What You Left Behind (12 page)

F
REDDIE HID HIS
bike behind some bushes, sinking it into the bracken. He hoped he’d remember where he’d left it later, having decided to take the field entrance into the woods. It was farther on, but he preferred to clamber over the fence rather than enter from the road. He couldn’t risk being seen. Several cars had already gone past, and he’d seen one parked up in the rest area a hundred meters or so back. Probably a couple making out, he guessed, deciding not to look.

He skirted the perimeter of the wheat field, the tall, nearly ripe ears of corn whipping at his thighs. The woods cast a thick shadow, protecting him from the pale moonlight, which was conveniently dimming as clouds gathered. He took one look back to where he’d hidden his bike before leaping over the fence and disappearing into darkness. It was as if the trees had swallowed him up.

He was pretty sure of the route to the hut, having walked it many times with Ringo. He felt determined to get what he’d come for. He was doing this for Lana. They’d scraped together the fifty quid Lenny was demanding, knowing he’d spend it all on weed. But that was up to him. He’d taken the risk, after all. He must be scared, Freddie reckoned, wanting to meet all the way out here. The money Lenny wanted was safe in his back pocket and it suddenly seemed a small price to pay.

Freddie froze.

A twig had cracked. Somewhere behind him. He looked back the way he’d come but the field wasn’t visible anymore. The trees and
undergrowth were too thick. This place was more disorienting than he remembered, especially at night. He suddenly felt a chill.

“Len?” he called out, hating that his voice wavered.

No reply. No sounds now at all.

He crept forward a few more paces, his mouth dry and his head pounding from worry. “Stop being stupid,” he whispered to himself. He held on to the straps of the empty pack on his back.

Then the noise again. There was definitely someone there.

Freddie darted sideways and hid down behind a tree stump, listening to his own breathing rasping in and out of his tight throat. After a few more minutes of silence, when his watch showed five past midnight, he decided to press on toward the hut. He didn’t want to miss Lenny. It must have just been a fox. He still kept glancing over his shoulder, though, squinting back at the route he’d take if he had to run for it.

The hut was smaller than he remembered, dilapidated, the wooden door hanging off its hinges and half the roof missing. It was barely visible here in the thickest part of the woods. It was only a short distance from the railway line but hadn’t been used by railway workers in decades. He couldn’t see Lenny, although he supposed he could be inside, so he went closer to take a look. An owl hooted directly overhead, making him jump sideways. He stubbed his foot on a jutting rock and grunted in pain.

The owl hooted again.

Taking hold of the old door, Freddie creaked it open. “Lenny, mate. You here?” he whispered loudly into the hut. If anyone else had been in there, lads hanging out, smoking, drinking, they’d surely have answered by now.

But no one was there. Not even Lenny.

A sound.
Fuck!
Someone
was
there.

Freddie ran through the dry undergrowth and hurled himself down behind a bush, thirty feet or so away from the hut. He cursed
his loud panting. What the hell was Lenny thinking, meeting out here at this time of night? He could virtually taste his own heart, it was leaping so far up his throat.

“Oi, Freddie, is that you? I got what you wanted.”

The familiar sound of Lenny’s voice approaching caused Freddie almost to laugh out loud with relief. It had been him all along. Thank
God
. Slowly, he stood up from his hiding place and waited for him to catch up so he could do the deal and get the hell out of there. He’d had enough of this bloody wood for one night.

Lenny came into view. Freddie was about to reveal himself, maybe give him a bit of a fright in return by grabbing him, when a figure leaped out of nowhere onto Lenny’s back and pulled him to the ground.

It happened so quickly. Freddie heard angry grunts from Lenny as he fought off his attacker. A second later and Lenny was upright again, scrambling for balance, arms flailing, taking off in the direction where Freddie was hiding. He was fast. The other person chased after him, yelling out in a fearsome, unintelligible growl, as Lenny streaked past, his assailant only a few seconds behind.

Freddie didn’t know what to do. His fingers danced over the screen of his phone in his pocket, but he was too terrified to use it in case the other man heard the beeps or spotted the glow. Turning slightly, shaking, he watched as Lenny was tackled to the ground again. The other man was on top of him now, thumping him with all his strength. “Oyyy!” came Lenny’s agonized cry as his head smacked against the ground. Freddie could almost feel the vibrations as the man pounded him with his right fist, over and over again, sending Lenny’s skull thumping to the ground every time he tried to get up.

He had to do something! It was his fault they were here after all, his fault for telling Lenny to steal the computer.

Freddie crept forward, praying that Lenny’s attacker wouldn’t hear his advance. But then he saw the man grab a rock and smash
it down on Lenny’s face until it was bloody. Even in the dim moonlight he could see that Lenny had no chance of escape now, and if he went to help, he’d get beaten to a pulp too. The man was big and broad, would easily overpower him. Freddie couldn’t make out the features on his face, and he suddenly realized why—he was wearing a balaclava. Apart from black-and-white stripy cuffs poking out from the sleeves of his dark top, the man was shrouded in darkness. Unidentifiable.

Freddie wanted to throw up, and pressed his hand over his mouth to quash the gagging sounds, even though there was little chance of being heard over Lenny’s shrieks. The man just sat on him, pinning him down, thrashing the rock at him—on his head, neck, chest, everywhere. It wasn’t long before Lenny’s desperate attempts to free himself lessened, and his body went still.

There was nothing Freddie could do.

The man grunted and stood up, wiping his forearm across his balaclava, shaking out his shoulders. He then stamped around the area, making guttural noises with every step, scuffing the undergrowth with his foot. Seconds later, a beam of light shone out from waist height.

Shit. He’s got a flashlight
.

Slowly, quietly, Freddie made his way back to the bush and sank behind it. The man was coming his way. If he ran, he’d be caught, just like Lenny. If he stayed put, the flashlight would pick him out.

He wasn’t even aware of throwing the rock, making it smack against a tree trunk on the other side of the hut. The beam of light quickly swung round to where the noise had come from, then went down to Lenny, caught the twitch of his leg as he spasmed.

The man grunted again, satisfied, and resumed his search, this time closer to the hut.

After a few moments, when he’d found nothing, he beat his fist hard against the hut door, which fell from its hinges and dropped to the ground. Several night animals screeched in the distance.

And then another sound, causing Freddie’s heart to leap, his breath to stop. The noise from the phone was shrill and clear, piercing the darkness with an out-of-place jazz piano ringtone.

It wasn’t his. Shaking with relief, tears welling in his eyes, he watched the man silence the call before making his way back to Lenny and picking up the pack that had fallen at his side. He tipped the contents out, and swore gruffly again. He gathered up the items, shoved them back in the bag, then paused for a few moments, as if he was thinking.

Freddie couldn’t see what the man was doing as he was facing away from him, crouching down, hunched over, the flashlight beam shielded by his back. After a few more seconds he put something else in the bag and slung it onto his back. Then he hefted Lenny’s limp body over his shoulder. Stuff came out of Lenny’s mouth and Freddie could see that his arms were outstretched, as if he was reaching for help.

The man lumbered off in the direction of the railway embankment.

This was Freddie’s chance to escape. Slowly, his knees stiff from crouching, he stood up and took a couple of steps from behind the bush. He could just make out the diminishing light beam as it disappeared down the slope toward the tracks. It was now or never. He ran for it.

He stifled the shriek as pain seared through his ankle and up his leg. Before he knew it, he was flat on his face, dirt in his mouth.

Fuck!

His foot was caught in something—he’d gone down barely five strides from the bush. He turned, saw the white of a plastic bag handle trapped around his sneaker. Reaching to unhook it, he felt something weighty inside. He opened the bag. It was the laptop.

Scrambling upright, clutching the computer to his chest, he spotted a jumping, zigzagging light cutting through the trees at speed.
The man must have heard him fall. Freddie reckoned he only had about a five-second lead.

He started to run as fast as he could, but almost immediately his hoodie got tangled in thorns. He wriggled out of it in a flash and was soon leaping over stumps and fallen branches, smashing his way through the undergrowth, tearing back toward where he thought he’d left his bike. But he’d obviously got it wrong. As he turned round and round, trying to get his bearings, the flashlight struck him full on.

The man was just a shadow behind the beam, but he’d seen Freddie. Seen the look of horror on his face as he searched for his bike, then turned and fled for his life.

11

Lorraine didn’t have a clue what it was at first as Stella held out the item, pushing it toward her until she took it. The odd-shaped curve of tinted plastic was scratched and flecked with dried mud. At either side were holes, presumably where fixings had once been. They were both cracked.

“Thanks, love,” Lorraine muttered as Stella went outside.

Jo looked up from the pile of sandwiches she was cutting for their lunchtime picnic. “What on earth is it?”

“Gil said I had to give it to you,” Stella yelled back from the garden. “When I saw him in the village earlier.”

Jo squinted at the item. “Poor Gil. I feel sorry for him sometimes.”

Lorraine was about to ask why, but Stella came running back inside,
through to the hallway, returning a moment later. “He told me to give you this as well,” she said breathlessly. “It’s horrid but amazing.”

Lorraine unrolled the sheet of A4 paper. The lines didn’t resolve immediately, but when they did she wasn’t sure what to be more shocked by first, the sublime quality of the pencil drawing or its subject matter.

“Good grief,” she said.

“Ah, that must be one of Gil’s drawings,” Jo said, casting a quick glance. “He’s bloody talented. I keep telling Sonia they ought to take his work to a gallery or something. He could make a fortune in London.”

“Not with pictures like this he couldn’t.”

The drawing was obviously done by someone with an eye for detail and photographic accuracy, but with a very troubled mind. The face of the dead body was actually a rotting skull, flesh peeling away from shattered bone with medical detail, while the rest of him was bent around the metallic form of a crumpled motorbike. Lorraine supposed it was nighttime. There was something ethereal about the tones that suggested moonlight—a full moon, she guessed.

Lorraine had seen a lot worse in real life but still, the image made her feel sick. And concerned. She hoped Stella hadn’t studied it too closely. She wasn’t overly protective when it came to gore and grisly stuff in films, but somehow this was different. Being hand-drawn, it was more personal, more real.

“Take a look,” she said to her sister.

Jo wiped her hands on a tea towel and moved round next to Lorraine to get a better look at the drawing.

“Oh God,” she said as she took the paper and pulled it close.

“It’s nasty all right.”

Lorraine went back to the bit of plastic she’d placed on the pine table among the typical family detritus that had built up there—a pencil case, letters half out of envelopes, a stack of junk mail and
free newspapers. She turned the object over a couple of times, put it down again, and returned to where Jo was standing.

“Why would he draw something like this? And why give it to me?”

“What do you think it means?” Jo said, handing the picture back to Lorraine, instinctively washing her hands before touching the food.

“Autistic people sometimes have problems expressing themselves verbally. Given the subject matter—a dead man and a motorbike—it could be he’s still very upset about losing his friend.”

Jo was nodding, taking bottles of chilled water from the fridge and loading them into an ice box. “That sounds plausible.”

“Should we mention it to Sonia? Perhaps call in on the way to the castle.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Jo replied. “I know it might look as though Gil is upset, but he and Dean weren’t exactly best mates. Gil would have just latched onto him.”