7

Slunk down the street.

Rain beatin’ on him and he don’t even know it.

Like one of those small men in gangster films who know too much and get killed.

Good that god kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all.

Perhaps that’s all that happened — the boy lost heart.

Went to jail part of me had died.

Hills finished the job.

Knows too much and knows nothing.

Last name in his notebook.

Youth worker who signed the pre-sentence report.

Ring fifteen times.

Said he was in court and would not be available until late in the afternoon.

Walks the streets until the appointed hour.

Called at the offices.

Wait if he’s busy.

Walls have plenty notice hang up.

Carrying a knife isn’t sharp. Real men use protection. Get ahead not arrested.

Slick-haired blonde man opened the door.

Good god! he said. Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time?

Spare you a few minutes as you are here.

Voice was already down the hall.

Eastern tales of woe.

Comes from the squalor of their streets, the filth of their homes.

Murderers and robbers from their very cradle.

Though something different about the boy, he admits, when they are seated in his office.

Lives in a world all his own.

Monkey, you know.

Smaller one used by bigger ones to access properties.

Thing Felix could do.

Break and enter a window without smashing glass.

Convenient drainpipe.

Tickle the lock.

Supple pull-up Felix gets in.

Softly up the steps straight afore you and along the little hall to the street door, unfasten it and let us in.

Why he was the one put away.

Fingered by his prints on the window, the inside of the front door.

Not because he was the instigator.

Captain or corrovat.

Arrest were banal.

In lieu of the dogged black-visaged ruffian they had expected to behold there lay a mere child.

What were his motives, or did he have motives?

Attempts of the police and the public prosecutor’s office to find this out have been fruitless.

Never saw him with money or possessions.

Sharp clothes.

Brain worked in dim ways.

Claimed he didn’t know the old woman was hurt, that he went back out the window when she appeared.

Door closed behind the others as they fled.

Nobody don’t know nothing until the milk bottles start to pile up.

Broke her hip in the fall but it was dehydration that killed her.

Explained that to him, he said if he’d have known he would have gone back and given her a drink of water.

Odd thing to say.

Long sentence for a juvenile but a life was lost.

Refused to give any names.

Judges don’t like that, though it’s the law round here.

Anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets he must have his throat cut and then have his carcass burnt up.

Bonds that come with blood.

Never been able to discover who is his father.

Notwithstanding the most superlative, and I may say supernat’ral, exertions on the part of this parish.

As for the north I have wondered myself what took him up there.

Run a scheme sending kids kayaking, abseiling, orienteering.

Hills in the south.

Never went but perhaps he heard about it from someone who did. After his time away thought he’d have himself a holiday.

Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.

Fulfil the dreams of one’s youth.

Only he bought a ticket to the wrong hills.