by Jackson Lear
“If you hold anything back the police will tell me everything you three have been up to. They’re going to ask Daniel and they’re not going to let him go until he’s answered every fucking question they have. And then they’re going to ask you and if you think it’s bad right now then just you wait until the police sit you down You’re not the only one who knows who the killer is. Someone is going to talk to save their own arse and it better be you because I don’t know how much longer I can trust you if you’re keeping the identity of one of your best friend’s attacker a secret.”
She slammed her hand down on the counter again and saw Ian jump. “So talk to me.”
“His brains were lying on the ground, Ian! Surrounded by his own skull and blood”
And that was it. The clasp around Ian burst free and everything tsunamied out in a blubbering mess. “We found a garden covered in vines and hedges and we started smoking and drinking in there. The owner found us and he tried to kill us with a pitchfork. He kicked Warrick to the ground and told me and Daniel to run back home and get him some whiskey and vodka and if we didn’t return with something then he was going to kill Warrick with the pitchfork and he wasn’t lying. He was going to kill him. So we came back and he said we weren’t done and he made us drink the whiskey and then he gave us a gun. It was empty but he said we could play with it for a few days and if we came back with videos of naked people then he would give us bullets, so we hid cameras in the bathrooms and gave them to him and he gave us bullets and we shot them down in the valley near the train tracks, but we were careful that we didn’t hit anyone or anything, we just fired them off at trees. Then he had a woman in an empty house and he told us if we didn’t have sex with her then he was going to kill us, so we did and he had a gun with him to make sure we did. Then Daniel and I were trying to look for the Beast and we found where he lived and there was a tunnel and we climbed inside and we found the woman tied up like an angel and we didn’t know how she died but we knew it was our fault and the police would find out we did something to her and we left and we tried to find a way to tell the police without letting them find out how we knew her but it was a group decision. We all thought no one was ever going to find her and then Anthony talked to us when Warrick went off to find her and I don’t know why he went, he just did. Anthony took my phone and checked the GPS on it and found that I had been up to the policeman’s house and he made me tell him about the woman in the tunnel. That’s when Warrick found the Beast and ran towards London. We didn’t do anything after that. I think James tried to kill Warrick today because his house burnt down last night but Warrick didn’t do it.” Ian raised his hands over his face and hurled himself into a spasm of sobs and tears.
Claire, meanwhile, sat ashen faced and dumb struck, hearing the trail of words that came out of her son. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “So who attacked Warrick today?”
“James,” blubbered Ian.
“James who?”
“I think his name is McIntyre.”
Claire leaned back as a burst of nausea hit her. “James McIntyre? The old bus driver?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he worked. He was always home.”
“Because he had an accident at work and one of his legs was crushed.”
Ian sniffed again. “He said he had stories of you from when you were in school.”
Claire recoiled again as a flood of hidden, and very drunken, tales came to the surface. She had slapped him so hard it made her hand sting. She had only been seventeen at the time.
“He wanted videos of you,” said Ian.
Claire’s stomach turned and now she really was going to be sick. “And you gave them to him?”
Ian’s face twisted through an impossible torrent of tears, but still he was able to nod.
Claire held one hand against her stomach to ease a burst of nausea. She had no idea how such an invasion of privacy could account for something as pathetic as a couple of bullets. “And you ... had sex ... with the woman in the tunnel?”
“We didn’t know she was going to die.”
“It was Zofia Bukowski?”
Ian nodded and kept his face buried behind his hands.
“James McIntyre made you three boys have sex with that woman?”
Ian nodded again.
Claire’s stomach twisted in ways she had never felt before. She had no idea if she actually wanted to know the answer to the next question. “Did he kill her in front of you?”
Ian shook his head and mumbled.
“Take your hands away from your face if you’re going to talk.”
“We didn’t know she was going to die.”
“Did you see her die?”
“No.”
“Did James tell you he was going to kill her?”
“No.”
“And you just happened to find her dead the next day?”
“Yes. It wasn’t the next day, but we found her by accident.”
“No,” said Claire, shaking her head. “You don’t just find a dead body by accident, in a random tunnel on the outskirts of town where you boys are already forbidden to go. You don’t just find the dead body of someone you had sex with the day before, or however long ago it was. What were you boys doing out there?”
“We were looking for the Beast. The man who cuts up animals and puts them in jars. The man who chased Warrick.”
“You said James McIntyre beat Warrick.”
Ian nodded. “The Beast chased Warrick in the valley. I think James beat up Warrick in school.”
“Why did he do that?”
“I don’t know,” said Ian.
Claire slammed her hand down on the counter again, causing the spoons on the drying rack to jump out of place and fall into the sink. “Damn it, Ian! That man just tried to kill your friend and you’re saying you don’t know why he did it?”
“He is crazy!”
“And you kept going back to him? To get a gun? Even when he forced you to have sex with someone!”
Claire recoiled as she remembered the stupid grin on James’ face in the supermarket just a few weeks ago. He knew. That son of a bitch knew all of this way back then and had videos of her doing god knows what. That’s why he leered at her. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you have sex with her? Why would you film your own mother? Just so you could go and play with a gun? Jesus Christ, Ian, you could have shot someone! Your friends could have killed you! Why would you do any of that?”
“I don’t know,” cried Ian.
Claire held her eyes closed as she feared she never wanted to see him again. “Did James tell Zofia that he would kill her if she didn’t have sex with you?”
“I didn’t hear him say that,” said Ian.
Her strain became even worse. “Was she crying at all?”
Then it came: the moment that she would look back at for the rest of her life. It lasted for just five seconds but it was long enough to become repulsed by her own son. He would never be able to make it up to her again. “Was she crying?”
“Yes,” said Ian.
Tears slipped down the side of Claire’s face as she willed herself to go back in time, all the way back to when this was simply Warrick being beaten to death in a classroom. “She was crying the whole time?”
“Yes,” said Ian.
Claire shook her head. “Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know,” said Ian, as quietly as he could.
“Ian? Why did you do it?”
He fell silent again.
“I need to know,” said Claire.
“He told us it’s what men do,” said Ian.
“James said that?”
Ian sniffed and felt his throat close over. “He said real men drank whiskey, so he made us drink whiskey. He said real men knew how to use a gun, so we used a gun. Then he said real men had sex with a woman.”
“Not like that!” Claire shouted, causing Ian to jump back again. “What you three did to her ...” She trai
led off. She had the word on the tip of her tongue. But if she said it then she couldn’t unsay it ever again.
“He told us to do it.”
“Did he force you to have sex with her?”
“I don’t know.”
Claire covered her face with her hands before quickly laying them down on the counter again. She had no idea where to look but it certainly wasn’t going to be at Ian. “Where did this happen? In his house?”
“No. It was in an empty house.”
“Where?”
“It was on his street. Five or six doors down the road.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know the name of it. It’s near the shops where the fish and chip place is. The road curves around and there are fields on the other side.”
“Strachen Road?”
Ian shrugged.
Then it clicked into place; the house that burned to the ground. That’s why James had crushed Warrick’s skull. “Where were you last night?”
“I was here,” said Ian.
“Did you leave the house at all?”
“No.”
“Did you set someone’s house on fire?”
“No!” said Ian.
“I swear, if you’re lying to me on this one ...”
“I didn’t! I don’t know who did it and I don’t know whose house it was.”
“Did Warrick set James McIntyre’s house on fire?”
“I don’t know,” said Ian.
“Then why did James McIntyre target him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew what you were doing was wrong.”
Ian nodded.
“Do you understand what you did to that poor girl?”
Ian nodded.
“Tell me.”
“I know what I did was wrong.”
“‘Wrong’ doesn’t even come close to it. You know what sex is?”
Ian nodded.
Claire hoped like hell that his idea of sex was just kissing Zofia, but James made that seem like a impossible fantasy. “Was she naked?”
Ian nodded.
“Were you naked?”
Ian nodded again.
“And you put your penis inside her?”
Ian sniffed and nodded.
“In her vagina?”
She got another nod.
“You’ve seen porn movies?”
Another nod.
“And you did the same thing to her?”
Another nod.
“And Daniel and Warrick did the same?”
“Yes,” mumbled Ian.
“So you know what sex is?” Claire asked.
“Yes.”
“And you had sex with a nineteen year old girl who was crying and you know she didn’t want to have sex with you but you did it anyway because James McIntyre made you do it?”
“Yes.”
“For fuck’s sake. Is there anything else from this time you need to tell me?” Claire asked.
“James had a camera with him. I think he took pictures of us having sex with her.”
Claire closed her eyes. “Did you see the pictures?”
Ian shook his head. “We didn’t see James again. We didn’t want to.”
“And why did you keep this a secret?”
“I–”
“And don’t say ‘I don’t know,’ because you all agreed to it and you do know.”
It took a while for Ian to find his words. “When we found her we didn’t know if James killed her or if the Beast killed her, or if it was our fault.”
“Who’s the Beast?”
“The weird man who lives in the woods.”
“Is he an actual man or part of your imagination?”
“He’s real,” murmured Ian. “He lived in the car that Anthony moved to find Catherine Shievers.”
Claire shot all the way back to when she was ten years old, to the day when a scrawny kid lifted her skirt up to check out her knickers. “So you remained quiet because you were scared?”
Ian nodded.
“Jesus Christ.” She would have to call the police. They needed to know it was James McIntyre and that he had to be caught before he targeted Ian. Her first instincts were to call her dad and ask for help, but there was no way she could tell him that the boy she had raised on her own turned out to be a rapist. She needed to speak to a lawyer before screwing anything up any further.
“God, what am I going to tell your father,” she said with her eyes closed. Just as quickly she opened them again but missed the pained look the smothered her son. “Go to your room.”
Then came a flash of horror. James McIntyre might be up there. Or Ian would run away. Or he might decide that he was in so much trouble his own life wasn’t worth continuing anymore.
“Wait. Stay. Get a drink. Get something to eat. Stay in my sight at all times. If I leave the room you will follow me. If you see James McIntyre you need to tell me before you even take another breath.”
Ian stared at the counter as he nodded.
Claire grabbed a kitchen knife and kept it with her at all times.
67
Emily
Emily Whitmoore was grounded for two weeks for shouting, “That’s fucking bullshit!” when her vintage jeans order was delayed by two days. As recompense, she was in charge of doing all of the laundry in the house, which she was also pretty sure was fucking bullshit, but she kept her mouth shut about that one.
The worst job was sorting through all the underwear. Her dad was a fan of speedos and male G-strings. Her mother had an extensive set of G-strings and negligees.
Nope. They’re not having sex. They may be freaky and weird but they’re not having sex.
So, for the next two weeks, Emily had to shove them all into the washing machine, hang them on the rack, and drop them off on the end of her parent’s bed.
That afternoon, just hours after Warrick’s beating, Emily went into Daniel’s room to gather up his used towel and discarded clothes, before shoving them all into the laundry basket. She reached under Daniel’s bed for what should have been a black t-shirt. Instead, it was a black slip. She looked further under Daniel’s bed and found a pair of purple satin knickers and some crumped tissues.
The knickers were hers. They belonged to a matching set that she noticed had been separated a month ago when all she had left was the bra. She pulled them out from under the bed as a shudder ran through her chest.
That little creep was jerking off into her underwear. She didn’t know who owned the black slip, but it certainly didn’t belong to Daniel.
She took his computer. She didn’t need to find anything incriminating on there, she just had to make him think she had.
68
Daniel
He had to time this carefully or he’d lose his phone for the rest of his life. Everyone in his contact list was sending him a stream of messages, desperate to find out what happened to Warrick, as though Daniel knew the answer when he wasn’t even in the same room as him during the attack. His mum had made it murderously clear that he wasn’t to speak to anyone or even look at his phone. He would just have to remain in front of the TV where she could see him at all times.
He had no idea what had been showing on the TV for the last hour. The spot on the wall behind it had consumed him more than the energetic host introducing the next round of programmes. Now that Daniel noticed the blank wall he was pretty sure there used to be a set of pictures there that his mum had put up when they moved in. Now there was a bolt-sized bulge in the wall with not-quite-matching paint over the top. For an hour he stared at a great big nothing, practicing a look of remorse that would surely be expected of him.
His phone vibrated with another message. He would have to wait until his mum slipped back into the kitchen. It didn’t take long before her own conversation forced her to duck out of earshot and close the door over.
‘He had a machete.’
Daniel opened up the picture. A blurred speck of James McIntyre appeared to be
standing in the middle of the school, heaving, with what certainly could have been a machete in one hand. Daniel’s stomach flipped itself inside out as another wave of ‘this shit is real’ slapped him in the face. A dribble of cold sweat ran down the side of one temple.
His mum was still out of sight. Daniel turned off the TV and retreated to his room. What should have been a dishevelled bedroom held a blindingly clean space on his desk where his computer used to sit. He spun back to the door, casting a quick flash over his unmade bed – and caught sight of his collection of knickers, bras, and underwear, all lying on top of his pillow.
An unspeakable lurch exploded within his chest. It was accompanied by a tingle in his groin, a throwback to every moment of being caught red handed and having the ever living shit scolded out of him. He had felt the same when Ian started telling his uncle about going to see the police. By far the worst was staring down James’ pitchfork as he jabbed it towards Daniel’s face, but today … this … and what was on his hard drive ...
His dad was already on his way home. He would be pulling into the driveway any second now.
“I found your stash,” said Emily, as she stood in the doorway. “And I found what was on your computer.” A sly grin spread from the corner of her mouth as she strode into the open room. “Mum is going to be sooooo pissed off! And when she finds out that her boy is a little pervert who’s been stealing her underwear, and from the neighbours, you are so going to get it. I’m going to have a free pass for whatever I do until the day you die.” She caught herself too late, thinking quickly that Daniel’s friend might actually die that day. “Shit, I -”
A million ideas hit Daniel in an instant. The first and foremost was a fist, swinging wildly at his sister’s face. She ducked back, leaving Daniel to spin in mid air as he missed her by a foot.
A stunned flicker flashed over Emily’s eyes, paralysing her for the length of a single breath. The same look appeared in Daniel as well. He had never swung at her face before. Her shoulders, yes, but never with the intention of putting her in the hospital. A desperation ripped through Daniel, screaming at him to escape no matter what the cost.
