by Kate Medina
Allan looked towards the beach. It was deserted, no one there to witness what they had done, no one to save the boy or his dog. They would need to save themselves – or die.
Even Hugo realized that they had gone too far this time. Flinging himself onto his front, he reached over the edge of the jetty.
‘You can make it. Swim, you fucker,’ he yelled.
But they were ten metres above the freezing waves and even if the boy had stretched his arms up, tried to save himself, there was no way that Hugo could have reached him.
The boy didn’t stretch up. His face – so starkly pale against the jet-black heaving swell of sea – bobbed, once, twice and was gone.
‘Swim, you stupid fucker,’ Hugo screamed at the empty sea.
Darkness pressing in around them, they waited, watching, four sets of eyes glued to where they had last seen him. Allan, his lips moving in silent prayer, remembered the nervous laughter, Hugo’s assurance that he was just dicking them around, that he’d fucking kill the little shit when he made it to shore. They had turned then, as one, and scanned the shoreline for a dark break in the pale froth of breaking waves, for the boy’s skinny, beaten body dragging itself from the sea.
But there was nothing. Only the white line of foam advancing, retreating, advancing again, unbroken.
Hugo swung back around to face them, awareness and fear in his eyes. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he snapped.
A voice in Allan’s head chanted: We killed him … we’re murderers … we killed him …
‘Hugo,’ Allan managed.
‘What, Allan?’
‘Shouldn’t we—’ Shouldn’t we – what? Turn back time? Have been nicer – for years? It had been going on for years and years by then, the bullying. And Allan had enjoyed it. He had enjoyed tormenting the boy, torturing his little dog.
We killed him … we’re murderers … we killed him …
Hugo rounded on him savagely. ‘What the fuck do you want, Allan? Do you want me to dive in, do you?’
‘We can’t leave him.’
Hugo lunged at him then, grabbing him by the shoulders, propelling him backwards towards the edge of the jetty. ‘Why don’t you fucking dive in, see if you can save the little shit.’
Allan’s terrified gaze flicked from Hugo, to Daniel, to Simon. Neither of the other two would meet his eye.
‘You’ve always been a fucking coward, Allan,’ Hugo sneered. ‘A follower and a coward.’ He gave Allan a shove that sent him reeling. ‘He’s not dead, anyway. He’s just dicking us around.’ Sauntering to the middle of the jetty, Hugo stamped hard on one gnarled plank. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are.’ He jumped up and down, the jetty shivering beneath them. ‘I know that you’re under here somewhere, you little fucker, clinging to a piling, waiting for us to leave.’ He jumped from one plank to the next, threw his arms out wide and raised his face to the black sky. ‘Well, I don’t care,’ he yelled. ‘I hope you’re dead. You were a pathetic excuse for a human being and I hope you’re fucking dead.’
And still the voice in Allan’s head chanted: We killed him … we’re murderers … we killed him …
‘Enough, Hugo,’ Simon stammered.
Dropping his arms, Hugo spun around.
‘Enough, Hugo,’ he whined. Turning away, he swaggered down the jetty towards the beach, stamping every few steps, jumping up and down every few more, yelling at the top of his voice. ‘I hope you’re dead, you stupid little cunt. You and your miserable fucking rat-dog.’
Allan, Simon and Daniel straggled down the jetty after Hugo. Half an hour ago, they had marched in the opposite direction – dragging the struggling boy, Hugo dangling his little dog by the collar, its body jerking and snapping as it fought for air – their footsteps pounding the gnarled wooden planks in unison, an army marching to war. Now they moved in silence, a routed gaggle, heads hanging, avoiding each other’s gazes. The chant in Allan’s brain, constant as the breaking waves: We killed him … we’re murderers … we killed him …
At the end of the jetty, Hugo turned and held up his hand. ‘Stop.’ His hooded, dark gaze drilled into each of them in turn. ‘What goes on tour stays on tour, right, boys?’ His tone a warning.
Speechless nods from dumb beasts.
Hugo raised his voice. ‘Right?’
‘Right,’ Daniel Whitehead muttered.
‘Simon?’
Simon Lewin nodded.
‘Say it,’ Hugo demanded.
‘Right,’ Simon muttered.
‘Allan?’
‘Yes, of course.’ He was as complicit as any of them. What choice did he have – to confess their crime or to conceal? There was no choice.
‘Where were you, Allan?’ Hugo demanded.
‘What do you mean?’ he stammered.
‘Where were you, if we get asked? For the last hour – where have you been?’
‘Uh, at … at home?’
‘No, you weren’t home,’ Hugo snapped, with derision. ‘Because your mum is there, isn’t she, so she’ll know that you’re not.’
‘My mum and dad are working late in the restaurant. You were at mine, Allan, weren’t you?’ Simon Lewin muttered.
Allan nodded. ‘Right. I was at Simon’s.’ His mouth was parched and his throat had closed up.
‘What were you doing? Watching TV, playing the PlayStation, kicking a football around in the garden, toying with your dicks?’
‘PlayStation,’ Simon managed.
‘Which game?’
‘Come on, Hugo.’
‘Which game?’
‘Air Combat,’ Simon stumbled over the words.
Hugo nodded. ‘Stick to it. You too, Allan.’
A silent, bovine nod.
‘Daniel?’
‘I was out running. I’m training for cross-country.’
Hugo looked down at Daniel’s feet. He was wearing the trainers he habitually wore when they saw him down here during the holidays, when he was staying with his grandparents. ‘Fine, that works.’
No one questioned Hugo as to where he had been.
‘No one squeals or they’ll have me to answer to.’ He laughed, the sound a harsh, animalistic bark that cut through the chill air and the pressing darkness. ‘Me and the police. Because we’re all in this together.’ He mimed slicing his hand across his neck. ‘Bonded by blood now. Forever, bonded by blood.’
A sudden movement caught Allan’s eye, a break in the pale line of frothing waves. The boy’s little black and white dog had made it to the beach.
‘What the fuck are you looking at, Allan?’
Allan snapped his gaze back to Hugo’s. ‘A seagull,’ he muttered. ‘Caught my eye. It’s gone now.’
Hugo’s eyes narrowed. Allan could tell that he didn’t believe him. Suspicion was cracking them wide open already. They had killed and now fear and blame would fracture their merry band, blow it wide apart.
He crossed his fingers behind his back, silently praying for the little dog. Hugo would kill it if he saw it; Allan knew he would. Was its survival instinct so acute that it would know to hide?
Allan’s eyes snapped open. Trees hugging either side of the road now, lit by the squad car’s headlights. Brandy Hole Lane, he recognized it. He used to take Robbie here when he was a toddler, before the bullying started, walk him through the woods foraging for wild mushrooms, peeling bark from fallen trees to send woodlice and red ants scuttling, Robbie, head thrown back, laughing gleefully, unselfconscious of his ruined face at that age. Would he ever walk in these woods again or would he die in prison? Whatever. He didn’t care. The only thing he cared about was Robbie and now he would be safe.
What was it like, Dad?
He had known, the moment Robbie was born, when he saw the ravaged mess that was his baby boy’s face, that it was his fault, his punishment, karma. Had known, every time that Robbie came home with tears staining his scars, that he was being punished for his father’s boyhood cruelty. And however hard Allan fought, he had been u
nable to save his son from the bullies’ torment. Just as the boy had been unable to save himself and his little dog from them.
What was it like, watching him die?
‘I murdered them,’ he said, testing the feel of the words in his mouth. ‘I murdered them.’ Louder. ‘All of them. I murdered them all.’
82
Sarah Workman’s three-hundred-year-old cottage reminded Jessie of her and Callan’s favourite pub, with its thatched roof and whitewashed walls. But where the pub’s woodwork was scarlet, with matching red lobelia clustered in the hanging baskets, Workman’s cottage was muted with greys and blues. Jessie imagined that in summer the cottage garden would be filled with white roses, soft blue delphiniums, larkspur and hollyhocks. But now it was bare, the wind cutting across the surrounding fields, bearing the chill of approaching winter. Warm lights pulsed from behind translucent linen curtains in the downstairs windows, though she could see no movement, hear no sound.
Allan and Robbie Parker’s house was now in lockdown, she knew, Tony Burrows’ CSI team crawling all over it, DCI Backastowe and Marilyn grilling Allan Parker, evidence being expedited, a party atmosphere among the team. A job well done.
Except.
Except for Robbie.
Pushing the gate open with a creak that sounded like branches rubbing against each other deep in a forest, Jessie walked up the front path, the heels of her boots clacking on the uneven slabs, the ‘Welcome’ doormat muffling the last of her footsteps. The grey-blue-painted front door was unlocked, resting against the jamb, and it swung open with barely a touch. She hadn’t expected that, though in truth she hadn’t given much thought to anything beyond getting here as quickly as she could. Odd though.
A shiver ran down her spine, someone walking over her grave, as she stepped into the dimly lit hallway. A face right in front of her and she leapt back, her heart rocketing to her throat. But it was only her own over-stressed, ghostly pale face looking back at her from a wall-mounted mirror.
Where to now? Only two options, left or right. Turning left, she stepped into a narrow, low-ceilinged kitchen that ran from front to back, spots casting mellow light onto pale grey units, a navy-blue Aga pumping a blanket of cosy heat that Jessie would have given a lot to be able to sink into, blotting out the real world, if only for a few moments. No time for that, though. Backing out of the empty kitchen, she stepped quietly across the hallway into a sitting room, which again ran from front to back. Signs of Sarah Workman were everywhere: in the navy-blue cushions carefully ordered on the pale grey sofa and matching armchairs; in the navy-swimsuited beach photographs; in the framed letters from various charities – Age UK, The Salvation Army, Dogs Trust – thanking Workman for volunteering. Navy blue featured heavily in Workman’s life, much as black featured in Marilyn’s: in the prim skirt suits and the sensible low-heeled courts and in the navy accents everywhere in this warm, homely cottage.
Jessie stopped in the middle of the room. ‘Robbie,’ she called.
No answer. No sound at all that she could hear inside the cottage. Only the faint rustle of trees in the garden and something loose knocking out in the street. Moving towards the stairs that rose upwards from the far corner of the sitting room, she called out again.
‘Robbie, it’s Dr Jessie Flynn.’
Silence still.
Was she too late? Had he gone? Run? He’d know that his only option was a foster family or children’s home, so why wouldn’t he have run? He’d be stupid not to. She would run, if she was him. Fuck, I’ll kill Marilyn.
This is bigger than Robbie.
No – he could have held DCI Backastowe off, waited for her to get back from Frimley Park. He could have, should have.
Tossing her coat onto the chair, she climbed the stairs. Three doors at the top, one either side of her, both in darkness, block shapes of beds and wardrobes in each. And straight ahead of her, a door ajar to the only room that was lit: a white-tiled bathroom, fluffy white towels neatly folded on a towel rail to the right, a toilet straight ahead, the seat down. Nothing here to goad her OCD and the electric suit into life – but still the suit hissed and snapped, searing her skin.
Water. It’s about water. Watching and water.
Images strobed through her mind: Hugo Fuller, strapped to a steamer chair, his face a mask of bloody gashes; the halo of Claudine Fuller’s blonde hair around her broken, bloodied head; the gaping black pits of Daniel Whitehead’s sightless sockets; Eleanor, beyond, bathing in a pool of her own blood; the pale, slack-skinned form of Denise Lewin; hot acid bile in her mouth, the taste real or imagined, she couldn’t tell. She ran her tongue around her palate, knowing that it was fear, adrenalin that had parched her. But it was a phantom fear, nothing to be frightened of. It’s only a bathroom. There’s no water, no running water, no blood. But still the electric suit burned.
A sudden noise – quiet, but there all the same.
‘Robbie? Is that you?’
83
While Allan Parker was being processed downstairs, Marilyn made himself a quick cup of coffee, strong, tar black, three sugars, tossed in another sugar for good measure and retreated to his office for five minutes of respite before the interviewing circus began. Even with the windows closed, he could hear the clamour of the press out front in the public car park. If the volume was anything to go by, their numbers were swelling by the second, and the noise gave him a slight, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. In his opinion, the press was rarely useful and unfailingly brutally judgemental, and they had proven that theory to be correct many times over on this case. He had garnered more column inches in the past few days than in the past twenty-five years of policing, ten per cent of those inches, at best, flattering. Though, to be fair, he was never going to cut it as the media’s perfect poster-child cop.
His coffee cup had barely touched his lips when there was a knock at his door and DC Cara stepped into his office.
‘What have I told you about the etiquette of knocking and waiting to be invited in before entering?’ Marilyn said in a weary voice.
Pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, he suppressed a yawn, hoping Cara hadn’t clocked the unbefitting lapse. The finish line for this horrendous case was a mere stumbling length away. All he had to do was to hold it together for a few more hours and then he could sleep the sleep of the dead at his leisure. Or at least secure that elusive Holy Grail of eight solid hours.
‘There’s a woman, with her teenage son, at the front desk asking to see you, sir,’ Cara said.
Marilyn’s eyes hung closed for a moment. ‘Cara, I was under the impression that you were working with us on the Allan Parker case, that you appreciate we have a serial killer in custody who we need to interview post-haste.’ He indicated his mobile, a silent, black rectangle in the midst of the sea of white papers flooding his desk. ‘I am awaiting an imminent summons from DCI Janet Backastowe and I cannot go AWOL to have a tête-à-tête with some lady and her son hot off the street with a beef about God knows what.’
Cara nodded. The kid looked as wrung-out as Marilyn felt. Wrung-out, but not put off, his expression depressingly determined.
‘They say that they need to speak to you about the Parkers, sir. Urgently, the woman said.’
‘Interview them on my behalf, DC Cara.’
‘They won’t speak to me, sir. The woman, Mrs Scuffil, she’s called, said that she wants to speak with the organ grinder.’
Marilyn’s jaw tightened. The organ grinder. Surely no one in their right mind, in this day and age, would have inferred that a multi-racial detective was the monkey in that particular scenario.
‘She’s not the most pleasant,’ Cara said, with a sardonic half-smile. ‘And the son looks as if he’s gone ten rounds with Tyson Fury. I think you need to speak with them yourself, sir. I got the impression that it was important to the case.’
Planting his hands flat on the desktop, Marilyn hefted himself to his feet. ‘Fine.’ He dropped his mobile into his suit jacket pock
et. ‘Remind me of their names, Cara.’
‘Mrs Sharon Scuffil and her son, Niall.’
‘Niall … Niall Scuffil. Why does that name ring a bell?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘No, sadly neither do I.’
The woman in reception was late forties, blonde hair dyed to a shade of platinum that reflected the unforgiving strip lights above her head with eye-wincing brightness. She was whippet-thin, wearing tight, distressed denim jeans and a sleek black leather biker jacket, glamorous in a mutton-esque kind of way, but with an air of dishevelment, as if she’d slept in her clothes. At significantly taller than six foot, her son towered over both her and Marilyn. He was broad-shouldered, square-jawed, blond and handsome, and Marilyn could imagine teenage girls melting for a piece of him, but for the purple-black bruises ringing each bloodshot eye, the puffy right cheek, and swollen, bloodied lip. His right arm was encased in a plaster cast to the elbow, and he was bent slightly at the waist, as if it hurt him to stand straight.
‘Mrs Scuffil. I’m Detective Inspector Bobby Simmons. What can I do for you?’
Mrs Scuffil made no move to take Marilyn’s outstretched hand. Spinning, she reached for the hem of her son’s shirt.
‘You need to arrest Parker for assault, right now.’
Her son stood, meek as an oversized baby, while she hauled his shirt up around his shoulder blades to show two burn spots on his chest. Taser marks. After this case, Marilyn could recognize them at a hundred paces. His gaze moved down the expanse of skin from the boy’s breastbone to his waist, mottled with huge black and purple bruises.
‘Tell me what happened.’
84
Robbie was standing in front of the bathroom mirror holding something up to his face. From where Jessie stood in the doorway, at an elliptical angle, she couldn’t see what it was, couldn’t see its reflection in the mirror either. She knew only that it was pale. One of Workman’s white towels?
‘Robbie.’
He spun around. And she saw.
