Nowhere Child Read online

  Tom interrupted.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to say these things about me, Emma. But they’re not entirely true. I can be a grumpy bugger when I’m tired, so don’t be under any illusion that I’m the perfect father. I’d love to be, if only I knew what that was.’

  Emma laughed.

  ‘I don’t much believe in perfection. But I do believe in always trying to be the best we can, and I think that’s what you’re like. I’m serious, Tom. You’re a good parent, and I respect your values. That’s why I’d like to ask if I can name you in my will as Ollie’s guardian.’

  Tom had been about to say something about Emma being ridiculous thinking about death at her age. But they were standing in her kitchen, on the very spot where her husband had been murdered – murdered because Emma had disobeyed the gang’s instructions and informed the police of Ollie’s kidnap. The gang – and in particular its enforcer, Finn McGuinness – hadn’t liked that one little bit, and David had borne the brunt of their anger.

  Flattered though Tom had been by Emma’s suggestion that he be Ollie’s guardian, he had put forward lots of arguments. His job had unpredictable hours; it was a long time since he’d looked after a baby; Ollie didn’t know him that well.

  ‘Sorry, Tom, but that’s a daft argument. If he was put into foster care, he wouldn’t know the people he was living with at all.’

  In the end, Tom had admitted that he was honoured to be asked, and, although hoping it would never come to it, he would be delighted to be Ollie’s guardian. Which was why he should be seeing more of the child, rather than staying away because of the inevitable arguments with Emma. Well, maybe not arguments – but heated discussions at least.

  And now Emma had seen Tasha – which was wonderful news on many levels, but it would inevitably resurrect the same disagreements.

  ‘Can you tell me exactly where you were when you saw Tasha, and precisely what happened?’

  ‘I was on Market Street – the pedestrian bit – outside the Arndale. I was shouting out, telling her to come home. You know what I do, Tom – you’ve seen me. I said there would be cake for people who came to listen to me, and that guaranteed getting some of the homeless there. They’re the people who’ll know where she’s hiding, I’m sure.’ Emma paused and took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, I looked up, and there was a kid – looked like a young boy – standing at the edge of the crowd. He was wearing a dirty-looking hoody and a black baseball cap. I couldn’t see much hair, but what was poking out at the back looked dark, as though it had been cut with a pair of garden shears.’

  ‘And you thought it was Tasha?’

  ‘I knew it was Tasha. It was the eyes. When I’d got over the fact that she was there – listening to me – I leaped off the box and hurried towards her. I really thought she wanted to see me, Tom. That she wanted to come home. But she turned and fled, skipping round people walking in the opposite direction. She disappeared down one of the side roads and I couldn’t catch her. I combed the streets for hours afterwards, hoping she’d taken refuge in some doorway that I’d missed or something. But she’d disappeared without a trace.’ Emma took a deep breath. ‘The important thing is that we know she’s alive, Tom – and that she’s not left Manchester. That’s the best news I’ve had for months.’

  ‘We’re looking for her too, Emma, and it’s a big help knowing she’s somewhere close. We need her to help us put Finn McGuinness away for a long time. We won’t make the kidnapping charge stick without her. We all know that Finn set up the abduction and coerced Tasha into stealing Ollie, but he was never seen with your baby.’

  ‘But he had a gun, Tom – he threatened me.’

  ‘Yes – he threatened you when you were in the car, but he didn’t force you into the car at gunpoint. Look, Emma, I’m not trying to be clever here, but although we have a case against McGuinness, it would be a lot stronger if we had Tasha. I’m worried that because you’re trying to get the whole world to find her, you’re pushing her further underground, scared to come out in case she’s recognised.’

  There was silence at the other end of the line, and Tom could almost sense waves of indignation wafting his way. But he was right, and he’d been telling Emma this for months.

  ‘All I care about, Tom, is getting Tasha home safely. If McGuinness doesn’t get life, that’s tough as long as Tasha is safe.’

  Tom knew there was no arguing. He had tried before, but Emma was adamant.

  She had seen for herself what a vindictive bastard Finn McGuinness was, but she seemed to be choosing to ignore it. If he was free, who knew what havoc he might decide to wreak on the lives of those responsible for his arrest. Tasha, for certain, wouldn’t be safe.

  If they could get the evidence to put him away permanently, they could finally rest easy in their beds.

  6

  I’ve been out again today. I’m not sure if it’s safer to be out where there are hundreds of people walking around or better to stay below ground. If I’m out in the open, I think it’s harder for somebody to grab me. People aren’t always interested in what’s happening around them, but I’m sure somebody would react if a kid was being dragged off the street. You’d hope so – but maybe not.

  Andy gave me some money so I could phone Emma. He said we need to know for sure that she’s not the one offering a reward for me because if it’s not her, we need to start worrying. He still thinks there’s a chance it is Emma, because he doesn’t think she would announce such a vast amount of money to the world at large – five grand is wealth unimaginable to the poor of Manchester. People would kill for less – Rory Slater for one. He’d have topped somebody for a grand, I’m certain. Or worse still, he would have done it for nothing, just because Finn McGuinness told him to.

  Andy thinks it’s more likely that Emma might have chosen one or two people she thinks she can trust and given them the task of finding me in return for a reward.

  I’m not sure about that, though.

  I made it as far as the phone box and hung about outside. Just as I plucked up the courage to make the call, some guy shoved me out of the way and went in, piling up his money, turning to give me a sly, toothless grin.

  I didn’t call her. The loser who elbowed me gave me a good excuse. The truth is I’m scared of what Emma might say to me. I can’t forget what I did, so how could she?

  I decided I needed to tell Andy everything last night. I didn’t want him to hate me, though, so before I told him the dreadful thing I‘d done, I told him about how my dad had set up my abduction when I was six, how my mum died, and how I ended up living with Rory and Donna Slater.

  ‘What was it like, living with a gangland family?’ he asked me.

  ‘I didn’t realise for ages that they were part of a gang.’ I answered. ‘I thought it was normal to have to steal if you wanted to eat. We all did it, and because I didn’t go to school, I didn’t know any different. There was always a chance that one of the teachers would recognise me, see, so I stayed at home, and they put me to good use – everything from nicking stuff to weighing and measuring the drugs that Rory sold. The other kids that lived there were okay, really. I had a friend, but she died.’

  Andy had looked at me with a frown when I said that. I didn’t want to talk about Izzy, though. The thought of how she had been forced to spend the last few weeks of her life, and what my life might have become, still gives me nightmares. I didn’t want Andy to know that I had agreed to kidnap my baby brother to save myself from a life as a thirteen-year-old prostitute, being pawed over by fat, greasy guys who got their kicks from screwing kids. I could sometimes feel their grubby hands touching my body while I slept, and I couldn’t stand the thought of Andy imagining me like that.

  ‘When did you realise – about the gang, I mean?’

  ‘When I first met Finn McGuinness. I heard him talking to Rory, and I knew Rory was being made to do stuff – that he wasn’t in charge, like I’d always thought. But even Finn wasn’t top dog. There was somebody higher up. Fi
nn and Rory were just part of his operation. I don’t know who the main guy was, though.’

  ‘So why do you think the police are looking for you now?’

  We both knew Emma wasn’t the only one asking about me, and although I tried to pretend the police are looking because I’m a runaway, that isn’t very convincing given the number of other kids there are on the streets. Why single me out for special treatment?

  ‘They want me because of what I did.’ I said it out loud; I admitted I had done something terrible. And I knew I would have to tell Andy the rest.

  He waited. He was good like that. So I told him I had stolen Ollie – my cute, lovable, baby half-brother – that I had walked out of the house with him, and handed him over to Rory. I just stuck to the facts; I kept to myself the way I had felt, but the memories came flooding back.

  At first, the planning had felt good. I wanted to punish my dad for betraying me and for setting up the abduction that had killed my mother all those years earlier. But Ollie had made me feel soft inside, and I wasn’t expecting that. I kept telling myself to stop being weak, that my dad deserved the pain and that I had to save myself from the alternative life I knew was my only other option.

  Walking out of the house with Ollie had been easy. I had felt quite clever for a moment. But when I picked his warm little body out of his pushchair and held him out to Rory – a man who stank of stale booze and cigarettes – I had felt sick. Ollie had turned back to me, stretched out his arms towards me, wanting me to take him back from the horrible man who was squeezing him too tight. He had looked frightened, his eyes wide and his mouth open, ready to scream. Rory had put his hand over Ollie’s mouth and I’d shouted then. ‘Don’t hurt him,’ I had cried. ‘He’s just a baby.’

  At that moment I had wanted more than anything to take Ollie back – to pluck his chubby body in its cuddly down romper suit from Rory’s arms and run as fast as I could.

  But I didn’t tell Andy any of this. I only told him what I had done.

  He stared at me with his mouth open like a goldfish. I had to carry on. I didn’t want to make it sound less than it was: evil, mean, destructive. I had thought then that it was the only thing I could do, but how could I explain this to a kind, thoughtful boy like Andy? That Finn had given me no choice? That he had planned it and made it clear what my options were?

  I rushed to finish my story, swallowing my words as they spilled out, telling him stuff I hadn’t wanted him to know, but feeling I had to somehow make excuses for myself.

  ‘Finn told me if I didn’t take Ollie, I would have to go to Julie’s, the place my friend Izzy – the one who killed herself – escaped from. It wasn’t a good place, Andy. Anyway, I hated my dad. I still do, for what he did. I wanted to make him suffer.’

  But never Ollie, I thought to myself. It should never have been Ollie. My baby brother.

  Andy was quiet for a moment, thinking. He picked up a pebble and threw it up and down in the air, catching it and tossing it up again, as if he was weighing everything up.

  ‘So why does Emma want you back, do you think, if you stole her bairn?’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. That’s why I had to leave. The police would have arrested me, Emma hated me, my dad was a useless piece of crap – and I couldn’t go back to Rory because I’d grassed on him and the rest of them. He’d have killed me. What else could I have done? So I came here.’

  ‘What happened to Rory and Finn, then?’ Andy asked.

  I didn’t know the answer. I’d been trying to find out – to track down some of the other kids from the Slaters’ house. I’d hung around their school for a while at the beginning, hiding in the door of a derelict house that had obviously been the victim of a fire, because everything I touched turned my fingers black. But none of the kids ever came. They must have been taken somewhere else. I didn’t know if Rory had done a runner with the lot of them, or been locked up for keeping me hidden all those years and a whole string of other crimes they might have uncovered.

  That policeman – Tom, Emma called him – knew what Rory had done to me, and he didn’t look like the kind of bloke who would let him get away with it.

  ‘I think the cops might have arrested Rory, but I don’t know about Finn. It doesn’t matter much. Whether Finn is inside or not, he’s got contacts. He knows I grassed them up – and he’ll get me if that’s what he wants. I’ve been expecting something to happen since the moment I ran.’

  It seems far more likely that Finn McGuinness is offering the reward. Why he’s waited so long is a mystery, but it would be just like him to offer money to some young guy who in the end will probably never see a penny of it. But I still want to know for sure. I want to know where the danger is coming from. I should have made that call.

  I feel safer now that I’m back underground. I don’t want Andy to hate me after everything I told him and I wonder what he’s thinking. He’s been so good to me, and I don’t want to spoil things. I plucked up the courage last night to ask him why he looked out for me all the time. He said it felt good to be able to protect somebody, then he clammed up. I’m going to try to explain better about what my life was like. I’ll tell him about the Pit, how it felt to be thrown into a damp, cold, dark hole in the ground for not doing as I was told, and how it felt to learn my dad had sold my young life to save his own skin.

  I wander back through the tunnel, back to Andy, and I realise that after I’ve told him the rest I’m going to have to leave him and move on. I’m a danger to anybody around me, and I don’t want Andy to get dragged into my mess. My eyes mist over at the thought of losing him, and my step falters. Nobody looks at me as I walk past.

  There’s something funny about the atmosphere down here tonight. Everybody seems jumpy – or is it just me? Tension seems to be bouncing off the walls. I’m looking at the floor as I walk, making sure I don’t tread in anything nasty, but out of the corner of my eye I notice that nobody is looking at me because they’re all looking away, down the tunnel towards our pitch.

  I lift my eyes from the floor and stop dead. Quietly I move to the side of the tunnel, deep into the shadows.

  Andy is up ahead, and the man from the other night is with him. I know it’s him – it’s the way he stands; the slight bow in his legs with his feet spread apart. He’s got a knife – against Andy’s throat. I edge a little closer so I can hear what’s being said. The tunnel echoes and the voice sounds weird, but I can make out the words.

  ‘You know something, don’t you, kid?’

  Andy starts to shake his head, then obviously thinks better of it with the knife up against his neck.

  ‘No – why do you think that?’

  ‘Because when I came asking the other night, you were too fucking interested. That’s why.’

  ‘Only ’cos you mentioned five grand. I’d do anything for a piece of that.’ Andy sounds convincing, but his voice is shaking.

  ‘There’s people looking for this girl – serious people – people who would slit your throat and not even think about it. Just like I’m going to.’

  I’m about to jump out of the shadows and give myself up. He can’t kill Andy – this is my problem. Then he carries on speaking, so I stay where I am.

  ‘But not yet,’ he says. ‘I think you know something.’ He pushes his knife against Andy’s throat, forcing his chin up. ‘Look at me, kid.’ Andy opens his eyes and stares at the man. Even from here I can imagine the terror in those eyes. Andy’s a peace-loving kid, and I think he’s known too much violence in his short life. Haven’t we all, I guess.

  The guy is talking again, pushing the knife harder, and I can see darker marks around the blade. It can only be blood.

  ’If I find out you’re hiding something from me – you’re dead. Tell me where she is, I’ll let you live. Have you got that?’

  Andy can’t nod without his neck being sliced open, so he whispers, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And just so that you know I’m not kidding …’ The man pul
ls the knife away but grabs Andy’s hair in his other hand and pulls him down over his extended leg and lets go. Andy falls hard onto the floor, and I hear the crack of his head as he fails to protect it with his bad arm. He is sprawled on the floor, unable to move.

  The man pulls back his skinny shin and kicks Andy in the guts. Andy cries out once, and the man laughs.

  ‘Pathetic. If you think that’s hurting, you ain’t got a clue what’s coming.’

  He is still laughing as he walks away, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his puffa jacket.

  I wait until I’m sure he’s gone. I don’t know if he’s going to come back or not, but I can’t leave Andy like this. He’s not moving, and I don’t know how badly he’s hurt.

  This is all my fault. Again. Why is it that I bring misery everywhere I go? I don’t mean to, but it just seems to happen.

  I know that I’m going to have to move on – leave Andy and walk away from the feeling of being safe when I’m with him. I need to be on my own, just as I thought, where I can’t destroy anybody else’s life. Maybe I should just give in and let them have me. Then nobody would have to worry about me any more.

  7

  ‘Hello,’ Emma said, slightly out of breath after running from Ollie’s room to her own bedroom. She could have let the call go to answer-phone, but she was obsessive about answering phone calls – just in case.

  There was silence at the other end of the line, and Emma felt her hopes rise. Could it be …?

  ‘Hello – is that you, Tasha?’ she asked.

  She heard a chuckle down the phone that sounded more derisive than amused.

  ‘Were you expecting to hear from her, Mrs Joseph?’ The voice was male, but young. And even down the phone line she could sense the poison.