Cross Country Murder Song

Table of Contents

Published by Jonathan Cape

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright © Philip Wilding 2010

Philip Wilding has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs

and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out,

or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior

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in which it is published and without a similar condition,

including this condition, being imposed on the

subsequent purchaser

SWEET CAROLINE

© Sony/ATV Music Publishing International.

All rights reserved. Used by permission.

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

Jonathan Cape

Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 2SA

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ISBN 9780224089173

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About the Author

Philip Wilding is a journalist, writer and producer for both radio and television. He currently lives in London.

Cross Country Murder Song
is his first novel.

Acknowledgements

These people have helped in one way or another, some still do, so thank you: Mal Peachey, Grant Moon, Sally Hayley, Eilidh Duncanson, Willie Dowling, Andy Bass, Dai Edwards, Neil Lach-Szyrma, Dr. Piz, Phill Jupitus (CEO P&P Industries), Lauren Laverne, John Dryland, Lou Pearce, Kory Clarke, Mona Dehghan, Jerry Ewing, Andy Ryan, Dan, Beth and Tom at the office, Mikey Evans, Ma, Dinah and Ron for keeping the home fires burning, Zaki Boulos, Justine Fox, J and Kim, Duncan for the photographs, Michael Forry, Danny Baker, Nicky Wire and the inestimable Miss Nuala Gallagher. I love Sylvain.

Box

Tell me about the box they kept you in, he said.

I remember the darkness, he replied, and the smell of the wood and the dust. When they first put me in there I sneezed and my sneezing made a dog bark and then someone shouted shut up, but I didn't know if they were shouting at me or at the dog.

He glanced up at the therapist seated just behind him then wriggled so that he was sitting up. He still felt uncomfortable lying on his back for too long. He understood that it was meant to relax him, but it put him on edge. He looked at the blue expanse of sky through the large window at the end of the office, imagined being in an airy square somewhere with the breeze prickling his skin and exhaled deeply and slowly to stave off the panic as he'd been shown.

The therapist was looking out the same window, his pencil flat on his notepad. Are you okay? he asked. We don't have to talk about the box if you don't want to.

It's okay, he said.

They'd kept him in the box for three days. It was oily; sludge filled one of its corners and the wood splintered easily. It had a hinged door and light came in as a thin slice of gold. It smelt musty, as if it had lain empty and unused for months before it became his.

He followed the day as it progressed slowly across his chest, traversing his body and then drifting into darkness, snuffed out as the earth spun and moved him away from the sun.

When they'd first placed him in there he'd had a blue canvas bag over his head. He'd heard the lid slam shut behind him and the rattle of a chain being drawn around the box and then a lock clicked into place. He was face down, his arms tied behind his back, he couldn't control the breaths that were coming from him in bursts; he gulped and gulped as if his face were being pushed down into a shallow pool. The chain rattled into life again, the lid flying open, someone freed his hands and flipped him onto his back. There was silence, he coughed abruptly, violently, and then a hand reached into the box and quickly pulled the hood from his head; the light stung his eyes and the lid clattered shut again. Life streamed out of him in snot, tears and wheezing air.

The therapist was writing something down in his notebook, he could see it in his peripheral vision. Sometimes the therapist leant forward attentively (to an onlooker it might have seemed like he was about to touch the head of his patient, perhaps to comfort him or ruffle his hair), other times he sat back deeply in his chair, his legs crossed, tapping his pencil distractedly against his bottom lip.

You were ten, said the therapist.

Just, he replied, my birthday was a couple of days before.

He was tall for his age, taller than his friends. Taller than the kidnappers might have gauged judging by the length of the box. He could never quite stretch his legs. It was narrow too. Years later he surmised, given the oil on his clothes and the cheapness of the wood, that the box must have housed car and truck parts before it held him.

I was more worried about the chains, he said.

The chains? said the therapist.

The ones wrapped around the box, he replied. I thought they were going to throw me into a lake and the chains were to stop the box floating away, to make sure it sank. I was a poor swimmer anyway.

When did you stop worrying that they were going to drown you? said the therapist.

I didn't, he replied, not until my father came to get me.

And water now? said the therapist.

Water's okay, he said. I like swimming now.

The air conditioning hummed. Outside a car caught its gears on the hill, the engine straining against the incline.

Do you remember it happening? said the therapist.

Happening? he asked.

When they kidnapped you, said the therapist.

I remember the car coming up behind me; I remember thinking that it was going way too fast, he said. I always imagine fast cars are going to lose control, the idea scares me. I remember thinking that when I heard the kidnappers' car. I didn't know they were kidnappers then, though.

Why do you think fast cars are automatically going to lose control? asked the therapist. For once his question didn't seem perfunctory. It sounded like he really wanted to hear the answer.

When I was young, he replied, six or seven maybe, I'd been out walking with my mother in town. She'd gone shopping and taken me with her, I don't know where my nanny was. She'd parked and we were waiting to cross the street.

Where was this? said the therapist.

Here, he said, in New York, we were on East Houston Street, heading for the shops in SoHo. My mother liked it down there, I did too.

And what happened? asked the therapist.

We were about to cross the road when a car came racing around the corner. I remember the noise more than anything else: the way the brakes were screeching, the tightening at the heart of the engine, the hopelessness of it all, the way the back end of the car tilted, drifted away and then came back into line. It looked like the paintwork was wet, like the car was being stretched. Like when you see those photos of pool balls on impact, and they're elongated for the briefest of moments before gravity or whatever it is snaps them back into shape, makes them spherical again. Do you know the pictures I mean?

The therapist nodded, he did.

That was how it looked, the car looked longer, like it was alive. Then it was gone and I heard the police sirens coming along after it. I remember the lights and the wailing getting louder and louder and my mother's hand tightening around mine. I tried to pull away, but she just dragged me closer and then the police car veered and dipped and never straightened again. It shunted a car on the corner, crumpling the wing. I remember the wing mirror twisting off and popping into the air and then the sound of glass breaking and a cloud of silver dust. The car they'd struck jumped back as if trying to get out of the way and then the police car bounced up off the kerb and hit the corner of a restaurant. The driver wasn't wearing a seat belt, who did then? Though I thought a cop might . . . he was on our side as they hit. I remember the jolt as he sprung upwards in his seat and his face collided with the windscreen; he looked really surprised as if he'd just come to, sitting there. His nose was bleeding and he was holding his head in his hand, tentatively, like he was scared of what he'd find if he touched it too closely.

What happened? said the therapist.

I don't know. The crowd gathered around the police car and my mother led me away; I think they were okay, I don't think the car blew up or anything like that, there weren't suddenly flames everywhere if that's what you're thinking.

The therapist glanced at him. That isn't what I was thinking, he said. He wrote something else in his notebook and stole a glance at his watch as he was doing so. So when you heard the speeding car coming up behind you the day you were kidnapped, your first reaction was to run? he asked.

No, not run, he said, almost the opposite. It used to make my legs seize up, I'd feel like I was about to flinch. It was like I was expecting the impact and I didn't want to draw attention to myself in case that made me a target.

He remembered thinking that the car was driving up too quickly behind him and stealing a glance over his shoulder, his head low as if to duck an oncoming blow. He remembered the shouting, someone's hand on a car horn, another voice telling them to shut the fuck up. He saw Karl his bodyguard being hit with a wooden club, the air leaving his body as he barrelled forward, his hands scrabbling emptily as he fell. There was already a welt raised on one side of his face, the bruising mimicking the shape of the club; the two men kept hitting Karl as he went down and then kicked him as he lay there. Then someone had hit him across the back of the head, he felt sick and scared as if the police car had mounted the kerb and clipped his calves, dragging him underneath the wheels. Then he was laid out across the back seat of the car, the sky rolling above him through the oblong of the rear window. They were pulling hurriedly away and he thought about the getaway car he'd seen on that day with his mother, with the muscular bodywork flexing into life as it raced away from the crime scene, like cars he'd seen in films. He lay there while someone sat on his legs and waited for the inevitable police sirens to start up in their wake.