Brigands M. C. (9 page)

Dante spent the next two weeks living in Ross Johnson’s London flat, while Holly stayed with a new foster family a few miles away. Ross was divorced, but his university-aged daughter Tina was home for Christmas holidays.

Following the bomb attempt the police were taking no chances with the only witness to a quintuple murder. Dante’s third school in as many months was six miles from Ross’ home and it had been chosen for its location on a dead-end street.

An armed police officer drove him each morning and sat in his car making sure nobody suspicious came through the school’s only entrance. At lunchtime he’d swap with another officer, who’d take Dante home and stay until just before bedtime. A third officer kept guard through the night.

It was an isolated existence. At school Dante was known as Kevin Drake. There were a couple of boys he got on with, but the other kids had settled into their own cliques which were hard to break into.

Things other kids took for granted were complicated by bodyguards and security details. Boy Scouts was out of the question because the church hall had an unlit car park and exits on three sides. An invite to a Saturday afternoon birthday party required a change in shifts and Ross having to fill in forms and negotiate overtime payments with the Devon police force who were paying for Dante’s protection.

Dante had always been the kind of kid who terrorised the playground and wound up teachers. But now he withdrew, burying himself in wrestling magazines, wondering about death and dreaming up elaborate fantasies of killing the Führer. He seemed content to watch the world drift by, rather than to take part in it. He only livened up when he got to visit Holly. He always tried to bring her sweets, or make a paper windmill or do some little thing to get her excited. Holly’s foster mum would take them out to a local swing park and her oneyear-old innocence allowed him to be a normal big brother until he looked up and saw the plain-clothes officer walking behind with a bulge under his jacket.

Dante’s teachers didn’t know his background and thought he was just taking time to settle. Ross was a trained psychologist. He knew Dante was depressed but couldn’t do much about it.

He’d sent e-mails to a few trusted psychologist colleagues asking if they had any ideas, but their replies told him what he already knew: Dante needed to start a new life in a safe location with Holly. This wouldn’t be a miracle cure, but over time he’d make new friends, develop new interests and begin to put distance between the grief in his past and his new life.

But Dante couldn’t lead an ordinary life while the Führer was walking the streets. There wasn’t even a date for a trial because the Devon police hadn’t even charged him with the murders. Ross tried to sound upbeat when Dante was around, but privately feared that the boy might be stuck in limbo for two or three years.

*

Dante’s mind drifted as he pressed the light on his projector clock. It was one of the few items salvaged from his previous existence and despite a melted facia and a warped lens it still put a legible 00:17 on to the ceiling.

For as long as Dante could remember he’d taken sleep for granted. He’d stay up as late as he could get away with, then crash out until he woke early the next morning. He’d either watch cartoons for an hour before breakfast, or if he’d stayed up too late he’d get shaken awake by his mum yelling at him to put his uniform on before she whacked him on the arse. Now he’d fight to get to sleep, then he’d wake up with nightmares.

Dante pulled his duvet around his head and brought his knees up into a foetal position. He closed his eyes and imagined that he was in a concrete bunker deep underground. He was protected behind huge metal doors, with video cameras. He had weapons. He had huge muscles like a wrestler, and he was famous and had hundreds of bodyguards who’d batter anyone who tried to come near him.

Dante’s fantasy got shattered by a deep belch from the policeman sitting in the living-room less than two metres away. Some of the bodyguards were nice and played video games and stuff, but Constable Fairport spent all his time studying his sergeant’s exam textbooks and looked like steam would vent from his ears if anyone made noise.

Now that he’d stirred, Dante found his ear was itching. The pillow felt lumpy and he had to move because the position that had been fine twenty seconds earlier now seemed completely impossible. He pressed the button on the clock again: 00:19. He’d been in bed since nine and reckoned he’d slept for less than an hour.

Dante’s brain ran in circles. Pressing the clock made him think about his mum again, and he fondly remembered the way she always yelled at him with a half smile on her face and threatened to whack him, even though she never did apart from two or three times when he’d done something totally crazy. Like the time he’d got up in the night and filled Jordan’s school bag with mud.

*

Dante woke with a start, as if someone had poured ice down his back. In the dream he’d been locked in the cellar of the South Devon Brigands clubhouse and the men upstairs in the bar were about to set one of the guard dogs on him.

He touched the clock – 01:07 – and couldn’t believe that he’d only slept for another hour. As his hand moved under the covers it dragged through a wet patch. He smelled the pee as he lifted the covers.

‘Stupid idiot!’ he cursed to himself, before gritting his teeth and punching his mattress.

Dante had never wet the bed when his parents were alive, or even at the Graves’ house afterwards. But ever since Doods and the bomb threat he’d woken up wet every second or third night. Sometimes even twice.

The first few times he’d been so upset that his crying woke everyone up, but even though Ross said it wasn’t his fault after all he’d been through, Dante was embarrassed and didn’t want lots of people waking up and making a fuss every time it happened. To ease the problem Ross had bought a mound of cheap duvets and sheets, along with a plastic mattress protector and loads of pyjamas.

Dante quickly stripped off his sheets and carried them along the hallway to the bathroom. He locked the door and put everything in the basket before standing over the toilet. He peed a little bit and stood over the bowl for ages trying to make absolutely sure that there was nothing else there. When he finished he threw his pyjama bottoms on top of the sheets and wiped himself off with a warm flannel.

Once he was done he pumped some spray disinfectant into the laundry bin and put the lid on tight so that the sheets didn’t stink out the bathroom. As he headed out he realised that he’d forgotten to grab clean pyjama bottoms. He’d have to run back to his room half nude, but it was only a few steps so he didn’t think it would be a problem.

But as Dante rushed into his room he bumped into Ross’ daughter Tina. She was nineteen, quite short, with a curvy figure under her nightshirt and stripy socks over small feet. Dante realised that she’d wiped his rubber sheet, put a fresh cotton sheet on top of it and brought one of the spare duvets out of the cupboard in the hallway.

Dante gasped, stretching his pyjama top down over his penis and bum.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Tina laughed and threw him a pair of blue bottoms.

They didn’t match the top half and Dante didn’t like this because it made it obvious to everyone that he’d had an accident, but he was too embarrassed to complain and he stepped back out into the hallway to pull them on.

‘I didn’t wake you up did I?’ Dante asked, stepping back into the bedroom as Tina smoothed out the fresh duvet.

‘Nah,’ she smiled. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Dante said nervously. ‘I could have done the sheets. You didn’t have to get up.’

‘Come here,’ Tina said, as she sat on Dante’s clean bed. ‘You look sad, give us a cuddle.’

Dante smiled as Tina wrapped her arms around his back and squished him. Tears welled up as he sniffed her deodorant. The smooth skin and shoulder-length hair reminded him of his dead sister.

‘I always wanted a little brother,’ Tina said. ‘I wanted him to be called Barnaby.’

Dante smirked. ‘That’s
such
a toff’s name! He would have got battered at school.’

‘I always saw him dressed in a little sailor suit and patent leather shoes. It wasn’t a
terribly
realistic fantasy to be honest.’

‘I wish I could stay here forever sometimes,’ Dante said. ‘Especially if Holly could come.’

Tina ruffled his hair and pulled back a triangle of the duvet. ‘You’d better get in. You’ve got to be up early for the drive to Devon.’

‘If I was dead I wouldn’t have to sleep,’ Dante replied. ‘Or worry about getting bombed. Or wake up drowning in piss.’

Tina rubbed his back and gave him a kiss. ‘You are so strong and clever, Dante Scott. I’d bet you my entire overdraft that your mum and dad wouldn’t want you dead. They’d want you to grow up and become an amazing happy person, and that’s exactly what you’ll be.’

Dante smiled and took another breath tinged with hair and deodorant.

‘Now try getting some sleep and I’m only next door if you need me, OK?’

Dante nodded before skimming across his bed and diving under the sheets. Tina flicked out his light and he went to sleep thinking about Tina and imagining having someone like her as a girlfriend or wife when he was older. Sleep came easier when he looked forward instead of back.

Ross made Dante dress in chinos and a smart shirt for the trip to Devon. It was a five-hour drive in an unmarked police car, with Ross at the wheel and Dante’s armed guard Steve in the passenger seat. Dante had the back seats to himself and spent most of the trip on his Gameboy and reading every word of two wrestling magazines that Ross had bought for the trip.

It was eleven when they stopped off at Bridgwater services to piss and eat Burger King. Dante was pleased that Ross bought him a Whopper. His mum always said it was too expensive because he’d waste half of it.

‘That big enough for you, boy?’ the police bodyguard asked, before blowing on his coffee.

Dante smiled. He’d been delighted when Steve had turned up for the morning trip. Out of all the police guards, he was the one most likely to join him on the Playstation and the previous Saturday he’d even shown up with a packet of cake mix and they’d made a sponge with orange-flavoured icing.

‘We stopped here once on a Brigands run,’ Dante said. ‘A full-patch called Pigeon got knocked off his bike after a run up in Scotland. I was in the run truck …’

‘What’s that?’ Steve asked.

‘You can’t carry much luggage on a Harley,’ Dante explained. ‘So when the Brigands go on a run, there’s usually a truck or van that carries baggage, spare parts and stuff. When I was little I used to think it was cooler to ride in the truck than in the coach with all the mums and kids.

‘So anyway, this other truck knocked Pigeon off the road. We followed the truck until it pulled in. They were all set to beat up the truck driver, but the man realised he was being followed and called the cops on his mobile. So we arrived to find all these pigs – sorry, I mean police officers – waiting. But when they asked what we were doing they just said that I’d been whining that I needed to use the toilet.’

‘So nothing happened?’ Ross said, disappointed at the flat ending.

Dante smiled. ‘I said I remembered coming here. I didn’t say it was a great story.’

‘You seem happier today,’ Ross noted.

‘Because something’s happening with the murder case at last, even if I don’t exactly understand what.’

‘I thought I explained,’ Ross said.

Dante shrugged. ‘I still don’t get this whole CPS thing.’

‘OK,’ Ross said. ‘It’s called the Crown Prosecution Service. You know when you watch a court thing on TV they have lawyers who ask people questions?’

Dante nodded.

‘OK, well in each court the person who’s on trial has a defence lawyer who tries to prove that he’s innocent. And the government has a lawyer called a prosecutor who tries to prove that they’re guilty. The government lawyers work for the CPS.

‘With a complex case like the murder of your family, the police and the CPS work together and decide when there’s enough evidence to charge someone with a crime. The CPS lawyers tell the police what kind of evidence they need to get a conviction and they speak with witnesses because it’s very important to know how well their evidence will stand up in court.’

‘So that’s why I’m going,’ Dante nodded.

As Dante said this, a frail looking woman who was well into her sixties entered the restaurant. Her soft leather briefcase and lavender coat with gold buttons looked out of place in the sparsely populated Burger King, but she cracked a big smile when she recognised Ross.

‘Hello, darling!’ the woman said brightly, as she headed towards the table and kissed Ross on both cheeks. ‘When did I last see you? It must have been the child development conference in Leeds two years ago.’

Ross shrugged. ‘Three years, I think. I haven’t been to the last two.’

Dante was curious because the meeting didn’t seem coincidental.

‘Would you like me to get you something to eat?’ Steve asked.

The woman gave a look like she’d rather eat her own shoe. ‘Just a tea. Two sugars, no milk, thank you.’