Our response had to be thought through now, and we needed to work out how we could find out for sure. Especially as we faced the awful prospect of having to tell Will’s family he was dead.
What did this mean about all the things we’d discovered, too? Had everything really just been a coincidence? I felt sick. A realistic possibility was that we’d manufactured all of this.
I read Steve the diary entries Jen had sent us in the group chat half-heartedly, photos of the actual pages marked with her wild handwriting. It was too much to deal with in that moment and he was quiet, distracted. Without explicitly saying so we knew everything had to wait until tomorrow, when we were back with the others.
I gazed at the passing cityscape while Steve muttered something about having introduced Will to Pinocchio after he wanted to drop out of school. He quoted a song lyric, about little beliefs growing up into trees. I opened a window and pushed one cheek towards the rushing air, wanting my head to open up and the night to wash out the inebriation.
When Steve pulled off the M42 he signalled left at the roundabout, towards Knowle and Blythe. To the right of the roundabout was a large Premier Inn.
“That’s where I’m staying,” he said, pointing while he waited for two cars to pass.
I had no interest in going home, no interest in sleeping in that forgotten bedroom alone, all the mixed-up thoughts about Will pulling me to and fro.
“Is it cosy in there?” I said.
“It’s pretty standard budget fare.”
“Are there spiders?”
“Not that I noticed.” He looked down at my leg, where my hand rested, palm down. Conscious of my tatty fingernails I hid both hands between my legs.
Voice wavering a little, I said, “Can I see it?”
It had happened, again, after all that time. In a hotel room of all places. Sex with Steve Litt. And though it had been a blur of clicking teeth and uncomfortably misplaced body weight, the whole thing rushing by before we found any real rhythm, it was still the best sex I’d had in years. I barely slept, the night full of detailed imaginings of how it would all go wrong from here. At around five in the morning, bored and bothered, I gave up trying to sleep and decided to go home. While I was dressing, Steve stirred.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” he said.
“I should get back before my parents wake up. I don’t really want to answer those questions.”
He insisted on driving me home, ignoring my protests. Once parked outside the house, he said, “I’m sorry. I got a bit self-conscious tonight. It’s been a while.”
“I had a good time,” I said, and kissed his cheek. “See you soon.”
I stepped out of the car, and entered my parents’ house through the unlocked door. The smell of paint made me feel oddly nostalgic.
Adeline, 1998
Adeline will take them to Brindley Place, by the canals in Birmingham city centre. The location of the other clues isn’t as important; they’ll be left along the way. It’s that final destination that matters. She will reclaim it from her past life, before Blythe, and bring it into the present.
She tells the others to be home around 11 a.m. on Monday, two days after Steve announced The Dedication. At 9 a.m., Adeline leaves her house and heads for Dead Man’s Alley. The field where she’d caught Will burying that animal is now filled with maize, already above head-height. Amidst the crops the stillness never fails to bring on a gut-level disquiet that today is much worse. Perhaps it is because of all the chat about Strachan, or whoever it is, trying to kidnap kids. Or it may just be its association with Will. She’s glad that today she will be safe in Birmingham when Will starts prowling for her clues. Prowling, yes, that’s the word. With his hunting eyes. That little expression has stuck with her since getting to know Will better. He’s hilarious sometimes, but she just finds him… He’s like milk on the turn.
Down in a sliver of pines where the land dips is the footbridge where COUNTRY PUNKS is still scratched into the handrail. She places a blue, steel petty-cash box belonging to Dad in the little pocket under the far step. She leaves the key in the lock and a folded note in one of the tiny plastic draws—technically the second clue of her Dedication.
Train your sights on Hampton-in-Arden for the next clue, A crack in a STATIONary wall will reveal all to you.
This clue is her toughest, but it will impress Steve if she sets a high standard.
The rest of the path to Hampton, particularly one nasty section after the beehives, has been cut back since last year, making the route easier. When she finally reaches the phone box in Hampton, she takes out a scrap of paper with their numbers on, ready to call them in order of closeness to Dead Man’s, which means Will is first.
She picks up the receiver and pauses. In a way if Will lost it wouldn’t be the worst thing, at least she wouldn’t be stuck out in Birmingham with him alone if he arrived ahead of the others. Perhaps she ought to phone him last? No one would know.
But that isn’t right. And it’s unfair, too, because his odd phrases and animal burying were only part of the story. What really bothers her about Will, if she’s honest, is the way he reacts to her. She doesn’t register to Will the way she does with the others. With Steve certainly, but also Rupesh and Jen—they sense and respond to her arrival and her departure, and her general existence, in a way that Will doesn’t. It makes her want to poke Will. Or even poke herself, just to check she isn’t invisible. And while she’s never been the most popular, beautiful girl in school—was in fact an utter dweeb when she started senior school in her braces and glasses—she’s grown accustomed in the last few years to being able to affect. So much so it is strange when it doesn’t work—annoying, even. Like he’s doing it deliberately to make a point.
She calls Will first, though. Then Rupesh, Jen, and finally Steve.
On the dead man’s path it won’t smell so nice, So give your nose a rest beneath the nearby pines.
“Amazing,” Steve says after hearing it. She hangs up, unable to keep the pleasure off her face on the walk to the station.
Her train is just two minutes away when she arrives. The place is deserted, there’s not even a member of staff behind the counter. This is good, because it means getting a mysterious permit to travel from the free machine on the platform—a licence to guilt-free fare dodging.
She stands on tiptoes to slide an envelope into a crevice in the platform wall, leaving the end poking out ever so slightly so it is visible to someone who knows where to look. This clue will get them onto the train, which Adeline does once it comes to a halt. She leaves her next clue under a large black rock by the lake at the centre of the National Exhibition Centre, a giant complex of warehouses for conventions and large concerts. The station here is called Birmingham International, even though it’s nowhere near actual Birmingham. She then catches a train to Balsall Common, going back the way she came through Hampton. She leaves a clue under the railway bridge just outside the station, hidden behind a light on the wall. Then she climbs back on board a train to Birmingham New Street, real Birmingham, the ratio of grass to graffiti inverting outside as the train closes in on the city.
It is as she pictured it, the sun and the bustle, a sense of important things going on all around her. The canal here isn’t the same as the industrial-looking ones visible from the train at the city centre’s edges; here the red-brick buildings on either side are home to pubs and restaurants that boast of their views over the water.
Two shy skaters, maybe a bit older than her, walk by twice, key chains jangling, before coming over to her to ask if she wants to come and watch them do some tricks at the library.
“I’ve got to wait for my boyfriend,” she says, although she thinks they can read that this is BS. They are nice about it, though, and wander off apologetically, leaving her alone. A year ago she’d have bitten their hands off—good-looking, scruffy boys were half the fun of the city. Now she has no interest; they’d wandered into the wrong story. Today is all about the
game. And Steve.
Who will get to her first? If it’s Steve—let it be Steve—they will have the kind of forced alone time that often leads to interesting things. She needs to be cautious, though: last summer had been painful and nothing that has happened in the last few weeks has cleared up why it took him until Christmas to write to her, nor where it is their friendship is going. There is still that unmistakeable pulling sensation when they are near, yet it’s like he’s fighting against it.
It isn’t Steve that first walks down the footpath towards her, it’s Jen. Of course, Jen. Super-keen Jen, here ahead of Steve.
“I won?” she says, beaming and out of breath.
“You won,” Adeline says.
Jen shakes her head. “Steve was ahead of me the whole way, but I lost him at Birmingham International.”
Great.
“I thought he’d be here,” Jen says. “Your clues were fucking great.”
“So glad they worked.”
“So am I. I was worrying about following the canal the wrong way and ending up in Scotland.” Jen looks up at a clock on the tower referenced in Adeline’s final clue. “Three thirty? Bloody hell, that was a mission.”
Steve arrives next, ten minutes later.
“You got here before me,” he says to Jen, then gives Adeline an apologetic look suggesting he’d been on the same page as her about the two of them being alone here.
Will is next, racing to get to Adeline despite no sign of anyone behind him. Will reaches out to touch Adeline, and she thinks his hand is going for her shoulder, but it comes in too low, and just for a moment his palm slides against her breast.
“Oh shit, sorry, Adeline,” he says on the way past. It’s an accident, of course, and Adeline tries not to dwell on it. Hands on his hips, his face red and his back rising and falling along with his breathing, he looks at her with a slanting smile.
“Two points,” Adeline says. “Despite all your effort.”
“Which unsurprisingly,” Steve says, “means Rupesh is the first loser. Was he actually behind you?”
Will shakes his head. “I didn’t see him at all. Just didn’t want to come last.”
They sit on a stone wall at the side of the canal, talking about their various encounters on the journey to Brindley Place. To Adeline, some of Jen and Will’s comments sound a little like complaints. But Steve seems to think it was spot on, says it gives them all a lot to live up to.
While they wait for Rupesh, clouds cover the sun. Adeline grows anxious, the clock hands approaching 5 p.m. She wants so badly to show them some of her favourite shops, make their epic journey worthwhile. But when their conversations begin to lull, Adeline gives up hope. It’s too late; the shops will be closing. They need to head back soon if they want to avoid walking on the footpath in the dark.
Bloody Rupesh. Yeah, maybe he’d got lost, confused by one of the clues. But he never wanted to do this in the first place. He probably never left his house.
They decide to walk back to New Street Station slowly. If he’s on his way still they’ll run into him. Not that Adeline or Steve believe they will.
“He saw that first clue and just didn’t fancy the walk to Hampton station,” Steve says. “I can just see it.”
Only then does it click in Adeline’s mind: Rupesh and trains, trains and Rupesh. That first time she hung out with them, when Obi died, Rupesh wouldn’t come all the way to the tracks with them. He’d stayed behind. And in fact, now she considers it, whenever they go to the train tracks it is always without Rupesh. Is he scared of trains? Is that why he isn’t here?
She puts this to the others, just as they are ascending the ramp into the shopping area above the station.
Will comes to a stop, his hand moving to his mouth. “Oh shit,” he says.
They all stop, and have to congregate against the ramp barrier to avoid the stream of other pedestrians.
“Fuck,” Jen says.
“What?” Steve says.
“I didn’t even think,” Jen says.
“Me neither,” Will says.
“I thought his parents just don’t want him close to the tracks,” Steve says. He turns to Adeline. “Some relative of his got hit by a train in India. That doesn’t mean he won’t go on an actual train. As a passenger, yeah?” Steve stares at Will and Jen, waiting for them to say something to disprove him. They just look at each other like they are both in pain, but they don’t contradict him.
To Adeline, Steve says: “He just didn’t fancy it. There’s no excuse. Fuck him.” With that he turns from them all and continues up the ramp.
They reach the Hampton end of the footpath around 7 p.m. Darkness is coming. When they finally exit Dead Man’s Alley almost two hours later, Steve turns right on Elm Close, away from the farmhouse.
“Where are you going?” Jen says when she catches up.
“I want to see if he’s home,” Steve says. “You can all go back to mine and wait if you want.”
“What are you going to say if he’s there?” Jen asks. “It’s getting late.”
“I’ll just ask him why he ruined Adie’s Dedication.”
“It was fine,” Adeline says, although it’s nice he’s so annoyed on her behalf.
Jen looks to Will, Will back at Jen. With a shrug, Will says to her, “Let’s just tell him.”
Steve isn’t interested or doesn’t hear. He carries on, determined. The gate is open at Rupesh’s house, and Steve walks down the drive with the rest of them trying to catch up. A statue of an elephant with human hands sits watching their approach from the immaculate front lawn.
“Steve, will you just hold on a second?” Jen says.
But Steve rings the doorbell while she’s still speaking. Will and Jen immediately start arguing quietly. Rupesh’s dad answers, an overweight man with a kind smile. It’s hard for Adeline to imagine this is one half of the force that Rupesh is so reluctant to disobey. He goes to find Rupesh.
Steve faces the three of them and gives them an unattractive, told-you-so smile. When Rupesh appears his expression is hangdog. Suddenly Adeline wants to protect Rupesh, to intervene and get Steve away from him.
“What happened, mate?” Steve says.
Rupesh steps out onto the porch and pulls the door behind him so it’s almost closed. “My parents won’t let me—”
“Seriously,” he says, trying to be light-hearted Steve, laughing at what Rupesh is saying but sounding slightly mad. “You might end up getting thrown out of the group for good.”
Rupesh shrugs, not knowing where to look. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t come.”
Adeline tries to call Steve off, but he cuts her short with a silencing hand.
“No, you worked really hard to make a great round for us, Adeline. And we waited around for hours for—”
“It wasn’t hours,” Jen says.
“For at least an hour,” Steve says without missing a beat, “and you were here all along. Are you going to do any of the other rounds?”
“I’ll do the others. I just couldn’t do this one,” Rupesh says.
“Because your parents won’t let you play by the train tracks?”
Rupesh’s eyebrows shoot up, and his jaw falls open. “What?” he says. He looks at Will, then Jen. “No. I just—”
“And you’re scared of your parents? Let’s be honest, that’s why you didn’t come, isn’t it? You saw the train station clue and just went home. I mean, you’re sixteen. You can make your own decisions, Rup, you don’t have to do everything your parents tell you.”
Will lets out a long, agitated sigh. “Tell him,” he says.
Steve doesn’t hear now. He’s enjoying this. He thinks he’s got everyone on side. He’s not even in the same space as them any more.
“I just think before we go to all the effort of the next rounds we should know what’s happening?”
“Rupesh, lovely.” Jen’s tone is so at odds with Steve’s that everyone looks at her. “I think if Steve knew about what me and Will d
o, then he’d probably shut up. Don’t you think, Will?”
“What, me? Shut up? Are you on his side?”
“There are no sides, Steve,” she says. “Just get your head out your arse for a moment.”
Steve looks like he’s been slapped. He starts shaking his head.
“Rupesh?” Jen says.
Rupesh nods. “Can I just come over after I’ve done the washing-up?” he says to Steve.
Steve holds up both hands, his abdication. “Fine. I have no idea what’s happening now and I’m just going to shut up, I think. Seems like it’s what everyone wants. I’m just angry for Adeline and…”
She can hear shame in his voice now: his painful return to reality. It makes Adeline reach out to him and touch his arm. He looks down at her hand, surprised. Not knowing what else to do, Adeline nods, trying to convey that she sympathises with him whilst urging that they now leave.
After a moment, he nods back, and the four of them head to the farmhouse.
The lounge smells of microwave pizza and ketchup. Steve is folded up on his throne. Rupesh sits on the dusty sofa with Jen, Adeline on the floor next to Steve’s chair.
“I don’t want to talk about this again, ever,” Rupesh says. “It’s just embarrassing.”
Steve says nothing. He’s trapped, knowing something is coming that will make him seem like an idiot, but unable to work out just how big of a one yet.
“I don’t like trains,” Rupesh says. “Medically.”
Will laughs at this, which surprises Adeline, though Rupesh doesn’t seem to mind.
When no one says anything, Rupesh adds: “That’s basically it. My legs shake and I get sick if I’m near them. I feel sick just hearing one.”
Jen reaches up and rubs Rupesh’s back. “Just tell them why, and they’ll understand,” she says.
The Killer You Know Page 15