‘Fly will remain here until we can get a youth court sitting for his remand hearing,’ Harriet is saying.
‘Give us a moment, will you?’ Manon says. ‘Me and Fly.’
Manon
‘I’ll get you out,’ she says to Fly. ‘It’s been a mistake and I’ll get you out.’ He looks so wounded, she is struck by her failure. Our only job is to protect children from the shoddiness of adults and I’ve already failed. She feels deeply implicated, a part of the world that has let him down. The police force has always for her been about protection, but it wreaks havoc also. ‘I’m sorry this has happened, Fly.’
She holds him close. At first he is limp, too dazed to embrace her. Then his tears come again and he holds on to her, full of fear.
She takes his face in her hands, looks into his eyes.
‘I’ll get you out, Fly. You have to trust me. I know this is awful but just … hold your nerve. I will get you out.’
Mark enters the room, sits down at the table and opens his file.
‘Right, I’ve seen the charge sheet and as per usual it’s telling me nothing. Jon-Oliver Ross stabbed, etc, we think your client did it.’
Fly turns to Mark and says, ‘No wonder they charged me, after all that no comment business. You made me look guilty. If I’d just talked to ‘em, told them everyfink, I wouldn’t be in this mess…’
Mark is shaking his head. ‘I advised you to go no comment because we don’t know what they’ve got, right? Fly? Look at me. We don’t know if there’s a witness who could identify you, we don’t know if there’s forensics, we don’t know if they’ve got a weapon. And they weren’t about to tell us anything. Which means you could’ve given them information without meaning to, without even realising you were giving it to them. It was crucial not to say anything that might’ve inadvertently helped their case, right? And as we didn’t know their case, not in any detail, the chances of that happening were quite high. So I was right to advise you to go no comment, and I’m sure your mum will agree with me. Even though she’s a copper.’
He has a dense beard and cowlicks of grey hair, as if electrified. Heavy, black-rimmed glasses. He is smiling at Fly to try and reassure him.
‘They are not going to release you on bail, so it’s likely you’ll be sent down from court, either tomorrow or the next day, to a children’s secure home. Arlidge House would be my guess.’
She can see the terror in Fly’s eyes. So can Mark. ‘It’s not a bad place,’ he says, ‘more like a youth centre than a prison.’ Manon is watching Fly’s face, watching him try to take in all the things he has never considered – that he would be sent to prison without any room for argument. Yesterday double maths, today custody.
‘The only thing I can do for you during this period,’ Mark is saying, ‘while we’re waiting for disclosure – that’s the evidence to be shared with us – is to take lots of detail about your background, how you’re doing at school, any health worries you might have. The Youth Offending team are going to be in doing the same, I’m afraid, to make sure you’re properly looked after in custody. I need you to sign this – it’s a confidentiality waiver – so I can discuss all aspects of the case with your mum.’
As Fly signs, the drips of his tears wet the paper.
Outside, Manon leans her back against the door. She is panting, cannot draw breath. ‘I can’t leave him here. I can’t … Someone has to be kind to him. No one’s being kind to him. I was supposed to protect him from stupid adults and look what’s happened.’
‘Come on,’ says Mark. ‘We’ll go and have a cup of tea. Talk it through.’
As they take the stairs down to the canteen, it’s as if he’s already forgotten her sensitivities, because he says, ‘We’ve got to hope the press don’t get hold of this. You can imagine what the tabs will do with a black 12-year-old charged with the murder of a white banker from the City. It’ll be mayhem, even if they can’t name him.’
Sitting across a Formica table from one another, like fugitives from the officers sitting at adjacent tables, she wipes a new set of tears from her face with a napkin, saying, ‘You don’t need to worry about Fly. He’s super bright, top of his class, great reader. He’ll understand everything you say to him.’
‘Any history of self harm?’
‘No.’
Mark gives her a sceptical look.
‘Look, if there had been, I’d have been all over it,’ she says.
‘Any involvement with the police prior to this?’
‘No; well, me – I’m the police. He was stopped and searched a lot when we lived in London. It was one of the reasons I wanted to get him out, move him here I mean. Bad move, huh.’
‘Background?’
She braces herself to tell Fly’s story, her efforts to bridge the gap between the bald facts and the nuanced reality. How things sound versus how they are lived. Fly’s story always seems to come out the same. Damage equals guilt, but nothing could be further from the truth. How should she describe the boy she has come to love without sounding delusional, blinded by maternal faith?
She tries to tell Mark how losing his brother Taylor was far more significant for Fly than losing his mother, who died six months after Taylor from stomach cancer, though both losses rolled together into a year of turbulent rage and depression, in which she feared she would lose him altogether or that he wouldn’t emerge and she wouldn’t cope.
‘Sorry, your relationship to Fly …?’ Mark says, looking up from his furious note-taking.
‘I was investigating Taylor’s death. Fly and I formed a bond. When Maureen died, I came to London to look after him, and also to be with my sister and nephew. Things just sort of … carried on. I wanted a child and he wanted a mother. A year ago I formally adopted him.’
She watches Mark lean back in his chair, as if there is some sort of fait accompli in his gathering notes. She is pricked by anger, that he is appraising her and Fly’s relationship, picking at the strands that have them so deeply – or tenuously – attached.
‘What, you think you know his story now, is that it?’ she says. ‘It looks bad on paper, this difficult life he’s had, and I’m not going to lie, we’ve had our moments. He’s definitely felt his losses. But the thing about Fly is that isn’t the story. He’s all there. He’s all connected up. He loves Solly and he loves me. Just because he’s been through bad things, doesn’t mean he’s incapable of leading a good life.’
‘It increases his predisposition towards crime and involvement with social services.’
‘Does it now,’ she says.
‘You know it does.’
‘Maybe I know it does in the main, but in this case it doesn’t because it’s Fly.’
‘Can you tell me how he felt about the baby you’re having? Was he threatened by you having a biological child?’
‘No, he was fine. He is fine. Everything is completely fine about the baby.’
Six months earlier
London