Read The Child Who for Free Online Page A

left.’
    ‘You left.’
    The boy nodded.
    ‘And this man. The one you saw—’
    ‘I didn’t see him.’
    ‘You didn’t see him?’
    ‘Uh uh.’
    ‘What then? Only the girl did. Felicity . Is that what you’re saying?’
    Daniel nodded again.
    Leo dragged his chair further from the table. He lowered himself onto it and caught his elbows with his knees. He looked at the sole-stained linoleum. ‘You said you left.’ He raised his head. ‘Why did you leave, Daniel?’
    Once again the boy shrugged.
    Leo waited. ‘Okay,’ he said, after a moment. ‘What about Felicity?’
    The boy, this time, turned away.
    ‘When you left,’ Leo persisted, ‘was Felicity . . .’ He coughed. He tried again. ‘In what state did you leave her?’
    Silence.
    ‘Was she alive, Daniel? Was Felicity alive when you left her?’
    This time the boy spoke but Leo did not catch the words.
    ‘I’m sorry, Daniel, I didn’t hear what you—’
    ‘She was alive. Okay? That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’ There was something in Daniel’s expression that reminded Leo all of a sudden what the boy was capable of.
    Leo backed slightly away. ‘No, I know, I just wanted to—’
    ‘You don’t believe me. Do you? You’re just like all the rest of them.’
    Their time was almost up. DI Mathers and DC Golbas would by now be gathering their notes, their props, their wits, ready to settle things one way or another but quite unprepared, Leo suspected, for what they were about to hear.
    ‘Look,’ Leo said, ‘Daniel. All I can say, as your solicitor – as someone who is here to help you – is that if you did what the police think you might have done, it would be better . . . it would be better for you to admit it. If you lie, and they catch you in that lie, the consequences – the punishment – will be all the greater.’
    ‘I’m not lying.’ The boy’s voice was taut to the point of tears.
    Leo showed Daniel his palm. ‘I’m not saying . . . No one’s accusing you of that. Not yet. But things get confused. They get mixed up. It’s perfectly natural that you should be worried, that you should be scared, that you should be looking to find some—’
    ‘I’m not scared either!’ Daniel’s hands, Leo saw, were curled and bloodless. His cheeks were blotched with red.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Leo said. ‘I’m not putting this very well. What I’m trying to say is, when they come back in here, the police are going to charge you. It’s either that or let you go and they’re not going to let you go. They have evidence, Daniel. Solid evidence. And your story . . . This story . . . It will only make things—’
    ‘You asked me what happened. Didn’t you? And I told you. Didn’t I?’
    ‘I did. You did. But—’
    ‘So why can’t you just tell them ?’ the boy said and the door behind Leo clicked open.

5
     
    Something detonated against the glass and Leo dived. He peered up and saw only sky, as well as what looked like a bleeding sun.
    ‘Jesus!’ he said and someone, somewhere within the car, echoed it. The driver? Daniel’s stepfather?
    Leo straightened and tried to see beyond the haemorrhaging egg yolk. The street, a somnolent sequence of shops until the corner before, had rounded into a throng. Young men mostly, Leo thought at first, and clearly in the wrong place, directing their ire in the wrong direction. These were anarchists, anti-capitalists, fascists, anti-fascists. Something was happening, obviously, that Leo had not known about – surprising perhaps that it should occur in Exeter of all places but unsurprising that Leo was so out of touch. He had not looked at a newspaper in days; not at a story that was not somehow connected to the case. And yet, here, there: a pushchair. A mother chanting as she held her son. And over there: schoolchildren. Three, four of them; two girls, two boys; his daughter’s age and – yes – in his daughter’s uniform. Not, like Leo, caught up inadvertently but bawling and baying