Witness - [48]

They walked home in silence. Not touching. Mike felt soiled, ashamed. All the old feelings. He wanted to weep but he didn’t know how.

He looked in on Kieran, peacefully asleep, and thought of Stuart’s parents, the horror they would carry with them forever. Of Danny Macateer’s parents.

Vicky came in. ‘I meant it, Mike.’ Her voice was fixed, flat. ‘It’s your choice.’

He had no answer.

PART THREE Stand By Me

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Zak

Soon as he asked for witness protection the atmosphere shifted. They put him back in the cells for an hour or so and then he was shown into a room with a couple of new faces. Plainclothes cops. Little and Large, Zak thought. Little smiled a lot but it was the sort of grin a wolf might have before it attacks. Large never smiled, he looked dead depressed, his mouth turned down, shoulders curled over. He had braces on his teeth. Zak thought he was a bit old for that; most people had ’em done when they were teenagers. But maybe the guy had been in a car crash or a fight or something and the braces were to help repair the damage.

Little and Large went at it for hours: going over what Zak had seen again and again, butting in and trying to trip him up. Almost like they didn’t believe him, thought he was making it up to get off the burglary charge.

They videoed him the whole time. Whenever he asked anything, about Bess, or if they were going to give him protection, they ignored him. Said they needed a full and complete statement first.

‘I’m not going to court without,’ Zak told them. ‘They’ll kill me, they know me. You got to sort me out, new identity, the lot, me and Bess and me mam.’

‘We do this first.’ Little showed his teeth.

Finally they let him have a break and he got given a chicken tikka sandwich and a bag of crisps and a Sprite. Even let him out for a smoke. He wished he had something stronger to take the edge off. He hated being in the cell, locked in. Brought back those sick feelings. Glimpses of memories he didn’t want at the side of his head like glitches on a screen.

He remembered the fly on his face, buzzing by his nose. Buzzing in his head too so he couldn’t think. Everything fuzzy and fizzy. But he wasn’t cold any more. Hot then, lovely and hot. Even with his eyes shut he could feel the line of sunlight, feel the weight of heat pressing him down, heavy as sand. Then the commotion, voices, banging.

Little and Large talked to him again and then they were writing it all out. They wanted him to read it, sign it. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he shrugged.

‘You can’t read,’ Large said like he’d known it all along. ‘I’ll read it, then you sign.’

It sounded dead weird; nothing that wasn’t true but not put the way Zak would put it. He wrote his name on the bottom. He was left-handed and he couldn’t help but smudge the letters.

Large looked at Little. ‘Could do a video statement?’

Zak groaned. ‘Not more.’

‘We edit what we’ve already got, play that in court instead of the prosecution taking you through this.’ He put his hand on the paper statement.

‘Haven’t said I’ll testify yet,’ Zak said. ‘Need some guarantees I’ll be safe.’

‘We’re looking into it,’ Large told him. ‘It’s not a soft option. If we go ahead, accept you on the programme, you’ll be relocated, you’ll lose everyone: friends, family-’

‘I’m not going on my own,’ Zak argued. ‘My mam?’

‘It’s possible. Even so, big strain for both of you. And if you break your cover, make a call, let something slip, do something stupid, then we can’t protect you. All bets are off.’

Little took over. ‘Also, we’d need you to be rock solid for the trial, stand by your evidence.’

‘I will, course I will,’ Zak promised.

He wondered where they’d send them. If it’d be abroad. Spain maybe. He could work in a bar and it’d be warm all the time and his mam’d maybe work there too, or at a restaurant and Bess’d get the leftovers. People’d be on holiday and give good tips ’cos they were having a good time and soon they’d have their own restaurant and pay other people to work and that. But maybe Bess wouldn’t be allowed in Spain ’cos of rabies. So somewhere else. Cornwall? Midge had been down there, he said it was like another country, well chilled and full of surfers and old hippies and that.

It was really, really late when Little and Large came back the next time. They didn’t have him brought up to an interview room but talked in his cell. Zak was climbing the walls by now, his skin all twitchy like insects were crawling over him and the room shrinking in on him.

‘You’ve not been completely straight with us,’ Little said, sitting next to him on the bench. Large leant against the door.

‘I have,’ Zak retorted. ‘It’s all true, all happened like I said.’

‘Your mother, you claim to have lost touch?’

Zak’s belly ached. ‘We did.’

‘When was that?’ Little asked him.

Zak shrugged. ‘Dunno.’ He just wanted to see her.

‘Fifteen years,’ Large said, ‘you were seven years old. You were taken into care. Remember that?’

Zak began to shake, jittery inside.

‘We’ve seen the files,’ Large said. ‘Your mother went down for child cruelty and neglect. She got a five-year sentence.’