Mike asks.
“Not really. He had his face covered, only his eyes showed. He was Asian.”
“Well, that narrows it down,” he says sarcastically. He stands up and walks around the room, running his hands over his close-cropped head – a leftover from his army days. “Is there anything missing? I mean anything that you noticed was here after the last break-in but isn’t here now?”
“It all looks the same to me. I guess they still haven’t found what they were looking for.”
“So until we’ve sorted this out, I advise you to stay out. Are you going to school today?”
“I’m fine,” I say as I push myself off the bed. The room spins for a second before it steadies and Mike grasps my elbow.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine, just winded,” I insist and pick up my gear bag from the floor where it dropped when the man kicked me. I notice a tuft of the carpet sticking up and I wonder if the guy scuffed it as he rounded that kick on me – did he use that much force? It certainly feels like it.
“Do you want me to give you a ride to school?” Mike asks.
“No. Come on, Ben.” I have to say it quickly, because it looks as if Ben is about to accept the ride.
“I’ll get a team in here and see if the guy left any traces behind.”
“Great,” I call back as I go down the stairs with Ben behind me. Suddenly I want to be right out of there. What do you do when you’re frightened of being in your own house?
“I’ll be around after school to get a full statement,” Mike shouts from upstairs.
I don’t reply.
At school I ask Ben not to say anything about the man in my house, and he doesn’t, which is good because I can see he’s just aching to tell everyone. He waits in the library in the afternoon while I do my run with the rest of the team, in the gym because of the cold heavy rain, but I’m not up to my usual level of fitness, especially with throbbing stomach muscles that hinder deep breathing, and I’m wasted by the time I get in. I’m relieved that Ben’s called his mum to come pick us up and take us home, I don’t think I can manage the short walk home. I head for a hot shower as soon as I get into the house and run my hand over the bruised mid-section of my stomach. Mike is waiting for me when I get out. I don’t want to be reminded of the clash with the hooded man but Mike makes me go over it step by step, drilling me for any small detail I can remember, which isn’t much, and he leaves with my signed statement. I head back to Ben’s bedroom where he sits sat at the computer as usual. I collapse onto the bed and cover my eyes with my arm.
“I’ve cracked it,” he says.
“Cracked what?” I’m so fed up that I’m ready to crack someone’s head.
“That file that was password protected. In the end it was your name and date of birth.”
“Mine?” I say, sitting up, grimacing at the pain in my stomach muscles and looking at the computer screen, on which there is a spreadsheet with columns across the top and rows down the side, the cells filled with numbers and letters. Ben clicks on an icon at the top of the screen; his printer whirrs and spits out a page. He grabs it and holds it up so that I can see it too.
2501 DL 7631 19.39 T-N9
2701 KE 6240 16.44 T-N12
It goes on for twelve lines and it makes no sense to me. I’m not sure why Dad put my name and birth date as the password. Was it supposed to mean something to me?
“Could it have anything to do with what happened to your parents?” Ben says.
“I don’t know. It seems to be some sort of code.”
“Should we show it to Mike?”
“He’s just left,” I say, and I know I don’t want him back just yet. I’m tired of all the questioning.
“OK, I’ll figure it out. Then we can tell Mike.”
“You just want to show off,” I say and head back to my bed.
Ben shrugs and I return to my book, but all I can see is the hooded man in front of me, his body poised as he raises his leg. My stomach aches as though the blow has been struck again and I feel anger; not only because I was attacked, but because my parents’ bedroom was the last place I saw them both alive and in one piece – normal. The man being in the bedroom was not only a violation of our house but of our lives; and the pain of my bruised stomach is a reminder of my bruised heart. Things are never going to be the same again.
Funeral
I dread the funeral. I can hardly remember my grandfather’s funeral as it was a few years ago, but I do remember that it seemed to go on forever and all I wanted to do was go outside to run around with the other children. I think I must have been about six.
This one is no different.
People I’ve never seen before come up to me and say things and talk to me, telling me things about my mother that I already knew. I sit in-between my aunt and Gran at the church and I can feel them crying from time to time, although I don’t look at them. I stare at the coffin, listening to the priest’s voice, but the words come to me as if through a long tube, echoing and distorted. For one wild moment I look around for Dad and it hits me suddenly why he’s not there. The ache around my heart is so intense that it hampers my breathing and I wonder if it’s possible to die of a broken heart.
Finally it’s all over and everyone gathers in the church hall for refreshments. Gran said that by tradition it should be at my house, where it would be ‘a good, old-fashioned wake’, whatever that is, but with the place in a mess, it isn’t possible.
I sit in the corner, trying to make myself as small as possible. I don’t want to be part of this. Ben comes and sits with me for a while but, discovering that I am bad company, goes off and talks to someone else from school, one of his cyber buddies, I think – probably planning to hack into the Federal Reserve Bank or something equally impossible.
A shadow falls over me and I look up to see Mike, who is in full service uniform. His eyes are red and his face haggard. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Next to him is a thin blonde woman and I barely recognize her as Estelle, his wife, although she and Mike came to our house often for dinner. I’ve not seen her now for some months, since she was diagnosed, and she’s lost a lot of weight and the sparkle in her eyes has gone. I guess cancer can do that to you.
She sits down beside me and places a bony hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry about your mother,” she says. “I know that Mike is determined to get whoever did this. He’s working lots of overtime and hardly spending any time with me.”
She looks up at him and smiles but Mike frowns and says, “It’s personal,” before he turns away.
I know I should say something to Estelle so I struggle to put some words together.
“How are you?” I hear myself say to her and realize how lame that is. I can see how sick she is.
“I’m coping,” she says. “There is some new medicine but we have to pay for it ourselves. It seems to be working. I’m in remission – for the time being anyway.”
Mike looks up as two men approach, both in full dress police uniform with lots of braids and stars – important men. Mike steps aside as the older of the two leans forward to offer me his hand. I shake it.
“Jason, I’m Chief Clarke, Chief of Police. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” I say, although I have no idea what I am thanking him for. I’ve not seen this man before and my father talked little about him so I am not sure why he is here. I suppose someone has to come from the police department and show that they care.
“Be assured that Captain Gaffney here will not rest until we find who did this.”
I look over at the captain. Dad talked about him from time to time – he’s Dad’s boss but this is the first time I’ve met him. He’s a tall man, graying, with a stern expression that he’s put on for the occasion.
“I have to get Estelle home,” Mike says as he helps his wife to stand up. I sense some tension in him – is it because these two are his bosses? “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jason, we’ll be at your house early.”
/> “I need to talk to you before you go, Mike,” the chief of police says. He turns back to me. “Be assured that I’ll be monitoring the investigation closely, Jason.”
I nod at him as he turns to leave with Mike and the captain sits down next to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. I bristle at this stranger’s close contact.
“This is a very sad day,” he says. “I know what you’re going through, believe me. It was hard for me when Margaret passed away. In a way it was a relief that we had no children to mourn her loss, but I had no one to share my pain with. You at least have your family, Jason.”
He lifts his hand from my shoulder and indicates the people around me, and I look up at Gran who looks back at me with sadness in her eyes while she tries to smile. My aunt is close by, standing with her husband, my uncle, while my cousins run around the hall, avoiding the adults as best they can. Ben is standing with his parents and he raises his eyebrows at me and nods. I look at the captain and see the sadness also in his eyes. I remember now that his wife died of some degenerative disease and my dad said that he’d not been the same since. He’d become bitter, he said; I know how that could happen.
“You’ll get the freaks that did this?” I ask him.
“Yes, Jason, we will, but it’s important that you tell us if you think of something, or find something, that leads us to find out whatever your father was investigating.”
“Yes, of course,” I assure him.
“Good boy,” the captain says and pats my shoulder