He shook his head and held up the piece of paper.
Ban.
With a nod at Steve, like it was all understood, he turned and left. They all watched in silence, staring at the closed door once he was gone until Adeline said:
“Are you going to go and get him?”
“Get him?” Steve said. “Why would I do that? He made me promise to stick to it. You lot have to decide what’s right, I can’t make you. But I think the fact he didn’t even try very hard makes me think he actually wants to be banned.”
Will hadn’t even come to apologise, or explain why he hadn’t stuck to their plan. He didn’t want to waste any more time on Will now. He’d shown his hand.
When the others have gone he burned the envelopes in the fireplace. The elementary sleight of hand he’d used to swap Films and Nothing with two more pieces of paper reading Ban would never be known now.
Steve bided his time, watching Elm Close from the window. Occasionally they would stand around on the road in small groups, never all four at once. He caught Jen staring at the farmhouse one day from the end of his drive.
Dad came and went without Steve seeing him, leaving behind a full fridge—the food fairy.
He didn’t want to lose Adeline. But equally what was the point of anything, any of their last few summers, any of the effort he’d made, if he just gave in now? All of it would have been for nothing.
He didn’t believe in God, but if there was one he or she would at least understand Steve’s point of view. They would be in his head and know how hard he tried for them all.
It was so unfair that Will wouldn’t just accept his fate, was probably moping around looking for sympathy votes. It actually made Steve angry. The ban wasn’t enough really, when it came to it. He’d really fucked up everything after he’d given him an out on a plate.
While overdosing on films, his mind occupied, some deeper part of his brain reached an important conclusion: they actually can’t do anything without him. They needed this place. Jen’s parents were never away long enough to go to theirs, and Adeline never wanted anyone around at hers for long because of her mum. And there was no way they would hang out at Rupesh’s or Will’s.
He just had to wait. They would eventually come back. And if they didn’t, he’d just find Will and speak to him. Tell him to deal with the consequences of his actions.
It was Rupesh who came over first.
“Not seen you in a while,” he said, sheepish. He waited for an invite before sitting down.
They watched a film. Later that day Jen came around, under the guise of looking for Rupesh. They both made themselves comfortable, snuggled up out of sight, and watched another film, although they constantly tried to bring the conversation back to Will. He made them drinks and got a fire going when it got cold. He was patient with them, but always managed to avoid falling for whatever little softly, softly plan they’d cooked up.
“Are you going to be part of the photograph when it happens?” Jen said that evening. “Or will you still be having a hissy fit?”
Steve resisted the urge to lay into her, took a breath, and as he’d planned, said, “I’m going to be part of it. I just don’t think Will should be.”
“Well, you can’t stop him being in it,” Rupesh said.
But, yes, he could if he wanted. And he did want. Will needed to know. Very calmly, and very rationally, he explained how he felt. How Will didn’t try in any of the rounds, regardless of the last one. It wasn’t like he was being unreasonable. If Will had just phoned him that afternoon, told Steve he couldn’t make it, everything would have been okay. Steve could have postponed it. But he hadn’t, despite Steve going out of his way to help him beat Rupesh.
When he finished, they shook their heads. The word harsh was thrown out more than once. And though neither of them agreed or disagreed with what he said outright, and made noises like what he said was in some indefinable way wrong, neither of them left. And neither of them disagreed outright with the notion of suggesting Will bow out of the photo.
“So really it’s up to you,” Steve said. “But you know, you lot can still see him if you want. You don’t have to come over here to mine all the time, do you?”
But the next day, they came over again.
A week after his round Mr. Strachan came to see Steve. It was early, before the others had come over and before he had even showered. He didn’t hold back once Steve opened the door.
“Your dad in?” he said.
“No,” he said with a tone to let him know it was none of his business really. Seeing a change, a glint in the old man’s eye, Steve knew he’d fucked up.
Strachan pushed the rest of the way inside and pinned Steve up against the back wall of the entrance hall, his meaty arm and all its grey hair wedged under his chin. Steve bit his tongue and he tasted blood.
Eerily calm, Strachan said, “My mate Will tells me you’re trying to stop him being in the paper. That right?”
Where does he start? Can he start? Is this man capable of understanding? He smells of booze.
“And before you speak,” Strachan said, “I’m just giving you the one chance here, okay?”
What the fuck did that mean? He didn’t know, but tries to say, “It’s complicat—”
His words are choked off by Strachan’s arm pushing into his throat and lifting him from the floor. He was being hanged. Strachan raised his eyebrow, disappointed, then lowered him back down.
“Yes,” Steve said.
“That’s not happening, you understand?” he said. “Whatever little power trip you’re on, it’s not worth it.” He raised Steve off the ground once more and a sound he’d never heard himself make before squeaked from his mouth. Placing him back down, Strachan said, “Whatever command of yours he’s disobeyed, you say sorry to him. He’s a good kid and I know you’re trying to get in his head. If I see he’s not in that photo, you’re fucked. Okay? Fucked.”
He let Steve go and he collapsed to the floor and watched Strachan leave, calmly closing the door behind him. He touched his tongue, and when he saw his bloody fingertips his eyes welled with tears.
Winter, 2015
After dropping Dad back at the hospital, I drive straight to my parents’ where Steve is already waiting. Jen arrives not long after. The three of us sit in my parents’ lounge. I cradle a black coffee in shaky hands. It’s nearly lunchtime.
We haven’t told the police that Rupesh is missing because we already know where he is and how we can get him back. Also because the latest note from Will explicitly forbids it.
Friends,
Rules aren’t made to be broken. So now…
Just one Dedication, yours Steve, the big man, but the stakes are so much higher.
You’re playing for Rupesh. And this will really strain you.
If you: haven’t started by 10 p.m., aren’t with me by midnight with all the clues I leave for you, don’t visit every stop of Steve’s Dedication, even think about the police again…
I can make it painful, for you and him.
Tell the police you’ll be at the hotel tonight then be at Adeline’s from 2 p.m. where I can see you all but you won’t see me. That’ll come later.
Do as I say and you won’t come to harm. This is meant to be fun.
The big reunion.
Love, Will x
At the bottom of the note is the dead smiley face again.
Jen finishes reading it and Steve says, “Does anyone think we should tell the police?”
He tries making eye contact with us. Jen shakes her head, her eyes wet with tears. I can only look at the floor. It’s obvious, to all of us, that if we do, there is no guarantee that the police won’t decide it’s better to sacrifice Rupesh for the greater good. Charge in regardless once they know where he will be and when. But equally there’s no guarantee Will won’t kill all of us once we are out there on our own along with Rupesh. No guarantee he’ll keep his word.
“It feels like a trap,” I say. “
He wants us to think we’ve got control over what happens to Rupesh when we don’t.”
“And if we do?” Jen says. “He could have killed us already. He could have killed us last night. Could have done it any time before.”
“He’s got something planned. Some grand finish,” Steve says. “It might not necessarily mean he plans to hurt us.”
“We won’t know that going out there,” I say. Just hearing it aloud, the very idea of us stepping into the night with Will out there waiting for us, is dreadful enough. How has it come to this? Things hadn’t been perfect in London but I’d been safe there. I had things to look forward to, so many of them. Why can’t I just walk out the door and forget all of it? Go back to what I’d been doing before.
Steve leans down and grabs his head with his hands. “Strain, that clue again.”
“What?” Jen says.
With a sigh, he says, “The more this has gone on the more I remember how angry I made Will at the end of that summer. I’d come here sort of worried about how everyone would remember me because of how I used to be, but mainly it was Rupesh. Because in my head it was him that I’d always been so disappointed in all the time. I mean, shit, I remember designing my round of The Dedication so that Rupesh would lose. If I’m honest, maybe the whole game was designed to get him back for always being so half-arsed. But when Will came last, I turned on him really bad. Do you remember? And now he keeps mentioning this Strain thing. I think if he’s going to harm anyone, it might be me.”
“What do you mean?” Jen says.
“Why is this my Dedication he’s making us do? Why is that clue he wrote us connected to what I saw at the train tracks?”
I can’t remember exactly what did happen after the game, outside of those events at the campfire. So Will was banned from Steve’s house, but it had all been sorted. Steve and Will had patched things up, hadn’t they?
“What is ‘strain’ then?”
Steve shakes his head and his voice softens. “I went to see Will after we kicked him out. Do you remember? You made me, Adeline, because he wasn’t right. You were worried about him. And I found him walking around the fields. He wouldn’t talk to me, but I walked with him around the lake, trying to convince him it would all be fine, told him he could rejoin the group if he wanted, that I was only doing it because he’d asked me to make sure the rules were obeyed no matter the outcome.”
“I remember,” I say.
“But he just kept walking and babbling, but not in his usual way. Really weird shit, about the afterlife and his family. I think he was high, and I was worried, especially when we ended up at the train tracks, and he told me he’d not been able to stop thinking about Obi and the trains. And what it must have been like for Obi, whether he knew anything about it or not.
“That’s when he said he thought he could lie under the train and it would go over him. And I laughed, same old Will, right? I told him the suction would pull him up and he’d be torn apart like they tell you at school and he told me Mr. Strachan and him had been talking, and that he thought it was a myth. So he went and lay between the tracks. I told him he was going to die, that he’d die and fuck me up in the process, and he started laughing and said that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. And he didn’t move. I thought any second he’d get up, joke’s on Steve, but also I sort of knew he wouldn’t because of how strange he was acting. And he stayed there. He even closed his eyes. I saw the real Will then, the one we’d missed because we’d been too busy laughing at him.
“I started telling him to move, swearing at him. I tried dragging him off but he was so strong, grabbing the rails. I knew a train would be there any second and so I ran. I ran away and just waited down by the bollards at the lake. I was bloody shaking down there, and when I heard a train go by shortly afterwards I didn’t know what to do. Had it hit him? Wouldn’t it have stopped?
“About ten minutes later he just walked on up and sat down with me. He said, ‘Told you.’ I didn’t believe him. And he just shrugged. It was weird because then I did believe him. I believed that I’d upset him enough to do that.”
“That can’t—” I say, because it’s impossible. No one could survive such a thing, could they?
“Of course he made it up,” Steve says. “But at the time, and for a long time afterwards, it haunted me that he had done it, and that I’d just… let it happen. And it terrified me so much, how nonchalantly he walked over to me after. I kept saying to him, ‘It’s impossible, it’s impossible.’ I looked it up once. What he did, whether it could be done. Recently enough that YouTube existed. The videos there are likely fakes, but some people on forums reckon if you’re strong enough, and there’s nothing dangling underneath, it’s possible. Unlikely, but possible.”
Now I vaguely remember Steve coming back from that meeting with Will all those years ago, acting distant and uncommunicative. I had taken it personally, of course, without a clue as to what had just happened. What had really upset him?
“I think this clue refers to what happened then. That’s why I think it’s me he’s focused on,” Steve says.
“But why would he want to get back at you?” Jen says.
“I don’t know,” Steve says. “Maybe he holds me responsible for how his life turned out for his own batshit reasons. You didn’t see how he was with me the other night, but that’s how it felt.” He looks at me for reassurance and I nod. “He calls me the big man in his note, like we’re all sixteen again. Maybe he never forgave me for kicking him out of the group. Maybe he’s angry I left him at the train tracks. Maybe he thinks I’m the reason Strachan decked him. I don’t know. But I need to go out there tonight because everything here suggests that whatever his grudge, it’s specific to me. I’ll understand if you guys don’t want to come. But if I’m right about this, and if anything happens to Rupesh because of it… Well, this is what I came back for really.” He looks at me and I want no part of this, and like a coward I stare at the floor again.
Will’s 2 p.m. deadline is fast approaching, which forces us to act without making a definitive decision about what to do later. For now we’ll play along. We agree to head to Marlstone and return together in one car. If we’re parked outside mine all day it might draw in any passing police patrols checking Elm Close. I drive to the hospital to see Dad first, while Steve heads straight to the hotel. Jen goes to her parents, the idea being Steve and I will pick her up on our way back to Elm Close once I’ve ditched my car at the hotel.
I find Dad conducting his vigil at Mum’s bedside. I sit with him, holding his hand. Mum’s face has swollen since the day before, a combination of the drugs she’s on and the injuries she sustained. Purple marks have appeared on her face and around her eyes. She’ll remain in an artificially induced coma until her brain has healed sufficiently, the doctors say—should it heal.
“You can talk to her,” Dad says. “I have been. I read it helps.”
“I should think I’m the last person she’d want to hear from,” I say, unable to think about anything but the night ahead, barely present.
Dad smiles. “She thinks a lot of you.”
I force a smile back when he bumps my shoulder for a response.
Dad leans in without looking away from Mum, and whispers, “She’s got a drawer about you.”
“What?” I say, the peculiar sentence pulling me into the moment.
“A drawer full of clippings, from the Guardian, from the Radio Times. All your Cambridge stuff. She’d never tell you, wouldn’t want you getting a big head, and she doesn’t think I know about it, I shouldn’t think. But there you have it.”
He’s being sweet to me, and to Mum, even though he must be so worried himself. I lay my head against his arm. He has no idea what she’s really like. No idea what she did to him, and the position she put me in, box of clippings or not.
“I never really forgave her for moving us from Marlstone,” I say. “I always thought she did it to spite me.”
“Well, it was my fault we ended up
in Blythe,” Dad says, never taking his eyes from Mum. “I was worried about the shop at the time, and the mortgage we had. I was having to work so hard all the time, never seeing either of you. Your mum didn’t want to go. She was worried you’d be bored and get into trouble, but I thought the opposite. And you soon made all your little friends, didn’t you? It was just so pretty there, and for what we were paying elsewhere…” He grips my hand and only after a moment do I squeeze back.
I tell Dad I’m feeling unwell, which isn’t a lie, and that I’ll probably sleep for the rest of the day, which is one.
“Go straight to the hotel, Dad, okay,” I say. “Don’t wake me up if I’m not around. Just stay in your room and I’ll find you tomorrow. Hopefully the police will have some information for us soon.”
I get up, dread like rocks in my belly, and kiss his head.
“Happy New Year,” I say.
Then, perhaps just for his benefit, but perhaps not, I kiss Mum’s head too.
Back at mine we sip tea and pick at biscuits, barely speaking to one another as the 2 p.m. deadline comes and goes. Jen turns on the television, but we only watch the clock. Both Steve’s and my phones ring. We let them go to voicemail. It’s PC Massey, telling us not to worry, that she is only checking in with us. Being vigilant. Steve calls her back and tells her we are fine, and that we’ll be safely tucked up in at the hotel again tonight.
The afternoon passes and I have to turn on the lights. While never committing to anything, we begin discussing what we might do should we go—all hypothetical, of course. About how we should prepare for the worst, arm ourselves as best as we can. We go through the drawers in the kitchen, picking out possible weapons and leaving them out on the counter. It’s probably this more than anything else that moves us beyond the hypothetical.
Steve runs through each part of his round of The Dedication—though we all remember it too—estimating that we’ll need a good two hours at least.
“Obviously,” Steve says, “being a bastard when I was sixteen, I made my round hard to try and put off Rupesh. It’s only fair that I do all the hard bits. Adeline, we need a towel for the lake—”
The Killer You Know Page 30