by Steve Mosby
A part of her wanted to, but at the same time she knew it wouldn’t do any good. It never had done, had it? She’d learned enough through her own bitter experiences to know that the police did nothing. Nobody did. All you could rely on was yourself. And yet she was powerless here. The words on the screen had reduced her to nothing: she was a child again, cowering in a corner. Nobody would help her, but it was impossible to believe she could deal with this on her own. How could anyone expect that of her?
You don’t know they won’t listen, she told herself. He has a kind face. He looks like he cares.
That kind of hope was a dangerous thing. It was better not to reach out at all than have your hand ignored or slapped away.
But it’s not just about you. What if he hurts someone else?
She could give no response to that. Who else was going to stop him? She had to tell the police, otherwise she would be at least partly responsible for the next girl he took, and the next.
Mary glanced at the phone on the table, but calling from here was out of the question. She’d worked too hard over the years to preserve her anonymity, and wasn’t going to risk being discovered now. The jobs she took, when they weren’t volunteer work, were all paid cash in hand, and her real name didn’t appear on any utility bill, bank account or rental agreement in the city. Everything could be traced.
Somehow, though, she had to do this.
After thinking for a few moments, Mary snatched up her coat and made her way downstairs, glancing left and right up the street as she went outside. Cars whined past, shocking her. Everybody seemed to be looking.
He seemed to be everywhere.
He’s not.
It took her half an hour to find a payphone a safe enough distance from home. Once there, ignoring the dull throbbing in her leg, she held the receiver up to her ear and dialled the number given on the screen just before she left.
As she waited, despite her surface intentions, she was aware of what she was feeling inside, along with the fear. It was that dangerous type of hope. Perhaps this time …
‘Hello,’ a woman said. ‘Police special invest—’
Mary interrupted her. ‘I know who killed those girls,’ she said.
Chapter Five
Sunday 7th August
Outside the car, the sky was growing dull, the late-afternoon breeze now bringing the first traces of evening with it. But the residual heat from the day was enough to hold people out a while longer: as I drove past Hadden Park I saw groups sitting out on the grass, and students in bright shorts knocking a football around in the distance. Along the main streets, the benches outside pubs were full of people settling in for the evening, not ready or willing to move inside or go home yet.
At traffic lights, Choc and Cardo’s car sat in front, red lights staring implacably back like the eyes of a rat in a tunnel. Each time we stopped, I felt an urge to flick on the indicator and turn off. But I didn’t. Instead, as their car gunned off again, I released the handbrake and accelerated to keep up.
Choc hadn’t told me where we were heading, but the place wasn’t important. It was what would happen when we got there that mattered. I pictured it in my head like this: the three of us would knock on a door, Eddie would open it, and all the colour would drain from his face. That much I wanted to see. Then Choc was going to have a word with him. I knew that word wouldn’t remain entirely verbal but, after seeing Tori at the piano, the thought didn’t trouble me much. In fact, I was pretty sure I wanted to see that too - although I might draw the line at joining in.
And rationalising it like that, it wasn’t too hard to stay behind them and ignore my common sense. Each turn-off, in fact, felt dark with my own guilt and failure, whereas following Choc and Cardo seemed like tracking the only ray of light I could imagine right now.
We crossed town and headed out to the east of the city, the main streets segueing into smaller, quieter country lanes. After twenty minutes their car indicated left, and I followed them up a thin, off-road track, driving slowly now, the tarmac switching to gravel that crackled beneath the tyres. We rounded a bend, and the track opened up into a parking area. Here, the gravel was piled up in several large mounds on the right, and a dense curl of trees stood in front and to the left.
A quarry, I guessed. Deserted on a Sunday.
One car was already sitting there, empty, and Choc pulled up alongside it. I drove in next to him and we sat for a moment, our engines idling.
The rational part of my brain was more worried now.
This isn’t knocking on a door, is it? This is the middle of nowhere.
But we were here now. I cut the engine and heard nothing but birdsong, then the clunk of car doors as Choc and Cardo got out and started towards the woods. When they reached the edge they glanced back at me, impatient. I took a deep breath and then headed after them.
‘If anyone asks,’ Choc told me, ‘you’re in The Wheatfield right now. That cool?’
‘Yeah,’ I said uncertainly. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Not far.’ They both moved off between the trees. ‘Watch your step.’
We walked a little way in. There was no path here, just a tangle of roots and grass underfoot. Smaller branches had fallen from the trees and formed ribcage traps that snapped in the undergrowth. In the canopy above, the sunlight could hardly make its way through; it came down scattered into fragments, casting small patches of dappled brightness on the leaves and trees. This should have felt idyllic and peaceful; instead, it felt full of menace. But I couldn’t turn around now.
A minute later we reached the occupants of the other car.
Three of them were little more than burly black shapes leaning against the trees, arms folded. More of Choc’s crew. They looked like they’d been waiting around here a while, killing time. The fourth person was Eddie Berries. He was kneeling in the grass, his head bowed. Most of his long hair, ripped from that ponytail, now hung down to his thighs, and he was hugging himself and shaking.
I hesitated slightly, then took another couple of steps.
Choc and Cardo walked up to Eddie. I glanced to either side. It wasn’t even a proper clearing here - just a large enough break between the trees to accommodate us. And far enough away from anything for us to be undisturbed, I realised.
What the fuck have you got yourself into here?
The quiet settled in my heart and set it humming, and I stared down at Eddie. Whatever he’d done to Tori, he was a pitiful sight right now: terrified and feeble.
‘He didn’t think we’d find him.’ Choc sounded proud. ‘But never overestimate a junkie, right? Get the fuck up.’
When Eddie didn’t respond, Choc kicked him casually in the side of the face and knocked him over.
The electricity in my chest lurched up in a spike and stayed there.
‘Get up, you piece of shit.’
After a second, Eddie climbed unsteadily to his feet. When he was as upright as he could manage, he wrapped his arms back around himself, head still bowed, body still trembling.
He said, ‘I’m sorry—’
Choc palmed him in the forehead, knocking his head back.
‘Look at me when you’re talking. Act like a man.’
Eddie did as he was told and kept his head up. But his gaze wouldn’t stay in one place. He was looking everywhere and nowhere: too frightened to meet anyone’s eye. Choc began pacing back and forth in front of him, like a lion held back by imaginary bars.
‘You know what you did, don’t you?’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why—’
‘What - you need a reason to be sorry or something?’
Eddie shook his head. He hadn’t figured out that it didn’t matter what he said: there weren’t any magic words that were going to get him out of this.
You neither.
‘I mean, I don’t know why I did it.’
‘You want me to give you a reason to be sorry?’ Choc slapped him on the side of the head. ‘Is that what you’re sayi
ng?’
‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘What, you just slipped?’ Another slap. ‘Like that?’
They weren’t the kind of blows that would even leave a bruise, but the low-level violence was just as ugly as a proper beating. Choc was like a cat playing with a mouse.
‘I’ve just been to see my friend in hospital. She’d never lay a hand on anyone, and yet you thought it was all right to hurt her.’ Choc moved behind him now. ‘You think you can hurt my friend and get away with it?’
Another bullying smack.
‘You fucking piece of shit.’
And suddenly, he had a handful of Eddie’s hair and was pulling him off-balance, his grip so tight the knuckles went white and the muscles in his skinny arm stood out. Eddie shrieked, but Choc hauled him over and pressed his face into the rough bark of a tree, leaning into him with all his weight, like he was trying to push him through it. Grinding slightly - four seconds, five, six - Choc’s face contorting, concentrating on hurting …
My heart hitched, tumbled over itself once, then carried on.
Finally, he released him.
Eddie’s face was mottled and blood-picked down one side, his expression frozen in pain, like a baby in the quiet, shocked second before it begins screaming. He reached up to his cheek in disbelief, but Choc knocked his hand away.
‘Big man now, eh?’ Choc sniffed, then glanced back at me, nodded at Eddie. ‘Come on over and say hello.’
My legs felt shaky, but I did as I was told, standing in front of Eddie, breathing slowly, trying to keep calm. A string of mucus led from his nose to his mouth. For a moment, he couldn’t look at me, but finally he glanced up, his eyes full of tears.
Please don’t hurt me.
And honestly, I had no intention of it - not anymore. I hadn’t worked out exactly what I was going to do, but there was no way I was going to be a part of this, and as long as I didn’t hurt him I was only a bystander, not involved or culpable. Because this felt just as ugly in its own way as what he’d done to Tori in the first place.
But then his expression changed.
I can’t describe what it was. Recognition, maybe. He saw me and knew who I was from those few times we’d met, and something shifted in the set of his face. I saw him thinking to himself: who the hell do you think you are, acting on her behalf? You’re nothing. And right then, all the emotions gathered together and rose up.
I think the punch I threw took us both by surprise.
The trees tilted around me, my fist was solid - crack - then numb, and suddenly I was bent over, holding my hand, while Eddie sprawled down in the undergrowth. I watched, stunned, as he rolled slowly onto his back, a stick cracking beneath him, his hands cupping his face. No sound at all.
‘Ha ha!’ Choc rocked backwards and pointed. ‘I think you broke his fucking jaw, man!’
What did you just do?
My voice, when it came, was barely audible.
‘I broke my fucking hand.’
‘No shit! Let’s see.’
It was shaking as I held it out.
‘You might have,’ he agreed happily. ‘You might. But you haven’t broken your foot yet.’
I glanced down at Eddie. As I did, he slowly moved his hands away. His eyes were staring at me and, although there was still fear in them, he’d also summoned hatred from somewhere.
I felt disgusted with myself for what I’d done.
‘I don’t want anymore,’ I said.
Choc looked like he was going to persuade me to carry on, but something in my expression must have told him it wasn’t worth it. The enthusiasm and admiration on his face disappeared, replaced by a casual blankness. In that brief moment, I understood, I’d just gone from somebody to nobody.
I didn’t care. I needed out of this. I needed to have never been here.
‘That’s cool. Wait back at the cars.’
I nodded, then turned and made my way through the trees, the pain in the back of my hand intensifying. There were flames building there. Behind me I heard the whump of a kick, and glanced back to see Choc stepping away from Eddie, lifting his leg to stamp on him. Eddie wasn’t looking at me anymore. I turned away.
Whatever happened now, it was nothing to do with me. All I’d done was throw one stupid punch, which was several less than he deserved. A lot less than he’d done to Tori.
I kept repeating that. From performing, I knew you could convince people of anything if you tried hard enough.
Back at the car park, I checked out my hand. The first two knuckles were burning badly, and when I touched the skin below them I winced at the purity of the pain. It felt like I’d rested a white-hot coin on the back of my hand.
Leaving everything else aside, if there’s one thing you don’t want to do as a magician, it’s break your fucking hand. I flexed my fingers and my hand blazed. What had I done? I couldn’t palm a coin right now, never mind trick-shuffle a deck.
I wanted a cigarette but didn’t know if I’d even be able to hold one.
Then I heard it.
Just a single noise, coming from within the woods. I turned my head slowly in that direction. In the distance, above the trees, birds had scattered into the air.
And then it came again: a dull, flat crack.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I found I was breathing very slowly.
A lot of ideas flashed through my mind right then, each of them upping the fear inside me. But on the surface, all I was doing was staring at the implacable face of the woods.
Everything was quiet again.
It couldn’t be what I was imagining. Even Choc wouldn’t …
Get out of here.
A little way in, I heard the undergrowth crackling. Someone was coming back.
For a moment I was frozen in place - then, when I started to move, it felt like nothing on earth could have stopped me. Round the side of the car, fumbling for my keys, opening the door. Throwing myself in. The engine rolling, then churning into life.
Oh fuck.
The gravel crunched and spat up behind as I swung the car round too quickly, my broken hand trembling as I attempted to hold the wheel, checking my mirror as the woods rotated behind me. Nothing. Not yet.
I sped off down the dirt track anyway, car rolling with the terrain, and pulled out onto the street beyond without even checking it was clear.
They can’t have fucking killed him.
Then I accelerated.
Heading anywhere, so long as it was away.
One inch of vodka and one inch of water knocked back in one. Not a particularly pleasant or sociable way to behave, I grant you, but it’s enormously practical.
After driving around aimlessly for a while, trying not to panic, I went home, parked up, and walked into my quiet house. The entrance was street level, between two shops, with stairs leading up to the first level of my two-storey flat. Emma had posted her key back through the letterbox, and I found it lying on the carpet as I went inside. When I went upstairs, she’d left the front room light on, but all the boxes of her clothes and books were gone. That was that.
I turned the light off and went through to the kitchen.
There was a bottle of vodka in the fridge, and an ashtray on the side. My fingers shook too much to hold the cigarette with my right hand, so I smoked south-paw, and set about getting drunk as quickly and comprehensively as I could.
The fifth glass I sat with for a time, with the strange sensation of watching my hand trembling even though the alcohol had dulled the pain almost entirely. The first two knuckles looked black, and the bruise was already spreading down the back of my hand towards my wrist. I tried moving my thumb to my fingertips and was rewarded by the burning return of that white hot coin, cutting its way through the vodka.
I downed the drink and poured another.
Nothing had happened, I told myself. Those noises hadn’t been gunshots. I’d thrown a punch, but that was all. Eddie had got himself beaten up - no more than was coming
to him - and that was all.
I downed the drink and poured another.
Like I’d told Tori the first night I’d met her, magic is mostly about misdirection. You have to make someone suspend their disbelief and accept something they know deep down isn’t true. Now, more than anything, I wanted to perform a similar trick on myself. I needed to convince myself that nothing had happened.
So I continued drinking, and I kept repeating the lie to myself, over and over, until the words sank into my subconscious like a blueprint. Nothing happened. You went to The Wheatfield. You need to practise a physical routine about three thousand times before your body will perform it instinctively, and I wanted a mental equivalent of that. My mind needed to know nothing had happened without me having to think about it.
Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, by which time I could hardly walk, I clambered carefully upstairs and collapsed into bed; at some vague point afterwards, in a trough between peaks of nausea and panic, I fell asleep.
I dreamed about my brother, Owen. He was standing in different woods, and there was gunshot that I’d never heard but had been real, and then there was the memory of a policeman, kneeling down beside me in my bedroom and talking to me gently, telling me that my brother was dead.
Chapter Six
Friday 19th August
The day two years before when Sam Currie had gone to his son’s house in the Grindlea Estate had been a warm August day, much like this one. The slate-coloured sky had been free of clouds, the hazy sun like a coin dissolving behind blurred glass. Currie had been irritated as he drove into the estate. He was annoyed with Neil, and with his wife, Linda.
The last time he’d seen his son had been a fortnight earlier, when Neil had called by their house. It had been as strained and awkward a visit as always. Currie had barely been able to suppress his disgust at his son’s appearance. Neil’s addiction hung around him: an unwashed, animal smell. His body was weak and pale, like a thin string of gristle. Sometimes, Currie would look at the photographs of those childhood birthday parties - that happy, smiling kid - and try to imagine what had gone wrong. There would be days when he felt sad and guilty that his son had ended up living this dirty hand-to-mouth existence, and other times when he was simply angry. Neil slipped back and forth between victim and villain; Currie’s opinion of himself shifted accordingly.