The Killer You Know

by S. R. Masters

  “BOY FINDS ROMAN HOARD,” he said to himself. Well casual. Then he frowned. “DOG WALKER FINDS ROMAN HOARD.” He needed to walk faster.

  None of it took as long as he expected, and he was back at the pit in under an hour—this time with his spade. The others might not even have reached the pit themselves yet—unless one of them snuck out before they were meant to. It was a risk coming back before they had found the first clue, but one he was willing to take for the sake of getting the pot out safely before anyone else did. It actually wouldn’t matter to the game, not really. As long as he got to the final place before the others.

  Down in the pit, he moved the soil out the way with his hands again, then started using the spade edge on the tough soil. He was gentle, but sometimes, when the soil just wouldn’t budge, he wanted to scream and smash the spade down edge first and properly do some bloody damage but—

  That was the ciggies talking. He recognised their voice now, especially the longer he left it between nicks from Monks’s stash. He took out the one he’d stolen that morning, one with a little extra in it, and lit the match on his fly.

  Will hummed while he worked, so engrossed that he didn’t hear someone approaching from the direction of Raven Way until they were at the edge of the pit behind him.

  “What are you doing?” a voice said.

  Will jumped, then turned.

  “Why are you here?” Steve said. Predictably, he wore that screwed-up expression on his face, like Will was a fresh fart.

  “It’s okay.” Will got to his feet. He held up his palms like Steve was sticking him up. “I’ve got the whole thing under control.”

  Steve sprang down. Will stepped back and the pit’s wall cut into his knees, which gave way, leaving him sitting on the edge not far from his find.

  “What’s going on, mate? Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”

  “I am taking it—”

  “If you were taking it seriously you wouldn’t be here.” He sounded a bit upset, didn’t understand that Will had this under control.

  “Mate, I had to come back for something.”

  “Don’t go all Rupesh on me,” he said. “Are your other clues set up even?”

  “Yes. Yes, the whole thing is fine.”

  He shook his head. “I thought you were into this game?”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Then get going, because this is probably against the rules. I’m not meant to see you.” Still shaking his head, he added, “You made me promise to stick to the rules of this thing. And I really don’t want you to get the ban.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “I am worried,” Steve said. “I’m worried because you came last before, and I’m worried you’re hanging out with that wanker Strachan. I don’t know what’s going on with you.”

  Will shrugged. How could he convince him about Bill in the time they had? Not that he’d listen anyway. Once Steve made his mind up that was it. He tried anyway. “He’s okay really.”

  “Is he?” Steve said. “He was cruel to his dog. And that dog bit Obi, remember, which is probably why he ended up like he did.”

  “There’s reasons,” he said.

  “There’s always reasons. Hitler had reasons. He’s messing with your head. Use your brain.”

  Will hated Steve when he was like this. He didn’t hate people often, not even when he fought with his brother. Steve, though, could just be so… so unfair. Don’t talk to me like that. He wanted to say it, and his mouth clutched the words, but they remained unsaid. He shifted his leg and it rubbed against the spade. Steve widened his eyes, which meant, Hurry up, dickhead.

  He stood up to his full height and walked in the direction of the footpath back to the fields behind Elm Close. When he was like this it was better to walk away. Although, like Bill said to him once, some people only respond to a clout round the ear.

  Deep in the maize, Will’s shame and anger leaked away like so many of his more intense emotions. Like there was a hole in him somewhere. Even when things were at their worst, at their Liz worst, he wasn’t able to hold on to a meaningful emotion for longer than a few minutes.

  Overall it was for the best. There were emotions he had that he didn’t really want. Like the ones that flooded him when he was around Jen and Rupesh these days. He held nothing against Rup, how was he to know what a bitch Jen had been to him? But she’d not been nice about what happened at the train tracks last summer, blanked him, laughed at him, not made any effort to hide her and Rup’s thing. Still, even now his heart always felt like it was stretching after a sleep when he saw her.

  He took a long head-spinning drag from his cigarette, then chucked it into the crops. Hey ho, there was nothing he could do about those feelings, even if they were the strongest feelings of all, compelling him to do things that he couldn’t do and making him feel weak. Weak and lonely and—

  The pot! Of course, what was he going to do about the pot? Not much he could do about it now, maddening as that was. He would have to wait until the game was over. And hope. Hope that none of the others did anything to it by accident. Or hope Steve didn’t see it and smash it out of revenge.

  He stopped walking. Should he go back and watch, just to make sure? No, Steve was mostly a good guy. He wasn’t malicious. He really had got it into his head that Bill was a monster, so he was just being a good friend if you thought about it. A good, wrong friend. Yeah, he lost control of his passion sometimes, but that’s what made him Steve. And unless you talk to Bill, you wouldn’t know why he was so angry at things. Why his dog was angry all the time. Why—

  Bill! He would know about the pot—know what to do with it to keep it safe or get it into the right hands or get the best money for it. In fact, with them all out doing the game, he could visit now and tell him. It was the weekend, so he’d be home. And if he ran he could make it in no time. He just had to make sure he got to the end before Steve did.

  Bill didn’t answer his door, which gave Will a little bit of time to catch his breath before walking around to the back and down to the workshop where Bill usually spent the weekends. The building was an oversized shed spread out almost fence-to-fence at the end of the garden. He rapped on the wooden door and Bill called out for him to wait a moment.

  When the door opened Bill looked surprised to see him. He wore a vest and blue shorts, sweat on his forehead and his face was red.

  “I think I found something, a pot, in one of the fields,” he said, and Bill nodded.

  He’d been doing his exercises; Will could smell that once inside. Sweat and rubber and varnish. All Bill’s weights and his punchbag were set up in the far left corner. He used to be an amateur boxer when he was a kid but the doctors had told him if he got another punch in the head he’d be a vegetable. A big red beetroot. On the right was a shelf on which all his cool artefacts were displayed. Belt buckles, shards of old pottery, coins. His retirement fund, he called it; reckoned he had about twenty grands’ worth of stuff all in all, things he’d found, things he’d swapped. Pretty casual all things considered, not a bad amount of cash to collect from digging around like—

  Elvis, the dog, the one that used to be chained up in the front, sat on a battered old sofa at the back of the room. He’d learned to recognise Will’s voice now and barely reacted to his presence. He was all right actually. Licked your hand and everything. Bill told him that his wife took him in from a rescue home, and it used to get stuff chucked at it all the time by its previous owners when it tried coming in the house, which is why it liked being outside. Stressed him out being inside. Thing was, when his wife left him for some wanker ex-pat over in Spain, the dog couldn’t go in the garden any more because like Obi, it kept running off.

  “It used to wait in the garden for her to come home,” he’d said, “and when it didn’t it went looking for her, little idiot. Found him out by those train tracks once. Never again. That’s all I’ve got left of her now.” That was why he’d chained it up.

  He wasn’t any
sort of hero, Bill. He called Rupesh a Paki once, and called Adeline “Jailbait” when talking about her, and he was always talking about things he’d done for Birmingham gangs when he was younger like he was making things up to show off. But that thing about the dog made Will hate what they’d done last year, and like Bill for at least trying to do right by the dog despite what his wife did.

  Will found a bright side to it all, though. The dog actually preferred it out in the shed. Smelled a bit like outside but meant he didn’t wander off. Win, win.

  “It’s probably an old bit of kit from the works they were doing up there,” Bill said, mopping his forehead with a towel slung over the push-up bench thingy which he was now sitting on.

  “It’s well older than that,” Will said. “You can tell.”

  “You think?” Bill considered the likelihood of this. “Want me to come out and look? Elvis is due a w-a-l-k.”

  The dog cocked its ear like it could spell, funny stuff.

  “Can’t do it now,” Will said. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  “With your little gang?”

  He nodded. Bill reached out and touched his shoulder. He touched him a lot, on his shoulder, on his side. That was really the only time he ever got the feeling Steve might be on to something. He did like to touch, which maybe Will wouldn’t have minded if they weren’t always on their own.

  “This isn’t you playing funny buggers, is it?”

  “No,” Will said. “They don’t know I’ve found it.”

  “The tall lad. Does he know?”

  Had Steve seen it earlier? Even if he had he wouldn’t know what it was, would he?

  “No, not yet.”

  “Good. Keep it that way. Don’t trust that kid at all. Then you and me go fifty/fifty on whatever this thing turns out to be.” With his other hand he reached out to Will to seal the deal. Will obliged and was now in both Bill’s hands. The handshake was firm and went on a bit long, but then he let go and Will agreed to meet him out there later on, at around 5 p.m., giving him the exact location of his find.

  Before leaving, he felt obliged to say, “Steve’s all right, really.”

  It’s what he’d have said if the situation had been reversed. Had, to be fair. Bill just grunted, and started punching the bag.

  Will sat on one of the six concrete bollards that marked the road behind the lake’s end. It was close to the railway footbridge, but Rupesh had come here before without freaking out. Although he supposed if he played the game the way Steve wanted them to he should have put his clue right on the tracks.

  The slap and crunch of someone coming down the path from the lake made Will look up. Typical, it was Steve. Taking his total up to eleven. He didn’t even need the points now. He sounded out of breath. Maybe he’d run. Winning probably mattered enough for him to do that.

  Steve sat on the block to Will’s right, both of them facing the long path back to the lake.

  “Balloons,” he said, nodding. “Nice.”

  “I was trying to fuck Rupesh because that film shit him up.”

  “You better hope that Rupesh isn’t here next, though.”

  It wouldn’t actually end right here if Rupesh arrived next, but Will would only be able to draw with him. But maybe Steve was right that Will needed to start worrying, he was usually right.

  Will associated this place with what happened to Obi. Steve and him had always been mates, but that day with Obi had made Will realise Steve valued him in a way that he didn’t value the others. He was the only one Steve asked to help bury Obi, probably because Steve once found him burying that bird out in one of the fields. Will dug the hole while Steve talked about what a good dog he’d been, though towards the end that hadn’t been strictly true. The dog was always trying to bite everyone, Steve included. It had a bad attitude. Will had picked up the dog’s body parts and put them in the ground. Obi’s guts had fallen on his leg.

  But had he complained about it once? Not at all. Not even when Steve told him to get the dog out and make the hole deeper, and wider, because he didn’t want foxes digging up the body. By the time he was done the hole could have fit three or four dogs in it.

  “I’ll do the rest,” Steve had said, and Will left him to put the soil over Obi.

  Will had never buried a dog before then, but he’d buried other—

  Animals were idiots sometimes—as if the exact thing Bill had worried about with Elvis had happened to Obi. Why did they even go up to the train tracks? The smells probably. Funny Strachan and Steve both had similar dog problems. Funny, funny, funny. If they didn’t hate each other they’d probably be friends.

  Will’s connection with Steve that day, he’d come to understand, was that only the two of them had been honest enough to realise that the dog was better off dead. Steve had once joked to Will about putting Obi out of his misery on the train tracks, which went some way to making him feel better about having often had the same thought, especially when Obi had been barking at him and—

  They raised their heads to the sound of slow footsteps approaching.

  It was Adeline, the three points hers. She ambled down the path to them without a drop of sweat on her face.

  “That was hard,” she said.

  Rupesh and Jen arrived last. They were laughing and joking together when they walked along the last stretch of the lake, concealed from the three of them by a large hedge. They all waited on a block of their own, their conversation having ended the moment they heard the others coming. This wouldn’t make Steve happy at all. He’d already made it clear he thought Jen had helped Rupesh to win her Dedication. This would go a long way to confirming that theory.

  When they appeared at the path’s far end and saw that they were the final two, their laughter stopped. Rupesh, possibly being shoved by Jen, ran to Will, touching him on the arm on the way past. Jen didn’t run. She didn’t dawdle either. She sloped, almost ashamed to look at Will, because in helping Rupesh she was condemning him.

  “The balloon on the bridge burst,” Jen said. “We bumped into each other trying to hold it together and work out the clue.”

  “Can’t believe you just reused my place,” Adeline said.

  Will shrugged.

  If Steve was annoyed he didn’t show it. Once they had settled down, and complimented Will on the imagination he’d shown for his Dedication, Steve recited a score update.

  Steve—11

  Adie—9

  Jen—8

  Rupesh—7

  Will—5

  “Jen and me can still win,” Adeline said to Steve.

  “No one really wins The Dedication,” Steve said, and while the comment was addressed to the whole group, Will caught Steve’s gaze as he surveyed them all and felt a charge pass between them.

  On the way home, Will, attempting not to draw attention to himself, peeled off and started back towards the burial site once the gate at Raven Way came into view. All the chatter was about Steve’s Dedication, The Big One, everyone agreeing it would be hard for Will to catch up now. He didn’t care about that, though. He might be rich and famous by then if the pot turned out to be—

  “Where are you going?” Jen said. “You not even going to say goodbye?”

  “Thought I’d slip off,” he said, which sounded a bit like he was a snake so he made his arm wriggle to show them he’d meant it deliberately. Some of them laughed at this, the way they often did when he wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “Without even telling us? We’ve talked about this, Will,” Jen said.

  “I found something at the pit I wanted to look at.”

  “What did you find?” Steve said.

  Shitbarn! He hadn’t meant to tell him. “Might be nothing.”

  Steve didn’t look convinced, but didn’t ask any more questions. He said, “It’s going to rain soon, come on.” They were content to go on without him. No doubt they would all end up back at Steve’s watching films anyway so it wasn’t like he would miss out on anything.

&n
bsp; The pit wasn’t far, and the spade and the pot were where he’d left them—the former he’d concealed in the nearby maize. A breeze dashed loose soil against the nearby fence posts and rattled the maize in the field beyond. He was glad for that noise, because he found that when it fell silent, as it often did, it gave him the creeps. He understood why Rupesh got scared of things when it went quiet like that.

  Kneeling down by the pot, he patiently broke away pieces of soil, every so often looking over his shoulder to check he was still alone. If he was asked, Will probably would have said that his pot, if Roman, was from something small like a toll house. Not a settlement. The Romans knew better than to settle nowhere, which is what these places were, these tiny villages around the West Midlands countryside. They were stopping points on the route to better places, or dwellings for the servants and staff that worked for whoever owned all the old mansions.

  Perhaps he needed a cigarette. That might explain the shifting in his guts. It was utterly irrational, but he was suddenly possessed by the notion that places settled for a reason, and that those drawn to the places like Blythe were fundamentally wrong in some important way. That was why Monks said Dad wants to move to the seaside. It’s where the interesting stuff happened, where the boats came in and brought new things, and where the people that liked new things went to experience them. Monks said the country was where people ran to escape, the way nits all run to your crown when you’ve covered your hair in poison.

  He shuddered. What did Monks know anyway? All he did with his life was listen to music and play computer games in his room. And the latest game he was addicted to was more pointless than most; apparently all you did was walk around in an empty desert for ever and ever without finding anything or reaching any kind of—

  A large chunk of earth fell away and the pot moved a little in a pocket of air. Another chunk came away then, and another after that, creating a hole through which he was able to pull the pot.

  “The real fun is finding out what’s inside,” Steve said from behind him.

  If he intended to make him jump again it didn’t work, but inside he felt cold. Hadn’t he been expecting this?