Black Rabbit Summer (43 page)

‘All right, Boland?’ he said. ‘Comfortable enough?’

I looked at him.

He grinned at me. ‘It’s all right, don’t look so worried. No one’s going to hurt you. We just want to ask you a few questions, that’s all.’

‘You didn’t have to bring me all the way down here just to ask me a few questions.’

He didn’t say anything to that, he just stared at me for a few seconds, his face pale and blank, then he reached into his pocket and brought out his Stanley knife. ‘What did Gilpin tell you?’ he said quietly.

‘Didn’t you ask him?’

‘Yeah, I
asked
him. Now I’m asking you. What did he tell you?’

I glanced at the knife in his hand. ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to hurt me?’

He shrugged. ‘I was lying.’

As he started moving towards me, I looked over his shoulder at Eric, my eyes imploring him to do something. It felt so false, so hypocritical – appealing to a friendship that didn’t exist – but what did I care? I’d rather be ashamed of myself than dead.

‘Hold on a minute, Wes,’ Eric said grudgingly.

Campbell shook his head. ‘This little bastard’s been winding me up for days. It’s about time he got –’

‘We need him,’ Eric said firmly. ‘Remember? We
need
him.’

Campbell hesitated, staring coldly at me, and I could see the conflict in his eyes: should he go with his gut feeling and rip me apart, or should he listen to Eric? I stared back at him, holding my breath, willing him to listen to Eric.

Eventually, after staring at me for what seemed like a year, he shook his head, spat on the ground, and took a few paces back.

I started breathing again.

Eric sighed and looked at me. ‘Listen, Pete, there’s no need for things to be like this. All we want to know is what Pauly told you, OK? Just tell us what he told you, and then we can sort everything out.’

I nearly said –
sort everything out? what do you mean we can sort everything out?
– but there didn’t seem much point. Whatever they had planned for me, there wasn’t anything I could do about it just now. And there was nothing to gain by
not
telling them what they wanted to know…

I looked down at the dirt for a moment, thinking things over… and then I told them everything that Pauly had told me.

‘That’s it?’ Campbell said when I’d finished. ‘That’s what he told you?’

‘Yeah.’ I looked at Eric. ‘Is that really how it happened?’

‘Not exactly,’ he said, glancing at Campbell.

‘Fucking Gilpin,’ Campbell said, shaking his head. ‘Lying little shit… I told you we couldn’t trust him, didn’t I? I
told
you.’

Eric looked at me. ‘I never touched Stella, Pete. It was Pauly… he just went crazy and attacked her. All that stuff about me trying to stop him and knocking Stella over… it’s all bollocks. I never
touched
her.’

‘You didn’t try to stop him?’

‘I didn’t have time. One minute he was on the floor, moaning and groaning… the next thing I knew he was charging at Stella and shoving her in the back. It was all over before I could do anything.’

‘What about the rest of it?’ I said. ‘The fake kidnap, Stella threatening you, what she did to Pauly… is any of that true?’

‘Yeah,’ Eric shrugged. ‘Pretty much all of it really.’ He let out a sigh. ‘Stella got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago. She said if I didn’t help her with this kidnap idea, she’d put the picture of Wes and me on the Internet.’

‘So you helped her?’

‘I didn’t think she was going to go through with it, did I? I just thought it was one of her sick little games, you know… getting her own back on me, having a laugh,
controlling
me. That’s how she got her kicks, Pete. Playing games. Messing with your head. Fucking with your emotions.’ He shrugged again. ‘I just went along with it. I didn’t think anything was going to happen…’

‘But then Pauly showed up.’

‘Yeah…’ Eric shook his head. ‘Christ, you should have seen him, Pete. I mean, he’s always been mad about Stella, hasn’t he? Even before she was famous, he was always watching out for her, talking about her, drooling every time he saw her. So you can imagine how he felt when he thought she was coming on to him, especially with all the booze and shit he’d been taking. He must have thought he was in dreamland. But then she goes and flicks him in the balls… right in front of me and Wes. And he’s crawling around on the ground, bawling his eyes out, and we’re all laughing at him… shit, it’s not surprising he lost it.’

‘Are you saying he killed her?’

Eric blew out his cheeks. ‘I don’t think he
meant
to… he just went berserk, you know. He just lost it. Ran up behind her, screaming like a madman, and shoved her really hard in the back.’ Eric shrugged. ‘She never knew what hit her. She just kind of flew off her feet and went head first into the girders and then –’

‘
Whack
,’ said Campbell, smacking his fist into the palm of his hand.

I looked at him.

He smiled at me.

I glanced down at the bloodstain in the dirt, imagining Stella’s dead eyes again, then I looked back at Campbell. ‘You dumped her body in the river?’

‘So?’

‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘What were we supposed to do – take her body back to her mummy and daddy and say sorry?’

‘You could have just left her here.’

‘Yeah, but someone would have found her eventually, wouldn’t they? And then the cops would have started digging around, and they would have found out that we’d been here –’

‘But it was an accident –’

‘So fucking
what
?’ Campbell said. ‘I mean, what the fuck’s it got to do with you anyway?’

It was a good question, and as I sat there in the dusty gloom, I realized that Campbell was right. I
didn’t
care what they’d done. It
didn’t
have anything to do with me. Now that I knew that Raymond hadn’t killed Stella… well, the rest of it was irrelevant. It didn’t matter to me who
had
killed her, or whether it was an accident or not, or why they’d try to cover it up. I just didn’t care. And I know that probably sounds pretty callous, but the simple truth is – I didn’t
like
Stella Ross. I’d never liked her. And I didn’t care much about Eric or Pauly either. I mean, I’m not saying that I didn’t feel
anything
for them, and if I could have clicked my fingers and brought Stella Ross back to life, I would have done it.

But I couldn’t.

She was dead.

And Raymond might still be alive.

I looked up at Eric and Campbell. They were both standing
in front of me now, the light from the ventilation grid outlining their figures with haloes of shimmering dust.

‘What are you going to do?’ I said to Eric.

‘What are
you
going to do?’ Campbell answered.

‘Nothing,’ I said, looking at him.

He laughed. ‘You got that fucking right.’

‘Look,’ I started to say, ‘I really don’t care what happened down here –’

‘Get up,’ Campbell said.

I looked at him.

‘Stand up,’ he told me.

I glanced at Eric.

‘Just do what he says, Pete.’

As I looked up at Campbell again, he grabbed me by the hair and yanked me to my feet. I reached up instinctively, trying to get hold of his hand, but he just tightened his grip, pulled even harder, and then – with a sudden sharp yank – he ripped out a handful of hair. I yelped, a pathetic little sound, and stared wide-eyed at him.

He was studying the clump of hair in his hand, feeling it carefully with his thumb. ‘Nice,’ he said distantly. ‘A bit sweaty, maybe…’

He smiled at me.

I didn’t know what to say. I rubbed at the sore patch on my scalp, watching curiously as Campbell stepped to one side, walked around me, and sprinkled the handful of hair over the ground. As he rubbed his hands together, getting rid of every last hair, I turned and looked at Eric.

‘What the hell’s he doing?’ I asked.

‘Sorry, Pete,’ Eric said, stepping towards me. ‘But this is the only way.’

I saw him glance over my shoulder then, and as I turned to see what he was looking at, Campbell stepped up and flat-handed me hard in the nose. My head roared, screaming with pain, and as I staggered back into Eric, I could already feel the blood streaming out of my nose. Eric grabbed hold of me, clamping his arms round my chest and pinning my arms to my sides.

‘All right?’ I heard him say to Campbell.

‘Yeah,’ Campbell said. ‘Get him down on the ground.’

I felt a sharp kick in the back of my knee then, and as my leg buckled, Eric pushed me down to the ground and threw himself on top of me. I was face down in the dirt now. Eric was straddling my back, holding me down… and I was too shocked and breathless to do anything. For a second or two, all I could do was lie there, spitting out strings of blood and snot, trying to get some air into my lungs… but then I felt Campbell crouching down beside me, and as he reached out and gripped my head in his hands, I suddenly started struggling like a maniac – twisting and squirming, kicking and screaming, shaking my head from side to side, trying to break free, trying to get up…

‘Fuck
off
,’ I spat. ‘Fuck
ughh
–’

Dirt filled my mouth as Campbell shoved my face into the ground. It didn’t really hurt that much, but it kind of knocked all the fight out of me, and as I jerked my head to one side, coughing and spitting out blood, I was just about ready to give up struggling and let Campbell do whatever he wanted.

But then, to my surprise, I heard him say, ‘That’ll do,’ and I felt him let go of my head, and a moment later I felt Eric clambering off me… and all of a sudden everything was silent and still, and I was just lying there, trying not to cry.

∗

I didn’t move for a while, I just lay there in the dirt, my eyes closed, my heart thumping, my head spinning dully, numbed with shock. My nose was throbbing like hell, but it was a strangely distant kind of pain. I mean, it
hurt
… but not as much as the feelings that went with it. They were small and childish feelings – self-pity, shame, humiliation – the kind of feelings that make you want to curl up into a ball and cry. But I wasn’t going to cry. I was sixteen years old, for Christ’s sake. I wasn’t a child any more. And even if I was, even if I
did
feel like the smallest thing in the world, I still wasn’t going to let myself cry.

Not yet, anyway.

I sat up slowly and wiped my face. My nose seemed to have stopped bleeding now, but there was plenty of blood on the ground. Dull red stains, already soaking into the dirt. Blood and spit. And hairs… my hairs, scattered amongst the blood and dust.

‘Are you all right, Pete?’ I heard Eric say.

I looked up at him. He was standing beside Campbell, smoking a cigarette. His eyes were so mixed up that I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. I don’t even think that
he
knew what he was feeling. I struggled wearily to my feet, steadied myself for a moment, and looked at him again. He was half-smiling at me now, half-shrugging… half-wanting to help me, half-knowing he couldn’t.

‘I’m sorry, Pete,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘I didn’t want it to be like this, neither of us did… but we didn’t have any choice. We had to do it. It was the only way.’ When I didn’t say anything, Eric glanced at Campbell for support. ‘Tell him, Wes.’

‘Tell him what?’

‘It’s over now, isn’t it? We’re finished. He can go.’

Campbell stared at me. ‘Your old man’s a cop, right?’

‘So?’ I said.

‘So you know how it works.’ He nodded at the ground. ‘That’s your blood down there. Your hair. Your fingerprints are on the door handle and the shelf unit. There’s probably all kinds of other crap around too – sweat, spit, bits of skin, whatever.’ He grinned at me. ‘You see where we’re going with this?’

‘DNA,’ I said.

‘Right. Your DNA’s all over the place.’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, there’s nothing to stop you coming back here and trying to get rid of it, but you’re never going to get rid of
all
of it, are you? There’s always going to be a bit of you down here. So, you know, if you start shooting your mouth off about Stella, and the cops come down here with all their forensic shit… well, they’re going to
know
that you were down here, aren’t they? Your blood, Stella’s blood. Your fingerprints, Stella’s fingerprints. Your DNA, Stella’s DNA.’

‘And yours,’ I said, ‘and Eric’s –’

‘That won’t change anything for you, though, will it? You’ll still be part of it. And we’re not going to say you weren’t. Me and Eric don’t have anything to lose, neither does Pauly. It’ll be our word against yours. Three against one. Who do you think the cops are going to believe if we all say that it was you that killed Stella?’

‘They already know who killed her,’ I said.

Campbell barely blinked. ‘Yeah, right…’

‘They found a bit of Eric’s necklace in Stella’s pocket.’

Campbell’s eyes darkened. ‘They what?’

I looked at Eric. ‘The gold chain you were wearing on Saturday night, the one you borrowed from Nic –’

‘What’s he talking about?’ Campbell said, turning to Eric.

‘I thought I’d got rid of it,’ Eric muttered.

‘Got rid of what?’

Eric sighed. ‘She broke it… Stella. When she brought me down here on my own – remember? She said she wanted to talk to me about something –’

‘Yeah, I remember. What did she break?’

‘Nic’s necklace… you know, the one you really like? The gold one. Stella broke it.’

‘How?’

Eric put his hand on Campbell’s arm. ‘Look, I didn’t want to tell you about it at the time because I didn’t want to upset you… and it was just so pathetic anyway. She was just trying to…’

‘Trying to what?’

‘She was, you know… she was coming
on
to me, trying to kiss me…’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘She said she was trying to
convert
me, the stupid bitch.’

‘
What?
’

‘It’s all right –’

‘No, it’s not
fucking
all right. Why didn’t you
tell
me?’

‘Because nothing
happened
, Wes. She was just messing about, you know… grabbing me round the neck, trying to stick her tongue down my throat. I just pushed her away, told her to piss off… and that’s how the necklace got broken. When I pushed her away, she just kind of lashed out at me, and somehow the necklace came off in her hand. I snatched it back off her, but I just thought the clasp had broken, you know. She must have had some of the chain left in her hand.’