If It Bleeds

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If It Bleeds Page 11

by Bernie Crosthwaite


  “Do you know where Lee is?”

  “Probably round the back.” He jerked a thumb to his left. “In the shed.”

  The door closed. I followed the path round the side of the house into the back garden, the dog close behind me.

  “Good dog, lovely dog, super dog…”

  In the far corner was a wooden shed, its door hanging open at an angle. I could hear movement from inside. As I crunched across the whitened grass the sounds fell silent.

  I peered in the open doorway. “Hello?”

  The barrel of a shotgun was pointing at my chest.

  On the other end of it, the small frightened figure of Lee Maddox was backed up against the wall.

  “Who were you expecting?” I asked.

  “Dunno. Police, teachers, social workers. They’re all the same. I don’t want nothing to do with any of them.” The muzzle of the gun lowered slightly. “I know you from somewhere…”

  “We met yesterday outside Lara Ramsey’s flat. You told me about Mr Keele.”

  “It wasn’t my fault he killed himself!”

  “No one’s blaming you.”

  He glowered at me, unconvinced. “What happened to your face?”

  “I got into a scrap. You should see the other guy.”

  He slowly put the gun down on the bench then clapped his hands. “Here, Sabre. Here, boy.” The dog padded into the shed. Lee bent down to scratch its ears.

  This time I followed the dog. Inside the shed I could see fishing rods, traps, lines, all hung on hooks in perfect order. Lee gently pushed Sabre away and turned to the bench.

  “What do you want? I’m busy.”

  “So I see.”

  He was making fishing flies from wire, beads and feathers. His fingers shaped and threaded the materials with practised skill. If they’d offered fishing as a subject at school, Lee would have been an academic success instead of an infamous no-hoper.

  “There’s something I want to ask you. Yesterday you said you’d seen men hanging round Lara’s place.”

  “I saw Mr Keele.” He stared defiantly at me, the planes of his face as sharp as blades.

  “I know. And I know you were telling the truth. But what you actually said was, I’ve seen blokes hanging round here. That suggests more than one, doesn’t it, not just Mr Keele. What other men did you see?”

  “Dunno. Leave me alone! You’ll be saying I killed her next!” With sudden ferocity he swept the pile of feathers and wire off the bench. The dog gave a startled bark.

  I shook my head. “No, Lee. I’m not suggesting that at all.” No one his puny size could have carried Lara into the park. Unless he’d had help, of course. And wheels. Did Scott have a car, or was the disabled motorbike his only form of transport?

  “You’re just like all the rest. It’s not my fault! None of it’s my fault!” He chucked the beautifully made flies on the floor and stamped on them. I touched his shoulder, a gesture intended to be reassuring. But Lee flinched, pushed past me and ran out of the shed.

  I followed, just in time to see him legging it over the back fence on to the recreation ground. As I climbed after him, Sabre snapped at my heels. “Bloody dog, nasty dog, revolting dog!” I kicked at its drooling fangs. It leapt backwards as if shot. I heard it scrabbling on the fence as I pelted across the snowy field.

  Lee was heading towards the derelict cricket pavilion on the far side. It had been abandoned when the cricket club moved to a more salubrious location on the other side of town. It had been regularly vandalised ever since. Now it was a focal point for drunks and druggies. I’d taken several pictures for the paper that charted its decline from a once-handsome wooden clubroom, painted gleaming white, to a tatty tumbledown shed stained green with lichen where it wasn’t covered with graffiti.

  “Lee! I need to talk to you!”

  “Fuck off!” His words floated back to me on the stiff arctic wind.

  I was panting heavily by the time I reached the pavilion. Lee had disappeared. His footprints, sharply defined against the white, stopped abruptly at the short flight of steps that led up to the veranda.

  “Please, Lee!” I called out. “I’m on your side. If it’s any consolation, I hated school as well!” I waited for a response but there was only a profound snow-muffled silence.

  I mounted the steps. The door of the pavilion had a padlock attached to it, but it had been sawn through. I put my shoulder to the door and it creaked open. A musty smell hit me — rotten wood and rat droppings. At the shuttered windows, old curtains hung in bleached tatters.

  A brisk wind blew through the building, making it almost as cold as outside. I looked up. The ceiling gaped open right up through the loft space, as if a heavy weight had been dropped from the sky and made a direct hit. The room was bare apart from drifts of rubbish in the corners — empty cans, broken bottles, cigarette butts, silver paper, lighters, needles. I walked forward slowly, testing each plank in case it gave way.

  There was a faint noise from above. Mice probably, or birds, flying in through the open roof and scratching about in the rafters. Or a boy of fourteen, so distrustful of the adult world he wanted nothing to do with it. Had he climbed up there? I couldn’t see any ladders or footholds.

  “Lee?” I called softly.

  I turned right and made my way gingerly towards the flat-roofed annex that housed the changing rooms. Two doors faced me, their faded signs reading ‘Home’ and ‘Visitors’. I pushed open each door. The walls were mottled with mould, the low wooden benches blistered and cracked. Further down the corridor, the shower room was even more derelict. The fittings had been ripped off the walls and hung in bizarre twisted shapes. There were pools of ice on the floor, making it too treacherous to walk on.

  I heard a clattering and whirled around.

  “Where are you?”

  No answer.

  I hurried back into the main room.

  It was empty.

  He was here somewhere, I was sure of it.

  I went outside. It was snowing more heavily now. I re-examined the footprints. They stopped at the steps, but Lee obviously hadn’t gone into the pavilion itself. I walked along the covered veranda, down another short flight of steps, and sure enough, the footprints began again on the grass, leading round the side of the changing rooms. I tracked him to a drainpipe where, once more, the prints came to a halt. The falling snow had already made their outlines fuzzy.

  I looked up but I couldn’t see him.

  “Lee, come down from there. It’s not safe.” A lean pinched face peered over the gutter. “I need your help.”

  The face drew back and once again silence descended on us along with the snow.

  “Right,” I muttered to myself. I spat on my hands. It was years since I’d shinned up a drainpipe. About thirty years, to be exact. Still, how could I have forgotten? It had to be like riding a bike, didn’t it? And in any case I’d had some practice lately, even if it was a gnarled tree with plenty of footholds, plus a doddle of a park fence. All I had here were the metal rings that pinned the pipe to the wall every half metre or so. I put my foot on the first one and hauled myself up. So far so good. It got more tricky after that, requiring an awkward squirming movement, gripping with my feet and squeezing with my knees to propel myself upward. Progress was painfully slow. The pipe was icy cold and ripped the skin off my palms. But I kept going. At the top I peeped over the flat roof of the annexe. I knew now how soldiers in the trenches must have felt. At least Lee hadn’t taken his shotgun with him. Or had he?

  He was sitting crouched against the pitched roof of the main building, arms clutched round his knees. No gun.

  “What do you want? I told you I didn’t kill her!”

  “I know,” I panted. The wind was stronger up here. A sudden flurry of snow blinded me for a moment. As it drifted away I hauled myself on to the roof. Lee pulled his knees in tighter.

  “It’s all right. I won’t come any nearer.” I flopped down on the snow-covered roof, just glad to reliev
e the strain in my limbs. “I really need to know, Lee — how many other men, apart from Adam Keele, did you see calling at Lara’s house?”

  His eyes screwed up. What if he’d been lying all along? Perhaps he had only seen Adam. Bloke, blokes — singular, plural — wasn’t it just semantics, the finer points of which Lee had failed to master?

  “Just one other guy, I guess.”

  My heart leapt. “Who? When did you see him? What did he look like?”

  Lee gave me his glowering stare.

  Cool it. Slow down. Keep it simple.

  “Did you know this person?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did you see him just once, or several times?”

  “Four or five times, I suppose.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “About a week ago.”

  I calculated quickly. This was Thursday January 4th. Therefore Lee had seen this man outside Lara’s flat some time between Christmas and New Year. I felt a rising sense of excitement.

  “This is really important, Lee. Can you describe him?”

  “I never saw him properly. I usually deliver the papers after I’ve had my tea and that can be any time, knowing my mum, so this time of year it’s dark by then.”

  Disappointment made me breathe heavily through my nose. Lee looked at me with alarm.

  “OK. Just tell me what he was wearing.”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “Please try.”

  “Padded jacket, jeans, trainers. And a woolly hat pulled well down. That last time, I saw him outside Lara’s door, but by the time I got there he was walking away.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “Course not. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers, dumbo?”

  “Point taken. And you’re quite sure it was a man?”

  Lee blew on his hands, which looked red and raw with cold. “Think so. Dunno. I suppose it could’ve been a woman.”

  I breathed loudly again, sending a plume of mist towards Lee, who watched me warily. I could feel the snow melting under me and the wetness permeating my trousers. My buttocks ached from sitting on the cold hard roof. It was time to go.

  “Is there anything else you remember about that evening?”

  “No.” A foxy look crept into his expression.

  “I think there is. What is it, Lee?”

  He shrugged.

  “Whatever it is, however unimportant it might seem, it could help.”

  He thought about this, then muttered, “He left something in the letterbox.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s a bugger, that letterbox, dead stiff. I could see a corner of a plastic bag sticking out where it had got caught in the hinge. So I put my hand in and pulled it back through.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was only a DVD. Something called…” His face creased with concentration. “Scorching Desert, I think. I thought it was a bit of porn so I took it home and played it.”

  “And?”

  “It was crap. Just these Arabs in tents in the desert, always moving on and riding camels and getting caught in sandstorms.”

  “Sounds like a documentary.”

  “No, it was a proper film, with a hero and a pretty girl and all that.” He must have caught my doubtful look. “I know what a documentary is. I’m not thick.”

  “I realise that. So what did you do with it?”

  “I fast-forwarded it to the end, but there wasn’t any sex so I switched it off.”

  “Have you still got it?”

  “I’m not a fucking thief!”

  “You gave it to Lara?”

  “I put it back through the letterbox next day.”

  I eased my frozen bottom.

  “Don’t come any nearer!”

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  We sat in silence for a while. I tried to make sense of what Lee had told me. Lara must have watched the film the night she was killed. That would account for the Arab music Annie Molloy had heard. But did it have anything to do with her murder? It seemed unlikely, a complete blind alley.

  “Why didn’t you like school?” Lee asked softly.

  “What?”

  “You said you hated school.”

  I hesitated, wondering where to begin. “I wasn’t any good at anything, except art. I despised most of the teachers. I was bullied by other girls because I preferred to do my own thing. I was always in trouble for speaking out. I loathed school dinners and I was useless at sport. Otherwise it was just fine.”

  Lee received this speech impassively but I could tell he was digesting each detail, relating it to his own experience. I reckoned times hadn’t changed that much for the misfit. After a few minutes he began to shiver.

  “Come on, Lee. You need to get home, have a hot bath and something to eat.”

  He snorted, and I had an image of his home life that didn’t include fluffy towels or tasty homemade meals. I got the impression he often crossed the recreation ground and made for this bolthole. Maybe here, on top of a freezing cold roof, he found some small degree of happiness and freedom.

  I tentatively extended a hand. “Let’s go before bits of us are iced to the floor and get ripped off when we try to stand up.” I smiled through stiff lips. “We can talk some more on the way back.”

  Lee wasn’t fooled. “I’ve told you everything I know. Now leave me alone!”

  He scrambled up and bolted for the far side of the roof. Before I had struggled to my feet he had started to clamber down the front of the building. He must have known every escape route in the place. His head disappeared. By the time I reached the edge he was just a tiny figure scurrying across the snow.

  Peering down, I could see the drainpipe Lee had used. It looked a lot less secure than the other one, but he seemed to have descended without mishap. I put one leg over the roof, feeling for the first foothold. It held, so I swung the other leg to join it, putting my whole weight on the metal ring. The pipe wobbled. I hesitated, realising that Lee was a lot lighter than me. I contemplated hauling myself back on to the roof, but the pipe didn’t like that idea either. When I put pressure on the ring, it expressed itself with an ugly grating sound. I had no choice but descend.

  My foot reached for the next ring and after scrabbling about blindly for a while, finally found it. I let the other foot join it, an awkward movement involving a lot of gripping with my thighs. That’s when I felt the pipe move. Instinct made me scuttle upwards rather than down. The fierce breeze began to loosen the pipe from the wall. I grabbed the gutter with both hands, and as the pipe gave way, clattering against the brickwork, I was left suspended.

  I hung there for what seemed like hours, about three seconds in fact, twisting my neck to see how far it was to the ground. It wasn’t that far, but below me was a strip of concrete, cushioned only by a covering of snow. By now my arms had nearly parted from my shoulder sockets. I couldn’t hold on much longer. I took a few deep breaths, but before I was ready to let go, a howling gust of wind shook me loose like a tree planted in thin soil. I hurtled downwards, nose, hands and hips in bone contact with the brick wall.

  I hit the ground with a jarring thud. My legs buckled with the force of the drop. My skinned palms stung as if I’d thrust them in a red-hot flame. Eventually I got some air into my lungs. I flexed my ankles carefully. Then the rest of my aching body. No bones broken. But the bruises were going to be spectacular.

  I limped the long way round to the street where the Maddox family lived. For some reason I didn’t fancy climbing over the fence into their back garden, straight into the jaws of a vengeful Alsatian dog. I pushed open the rusty gate, keeping an eye out for Sabre. But there was no sign of him. I imagined him waiting fixedly by the fence for my re-appearance. I just hoped his sense of smell was as limited as his intelligence, otherwise the reek of sweat and damp that emanated from me would bring him hurtling towards me at the first sniff.

  I knocked on the door. Aft
er the familiar lengthy interval Scott opened it.

  “You again?” He did a double-take. “You’ve got blood on your face.”

  I rubbed my nose with a grubby hand. “I slipped on the snow. Is Lee there?”

  “Didn’t you find him?”

  “Yes, I did. But I didn’t have a chance to say thanks. He’s been a big help.”

  Scott looked surprised again. Praise and gratitude were clearly on short rations for the Maddox boys. “OK. I’ll tell him when I see him.” He was about to close the door.

  “Can I check something out with you?”

  “What?”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “No. What’s it to you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure you’ve been interviewed by the police already?”

  “No way.”

  “Oh? But I thought you were a friend of Lara Ramsey?”

  “I never said that. She was in my year at school, that’s all. When she turned me down in Year 11 that was it. I don’t think I’ve spoken to her since. I told you, I’ve got a girlfriend. And before you ask, the night Lara was killed I was at my girlfriend’s house with her mum and dad, two sisters, her cousin and her gran. Ask them, they’ll tell you the same thing.”

  “Was Lee with you?”

  “Course not. That little bugger leads his own life. We never know where he is most of the time. Do you think he did it? Or both of us?”

  “I wasn’t suggesting —”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “I’m sorry if it came out like that.”

  “Sorry, my arse!” He looked genuinely affronted and I didn’t blame him. I seemed to have the knack of blundering about, upsetting people, even someone as apparently hard as Scott Maddox. Though I reckoned the skinhead look was just a front. Underneath, he was as soft as butter, a touch rancid perhaps, but a murderer? I didn’t see it somehow. In any case, he had an alibi for that night, and Lee couldn’t have done it on his own. Another blind alley.

  “Thanks for your time, Scott.”

  “Are you taking the piss? Get out of here! Or I’ll set the dog on you!” He stepped out of the doorway and yelled, “Sabre!”

  I heard a throaty growl. The Alsatian trotted round the side of the house. I quickly backed away, then turned and ran down the path and out of the gate, hunting in my pocket for my keys as I went. Where were they?

 

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