Slipknot Read Online Free Page A

stone. So that little bit of evidence was bound to come out – and be made much of by the prosecution.
    Stephenson heaved a big, private sigh. He always got landed with them, he reflected, these naive ones. The quiet ones. The weirdoes, the still waters who ran so deep and lashed out without warning. His gaze landed back on the boy and he wondered what was going on inside that strange head of his?
    Maybe Callum picked up on the solicitor’s sigh. He turned his head and stared at him. For a split second they exchanged something – some empathy. Stephenson cleared his throat and for some unaccountable reason was reminded of his two- year-old son, Dylan, who sometimes stared at him with the same perceptive and unabashed absorption.
    He took his glasses off and wiped them on a tissue he drew from his pocket. It wouldn’t do to feel pity for this soul or to connect him too closely to his own child. And yet… He turned his attention towards Shelley. Callum was her son just as Dylan was his and Andrea’s.
    Both the police were watching him impatiently. He read their minds.
    Get on with it.
    ‘You were seen…’ PC Gethin Roberts was reading from some notes he’d made earlier ‘…by many witnesses getting the knife from your bag and approaching Roger Gough with it in your hand. Do you deny that you took the knife with the intention of assaulting your schoolmate?’
    Callum shook his head. Even he could work out that it would be pointless. Everyone had seen it in his hand, for goodness’ sake. He supposed he could have said he’d
found
it, in his schoolbag, by chance. But that was so weak. And for once in his life he didn’t want to be weak.
    ‘For the record defendant has shaken his head.’ PC Roberts spoke.
    ‘Why did you have a knife?’ Paul Talith’s style of questioning was very different. Truculent and confrontational .
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘I suggest to you that you know perfectly well why you had a knife. It was to attack Roger Gough, wasn’t it?’
    Callum opened his mouth to deny it then thought, what the Hell? ‘Yes,’ he said instead.
    ‘I suppose you disliked the guy.’ Talith couldn’t manage to be subtle – even when he tried as hard as this.
    ‘I did dislike him. Why don’t you ask me why?’
    Talith simply lifted his eyebrows.
    ‘It was because he was bullying me.’
    ‘Look, sonny.’ Again Talith leaned right across the table. ‘We don’t have any evidence that Gough was anything but a school buddy of yours. You, on the other hand, were seen plunging a knife right into Roger Gough’s chest missing his heart by a couple of inches. It was a lethal attack. Understand? He’s lucky to be alive. In fact,’ he jabbed his finger at Callum, ‘
you’re
damned lucky he’s still alive. You don’t know how lucky you are, sonny. You could well have been up on a murder charge.’
    Callum put his hand to his throat and drew in a long, rasping breath.
    ‘Pass his inhaler,’ Shelley ordered. ‘Give it to him.’
    Roberts handed the schoolbag across to her. Disdain darkening her face, she fished out a Ventolin pump and handed it to Callum without saying a word. They all watched silently while he inhaled two sharp squirts.
    Roberts waited for a minute or two then continued with the questioning. ‘Tell me about the knife,’ he said. ‘When did you buy it?’
    ‘I told you. A week ago.’
    ‘
Why
did you buy it?’
    ‘I don’t know. Self defence I suppose.’
    ‘So you did intend to use it against someone.’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Was it for anyone specific?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Have you ever stabbed anyone before?’
    Callum shook his emphatically. ‘No, I never have.’
    ‘So you bought it with a
specific
purpose in mind.’ The way he lingered over the word specific was a lure, a shining thing in the water, dangling for him to take it in his mouth. But then he would be caught – trapped and never free without tearing his flesh.
    Callum appealed dumbly to