The Gathering Man (A DI Erica Swift Thriller Book 7)

by M K Farrar

  “You can talk to me, Bethany,” Mr Woodhouse said. “If someone is making your life miserable, I want to know about it. I can’t do anything to help if you won’t talk to me.”

  He was watching her with concern, genuine compassion on his face. But it was all a trick. She’d been here before. He could act as kind as he wanted, but in the end, it wouldn’t help. He’d bring the girls into the office and would call their parents. There would be a meeting, and they’d all be made to apologise to each other—even though Bethany hadn’t done anything wrong—and promise that things would change. But they didn’t change. They never would.

  “Everything’s fine, sir.” She didn’t lift her gaze to his, knowing he would read the lie in her eyes.

  He exhaled a sigh. “I’ve spoken to your mother about you spending some time with our school counsellor. Is that something she’s mentioned?”

  Bethany nodded. “Yes, she has.”

  “I think it would be beneficial to you to speak to someone impartial. There’s an opening tomorrow. How do you feel about that?”

  She still couldn’t meet his eye. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Good, I’ll set it up then. And you know, my door is always open. If you ever need to talk, you know where I am.”

  She still didn’t look up but reached for her bag instead. “Does that mean I can go.”

  “Yes, you can go.”

  Relieved to be out of there, she snatched up her bag and jumped to her feet. It wasn’t Mr Woodhouse’s fault, he was doing what he was supposed to as a teacher, but there really wasn’t anything he could do. Nothing could help her.

  Chapter Seven

  Joel Cumbee sat on a park bench and pulled his hood over his head, trying to stay hidden. Maybe if he couldn’t see anyone, they wouldn’t be able to see him either. No, that was a stupid thing to think. Stupid boy, like his grandmother always said. Such a stupid boy. Maybe he was stupid, but he understood what it meant when she poked out her lower lip like she did, and shook her head. Disappointed.

  It was better when people didn’t notice him. Stupid wasn’t the only thing people called him. Slow was another word. So was retard, which was often accompanied by people laughing. He didn’t understand what was so funny. It wasn’t his fault his brain didn’t work as fast as other people’s or that he didn’t always understand when something was a joke or when they were being serious. He wished he did, but he couldn’t change who he was.

  A figure sat beside him, and Joel stiffened. It was a stranger, he knew that, and he always had to be careful of strangers. They rarely meant anything good.

  “You look warm,” the man said, a jovial tone to his voice.

  Joel twisted his head towards him. It was rude not to reply to someone who had spoken to you. “I’m not warm. My feet are cold.”

  As though to display that fact, he stamped them up and down.

  “Your hoody looks warm, though,” the man continued. “Nice and thick.”

  “My grandmother gave it to me for my birthday this year. I am twenty-two years old.”

  He smiled. “Is that right? It sounds as though you have a nice grandmother.”

  Joel glanced away. “Sometimes she can be nice.”

  “Oh?” There was interest in his tone. “And sometimes she isn’t?”

  “She gets mad at me really easily.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “I don’t have a mother. She got sick when I was little. My grandmother raised me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Joel shrugged. Sometimes he wondered what it would have been like to have a mother. Would it have been any different to having a grandmother? He imagined a mother would be softer, gentler, kinder even. His grandmother got frustrated with him all the time, though he didn’t understand why. He always tried to do the right thing, but even when he thought he was doing something right, like helping to clean up, or putting the shopping away, she still got angry with him.

  “What about friends?” the man asked. “Do you have many friends?”

  Joel swallowed hard. “No, I don’t have any friends either.”

  He wished he did have a friend, someone he could joke around with, someone who wouldn’t laugh at him or judge him. He’d had a friend once, when he’d been at school—a special school, not a school for normal children, children whose grandmother wasn’t angry and frustrated with all the time, but instead would scoop them up with big hugs and buy them too many sweets and read them stories. His friend’s name was Adam, and they’d liked all the same things, like Lego and Star Wars, and they’d even liked the same foods, like chicken nuggets and sausages. But then one day Adam said he was moving to Scotland, and Joel didn’t even really know where Scotland was except that it was another country and really far away. They’d promised that they’d stay in touch, and they had at first. Joel had made sure to phone every single night, and even sometimes in the morning, but then Adam’s mother had got angry with him—someone else who was annoyed with him without him understanding why—and told him he needed to stop phoning all the time.

  “I know somewhere you could make some friends,” the stranger said, “good friends, too. The kind you can keep for the rest of your life.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely. I run a friendship group that I call a gathering, and we’re all friends there. We listen to one another, and we support one another. It’s really great.”

  “Do you eat pizza and watch Star Wars?”

  The man laughed, but it wasn’t a cruel laugh. “Well, we haven’t yet, but I don’t see why we couldn’t, if that’s what you like to do. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t like pizza, am I right?”

  His grandmother sometimes said she didn’t like pizza whenever he asked for it for dinner, but then she’d always eat it, so he guessed that meant she did like pizza after all. People didn’t eat things they didn’t like. He knew he didn’t. Sometimes his grandmother made broccoli to go with his meat and roast potatoes, and he never wanted to eat that. Another thing that made her angry.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “Everyone does like pizza.”

  “Here.” The man handed him a card. “How’s your reading?”

  “My reading is okay. Not the best, but okay.”

  “Can you read what’s on that card?”

  Working slowly through the words, using his phonics like he’d been taught, he read the address.

  “Do you think you could find it?” the stranger asked. “It’s not far from here.”

  “I think that would be okay. It’s not too far from my house.”

  He could always look the address up on a map. He was good with maps. They made sense to him. Everything in the right place.

  “Well, maybe we’ll see you there. It would certainly be great to have you come and make lots of new friends. There is one rule, though.”

  “Okay.”

  “The gathering is a secret group, so you can’t tell anyone about it. You know how secrets work, don’t you?”

  “You can’t tell anyone about them, or they won’t come true.”

  The man patted his hand. “Yes, something like that. Definitely the ‘can’t tell anyone’ part, though. The only people invited to this club are very special, like you, and we wouldn’t want just any old person showing up, would we? People like your grandmother.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  The man stood and dusted off the front of his trousers, as though lots of specks had landed on him in the short time he’d been sitting there.

  “Oh, I forgot one thing,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Joel,” he replied. “Joel Cumbee.”

  The man smiled. “Well, Joel Cumbee. I hope I’ll get to see you again really soon.” And with that, he walked off, leaving Joel alone.

  Joel put the card in his hoody pocket. He’d need to make sure he took it out again before his grandmother put the hoody in the wash, otherwise she’d find it, and Joel already knew what
would happen if his grandmother found the card.

  She’d be very angry indeed.

  He walked home and entered the house he shared with his grandmother.

  “Where have you been, Joel?”

  His gran’s voice came out of the kitchen, and inwardly he cringed.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Don’t you ‘nowhere’ me. Unless you vanished off the face of the earth for the past hour, you’ve been somewhere.”

  His shoulders slumped, and he put his head down and went through into the kitchen. His feet felt like they were two bricks as he dragged them along the floor.

  “Pick up your feet, Joel,” she snapped. “You’re going to scuff your shoes.”

  Joel sniffed the air, and his stomach sank. It was stew for dinner again. He hated stew. The meat his grandmother used always had pieces of fat and gristle on them, and he loathed the texture in his mouth. It made him feel like he was going to gag, but if he spat the meat out, he’d get told off for that. He thought it was better that he spat out a piece rather than throw up on the dining room table. He could just imagine her reaction to that.

  “Can I have something else for dinner?”

  “No. You’ll have what you’re given.”

  “But I hate stew. You know I hate stew. Why do you have to keep making it?”

  “Because I happen to like it, and since I’m the one cooking the dinner, I get to say what we have.”

  “I can cook dinner,” he said sullenly.

  “You mean beans on toast or cheese on toast? That’s hardly a nutritious meal.”

  “I like toast.”

  She rolled her eyes and went back to peeling potatoes that would be turned into mash.

  “You still haven’t told me where you were this afternoon.”

  “Just in the park.” He opened his mouth to tell her that he’d made a new friend and then quickly shut it again. It was a secret, wasn’t it? Or was it just the meeting part that was a secret—the part to do with the card that was still in his pocket.

  “And what were you doing in the park.”

  He wished she’d stop talking. He didn’t like it when she did this—just went on and on until eventually it was like he had no choice but to blurt out the truth. Of course, that was why she did it. She knew she’d wear him down eventually.

  “Just sitting with—” He snapped his mouth shut.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Sitting? With who?”

  “With a friend.”

  “Which friend, Joel? Don’t make me keep asking you.”

  “A new friend.”

  “You’ve been talking to strangers?”

  He wasn’t a stranger exactly, was he? Joel knew who he was, and he knew who Joel was. That was how people got to know each other. Everyone was a stranger at first. But he knew his grandmother wasn’t going to agree with him, even if it was a fact.

  Joel wasn’t very good at lying. It got him all muddled up. He could never think of the smart thing to say, and sometimes even when he wanted to lie, the truth just popped out.

  “No, he’s not a stranger. Not anymore.”

  She let out an exasperated breath. “What am I supposed to do with you? You’re a grown man, and I can hardly keep you locked inside the house, but I simply want you to make sensible choices, Joel. Is that so much to ask?”

  He shook his head. “No, Gran. I can make sensible choices.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Was his idea of a sensible choice the same as his grandmother’s? He didn’t think so, but that wasn’t his fault, was it?

  His new friend had mentioned Joel coming to a gathering. A group of people who would also become his new friends. The thought of having a whole group of friends made Joel dizzy with anticipation. It was hard for him to meet people, and when he did, he always felt as though they either judged him or felt sorry for him. He didn’t want any of those things. He only wanted to be around people who wanted to be around him. Why was that so hard?

  Joel didn’t even feel like his own grandmother wanted to spend time with him, and if even she didn’t like him, how were other people supposed to?

  Chapter Eight

  It had fallen dark just over an hour ago. The clocks were due to go back soon, so it would get dark even sooner then. Erica wasn’t a fan of this time of year, when there barely seemed to be any daylight at all. She pulled her jacket tighter around her body and shoved her hands into her armpits to keep them warm.

  “This feels ridiculous, you know,” she whispered to Shawn, who was standing behind the tree opposite. “Don’t you think they’d be here by now?”

  “Keep your voice down or they’ll hear you,” he hissed back.

  “Who’s going to hear me, Shawn? There’s no one here, it’s just us two idiots hiding behind trees. This is hardly high-tech police work, is it?”

  His low chuckle came back to her. If she didn’t know any different, she’d think he was enjoying this—perhaps not the stakeout part, but certainly getting some amusement from her complaints. She could be home right now, snuggled on the sofa with Poppy, nursing a hot cup of tea or a glass of red wine, and catching up on EastEnders. She didn’t even know why she kept watching the show. It was like an old comfort—it didn’t matter how many episodes she missed because of work, she always seemed able to catch up, filling the pieces in by herself. Not that life on the TV show was anything like actually living in the East End, of course.

  The cordon where the girl’s body had been found was on the other side of the park, protected by a couple of uniformed officers. She’d made the assumption that if teenagers planned on hanging out here with booze they weren’t yet old enough to drink, and drugs that were illegal, they would do so as far away from the police as they could get.

  Laughter and a shout drifted over to her, and she froze. It wasn’t Shawn this time. The voices were unmistakably young, all of them trying to talk over the top of each other, as though whoever could talk the loudest and the fastest would automatically be given the ‘most popular’ badge. Erica didn’t think they were even listening to what each other said. She risked leaning out from behind the tree to catch a glimpse.

  Dark figures moved between the trees. There looked to be six of them—three girls and three boys, all around the ages of fourteen or fifteen, she guessed. They had bags on their shoulders, most likely to carry the alcohol in.

  “This’ll do,” one of the boys announced and dropped his bag to the ground.

  “Can you see where that girl was found from here?” a girl asked.

  “Nah, we’re too far away.”

  “Do you think whoever killed her is still around? Maybe we’re next.”

  The tallest of the boys laughed. “Like in a horror movie. Whoever drinks and takes drugs or has sex is the one who gets killed first.”

  A girl thumped him in the arm. “No one is having sex.”

  He threw her a wink. “We’ll have to see about that.”

  Erica was pretty sure that once she and Shawn showed up, sex was going to be the furthest thing on their minds. She intended to get them shaken up and send them running home to their parents. She wanted to hope that Poppy wouldn’t end up like these kids one day, but chances were she’d have her turn of getting drunk in a field with her friends. It was like a teenage rite of passage.

  A crack and hiss of beer cans or cans of cider opening filled the air.

  She caught Shawn’s eye. They needed to wait. She could use their possession of alcohol to scare them, but it would be better if they had something more. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes, there was a click and flare of a lighter, and then a sweet scent of potent smoke drifted over to her.

  She lifted her hand and pointed at the teens as a way of telling Shawn it was time to move.

  They both stepped out from behind the trees at the same time, holding up their IDs.

  “Police! Nobody move.”

  “Oh, shit.” The lad with the joint quickly stubbed it out on the grass
and then stood on it, as though hiding it under his shoe might work.

  “What have you got there?” Shawn asked. “Mind if I take a look at that?”

  “Nothing,” he spluttered. “It’s nothing.”

  They’d all made some pathetic attempt to hide the cans as well, but from the paled expressions on their faces, it was clear they all knew they’d been busted.

  “Do you kids come here often then?” Shawn asked.

  “Is that a pick-up line?” one of them quipped.

  Some of the others joined in the laughter.

  Shawn’s lips thinned. “This isn’t funny. A girl was murdered just on the other side of the park last night. Do you know anything about that?”

  The young man, who was probably around sixteen years old and appeared to be the ringleader, spoke for all of them. “No, why would we?”

  “Because we’ve been told this is your local hangout.”

  The boy folded his arms across his chest. “We don’t have to answer any questions. I know my rights.”

  Shawn wasn’t the type to be intimidated by some cocky kid. He produced a set of handcuffs from his pocket, and moving quickly, yanked the boy’s arms behind his back and clipped on the cuffs.

  “Hey!” the boy protested.

  His friends looked on, aghast.

  “Those cuffs come off as easily as they went on. It’s up to you how this works. “You can either help to answer our questions, or we can book you for possession. Which would you prefer?”

  He scowled. “Fine. Whatever.”

  Shawn ducked his head slightly, clearly trying to use body language to bring the pressure down a notch. “Can I take off the cuffs?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Take them off.”

  Shawn sighed and unlocked them, unclipping them from the boy’s wrists. “All we’re asking for is for you to help us out.”