Raven's Gate

flight of stairs into this modern, unattractive building. There had been no time for sightseeing.
    A week had passed since Matt’s arrest, and in that time he had been interviewed, examined, assessed and, for many hours, left on his own. He had filled in papers that were like exams except that they didn’t seem to have any point. “2, 8, 14, 20… What is the next number in the sequence?” And: “How many spelling misteaks are their in this sentence?” Different men and women – doctors, psychologists – had asked him to talk about himself. He had been shown blobs on pieces of paper. “What do you see, Matthew? What does the shape make you think about?” And there had been games – word association, stuff like that.
    Finally they had told him he was leaving. A suitcase had appeared, packed with clothes that Gwenda must have sent from home. After a three-hour journey in an ordinary car – not even a police car – he had found himself here. The rain was still lashing against the windows, obscuring the view. He could hear it hammering against the glass, as if demanding to be let in. It seemed that the whole outside world had dissolved and the only things remaining were the five people, here, in this room.
    On the far left was his aunt, Gwenda Davis. She was dabbing at her eyes with a paper tissue, causing her mascara to smudge – there was a dirty brown streak all the way down one side of her face. Detective Superintendent Stephen Mallory sat next to her, looking the other way. The third person was a woman magistrate. Matt had only met her for the first time today. She was about sixty years old, smartly dressed and a little severe-looking. She wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a look of disapproval that had, over the years, become permanent. The fourth person was Matt’s social worker, an untidy, grey-haired woman about ten years younger than the magistrate. Her name was Jill Hughes and she had been assigned to Matt when he was eleven. She had worked with him ever since and privately thought of him as her greatest failure.
    It was the magistrate who was talking.
    “Matthew, you have to understand that this was a very cowardly crime and one that involved violence,” she was saying. The magistrate had a very precise, clipped manner of speaking, as if every word was of the utmost importance. “Your associate, Kelvin Johnson, will be sent to the Crown Court and he will almost certainly be sentenced to imprisonment in a young offenders’ institution. He is seventeen. You, of course, are younger. But even so, you are above the age of criminal responsibility. If you went before the court, I suspect you might well be given a Section 91. This means you would be locked up for perhaps three years in either a secure training centre or a local authority secure children’s home.”
    She paused and opened a file that was on the table in front of her. The sound of the pages turning seemed very loud in the sudden silence.
    “You are an intelligent boy,” she went on. “I have the results of the tests you have been given during the past week. Although your school results have never done you any credit, you seem to have a good grasp of the basic skills – maths and literacy. Your psychological report suggests that you have a positive and a creative mind. It seems very strange that you should have chosen to drift into truancy and petty crime.
    “But then, of course, we have to take into account your unfortunate background. You lost your parents suddenly and at a very early age – and this must have caused you enormous distress. I think it’s fairly clear to all of us that the problems in your young life may have resulted from this one, tragic event. Even so, Matthew, you must find the strength to overcome these problems. If you continue down the path you have been following, there is a very real chance that you will end up in prison.”
    Matt wasn’t really listening. He was trying to, but the words sounded distant and irrelevant … like an announcer in a station where he didn’t want to catch a train. He couldn’t believe that this woman was talking to him. Instead, he listened to the rain, beating against the windows. The rain seemed to tell him more.
    “There is a new government programme that has been designed specifically for people like you,” the magistrate went on. “The truth is, Matthew, that nobody wants to see young people sent into care. It’s expensive – and anyway, we don’t have enough