‘Tie his arms together!’
‘No, you’ll get in trouble, doing that to a kid. Wait for the police!’
‘Who cares? A lad who does a thing like that? Tie him up, safer for us all that way -’
‘Callum didn’t do it!’
Melissa had managed to push her way to the front of the mob. Stunned by the fierceness of the crowd, Callum noticed for the first time that one of the men holding him down was Mr Gower, the deputy head. Melissa noticed at exactly the same time.
‘Mr Gower! Mr Gower! Listen to me!’ she shouted. ‘Callum’s been with me all afternoon, since school got out! I was waiting for him outside and I’ve been with him the whole time since! He didn’t do anything!’
‘You’re in it together!’ Baz screamed at her. ‘You both hated him!’
Melissa ignored Baz completely. She brandished her recently purchased notebook.
‘Mr Gower, you’ve got to listen to me!’
Gower beckoned to another man to come and take his place holding Callum, then got to his feet and drew Melissa aside.
‘I know it’s hard to accept,’ Gower said, ‘but sometimes we don’t understand -’
‘No, listen!’ Melissa cried. ‘We were in the post office. See this?’ She held up the notebook. ‘We just bought it. We were in the queue for fifteen minutes with tons of other kids. Then we were in the shop. We only heard the screaming as we came out! We’ve got dozens of witnesses. Ask any of them! Callum didn’t do it!’
‘Well, we can check,’ said Gower dubiously. ‘But that’s up to the authorities.’
Right on cue, wailing sirens and flashing lights began to pull up around them. It was emergency vehicle overkill – a couple of ambulances, a police van and at least three squad cars. Dazed as he was, Callum couldn’t see through the crowd to count them all. A medical team swooped down on Ed’s lifeless body and a swarm of uniformed police officers began to organise the crowd. Baz was gently coaxed into one of the police cars so he could make a statement. At this point the policemen noticed Callum, nailed to the ground by half a dozen men.
‘This the suspect?’
Melissa was as persistent as a bulldog. Since she’d got no joy from the deputy head, she shifted her focus to the police officers.
‘Callum Scott didn’t do this! I was with him all afternoon. We were in the queue outside the post office! You can ask anyone who was there. And there’s CCTV, too. You can check that. You can check!’
She wasn’t hysterical, she was dogged. But she couldn’t stop the officers hauling Callum to his feet, frisking him against the wall, and snapping handcuffs into place around his wrists. She finally got through to one of the junior officers who was taking notes and looking for witnesses.
‘CCTV in the corner shop. Right, we’ll check that. There’s a camera at the school gate, too.’ The brisk young woman swivelled on her heel and pointed with her pen. ‘Anyone from the school here now? Teachers, I mean.’
‘The deputy head there – the bald guy,’ Melissa gasped gratefully. ‘Mr Gower.’
‘Right-o. I’ll speak to him.’ The officer scribbled his name down. ‘And your name, miss?’
‘Melissa Roper.’
‘Are you one of the victim’s friends?’ the policewoman asked kindly.
‘No!’ Melissa’s answer was forceful. ‘No, I wasn’t. He was a bully. But . . .’ Callum saw her staring woefully at the policewoman with her big, soulful eyes opened wide. ‘But what happened to Ed shouldn’t happen to anyone. And there isn’t a girl or a boy in the school who’d do that.’
A couple of other kids were gathering round Melissa now. Some of them nodded in agreement with her, but then Ed’s mate George shouted, ‘Don’t pay any attention to Melissa, miss, she’s Callum’s girlfriend!’
‘I am not!’ Melissa responded angrily.
The officer gave Melissa a quick, sharp look, but continued scribbling on her notepad. ‘Telephone number?’ she asked.
Callum didn’t hear any more of the conversation. He was being frogmarched to the police van by four black-suited officers in protective vests while another two wrestled the heavy doors open. He was still too numb to struggle or even protest.
Just as they got the doors to the van open, Melissa appeared at his side again. She’d forced her way out through the crowd and past the barrier of police surrounding the emergency vehicles.
‘Callum!’ she cried. ‘They’re not going to take my word against Baz’s, but they’ll check the cameras.’
One of the policemen grabbed Melissa by the shoulders and pulled her back. Callum finally came to his senses.
‘Tell Gran!’ he called out to her.
‘What?’
‘Go and find my gran. Tell her what happened – tell her where they’re taking me!’
Never in his life had Callum been so anxious to have Gran, with her practicality and determination, battling on his side.
‘Anything else? Can I do anything else?’ Melissa cried out desperately.
‘Just tell Gran!’
The strong arms that held him began to lift him into the van. Inside its dark interior, Callum was shoved down on the single hard bench, a policeman on either side of him. Someone pulled a barred gate across the opening with a clang.
Callum heard Melissa’s anxious voice calling out one more desperate message to him:
‘I’ll go and get her now!’
Then the van doors slammed shut.
Chapter 18
The police cell was clinically clean and bare. Callum sat on the narrow mattress with his head in his hands, still dazed, and growing increasingly frightened.
He had not been charged with anything. The term they had used when they locked him up was ‘detention before charge’. The Custody Sergeant had been very clear as he explained it. While they decided if there was sufficient evidence to charge him, Callum would be held in custody. If a charge was made, it would be for murder – for the grisly, cold-blooded murder of Ed Bolton.
Callum could scarcely believe that the events of the past few hours had actually happened. His arrest had gone strictly by the book. He had been taken into Marlock Police Station, photographed, fingerprinted, breathalysed and made to give a urine sample, too – Baz’s description of Callum’s behaviour had made him sound so thoroughly insane that there was suspicion he might be high on some kind of mind-altering drug. They had taken his clothes for forensic testing, leaving him a pair of white overalls that were at least three sizes too big for him. And he was bombarded with questions – did he have any existing medical conditions? Did he want to speak to a solicitor? Callum couldn’t imagine that the ability to see ghosts counted as an existing medical condition, and he didn’t think it would be a good idea to mention it. He had been allowed one phone call and had tried to ring Gran. She hadn’t answered.
So Callum waited. He sat with his head sunk in his hands. It was all unbelievable. He couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t get the events of the day ordered in his mind. His brain dragged him relentlessly back to the scene of Ed’s murder – to that first terrible moment of discovery, when he had seen his eyeless body . . .
A memory of something Jacob had said popped into Callum’s unwilling head.
Surely you have seen it – boys and girls like you, killed.
Chime children, with their eyes torn out.
Could Ed have been a chime child? Now that he thought about it, there was no reason there shouldn’t be other chime children in Marlock – Callum wasn’t necessarily the only child in the town born between midnight on Friday and cockcrow on Saturday on the night of a full moon. The thought had never occurred to him. No one else could see ghosts, could they? Or maybe, like Callum, they just didn’t admit it. Jacob had said that Callum was like other chime children, but stronger. Maybe someone like Ed only saw ghosts now and then, and was able to explain it away to himself. Or didn’t care. Or hadn’t developed the ability before . . .