The Dead of Summer Page 11

  ‘Vanbrugh Castle,’ said Patrick in a teacher’s voice. ‘Built by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1719. It was used as a school for years, but it’s all flats now, I believe.’

  We gazed in through the gates until a fat woman came out of the door, two Great Danes bounding beside her, and we slunk away. We walked on to the park and sat at the top of the hill, looking down at the royal palace below us. Patrick began telling us about the kings and queens who had lived there, how the park had been their garden, full of deer instead of tourists, when Kyle interrupted suddenly, abruptly, ‘We’re going down to the river now.’

  Patrick looked at his watch. Smiled at Kyle and said, ‘Well, OK, if you’d like.’ Everything felt awkward suddenly. Kyle looked away, staring expressionless at the river that gleamed behind the palace. ‘Well now,’ said Patrick eventually, ‘I’m sure you don’t want your old granddad hanging about.’ I felt sorry for him then, felt annoyed with Kyle for being so mean. I watched him get up stiffly, the cheerful wave and, ‘Bye then. It’s been a lovely day,’ making it worse.

  ‘Bye, Patrick,’ I said. ‘Thanks for taking us swimming.’ I watched him walk off up the hill on his own. Turned to see a sneer on Kyle’s face.

  “'Bye, Patrick,”’ he mimicked. “'Thanks for taking us swimming''’. He had my Leeds accent down perfectly.

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ I said weakly.

  ‘No, why don’t you fuck off, Anita?’ he said, his voice a dead weight. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’ he said again, more loudly, when I shrugged and looked away.

  ‘And while you’re at it, why don’t you just stay away from my house and my granddad?’

  I stared down at my hands plucking the grass, waiting for it to stop, but he was working himself into a rage, I could tell.

  ‘You don’t fucking know anything, Anita. We don’t want you. Patrick just feels sorry for you because you’re such a skanky, stinky little Paki and your dad’s an alky and your sisters are slags and you’re poor and you’ve got no mum. He doesn’t really like you and neither do I. Don’t you ever come round my house again. I mean it, Anita. Stay away from my fucking house.’

  Pain’s a funny thing. Hard to describe once it’s over, hard to recapture once it’s gone. I think it felt like drowning might. His words filled me up like the muddy water used to fill up the Deptford Quaggy. And I felt it in my heart, it’s a cliché but I really did. I felt my heart not break, not snap, but become saturated with his words, bloated with what he said until, too heavy, it sunk. I wanted to stand up and walk away but couldn’t picture how I’d physically get up, how my legs would manage it. I looked at Denis who was watching us like we were something upsetting on the telly, like he was watching Lassie Come Home or something, the corners of his mouth turned down, his eyes all big and anxious behind his specs.

  ‘Just shut up, Kyle,’ I said. ‘Leave me alone.’

  He got up then. Kicked at the plastic bag with his towel and trunks in it, Denis’s eyes following him agog. I looked at Denis rather than him in case I started crying.

  ‘You’re a fucking weirdo, anyway.’ He was shouting now, a couple playing Frisbee turning to look at us. ‘All you do is stare and stare. Never saying anything. Every time I turn around you’re staring at me. Or you’re staring at Denis, or I don’t know, someone on the bus. You just fucking zone out and stare for ages. You don’t even blink. Once I timed you staring at Denis for six fucking minutes. Your eyes go all funny. It creeps me out. You never speak, just follow us around. You do my head in.’

  He stopped, then. Like he was all out of things to say. I almost laughed. Something almost made me laugh. Because despite the terrible things he was saying, despite how awful I felt, a tiny bit of me didn’t quite believe him. Ninety-seven per cent of me felt annihilated, obliterated, but the rest of me sensed that he was acting. Putting on a show and hamming it up just a little too much. He was out of breath. His white little face pink around the edges. It was over.

  I got up, finally, unsteady on my feet. Got up and stumbled off. Felt like I was sleepwalking. Felt like the contents of my head were falling through my body and were rattling around in my feet. Halfway down the hill I dimly heard him shout, ‘Anita! Fuck’s sake, Anita, come back.’ And I turned, once, when I was at the bottom. Turned to see Kyle following me, far away. Denis jogging behind him.

  eleven

  New Cross Hospital. 4 September 1986. Transcription of interview between Dr C Barton and Anita Naidu. Police copy.

  Last night I dreamed I was down there again, down there in the mine. Except this time I knew exactly what was about to happen. I knew what was going to happen but there was nothing I could do but wait for it. I was back there, listening to the girder being dragged, my heart going like the clappers as I watched the board slide away. I saw his face looking in suddenly all surrounded by light and I watched him lower himself down to where I was sat in the dark and I knew exactly what was about to happen next but there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. My screaming woke me up and I was too scared to go back to sleep again.

  Can you believe, Doctor Barton, that my walk with Malcolm that Saturday morning five weeks ago was my first date? Twenty years old and having my first date! We didn’t say much, not really, not that first time. Just walked over the suspension bridge then back again. Then we went to a café. It was difficult, because he didn’t like to call the waitress over and neither did I so we both just stared at the table for ages before anyone noticed us and came over. He had chocolate milk, I had lemonade. He told me about his job at Speedy Gonzales. Then he told me what sort of films he likes. Sci-Fi is his favourite. Malcolm has a collection of Star Wars and Star Trek things in his bedroom but I haven’t seen them because his mum doesn’t like him bringing people back, and she especially wouldn’t like a girl. They’re worth quite a lot though he says. He’s going to show me one day.

  Mostly he comes round here. We watch telly on the portable that Push bought me. And when I’m with him, I feel like somewhere inside me, someone has turned the dial down from Freeze to 7.

  Between Greenwich and Lewisham, behind all the estates, there used to run an alleyway so endless and creepy even Kyle preferred to take the longer route. It was getting dark, but it didn’t stop me from going down it. I figured things couldn’t get much worse for me that day, and I knew that if Kyle and Denis were still tailing me they’d be unlikely to follow me down there.

  Still, it didn’t take me long to wish I’d caught the bus instead. Long and bricked and narrow and winding and stinking of stale piss, the alley turned and turned for much longer than you thought it was going to. Just when you felt certain that a ten-foot murderer was going to appear around the next bend it opened out, finally, not to welcome, bustling streets but to a whole new level of creepiness.

  It was a cul-de-sac, a cluster of prefab houses and shops which must have been meant for the estates, but then a Tesco opened up down the road and that was them fucked, I suppose. Everything was deserted and half-heartedly boarded up. Stuck in a different time. Like everyone had just been magicked away suddenly. Beam me up, Scotty. On the door of the Three Feathers a poster saying ‘Sat nite is Disco nite’. Black and white pictures in Stacey’s Unisex Salon of girls with 70s flicks, an ad that said ‘Model’s Required’. A grocer’s and the newsagent, their iron shutters blocking out the years but through which you could still see a few forgotten tins of carrots, a charity box chained to the counter, some magazines still on the shelves.

  In the twilight the street had a washed-out, faded quality, as if everything had been bleached the same shade of grey. The only bit of colour came from a child’s abandoned jacket, its pink hood hooked over a bollard at the far end of the street.

  I saw this drama on TV once about nuclear war. I watched it in the dark after everybody else had gone out or gone to bed and it gave me nightmares for weeks. As the opening credits rolled, a giant mushroom cloud rose above London, then a handheld camera snaked its way through a suburban street, into
the kitchens and front rooms where bodies lay slumped across tables and over sofas or were lifelessly tucked up in bed. I remember the dressing-gowned corpse of this old lady, sprawled on her bathroom floor, a slipper dangling from her foot.

  Walking past those houses and shops reminded me of that. I imagined dead families behind those boarded-up prefabs, a decaying barman behind the till of the Three Feathers, middle-aged women under the orbed hair-dryers, rotting beneath their perms.

  The sky darkened and the lampposts glowed orange and I kept walking, concentrating on getting the fuck out of there and back into Lewisham as quickly as possible. And there he was. Mike Hunt, the kid who wanted to kill us. Mike Hunt, leaning against a wall fifty yards ahead. It was turning out to be an unbelievably shit day. He hadn’t noticed me and I considered turning back, considered walking back through the alley and taking the long route home, but there was something about the way he was leaning against the bricks, like one of those plastic spiders you throw at a wall, splat, and then watch it slowly dribble down again or like he’d been fired at the bricks by a giant sucker gun, his arms and legs at funny angles.

  Then I noticed the blue plastic bag dripping from one of his fingers. Saw the nozzle of a canister poking out. Realised he was off his head and crept a bit closer, felt he was senseless to the world around him. And so I kept walking. If I hadn’t things might have turned out differently. Doubt it, but they might have. I always think back to that moment, that split second when I decided to keep on walking instead of turning back (and what made me do that? Laziness? Recklessness? Fuck knows, fuck knows).

  Anyway, I kept walking, and the closer I got to him, the clearer it was how wasted he was. I felt more confident then that he wouldn’t even notice, never mind recognise me. I bent my head down as low as it would go, put my hands in my pockets and concentrated on being invisible.

  ‘Paki,’ he said, as I passed him. And he said it almost pleasantly, almost like a greeting. Like he’d just woken up and was pleased to see his old mate Paki there in the room with him. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. As soon as I heard his voice I realised; remembered what a psycho he was, that you didn’t take chances with people like Mike Hunt, you did everything you possibly could to avoid them, even if it meant walking back down a frigging alleyway. I cursed myself at my stupidity and kept walking; felt, rather than saw him peel himself off the wall and stumble after me.

  ‘Paki.’ He was next to me then and I glanced up at him. His pupils huge in his pale-blue eyes. He put his hand out and stopped me. I felt the blood rush to my ears, the icy feeling in my spine. Tried to think what the hell I was going to do. We stood, looking at each other. He had a foolish grin on his face. It was almost childlike, almost sweet. But that expression kept floating away to reveal a harder, more focused one behind it. I noticed he had pimples all round his nose and mouth, shiny and yellow, saw how his skin seemed to creep and twitch over the bones of his face.

  And behind the softly shifting consciousness of his face, an evil in him like a metal plate, like wire running through him. You could almost see it behind those pale, watery-blue eyes like broken glass in a kids’ paddling pool. I noticed that he couldn’t control his head properly, it bobbed about and now and again his eyes would flutter and you could see the effort it took for him to remain focused and upright, but still that hard glint of steel running through him, always there, always sharp and ready for you.

  I tried to move off and for a moment I thought he was going to let me. He even said, ‘Fuck off then, Paki, too fucking twatted today anyway,’ but just when I thought I was going to get away, just when I thought I was safe, his grip tightened. He peered at me.

  ‘You!’ he said. ‘It’s fucking you, isn’t it? One of the gypos from the bus?’ He let go of me while he stared, outraged. I tried again to walk off and that’s when he grabbed me by the throat. Nothing wobbly about him then, focused and lightning-quick he was. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’ he said, a slow smirk of pleasure creeping over his face like an oil spill. He looked down the street in the direction of the alley. ‘Where’s your mates? The fat black one and that bony little cunt?’ When I didn’t answer he rammed me into the wall until I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m by myself.’ He looked at me more keenly then.

  ‘Fuck me. Are you a girl?’ The last word in shocked disbelief. I shrugged. He looked at me more closely, grabbed my chin with his pincer-fingers, waggled it back and forth. ‘You are! You’re a fucking girl. Shit, I thought you was a boy.’ Wondering, reproachful, like I’d deliberately misled an old friend. He looked around him, checked there was nobody about, jabbed me in the crotch. ‘Does your minge smell of curry, Paki?’

  I tried to run, then. Pulled away from him, yanked away from him, fear biting at my throat. Tried to run, but he had hold of my arm. He was a head and shoulders bigger than me and I had no chance.

  ‘Let’s have a little look, shall we?’ he said pleasantly. Then he spat, ‘Fucking Paki bitch.’ He dropped his plastic bag and I heard the clanking of his canisters. He held me against the wall by the throat with one hand, pulled at my jeans with the other. Ripped the top button from its hole, yanked at and finally pulled down the zip. My tears and snot were running down my face and onto his hand and he flicked it away with an annoyed ‘Ew!’ Then,

  ‘Mike.’

  It was Kyle. Just standing there. A metre away. Just standing there calmly, come there to save me.

  Kyle.

  The relief, the gratitude, the pure joy lasted as long as it took to do my jeans up again and move clear of Mike, who was staring at Kyle with gaping, furious, disbelief. ‘You!’ he roared, and as he steamed towards Kyle and I saw the difference in them, the size of Mike compared to Kyle, the chemical-fired energy and strength in him compared to the quiet, tense smallness of my friend, the fear came back to me twice as strong; a useless, powerless terror as I realised that Mike was going to pulverise Kyle, then lay into me next.

  And then, just as Mike made a grab for Kyle with one hand and raised his other in a fist, we both noticed the knife. The penknife, Kyle’s birthday knife, opened at its biggest blade. Held in Kyle’s hand which he raised, slowly and deliberately, stretching out his arm, the blade’s tip inches from Mike’s chest.

  He backed away then, Mike. Lowered his fist. Stared – as if mesmerised – at the knife. His head had stopped bobbing finally. He was focused and alert now. At last he said, ‘Are you fucking serious?’ and shook his head in disbelief. ‘What you going to do with that? Take us all camping?’

  Still, he was unsure, I could tell. Kyle kept his arm steady, didn’t say anything, just stared expressionless at Mike. And in those seconds while Mike made up his mind what to do, I had time to notice Kyle’s eyes. Dead, they were, pure dead, like the time on the boat. Nothing behind them. He was off somewhere else, I could tell. A different fear, then, fear for Kyle, fear of Kyle, crept into my guts.

  Mike shrugged, said, ‘Fuck this shit,’ made a movement to walk away then suddenly, quickly, turned back again, chopped his arm out to knock the knife from Kyle’s hands, but Kyle was too quick and snatched his hand back then lunged, cutting Mike’s wrist, neatly, cleanly, the blade slicing through the flesh, blood arriving immediately, thick and red, one wet, red drop falling to the ground. A sound from Mike, like a dog that’s just been stepped on, then a furious, silent grab for Kyle’s arm. But again Kyle was too quick and nicked him again, this time on the neck, just below the jaw. Blood again, but not so much, just a slow seeping redness, a thin oozing line.

  Mike reached up, touched his neck, held his fingers smeared with blood to his face. Studied them, screamed, ‘Fuck!’ Went for Kyle again, kicked at him, shoved his trainer into Kyle’s stomach and Kyle went down, but still he held the knife, he never dropped the knife. Mike kicked him in the ribs, went to stand on Kyle’s hand but just in time Kyle reached up and stabbed him in the shin. Not just a nick this time, not just a cut, but a proper plunging, lunging, stab. I saw the blade disappear into Mi
ke’s jeans, heard him scream, the three of us staring at the knife eaten up by Mike’s leg. Then Kyle pulled it out again, stood up.

  Mike howling, hopping, holding his leg, pulling at his jeans, blood seeping out from under the hem, trickling onto the pavement. A red-black stain spreading across pale-blue denim. ‘Cunt!’ screamed Mike. ‘You fucking, cunting cunt. I’m going to fucking kill you. Both of you. I’m going to come after the pair of you with a fucking cleaver and chop both your fucking heads off.’ Then he limped away, disappearing off into one of the estates, and we watched him go until we couldn’t see him anymore, only hear his cries of ‘Fuck!’ and ‘Cunt!’ get fainter and fainter.

  Kyle dropped the knife. Dropped himself, to his knees. Knelt there on the tarmac, his head bent. I picked up the knife. Wiped it on my T-shirt, closed the blade and put it in my jeans pocket. Sat on the kerb and watched him. We didn’t speak, didn’t need to. Just stayed like that for a minute or two. Then got up and walked home. Didn’t speak the whole way back but I’d never felt so close to him. At his gate I didn’t want to leave him, didn’t want to be apart from him, but I stayed on the pavement and watched him walk to his gate by himself. When his key was in his door and I was moving off he said, ‘Anita.’

  I stopped, looked at him. His eyes were his again and he fixed them on mine as he said, ‘We’ll go to the castle, yeh? If you want to. We can go and look for that bunker.’

  I nodded once, my eyes locked on his.

  He looked done in, like he could hardly stand anymore. Like every word was an effort. ‘I’ll meet you here, outside your house at three,’ he said.