The Dead of Summer

by Camilla Way

  I ran all the way. Through the back streets, past the gasworks and the power station, along the river. I ran all the way, through all the tourists, past the Cutty Sark and the markets. I didn’t stop until I got to the police station and then everything stopped. It was the strangest thing. There I was, suddenly standing in that police station and everything went very quiet and I looked down and there was blood all over me, covering every bit of me, and I was still holding the bloody knife, Kyle’s birthday knife. And all those coppers, just standing there so still and quiet, just staring at me, all those big men so frightened at the sight of me. And then I heard someone screaming, someone was screaming really loudly, and I realised it was me. And then all of a sudden was the shouting and the voices and the questions and then the sirens and the doctors, and then the quiet of the hospital room where they left me before they came at me again with their endless, endless questions. But the silence of that hospital bed was more horrible somehow than anything else and all I could think was, where was the shoe? Where was Katie’s little shoe? Must have dropped it as I ran along the river. Must have dropped it as I ran.

  So anyway, Denis went missing a couple of days later.

  I had been to the shop to buy some sweets and was sitting on our front step as usual, sucking the fizz off my cola bottles and candy worms one by one. The sky seemed lower, thicker. It was still hot but now you could smell a distant coolness; a hint, just a warning of rain. It felt like when you watch a glass fall; that moment just before it hits the floor and shatters. I sat and waited.

  I was thinking about something that had happened when I was little. One day my family went to the circus near where we lived in Hunslet. My best friend Susan Price came too and we sat in a vast chilly tent all in a row on a bench with peeling paint, I can still feel the warmth of my mother’s arm around me, Susan’s hand in mine. Next to me Push sat under a green bobble hat almost as big as him and my sisters wore matching duffle coats with white fluffy scarves.

  My dad’s breath was like smoke in the cold night air. We were all transfixed by the lights and the colours, the crack of the ringmaster’s whip, the monkey so hilarious on his little red bike, the sequinned ladies dangling from a trapeze, the lions with their flashing eyes and teeth. We roared with laughter at the clowns and screamed when the tightrope man pretended to fall. And all around us, the bright lights and the enormous tent and the smell of toffee apples, roast chestnuts and sawdust and somewhere behind it all a brass band played.

  Afterwards, in the rush to leave the tent, Susan and I got separated from the rest and were carried away in a sea of legs and coat hems. Suddenly Susan stumbled and fell, her hand landing on a broken beer bottle. My head was still full of lions and sawdust and clowns and crowds, of bright lights and trumpets, and when Susan held her hand up to show me the bloody shard of green glass jutting from her palm, her eyes huge and wet with shock, I could only stare, mesmerised, at the red blood and the green glass caught there in the half-light from a hotdog stand. The red blood, the white flesh, the green glass, gleaming and sparkling and beautiful in the dim light of a naked bulb.

  I didn’t think about it clearly, I just reached out, my eyes still on the pretty colours, the red, the white, the green. And instead of pulling the shard out, I poked it in even further, hadn’t meant to, but I couldn’t help watching, fascinated, as the wound widened and spewed. I was oblivious to Susan’s screams.

  Suddenly my mother was behind me, picking up Susan, pulling the glass from her hand and wrapping it in a hanky, kissing and hugging her while Susan cried and cried. But I had only wanted to look at all the pretty shining colours, the red, the white, the green.

  Sitting there on the step, I noticed eventually a figure in the distance. It was coming towards me from the direction of the main road. As I watched I realised that the person was walking strangely. First they’d scurry forwards at a rush, then they’d stop and continue more slowly. I watched them make their way up Myre Street in fits and starts like that for a while before I realised it was Denis’s mum, Gloria. Despite the heat she was buttoned up in a thick black coat, a blue bonnet perched stiffly on top of her Playmobil hair.

  When she got level with Kyle’s house she stopped at the front gate. I noticed that she was talking to herself, that she kept making the same gesture with her hand, reaching up as if to pat her hat down more firmly on her head. She kept lurching forward as if to go in through Kyle’s front gate, but each time she attempted it something would stop her in her tracks.

  Eventually she looked wildly around her. That’s when she spotted me. As she scuttled over I realised suddenly that she was crying.

  ‘Anita,’ she said, and I shrank back because she reminded me a bit of that dog Tiffany from the scrapyard, and I was afraid that she might bite me.

  ‘Have you seen Denis?’ Her West Indian accent was much stronger when she was upset.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not since the other day when we went swimming with Kyle.’

  At the mention of his name she made a sucking sound with her teeth. ‘That Kyle knows where he is.’ She nodded bitterly over to No. 33. Then she blurted desperately in a rush of tears, ‘Haven’t seen Denny since yesterday. Thought he was in bed when I got back. Thought he was asleep and I didn’t check. Not there this morning when I took him up his milk.’ She stopped and slowly shook her head in disbelief at the memory of her shock. ‘He’s never not there. And he hasn’t turned up neither and it’s nearly twelve o’clock. He ain’t got no other friends apart from you and him’ (she nodded over to Kyle’s door) ‘and I’m going to find out right now where he’s got to.’

  She glared at me as if I was going to try and stop her and when I just shrugged, she rolled her eyes and off she went. She launched herself across the road and almost threw herself at Kyle’s door and though she could barely reach the knocker she started banging it as if to wake thedead. Eventually the big black door opened, and after watching her shout at him for a bit, Patrick, looking baffled, stood aside to let her in.

  I waited and after ten minutes the door opened again and she came hurtling out, crying still. Kyle and Patrick gazed after her from their step as she flung herself back down Myre Street – straight to Brockley police station as it turned out, though I didn’t know that then. I only knew I didn’t have much time to lose. Kyle and Patrick looked at each other, shrugged, and made to go back inside. I was on Kyle’s front step in seconds.

  ‘Kyle.’

  He closed the door gently behind Patrick, and walked to the pavement with me.

  ‘All right?’ he said.

  The flapping bird feeling in my chest. ‘I need to show you something.’ My voice sounded breathless and strange.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked.

  ‘I need to show you something,’ I said again.

  He considered me for a few moments, then looked off down the street at Gloria’s retreating back. ‘You seen Denis?’ he asked. ‘His mum just went mental at us.’ A flicker of enjoyment on his face.

  I was trying to keep calm but almost shouted, ‘Kyle, you’ve got to come with me now!’

  He looked at me like I was mad. I lowered my voice, told myself to get a grip. ‘Please, Kyle. You’ve got to come down to the river. It’s important.’

  He stared at me for a while longer then shrugged. He seemed tired, distracted. ‘OK.’

  We started walking to the bus stop. Occasionally he’d throw me puzzled glances and say, ‘What’s going on, Anita? Where are we going?’ But when I didn’t answer, he gave up, and we got on the bus in silence.

  Through the backstreets I took him, down to the Thames. The few people that we passed were frowning expectantly up at the thickening sky and again there was that sense of distant rain, that strange feeling of watching a falling glass just before it hits the ground and shatters. The world held its breath.

  We followed the river for a while, the receding tide revealing its vomited bounty of mud and driftwood, plastic bags, empty bottles, a
broken tricycle. Through the empty wastelands I took him, filled with those musky white flowers, the ones that smell of cats’ piss, of summer. Past the factories, the warehouses, past our hideout, past the point where the river twists, through a gap between some hardboard and corrugated iron, into the empty scrapyard.

  The sky was still blue but a little less so, like the colour had been stretched out of it; a blue balloon that has been blown too big.

  ‘Why’ve you brought me here, Anita?’ He looked around the empty yard in surprise. He gazed at me expectantly, a little irritated. ‘Well? Why have you brought me all this way?’

  He crouched on the floor. He hadn’t noticed the mound of earth at the far end.

  I knew that I was right, I knew that Kyle and I were the same and that he would love me for what I was about to show him, but still my heart thumped nervously in my chest. Still I gulped and stuttered over my words as I began.

  ‘I saw you, Kyle.’

  He blinked at me, not understanding. Shook his head and shrugged. ‘Saw me where?’

  I sat down next to him. ‘I saw you, the other day, in that little room off your kitchen. I saw you,’ I stopped, unable to look at him while I said it. ‘I saw what you were doing with Patrick.’

  When he didn’t answer for a while, I looked up to watch the meaning of my words creep slowly across his face the way the putrid river creeps across the shore.

  I stared again at the ground in front of me until the silence became so unbearable I dragged my eyes back to Kyle’s face. It was ashen, demolished, every trace of blood drained from his skin. And when he turned his eyes to me they were full of shame.

  He looked away and stared into the distance, nodding slowly to himself. The world flexed and waited. I knew I had to make him understand. I had to try and explain it all to him. But everything seemed broken and foul suddenly between us and I didn’t know how to make him see.

  And then I thought about what I’d done for him and I felt my heart might explode with excitement.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. Gently I reached out and patted him on the arm. He flinched so violently he fell backwards. We stared at each other. Finally he sighed and got up. ‘So?’

  I looked at him and got up too.

  ‘So?’ he said again and his voice was cold and hard. ‘What the fuck have you brought me here for? What the fuck do you want, Anita? Now you know. Did you just bring me here to tell me that?’ He wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. I felt tears sting my eyes. I’d planned what I was going to say so carefully over the last couple of days, and now it was all going wrong. ‘I know about Katie,’ I said, just blurting it out.

  He looked around him in exasperation. ‘Katie?’ he said. ‘What are you talking about?’ He came up to me and stuck his face in mine and I flinched. ‘What the fuck do you think you know about Katie?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said, and I knew it was, I knew that he’d understand as soon as I showed him. I smiled and he recoiled from me. ‘That’s why I brought you here,’ I said, and I gestured to the mound of earth. ‘I found it, Kyle. I found the old sand mine for you.’

  He looked from me to the mound with amazement. ‘You what?’ he asked.

  I savoured the moment. ‘I found it, Kyle. I found the mine for you,’ I said.

  He went over to it then, his eyes still on me as he began to pull the boards and girders from its mouth. When he saw the hole his face lit up with excitement. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he said, his expression almost making me cry with happiness.

  I felt brave enough then to say, ‘Kyle, I know that you killed Katie.’

  ‘What?’ He was only half paying attention, so desperate was he to explore the mine.

  ‘I know you killed Katie,’ I said again.

  He dropped the bit of hardboard he was holding, came back to where I was standing. I felt nervous again at the expression on his face, but told myself it was OK: I’d known it was going to be hard for him to talk about it at first. But I knew that once he realised how much I loved him and that we were the same then everything would be OK.

  I took a deep breath. ‘I know you killed her to protect her from Patrick.’

  He stared at me for what seemed like ages. I braced myself for his reaction. I had expected tears and then a confession. And love, I had expected love. But he just carried on looking at me with something like horror. Seconds dripped by.

  ‘Killed her?’ he said, his voice very faint.

  I nodded and took hold of his arm. ‘But it’s OK, Kyle. It’s OK. I love you.’

  He shook me off like ants. Finally he said, slowly and carefully as if to a retarded person, ‘Anita. I didn’t kill my sister. What the fuck is the matter with you? Nobody kills people. Are you completely mad? This isn’t TV. My sister’s in America with Dad.’

  I sat down on the ground, my legs feeling very weak suddenly. I tried to piece things together. My head felt very thick and confused. Nothing made sense. Eventually Kyle came and sat down beside me.

  He took a deep breath and put his head in his hands. It was a while before he spoke. ‘She saw us,’ he said. ‘Katie. She saw me and Granddad.’ I looked at him, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘He’s been doing it since I was a kid.’ Neither of us spoke for a while and I heard Kyle begin to cry. Raspy, reedy sobs. Finally he wiped his tears away with his bony little hand. ‘He said that if my mum ever found out that it would kill her. And it would have done. I know it would.’

  I had no idea what to say, he still wasn’t making any sense.

  ‘She couldn’t take it,’ Kyle whispered. ‘Granddad told me.’ He started crying again. ‘When he, when it first started, I was about five. He said that it would kill her to know about us, and it would all be my fault because I’d made him do it.’

  I thought about the look on Elizabeth’s face, that frightened, guilty expression, the day I’d seen her on the stairs.

  ‘One day Katie came in and saw us, and I was so fucking scared that she’d tell Mum. I told Katie not to but she didn’t really understand. She loved me though, you know? She’d do anything I said.’ A brief smile. ‘But I knew it was only a matter of time before she slipped up. She wouldn’t have meant to, but sooner or later she would have said something to Mum.’ Kyle exhaled and wiped some snot off his nose with his jumper.

  ‘My dad wanted us to live with him but he wasn’t allowed to have us. He’d been to court and everything, tried everything to get us back. So I phoned him, I snuck out and phoned him and we arranged it. I helped him kidnap Katie, Anita.’ He turned to me, horrified. ‘It was me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go too?’ I whispered.

  ‘I had to look after Mum,’ he said. ‘Granddad’s not there all the time. I couldn’t leave her on her own. She couldn’t cope.’

  He stopped talking then, just stared down at his hands. He was lost in thought for a few moments, remembering. ‘She cried so much, when I took her to meet Dad that night. She didn’t want to go. She knew she’d never see Mum or me again. I told her that she would but she knew it wasn’t true. She was crying, begging me to take her back home. She didn’t understand, she thought she’d done something wrong and that me and Mum didn’t want her any more. But I knew I had to. I knew it was for the best. I had to do it.’

  I tried to make sense of what he was telling me.

  ‘But,’ I said. ‘But, I thought … Mike, and everything, I thought.’

  He looked at me then. ‘What, Anita? You thought what? That just because I’d given that cunt Mike what for, that I’d be up for murdering my kid sister?’ He shook his head. ‘You’re fucking barking, you really are.’

  As I looked at Kyle I felt the world and all its people, every single one, disappear. Even Kyle didn’t seem real to me any more. I felt every single human being vanish until it was just me, just me alone in the whole universe. Like one of those sea birds, that’s how I felt then. Tearing through empty skies above empty oceans, nothing, no one in sight.

&nb
sp; Kyle wiped the tears and snot from his face, got up and went over to the hole. I followed him, watched him pick up the torch I’d left just outside, saw him turn it on and smile, watched him bend down and crawl through. I stood at the mouth while he lowered himself down the steps. I watched him straighten up and shine the light around the cave, waited for his beam to find Mike and Denis.

  Heard him say in a voice like shattered glass, ‘Oh shit.’

  sixteen

  I’d put my plan into action a few days before. It really wasn’t my fault that Denis had got himself involved. I hadn’t meant for it to turn out that way at all.

  It had actually been less complicated to find Mike than I thought it would be. I’d imagined myself hanging around in the alley outside his estate for hours, just waiting for him to pass by. I braced myself for the possibility of him turning up with all his mates because I knew that would have been me fucked; they’d have kicked my head in for sure. I knew it, but I went anyway. I had no choice. As it turned out though I bumped into Mike straightaway. He was alone and heading towards me. Lucky, or what?

  He didn’t even notice me standing there. In fact he would have walked straight past me if I hadn’t called out to him. He looked up when he heard his name and as soon as he recognised me he tensed and stopped and I realised that he was looking around for Kyle. Now that he was close to me I could see that he had bruises on his face and neck, and I wondered who’d given them to him. He was wearing a bright pink T-shirt that made his see-through skin and greasy hair look even sicker than usual.

  ‘Mike,’ I said again, to his stupid face that gaped at me like I’d just landed from Mars.

  ‘Hah?’ he said, and we stood there for a few moments while I let the penny drop.

  ‘Where’s your mate?’ he said at last.

  ‘Kyle?’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m here. He wants to meet you. He wants me to take you to him.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Seriously,’ I said, trotting after him, because he’d begun to walk away. ‘He says he wants to finish what he started.’