Strangers

by David Moody

  He noticed that Jeremy hadn’t moved.

  Scott could still see his feet sticking out from around the side of the bus shelter, one of them twitching. He thought about Phoebe back at the house. How the hell am I going to explain this to her? For a moment he considered taking Jeremy back with him. His mess, his fault. He can do it...

  ‘Oi, Jeremy,’ he shouted. ‘Get up you useless bastard.’

  Nothing.

  Had he fallen asleep? Again the immature side of Scott’s character took hold. Michelle was always having a go at him for falling asleep straight after sex, was this just the same thing? Was poor little Jeremy exhausted after all that uncharacteristic exertion? No way. Jeremy was a nervous little shit, scared of his own shadow, terrified of not doing everything ‘by the book’. So why was he still lying there?

  He walked around to where the semi-naked man lay on the grass verge, then stopped.

  Fuck.

  If Jeremy wasn’t already dead, then he would be in the next few minutes... the next few seconds, even. His face was unnaturally pallid. His mouth moved slightly, as if trying to form his final words, and though his eyes looked directly at Scott, he knew they weren’t seeing anything.

  There was blood all over the grass: puddles of it under his pale white buttocks, pools forming between his spindly legs, dribbles running down his thighs.

  Where the hell’s it all coming from? Did that woman cut him?

  Scott gagged when he saw it, almost threw up. The end of Jeremy’s penis looked like it had been torn apart, as if someone had first skewered the hole, then ripped the flesh away in sections like they were peeling a banana. Flaps of skin hung uselessly over the end of the stump from which blood continued to pump in dull spurts, slowing with the weakening pace of Jeremy’s pulse.

  And, for the briefest of moments, all Scott felt was relief. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he didn’t care because he immediately knew this was what had happened to Shona McIntyre. This was what he’d seen in all those grotesque photographs that frigging detective had shoved under his nose while he was in custody. This was proof positive to the rest of them that he wasn’t the killer.

  The woman.

  Was it her?

  He reached for his mobile, but stopped. He scanned the horizon looking for the woman and spying her almost out of view, half-running into town. He couldn’t be the one to tell the police, could he? They’d jump to all the wrong conclusions if he admitted to being here. No, Scott knew he had to get away from here fast. He’d phone them from home, let them know what Jeremy had tried to do to Michelle, tell them where he thought he’d gone then let them find him and his fuck-buddy... Better still, maybe he’d stay quiet and plead ignorance and let someone else find the corpse.

  He got back into the car, turned a tight circle in the empty road, then drove away at speed.

  24

  ‘Well?’ Michelle said. She was in the kitchen, waiting. They all were.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘No,’ he said, because lying was easier than the truth.

  ‘But he can’t have just disappeared.’

  ‘Well I couldn’t find him.’

  ‘You can’t have looked very hard,’ Tammy said.

  ‘I looked hard enough.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Michelle asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘What do you want me to do? I’m not exactly heart-broken, if that’s what you’re thinking. Call the police if it makes you feel better. Tell them he’s disappeared. Tell them he was acting like a fucking freak.’

  ‘Scott...’

  ‘Tell them what you like, just don’t involve me. I’m sick of getting dragged into other people’s messes.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Tammy said.

  ‘No, I’ll do it,’ Michelle said. ‘It’d be better coming from me.’

  Tammy followed her out into the living room, leaving Scott with Phoebe. George played on the floor, oblivious to everything.

  ‘Thanks for looking,’ Phoebe said.

  Scott looked at her, confused. ‘What?’

  ‘I said thanks for looking for Dad.’

  He turned away. ‘It’s fine. Sorry I didn’t find him.’

  ‘He’ll come back later, won’t he?’

  Shit. Is she testing me? Does she suspect? ‘Sure he will.’

  ‘He’s not well, is he? There’s something wrong with him. He must be sick.’

  ‘He must be.’

  Scott went to the bathroom, more to avoid Phoebe than through any real physical need. He leant against the wall, shaking with nerves. What he’d just seen happen to Jeremy made no sense at all, and yet he felt in his gut that it should explain everything. Who was that woman? Was she the cause of all of this? If so, why hadn’t she been seen or caught previously? Was she the killer, or just another victim? Could it be that these weren’t murders, that they were something else entirely? Some kind of infection? A killer STD passed from person to person? He laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, then sat down on the toilet and held his head in his hands, unable to think straight.

  When Scott returned to the kitchen, several minutes later, Michelle was back. ‘They won’t do anything,’ she said.

  ‘Who won’t?’

  ‘The police. They won’t do anything about Jeremy. They say someone walking off after a fight doesn’t qualify as a missing person.’

  ‘They’d know. Fucking top-notch police force we’ve got round here.’

  Michelle stared out of the window, looking for something to help make sense of this impossible day. Maybe she should go and look for Jeremy herself? She quickly dismissed that idea, knowing full well how Scott would react. Besides, she thought that if she left this house, she might not ever come back, and she couldn’t leave the kids. She glanced up as a convoy of three khaki-coloured trucks thundered past on their way into Thussock. If they’d been going the other way, she thought, I might have thumbed a lift.

  This was stupid. They were grown adults. She couldn’t explain how she’d felt around Jeremy this morning – maybe it was just a reaction to how she was beginning to feel around Scott? Anyway, as close as it had been, nothing had happened. She turned around, looking for her husband.

  ‘We need to talk, Scott.’

  ‘You need to shut the fuck up and keep out of my sight. You think I want to talk to you after what’s happened?’

  ‘Phoebe, would you take George upstairs please,’ Michelle said, undeterred. Phoebe looked from face to face, unsure.

  ‘But I don’t want to go upstairs.’

  ‘I need to speak to Scott. Just do it. Please.’

  She grudgingly did as she was told, scooping up her little brother and his toys and carrying him out. Scott watched Michelle intently, trying to work what she was thinking, how she thought she was going to worm her way out of this mess. If only she knew what he knew. This inexplicable urge to copulate – first between Michelle and Jeremy, then Jeremy and the woman – was it pheromones or endorphins, he wondered, something like that?

  The silence between them was deafening. Michelle didn’t know where to begin. She was starting to wonder if she even wanted to, if it was worth the effort anymore.

  ‘I’m worried about the girls,’ she said, trying a different tack. ‘They were already struggling, and now this...’

  ‘Maybe you should have thought of that first,’ he said, his spite a gut reaction. Then he thought about Jeremy, lying dead on the grass less than a mile from the house. ‘Oh well, look on the bright side, eh.’

  ‘There’s a bright side?’

  ‘There is for me. For once none of you can blame everything on me. You and Jeremy can share this one.’

  ‘And is that all that matters to you?’

  ‘I’m sick of being the whipping boy. Everything’s always my fault.’

  ‘That’s because it usually is,’ she said without thinking. She cringed inwardly, waiting for his reaction, bracing herself in
case he came at her. When he didn’t, she risked saying more. She knew she had to; the enormity of the moment slowly dawning on her. It was now or never: to put up with more of his shit and risk things getting even worse, or to finally make a stand and do something about it. Tammy had said as much the other night, and Michelle knew now that her daughter had been right. She’d known it for a long time. ‘It’s your fault we’re here and in this mess, Scott. Your fault we had to leave Redditch.’

  ‘So is what happened this morning somehow my fault too? Is it my fault I lost my temper when I saw another man trying to fuck my wife outside my bedroom window? Jeez, what a terrible overreaction on my part. What do you think I should I have done, Chelle? Fetched you a bloody condom? Cleared out of the bedroom so you two could have had the bed?’

  ‘I can’t explain this morning. I just...’ she started to say before losing her nerve. Deep breath. Can’t avoid this. Have to do it. ‘I think you’re the cause of all our problems. I want you to go. I want you to leave us alone.’

  He threw himself at her and she cowered, braced for the familiar rush of pain. But he stopped, fist just inches from her face, and grinned as she shrank away from him. ‘You’ve got this all mixed up in that empty little head of yours,’ he said. ‘You see, love, I’m the one who keeps this fucked-up family together. I don’t know why I bother sometimes.’

  ‘Then why don’t you just stop? Leave us alone... Don’t you get it? There’s nothing wrong with us. There’s nothing wrong with Thussock or any of the people here... it’s all you. You’re the one who’s different. You’re the one who’s got it wrong, the one who doesn’t fit in. You should just pack your stuff and—’ The phone started to ring, interrupting her. She heard Tammy sprint to the living room to answer it. Michelle tried to follow but Scott blocked her way.

  ‘You’re unbelievable, you know that?’ he said. ‘You’re deluded.’

  ‘I think I might have been, but I’m starting to see things more clearly now.’

  Tammy was in the doorway. ‘It’s Jackie. She’s asking to talk to you, Mum. Says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Be a good girl and tell the nice lady that your mother’s busy,’ Scott said. ‘Actually, tell her your mother’s busy and ask her to stop sticking her fucking nose in other people’s business.’

  ‘Leave Jackie alone,’ Michelle said. ‘She’s a good friend.’

  ‘I know. I met her.’

  ‘You didn’t say.’

  ‘No, and you didn’t tell me she was round here when I was locked up, either. Have a little party, did you? Drinks with friends while I was away?’

  ‘That’s not fair, Scott,’ Michelle protested, pushing past him to get to the phone. ‘None of this is Jackie’s fault. She came around to support me. She’s just—’

  ‘—she’s just another frigging hillbilly local who can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business.’

  Michelle ignored him and snatched up the phone, but the line was dead. She checked and double-checked it, then turned back to face him again. ‘What have you done to the phone?’

  ‘What are you talking about now? How could I have done anything to the phone?’

  ‘It’s disconnected.’

  ‘It has to be you,’ Tammy said. ‘You pulled the cable out because you don’t like Mum having friends.’

  ‘Jesus, love, you’re getting as bad as your mother. You’re all paranoid.’

  ‘I’m not paranoid, and I’m not your love,’ she spat.

  Scott grabbed the phone from Michelle and held it to his ear. Nothing. He tried making a call – still nothing. The screen lit up but there was no noise, not even a dialling tone. ‘I give up,’ he said. ‘Is there nothing in this house you lot can’t fuck up?’

  ‘Come on, Tam,’ Michelle said and dragged Tammy upstairs.

  ‘Something I said?’ Scott shouted after them. ‘Where you going now?’

  ‘To check on Phoebe and George.’

  ‘But I thought you wanted to talk...’

  They went into Phoebe’s room and found her sitting on her bed, knees drawn up to her chest, George playing by her feet. Her face was drawn; eyes red, cheeks streaked with tears. She didn’t even look up. Michelle crouched down and put a hand on her arm but Phoebe pulled away. ‘Come on, Pheeb, please... don’t do this.’

  ‘Don’t do what?’ Phoebe said, her voice so quiet the words were hard to make out. ‘I haven’t done anything. It was you, remember? You and my dad. I saw you.’

  ‘Look, if I could do something to put this right, I would. I swear, I don’t know what happened or why... I think we’re all under a lot of stress right now with the house move and new jobs and new schools and—’

  ‘I’ve tried though, Mum. I haven’t done anything wrong. When you lot were all bitching and fighting, I was just getting on with it, trying to make the most of it. None of this is my fault.’

  ‘I never said it was.’

  ‘You and my dad, trying to shag each other out in public...’

  ‘Don’t use that word, Phoebe.’

  ‘What do you want me to say instead then? Cuddling? Raping? It was disgusting...’

  ‘I only went out there to try and talk to him. I didn’t mean for the rest of it to happen, I swear. I just—’

  She stopped talking abruptly when she heard a noise downstairs. Someone was at the front door. Was it Jeremy? Tammy had the same thought and she moved fast, desperate to get there before Scott did. The door flew open before she was halfway downstairs, kicked in from outside. Hazmat wearing soldiers flooded into the house. Michelle yanked Tammy back as Scott ran at the nearest of them. They overpowered him easily, catching his arms and dragging him into the kitchen, kicking and yelling. They looked terrifying in their camouflaged all-in-one suits, their faces obscured by breathing apparatus, eyes hidden behind reflective visors.

  George clung to Michelle’s leg. She scooped him up into her arms and ran back to Phoebe’s room, pushing Tammy ahead of her. Once inside, she turned to shut the door, only to find it wedged open by a light brown boot. The soldier forced the door open again, sending Michelle, George and the girls running to the furthest corner of the room. He had a rifle, but left it slung over his shoulder. His gloved hands were raised. ‘Come downstairs please, ladies,’ he said, his deep voice distorted by his breathing gear. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

  Michelle thought she detected a faint Midlands accent and that familiarity, bizarrely, made her feel marginally safer. There were three more soldiers on the landing, and even more behind them. The first man led them back down to the kitchen in silence as others explored the rest of the house.

  ‘Anyone else here?’

  ‘No, just the five of us,’ Michelle said. She felt herself relax, or was it just that she was finally giving up and shutting down? Was she relieved because there were people here now who could keep Scott under control, or was it more than that? Somehow, in the utter chaos of this day so far, the house being invaded by a horde of faceless, protective-suit wearing soldiers made things feel a little more certain. She began to think it might not just be this household which was screwed-up beyond repair. Maybe the rest of Thussock was the same too?

  When Phoebe looked into the face of the next soldier, all she saw was herself reflected back. It wasn’t until the soldier spoke that Phoebe realised it was a she. ‘Go into the kitchen with your mum and dad, love. And don’t worry, everything’s gonna be okay.’

  Phoebe glanced out through the kicked-in front door. The yard was full of military machinery. There was some kind of truck blocking in the Zafira, and a jeep on the road with a soldier manning the kind of massive machine gun she’d only ever seen in films before. There was another vehicle too. It looked like her old school minibus, all done up in army colours.

  The entire family was rounded up in the kitchen. They stood next to each other in front of the huge hole Scott had knocked in the wall, feet crunching in the brick dust and plaster, the closest they’d been to each other all
morning. There were soldiers standing either side of Scott, ready to restrain him if he kicked off again. ‘What the hell’s this about?’ he demanded, spitting the words angrily at the intruders.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed.’

  ‘Don’t be alarmed? Fuck’s sake, you break into my house carrying guns and wearing fucking facemasks and suits, and you tell me not to be alarmed?’

  ‘Please...’ Michelle said, clinging onto George with one hand and trying to hold onto Phoebe with the other. ‘What’s happening...?’

  ‘If you’d like to come with us,’ another soldier said, standing to one side, opening a clear passage through the ranks. Jesus, Michelle thought, how many of them are here?

  ‘I’m not going anywhere until you fuckers tell me what’s going on,’ Scott said, standing his ground. His resistance didn’t last long. With a nod from the commanding officer, two soldiers hauled him outside. He protested at first, struggling to get free, but there was no point.

  The others were ushered out. Michelle walked across their suddenly chaotic yard, looking around in disbelief. High overhead, three helicopters circled Thussock like birds of prey, and in the fields on the other side of the road she saw a long line of similarly suited figures moving across the land. They looked like they were combing it, hunting for something. It reminded her of the people they’d seen from the hills when they’d first arrived in Thussock. And every soldier she could see – every last one of them – was armed.

  They were loaded into a van. She sat down with Tammy and Phoebe, George perched on her lap. Scott was a few seats ahead, still seething. He made fleeting eye contact with the others, but that was the limit of their communication.

  The back of the van was more secure than she’d expected: a metal division between those in the front and their passengers behind, just a small rectangular hole cut into it at driver’s eye level. It was stiflingly hot and claustrophobic. Dogs die in hot cars, was all she kept thinking.