‘Who knows? Who knows what, who knows when? You won’t be seeing Mags for a while is my guess.’
‘I miss her already.’
‘You traded.’
‘You think I betrayed her?’
‘Traded. Betrayed. Yeah, I do. But I’m not blaming you. I know why you did it. You’re just the one who has to live with it.’
*
It was turning into a very hot summer. Robbie’s dad said it was the hottest he could remember. War was brewing between him and Sheila; they had reached the point where they didn’t seem to be able to agree about anything. As a result, Lucy was, for once, being friendly, and she and he and Jess rolled their eyes at each other all day long.
‘They’re going to end up like Mags’s parents, slobbing around in different houses,’ said Jess.
‘Have you seen Mags recently, Robbie?’ asked Lucy. ‘People say she’s disappeared.’
‘No.’
‘Anything wrong with her? You’d know, wouldn’t you? Where’s she gone?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.’
‘What, she just went away? I think it’s weird, disappearing like that and not talking to anyone about it.’
‘That’s my speciality.’ Neither of them took any notice.
‘Well, why should she?’
‘I said I don’t know.’
‘I reckon he does,’ said Jess. ‘Uh oh, there they go again.’
‘What are they arguing about this time?’ asked Lucy.
‘I think,’ said Jess, ‘it’s something to do with shopping.’
‘Not the Wheatsheaf, then?’
‘No, he forgot to get something she wanted from the village. So very soon,’ Jess went on, ‘Mum’ll be asking us to go and get whatever it is he’s forgotten.’
The door opened.
‘Would one of you three mind?’ It was his dad. ‘We need some spaghetti.’
‘Robbie,’ said the sisters, as one.
‘Would you?’ asked his dad.
‘Hey,’ protested Robbie, but then he considered. ‘What’s it worth?’
‘Pound?’ said his dad hopefully.
‘Five.’
‘Three?’
‘Done.’
‘Unbelievable,’ said Jess.
His dad looked pathetically grateful.
*
The store in the village was empty and cool, so he lingered a while, reading the newspaper headlines and inspecting some DVDs. Robbie could hear the man behind the counter talking, something about people starting heath fires.
‘She’s here, you see.’
The person he was talking to dropped her voice to reply.
‘Do we know who it is?’
‘Well, you never do. But it’s obvious, we think.’
‘She always gets what she wants, you know, whatever they do to try to stop it.’
‘But they’ll try.’
‘Oh, they’ll try.’
‘Spaghetti?’ Robbie’s question seemed to take them both by surprise. The man pointed to a shelf.
‘Well, as I was saying,’ continued the woman.
The man watched Robbie over his spectacles.
‘You gave us a bit of a surprise there, you know.’ The woman surveyed him austerely, her Daily Mail clutched in her hand.
‘You’re Maggie Carr’s friend, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘You haven’t seen her, have you? People are getting a bit worried.’
‘Haven’t seen her in ages, sorry. Maybe she’s got a job somewhere or something. She’s hard to predict.’
‘A law unto herself,’ said the woman.
‘Something like that. Anyway, thanks for this.’
He hurried out of the shop into the high street, but before he could turn for home he found himself faced by a mud-covered Land Rover full of the Strickland brothers and accompanying Alsatians. The doors opened and both men and dogs poured out on to the pavement.
‘We might want to talk to you,’ said Tommy, head on one side, holding back the dogs on their leashes.
‘I’m not that interesting, sorry.’
There was only one thing to do, and there was only one way to go. Up the street, up the hill, and fast.
As he ran, he could sense one of them running behind him, straining to catch up, then his brother shouted something and he fell back. Too many witnesses around.
He stayed off the pavement to avoid people, running on the side of the road to dodge oncoming cars, and then there were brown flashes either side of him, and something hit his back. It was the dogs, not moving fast enough to bring him down, but he was aware of a blur of movement around him, he could hear their panting and feel their hot breath and he knew they were going to move in on him as soon as he slowed or slipped.
He wasn’t going to be taken. He was going to take them.
He didn’t know where all this energy was coming from, he’d never run like this or felt like this. It was as if he was flying, as if the road was dissolving, melting away. He was leaving the dogs behind; he could hear them barking insanely, furious they had lost him.
About two kilometres outside the village the road cut between two cliffs into deep shade, and there he slowed. His energy had evaporated and he couldn’t take another step. His insides had been sucked out and he was all shrivelled skin and bone, like a scarecrow. There was a pain in his chest. He missed the running, now that he was spent, because for a while there he had been someone else. And it had felt so good, the air flowing past him and the endless movement, like being a rapidly flowing river, or an arrow unleashed.
He sank to the ground, head against his knees, arms balanced on top of them. He thought he might be blacking out. There was nothing moving in his head. There was just a humming, perhaps it was in his blood, echoes of his heart pounding. A humming, a thrumming, a memory of the earth far away, his hearing good enough to catch it, warning him to get out, but he was too drained. His body wouldn’t do the smallest thing he wanted it to.
The thrumming got louder. The tone changed, to an engine whine, an engine being gunned through its gears, and down the hill came the Land Rover, the sun blazing off its windscreen.
21
THE CAR skidded to a stop with a short sizzling scrunch. Robbie could hear the dogs falling over each other inside, thumping against the seats in front. Then the car windows slid shut and muffled the barking. All was quiet, but that wasn’t going to last. He felt completely exposed. He wondered if there was anyone out there, in the fields or on the roads around. He needed another car to come along. Someone to see what was about to happen. Squinting up the sides of the cliffs on either side, he saw they were overhanging hard rock, not soft sandstone good for climbing. Even if he had the energy. And he had none now.
He knew he couldn’t outrun the dogs again.
He shivered. Surprising how cool it was in the shade.
The Land Rover started to back up slowly, until it stopped in front of him. They were just looking down, Stricklands and dogs, peering at him, waiting to see what he was going to do.
The passenger window opened. It was Billy, holding a packet of fags.
‘Want one?’
He nodded.
A cigarette was picked from the packet and held out to him. The dogs’ tongues had covered the back window in spittle.
‘Catch.’ Robbie put out his hand, but the cigarette rolled off and fell on to the tarmac. Billy looked at him and pulled a sad face. ‘Oops. Pick it up,’ Robbie heard him say, as if he was talking to a baby.
There was a hum in the distance.
A car, a black four-wheel-drive, came down the hill, and slowed. But the Land Rover’s door opened and shut and Billy’s hand was on his shoulder and he was kneeling next to him lighting the cigarette and pushing it into Robbie’s hand. The driver’s door opened and slammed too. There was a lot of waving and halloing from the brothers. Trying to make everything look normal.
Tommy was on the other s
ide of the Land Rover. His brother was next to Robbie. The dogs were still inside.
One last chance.
It was all in the back neck muscles. Like heading a football.
Robbie brought the point of his forehead down sharply on to the bridge of Billy’s nose. Robbie had never had that much practice, but he knew the pain would swamp his victim’s head. He watched him stagger backwards. It was time to go.
If he could get up the road and into the fields he could lose them in the woods. He was going back the way he came, so he knew these cliffs ended somewhere. Doors were opening and slamming shut behind him again. They would need to turn, not so easy in that gully.
He was out in the open now. Two empty fields of grass, then one of corn, then the woods. He wasn’t moving as fast as he had been and he didn’t know how long he’d last. He was looking for a way into the next field, he didn’t want to be rushing ditches and barbed wire, but he daren’t slow down either. There was a gate over to the left, and he was aiming for that, when suddenly the dogs were behind him. He could hear them, a couple of hundred metres away, and they were shortening the distance.
He was over the gate like a high-jumper, then over the next field, his vision blurring from sweat and the pain in his chest coming back fast. Up on the hill ahead where the wood ended there was a house, he could sense it better than see it.
Another stile.
He looked back.
Tommy Strickland. Far away. Cradling something in his arms.
The top of the post next to Robbie’s hand blew apart, wood splintering everywhere. Then there came the sound of the shot.
Was he trying to kill him or warn him?
Robbie’s head was swimming now.
He looked up at the house again. It seemed a long way away.
One last go.
One last.
Go.
Every bit of him was screaming, every bone a heavy weight.
Stop thinking, Robbie. Stop thinking. Too much energy, thinking. Just run.
House. Where?
Come on.
Dogs. Where?
Closing. Everything closing. Me on the house. Dogs on me.
Gun. Where?
No more shots.
Warning, then.
Why would he kill me, anyway?
Whole body saying stop. Shutting down.
Almost there. Look up. Look up.
High fences. Barbed wire.
I can’t get in.
Then the dogs were upon him, their teeth pulling at his clothes. As he stumbled his hand felt wood, a branch blown to the ground in the wind, long and bendy and leafy. He picked it up and brought it down on the head of one of the dogs.
The dog backed off. It wasn’t expecting that.
There was strength in his arms even if his legs had gone, but as a weapon the branch was pretty lame.
They were waiting for their chance, the three of them, teeth bared, one stock-still with taut haunches, the other two sloping around him. He wasn’t going to last long, he could feel that. He could see the Stricklands closing in up the hill and heaving the branch around, pushing it at the dogs, was doing him no good. No good at all.
One last burn.
Now.
He turned again and ran.
They’d been waiting for just that moment.
There was snarling in his ears, and in a blur he was down, floundering under the attack.
And suddenly there they were. Billy had blood all over his face. That wasn’t a good idea, that, Robbie thought.
With his good eye, he winked at Robbie.
‘Time for some fun,’ he said.
22
ROBBIE COULDN’T move. His hands and feet were tied.
He could feel, though. He could do that. His whole body was consumed with pain, not all of it the same pain. The top of his head felt as if he had been scalped. There was dried blood on the side of his head, and one of his eyes had closed.
He thought he might lose consciousness. There were a lot of flies around, it must have been the blood. He could see it on his t-shirt. He rolled over and was sick over the side of the sofa he was lying on, which smelled of cat’s piss.
He had taken everything he could now. He couldn’t be hurt any more.
He was in a big barn with a high roof, filled with junk. There was lots of rusty machinery, and the tractor and the Land Rover he could remember from his previous visit. As the flickering in his head slowed and the pain receded he could see the light outside was fading. The great doors were silhouetted in the dusk, and against the wall there were bales of sweet-smelling straw.
He wondered how long he’d been there.
He had a thirst that made his throat feel like sandpaper.
He wondered if anyone was out looking for him.
You know, Robbie, he thought to himself, this might not have a happy ending. And he didn’t even know what they wanted.
Actually, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly what they wanted, what he had over them. They wanted what they thought he knew.
He only had that one card, but it was a trump. He had to play it well.
*
He was beginning to drift again. He tried to roll over to get his head away from the cat smell, and then he got the smell of his own sick. The rope, or whatever it was around his wrists, was tight and his hands were sore from lying on them. He wondered if this was the first time the Stricklands had done this.
A light went on.
‘Oh, he’s been sick.’
They were behind him.
‘The little lamb. Dear, dear me.’
Now they were looking down at him, and Tommy was turning something over in his right hand, long and thin and shiny, which Robbie didn’t like one bit.
The younger brother reached out and pulled him upright, kicking his feet so they swung into line. They got some old chairs from the back of the barn and slammed them down in front of him, sitting on them and folding their arms. The knife blade flashed in Tommy’s hand as the reflected light shone momentarily into Robbie’s eyes.
Flash, flash.
‘You like running away, don’t you?’ said Tommy. ‘Nobody’s going to be surprised much.’
‘Maybe you could tell me what this is about? It seems kind of excessive.’
‘You ran away from us.’
‘Like you said, I like running.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I’m guessing I’m not top of your friends list, right?’
‘Maybe. But there’s only a little something we need to know, and we’re thinking you could help.’
‘And that is?’
‘Where’s Maggie Carr?’ said Billy.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Man, we hit you enough, you want some more?’ said Tommy.
‘I don’t know where Mags is.’
‘You don’t know? Yeah, you know,’ said Billy, leaning forward in his chair.
Don’t start again, mate, please don’t, thought Robbie. This head’s falling apart already.
‘Why would I? She didn’t tell me she was going anywhere.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘I don’t know. Before she left, I s’pose.’
Billy looked as if he was going to make a move, but Tommy waved a hand to stop him.
Flash, flash.
‘It was at her dad’s house.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘Just watching TV and stuff.’
‘What were you watching?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Mags’s dad doesn’t have a TV.’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘Not one that works.’
‘Well, I was watching it.’
‘No, you weren’t. Want to know why? He owes us money, right? But he doesn’t pay it. So Billy goes to see him and, weirdly, somehow his foot goes straight through the TV screen. Imagine that.’
‘Yeah, weird,’ said Billy.
‘An accident,
’ said Tommy.
‘Easy to do,’ Robbie said. ‘Anyway, he must’ve got a new one.’
‘Thing is,’ said Billy.
‘Every time he gets a new one, Billy goes over and there’s this accident again.’
‘So weird,’ said Billy.
‘So I think you probably weren’t watching TV with Mags,’ said Tommy. He got up and walked behind Robbie.
Suddenly Tommy was pulling up his arms and pain was shooting along them.
For a moment he thought it was all over and tensed, waiting for the first thrust of the blade. But instead he found his arms swinging back round in front of him and he could move them. He’d been cut free. Billy looked at his brother as if he thought he’d gone mad, but Tommy just jerked his head and Billy slunk sullenly off into the darkness.
Tommy sat down again with his feet up on his brother’s chair. He brushed his hair casually back over his head and stared up into the recesses of the barn roof.
‘Feet?’ Robbie asked hopefully.
‘Feet can wait,’ Tommy said. ‘See, Robbie,’ he went on, ‘it’s really important I find Mags.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘You know why?’
‘No.’
‘You sound like maybe you do.’
‘No, I was just, I mean, I could get that, like, from what you were saying.’
‘And, until you tell me where she is, you’re staying here.’
‘And then what?’
‘So you do know something? You must know something or you wouldn’t be thinking you’ll be getting out of here.’
‘My head hurts, I’m not getting this.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that.’
‘You’re sorry?’
‘It’s a bad idea to upset Billy. Lots of people find that out. The best thing is to keep him smiling.’
‘I’ll try to remember.’
‘We heard there was something you told someone about something she’d seen.’
‘You want to be more specific?’
‘You know what I’m saying.’
‘So this is my fault, right?’
‘No. ’Cos now I know. I know what she’s seen. What I need to find out is what she’s doing about it.’
‘Well, I don’t know. Last time I saw her, I mean the real last time, was just down on that bridge, where we always hang out.’
‘Cute.’
The White Hare Page 11