Rhinoceros 9
Doreen was ‘coming down with something’ and was therefore unable to make it to the meeting. Ryon had ‘done a runner’ when she had told him to transport his arse to school. Which, Alan tended to think, was fine by most of the people in the room. Easier to talk about people than with them.
It never ceased to amaze him how many people an innocuous, lumbering, muddle-headed individual like Ryon could cause to be in the same room at the same time, all advocating on his behalf, or in the interests of their chosen occupation. Where would all these people be without Ryon and his mates?
Some familiar faces. PC Scammell, the police liaison officer for the estate, was there in all his Yorkshire bluffness that hid a heart of total ineffectiveness. The Youth Offending Officer, Jon Wilson, with his earnest beard and hippy bracelets. A rare appearance from a consultant from the Children’s Assessment Centre had been tempted out of the confines of the NHS, blinking like a wayward mole, into the real world. She was named Angie Cooper, according to the badge Alan spent a few minutes trying to read, and she had brought along a student called Lizzie for moral, if silent, support. Then there was the Social Worker, Diane Fishbourne, flailing defensively behind her thick glasses and eternally searching in her huge bag with distressed seams for something useful. Alan told himself he really must cut down on the cynicism. Two or three attacks a day is OK, but chain-cynicism will lead to an early death.
“Shall we do introductions?” Diane asked, still fumbling in her bag. She spilled the contents of a folder onto the floor and looked at Alan pointedly, as though this, too, was his fault.
“Alan Scope, Ryon’s form tutor and key worker at Greenlands.”
“Bob Scammell, Police Liaison Officer for Ryon, and his reprobate cronies, for my sins.”
“Jon Wilson, yot.”
“Yot?” said a startled Diane.
“Youth Offending Team,” Jon clarified.
“Angie Cooper, clinical psychologist, Fulwood Children’s Centre. Sorry I was late, couldn’t find the school at all. Is anyone taking minutes?”
“I’ll do it,” said Alan, after a pause. Don’t all volunteer at once, he decided not to add.
“Oh, I’m Lizzie, student psychology,” and she giggled unnecessarily.
“I think you all know me,” Diane stated. “Right, down to business. Doreen Taylor is not able to attend as she has a cold – “ There was a sudden snort from PC Scammell, as though he had been building up steam for too long and needed to release the pressure. “ – yes, and Ryon, unfortunately, is out, whereabouts unknown.” Everyone glanced at PC Scammell, who this time, not wishing to disappoint, folded his arms, puffed out the rotundity of his chest, and raised his eyebrows. Where he to lose his job, Alan reflected, there was always a solid career as an Oliver Hardy impersonator. “So, I think we’ll make a start. As I think you all know, Ryon was arrested on Thursday night in the residence of a Mr… where is it, I’ve got it written down somewhere, of a Mr… Anyway, a resident of Brockholme Cresent in Fulwood. He was apprehended by the occupier who then called the police, whereupon he spent the night in Endington Police Station.”
PC Scammell had again reached maximum pressure. “Basically, he was caught red ‘anded and nicked.”
“Indeed,” Diane continued. “His mother was unable to collect him and he ended up making his own way home the following day. There is a suggestion – and I know what Doreen is like, before you say anything – but I’m obliged to record the suggestion that Ryon was handled unnecessarily, erm, abrasively by the police…”
For a brief moment there was a risk that everyone was going to be sprayed with the contents of PC Scammell’s tea, but he restrained himself enough to bang the cup onto the table and boom, “The lad’s a thug. He’ll as soon as mug his own gran as ‘elp ‘er across the road.”
“Perhaps he was resisting arrest,” Jon helpfully suggested. Alan couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.
“I don’t want to get sidetracked by – “ Diane began.
PC Scammell cut in, “You don’t pussyfoot around his type.”
“I wasn’t suggesting… But he does have rights,” Diane ventured, her face flushing slightly as she looked around the table for support. No-one seemed engaged enough to take up the cudgels of justice, so PC Scammell, with some satisfaction, emitted a ‘harumph’ and occupied the fullness of his chair like a Buddha in fancy dress.
After a pause, Angie said, “Shall we move on?”
“Yes, we need to watch the time,” Alan agreed. “I’ve heard custodial is a possibility.”
“About time,” said PC Scammell.
Jon stroked his wispy beard. “If the court made an order insisting on engagement with YOT we could, I think, make some progress. That would be more cost effective than custodial.”
“But would it be more effective?” PC Scammell asked with unnecessary emphasis.
“The short answer is, probably, yes,” Alan said. “If he gets away from his environment somehow, maybe a college place or something, I don’t know... But he still has a chance.”
“Cool,” agreed Jon.
PC Scammell, now hugely inflated and impressively pink, like a cartoon tea urn, indicated that ‘cool’ was the very opposite of his thoughts and intentions.
The meeting meandered at this point, discussing the costs of various interventions, but Alan dutifully wrote down a summary of each comment. He didn’t mind. It gave him something menial to do while he attempted once again to straighten his thoughts.
Diane outlined the various possibilities that could arise from the deferred court hearing, running from acquittal to caution to fine to custodial, with various permutations inbetween. She felt that a fine seemed most likely, a comment which facilitated a flurry of Hardy-esque postures of exasperation from PC Scammell. As the meeting progressed he increasingly turned the colour of a russet boil and expanded his lungs with sharp inhalations to frightening proportions.
Diane mentioned the current situation with Ryon’s father and the household arrangements of Ryon and his mum, who had recently been prescribed anti-depressants. Ryon, it turned out, was ‘yet to engage’ with his reparation for the theft of the mobile phone (which Ryon denied because it was already stolen and ‘it was a shit phone anyway’). But he was keeping pretty much to his curfew, and was intending to take some GCSEs in the summer. The meeting looked to Alan expectantly. “Well, I think I can get an English grade out of him if I bribe him with a KFC.” They smiled, as if this was a joke.
Diane then told the meeting that she would be stepping up her home visits to ensure success, and at this point even Alan inadvertently found himself discharging a surprise snort, which he quickly diverted to a sneeze and an ostentatious blowing of his nose.
There was then talk of recommending Doreen for a ‘parenting course’, which, at the very least, provided most of the professionals around the table the opportunity to join PC Scammell in a bout of smirking, sniggering and, Alan had to admit as he wiped a tear from his eye, downright prejudice.
Angie felt obliged to ask about medication which, as everyone knew, Ryon refuses to take because it ‘makes him feel like a spaz.’ She went on to explain how his correct dosage had lapsed anyway as Doreen had not made the last three appointments. Even if he took some medication now his body would not have acclimatised to its usage, and his increased size would absorb it, mitigating the effects.
“Why doesn’t he take two or three, then?” Jon asked.
“It doesn’t work like that – we’d need to see him. Anyway, it’s hardly worth it now, he’ll be leaving school soon.” All this support sat around the table, thought Alan, and it just melts away on his sixteenth birthday. Well, all except the police, probably.
Jon, who said ‘cool’ on two further occasions which, to Alan’s way of thinking, would deserve a sound punch in his beardy face in other circumstances, gave a cedible account of total non-engagement with the Youth Offending Service. Ryon seemed to miss his appointments, during which he was meant to ‘empathise with the victims of crime’, with a very particular regularity, leading Jon to believe that Ryon was ‘not really interested in reforming’. It was fortunate that PC Scammell was out of the room at this point answering his mobile.
Alan outlined Ryon’s behaviour whenever he was in school, and gave the gist if his recent home visit. Then the meeting stumbled towards its inevitable conclusion of a list of ineffectual actions and off-the-record (but far more interesting) opinions and small talk.
But before it finished, Alan was caught off guard by an innocuous piece of information and a question from Diane. “Ryon seems to spend a lot of time at a mate’s house, a certain… now what’s his name? Let’s see, Ah, here it is,” and Alan looked at her greedily, “A Gary Mitchelson of 3 Lombard Close. Is he known to you, Bob?”
PC Scammell, who had returned to the stuffy meeting room in a slightly less flammable state, stretched his shoulders back and out in order to command further the space, and announced, “He’s a known fence. Doesn’t do the nicking himself, gets others to, passes on the gear, splits the profits. Father runs the show. Out and out thug. Well known. Very well known. I think a little visit from PC Plod may be in order.” And he grinned menacingly.
Alan surreptitiously wrote down the name and address on the sheet under his notes.
