The Wild Child by Casey Watson

Author:Casey Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

Despite his apparent glee at seeing off his tormentor, Tyler was really keen to get dressed and go and help Mike, but I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but no, love. It’s not your job to be running around after him and even if it was – even if you managed to catch up with him – I’m not sure you’d manage to get him back. No, you keep an eye out for Mike while I phone the EDT. We need them to take charge of this now.’

Well, would have been, had they answered, which they didn’t seem to want to. I was still hanging on the phone, re-dialling and re-dialling, when Mike returned a quarter of an hour later. He was empty handed.

I went to hang up, but he stopped me. ‘No, keep trying, love. He’s vanished. I reckon he’s gone over one of the walls and got through the backs somehow. He’s nowhere on the street, and if he’s still in earshot he’s ignoring me. Though Christ knows where he thinks he’s going to go with nothing on his feet and in a pair of flipping pyjamas!’

‘To find a phone box,’ I told him, ‘so he can call his father “in the nick”.’

‘And get us murdered in our beds,’ added Tyler.

‘That so?’ asked Mike. ‘Well, he’ll be looking a while then. I think the last time there was a phone box in this neck of the woods it was about 1993. I –’

He stopped then, in response to my hand, which I’d flapped, the duty officer having finally answered the phone. I ran through what had happened, then answered the usual questions: a physical description, plus the events that led up to him running off, step by step, from my overhearing his altercation with Tyler in the living room, to the actions I’d taken, to his climbing out of the window. I was then told, as I’d known I would be, that I must next call the police and go through the whole process once again.

It was a futile business, I always thought, the system we had in place; to have to go through such a rigmarole when in reality they couldn’t do anything – well, apart from telling you to phone the police. But it was protocol, and protocol was king, so I had no choice.

‘Am I in trouble?’ Tyler asked me, as I dialled the local station.

‘Trouble?’ I asked him. ‘Why would you be in trouble?’

He looked anxious. ‘Well, I was there, wasn’t I? It was me he was rowing with. What if he doesn’t come back? What then?’

‘Ty, mate,’ Mike said, putting an arm around his shoulder. ‘You are not in any trouble. Not the tiniest bit of trouble.’

‘But I called him things,’ he said, as I began explaining what had happened to a police officer. ‘I told him I’d punch his lights out. That’s, like, assault, isn’t it?’

Mike put his mouth to Tyler’s ear and whispered something I couldn’t catch. But could guess at. And at least it put a smile on Tyler’s face.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.