High Moor (10 page)

“Most of the bullet passed straight through, but it fragmented when it clipped her collarbone. I can feel it…there…got it,” he said, drawing out a lump of bloodstained metal.

Yolanda looked at the remains of the bullet and put her hand to her mouth. “Joseph. It’s silver. They know. We need to get away from here. Far away, where they will never find us again.”

“We can’t move her. Not yet. The silver will take time to leave her system. Later, when she is better, we’ll leave.”

She turned away from her husband, bitter tears running across her face. “You doom us all, Joseph. You doom us all.” Then she opened the door and stormed out of the caravan.

Joseph removed a needle-and-thread from his pouch and sewed the wound closed. The old woman writhed on the bed and then was still. Joseph put his tools away. He was about to leave his mother to rest when her arm shot out and grasped his wrist.

"Joseph. Please, I beg you. Let me die."

He smoothed her hair back and kissed her forehead. "Mother, it's alright. Soon the sickness will pass, and you'll feel better."

"You're not listening to me, Joseph. I know that sometimes I am…elsewhere, but right at this moment I am here, and you will heed me. My heart cannot bear the pain any longer. I am responsible for the death of that child, and it destroys me. It eats away at me, even as my mind wanders. If you love me, you will let me die."

Joseph ran his hand across his mother's face. "You sleep, Mother. We'll talk more when you feel stronger." He blew out the candles and left the caravan, leaving Mirela to weep alone in the darkness.

***

25th April 1986. John’s House, High Moor. 10.30.

“John? Michael, and Marie are here,” yelled John’s mother from the bottom of the stairs.

“OK, Mam,” he shouted from his bedroom. He got up from his desk and ran downstairs to meet his friends, jumping the last three stairs to land with a thud on the hallway floor.

Mrs Simpson put her hands on her hips. Her face creased into a frown. “John! How many times do I have to tell you not to jump down those stairs? You’ll go through the floor one of these days.”

Michael and Marie stood by the back door, trying hard to keep their grins under control.

John rolled his eyes and gestured to his friends. “Come on upstairs, guys, before I do something else wrong."

“Do you want anything to drink?” said his Mother as the children filed past.

“No thanks, Mam, maybe later on,” said John. Then the children left the kitchen and ran up the wooden staircase.

“For God’s sake, you lot, you sound like a herd of elephants,” said Mrs Simpson as the children stampeded through the house. Three muted apologies rang down from the top of the staircase. Mrs Simpson shook her head in mock exasperation and went back to preparing lunch.

John closed his bedroom door and moved a stack of comics from his bed to allow Michael and Marie to sit down. John sat on a swivel chair by his desk.

“You two look funny,” said Marie, “like two giant pandas or something.”

Michael made a face at his sister and winced at the movement. Both boys’ faces were covered in dark purple bruises and small scratches. Michael’s right eye was swollen almost shut, and John’s nose was slightly crooked.

Michael punched his sister's arm. “At least we’ll get better, you'll always look funny.”

Marie giggled and stuck her tongue out at him.

“How was your dad last night?” said Michael, “I thought he was going to go mental when the police called him to the hospital to pick us up.”

“He wasn’t too happy with your dad. I think he might have hit him, if he’d been there. Did they ask you who beat us up?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t gonna grass. You heard what they said they’d do if we told.”

“So, what are we going to do about them?” said Marie, “We can’t let them get away with what they did to you.”

John shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re older than us and there’s more of them. We try anything, and they’ll just give us another kicking.”

Michael picked up one of John's comics and flicked through the pages. “We could get hold of them, one at a time, and beat them up for a change?”

“That’s fine, but then they’ll just gang up on us again and do worse next time. We need to find a way to get them off our backs for good.”

“How about saving up our pocket money and paying some bigger boys to beat them up and act as our bodyguards?”

“Maybe, but do you know any older boys that'd do it and not just take our money?”

Michael thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No, all the older boys I know are arseholes.”

“So that’s it then. We might as well just stay inside all summer.”

Michael shrugged. “Looks like it. Got any new games for your Spectrum?”

“Yeah, got a couple. Bring a tape over later on and I’ll do a copy for you.”

“I can’t believe you two,” said Marie. “You can’t just give up like that. Malcolm Harrison and his little bum chums have to pay for messing your faces up.”

“And do what?” said Michael.

Marie grinned at the two boys. “I’ve got an idea. Now listen up. This is what we're going to do.”

4th May 1986. Coronation Estate, High Moor. 14.22.

Malcolm scrawled his name on the glass window of the bus shelter with a black permanent marker. His ribs still hurt from the "discipline" that his stepfather had administered the night before, and he winced at every movement. Not that he'd ever admit his pain to the others. They'd be on him like a pack of hyenas. He needed something to take the edge off. Numb him until he could creep back into the house after his bastard stepfather had gone to bed. He finished his drawing and turned to his friends. “Billy, you got any smoke?”

Billy held up a black lump, wrapped in cling film. “Yeah, nicked this off my brother. There’s about a quarter, and it’s really good gear. Proper squidgy black hash. My brother’s been tearing his room apart trying to find it.”

“Give us a look,” said Malcolm, and took the lump from Billy. He unwrapped the cellophane and sniffed the lump of cannabis. “This is good stuff,” he said and broke the piece in half, put one in his pocket and passed the other back to Billy. “Better than that shit you got last week, Simon.”

Simon looked offended. “That was good soap bar, that.”

“It was a lump of dried dog shit. Are you telling me that you actually smoked it?”

“It wasn’t dog shit. I paid three weeks pocket money for it from Geoff.”

“It was definitely dog shit. It smelled of shit and looked like shit. Geoff was laughing about it after, up the park. And you put it in your mouth?”

“Piss off, Mal. I didn’t smoke dog crap. I would have been able to tell.”

“How? You know what dog shit tastes like? You been round to Pikey Mikey's for tea or something?”

Simon opened his mouth to respond when a milk bottle filled with yellow liquid arced through the air and shattered against the back of the bus shelter. Glass and stale urine rained down on the boys. They looked up and saw Marie sitting across the road on her push-bike. She smiled at them sweetly, then gave them the finger and pedalled off down the road as fast as she could.

Malcolm stood with his mouth open for a second, unable to comprehend what had just happened. When he spoke, his voice cracked with rage. “That little bitch. Get her. GET HER.”

The four furious, urine-soaked boys jumped onto their bikes and took off in pursuit.

***

Marie was terrified. She couldn't believe she'd suggested this. The boys had argued with her, but she'd dug her heels in and eventually they'd agreed to her plan. She was regretting her stubbornness.

Malcolm and his friends were gaining on her. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw the four boys pedalling down the hill, shouting abuse. She needed to slow them down if she was to have any chance of getting to her destination.

The main road into town was at the bottom of the hill, and she would have to get across it to reach the school. If she stopped, even for a second, the boys would catch her.

Just like playing Frogger. I’m ace at it on the computer.

She tried not to think about what happened to the frog when she got it wrong and increased her speed, trying to spot a space between the cars.

Here goes nothing.

Marie hit the junction and weaved to the right, passing just behind an old brown car. She turned left and saw a motorbike heading straight for her. Adrenaline surged through her, and for a moment she froze, hands locked in place and the bike free-wheeling. Her speed carried her past the oncoming vehicle. She bounded over the kerb and turned left. A blaring of horns erupted from behind, and she grinned as she saw Malcolm being yelled at by an angry motorist. The four boys ignored the man and walked their bikes across the road. Marie pedalled away through the open school gates.

She dropped her bike at the front door to the building and tried the door. The top and bottom bolts had been undone. It was a simple matter to pull both doors so that they opened, despite the lock being applied. She could hear the yells from her pursuers and she ran off into the dark corridors.

***

“She’s gone in the school,” said Lawrence, as he passed the school gates and headed down the driveway.

Malcolm grinned. “Then we’ve got her. She can’t ride her bike over the field, and she can’t outrun us.”

“No, Mal, she’s gone inside the school. Through the front doors. Do you think there’s a teacher there or something?”

“Who cares? If we see a teacher, we’ll just wait outside for her. She’s not getting away with that.”

“What are we gonna do to her when we catch her?” said Simon.

“I don’t know yet, but it’ll make what we did to her brother look like nothing.”

The four boys dropped their bikes on the floor next to Marie’s and ran through the open doors into the dark, echoing corridors of the school.

***

John looked out from the bushes next to the school gates. “OK, they followed her. I still can’t believe we let her do this. Did you hear those cars on the main road?”

“It was her idea. Anyway, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. You go get her bike and lock the front doors again, I’ll phone the coppers.”

John nodded his agreement and both boys broke cover. John ran down the driveway. When he reached the doors, he loosened the bottom bolts and pushed them closed again. The bolts dropped into their holes and the door was again secure.

He then took a small plastic bag from his pocket and opened one end of it, gagging as the smell of the fresh dog turd hit him, and held the bag at arm’s length. He pushed the handlebars of Malcolm and his friend’s bikes into the bag, making sure that each grip was well and truly coated. He then wiped the remains of the bag on the seat of Malcolm’s BMX, picked up Marie’s bike, and made a hasty retreat from the scene.

***

Marie crouched in the cupboard, hardly daring to breathe. In her panic, she'd taken a wrong turn. A window was open in one of the other classrooms where John had broken in earlier. Marie was supposed to escape through that window and join John and Michael before the police arrived. The fear of what Malcolm Harrison would do to her paled in comparison to the fear of how her father would react if the police brought her home again.

She could hear the boys in the other classrooms, yelling and breaking things as they searched for her. Then the door to the classroom she was hiding in opened.

Marie heard Malcolm's voice. “Where the fuck has the little bitch gotten to?”

The air was filled with sounds of tables being overturned and paper displays being torn from the walls.

“This is taking forever. We’ll never find her at this rate,” said Simon.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Malcolm.

“What?”

Marie heard the distinctive metallic click of Malcolm's lighter.

“We’ll smoke the bitch out.”

***

John arrived back at the bushes with Marie’s bike. Michael was already waiting for him.

“You do it?” he said to Michael.

“Yeah, phoned the police and told them I'd just seen Malcolm Harrison and his mates break into the school. Where’s Marie?”

“Is she not back yet?

“No. You mean you didn’t see her?”

“Oh shit. Maybe they caught her. We gotta go see.”

“We can’t. The police will be here in a minute.”

“We can’t just leave her there. God knows what those psychos will do to her.”

John turned to look at the school, praying that Marie would come running around a corner. Instead, he saw black smoke coming from a classroom window.

“Oh fuck. Mike, go and phone 999 again. Tell them that there’s a fire at King’s Close School.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get Marie.”

***

Marie crouched inside the cupboard, not daring to move. She could still hear Malcolm’s gang running through the corridors. She could also hear the crackle of flames. Smoke seeped into the cupboard. She pulled her T-shirt up over her mouth and tried to open the door, but something was jammed against it. Panic rose in her chest. She threw herself against the door, over and over again. It opened a little more, then refused to budge another inch.