That Summer He Died (25 page)

Just admit to the runner. Don’t explain why. Just tell them you freaked. Deny the drugs. Deny the drugs no matter what.

But what if they gave him a blood test? Could they do that? Would they? What should he say then? That someone must have spiked him? Not up there at the caravan, but earlier in some pub in the town?

No way would Murphy believe it, but it might still work. So long as James wasn’t done for possession, he knew, then all of this might still work out fine.

He had about fifteen yards to cover now before he’d reach the police car. Murphy was nowhere to be seen. With Alan? Probably. Already speaking to him, telling him what had happened, listing his suspicions, detailing the exact nature of the grief his nephew had just brought crashing down on him. And Alan’s response? That was less simple to predict. What his uncle’s reaction was going to be was anyone’s guess.

James stopped where he was. The uniformed policeman was smoking a cigarette, gazing at the ground. James was close enough to see the acne scars on his face. A couple more paces and he’d be able to reach out and tap him on the shoulder. Instead, though, he waited, something holding him back. What was he meant to do now, just walk on up and hold out his wrists? Or wait here till the policeman noticed him and collared him in whatever way he saw fit?

He glanced around the rest of the yard. Something wasn’t right. Then he realised what: Alan’s Land Rover was missing. The funeral. Of course. James looked at his watch. But it would have finished by now. So where was his uncle? At the Moonraker with the others? Maybe. Or still in the churchyard, unable to force himself into motion? Paralysed by grief? Or worse – regret swept through James then – sickened by his nephew’s delinquent behaviour in driving past St Donal’s like that, publicly not giving a damn for the dead.

‘Don’t fucking move!’

The policeman was staring at him. His expression had turned into a snarl.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ James said.

‘You’re right there.’ The policeman flicked his fag away, stepped forward and grabbed James by the arm. ‘You little shit,’ he said. ‘Give me the f-ing runaround, would you? Make me look like a right twat?’

He hauled James off towards the waiting squad car.

‘Take it easy, all right?’ he said. But James’s voice sounded weak, ineffectual. He wasn’t calling the shots here and he knew it.

The policeman jerked the door open and shoved him inside the car. ‘If I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut. You’re in enough shit as it is.’

‘What for?’ he asked. ‘What have I—’

But the cop wasn’t listening. He slammed the door and jogged up to the house. He reappeared with his superior a few seconds later. Murphy closed the front door behind him and fiddled busily with the lock.

Nausea hit James then, leaving him punch-drunk, reeling. Where was his uncle? What was Murphy doing in the house with Alan absent? Jesus, he didn’t want this encounter without his uncle here. Not after what Alex had told him Murphy was capable of.

James tried the police car door, but it wouldn’t open. A bloody smudge of dead fly impacted on the windscreen left Murphy’s face momentarily bathed in red as he marched towards the car with the constable in step behind him, like a dog at heel.

The cops got in the front, a fact for which James felt absurdly grateful. He’d assumed they were about to drag him out on his arse.

‘Make a habit of walking into the lion’s den, do you, you dozy bastard?’ Murphy said, fat neck struggling to escape from his collar as he twisted round in the passenger seat.

The other policeman sat in the driver’s seat and stared straight ahead.

‘That was a question,’ Murphy said. ‘So give me a fucking answer: tell me where the drugs are.’

Deny everything.

‘I don’t know.’ James tried to keep his voice steady. ‘I don’t do drugs.’

Murphy shot out an arm, gripped James’s throat and wrenched him forward.

‘You playing games with me?’ Spit flew from his mouth, landing on James’s face. His yellow teeth zoomed in closer. ‘That what your mate told you to do? Fuck me around?’

James’s bowels began to churn. ‘Please don’t. I swear to God, I haven’t got—’

‘Don’t talk to me about God, you piece of slime! You don’t give a fuck about God any more than I do. I saw you driving past St Donal’s.’ The policeman started to shake him violently. ‘That’s why I came for you. Thought that was funny, eh? Bit of a fucking laugh?’

‘No. No. I didn’t. I—’

Murphy threw him back against the seat. ‘I’m going to ask you again and this time you’re going to tell me. You’re going to tell me because you’re not stupid. You’re going to tell me exactly where they are because your little bitch friends told me that Howley gave them to you before you ran off. And you’re going to tell me because, if you don’t, I’m going bury you.’

Tears formed in James’s eyes. He put his arm across his face in a futile attempt to conceal them. But he could not conceal his shame.

‘You’ve got to believe me. . .’

Murphy tore James’s arm away and twisted his wrist down hard. James cried out in pain.

‘You don’t owe Howley shit,’ Murphy said. ‘That why you’re shutting me out? You think he gives a fuck about you? Think he’d give a flying fuck if I’d caught you with the gear?’

‘I don’t know.’ James was begging now. All he wanted was for all this to go away. He wished he’d never set eyes on Alex. Jesus, if only he could turn back time, make things different. ‘Please stop.’

‘You’re pathetic,’ Murphy spat. ‘Look at you. Least your mate Howley’s got balls. Not you, though, eh? Sitting there blubbing like a queer.’ Murphy paused, sniffed. ‘Probably runs in the family.’ He let go of James’s arm.

James stared at him, confused: ‘What?’

Murphy grinned and wiped his hand across his hooked nose, leaving it quivering for a second or two. ‘I’ve been in there, haven’t I? Pest-hole. Wouldn’t keep a pig in there. Scum. That’s you, boy. And your uncle. Should be put down like dogs. Put out of your misery.’

The grin vanished. He punched James hard in the temple. James’s neck snapped back but, before he could speak, Murphy had hold of him again.

‘Now tell me where you’ve put the stuff,’ he said.

James’s guts felt as if they were melting now. He looked to the other cop. He couldn’t just sit there surely while Murphy did this. But the other cop said nothing. He didn’t even turn round.

‘Well?’ Murphy roared.

James opened his mouth to speak, then clamped it tight shut again.

Deny everything. Deny everything, and everything will be OK.

‘I told you,’ he spluttered, no longer even trying to hide his tears, letting them run freely down his face. ‘I don’t know anything. . .’

Murphy released him. Rapid movement in the front of the car, the passenger door opening, slamming shut. James looked out of the window and recoiled across the seat. Murphy reached inside and snatched him out.

He felt himself free-falling, plummeting as if from an aircraft towards a concrete sea. He hit the gritty ground hard. Murphy kicked him in the gut. Once, twice, then hard in the back of the head.

This can’t be happening, he thought.

James tried rolling away, but already Murphy was dropping down on him. He knelt down hard on James’s spine.

‘You shouldn’t have crossed me,’ he said, panting, his mouth pressed up close to James’s ear. ‘Because now you’re gonna find out what happens. . . now you’re gonna––’

The slamming of a car door.

James gasped for breath.

‘Someone coming,’ the other cop said.

Murphy pressed down on James’s face with the flat of his palm and used him to push up off, grinding James’s cheek into the grit as he did.

‘This isn’t the end of it,’ he warned. ‘You remember that next time you see Howley. You take a good look at the bruises on his face too, and you remember me.’

An engine’s growl. Tyre treads biting into the dirt. Another car door slammed as someone got out.

‘What do you want?’

‘Brought you something.’

‘What?’

Alan, James realised. It was Alan who’d just driven up.

‘Over there on the ground.’

James tried to push himself up, but he was hurting too much and he could still hardly breathe. He saw Alan come round the side of Murphy’s car and look down at him.

‘Found him drunk, didn’t I?’ Murphy said, leering. ‘Drunk and high as a bleedin’ kite, I reckon, judging by the look of his eyes.’

‘He’s bleeding,’ Alan said. ‘Where was he when you found him?’

‘Up at one of the caravan parks.’ Murphy flashed James a warning glare. ‘Getting wasted with some of the local scum. Next time I catch him, I’ll lock him up. You hear that, son? Consider yourself bloody warned.’

Alan said nothing. He just stared down at James in disgust.

Murphy got back in the car with the other cop. The engine started and the wheels crunched across the yard. Alan watched the car all the way down the drive, until it turned into the lane and was gone.

‘Proud of yourself, are you?’ he said then, staring back down at James. ‘Driving past the funeral like that. Making a cunt of yourself. . . like now.’

James didn’t reply.

‘You make me sick,’ his uncle said.

James’s voice came back weakly: ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear.’

Alan turned his back and walked towards house.

James managed to sit up. He spat blood on to the ground.

Murphy.

Animal.

Pig.

Filth.

James thought of Alex. Thought of his face being bruised as well. He was better than Murphy, better than Alan too. Alex would still be there for him. Alex was James’s friend.

He hauled himself up and walked down the drive. And when he found the bag, he smiled.

Screw you, Murphy, he thought. You’ve still got nothing on me.

*

James watched a house martin dart across the blue sky and duck out of sight beneath the guttering of Alan’s house.

With an effort of will, he could make the day of the funeral lie dormant in his mind, blot it out. He didn’t want it coming back to haunt him. He could pretend he was over it. He was over it, right?

Yes, he told himself. Things had changed after that day. Or rather, he’d changed. And the catalyst for the metamorphosis? Alex. It all came down to Alex. He was sure of that. Where Alan drove him away that night, the next morning, when James had returned Alex’s bag to him, Alex had accepted him. Where Alan had offered nothing but deathly rejection, Alex had launched him into new life.

James stretched and tilted back in his chair, enjoying the sensation of sun on his face. Then commitment clawed its way into his conscience. He looked at his wrist instinctively, before remembering that he’d lost his watch somewhere on the beach the week before.

Already the white strip of skin it had sheltered from the sun had turned the colour of copper. He closed his notebook and got to his feet. The temptation to go inside and pick up the phone would have been irresistible, if it weren’t for the fact that Alan’s phone had been disconnected the week before and James’s own had run out of credit. He’d found the final demand for the house phone screwed up on the floor next to the bin in the kitchen.

Just as well. It was going to be a bigger kick making the calls together. Him, Alex and Dan. He could see it now. The three of them, squatting at their usual table in the Moonraker and ringing their schools, finding out if their A-level results had cut them free or caged them in. Dan already knew, of course. He had no expectations. But as for James and Alex, well, that was all still up in the air.

But one way or another, James knew, his whole future was about to change.

*

James sat slouched in the cool stone alcove of the Moonraker pub and waited for Alex and Dan to arrive.

He felt the sweat on his brow, generated by the walk here from Alan’s house, finally beginning to cool. He wiped the condensation off the full pint of lager on the table before him and transferred it to his face.

He was already high, had chugged down a spliff in the pub car park before coming in. It wasn’t the first time either that he’d ended up this banjaxed so early in the day. He’d been getting wasted a lot lately, sometimes even losing whole nights, smoking dope through till dawn with Alex, Dan and assorted groupies, over on the rocks on South Beach after some party or other, all of them watching pie-eyed as the embers of the fire faded into grey in the gathering dawn light.

He swigged at his pint, lubricating his throat. Truth was, his lungs ached. He wondered if maybe he should be giving all this a rest. He never used to carry when he was in London, had always kept his stash back at the flat. But now he always had a pinch of grass, Rizlas, and a pill or two on him, maybe even a wrap. Not just because he liked them there in case he needed them. More because, since he’d got to know Alex, there was just so much of it about.

He looked down at the tanned skin of his forearms, and that of his knees where they protruded from his long surf shorts. The brush of hairs, customarily brown, now lay blond, bleached by the sun, fine and wispy as dandelion down.

He studied his reflection in a mirror on the wall. His fringe, uncut and uncombed since the day of Jack Dawes’s funeral, now hung down, tucked behind his ears, streaked like straw where he’d repeatedly applied lemon juice, while baking his body on the beach, day in, day out. He looked good, like he’d been born to this, like he belonged.

He glanced across at the clock above the bar. The others were late. Hardly surprising, really. They’d had some business to deal with this morning, a few loose ends to tie up before the big party tonight.

Logistics. The generator that would power the sounds and lights up at Eagle’s Point had been playing up the day before. Alex had had to drive over and pick up a mechanic today to sort the problem out.

Then there was the Council with all their by-laws and safety regulations to satisfy (shouldn’t be a problem, Alex reckoned, since he’d done everything legally for once in his life). And Dan was on another mission: charging round the nearby villages and towns with a bunch of mates, slapping up flyers on every available wall, informing the world that, for tonight at least, Grancombe was the centre of the whole fucking world.