Dead Jealous (14 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The music pounded through the house.

Michael held the same can of Red Stripe he’d been clutching since mates from school began flooding the house.

Julia was loving every minute of the attention. At that second she was dancing with a group of her friends – one of those slinky kinds of dances, totally out of time with the heavy beat of the music. Her long arms were in the air, her blonde hair swishing around her bare shoulders, and her silver sequinned dress clung tightly to her jiggling hips.

As if sensing him watching her, she turned and, with a seductive finger, beckoned him over.

He smiled, but shook his head.

Her pale pink lips puckered into a pout that made him laugh. Realising that the mountain wasn’t going to go to Mohammed, she danced her way across the room. At that moment, a few of the other guys from school showed up with bottles of what looked like vodka. Julia waved excitedly at them, but didn’t stop her journey towards him.

She stopped in front of him. Her big blue eyes were shining with mischief. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and Michael couldn’t help glancing down at her shimmering form.

Without a word, she pressed her lips to his.

She tasted of the sweet white wine she’d been drinking since about five that evening, and of something else...perhaps a promise of something more to come? Her parents had cleared out for the night so they pretty much had the house to themselves.

She pulled away, linked her hands behind her back and swayed from side to side, looking pleased with herself.

Michael was aware that the whole room was staring at them. Every guy was wishing himself in his place, and all the girls in school wanted to be Julia, not because she was kissing him, but because she could have whoever the hell she wanted. All the girls he knew were locked between being jealous of Julia and being in awe of her. Except for Poppy.

He wondered what Poppy was doing. He wanted to call her, but he had no idea what to say. He’d bottled it again. He should have stayed and talked to her – tried to work out if she really knew what she wanted and maybe even work out what he wanted.

Julia cleared her throat. ‘Hello? Earth to Michael?’

He blinked.

‘What’s wrong?’ Julia asked, raising her voice over the music.

‘Nothing.’

She ran her hand over his chest. ‘Dance with me?’

He shook his head. No matter what she said or did, he wasn’t dancing with her or anyone else. He couldn’t dance – couldn’t seem to get his legs and his arms to do what they were supposed to do. Poppy always said he looked like a creature from one of those build-a-monster flip books – the wrong legs on the wrong body.

A finger poking his ribs brought him back to the party. Julia was frowning.

He shrugged and smiled. ‘Sorry, it’s the beer,’ he said, holding up the can.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t drink too much. You have to be sober enough to give me my birthday present.’

‘But I’ve given you...your...’

Julia grinned and her cheeks glowed red. She leaned forward and whispered. ‘You
have
brought you-know-whats, haven’t you?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Poppy tried to shove Kane away but the hands gripping her shoulders felt like they were made of iron. Panic flooded through her and she hit out, punching and kicking. He loomed over her, his green eyes staring into hers from his skull-like face. He pulled her back to his chest and two arms wrapped around her, fixing her in place.

‘Let me go!’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘No!’ she screamed.

His hand clapped over her mouth, trapping the sound inside her. The arm around her chest tightened its grip. Shit! Her gaze darted from stall to stall, hoping someone was close enough to realise what was going on, but tears blurred her vision until she could see nothing but watery shadows in the fading light.

Kane leaned his head into hers. Hot breath grazed her cheek.

‘I won’t hurt you. You just need to listen to me.’

She didn’t believe him. He was going to kill her. Like he’d killed Maya...and Beth.

He started moving, dragging her backwards. He was taking her to the woods.
Shit-shit-shit!
Once he got her in the woods it was game over. She was dead. In the shock of realisation her entire body sagged. Kane swore as he lost his grip on her. He yanked her to her feet and for just a second, his hands loosened.

She kicked back as hard as she could, heard a satisfying thunk as her heel made contact with his shin. Kane gasped in pain. She shoved him away and ran.

Heavy footsteps thundered after her. Despair flooded through Poppy as she realised she wasn’t fast enough; she wouldn’t have been fast enough even if her legs hadn’t turned to shaky rubber.

A hand grabbed her arm and she screamed.

As his grip tightened, she swung her elbow into his chest. Kicked, scratched, anything she could do to hurt him before he hurt her.

‘She wants you dead, Poppy!’ he shouted. ‘I’m trying to help you!’

What?
Suddenly, Kane’s hands on her shoulders were the only things keeping her on her feet.

He stared at her, his eyes pleading. ‘You
have
to listen to me! She’ll kill you. This place – it was in her blood. You have to leave. Here she can get to you. You need to get away, Poppy. She’ll kill you like she’s going to kill me. I’ve seen it in the cards. Death. Always Death.’

He let her go; she stumbled, nearly fell, then backed away, her heart thudding painfully. Had she got it wrong? Was he really trying to help her?

His eyes were so wide they looked like the eyes of a corpse, as if he was dead already.

A voice called out. Someone was running in their direction. She turned and saw Tariq and another guy. Kane heard them too. His head swung one way and then the other, like an animal being baited.

He stumbled back and pointed a finger at her. ‘Get out of here. Go and never come back.’ Then he turned and ran.

‘It’s him!’ someone shouted.

Poppy watched Kane escape through the metal bones of the market stall, towards the centre of the festival ground. Out of nowhere, three or four figures gave chase.

A hand grabbed her arm and she gasped.

‘It’s OK, it’s me,’ Tariq said, his face scrunched with concern. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Umm—’

‘—Poppy, did he hurt you?’ Tariq asked, urgently.

Poppy shook her head. ‘Something’s not right.’ Something bad was going to happen to Kane.

The sun hung low over the hillside, bleeding red light through the black spikes of the fir trees up on the bluff. Before she knew what she was doing, she was running too, joining the hunt. Her legs kept pumping the ground, but Kane had disappeared into the canvas village.

Police were shouting directions to each other, like they were trying to flush out an animal. And then he appeared again, his shaved head pale against the dark of the landscape, running up the steep bank that led up to the farm. Black shadows swarmed after him, spreading out, creating a net in which to catch him.

Adrenaline finally kicked in and Poppy picked up speed, ignoring Tariq’s calls. She attacked the hill, using the solid rocks that stuck out of the gravelly earth to propel herself up. When she eventually reached the top she skidded to a stop, almost crashing into a stationary policewoman.

The policewoman turned and frowned. ‘You need to get back down the hill, now!’ she said.

But Poppy’s eyes sought out Kane as she struggled to catch her breath.

Kane had taken a wrong turn and ended up trapped, thirty feet away, on the rocky outcrop of the bluff that hung over the lake. Or maybe he hadn’t taken a wrong turn. Maybe this was where he’d wanted to lead them.

The police were standing, spread out in an arc, their arms outstretched like they were playing a game, and behind Kane, thirty feet below, the lake shone red with the sunset. Kane seemed to have shrunk in size, or maybe it was just that he was hunched over, cowering like a wounded fox faced with a pack of hounds.

‘Poppy, are you OK?’ a breathless voice asked behind her. It was Tariq.

‘Yeah. But Kane—’

‘—Don’t worry, they’ll get him,’ he whispered.

That’s what she was afraid of.

Death. Always Death.

Kane had come here to die.

Just then, the police officer who was talking gently to Kane took a step forward. Kane edged further towards the edge. His foot slipped and he only just managed to stop himself from falling.

‘No! Poppy screamed.

Kane’s face snapped up. His eyes connected with hers and his cheek twitched in what could have been the beginning of a smile, but sadness and fear got the better of it.

‘I didn’t kill Maya, Poppy,’ he called over to her, his voice trembling and thick with fear. ‘She killed me.’

With that Kane took a step back and slipped from sight.

As Poppy screamed, the dream came back to her. Maya pushing her. Falling...falling...falling...

She wasn’t even conscious that she had run to the edge until she was staring down at Kane’s contorted body, broken on the pebbles below. One leg had gained another joint, bent the wrong way, and his face stared up at them – seeing or unseeing, she couldn’t tell. As if to finish off the job, a tide of red lake water rolled over him.

‘She pushed him – she pushed him!’ Poppy heard herself shouting.

Arms folded around her and she was enclosed in a tight hug as she gasped for breath.

‘Come away.’

It was Tariq. His fingers tried to brush her hair away from her face, but it was stuck to her cheeks by tears and sweat. It was in her eyes, in her mouth, but she could do nothing other than cling to him and take in deep shuddering breaths of air.

‘Get an ambulance,’ someone was saying, ‘and get down to him, check if he’s alive.’

Tariq squeezed her tightly. ‘It’s OK, Poppy. It’s OK.’

But it wasn’t.

The tipi was packed with people. Mum, Jonathan, DS Grant, the policewoman she’d seen talking to Bob and Pete earlier. Bob and Mo were outside,
giving them space
, but not willing to leave entirely. Even Tariq was sat by the flap, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else on earth.

She shot him a quick smile. He couldn’t be finding it easy, being surrounded by all these coppers.

Tariq lifted his eyebrows in a question. ‘OK?’ he mimed.

She nodded. And she was OK now. Everything was fine as long as she didn’t think too much...and as long as she was surrounded by ten or twelve people.

As the conversation between Jonathan and the policewoman dwindled to a pause she could hear the bark of police dogs and the hum of engines.

She couldn’t stop her mind from replaying the scene. Over and over like a YouTube clip on repeat. Her imagination had even added a soundtrack. Now she didn’t hear the shouts of the police officers calling for him to stop, instead she heard the sickening thud of Kane’s body as it had tumbled down the sharp incline of the bluff, and the splash as he’d landed head first into the shallow waters below.

‘There’s still a chance he’ll make it,’ DS Grant said, catching her eye.

It had taken twenty-five minutes for an ambulance to arrive. But he was still breathing when they’d loaded him into the back. Just.

‘I think he’s ill. I don’t think he wanted to hurt me.’ She didn’t quite know why she was defending him. He’d killed two women. Or at least she’d thought he had. But he’d been scared and confused and she couldn’t rid her head of the thudding noise, nor the feeling that somehow Maya had killed him, just like he’d said she would.

A hand rubbed her back. She looked up. Mum’s face was surprisingly calm, like she’d managed to fit in an hour’s Zen meditation since her initial freak-out. Mum leaned over, kissed her forehead and then pressed her face against Poppy’s so that she was surrounded by Mum smell. It wasn’t just the scent of the oils she used in her massage, but that special something in her DNA that always made Poppy feel safe and at home.

There was a buzz of static from a radio.

‘Excuse me a minute,’ DS Grant said, getting to his feet and slipping out of the tipi.

Mum’s shoulder shifted beneath her head. Poppy sat up and looked at her.

‘I’m going to call Michael,’ Mum said.

‘What?’ Poppy’s stomach twisted. Michael was the one person she wanted most... but she couldn’t have him. Especially not tonight. ‘No. You can’t. It’s Julia’s party. I don’t want you to call him.’

‘He’d want to know what’s happened,’ Mum said.

‘No! I’m fine. There’s no reason for you to call him. I’ll speak to him in the morning.’

‘You should call him,’ a voice said from the opposite side of the tipi. Tariq’s gaze held hers. He smiled, but there was a frown mark between his eyebrows that told her he wasn’t joking. ‘It’s going out on the news. If my best friend was involved I’d want to hear about it.’

Mum squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’ll just tell him that you’re OK. I don’t want him hearing about it from somewhere else and driving over here if he’s been drinking.’

CHAPTER THIRTY

The soft glow from Julia’s bedside lamp did nothing to disguise the pinkness of the room. Pink fluffy pillows. Pink flowery bedspread that looked like something his gran would choose. And then there was the teddy collection. Hundreds of them. Everywhere he looked there were fuzzy pink and brown noses, glassy eyes...all staring at him.

Were they gonna watch?

Behind him the door clicked shut. He turned to see Julia dragging over a chair to prop underneath the handle, the way that they did in films. A gang of her friends was downstairs still drinking cocktails with no names, listening to husky-voiced women singing out of the iPod speakers, and slagging off all the blokes they’d ever known.

A girly sleepover, that’s what she’d told her parents. He couldn’t believe they’d fallen for that old chestnut.

Happy that the chair would stop any unwanted visitors disturbing them, Julia turned and smiled.

‘Should I put on some music?’ she asked.

Michael shrugged. ‘OK.’

She went over to a white chest of drawers that was covered with twenty or so bottles of perfume and began fumbling with the stereo. After a minute she sighed.

‘Bloody thing won’t work.’

He gently budged her aside. She hadn’t flicked onto the right function. He pressed a couple of buttons. ‘Remote?’

‘Here,’ she said, holding out the small black plastic remote.

As he took it, he noticed her hand was shaking. A nervous shiver worked its way up his spine. He took a deep breath, pushed the play button and chucked the remote on the side.

Over the course of the evening her eyeliner had smudged. She’d tried to fix it, but it was industrial-strength stuff. She always wore a lot of make-up when they went out. He preferred her without, but now probably wasn’t the time to tell her.

She took a step forward and slipped her hand into his hair. And she stared at him. Her wide eyes were as shiny as the hundreds of glass eyes watching them.

‘I love you,’ she whispered.

She’d said it before, but this time it set bugs crawling through his veins.

Did he love her?

He liked her. He thought she was sexy. But he loved Poppy. He was in love with his best friend and had been for as long as he could remember. Was it possible that he could love them both? He felt paralysed standing there in Julia’s bedroom with all those accusing glass eyes staring at him. All those bears, they knew.

Shit! This was confusing.

Julia pulled down his head to kiss him. Her lips were soft and inviting. She wanted him, for definite. There was no confusion in her kisses and it felt good.

She guided his hands to the zip to her dress. It got caught and there were a few moments of nervous giggling from both of them. Then it was free and Julia, this girl who he’d fancied since they were both gawky and twelve, was practically naked. She was beautiful and she’d been more of a friend to him than Poppy for the last six months. And he did love her in some way.

‘Are you sure?’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ she replied.

His brain left the planet and all he was left with was wanting.

They landed on the flowery bedspread and the teddies scattered. She pushed off his shirt and then they were flesh on flesh.

Ring-ring!

God, it was so good that there were bells.

Ring-ring!

Bells? There were bells? No, it was a phone.

Ring-ring!

Her fingers were on his belt, trying to undo the buckle.

Ring-ring!

‘My phone,’ he muttered, pulling it from his back pocket.

‘Ignore it,’ Julia gasped.

‘Yeah, I—’ He was about to reject the call when he saw the screen:
Meg calling
. The moment froze.
What the fuck am I doing?

Julia grabbed the phone from him and threw it on the bedside cabinet.

‘No! Hold on.’ Michael untangled himself from Julia, grabbed the phone and hit
Answer
.

‘Meg?’

‘Michael. Sorry to call so late. I know you’re at a party—’

He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘—It’s OK, what’s wrong?’