Patchwork Man (4 page)

I watched them leave, irritated with the boy, the social worker, Margaret and myself. I shuffled the papers together and flipped the case cover shut. Pointless handing it over to my clerk to gather the rest of the information. If I’d got nowhere, he’d get even less. It was going to be a royal pain in the ass after all. Maybe Margaret’s little list of facts was irrelevant to it, or could be tucked away. If no-one came asking, who was there to answer to? In extreme circumstances we all take on things we don’t intend completing. This would be one of mine. The vicious little bastard probably deserved to go down, anyway. The old woman had been nearly ninety and half blind. It hadn’t been the attack that had carried her off but the complications from the broken hip following the resulting fall. It was a fairly common cause of death amongst the elderly, so the medical report concluded. Manslaughter, not murder; but enough to put this young thug away until his twenties. I tied up the bundle of notes and handed it to my clerk to put in his briefcase.

A sad statistic of life.

Yet unaccountably, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the boy who’d created the statistic because his life was probably the more hopeless overall. The old woman had lived a long life – and apparently full, judging by the hordes of children and grandchildren she’d spawned. He was still merely a child, with no-one to care other than those charged with the clinical ministrations of the state, and already a lifetime of bad role models to follow. Difficult that; to empathise more with the killer than the victim and their grieving family. I sympathised with them but couldn’t feel the emotions they felt because I hadn’t been close to anyone – including Margaret – since I was a child. The boy, though, I understood – more intimately than I cared to admit, no matter how much I’d determinedly sequestered my childhood life from my current one. And that way lay the madness I’d escaped a long time ago.

My clerk had packed the papers away and was waiting quietly by the door, face shining with perspiration. I’d forgotten he was there in my immersion in myself. I was jolted out of my reverie by the social worker returning. Ignoring niceties and the clerk, she plopped down across the table from me, serious faced; a typical do-gooder in ethnic form. Her mouth was still tempting though.

‘Can I make a suggestion?’ My prejudices fired at her temerity. I had a suggestion for her too, but it would have demeaned me to have voiced it, and to be fair she wasn’t responsible for the situation, just the manipulation of it. She was simply another cog in the nanny-state wheel that drove the machinery supporting the Danny’s and hit and run drivers of this world. I made do with a dry rejoinder.

‘You can make it but I won’t necessarily act on it.’

‘Well, you need to earn his trust. I think you’d get more out of him if you did. I don’t think he was responsible, even though he was there. I think at the least, he’s being used by the other kids in the gang he joined – or worse, by someone who runs them – but he’s too afraid to tell anyone in case they get to him. I think there’s more to it than hooliganism – that’s why he’s scared, Mr Juste. He needs someone to look up to and trust. You could be that person.’

‘I should earn his trust?’ l snorted, ‘Miss?’

‘Roumelia.’ It sounded familiar even though it was unusual. The rounded cheeks of her earnest brown face made her seem too young to be doing this kind of job. I could smell her perfume even across the table. Too strong and too tart. She needed something headier – exotic to complement the wide sensuous mouth and Rubenesque curves contained within the regulation bow-necked work blouse and black pencil skirt. Sinner in a social worker’s body. I wanted to laugh at the incongruous ideas forming in my mind. They said pressure got to you in unusual ways. I sternly reeled my imagination in.

‘Miss Roumelia, I am doing this child a favour – not the other way round. He’s accused of manslaughter. I’m trying to get him off the hook and away from a nasty long spell in the University of Crime.
He
needs to earn
my
trust, not I his!’

‘But he won’t confide in you if he thinks you don’t believe him. You need to make a connection with him – something you have in common.’ I laughed caustically, insulted that this outspoken young woman should think there could be such a thing and even more so that she had the cheek to suggest it. Yet there was.

‘Us have something in common?’ The thinly disguised sarcasm of earlier came out full-force this time. She looked embarrassed.

‘I didn’t mean you were alike, but he’s only a kid and you are a figure of authority that’s actually trying to help him, not shut him down. He’s already had a tough life and he’s barely ten. He was only in care because of an administrative hitch they don’t seem to be able to get sorted out. By the time they do, he could be trapped there altogether. He feels rejected and abandoned – all on his own. He has five siblings you see. He’s used to being part of a group so I guess that’s why he joined the gang. He probably thought it would be like family, and now he has to appear loyal to them or there will be more trouble for him. Haven’t you ever felt lonely or lost?’ She paused whilst I battled remembered vulnerabilities, unprepared for her final shot. ‘Your wife said you’d understand when I told her Danny’s story. She said you’d appreciate what this meant for him.’

The shock of the statement battled with outrage at her gall in making it. Neither she, nor the boy were invited into my private life, whatever Margaret might have thought. The present and future might be lonely but my past had been desolate, and I wasn’t sharing any of myself with anyone again. Only Margaret had achieved a modicum of understanding of me over the years I’d known her but it seemed even she’d been planning on using it against me. My vulnerabilities would remain mine alone now she was gone. A bolt of misery shot through me – whether for the past, the boy, Margaret or for myself, I wasn’t sure. It made me angry with the plump brown Madonna who’d prompted it.

‘My wife’s not here anymore, so she’s somewhat irrelevant, whatever she may have said.’ It sounded colder than it was meant. She looked quizzically at me. Had she not noticed the news that had graced the inside pages of the newspapers over the last few weeks?

Understanding dawned and she blushed furiously. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean ...’ I waved away her sympathy. I’d managed this far without it, but it did decide me. The hurt child reverted to invulnerable adult. I don’t know what my face said but my words were carefully chosen.

‘I’m not sure I’m the right person to help him, after all. I will see who else can take the case.’

‘But he needs
you
,’ she pleaded. ‘And he’s a smart kid really – give him a chance.’ I shook my head. The room felt oppressive, and not just from the early summer heat wave. The old miseries reared up and threatened to stifle me. The echoing hall where we lined up for inspection, Miss Liddell’s bony fingers twisting my ear until I thought it would snap off, the harsh rasp of the horsehair blankets on shivering skin at night, and the whispered threats that accompanied the burning pain and knowing it was going to happen all over again ... No, I wasn’t the right person to help him. Somewhere buried deep inside I still needed to help myself. Her eyes reminded me of something too – or someone. ‘Please?’ I couldn’t place them.

The mêlée of emotions were too confusing. I just wanted to get out of there – out of the heat and the pressure and people watching me and her pleading and everyone always expecting me to perform miracles for them without ever wondering how I was feeling. I wanted to be left alone to be the boy under the bedclothes, sobbing his soul into their unyielding depths, letting the misery of the moment be all that there was to feel until it faded enough to bear. I agreed to think about it just to make her leave. She and her soft pink mouth suddenly upset me more than anything else.

*

I
set the case notes aside for the rest of the week, reluctant to stir the hornet’s nest again. Margaret’s manoeuvring felt like betrayal as surely as being left in the children’s home had felt forty years beforehand and I didn’t want to feel angry with her. That felt wrong. After all, she was dead.
Don’t speak ill of the dead, and don’t think it either.
I was sure it was something my mother would have said to me if she’d been around for longer in my childhood. Eventually I re-opened the folder out of necessity the evening before I was due to interview the boy again. The facts were strikingly similar to mine in some ways, but jarringly different in others.

The suddenness of being taken into care and the isolation from the rest of our family were much the same, but his background was one of dishonesty and parental mismanagement whereas mine had been of haphazard poverty ending in loss of control. His father was in and out of jail, and his mother convicted of at least two counts of prostitution with a further one pending. Mine had been upright but inept – or maybe simply too poor. The boy and his siblings seemed to run as wild as we had though, and already appeared to be youthful representatives of the criminal fraternity of the future – apart from the boy, who until taken into care had been doing well at school and mainly stayed out of trouble. Why had he – of all of them – been trapped by red tape? Then it occurred to me that maybe, far from being trapped, he’d been saved; saved from being returned to a foregone conclusion of failure – until the mugging incident. Was this boy a potential murderer? The social worker hadn’t thought so – Miss Roumelia of the brown velvet eyes and inviting mouth. I thought for a long time about both of them; her faith in the boy’s innocence and the boy’s insistence on his innocence. Everything had involuntarily turned on its head in my life recently. Maybe I should deliberately do the same with this case.

I went without an accompanying clerk the next day, and the social worker’s suggestion lingered at the back of my mind so I asked a different kind of question to the one I usually asked.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why are you so angry with everyone?’

‘Cos I been stuffed.’

‘Who by, the other gang members?’

‘No, me mum and dad. They let them take me away – only me, not the other kids. They’re all right. Me; I’m shoved out. Stuffed.’

‘I think you’ll find all your brothers and sisters were shoved out too, as you put it.’

‘No, they weren’t. They went to that place in Putney for just a coupla nights until me mum was back, then they went home again. She,’ he jabbed a thumb in the direction of Miss Roumelia, ‘told me. They weren’t shoved out. They’re all right, Jack. I’m not. Ain’t fair.’ I looked askance at her. It hadn’t helped to fire up his sense of inequality. She tossed her head and stuck out her chin, as if challenging me, and I found myself admiring her spunk. It was a refreshing change in a world of measured words and sycophantic flattery. Even Margaret had been too sugary sweet and polite for me at times.

‘It was an administrative error, we haven’t managed to iron out yet – but we will, in time.’ We locked eyes, hers dark and exciting, mine probing. She looked away first, with that blush again.

I answered for her, and she flicked me a grateful look from under heavy lashes. ‘It seems the mistake was on the authorities’ part, Danny, not your parents. I’m sure they didn’t want any of you
shoved out
.’

You put it right then. You’re authorities. Your lot took me away. You put it right.’ His faced crumpled momentarily and I wasn’t sure whether he was about to snarl, or cry.

‘I can’t sort that out but I can help sort this out,’ I indicated the case papers, ‘if you’ll help me.’ He went back to his standard response. It was well-rehearsed. I wondered who’d rehearsed it with him. I didn’t think it was the social worker: Miss Roumelia. I savoured the name. Exotic, like a tropical flower.

‘Didn’t do it. Wasn’t there.’

‘Danny ...’ Miss Roumelia shifted anxiously in her chair, face glowing softly with perspiration in the warmth of the stuffy interview room. The air conditioning should have worked but had either been turned off or never been turned on down here. Plod regarded solicitors and barristers as the scum of the earth unless they were taking the case against, not pleading the case for. Defendants and their representation plainly didn’t warrant the niceties of fresh air and pleasant working conditions. The stark overhead light picked out the sheen of faint downy hairs on the side of her face. Her eyes asked for me for mercy and him for co-operation. I felt sorry for her. I’d always thought being a social worker was a shit job, even from the time I’d had to be regularly monitored by them myself, right up until now, when I was the one observing the results of regulation. We were about to deadlock again, and her suggestion of a week ago brought a dangerous idea to me. The very appearance of it surprised me. I didn’t usually take risks unless carefully calculated. This one had no risk calculations made at all – other than that it could be disastrously bad or spectacularly effective – but for who, I wasn’t sure. I changed tack dramatically.

‘Tell me about it then – the day they took you away, and we’ll see what can be done.’ Danny eyed me suspiciously and then glanced over at Miss Roumelia. I wondered inconsequentially what her first name was. It should be something like Jasmine. She stared at me, doe eyes hardening until they bored into me, surprised but unexpectedly comprehending. It occurred to me then to wonder how much more she knew. Margaret might not just have said I would understand. She could have told her why – if she’d worked it out herself by then. The question passed between us and her eyes seemed to apologise. I felt betrayed, and wondered again why the hell Margaret had done it. What had got into her? What was it about this boy that she had wanted to risk our comfortable relationship and my sanity for? Miss Roumelia turned away from me to meet Danny’s frown and nodded encouragingly at him, eyes slipping back over the top of his head as he faced me again.

‘Why?’ he demanded. Miss Roumelia’s gaze sought mine, plainly unsure what I was going to say next.

Perhaps there is a side of us that wants to purge and expunge by regurgitating all our deepest, darkest pain when we least intend to. Perhaps the combination of Margaret’s death and the rejection in the boy’s eyes when he’d denounced his parents for ‘shoving him out’ had opened the door to the dark place where I’d kept mine all those years. Perhaps curiosity played a part too – why Margaret had raised this particular ghost before becoming one herself. It was a split second decision – and it came from the same place as the unintentional agreement to continue the case had come from. I almost said, ‘we could compare notes,’ but I managed to pull back from the precipice just in time. I made a dangerous promise instead.