Better Left Buried (15 page)

I stare at her question, letting the implication sink in. So it's true. Lizzie knows who I'm talking about.

She knows Jack.

I spoke to him today, Lizzie. But he won't tell me what's going on. Who is he? What's this all about?
I'm typing so fast my fingers are a blur.

I watch the space under what I've written for Lizzie's reply, but there's nothing for several minutes. As if she's considering what to say.

Or maybe talking to someone, it occurs to me. Her boyfriend.

Lizzie?
My fingers fly over the keyboard.
Are you still there?

A few more seconds, then she replies.
Listen, I've got to go…I'm running out of time. Look, be careful, Sarah, okay. I can't go into it all now, but I will. I promise.

Into what?

Stay away from Jack. He's bad news, Sarah. We'll talk soon, all right? By phone, no emails.

Why not?
I write quickly.

I'll explain next time. Sorry. And please don't tell anyone you've spoken to me, not even Mum.

The words stop for a moment. Then another message appears.

Whatever you do, don't tell Jack.

An instant later, before I have a chance to type anything back, Lizzie signs out.

Meet me. The Dog and Rose. 4 p.m.

The text arrives the next day, no name attached. But I don't care. Only one person could have sent it.

I agonize through all my lessons, wondering if I'll go. Lizzie's words hovering at the back of my mind as I try to focus on my work.

Stay away…he's bad news.

But I figure there's nothing much he can do in a pub full of people. So I head there after college and find him standing near the back, playing on a fruit machine. It's a quiet time, only a few people scattered around the other tables. I glance at the barman, but he's oblivious, watching a game of rugby on the large screen above the pool table.

I stand to the side of the fruit machine and wait for Jack to finish. He's wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt and the same dark jeans, so blue they're nearly black. And a relieved expression when he lifts his head and sees me.

“You came.” He turns to face me, sticking his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans and hunching his shoulders up.

I nod.

He gazes at me for a few seconds, as if he's not sure I'm real. Clearly he wasn't expecting me to show up.

“Want a drink?” He gestures in the direction of the bar.

I shake my head. “I can't.”

Jack raises an eyebrow.

“I'm not eighteen till February.”

A twitch of his lips. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“So why are we here?” I ask as he grabs a bottle of beer from a nearby table and takes a swig.

“Sure you don't fancy anything else? Coke? Ginger beer? Lemonade?”

I stare at him. Is he taking the piss? “I'm fine,” I say. “Tell me what you want.”

He nods towards the beer garden. “How about we go outside?”

We sit at one of the wooden benches ranged around the little patio. Beyond is a small, scrubby piece of lawn with a plastic climbing frame. I shiver. It's early September and though the sun is out, there's a damp autumnal feel to the air. I glance around. We're all alone, except for a couple sitting a few tables away, feeding crisps to a chubby chocolate Labrador.

Jack shifts in his seat and fixes his gaze a little to the left of me, his face tense and determined. “I can explain, but you've—”

“Explain now, or I'm leaving.”

“Sarah, please…”

“Lizzie. My friend, the one from the cafe.”

Jack nods.

“I spoke to her last night. She seems to know you. And she reckons you're bad news.”

“What did she say?”

I counter his question with one of my own. “So how do you know her?”

Jack eyes me warily. I can see him calculating what to tell me. “I only met her once. At a party.”

“Where?”

“London. It was after some gig. She was there with Rob, and your brother.”

A hitch in my breath as his words smack right into me. Lizzie was at a party in
London
? With my brother and his best friend? What the…? How come she never said anything?

“When was this?” I manage to ask.

“Around May sometime.”

I think back. The news of Max's death a month later pretty much knocked everything else out my head, but I do recall Lizzie mentioning a party. That's right – it was the night I was soloing in a concert for the local choral society, so I couldn't go.

I'd assumed the party was something to do with college. Not in London.

“She was with Rob, you say? Max's friend?”

Jack nods.

“You mean they were together?”

“Uh-huh.”

A molten surge of betrayal erupts inside me. Lizzie's well aware of how I feel about Rob. All that time he and my brother spent together – even sharing a house in their second and third years – and Rob still couldn't be bothered to come to Max's funeral.

Jesus. Lizzie never said a thing. Not a word. I mean, how come she even met him?

Then it clicks. Last summer. Rob came to stay at ours for a few days. Max invited loads of people round while Mum and Dad were on holiday in Italy and I remember Lizzie spending ages talking to him. I assumed she was asking about university, stuff like that.

“So you didn't know about Rob and Lizzie?”

I raise my eyes to find Jack examining my face. Press my lips together, suppressing a sigh. “It seems there's quite a lot my best friend forgot to mention.”

“I guess it's hard to know who to trust.” Jack's eyes linger on mine.

“Yeah. You could say that.”

“Like me, for instance.”

I don't say anything, but have to turn my head away.

“Would it help if I told you I'm actually looking out for you here, Sarah?”

I spin back to face him. “It would help if you told me what the hell is going on. Like why you're involved in my life. And why you'd give a damn about me, anyway.”

This time it's Jack who shifts his gaze, his hand fidgeting around his bottle of beer. “Your brother. He got himself in a shitload of trouble before he died. And some of it…a lot of it was my fault. I figure that watching out for you is payback, that's all.”

For a moment I feel oddly flat. As if part of me was hoping for a different answer. I pull myself together. “What kind of trouble?”

Jack stays silent, and for minute or so I tune into the sound of a piano concerto playing somewhere nearby, barely audible under the noise of the TV.

“I want to know, Jack. Seriously. I'm going to leave unless you tell me.”

He looks up, measuring my resolve. And despite my show of bravado, I hesitate. Because I can see in his face, in its serious, almost severe expression, that there'll be no going back. The old Max will be forever replaced in my mind with another version – and possibly one I don't like.

That picture flashes into my mind, the one in Mum's photo album. Max standing on the porch in Sweden, holding the jar with the minnow. Looking so proud, and so pure. Still untouched by life.

But he's your brother,
says a voice in my head.
You have to know the truth. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life wondering.

“Tell me.”

Jack scrutinizes me for a full minute or so. His features barely move, but I can see a battle raging inside. The grip of indecision.

Finally he drains his remaining beer and places the bottle in front of him, cradling it between both hands. “Max and Rob, they came up with a way of making a new kind of dove.”

“Dove?”

“Ecstasy. You know, E.”

I stare at him, eyes widening. I can hardly breathe. I mean, marijuana is one thing, but this sounds way more hardcore.

Jack was right. I'm already regretting asking him anything.

He shrugs at my expression. “You said you wanted to know.”

“You can
make
it?” I frown.

“Yeah. Not easily. You've got to have the right gear. The right chemicals and equipment. But it was easier for Max and Rob – they had the facilities, and the know-how.”

I recall the chemistry labs at the university. I visited them once, the first time I went to see Max in London. They were housed in a new, purpose-built block, all pristine white walls and bright overhead lighting, and filled with test tubes and flasks and bottles of interesting-looking liquids and compounds.

Dead smart. They were one of the main reasons Max chose to go there. I remember his face as he showed me around – so pleased and excited.

“He – your brother – said they were only mucking about. Trying to cook up a bit for themselves and their mates. Not out to make money or whatever. Anyway, it worked better than they ever imagined.”

“How do you mean?” I sit on my hands and clamp my lips together so Jack can't see them quivering.

“Max and Rob were making a batch and they were short of some chemical or other. I've no idea what. I honestly don't know that much about it. I only sold the stuff.”

“Their stuff?”

Jack glances at me but ignores my question. “So Max substituted it with another compound, something similar. It seemed to work. He and Rob tried it that weekend, only a small dose.”

I still can't get my head around Max doing this. Not just taking drugs, but actually making them. Why would he even do that?

“So what happened?” My jaw so tense now I have to force out the words.

Jack laughs. But not a happy kind of laugh. The kind of laugh that makes me want to grab my bag and run out the pub.

But I have to hear this out.

“Heaven, Sarah. That's what happened. It lasted twice as long as ordinary E, with no comedown, no feeling like crap for a day or so – you simply float back down to normal. Max and Rob, they discovered super-E – by accident.”

Jesus. I've never met anyone who's taken ecstasy – at least not till now. But I'm not stupid. I understand what this means. And how it might lead to the shitload of trouble Jack referred to.

I glance up and catch him assessing me again. And wonder what he thinks of this naïve girl who doesn't know what dove is – or how it makes you feel.

“So where do you come into all this?” I ask.

“Like I told you before, I'd been supplying weed to them for a while and we sort of became friends. He was a good bloke, your brother. Funny, you know, clever in the way he looked at things.”

Despite everything I smile. He's right. Max was witty – and amusing. He could always diffuse an argument by making people laugh.

“Anyway, one evening I hung around for a smoke,” Jack continues. “And they gave me some of their stuff, to see what I thought.”

“And?”

He twirls his beer bottle between his fingers and sighs. “I thought it was a goldmine, Sarah, to tell you the truth. Worth a fortune in the right hands.”

“Or rather the wrong ones,” I add, watching him grimace in response. He abandons the bottle and pulls out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

“So you offered to sell it for them?”

Jack stares at the pack. He can't lift his eyes to mine. “Sort of. But they weren't interested in making money. They were only in it for the ride. I told them it could earn them loads, enough to wipe out their student loans with plenty left over, but they didn't care.”

“So what did you do?”

He twists the cigarette pack in his fingers. And it's then that I see that mine aren't the only ones trembling. This is hard for him, I realize, and I wonder why. Shame? Guilt?

“I…um…went to see one of my contacts. Gave them a sample Rob had given me.”

“Rob asked you to do that?”

Jack's face begins to flush. His left eye twitches, then he blinks. “Not exactly. I cadged a couple, said I was off to a party and needed a bit of a lift. Only I never took those, just pretended I had. I was hoping that maybe my contacts could find out what was in it.”

Oh god. Ice forms in my stomach. I'm not sure where this is going but instinctively sense it's not good. “And did they?”

Jack shakes his head. “No. They couldn't identify anything other than the usual compounds.”

“So why didn't you ask Max? Or Rob?”

“You reckon I didn't? I practically begged them to tell me what was in those pills. But Max wasn't stupid, Sarah. He was keeping it to himself, and he made Rob promise to do the same.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. He could be weird, your brother. Pretty straight up over stuff. He didn't want loads of people getting into it, he said, didn't need that on his conscience.”

I remember how Max used to berate Dad for using weedkiller in the garden, or have a go at Mum for buying food with loads of air miles. Jack's right. He could be very high-minded about things.

“So what has all this got to do with me?” I ask, wishing I'd accepted Jack's offer of a drink. Right now I could do with something alcoholic. I glance indoors at the landlord, still absorbed in the game – it's not as if he would notice.

Jack sighs. Plays with the lid of his cigarettes, flipping it up and down with his thumb.

“Those people I spoke to. They didn't just lab test the drug, they tried it. Not much – there wasn't much – but enough for them to see its potential. I said I'd talk to Max, try to work out some kind of deal. But then…”

He stops, peers down at the ground between the slats of the table.

“Then what?” I can barely keep the impatience from my voice.

“Then it happened.”

“What?”
My throat is dry and raspy and the words come out as a croak. “What happened?” A tight, almost nauseous feeling in my belly.