit to their section he noticed two officers watching a particular video. He recognised the child featured instantly.

Ellingham felt sick. He sat down and forced himself to watch it from start to end. It was every bit as vile as he feared it would be.

Useless to tell himself the boy was safe now, that the boy was in a school so very far removed from the seedy scenes in that video. He knew he could not look at Conway now without those other images coming to mind. He didn’t feel like walking or talking or joking with him, because he would keep thinking about the doubts and hesitation on Conway’s face in that film: the way he was coaxed into doing things he so clearly found uncomfortable. For the paeds, that had been the big kick, the thrill of the chase, to watch the boy being dragged inexorably into taking part. Not forced, but coerced. Consenting, but unwilling.

It was Ellingham’s fault the boy got involved with people like that. He knew that because of the age of the injuries on Conway’s skin. When Conway was at his house, in his care, the cuts had not even formed a scab. They were terrible, open cuts, shiny with clear pus weeping from the wounds, and bleeding at the slightest knock or pressure against them.

He could have stopped this. If he had turned the child over to social services then, none of this would have happened. Useless to tell himself the boy would only have run away again. How could he know that?

Ellingham forced himself to look through all the films that had been seized, in case there were more featuring Conway. He saw none, but film after film made his heart heavy. He could not laugh or joke right now. Guilt danced manically at him. Wherever he looked he could not absorb an image of a street, or an office, or his home. He could not register anything in his vision, only what was in his mind.

That child had left his home, alone and friendless, and had fallen into the hands of ... scum, to be used as their plaything.

Ellingham phoned Conway to plead pressure of work. Even the voice of the youngster seemed to sear him.

Conway, contrary to what Ellingham had expected, pleaded and begged for him to come with such urgency that Ellingham was again chillingly fearful.

“You are all right, aren’t you? There’s nothing wrong?” His voice almost quivered with dread. He felt quite sick to think there was a new unhappy twist in this boy’s life, and more guilt would be his to claim. He pressed a hand to his temples. He didn’t think he could stand it. He felt as though something had stained him and he would feel dirty for ever.

“Please come, man. Please. I just wanna see yer.” Ellingham was not to know that if he arrived Conway would be allowed the afternoon off from his window cleaning, but if he did not there would be no reprieve.

Suddenly panicked, Ellingham set off at once, his car journey tormented with evil imaginings.

The school was due to be opened to parents at 2.30. Conway enjoyed his lunch, looking forward to an afternoon of pleasant activity, only to be utterly dismayed when he was presented with the tools of his labour at five minutes to two.

“But - !”

“I’m sorry, Connor,” replied Mrs Smedley, as kindly as she could. “I’m afraid Mr Williams wants your guardian to see you working. He thinks you should be made to answer awkward questions.”

“Oh, I see.” Conway’s voice was flat.

Within moments word got around that Zebra was about to start on the windows, and by the time he was directed into a small quadrant to start work, most of the boarders had assembled along the route, whispering and giggling as he walked past.

He would have admitted to feeling exasperated as he stepped into the quadrant. It was a small playground, housing a pond, and surrounded by banks of windows on all four walls, one of them being the window to the headteacher’s office. Within a few seconds a boy’s face was pressed to each window, and it was truly a scene reminiscent of a Christian being hurled into an arena. A big cheer went up as Conway stepped blinkingly into the sunlight. No wonder they had said he was the biggest spectator sport this year!

He played to the gallery, bowing extravagantly and encouraging applause. It was cut short by the appearance of Mr Williams at his study window, and a blunt order to “just get on with it”.

He dipped his cloth with a sigh and began rubbing at a window, watching a crowd of boys on the other side pulling faces at him, and laughing reluctantly at them, despite his black mood. He didn’t relish the thought of doing this at all. It was sheer drudgery. And he didn’t like the thought of having to explain himself to Ellingham. It was no good telling himself that he was doing Ellingham a favour, and that he didn’t owe Ellingham any kind of duty to be a good pupil. He thought the big guy would be unamused.

His task involved working with two cloths, one wet, one dry. He wet the windows with a soapy cloth, wiped away the smears with the dry. He hadn’t even completed one of the tiny windows and he was glancing all around, reminding himself of how many more he had to do. His heart seemed to shrivel. He felt so depressed. He felt his jaw harden as he tried to sum up all of his enthusiasm to get on with the task. He literally groaned aloud at himself. This was going to take ages!

The boys were meant to meet their parents back at their respective houses, but Ellingham, who arrived at about 3.30, didn’t realise that. He decided to go to the school office and inquire where he should meet Conway. On his way there he overheard another boy calling his parents to the window to watch somebody.

“That boy there has to clean every window in the school.”

The parents were visibly taken aback. “Why?”

“Mr W caught his shinning down a wall, just like a burglar, he said.” The lad was laughing. “He’s so funny. He’s only just spent the last three weeks polishing all the door handles because he was naughty. Now he’s got to do all the windows.”

Ellingham cast a quick glance as he walked past and stopped mid-stride. He should have known it was Conway they were talking about! He felt his top lip press hard against his bottom lip several times. He marched without preamble into the quadrant.

Conway heard the door swing open and looked round. Ellingham was striding across the yard, looking furious.

“Burglary?” He spat out the one word in obvious accusation.

Conway scrambled down from his step-ladder. “I wasn’t stealing anything,” he spoke quickly. “I wanted to get out for some air.”

“That’s a bit stupid, isn’t it?” Ellingham snapped.

“Yes.” Conway looked up, his face pleading. “Don’t be angry.”

Ellingham turned his head away sharply. He had spent more than 11 hours in the past two days looking at kids with pleading faces. Almost with a shaking hand he rubbed his hair, not meeting the boy’s eyes.

“I - “ He sighed harshly. “I can’t talk to you right now. I can’t handle it.”

He strode off, leaving Conway to stare after him in dismay. Finally the boy hung his head. He wasn’t used to having people being so disappointed with him. It hurt. Was this what having a parent was like? He didn’t realise it would be so difficult.

Ellingham marched off, intending to walk back to his car, but Conway’s pleading telephone conversation came back to him. He still hadn’t asked Conway if he was happy at the school.

He stopped walking and breathed in and out deeply. His gaze fell on an incongruously clean door handle. He looked up and down the corridor, and the enormity of the task began to sink in. He started walking about, seeing evidence of Conway’s work wherever he went.

He stopped a kid walking about. “Excuse me. Do you know Connor Flynn?”

The lad stopped walking and started giggling. “Yes, sir.”

“What’s so funny?”

The boy smothered his giggles. “Er - nothing.”

“He had to clean door handles, or something?”

The boy looked curious. “Are you a journalist?”

“Just a friend. Did he clean these handles on his own?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All of them in this building?”

“And our boarding houses, sir, all five of them.” The giggling began afresh. “He’s gotta do the windows now.”

“So I heard.” Ellingham’s voice was a low growl. “Mr Williams’ office is up there on the left?”

“Yes, sir.”

He found the office without difficulty, rapped firmly on the door and entered without waiting for an invitation. His hands were bunched into fists.

Mr Williams was sorting through his filing cabinet. He glanced up and greeted Ellingham cordially.

“Ah, detective inspector. Good to see you.”

“Arbeitet macht frei, Mr Williams?” Ellingham ground out stiffly.

Mr Williams smiled and shut his filing cabinet. He was clearly amused. “Has he complained?”

“No.”

“Humph!” Mr Williams repeated the death camp motto with relish. “Freedom through work. I prefer the saying ‘triumph over adversity’.”

“He cleaned every single door in the school?” Ellingham demanded, appalled.

“A remarkable achievement, Detective Inspector, don’t you agree? They held a party in his honour when he had done it all.”

“You’ll break his spirit.”

“On the contrary, I’m rebuilding it.”

“You’re really going to have him cleaning every window in this school?”

Mr Williams considered the matter. “No. I employ a window cleaner. I’m sure he deserves to earn his wages. It suits my purposes for the boy to believe it, however. I don’t want him to get into the habit of scaling down walls in all hours of darkness.”

He shuffled some papers on his desk. “But he knows he doesn’t have to work during your visit. Were you proposing to spend some time with him?”

“No.” Ellingham spoke curtly.

The headteacher raised his eyebrows. “Ah. It’s a pity you’re in a hurry,” he remarked. “I was hoping to discuss his progress with you. Can you spare me a few moments before you head back to London?”

“Yes. Yes, that will be fine.” Ellingham was frowning.

The headteacher twisted his chair and looked over to Conway’s forlorn figure. He could have done without the diversion, but he was sorry to see the boy so deeply out of favour with the detective inspector. It had been easy to ascertain the depth of Ellingham’s disgust. Will you spend time with the boy? No. Do you have time to talk? Yes. Conclusion: the boy was in the dog house. But Mr Williams knew it wasn’t all bad news. He hoped to soften Ellingham’s anger.

“I’ve been impressed with Conway’s progress. It’s been better than I could have hoped for. He mixes well with other children, he works hard at his studies, and he seems inclined to accept responsibility for his actions. I’m starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.”

Ellingham breathed with relief. “Do you think he will settle?”

“A little early to say, still, I’m afraid. But it’s certainly a good start. I’m especially pleased with the effort he’s been making at his reading. Invite him to read to you, inspector. It’s the sound of a miracle. And you’re right, you know, he’s exceptionally bright. He could join mainstream classes within a year at this rate.”

Ellingham, almost floppy with relief, thanked the headteacher and left. He saw Conway working still in the quadrant on his way past. Within a few moments he decided not to leave things as they were between them and retraced his steps.

Conway didn’t hear his approach initially, and when he did it was an effort for him to look into Ellingham’s face.

“Hi.”

“Hello, Conway.”

Ellingham still wanted to shake the stupid boy and demand to know why he was in the video, but he couldn’t see what he would gain by doing so. Hopefully, Conway had moved on from that now.

“I’ve got nothing to report. I’ve seen nothing unusual.”

Ellingham stared blankly, then remembered the Spanish boy. “Ah. That’s good. Does he share many classes with you?”

“All of them. We have to work in pairs and he’s my study partner.”

“Do you get on with him?”

“Not really. He’s okay to work with, but he won’t win prizes for Mr Personality. He’s a little weird.”

Ellingham heard him only absently. He was looking at the windows Conway had cleaned. He had made good progress, remarkably so considering how weary he must have felt.

“You must be so sick of cleaning!” Ellingham burst out.

Conway heaved a sigh. “Yeah.”

“You have to obey the rules, Conway. They can’t make a special case for you.”

“No.” Conway agreed. “I guess people would catch on, then.”

Ellingham’s lips twitched.

“I guess it’s hard to work with rules,” Conway confessed. “I haven’t really been doing it for a long time. I’ll try harder, man.”

Ellingham laughed, but with sympathy. He took Conway back to House A for a coffee and heard the boy read. The sentences were basic, simple and boring. Ellingham silently applauded Conway for effort. It must have taken so much guts for him to keep trying to learn when all the other kids in his class were so far ahead of him. He was willing to bet they called Conway ‘thick’ to his face.

He found it hard to talk to Conway. He found himself thinking the whole time about the video. They briefly discussed the arrangements for half term holidays in a fortnight’s time. Essex Social Services had arranged for Conway to stay with a family in Colchester.

“What will happen to me when I’ve come to the end of my time here?” Conway asked. “Will they still try to lock me up?”

Ellingham shook his head. “If they were going to, they would have done it by now.” He knew there was a possibility that social services would continue the arrangement if they thought it was likely to be successful, but he didn’t want to take the boy too far ahead.

“I’ll miss this place, man, even if it does mean getting away from the bloody cleaning.”

“Don’t swear,” Ellingham replied sternly. “And if you had behaved yourself, you wouldn’t have had to do any cleaning,”

Conway, laughingly, held his blistered hands up in surrender. “Aw, man, look at me! I ache all over. My shoulders, my back, my hands - I’m hobbling about like a 90-year-old. And it’s so boring! Hours and hours of working on my own, with no-one to talk to, no music, nothing. I’m dying by inches!”

“Serves you right!” Ellingham snorted. “Do you have to start again the minute I’m gone?”

Conway caught the gleam in his eye and began to half-laugh, half plead. “Pity me and stay a bit longer, Mel!”

Mel. Now where did that come from? Ellingham hoped Conway was not about to start calling Mel all the time.

“Uh-huh. I’m gone already.” the detective drawled brutally, and smiled at the abuse Conway bitterly mouthed as he walked off.

CHAPTER ELEVEN  home

Terencio Otoma was almost sick with rage. He had spent an afternoon tuning in on one boy and his guardian, and it was beyond belief just how far Flynn - or Conway, or whatever his name was - would go, just to spy on him.

He was no further into decoding Ellingham than he was before, except for the alarming knowledge that the spy could stay permanently at the school, and that the threat would remain constant.

The shadowy man was so hard to read. The mission would not configure in his mind. The only thing Teri could sense was his guilt over the video.

The video was interesting, but irrelevant. It amused him to register that Flynn had done anything so degrading, but Teri failed to see how he could turn its existence to his advantage.

Was there no way to rid himself of this tiresome spy? Teri felt the urge to summon all his strength to exact a spectacularly horrible death. He could crush him. Or spontaneous combustion, perhaps? Why not set Flynn alight and watch him burn? He could see the body writhing in the flames. He could heard him screaming with agony.

He nearly did it. The urge was so overpowering. He had the ability to do it, but he drew back at the last second, sweating and shaking all over. No, he thought. You can’t. It would open the floodgates. Investigations would start, and bad temptations would only follow on from that. Once he started that sort of thing, how could he stop? ‘They’ would keep trying to destroy him until one side was gone. And even if he, Terencio Otoma, were the victor, what triumph would he feel? He tried to imagine the planet Earth, devoid of human life. It was less difficult than he wanted it to be, and that scared him even more.

What other ways could he call upon to rid himself of the spy? Illness. Flynn could ‘remember’ the beating Travis gave him, and be rendered insensible with physical pain. But that would awaken his aura of violence. And how much of an echo would there be - enough for Teri to feel it too?

Mind games, then. But he couldn’t increase the punishments the school were imposing on him. Williams was a hard man to influence. He would not be able to continue this soon without direct confrontation, and that would mean Teri giving himself away. Another would see him as he really was, and try to kill him, as his mother and a personal tutor had both done.

Teri toyed with the idea of obtaining the video. Perhaps if the other school pupils saw it he would become so ashamed he would move away. At first Teri liked this idea, but the more he thought about it, the less effective he thought it would be. Schoolchildren were ghouls. They had heard so much about Flynn by now that almost nothing about him could shock them any more. Teri could imagine some of them wanting to touch his scars too, but for very different reasons than those hinted at by the men on the video. The perverted message would be wasted on these boys, Teri decided.

He went back to considering Ellingham again. His involvement in this whole thing was crucial. What sort of a threat was Ellingham to Teri? Scanning him, Teri could have almost believed none at all. He had no explanation for it, but he felt sure the detective hardly thought about Terencio Otoma at all. It was the boy who was persisting. All of the threat came from him.

Perhaps not so much of a threat then, if it was only the boy who believed he was a danger. Perhaps not much of a threat at all.

But that did not pacify Terencio Otoma. What angered him most was the lengths Flynn seemed prepared to go, simply to spy on someone for so little good excuse. Teri hadn’t provoked the intrusion. He was trying to live his own life without harming anyone. But Flynn, despite aching in every part of his body, and despite his depression at the thought of spending weeks doing monotonous cleaning, was never going to quit. ‘Whatever it takes’ should have been his personal motto. Teri had rarely met anyone who was so determined, or so stubborn.

It was Flynn who was looking for trouble, not the detective. And if he wanted some, Terencio Otoma would oblige him. He had no idea when, or how. It was a question of waiting for the right opportunity.

Conway resumed his cleaning on Sunday, working outside. There was no sun, but he felt uncomfortably hot. He was not to know there was a presence nearby who quite literally wanted to see him enmersed in flame.

Conway took off his top, and his bare back was noticed by Mr Williams who was hurrying about preparing to take some boys out for the day to an arts festival.

“Put your shirt on, boy!”

“But sir, I’m too hot.”

“I thought we agreed that you were to keep yourself covered up, did we not?”

“But sir, the whole school knows about it. They all call me Zebra.”

“Will you just do as I say?” Mr Williams was exasperated. “People don’t want to look at you!”

“Sir.” Conway resentfully put his top back on, waited until the headteacher was out of sight, then removed it.

Small wonder that when he was summoned to the headteacher’s office the following day his heart was beating a little faster than normal. Mr W must have seen Conway take his top off again. Now he was going to be for it! Instead, he received a total surprise.

“Ah, Flynn, I want to talk to you about basketball.”

“Sir?”

“Yes. We hold an inter-schools tournament every year and Mr Howsden would like you to join our second team. He’s asked me to release you from your window cleaning so that you may practise.”

“Yes!” Conway whooped. He punched the air with his fist, then scrambled to his knees with his hands together as though in prayer. “Thank you.” His gaze was piously heavenwards. “I swear I’ll never miss another Sunday.”

He drew a reluctant bark of laughter from the headteacher, who had been well-aware of Conway’s capacity for clowning and had been determined not to let himself be drawn into it. Nevertheless, the man was amused. He fixed his gaze on Conway’s face. “Indeed, I’ll expect to see you in chapel on Sunday for that remark,” he warned. When Conway promised, in apparent seriousness, that he would be there, Mr Williams passed onto the next topic quickly.

“I’ve been discussing your security arrangements with your guardian - “ He was playing along with the police informant line. He thought he would allow Conway a little dignity. “- He assures me the risk is minimal, therefore I have decided to end your curfew and alter your sleeping arrangements. The farm and estuary walk is no longer out of bounds.”

Conway blinked in delight. This was several Christmasses rolled into one.

“There’s just one more thing I want to discuss with you -” But Mr Williams frowned. This was trickier to phrase. “I don’t want to stop you swimming, but you must wear a T-shirt or something over your scars. It’s most disconcerting for others, you know.”

“Sir.”

“Please ensure you are especially careful if any of the public is about. I don’t want people to think I’m beating you, though I will admit to being tempted on occasion.”

“Sir,” Conway was in the mood to promise just about anything. “Thank you for letting me play basketball, sir.”

“Very good, Flynn. That’s all.”

Conway raced at full sprint back to the house. Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! He couldn’t believe his luck. No more cleaning. No more curfew. No more swimming pool ban. It quite simply had to be the best day of his life. He tried to think back to a more joyful one, and couldn’t.

He burst full speed into the recreation room, causing others there to jump, and the nearest to him to spill his drink. Conway barely noticed. He was on such a high.

“No more cleaning! No more cleaning!” he whooped.

Everyone in House A cheered.

It took Conway several days to settle down. He was euphoric, initially. Then it became harder simply to adjust to having more free time. He was so used to doing his cleaning duties that he hardly knew what to do with himself.

At first, swimming was the replacement that initially filled his time, after it became apparent during his first lesson in the pool that he could not swim. With characteristic recklessness, he saw the other boys expertly performing the front crawl, reasoned that he could do anything they could, and jumped into the deep end without a thought as to his personal safety. He had to be rescued, much to Mr Howden’s exasperation and everyone else’s astonishment, but his determination to learn was as fierce as ever, so much so that he had managed to swim five metres before the end of his first lesson. He earned a certificate for his effort.

Conway was moved back to share a room with Dean, who was one of the most popular and easy-going boys in Conway’s class. They spent hours playing basketball, and they were good company for each other.

Mrs Graham arrived for another visit. Anyone witnessing the encounter between them would have said Conway was unusually quiet, but Mrs Graham, who had struggled to recognise Conway before, could hardly believe this was the same child now. He chattered spontaneously and smiled frequently. He even cracked jokes. He boasted to her about his reading ability and showed her his swimming certificate, and her only regret was that the colleague with her had never known what Conway was like before, and had no idea as to how dramatic the transformation was.

Conway’s half-term holiday was to be spent with a family in Colchester, whose surname, by coincidence, was also Graham. Conway wasn’t looking forward to it very much. It was okay to talk to strangers for an hour, or an afternoon, maybe. But it was always exhausting to suddenly start living with them. And Conway had not been placed with foster families for some time, not since he had known Travis at least. It had been a leap of faith to put him with a family at all. Within moments of arriving at the home of last family, more than 18 months before, Conway had shocked the man of the household by touching him intimately and offering him a sexual service. It was a joke, done deliberately to shock. It worked. The man was shocked, and Conway was removed within the hour. It had amused him then, but he found it less funny now. He realised since it was one more reason why they thought he should be locked him up.

“What are you doing for half-term, man?” Conway asked Teri one day, as they were walking to their next lesson. “Are you seeing your parents?”

As usual, Teri looked irritated at being spoken to, as though he found it an interruption. “No.” He spoke curtly.

Conway loved the way he pronounced the word ‘No’, not rhyming it with ‘low’ but the ‘o’ in holiday. Sometimes he would ask Teri a question, knowing the answer was negative, because the way the Spanish boy said it fascinated him.

“Oh. Are they abroad, then?”

“No.” Teri was still curt. He always was.

“Not dead, are they?” Conway wasn’t one to skirt politely around sensitive subjects.

“No.”

“Where are they, then?”

Teri paused to draw in breath. “Always, you are nosy!”

Conway laughed. “I know, man. Put me out my misery! Where are they?”

It seemed as if there was no wriggling away from him. Teri hardly knew what to say. “I don’ get on with them. I don’ see them much.”

Conway was fascinated. “You don’t see them? Why not? What do you do instead?”

Teri’s eyes flashed with anger.

Conway felt a stab of pain behind his eyes. He paused mid-stride, a hand on his temple. A migraine? Something about the floaty sensation he was experiencing reminded him of how he had felt after the crazy old man had fractured his skull. He shook his head, dazed, and felt the riotous pounding of his heartbeat subside. He wondered what they had just been talking about, then remembered.

“My parents are dead,” he said, finally.

“Not your mother, I think.” Teri wasn’t concentrating on what he was saying. The colour had drained completely from his face. Conway was thinking about the time he fractured his skull and he was within touching distance.

“Yes, I saw her. I went to the chapel of rest.” Conway was saying. “That’s kind’a weird. You look at them and they look the same, but they’re not the same. Like they’re the queen and king, or something. They look really important and special.”

“Can we discuss something else?”

“Oh, yes. Sorry.” Conway seemed totally unaware of the way Teri was looking at him, with a film of sweat across his forehead. Few people had ever experienced the sensation of a fractured skull, but for Teri the risk was constant. A light brush of body contact with any stranger, and any memory could “jump” to him. It was the cause of so many ‘fits’ when he was younger. Living with the constant fear of it happening was a never-ending strain that threatened his sanity.

It was ironic. He could deal with an aggressor with just a look, but victims petrified him. His greatest fear was to accidently brush against someone who had suffered a near-death experience.

By what means he managed to mask his petrified state from Connor Flynn he knew not. He tried to twist subtly away, silently begging the other boy not to notice there was anything wrong, not to reach out and ask, “Are you okay?” in the manner that he had when they first met. But his knees were trembling so violently with his fear that he could scarcely walk.

“So,” Conway was smiling disarmingly. “Where are you going at half term then?”

“Eight Ash Green.” Teri’s voice was very faint. He was barely capable of thinking coherently. His sweat-soaked clothes were sticking to him from head to foot.

He hoped Conway wouldn’t have heard of it, but Conway’s geographic knowledge of Essex was extremely thorough.

“Hey, right near Colchester. That’s where I’m going. We ought’a meet up somewhere.”

“Okay.” Teri said at once, surprising Conway with his ready agreement. “Yeah. That would be good.”

Just don’t touch me. Don’t for God’s sake touch me.

He eyed Conway warily as the other patted his blazer for a slip of paper and a pen. In mounting panic he realised Conway was intending to lean against his shoulder while writing down his telephone number. He nearly swooned with terror.

“In class.” He croaked, stammering in his haste. “In class I write my number for you, okay?”

Conway hesitated, then realised somehow they had fallen behind the others and were going to be late.

“Sure,” he smiled reassuringly. “Don’t sweat it, man. I’m nowhere near you. C’mon, let’s run and catch up.”

What? Teri stared at Conway’s back as the other boy broke into a run. Had he spoken his fears out aloud, or had he just imagined it when he thought Conway said, I’m nowhere near you. What did Conway mean when he said that?

By what means Teri managed to start running, like an ordinary boy, and as if nothing were wrong other than being a little late for their lesson, he knew not. Conway’s state of mind was relaxed, not thinking about fractured skulls or any other devastating memory, and the threat was rapidly decreasing. But this had been just one of nearly a dozen such instances when Conway had managed to reduce him to a quivering wreck without realising it.

It was no good. Life alongside this boy - this Connor, or Conway, was just intolerable. Above all other things, Teri had to remember to control his temper. He could not afford to submit to even any of the tiny spiteful urges that bubbled up within him, because it seemed each time it merely reminded the spy of some earlier trauma, and that left Teri vulnerable to suffering it too.

He cherished the nights. It gave him time away from the crushing threat that the spy represented to him. Mealtimes too, since they ate in their respective houses. Even in the hours after lessons, Conway mercifully had his own set of basketball friends. Yet despite spending less than six hours a day with the spy, the effort of coping with him exhausted Teri. The pressure was relentless. Even if it were not, he still would have suffered headaches. Conway filled every lesson with constant, artless chatter.

But he felt a grudging sort of respect for the spy. Teri thought him childish, but not stupid. If it weren’t for the fact that the spy was such a constant threat to him, Teri might have even sometimes found him amusing.

Nor did he doubt Conway had great physical bravery. Some people had a high pain threshold. The other boy was not naturally one of these, but he had acquired one through practice and sheer determination.

During the half term holiday, Teri was also due to stay with a foster family, but it was not via social services. It was a private fostering arrangement, made through his father. His parents had made out they were abroad all the time, but they lived in Hampshire. His mother had spent years in psychiatric care, but she was home now. His father would send Teri his every last penny, on the condition that he stayed away from them. Both were scared of him, but at least his father could negotiate coherently. His mother was beyond all that.

Teri had barely spoken to them for more than two years. If he had to communicate at all, he usually did so via Carina, his older sister, who enjoyed all the privileges of being treated like an only child, but who had a careless affection for her sibling. She had helped Teri to discover that he was different, and she seemed the only one to understand that his abilities were more a curse to him than a blessing.

He regularly stayed with two foster families, but alternated his stays. Neither foster parent knew about the other and when he wasn’t at their home they thought him at home with his parents.

His other ‘home’ was near Iken on the Suffolk coast. It was an extremely remote location, and the house was at the end of an obscure, narrow track. He much preferred to go there. He could spend literally days, especially in winter, without seeing a soul other than his foster hostess.

Teri, with the appearance of being co-operative, gave Conway his telephone number, but altered the second to last digit. He could always claim later he nad made an easy mistake. He departed to Eight Ash Green, hopeful of securing some peace, travelling in a taxi, as usual. His Eight Ash Green home was at the end of a farm track, surrounded by open fields. He was the only child staying there.

He looked forward to the holidays. They helped him revitalise. School was a terrible ordeal for him.

He was born in Spain and stayed at one place until he was about 18 months. That was when his parents first suspected he was different. At first they were proud. Their son was a genius. Then as time went on, friends and neighbours seemed to find his abilities sinister, and his parents began to move house frequently.

When he was five his family moved to Dunkirk in France. That was not a successful time and within a year his mother made her first attempt on his life. She tried to smother him in his sleep with a pillow, having first given him sleeping pills.

It was a frightening experience. The sleeping pills had weakened his self-control, which he had been trying to impose, even then. His parents fled with Carina to Scotland and tried to leave him behind, but he was too scared to try to make it on his own and followed them.

School was an impossibility. They employed a tutor. Within months his tutor had tried to stab him with a bread knife. His remains would be impossible to identify as human.

His family by now were even more terrified of him than they were before. They literally cowered in his presence, living their lives in the grip of his power, and doing all that they could to indulge his every whim. By conspiracy, they managed for many months to keep him at home out of sight, but his family fell behind with rent payments and his non-attendance at school was reported by their landlord.

They fled to Hampshire, again, to a very remote farmhouse, trying to keep him shut away from people. But by now the strain for his mother was too much. She made three more attempts on his life within the space of one month.

By what happy means he thought about going away to a private school, he knew not, but it was a wonderful idea. His first school had only 40 pupils, and he had coped well, managing to stay there for nearly 18 months. Then disaster struck. He blew it in a fit of temper and killed again. It was time to move on and the Endeavour School became his latest refuge.

Teri enlisted his father’s help with securing the foster accommodation and enrolling him at the Endeavour. He was happy. This arrangement was definitely the best. It probably would have continued to be the best if he were not targeted by a group of thugs during a school trip to Southwold.

He had been given no time to prepare for such an attack. He was getting off the school coach, sensed, rather than saw, a bottle flying towards him and reacted automatically. The incident was his most public one and it took all of his energies to suppress the attention it received.

CHAPTER TWELVE  home

Teri was amazed on the Wednesday of his holiday to find Conway had actually come to the house.

“Sorry, man.” Conway was apologising. “Tried to ring ya. I reckon you wrote the number down wrong.”

“How did you find me?” Teri hadn’t even picked up a warning that the spy was coming.

“You know you got a taxi from the school? I rang up the taxi firm. Apparently the same guy takes you nearly every time, so he remembered you.”

Teri made a mental note never to use that taxi firm again and invited Conway in. “How did you get here?”

“My foster dad’s a bus driver. I wasn’t planning to come. I was just hanging around on his bus, getting a free ride. I realised I must be somewhere near to your place, so he dropped me off. He said to ring for a lift ‘cos he’ll finish his shift soon.”

He was speaking the truth, Teri realised. That explained the lack of signal. To his surprise, he realised the spy was more shy than usual. He hadn’t felt confident about coming here. He had found out the address from the taxi firm because he intended to write explaining why he had not telephoned, but the spy thought it was rude to turn up without warning. It was the foster parent who encouraged him. If Teri wasn’t there, Mr Graham reasoned, all Conway had to do was wait back at the village for the return bus in 30 minutes’ time. He had called the lad silly for having qualms about it.

Teri relaxed slightly. This hadn’t started off as a spying exercise. He suggested a walk. Conway readily agreed. They followed a footpath Teri knew well.

It was a hot day. Teri made a supreme effort to attempt polite conversation, but it was difficult to ask questions about Conway’s foster home when he already knew all the answers, and it was hard for him to keep track of things he was supposed to know, and to remember to keep quiet about things he was not. Within a short time he was exhausted. And he knew that Conway’s chatty manner was a front. The spy had a habit of talking fast and watching carefully.

After about an hour, the path led to a trunk road. Nearby was a garage. Conway had plenty of change in his pocket, a gift from Ellingham, whom he had seen the day before.

“Let’s go and buy a drink,” he suggested.

They strolled across the forecourt. Conway held the door open for a woman who was leaving the shop. She started to smile a thank you and looked up into his face.

Wham!

For Teri, standing between them both, it was like standing between two poles of electricity. A sensation hit him with a massive crack, mingled with images, the sound of someone gasping, the constriction so tight around her throat that even though she was trying to scream, the noise was barely above a whisper. She was struggling with all her might.

It was the woman. Violence. Quickly Teri stepped backwards, as though to give her more space to pass, but in reality to ensure she did not brush against him. She looked at him also, directly into his eyes, as though about to absently smile a thank you despite her mental torment.

And he read everything. He tried to retreat. He didn’t want to see, but he couldn’t stop. A dark-haired man was holding her wrists down, pinning her, while another man was astride her. The two men were grinning manically, and looked so evil she could not bear to look at their faces. Instead, her eyes were pleading a silent entreaty to the third, who stood hesitantly watching the scene. He was fair-haired, and looked a bit like Conway.

On her mind raced, to a scene long after, to a time when the struggle had gone out of her, to when the third man’s face was above hers, looking directly down into her, his face twisting with panic.

“I c-can’t c-come!” He stammered.

She remembered it so clearly because afterwards it was the aspect that she found most humiliating. She lifted her head and kissed him, because she just wanted it done. She wanted them to finish and leave her alone, but she figured this man had felt the strongest doubts about what they were doing, and the slightest sign of encouragement would overcome his scruples. And the sooner he overcame those, the sooner they would leave her alone.

It worked. As their lips brushed, she felt the heat burst out of him, and she knew his involvement was nearly over. She made it all happen quicker, but she had helped him! It was something she never found the courage to tell anyone. Not even in court, had that shameful detail emerged.

Teri froze, feeling nausea wash over him. It wasn’t just her memories that assaulted him, but the dual pulse, thumping either side of him. There were twin signals, one so faint, barely perceptible, a baby’s signal. The other strong, but in denial. Suppression. Hatred, even. Repulsion.

Baby and woman.

She had glimpsed at Conway’s face for only a split second. But now she was thinking, thinking back again to the images, to the pain. Teri began to shiver. He had just witnessed a rape, a harrowing scene for anyone to watch. But he knew something else about that rape. She was the spy’s mother.

Teri swallowed. He had sensed this rape once before. The give-away then had been a sensation rather like a heavy smell, not necessarily unpleasant, but overpowering. Now the smell of it was even stronger than before, and a blend. Mother/Father, Mother/Son. They merged. A sickly smell. It seemed to ooze, like burnt treacle.

“Are you coming?” Conway, looking puzzled, was still holding open the door, watching Teri with a slight frown.

His words, the sound of his voice, brought shivers to the woman and Teri at once. She glanced back, and Teri almost fell as she almost fell.

“You go on.” He forced the words out in a heavy accent. “I sort out cash, O.K?”

“All right.” Conway stepped in and let the glass door bang after him. He was still looking back curiously.

The woman hurried with shaking legs to her car. Teri watched her, knew her struggle to sort out the right keys to fumble into the ignition. Even the act of insertion was a mockery to her. He felt her stickiness from head to foot. She hesitated before starting the engine, leaned her hot head back against the seat rest. Cold logic warned her she was in no fit state to drive. That boy! His eyes. He had looked so much like ...But didn’t she always feel this way every time she saw a boy his age? Maybe.

A little voice, like an intruder, perhaps cold logic again, reminded her not to think of it. She reminded herself of who she was, and where she was going.

Adele Kelleher. She lived in Hornchurch. She was on her way to Norwich to visit her daughter, who had just had a baby. There was another daughter too, and ... that other, the boy.

And back her thoughts were racing again. The maternity unit. She had considered a Caesarian, because the violation between her legs had been too much already, but at the last moment she changed her mind. Without knowing why, she chose to give birth to it naturally. Perhaps she feared it would take longer to recover from the Caesarian, and she had to return to normal quickly. Perhaps she was afraid she would accidentally have a glimpse of the baby behind the screen, and above all things she wanted to know nothing about the baby. She did not want to look at it. She did not even want to know its sex.

But she had heard the whisper, “Take him to ...” and she knew it was a boy. And later, much later, she stole a glimpse. A big baby. Nearly 9lb, with white-blond hair. A bonny baby. She had known instantly which one was the father. The one who had taken the most from her, because somehow he had managed to get her to help him.

In the car, she opened the window. It took all of her exertion not to twist in her seat and look back at the fair-haired boy she had just seen. She must forget. Move on. Don’t think of this now.

But she had always known the arrival of a baby would be a fragile time. Her daughter’s child would make her think back. It was impossible to escape. No escape, ever.

Peter had been so angry. Over the months he built up a silent resentment as she grew fat with another man’s child, and eventually he said he couldn’t bear to stay and watch any more. He said she made things worse for herself. Perhaps she did. Perhaps it was a time when she should have forgotten about her principles. Even those whom she had always thought shared her beliefs had doubts now. She had shattered at least a dozen lives. Her friends and colleagues re-evaluated their priorities, and the anti-abortion charity she worked for withered and folded. So the rape had even cost her the job.

Maybe she expected to lose husband, home life, and sanity, but not her beliefs.

But they had never been tested before. Two beautiful daughters whom she adored. She had never imagined not loving a child. But the boy. Who could love that?

As soon as she looked at its bonny face, she knew it was a mistake. It stole something from her in the same way its father had. Its father she kissed, because she knew his conscience interfered with the final release. And she tormented herself with the thought that maybe, just maybe, she had pitied him.

And she pitied the baby. Her breasts were full of milk for it because nature overcame even the most deep-seated revulsions. But cold common sense helped her walk away from it. What revenge would she wreak upon it? How could she love it? How could she possibly give it what a growing child needed? She would never be a proper mother to that one. Best to give it to someone else, if it was to stand any chance of normal life at all. Maybe it was better if it had never been born, as Peter had said all along.

She glanced up at the rear view mirror, and caught a glimpse of the fair-haired boy leaving the shop. Even the way he walked looked familiar.

She twisted in panic and started the engine. She had to get away from here. Never mind that she was unfit to drive.

The engine roared into life, and she took off, with tyres screeching. She nearly collided with a lorry as the little car ripped its way out of the forecourt and into the dual carriageway. The lorry blared its horn and its headlights flashed, but it had managed to move into the overtaking lane and pull clear of her car.

Terencio stood in silence, waiting for the thump of his heartbeat to become less violent. He had managed to warn the lorry driver just in time to avert the collision, but it was not the near-miss that caused his heart to skip a beat.

He had just had an idea  - not one he liked, but one he knew would rid him of the spy completely.

Conway was working at the school’s stables. It was a blazing hot day, four weeks after his return back to school after half term. He was mucking out.

The last four weeks had been the happiest he could remember. When he and Teri had returned to school they had joined mainstream classes, with an assistant nearby to help both boys with writing and reading. The work had been more interesting. It felt to Conway that he was doing ‘proper’ lessons at last.

The basketball tournament had been a spectacular success, with the Endeavour’s first team winning first place, and the school’s second team winning third place out of the ten teams that took part.

Conway’s days were long and happy, full of hard work and clowning with friends of his own age. When Ellingham had visited only the previous weekend, it had been a struggle for the detective to recognise him. His hair had lightened, bleached blond by the sun, and he had not only grown a couple of inches, but he had stopped looking so skinny. His face  had filled out and the haunted look around his eyes had gone. Instead, he looked a vision of health.

Conway had experienced no more run-ins with his headteacher and instead had filled his time with learning to swim and befriending the woman in charge of the riding stables. Now that the basketball tournament was over, he spent most of his leisure time with her. Jenny had promised she would teach him how to ride, but he had to learn to look after the horses first. Hence the mucking out.

The temperature was in the 90s, and he had stripped to the waist.

“Connor,” Jenny was saying. “Can you take Jasper’s reins for a moment?” She was nipping back to the stable office to answer someone’s query about a forthcoming cross country event.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Conway rested his broom, took the reins and stroked the animal’s neck. Jenny had invited him many times to call her by her first name, but Conway could not bring himself to do it. He found formality reassuring. He had been teased relentlessly by the foster family in Colchester, because he had been unable to stop himself addressing them as Ma’am and Sir. They thought him punctilious and pompous, probably. But it was better than being a yob.

It was while he was stroking the animal that he first noticed two women walking on the nearby public footpath. He wouldn’t have noticed them at all, maybe, except for the fact that the older woman was being supported by the other, as though she were unwell.

Jenny took back Jasper’s reins and rode off, leaving Conway to resume shovelling the yard. He was humming a song to himself, thinking about his history prep, when he heard a noise and looked round.

It was the older woman. She had left the footpath and come right up to the stone wall. She was staring at his scars with horror in her eyes.

Conway muttered a curse and reached quickly for his T-shirt, remembering Mr Williams’ warning that strangers found him disconcerting to look at. He pulled the T-shirt on quickly and looked back at the woman.

“Can I help you, Ma’am?”

The woman didn’t reply. She gagged and pressed a handkerchief up to her mouth. Her face was ashen.

“Are you all right?” Conway suddenly feared she was about to faint. “Can I get you anything?” He stepped towards her.

“No!” The word shot out forcefully, causing him to blink in surprise. He looked up at her mouth, twisting almost as if she had tasted something sour. She shrank away. “I’m - all right, thank you.” Her voice was muffled.

She didn’t look all right. He stared uncertainly. Her breathing was ragged, like an asthmatic. She was looking away from him, as though fiercely determined not to see his concerned gaze. But she glanced up once, and immediately gagged again, as though about to vomit. He stared at her, and thought her very odd.

She looked determinedly back towards the school. “You’re a pupil here.” It was more a statement than a question, spoken almost in disgust.

“Yes, Madam.” He was stiffening. Something made him choose to call her madam, and not Ma’am. “I’m a Year Seven pupil.”

“Is it a good school?”

There was something about her that should have been familiar to him. He was frowning as he gazed at her profile, noting the line of her forehead and her widely-spaced eyes. He wondered where he had met her before. He blinked, then remembered her question.

“Well, you know.” He tried to joke, hoping it would put her at her ease. “They give you too much prep, stodgy food, make you iron your own clothes.”

She tried to smile at that, but couldn’t. Her mouth literally turned downwards at the corners, as though she had eaten something vile. She was trembling, her hand fluttered as she raised the handkerchief back to her lips. He thought again she would vomit and put out a hand to steady her, but something made him think again, and he withdrew his hand without touching her.

She wasn’t a young woman. In her mid 50s, maybe, with a short layered haircut. Her hair had been dark, but it was in an advanced state of turning grey. She looked very slim and very delicate, and he thought her composure would crack at any moment.

“Are you enjoying your walk?” He asked politely. He was feeling more ill at ease with every passing moment in this woman’s company. and he used his politeness as a shield. “It’s a lovely view from here, isn’t it?”

“L-Lovely,” she agreed, but she was showing no sign of relaxing. She was still trembling.

“You can cut across to the car park through a path up there.” Conway pointed. “It’s just on the left, near that big chestnut. You can often see a lot of rabbits there.”

“Are you - “ She paused, struggled to speak, but hesitated. The determination flickered across her face again. “Are you happy here?”

Conway stared at her. He started to notice again her eyes, her nose, the shape of her mouth. Something was beginning to occur to him, but it felt like the tremors at the start of an earthquake. It was something dramatic, and unlikely, and something that could change his life irrevocably. Very much like an earthquake, in fact.

But then, what would anyone think, when a total stranger, who looked slightly familiar, appeared from nowhere and asked if he was happy? He felt the rest of the world slip away from his perception, as if nothing else could ever matter to him but her face. It even felt as if the world were sliding away from under him.

“Are you - ?” But he couldn’t say it. Nothing would come. He took a step forward.

“No!” The word shot out violently. She seemed to know what he was thinking even before he could say it, and was at pains to deny it. “No, I’m not.”

“But -” He took another step forward. He felt a rushing sensation within him, something almost like joy. He caught her arm.

And the world seemed to shatter with a high-pitched scream. She stood rigid, so much so it took him a moment to realise the screams came from her. He looked and saw her revulsion of him.

Even before his stunned senses had a chance to react, someone else ran towards them. It was the younger woman, throwing herself protectively between them.

“Leave her! Don’t touch her. She’s suffered enough. She’s gone through too much already!”

Conway stepped back, shocked at her vehemence. A stunned silence fell over them, then the younger woman wrapped her arms protectively around her older companion and gently led her away. She looked back once, her fierce stare a warning to Conway to keep his distance, but he needed none. The older woman was sobbing violently, a sound that seemed to freeze his blood. Much as he desired to, he could not follow her. He did not have the strength. All his sense of joy was extinguished. Only his hammering heartbeat seemed to exist.

He sank slowly against the paddock wall. His chest hurt so deeply it was a struggle to draw in breath, and a sudden trembling robbed him of his self control.

It was him that woman was scared of. She found him repellent.

He leaned there for several moments, struggling to think, fighting to breathe. He had no idea how long he was there, blinking, and staring without seeing. Eventually his trance broke. He looked back up to where he had last seen the women, but they weren’t there.

With sudden urgency he pushed himself to his feet, almost stumbling. He broke into a run, then a sprint. It was the fastest sprint he had ever done. He was pumping his legs vigorously with no thought in his brain but to chase them. He must talk to her. He could not let her drop out of his life again.

He rounded past the chestnut, through the clearing, oblivious of the rabbits which scattered as he approached. On he raced, with breakneck speed, to the car park. His feet hit the gravel just in time for him to see a red car drawing away.

He stood, clutching a stitch at his side, and watched it disappear from sight. His chest was hammering, his gullet burning. His heartbeat thudded so hard in his ears it felt as if someone was hitting his eardrums. He had let her go. She was there, and now she was gone. How could he have let her just walk out of his life like that?

CHAPTER 13  home

He walked. He didn’t even know where he was going. He just set off on a path in the woods and followed it. He wasn’t able to think. Only to remember her - her eyes, her mouth, her delicate skin, the bony hand that had pressed the handkerchief to her mouth.

He remembered something else too. The abhorrence in her face when she looked at him.

Hours he walked, until it was dark. He had come to a main road, but somehow could not find the strength to cross it, almost as if some self-preservation warned him he lacked the concentration to complete the task, and could be hit by traffic.

He sank down on a fallen tree just off the road, listening to car after car whap past. Often a lorry thundered past, sometimes the rasp of a passing motorbike. Rarely was there silence, but he noticed the ants on the fallen tree did not care. They had their world. Things continued. Everything was the same.

It was growing very late now. The whapping of the traffic eased up, then eventually it became almost non-existent. Still he could not move. He just lay there, staring at the shapes of the tree in the murky darkness. It was cold. Cold like the chill inside him. He didn’t even know how long he sat there.

Before dawn, orange streaks like cracks tore along the sky towards the east. As the sun broke through the early morning cloud, he began to realise he had sat there all night and there would probably be hell to pay.

It took such an effort to move. His legs were stiff, and he felt ridiculous. However was he going to begin to explain his absence? And part of him clung to the state he was before, not thinking about anything, just doing, listening to traffic and watching the network of ants and their busy lives. But he must go back. He knew he must go back.

He walked hesitantly at first. His legs grew steadier the further he walked. Within a few miles, he was walking briskly.

In the woods he found boys from House D out looking for him. The whole school was looking for him, they said. He was to go and see Mr Williams at once.

Conway was met on the path by Mrs Smedley, who escorted him to Mr Williams’ office. Strangely, she did not scold. More strangely, she impulsively wrapped her to him and gave him a hug.

“Poor boy.” Her eyes were moist. “You poor boy.”

She went with him to Mr Williams’ office. It was Mrs Smedley who knocked. Conway did not even have the strength to do that on his own. She opened the door and stepped in too. She closed it behind Conway and stood like a sentry near the door.

Mr Williams was sitting at his desk, almost lost in thought. He waved a hand at Conway, motioning him to sit, without saying anything.

The boy sat. For some reason, he was looking at the patterns on the carpet. He had been here, in this office, on quite a few occasions, but had never really studied them before. He was in no hurry to find out why Mr Williams wanted to see him. He knew by Mrs Smedley’s presence it was something very serious.

Mr Williams seemed in no hurry to talk to him either. He was forming a steeple with his fingers, pressing his index fingers to his lips.

“You had a visitor yesterday.” He said finally. It was a statement, not a question.

“Sir.” Conway responded automatically, but the carpet was still oddly more interesting than anything else in that room.

“Did you notice anything about her?”

“Sir, I - “ but he could not say it out aloud. “Who was she?”

“Her name is Adele Kelleher.”

Yes. But who was she? Conway thought he knew, but still couldn’t force himself to bring up the subject. “Why did she come here?” he asked finally.

Mr Williams sat back in his chair. He looked as though he was about to say something, but changed his mind. He rose to his feet, pacing inexorably.

“Someone’s been sending her hate mail.” He answered, matter of factly.

Conway sat in silence, trying to digest this. But he couldn’t, not on top of ...

“The police have been in contact with me.” Mr Williams was speaking again. “I’m afraid they’ll have to talk to you.”

A panic fluttered in him. Conway thought at last he understood. He half rose from his chair. “They think I - ?”

“No. Very unlikely, I should think.” The headteacher seemed to have anticipated his question. “They just need to talk to you.”

“Yeah!” Conway scoffed. He felt trapped, cornered, and already condemned. “Who’s going to believe I had nothing to do with it?”

Mr Williams flicked a stern look. He drew breath, but could say nothing. He paced again. “Calm yourself, boy. The police do not believe she has been harassed by you.”

“Then why - ?” Conway broke off. He didn’t care why, so long as they thought him innocent. What he wanted was to find out about the woman.

“Who was she, Sir?”

Another harsh stare. “Who did you think she was?”

“I - “ Conway gulped in breath. His heartbeat was heavy. “Sir, I thought, perhaps, she could be my ... mother.” His voice faltered at the final word.

“Yes.” Mr William’s stare was fierce. He was speaking harshly. “She is your mother.”

“Did she want - ? I must see her!”

“You cannot.” The expression on the headteacher’s face was more fierce than ever.

“But -!”

“You cannot see her because that woman was raped 13 years ago.”

Raped!

The word hit Conway like a slap. He stared up disbelievingly into the headteacher’s face. The man’s gaze fixed intently back on him.

“You must understand. You cannot try to contact her. That poor woman has suffered beyond description.”

And finally, Conway drew his breath. The first one since he had heard that word, raped. It was as monumental an event as his very first breath must have been when he was just born. And it hurt. It hurt his insides just below his ribs, just to draw in that precious breath.

“Of course,” he murmered. But it seemed to come from far, far away. And there was no understanding of his answer, only that it was the words they wanted to hear from him. Inside a little voice was saying, ‘But what about me? What about my suffering?’ He was starting to tremble, and he clasped his hands tightly together as though to try to quell it. He failed. There were so many things he wanted to ask, but he could say nothing because the lump in his throat hurt too badly. And anyway, it seemed as though he was going to be placed firmly outside of all knowledge. As though no-one thought the beginnings of his life was any of his business.

He struggled to speak. It was hard even to control his mouth, to form a word that was intelligible. “W-Why do the police want to s-see me?”

“I must leave that for them to tell you. I am expecting them to arrive shortly. Perhaps you would like a shower before they arrive?” Mr Williams observed Conway’s rough appearance.

“Yes, Sir.” He marvelled at himself. He was managing to speak quite normally. But something else was taking him over. His real self was inside, hurting and scared. Someone else was doing his talking for him. “Do you know if I’m accused of anything? Will they call a solicitor out for me?” Mrs Graham would be called out too, he remembered. She was what the police called an “appropriate adult”. But he did not wish to see her. Not a woman who asked how he felt about cleaning door handles.

“I really must leave this for the police to tell you.” Mr Williams replied, and drew breath. “If you tell the truth, you will have nothing to worry about.”

Conway only just had time for his shower. A WDC and DS arrived as he was drying himself. He dressed quickly, greeting them barefooted and with his wet hair sticking out at all angles. They were waiting for him in the corridor outside.

He looked up at them. It was probably the first time he had ever had to speak to a police officer with the knowledge that he was innocent of any wrong-doing. It made him feel better, but he was still scared.

“Do I have to go to the station with you?” he asked, hesitantly.

“You don’t have to, but we’ld prefer it.” was the response. “We’ve contacted your social worker. She’ll be with us soon.”

“No, I - “ Conway paused. He really couldn’t talk in front of Mrs Graham. “I can ask for anyone else, right?”

“Within certain limitations.”

“I want DI Ellingham. He’s based in Hackney.”

“You can’t have him.”

Conway glared. He had reckoned the DI would help him more than anyone. “Mr Williams, then.” The old man was intimidating, but he would never let a load of coppers push him about.

“You can’t have him either.”

“Why?”

“You can’t. Choose someone else.”

Eventually, Conway chose Mr Howsden, his PE teacher. He was slightly surprised when they agreed. And Conway later had reason to be glad of his choice. He had a calm manner about him. He seemed like a man who could be trusted.

“I’ve no idea what they want,” Mr Howsden confessed, as they sat together in the car. “But the best way to deal with them is not to try to make anything sound good for them, all right? Even if you think what you say sounds bad for you, or someone else, just say what you know. You will always remember what you know, but you won’t remember lies. They’ll trip you up if you tell lies.”

Conway nodded. But every moment in the car, and every step inside the police station, further towards the interviewing suite, he felt as though he were travelling down a long tunnel, going deeper and deeper underground, and sure he would never see daylight again. At one moment, he felt an impulse to reach out and hold Mr Howsden’s hand. He stifled the impulse and felt ashamed.

Once there, and settled, they began to ask about the scars on his back, the ones caused by Travis. They wanted to know when the beating had happened. Could Conway name a date? Conway could. It had happened two days after Travis’ birthday. Where did the beating take place, who saw it, what had sparked the incident off, had Travis ever hit him before? How many times? Why did he hang around with Travis, if he beat him so much?

Next they wanted to know about Ellingham. How did they meet? What did Ellingham do after Conway was caught red-handed in the detective’s kitchen? They were very particular in assessing the details of Conway being handcuffed to the oven, and whether the DI had threatened him or touched him in any way. They needed to know every single thing that had happened between him and Ellingham. Why did the DI let him stay? Why had he given Conway money? Had Ellingham ever seen him naked, or touched him when he was naked? Had he seen the DI naked?

Conway knew a sex abuse inquiry when he heard one, but he was so amazed at the line of questioning that he stammered and stumbled out his replies. Worse was that the DI had seen him naked, when he washed Conway’s wounds. And Conway had seen the DI naked too, prowling around the big guy’s room while he slept, with his limbs and quilt akimbo. There was little about Ellingham’s physical attributes that Conway did not know. He had made a note of them so that he could tease the DI later.

And then the coppers were suggesting that perhaps Conway had made up the story about Travis doing the beating. Was he sure it was not Ellingham who had done it? And they asked more closely about the beating, in what order the blows had been inflicted? Not only that, they wanted a doctor to inspect the scars and for them to be photographed.

All the parallels of having the police photograph his scars, and having those four men film them, then came home to Conway. He began to refuse with more force than necessary, and then realised he was likely to have no choice in the matter. It was as though he was caught in a big machine. Once the machine rolled into action there was no stopping it. He could not buck its authority. Authority was always going to win in the end.

With a sense of defeat he allowed himself to be taken to a medical officer for an inspection. He panicked when asked to remove his clothes and, having been persuaded to co-operate, then flinched with every flash of the cameras as surely as if he had been struck. He shivered all afternoon, feeling wretched and dirty, while those stupid coppers kept asking him and re-asking him their silly questions, and Mr Howsden eyed him shrewdly, guessing something was wrong but probably thinking Conway was choosing to tell lies after all.

The questions slowly widened. How many times had he broken into Ellingham’s house. Where had he obtained the information that he had passed on to Ellingham? Why had Ellingham suggested he go to the Endeavour School? Why that school in particular? What exactly had Ellingham said about Terencio Otoma? What unit did he say he worked with? What was Conway suposed to be doing when making his surveillance reports? And did he really believe all this guff?

Conway stopped. “Why shouldn’t I believe it?”

“Ellingham paid Ј3,000 of his own money to send you to the Endeavour. We want to know why,” he was told.

It was a rude awakening. The police wanted to know what it was that had made him believe such a fantastic story about spying on Teri Otoma. Was he really that naive and gullable? And when he found absolutely not one single suspicious fact about Teri Otoma, why didn’t he suspect it was a cock-and-bull story? And what was it about the whole thing that made him believe anyone would send a child on a surveillance operation?

By 5pm, everyone seemed exhausted. They decided to leave it there for one day and begin again in the morning. Mr Howsden was allowed home. Social Services had arranged for Conway to stay with an Ipswich family overnight.

“Keep it going, Conway. You’re doing great,” Mr Howsden had told him, before going home.

Conway didn’t feel that he had “done great”. He felt like an absolute fool. He had spent hours and hours trying to explain why he had been an absolute fool, with the coppers sarcastically calling him “Sherlock” to his face. It had been an extremely unpleasant afternoon.

He didn’t know why Ellingham had spent Ј3,000 of his own money sending him to the Endeavour, and he wasn’t going to get an opportunity to find out. Not just now, anyway. He was not allowed to talk to Ellingham until ‘they’ said so.

The only saving grace was that they had asked nothing about Pete Waterman, and the men who had filmed that video. They had no idea why he panicked when they wanted him to strip off in front of the doctor. They did not realise why he hated them taking photographs of his scars.

Wrong again. When he went back in the morning they began to ask him questions about Pete Waterman, and he realised they had known all along, they had just been playing cat and mouse with him. Sadistic bastards. They knew he had been talking to Pete Waterman about Merrill Ellingham. What had Conway to tell Waterman about Merrill Ellingham?

Conway had listened to all those lectures the DI had spouted off without appearing to. The detective had warned Conway about “snuff films” where sick geezers found it a turn-on to film people dying. And just in case he had fallen foul of men like that, Conway had threatened Pete Waterman. He showed Pete Waterman a snap taken from Ellingham’s house of the detective, asking the pimp if he recognised the DI. He didn’t. But he recognised one of Ellingham’s colleagues, who was also in the picture. So then Conway had boasted to Pete Waterman about how he had broken into the DI’s house, and how the DI made up his bed all neat and tidy every morning.

Conway had stolen a camera, and got a stranger to take a picture of him outside Pete Waterman’s place of business. Then he had left the camera on the bed that DI Merrill Ellingham made all neat and tidy that morning. So, Conway said, Pete Waterman had better make sure that after everyone’s ‘business transaction’ was over, Conway was in a fit state to walk round to Ellingham’s home, break in and steal back the camera, or the detective would puzzle on finding the camera, have the film processed, and know he could question Pete Waterman about it.

He had no idea if the ploy kept him alive or not, but Conway had been in no mood to take chances. He had done exactly what he had said. The camera, still with the film in, had been stashed by Conway in Ellingham’s attic, where it was apparently found two days ago.

So now the coppers wanted to know who had shot the video? How much was he paid for co-operating with it? On how many occasions had he allowed himself to be used in this way, and who suggested it. What sort of things had people done with him - exactly? Had he ever seen Ellingham at Pete Waterman’s shop, or in the company of any other person he had ever seen at Pete Waterman’s shop?

On and on it went, with only a short break for lunch. Mr Howsden was great. He sat silently throughout the whole interview, never once uttering a sound, or betraying how shocked and sickened he was. He only ever spoke to Conway if the boy asked him something first, and otherwise sat without ever once giving an indication that what he heard bothered him. But it did, badly.

By the following evening, the police decided Conway could go back to school. The boy arrived, feeling weak and bewildered, and like a cloth that had been wrung and squeezed and twisted until every last drop of moisture was out of it.  When he reached his room he found Dean lying on his bed, eying him with insatiable curiousity, but politely refraining from asking what was going on.

Conway didn’t even know what was going on. He was dazed beyond rational thought.

“It’s to do with my mum - my real mum, I mean,” he told his room-mate. Conway felt he had to say something. “Someone’s been hassling her. They thought it was me.”

“Did they believe you?” Dean asked, after commiserating with him.

And it was only then that Conway realised they hadn’t even accused him of bothering his mother. He had no idea what the whole thing had been about at all.

CHAPTER 14  home

.Terencio Otoma had already got the result he wanted.

He had established the risk to himself, which was minimal. He had managed to give Merrill Ellingham other things to worry about, and he had made Conway Prest feel extremely silly. Later it would sink in to him just how it felt to be rejected by one’s mother. He was incapable of considering that just now, but he would later. Teri knew from first-hand experience just how painful it was, and felt a vicious pleasure knowing that Prest would suffer it too.

Best of all, he had managed to handle the whole situation without losing his self-control. He had kept his temper, used his head, and as a result no-one suspected anything about him. How different than if he had enmersed Prest in flames.

It hadn’t been easy. Going to London to organise the posting of the letters had been especially difficult.

He had done it on the Thursday of half term, travelling all the way by taxi where he had sensed the video was stored, and where copies were kept.

He had entered the station, pretending to report a stolen bicycle, and had scanned for the person in the building with the worst health. He found a clerical worker in her 40s. She thought she had irritable bowel syndrome, but she had cancer. Teri sensed she had less than two months to live, probably closer to six weeks, in reality.

He used her to send his messages to Adele Kelleher, but in sequence. First a letter, with a school photograph, identifying Conway as her son. Then to claim her son needed Adele Kelleher’s help. Then to claim Ellingham had beaten her son and forced him into child prostitution, and that the headteacher of the school he attended knew something suspicious was happening, but failed to act to help her son. Then he sent the proof: a copy of the video.

Teri had used the cancer victim for two reasons. Her resistence was low. Even then, it took an inordinate amount of influence to make her give in. She knew Ellingham personally. The second reason was that by the time they traced the letters back to her she would either be dead, or it would be known that she was dying. She would probably be heavily sedated, and unable to be questioned too closely about what had happened.

It would be wrong to say Teri didn’t have qualms about what he was doing, and they all concerned Adele Kelleher. She hadn’t even known her attackers. A gang were driving around the streets in a district of Birmingham one day, pulled her into their van, and raped her, for no reason other than she happened to be there.

Her bravery astonished him. He wished she was his mother. How much more different would his life have been if he had been able to rely on a woman who confronted problems so directly as she.

She hadn’t watched all the video, but she watched enough to satisfy herself the claims were true. He didn’t plan on her going to the school to see Conway for herself, but she had, and the results of that were going to be even more devastating than he had ever imagined.

But though he had not a moment’s regret for anyone else, he had regret for what he had done to Adele Kelleher. He was sorry now that she regretted having principles. She had thought she was giving the child a chance to live a normal life. But in that child she saw only deep-rooted tragedy. So Peter was right. He was definitely right. She had only made things worse for herself, and for the child who might never have been. It would have been better if it was never born.

For Adele Kelleher, he felt her pain deeply. Perhaps if there were anyone else he could have sent the video to, then he would have done. But who else would have cared deeply enough to expose herself to the potential mockery of the authorities? No-one. There was only one person who would not be able to dismiss the whole thing as being the work of a crank. That was his mother.

But he, Terencio Otoma, had not until this point, helped to create the tragedy that was her son. He had not given Conway those scars, nor contributed to his misfortunes in any way. He had even refrained from inflicting any great physical pain upon him, despite it easily being within his power. His ‘friend’ Travis Beales had not been nearly so generous.

He had not helped to make the wretch that was Conway Prest. He had only exposed it. If Adele Kelleher wished Conway Prest had never been born, that was her son’s fault, not Teri’s.

For the first two days after the police questioning, Conway could think of no-one but Ellingham. He had no idea still what the police investigation was about. Surely no-one believed Ellingham was hassling his mother? Surely no-one suspected Ellingham of anything! He seemed everything Conway Prest could imagine a decent copper to be.

But they had not asked Conway whether he had written to his mother, or even whether he had heard of his own mother before. He could not understand why she would have anything to do with Ellingham. And the more he puzzled, the less he understood.

His anxiety lessened after Ellingham telephoned him. He couldn’t talk now, said the detective, but he was ringing to let Conway know he was all right. Perhaps they could talk more later.

At that point Conway stopped worrying about Ellingham, and began to worry about his mother. He had a dream first, in which he chased her through the woods to the car park, caught up with her, then she turned instantaneously into a beast with scaly arms and long tentacles. He woke sweating. For the next few hours, he recalled, over and over again, Mr Williams saying, “You cannot try to contact her. That poor woman has suffered beyond description.”

Then Conway would see her face, over and over. He could hear her high-pitched scream. The way she stood so rigidly. Her violent sobs.

He was the beast. The scaly armed monster’s long tentacles were reaching out for love, for stability, for family, but no-one understood that. No-one wanted to give him these things. In reaching out for them, he was being the monster who frightened everybody.

He was the beast.

Fanciful stuff. Conway scolded himself for the way he was thinking. He was trying to be sensible, and practical, and maybe just a little bit kind to himself. But even though he knew he wasn’t a scaly armed beast, he could not run away from that one single fact.

He was the product of evil. The son of a rapist.

A chant pounded through his head for hours. The beast. The product of evil. The son of a rapist.

He could not chase his tormented thoughts away, and eventually he swung himself out of bed and went downstairs to make a hot chocolate. He sat in the kitchen, nursing his headache, and staring down into his cup, trying to divert his thoughts away from himself, and to think about his mother.

What had really hurt him was not her reactions, but his. For the first few seconds, after he began to suspect she could be his mother, he had felt deliriously happy. He had long imagined a time when his real mother was found. He had actually believed his blood relative had come to explain it all. He was half expecting to hear that she had always regretted the day she gave away her baby, and had always hoped that he would find her. Perhaps he had brothers and sisters somewhere and he could enjoy a family life again.

But the reality was face to face with evil. He was the product of evil.

It was wrong that he should be here. He had no right to expect anything from her. He had no rights to anything but a bucketful of shame. The son of a rapist. The child of violence.

By what right, he wondered, did he have to share her air? What gave him the right to pollute the world she gazed upon? No right. He had no right to walk in sunlight at all. A bucketful of shame? A pit, more like! And if he should ever crawl out of his pit, he should walk only in shadow, with his eyes downcast.

Crazy thoughts! Conway was appalled at the way he was thinking. ‘Bats’ Bereford was right. He always said one day that Conway would lose his mind. ECT? How appropriate! Burn in hell, Prest. Didn’t you know the sins of the father were visited upon the children? Claim your shame. Pick up the yoke of thy guilt. Sackcloth and ashes. Weren’t they the Bible’s symbol of repentence? They would become his inheritance, then.

“Conway? You look as if you’ve been here all night!”

The words of Mrs Smedley made him start.

He had a tea towel in his hands, and was repeatedly wiping his face with it. He had tried to cry, but the tears of repentence would not come. If they had, perhaps he could have thought himself worthy of God’s grace. But he could not cry. The devil’s child could not cry. He had laughed, wildly, madly. And he had wiped, and wiped and wiped at his face. He had burned paper and pushed the ashes in his mouth, and wiped and wiped and wiped his face. Insanity had come, and even that was too merciful. Where was the pit he could crawl into? Too late. He realised he must first climb high ground. He must make the climb in full view of everyone so that they could know his guilt and see his mark of shame.

Cruel Conway. Must you be so hard on yourself? Who else will take care of you, but yourself? Who else could love a product of evil, but himself?

Mrs Smedley walked to the table and lifted the cup. The chocolate drink was almost untouched, with a thick skim on its surface. She was aware of the boy wiping his face. She could hear his laboured breathing. Then she saw him wipe again, the same way as before. Forehead first, then pressing the towel to his eyes. Patting right cheek, left cheek. dabbing at his mouth and chin. Pause for a second. Then the ritual again.

“Conway?” She spoke gently.

Sweet madness. ‘Bats’ Bereford was right.

He intended to reply to her, but felt his mouth twitch. Again with his ritual, forehead, eyes, then cheeks. Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to summon any words. She took a step forward.

“Have you been here all night, Conway?”

“I - “ Too late. He could not expose his shame, nor his madness, to her. He dared not make the climb and let her see. “N-No. Not all night.”

But he saw her frowning at the specs of ashes on the table. She stroked it, almost, with her finger, and raised her finger to inspect it, wondering whose letters he had burned.

“Not all night,” he murmered again, anxious to take her mind away from his shame. If she had seen him hours before, scooping handfuls of ashes into his mouth, what would she think? He did not dare climb the high ground, and let her see his mark.

“What is it, Conway?” She asked, so very gently. “Is it that business with your mother?”

Poor boy. You poor boy.

He remembered her words of comfort the day before and nodded. He leaned his exhausted head upon the table and tried to stop wiping his face. But the headache in him was like a pressure pushing directly down on the crown of his head. With a struggle, he forced himself not to wipe his face.

“I - “ he rocked on his seat, then wiped his face again. Ask for help. Ask. They won’t hurt you. And if they did. If ‘Bats’ was right about the ECT, wasn’t that justice? Burn in hell, Prest.

“I’m - not - coping.”

The silliest words in the English language. The silliest sentence ever spoken. I’m not coping.

And still, he could not cry. The devil’s child could not cry.

Mrs Smedley moved, very gently, as though she thought her tiptoeing could make the whole situation better. She was even more silly than ‘I’m not coping’.

“I’ll call the doctor,” she said.

“Bugger the doctor.” Conway murmered. He needed a priest.

They sent him to bed with a sleeping pill. It gave him a strange sensation. For ten minutes he felt as though his body was tired, but his brain was not. The effects of the drug took over soon afterwards.

They told him they would arrange counselling. This was a rare event, they said teasingly. Apparently Mr Williams thought it a namby-pamby exercise, but his planning team disagreed and overrode him. They did that a lot at this school. They publicised their decision-making process, and discussed the outcome with the pupils.

When Conway woke it was early afternoon. Everyone else was at lessons. He showered, dressed, then sat about in the common room. He was awake, but lethargic. When he thought back to the events of the night before he could hardly believe he had acted like that. He wondered if he had really tried to swallow ashes, and what possible good he thought it would have done. It would be nice to think it was all a dream, or part of his tormented imagination. But he could remember the sensation in his throat and on his tongue as he choked on them. He could remember it all far more vividly than he wanted to.

Hurriedly, he forced himself to think of something else. He had missed nearly all of his lessons that week. Automatically he thought about Teri working alone. Inevitably that led on to memories of the police officers’ incredulity, and his embarrassment now, that he had tried to mount a surveillance operation on an innocent schoolboy. He wondered if he would ever be able to sit down with Teri one day, tell him about it, and the two of them laugh about it together. Somehow he didn’t quite think so. Teri was an intense personality. He would be upset.

A noise disturbed him. He looked up.

A woman was standing there. He recognised her instantly. She was the younger one who had been with his mother that day and shouted at him to leave them alone.

He stood up, because the school’s etiquette demanded that he should do so, but his manners ended there. Now he was looking at her more closely, he realised she must be his mother’s daughter, the physical similarities were more obvious to him now.

His sister then. What could an unwanted blood relative say to her?

“Hello,” her voice was clipped.

“Hi.”

Neither of them smiled. For a long moment neither spoke. She met his look coolly, her grey eyes critical.

“You look like him,” was her verdict.

Conway flushed. He felt a prickle of anger creeping along his neck, and he recognised the rush of blood-red rage that had been so characteristic of the wild, uncontrollable Conway he had once been. He looked away, controlling his temper with an effort.

“So, what you’re thinking is, I look like him, I must be like him, right?”

“Worse, probably.”  Her voice was still cool. “The police told us a lot about you.”

Her words were pure torture to him. He recoiled, sucked in breath, then laughed harshly. “Piss off!”

She was unshocked. Her gaze seemed to size him up, and the slightest flicker in her eyes told him his bad language was exactly what she had expected. He had just confirmed everything she had thought about him.

He was starting to tremble. It seemed as though every nerve in his body was shaking. He couldn’t keep looking at her, so he turned his back to her and walked over to the common room window. He stared out at the garden. His face kept twitching near his eye. He rubbed it, silently willing it to stop. Self pity gushed in on him.

“You know,” he sneered, “It kind’a makes your day, finding out your dad’s a rapist.”

“Guess what?” her sneer matched his. “It kind’a makes your day learning your mum’s been raped, as well.” Her voice roughened. “Don’t kid yourself. She’s the one who’s suffered. She’s been through hell.”

Of course, she wasn’t just saying that to remind Conway of that, but to remind herself. There had been a price for her to pay too. Part of her childhood had been lost through it. But Conway, although absently registering the real reasons for the words she had just said, was thinking of his big traumas too. He had been attacked. Twice. Someone had broken his skull and someone else had flayed the skin on his back.

“What the fuck do you know about my suffering?” He muttered, spinning round to glare at her. “You know nothing about me!”

“I know you have no idea what she’s had to put up with,” she retorted. “But don’t worry. I’ve come to remedy that. Here you are.” She slammed something down on the snooker table beside him.

He seemed to freeze, almost in fear. After a moment, he realised it was a file. A ripped and dog-eared yellow folder.

“What is it?” His voice was hoarse.

“It’s the story of how you got here. I thought you might benefit from reading it.”

He stared at it. Perhaps he would have taken a step towards it, but he seemed frozen. His eyelids were burning, but still, he couldn’t cry. “W-What’s in there?”

“Newspaper cuttings.”

“You kept a scrapbook about your mother’s rape?” He couldn’t believe it. Scrapbooks were supposed to be filled with happy memories, not something as grotesque as this.

She did a half-laugh that reminded him of his own. “Sick, isn’t it?”

They stared at each other. It was as though they realised then how much they had in common. There was something about their mannerisms, their rough sneering humour. So this was what it was like to know a blood relative, Conway thought, almost with a sense of awe.

She seemed to sense their similarities too. She shrugged. “I was about your age when it happened, and no-one would tell me anything. I had to read it in the papers.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I just wanted to keep a record of it, to remind me how special mum is. I had a baby recently and re-read this file. She’s got so much guts.”

Conway didn’t know what to say. He wanted to thank her for bringing the file, even if he thought he could never bring himself to read it. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t trust himself to speak. His legs were shaking. He sank down on an armchair.

He looked down at his trembling hands. “W-Why did she come to see me?”

“You don’t know?” Her eyes widened.

“No.”

“She got these letters making out you were being abused by a detective. She needed to check it out.”

“But - “ He thought back, and the memory of his happiness that morning stung him. “I was all right. She must’a seen I was okay?”

The woman looked sceptical. “Well, someone’s had a go at you, haven’t they? Recently, too.” She was referring to his scars.

He sighed and rubbed again at the twitch on his face. “It wasn’t him.” He spoke slowly. “But it was - “ he swallowed. He missed Travis. Right now, he thought he missed him more than anything. “ - a very good friend.”

She gave a look as if to say, ‘some friend’, but said nothing.

Conway sighed raggedly. Thinking of Travis reminded him of a running joke they had enjoyed.

“Y’know. I kind’a had this fantasy about meeting my mum ...” He broke off from his sentence. He thought it would help him to say it out loud, but halfway through saying it, he realised it wouldn’t.

The woman looked horrified. “She can’t give you anything. It took everything she had to even come here. To have you pestering her would be her worst nightmare.”

He knew that. Of course he knew that, but he almost looked as if he hadn’t heard her. He was remembering that joy he had felt, just for an instant, when he first realised he had found his mother.

“I don’t even know your name,” he confessed.

“It’s Jackie.” She was reluctant to tell him.

“Well, Jackie,” his voice was harsh, even to his own ears. “I suggest you go home to your family.” He swallowed and forced himself to look directly up at her clear grey eyes. “And don’t worry about your mum. I won’t go near her.”

There was really nothing else for her to say. She studied him in silence for a moment, then gathered her bag. Perhaps she could have liked to have said something more, but nothing seemed appropriate. Eventually, she fiddled with the strap of her bag over her shoulder, then turned and walked out. She didn’t even say goodbye.

Conway stayed for a long time where he was, sitting in the chair. Eventually his gaze fell on the battered yellow folder.

He stood, but didn’t walk to it straightaway. He was almost too scared to touch it. Part of him told him to throw it in the nearest bin. He was afraid of what he might find there. He did not want to know what suffering his mother had endured.

But it also held some sort of grotesque fascination for him. He picked it up slowly and hugged it to his chest without opening it. This was his life in here. The answers he had always wondered about since he discovered he had been adopted. Yet it was a Pandora’s box. If he opened it, he would find terror, pain, despair, rage. Was hope going to be there too? Would that come out in the end?

Slowly, very slowly, he carried the file upstairs, went to his room and shut the door.

But when he eventually found the courage to open the file, he realised he was going to have to wait before its secrets were yielded to him. His reading skills had improved well enough to read the headlines. He had picked up a scrap of paper and struggled to make out the words: Why I Gave Birth To Rapist’s Baby.

But he wasn’t going to find out why she gave birth to a rapist’s baby, because he found the text too difficult to read. In dumbfoundment, he stared down at the fine grey print and tried to make something of it. He tried for a very long time, but only the odd words could be recognised or understood. The overall meaning of the sentences was lost to him.

Eventually, he shut the file and cradled it to him. He burned to know what was written there, but he couldn’t show it to anyone else and ask them to read it to him, so he merely sat, holding his folder of shameful secrets to him in silence, and wondered why any woman would choose to give birth to a rapist’s baby.

CHAPTER 15  home

By nightfall the madness had returned. And the night after that. And the night after that.

Conway did not get up this time. He did not try to eat ashes, or make a drink of hot chocolate and leave it untouched for hours. He did not repeatedly wipe his face in full view of anyone. He merely stayed in bed, and silently bit his pillow. And above all, he told no-one, absolutely no-one, that he was not coping. And strangely, they all seemed to think that he was.

In the day he recovered again, the same as before. He could remember being in the grip of madness, but not to associate himself very well as the person who had suffered it. But by the end of the third night after his sister’s visit, he had reached a conclusion. He should die.

Most of his logic centred on the fact that he had no right to be living. The product of evil should have no presence. It was wrong that he should benefit from the situation. Later, much later, it also occurred to him that he also did not want to spend every night in his madness, but that seemed to him a selfish thought.

He resumed attending lessons, but did not pay attention to them. His thoughts were filled with the method by which he should achieve his death. Plunging from high buildings, drinking bleach and stabbing himself were all options he considered, but he was starting to favour death by hanging. There was rope in the stables, and the stairwell in the hall of the house had a big drop from the bannisters - more than 12 feet. It was probable that he could jump over the stairwell and break his neck as the rope tautened, which he considered to be quicker than mere strangulation and more desirable. He wondered if he should also secure a plastic bag over his head before making the leap, just in case.

He was unaware of the Spanish boy beside him, studying him covertly. To be in the presence of one who was so meticulously planning his own death was an uncomfortable experience for Terencio Otoma.

He hadn’t reckoned on this happening. The spy had never had suicidal tendencies before. A few weeks earlier, maybe, and Terencio would have been pleased at the development. He should be pleased that he was to rid himself of the spy, shouldn’t he?

Yet he was not. It was hard to watch the boy sitting next to him in the certain knowledge that within days he would die. With every method Conway considered for self-disposal, Terencio Otoma was able to visualise the corpse, and the state in which it was likely to be discovered. It was not a comfortable thing to contemplate. He did not like to consider the moment of no-return, when the deed could not be undone.

So, indirectly, he was about to kill again, and he began to wish there was a means by which he could prevent it. But he could not talk about it directly to Prest, or he would betray the extent of his powers. What had been the purpose of the whole exercise? He needed to keep his abilities hidden.

“You O.K?” he asked once, breaking the heavy silence.

“What?” Conway mumbled the word absently.

“You quiet today. No chit-chat.”

Before, the non-stop chatter had got on Teri’s nerves. It was a constant drone, as though he was next to a radio that couldn’t be switched off. But he stole a glance at the spy and wished Conway would talk now

“Oh. Yeah.”  Conway rubbed his temple. “A headache, that’s all.”

And he suddenly realised that was true. He had a headache.

“You want pill? Paracet’mol, something?”

He didn’t care about the spy’s headache, only that he should show at least some small sign that people around Conway cared, so he was copying them. Thoughtlessly, he reached inside his pencil case and exposed a foil studded with white pills.

A mistake. Conway had never considered an overdose before, but his eyes fell on the foil, and he thought of it at once.

Teri groaned inwardly, ripped two pills off, and pushed them across the desk. “But you no take too many, mh?” he suggested, in the manner of a rough joke. “Give you bad e-stomach ache. How you say it? Dialysis, no? A lifetime of that is no good, I think.”

He hoped to underscore the horrendous consequences of failed suicide attempts. For the briefest moment, Conway absorbed the grim message, and gave it his consideration. But he did not intend his attempt to fail, and he told himself it must not.

Teri sighed quietly, picked up his pencil, and tried to concentrate on his books.

When he had assembled what he needed, Conway selected a time of 1.45am, judging it to be the period when everyone was most likely to be in their deepest sleep. He had laid awake, dry-mouthed, but slick with sweat, counting the minutes on Dean’s digital clock.

When it clicked exactly on 1.45am, he hesitated for a long moment. Part of him felt silly, another part of him felt furious with himself because of his selfishness and cowardice. Sighing, he forced himself to break out of his trance-like state, which he recognised only as his instinct to cling to life. Cursing himself, smarting with self-hatred, he moved slowly, as stealthily as he could, from the bed. And because he despised himself for his fear, and his temptation to spare his miserable, contemptible being, he forced himself not to listen to the part of him that was sobbing inside with terror. Hard-faced, he forced himself to think about practicalities. He had stashed all his items in a cupboard by the showers. Dean was a heavy sleeper, but Conway hadn’t wanted to risk waking him by storing the equipment in the room.

In the darkness, he edged his way, barefooted, to the door. He had practised this. He had studied the way each floorboard creaked. He knew how to open the door with the minimum amount of noise.

He carefully placed his palm on the handle, wincing slightly at its very light squeak as he slowly depressed it downwards. He felt the slight draught against his hot face as he held the door open only slightly, then he swung open the door, and started to creep outside.

“I fancy a drink as well, while you’re up, mate.” Dean’s voice was drowsy.

Conway jumped with fright.

For five days, he had rehearsed this procedure, and in all of that time, Dean had never woken once. Why now?

And then it seemed as though the spell was broken. All Conway’s sense of purpose, all his courage, all of his plans - they were all shattered in just a few short seconds. He couldn’t do it now. Not right now. Dean might discover what he was doing before he could finish it.

“Sure.” He marvelled at the calmness of his voice. He had managed to speak so casually, but he could have howled with frustration. “What shall I get ya?”

“Milk would be nice.”

Conway walked downstairs and fetched the milk, and it wasn’t until he was walking back up, glancing at the stairwell as he went past, that the reactions seemed to hit him. He began to shiver uncontrollably, and realised the madness that escaped him so far that night was about to hit him now. He was so eaten up with hatred for the devil’s child, yet no sooner was he filled with rage at himself, than he was also arguing with himself, pleading for mercy, urging himself to be kinder.

He handed Dean the drink, sat on his bed, and began to mop his face with his sports top. He listened to his room-mate drain the glass, fumble as he popped it on the chest-of-drawers behind his bed, and settle back down for the night.

“D-Dean?”

His room-mate was already breathing evenly. He interrupted it. “Yeah?”

Conway’s shivering intensified. “My s-sister came to see me the other day.”

“That’s nice,” came Dean’s sleepy reply. After a long moment, he added, as an afterthought. “Didn’t know you had a sister, actually.”

A long silence followed. Conway was wondering if he dared expose his fragility. Dean was almost snoring, and Conway, feeling desperately lonely, mopped his face with the top.

“Sh-She was telling me - “ Conway swallowed. Dean’s breathing quietened once more, and Conway knew he had roused him. He felt guilty. He also felt frightened, yet he plunged on anyway. He was sinking fast into his madness, and he needed to speak to someone - anyone - who would not condemn the devil’s child. “She told me about this woman she knew, who got raped, and this woman decided to have the baby but give it away.”

Dean grunted. It was merely an acknowledgement to let Conway know he was still listening, but in reality he was three-parts asleep once more, and even Conway knew it. Conway continued his face-wiping ritual. Forehead, eyes, cheeks, chin. Forehead, eyes, cheeks, chin. He pressed the brushed cotton against his face, and squeezed it.

“W-Why do you think sh-she did that, Dean? Why did she have the baby? She c-couldn’t have wanted a baby, if-if she gave it away, could she?”

“Dunno, mate.” Dean’s reply was slurred. “She must’a valued life, I reckon.”

And there was the answer.

Conway sat in the clutch of amazement, and realised it had been blindingly obvious all along, but he had never been able to grasp it. Instead it took a few casual words, spoken by someone who couldn’t care less, to explain her motives. She valued life.

With a sense of horror, he realised what he had so nearly done. He had the right to carry on breathing because, through her grace and through her mercy, she had granted him that right. But he had nearly made a mockery of everything she had done for him. She had given him the gift of life, and he had been on the verge of destroying the very thing she valued.

He put down the top he had been using to wipe his face and stared blankly into the darkness, absorbing all the implications. Perhaps what struck him most was that it was sheer fluke that had stopped him from doing the most destructive thing he had ever done in his life. Only Dean’s request for a drink had stopped it all, and the fact that Conway had started to talk. Yet Dean would probably never realise the significance of what he had done. Conway doubted if Dean would even remember the conversation in the morning, and would certainly not think very deeply about it.

Before the night was over, he silently prayed his thanks that he had been interrupted, and decided, with as fierce a determination as he had while planning his death, that it was his duty to thrive.

It was hard. He didn’t quite return to his lessons full of ‘chit chat’, but the madness was over. Quiet, but on an even keel, he dedicated himself to working as hard as he could, and being a good friend to his mates.

Once, Mr Williams caught him in the corridor, in the act of telling a joke to a group of classmates. The joke was in poor taste, and he thought from the headteacher’s surprised glare that he was disgusted by the joke. After a moment, he realised the headteacher was merely surprised that he should be telling a joke at all. His face reddened abruptly, and something inside of him seemed to shrivel up with a sense of shame. It paralysed him for almost a full minute, then his chest heaved with the effort of breathing, and he forced himself to look up. With a sense of horror, he realised the headteacher was still watching him keenly, and he battled again with his shame, but this time, he managed to conceal it, and met the man’s gaze evenly.

“A word, Flynn?” The headteacher suggested.

Once alone, Mr Williams apologised for the delay in the counselling. He explained that Conway had been put on a waiting list, and it was taking a lot longer than he anticipated for Conway to reach the top of the list. Did Conway want him to try to speed matters up?

“I don’t think I need it now, sir.” Conway spoke evenly. “It was the shock of it, that’s all, and my - M-Mrs Kelleher had been very distressed when I met her. It was impossible to be unaffected by that, sir.”

He was aware of the headteacher’s stare once again, but not of the reason for it. Mr Williams was silently applauding Conway’s mental toughness, but he considered a comment would be ill-advised, so he merely nodded matter-of-factly.

“Very good, Flynn, but if things change, let me know,” he requested, and briskly sent Conway on his way.

For Terencio Otoma, Conway’s newly-found respect for life came as a relief, but it had been Dean - happy, normal, well-adjusted Dean - who had worked the magic. Teri had managed, with a struggle, to get Dean to wake up and ask for a drink. But Conway had managed to talk about his problem, and Dean had provided the cure, without any influence from Terencio.

In class, Teri and Conway worked better together than they had ever done before. Conway’s quieter manner suited Teri, and he was even less tactile than before. He lacked spontaneity now, and it was easier for Teri to cope with him. But he still had to watch what he chose to say, and took care to appear to be more stupid than he really was. Conway was still sharp enough to spot any potential irregularities.

It was the last weekend before school broke up that Ellingham eventually managed to visit Conway. On arriving at the school, he was informed Conway was playing basketball. As he walked around to the courts, he spotted Mr Williams, who greeted him politely, but warily. The police had grilled him too. Not that they would ever find anything irregular at the Endeavour, of course. Huw Williams had kept meticulous notes on Conway’s progress, including the initial inquiry by ‘Mr Wallace’ as to whether ‘Connor Flynn’ could attend the school. His notes outlined the discovery of the scars, every punishment, the visit by the doctor, his conversations with Ellingham and Social Services, and Conway’s list of signatures recording his activities every hour during his curfew. It was impossible for anyone to believe the school was involved in collusion, presented with such thorough documentary evidence.

“How’s Conway?” Ellingham asked, as soon as polite greetings were exchanged.

“Better than you could possibly imagine.” The headteacher was still surprised at Conway’s resilience. “Prepare to be surprised. I hope he’s not quite as unfeeling as he appears.”

The words held little meaning for Ellingham. He thought the headteacher was just demonstrating positive thinking.

“I’ve heard from Social Services,” Mr Williams was saying. “They’ve agreed to fund him for an experimental two terms next year. If successful, they’ll make it permanent.”

“They’ve asked you to take on someone else, I hear?”

Mr Williams gave a snort of disgust. “I’m not sure I want to mop up all their problem-children,” he answered, “but I haven’t refused yet.”

Ellingham smiled fleetingly, but it was hard for him to concentrate on polite conversation. He was feeling bruised.

He was now the subject of a thorough on-going investigation, and he had just lost a close friend. Even if she hadn’t died, he still would have lost a close friend.

He had no explanation for why Caroline had accused him, nor any explanation as to why a camera had been found in his attic, containing pictures of Conway outside a place of dubious reputation. And the explanations that he did have for certain irregularities, such as seeing Conway in a state of undress, and handcuffing the boy to his oven for several hours, sounded like the sorriest of excuses. He had been suspended, pending a disciplinary inquiry. It was possible - actually, very likely - that he was going to lose his job.

Not only that, but his shock on discovering the grotesque circumstances surrounding Conway’s birth had been considerable. He could even remember the headlines about the rape victim who had given birth to the baby, although if pressed he would have said it had happened eight or nine years before, not 13. He could remember that the woman’s marriage had broken up, that she had lost her job and that most of her friendships with colleagues had disintegrated. Her decision to bear the child had attracted media attention, with experts questioning the effect on the child if it learned of its history - and she had still stoutly declared that it had all been worth it, and that she had her principles.

The advice the experts had given then loomed large on Ellingham’s mind now. Possibly one of the few people with a vague idea of how perceptive and sensitive Conway could be, he had correctly guessed on Conway’s true state of mind in the days that followed the discovery. But, as he was under suspicion, he had not been in a position to contact the boy, nor lend him any support. He had fretted on how Conway was coping with his burden. He fully expected to find the youngster crushed.

His first glimpse of Conway energetically running on the basketball court, slam-dunking, yelling encouragement to his friends, was almost an affront to him. It seemed on the verge of being obscene. He remembered the headteacher’s words about Conway appearing to be unfeeling, and he stiffened with a sense of disgust.

Only when Conway turned round and spotted him did his stance soften. From that moment, Conway’s heart wasn’t in the game, and after a few moments he excused himself and walked off the court, heading directly for Ellingham with a look of determination on his face.

His greeting was conventional and polite, but it was spoken very quietly. Ellingham’s heart melted. With a sense of relief, almost, he realised Conway was not unaffected by recent events after all. Conway’s greeting put him even more at ease.

“So, what’s it all about, man?” the boy demanded, with a sense of grievance. “Why am I at this school?”

It wasn’t easy to explain. Conway was still smarting from the police officers’ sarcastic Sherlock Holmes jibes, and he resented Ellingham’s suggestion that he had been in dire need of help. It was tempting to bring up the subject of the video, but Ellingham kept quiet, allowing the kid to sound off at him. At the moment Conway didn’t realise Ellingham was aware of the video’s existence. The DI intended to keep it that way.

Jokingly, he held up his hands in surrender, admitted he had been stupid, and above all, said nothing to indicate that how much trouble he was in. Instead, Ellingham lamented the loss of Ј3,000. “Maybe it was worth it to stop this strange goon from breaking into my house all the time, I dunno.” he suggested.

“Shouldn’t get paid so much, should yer?” Conway retorted, unsympathetically. “And you reckoned it was a close friend of yours who wrote all these letters to Mrs Kelleher?”

Ellingham nodded, not caring that his sense of shock was visible. “I can’t believe it, Conway, I’ve known her for years! First I find out she’s dying, then I hear about these notes.”

“Is this a black thing?” Conway asked.

Ellingham laughed. It seemed so ridiculous. “Conway, I was dating her!”

“What?” The boy’s eyes were narrowing.

“Oh, not seriously. I helped her out for a while after she and her husband split up. We went out a couple of times.”

And this was happening at the very time when Ellingham first met Conway, which was what made her allegations of witnessing the DI beating the boy all the more damning. What the hell had happened to Caroline, Ellingham wondered? Her illness must have turned her brain.

“Did you upset her?” Conway wondered out loud. “Was she keen on you, and you rejected her?”

Exactly the questions his colleagues had already asked, Ellingham realised. The boy was starting to sound like a policeman!

“No, nothing like that at all. It must have been the illness affecting her. They say she only has about a week left.”

“And you can’t ask her how she traced my mother?”

“She says she doesn’t know what we’re talking about. I’ld love to know, though.”

“Was she abusive about you in these letters?”

“No, factual. Here - “ he reached inside his back pocket and handed over a multi-folded sheet of paper, forgetting that Conway could barely read. “I’ve got a photocopy of one of them.”

Conway made an exclamation of surprise. “Unusual handwriting.”

“I recognised it immediately,” Ellingham agreed.

Conway scanned the sheet. There were very few words he was able to recognise or read, but one particular word ending caught his eye.

“What’s that say?” He pointed to the word.

“Information.”

Conway, only two days before, had written ‘frickshun’ during a science exercise, and it had resulted in a lengthy lecture about words ending with ‘tion’ Station, friction, frustration, direction. He had been given a list of about 100 words, and had been made to copy them all out. He had been warned about some words that ended in sion, such as tension, but cion was new to him.

He frowned, trying to remember if information had been on his tion list. He was sure that it was.

“Is that spelt right?” He wondered. “C-I-O-N?”

“That’s not a C, it’s a T, you stupid boy.”

“T’isn’t. Look, that’s one of her T’s there. That’s one of her C’s. Hey, Sir!” He called out to Mr Williams, who had walked to a classroom near the basketball courts with Ellingham, and was now on his way back. “Look, Sir. Isn’t that a C there?”

Mr Williams tutted with impatience. He was in a hurry. He scanned enough of the letter to realise the nature of its damning contents, and eyed it with distaste as he passed the paper back. “I don’t know. Could be,” he answered briskly, and started to walk on.

“I tell you, that’s a C.” Conway declared, and still smarting from the lecture he had received, in which he had been told everyone knew these elementary word endings, and that they were very commonly used in the English language, he muttered, “Who would spell information with a C instead of a T?”

Mr Williams was still walking on, but Conway’s question was being mentally answered by him, and he suddenly realised the significance of it. He stopped almost mid-stride and looked round.

“A Spaniard,” he said.

CHAPTER 16  home

Terencio Otoma sprang to his feet instantly, a ghastly panic closing in on him.

He was in his own room, and had been lying on his bed, reading situations about him like most people would read a newspaper. The jolt when Mr Williams realised he had spelled informacion was sudden, shocking, horrible.

Headteacher, detective and boy had stood in collective, stunned silence. They all recalled that Conway had come to the school believing he must keep a watch on a Spanish boy with special powers. It was, of course, all just nonsense - wasn’t it?

For a moment Teri knew a mad impulse to do something dramatic. Perhaps the most horrific freak accident could befall them before they reached the building, where all three were now headed, walking together in grim silence.

He choked down the impulse. No! Not this again. He had promised himself he would never do it again. And anyway - he felt a rush of anger - it would only deprive them of their guilt. If he killed them right now they would never know why. And they should know why. They started it, not him. He was just trying to live in peace.

He battled with the panic gnawing violently within him. He had to gain control of himself, and stay in control. He had all the time in the world to organised bad things for them. This was no time for impulses.

It was hard to do it within a prescribed time. He had so little time. But he knew if he failed he would regret it. It was so easy to create a mess, so hard to clear it up afterwards.

He opened the door as they approached and was pleased to register the surprise on their faces.

“Come in,” he invited, politely. “I’ve been expecting you.”

All three filed into his room, but as Ellingham entered he grabbed the door and jerked his head to motion Teri to go first. He shut the door and seemed determined to guard it.

For the first time, the panic really did subside. Teri was amused. What was he doing? Making sure Teri couldn’t run? How little he knew!

He flicked a look at the other two. Mr Williams was standing by the window. Conway sat himself on Teri’s bed and started swinging his legs. Questions seethed within all of them. Mr Williams was the most patient, he was the most willing to think about the situation. Ellingham was thinking like a policeman, the questions he wanted to ask formed a certain structure. Conway ...

Teri smiled a little at Conway as he pulled out the chair to his study table and sat down. The men could not quite believe yet that Teri had anything to do with the letters, but Conway believed it absolutely. Only Conway had ever believed he could be dangerous without a shred of evidence to support the theory.

Teri clasped his hands together on the table and waited, his face a picture of serenity. He was in control. He would stay in control. He knew that now.

Ellingham spoke first. Ah! So very like a policeman!

“How do you spell information in Spanish, Terencio?”

Teri paused, wondering whether to cut to the chase, but he decided he liked this little cat and mouse game.

“The same as in English,” he replied calmly. “But with a C instead of a T, and an accent above the O.”

Ellingham fumbled for the letter in his back pocket. “I have a letter here written by an Englishwoman who has spelled information with a C. Can you think of any reason why she would do that?”

“Per-aps someone else tell her what to write.”

He had considered plenty of amusing petty chases, and suddenly bored of the idea. Instead, he enjoyed the impact his directness was having on them. And it had an impact, there was no doubt about that. All of them wondered if it was Terencio Otoma who told her what to write.

“And do you think that’s what happened?” Ellingham asked, recovering quickly. “That someone else dictated the letter?”

Teri shrugged. He knew he could handle this, but he still felt a quiver of apprehension rising within him. He had never actually volunteered information about his powers before. People had always stumbled accidentally across it.

“Perhaps if you look at the letter,” Ellingham suggested, passing him the copy.

Teri scarcely glanced at it. “She did not write this of her own free will.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Teri shrugged. “The spelling error. If this was an elementary mistake for ‘er, then she must ‘ave written it under great pressure.”

“What sort of pressure?”

Teri shrugged again.

“The person dictating the letter must have been Spanish, don’t you think? In view of the spelling error?”

“Si, es posible.”

He had not intended to answer them in Spanish, it was a slip of the tongue. All three were jolted by it, as if the sound of the foreign words was a studied insult, or an admission of his guilt.

A long pause. “Did you pressurise her to write the letter, Terencio?” Ellingham asked quietly.

There was a very long silence while Teri held a last-minute, private panic. “Si,” He felt no amusement now. The Spanish boy’s hands trembled slightly. He had passed the point of no return. He had confessed his malice. They knew now that he did not deserve the benefit of the doubt. And soon, their anger would follow.

Ellingham, so used to hiding personal emotions when interrogating people, recovered first.

“Why did you want her to send this letter, Terencio?”

Teri’s eyes flicked over Conway. “You sent him to spy on me.”

That jolted them all again, all three of them. Mr Williams and Ellingham kept their faces composed, but Conway’s mouth dropped open.

“How do you know that, Terencio?” Ellingham asked, with studied neutral tones.

Teri looked down at the table. For a moment, his resolve failed him. Then it seemed to the others he had made up his mind about something. He looked round at Ellingham.

“Venga!” He motioned for the DI to come to his study table. “Sus manos sobre la mesa, por favor.”

Ellingham didn’t understand a word of Spanish, yet he knew what the boy wanted, even without Huw Williams’ translation.

“He wants you to put your hands on the table.”

The DI approached the table suspiciously, standing opposite Teri. He placed his hands, palms flat, on the table, and looked hard at the boy.

Teri looked at him calmly, his dark eyes unflinching. Then he began to speak in rapid Spanish. And even though all of them knew he was speaking in Spanish, they were able to understand every word he said.

“Your name is Merrill Lloyd Ellingham. Your father’s name is Bernard. Your mother’s name is Rosemary. Your father is from Jamaica, your mother was born in Dudley. You have three sisters and one brother. Two of your sisters are married, one to Joseph, the other to Paul.” Teri smiled maliciously. “Joseph sells drugs to primary school children, but you have failed to notice that.”

Ellingham stared in wonder at the boy’s face. With each sentence it dawned on him that he was dealing with something extraordinary, something he was never likely to see again.

Teri switched his gaze to Huw Williams, still standing by the window. He smiled mockingly. “Ah, but he is so much more interesting than you.” He observed, insultingly, and speaking once more in English. He nodded at the headteacher. “His woman die three days before wedding. No more love for him, I think. He try to gas himself in car.”

The big, black bushy eyebrows of Huw Williams shot up sharply. After a moment’s stunned silence, he observed gruffly, “Uncannily accurate.”

“My God!” Ellingham breathed, still staring in fascination. “You’re psychic.”

Teri shrugged. “Psychic, telepathic, telekinnetic, whatever you want to call it.”

Both men still struggled to accept this, but Conway leapt to his feet in feverish excitement. He was the only one who wanted to believe what they saw.

“I knew it!” He whooped. “I always knew there was something about you, man, but I could never be sure. But if you could do all that stuff, why didn’t you just hypnotise me and get me to go away?”

Because it had never been possible to hypnotise Conway. His memories of physical trauma, such as fracturing his skull, or being on heroin immediately after receiving the cuts on his back, were the ones that rose to the surface as he fell into the state of hypnosis, and Teri could not hypnotise anyone unless they were within touching distance. And if Conway had touched him -

I must not tell him, Teri was thinking to himself.

How it happened, he did not know. But he saw Conway’s eyes widen, and knew, somehow, that the knowledge had jumped, in the same way that memories of physical pain could jump. His thoughts were accessible to Conway Prest, for a fraction of a second - long enough for his question to be answered.

“You mean, if I’m remembering a beating and I touch you, you actually feel the beating?” Conway demanded, wide-eyed.

Neither men understood the reference, not fully, though they realised a silent communication had passed between both pupils.

“That’s amazing!” Conway breathed.

Teri paused, almost as though sensing a very great danger. He raised his eyes to Conway’s face, and watched Conway with something approaching dislike. He was right to be suspicious. Conway took a step forward, and the meaning flashed before Teri instantly. The fool was going to test it out, not through malice, but thoughtlessness, in the same way that anyone who is warned not to touch a button instantly feels the desire to press it to see what it does. And the scene he was conjuring to mind was the lashing that Travis had carried out with the coiled steel.

“Mierda!” Teri tried to get up and twist out of the way both at once, the movement so sudden his chair fell backwards, and he fell painfully on the floor. He barely noticed the impact, scrambling at once to his feet and putting as much distance between him and Conway as he could.

“I make you feel it too!” he yelled, his eyes wide with terror as Conway stepped forward. Beads of sweat had formed on his suddenly pale face. “Your wounds will feel seconds old.”

Conway hesitated. Perhaps not.

“Si, per-aps not, I think also.” Teri was trembling violently. “That one I feel already, the first day I meet you.”

“That fit you had?” Conway stared in wonder. “You felt the pain as bad as that?”

“Si.” Teri was still quivering at his narrow escape. He picked up his chair but did not sit. Conway was too close for comfort.

“How come I wasn’t in pain back then?”

“I did not will it - but I can do so.” He added his last five words hastily. Conway was thinking of risking it, because his curiosity was so overpowering. “You sit!” Teri ordered. “Sit now on bed! I cannot think while you threaten like that!”

Conway sat back on the bed reluctantly. “So you felt the pain as bad as I did, that time Travis used the wire?”

“Si.”

“How come you didn’t shit yourself?” Conway muttered resentfully.

The faintest of wintry smiles touched Teri’s lips. “What makes you think I didn’t?.”

Conway laughed, despite himself, but Ellingham was growing impatient.

“Let’s go back to these letters you sent to Mrs Kelleher.”

Teri shot a glance at Conway to make sure he was at a safe distance before sitting down. “What of it?”

“Didn’t you think of the distress you would cause her?”

“I think of it.”

“And - ?”

Teri shrugged.

“You don’t regret anything? Nothing at all?”

“Si,” Teri looked back at Conway, watching his eyes with a malicious pleasure. “I regret sending her video.”

Huw Williams closed his eyes painfully, the repercussions of that answer hitting him at once. But Conway looked on in confusion. Video? What vi - ?

He remembered, and his mouth fell open. He began to recall exactly all the unpleasant requests the four men had asked him to perform that day. He fleetingly detailed which of them may have been filmed, and he began to absorb what the effects of that must have been on Mrs Kelleher when she saw it.

“You - sent - that - to my mother?” he gasped, unable to think of anything more evil. The expression on his face was completely blank, and his eyes glassy. He wondered what else Teri had revealed to Mrs Kelleher, and could not repress a shudder. Besides his short, inglorious career as a child prostitute, had the Spanish boy revealed to her what kind of a crazed child Conway had been, with his violent, uncontrollable rages? Did she now know about Conway’s burglaries, or his handbag snatches from feeble, delicate old women who must have been in their 80s - or even their 90s? What about the fracture of his skull, and the dark months of crushing headaches that left him confused and stupid?

There was nobody - but nobody - who could have known Conway Prest’s full history, and still believed it had been a good thing to bring him into the world.

The black eyes of the Spanish boy flicked over Conway contemptuously. Teri smiled with malicious enjoyment, then spoke with deliberate intent to inflict maximum pain.

“Si,” he confirmed, his soft voice like fingers stroking open wounds. Very little pressure needed to be applied for the agony to come to the surface. “She regrets that you were born.”

Conway blinked. It was the only outward sign of how badly the words sliced into him, but the Spanish boy enjoyed a thrill from watching it.

“She thought it noble thing, to give you life, but she spawned scum, verdad?” Teri taunted. “You lie, steal, cheat, and your blood boil with bad temper. You let so-called friend beat you, and crawl back always for more.” His smile was tight with cool amusement. “Her boy - so like his father, no?”

“You enjoyed showing her that, did you?” Conway’s voice was hoarse.

The Spanish boy frowned. “But no. I have already said not,” he objected. “I only enjoy demonstrating that to you.” He stroked the side of his face thoughtfully with just one finger.

“Ask yourself this,” he suggested. “Was my fault you degrade yourself on film? No. Was his?” he flicked a look at Ellingham. “No, also. Who force you do to it? No-one. If no film there, your mother see nothing.”

“Bravo,” Mr Williams observed, somewhat unkindly.

There was a few moments silence while everyone digested Teri’s brutal speech. Huw Williams agreed with it utterly. Ellingham found it comforting that the psychic had cleared him of personal blame for a lamentable episode. Conway felt misery cloak around him. He could feel a slow, dull flush creeping slowly into his face, and he wished, more than anything, that Ellingham and Mr Williams were not present to witness his discomfort.

Eventually, he closed his eyes and considered, with agonising logic, his personal blame for everything that had been wrong in his life. If Mrs Kelleher had seen a boy who was so like his scumbag father, whose fault was it? Whose fault was it really?

Conway had no means by which he could remedy the wrong he had inflicted on Adele Kelleher. To try to contact her so that he could apologise would only perpetuate the cruelty. Talking to Conway again would be her worst nightmare, according to Jackie, and she seemed to be in a good position to know that. But he was fully sensitive to the insult he had heaped upon her. And he silently swore to himself that he would spend the rest of his life being a model citizen.

CHAPTER 17  home

Teri, reading Conway’s thoughts fluently, was at first inclined to dismiss the other boy’s good intentions as something that wouldn’t last long. But then he remembered how stubborn Conway could be, and he changed his mind.

“You should thank me,” he announced, coolly.

He was aware that three people levied their shocked gazes to his face. He also approved of the way Conway did not curse, or shout, or swear, as Ellingham most certainly would have done. Instead, he merely stared.

“Why?” he asked simply.

“Because I make you wake up to yourself. Already, you change so much. Did you say ‘Fuck the doors, I no clean them’? No. You scuttle like rabbit. ‘The doors! The doors! I must clean zem.’ Everyone laugh, but you get on with it. Then you must clean windows, but you no run this time, mh? Towel on head, so. ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid,’ you say. ‘I am fucking stupid prat!’ Because of me, you learn to do difficult things.”

Conway stared. It was incredible how much Teri knew, as if the Spanish boy had been living inside Conway’s skull. It seemed there was nothing he did not know. A thought occurred to him. “The mud on the doors. That was you, wasn’t it?”

Teri burst out a cruel clatter of mirth. “Ah! I had fun with that!” He exclaimed, and his face lit up with the memory of it. “I thought you must go then.” He nodded towards Huw Williams. “He was so angry. He thought everyone gang up on you, and wonder what you do to make zem hate you. Por Dios! He was zis close to flogging you - ” He held up finger and thumb to demonstrate an inch “ - in front of everyone, too!” And he lamented, “Ah! But I wish that he had! I would have found it so amusing.”

Mr Williams’ bushy eyebrows shot upwards. “The monkey on your back, I think?” He looked quizzically at Conway.

Teri snorted derisively, his dark eyes throwing a challenge at the headteacher, daring him to say something really insulting. “Sticks and stones!”

There was another long pause. Mr Williams was eying Teri as though he were a specimen in a science lab. He thought his subject fascinating, but with dangerous properties.

Conway was feeling battered beyond rational thought. He was full of painful regrets and self-realisation. A hard time would follow for him.

Ellingham was puzzled. He had listened to Teri lashing Conway verbally, and though he still knew little of Conway’s history he suspected there was truth in what had been said. But Teri had done a great wrong to Mrs Kelleher, and he knew it. Surely he must realise there would be a penalty to pay for that? Wasn’t he worried about what would happen next?

Teri turned his head and met the DI’s gaze. “Nothing ‘appens next,” he said coolly. “You go away and leave me alone.”

Ellingham shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“The harm you’ve caused to Mrs Kelleher.”

Teri felt a twitch of frustration. “I don’t want to ‘arm anyone!”

“It’s too late for that.”

Teri stared hard into Ellingham’s eyes. “No.” He correctly coldly. “It is not too late because nothing ‘as ‘appened yet.”

“Threats don’t bother me,” Ellingham was thinking.

The Spanish boy took a deep breath and told himself to stop panicking. He could deal with this verbally. He didn’t have to resort to brutality. He met Ellingham’s gaze with every appearance of looking calm.

“There is no point in arresting me, senor. Nothing will ‘appen. Papers can be lost. Things can ‘appen to witnesses.”

Ellingham barely paid this any attention, but Huw Williams was interested. “What things?” He asked sharply.

“Cosas malas.”

“What bad things?”

Ellingham was moving nearer to Teri. His intentions were unclear, but action was needed, quickly. Teri shot a pleading glance at Huw Williams. “No soy malvado, senor.”

“No?” Mr Williams was sceptical of the boy’s claim that he was not evil.

“No. Es preciso ayudarme ya!”

But, assuming the headteacher was more fluent in Spanish than he was, he had not provided a translation. The headteacher looked baffled.

Teri was backing away from the table, resisting the urge to do something drastic, and merely twisting out of Ellingham’s reach. The big man was intending to reach out and grab him, and more than anything in the world, Teri detested physical bodily contact.

“Basta ya!” The Spanish boy commanded. “Don’t touch me! I show you why not.”

He glanced at the table.

BANG!

The noise was ear-shattering. Fragments smacked in all locations across the room, ricocheting off every surface. None touched the occupants of the room. Teri had provided a protective barrier for them. Still they flinched at the noise. Ellingham glanced back, then stared in disbelief.

The table was gone.

He swivelled back to look at Teri, who met his stare. The boy was breathing very fast, very shallow.

He was scared now. He had not wanted to betray his ability to affect the physical world about him, even if he had limited his display to exploding a table, and not a human body. And was it possible someone else would come, drawn by the sound of the explosion? He listened, and scanned, but no-one was about. It was Saturday afternoon. Even Mrs Yates was no longer in House C. She was in a meeting with the other house matrons.

Mr Williams carefully plucked something that was embedded in the stud wall. It was a sharp fragment from the table’s steel leg, no bigger than a coin. He studied it in fascination, then turned his gaze to the floor, where literally hundreds of table pieces lay scattered about like shingle.

All of them were staring in astonishment, but Teri found Huw Williams the most coherent. He looked up, pleading again.

“No les deseo ningun mal, senor.”

Mr Williams looked blankly, then shook his head. He lifted the fragment again to his eyes, turning it in his fingers, and he placed it carefully in his pocket.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to speak in English,” he said, matter of factly. “I can’t quite follow you.”

“Don’ let him do stupid thing, senor,” Teri pleaded, nodding again at Ellingham. “He think to arrest me. He will die.”

Silence greeted this particular remark. None of them doubted Teri had the power to kill... but, would he?

Teri raised his eyes to stare back at Ellingham. The boy was still breathing very rapidly, his face pale. There was determination in his eyes and mouth.

“Five times I kill, senor, but I was forced into it. I only want to be left alone.”

There was another long silence. Ellingham was trying to think how they could negotiate themselves out of the room, and what kind of back-up he would need to eliminate danger to the public. Guns, certainly, but what kind of a gun? Was military involvement likely to be necessary?

Conway’s thoughts were in a similar vein, but only with a view of gaining control, and not the outright destruction of Terencio Otoma. He could conjure up memories of any beating at will and hurl himself at the Spanish boy. He would be prepared to do that, even if Terencio “made him feel it too.” He was prepared to face any amount of suffering necessary.

And he would, too, Teri thought, looking at him with dislike. Conway was already thinking back to that day. His terror and his agony had been such that to think of it caused him to break out in sweats, but call it bravery, guts, tenacity, or stubborn pig-headedness, Conway Prest would destroy himself for the sake of common good. He was the only person Teri had met who had the capacity, and the determination, to get the whip hand over Terencio Otoma.

Involuntarily, the knowledge had ‘jumped’ again, and the telepathy between them sparked for a split second. It was fear that made it happen, Terencio realised. When he succumbed to fear, his involuntary instinct was to expose himself to the more powerful being, to gift himself, to be servile. It was an almost animal-like, deep-rooted compulsion in him to acknowledge the leader of the pack. And that explained why, on the day Teri panicked lest he would experience the sensations of a fractured skull, Conway had surprised him by saying, Don’t sweat it man. I’m nowhere near you. Even on that day, he had exposed his fears to Conway.

Conway knew that too. Their eyes met, and they studied each other intently.

If Conway leapt at him, Teri would have no choice but to kill Conway. But there was still a strong likelihood that Teri would feel the pain Conway was thinking about. And unlike Conway, Teri was not brave. He lacked the fierce determination that Conway had.

All of these thoughts, he passed at once to Conway Prest, lacking the means to stop himself. And because he had done that, he suddenly realised all was lost. He eyed Conway warily. He had spent months feeling faintly contemptuous of his classmate. It was not easy to think of him as a superior being.

“Check-mate,” he acknowledged, looking directly at Conway’s eyes.

At once a sensation rushed through him, a torrent that robbed him of his self-control. He began to tremble violently. It took all of his effort to stop himself falling to his knees and flinging his hands and face to the ground in an elaborate bowing and scraping. He had a sudden, overwhelming, and unaccountable desire to kiss the ground at Conway’s feet.

All of which Conway sensed. One word from him, and Teri would have scrambled to his knees and pressed his lips to the floor in front of Conway, no matter how ridiculous he appeared, because he would not have been able to help it. His longing to abase himself was so violent it took all of his self-control to stop himself from doing it. He looked at the floor, and imagined the touch of the cool floor tiles against his warm lips. His knees were weak, shaking with the effort of keeping himself upright. He felt he had no right to stand, not in the presence of Conway Prest. He was being impertinent.

He had never realised his surrender would be so complete, or so humiliating.

There was a long silence, a silence in which Teri realised even his capacity to read Conway’s thoughts was gone. An instant later, and it began to dawn on him that their positions had transposed so utterly that his thoughts were open to Conway Prest, who was watching him intently, frowning slightly.

It was as though he was mentally disembodied with his panic, like a spider frantically escaping an attempt to squash it, finding itself cornered, and was manically running in all directions. Not only was he struggling with his panic, but his craving to sink to his knees and bow down. Every part of him was trembling uncontrollably.

Teri raised his eyes to Conway’s face and thought he knew with a certainty what fate would befall him.

“I-It is logical for you to kill me, as Senor Ellingham wants,” he admitted, trying to muster a semblance of dignity, but knowing he could not fool the superior being. Conway would be able to read Teri’s panic with the same ease with which he had formerly been able to read Conway.

He spoke in Spanish, knowing Conway would understand. He hoped the two men would not, but a glance at Huw Williams confirmed that the headteacher had grasped its meaning. The man’s keen eyes scrutinised the scene in silence.

Conway was indignant. “Kill you? Don’t be silly, Teri.”

And abruptly, the miracle happened, and the balance of power tipped back. Teri’s fear, and his surrender was wiped out in an instant. Gone was his craving to sink to his knees and humiliate himself. Instead, there was only a sense of calm, and then a sense of a partnership, rather like that of a couple who had been married a very long time, with an intense understanding of each other. He could read Conway’s thoughts again, but it was almost with his consent.

And he was skimming back in time with him, to a scene in Ellingham’s bedroom. Conway was asking Ellingham if a freak of nature would be used as some kind of weapon, and Ellingham’s assured him they only wanted to keep an eye on Teri. Conway had never meant to harm him, and his views about that remained unchanged..

The sense of relief within Teri had him gasping, like the greedy breaths a swimmer takes after having been underwater for too long. Dear, sweet, generous Conway Prest, who had inherited so much of his mother’s ways after all: dogged determination, respect for life, and a possessor of an extraordinary inner grace that gave him the compassion to grant mercy. No harm was going to befall him because Conway would not allow it, and he was the only one with the power to inflict it.

His triumph was short-lived. In that delicate overlapping of power, he realised that Ellingham had a lot of influence over Conway, and that the detective could convince Conway of the need to kill.

“I had no choice but to kill, senor!” He burst into rapid speech, appealing at once to Ellingham and at the same time very aware of Ellingham’s sceptism. “You must believe me in this. I kill when I am very young, and very stupid, but I control myself better now. And I kill only because they try to kill me. But you know how hard it is when someone point gun at your head, no?”

Ellingham knew. It had once happened to him, quite literally. Someone had pointed a gun at his head, and he thought he was going to die.

“We need you under lock and key,” Ellingham growled. “Where we can keep an eye on you.”

He had not realised what had gone on between the two boys. He did not know Conway, briefly, had grasped control. Teri glanced pleadingly at Conway. He had been threatened with secure accommodation. They had wanted to lock him up, too.

“And if I submit myself to that, is that all that will ‘appen?” he asked softly. “Will government just keep an eye on me, or use me? For intelligence, say. Warfare, per-aps? No records of my characteristics can be kept, Conway. You must let me live undisturbed.”

Just at that moment Ellingham remembered the most important question Conway had asked before agreeing to watch Teri: He did not want a freak of nature to be regarded as some kind of weapon.

Ellingham grimaced.

“You can’t do this, Mel.” Conway said.

Per-lease! Ellingham thought, with exasperation. Conway was so naive. How could this - thing - be left to run amok in society when it had already killed five people? It had to be stopped - wiped out, if necessary. But what sort of a weapon would eliminate someone who could obliterate steel just by looking at it?

Teri recognised the pattern of Ellingham’s thoughts. Everyone who had discovered his secret thought like that - with one notable exception, Conway Prest. Teri shot him a grateful look. He had shown such remarkable generosity of spirit.

Even Mr Williams, though his thoughts were more measured, was wondering if they could really go away and leave Teri to live undisturbed. He doubted it.

Back to Ellingham again. Teri burst out laughting. “Mortars?” He scoffed, folding his arms. “Why not go whole pig, senor Ellingham? Why not arm a nuclear missile, or two?”

He sighed. He was exasperated, and suddenly utterly weary.

“But I tell you something. The last time Mama try to kill me, she had gun - a big rifle she take from farmer. Me? I am tired. I do not like to keep on living, so I say to myself, I will stay still. I will not hurt Mama. I will let her shoot me. Joder! I no die. I no help it. Bullets hit dog, not me. Everyone ask her, why she shoot dog? Damn near took its head clean off!”

Teri’s legs felt wobbly. He pulled up a chair, and sat down. “No bloodshed, please.”

And he looked directly at Conway. If he had to be executed, Conway must do it. It was the only way to protect the innocent.

But Conway only shot him a look of disgust. He had absorbed Teri’s way of thinking, and rejected it. Instead, the blond boy touched Ellingham’s arm. “You can’t do this man. You have to help him. It will only go out of control, otherwise.”

Ellingham shook his head. He looked stubborn. “No deal.”

“Think about it, man,” Conway urged. “He knows every thought that enters my head. He seems to know yours, and Mr W’s. He tracked my mother down. She could have been any one of about 15 million women, probably, in Great Britian alone. He’s blown up a table to show you what he can do, and he says he wants no-one to die. How many bodies do you want, man? I’m telling yer, drop it now or there’ll be some.”

Ellingham hesitated. He looked at Mr Williams. “What’s your view on this?”

Mr Williams paused for what seemed to be a very long time. Eventually, he removed the steel table fragment from his pocket. He turned it once more in his fingers, eying it thoughtfully.

“We often try to destroy things we don’t understand. I think that’s rather a pity.” He put the piece down. “A psychic would be useful to many a policeman, I’m sure, in much the same way as an informant would be. But your superiors don’t know that much about your informants, I’m sure.”

But he wouldn’t be useful to Ellingham. The DI was about to be sacked.

“You’re suggesting we just walk away?” Ellingham demanded. “Five people have been killed.”

“Humph!” Mr Williams began his habitual pacing. “Most unfortunate. Doubtless it must be difficult to be young, with limitations uncertain. It must take time to learn restraint, especially in the face of intolerance.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Ellingham was dazed by the headteacher’s attitude.

“I suggest you minimise the danger to the public. Help your psychic by controlling his environment. Smooth out his practical problems, and I believe you’ll help everyone.” He paused deliberately. “This could be important for your career.”

What career? Ellingham felt the desire to laugh wildly. Evidently no-one had told the headmaster of his suspension, and imminent disciplinary inquiry, but Huw Williams had correctly guessed how ambitious he was. He had always wanted to prove something - quite what, he didn’t know. It was as though he needed to show everyone that black people were twice as good.

“Por favor, senor.” Teri was looking up at him. Talk about butter wouldn’t melt! “If you do this, I do what you say. I help you track missing people. Possibly I help not much, possibly I help plenty. I cannot tell. But I am not wicked, senor. I want to live peaceful life.”

Ellingham sighed and pressed his hands to his face, then swept them through his hair. He wondered fleetingly why Teri offered to help him with his police work, when he at least must know Ellingham wasn’t going to be a police officer anymore, but he was too ashamed to reveal his predicament to Conway or Huw Williams. Instead, he glowered at the Spanish boy without daring to ask any questions. After a moment, he began to ponder the headmaster’s advice. Was it better simply to work with the psychic and help control his environment? Wasn’t that the best way to help the public?

He groaned out aloud. “One cock-up, and you can forget it!” he threatened.

And that was his assent.

CHAPTER 18  home

As soon as Ellingham had spoken, Teri looked back at Conway.

“Sleep.”

The word was uttered quickly and quietly, too quickly for Ellingham or Huw Williams to pick up on what he had said, but the effect on Conway was obvious. The boy had been standing very close to Ellingham, looking up at him, ready to persuade him that he must help the psychic. Now he was standing, locked without movement, and was as rigid as a statue. His eyes were open and unmoving.

“What have you done?” Ellingham demanded, suddenly panicked.

“Nothing that he objects to.” Teri replied calmly. He walked over to study Conway’s frozen face, and knew this time the hypnosis had worked because of how deeply they knew each other, and because Conway had already started to realise what was going to happen before it happened. Though apparently rendered senseless, Conway had the greater control. He was waiting to find out what Teri wanted. He was co-operating because he trusted him.

Teri stopped when he was only inches away from the other boy.

“Thank you,” he murmered politely to his superior being. He had to struggle once more with his craving to bow, or even to sink to his knees to kiss the superior being’s hand. The graciousness Conway had shown in trusting him made Terencio feel weak and almost faint.

“The bed is more comfortable, patron.”

Conway blinked. His eyelids lowered, then grew heavy and closed.

“A la derecha.”

Conway swayed to his right, lurched drunkenly, then flopped onto the mattress. He stayed motionless.

Mr Williams moved forward at once to check his pulse.

“He’s all right,” Teri said carelessly.

But the headteacher checked anyway, just to be sure. He nodded an acknowledgement at Ellingham.

“What have you done to him?” Ellingham was anxious.

“In a moment, I ask him to grant me favour.” Teri spoke quickly. “I ask him to do this, because you would like it, I think.”

“A favour?” Ellingham’s voice raised a pitch. He could feel his hands curling into fists. “What kind of a favour?”

The Spanish boy remained calm. “We must discuss something I think you don’t want him to know. So, we talk, and later I ask if he will be kind enough to forget what we say.”

“What the - ?” A few choice curses sprang to mind. Ellingham spluttered. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Do you not?” Teri asked quietly. His dark eyes were solemn. “Senor, all you dread will visit you.”

“What?” Ellingham’s voice was suddenly faint. All you dread - ? What did it mean?

“You know what I mean.” The Spanish boy challenged, and Ellingham stared in disbelief.

“All afternoon, I watch you thinking that you would like to keep your job,” Teri observed. “So now I give you the chance to ask yourself, are you sure? Do you really think that is what you want, Senor Elling’am? If yes, I can ensure that, but I repeat, all you dread will visit you. So maybe now you think again, yes?”

Huw Williams watched in puzzlement. Ellingham seemed dazed beyond rational thought. The Spanish boy was still watching him, and although he found it virtually impossible to feel sympathy for anyone inferior to him, he understood Ellingham’s wants and needs. He knew the detective would not find this easy.

“I am sorry,” he lied. He felt it polite to lie. “But you brought trouble to me, so I gave you trouble back. I cannot undo it, I can only lessen some of it for you.”

“Is it too much to hope that someone will enlighten me?” The headmaster wondered aloud.

Teri glanced at him, then fixed his gaze back at Ellingham. His warning was uttered dispassionately.

“You have not a single colleague who believes you innocent, senor.”

He watched Ellingham’s face intently, not with the sadistic pleasure he had earlier gained from taunting Conway Prest, but with dark, unsmiling eyes.

Ellingham was incapable of speech. He was unable to do anything but stare. A hot prickle had started to creep over the nape of his neck, then it slowly swept down over every nerve in his rigid body, like a snake slithering over him, leaving him slick with sweat.

What he dreaded - what he really dreaded - was that one of his colleagues would think he was a pervert. And according to the psychic, not one thought him innocent. Not one.

“But Conway - “ he began.

“Si. He tell truth, senor.” Teri confirmed, glancing momentarily at Conway’s limp form. “But you must remember what woman with cancer say. She watched you do it, senor. She saw it happen. I make her think she watch you do it.”

“But - !” Ellingham began, stupefied. He had no need to say ‘But’. He knew where this was leading. The letters described the beating in which Conway was scarred in precise detail. She stated the thickness of the coiled steel, the order in which the blows were inflicted, the order of Conway’s movements as he threshed so wildly in a futile attempt to avoid the blows, and the date that it happened - exactly the same date that Ellingham had admitted false imprisonment of a juvenile in his kitchen, the same date that a call had been logged from his home requesting an ambulance... and mysteriously cancelled. Everything Caroline had said in her letter could be supported by medical evidence. Conway’s description of events had been vague and incomplete. He hadn’t been able to say where the attack took place, and he didn’t even know the surnames of the witnesses. The only definite thing he had said, beside the fact that Travis did it, was to confirm the date it happened.

Not only that, but because Caroline had known Ellingham well, and had borne him no apparent grudges, it lent credibility to her accusations.

“The man who really did it - “ Ellingham gasped. He was clutching at straws.

“Si. They look for ‘im.” Teri confirmed. “They all ‘ope to find him, senor. Desperate are they to find ‘im, because they do not want to think it was you. Their hearts say not guilty, but their heads say otherwise. But I expect no inditement. While Conway speak for you, they can prove nothing.”

“Where are the witnesses?” Ellingham demanded.

Teri waved a hand. “This Travis. I think he dead. I sense nothing of him. One who saw it was Romany I think - the one who gave him heroin. But Romany have special resources, senor. He no want to be found, and I no will find him. The others? I know nothing of zem. Conway know nothing of zem.”

He fixed his gaze on the DI. “So, I ask you this again, senor. Is it your wish to be policeman still? To be forced to work alongside those who suspect you, with your name always associated with disgrace?”

Ellingham found himself resuming his paralysis. He was sweating profusely, unable to think, unable to grasp the full implications of his fate. The word he heard, and understood, was disgrace. He stared aghast at the limp form of Conway Prest, and thought only, almost with loathing, of the trouble that street kid had brought him.

“His heart is brave, but it is sad.” Teri observed, regretting that Ellingham should regard Conway with so much hatred. “He has so much sadness in him that I thought you would like to spare him this. But per-aps I was wrong, senor. You want him to know of your shame - to know he is responsible for it - yes?”

“No!” Ellingham blurted.

Teri looked directly at him, and waited for the detective to speak.

Ellingham glanced helplessly around the room, then seemed to realise this was the extent of how much the psychic could lessen his suffering. He offered only the choice that Conway need not know about it.

Ellingham crumpled into sobs. A terrible moment of broken, hateful, self-pitying crying.

He couldn’t do that for long, not with Huw Williams watching so closely, nor with the psychic absorbing all his weaknesses. He quelled his emotion with an effort and looked back at Conway Prest.

“No, I wouldn’t like him to know it.” He spoke quietly, with an admirable attempt at control.

The psychic merely nodded. “And of your job, senor? As you know, in normal circumstances you lose it, but I can ‘elp you with that, if you want.”

The indecision was painful. Ellingham broke out in fresh sweats.

“I - I don’t know.” he stammered. “I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a policeman.”

“O.K.” The psychic nodded, taking the words as an assent.

But Ellingham was already doubtful, unsure if he could bring himself to adapt to his state of disgrace. And in his mind, he saw the stares of his colleagues, their faces stiff with condemnation. One or two, those who were subtle, but insulting, about his skin colour, would be sure to insult him openly about this. He was going to be despised by all those who worked with him.

“Of course, senor, there is other alternative open to you,” Teri observed quietly.

Anything, Ellingham thought, looking at him.

“You could tell them about me, senor.”

Ellingham stared, then laughed wildly. “I’m meant to believe you’ll give me the chance, am !?” he sneered.

“Si senor. I give you that chance,” the boy spoke with calm dignity.

Ellingham laughed even more wildly than before and turned away. He seemed almost punch-drunk with shock. The thought of having to face his colleagues made him feel desperate. He leaned heavily against the wardrobe, the nearest prop available to him, and stared with revulsion at Conway Prest. Bitterness swelled in him.

“I always knew he was trouble.”

“Si. But you were noble man, senor.”

“I didn’t want to be noble.” Ellingham said irritably. “All I wanted was peace and quiet. He just wouldn’t leave me alone, would he? He had to keep  - ”

No-one said anything. Ellingham wondered if he was being selfish. He peered down at Conway’s pale face, and remembered the kid had betrayed little emotion for his mother. Callous kid. He didn’t deserve to have so many people suffer for his sake.

“He plan to hang himself,” Teri offered. “He wait until everyone asleep, and he have rope. He think to do it over the stairs. But I stop him. I tell him his mother value life.” Although Teri didn’t quite deserve the credit, he had no qualms about taking it.

So Ellingham was wrong in thinking Conway was unfeeling. It seemed they all had their cross to bear, Ellingham, with his disgrace, and Conway, over how he came to be born. Even Huw Williams had a heartbreak of his own, it seemed.

Merrill Ellingham felt drained. He wished with all his heart that he never, ever, had to speak to Conway again. A moment later it occurred to him that perhaps he didn’t have to. Perhaps he could get away with never having to visit that skinny runt of a kid.

As though sensing his thoughts, Teri interrupted him. “But he needs you, senor Ellingham. You are mentor to him.”

And then the psychic bluntly spelled out Ellingham’s dilemma. “Many times he will want  to ask you things. But you are right to be reluctant to see Conway, I think. Each time you visit him, your colleagues suspect you a little more.”

He smiled, amused at Ellingham’s predicament. “I think you will be noble again, senor,” he taunted. “I think you will put his needs above those of your own, even if you come to dread the very sound of his voice.”

The taunt was too much for the superior being. Conway opened his eyes, and looked startled. He neither moved, nor spoke, but Teri moved quickly to his side.

“I joke.” He murmered, in apology. “Sleep, please.”

And when Conway did not immediately obey, the psychic urged softly, “Trust me, patron! He has to see you change your bad ways. What bigger reward could he have?”

To his relief, Conway accepted the logic of this argument. The superior being’s eyelids drooped slowly, and eventually shut. Ellingham watched the scene with rising disgust.

“And will he?” he grated harshly. “Will he change his bad ways?”

Teri shrugged, then spoke quietly. “I think yes. I dunno if he ever intended to be so bad, but who was to care that he let himself down? You, senor, have people to support you. Your disgrace will hurt them, but they will believe in you. I do not think you can know what it is to have no family to care for you. But that is why you will continue to care for Conway, senor.”

“Humph!” Ellingham snorted. The idea that he would care one jot for Conway Prest was going to take a lot of swallowing. Just looking at that kid’s face made him feel sick

“What of me, senor?” Teri asked anxiously. “Will you tell them of me?”

But surely he had no need to ask anything. He must understand, more than anyone, what was uppermost in the chaos hurtling through Ellingham’s mind.

He only desired never to see any of them again - Conway, Terencio Otoma, Mr Williams, even. He was about to be disgraced. They were associated with the shame he was going to face.

Ellingham thought he was going to vomit. He wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there.

The DI glanced helplessly around the room. “Mr Williams will help you,” he muttered, clasping the door handle and rattling it.

He stumbled out away down the corridor, knowing only that he needed time. He needed to prepare himself for all he dreaded. Later, perhaps, he could face Conway and give him the support he needed. Perhaps one day he could find it in his heart to forgive him, and Terencio Otoma, for what they had done. In the meantime, he would face his stigma alone.

As he stumbled out into the brilliant sunshine, staring blankly at the beautiful gardens with brightly coloured flowers swaying gently in their beds, he accepted that he wasn’t blameless. He had allowed himself to worsen Conway Prest’s troubles because he had been selfish, thinking only of the damage Conway could do to his career, and not about the vulnerable boy whom he had cynically believed beyond help. His tears of bitterness didn’t alter anything. The boy had dabbled in prostitution because Ellingham failed to help him, and even if the full repercussions of that might not hit Conway for many years, Ellingham knew there would be a time when it would hit Conway very hard indeed.

It was true, what the psychic said. There was no bigger reward he could have than to see Conway changing his bad ways. Only time would tell if the boy could change. Ellingham had no idea if he would or not.

He reached his car, and as though finding it to be some kind of sanctuary, he collapsed once more in a tide of self-pity until the sobs racked him. He had always been ambitious, and his initial successes had come so easily. He thought of having to face his colleagues every day, with not one believing he was innocent and he started to wonder if he could.

Not only that - and now he cursed the psychic sourly - he was not going to be able to help himself acting like a guilty man. Because he knew in advance what his fate would be, because he was already intimately acquainted with what their suspicions were, whatever he did would look fake. He was going to damn himself with his prior knowledge and attempted lies.

Ellingham sobbed more bitterly than he had over anything in his life.

When he had wept himself to calmness, the DI kept remembering one phrase the psychic had said. What bigger reward could he have, than to see Conway change his ways? He phrased it wrongly. What other reward could he have? There was no other crumb of comfort. No other consolation to be salvaged from the whole messy situation.

As he started his car engine and steered the vehicle down the long sweeping drive, Ellingham wondered if Conway could change.

After considering the matter for half an hour or so, he began to believe the boy just might.

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