The band of spectators had begun to disperse, now that the best of it was over. Not much fun picking up the pieces.
‘Wait, wait,’ said Redman, ‘don’t we need some witnesses here? Who did this?’
There were a few casual shrugs, but most of them played deaf. They sauntered away as if nothing had been said.
Redman said: ‘We saw it. From the window.’
Leverthal was offering no support.
‘Didn’t we?’ he demanded of her.
‘It was too far to lay any blame, I think. But I don’t want to see any more of this kind of bullying, do you all understand me?’
She’d seen Lacey, and recognized him easily from that distance. Why not the attacker too? Redman kicked himself for not concentrating; without names and personalities to go with the faces, it was difficult to distinguish between them. The risk of making a misplaced accusation was high, even though he was almost sure of the curdling eyed boy. This was no time to make mistakes, he decided; this time he’d have to let the issue drop.
Leverthal seemed unmoved by the whole thing.
‘Lacey,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s always Lacey.’
‘He asks for it,’ said one of the boys with the stretcher, brushing a sheaf of blond-white hair from his eyes, ‘he doesn’t know no better.’
Ignoring the observation, Leverthal supervised Lacey’s transfer to the stretcher, and started to walk back to the main building, with Redman in tow. It was all so casual.
‘Not exactly wholesome, Lacey,’ she said cryptically, almost by way of explanation; and that was all. So much for compassion.
Redman glanced back as they tucked the red blanket around Lacey’s still form. Two things happened, almost simultaneously.
The first: Somebody in the group said, ‘That’s the pig’. The second: Lacey’s eyes opened and looked straight into Redman’s, wide, clear and true.
Redman spent a good deal of the next day putting his workshop in order. Many of the tools had been broken or rendered useless by untrained handling: saws without teeth, chisels that were chipped and edgeless, broken vices. He’d need money to re-supply the shop with the basics of the trade, but now wasn’t the time to start asking. Wiser to wait, and be seen to do a decent job. He was quite used to the politics of institutions; the force was full of it.
About four-thirty a bell started to ring, a good way from the workshop. He ignored it, but after a time his instincts got the better of him. Bells were alarms, and alarms were sounded to alert people. He left his tidying, locked the workshop door behind him, and followed his ears.
The bell was ringing in what was laughingly called the Hospital Unit, two or three rooms closed off from the main block and prettied up with a few pictures and curtains at the windows. There was no sign of smoke in the air, so it clearly wasn’t a fire. There was shouting though. More than shouting. A howl.
He quickened his pace along the interminable corridors, and as he turned a corner towards the Unit a small figure ran straight into him. The impact winded both of them, but Redman grabbed the lad by the arm before he could make off again. The captive was quick to respond, lashing out with his shoeless feet against Redman’s shin. But he had him fast.
‘Let me go you fucking —‘‘Calm down! Calm down!’
His pursuers were almost there. ‘Hold him!’
‘Fucker! Fucker! Fucker! Fucker!’
‘Hold him!’
It was like wrestling a crocodile: the kid had all the strength of fear. But the best of his fury was spent.
Tears were springing into his bruised eyes as he spat in Redman’s face. It was Lacey in his arms, unwholesome Lacey.
‘OK. We got him.’
Redman stepped back as the warder took over, putting Lacey in a hold that looked fit to break the boy’s arm. Two or three others were appearing round the corner. Two boys, and a nurse, a very unlovely creature.
‘Let me go . . . Let me go . . .‘ Lacey was yelling, but any stomach for the fight had gone out of him. A pout came to his face in defeat, and still the cow-like eyes turned up accusingly at Redman, big and brown. He looked younger than his sixteen years, almost prepubescent. There was a whisper of bum-fluff on his cheek and a few spots amongst the bruises and a badly-applied dressing across his nose. But quite a girlish face, a virgin’s face, from an age when there were still virgins. And still the eyes.