We Can Be Heroes (30 page)

‘My dad told me not to.'

‘When?' I ask.

‘Later.'

‘When later?'

‘Just later,' he says.

And then we hear the patio door open. ‘They've only gone and arrested that lad next door,' Grandad is saying. ‘Come on or you'll miss it.'

‘Remember, you promised,' Jed hisses. ‘You can't tell anyone. Not even Priti.'

‘I promise,' I say. And I can see my mum's face again, smiling, happy.

It turns out the police did find something when they combed the park – that's why they're taking Mik in for questioning. We watch them escort him out of the house. First we watch it live, then we see it again on the TV and for the first time we can see how badly beaten up he is. The whole left side of his face is swollen – red, black and blue – and one eye is completely closed.
He walks uncomfortably, like he's in real pain. The photographers crowd round the police car to take pictures.

‘Why don't they question him at home if he's not a suspect?' asks Jed.

‘Priti would know,' I say.

But we haven't spoken properly to Priti for a couple of days – and I kind of miss her.

‘Dad says we need to keep an eye on her,' says Jed. Uncle Ian called last night to talk to Jed.

‘On Priti?'

‘On her whole family. He reckons they might be into child-trafficking. White kids. Better than a bomb, he reckons. Make a few little white kids disappear and you destroy the confidence of a community.' Jed doesn't look at me as he says this. He's flicking through my notebook, but he doesn't seem to be actually looking at the pictures.

‘Mik looked pretty bad, didn't he?' I say.

‘Did he?' Jed shrugs.

‘Did you see him get beaten up then?' I whisper.

‘I told you. I'd gone before it all kicked off.'

He doesn't say any more after that, but he looks uncomfortable. My big, cool, unflappable cousin looks almost – what? – scared? And now I'm sure that he's lying.

This morning, there's a little group of people at the bottom of the close holding banners with pictures of Stevie and slogans like, ‘Give her back!' and, ‘Pakis stole Stevie Sanders'. Grandad says we should take them tea and sandwiches, but Granny won't let him.

She won't let us go over to Priti's house either, although when Jed asks if this is because Mik has been arrested, Granny says, ‘He's not been arrested. He's been taken in for questioning.'

But then we see Priti snaking her way through the reporters to get across to our house. For some reason she's wearing a sari and a headscarf, although she's still got her wheelies on, so some things don't change.

‘They're like flaming piranhas out there!' she says, after Granny shows her up to our bedroom. ‘Thanks, Mrs Evans,' she says, pulling off her headscarf and giving Granny her best smile.

Granny just nods and I don't know if I'm imagining
it, but I can't help thinking she isn't quite so friendly to Priti as usual.

‘What's happening?' I ask.

‘They took Mik in for questioning.'

‘Yeah, we know that,' says Jed, who's staring out of the window with the binoculars and acting like he's not really listening.

‘And a policewoman is talking to Zara. They know she was in the park. They want to know what she saw.'

‘What did she say?' I ask.

‘She still says she wasn't there, but they know she's lying.'

‘What's going to happen to her, do you think?' I say.

‘My dad will go mad if he finds out she was with Tyreese. And, even worse –' Priti looks almost excited when she says this – ‘Tyreese got Mik taken in by the police.'

‘How?'

‘It turns out Stevie is Tyreese's cousin of some sorts.'

‘No way!' I say and even Jed looks like he's vaguely interested in this new piece of information.

‘Yeah, her mum and his dad are cousins or something.'

‘But it's not like Mik knew that,' I say.

‘I know, but Tyreese says he did and that Mik kidnapped Stevie as revenge cos he reckoned Tyreese had stabbed Said. Cousin for a cousin sort of thing.'

Jed puts down the binoculars, but he doesn't say anything.

‘So what's going to happen now?' I ask, glancing at him.

‘Well, for a start, Jed's going to tell the police what he saw when he went back with his dad so the police can get their story straight,' says Priti.

‘What?' Jed spins around so quick he almost falls off the windowsill.

‘You must have seen what went on,' Priti says. She's got a no-nonsense look on her face and her hands are on her hips. ‘You can tell them he's innocent,' she says. ‘And so can your dad, if he's not bent on trying to frame Muslims.'

‘My dad is not bent.'

‘No, but he is a racist bigot!'

‘He is not!'

‘Whatever. You have to clear Mik because they'll find out you're lying eventually.'

‘Zara could tell them,' says Jed. ‘She saw what went on too.'

‘So you did see it then!' Priti says triumphantly.

‘Maybe. But so did Zara. She can tell the police.'

‘Two reasons why not – one, she's not going to tell my mum and dad she was making out with a biker or they will kill her, literally kill her. Two, she left the park long before you did.'

‘Mik already knew about Zara and Tyreese,' says Jed angrily. ‘He could have told your parents any time.'

For perhaps only the second time since I've known her, Priti is lost for words.

I imagine doodling a speech bubble above her head, filled with rows of question marks.

‘He was going on about it that day,' Jed continues, ‘like he'd known for ages.'

‘I don't get it,' I say.

Priti still has her mouth open, like a fish. Now in my head I'm doodling flippers and a fin and air
bubbles rising up out of her mouth.

‘He was going on like, “I don't say nothing about your little meetings with my sister in the woods, but you lay another finger on her and I'll kill you!” that sort of thing,' says Jed.

‘So Mik knew Zara was meeting Tyreese in the park all along?' Priti says quietly. She looks like her brain's working really hard to figure it all out.

‘Mik must have seen that he'd hit her though,' she says.

‘Who hit her?' I say. ‘Why?'

‘Tyreese,' says Priti. ‘Zara told me that when she tried to end it, Tyreese got rough with her.'

‘So that's why Mik got his gun out?' I say.

Jed glares at me.

‘Mik had a gun?' For the second time in five minutes Priti looks gobsmacked.

‘Jed saw it,' I say, ignoring the looks he's giving me.

Priti glances at Jed, who just shrugs.

There's a pause in which I can almost hear the cogs in Priti's brain turning. ‘How did they manage to beat him up then?' she asks.

I've been wondering this too. Because even if the gun had no bullets or was a fake, how would the bikers have known? And they wouldn't have taken him on if he was waving a gun.

Jed just shrugs, but his face goes really red.

‘You have to tell the police what you saw, Jed,' I say.

‘And you have to learn to keep your promises!' he snaps back.

‘Why won't you tell them?' demands Priti.

‘I've got my reasons.'

‘What are they?'

‘Loyalty. That's something we have in my family!'

Priti pulls a face. ‘OK, let me rephrase the question then: why doesn't
your dad
want you to tell the fuzz what you saw?'

‘None of your business,' says Jed.

He refuses to talk about it any more after that. He just gets out his console, slumps on the bed and acts like we're not even in the room. Priti says she's not going to hang out with someone who is wilfully obstructing the course of justice and storms off home.

I watch her wheeling her way through the journalists then I pull out my notebook and start work on a new Bomb-busters storyline in which Jed-eye and Lil' Priti are arguing about whether to get the police involved or to mount a solo mission to rescue the kidnapped girl from the hostage-takers. But I only manage to do one frame because I keep thinking about what Jed said and I can't seem to concentrate on drawing properly.

When we wake up, we see that somebody has graffitied the front of the Muhammeds' door in the night:
Pakis, give her back!
it says in bold, red letters. Mr Muhammed tries to wash it off and the TV crews film him out there with his sponge and bucket of white spirit. But it won't budge.

Something else has happened too. Uncle Ian has told the police that Jed's mum was there on the day of the wedding party. He turns up at the house again, this time with the nice policewoman and the policeman, who say they need to ask more questions. And they bring a social worker, at Uncle Ian's request, supposedly to protect Jed's interests – although Jed doesn't look too pleased about it. In fact, he doesn't look too pleased about seeing his dad at all.

First the policeman asks Granny and Grandad about Auntie Karen coming over and ‘harassing them' as Uncle Ian calls it. Uncle Ian sits on the arm of the sofa with his arm round Jed's shoulders and answers
most of the questions for them, even though he wasn't actually there.

The social worker makes loads of notes and at one point she says, ‘But Karen was granted contact rights by the family court, is that right?'

Granny looks up and Grandad is staring at Uncle Ian.

‘Jed didn't want to see her and I wasn't about to force him,' says Uncle Ian. ‘Isn't that right, son?'

Jed just nods. With his dad's arm round him, he looks smaller than usual.

Granny purses her lips tight and Grandad looks confused.

But then the police start asking me and Jed loads of questions, and Uncle Ian keeps his arm round Jed's shoulders the whole time as if he's afraid Jed might leg it out of the room. Jed keeps shifting around and scratching his head like he's got nits or something.

Were we aware of Auntie Karen's presence at the wedding prior to the encounter in the alleyway? the policeman asks us.

‘No,' says Jed.

‘Were you aware she'd been spying on you?'

‘No – That is, yes.'

‘Which is it?' The policeman asks all the questions this time, not the nice police lady who just stands in the background and takes notes.

‘I suppose,' says Jed. He keeps scratching his head till I reckon it must really hurt, but he can't seem to stop.

‘How did you know? Did she say she'd been spying on you?'

‘She wanted to see me, yeah,' says Jed, still scratching.

Uncle Ian slaps his hand away from his head sharply. Jed twitches his head and holds his hand tight in his lap.

‘Did she say whether she had ever spied on you before?'

‘No.'

‘And had she tried to make contact with you before this?'

I think of the letter under the bush, the letter Jed keeps under his mattress and which I've been tempted to read, but haven't.

‘No.' The way he's sitting, it looks like Uncle Ian's arm round his shoulder weighs a ton or something.

‘Has she or any member of her family ever tried to make contact with you outside the terms of the contact order?' asks the social worker, who is middle-aged and dressed in beige and talks with a fake, soft voice.

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Any secret meetings? Phone calls? That you weren't supposed to tell anyone about? Don't worry – you can tell us.' She smiles in that way that is supposed to make us feel we can trust her, but immediately makes me feel the opposite.

I glance quickly at Granny, who looks pale and washed out, her blue eyes suddenly grey like her hair.

‘No!' says Jed.

‘And on the day of the party,' the policeman says, obviously keen to stick to what's relevant to the Stevie Sanders enquiry, ‘would you say your mother seemed desperate?'

‘Yes,' says Jed.

‘More so than usual?'

‘I don't
usually
see her, so how would I know?' Jed
twitches his head again and stares down at his hands.

The policeman turns to me. ‘Ben, do you think Jed's mum seemed agitated or distressed that day?'

‘I guess so,' I say. I want to add that this isn't really surprising, but Uncle Ian is looking at me, so I don't.

‘Did either of you see which way she went after she spoke to you?'

‘No,' says Jed.

I say nothing.

‘Of course, you ran off, didn't you?' says the policeman, looking back through his notepad, but I'm not sure if he believes Jed. ‘You ran down to the other end of the cul-de-sac,' he says, reading from his notes. Then he looks up. ‘So if she'd left that way, you'd have seen her, right?'

‘I don't know,' says Jed, twisting his fingers in his lap.

‘Answer the question!' says Uncle Ian.

‘I suppose so,' says Jed.

‘Did you see her leave that way, Mr Evans?' The policewoman turns to Uncle Ian. ‘You were with Jed at that time.'

‘No,' says Uncle Ian. ‘No, I didn't.'

‘So the only other way she could have left would have been through the park?'

Suddenly I see what they're getting at. They think she went back through the park and snatched Stevie on the way – just like Priti's mad theory.

‘She didn't go through the park,' says Jed quietly.

‘How do you know?' the policeman says.

‘I just know,' says Jed. ‘She must have left some other way.'

‘What about you, Ben? Did you see which way she left?'

I glance at Jed.

‘No,' I say, then, ‘I don't know.'

But they don't seem that bothered about what I've got to say because then Uncle Ian starts talking about restraining orders and stuff and the police talk about getting Auntie Karen in for questioning. And suddenly it's like me and Jed aren't even there at all. I look at Jed, who's staring out of the window in the direction of the alleyway.