His panic worsened when he couldn’t breathe, but once his wrists were secure, the weight came off his neck and he was hauled into a sitting position. He could barely stay upright. Nothing was in focus and his head hurt. When he realised he was being read his rights, he wanted to throw up. This had to be a mistake. They’d got the wrong room. They were probably looking for Sean or his father.Please not Phelan.
Newt watched in slack-jawed disbelief as one of the policemen lifted a gun from the top drawer of the unit where Newt kept his clothes and slid it into a plastic bag. Where had that come from?
“Wazzz happ…ing?” Why weren’t his words coming out right?
“I told you. You’re under arrest for armed robbery.”
Armed robbery?Everything inside him turned to liquid. “When…wuz I ‘posed…to have done that?”
“Last night.”
“But I wuz…here…in bed. Missstake. Asssk mother. Sssister.” Newt could feel himself slurring his words.Why?Then he got it.
Oh shit. My mother drugged me. She fucking drugged me!
“She says you went out around eight.”
Seven words to unravel a life.
Oh God. Oh God.His lungs locked. His stomach didn’t. He leaned forward and threw up all over the carpet. One ofthe policemen swore and jerked back. Newt had managed to hit his boots. He threw up again. It was as much as he could do not to piss himself.
And suddenly, with shocking clarity, he knew nothing in his world would ever be the same. His future had been stolen from him. Fear morphed to fury, but he smothered it. Showing anger would be a mistake. These guys were waiting for an excuse to hurt him. He watched as—ah, nothisjeans and T-shirt were lifted from the floor, where he never left his clothes, and bagged up.Shit.
“Not mine.” But whose were they?
No one took any notice. A towel was dropped over where he’d been sick. Newt wished he could rinse his mouth. His room was aggressively searched, his books flicked through and tossed aside along with his A level notes. It hurt to watch his things being treated with such little care. Clothes were pulled from his drawers, the drawers themselves yanked out of the unit, the unit dragged away from the wall… He had no idea what they were looking for, what else they might find because he’d clearly been set up. He clenched his teeth so hard into his cheeks that he made them bleed.
They found jewellery and money in a box under his bed.Fuck.But they didn’t find his money which was hidden behind a piece of skirting board.Oh, now they have.
I have to keep quiet.Anything he said could be used against him. He’d seen the TV shows, heard people repeatno commenttime after time. Though mostly, if you were innocent, everything was fine in the end. Newt somehow knew innocence wasn’t going to save him.
He was taken out of the house in his grey tartan pyjamas. Luckily, he hadn’t been sick on them. They wouldn’t let him change but they allowed him to put on his trainers.While his hands were free, he’d wiped his mouth and managed to grab a gulp of water from his glass before he was taken downstairs. He was hauled past his mother who stood in the hall in her dressing gown, clutching Raithnait, pretending to cry.Oh, you bitch!It was a horrible thing to call your mother but she’d set him up.
“Newt! Sweetheart!” She reached for him and he jerked away. Not that she’d have managed to touch him. The policeman holding him made sure of that. The first time in his life he remembering hearing an endearment from her and she hadn’t even meant it.
He was taken outside to a police van and was surprised to see his father and brothers already secured in the back. He’d assumed he was being made to take the fall for one of them, but… He opened his mouth and his father put his foot on Newt’s and pressed hard. Newt kept his mouth shut. Phelan looked pale and distraught, but said nothing. Nor would he meet Newt’s gaze. If his brother had just shot him a little smile, Newt would have felt some comfort, but if the only person in the world who cared about him wouldn’t even look at him, that wasn’t good.Really not good. Why am I being dragged into this?
Crushed by the gravity of the situation, Newt felt as if he’d just fallen through ice into freezing water. He started to shake. If he hadn’t been secured in place in his seat, he’d have slumped to the floor. He couldn’t believe this was happening. Had he broken a mirror, spilt salt, put his shoes on the table, walked under a ladder, dropped a pair of scissors…? Any of the bad luck things his stupid family believed in? Newt sucked in a ragged breath.
From the moment he’d been born into this family, his luck had been running out and now the glass was finallyempty. He’d been set up to serve whatever purpose his father wanted and his entire family would go along with that. There might be no way to avoid it. But he clung tomightbecause even with the odds stacked against him, he wasn’t a quitter.
As the van began to move, his father started to talk, playing the role Newt had somehow expected.
“You’re a disgrace,” his father hissed. “You’ve let the family down…”
He railed at him for being a bad son, disappointing his mother, taking a gun on a job, firing that gun…Oh fuck.Newt said nothing. He looked only at Phelan whose head was still down.
“Phelan,” Newt whispered.
His brother didn’t look up.
His father kicked Newt’s shin—hard. Newt bit back his yelp.
“Listen carefully, you little shit.” His father was whispering below the noise of the engine. “Your fingerprints are on that gun, the clothes from the floor of your room are covered with gunshot residue. Youwilltake the fall. Plead guilty. At your age, you’ll be out in less than three years. It’s nothing. Phelan has a previous conviction, which means he’d get at least fifteen. That’s not going to happen. I need him.”
And not me.Newt could almost feel himself shrinking.But Phelan? Oh God.That was why his brother wouldn’t look at him?
“It’s my history A level this morning,” he whispered.
