by Tin Larrick
“Then I’m going to need fuel.”
I stopped at an all-night garage and filled the tank. My preoccupation with the situation meant that the usual worry that accompanied such everyday transactions was absent. By the time I remembered that I had no money, Kevin had already got out of the car to pay, and I wondered if such worry was always necessary, as if I should place more faith in the adage often banded about by Claire; that something always turns up.
Kevin didn’t speak until we were passing Uckfield. It was nearly five in the morning, and the first strands of daylight were beginning to appear.
“Trevelion spoke so highly of you,” he said. “It broke his heart that you broke ties with the family. He – everyone – thought you were dead.”
He shifted in his seat so he was facing me.
“Got any smokes?” he asked.
I handed the pack to him without speaking. He lit two and passed one to me.
“He’s dead now, you know. Trevelion, I mean. Heart attack. Not that I’m surprised – guy was huge.”
“How did you find me?” I croaked, the cigarette between my lips, hands occupied with driving.
“Well, like I said, it wasn’t easy. When Trevelion died I thought I’d nab you at the funeral.”
“I didn’t go.”
“I know. Process of elimination, to be honest. I drew up a list of things that might have happened to you; then one day it occurred to me – what if you became police? Once I had the idea, it was easy to confirm. And I guess to become a cop you had to sever any ties you had with Trevelion and the estate.”
I nodded, and began to speak.
“I grew up on Town Farm. I had two options. Stay, and end up dead or in prison, or try to get out. But you don’t just walk away from these places. They pull you back. It was like wading through weeds.”
“Turn right here,” Kevin interrupted. I checked the mirror and turned off the A22 onto a yellowing, unmarked road that rumbled like an airstrip as we drove down it. The road was dead straight and looked as if it would lead towards some kind of life, but all I could see were the rust-brown sides of the rolling Ashdown valleys in the distance, patchworked with bracken and dotted with black skeletal firs. The place felt desolate, and always made me think of Apocalypse Now.
“Did you really want it that badly?” Kevin asked.
“It wasn’t like that. I still hadn’t made my mind up,” I said. “I approached the recruiting departments of three forces, just to find out a bit more about it. Trevelion found the application forms under my bed.”
“Ouch.”
I flicked the cigarette out of the window.
“He gave me two choices – join up, but don’t come back. As far as everyone here is concerned, you’re missing or dead. Or you can stay on Town Farm.”
“And become nothing?”
“The Mets were the least fussy. So I changed my name and moved to London. And I doubt very much that it broke his heart.”
“Why did you move back to Eastbourne?”
“If you know what’s in the box, you know the answer to that one.”
“We’re nearly there.”
The firs that had been sporadically lining the roadside were now increasing in number, slowly becoming impervious to what little daylight existed as the forest thickened around us.
We drove in silence for another ten minutes or so.
“Stop the car.”
*
junior
I pulled over onto the verge and stopped. It seemed we had arrived at nowhere in particular. I looked up and down the yellow road. It faded to a point in front of me, and again to a point from the direction we had come.
The land was desolate, the sky the murky pale grey of a hard-boiled egg. We were surrounded on both sides by a forest of firs, but a mile or so further up the road the trees ended and the rolling valleys led to the horizon. The wind was shrill with cold, and it numbed my face as it panted through the firs.
Kevin walked off the road and towards the lip of the forest. I followed him, treading carefully on the uneven ground, concealed below knee-length blades of coarse grass. Kevin seemed to be walking effortlessly, with little regard for the terrain, and I struggled to keep up with him.
“Hey, wait,” I called in a strained voice as Kevin disappeared into the gloom of the forest.
What little light was left disappeared under the canopy of firs, and I patted my pockets. There was a small torch attached to my keyring, which was powerful enough to be of some use. It suddenly occurred to me that I was out in the middle of nowhere with a murder suspect, and no one knew where I was. My radio was in the car.
I’d read somewhere that the US government had some satellite system that could pinpoint your exact location anywhere on earth, provided you had some kind of device – like a radio – that was hooked up to the satellite. It had previously been the reserve of the military, but after a Korean airliner was shot down by the Soviets, Reagan wanted it civilianised.
It sounded grand. With no real sense of where Kevin was leading me, I could have really done with it at that very moment, but frankly, I couldn’t see it happening in my lifetime.
I turned around. We had only walked fifty yards or so, but the daylight we had left behind occupied only a small circle in my field of vision – the rest was black, like tunnel vision. I couldn’t see the car.
I caught up with Kevin as the ground inclined more steeply. I grabbed his arm.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
He stopped and looked me dead in the eye. His eyes were bright in the gloom.
“We’re nearly there,” he said, shrugging off my grip.
He picked his way up a steep bank, and I followed him, impressed by his agility.
The forest was huge, and it seemed even larger because I knew that beyond its natural perimeter there existed nothing but miles of empty land stretching its way in all directions.
There was no sign at all of human occupation – no litter, no friendly signposts, no time-worn paths or tracks defined by the footsteps of those that had gone before; none of those trappings of infrastructure to reassure you that someone somewhere must be looking out for you.
I looked at the unspoiled forest floor and thought – what good would credit cards be here? What good cash? If I could live here – hunt my own food, build my own shelter – then I could make a life.
Man is defined, to a significant extent, by place. Where he can freely go; where he must physically avoid. Where he has conquered; where untamed terrain and hostile land frequently beats him back. Where the confines of civilisation end and the rasps of the wild world begin, often separated by no more than a single footstep; and, with that footstep, his power of independence is turned instantly on its head.
At the top of the bank I could see pockets of pale light bursting through the foliage, and, beyond that, a low thudding noise, muffled and barely audible over the thousand hushing trees.
The undergrowth broke, and I heaved a sigh of relief at the return of daylight. We found ourselves on the edge of the forest, in a clearing overlooking a deep grassy basin.
In the clearing the dull thudding had sharpened to the sound of a helicopter. I looked up and shielded my as-yet unaccustomed eyes from the light. Two helicopters, in fact. One was dark blue and yellow, with the word ‘POLICE’ on the side; the other silver, bearing the letters ‘TVS’ in metallic blue.
I traced my line of vision down to the spot over which they hovered. Down in the basin, some two hundred feet below us, near what looked like a makeshift camp, there was a lone man, surrounded by a circle of other men. Voices were faintly audible – it sounded like shouting.
Kevin passed me a pair of binoculars from nowhere. I slowly lifted them to my eyes, half-knowing what I was about to see.
There was Junior, looking more like his dad than ever before. Zero-grade haircut all over, shell suit and t-shirt clinging to his huge frame, a jacket tied around his waist.
He was h
olding a sawn-off twelve-bore on himself, the barrel pressing into his stomach. A phalanx of armed police surrounded him, weapons trained. They were all stationary apart from two, who edged almost imperceptibly forwards. Another officer, who was in plain clothes and behind the line of armed police edged forwards flanked by two officers holding full length riot shields to protect him. He wore a suit and sheep-fleece overcoat. I didn’t know him, but experience told me he was the negotiator.
Junior screamed – a cracked, high-pitched sound. It echoed around the basin. He raised the gun to his head. The two moving officers and the negotiator stopped moving, and the tableau became static as the stand-off took hold.
I passed the binoculars back to Kevin. He took them from me, his eyes fixed on the scene below us. With his attention elsewhere, I looked him up and down. Second-hand jacket with the tartan trim, Converse trainers worn grey with age, huge fake Rolex. The haircut looked decidedly DIY. Everything about him just screamed Kingsmere – every inch a dead-end. His eyes looked old, far older than his nineteen years, as if he’d accepted that Kingsmere was all he’d ever be, and so his body had got busy with the process of aging, just to get it over with.
“Junior had a brother,” I said eventually.
He turned to look at me, his eyes wide with anticipation.
I nodded.
“Two years older. Junior’s dad drowned him in a bath when Junior was just a baby. He never knew him.”
Kevin looked down at Junior, the shotgun pressed to his temple, and then lowered himself into a sitting position. He let out a sigh as he sat, as if he didn’t think he’d ever get up again.
“Gissa smoke,” he said.
I lit up for both of us and sat down alongside him.
“Trevelion told us about this bloody box,” he said. “We went to Junior’s ma and asked her about it. She went to bits, man. I mean, total fucking loopy. She chased us out of there with a fucking steak knife. Took us a week to work up the nerve to go back, and she did it again. Eventually, after we’d been round about seven times, she let us in.”
“Showed you the box.”
“Gave it us, and threw us out again. We took it up Butts Brow. It had newspaper cuttings in it, legal shit, letters, tapes, all kinds of stuff like that. And then, near the bottom, two dog-eared snaps of a kid.”
“She tell you about it?”
Kevin shook his head.
“Gave it us, but still wouldn’t talk about it. We asked Junior, but he didn’t know what any of it meant, either. Something about a kid being killed, but we didn’t know who. You’re saying it was our Junior’s brother? His dad killed him?”
I nodded.
“So what happened to him?”
“He claimed it was an accident. There wasn’t enough to say it wasn’t. He went to trial. Hung jury.”
I looked down at Junior in the basin, the weapon still held to his head. The scene was still motionless, but I could have sworn the armed officers were closer to Junior than they had been a minute ago.
“This happened in Kingsmere?” Kevin flicked his cigarette.
“Fuck no. That’s just where they ended up after the trial. This all happened somewhere in Luton. Even back then, under Wilson, a child killer had to be given some kind of protection. We repackaged the whole family, gave him a new identity, cash and a house in Kingsmere. I was the one called in to arrange it.”
“Why you?”
“They wanted a local lad to act as handler. Thought it would make everything go smoother. There’s not many in the job from our neck of the woods. They tracked me down to the smoke, and I came back to Eastbourne on secondment. Didn’t bother going back.”
“His poor ma. Jesus, it makes me cry, never mind her. Why didn’t she just leave him?”
“You tell me. Junior’s dad convinced everyone else it was an accident. Maybe she ended up believing him.”
“How come they let him stay around Junior?”
“This was the back end of the sixties, remember? Social workers couldn’t do much without a conviction, so it was business as usual when Junior came along. The best we managed was moving him down to Eastbourne under a new name, for his own protection.”
“Jesus.”
“But all this was years ago, Kevin. Why have you all suddenly come out the woodwork? To exact your revenge?”
“Junior must have known.”
“What do you mean?”
“Another smoke.”
I held one out to him. I handed him my brass-plated Zippo, which he used and then dropped in his pocket.
“After Junior’s ma gave us the box, Junior’s dad went AWOL. Left without a word.”
“And?”
“And I’m guessing that’s about the time he called you up and said – Chief, I need to move on again.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You see, any other time, Junior would have counted his blessings and not made a fuss. But he changed. He got to about fourteen, and he got this look in his eye. We guessed he’d probably worked out what everything in the box meant, but he never told us. He must have worked out – or been told – about the brother that his dad had done in, and being shot of him wasn’t enough. Junior wanted his blood.”
“He wanted revenge.”
“We grew up with it. Watched him turn into his dad. It was scary as hell. First the boxing classes, eating steaks by the truckload, the buzz cut – and then the ‘roids.”
Kevin shuddered.
“And then, when he was ready – we couldn’t find him.”
“So how…”
My voice tailed off. Kevin watched me, his lips curling into that thin smile I had seen before as the penny dropped.
“It was me,” I said. “I led you to him.”
“Trevelion told us to seek you out, but he didn’t say why. I thought you’d give us some kind of help. When I found out you were police, I thought – great. He’s going to offer us protective custody or some other FBI crap. It didn’t occur to me that, by then, it wasn’t us that needed protecting from Junior’s dad. It was the other way around.”
I sat down heavily. Junior’s dad had been a psycho, but the burned-out slab of meat in the mortuary – no one should have to die like that. And it was my fault he was dead.
“You… you lured him to the Cannon?”
“Kind of. Told him it was a gig. Him against some headcase from Whitehawk. Ten grand on the table. Winner takes all.”
“And he went for it?”
“’Course he did. What kind of life you think he had after he ran out? Traipsing around the south coast with a rucksack, using his fists to make a living.”
“Jesus.”
“If it’s any consolation,” he said. “He was probably already dead before the fire really took hold. Junior tonked him with a claw hammer.”
I rubbed my face with my hands, and sighed.
“The wheel turned, Peter. Eastbourne’s a small place. We couldn’t find Junior’s dad, and we’d already given up finding you. It was all going to shite, and then I thought again about what Trevelion had said. I thought – maybe we needed to find you, but for different reasons than we thought. So I started thinking about it differently. Scientifically.”
“Mickey?”
Kevin nodded.
“And like I said, when I sussed you out, it only took a bit of surveillance, a bit of – well, you said it. You led us to him.”
“But if you didn’t know about Junior’s baby brother, why did you go along with it?”
Kevin shrugged, as if I’d asked a stupid question.
“We were pals, Peter. If Junior had asked us to lie in front of a bus for him, we’d have done it.”
He turned to me.
“Can you understand that, Peter? You left it all behind. Would you do that for anyone? Would anyone do that for you?”
I didn’t answer. Kevin turned back to the scene in front of him.
“Trevelion wasn’t stupid,” he said. “He knew the history. He just
lit the touch paper and stood back.”
The stereo sound of the helicopters, a constant up until now, suddenly halved. I looked up and saw the news helicopter rearing off into the distance.
“Oh shit,” Kevin said. “They’re going to shoot him.”
We looked down. The circle of armed officers were now in a tight circle around Junior. I picked up the binoculars. His body was convulsing as he sobbed, the shotgun gradually lowering until the barrel was pointing at the ground.
He slowly sank to his knees, and dropped the weapon, his head hanging forwards, staring at the ground.
I exhaled heavily. Kevin did the same.
One of the officers slung his rifle onto his back, and moved forwards to put the cuffs on Junior. The others kept their weapons aimed at him.
There was a flash of sudden movement as Junior made a grab for his waistband. He moved quickly – the pistol was already in his hand when the muzzles of three rifles silently flashed. At this distance, Junior was already dead on the grass before the sound of the three rifle cracks reached Kevin and I.
Kevin said nothing, but turned and began his descent back through the forest.
I was suddenly angry.
“Is that it? You brought me here for this?” I called.
He ignored me. I chased after him.
“Wait,” I yelled. “You fucking used me.”
He ignored me, and I grabbed for his arm. I missed, lost my balance on the steep uneven ground, and we both tumbled down the bank. By the time we came to rest we were linked together like tussling lovers, raining blows down on each other.
I gave up first, and he stopped when I did. We lay there in silence, breathing heavily. I got to my feet and helped him up.
“Sorry about your friend,” I said.
“This was always going to happen,” he said. “When we were kids, we always had a plan. It didn’t quite work out this time. He was too nuts. He’s at peace now.”
It seemed a stupid thing to say. Junior’s death had been like his life – anything but peaceful.
We walked back to the car, and made the drive back to Eastbourne in silence.
As we entered the town, I went to turn off to Grove Road. Kevin touched the steering wheel lightly.
“Don’t,” he said. “Keep going.”