Wanting (3 page)

“It’s the same man as the others,” she said, staring at the CCTV screen.

“Right, son.” The male officer pulled out a notepad. “If you could just tell me what he did, then, although I could probably tell you.”

Adam frowned.

“We’ve had a lot of incidents like this. He does the same thing every time, but I need to hear it from you just the same.”

Adam didn’t want to tell them, didn’t want the images to come back into his head, but he pushed himself, words pouring as fast as the rain had. After waiting for Dane to clear up the Doritos and dip and lock up, the police then gave them a lift home.

Once inside their flat, Adam thought he’d feel safe, but he didn’t. It wasn’t as though by being in your own home the memories went away, was it? They were with you, in your head, and no amount of hiding was going to cut it.

He went into the kitchen, exhaling a steady breath of relief at hearing Dane locking up, and flicked on the kettle. He picked out two mugs, busied himself with the mundane task of making instant coffee so he didn’t have to think too hard.

Thinking hard hurt more than your head sometimes.

“Hey, you okay?” Dane asked, coming up behind him, pulling Adam back so he leaned against him.

Adam was okay for an instant, nothing else existing except them, but the kettle clicked off, bubbles raging about inside it, steam huffing from the spout. It brought Adam back to reality.

“I can’t fucking live here anymore, man,” Adam said, and the sudden conviction that he couldn’t, he really couldn’t live here, smacked him full force. “This flat, this fucking
place
…”

“I know. I know. I’ll look into it. A fresh start somewhere else, yeah?”

Adam nodded, bringing his arms up to cover Dane’s across his middle. “Somewhere quiet, without all this bullshit. Too many people here, too much danger. Just…too much fucking everything.”

“All right. It’ll be all right. I’ll take care of it. Of you.”

Dane and Adam were going to view a potential property. Dane had chosen a small hamlet called Lower Repton outside the city, close enough that they could visit when needing to do a big food shop but far enough away that a million miles might as well separate the two places. It was nothing more than a single street, cottages in a row on each side and a Cotswold stone pub called Pickett’s Inn sitting on the corner, having seen better days by the looks of it. Adam reckoned it might fall down if a storm had the idea of howling through the street.

Why Dane had chosen Lower Repton, when it was still the subject of so much speculation with regards to those Sugar Strand drug murders, Adam didn’t know. Maybe because this place was in the middle of nowhere Dane thought they’d be safer, regardless of what had happened here. Adam relaxed as soon as he saw the small cottage they were thinking of renting, number two, with its whitewashed outer walls, higgledy-piggledy slate roof, and a sign beside the front door that read Reynolds’ Gaff. Apparently the murder had occurred here, in the main bedroom, but any clue there had been a killing had been removed, the room bright and airy, belying the fact something grotesque had taken place.

Despite that, all the tension that filled him from the city attack and the recent happenings at the mini-mart drifted away, leaving him free of worry for the first time in quite a while. Sadly, it returned when they went back to their flat. Like a dose of the clap, it itched and made him think everyone was aware of it, that they knew he was vulnerable to future attacks.

Lower Repton felt different, the people they’d encountered more laid-back, not one of them giving funny looks after they announced their intention to live together. Well, no one except an old lady who lived over the road, a bit of a nosey mare if ever there was one, but she didn’t seem like she’d do them any harm. Adam had expected the villagers to be less liberal or accepting than those in the city, but those they’d met had proved him wrong. Even though the tiny place had been rocked recently, everyone appeared to be getting on with things, getting back to normal. Maybe city dwellers had a pack mentality, the majority following the loudest voices instead of the quiet ones inside them. He didn’t know, but he was glad to be getting the hell away from it, them and the knot of fear that prevented him getting on with his life.

* * * *

The city was far behind them. They’d been in the cottage just over a week, Dane and Adam working for a local farmer, helping out with whatever jobs needed doing. Dane had said he’d sort things out, that he’d take care of Adam, and he’d come through faster than Adam could have imagined. Adam really ought to give it a good go on that last chance thing they had going, too—repay him, show him he could come through as well. But it was so difficult to stay quiet in their bed…

It felt to Adam they’d lived in Lower Repton for longer than they had. What had gone on in the city was a distant memory, something that had almost wrecked another man in another time. One day, he’d like to say it was as though it had never happened, but he doubted he would. The attack had been too brutal, the words spoken too harsh for him to erase them fully.

Finally, the last of the packing boxes empty, Adam flattened them into large squares ready for the recycle collection. He supposed their old mates in the city would take the piss out of the way Adam and Dane had settled into village life, but really, did he give a shit?

No, he didn’t. Where had those mates been after he’d been accosted in that alley? None of them had cared beyond hearing about it for the first time. They hadn’t wanted to deal with the aftermath, and when Adam and Dane hadn’t gone out clubbing with them like they used to, when they weren’t the ‘fun fags’ any longer, those friends had taken a huge step back. Still, what they thought wasn’t his concern now. Quality of life and peace of mind mattered far more than anyone’s opinion. He thanked his lucky stars he hadn’t been fucked up so much that he didn’t realise that.

Outside in the back garden, he wedged the cardboard behind a large green wheelie bin and looked around at the shadows. They didn’t freak him out like those in the city, where people could jump out at him or lurk about doing things they shouldn’t bloody well be doing. Drug pushing, fucking against alley walls, meeting to work out the best way to do people some damage. The whole ethos of a place like that had always bothered him, but as usual, he’d never thought anything bad would happen to him. Shit, he’d been so wrong.

Who knew walking home after a few beers could leave him broken and bleeding on the ground, a spiteful wind whipping around him as though Mother Nature was also in on the act? Everything about that night had been wrong anyway, from the sour-tasting beer he’d sworn was off, to the general atmosphere in The King’s Arms being fraught with tension. People were antsy, pissed off at the end of a long week when they should have been ecstatic the weekend was there. He remembered thinking that was odd, how everyone wore frowns and spoke in sharp, clipped tones.

He wished he’d listened to what his intuition had been trying to tell him instead of brushing it off as insane thoughts. That he’d got mad ideas because he’d been tired and his mind had decided to mess him about. He had too many what-ifs, that was the problem. Dane had told him recently that the past couldn’t be changed, so there was no use mulling over it, not unless it helped him to mend himself and move on. And Adam wanted to mend himself, wanted to move on, but had been unable to. Maybe now, in Lower Repton, with the fear receding a little more every day, he’d finally get to grips with it all. The thing was, he still didn’t have any idea how the hell it had all gone so wrong that night.

Maybe he’d given someone a weird look. Maybe he’d stared a little too long at the wrong person on the wrong day. Whatever, that gang of blokes had taken exception and followed him out of the King’s. At first, he hadn’t taken any notice, thinking the men were on a bender, heading to the next pub along High Street, but when he reached the end of the road and they were still behind him, he’d begun to get a bit worried. His heart rate had accelerated, his legs had gone a bit weak, but he’d called himself a silly bastard and had carried on walking. Like a group of blokes would want to follow him anyway.

So he’d told himself they were on their way home, just happened to be walking the same way as him, and he’d carried on, head down, hands jammed in his jacket pockets. In Kitchener Street, two roads away from Adam’s flat, the men had shortened the gap between them. He’d heard their conversation about duffing someone up and making them regret they’d ever lived, and he’d felt sorry for whoever they’d had in mind for punishment. It couldn’t have been him, though, because he didn’t know them, hadn’t done anything to upset them. Regardless, he’d walked faster, stupidly darting down an alley between houses that led to his street, his safe haven, thinking he’d get back quicker that way.

The men had been on him before he’d even made it halfway down, kicked the shit out of him—literally—and had walked away as though they’d done nothing wrong. That part had struck him as the worst, even more so than the beating. How could some people do that and not feel guilty? Pissed up on alcohol or not, it wasn’t normal for people to act that way. The fact that none of them had shown any guilt—yeah, that was the bit that got to him the most. Adam had rolled onto his side and watched them leave the alley the same end they’d entered, laughing and jostling, the streetlights giving them an orange aura. They’d looked weird. Alien.

He’d stayed put, bones and muscles screaming, his mouth so puffy and full of blood he couldn’t scream himself. His whole body had ached, shaken, and he’d had a bit of trouble fully processing things. It had all happened so fast. One minute he’d been walking home, the next he was on the wet ground in an alley that stank of cat and dog piss—his own shit too—knowing he couldn’t get up because his leg didn’t feel right, like it didn’t belong to him. Numb. Bent.

An old granny had stumbled upon him the next morning, shaking him awake, bending over him with a look of pity mixed with horror. Again, things had occurred in quick-time—the ambulance had come, he’d been loaded into it—and he’d found himself at the hospital, cleaned up and wearing a gown with a fuck-off great slit up the back. Adam had wondered how the hell he’d managed to get himself in this mess, his mind unable to piece things together in any form, and he’d drifted back to sleep, uncaring whether he woke again.

When he’d next opened his eyes, Dane had been sitting beside the bed, holding Adam’s hand like he’d never wanted to let him go.
Then
Adam had wanted to stay awake, to never sleep again, to always be on alert for arseholes who’d had a mind to do someone in, just because. And he hadn’t slept properly ever since—well, until they’d moved to Lower Repton.

Today had been a long one, their Saturday taken up with the last of the settling in. He stared at the same sky he’d always stared at his whole life, yet it appeared different. The stars were brighter, and less cloud coverage scudded across the bright silver-quarter moon. Dane was inside, putting up a shelf over the head of their bed so they had some place to put their things without having to scrabble about in drawers at the crucial moment. The sound of a hammer then the use of a drill drifted out to him, and he smiled, imagining what they’d place on that shelf. Lube, butt plugs, cuffs—God, all manner of shit. He thought of the massage gel they’d bought just before moving here, scented and containing extracts from plants that were meant to enhance orgasm. He wasn’t sure about that, whether it would actually work, but Adam couldn’t wait to give it a try.

He looked out past the water-logged grass and hedges at the bottom of the garden and squinted at a series of bobbing lights in the distance. Car headlamps? They drifted from left to right as though a string of traffic travelled, a set of several cars all going to the same location.

If Adam knew the area better he’d be able to judge where the cars might be going, but the road to the city was the only one he knew and went in the other direction from the front of the cottage. The lights winked out in twin sets one after the other, and, curiosity getting the better of him, Adam went upstairs to the back bedroom so he could get a better look.

From this height, he made out the shape of a barn about a mile away, the flicker of strong-beamed torches briefly lighting patches of it—red bricks, a door frame, a grey-tiled roof? He wasn’t entirely sure from this far out, but his imagination liked to fill in the blanks. Every so often the head and shoulders of figures broke the backdrop of dark grey, the people partially obscured behind what appeared to be hedges. The moonlight gave them an eerie appearance. What the hell were they doing out there? He was pissed off with himself for not having studied the landscape more in the daylight. That should have been the first thing he’d done, what with his need to make sure they’d be safer living out here. He’d been so taken by the feel of the place, though, at how he felt so much calmer here, that gazing at their far surroundings hadn’t entered his head.

Dane stopped hammering and using the drill, and a few beats of silence ensued before he padded up behind Adam.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked, hugging Adam, clasping his hands across his belly.

“Look.” Adam nodded at the window. “What d’you reckon they’re doing?”

Dane’s breath cooled the back of Adam’s neck.

“Fuck knows. Can’t say I give much of a shit.” He paused for a second or two, then said, “That shelf was a right bastard to put up.”

“It looks weird.”

“What, the shelf? Didn’t think you’d even been in to have a look yet.”

“No. Them. Those torches, see?” A skewer of fear twisted in Adam’s gut. “A few minutes ago they pulled up in cars. From what I could see, about six of them. Cars, I mean. Now they look like they’re trying to find something. I wonder if they’re one of those groups who go out with metal detectors to try to find shit. They might need to do it in the dark cos the land belongs to someone and whatever they find wouldn’t really be theirs.”