Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Gemma Akintola

"Gemma...are you okay?"

It was a fatuous question and took all Gemma's willpower not to snap back. After all, Ellie, after seeing Gemma wander, confounded and crestfallen, into the kitchen, had immediately kicked Jade March out to ask what was wrong. She'd then refused to leave Gemma's side until she'd explained what had gone on, and spent the next hour comforting her before driving her to the police station, every one of those sixty minutes spent holding back incensed sobs. Ellie didn't deserve Gemma's virulence. But still, "are you okay?", really? It was the automatic human response to sadness, Gemma supposed, the buying of time whilst the brain attempted to decode the situation and churn out the requisite sympathy. Fucking stupid question though, she thought to herself. Undeserving of a reply, even, as she slammed Ellie's car door shut and stormed into the building, not stopping until she reached the reception.

"Can you let me through to see my brother, please, Sonny Akintola? He's 17, he's in the custody suite and I'm here to sit in on his interview." She said brusquely, running a hand across her clammy forehead. The man behind the counter she recognised to be the same man who'd patronised Alice when they'd gone to see Detective March about the taxi driver; he was equally as uncooperative as he'd been on that occasion, taking an unconscionable amount of time simply to raise his head and look at her.

"You're here for Sonny Akintola?" He asked wearily, tapping his biro on the counter.

"Yes...is that not what I just said?" Gemma retorted. "Can you take me through? Like, now, please?"

"Of course, sweetheart." He replied.

Eurgh.

Sweetheart, Gemma thought. The arsehole needed a good kick up his condescending arse. "If you'd just like to follow me this way." He said, and then, without checking Gemma was behind him, he launched into an affected yet purposeful half-walk, half-march. Again, she was led through the double doors, then the long, stark corridor and finally, not without a quick rap on the door, into a square, compact room, where her brother, Sonny, and one tired senior looking police officer sat on opposite sides of a ramshackle table. Immediately, Gemma threw her arms around her brother, hugging him so tightly, anyone would think it her mission to squeeze the life out of him with her bare hands.

"If you'd like to, uh, take a seat please, Miss Akintola." The officer said in a low, chastened voice.

"Are we allowed to talk quickly first?" She asked, her speech suffused by desperation as she reached out to clasp her brother's hand between her own. She knew all the basics; Sonny had told her over the phone. He'd been in town near St.Edmunds, dropped off by, and at the suggestion of their mother, to surprise Gemma with an end of term dinner and his company on her drive back home. Bored, and waiting for Gemma to text him when she was leaving, he had looked at rings in the high street's jewellery shop for his girlfriend of "1 year and 2 months", Danielle. That part of his story had earned him a "For Christ's sake, Sonny! Rings? You're 17 fucking years old!" from Gemma, but nonetheless, she'd let him continue. Upon his exit from the shop, the alarm had began to blast and he had been followed out of the shop by security guards. He'd made the mistake of running ("Why would you run, Sonny, if you didn't steal anything?", "Because, Gem! You see police, security guards, you bloody run, don't you? Even if you haven't done nothing wrong!") and had been apprehended promptly after down some alleyway by police, who had found one of the store's £250 rings in his rucksack and taken him to the station. She had imagined him, the runner that he is, feet slamming down on the concrete, arms blade-like, and police sirens where she usually got the ecstatic clamour of an audience, bewildered but running, regardless, from the assembly of halfhearted, nothing-better-to-do monsters that boys like her brother were told to call the "justice" system. And she understood the fear, knew it well. She'd had police stop her in the park before just for smoking a cigarette, suspecting it of being weed, giving the 2 cutesy white girls that sat on the swings next to her time to stub out their joints. There were things, however, that she didn't understand. How it had all happened, why he had called her instead of one of their parents, and the possibility that it had all happened as a result of the carnage that had begun the day they found Cleo's body in the lake. Upon receiving a furtive nod from the officer, to signal that they were allowed to briefly talk before he began to interview, Gemma turned to her brother and launched into her long, mental list of questions.

"Why did you call me first, Sonny?" She said in a low voice, glancing in the direction of the officer who pretended to suddenly be interested by a speck of peeled off paint on the wall opposite.

"Because...You're the only one that didn't crucify Isaac when he got arrested. You're the only one that really, like, stuck by him, you get me?" Isaac's name was the last thing Gemma wanted to hear, let alone think about. She'd seen what prison had done to him and maybe, maybe it would be different for Sonny but it was a chance she wasn't open to taking. She had to direct their conversation to positive things, productive things, "let's get you out of this shithole" kind of things.

"Do the store have CCTV?" She asked. "I mean, if they have CCTV, we can use that to prove that you didn't do it,", Her words got closer and closer together as she spoke, "it will all be fine, you'll be out of here tomorrow and then-"

"I thought that, Gemma, but I heard the woman that owns the shop tell the police their CCTV isn't working at the moment." Sonny interrupted. "She reckons she saw me take it herself-"

"Bullshit." Gemma spat back at him.

"And she said as well that I'd be loitering around outside the shop for weeks, which is utter shite! I haven't ever been to that shop before in all my life! Said she had me pegged down as a thief before I even walked into the bloody shop." Sonny paused and then looked to the officer, who appeared momentarily distracted by a woman mouthing something to him from outside the door. Screwing his face up in concentration, he stuck a finger into his sock, Gemma watching him, baffled yet staying silent, so as not to attract the scrutiny of the detective. Drawing his finger back out, he pushed it against his thumb, something thin and white resting between them.

"What the..." Gemma began to hiss but she faltered, for Sonny began a vehement shaking of his head, before dropping it into her hand a small piece of crumpled up paper.

"Fell out of my bag when they were searching it. Haven't had a chance to read it." He said under his breath, falling silent as the officer turned his head owlishly towards them.

"Uh, I need the loo." Gemma barked at him, the second the officer was fully facing them again. Confused, he nodded at Gemma before leaning back in his chair and holding the door open, where she bolted out into the corridor and unfolded the piece of paper.

Like brother, like sister.

The drug smuggler, the murderer and now, the thief.

Your parents must be so proud of you all.

You can thank her for me too.

After all, your darling sister, Gemma?

She's the reason you're here.

Gemma felt her knees clock out beneath her as she read it. There were flashes of that waxen, ghostlike face, that clear liquid splattering on her arm, her own flesh bubbling like water in a kettle.

The Supplier.

"Shit!" She screeched down the corridor, her cry bouncing off the walls, reverberating as if there were several of her stood there in front of her, each one of them ready to drive a knife into those 2 black holes for eyes, all together like an old English style angry mob. But there weren't several of her. There was no angry mob. And that was a fact she was agonisingly aware of as she stood there, completely impuissant.