Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

did nothing to clear the obscurity that seemed to grow around the case with every passing day. While she appreciated the necessity of spending hours ferreting out information, she was always happiest when she was out and about looking for answers in the real world, leaving the virtual maze for others to track online. Missing Geraldine, she set three of her constables to assist the VIDO team in viewing CCTV, and took Detective Constable Christian Whittaker with her to see what they could find out about Charlie Lewes, the young boy who had been attacked on the Andover Estate.

     
    Charlie was a skinny lad, with floppy light brown hair and narrow brown eyes that glared from beneath lowered lids. Either his memory had been knocked out of him in the attack or else he was deliberately refusing to co-operate, because whatever question was put to him, he was unable to come up with an answer.
    ‘How did you get that bruise, Charlie?’
    ‘Can’t remember.’
    ‘Who hit you?’
    ‘Don’t know.’
    ‘How can you not know who did that to you?’
    ‘Can’t remember.’
    ‘Was it your mum?’
    ‘Me mum? You having a laugh? She knows better than to lay a finger on me.’

     
    Despite vociferous protests, the boy had been given a medical examination.
    ‘It’s for your own good,’ Sam had explained.
    ‘What would be good would be to let me go home. It was only a bleeding bar of chocolate.’
    The medical officer was positive the blow had been indirect. If the implement had struck full on, there was no way the boy would have escaped serious damage. As it was, he had suffered a flesh wound that looked nastier than it actually was. Skin had been scraped away as the bludgeon slid along the side of his head, but internal damage appeared minimal. The boy was sent for an x-ray to make sure, but the doctor was confident the victim had suffered only superficial damage.
    ‘Would it have been enough to knock him out?’ Sam asked.
    The doctor shrugged.
    ‘He might have been stunned, in the sense that he’d received a terrible shock. As to whether he actually lost consciousness or not, that’s something you’ll have to ask him.’

     
    Charlie’s form teacher at school was a harassed-looking middle-aged woman, who groaned when she heard the police had come to see her about Charlie.
    ‘What’s he done now? I noticed he wasn’t in school today. He’s not in trouble is he?’
    Without answering the question, Sam asked if Charlie had been in any fights in school recently. The teacher said she wasn’t aware of any such incident.
    ‘What about injuries?’
    ‘What sort of injury are you talking about? He’s a boy. They fall over, knock each other about playing football, that sort of thing. But we don’t have any trouble here with fighting and –’
    ‘I’m talking about a nasty-looking head injury, on the right side of his head, bruised and perhaps bleeding. You couldn’t miss it.’

     
    The teacher shook her head.
    ‘A head injury, you say? That wouldn’t go unrecorded.’
    ‘When did you last see him?’
    Flustered, she checked her register.
    ‘Yes, here it is, 9S,’ she muttered. ‘He was here yesterday, but not today. I saw him at the end of the school day yesterday and he didn’t have any head injuries then as far as I’m aware. Whatever it is you’re investigating, it must have happened after he left school yesterday.’
    She looked up with a smile as though relieved the injury hadn’t happened in school.
    ‘He’s in my tutor group,’ she added, sounding more confident.

     
    ‘What about his mother? Could she be beating him at home? Enough to cause potentially serious injury?’
    The teacher shook her head.
    ‘I doubt it very much. She’s the overprotective type, always coming into school complaining.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘Some parents just complain a lot, it doesn’t seem to matter what it’s about. Most of them just want to blame the school for their children’s bad upbringing. It happens a lot, especially when there’s no father at home. The mothers are either violent or over-indulgent. Sometimes both.’
    She laughed nervously.

     
    A figure resembling Charlie was spotted on camera near his home at eight thirty that morning. Close examination of the film disclosed a stain on the side of his hood that could have been blood. It was difficult to tell on the grainy black and white film, but comparison with a blood stain on Charlie’s jacket confirmed the identity of the figure, so