Raven's Gate Read Free Page B

she, not her nephew, who had been accused of something.
    “So where is he?” Gwenda asked. She had a thin, whiny voice that made every question sound like a complaint.
    “He’s upstairs,” Mallory said. “He fell asleep before the doctor could see him but we gave him a tranquillizer anyway. It’s possible he’s in shock.”
    “
He’s
in shock?” Gwenda laughed briefly. “
I’m
the one who’s in shock, I can tell you. Getting a call in the middle of the night like this! Having to come down here. I’m a respectable person. All this business with knives and burglary. I’ve never heard such a thing.”
    “I understand you share your house with a partner?”
    “Brian.” Gwenda noticed Mallory had taken out a pen. “Brian Conran,” she continued, and watched as the detective wrote it down. “He’s in bed. He’s not any relation to the boy. Why should he come out in the middle of the night? He’s got to be up first thing in the morning.”
    “What’s his job?”
    “What’s it to you?” She shrugged. “He’s a milkman.”
    Mallory pulled a sheet of paper out of a file. “I see from Matthew’s record that his parents died,” he said.
    “A car crash.” Gwenda swallowed. “He was eight years old. The family was living in London then. His mother and father were killed. But he’d stayed behind.”
    “He was an only child?”
    “No brothers or sisters. No relatives either. Nobody knew what to do with him.”
    “You were related to his mother?”
    “I was her half-sister. I’d only met them a few times.” Gwenda drew herself up, crossing her hands in front of her. “If you want the truth, they were never very friendly. It was all right for them, wasn’t it. A nice house in a nice neighbourhood. A nice car. Nice everything. They didn’t have any time for me. And when they died in that stupid accident… Well, I don’t know what would have happened to Matthew if it hadn’t been for me and Brian. We took him in. We had to bring him up all on our own. And what did we get for it? Nothing but trouble!”
    Mallory glanced again at the report. “He had never been in trouble before,” he said. “He started missing school a year after he came to Ipswich. From there it was downhill all the way.”
    “Are you blaming me?” Two pinpricks of red had appeared in Gwenda’s cheeks. “It was nothing to do with me! It was that boy, Kelvin Johnson… He lives just down the road. He’s to blame!”
    It was eleven o’clock at night. It had been a long day and Mallory had heard enough. He closed the file and stood up. “Thank you for coming in, Ms Davis,” he said. “Would you like to see Matthew?”
    “There’s hardly any point seeing him if he’s asleep, is there?”
    “Maybe you’d like to come back in the morning then. The social services will be here. He’ll also need legal representation. But if you’re here at nine o’clock—”
    “I can’t come at nine o’clock. I have to make Brian his breakfast when he gets in from his rounds. I’ll come in after that.”
    “Right.”
    Gwenda Davis picked herself up and left the room. Mallory watched her go. He felt nothing for her. But he couldn’t avoid a sense of great sadness for the boy who was asleep upstairs.
    * * *
    Matt woke up.
    The room with the four metal beds was deserted. No sound came from anywhere in the building. He could feel a pillow cradling the back of his head and he wondered how long he had been here. There was no sign of a clock, but it was pitch-dark outside – he could see the night sky through the barred window. The room was softly lit. They probably never turned off the lights completely.
    He tried to go back to sleep but he was wide awake. Suddenly he was seeing it all again, the events of the evening. The images flickered in front of him like cards caught in the wind. There was Kelvin, outside the railway station. Then the warehouse, the DVDs, the guard, the knife, Kelvin again with that stupid smile, the police