Black Rabbit Summer (42 page)

I saw Eric glance over his shoulder and say something to Campbell then. Campbell looked at him, glanced at me, and then – without so much as a final quick look at Pauly – he grinned and started walking towards me. As he passed Eric, Eric touched his arm and said something. Campbell paused for a moment, looking at Eric, and although there were no smiles, no obvious signs of affection, the intimacy between them was unmistakable. And now that I was aware of it, it was hard to believe I’d never noticed it before.

Not that it made much difference to me.

Campbell was walking towards me again now. Eric was right behind him, and Pauly was tentatively following along a few metres further back.

‘Piss off, Gilpin,’ Campbell called back, his eyes still fixed on me.

Pauly paused.

‘Go on,’ Campbell said dismissively. ‘Fuck off home.’

Pauly just stood there for a moment – his eyes blinking rapidly, his face pale and confused – then he turned round and walked off dejectedly in the opposite direction. I couldn’t see his face, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the look in his eyes… the loneliness, the darkness, the sadness…

But I didn’t have time to think about Pauly.

I looked over my shoulder. The Greenwell kids were still there, still blocking the lane up ahead. I had nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. I looked back at Eric and Campbell again. Campbell was about five metres away, smiling crookedly at me.

‘You’re on your own this time, Boland,’ he said. ‘Your luck’s just run out.’

I stared at him for a moment, looked over his shoulder at Eric, then I turned and started running towards the Greenwell kids.

I could see them grinning at me as I ran towards them – smiling at my stupidity, getting ready to have some fun. I could see their feet fidgeting, their shoulders twitching, their fists clenching. They knew they wouldn’t have much time with me before Campbell and Eric called them off, and I could see them moving towards me now, jostling for position, each of them trying to get to the front so they could get a few good kicks in while they had the chance.

But they weren’t going to get the chance.

I carried on running straight at them, running as hard as I could – my arms pumping, my legs pounding – and I didn’t make my move until the very last moment. Just as I reached the first of the Greenwell kids, just as he was slowing down and spreading out his arms to stop me, I leapt up on to the bank and started scrambling up through the undergrowth. There wasn’t a path here, just a thick spread of brambles and weeds and moss-covered roots, and the bank was a lot steeper in this part of the lane. It was almost impossible to stay on my feet, and I didn’t even try. I just crawled and slithered, scrabbled and groped, heaving myself up the bank. The brambles were ripping me to shreds, tearing at my clothes and gouging my skin, but I didn’t care. The Greenwell kids weren’t going to come up here and get
their
clothes messed up. I could hear them down below, laughing at me as the brambles got thicker and thicker, and my crawling got slower and slower. They knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

And I knew it too.

I wasn’t even trying to go anywhere now. All I was doing was rolling around in the undergrowth, looking for somewhere to
hide for a moment – a dip in the ground, a hollow, a broad-trunked tree. Anywhere. As long as it kept me out of sight for a second or two.

‘Boland!’ I heard Campbell shout out. ‘You might as well come down… there’s nowhere to go.’

A dead oak tree loomed up in front of me. It was lightning-struck, blackened and burned, with bare branches and a hollowed-out trunk. The ground round the base of the tree had been dug out by a badger or something. I looked around, memorizing the surroundings – halfway up the bank, directly below a group of old factory buildings, just to the right of a drooping holly tree, about ten metres to the left of an overgrown path…

‘Boland!’

I rolled into the ditch at the base of the oak tree, lay on my back, and pulled my mobile out of my pocket. Still no signal. I dug Eric’s phone out of my pocket.

Campbell yelled out again. ‘If you’re not down here in thirty seconds, I’m coming up. D’you hear me?’

I didn’t bother checking Eric’s mobile for a signal, I just reached inside the hollow trunk and placed the phone out of sight. It was safe now. I didn’t know what good it would do, hiding it away, but Eric’s phone was the only piece of solid evidence I had. Names, places, times, texts. It was all in there somewhere. Eric might have deleted his texts, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there any more. And his calls could be traced. Calls to
Amo
and
Bit
… Campbell and Stella. Amour. Bitch. Amour. Bitch. Amour…

It’s all about love.

‘All right, Boland, that’s it. You’ve had your –’

‘I’m coming down!’ I shouted, getting to my feet.

I climbed out of the ditch and looked down the bank. They
were all there – Campbell, Eric, the Greenwell kids. They were all looking up at me, squinting into the sun, waiting for me to come down.

They looked pretty small from up here.

But as I started edging my way down the bank, I knew it wouldn’t be long before they looked pretty big again.

By the time I got to the foot of the bank, I was sweating all over and covered in dirt, and every inch of my skin was either bloodied-up with bramble scratches or itching like hell from a million gnat bites.

‘Give me the phone,’ Campbell said, holding out his hand.

I looked beyond Campbell at Eric. He was standing on his own, a little way down the lane. Away to his right I could see the bunch of Greenwell kids sloping off down the path towards the wasteground. They’d done their job, they weren’t needed any more.

‘Phone!’ Campbell snapped.

I pulled out my mobile and flipped it open. ‘I’ve just called my dad,’ I told him. ‘He knows where I am, he’s called the police, they’ll be here in a few minutes –’

‘Yeah?’ Campbell said, grabbing the phone and glancing at the display. He hit a couple of buttons, stared at the screen for a moment, then looked back at me and grinned. ‘No signal,’ he said. ‘No calls to Daddy.’ He snapped the phone in half and threw the pieces over the fence into the wasteground. ‘Now give me Eric’s phone.’

‘I haven’t got it with me. I left it at home…’

Campbell stepped up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders,
and hooked his foot round the back of my leg. A quick shove in the chest and I was flat on my back on the ground. Campbell planted his foot on my chest, pinning me down.

‘Eric,’ he said, ‘come here.’

Eric came over.

‘Search his pockets,’ Campbell told him.

As Eric crouched down beside me and started going through my pockets, I stared silently at him, trying to make eye contact, but he wouldn’t look back at me.

‘I know what happened, Eric,’ I said quietly. ‘I know it was an accident –’

‘Shut up,’ Campbell told me, stomping on my chest.

I shut up and lay still, trying to get some air back into my lungs. Eric carried on rummaging through my pockets.

‘Nothing,’ he said after a while.

‘You sure?’ Campbell asked him.

Eric nodded. ‘He hasn’t got it.’

‘Maybe he ditched it somewhere?’

Eric glanced up the bank. ‘We don’t have time to look for it up there. It could be anywhere…’

‘All right,’ Campbell said. ‘We’ll have to leave it for now.’ He looked at Eric. ‘Shit, if you’d done what I told you –’

‘Yeah, well I didn’t, did I?’

‘All you had to do was –’

‘I know what I
should
have done, Wes. You don’t have to keep going
on
about it.’ He stood up. ‘Anyway, it’s not going to make any difference now, is it?’

‘I suppose not.’ Campbell took his foot off my chest and looked down at me. ‘Get up.’

I got to my feet. He took out his knife, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me down off the bank.

‘Wait there,’ he said to me. He turned to Eric. ‘You go first.’

Eric stepped down off the bank and began walking along the lane, heading in the direction of St Leonard’s Road. Campbell gave me a shove in the back, and I stumbled forward and started following Eric.

‘I’m right behind you,’ Campbell whispered, breathing down my neck. ‘You want to make a run for it, that’s fine. See how far you get with a Stanley knife stuck in the back of your head.’

I didn’t say anything, I just carried on walking, as carefully as possible, following Eric along the lane. I tried not to imagine how it’d feel to have a Stanley knife stuck in the back of my head, but the more I tried not to think about it, the more it made my skull shiver. And the more my skull shivered, the harder it was to concentrate on not doing anything that could possibly be mistaken for trying to make a run for it.

Which wasn’t easy…

Especially as another part of me was trying to think about where we were going and what was going to happen when we got there, and when and where I
should
try making a run for it. But then, just as I was starting to seriously consider the options, I realized that Eric had stopped in front of me and was peering up the bank.

I stopped too, my skull instinctively flinching.

‘Is this it?’ Eric asked Campbell, still gazing up the bank.

‘Yeah, I think so.’

I could see the outline of a path now, a barely visible track winding up the bank.

Eric looked back along the lane. ‘There’s another one over there…’

‘No,’ Campbell said, ‘this is it. We tried that one, remember? It’s blocked off at the top.’

I glanced over my shoulder, recognizing the overgrown path that I’d seen near the dead oak tree.

Campbell slapped the back of my head. ‘What are
you
looking at?’

I quickly turned back.

Eric was stepping up on to the bank now, beginning to climb the narrow path. Campbell gave me another push in the back, and I got moving again. Up on to the bank, up the path, back up through the brambles… with Campbell close behind me all the way, breathing heavily.

I followed Eric.

Into the undergrowth.

Through the trees.

Sweating and stumbling…

Slipping and sliding…

There was something distantly familiar about the path and the surrounding woodland, something that reminded me of something… a feeling, a childlike anxiety, an expectation. Or maybe it was just the feeling itself that was familiar? It was hard to tell, but I kept getting the sense that this was the path I’d taken as a thirteen-year-old boy when I’d nervously followed Nicole up to the old factory that day, the day that Dad had caught us together and gone ballistic…

Or maybe not.

Maybe I was just imagining things.

We’d reached the top of the bank now and I could see the old factory spread out in front of us. A narrow strip of level ground ran alongside the high metal fencing that separated the bank from the factory, and as the three of us stopped for a moment to get our breath back, I noticed a gap in the fence. Someone had cut through the mesh. The opening wasn’t big enough to see
from a distance, but it was easily big enough to squeeze through. As I stood there – sweating and panting – gazing through the fence at the old factory, I found myself trying to remember which one of the buildings I’d been in with Nicole all those years ago… but there was nothing there that brought back any memories. I suppose I’d been too busy thinking about other things at the time to take any notice of
where
we were going. It was a building, that’s all I’d cared about back then. It was a place for us to be on our own. It could have been a bright-red tower block for all I’d cared…

But I couldn’t see any bright-red tower blocks now. All I could see were derelict workshops and offices, abandoned machinery, chimneys and towers, ramshackle warehouses… a concrete square, a pile of old car tyres… and, over to my left, a huddle of pale stone buildings with corrugated iron roofs…

I didn’t have to wonder where we were going any more.

‘After you,’ Campbell said, ushering me towards the door of the abandoned building.

I looked at him for a moment, then opened the door and went inside. It was pretty much as Pauly had described it – boarded-up windows, rusted office furniture, crap all over the floor. Campbell grabbed me by the arm and led me across to the far end of the building. We stopped in front of the metal shelf unit that Pauly had told me about.

‘Pull it back,’ Campbell told me.

I gripped the shelf unit and pulled it away from the wall. Campbell took a torch from his pocket and shone it down into the basement.

‘Everything all right?’ Eric asked him.

He nodded, turning to me. ‘Down you go.’

As I went down into the basement, I could see that Pauly hadn’t been lying about that either. It was just as he’d said – dirt floor, stale air, stone walls, bits of machinery, a pile of rusting girders. Behind me, at the top of the steps, I heard Eric pulling the shelf unit back. As it clanged dully against the wall, the basement suddenly darkened.

‘Get over there,’ Campbell said roughly, pushing me towards the girders.

Although Campbell was shining his torch away from me now, the basement wasn’t completely dark. A faint chink of sunlight was showing through a small ventilation grid at the top of one wall, and as I shuffled wearily across the dirt floor, I could see well enough to see where I was going. I stopped beside the pile of girders.

‘Sit down,’ Campbell told me.

I sat down on the nearest girder and looked down at the ground. There was a dull red stain in the dirt at my feet. It was crescent shaped, like a jagged half moon, and just for a moment I could see Stella lying there, her skull cracked open, her dead eyes staring, her perfect blonde hair matted with blood…

I raised my head and looked over at Eric and Campbell. They were standing against the far wall, talking quietly to each other. Eric was smoking a cigarette while Campbell whispered urgently into his ear. I saw Eric shake his head.

Campbell put his hand on Eric’s arm.

Eric looked up at him.

Campbell smiled.

Eric sighed.

They looked into each other’s eyes for a while – staring at one another as if they were the only living things in the world – and
then eventually Eric just nodded. Campbell patted his arm, then turned to face me.