They have left him alone. Occasionally he hears movements on the other side of the door. Voices. Like sleeping in the afternoon. Pete thinks of his room at home, pushes all that out of his head.
Hanley. Hanley will come in and say, What have you been doing you daft lad? Come on, time to knock off.
But Hanley doesn’t come. No one comes.
Pete supposes this is when you ask for a solicitor, maybe Hanley is getting a solicitor, do you have to pay for a solicitor, how much does a solicitor cost, hadn’t Hanley been going on the other day about how at last they’d stopped all those crooks, chances and scroungers getting legal aid? Was he a crook, a chancer?
Pete pulls a thread from the cuff of his shirt, winds and unwinds it round his thumb.
He can hear dogs but her can’t hear dogs, he can hear the hiss of trees, but the tree sound is something above him hissing in the concrete round the skylight.
He realises that no one has actually arrested him, wonders if he could just get up and leave.
He needs to call someone. To phone home would do his mum’s head in, exactly what she doesn’t need right now. Not her.
His sister. She is always there even though there is nothing she can do for him now, if she was still alive … but she is not. Not her.
His Dad couldn’t give a fuck, he’d just laugh, go on again that always knew Pete would turn out bad. He was never as good as David.
David is in Afghanistan. Or somewhere. Afghanistan last time he heard.
David’s wife. No. She would use it to start things again.
Lyn. Lisa. Lyn.
Her number’s in his phone in Hanley’s van. He could ask them to find out, look her up. Lyn who? That Lyn who lives over there.
They’d laugh at him. Like his Dad.