“Is this going to be another bloody crime you can’t get to the bottom of?”
“That’s enough,” Ray stared icily at Derek, but the man went on undeterred.
“I’ve got silly black bastards running around, killing each other, burning down my docks and London’s finest are sitting here on their hands, watching it all happen. Sooner you clap all this lot in irons and ship them out, the better.”
“That’s enough,” Ray snapped.
“I’m sick of it. Whole country is going to the dogs if this is how they’re going to carry on. Mark my words. No good comes of having people like that here.”
Ray said nothing. For a moment, silence hung between the two men and Joseph wondered if Ray would hit Derek. Derek must have realised he’d pushed things too far. He said nothing more, but turned, storming off in the same manner he’d approached them in, before shouting at the assembled workers that they could “carry on or clear off,” and that he didn’t care which.
“That was an outburst,” Joseph said once Derek had gone.
“He’s a horrible piece of work,” Ray replied, malice still in his voice. “Sorry you had to hear that.”
“It’s all right,” he replied, even though he knew that it really wasn’t. “Not everyone is like him.”
“No, but too many folks still are. Should be able to all get on and be the same. It’s people like Derek Nadderley who’ll make it impossible for that to happen.”
“It’ll change. One day,” Joseph said, more out of hope. Not belief. If Ray agreed or disagreed, he didn’t say.
“Let’s look at the list of names. I want to get a copy to take with me, to have a look at tonight, when my head is a bit clearer. Try and work out which fizzer is trying to make us look incompetent. They might think they’re ahead at the minute, but I can assure you, that feeling won’t last.”
17.
One particular day in Joseph’s school life remained forever etched in his memory. He had been nine years old, a student at St Margaret’s Primary School in Norbury. St Margaret’s was a three-storey T-shaped building, with a playing field out back, on a leafy avenue of semi-detached houses, flanked by allotments and a park.
His teacher, Mr Rafferty, was a short man with fiery ginger hair and a strict but quiet nature. Joseph wouldn’t have been able to tell you how old he was. He was an adult, so he was old, but how old didn’t register with a nine-year-old. Mr Rafferty kept his class disciplined and ordered and, for the most part, the children behaved as they should. They weren’t first years after all. They knew how to behave in school by this point and, more to the point, they knew what would happen if they didn’t.
The year had been relatively uneventful until one day in late April, shortly after the school had returned from their Easter holidays.
It had been particularly warm that day, and the classroom had become uncomfortable as the air grew heavy with dark black clouds riding in the sky above. The promise of rain and more hung heavy in the skies. A threat from above that brought back a small but unyielding fear. They all felt it. All still unable to forget the years gone by when rumbles and booms from the air signified something far worse than a storm.
The atmosphere within the class had grown more fraught throughout the day. Children muttered and grumbled to each other in a way completely uncharacteristic of their normal routine. Petty squabbles broke out over the most trivial of reasons. A fight had taken place on the playground between two boys in the year above, both of whom had been dragged apart by red-faced teachers who had scrambled from their staffroom and their cups of tea and sandwiches. Mr Rafferty had been one of those who had intercepted the fighters and had received a flailing elbow in the face for his troubles. The offenders had been marched off to the head teacher for the appropriate discipline. Joseph shuddered at the thought. He had never been in trouble like that before. He had never felt the sting of the birch. He intended on keeping it that way.
Lessons in the afternoon began normally enough. The excited chatter born of the events of lunchtime had been repelled by the angry look on Mr Rafferty’s face as he came back into the classroom. When he spoke, there was a menace to his tone that permeated through the exhilaration of most of the children, but not all. The animalistic frenzy that they’d been whipped into could not be stopped and, as the day wore on, they probed Mr Rafferty’s defences, picking through the minefield of his temper, brushing dangerously close to the moment when he would explode, without fear of what would happen to them or the collateral damage that it would cause.
Less than half an hour before the end of the day, the fatal blow was struck. A boy called Philip, whose surname Joseph no longer remembered. Something beginning with a C. Cross, or Croft or something like that. Philip was the sort of child that revelled in making trouble for other people. He was rude, he was selfish, and his usual method of getting everyone’s attention was to demean someone else in his orbit.
Early in the afternoon, Philip and a couple of the other boys who sat near the back of the classroom had realised that they could anger Mr Rafferty, whilst diverting his ire towards other people, simply by launching small projectiles of paper around the classroom. It wasn’t a constant barrage. Just an occasional lob of a balled-up portion of a page from an exercise book, fired in the direction of the back of someone’s head. Their attacks were timed well. Mr Rafferty would have his back to the class, or his head in a book. Anywhere, so long as his eyes weren’t scanning for incoming. Not all the missiles found their mark. Many went wide, some fell short or long. But those that didn’t struck home, on the back of their victims’ heads. Shockwaves rippled around the classroom. Gasps of confusion. Murmurs of discontent. Giggles from onlookers revelling in the misfortune of those hit and relieved that they weren’t the targets. All of it building. Each wave of missiles causing a reaction that jabbed at Mr Rafferty’s rapidly receding temper.
“Enough!” he finally called out, brandishing the cane that he kept propped against his desk. “Next person who disturbs this class comes to the front of the room and takes ten.”
Immediately, everyone sank down in their chairs. Smirks were subdued as nervous glances were cast around. Only, at the back of the classroom, where perhaps the reach and intimidation of Mr Rafferty’s threat came up short, was there no deference. Joseph remembered the glint in Philip’s eye as Mr Rafferty turned away. He knew what was coming. He remembered hoping to be wrong or hoping that Philip would miss. He remembered most of all the hopelessness, especially as he spied the next shot arcing across the classroom.
At first, he was relieved. It wasn’t heading his way. He was safe. But as it flew, he saw that this particular projectile was unlike the others. This one was far larger than the others and had been soaked in saliva. They had saved the best till last. The chewed and crumpled-up blob impacted into the back of Cynthia Plant’s head. She shrieked as the sodden shot dripped down the back of her neck.
Mr Rafferty’s response was immediate.
He turned and shouted, “Get up!” at Cynthia, who was still wildly trying to fish the ball of paper from out of her top. A ripple of laughter rang out from the back of the classroom. “You can shut up and all,” Mr Rafferty bellowed in the direction of the laughter, before turning to Cynthia who had remained in her seat. “I said get up!”
Cynthia looked around, confused. Joseph knew that she wanted to object. To point out that she was the victim. She needed someone alongside her, though, to give the courage. Someone to say it with her. Joseph knew he should. He knew what had truly happened. He stared back at her open-mouthed. For a moment their eyes met. Silently she pleaded with him to come to her rescue.
“I said get up!” Mr Rafferty roared now. Louder than any rumble of thunder that might have broken above them. Cynthia flinched, then accepted her fate. She stood. “Get over here.”
Cynthia slowly walked to the front of the classroom. Joseph couldn’t remember her getting the cane before. She was one of the good children. She never spoke out of turn. She never acted out. Her work was always immaculate, her answers always right. Yet even she knew what was expected of her. They all did. She approached the desk, turning and placing her hands at either end of the desk on which the cane rested, clasping the sides.
Mr Rafferty took the cane in his hand, looking out at the rest of the class as he did so, his stare letting them know that, if he could have done, he would have beaten every one of them. He raised his arm, then brought it back down, with a sharp crack. Cynthia squealed as it bit into the back of her legs. He struck her again. And again. Again. Again. Quicker and faster with each blow as he worked his way through the ten. Cynthia sobbed after the first. Her knees buckled by the fourth. Joseph longed to be able to swap with her. To take the pain away from her. She didn’t deserve that. He deserved it for being cowardly. Philip deserved it even more for being the one who threw the paper in the first place.
By the time it was over, Cynthia’s reddened face had been soaked with tears. Her eyes wedged firmly shut, spit bubbling from her mouth as she cried uncontrollably. Mr Rafferty took one more look at the class before turning to his victim.
“Go sort yourself out,” he growled. Cynthia turned and ran.
*
Joseph hadn’t forgotten a single second of the episode. Another nightmare from a youth he’d lost to fear. Now, as he looked at Claude Banks stalking into their office, he was being transported back to that moment in a classroom in Norbury.
“What the bloody hell is going on with my investigation?” he bawled as he barged through the door, slamming it against the wall as he went.
“Sir,” Ray stood up, and Joseph tentatively followed suit.
“What sort of horse shit have you been shovelling out there, Cribbs?” Banks’s finger pointed at Ray, leading him towards the detective as he continued his rampage. “Docks half closed down, now fires in warehouses. Do you know the sort of problems you’ve caused? I’ve got so many people in my ear now, moaning about loss of income.”
“We’re investigating a murder, sir,” Ray protested calmly.
“Oh, really? And what is it you’ve found so far? Got a suspect? A motive? A murder weapon?” Ray went to answer, but Banks didn’t give him the chance. “Of course you haven’t. You’ve stopped an important part of our local economy from working, that’s what you’ve done. Well, no more. The docks are off limits. No bloody point going back there anyway, is there? You and your pissing circus. It’s all gone. Whatever you hoped to find. You dawdled and delayed and compromised this whole investigation. Well bloody done.”
Ray inhaled, his teeth gritted, doing his best not to argue back. Joseph wished he would. Banks was wrong. Very wrong. They were working hard. They had things that they could work on. He wanted to say something to that effect himself, but the words wouldn’t come. His cheeks flushed, his stomach turned and his bladder felt impossibly full.
