Page 117 of Little Children
Seventy-Six
LEWIS
Lewis tried to stand after the blow to the side of his head, but his legs turned to jelly and he crumpled to the ground. He’d been blinking the blood from the cut above his other eye for minutes, and now he was too exhausted to raise his swollen lid.
Mister pulled him out of the ring and sat him against the wall next to the others, then grabbed the next boy in line.
Lewis allowed his head to loll against the wall as his body tingled and ached all over. In particular, his hands and wrists throbbed from punching the pig earlier in the day and then fighting his opponent.
His breathing started to regulate and slow in his chest. The assault on his body was luring him towards sleep.
Mister returned to stand beside him. His face looked like thunder.
Missus turned to Mister and hissed loud enough for Lewis to hear, ‘He’s done and he’s making us look bad. Cost us a fucking fortune. Take the loser out of here.’
Lewis felt himself being dragged along the ground behind the large group of men already focussed on the next fight. He knew that it was time for him to return to his pig pen and his chain on the floor, and that Mister and Missus wouldn’t feed him again for a couple of days. He was being returned to silence and seclusion and what felt like a fate worse than death.
The rough concrete floor ripped at the skin on the back of his legs as he was dragged along.
Right now, he didn’t care how it happened, but he prayed for this nightmare to end.
Seventy-Seven
‘What do you mean she’s in the fucking van?’ Bryant asked when Red returned.
Even in the semi-darkness, he knew his profanity had startled Penn and Stacey, but he hadn’t expected Red to return alone. In his absence, they had gained access to an empty field opposite the locked gate and hidden the cars behind the dense hedge. After hearing footsteps, they’d used a good old-fashioned whistle to get Red’s attention, but he hadn’t expected the guv not to be with him.
True to his word, Bryant hadn’t taken his eyes off Steve Ashworth, who had been surprisingly helpful.
Everyone was huddled using their phones for illumination and awaiting an explanation.
After everything they’d learned this week, he still wasn’t convinced that they could totally trust Red. For all he knew, the guv was lying back there in God knows what?—
His thoughts were interrupted by the receipt of a text message.
As though she’d read his mind, the message was from the guv. He smiled briefly before holding up his phone.
‘She’s fine. She says to follow Red’s instructions.’
With his mind pacified slightly, he turned his attention back to his boss. Okay, she was safe for now, but she was in the back of a van that belonged to people with no regard for human life. He’d seen the photos of Josh Lucas’s body. If they could do that to a kid, they’d have no issue doing it to an adult.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Red said, ‘but it’s a risk she was determined to take, and she’s not wrong. I don’t know what she saw in there, but even I know some kid was getting the shit kicked out of him.’
‘Lewis?’ Stacey asked.
Red nodded. ‘But no Noah.’
Bryant could immediately see why his boss had changed her thinking.
The plan had always been to come here, break it up, get the boys and make as many arrests as possible.
‘If we go in now, we get six boys, a wall of silence from the organisers and other boys being stranded somewhere, possibly left to die. In addition, we can’t contain fifty or more spectators with this small a team quickly enough to stop phone calls and text messages being fired off. If the rest of the network gets that kind of advance warning, we’ll never track down all the others, and God knows what’ll happen to the other boys then. We don’t know how widespread this thing is.’
Bryant already understood the problem. He just didn’t like the fact it wasn’t his boss sharing the update.
Red looked at his watch. ‘We haven’t got a lot of time. There are two vans up there – the grey one we know about and a white transit.’ He nodded towards Bryant. ‘You follow the grey one with your boss in it; we’ll be following the other one,’ he said, indicating Walsh and Dickinson.
‘Adil, Wood and reporter guy are to stay here.’
