Speak No Evil by Martyn Waites Read Free Book Online Page A

sidekick at his right. The boy was pointing at Jack’s new trainers.
    â€˜Present.’ Jack knew he should say as little as possible. Sometimes greetings like this meant they wanted to be friends. But most of the time it meant the opposite. Also, he didn’t want them to hear him speak. His lack of a Geordie accent, as much as his longish hair, already marked him out as strange. He didn’t know if he had become infected with the fear bug too or whether it was just self-protection.
    The boy persisted. ‘Where from?’
    Jack wanted to walk away, be left alone. But that was impossible. He shrugged. ‘Friend.’
    The boy kept staring at him. Jack tried to look away. He didn’t know if that made it better or worse.
    The boy kept staring, Jack kept ignoring him. It was time for the boy to make a move. Either that or walk away. And Jack didn’t think that was about to happen. The boy was a couple of years younger than Jack but that didn’t count for anything where meanness and rage were concerned. Jack tensed, expectantly.
    â€˜Gis them.’
    Jack looked up, caught the boy’s eye for the first time since he had spoken. ‘No.’
    The word was spoken calmly and quietly but with force behind it. Jack’s hair might be long and his accent strange. But he knew how to fight. He had moved around so much in his short life, he had learned the hard way.
    The other boy, not wanting to lose face in front of his follower, stood his ground. ‘You better gis them. Now.’ The words were growled, but Jack could detect the fear behind them.
    â€˜No.’ More forceful this time, his eyes meeting the other boy’s.
    â€˜You’d better do as he says, like.’ The runty boy spoke from behind the bigger one.
    â€˜Shut up, Pez,’ said the bigger boy, clearly embarrassed by the outburst. He turned back to Jack. Jack knew the signs. The boy was looking for a retreat that would save face.
    â€˜I’ll see you after school,’ he said. ‘I’ll have them then.’
    Jack said nothing, just stared at him.
    Anger clouded the boy’s vision. Jack hoped he wasn’t going to try to hit him. He wasn’t a coward and he was no stranger to fear. It was something he could use, turn outwards into violence. But he didn’t want to. He wouldn’t fight back, not because he was scared of being hurt, but because he didn’t want trouble at this school. Trouble was something that followed him around.
    Instead the boy turned away and walked off, his sidekick trying to keep up in the slipstream.
    Jack watched them until they disappeared round the corner of the building.
    He looked at his hands. They were shaking.
    He thought about his mother’s hands again, closed his eyes. Wished he was somewhere else. Someone else. Leading a better, happier life.
    Knew it was never going to happen.
    The bell rang. Break was over. He welcomed it.
    Donovan turned away from the screen, the blue door still unmoving, and stared out of the office window as a Metro train went by on the viaduct overhead. When he had first moved Albion into the building he had thought their regular rumblings would have been a distraction but now he found them quite reassuring. The habitual rhythms gave him a sense of people going somewhere, of lives moving forward. At least that was what he told himself. Really, he probably just liked the sound.
    Anne Marie had gone home. It had been a difficult, distressing day. Donovan knew that it would be hard to get her to talk honestly about her mother but he hadn’t realized just how hard. Anne Marie had fretted, procrastinated, found displacement activities, in fact done anything but confront the memories of her mother head on. Donovan couldn’t blame her. Anne Marie’s childhood was the stuff of nightmares. And if he’d had a mother like her, he might have ended up the same way.
    Monica Blacklock should never have been allowed to have