Black Rabbit Summer (37 page)

And I was already stepping back, starting to turn round, getting ready to run…

When someone grabbed me from behind.

∗

I couldn’t see who it was at first, all I could feel were two strong hands on my shoulders, holding me firmly in place, and the imposing presence of someone behind me. I squirmed and struggled for a moment, trying to break free, trying to see who it was, and then I heard Tom Noyce’s deep voice.

‘It’s all right,’ he said quietly. ‘Just stay where you are.’

I twisted round and gazed up at him.

‘OK?’ he asked me.

‘Yeah…’

He took his hands off my shoulders and looked slowly at Campbell. I looked at him too. He’d stopped about three metres away from us and was staring over my shoulder at Tom.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ he said.

‘Tom Noyce.’

‘Yeah? Well, listen to me, Tom fucking Noyce –’

‘Get back in the car,’ Tom said calmly.

‘
What?
’

‘Get in the car and go home.’

Campbell glared at him. ‘And what are
you
going to do if I don’t?’

Tom didn’t say anything, he just sighed quietly and started moving towards Campbell. Campbell hesitated for a moment, nervously blinking his eyes, then he held up his knife and waved it at Tom.

‘I’ll cut you,’ he warned him, backing away. ‘You come any closer, I’ll fucking cut you… don’t think I won’t…’

Tom just carried on walking, his eyes fixed silently on Campbell, and I could see that Campbell was beginning to realize that Tom Noyce wasn’t just big – far too big for the suddenly very small knife in Campbell’s hand – but he was fearless too. Tom Noyce didn’t care what happened to him. And Campbell wasn’t prepared to face that.

‘Yeah, all right,’ he said to Tom, backing away to the car. ‘Look, I’m going, for Christ’s sake… OK? I’m going.’

Tom stopped, watching him as he opened the car door.

Campbell looked at me. ‘I’ll see
you
later, Boland.’ He glanced at Tom, then turned back to me and grinned. ‘And you won’t have your pet Yeti to look after you next time. I’ll make sure of that.’

As Tom took another step towards him, Campbell laughed and quickly got in the car. The engine was still running, the exhaust fumes misting in the still night air, and even before the door slammed shut, Campbell had put the car into gear and hit the accelerator. The tyres spun for a moment, squealing loudly, and then the hatchback screeched away from the kerb, swung round to the right, and sped off down Recreation Road.

I watched it until it was out of sight, then I turned to Tom Noyce. He was still just standing there, staring down the road.

‘Thanks,’ I said to him.

He turned to me and nodded. ‘No problem.’

‘That was Wes Campbell,’ I explained. ‘He’s one of the guys your mother was telling me about.’

‘I know – I saw him earlier at the park. He was following you.’

‘Following me?’

Tom nodded. ‘He was parked across the road when you were in the trailer. He drove off after you left.’

‘So you followed me?’

He shrugged. ‘I thought you might need some help.’

I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I
wanted
to ask him why – why had he bothered to help me when he hardly even knew me? – but it seemed such a shitty thing to say. So I just smiled at him and thanked him again. And he just nodded his dreadlocked head at me and told me it was no problem again.

And it felt OK.

‘Well, anyway,’ I said, ‘I’d better be getting home now.’

‘Do your parents know you’re out?’ Tom asked.

‘No.’

‘Have you got far to go?’

‘Hythe Street.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘It’s all right,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be OK.’

‘Fair enough,’ Tom shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Campbell’s waiting for you somewhere.’

I thought about that for a moment, imagining Campbell sitting in his car in a side street somewhere, waiting for me to walk past, waiting for his chance to get me on my own…

And then I thought about Tom, and I couldn’t help wondering about his motives again. Why was he helping me? Why was he looking out for me? Why should I trust him? I mean, Stella’s blood was found on his caravan, wasn’t it? And his caravan had been parked down by the river. And now here he was, offering to walk me back home, back to my house in Hythe Street… just a few hundred metres from the river. And just because he’d
told
me that he’d followed me from the trailer because he’d seen Campbell following me and he’d thought I might need some help… well, I only had his word for that, didn’t I? Maybe he’d followed me for his own reasons, and maybe he’d saved me from Campbell for his own reasons too?

I looked at him, smiling nervously, and as he looked back at me with those cold blue eyes, I found myself re-imagining his capabilities…

I didn’t know who Tom Noyce was.

I had no
idea
who he was.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked me. ‘You don’t look so good. Do you want me to –?’

‘Has your mother ever worked with Bretton’s Funfairs?’ I heard myself ask him.

‘What?’

‘Or Funderstorm?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what –’

He stopped abruptly as the piercing wail of a police siren suddenly blipped on and off behind him, and as he spun round to see where it was coming from, I saw the flashing blue lights of a police patrol car accelerating up the street towards us. The headlights flashed, the siren blipped again… and then the patrol car was pulling up at the side of the road, the doors were opening, and two uniformed officers were getting out and moving purposefully towards us.

‘Shit,’ sighed Tom. ‘Here we go again.’

Mum and Dad were waiting for me at the police station. They were both in the reception area when one of the officers took me in, sitting with DI Barry on a red metal bench, and they both looked pale and exhausted. As soon as Mum saw me, she jumped up from the bench and hurried over to me.

‘Pete!’ she cried, pushing the officer out of the way and flinging her arms round me. ‘Christ… I was so
worried.
We didn’t know where you’d gone. We’ve been looking
everywhere
for you.’ She stopped hugging me for a moment and held me at arm’s-length, looking intently into my eyes. ‘Are you all right? Has anything happened to you? You’re not –?’

‘I’m all right, Mum,’ I told her. ‘I’m fine –’

‘Where the hell have you
been
?’ she said, letting herself get
slightly angry now. It was the kind of relieved anger that parents allow themselves when everything has turned out OK in the end, but they know that it might
not
have turned out OK.

I could see Dad and DI Barry coming over to us now. Dad looked surprisingly calm, but I knew that didn’t mean anything. He always looked pretty calm when things were really bad.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I said. ‘I didn’t
know
you were looking for me, I thought you were asleep –’

‘Have you been with
him
?’ she asked me, shooting a look at Tom Noyce as the other officer led him past us towards the security doors.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Boland,’ DI Barry said as he came up and stopped beside us. ‘We need to ask your son a few questions.’

Mum ignored him, keeping her eyes fixed on me. ‘What’s going on, Pete?’ she said. ‘What have you been doing all night?’

‘Nothing. I was just –’

‘Please, Mrs Boland,’ Barry said. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot tonight, and I know you want to be with Peter right now, but we really need to ask him some questions first.’

‘You’re not questioning him without me,’ Mum said firmly.

‘Of course not.’ Barry looked at Dad. ‘I need to talk to him, Jeff. The sooner the better.’

Dad nodded and turned to me. ‘Are you all right, Pete?’ he said quietly.

‘Yeah…’

‘Are you up to answering questions?’

I shrugged. ‘I suppose…’

‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but you’re going to have to do it at some point. You might as well get it over with now.’

I looked at him. ‘Can you come with me?’

Dad glanced at DI Barry.

Barry shook his head. ‘Sorry, Jeff.’

Dad turned back to me. ‘Mum’ll be with you. Is that OK?’

I looked at Mum.

She smiled at me. ‘You’ll have to make do with second-best again.’

‘I didn’t mean that –’

‘I know. I was only joking.’

‘I just meant –’

‘It’s all right, Pete,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I know what you meant.’

‘Sorry…’

Dad put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Let’s just get this done, OK? The sooner it’s over, the sooner we can all go home.’

I looked at him. ‘I didn’t mean to cause any trouble, Dad. I was just trying to –’

‘Later, Pete,’ he said, giving me a look. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

It was the same interview room as before, and I was sitting there, just like before, with Mum sitting next to me and Barry sitting opposite, and the red light of a tape recorder blinking away in the corner, and a stack of video equipment piled on a table against the wall. The only difference this time was that DC Gallagher’s place at the table had been taken by John Kesey, which Mum didn’t like one bit. And she didn’t try to hide it either.

Kesey had stood up and smiled at her when we’d first come in. ‘Hello, Anne,’ he’d said, offering his hand. ‘It’s good to know that Pete’s safe and sound –’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ignoring his hand and sitting down. ‘Can we just get on with it, please? It’s late. Everyone’s tired.’ She glared
at DI Barry. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes and then we’re leaving. So you’d better start asking your questions.’

DI Barry did as he was told.

‘Where did you go tonight, Peter?’

‘I went to see Lottie Noyce.’

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to talk to her.’

‘About what?’

‘Raymond, Stella… anything she might know.’

‘Did she tell you anything?’

‘Not really.’

‘Not really?’

‘She didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know.’

‘Like what?’

I told him some of the stuff we’d talked about – how she’d guessed things about Raymond, how she’d thought he was troubled, how she’d understood why I was worried about him.

‘She told me she’d seen him following Nicole back to Luke Kemp’s trailer,’ I said. ‘She thought he was worried about her.’

‘Raymond was worried about Nicole?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he cared about her. Because she was drunk, and she didn’t know what she was doing… and Raymond probably didn’t like the look of Luke Kemp.’ I looked at Barry. ‘Did you know he’s suspected of drugging girls?’

Barry nodded. ‘We’re looking into it. Was Tom Noyce at Lottie’s trailer tonight?’

I looked at John Kesey. He was taking notes. ‘Have you
looked into
all these fairground disappearances yet?’ I asked him.

Kesey smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. ‘We’re looking into everything, Pete.’

DI Barry said, ‘Please answer my question, Peter. Was Tom Noyce at the trailer tonight?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Have you ever met him before?’

‘I saw him once, that’s all. I told you before, I saw him on Saturday night –’

‘So you’ve never met him before?’

‘No.’

‘Did you talk to him tonight?’

‘What about?’

‘Anything.’

‘Not at the trailer… well, he saw me outside and asked me what I was doing there, but after that, when I was talking with Lottie, he never said anything.’

‘So how did you end up in Recreation Road together?’

‘He said he was worried about me… he’d seen some kids from the Greenwell Estate hanging around when I left, and he thought they might be following me or something. They were in a car.’

‘Why would they be following you?’

I shrugged. ‘I was on my own, it was late…’

‘And why would Tom Noyce be worried about you?’

‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.’

‘We will.’ Barry smiled briefly. ‘So he followed you home, is that right?’

‘I didn’t know he was there until some guy pulled up in a car and started hassling me.’

‘Where was this?’

‘In Recreation Road, by the old factory. This guy just pulled
up and asked me if he could use my phone, and when I asked him why, he started getting all nasty about it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was threatening me, telling me to give him my phone… and then he started getting out of the car and waving a knife at me. And that’s when Tom Noyce showed up.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He told the guy to get back in his car and go home.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And what happened then?’

‘The guy got back in his car and drove off.’

‘Lucky for you.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you know him – the guy in the car?’

‘No.’

‘Could you describe him?’

I described someone who could have been anyone – mid-twenties, dark eyes, short brown hair – and as John Kesey wrote it all down, I kept my eyes fixed firmly on the table. I was pretty sure that Barry knew I was lying, but if I’d told him the truth then – if I’d told him that the guy in the car was Wes Campbell – Barry would have wanted to know who Campbell was, and how I knew him, and how he knew me, and why I hadn’t said anything about knowing him before… and I really didn’t think I could cope with all that.

‘So,’ Barry said, ‘after Tom Noyce had scared this guy off, what did you do then?’

‘Not much… I thanked him, asked him what he was doing there, and that was about it. I was just about to get going when the police car showed up.’

‘Where were you going?’

‘Home.’

‘What about Noyce? Did he say where he was going?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t you ask him?’

‘No.’

‘Where do you think he was going?’

‘I don’t know. Back to his mum’s trailer, I expect.’

Barry stared at the table in silence for a moment, then he let out a long sigh and looked up at me. ‘All right, Peter… let me ask you something else.’ He paused, staring at me. ‘What would you say if I were to tell you that we’d found your fingerprints on Tom Noyce’s caravan?’