When I Was Joe (29 page)

We get back to the flat and we're unpacking all the stuff, and Mum is talking about getting Maureen to call the Open University and see if her credits can be transferred to her new name so she can pick up her studies again. ‘Only two more courses and I've got a law degree,' she says. And then we hear a knock at the door.

‘Who on earth is that?' says Mum. ‘Doug said he wouldn't be back until Tuesday to hear how your first day went.'

We both freeze, looking at each other nervously.
She says, ‘You go out on to the roof and I'll see who it is.'

So I'm lying on the roof, watching the seagulls circling overhead and pretending they are vultures about to pick out my eyes, when DI Morris and DC Bettany step out to join me. ‘Don't get up,' says DI Morris, and he sits down next to me. DC Bettany gets out his notebook. I'm beginning to hate that notebook.

So there's nowhere to run when DI Morris says, ‘I've been talking to a friend of yours and I'd like to ask you some more questions.'

‘Oh, yeah?' I say cautiously, watching three gulls fight viciously over a piece of fish. I'm wondering if he's been to see Claire, and hoping he doesn't mean Ashley.

‘I want to ask a bit more about what happened before you got to the park,' he says.

And I know who he means. He doesn't mean Ashley. He doesn't mean Claire.

He's been talking to my friend Arron Mackenzie.

Arron promised. He promised me. ‘I'll never tell it was you,' he said. But of course six months in a youth offenders' institution can change anyone. I wouldn't blame him if he's told them what I did. But that doesn't mean I'm giving anything away right now.

I sit up. ‘I thought you weren't meant to be talking to me without a lawyer here. Or my mum, anyway.'

DI Morris says, ‘Here she comes.' And Mum's climbing out on to the roof as well. She sits down and says, ‘Are you sure you don't want to come back downstairs? It's a bit more comfortable.'

‘We shouldn't be too long,' says DI Morris.

Oh. That doesn't sound like. . . I'll just wait and see what he asks. No point rushing into anything.

He's asking about the paper round. About whether I ever saw anyone using the bags to transport anything
other than newspapers and magazines. Whether any little packages were involved. And I say no, I was always the first one to get my bag and I had the longest round and they were all finished before me. It's true. I don't know if anything else I tell him will be.

Then he says, ‘I want to ask you about a meeting that you and Arron had with the youths that you identified as being with Arron in the park. Julian White – known as Jukes – and Mikey Miller. Is that correct?'

‘It wasn't a meeting like that. They were just there when we got off the tube on the way home from school. . . I thought maybe they'd been bowling. The bowling alley's just there by the tube station, you know. . .' Of course I realise now that Arron must have arranged it.

‘I just knew them from boxing. Friends of Nathan, at least, I think so. . . ‘

They were scary, these guys. We met them by the bowling alley on the way home from school and walked with them down to the bus stop. We stopped outside one of those shops that sell knocked-off mobiles. ‘What you want from us, boys?' asked one, and Arron said we needed protection. He'd been mugged the week before, threatened with a blade and robbed of his watch, and he was jumpy. That's when we both started carrying knives.

‘You gotta earn dat protecshun,' said Mikey. He's one of those white guys who talk all the time in gangsta, have massive tattoos and go heavy on the bling. He had huge diamond studs in his ears and a gold tooth, and the sort of gold chains that you only wear in our area if you're tough enough to defend them. ‘You gotta do some li'l jobs for us.'

I was too scared even to speak but Arron said, ‘OK, man, no problem.' And they all laughed together.

‘Wha' abou' ‘im?' said Jukes, jerking his thumb at me. Jukes isn't one for the bling, and if you saw him in the street, the only thing that might make you look twice is the eagle tattooed on his arm. It's only because I've seen him fight at boxing club that I know how much power is packed into his stocky body. I shook my head and stared at the gum-splattered pavement, and the two of them laughed. And Arron joined in after a few minutes and said, ‘He ain't got no bo'ul.'

‘So you thought Arron was looking for protection from Jukes's gang,' says DC Bettany.

‘No . . . yes . . . sort of. I didn't think they were a gang.'

‘And you knew he was going to the park to do a job for them?'

‘Umm . . . I didn't know exactly. He asked me to come along, and then he started talking about protection
again, said I'd be a target for everyone unless I had it. But I said I wouldn't come. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to get into trouble.'

I don't tell him that Arron wanted me to do the job for Jukes and Mikey. That he said, ‘Prove yourself a man.' When I said no, he spat on the ground and said, ‘You're letting me down, Ty. You're just a big girl.'

‘You didn't want to get into trouble,' said DI Morris, and then, ‘Well, you seem to have changed your tune recently. Suspended twice from school in as many weeks.'

‘Sorry. It was an accident. I don't really know how it happened.'

‘Don't let it happen again.'

‘No,' I say, and think about what a completely boring person Jake Ferguson's going to have to be. He's going to have to make much better choices than Joe or Ty. I don't know if I'm up to it.

‘So then you followed Arron?'

I've told them about this again and again. I'd followed him all the way to the lower entrance. It's only a small park. It stretches between two streets, up a hill, with a pond at the bottom and a children's playground at the top. Arron and I used to play a lot in that playground when we were younger. There's a wooden castle with walkways and a slide, and the usual swings and stuff.
We loved it there.

He'd gone in towards the pond and I ran around the perimeter fence, up the hill on the other side, and climbed over the fence at the top. No one was playing in the playground because it was getting dark and it was drizzling. I climbed into the castle, because from there you can see the whole path and everyone coming up the hill, but no one can see you.

‘I followed him. Just in case he got hurt or anything. I didn't know what was going to happen. ‘

‘Right. And when did Jukes and Mikey turn up?'

‘They were walking up with Arron. They must have met him down by the pond. And then they all hid themselves and waited for someone to come along. But I've told you all this before. ‘

I'm thinking about that boy walking up the path towards them. I think about him a lot. He was singing along to his iPod. He was only the same age as me. He wore a hoodie and baggy trousers and he was eating chips and he looked just like all of us, except he was black and we were white. And I wanted to shout and warn him, but he wouldn't have heard because he was plugged into his music.

Arron leapt out at him. He had his knife out and he hit the boy's chips out of his hand. ‘What've you got for me?' he said. You'd have thought the boy would have
just given up right away, handed over the iPod and run away. That's what I would have done. But he didn't. He had his own knife. And he started waving it back at Arron.

If I'd done what Arron wanted and been the one mugging the boy, then I'd have dropped my knife and run away. And I can run so fast that there wouldn't have been a fight. But Arron didn't run. He was backing off, looking around, unsure what was going to happen next.

Jukes and Mikey jumped out and pushed him forward. ‘Go on, man, don't let him disrespect you,' said Mikey. The knives waved in the air. I stayed frozen in the castle. What if I'd tried to help . . . shouted out . . . had some credit on my phone?

Then Jukes grabbed the boy's arm and twisted it. The knife in the boy's hand grazed Arron's ear, sending blood gushing over his shirt. And Jukes pushed the boy away, and he fell against Arron. And Arron's knife. And they splashed into the mud together and they were fighting, and all I could see was a tangle of bodies. And blood. And mud. And Jukes and Mikey running away.

And there's no point going through this with DI Morris because this was all in my original statement. They know this bit, every last detail.

‘And how close did you get, before you called the ambulance?' asked DI Morris.

‘Not close at all,' I said. I'd jumped down from the castle and run away. I could have just run and run and never come back, but I didn't. All the time in my head there were the two thoughts – first ambulance, then Arron. How to get an ambulance. How to help Arron. How to make certain he didn't take all the blame.

I got out on to the road and I saw the bus coming up the hill towards me. And I stuck my hand out to stop it. When the door opened I shouted, ‘ Ambulance . . . call an ambulance. In the park, by the playground . . . someone's really hurt.' And then I ran back.

‘And then you helped Arron run away,' says DI Morris. ‘Yes,' I say, and I wait. But he doesn't know. He doesn't know. Arron didn't tell him what really happened then.

‘When did you realise he'd also been hurt?'

‘When we were running. It all happened really quickly.'

‘His idea to run, or yours?' he asks.

‘Both,' I say firmly.

He's looking curiously at me, like he knows there's something wrong with my story. But he doesn't ask. He doesn't ask. So I don't have to lie.

He asks a few more questions, but nothing I can't
handle. And then he says, ‘We're nearly there with the case that we're building but there may yet be some delays before it goes to court.'

‘Oh, yeah?'

‘Be patient. Keep your head down. We'll have a new statement which covers this meeting outside the bowling alley for you to sign in a week or so.'

‘What about Arron? What's going to happen to him?'

He shakes his head. ‘I can't tell you that,' he says.

I don't know a lot about courts and law but I'm hoping that, by telling DI Morris that Arron wasn't meaning to stab anyone, I can help him. Arron was injured as well. I'm sure he'll be able to argue self-defence. He's a lot younger than Jukes and Mikey. As long as the court believes me about what they did. I wonder what Arron's statement says.

‘How come you never thought I was involved?' I ask. I want to make absolutely sure that I'm in the clear.

‘Luckily for you, we found traces of your DNA on the castle, which backs your story, and the timing of you appearing on the bus route also seems to rule out much involvement. Anyone who'd been in that fight would be covered in blood and mud, and every passenger on that bus says you were spotless. It'd be hard to
prove joint enterprise – that you were working with the others. Of course, you could have been acting as their look out, but we're not pursuing that line. We checked your computer as well and there's absolutely nothing on the hard drive to link you with any gang activity.'

I think about them checking my laptop, reading every message I've ever written, every word of the diary I kept for a bit – which was mostly about Maria at the tattoo parlour – and I feel a bit like someone's just gone through my underwear drawer or filmed me in bed at night. It's not good to be spied on. It makes you feel automatically ashamed.

‘Can I talk to him, to Arron?'

‘No, Ty, because you're a witness in the case against him.'

All these months I've been worrying that Arron and his family hate me for going to the police. All these months I've been confused about who's after me. But when I think clearly, I know who I have to worry about. I'm pointing the finger at the one who pushed the boy on to Arron's knife.

‘OK,' I say, ‘why can't you arrest Jukes's family? Because you know they were the ones that threw that bomb and beat up my gran, don't you? Why can't you lock them up?'

He sighs. ‘It's a fair question,' he says. ‘The problem
is proof. These are organised criminals. They're probably responsible for half of the drugs on the streets of North London. They control a large number of people and they have vast resources. Nothing that's happened to you will have been done directly by them. Getting people to testify against them is a problem, and getting hard proof that they are ultimately responsible for any one crime is extremely difficult.'

Fair enough, I suppose. It makes me feel a bit stupid, though, that I didn't realise what a risk I was taking when we went to the police in the first place. I wonder how they're keeping Arron safe in prison. Or did Arron even name Jukes and Mikey in his statement?

And then DI Morris says to me, ‘OK son, behave yourself from now on,' and they leave me alone on the roof.

I lie on my back again and look up at the seagulls. And I'm back in far, faraway London, running back to Arron in the park.

I can see that the boy is dead. He couldn't look more dead. There is blood everywhere. But Arron is desperately shaking him and shouting at him, ‘Wake up, man, help is coming, it's gonna be OK.'

‘Come on Arron, leave him. You can't help him now.'

‘Shut up, man,'

‘Come on Arron, you can still escape.'

‘Shut the fuck up.'

So I get out my knife. And I wave it in his face. And I say, ‘You do as I tell you.'

‘Make me, gay boy.'

I slash the knife at his arm. Harder than I meant to. And he's bleeding and gasping and looking at me like he never knew me.

The strange thing is that sometimes, when I remember it, my knife slices hard into his arm and blood spurts out in a fountain. And sometimes my knife just scratches his arm, leaving a straight red line which oozes little drops of blood. I have no idea which memory is right. I've been over it again and again in my head.