Read The Child Who for Free Online Page B

like the rest of the crowd. Schoolchildren. Just schoolchildren. And as Leo looked it was one of the schoolboys who threw another egg.
    Again Leo ducked but the missile, this time, missed by a car’s length. Something else hit, on the roof it sounded like. In the seat behind Leo’s, Daniel’s mother screamed: a counterpoint to the baritone boom of the impact. And, ‘Jesus!’ said the voice again. It was not the driver: a policeman and trained, Leo hoped, for this sort of thing. Daniel’s stepfather, then, in the back beside the boy’s mother. Leo turned, hugging his cheek to the velour upholstery.
    ‘Who are these people?’ said Stephanie Blake. With her eyes drawn wide, Leo could see gaps, like wrinkles, in her makeup. She had slouched in her seat and her skirt, too short already for a visit to court, had risen halfway up her nylon-trussed thighs. ‘Vince? Vince! What’s going—’
    ‘What the hell is happening?’ said Vincent Blake. ‘Where the hell are you taking us?’ He was seated behind the driver so had no choice but to focus his outrage on Leo.
    Something hit Blake’s window and he spun. His pinched face turned pale. The man had a nose crooked like a brawler’s and a crease, across it, extending below his eye but there seemed nothing intimidating – nothing tough – about his appearance now. He slid towards his wife, forcing her closer to the nearside door.
    ‘Sit tight,’ said the driver and Leo turned back to face the front. The policeman, a youthful, earnest constable, was doing his best to appear stoical but there was tension in his grip, ten to two, on the steering wheel. ‘This might get rocky,’ the young man said.
    It was an understatement. The crowd through which they had already passed was only the fringe of the mob outside the courthouse. There was a cordon of yellow-clad officers along the kerb but their line was bedraggled and beginning to fray. Just as the van – Daniel’s van – turned to make its final approach, the string of policemen snapped.
    The protesters swarmed. There must have been two, three, four hundred people gathered and the men in front – and it was, here, mainly men in front – led the charge. The convoy – a police car, the van, another marked unit and finally Leo with Daniel’s parents – had been moving at a brisk speed but now the lead driver had no choice but to press his brakes. The procession slowed, then stopped, and the protest turned into a siege.
    A dozen men, then a dozen more, surrounded Daniel’s van. They launched kicks at its bodywork and threw fists at the glass as though the pain they would be feeling in their toes and knuckles would somehow disseminate towards their prey. Someone swung a placard but in slow motion because with the sign it would have been like trying to swing an oar through water. The man turned it instead and used the pole end as a club.
    ‘Daniel!’
    The boy’s mother had wedged herself between the two front seats. Her scarlet nails were clawing Leo’s shoulder but when he winced she paid no heed. Her attention was on the scene ahead: on the van, which was beginning to sway. Just lightly but the momentum was building, the efforts of the protesters coalescing. They would tip it. In a moment, the van would be on its side.
    Leo tried to picture the boy. Seated between two policemen, would he be reaching for one of their hands? Would he be crying, like a twelve-year-old ought?
    ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Blake had displaced his wife between the seats. ‘Why aren’t we moving? Just drive, will you? Just go!’
    ‘Vince!’ Stephanie was trying to pull her husband to her side. ‘Sit down, Vince, please!’
    ‘You!’ Blake said, prodding the driver. ‘Put your foot down. Just drive through them – it’s their own damn fault!’
    The policeman turned. ‘Sit down, Mr Blake!’
    Blake fell away. He swore. He was starting forwards again when another impact tipped him back. It was not a missile this time but a body,