Read In Guilty Night for Free Online Page B

branches outside and the muffled blare of a television somewhere in the building. He wondered how almost a dozen children could be kept so quiet,or why anyone should feel the need to do so, and, gazing round the miserable cell, its walls bare of posters or pictures, where he, had he been incarcerated like Arwel, would hide his precious secrets. Screwed to the wall beside the wardrobe was a rail, draped with a raggy white hand towel. Pulling the towel aside, he lifted the thick plastic rail from its cups, and held it end on to the light. An object fell out, hitting his cheek before hitting the floor with a sharp crack.
    Sitting again on the bed to look at his trophies, Dewi eased out the tight roll of paper from the guts of the rail. Unfurled, the paper tube became two glossy enlarged photographs. In one, eyes screwed up against the sun, Arwel sat astride a slender bay horse, looking down to the camera, a smile to his angelic face. He wore long black boots, fawn breeches, a quartered jersey and silk cap. Dewi turned the print over, to find the verso blank. In the other photograph, a man sat astride a silvery-grey horse, against a backdrop of cloud-swagged silvery-grey sky. He too wore long black boots and fawn breeches, a checked hacking jacket, and a black velvet hat, its peak shadowing his features. Dewi stared at the man and whistled to himself, before putting both photographs in his pocket. The other trophy, a black leather key-fob depicting a Harrier aeroplane, he too put in his pocket, before switching off the light, and opening the door to find the girl waiting for him, leaning against the far wall with her arms folded.
    ‘Find anything?’ she asked.
    ‘A keyring with a Harrier jumpjet on it.’
    ‘Oh, that. He got it from RAF Valley Airshow.’ She nudged Dewi towards the end of the corridor, anxious to be rid of him and the disturbance to routine he represented. ‘Surprised he didn’t take it with him,’ she added. ‘He was always bragging about it. Made the other kids jealous, though I can’t think why.’
    ‘He didn’t have much you might call personal. What about his sportsbag?’
    ‘Didn’t go to school, did he?’ She sounded bored, Arwel already consigned to the past, his means of passage an irritant to be tolerated with ill-grace.
    ‘Surely he went out? He can’t have stayed in all the time.’
    ‘Well, he was allowed out sometimes.’
    ‘On his own?’
    ‘Are you kidding?’
    ‘Was he or wasn’t he?’
    ‘The kids aren’t supposed to go out without staff.’ She heldopen the door to the administration corridor. ‘And you’ve no idea the trouble that causes.’
     
    Dewi laid two plates of fish and chips on McKenna’s kitchen-table, the cat squirming around his ankles. ‘Shall I cut up yours, sir?’
    ‘No thanks, Dewi. Take the end off my fish for the cat, please.’
    ‘She’s got a good thick coat for the winter.’ Putting the plate of fish on the floor, he watched her eat. ‘I like cats. They’re good company.’
    ‘They can,’ McKenna said, chopping his food into mouthfuls, ‘be very trying. Seen that chair in the parlour?’
    ‘You should’ve seen Arwel’s bedroom.’ Dewi poured the tea. ‘Furniture in there the gipsies’d throw on a council skip.’
    ‘Social Services are broke. Massive budget overspend.’ McKenna forked chips into his mouth, his right shoulder and elbow locking with each movement.
    ‘From what I’ve heard, Hogg reckons kids like that aren’t worth spending on,’ Dewi said, ‘partly ’cos they’ve no respect for anything, and partly ’cos most of ’em come from slummy council houses and wouldn’t know the difference anyway. And,’ he added, spearing a chip, ‘Mr Hogg thinks he shouldn’t give the kids ideas above their station by letting them have a nice place to live in.’
    McKenna put down his fork and picked up a mug of tea. ‘I’m not sure if what you say is decent hearsay, or your own interpretation of odds and ends of