Hurt (DS Lucy Black) (7 page)

She was just reaching the junction of Bann Drive with Irish Street when a youth thudded onto the bonnet of her car as he careened across the road in front of her. He righted himself quickly, glancing into the car, long enough for Lucy to see his face. Then he set off, eight other youths in pursuit.

Lucy grabbed her phone and speed-dialled the residential care unit as she pulled out onto the road, steering one-handed. It was Robbie who answered.

‘Lucy, it’s g—’

‘Robbie, is Gavin there?’ She spoke over him.

‘What? No, he’s out. What’s wrong?’

‘I think I’ve just seen him being chased by a gang. I’m going after him.’ She cut the call immediately.

She could still see the gang running after him along Irish Street. Suddenly, Gavin, about twenty yards in front, sprinted across the road, weaving his way around cars coming in the other direction. The gang in pursuit split, some continuing on the same side of the road, others following him across to the opposite pavement. Lucy sped up, angry that being in her own car, she didn’t have a siren that might help scare the gang away.

Up ahead, Gavin darted off the pavement, slipping through a gap in the wooden fencing to his right and into the car park area at the front of the River City Apostolic Church. The building itself was a basic single storey affair, with a set of steps to the front and little other external ornamentation that would mark it out as a place of worship. By the time Lucy pulled to a stop opposite it, the youths who had been pursuing Gavin had gathered in a scrum at the front steps of the building. Gavin was lying on the ground at the centre of it taking a beating from a dozen Nike shod feet.

Ignoring the oncoming cars, Lucy sprinted across the street, calling out to the gang to stop. Some pack instinct, though, seemed to compel them for none paid her any heed. She reached the outer edge of the scrum and pulled the youth nearest to her backwards, away from the melee. He spun, raised his fist and slashed at her, but she’d anticipated it and slipped to the side. Quickly, she gripped his flailing arm and twisted it sharply back, against the joint. The youth screeched, following the direction his arm was being tugged to alleviate the pain. Lucy tucked her leg behind his and pulled him off balance, onto the ground.

‘Police,’ she shouted. ‘Disperse, now.’

One of the others had turned to see what had happened to his friend and swung a kick wildly in Lucy’s direction. It glanced off her side. He lifted his boot a second time, aiming to stamp rather than kick. Lucy deflected the kick, bringing herself in close enough to him that she could grab his jacket and pull him away from Gavin.

‘I’m the police,’ she shouted at him.

The boy stared stupidly at her for a moment then helped his mate to his feet and ran.

Lucy turned to face the rest of the gang, but the numbers were winnowing out. Two boys continued to kick and stomp on Gavin, who had curled himself almost into a foetal ball by this stage, his hands up over his head, the blood marking his face black under the street lights. They took a final kick, then both turned and ran. One spat at Lucy as he did so.

‘Fenian bitch,’ he shouted.

Lucy followed them a step or two as they ran, then gave up. Several cars had stopped on Irish Street now, the occupants staring at her. One man was standing out of his car, a mobile phone raised, recording what had happened.

A second man was just getting out of his car. ‘Are you all right?’ he called, coming across to her. The mobile phone man continued to film even this.

Lucy grunted thanks for his help and they both went across to Gavin. The boy still lay on the ground, but had brought his hand down from his face. His head was closely shaven, just as Lucy had remembered it from when she had last seen him. In addition to assorted grazes and cuts, a bruise was forming on his cheek. His mouth was slick with blood when he looked up at her. She could tell that he was dazed and was trying to work out how he knew her.

‘Gavin. It’s Lucy. Robbie’s ... friend. Can you hear me OK?’

He looked around him, staring wildly at the man who had come to help. ‘Who’s he?’ he said, then tried to turn and lift himself up a little. Lucy and the other man gripped him around the trunk to help him up, earning only a shriek of pain from him as they did so.

‘His ribs could be broken,’ the man said. ‘He seemed to be taking quite a beating.’

‘What happened, Gavin?’

‘I don’t know. I never seen them before. I was just walking home and they chased me,’ Gavin said. ‘I never said nothing to them.’

‘That wasn’t the crowd I saw you with earlier?’

Gavin shook his head. ‘Nah. The ones you saw me with are my friends. I don’t know who
that
crowd were.’

‘They maybe saw this,’ the man said, pulling the lapels of Gavin’s jacket back to reveal the blood-spattered green and white hoops of a Celtic football top. ‘Not the right colours for this part of the town, son.’

‘I can wear what I want,’ Gavin snapped, then turned and spat a bloody globule of saliva onto the ground.

‘This man is only trying to help, Gavin,’ Lucy said.

‘I don’t need help,’ the boy replied. ‘I need to go, or your boyfriend will be looking for me. He’ll probably phone the cops.’

‘Maybe we should phone them,’ the man muttered to Lucy.

‘I am one,’ she replied. ‘I’ll take him up to the hospital for a check-up, then get him home.’

‘I’m not going to the hospital,’ Gavin said, limping away from them. ‘I’ll walk home myself.’

‘I’ll drive you back at least, Gavin,’ Lucy said.

The boy turned to look at her, then looked around him, as if to see who was watching. ‘Me in a cop’s car? Not a fucking chance.’

In the end, after walking almost half a mile towards the residential unit with Lucy trailing him slowly in her car, Gavin gave in and agreed to be taken to Casualty. Lucy called Robbie, who was nearing the end of his shift in the unit and was waiting for his replacement for the evening shift. He suggested that if Lucy could take Gavin to A & E, he would come across and relieve her as soon as he was done.

The waiting area in Casualty was busy, though it was early enough in the evening that the habitual drunken injured hadn’t yet begun to seep in. A few obvious fracture injuries were waiting. A young man who had fallen through a pane-glass doorway was rushed through, the blood trailing behind him all the way in, despite his best efforts to stymie its flow from his arm.

Gavin sat sullenly next to Lucy, playing a game on his phone. He slouched low in the seat, his hood pulled up over his head.

Lucy glanced at the phone. ‘Do you play Angry Birds?’

Gavin answered without looking at her. ‘That’s ancient,’ he said.

‘That’s a nice phone. Is it new?’

His head twisted within the hood so she could only see his left eye, squinting suspiciously. ‘I didn’t steal it if that’s what you think.’

‘I didn’t think anything,’ Lucy said, though she was immediately reminded of the new phone Karen Hughes had been given.

‘Anyway, it’s not a phone. It’s an iPod Touch. My granda bought it for me.’

‘It’s nice.’

Gavin grunted in response, then resumed playing.

‘I was sorry about Karen.’

‘It’s shit,’ Gavin muttered. ‘She was nice. When I moved into care, like, she was good to me.’

‘Between your dad’s death and now Karen. I know she wasn’t family or that, but, you know ... it must have been a difficult few weeks for you.’

‘Me da was a useless bastard. No loss that he topped himself.’

Lucy said nothing, glancing across at the couple opposite who were watching them, perhaps attempting to work out how Lucy, in her late twenties, could have a son Gavin’s age.

‘He had issues,’ Gavin offered suddenly, making speech marks in the air with his fingers. ‘So the shrink told me.’

‘The shrink?’

‘They made me see one – a thingie. To talk about it.’

‘How’s that going?’

‘It’s a load of bollocks. She says that loads of men from the Troubles and that are killing themselves now. She says they have inter-somethinged their guilt and anger.’

‘Internalized.’

‘Aye, that’s it.’

The fingers stopped sliding over the screen. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked quietly. ‘I didn’t want to ask her in case she thought I was stupid.’

‘You’re not stupid.’

‘I didn’t say I was. I said I didn’t want to look it. There’s a difference, you know.’

Lucy ignored the comment. ‘It means when the Troubles were happening, people had places to direct their anger, to get rid of it. When it all ended, that anger didn’t go away too. It was still there, except a lot of people couldn’t get rid of it the way they used to.’

‘Like in riots and that.’

‘Aye. Or even just quietly supporting what was happening. Turning a blind eye to things. People can be complicit without doing anything.’

The boy didn’t speak and she knew she had lost him, though he wouldn’t admit such after the previous comment.

‘Anyway, whatever. It means that, because they can’t get rid of their anger – or guilt in your dad’s case – the way they used to, they turn it inward, on themselves.’

‘Like hurting themselves. Like Karen.’

Lucy was momentarily surprised that Karen had confided in Gavin about her self-harming. They’d not known one another long. Then again, they had been in the residential unit together, both let down by their families. The same boat.

‘Yes,’ Lucy said. ‘Like Karen.’

Gavin nodded.

‘Did Karen ever mention any boys to you? Anyone called Paul Bradley, maybe?’ Lucy asked. If she’d confided her harming to Gavin during the period when they had been in the care unit together, she might have mentioned the new boyfriend, if that was what Bradley had been to her.

The boy considered the name then shook his head. ‘I saw her once or twice with a fella. A bit older than her, short dark hair. That was it. She never mentioned him though. Never mentioned any names anyway. Is he a suspect?’

‘She met someone on Facebook. We’re not sure if the name’s real or not. It’s something we’re following up,’ Lucy said. ‘Speaking of following, why
were
that crew following you tonight?’

‘Maybe they had anger issues too.’ Gavin chuckled darkly to himself, then resumed the game again.

By the time Robbie arrived, Gavin was already being assessed by the doctor on duty. He’d removed his top to reveal a series of vivid bruises forming along his back and ribcage, a mixture of reds and purples. There were other, yellowed bruises too, healing already from earlier beatings.

‘It’s just scars on top of scars,’ the doctor said to them disgustedly after the assessment. ‘He has bruised his ribs, so I’m going to get some X-rays done. He has taken a few blows to the head, too, but no concussion. Maybe keep an eye on him tonight. Wake him a few times during the night to make sure he’s OK. We’ll get him back from the X-rays as soon as we can.’

Robbie and Lucy went back out to the waiting area again and Robbie bought them two coffees from the vending machine humming in the corner. It was the first time they had been alone together since Lucy had broken off their relationship a month earlier after hearing from one of the kids in the residential unit that Robbie had been seen kissing one of the other social workers at a Hallowe’en party. Robbie had tried to explain to her that the kiss had gone no further than that. To Lucy’s mind, a kiss was already too far. As she watched him approach, bearing two steaming polystyrene cups, she wondered, not for the first time, whether she had overreacted.

The first drunk had arrived and was declaiming to all those still waiting as to just why Christmas was so shite. He waited for fifteen minutes before announcing that he’d been kept too long, and so left. It was never clear to anyone else there what the nature of the injury that had brought him to A & E in the first place had been.

‘Thanks for the coffee,’ Lucy said, sipping at it.

They sat for a moment, drinking in silence.

‘You don’t need to stay if you have somewhere to go,’ Robbie said.

‘I know,’ Lucy said.

Robbie nodded. ‘So, any plans for Christmas?’

‘Not yet. You?’

‘I’ll cover the day shift so that the workers with families can be at home with their own kids. Then in the evening I’ll probably head home to Omagh. My parents still like us all to come home for Christmas. We all muck in and make dinner. It’s always good fun. For an hour. Then you remember why you moved out.’

Lucy laughed lightly. ‘I don’t remember family Christmas’,’ she said. ‘I’ve vague recollections of Santa and that, but the one I remember clearly was when I was eight, just after Mum left. Dad decided I was old enough to be told the truth after he read my Santa letter that year.’

‘Why?’

‘I’d asked him to bring my mother back.’ Lucy glanced at Robbie, the expression of concern on his face, and smiled. ‘That was the last time I wanted that, mind you.’

‘Santa’s a bastard that way,’ Robbie said. “I always wanted Mousetrap, and he never brought that to me. That and a James Bond attaché case.’

Lucy laughed, then turned her attention to the polystyrene cup in her hands, tearing the rim and folding down the top of the cup.

Robbie nudged her and handed her a folded piece of paper.

‘What’s that?’ she asked. She took it, unfolded the page and found an address written on it.

‘You’d asked me where Mary Quigg’s baby brother, Joe, ended up. Before we ... you know. Before.’

Lucy nodded. ‘Thanks, Robbie,’ she said, refolding the page slowly and slipping it into her back pocket.

‘A token of my regret,’ Robbie said. ‘Over all that happened.’

‘And mine,’ Lucy added, though she suspected not referring to the same events as Robbie.

‘Nothing broken,’ Gavin said, interrupting them. They looked up to where he stood. ‘No bones at least,’ he added, looking from one of them to the other.

The following morning, Lucy drove into work via the Culmore Road. The note Robbie had given her sat open on the passenger seat. The address listed was in Petrie Way, a fairly affluent area of the city. Joe Quigg had been the only survivor of the fire that had killed Mary and her mother. With no family left, he would be placed with foster parents in the hope that someone might adopt him. Lucy had asked Robbie, while they had still been together, for details of the family with whom the baby had been placed. He’d refused then; it said something about the guilt he felt that he should give it to her now, she reflected.