insist on an answer.
If Sean
***
The Suzuki was barely warm by the time I pulled up behind the dark blue Grand Cherokee outside Mrs Meyer’s house.
Despite Sean’s reassuring words, I was still aware of being watched on my way into the estate. Eyes followed me all the way up the path, and as I knocked on the door.
This time, it was answered quickly. Sean was dressed in jeans and a jumper, both black. Still, it made a change from either camouflage or khaki from head to toe.
He looked uncharacteristically uneasy as he stood back and waved me into the hall. It seemed much smaller than it had done the last time I was there.
“Go through,” he instructed, and I walked into the cramped living room ahead of him. Madeleine was sitting on the arm of one of the big squashy chairs, and she gave me a tentative smile of greeting. Mrs Meyer was bending down with a teapot to pour a cup for someone sitting on the sofa. It wasn’t until she straightened up and moved aside that I saw who it was.
The sight of Eric O’Bryan gave me a jolt I hadn’t been expecting, but I wasn’t the only one who was surprised.
His hands gave an abrupt nervous twitch. The cup of tea chattered on its saucer, slopping half the contents over the rim. Most of it landed on his shoes, but the rest hit the carpet. He began stuttering apologies immediately, and Madeleine jumped up to fetch a cloth.
“Oh, don’t worry yourself,” Mrs Meyer said placidly. “There’s been far worse than a drop of tea spilt on that carpet, I can tell you. I may not care for the pattern overmuch, but it does hide the stains, you have to give it that.” She brightened as she turned to bustle out and caught sight of me. “Oh, hello again, dear. Would you like a nice cup of tea?”
I smiled and said yes please. Sean flashed me a momentary glance from under his eyebrows that could almost have been a warning.
I returned the gaze flatly. Gone were the days when he could pull rank on me. It didn’t work that way any more. If I thought the Community Juvenile Officer could give me answers, I wasn’t going to hold my tongue.
“Charlie,” O’Bryan said shakily when he’d recovered something of his composure. “You’re the last person I was expecting to meet here.”
I gave him a tight little smile. “Yeah, you too. And on a Sunday.”
“Ah well, needs must,” O’Bryan said now. He sat perched on the edge of the sofa, knees primly together. His eyes flicked apprehensively over the group of us. “You didn’t mention before that you knew Roger’s family,” he went on. There was a hint of reproach in his quiet voice, as though I’d played a cruel joke on him.
“I didn’t realise that I did,” I said. “Sean and I used to know each other. I’d never met his family.” I tried hard just to make it a flat statement, but I must have added something.
O’Bryan glanced at me, trying to read the undercurrents. “Oh, I see,” he said, when clearly he did not. “Well, I assume at least this means you’re not still going to oppose Roger’s caution, then?”
Sean reacted to that one, rounding on me, glowering. “You were going to?”
“Of course.” I stood my ground. “Roger did his best to help kill an old man, who happens to be one of my neighbours. What did you expect me to do?”
O’Bryan cleared his throat. “Well, ah, if you’ve changed your mind that’s good news, anyway,” he said cautiously, interrupting our mutual glowering match.
Sweat had broken out on his forehead. I could see a bead of it making an unsteady bobsleigh run down his temple. I realised that his discomfort came not from a dislike of such emotionally charged scenes, but from fear. He was afraid of Sean.
I suppose I couldn’t really blame him for that.
“So then, Mr O’Bryan, if he’s going to get another caution, that’s the end of the matter, isn’t it?” Mrs Meyer’s voice was puzzled, but hopeful.
The man shook his head. “Unfortunately, as I was saying before Charlie arrived, Roger should have checked in with the police this morning, and he didn’t, which is going to get him into very hot water unless I can straighten things out pretty quickly. I really need to get my hands on him.”
“You’re not the only one,” I muttered.
Sean shot me a dark look, which I ignored.
“Why wouldn’t he have checked in?” It was Madeleine who spoke. Partly, I reckoned, to stop open hostilities breaking out, and partly because she was fishing. I saw the quick glance she exchanged with Sean, and realised that she knew all about the shooting at the gym on Friday night. I had to admire her tactics, if nothing else.
“He’s probably scared stiff, and in hiding, don’t you think, Mr O’Bryan?” I put in.
O’Bryan looked nervous at being put on the spot again. “Erm, why’s that? Hiding from what?”
“Hiding from whatever, or whoever, shot his friend, Nasir Gadatra dead.” I watched Sean’s face while I dropped that particular little bombshell. Not that it did me a lot of good. His expression hardened into a mask. If I’d been expecting a leap of guilt, I was sadly disappointed.
The news was met in a silence that stretched like bubble gum.
“Look,” O’Bryan said quickly after a few moments, “all this doesn’t change the fact that we need to find the boy. If anything, it just makes it more important that we do. I want to keep him out of prison as much as you do, but it’s imperative that we find him. You must tell him that by absconding like this he’s just making things ten times worse for himself.”
He got to his feet and Mrs Meyer, sensing the interview was over, thanked him gravely for coming to see them.
He gave her a weak smile as he shook her hand. “That’s my job.” He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead while he pinched the tension out of his nose like I’d seen him do the first time I’d met him.
We all moved outside onto the pavement to see him off, standing in a semicircle facing him. O’Bryan unlocked the door of a pale green Cavalier which was parked behind the Grand Cherokee. I hadn’t noticed it when I tucked the Suzuki between the two.
“No MG today?” I asked him.
He smiled, almost relaxing. “No, it turned out it was just the cable that had gone on this, so I didn’t need a complete new clutch. The MG’s more fun though.”
Suddenly, his face stiffened as though his heart had just given out. His eyes focused over my shoulder, beyond where Madeleine, Sean, and I were standing. His mouth dropped open in shock.
We all turned on a reflex. All saw roughly at the same time the figure who’d just stepped round the back of the Cherokee and come to a sudden halt at the sight in front of him.
“Roger!” Sean yelled. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”
Roger took one look at the assembled group of us. Recognition flashed across his face, and I saw a naked fear there. Then he turned tail and ran.
“Roger,” O’Bryan shouted. “Give it up, boy. You can’t hide forever!” There was genuine anguish in his tone.
Sean was already sprinting across the road after his brother, a head-down flat run. Roger panicked as he heard the steps behind him. He broke stride to stoop and grab a half-brick from the far gutter, slinging it at the figure chasing him. It was debatable if he even realised who it was.
Sean dodged out of the missile’s way. Any of the rest of us would have been flattened.
“Don’t just stand there,” he shouted back over his shoulder. “Get after him.”
His words galvanised the rest of us into action. O’Bryan jumped into his car, fired it up and wheelspun away towards the end of the road, trying to head Roger off. Instead, the boy darted into one of the narrow ginnels that characterised both the estates. Sean went after him.
Madeleine and I broke into a run at about the same time, heading in a different direction to O’Bryan, so we’d got the exits covered whichever way Roger swerved.
“Why the hell’s he running?” Madeleine gasped as we sprinted along the cracked pavement.
