Hide and Seek (18 page)

CHAPTER 37

19:54pm

Peter left the shop and closed the door behind him. He glanced down the road - back towards the car he’d dumped. He could see a crowd of people - perhaps five - were gathered at the corner, obviously discussing the accident. He couldn’t return to the car, someone would have called the police by now. He had to get out of there quickly.

He turned and started to walk in the opposite direction. He could hear the murmuring of the crowd behind him and the sound of an agitated man cursing. His
swearing died down for a few seconds, as did the murmuring of the crowd. Peter had the uneasy sixth sense that they had spotted him. His fears were confirmed when he heard the man shout out.

‘Excuse me,
you. Excuse me!’

He could hear the man coming towards him
- his voice growing louder and more agitated when Peter didn’t respond to his shouts.

‘Hey, you, stop.’

Peter didn’t have time for this and was weary of being chased again. He stopped and turned, pulling the knife from his pocket. The man saw the glint of the blade and immediately stopped.

Peter said simply, ‘Fuck off.’

The man - with a wiry frame and designer goatee - held his hands up in submission and started to back away.

‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ he repeated over and over.

Peter made as if to run towards him and the man turned and ran - back towards the crowd as shocked gasps erupted from them.

Peter
himself turned and started running, past the end of the row of shops and round a loop which took him out of sight. He placed the knife back in his pocket as he reached the junction at the end of Delview Road. He stopped, looking down at himself. His shirt was wet through and covered in blood. His hands were scratched and bloody too, covered in burglar grease. His legs were burning and his shins felt as if someone had hit them with a crowbar.

The cemetery was a good distance away. He didn’t know whether he had enough energy in him to run that far. As a car flew past him he wondered if he should steal
one again. He felt unsure now. He had done things which he’d never have contemplated ordinarily. He had scared a poor woman from her car at knifepoint and he had just threatened the man outside the shop. In addition, another theft would only alert the police again, and this time they might catch him before he had his chance to find the person responsible for all this and have his revenge.

He started wearily jogging down the road towards Bilton Beck. His legs felt like jelly and every
stride felt uneven, as if he was drunk. He stopped after only a hundred yards and bent over gasping for air. The anger and rage he had felt minutes ago had given him a burst of adrenaline but now it had subsided and taken his last ounce of energy with it. There was no way he could run all the way to the cemetery. Then he saw a cyclist coming up the hill towards him. Thoughts raced through his mind. A bike still required effort, would be reported to the police and he’d be out in the open. But there was so little time. He had to act now. He stepped off the curb and put one hand out to stop the cyclist.

‘Stop,’ he shouted.

The brakes on the mountain bike screeched as the man came to a halt. He lurched forward into a standing position almost going face first over the handlebars. Peter brandished his knife once again.

‘Get off the bike.’

The man staggered off the bike and away from Peter. He could see the alarm in the man’s face. It was the same flustered terror he had witnessed from the woman he had stolen the car from, the same fear he had just seen in the man outside the shops. The power he felt over them was exhilarating. He now understood what Celo must feel like, having this much control over people’s fear and using that to torment them. But he was not Celo and refused to relish in people’s misery like he did.

Peter felt guilty and immediately became apologetic. He felt the overwhelming need to explain his actions to the biker, so that he would understand and wouldn’t feel the same panicked dread that Peter had felt all day, the same nauseating anxiety which Celo had forced upon him.

‘I am really sorry, I need your bike. I’m trying to save someone from being killed.’

The man continued to back away, his hands held up submissively. Peter picked up the mountain bike from the floor and straddled the frame.

‘Do you know who I am?’

The man shook his head.

‘Have you seen the news today?’

The man shook his head again, his lips quivering as if he was about to start crying.

‘The police are after me because they think I’ve done some terrible things. But I haven’t. I’m trying to help my friends. Do you know a man called Steve Jenkins?’

The man shook his head again. Peter had known it was a long shot. Even in a small town like Bilton it was impossible that everyone knew everyone.

‘I know it’s a lot to ask but please don’t report this for at least an hour. If you do and I get caught, a man called Steve Jenkins will die. Do you understand?’

The man nodded enthusiastically in agreement. Peter doubted whether he was actually taking in what he was saying
- the man was probably just appeasing him to avoid injury. He repeated himself, just to be sure.

‘You can’t report this for at least an hour or my friend will die. Do you understand?’

The man continued nodding; adding a few okays as if to confirm that he understood.

‘You’ll get your bike back from the police later, I promise.’

Peter gave one final glance to the man, looking him up and down and then he looked at his own blood stained shirt.

‘Give me your jumper.’

‘What?’ The man stammered.

‘Your jumper, give it to me.’

The man started pulling his jumper off, pulling the T-shirt underneath out of his shorts and getting it stuck on his head as he clumsily wrestled to release himself. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, Peter would have found the sight comical. The man pulled off the jumper and threw it to him.

‘Thank you.’ Peter said.

He threw the jumper on fast but the second his face was covered the man had turned and started running away onto Delview Road towards the shops.

Peter crossed over to the other side of the road and started to ride down the hill towards Bilton Beck. His feet were uneasy on the pedals. He hadn’t been on a bike since he was a child. He fiddled with the gears to adjust them down so he could pedal faster and the chains rotated with a clunking noise as he gathered speed down the bank. He turned right at Bilton Beck onto Wolviston Road.

Peter wondered if the biker had truly comprehended what he had said to him and whether he would follow his instructions. He just needed enough time to save Steve and get a head start on his final clue to finding Celo. He thought how much better it would be if the police were actually on his side during all this, instead of him having to run and hide from them. If he’d only been able to tell them from the start what was going on. He felt a twinge of guilt. Had he done the right thing by going along with Celo’s game and not involving the police? His record had not been very good. There was nothing he could have done to save Gavin but Colin, Cas and Laura were dead because he hadn’t saved them in time. If only he had called the police as soon as he got the first phone call from Celo, or as soon as he had found Colin’s dismembered arm. Then the police would have taken it seriously and ploughed all their resources into finding the other members of the Excellent Eight, and maybe more would have been saved. A part of him wished that he could go back in time and make a different decision, but only if he knew that the outcome would have been more favourable. It was hurting him that the whole responsibility for today rested on his shoulders and he yearned for someone else to share the burden with him. If the police had been involved then the outcomes wouldn’t have been entirely dependent on him. He shook his head; there was a good chance that the police wouldn’t have found any of them, as there would have been no clues from Celo. Maybe he could have involved the police but somehow kept this from Celo. Peter shook his head again. That wouldn’t have worked. Celo had been watching him closely throughout the day and would have picked up on any police involvement. Celo had been clear that any involvement from anyone else, especially from the police, would render his game null and void and all the players would die. That was a lie, Peter thought to himself. All the traps had had set time limits. How would he have killed all the players immediately? Peter wondered about Celo’s direct involvement in the game. He had obviously set up the traps but on various occasions he genuinely seemed like he wasn’t able to change the time limits he had set, almost like he had no control over the game once it was in motion. Perhaps all he could do was sit back and watch? Well, there wasn’t much more to watch. He’d find Steve, and then the tables would turn. It would be Celo on the run, and Peter doing the seeking. And when he found the evil bastard, he’d kill him.

CHAPTER 38

20:02pm

Peter had less than thirty minutes to get to the cemetery and save Steve. He wondered what trap would be set up this time. For the first time he went over the words of the clue again, speaking them out loud.

‘A graveyard for the ones we abandon, where wars may be lost and won.’

Peter was confused. He could hardly remember ever playing in the cemetery. He could recall playing there once and being chased away by the priest but nothing had happened to them. No one had been caught or hurt.

‘A graveyard for the ones we abandon?’

He wondered why Celo would be suggesting we abandon our loved ones when we bury them in a cemetery. And what were the wars that had been lost and won there?

‘Shit,’ he shouted
, screeching to a sudden halt.

In his anger at Celo and in his haste to get going he
’d completely ignored the clue and mistakenly thought he had to go to the cemetery. He knew now where he was supposed to go. He had been cycling the wrong way for the last five minutes. He cursed his lack of focus as he turned around and started riding in the other direction. He had to get to Nelson’s car yard, on the outskirts of the town, in the desolate industrial estate which lay next to the old mill factory.

In the '80s, when he was a child it was a thriving
hub of commerce which supported and manufactured products from the supplies provided from the mill. The Excellent Eight rarely went over to that side of town but occasionally they’d ride out there and use the sprawling network of buildings for games of Hide and Seek as well as retrieving rubble and pieces of wood from the various skips in order to fashion elaborate bike tracks with ramps.

On a few occasions they went into Nelson’s car yard. It was a perfect playground for children
, with a veritable maze of abandoned cars stacked in rows. They would play made up games within the car yard and the popular movie they would act out was one they made up called Tony and Texas.

In the movie, Tony and Texas were a pair of evil gangsters set on taking over the world and the
boys had tracked them down to their lair at the car yard - where they conducted their nefarious deals with other villains. The three girls, Cheryl, Michelle and Laura would play the damsels in distress and pretend they’d been kidnapped and the boys would attempt to save them before they were killed. In reality, the girls used to just sit, talk, laugh and giggle at the sight of the boys as they would pretend fight and battle with multiple henchmen. The boys would make punching noises as they mocked getting beat at first and then they would come back to triumph over the henchmen before facing the evil bosses Tony and Texas.

One day the boys had found that the employees at the car yard had mistakenly left the key in the compactor. They
’d played around with the buttons and the conveyor belt had creaked noisily into life. The compactor lay at the end of the belt, its open steel doors looking like the jaws of an upturned mouth waiting to be fed. The boys had no idea how the compactor worked and thought they had only turned the conveyor belt on. They continued to play their made up game. Steve was mimicking fighting a henchman on the conveyor belt. Peter, Cas, Gavin and Colin continued to punch thin air as they fought their respective baddies. They all kept an eye on Steve as he rolled about on the conveyor belt with arms and legs flaying about as he sped down towards the hungry mouth of the compactor. Like a scene in numerous movies they had seen they were expecting Steve would throw the baddie into the compactor at the last minute and it would crush the bad guy in a suitably gory way. The four boys stopped fighting in shock as Steve rolled off the conveyor belt, still battling his invisible assailant, into the compactor.

‘Steve, what are you doing?’ Colin cried out.

A hand appeared from inside the belly of the beast and Steve started climbing out of the compactor still pretending that he was fighting the baddie. He looked behind him and mimicked the actions of someone kicking a man who was holding onto his leg.

The boys were laughing at his Oscar winning performance when the light in the lantern above the switch to the machine started rotating and flashing and an alarm started beeping loudly. The compactor
was triggered by a weight sensor and the jaws started to close. Steve panicked, slipping on the side, stumbling then rolling back inside the compactor. His friends ran to the side shouting for him. Cas jumped up onto the conveyor belt and started running towards the compactor. Colin was the only person who reacted rationally and ran to the switch and thumped the palm of his hand on the red off switch. The jaws of the compactor were almost shut. There was a nervous few seconds as the machine kept going but then it shuddered to a stop.  Everybody stood in quiet shock as Cas reached the end of the conveyor belt and looked down inside.

‘Steve, are you alright?’

Cas crouched down and lowered his hand to help pull Steve out. Steve looked visibly shaken and Cas held a reassuring arm around his shoulder. Colin broke the nervous tension in the air and spoke first.

‘That was awesome.’

The group laughed half-heartedly.

Steve fought back his nerves and quipped, ‘That bad guy almost
beat me … but I flattened him.’

The group erupted into laughter as Cas and Steve climbed down from the conveyor belt. Although they laughed and joked about what had happened on the way home no one ever suggested going back to the car yard after that, and they never did.

Peter continued down Wolviston Road heading out of town. He knew the road ahead of him would loop right around in a semi circle around the southeast outskirts of the town until it came onto the industrial estate. Ahead of him,
to his right, the headlights of a car blinded him. As the car drove past he realised it was a police car without its sirens blaring. Peter’s heart dropped and he continued riding, looking straight ahead, expecting the sound of the sirens. But nothing came. After a minute he glanced back over his shoulder - the police car was gone.

He was relieved but also surprised at the ineptitude of the police. They had almost had him in their grasp and chased him on three occasions only for him to successfully escape. He did reason with himself that although this was a small town in which to find him, it was an equally small police force. They were probably more accustomed to babysitting drunken locals and refereeing bickering neighbours than dealing with something of this scale.
They would know most of the people in this small town, and yet he had passed right under their noses on more than one occasion today. He was thankful that the police force was not as clinical as the movies he had seen but he reminded himself not to feel too confident. He couldn’t push his luck. He still had to be careful. He couldn’t afford to get caught now, not when he was so close to the end, and so close to getting his face time with the mastermind behind this terrible game. He didn’t need the help of the police now. He didn’t need anyone’s help. Not that anyone had helped him much today, he thought.

Anger came again as he thought about
Michelle’s betrayal. He wondered why she hadn’t trusted him. Peter could feel himself making excuses for her yet again. Maybe she just had the natural suspicion of a policeman’s daughter. Also, at that point, he had been involved in the game for a few hours and had assumed some unnatural calm to override the panic of what was going on. She really had no idea what he’d been through, and furthermore, what he still had to go through after he rescued her from Chaser’s Toy Store. Still, he felt she should have had some faith in him; in their friendship. After all he had been risking his own life for that friendship and placing himself in harm’s way on multiple occasions. Peter started to wonder about Celo’s earlier comment about whether he would prefer to be one of the people who were hiding or to be the seeker. He wondered if any of the other members of the Excellent Eight would actually have gone through all this to try and help the others if Celo had made them the seeker. Some of them had stayed in touch with each other purely by staying in the town but he didn’t really know any of them anymore. Was that why Celo picked him? The main person he’d stayed in touch with throughout the years was Gavin but Celo killed him first before the game even started. How did Celo know that he would care enough about the remaining members to go along with his game? The only ones he cared deeply about were Laura and Cas. Peter was sure that Celo placed them towards the end of his game to keep his interest going. Peter started to think about Laura again, but stopped himself. As Celo said, he couldn’t get upset now. He would have to grieve for her properly when this was all over.

His thoughts turned to Cas. He had hoped that he could save Cas and then
enlist his help. But Cas knocked him unconscious and according to Celo was going to kill him. Surely he wouldn’t have done that? Surely he hit Peter because he was scared and confused and couldn’t make out who it was in the dark? There was no way Cas would have killed him once he knew it was him. Or could he? Celo seemed convinced that that was what he was going to do. In that case, Peter almost felt glad that Celo intervened and stopped Cas. Peter was still unsure why he did it though. Why was he so hell-bent on having him as the seeker? Peter recalled that Celo had said he was actually proud of him for making it this far. Something twigged in his brain. Cas had made a similar remark to him last night when Peter had told him of his achievements at work. He started to think about it more. After he had awoken from being knocked out by Cas he didn’t see his body at any point. He saw no proof that Cas was really dead. If Celo had really intervened why would he have wasted time moving the body? It’s not like Celo would have been worried about Peter seeing a dead body bearing in mind the atrocities he had already witnessed that day. If Cas was Celo it would make sense that he would have to place himself in the game somehow to throw him off the scent. Peter recalled that during the few seconds he looked around the storage cupboard when the lights were on; there was no sign of any sort of contraption that looked like a trap which Cas could have escaped from. He had had suspicions about Cas and now everything seemed to be pointing to him. He still couldn’t think of a reason why Cas would do something like this, but then again he had searched for answers all day. He hadn’t been able to find a viable reason why any of the Excellent Eight would do something like this, specifically picking him as the seeker, and obviously setting him up to take the blame for this game.

Peter felt more determined than ever. He was going to find and save Steve and then he would find and kill Celo, even if it was Cas.