heal without leaving a good deep schmiss – a scar. It was the one that made girls want to find out more about this mysterious German stranger. Duellers nowadays were supposed to be discreet about their fraternity exploits; their obsession with sharp swords; their ostentatious wearing of the sash and cap. But if it made him more interesting to women …
Joachim picked up his list from the neat, dust-free desk in his uncluttered room.
‘Cola and snacks,’ he said, flicking his finger at the paper.
He collected his wallet from his desk and shoved his feet hastily into his trainers. He had just enough time to run to the Albert Heijn on the corner before he left. Kiosks in the train station were so much more expensive and Joachim was a careful sort. Klaus was right. Why should he put his father’s money in the pockets of the Blacks and Arabs?
As he slammed his door shut, he realised he had left his jacket on the end of the bed. It didn’t matter, though. He would be back within ten minutes, tops.
It was an ordinary beginning to what would almost certainly be an ordinary journey home at the end of the semester except that, under the bright lights of his local Albert Heijn supermarket, Joachim felt like he was being watched.
As he gathered his shopping and entered the alley that led back home, he just had time to register a stinging sensation in his neck before everything went black.
Ella Williams-May stared intently at the flickering old TV set, willing the night to pass without incident. A dark-haired actress was bouncing up and down on naked actor, Richard Gere’s lap. Officer and a Gentleman. The movie was so old that the quality of the picture would have been fuzzy even on a top of the range HDTV. But her mother liked Richard Gere and late-night pre-Christmas television was all about the repeats.
‘Turn it up,’ her mother said. ‘I can’t hear it.’
Ella tutted and turned the volume up a fraction.
‘More,’ her mother said.
‘But we won’t be able to hear if they come,’ she said.
‘Like I’m bothered tonight?’ her mother said. ‘I should be out partying, not babysitting you. It’s nearly Christmas, anyway. Can’t see anything happening tonight.’
Her mother dragged hard on her cigarette and exhaled through her nostrils. Ella thought she looked like a dragon when she did that. Letitia the dragon. With her shining long claws painted in rainbow colours; studded with diamanté; always fake.
Letitia the dragon took a swig from her glass of vodka and orange, rose from her sagging armchair and snatched the remote control from Ella.
‘Louder, I said,’ she barked. ‘Who’s the bloody parent in this house?’
Ella said nothing. Ella knew they should keep it low. Ella knew there could still be trouble.
Richard Gere’s friend had just hanged himself when trouble started.
Low voices out back. Dark shapes moving beyond the fence. Then, a broken bottle on the back path. Smash. Footsteps running away quickly. Whistles.
Ella grabbed her hockey stick.
‘Kill the lights,’ Letitia shouted, her cigarette twitching between her shaky fingers.
Loud knocking at the front door, then …
‘Don’t go,’ Ella said. ‘It’ll be—’
Letitia slid silently into the kitchen at the front. Ella followed, keeping low; creeping stealthily. She raised her head above the windowsill but Letitia was already standing tall, flailing her arms around, shouting.
‘Those bastards set fire to my house!’
Ella rushed to the front door ahead of Letitia. The door was open now, flames bubbling up the council’s standard-issue red paint, quickly extinguished with a pot full of liquid flung by Letitia. Letitia always had something fun in the pot standing by the door, ready to throw when the occasion demanded. Now the door reeked of petrol and piss. Glass on the floor out front. And, by the gate, an intact Coke bottle with a singed rag stuffed in the neck that had failed to ignite properly.
‘Petrol bomb! They petrol bombed us!’ Ella said, transfixed by the tableau before her.
She ran inside, heart thudding. She picked up the phone.
‘Don’t call the police!’ Letitia shouted. ‘Are you mad? Think I wanna be labelled as a grass?’
Ella ignored her and dialled 999. She held the receiver to her ear and squatted in the lounge where the flickering screen of the TV was the only source of light. Richard Gere was smiling now. Talking without sound. Lips moving. Carefree. Smart in his uniform. In the seconds she waited to be connected, she heard their voices again at the back. She could see them through the net curtains, moving below the streetlight.
‘Which service do you require, please?’ the woman at the other end asked.
‘Police. Quick. They’re here,’ Ella said.
The gate clicked as they crept into the garden. Right up the back path; brazen now. Ella could see their hooded silhouettes as they skulked by the door. She fired the details of her name and address at the woman on the phone.
‘Come quickly!’ she shouted.
Too late. Ella screamed.
It takes more than one go to smash an entire window in with a crowbar. The crowbar doesn’t do a clean job and glass is much harder to break than people think. Danny and his boy smacked the window hard, twice, and left only small shards stuck to the white UPVC frames. They had had a lot of practice lately.
Oh Danny Boy, Oh Danny Boy, the sirens are calling,
Their trainer-clad feet pounded away, accompanied by laughter and whistles. Down through the twists and turns of the alleys they would run, like rats hastening to the sewers. Always knowing where to go to ground. Ella knew this much.
Letitia was standing by the back door, staring down at the wreckage on the carpet.
‘How can they do this? Nearly Christmas, man. Look at the fucking mess. And now the cops are coming. I told you not to bloody ring them.’
Ella stared at the glass strewn at her feet. She looked around at the dismal living room. Sagging three piece suite, peppered with cigarette burns and food stains. Scratched coffee table. Old stereo, a relic from the early nineties. Drunken, balding Christmas tree, perched in the corner like a sad, old glittery tart at a crap party. There was nothing left to steal. There was nothing left to break. She shut her eyes and swallowed hard. She thought about her just-in-case hammer under her pillow. Then she kicked the despair aside.
‘I’ll help,’ Ella said, grabbing a dustpan and brush from the cupboard under the sink.
