Free Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce Page A

lawyer. Do I mind getting the fingerprinting out of the way? No, I don’t mind, here, do it now. I’ve got nothing to hide.
    It’s an hour before this lawyer arrives. Woman. I don’t like her much. She’s got this long jaw and her teeth are like too big for her mouth. Face like a fucking racehorse. Shergar. All she does is nod at me, no kiss your ass or nothing. Just sets out a notepad and pen on the table. She sees from the ink on my fingertips that they’ve already started. There’s this copper sitting beside me, bloke with a big wart just beside his nose. He’s been all right, told me not to worry, brought me cups of tea.
    She looks at the copper. “You shouldn’t have begun this before I arrived,” she says sourly.
    Copper smiles at me and scratches an eyebrow, as if it’s all a joke between him and me.
    “He’s a minor,” says the lawyer.
    “Give me a break,” says the copper. “We just got a few things out of the way.”
    “Has he said anything?”
    “No.”
    “Excuse me,” I puts in fiercely. “I’m here.”
    She turns to me and through the narrow gap between her two rows of teeth she says, “Have you told the police anything?”
    “Only what they asked me,” I says. “I haven’t got nothing to hide.”
    She looks at the copper again and he just folds his arms.
    Two new coppers come into the room, plainclothes. They don’t even look at me. They introduce themselves to my lawyer as West Midlands CID. I’m trying to think where I’ve heard stuff about West Midlands CID. Something to do with corruption charges.
    “I’m Julia Langley,” my lawyer says through her overcrowded mouth. I think it’s funny how some people’s names ring against their own teeth.
    The two newcomers settle into the plastic chairs around the table. One of the CID men is so big he can only just squeeze into the chair. He sits back from the table, the seams of his trousers almost bursting round his fat thighs. He rocks back in the chair with his legs apart and the fat fingers of this huge paw digging in under his collar, as if it’s too tight for him. He still hasn’t looked me in the eye.
    The other one is most definitely looking me in the eye. He’s way overfocused on me. And he looks sad. I mean sad, like he might at any moment burst into tears. Is he faking it? I don’t know. He’s kind of scruffy. An old raincoat with a shabby cardigan underneath. He’s wearing a tie but the knot is tiny, pulled way too tight, and the collar of his shirt even I can see is dirty. His face is wreathed in lines. I’ve never seen a bloke with so many lines on his face: brow corrugated, wrinkles all round his eyes, lines circling his mouth like ripples from a pond, a big cleft in his chin. His face is a ruin. He takes his eyes off me very briefly to nod at the uniformed copper who’s been with me for the past hour. The uniformed copper leans forward and switches on a tape machine and says my name aloud and what time it is.
    “Hello, Richie,” says the man with the lined face. His voice is very gentle. It’s so gentle it scares the fucking liver right out of me. A gentle copper. Really, I want to shit. “I’m Dave Williams. Are you all right?”
    I look at my lawyer. She just clamps her teeth together like a horse and stares back at me. “Yeh,” I say. “Yeh.”
    “They treating you okay?”
    “Yeh.”
    “That’s good, because I don’t want anyone to give you a hard time. We just want to get to the bottom of things.”
    “Right.”
    “Richie,” he says, and the lines corrugate deeper on his brow, “we’re pretty much sure we know how it happened.”
    “How what happened?”
    “Look. I’m going to be dead straight. It really is better if it comes from you.”
    “If what comes from me?”
    The big fat fucker suddenly coughs and leans forward, fingering his collar again like he might want to rip it off his neck. He says nothing.
    “Richie, I want to help you.”
    “Who are you?” I say.
    “I told you,