That Summer He Died (21 page)

‘Drop him’ Dan shouted at James. ‘Don’t let him—’

Instinct tensed James’s body, sprung it like a snare. He was back on the sports field at school. Focused. Just you and him. Last line of defence. Take him out. Bring him down. He found himself moving across for the interception. The thin man kept coming. Going to try and run through. James side-stepped, then switched back as the man drew level with him. He piled into the other man’s gut, knocked him sideways and dumped him flat on his back on the sand.

‘Cunt,’ the thin man cursed, already on his feet. He checked over his shoulder, hand sliding into his back pocket.

James didn’t see the blade until it swiped across him, slicing through his shirt. Warmth spread across his chest. Then pain. Then heat. He stared into the thin man’s eyes, couldn’t believe what was happening. He felt himself staggering back. He pressed his hand against the wound, felt his shirt slide across his skin. The thin man was grinning now, maniacal, coming on again. His arm swung back. The knife blade trapped the moonlight.

Which was when Dan hit him.

James watched helplessly, clutching at his wound, as they crashed to the ground and rolled across the sand. Alex threw himself on to the others with a roar and joined them, twisting across the sand, a flurry of motion, too fast to track.

A scream. James staggered forwards. He could hear himself whimpering. He was starting to cry. He wanted his mother. He wanted his parents back. Someone had to take him to hospital. Fuck, his stomach burned. Was this what it felt like? Was he dying? Why the fuck was no one here to help?

Another scream, strangulated his time. A snarl. Dan reared up. Another blur of motion. The thin man. . . Dan was on top of him, pinning him there. A hiss of motion. The thin man struggled and threw a punch.

Again James saw the blade flash. Only this time it was Alex holding it, his face blue and smooth as china in the moonlight. His arm snapped up and down.

Again.

Like a piston.

And again. And again.

There was a gargling noise, like a bath being emptied. It got weaker and weaker, running dry.

And then it stopped.

‘What the fuck have you done?’ Dan groaned. ‘What the fuck have you done?’

Alex said nothing. He slumped back in the sand. James just stared. He’d stopped crying. He couldn’t even feel his chest any more. He couldn’t feel.

‘Check his pulse.’ Dan was frantically rolling the thin man over, pulling Alex’s hand towards his throat. ‘Check his fucking pulse. He can’t be. Fucking tell me he’s not. . . Fucking check!’

James stumbled towards them. ‘Wha—’

Dan stared up at him, jerked his hands off the thin man like he was on fire. His fingers clawed at James’s jeans.

‘What the fuck has he done?’ He spun round on Alex then, seized him by the shoulders and shook him. ‘What the fuck have you done?’

Alex twisted, throwing him off. He knelt beside the thin man, panting, and stared down at him.

The knife handle was sticking up vertically from the skinny motionless chest. Alex gripped it and pulled. The blade made a squelching sound as the flesh gave it up.

‘You saw!’ Dan was shouting at James. ‘It wasn’t our fault. He was gonna kill you. You saw it! You’re our fucking witness. It was an accident. It was self-defence. He was gonna kill us. Alex had to stop him. He had to fucking stop him.’

But Alex hadn’t just stopped him, he’d stabbed him. And he hadn’t just stabbed him, he’d stabbed him until he was dead.

‘Shut it,’ Alex said. His voice was steady, but to James it sounded distant, like it was coming from another room.

Dan started to say something, but Alex cut him off: ‘I said, shut it. Do you really think anyone’s going to believe us? No one’s gonna give a shit about why we did it, only that we did.’

James took a step back. Another. But when Alex turned to him, he froze.

‘Stay there.’ Alex got to his feet and walked up to him, reached out and told him, ‘Move your hands. Let me see.’

James’s arms fell limply to his sides.

Alex started unbuttoning the slashed shirt. When he’d finished he pulled it open and examined James’s chest. ‘You’re OK,’ he said. ‘It’s not deep. Just surface. You don’t need a doctor or anything. You’ll be fine.’

James was numb. He felt nothing.

‘I’m scared, Alex,’ Dan was mumbling. ‘This is real. This is too fucking real. He’s dead. He’s fucking dead. What the fuck are we going to do?’

‘Just shut up and let me think,’ Alex said.

‘But—’

‘Forget but,’ Alex snapped. ‘He ripped us off! He got what was coming to him. His knife. Not ours.’ He glared at the still body. ‘He did it to himself,’ he persisted, before sitting down on the sand with his back to them. ‘He stabbed James and then he tried to stab me.’

The hiss of the waves boomed in James’s ears.

‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘Murphy. . . I’m going.’

‘You’re going nowhere,’ Alex said.

James wrapped his arms round himself again. He was starting to shake. He backed away.

‘I don’t want anything to do with this. I didn’t touch him.’

‘Didn’t touch him?’ Alex mocked. ‘You knocked him flat on his frigging back. If you hadn’t knocked him down, he’d never have pulled the knife.’

‘I’m no killer.’

‘No?’ Alex hissed, gripping James’s hair with blood-sodden hands. ‘How about now? How do you think it’ll look?’

‘Get off!’

James jerked back, but Alex wouldn’t let go. The two of them twisted and fell together on to the sand. James tried to roll away, but Alex was already on top of him. He wiped his bloody hands across James’s shirt, across his skin. His eyes glinted darkly in the moonlight.

‘What are you now?’ he said.

James threw him then, right off him, on to the sand. He got up, rubbing at his hair and his skin, trying to wipe the evidence away. But all he was doing was making it worse. He was mixing the dead man’s blood with his own.

Laughter.

James spun round to see that Alex was rising to his feet, laughing. He stabbed a finger at James.

‘You’re whatever I fucking want you to be,’ he said. ‘You’re blooded, the same as us. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life behind bars, you’re gonna do what I say and you’re going to keep your mouth shut.’

Blood. That was all James could feel. The dead man’s blood was burning his skin and his hair. The hiss of the waves reached him again. He should go into them. He should go and wash. He should tear off his clothes and wash himself clean.

‘If you try and leave here,’ Alex said, ‘me and Dan. . . we’ll both say it was you.’

He didn’t blink. He waited for James to argue. Then he knew that he would not.

He turned his back on James.

‘Dan,’ he said, ‘pick that shithead up.’

Dan was still panting. But he nodded. He didn’t say no. He didn’t run away.

James didn’t run either. Not as Dan heaved the dead man up on his shoulders and not as Alex got down on to his hands and knees and clawed the bloodied sand over, ploughing it down into the beach.

‘Both of you, follow me,’ he said eventually.

James’s head was pounding. He was trying to see a way out, but all he felt was darkness closing in. Next thing he knew, his feet were moving. He was following Alex and Dan back across the beach to the campfire. Was it really so simple? Could it really come down to just that, Alex’s word against his? Or should he turn tail now? Forget what Alex had just said? Should he run for the cops and take his chances? Tell the truth and pray that that would be enough?

‘None of us needs to be caught for this,’ Alex said.

The numbness in James’s chest spread throughout his body, further and further with each step he took. A wave boomed in a nearby cave. His heartbeat raced. He watched in silence as Dan dumped the thin man’s body on the sand near the fire. How could he even bear to look? This wasn’t a fucking film or some PS game. This was all happening. So why wasn’t he panicking? Why was he still not running away?

‘What we gonna do?’ Dan mumbled.

A crackle of paper. James saw Dan’s fingers moving in the firelight, unfastening the origami of a coke wrap. He took a pinch of the white powder like snuff. Then another. He licked his finger greedily and dabbed up all that was left and rubbed it fast into his gums.

‘What the hell are we gonna do?’ he said.

‘You’re gonna do as you’re told.’

Alex knelt down and started rummaging through the thin man’s pockets. Any shock James might once have felt was absent. He remembered the woods when they’d found Dawes. He remembered Alex touching him. Why would this be any different? Why would death scare him now?

‘I’m gonna sort this, so that no one knows shit,’ Alex said. ‘So that all of us here, we can just forget.’

Yes. . . James understood that. He wanted that more than anything else. He someone, anyone – even Alex – to wipe all of this away and bury it deep. No different from the blood Alex had sowed back into the sand.

Alex’s hand pulled free, grasping a thick wadge of cash and a sealed parcel.

‘Thieving fuck,’ he muttered, stuffing both into his own pockets.

He reached across to the stack of chopped branches next to the fire and picked up. . . an axe. James hadn’t noticed it until now. The others must have brought it here for hacking up driftwood for the fire. Had the thin man helped? Had he made the fire this big to begin with?

‘You,’ Alex told James, setting off towards the steps, ‘help Dan pick that wanker up.’

‘What?’

‘You heard. Now move it. We’re taking him up.’

‘Up where

‘There.’ He used the axe head to point up the cliff. ‘The top.’

Alex didn’t wait for James to reply. He set off ahead of him, swinging the axe. What was he planning? To build another fire? To burn this guy? He had to be kidding, right? James didn’t know much about police work, but he’d watched easily enough TV to know that the cops wouldn’t be fooled for long by a ruse like that. Shouldn’t they be thinking of burying the body instead? Or driving it away and ditching it somewhere?

James shivered. What the fuck was he thinking? Since when did he become someone who decided how to dispose of a body?

‘You heard him, fucking help,’ Dan said. He had the dead guy under the armpits. ‘Take his legs. We’ll carry him together. Come on, let’s get this done with. Bloody move!’

*

Alex was waiting for them at the top of the steps. He watched in silence as James and Dan let the corpse fall to the turf and stood there, panting.

When James next looked up, Alex was gone. Where the hell was he? A scenario rapidly unfurled in James’s mind. Had Alex suddenly bottled it? Was he even now running for his car, or for home, to wash himself, scrub himself clean, and pin the blame on Dan and James?

But then came a snapping of twigs, and Alex stepped out of the scrub and into the clearing where Dan and James were still catching their breath. He was carrying a flat boulder. When he dropped it, it landed on the turf beside the corpse with a dull thud

Alex knelt down and picked up the axe.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Dan said.

‘Question,’ he said, looking from James to Dan. ‘What’s the best way to get away with something?’ Neither of them spoke, just stared at the axe. ‘Answer: put yourself out of the picture by pinning the blame on someone else.’

‘I don’t. . .’ Dan started.

Alex ignored him. ‘Jack Dawes,’ he said, pulling at the thin man’s arm, positioning the wrist on the boulder. ‘Cut up in the woods.’ He raised the axe above his head with both hands. ‘While we were away on holiday. While James was in a different town.’

Alex raised the axe.

‘He died of multiple wounds,’ he said, then brought the axe sweeping down.

A butcher’s noise. James couldn’t look away.

Alex brought the axe down again. The stone sparked. The moonlight showed blood on the rock as the hand slipped from the wrist and slid on to the grass.

Alex put the axe down. He lifted the severed hand.

‘Dawes’s hands were both cut off,’ he said. ‘Weren’t ever seen again.’

He dropped the severed hand back down on the grass and dragged the blood-stained boulder round to the other side of the thin man’s body. He reached for the axe and raised it again.

‘Only a psycho could do something like that. Not a kid. Not a kid like me or you.’

The axe came flashing down.

James couldn’t move his head.

Again the axe rang out.

James couldn’t even blink.

‘It could be anyone who’d done that first murder. Anyone at all. But not us.’

James couldn’t open his mouth.

‘Makes you wonder what you’ve got to do to get a “thank you” from some people.’

‘What about Ken?’ Dan said, his eyes flicking to the thin man and back again. ‘He must’ve told someone he was coming to meet us, must’ve told someone how much we were buying off him.’

‘So what if he did? If they talk – which they won’t – we just say he never showed. No one’s seen us since he met us by the fire. No one’s gonna know any different.’

James couldn’t swallow.

Alex leant forward, then straightened up. ‘We’ve got some clearing up to do,’ he said, walking over to James. ‘You know, axes to hide, sand to kick over on the beach in case the tide doesn’t come in on time, campfires to put out . . . That sort of thing. But I’ll tell you what. Just in case you’re thinking of doing anything stupid. . .’ He yanked James’s hand forward and slapped something soft into his palm. ‘Shake on it, buddy. And when you’ve done that, bury it. And then. . . just keep the fuck out of my way and forget you ever saw this.’

*

But James never did forget the touch of the dead man’s hand in his. He never forgot the walk back through the woods to Alan’s house. He never forgot stripping off his blood-stained clothes and burying the bin liner in the undergrowth behind the house. And he never forgot standing on the platform the following morning, waiting for the dawn train to arrive, watching the sun stain the sky like an open wound.

He tried to forget, but he could not.

James looked down at his hands. They were red. The blood was back, like he’d never washed it away. Then he understood. The rain: it was chucking it down. Mud, not blood. He lifted himself up from the ground and looked at Alan’s house, remembering where he was, remembering Alex and the men in the barn. James’s fingers gripped the wet material of his filthy clothes and wrung water from them. How long had he been sitting here?