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.74/1048Callum himself was sat on the bed.Hewas fifteen, with hair shaven to near-skin-head at the back and top, but left at the frontin a curly quiff, created by a hairdresser whodidn t believe in showing them the back.Hewas barefoot and wore jeans and a T-shirtwith a faded logo showing a pair of openhands.As we entered he looked slowlyround, turning only his head, and saidwithout expression,  Hello.You are Ms Hirjof social services.Nabeela smiled and said,  Good evening,Callum.How are you today?She pulled up a chair, carefully deposit-ing a pile of biohazard clothing onto thefloor, and sat down in front of him. Thank you, Ms Hirj, he intoned, hisvoice neither rising nor falling. I am well.Nabeela went on,  This is Matthew.He sa consultant.75/1048 Hello, Matthew. Callum seemed tohave grasped the necessary details of speechwithout tackling its full potential. Would you say you were a wanky littlesquirt? asked Nabeela suddenly.I raised my eyebrows, waiting for a tor-rent of abuse, but Callum only replied,  I willdo better. How can you do better? Nabeela s voicedidn t rise, but had an edge to it that warnedof anger. You ve only got one leg.Callum s eyes didn t flicker, and bothhands stayed in his lap, on his two functionallegs with their perfectly functional feet. Youare here to help me, he said. Thank you. Help you? I m not here to help you.Whyshould I care about you? In fact, you ve be-come such a pain in the backside that I vehired Matthew here to kill you.That s whatyou re going to do, isn t it, Matthew? Uh&  I began.76/1048 He s going to strangle you with his barehands.Come on Matthew, let s kill him. Sure, I mumbled, not shifting fromwhere I stood. Bare hands.Strangulation.Right up my street.Callum still didn t move, didn t evenblink.Nabeela slapped him, not particularlyhard, and snapped,  Come on, Callum,you ve got a view on that?His head drifted back to its former posi-tion, one cheek faintly red from the slap. You are older and work for the government.You know best.Nabeela straightened up, and shot me alook of pure  what do you think of that,then?I edged closer, squatted down, andlooked into Callum s vacant face.If this wasan act, it was brilliant.His eyes drifted to-wards me and seemed to focus just behindthe back of my nose.I said,  You heard ofpsychotic breaks?77/1048 You are a consultant, he replied. Youare an expert. It s not psychological, Nabeela mur-mured. And no, it s not an act. How can you be sure? Well, she sighed, the expert dealing pa-tiently with the layman,  there were no psy-chological warning signs, no history of men-tal illness in either him or his family, nocauses, no gradual break, none of the typicalsymptoms of depression, psychosis orschizophrenia, no drug abuse, no crisis mo-ment; nothing you would expect. But sometimes&  And there re twelve other teenagers inthe North-West London NHS trust areaalone who are suffering the samesymptoms.Callum went on blinking with clockworkregularity, staring through me. Okay, I saidfinally. Why the Midnight Mayor? This78/1048could be& a disease, it could be food poison-ing, it could be&  Are you really that thick? & I m just saying&  Callum, interrupted Nabeela. TellMatthew about what happened three weeksago. Was there a fight? asked Callum. Tell Matthew about the sound youheard.Something glimmered behind Callum seyes, and his head twisted as if lookingaround to seek a memory.Then he said,  Iwas out with my friends.We were not doingour best.We were wrong.I heard a sound.Itgave pain.Some of us were afraid but I thinkit was a good fear.It made me better.Then itwent.Did I remember well? What did you see? asked Nabeelagently. It hurt, he replied. Hurt.79/1048 I know it hurt, she said, leaning for-ward and resting her hands gently on Cal-lum s own. I know it is hard, but I need youto remember for Matthew here.What didyou see, the night it hurt? We were doing bad, he breathed. Weare better now. You and your friends weren t beinggood? What were you doing? Drinking. You were drinking alcohol? We were drinking& beer. He stumbledover the word, spitting it out like a loosetooth. And then what? Sound. The high-pitched sound, and thenwhat? Hurt. What did you see?His tongue darted over his lips, the firstsign of anything other than dead neutrality [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]