Hide and Seek (9 page)

CHAPTER 19

16:06pm

Peter turned and ran back through the kitchen sidestepping Cheryl and ran up the stairs to the flat above. He ran through the living room and out the open door onto the balcony. In the short time he had been inside the shop the early dark nights had already started to creep in. The rain had stopped for now, but the winds continued to whistle.

He crept
along to the edge and peered around the corner, wondering whether to risk going back down the stairs. He didn’t have to ponder much longer as a policeman appeared at the bottom, blocking his exit. He caught sight of Peter and shouted out.

‘
Police!’

Peter turned and ran back
along the balcony. He clambered over to the other side of the wet metal barrier with his toes teetering on the edge. He crouched down and started to climb down the outside of the building; his feet hanging off into nothing. The policeman reached the top of the stairs and shouted again.

‘Stop, police
!’ as he ran towards Peter.

Peter hung from the ledge and dropped down as the policeman leant over the bars to grab him. He fell ten feet and landed heavily on the gravel of the alleyway, the momentum of his drop making him stumble and fall backwards to the
ground. The policeman shouted out for his colleague.

‘Mike, he’s in the alleyway.’

Peter clambered to his feet, looking left and right wondering which way to go. The policeman on the balcony, deciding not to risk a similar jump, turned and ran back towards the stairs. Peter heard him shout again to his colleague who he assumed was at the foot of the stairway.

‘Go round the other side.’

Peter realised he couldn’t escape from the alley. He turned and ran towards one of the garages and jumped up to grab the roof. He hadn’t done anything like this since he was a child but was surprised how easily it came back to him. He pulled himself up with his fingers whilst using his feet to scramble up the front of the garage door. He got his upper body above the roof line and slumped onto the top of the garage and shuffled the rest of his lower body onto the roof. The two policemen ran into the alleyway from opposite sides of the buildings and ran towards him. He stood up and started to step gingerly over the ivy covered felted roof, almost tiptoeing, worried that at any moment it would crack and break and he would crash through into the garage below. He made it to the other side and jumped down onto a patch of unkempt grass and ran over the uneven surface. He fought his way through the thin tree saplings sprouting from the ground until he reached the wire fence surrounding the cricket pitch. As he vaulted over the fence he took a chance to look behind him. He could see that the other policeman, the one called Mike, had just jumped down off the garage roof onto the grass behind him.

Peter sprinted across the middle of the cricket pitch, his feet squelching on the sodden grass. He could hear the sound of an ambulance in the distance and felt a sense of relief that it was most likely heading towards Cheryl. He ran to the side of the cricket stands
- down the road between the stands and the car park - and continued down the sloping tarmac drive.

He came out onto Regal Road
, a long thin street with terraced houses to the right of him. Down the road to his left was a railway crossing, the track running by the side of the cricket ground. Beyond the railway crossing Peter recalled there was a steep hill leading down to mainly derelict ground which also housed the Marshalls site. It was a merchant’s yard for creating and distributing paving slabs, bricks and tiles. On the opposite side of the road were a number of small disused warehouses which covered the ground from the railway crossing up to the alleyway before the terraced houses began. He wondered if he should try and hide within the warehouses.

Peter looked behind him and could see that Mike had just entered the drive and was heading towards him. He realised that the policeman, although tall and slim, couldn’t be a fast runner because he
’d dropped further behind whilst crossing the cricket pitch. He just had to keep running, Peter thought to himself. He crossed the road and ran down the alleyway behind the terraced houses. At the end of the alleyway there was a junction where he could either turn back out onto Regal Road or take a cycle path which led down to Sudbury Lane. The lane had approximately twenty generously-sized houses either side of an extreme decline where the Excellent Eight used to play on their skateboards when they were younger. As he ran down the alleyway towards the junction he could feel his shins throbbing as his feet thumped clumsily on the cobbled floor of the alley. He was panting very heavily, his brow lined with sweat and he had a stitch that ached every time he gasped for breath. He reached the junction and glanced back down the alleyway. He could hear the sound of boots echoing on the cobbles but Mike hadn’t rounded the corner yet.

Peter turned and ran down the steep
incline of the cycle path. The path was shielded on either side by high wooden fences. As far as he could remember, behind the fence to his left was a wasteland of trees and bushes. Behind the fence to his right was the extended garden of the first house at the top of Sudbury Lane. He managed to bring himself to a stop against a lamppost at the exit of the path and looked down the lane. He tried to remember the layout of the streets that led from the junction at the bottom of the road. To the right the road led into another wasteland which the Excellent Eight had affectionately dubbed ‘the tip’ as people used it as a dumping ground. The road to the left led through more housing estates. He couldn’t think of any viable place to hide and besides every part of his body was aching and he needed to rest. He climbed over the waist high wall surrounding the house and moved into the garden which sloped up the bank beside the cycle path, cut off from view by the high fence. There was a shed at the top of the garden and he ran up behind it and crouched down. Peter froze as he heard the sound of shoes scraping to a stop at the junction of the alleyway on the other side of the fence, inches away from him. He searched for a crack in the fence but it was made of solid timber panels. He could hear Mike panting as he spoke into his radio.

‘Adam, I’m in the alley behind Regal Road.’

He paused for another breath.

‘I think I might have lost him.’

Peter felt a sense of relief wash over him but knew he wasn’t completely safe yet. Mike started to move down the cycle path and passed the spot where he was hiding on the other side of the fence.

‘I’m heading down onto Sudbury Lane.’

Peter hoped that he wouldn’t look for him in the garden. He figured that Mike would know he could have gained enough distance from him to make it to the junction at the bottom of the road and take either turning. He crouched on his knees behind the garden shed waiting. He attempted to take advantage of the brief respite to regulate his breathing which he had been holding in when Mike was on the other side of the fence. His knees were hurting and he felt slightly wobbly. He clumsily fell back onto his backside, wincing as his feet scraped out noisily across the pavement slab. He sat there waiting. The sound of his own heartbeat drumming in his ears.

Peter crawled up to the edge of the garden shed and timidly peeked around; there was no sign of the policeman. He climbed up onto his feet and looked around again. From his vantage point he had a good view of the houses and half of the road on the right-hand side of Sudbury Lane. He tensed as Mike walked into his eye line at the bottom of the junction. The police officer looked up and down the road and then disappeared down the right turning towards ‘the tip’. Peter breathed a sigh of relief.

He crept cautiously back down the garden, keeping an eye on the bottom of the road in case Mike decided to abandon his search and come back to Sudbury Lane. He shuffled backside first over the waist high wall and climbed back up the cycle path to the alleyway junction and took the other route back out onto Regal Road. As he came out of the alleyway, he looked around him and a bolt of fear flashed through him as he saw a police car navigating up Regal Road towards him.

‘Shit.’

He immediately back stepped into the alleyway and turned to run back down it. For a second he hoped that he hadn’t been spotted but his heart sank as he heard the sound of the sirens blare out.

CHAPTER 20

16:18pm

The police car turned into the alleyway as Peter reached the junction again. He knew he couldn’t risk going down the cycle path a second time - he could run into Mike coming back from ‘the tip’. He turned and ran round the corner back down the alleyway behind the terraced houses as he heard the tyres of the car scrape across the cobbles as it throttled down the alley. The car screeched to a halt at the junction because the turning was too tight to get the car around the corner. As Peter sped down the alleyway he heard the slam of the car door as the policeman Adam gave chase. He shouted into his radio to his colleague.

‘He’s in the alley behind Regal Road. I’m
pursuing on foot.’

Peter rounded the corner and came back onto Regal Road opposite the cricket club again. For a second he debated whether to go back through into the cricket club and run the exact same way he had come but he didn’t know how to get back up onto the garage. Besides there might be more police at the shops attending to Cheryl, he thought. Peter glanced down the road and saw the outline of the Marshalls site, another childhood playground. He started running down the street and passed over the railway crossing and ran unsteadily across the muddy path leading to Marshalls.

Peter got to the entrance to Marshalls and was both surprised and grateful that security hadn’t been increased in the twenty years since he’d last been there. Despite the ten foot high perimeter fences, the entrance to the site simply consisted of a barrier fence. Peter vaulted over the fence like a hurdler and continued into the site, which was deserted because it was a Sunday. Peter had chosen to come in here because he was confident he could lose the police amongst the maze of bricks and pavement slabs in the grounds at the rear of the site. There were so many nooks, crannies, crevices and niches to hide in which is why it had been such a brilliant place to play Hide and Seek when the Excellent Eight were younger. Now he was 34 years old and playing Hide and Seek again.

He ran
between two industrial warehouses, where the paving slabs, bricks and tiles were manufactured, and into a field of stone pillars. On the left-hand side of the grounds were bricks stacked ten feet high on pallets ready to be shipped off when ordered. The right-hand side of the grounds had paving slabs stacked on pallets. His plan was to do exactly what the Excellent Eight used to do when they were occasionally caught playing in the site by the security guard. He ran down the main path, splashing through the puddles and veered off. He darted between the blocks in a zigzag fashion, moving stealthily as if he was a child again. He continued - deeper into the grounds - until he came to the back row of the brick pillars which towered over him like statues. The last row was only a couple of feet away from the security fence at the back of the site. He could hear the commotion of the policemen entering the site, Mike who had gone towards ‘the tip’ must have caught up with his colleague Adam. It wouldn’t be long until more police arrived, Peter thought.

The pillar of bricks he was stood by had four sets of pavement slabs sat on a square pallet at three different levels like a stairway. One set of paving slabs stopped at about five foot, the second set at about seven foot and the front two sets at about ten foot high shielding him from view. He climbed up the first two steps, crouching behind the two higher sets of paving slabs in front of him and peeked over to see where the policemen were.
They were walking down the main path in the middle of the site, each of them looking up and down their respective rows as they passed them by. They were talking to each other. Peter couldn’t hear what they were saying but it was obvious they were debating how best to find him. They stopped about half way into the site and after a brief discussion Mike nodded in agreement and turned and ran briskly towards the site entrance. Peter realised that they probably thought they had him trapped in here and Mike was returning to the entrance to make sure he couldn’t get past them and leave the site. Adam stood for a few seconds, clearly deciding which row to investigate and then headed away from Peter over to the other side disappearing behind the pallets of bricks.

Peter took the opportunity to stand up. He turned around to the fence, shuffled his feet on the spot to ready himself and then took a short run and jumped over the security fence, pulling his feet up to ensure he didn’t catch himself on the spikes. The ground on the other side of the fence sloped down towards the railway line. As Peter’s feet
hit the ground on the side of the muddy hill his momentum carried him forward. With his arms flailing he tumbled head first, rolling for a few feet before he came to a violent stop at the foot of the hill.

He la
y there dazed for a few seconds, not wanting to move in case he had damaged something. He tensed his body in expectation of a sudden onset of sharp pain but apart from a dull aching sensation in his feet he felt okay. He stretched his back as he sat up. He looked back up the hill. It was a more difficult jump than he remembered. He got up and brushed the smeared mud from his knees and backside. He kept an eye on the fence of the Marshalls site as he moved away and crossed back over the railway line. He pushed his way through the bushes at the side of the line and climbed over a rickety fence. He clambered down a small grass hill to reach the road that led to the derelict warehouses behind him. He jogged away from the warehouses, making sure he kept under cover of the trees and bushes by the side of the railway line. Peter continued over into Beckbank estate and only then did he feel safe enough to slow down to a walk.

His hands were stinging slightly and as he turned them over to investigate he
saw they were covered in dry blood, with a few spots of fresh blood on top. For a moment he thought all the blood belonged to him, but then realised it was mainly Cheryl’s blood that he had on his hands. His stomach shuddered and he began to retch as the images of Cheryl’s body, her skin blistered and cracked, flashed through his mind. The day’s events overwhelmed him. He couldn’t control himself for shivering and crying. Tears started to pour from his eyes, as he hugged himself and wept, rocking on the spot. Peter had never been someone who cried very often. In fact the last time he remembered truly crying from pain was when he was a child and hurt himself playing a game in Durden Woods. He had fallen into a hole and hurt his leg. He had cried then. He hugged himself hard trying to control the feelings washing through him.

He thought back to the time when Janine had been inconsolable after the death of her father. Janine was a strong woman who
, like him, didn’t cry often and he remembered how helpless and small she had looked, curled up on the bed hugging the quilt which spilled out above her arms and covered her face. He had comforted her during those times the only way he knew how. He did not know what he could say to make the pain go away and all he could do was be there for her and be her blanket. He had held her close as she gripped onto him tightly, shuddering as the waves of emotions flew repeatedly through her body. They stayed there on the bed for hours at a time for a number of days, hardly saying any words. Peter wished that she was here now, to hold him in his hour of need. But she felt very far away, and that only made him cry more.

Peter sat on the wall of a house on the desolate street for more than five minutes as images of Colin and Cheryl flashed through his mind. Eventually, his
crying subsided, until he was left shivering, his tear ducts exhausted like reservoirs emptied. He looked up to the grey sky and closed his eyes, inhaling and exhaling deeply to calm himself.