The Piper 4

Tony Blackledge read the case history and almost cried.

All his years in the field of social work had never fully salted the wounds he felt at the injustice that was regularly visited upon many of society’s most vulnerable citizens. He particularly felt the pain of the young who were caught up in cycles of abuse and indifference and rarely had the chance to escape. He liked the words of Elliot Ness from the film The Untouchables, ‘Let’s go do some good’ and kept it as a slightly ironic motto.

Now, as he saw the boy, he could not help thinking that he ought to have felt more than sorry for him. There had been lots of cases where the child had suffered as a result of a bad parent or just plain bad luck. Liam had had both. So Tony should have been able to understand his plight…