by Kevin Brooks
And I knew it too.
I wasn’t even trying to go anywhere now. All I was doing was rolling around in the undergrowth, looking for somewhere to hide for a moment – a dip in the ground, a hollow, a broad-trunked tree. Anywhere. As long as it kept me out of sight for a second or two.
‘Boland!’ I heard Campbell shout out. ‘You might as well come down… there’s nowhere to go.’
A dead oak tree loomed up in front of me. It was lightning-struck, blackened and burned, with bare branches and a hollowed-out trunk. The ground round the base of the tree had been dug out by a badger or something. I looked around, memorizing the surroundings – halfway up the bank, directly below a group of old factory buildings, just to the right of a drooping holly tree, about ten metres to the left of an overgrown path…
‘Boland!’
I rolled into the ditch at the base of the oak tree, lay on my back, and pulled my mobile out of my pocket. Still no signal. I dug Eric’s phone out of my pocket.
Campbell yelled out again. ‘If you’re not down here in thirty seconds, I’m coming up. D’you hear me?’
I didn’t bother checking Eric’s mobile for a signal, I just reached inside the hollow trunk and placed the phone out of sight. It was safe now. I didn’t know what good it would do, hiding it away, but Eric’s phone was the only piece of solid evidence I had. Names, places, times, texts. It was all in there somewhere. Eric might have deleted his texts, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there any more. And his calls could be traced. Calls to Amo and Bit… Campbell and Stella. Amour. Bitch. Amour. Bitch. Amour…
It’s all about love.
‘All right, Boland, that’s it. You’ve had your –’
‘I’m coming down!’ I shouted, getting to my feet.
I climbed out of the ditch and looked down the bank. They were all there – Campbell, Eric, the Greenwell kids. They were all looking up at me, squinting into the sun, waiting for me to come down.
They looked pretty small from up here.
But as I started edging my way down the bank, I knew it wouldn’t be long before they looked pretty big again.
Twenty-nine
By the time I got to the foot of the bank, I was sweating all over and covered in dirt, and every inch of my skin was either bloodied-up with bramble scratches or itching like hell from a million gnat bites.
‘Give me the phone,’ Campbell said, holding out his hand.
I looked beyond Campbell at Eric. He was standing on his own, a little way down the lane. Away to his right I could see the bunch of Greenwell kids sloping off down the path towards the wasteground. They’d done their job, they weren’t needed any more.
‘Phone!’ Campbell snapped.
I pulled out my mobile and flipped it open. ‘I’ve just called my dad,’ I told him. ‘He knows where I am, he’s called the police, they’ll be here in a few minutes –’
‘Yeah?’ Campbell said, grabbing the phone and glancing at the display. He hit a couple of buttons, stared at the screen for a moment, then looked back at me and grinned. ‘No signal,’ he said. ‘No calls to Daddy.’ He snapped the phone in half and threw the pieces over the fence into the wasteground. ‘Now give me Eric’s phone.’
‘I haven’t got it with me. I left it at home…’
Campbell stepped up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders, and hooked his foot round the back of my leg. A quick shove in the chest and I was flat on my back on the ground. Campbell planted his foot on my chest, pinning me down.
‘Eric,’ he said, ‘come here.’
Eric came over.
‘Search his pockets,’ Campbell told him.
As Eric crouched down beside me and started going through my pockets, I stared silently at him, trying to make eye contact, but he wouldn’t look back at me.
‘I know what happened, Eric,’ I said quietly. ‘I know it was an accident –’
‘Shut up,’ Campbell told me, stomping on my chest.
I shut up and lay still, trying to get some air back into my lungs. Eric carried on rummaging through my pockets.
‘Nothing,’ he said after a while.
‘You sure?’ Campbell asked him.
Eric nodded. ‘He hasn’t got it.’
‘Maybe he ditched it somewhere?’
Eric glanced up the bank. ‘We don’t have time to look for it up there. It could be anywhere…’
‘All right,’ Campbell said. ‘We’ll have to leave it for now.’ He looked at Eric. ‘Shit, if you’d done what I told you –’
‘Yeah, well I didn’t, did I?’
‘All you had to do was –’
‘I know what I should have done, Wes. You don’t have to keep going on about it.’ He stood up. ‘Anyway, it’s not going to make any difference now, is it?’
‘I suppose not.’ Campbell took his foot off my chest and looked down at me. ‘Get up.’
I got to my feet. He took out his knife, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me down off the bank.
‘Wait there,’ he said to me. He turned to Eric. ‘You go first.’
Eric stepped down off the bank and began walking along the lane, heading in the direction of St Leonard’s Road. Campbell gave me a shove in the back, and I stumbled forward and started following Eric.
‘I’m right behind you,’ Campbell whispered, breathing down my neck. ‘You want to make a run for it, that’s fine. See how far you get with a Stanley knife stuck in the back of your head.’
I didn’t say anything, I just carried on walking, as carefully as possible, following Eric along the lane. I tried not to imagine how it’d feel to have a Stanley knife stuck in the back of my head, but the more I tried not to think about it, the more it made my skull shiver. And the more my skull shivered, the harder it was to concentrate on not doing anything that could possibly be mistaken for trying to make a run for it.
Which wasn’t easy…
Especially as another part of me was trying to think about where we were going and what was going to happen when we got there, and when and where I should try making a run for it. But then, just as I was starting to seriously consider the options, I realized that Eric had stopped in front of me and was peering up the bank.
I stopped too, my skull instinctively flinching.
‘Is this it?’ Eric asked Campbell, still gazing up the bank.
‘Yeah, I think so.’
I could see the outline of a path now, a barely visible track winding up the bank.
Eric looked back along the lane. ‘There’s another one over there…’
‘No,’ Campbell said, ‘this is it. We tried that one, remember? It’s blocked off at the top.’
I glanced over my shoulder, recognizing the overgrown path that I’d seen near the dead oak tree.
Campbell slapped the back of my head. ‘What are you looking at?’
I quickly turned back.
Eric was stepping up on to the bank now, beginning to climb the narrow path. Campbell gave me another push in the back, and I got moving again. Up on to the bank, up the path, back up through the brambles… with Campbell close behind me all the way, breathing heavily.
I followed Eric.
Into the undergrowth.
Through the trees.
Sweating and stumbling…
Slipping and sliding…
There was something distantly familiar about the path and the surrounding woodland, something that reminded me of something… a feeling, a childlike anxiety, an expectation. Or maybe it was just the feeling itself that was familiar? It was hard to tell, but I kept getting the sense that this was the path I’d taken as a thirteen-year-old boy when I’d nervously followed Nicole up to the old factory that day, the day that Dad had caught us together and gone ballistic…
Or maybe not.
Maybe I was just imagining things.
We’d reached the top of the bank now and I could see the old factory spread out in front of us. A narrow strip of level ground ran alongside the high metal fencing
that separated the bank from the factory, and as the three of us stopped for a moment to get our breath back, I noticed a gap in the fence. Someone had cut through the mesh. The opening wasn’t big enough to see from a distance, but it was easily big enough to squeeze through. As I stood there – sweating and panting – gazing through the fence at the old factory, I found myself trying to remember which one of the buildings I’d been in with Nicole all those years ago… but there was nothing there that brought back any memories. I suppose I’d been too busy thinking about other things at the time to take any notice of where we were going. It was a building, that’s all I’d cared about back then. It was a place for us to be on our own. It could have been a bright-red tower block for all I’d cared…
But I couldn’t see any bright-red tower blocks now. All I could see were derelict workshops and offices, abandoned machinery, chimneys and towers, ramshackle warehouses… a concrete square, a pile of old car tyres… and, over to my left, a huddle of pale stone buildings with corrugated iron roofs…
I didn’t have to wonder where we were going any more.
‘After you,’ Campbell said, ushering me towards the door of the abandoned building.
I looked at him for a moment, then opened the door and went inside. It was pretty much as Pauly had described it – boarded-up windows, rusted office furniture, crap all over the floor. Campbell grabbed me by the arm and led me across to the far end of the building. We stopped in front of the metal shelf unit that Pauly had told me about.
‘Pull it back,’ Campbell told me.
I gripped the shelf unit and pulled it away from the wall. Campbell took a torch from his pocket and shone it down into the basement.
‘Everything all right?’ Eric asked him.
He nodded, turning to me. ‘Down you go.’
As I went down into the basement, I could see that Pauly hadn’t been lying about that either. It was just as he’d said – dirt floor, stale air, stone walls, bits of machinery, a pile of rusting girders. Behind me, at the top of the steps, I heard Eric pulling the shelf unit back. As it clanged dully against the wall, the basement suddenly darkened.
‘Get over there,’ Campbell said roughly, pushing me towards the girders.
Although Campbell was shining his torch away from me now, the basement wasn’t completely dark. A faint chink of sunlight was showing through a small ventilation grid at the top of one wall, and as I shuffled wearily across the dirt floor, I could see well enough to see where I was going. I stopped beside the pile of girders.
‘Sit down,’ Campbell told me.
I sat down on the nearest girder and looked down at the ground. There was a dull red stain in the dirt at my feet. It was crescent shaped, like a jagged half moon, and just for a moment I could see Stella lying there, her skull cracked open, her dead eyes staring, her perfect blonde hair matted with blood…
I raised my head and looked over at Eric and Campbell. They were standing against the far wall, talking quietly to each other. Eric was smoking a cigarette while Campbell whispered urgently into his ear. I saw Eric shake his head.
Campbell put his hand on Eric’s arm.
Eric looked up at him.
Campbell smiled.
Eric sighed.
They looked into each other’s eyes for a while – staring at one another as if they were the only living things in the world – and then eventually Eric just nodded. Campbell patted his arm, then turned to face me.
‘All right, Boland?’ he said. ‘Comfortable enough?’
I looked at him.
He grinned at me. ‘It’s all right, don’t look so worried. No one’s going to hurt you. We just want to ask you a few questions, that’s all.’
‘You didn’t have to bring me all the way down here just to ask me a few questions.’
He didn’t say anything to that, he just stared at me for a few seconds, his face pale and blank, then he reached into his pocket and brought out his Stanley knife. ‘What did Gilpin tell you?’ he said quietly.
‘Didn’t you ask him?’
‘Yeah, I asked him. Now I’m asking you. What did he tell you?’
I glanced at the knife in his hand. ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to hurt me?’
He shrugged. ‘I was lying.’
As he started moving towards me, I looked over his shoulder at Eric, my eyes imploring him to do something. It felt so false, so hypocritical – appealing to a friendship that didn’t exist – but what did I care? I’d rather be ashamed of myself than dead.
‘Hold on a minute, Wes,’ Eric said grudgingly.
Campbell shook his head. ‘This little bastard’s been winding me up for days. It’s about time he got –’
‘We need him,’ Eric said firmly. ‘Remember? We need him.’
Campbell hesitated, staring coldly at me, and I could see the conflict in his eyes: should he go with his gut feeling and rip me apart, or should he listen to Eric? I stared back at him, holding my breath, willing him to listen to Eric.
Eventually, after staring at me for what seemed like a year, he shook his head, spat on the ground, and took a few paces back.
I started breathing again.
Eric sighed and looked at me. ‘Listen, Pete, there’s no need for things to be like this. All we want to know is what Pauly told you, OK? Just tell us what he told you, and then we can sort everything out.’
I nearly said – sort everything out? what do you mean we can sort everything out? – but there didn’t seem much point. Whatever they had planned for me, there wasn’t anything I could do about it just now. And there was nothing to gain by not telling them what they wanted to know…
I looked down at the dirt for a moment, thinking things over… and then I told them everything that Pauly had told me.
‘That’s it?’ Campbell said when I’d finished. ‘That’s what he told you?’
‘Yeah.’ I looked at Eric. ‘Is that really how it happened?’
‘Not exactly,’ he said, glancing at Campbell.
‘Fucking Gilpin,’ Campbell said, shaking his head. ‘Lying little shit… I told you we couldn’t trust him, didn’t I? I told you.’
Eric looked at me. ‘I never touched Stella, Pete. It was Pauly… he just went crazy and attacked her. All that stuff about me trying to stop him and knocking Stella over… it’s all bollocks. I never touched her.’
‘You didn’t try to stop him?’
‘I didn’t have time. One minute he was on the floor, moaning and groaning… the next thing I knew he was charging at Stella and shoving her in the back. It was all over before I could do anything.’
‘What about the rest of it?’ I said. ‘The fake kidnap, Stella threatening you, what she did to Pauly… is any of that true?’
‘Yeah,’ Eric shrugged. ‘Pretty much all of it really.’ He let out a sigh. ‘Stella got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago. She said if I didn’t help her with this kidnap idea, she’d put the picture of Wes and me on the Internet.’
‘So you helped her?’
‘I didn’t think she was going to go through with it, did I? I just thought it was one of her sick little games, you know… getting her own back on me, having a laugh, controlling me. That’s how she got her kicks, Pete. Playing games. Messing with your head. Fucking with your emotions.’ He shrugged again. ‘I just went along with it. I didn’t think anything was going to happen…’
‘But then Pauly showed up.’
‘Yeah…’ Eric shook his head. ‘Christ, you should have seen him, Pete. I mean, he’s always been mad about Stella, hasn’t he? Even before she was famous, he was always watching out for her, talking about her, drooling every time he saw her. So you can imagine how he felt when he thought she was coming on to him, especially with all the booze and shit he’d been taking. He must have thought he was in dreamland. But then she goes and flicks him in the balls… right in front of me and Wes. And he’s crawling around on the ground, bawling his eyes out, and we’re all laughing at him…
shit, it’s not surprising he lost it.’
‘Are you saying he killed her?’
Eric blew out his cheeks. ‘I don’t think he meant to… he just went berserk, you know. He just lost it. Ran up behind her, screaming like a madman, and shoved her really hard in the back.’ Eric shrugged. ‘She never knew what hit her. She just kind of flew off her feet and went head first into the girders and then –’
‘Whack,’ said Campbell, smacking his fist into the palm of his hand.
I looked at him.
He smiled at me.
I glanced down at the bloodstain in the dirt, imagining Stella’s dead eyes again, then I looked back at Campbell. ‘You dumped her body in the river?’
‘So?’
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘What were we supposed to do – take her body back to her mummy and daddy and say sorry?’
‘You could have just left her here.’
‘Yeah, but someone would have found her eventually, wouldn’t they? And then the cops would have started digging around, and they would have found out that we’d been here –’
‘But it was an accident –’
‘So fucking what?’ Campbell said. ‘I mean, what the fuck’s it got to do with you anyway?’
It was a good question, and as I sat there in the dusty gloom, I realized that Campbell was right. I didn’t care what they’d done. It didn’t have anything to do with me. Now that I knew that Raymond hadn’t killed Stella… well, the rest of it was irrelevant. It didn’t matter to me who had killed her, or whether it was an accident or not, or why they’d try to cover it up. I just didn’t care. And I know that probably sounds pretty callous, but the simple truth is – I didn’t like Stella Ross. I’d never liked her. And I didn’t care much about Eric or Pauly either. I mean, I’m not saying that I didn’t feel anything for them, and if I could have clicked my fingers and brought Stella Ross back to life, I would have done it.
But I couldn’t.
She was dead.
