Head Case Read online

  Or rather ABCs, the ASBO is the last resort before criminal charges are brought. An ABC comes before that.

  That’s my first act on my first day, Monday at 10.10 a.m. Drawing up an Acceptable Behaviour Contract for my schoolmate Dom Minton’s half-brother, Eli. He’ll probably be the last kid around here to get one, as they’re soon to become defunct, so I suppose you could say this is a bit of a Kodak moment.

  Eli has a birthmark that wine-stains the top left hand side of his face and I feel sorry for the kid. School is hard enough without the kind of stares it must bring.

  I take advice from my sergeant on it all. I look at Eli’s case notes and write down a few of his greatest hits. Then I ask if he would agree to the reasonable suggestion that he should’ve thought better of them.

  The severity of his list of misdemeanours escalates sharply. Something dark in me struggles not to laugh when I glance at them over his shoulder as he reads:

  CONTRACT

  I will get to school on time.

  I will not graffiti my school toilet wall.

  I will not climb into any lift shafts.

  I will not throw rocks and debris at passers-by.

  I will not attempt to set fire to people.

  ‘Does that sound fair, Eli?’ I say.

  He looks up and recognises me. It helps that I know his brother. But he’s saying nothing.

  ‘Think you can manage not to set fire to anyone? For a while? Maybe try not to ignite anyone just for this week and see how it feels. Sound like a plan?’

  I’ll probably learn not to take the piss at some point but I’m new at this. He looks at me, stone-faced, then signs.

  ‘And you understand the consequences of not sticking to the contract, don’t you? Eli?’

  All I hear is the sound of engines and tyres on the road.

  ‘Eli? I need to hear you say it, mate.’

  He looks up again, having been fascinated by the pavement for a few seconds.

  ‘Yes I do, PCSO Mondrian.’

  He leans quite heavily on the ‘SO’ and not so much the ‘PC’ as if to make a point, but I still pat him on the shoulder and attempt a smile that aims for reassuring, while steering clear of any local-bobby-earnestness that might engage his gag reflex.

  He barely looks half of his fourteen years to me. But then he did throw a brick at a pram and try to set fire to an old man so perhaps I shouldn’t feel too sorry for him.

  I wish I didn’t feel this way. But living around here, experience tends to toughen your opinions.

  His dad grabs him by the shoulder I patted and leads him back to their car, clearly not delighted at having to take an hour off work for that. I hope he isn’t too hard on him, I hope he isn’t one of those dads, but then it’s difficult to tell. Eli pulls away as if the shoulder already holds a fresh bruise that’s more than a little tender.

  On Tuesday I see my first dead body. I’m early on the scene at a gruesome traffic accident, a head-on collision that’s killed the driver of Vehicle 1 instantly. His chest and the steering wheel are an item. His jaw is locked wide open. His passenger and the driver of Vehicle 2 are taken away and are in critical condition. I meditate on the nature of suffering, the end of things and déjà vu. Then I sack it all off, take an early lunch and have a steak and kidney pie.

  On Wednesday I check out a break-in where the intruder has done nothing but broken a window, nicked one laptop and shat on the bed. People are very strange. Some watch videos of executions. Some change names on gravestones so they become rude words. Some are purely vindictive with their poo.

  On Thursday the highlight is standing out in the cold for five hours, making sure the peaceful demo about closing the local library doesn’t erupt into a volcano of bloodshed. There’s no chance of that. It was more the sort of event where someone erects a cake stall, but on this occasion no one even did that.

  Thursday’s lowlight is getting a call telling me that Eli has neglected to turn up for school. His dad, out of town for a few days, was contacted immediately and ominously asked in a mutter over the phone if he could ‘deal with it’ himself. None of this seems very good for Eli, so seeking some other option I trudge over to his brother Dom’s house.

  ‘What can I say, the kid’s an evil little fucker at times,’ Dom says, hands tucked into his jogging bottoms. ‘But he’s my brother.’ This much I have already gleaned.

  ‘Do you think your dad’s… a little hard on him?’ I say, searching for the most delicate way to put it.

  ‘Dad’s no soft touch. Never thumped me. But then Eli is… Eli.’

  ‘Eli? Eli!’ I call, seeing his face peeking out unsubtly behind the kitchen door.

  Before Eli drags his bones towards me, Dom hangs his head and then whispers to me, ‘Sorry, Tom. He’s having trouble at school, they’re pulling him into some gang. It’s nasty. He asked if he could hide out here.’

  As he enters, I see the picture of a kid stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Shitty dad at home. Shittier kids at school.

  Eli clearly isn’t ill and I have a choice to make. He’s breached his contract and I’ve stumbled in on him doing it. Let him have it and dad will come down hard on him. But at least a full blown ASBO would give him a legitimate reason to stay away from his new friends in the evening.

  One thing’s for sure, Eli is getting fucked from every side whatever I do. He’s contributed pretty amply himself, yet I know I could save him some hassle if I just look the other way on this occasion.

  But this is my first week, so I keep it simple and I call it in.

  Later, he’ll say I was ‘victimising him’.

  And what’s true is, I could’ve been kinder. I think they call it tough love. I hope, in that tiny moment of decision, that everyone else isn’t too tough on him as a result.

  *

  It’s been a week. I can’t quite tell what sort yet. But it’s certainly been a week. Friday has come shaped like mercy.

  *

  ‘Dee. Dah dah dah dee dah, dah dah, dah dee…’

  I get these tunes in my head sometimes, I think everyone does it.

  Earworms. People say you choose the tune because the lyrics associated hold the key to something you’re mulling over in your subconscious.

  But I don’t know about that.

  I barely even remember the words. I try to keep it down as I zone out, muttering under my breath as I walk.

  ‘Dee. Dah dah da, dee dah, dah dah, dah dee…’

  I get a call on my radio about a minor accident at the other end of the main road. I need to go and direct traffic. I’m not sure this is what I was birthed for.

  At least you can pick your hours, within reason. You have to cover thirty-seven in a week and they like you to take one evening. So I went for a five-hour evening shift on Thursdays, seven till midnight. Then took eight hours on all the other weekdays, leaving my weekend free. I consider the merits of this time format. Even my thoughts start to bore me.

  I count them as they as they plod through me. Dry and empty.

  This is a thought.

  This is a thought.

  This is a thought.

  Then one comes along covered in this morning’s regrets:

  I was called to a house after a neighbour had complained about frequent raised voices and commotion, as well as the sound of skin on skin contact and not the friendly kind. I didn’t bother the neighbour on the right side of the house before calling on the home in question. They had been brave enough to make the call and I didn’t want to give them away by paying them a needless visit first.

  As I approached, the neighbour on the left side came out, and when she saw me she hustled back inside quickly. She had a look of intense fear about her. I wondered if that came from the build-up of what she was probably also hearing through the walls, night after night. A man, taking out his stresses on his wife. Or whoever else.

  The neighbour looked spooked so I didn’t say a word. She didn’t want any trouble, and to her may
be I meant trouble, so she shot back inside to avoid whatever was about to happen. She gave me a funny feeling, her presence sparking a strange sensation close to déjà vu.

  When he answered the door, the man, bald, moustached and laying on the innocent look as thick as it comes, led me inside, where a woman, presumably his wife, sat in the kitchen giving little away.

  An extraordinary sense of creeping unease came over me, a tingling on my skin, which had started when I saw that neighbour’s face.

  I asked the woman if she was okay. I asked him the same. They both replied with a nod. It felt like something hung in the air between us that I wasn’t allowed to touch. There seemed to be a palpable prompt the scene itself was giving me, other than the possible violence between them. Another cue that I wasn’t picking up on.

  The silent couple… The noises through the wall… That neighbour’s face.

  ‘There’ve been reports of a disturbance coming from this residence. I’m duty bound to follow that up. So… anything I need to know?’

  Nothing but the shaking of heads.

  ‘Anything at all?’

  In the next deafening silence, I tried to communicate to her wordlessly that she didn’t have to take any shit. And to him that if he was doing something to her then I’d be back with uniformed friends and trouble. But all I said was:

  ‘Well, we’re a phone call away.’

  I shook off the tingle and reluctantly got out of there, resolving to do the only things I could: make peace with my limitations, and with the sour fact that she would probably never make that call, and record the encounter in my pocket notebook.

  I can feel my mind listlessly erasing the encounter, as I make my trudge through grey reality towards traffic duty.

  But then, they’ve recently found you can’t erase memories. They’re physical things. They make visible changes to the brain. Some are hard to access if you haven’t exercised them recently, but they never disappear. If you took my brain out of its case, you could see it all.

  • There’s the crease that holds my parents’ smiles at my fifth birthday party.

  • There’s the blot that is my first crush’s face.

  • There’s that neighbour’s face, just next to it.

  • There’s the dot of possible heroism. Watch me be disheartened, watch it degrade and fade.

  This is not the electrode up my arse my life needed. This isn’t even a power trip. Perhaps I should have stuck with charity fundraising on the phones, say my thoughts. But I guess mum and dad would be prouder of me doing this.

  The radio kicks in.

  ‘PCSO Mondrian? This is Duty Officer Levine, over.’

  ‘Yeah. Yes, this is me.’

  ‘… You’re supposed to say over.’

  ‘Over,’ I monotone.

  ‘So when someone calls for you, say go ahead, over. Over.’

  ‘Go ahead, over.’

  ‘Understood? Over.’

  ‘Yep.’

  A pause. I wait.

  ‘Don’t say yes, say affirmative. And you didn’t say over. Over.’

  I sigh, away from the walkie-talkie. Then steel myself.

  ‘This is PCSO Tom Mondrian. Affirmative. Go ahead. Over.’

  ‘Understood. Hearing you loud and clear. I’m over by the loos, over.’

  ‘Understood… over.’

  ‘What a wanker,’ I mutter to myself.

  Cccchhhhhh...

  ‘And after you’ve finished speaking, take your finger off the PTT button. We all heard that.’

  Crackles of laughter from someone else on the line.

  ‘You forgot to say over, over,’ I say.

  I remember to take my finger off the button this time as I walk along.

  ‘Not funny, over,’ he says.

  But it was a bit.

  Levine is clearly the pedant of the bunch. I keep walking, my feet crunching in the snow.

  Here we are. Broken glass on the tarmac. Red faced fella at the side of the road. A light blue Astra with one door open, diagonally up the kerb. Levine sees me and holds up a hand. His posture says, ‘I’ve got this thing locked down, you just stand way over there.’

  La-di-dah. The beat goes on.

  The ABC. The body. The beat. All firsts.

  I wonder if anyone has ever fallen asleep while directing traffic. Could be another first for me this week.

  I check my watch and see there’s an hour until my week ends. Nearly time to head back to the station locker room, change, clock off. Maybe a drink with the team if I’m unlucky.

  Levine signals me to allow traffic around the car from my side, while he holds vehicles at a stand at his end for a while.

  I signal. I smile courteously at the drivers as I do so. La-di-da.

  I see many faces I recognise.

  Amit from the paper shop down the road. Zoe Hughes from Maths drives past, averting her eyes to ignore my existence. She didn’t always.

  I glance to the cluster of shifty kids on the other side of the road to make sure they see traffic is being held and let through at intervals. I’m only looking out for them, but they take one covert glance at me, put up their hoods and scarper off, one holding something weighty in a black plastic bag that’s got them pretty excited.

  I probably should be curious about what it is, but that’s not really very me.

  ‘Dee. Dah dah dah dee dah, dah dah, dah dee…’

  I stop the flow. I can barely see the driver in front of me through his tinted windscreen. But I squint to get a look at him in there and see his outline change. He taps the wheel, jittery, maybe coked up, which would account for the nerves. But I’m not going to create any extra trouble for myself. He glares at me, stiller now, as I hold my ground, letting him know I know there’s something up.

  Then I wave him through. He shoots away hastily, as I snigger, enjoying my power to intimidate. Then I move to the side of the road, making sure I’m still visible to passing traffic.

  Blue car. Red car. White car. Mini. Bus… Bus…

  Oh!

  I feel tired. Not just tired, faint. I shake my head. Somewhere I hear the bus stop but I don’t see anything. It’s darker now, all around me. I feel sick. I’m fighting to keep my eyes open. I try to go to ground, layer by layer, as a tower block might be detonated or dismantled.

  I feel like I’m going to vomit but I don’t want to in front of all these people. It’s a shame-based reflex. I try to hold it in. I try to hold it together. There are shouts behind me.

  The sound of footsteps. Running. I just need to reach the floor and everything will be okay. But my ears are going crazy horse. A high-pitched squeamish noise. A fresh white blah blah blah. Like TV failure.

  Nearly at the ground now. It all flashes. I swallow ocean breaths. I wonder whether I’m causing scenes. My hands reach for the tarmac black. That high pitched squeal blazes on.

  The world looks like it’s under a slow strobe.

  Then my back is against the kerb. Clouds forming, crowd forming. I know something is wrong for sure.

  I pull out my phone and try and call the… or should I use my… what’s the number for the 999…

  I stare at the phone. Not fainting yet. Holding on.

  Its numbers are strange. Just lines. Like Greek, or Latin. Symbols I don’t understand. I comprehend nothing.

  My head is wet with something. But I don’t know what. I see Levine running up to me. I’m not sure whose blood this is.

  I shout to him to check everything is all right.

  ‘Take the hard road up.’

  I don’t know why that comes out. It’s not what I intended.

  I try again. As I crawl towards him, off the pavement and onto the road.

  ‘Perhaps the hard road’s impossible!’ I shout as I crawl and my hand drags past more wet.

  ‘Take the hard road up. Anything is possible!’ I shout.

  It doesn’t feel like my voice. He’s nearly with me. I see the bus has emptied and its passengers are looking
at it. And me.

  It’s slow motion. It’s hard tarmac broken glass music video inner city incident news commercial heartache.

  That high-pitched squeal sings on and on.

  A song from a passing car radio strikes up.

  ‘We lived in this crooked old house

  some cops came over to check it out

  left on the step was a little baby boy

  In a soft red quilt, with a rattle and a toy.’

  My hands shake beneath me like an engine does before it stalls. A guy with a busted tooth shouts something.

  Before my head falls, I notice the bus has two broken windows. One on each side.

  They’re all on their phones. It’s a picture that blurs.

  My ears still work though. Listening to the radio song.

  ‘You’re my little one

  Say I didn’t love in vain

  Please quit crying honey

  Cos it sounds like a hurricane’

  I wonder how those windows got broken.

  That’s my last thought for now. Before I go.

  It’s just one of those things.

  Some days you meet the person you were always meant to be with.

  Some days you get shot in the head.

  4

  ‘‘Can’t get that, dah dee dah, dah dah, my head…’

  ‘Good. You’re awake. Looking good,’ says the voice.

  Male. Warm. My thoughts run slowly like traffic jammed cars. His face comes into view.

  I’m cold. I guess I should do something. Say something maybe. Missed it. The chance has come and gone.

  We sit in silence for a while. Everything has changed.

  ‘Cold,’ I say, trying to get things moving, in my head.

  ‘Oh yes. It is a little chilly.’ He turns and nods to someone. He smiles. I lift my head to see who he’s looking at, but by the time I do they’re gone.

  Where am I? A hospital. I guess.

  ‘How’s it all feeling?’ says the man.

  ‘Unsure,’ I say.

  ‘You’re unsure how you feel? Or you feel unsure?’