by S J Bolton
Megan pressed the reject button.
Of course he would; this was Felix.
‘Amber slow down, this is dangerous.’
The speedometer was at sixty-two miles an hour, too fast for this narrow, dark road. Amber eased up on the accelerator.
‘OK,’ Megan said. ‘I need you to stay calm and listen to me. Can you do that?’
She could do that. She let her head tremble – it would do as acquiescence.
‘I was leaving,’ Megan said. ‘I’d paid a dodgy lorry driver to smuggle me to France in the back of his lorry. No one gives a toss about lorries heading out of Britain – all they care about are the ones coming the other way. I was in Dover last Tuesday, ready to go, and you would never have heard from me again.’
This couldn’t be true, it made no sense. ‘So why didn’t you go?’ she risked.
‘I heard on the news what someone did to my dad. Someone broke into his caravan in the middle of the night and beat him within an inch of his life. I had to turn back.’
Still not making sense. ‘You hated your dad.’
‘I don’t give a shit about the bastard, but I knew something was up. Even Talitha couldn’t have organised a hit that quickly. This was something else.’
Amber heard the words, but they might have come out in the wrong order for all she understood them.
‘I’m not ill, Amber,’ Megan sighed. ‘I would never have made Dan give me one of his kidneys – I was messing with him. You too. As if I’d ask for one of your children.’
The woman was mad. She’d broken Amber with that demand; now she was saying it had been a joke? Suddenly, it was all too much. Amber took her hands away from the steering wheel and her foot off the accelerator.
‘I can’t do this.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’
Megan grabbed a hold of the wheel. ‘OK, OK, pull over. There’s a layby coming up. Look, four hundred yards, pull in there. But you have to promise me you won’t run away.’
‘I promise.’ She’d promise anything. It didn’t even matter if this had been Megan’s plan all along, to get the car parked up before smashing Amber’s skull to pieces. She was past caring.
As Megan glanced repeatedly behind, and at her watch, Amber drove the last few yards and steered the car into a layby. She let the engine stall and her eyes close.
‘Listen to me.’ Megan’s voice sounded loud and too close. ‘I was messing with you, with all of you. I was bloody furious at the way you left me to rot in that place, not giving me a second thought all those years.’
Hearing movement, Amber opened her eyes in fright. Megan was staring directly at her.
‘And, if I’m completely honest,’ Megan went on as Amber closed her eyes again in shame, ‘there have been times when I could cheerfully have killed Talitha for keeping me in there.’
‘I didn’t know about that, I promise,’ Amber sobbed.
A hand landed gently on her arm and this time she didn’t shake it off. ‘I know,’ Megan said. ‘But this is important, I wasn’t going to do anything. Amber, please look at me.’
Amber opened her eyes, but tears had filled them again and Megan was a blur.
Megan said, ‘I know what you’ve all been going through these last twenty years, I know that what we did has been eating away at you. You’ve all been punished too.’
Yes, that was true, they had. ‘Not like you, though.’ Amber wiped her eyes in time to see Megan smile.
‘No, not the same,’ she said. ‘Arguably worse. At least I paid for what we did. There’s some solace in that.’
Tears were threatening again as Amber felt Megan take hold of both her hands. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again.
‘Listen to me.’ Megan squeezed Amber’s hands. ‘I put the film and the letter in a place where I knew Xav would find them. I knew he’d remember that tree in the Markham garden. I don’t even know if the film could be developed after all these years, but I was never going to try. I left a letter for Xav too, explaining exactly what I’m telling you now. It was over, Am. I’d taken the money, and I’m not going to feel guilty about that, but I was never going to bother any of you again. For one thing, Talitha was capable of a lot. I was never going to trust her.’
Amber was trying to process what she was being told. If Xav had found the proof in the Markham garden – in a tree? – then the police must have it now. Except that didn’t work either, because if the police had it, they would know everything. Megan had to be lying.
‘Talitha is dead,’ she said to Megan. ‘You killed her.’
Dark eyes stared directly into Amber’s. ‘No, not me. I’m not saying I didn’t hate her, but you think I could kill Xav? Even Daniel?’
She didn’t know. ‘I don’t know you any more. I don’t know what you’re capable of.’
Amber’s hands were released. ‘So why haven’t I done it already? Why wasn’t I waiting outside your back door, ready to cosh you over the head with something heavy?’
It would have been so easy. ‘Your car was seen heading up Boars Hill the night Xav was killed,’ she said. ‘The police know you did it.’
Megan flinched, as though Amber had struck her, and for a moment, she seemed lost in thought.
‘I left my car at the Travelodge last Sunday,’ she said at last. ‘I left the keys under the carpet on the driver’s side. I knew I couldn’t take it away with me, and I didn’t want it used to track me down. It was collateral damage.’
So much to process, and no way to tell truth from lies.
Megan dropped her head into her hands, maybe giving herself thinking time, a chance to invent more lies, and Amber heard a car approaching. She looked around in time to see the vehicle – a small blue hatchback – draw closer and seem to lose speed, before accelerating away again.
‘We should get moving.’ Megan had raised her head. ‘Are you OK to drive?’
Amber started the engine and pulled out of the layby. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘Not sure.’
The wind was still furious. Every few seconds, flotsam blown from the trees hurtled across the road like tiny weapons. Her car phone sounded, Felix again; this time Amber made no attempt to answer.
They passed a turning to the left and Amber caught sight of a small blue car waiting to pull out. It took its time, even though the road was empty but for the two vehicles, and then its headlights were lost around a bend.
‘Why are you even here?’ Amber asked, after she’d driven a half-mile. ‘If you don’t want to hurt me, why would you climb the fence to get onto my property and sneak inside my car?’
Megan gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Well, first up, I didn’t climb a twelve-foot fence with trellis on top. I used your mother’s birthday on the keypad and it worked. I figured of all of us, you’d be the least likely to change your passcodes, even after twenty years. Your car was open. And I’m here because someone does want to kill you and is planning to this very night. I would prefer that not to happen. I couldn’t go to the police for obvious reasons, so I had to come myself.’
Amber felt the fog in her head gathering again. Who on earth wanted to kill her if Megan didn’t?
‘Who?’ she asked.
Megan said, ‘Felix, of course.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Felix has had access to my car keys for weeks. He could easily have had a copy made.’
Felix had put a tracker in Megan’s car too, he’d known where it was all the time.
Megan said, ‘What did he say to you on the phone?’
Something about wanting to see her, not being able to talk on the phone. He’d bullied her into meeting him, and it was so in character for Felix to expect the rest of them to jump when he told them that she hadn’t questioned it anything like as much as – maybe – she should have done.
‘He s
aid I was in danger,’ she told Megan. ‘He said we needed to talk.’
‘Think about it, Am. Talitha, one of the smartest people we know, left the security of her house after someone rang the doorbell late at night. At a time when she knew she was at risk. Do you seriously think she’d have opened it to me?’
She wouldn’t. Of course, she wouldn’t.
‘You tricked her.’ Amber knew she was clutching at straws. ‘You rang the bell and hid.’
‘And she’d have fallen for that? Come on. Whoever rang Talitha’s doorbell was someone she trusted. She did not trust me.’
Talitha had been so convinced of the danger they were all in, had impressed upon Amber the importance of being cautious.
‘The attack on my dad was something to do with you lot,’ Megan said. ‘I knew the chances of Talitha arranging something so quickly were slim, so I figured it was one of the guys. Dan didn’t have the guts for it, never mind the muscle, so it had to be one of the other two. Who, out of Xav and Felix, would you say was the most capable of violence?’
Felix, of course. Amber had never seen Xav so much as lose his temper.
Megan assumed from Amber’s silence that she’d come to the right conclusion. She said, ‘Where are you supposed to meet him?’
‘The factory.’
‘Well, we’re not going.’
No, they weren’t, Amber realised. She was not going anywhere near Felix. Somehow, in the last few minutes, she’d transferred her trust from one old friend to the other.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked again.
‘Somewhere he won’t find us. We need a plan, Amber.’
59
Before leaving home for the factory, Felix checked the tracking app on his phone, expecting to see Megan’s car on the Blackbird Leys estate where it had been immobile for over twenty-four hours. When he saw it on the A329, only a couple of miles outside Drayton St Leonards, where Amber lived with her family, he thought his heart might stop beating.
He called Amber’s home phone, her personal mobile and then the burner phone that Tal had given her. No answer.
He was too late.
60
Echo Yard. Amber read the sign and wondered why on earth they were at Echo Yard. If Felix had nearly killed Megan’s dad here, he knew how to get in. Too late to ask questions, though. Megan was already approaching the huge steel gates.
Aware that, at last, she had a chance of escape, Amber knew she wasn’t even going to try. Sometime, over the last few miles, she’d made a decision that she hadn’t even needed to formulate in her head. She trusted Megan more than she did Felix; it was as simple as that.
It still didn’t make being here a good idea. Amber watched Megan tap in the lock code and then the gates slide open. Following her old friend’s signal, she drove forward and into the yard. The heavy gates clanged shut behind her. Megan walked ahead of the car, leading the way.
So unnerving, this place at night. Surrounding trees, all of them huge, were being tossed around like straw, and their shadows raced everywhere. As the car crawled forward, statues loomed pale in the moonlight and from the walls of the lock-up shed gargoyles sprang like stone pimples, dozens of hideous faces peering out at her. Others hung from trees, like devils leering from above. Hair blowing like a flag in the wind, entirely at home in this unearthly place, Megan ignored them all and directed Amber to tuck the car behind the shed.
‘It won’t be seen from the road,’ she called through the glass of the driver window.
The car parked, engine switched off, Amber climbed down. ‘Is anyone else here?’ she asked. The yard was full of sound and movement; impossible to believe it was just she and Megan.
‘The other owners don’t sleep on site.’ Megan set off towards the caravan. ‘Dad’s the nightwatchman as well as everything else.’
After a glance at both her phones, Amber followed; there’d been several calls to each of them from Felix.
The caravan wasn’t locked. Once inside, Megan checked each window to make sure the flimsy curtains were pulled tight before switching on a low piece of strip lighting over the sink.
The caravan was tiny; a two-man, Amber guessed from her memories of her grandparents’ caravan. She was standing in a kitchen area. To her right, a desk and chair sat under one window and an internal door led to what was probably the bathroom. To her left was a small dining table and, beyond that, a double bunk.
‘Have a seat,’ Megan stepped around two holdalls that filled the floor space. Another bag, smaller, with a sports logo, sat on the narrow table.
‘Have you been living here?’ Amber asked. There was a faint smell of Megan in the cramped space, floating somewhere on top of stale clothes and wet dog.
‘For the last few nights.’ Megan squeezed herself onto the narrow bench seat. ‘I was only going to stay a day or so, till I found out what happened to Dad. Then I heard about Daniel vanishing. Those aren’t mine, by the way.’ She nodded to a half-full bottle of Bell’s whisky and two dirty glasses on the Formica table. ‘They’re Dad’s. I’ve been trying to touch as little as possible. You shouldn’t either – you don’t want your prints found here.’
That really wouldn’t be a problem. You could write your name in the grime around the sink, and the floor was worse. Clusters of dog hair and grit had caught in each corner, and the small square of rug was littered with debris. Empty beer cans lay in a disordered heap on the draining board and the remains of a takeaway dinner tumbled out of an over-filled waste bin. She could hear the buzzing of flies above the wind and as she sat opposite Megan, Amber felt something small and light hit her hair. She brushed the insect away and shuddered.
Megan’s mouth pursed. ‘To answer your unspoken question, prison is a lot worse,’ she said.
Amber looked down. ‘Sorry.’
‘And that needs to be your last apology.’ Megan pulled the sports bag towards her and unzipped it. ‘You have to see this.’
The contents of the bag spilled out onto the Formica. Clothes, all of them black, a large pair of trainers, jeans, a hoody, gloves and, weirdly, a ski mask. Also . . .
‘That’s a baseball bat,’ Amber said, looking at the long smooth piece of wood.
‘Look at the logo immediately below the handle. Don’t touch it.’
Amber did what she was told. ‘Beit Hall,’ she read. ‘Felix’s hall of residence at Imperial. Is this Felix’s stuff?’
‘Given that I found it at the back of the store cupboard in the factory, I’d say yes,’ Megan replied. ‘I let myself in there last night. I think this is the weapon used to beat my dad half to death. And quite possibly Dan, Xav and Tal as well.’
Amber pulled back. If there were bloodstains on the thing in front of her, she didn’t want to see them.
‘And you took it?’ she asked. ‘He’ll know. He’ll be coming after us.’ She thought of the huge steel fence surrounding the yard. It might keep them safe; equally it could hold them trapped.
‘Amber, he was coming for you anyway. You were a sitting duck.’
She still was. Felix’s brain was unfailingly logical. If he was looking for Megan, then sooner or later, probably sooner, he would think of this place. He would come here looking for Megan, and he would find Amber too.
Megan said, ‘Come on, Am, pull yourself together. I need you at your best.’
Easy to say, but Amber had lost her best a long time ago. They all had.
‘Why is he doing this?’ she said. ‘He’s our friend, why is he hurting us?’
Felix was doing so much more than hurting them, but it was hard, somehow, to use the word kill. So much easier to pretend it was all a series of terrible accidents, born out of a misunderstanding, because that way, there was still a possibility it could all come right.
‘Because he thinks you’re going to crack under the pressure and confess,
’ Megan said. ‘Pressure that I’m largely responsible for. So, I do accept my share of the blame for what happened to Xav and Dan.’
Even in the dim light Amber could see that Megan’s eyes, too, were shining.
‘Not Talitha though,’ she went on. ‘That bitch deserved it.’
‘You’re not to blame,’ Amber said. ‘We set events in motion that summer. Sooner or later, they were going to catch up with us all.’ Her eyes went to the bottle of Bell’s. She’d never needed a drink more.
‘In Felix’s psychopathic brain, it only needed one of you to go to the police and that would bring you all down.’ Megan said. ‘He’s been struggling for years, Am. His drinking’s out of control, and his company is on the verge of going under. He’s made some stupid decisions. I wasn’t entirely kidding when I said it needed someone like me to turn it around.’
‘We’ve all been struggling,’ Amber said. ‘None of us are normal people.’
‘No. I could tell as soon as I met Dan again that he wasn’t robust. I’d say he’s had mental health problems for years.’
‘It wasn’t him, though,’ Amber said. ‘It wasn’t Dan who cracked first. Xav was the one who was going to the police. He even gave us notice.’
Megan let her head shake sorrowfully. ‘Well, there you are. Felix couldn’t let that happen. But we don’t know what might have happened between Felix and Daniel. I wouldn’t be surprised if Daniel was the first to die.’
‘But why Talitha? There’s no way she would have gone to the police. Not ever.’
‘I think Felix realised the only way he can be safe is if he’s the only one left.’
Impossible to sit still any longer. Amber got up, stepped over Megan’s holdalls and crossed to the far wall of the caravan. She pulled the curtain back a couple of inches. The road beyond the fence was empty.
‘He won’t be the only one left though.’ She turned around to face Megan again. ‘Even if he gets me, there’s still you.’
‘Oh, I’m easy to deal with,’ Megan said. ‘I’m going to get the blame. He’ll have DNA that he’s picked up from the factory: stray hairs, fingerprints on pens, the odd tissue from the bin. He’s going to spin the line that I’m out for revenge on the friends who abandoned me, so I’ll go back inside, probably for another couple of decades. I’ll die in prison.’
