The Bone Field

by Simon Kernick

  There were plenty of things I could have done to mess up Kevin Wallcott’s life. I could have broken into his house and planted drugs, or stolen property. Or even child porn. I could have got hold of his credit card details and stolen his identity. But none of these things was personal for me. I had to actually see him pay.

  So one night I told Jo I was working late and I paid him a visit.

  I knew he was at home because the lights were on, and I briefly saw him in one of the windows. He lived on a street of terraced houses with access through an alleyway at the back. I waited until after midnight then slipped from my car, climbed the fence into his garden, and picked the lock on his back door. I felt nervous, but excited too, the adrenalin kicking through my system as I crept through his house, slipping on a ski mask and taking out a replica Walther PPK pistol from under my jacket. I knew plenty could go wrong; that I was risking my job, my marriage and my liberty for the sake of a little girl I would never know. But that didn’t seem to matter. I was dispensing justice.

  I found him in the bedroom. He was lying naked on the bed texting on his mobile, an idiot grin on his face that died the second he saw me. He opened his mouth to say something but I told him to shut the fuck up, my voice hard and calm, as I walked towards him, pointing the gun at his head with a steady hand. It might have been a replica but it looked exactly like the real thing.

  Straight away he could see I was serious and, big guy or not, the way he was staring at me told me he wasn’t going to cause me any trouble. I stopped five feet away and told him to drop the phone. He did. I told him to get on his knees on the floor with his back to me. He started talking fast, telling me I could take his money but not to hurt him, but I cut him off, telling him that if I wanted him dead he’d be dead already. He looked sceptical, as if he was sure this was some kind of trick, but he did as he was told. I ordered him to thread his hands together behind his back and, pushing the barrel of the gun against the back of his head, I cuffed his hands together, making sure the metal bit into his skin. He asked me what I was going to do with him. His whole body was shaking, he was that scared. I didn’t answer him. Instead, I took a step back and kicked him in the balls from behind as hard as I could. He cried out and crumpled to the floor, rolling over on to his back.

  I looked down at him as he writhed in pain and I felt a momentary pang of doubt about what I was doing. Then I pictured the little girl in her wheelchair where she’d remain for the rest of her life, and I stamped hard on Wallcott’s groin before jumping on him, my knees pinning down his shoulders. ‘This is for Jodie Parrish,’ I said, and slammed the metal stock of the gun into his face. The first blow opened up a huge cut above his eye, the second and third spread his nose all over his face, and the fourth sliced open his forehead. Each one felt like an incredible release.

  I leaned back and raised the gun high above my head, the darkness upon me, my whole body alive with fury, ready to deliver an even bigger blow to his head. Wallcott’s face was a mask of blood and he was hardly moving. It would have been so easy to finish him off.

  But I didn’t. Something stopped me. A knowledge that I couldn’t be his executioner. Not here. Not like this.

  I stayed in that position for a good few seconds, with the gun above my head, before finally I lowered it and got to my feet. Wallcott rolled over on to his side, spitting out blood. I thought of taking the cuffs off, but why make it easy for him? I’d bought them with cash from an army surplus shop weeks earlier so they couldn’t be traced back to me. Instead, I crushed his phone underfoot then turned and left him there, knowing I’d crossed a line.

  And that’s the thing. When you’ve crossed the line once, it’s a lot easier to do it a second time. I was thinking that as I pulled my car up on a quiet side road just outside the village of Hambleden and cut the engine. Like the last time, I wasn’t entirely convinced I was doing the right thing and I sat in the darkness of the car and took the picture of Dana Brennan her mum had given me out of my wallet. I stared at it for a few moments, thinking about the way Dana’s life had been snatched away from her, and the fear she must have experienced in her final moments, and within seconds the anger was there like an old friend.

  If Bill Morris knew anything about her murder, I was going to get it out of him.

  I got out of the car and quietly shut the door. It was nearly ten o’clock and the night was silent out here in the rolling English countryside. On the other side of the valley was Medmenham College where even now they continued to dig for more bodies, and it made me wonder what was going through Morris’s mind right now. Fear. Guilt. Or nothing.

  Morris lived in a tiny cottage that guidebooks would have called quaint, the end one of a row of five up on a hill overlooking a field that led to the village church about fifty metres away, down a narrow tree-lined lane. A downstairs light was on, as was a single upstairs one, and an ancient Ford Fiesta was parked outside the gate, so I guessed he was in.

  Slipping on a pair of clear plastic gloves, I opened the gate and mounted the steps to Morris’s front door. I opened the letterbox and listened. I could hear the TV blaring loudly inside. It sounded like the news. There was no doorbell, just an old brass door-knocker. I considered using it and announcing my presence the old-fashioned way but decided against it. If he didn’t cooperate with Thames Valley he wasn’t going to cooperate with me.

  I took a step back and looked up. There didn’t seem to be any movement coming from upstairs either so I headed round the back into a small, neglected garden overgrown with weeds.

  The cottage’s back door was unlocked and led straight into a kitchen and dining area. Plates were piled up in the sink but the room and the hallway beyond were empty.

  I walked through the kitchen and into the narrow hallway, keeping my head down to avoid the overhead beams. The only sound was the blare of the TV. I pulled on a ski mask like the kind the gunmen had worn the previous night, and the kind I’d worn when I’d visited Kevin Wallcott, and pushed open the living-room door.

  It was dark inside, the TV providing the only light. The threadbare sofa opposite it was empty but there was a half-full pint glass of lager balanced on one arm, along with a well-used ashtray, a packet of cheap brand cigarettes, and a lighter. The lager had gone flat.

  It looked like Bill Morris had been settled in for the night, yet there was no sign of him now. I doubted if he’d gone for a walk without taking his smokes.

  I stopped at the bottom of the staircase, listening for any movement upstairs. It was hard to hear anything above the TV, but I thought I heard something bang up there.

  I’d brought a small leather cosh with me in case Morris proved a bit of a handful and I took it from my jacket now and started up the stairs.

  That was when I heard another noise, like something being kicked. I caught something else too. The faint but unmistakable smell of shit.

  I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck and waited a few seconds, not moving. Then, when there was no repeat of the noise, I continued up the staircase, step by step, conscious of the loud groans they made under my weight.

  The door directly opposite the top of the stairs was ajar a couple of inches and the light inside was on. The smell was worse here and I felt a clear sense of dread as dark memories surfaced inside me. Memories of being alone and terrified in an old rambling house while all around me murder was committed. I shuddered, felt the fear rise, and fought it down. I had no choice. I had to go inside.

  With my grip tightening on the cosh, I kicked open the door and stepped over the threshold.

  Morris was hanging from an old air vent in the ceiling at the foot of an unmade bed, his face puce, his eyes bugged open, his tongue hanging from his mouth. He was dressed in a grimy white vest and grey tracksuit bottoms, and his feet were swollen and bare, the yellowing, talon-like toenails only centimetres from the floor. A chair lay on its side nearby and next to it was an empty bottle of whisky sitting on top of a sheet of A4 printer paper.

 
; As I stood there, momentarily frozen to the spot, Morris’s leg twitched violently and a stain spread across the crutch of his tracksuit bottoms as his bladder evacuated. That was when I knew he’d only died in the last few seconds.

  I heard movement behind me.

  Before I had time to turn round I felt a powerful blow across my shoulder blades and I fell forward into a pile of junk boxes against the bedroom wall, just managing to put out a hand to break my fall. I wriggled round and caught a glimpse of two figures in dark clothing in the room with me before one of them sprayed something in my face.

  I rolled away, shutting my eyes, but it was too late. The spray had invaded my nostrils, eyes and throat, burning them up. I broke into a coughing fit and tried to get to my feet, but a kick from nowhere sent me sprawling again, and this time I banged my head against the wall. I felt a surge of panic, knowing I was helpless, wondering what the hell they’d sprayed me with.

  I felt one of them come in close and lashed out blindly at him, missing completely. The next second the ski mask was wrenched from my head and I felt rather than saw a camera flash. A boot caught me in the gut but I hardly felt it. All I could think about was the burning effects of the spray. I had to get fresh air.

  The attack stopped, and I heard the sound of footsteps rapidly descending the stairs. Still blinded, I felt my way over to the bedroom window and shoved it open, pushing my head out and gasping for breath.

  I hung out there for a good thirty seconds until finally the effects of the spray, which was almost certainly CS gas, began to become more tolerable. Then, knowing that I was hugely conspicuous with my head stuck out of a murder victim’s window just minutes after he’d been killed, I staggered out on to the landing, found the bathroom, and splashed water over my face until the burning faded.

  I needed to get out, and fast, but I also knew I couldn’t leave evidence behind, so I ran back into the bedroom, barely glancing at Morris’s now still corpse, and looked around for the ski mask.

  But it wasn’t there. The men who’d ambushed me had taken it.

  Why?

  There was no time to answer that question, so I turned and ran down the stairs, going out the way I’d come in, through the back door.

  Almost immediately I heard an angry shout coming from one of the neighbour’s windows: ‘Stop thief! I’ve called the police!’

  I had my back to the neighbour so he couldn’t see my face and, with my eyes still streaming from the gas, I clambered over Morris’s back fence, fell down the other side, and took off through the trees, trying to navigate my way back to the road I was parked in.

  By the time I reached the car, I could hear the first siren somewhere in the distance. I was pointed in the direction of the village and there was no way I was going to risk driving past Morris’s house in case someone got my number plate, so I did a rapid three-point turn, not entirely sure where I was going, and drove away into the darkness.

  Twenty minutes and a lot of winding back roads later I was back on the M40 heading into London and wondering how the killers always seemed to be one step ahead of me.

  Because that was the thing. They were.

  Eighteen

  Life had dealt some pretty poor cards to Ramon Thomas, starting from even before he’d been born. A few months before she became pregnant, his mum had discovered the brand-new drug that was sweeping London’s sprawling council estates, and she’d continued smoking crack the whole time she was carrying Ramon. He’d ended up being born a month early when his mum was rushed to hospital with major complications. The doctors had been forced to deliver him using forceps and, as far as Ramon was concerned, they hadn’t done all that good a job of it. He’d been left with a deep scar on his cheek and a lazy eye that had got worse as he’d grown older, making him look like some kind of retard.

  With a crack addict for a mum, and a dad who was always in and out of jail, Ramon and his little sister Keesha ended up living with their granddad, who tried his best to bring them up with some semblance of normality. But then Granddad had died when Ramon was nine and Keesha only five. At the same time Ramon’s old man had just finished his latest sentence and he made Ramon and Keesha move back in with him and their mum. Supposedly, they were going to be a family and everything was going to turn out OK. At least that’s what his old man said. The reality was a whole lot different. His mum and dad argued and fought like a pair of stray dogs, and when the old man got in one of his moods, he’d beat Ramon with anything he could lay his hands on. Ramon could handle it as long as he didn’t hurt Keesha, and usually he didn’t. The old man loved Keesha. A lot more than he loved Ramon.

  One day when Ramon was at school, someone left the flat’s front door open and Keesha wandered outside. Something must have caught her attention on the other side of the road because she ran right across it. A car had been coming, driven too fast by a couple of kids, and they’d hit Keesha head on. The Feds said she’d died quick, which Ramon supposed was something to cling to, but the death had hit him hard. Keesha was the only person in the world who’d ever shown him real love. She’d had this way of looking into his eyes like she truly needed him, and it had always filled him with a weird kind of pride. He was her protector.

  Except he hadn’t been there when she’d needed him.

  His old man had blamed his mum, and after the Feds had caught him beating the shit out of her, he’d gone back to jail. The social workers had wanted to put Ramon into care but he’d told them his mum was looking after him properly and they’d let him stay with her. She didn’t look after him – she couldn’t even look after herself – but Ramon didn’t want to have to leave the estate where he’d spent his whole life.

  One day, when he was about thirteen, he was walking down Tottenham High Road when a gang of older boys surrounded him. They laughed at his lazy eye and called him freak, demanding to know which postcode he lived in. Ramon recognized one of the boys and knew he was from the Man Dem Crew from an estate in Wood Green. Ramon knew the Man Dem Crew had a beef with some of the boys from his estate so he lied and made up a postcode. But they’d heard his hesitation and knew he was lying, so they dragged him into a side street and started beating him. That was what it was like in those days. You could get hurt just because you lived in the wrong place. He’d fought back, and fought back hard, but that just made them beat him more, and he was never going to win one against six.

  When he got out of hospital a few days later, Ramon knew it was time to join a gang so he could protect himself. On his estate, the main crew were the N17 Murder Boys and Ramon knew one of their Youngers, a kid who lived a few doors down, so he approached him. Even at thirteen, Ramon was a big guy – his mum’s crack addiction during pregnancy didn’t seem to have left him with any growth issues – and the scar on his face made him look pretty scary. More importantly, he was fearless. The only thing he cared about in life – his little sister – had been taken away from him, and now that she’d gone he had nothing to live for, which made him perfect gang fodder.

  And Ramon loved being part of a gang. It gave him the sense of belonging and stability he’d been missing his whole life, and it was exciting. Jesus, it was exciting. He started dealing. First skunk, then crack, and even brown when the crew could get hold of it. The crew’s Elders took a big cut of the profits but still left him with more cash than a thirteen-year-old could dream of. He earned even more by robbing kids at knifepoint round near the High Road with a couple of other crew members, and found that he loved the buzz of imposing his dominance on them, and seeing the fear in their eyes as they begged him not to hurt them. He didn’t. But he always took everything they had.

  His mum, crack-addled ho that she was, knew what he was up to, and she tried to muscle in, saying that if he wanted to stay in her flat – like it actually belonged to her – then he was going to have to pay, either in money or rocks. But Ramon had soon put her right, giving her the kind of beating that made her know not to fool with him again.

  Ramon kn
ew that what he was doing in his life was wrong. He was no fool. His granddad had been a churchgoing Christian who’d recited the Ten Commandments to him plenty of times, and told him that God was always watching what he did. ‘He’s taking notes, boy,’ was what Granddad had always said, ‘and if you don’t do right, you’re not going to his place at the end.’ But Granddad had died so poor they couldn’t even afford a funeral, so how much had God really helped him?

  And so Ramon had gone further and further off the rails. It was an easy journey. Once you’d robbed someone once, it was a lot easier doing it again. Once you’d punched a man in the face, it wasn’t that much of a step to kicking him while he lay helpless on the ground, or smacking him round the head with a bottle. Violence became a release for him. All his pent-up rage at the injustices of the world came pouring out. The high was better than any crack hit, or even sex. When he was fighting, it was like he was king of the world: fistproof; knifeproof; bulletproof. He built up a formidable reputation. No one laughed at him any more. No one called him a freak. He was respected. And it felt good.

  He rose up the ranks of the gang, became one of its Elders so he had dealers working for him, even moved into his own flat away from his ho of a mother. And because he was a face now he bought himself a gun, and not one of those converted starter pistols either. His was a Browning nine-mill semi-automatic. It cost him two grand in cash, which was a hell of a lot of green, but now he had a real status symbol. Ramon had never handled a gun before, let alone fired one, and the white guy who sold it to him had to show him how everything worked.

  He carried that gun with him everywhere, tucked into the waistband of his jeans, waiting for someone, anyone, to try it on with him.