by C. J. Skuse
‘No,’ said Fallon. ‘We’re a team, aren’t we? Fearless Five, remember?’ She looked at Pete, and frowned. ‘Technically, you’re not in the Fearless Five though. Sorry.’
‘I’m sure I’ll cope,’ he said.
‘Ssh,’ I said. I could hear something going on inside – a noise I couldn’t identify. I rang the doorbell. A light came on in the hallway and a red shape appeared through the frosted glass of the front door. It was Jo – I recognised her red dressing gown.
It was clear that something had happened the moment she opened the front door. Her hair was scruffy and her eyes were bloodshot; behind her on the carpet lay the potted plant and the telephone table, upturned and smashed. There was scattered earth everywhere. Her cheeks were wet, and she looked through me like I wasn’t even there.
‘Jo? What’s happened? Has Max been here?’
Before any of us knew what was happening, she fell forwards and collapsed against the door frame. Pete caught her just in time to stop her hitting the step face first.
‘Jo? Jo?’ He started lightly slapping her cheek; then he laid her out flat on the floor, half on the hallway carpet, and half hanging outside the front door. He knelt down and put his ear to her mouth to listen for breathing. ‘She’s all right. She’s had a lot to drink, though.’
Jo was gabbling, gibberish and sobbing noises that none of us could decode. It was the most I’d ever heard her speak.
‘She stinks of whiskey,’ said Fallon. Pete lifted her to a sitting position and she started sobbing into his neck.
‘Help me lift her, guys,’ he said. ‘Corey, take one of her arms with me. On the count of three, one, two…’
‘Thank God you’re here!’ Jo wept, suddenly. ‘Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Got to go after him. Please Estella, please.’
We lowered her again.
‘Is it Max?’ I said. ‘Or Neil? Where are they?’
The front door was wide open – I only realised then how loud our voices had been. A neighbour from across the road was walking towards us in his silk robe and slippers. Fallon headed him off on the gravel drive, doing her best to assure him that everything was fine.
‘Is Neil here?’ asked Pete.
‘Max. He’s g-going to kill him,’ Jo stammered as we dragged her into the kitchen. ‘Oh God. Oh GOD. Oh GOD!’ She was screeching like an owl, clutching Pete’s shirt to the point of ripping it (again). We managed to get her to her feet and guided her towards the nearest stool at the copper-covered breakfast bar (which, as Neil liked to remind everyone, had cost over £3,000 to install).
‘Please. He’s going to kill him. He’s going to kill his father,’ Jo kept on burbling.
She looked straight at me, didn’t even blink. When I moved, she kept looking straight past me to the sink, her sobbing broken up by quick hysterical breaths and hiccups. ‘H-he was h-here. H-he shouted at me. He’s s-so angry. He thinks it’s my f-f-fault! Oh God. Oh God. My Max. My Max!’
Corey looked at me.
‘Where’s Neil?’ I asked her. She didn’t make eye contact, just clung on tighter to Pete, and kept sobbing. ‘Jo? You need to tell us where Neil is.’
Jo shook her head. ‘This isn’t happening.’
I lost all my patience then. ‘You knew, didn’t you? You knew what Neil did to me.’
‘No, no! I wasn’t sure.’
‘Did you know what he did to Jessica? And you didn’t do anything? You still let me come here. You still left me alone with him. Why didn’t you do something?’
‘I didn’t know for sure, I swear I didn’t! Ella…’
‘Why didn’t you protect us?’ I pushed Pete out of the way and got right into her face.
‘I couldn’t. I didn’t.’
‘Ella,’ said Pete. ‘Not now.’
I was shouting ‘Tell me where Neil is. Tell me where Max went.’
‘He’ll kill him. Then we’ll all be free of him, won’t we?’ She said it like it made good sense, like it was a logical solution. Max would kill him and that would be that.
‘No, Max isn’t killing anybody. I’m not going to let Neil ruin anyone else’s life. Just tell us where Max went!’
‘W-wallflower,’ she sobbed. ‘The p-p-p-p-pub. Seafront. Ella, he took it.’
‘Took what? Make sense, you stupid bitch!’
With a quivering finger, she pointed towards the kitchen counter. There beside the draining board was the £700 knife block, with the knives made of ‘diamond-sharpening steel’. It had been knocked onto its side. And the biggest blade of the bunch was missing.
26
One Goes Down to the Sea
I didn’t think, I just ran. Out of the kitchen, across the hallway, through the office to the conservatory and out into the back garden. I could hear them all behind me, shouting.
Ella, no!
It’s too dark.
Where’s she going?
You’ll never make it! We’ll take the Jeep.
I’m gonna call the police.
Moonlight was my only friend as I wrenched myself over the back fence and scrambled through the sand dunes, stumbling and tumbling through the collapsing mounds of sand and long grasses and forging on down towards the beach. The tide was coming in, like a billion angry tigers storming the beach with snarls, eating up the sand by the second. I didn’t have long – only minutes – before it swallowed everything, but I’d run the beach a million times before with Pete in training, and I knew this was the quickest way to the pubs-and-clubs end of the seafront where Max had gone. It was exactly eight minutes to the jetty directly opposite The Wallflower if I sprinted.
And so I ran. I tore across the wet sand faster than I’d ever run it before, my arms pumping against the wind, the tide biting at my trainers all the way. The salt was in my throat, but Max was the only thing in my mind. He’d never had to handle anything hard before – his parents had always bailed him out, or shielded him from any sort of harm. If he was going to fall, I had to be there to catch him.
As I rounded the headland, I could see the lights on the seafront – I could just make out the sign of The Wallflower, swinging in the wind. I prayed to God that the police were there before me but as I got closer I couldn’t hear any sirens – just the bassy thud of the music from the Fun Pub next door. I could smell the burgers frying in the van opposite Tesco. Behind me, the stretch of sand I had run had already been swallowed by the tide. I could feel water through my shoes but I just kept going. It was already up as far as the second lot of stilts on the jetty. I was about two minutes away when I saw the two silhouetted figures halfway down the boardwalk. I knew it was them.
I heard their raised voices on the wind as I hoisted myself up onto the dry boardwalk. They both turned to face me. Still catching my breath, I looked for the knife.
Neil glanced from me to Max and back again. We were either side of him, trapping him like a wild animal. Then I saw the blade in Max’s right hand, as the light from the street lamps bounced off the metal. He was nudging his father along the jetty with it, making him walk the plank.
‘What the hell have you told him, you lying bitch?’ Neil shouted. I was instantly shocked – he’d never shouted at me, never even raised his voice to me before. I had a split second of feeling ashamed. And then there was no feeling at all.
Max looked at me, desperate. ‘He’s just denying it.’
‘If someone has been making up vicious lies about me, I want to know why,’ Neil spat. He glanced at me and back to Max. Then me. Then the knife. ‘Max, come on, son. Come on. Give it to me. We can sort this.’
‘You’re a nonce,’ Max wailed, crumpling down to the boardwalk, toppled by the weight of what he was realising. ‘You’re disgusting!’
‘I haven’t done anything, I told you! Jesus Christ, you think I’m capable of something that sick? Max, you know me. I’m not like that. Please, son.’
‘Why deny it?’ I said. ‘You know what you did to me. To Jessica.’
He snapped his hea
d back at me, then back to Max. To the knife.
‘Max, I loved your sister. But Jessica had mental problems. She told stories, and, sometimes, if she got angry, you couldn’t believe a word she said. She was always doing that. She could be quite vindictive. You ask your mother.’
‘We did,’ I said. ‘Jo’s in a worse state than Max is. Coming apart at the seams. She can’t hide it for you any more either.’
Neil barked his laughter like a walrus. ‘I can’t believe this. Do you have any idea what you’re doing? This is libellous.’
‘Actually, I think you mean slanderous,’ I said. ‘Libel is written. But I’ll write it down if you want me to. I’ll spray it in big black letters up and down the sea wall if you like.’
I don’t know where my strength was coming from – I can only describe it as unlocking a door and letting water flood through it. The door had been locked and watertight for so long, but now it was open, and everything was coming out. I could feel the fear leaving me as the truth did. Max was destroyed and I had nothing left to lose now. The worst was over. There was nothing to be afraid of any more.
Max collapsed to his knees on the boardwalk, the knife clattering down beside him.
Neil stepped forward. Max shuffled back one space. He stepped forward again, but again, Max shuffled back. Neil put his hands up and stepped back in surrender. He was so close to the edge of the jetty I could have pushed him into the raging sea with one finger.
‘OK. Listen to me. If you want the truth, I’ll tell you. But you’ll only hear it from me, son. You’ll get nothing but lies from that one.’ He pointed to me, not looking at me.
‘That one?’ I said, folding my arms. ‘Who are you calling “that one”?’
‘Go on,’ Max mumbled. I could barely hear him over the waves beneath the jetty, barrelling into the wooden stilts like wrestlers.
‘Your sister had problems. We took her to counsellors, therapists, and they all said the same thing: she was angry because of her dyslexia, and how she kept sending her little stories off to publishers, getting nothing but rejections. It affected her badly. She took it out on us. Mainly on me.’
‘You’re lying,’ I said calmly, feeling my fear fizz away, an angry swirl in my stomach taking its place.
‘Come on, son. Let’s go home and we’ll talk about it and I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I’ll tell you the truth.’
The word ‘truth’ was fired at me like a spit glob. Max mumbled something. ‘What was that, son?’
‘I said Ella wouldn’t lie to me. Not about this.’
Neil didn’t skip a beat. ‘She would, if she needed the money. I’ve had this before. Work experience girls at the garden centre. Accusing male members of staff of all sorts, just to get them sacked or to get a bit of compo. This is what girls like her do. You can kiss your sponsorship goodbye, darling, I’m telling you that for nothing.’
‘Good,’ I said, crossing my arms. ‘I didn’t fancy another year with Pervert World emblazoned across my kit anyway, thanks.’
‘Everything I’ve done for you.’ He licked his lip again. ‘You’re done. Your father’s done ’n’all. I can afford better lawyers than he can. False accusations can get you in very hot water, my girl…’
‘This isn’t a false accusation.’
‘Your word against mine. I’ve got clout around here. You haven’t. You’re just a slut.’
‘Say it again, Neil.’
‘Slut. You wanted it as much as I did. Touching me when you thought no one was looking. Little stolen kisses when you said goodbye. Always wearing the shortest little dresses. Any excuse to wear very little at all around me.’ Neil laughed, managing to be patronising even now, with the waves roaring. ‘You see things in black and white, love. It’s not always the man’s fault, despite what the papers say.’
‘I was a child!’
‘Takes two to tango. If there’s blame being apportioned here, you’ve got to take some of it.’ He turned back to Max. ‘OK, have it your way. We did have a thing. Briefly. But it was all her, Max. Every bit of it. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. You know what she was like; always round our place, always cadging presents.’
Max just sobbed. I laughed. I was on the verge of hysterics. ‘I was a child!’
‘Yeah, you’re a child when it suits. You’ve got nothing on me, little girl. Nothing.’
‘I’ve got everything, actually. I’m going to the police, and I’m going to tell them every single detail about every little thing you did to me, starting with the moment you sat down on the sofa next to me when I was watching cartoons and you shoved your filthy hand down my knickers. Right up to and including the afternoon you pinned me down with your big fat hairy belly and raped me on that island.’ I pointed into the thick black night, in the vague direction of where I knew it was. Where it would always be. ‘I’ll tell everyone what you did to me. And they will believe me.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Where’s your proof? The diaries of a lunatic and stories about me kissing you at some party and putting my hand down your pants. That’s all they are, darling. Stories. Big deal.’
‘I never mentioned the party,’ I said. ‘Did you, Max?’ He shook his head.
Neil folded his arms.
‘And it’s not just the diaries. It’s not just “some stories”, either. And we’ve got a witness who swears Jessica walked in front of that bus.’
‘And a witness who saw you touch her up,’ called a voice. All three of us looked up towards the seafront, to where a figure stood in a white hoody at the end of the jetty.
Zane. Next to him stood Corey. And next to him was Fallon. A bubble caught in my throat. I had never felt so strong.
‘What’s this, a conspiracy?’ Neil fake-laughed, but his nostrils were flaring like his face was fighting itself.
Fallon went to Max’s side and bent down to put her arms around him. ‘And there’s the baby,’ she said bluntly.
Neil looked from her to me, back to her. ‘What baby?’
‘The baby you put inside her. The one she lost.’
He pointed at her. ‘Shut your fucking mouth, you liar. Your mother was that old witch woman, at my daughter’s inquest. I know your lot. Bunch of gyppos. I’ll sue this time, I’m telling you. You’ll all look like fools in court.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not lying. I was there when she miscarried it. It was fully formed. It had bones. It had eyes.’ She looked at me. ‘I didn’t know what to do with it but I couldn’t just flush it down the toilet like you told me to. So I buried it. I took a boat out to the island and I buried it.’ She turned her attention back to Neil. ‘I’ll tell the police where it is. They’ll be able to tell it was yours.’
‘You’re bluffing. All of you. This is harassment.’
‘You did this to yourself, Neil,’ I said. ‘You can’t complain now it’s come back to bite you. You’re a paedophile. You’re evil. Every one of us knows it now. And if I speak up, they’ll speak up with me. It’ll be all over this town by the morning. I’m not living with this any longer. You have to live with it.’
He breathed like he was having a heart attack, scanning the boardwalk. Then he strode over to Max, who shuffled back until Neil had a grip on the knife. He came striding back towards me. Zane and Corey started down the boardwalk, but I held a hand up to stop them.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m not afraid. He’s the coward. A coward who hides behind money. He’s going to offer me some right now. Aren’t you, Neil?
Huffing, he backtracked to stand next to Max, sweating heavily now. He pointed the knife down at him. He was shouting.
‘Do you want to lose the house? Do you? Do you want me to lose all my businesses? Your car? Do you want everyone to know about this? Because that’s what will come of this if you go to the police, son. Do you want your mother to be out on the streets? You’re a Rittman. You’ll be tarred with the same brush. And for what, eh? This is family, Max. We can’t lose that. There’s not
hing more important, is there?’
‘Strange that family was the last thing you mentioned losing,’ I called out.
I held fast to Neil’s stare. Even if the sea wind burned my eyeballs, no way was I backing down this time. Zane and Corey were standing beside Max, helping him get to his feet. Strong and mighty, making a wall in front of Fallon.
‘I’ve been so scared of you, for years, but I’m not scared any more. I can see what you are now. The only thing that scares me is Max living for one second longer in your disgusting shadow. You going to prison – it’s going to solve all our problems.’
Neil dropped the knife. ‘A hundred thousand,’ he said, quieter than before.
‘What was that?’ I said, cupping my ear.
He chewed on both his lips. ‘One hundred thousand and you leave Brynstan. My lawyer can draw up the contract. But no repeat fees, no comebacks. We’re done.’
I shook my head.
He breathed out – once, twice, three times. ‘Two hundred.’
I shook my head.
He scratched his neck, the diamonds on his watch glinting in the moonlight.
‘Five. Hundred. Thousand. Final. That’ll buy you whatever then, won’t it?’
I looked at Max, then back at Neil. ‘It won’t buy my life back, will it?’
With a snarl, Neil delivered his parting gift to me in a hushed, deep tone, like the one I’d last heard on the island.
‘If your father gets cancer again, I’ll make sure he dies. And then I’ll come for you. That’s a promise. You’ll see my face in your fucking nightmares.’
I stared back. ‘I already do.’
That was the point when I just lost it. I was an athlete coming out of the blocks. I flew, barrelling into him and feeling the boardwalk disappear beneath my feet as we flew through the air and crashed down hard onto the wet sand below. As the tide lapped over us, I straddled his chest, my hands around his neck. I squeezed and squeezed with all my strength but his neck was too strong. So I started punching him instead, both fists. Right hand, left hand. Cross punching. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. And screaming, so much screaming. I was wild. This was the revenge I’d always wanted. This had been the target all along – Neil Rittman. I was going to kill Neil Rittman. I wanted to kill Neil Rittman. I wanted to knock his brain clean out of his skull.