“What are they?”
“Underpants,” he said. “Girls. I found them in the back of his van.”
“No way,” he said.
“Yeah. I followed him this morning after he attacked me, lost my mind and went to see if the house was empty, try and break into that shed and see if it’s got like a dungeon in there, some evidence. But his van was on the drive, the door open. I saw him walking back into the house, and I waited. He’d forgotten to close it. So I looked inside, and these were inside a plastic bag in the corner. Like he was hiding them.”
“I don’t know, man,” Will said. His spliff was down to the dregs and he chucked it behind him. “Could be loads of reasons that’s in there.”
“Like?”
“Dunno.” He shrugged. “Found them.”
“You really think?” Will didn’t answer. “If you want things back to normal I need to know he hasn’t brainwashed you. Otherwise how can I be sure you won’t say something else to him that’ll bring him back to my door? I want you to put this back on his property sometime next time you are over. And then I want you to call the police and say you found this. Then they can run some DNA tests or whatever and find out once and for all what he’s up to. Maybe search that shed of his.”
“I don’t know, Steve,” he said. “That shed’s just got a load of his workout shit in it. That and his museum. I’ve been in it.”
“So you’re saying no, then?”
“I just don’t think he’s a paedo,” Will said.
“Mate, do you not get it? That doesn’t matter. The police can decide that for themselves. I just want Strachan to know he can’t get away with stuff. That there are consequences. And I need something from you.”
“Yeah, but…” He sighs again. “If he’s not a paedo, then it’s well harsh. Might ruin his life.”
Steve wants to yell at Will now. The kid was so dense at times. Couldn’t help it, the comprehensive education system was a lottery. And his parents obviously weren’t the brightest. Still, why didn’t he want to make things right again? The point was to fuck Strachan. The point was to fuck Strachan like he’d fucked them, and Obi, and him.
Instead, a new idea, fresh and exciting, occurs to him. He wasn’t attached to the plan to call the police anyway. Too much risk there, bringing the police into things again, leaving it up to their competence to get things sorted. Paedophilia was a nasty thing to accuse someone of if you didn’t know for sure. And who knew what Strachan did if and when he kidnapped kids? He just wanted to know Will would have done it, that was what was important.
“What’s his museum?” Steve said.
“All the old stuff he’s found,” Will said.
“Is it valuable then?”
“Yeah, really valuable. He reckons he can retire on it. Use it to buy a motor home on this camping site he loved as a kid in Cornwall.”
“Cool,” Steve said. Having become momentarily enthused, Will now realises that he has made a mistake and his expression conveys a fearful gloom once more. “Very cool. I think I have a new plan.”
He didn’t give Will all the details, just enough to get him to agree to show up at Mr. Strachan’s with the understanding it was this or planting the underwear. Going over it now, marching back home along the footpath with Will somewhere behind him, he’ll have to make sure to get it right, get there early to set things up, make sure Will would have to make a decision.
Not tonight, of course, that would be too obvious. But soon, the night before the photograph perhaps. That would be Adeline’s birthday night. And when he got back to the farmhouse he couldn’t appear as happy as he felt. He had to make sure he looked defeated. That it took all the guts in the world to do what he’d done in letting Will back in the group. Heroic actions really, just not quite in the way they’d assume.
Only Will and he needed to know the truth.
New Year, 2016
It’s surprising that there are two cars instead of one on Rupesh’s drive, and even more surprising that Jen’s battered Ka is one of them. Jen is sitting on one of the sofas in the lounge so I occupy the furthest seat of the empty sofa, wary.
“Listen, Adeline,” Rupesh says, sitting beside Jen, “Jen and I have been talking, a lot actually, since what happened, and there are some things that we really don’t understand. And it’s led us to some odd conclusions.”
“Like what?” He’s in consultation mode. My mouth is suddenly dry.
“Well, I suppose we could sort of beat around the bush, couldn’t we?” He looks at Jen, who nods. “Because there’s not really an easy way of saying any of it, other than just, you know, saying it.”
It’s like my heart and lungs are lead-lined. I need to breathe, need to swallow, to shift my weight.
“And given how close you are to Steve we know how this will—”
“Just tell me.”
“It’s my fault,” Jen says. “I should have—”
“It’s no one’s fault but his,” Rupesh says, turning to Jen. Their private little bubble of reassurance is maddening.
“What about Steve?” I say.
“Jen told me the story Steve gave you about the train going over Will. About Will being suicidal. Thing about it is, that never happened. I actually know what really happened that day, because Will told me at the time. He practically bragged about it.”
“We’re taking Will’s word now, all of a sudden? Okay, what did he say happened?”
“Do you remember you made Steve go and find Will in the fields to sort things out, but when he did he accused him of moping around so we’d all nag Steve to let him back in the group? He told Will he needed to be a man and accept he lost, and basically ordered him to come back to the farmhouse, tell all of us that Steve had tried to convince him back, but that he had ultimately decided to abide by the rules of the game and leave. Only Will refused, and Steve tried getting physical with him. So Will just smacked him one in the face. Will told me that when he saw Steve lying there on the floor, saw his expression, he realised how much stronger he was than Steve. And that if the rest of us wanted him back in, there was nothing Steve could do about it really. So he said all that to Steve, and Steve had no reply.”
“So Will bragged to you about this and none of the rest of us?” I say, addressing Jen now because she was clearly the one fuelling Rupesh’s madness here.
“He told me,” Rupesh says, “because the reason he never showed up to the final Dedication was because he’d found out Steve had planned it specifically so I’d lose, which I think we all knew really. So he lost The Dedication deliberately because he didn’t want me kicked out of the group.”
“Will hitting Steve like that sounds like a loser’s fantasy,” I say. “I saw him that day, he was broken. He wasn’t fighting anyone.”
“More of a fantasy than a train running over Will?” Rupesh says.
“Steve never said that happened. He said Will claimed it happened.”
“Then why wouldn’t Will tell me that? Ha, ha, check out this trick I played on Steve. Look, I remember that conversation better than most things from then because it was a selfless thing he’d done for me. I was touched. And I’d have remembered if Will was suicidal. We talked a lot, I was probably closest to Will out of any of us. He was upset about how Steve was acting, and about his parents fighting, about his sister. But suicidal? So the next question is: why did Steve lie?”
“I’m not sure he did. I remember Will being really, really upset.”
Some sort of trick is being played on me here, the way I sometimes feel on the podcast when one of the others has made a distracting non sequitur to try to win the argument. I need to be that Adeline now, because Rupesh is up to something, I’m sure.
“So Will’s a reliable source now?” I say. “And Steve’s isn’t?”
“Believe Steve if you want,” Jen says, “but there’s more, Adeline. Let us finish.” She’s hard now in a way that’s upsetting.
Rupesh takes his cue. “When I woke
up in the hospital I couldn’t remember much. I barely remember going to bed that night in the hotel. But I had a few very fuzzy memories when I must have come around as the drugs wore off. And one of those, one of the clearest, was of someone looking down on me, closing a door down, like a car boot, you know? Now I’ve had bloods done and they think I was dosed with Rohypnol—probably in the wine Steve gave us. And then again via injection, because I have a needle scar. I could have been hallucinating, of course, it’s a side effect. But I kept thinking why could I remember this one thing and nothing else? It stuck with me, but I was going to let it go up until I spoke with—”
“You’re saying that the someone you saw was Steve?”
“I know how it sounds. But undoubtedly, yes.”
I smile. Shake my head. Smile again. What can I say to this? It’s fucking absurd. This is Rupesh’s grudge against Steve taking some sort of monstrous form outside of his warped mind, and no rational response will do. There are so many obvious reasons it isn’t Steve where do I start? The fact he was the one urging us to go to the police. That he was with me most of the last few weeks. That both Jen and Rupesh make so much more sense as possible suspects if that was the door being opened.
“I think you’ve both gone mad,” I say with a mirthless laugh. “I’m sorry. If, and I say if, Steve lied, then that doesn’t mean he… he… You were drugged. He didn’t even organise this stupid reunion, you did, Jen. I could understand if you…”
I trail off because Jen is grimacing, shifting in her chair.
“What?” I say.
“I did email everyone, Adeline,” Jen says, tears quick to cover her eyes. “But I think he played me. Before I sent that email to you all I actually saw Steve. It was at the local Co-Op near Mum and Dad’s in Marlstone, early December last year. And when we were talking about old times, he said to me how he’d love us to do a reunion.”
“So he suggested a reunion to you?” I say.
“No, Adeline, wait. He actually said to me that he’d love a reunion, but didn’t think anyone else’d come if he organised it because people might not like him after how that summer ended. He thought Rupesh and you might hate him.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Said he was a bit embarrassed of the past or whatever. About how he used to be. And I fell for it, because then he suggested I organise the reunion, because everyone loved me—oh Jen, you were always the most popular, the peacemaker, all this. He even got me—and this is how gullible I am—to agree to tell you all we’d not seen each other in case you thought Steve was getting me to organise it on his behalf. Which I was. I feel like such an idiot.
“And I’d never have thought of mentioning this if Rupesh hadn’t questioned Steve’s story about the train. It’s funny, I just thought it was a random coincidence seeing him there. I was back for Mum’s sixtieth, and I think he said he was back seeing a friend or something. Now I’m thinking, who does he know round my mum and dad’s way? Did he follow me there?”
“Jen,” I say, biting the inside of my cheek, “can we just have a reality check? You placed notes around the place pretending to be Will.”
“Only so we’d not stop, Adeline. I explained that.” She is practically shouting.
“So are you saying you think Steve did all of this? Will, my mum, those girls?”
Jen and Rupesh look at me, then at each other. Is this some twisted bonding ritual?
“So in your minds Steve somehow made Will pack up his life and leave the internet after telling us he was coming to the reunion?” I say. “I mean, Will was crazy when we saw him, put a knife to Steve’s throat. But you think it’s Steve that killed Will? And left his body at that pylon like that? How does it all work, I’m just—”
“I know this sounds mad,” Jen says, “but the more you think it through the more things make sense. So, like, Will was part of our group emails, wasn’t he? And we know he replied to me initially, so it was definitely his account. So if Steve really did it all, how did he know Will wouldn’t just keep emailing us, then just show up at the reunion? Would sort of ruin the whole vanishing-for-a-year thing, especially after Steve went to all the trouble of arranging those two suicides. But Adeline, it was Steve that gave me Will’s email address in the first place. And it was just a Googlemail account—he could easily have set it up, then sent Will’s first and only response. To hook us.”
“Remember, Will said he didn’t even get Jen’s email when we saw him,” Rupesh said.
“The worst thing of all,” Jen said, “is that I said to Steve do we have to invite Will? I didn’t really want to see him, was glad when he didn’t show up that night. But Steve said that I had to, for old times’ sake. But, and get this, Steve said Will probably wouldn’t show anyway because he’d had trouble contacting him. Steve knew that Will had gone off grid even then.”
“So we think Will initially did his vanishing act of his own volition,” Rupesh says, “and Steve noticed and it triggered him into action. I think he kept tabs on us all, including Will, and knew about his situation somehow and took advantage of it. The night we saw Will did you not get the impression he was acting towards Steve like he’d seen him more recently than sixteen years ago? He said something regarding being clear last time, about not wanting to see him again.”
I remember, but to me it had been the ramblings of a mad man with an ancient grudge. Of course his ejection from the group would feel fresh if he is the sort of person that can kill two—
“And Steve also made this comment about having seen Will at some point,” Jen says.
“I think he set Will up,” Rupesh says. “He found out about Will’s decision to go AWOL from life, as Will put it, chose victims connected to him through Wallgrove, and then killed them in the ways Will had described.”
“Maybe he even worked at Wallgrove or knew of it?” Jen says. “He said something about working in health management.”
“And Will even mentioned Steve doing therapy when we saw him,” Rupesh says, overlapping with Jen saying: “And Steve was so elusive about his job in general when we asked.”
“And if he works regularly in hospitals he’d also have access to drugs,” Rupesh says.
“Why would he actively let us go and confront Will?” I say. “Will could have mentioned he’d seen Steve before in front of us.”
“Oh, he wasn’t keen on us going, was he?” Rupesh said. “But I was the one that insisted we get it over with, so he came, his bluff called. And he was confident, too confident, as always. He probably banked on Will not wanting to stick around too long once he saw him. And I bet he had some bullshit prepared should it come up too.”
“You believe this?” I said, desperate to halt this torrent of madness.
“He told us he knew PC Clarke to stop us going back after our first visit. We asked PC Clarke and he’d never seen Steve before. Was mighty interested in Steve lying about that too.”
This stumps me for just a moment. “He never said he knew him for sure. He said he thought he might know him.” That was what he said; I’m certain of it.
“Really?” Jen says.
“You’re just finding links because you want to now,” I say. “This is cherry picking, it’s not scientific.” Only Steve has been vague about his job, that is true. And he had been reluctant to go after Will that night. If this were Will we were discussing, how quickly would I be rushing to his defence?
“Just play that night again in your head,” Jen says. “The way he led us, Adeline, think about it. The way only he saw Will watching us. None of us really saw anything.”
“You did.”
“I was seeing figures everywhere,” she said. “I was terrified.”
I need to get outside again, get some air to help me think. Force myself into critic-mode. It’s impossible that Steve is involved, this has to be coming from Rupesh and his—
Something hits me then, something I wish I’d told the police, and it’s surprising how much relief it brings with it.
/> “I heard Will out there,” I say. “We all did.”
“We can’t have,” Jen says. “I thought I did too, but then I also remember Will’s body. I was right next to it. Did that look like a sudden death to you? It looked—”
“It was too dark—”
“—like he’d been there a while, posed like that. Steve could have been throwing stones to make it sound like someone was ahead of us.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “Bullshit. So you think he planned this out in all this detail, and yet made all these stupid mistakes at the very end? PC Clarke, the train story.”
“I think he got carried away and sloppy,” Rupesh says, “just like he told us killers do when they’re coming to the end of their sprees.”
I don’t have an answer to this.
“Another thing killers do is obsess about other killers, by the way,” Rupesh adds. “I don’t think we were meant to ever find Will in Sparkbrook. He underestimated us, like he always used to. So he panicked, tried controlling it again, went after your mum and hoped everything would fall into place just like it usually does for him. I mean, think about it, this whole thing, another Dedication, bringing us all back together, games in the night. That’s Steve, not Will.”
I flare with anger now, recalling just how vulnerable Steve had been with me. How trapped he’d seemed by the version of himself they’d all had in their heads.
“You’re basing all this on the Steve you remember from being a boy. A lonely, messed-up child,” I say. “That’s what this is about, Rupesh. Your ancient shit with Steve. And now you’ve decided he’s a fucking murderer.”
“I think he played us all, Adeline,” he says. “He was a very clever and very manipulative child, and now as a man… well, he’s grown up and learned to hide it better.”
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