Time was the two lads had been inseparable, egging each other on, both drawn to mischief, hot-headed, impulsive. Both prone to giving cheek. But in the last couple of years Declan had started messing with pills, and nowadays he was out of his skull half the time, spending his life in front of the Xbox cocooned in a haze of chemicals.
‘Are you at home? Can I knock on?’
Louise felt a spike of unease. Why on earth would Declan want to visit her? ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘See you in a bit.’
When he arrived, she offered him coffee but he just wanted milk. His eyes were watery and red-rimmed, his lips chapped, his hair straggly and unkempt. Louise felt a wave of sadness for him. He’d lost his way. His life a narrow rut growing deeper, his health precarious. He’d be old by thirty at this rate. And what alternatives were there? There was no one to guide him, to champion him. His mum as lost as he was. He’d never work, not legally; he hadn’t the discipline or the self-belief, let alone any marketable skills. It was such an awful waste.
He nodded at the paper. ‘You seen the pictures?’
‘Yes, have you?’
‘Only on telly.’ He leaned closer. ‘This one,’ he pointed to the bigger lad, ‘I think it’s Gazza.’
Louise felt her blood chill, cold spackle her skin. ‘Who?’
‘Gazza; his real name’s Tom Garrington. Don’t know him really, like, but Luke had a run-in with him a while back.’
‘When? What?’ Her rapid-fire questions disconcerted Declan and she bit her tongue as she watched him struggle to focus.
‘A while back.’
‘How long? When?’
‘Erm…’
‘Summer?’
‘No. Halloween.’
‘What happened?’
Declan puffed out his cheeks, released a slow breath. He looked hounded, head hanging low between his shoulders, eyes averted.
‘Declan, whatever it is, it’s fine. This could be really important.’
‘There was a party – this empty house off Braithwaite.’ One of the roads on the estate. ‘Everyone went. They was all, like, off their heads, man.’ He slid a frightened glance her way. ‘There was a lot of gear.’
‘Gear?’
‘Stuff.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Pills and coke and that meow stuff.’
Oh God. ‘Go on.’
‘That Gazza, it was his birthday, he was with this girl. Well, dunno if he was with her but he was next to her, slagging her off, she was crying. She was off her face, man.’
‘This girl?’ Louise touched the picture in the paper.
‘Nah. Anyway, he’s saying a lot of shit, how he’s going to cut her up and stuff, and Luke just tells him to pack it in. Then he’s yelling at Luke, like well stressed, man, abuse and that. Luke’s ready to thump him. Gazza goes for him but Luke trips him up and he falls in all this crap, like where people have left pizza boxes and dead drinks and fag ends and that. Well rank. Everyone laughs, man.’ Declan tugged at a strand of greasy hair, looking guilty. ‘Then Luke gets his phone out, “say cheese”, takes a video, like. We had to leave then. Luke sent the file round. Put it online.’
For this. For this they had kicked him half to death. Pity and grief and dismay crept through her.
‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’
Declan flushed. ‘It were ages ago. I’d forgotten.’
‘Was this other guy there?’ She tapped the paper.
‘Dunno.’
‘You need to tell the police.’
He sighed, slumped, stared at her, mouth hanging open.
She fought the anger heating her flesh and resisted the impulse to grab hold of him and shake him and tell him to frame his bloody self. ‘Yes, everything you’ve told me.’
‘I’ve not much credit left.’
She bit her tongue. ‘Wait.’ She dialled the number the police had given her, her pulse racing, her stomach knotted and a great weight crushing her heart.
You’d have thought the police would have been falling over themselves to hear what Declan had to say, but they kept them hanging around the reception bit at the police station long enough. Louise gave the gist of why they were there to three separate people one after the other, like it was a memory test.
Finally DC Illingworth, a woman about Louise’s age, glowing with a violent tan and dressed in a purple pinstripe shirt and black slacks, took them into a small room and sat them down. It was just a little box, table and four practical chairs, steel frames and padded seats.
