That Summer He Died (33 page)

Alex pulled a half-bottle of dark rum from his pocket and drank from it deeply. ‘We didn’t kill anyone,’ he said. ‘It was an accident.’

James wasn’t buying it. He’d seen the facts in the seared flesh of Victoria Cooper’s body, as surely as if they’d been branded there. ‘The pills killed her. That’s what they were all saying. Overdose. Toxic shock. I heard them. The paramedics from the ambulance. Said they’d seen the same thing before.’

‘They could be wrong,’ Dan said. ‘She might just have died.’

‘Yeah,’ James said, ‘and we might just have killed her.’

‘Murphy’s gonna be after us, Alex,’ Dan said. ‘He’ll bang us up for this, I know he will. Even if he can’t prove anything, he’ll fucking set us up.’

‘Shut it! Both of you,’ Alex said, getting to his feet and pacing around. ‘Murphy’s got nothing on us. Same as everyone else. They don’t know shit.’

‘But it was our party, Alex,’ Dan persisted. ‘He’ll fucking know it’s down to us.’

‘What? You reckon I was the only person dealing there?’ Alex said. ‘No fucking way. Even if she did OD – and we still don’t know that for sure – then anyone could have slipped her what did it.’

James screwed up the cigarette he’d been about to light. ‘You did it,’ he said. ‘I saw you. You sold the pills to her. No one else.’

Alex stood with his boots only inches away from James.

‘And you’re the one who told her to buy off me.’ His bared his teeth like a dog. ‘Remember that?’

James stared into the sky. The searchlight swept across the stars above Eagle’s Point. He wanted out so bad he’d risk jumping off the cliff if he thought he’d stand an infinitesimal chance of survival. He kept swallowing, his throat heavy with phlegm. His thoughts kept racing. Turn back time. . . Always the same desire. . . Doing all these things that weren’t him. . . Having to deal with the consequences.

The Ecstasy was still in his system, too strong to be flushed away completely by his panic, lodged there, inescapable as his guilt.

‘I remember,’ he said.

‘Yeah, well, you make sure you do. ’Cos if any shit comes down on me over this, it’s on you too.’

‘They’re gonna tell him,’ Dan said. ‘Someone’s gonna tell Murphy it was us.’

‘No one’ll say shit,’ Alex snapped.

‘I’ve seen it, man. I’ve seen it fucking happen. You remember that schoolkid who died in Brighton? OD’d in some club he wasn’t even old enough to be in. They nicked the dealer. I remember his face in the papers, fucking everything about him. Scapegoat. They ain’t gonna stop till they’ve got one.’

Alex spoke quickly, logically, like he was giving a lecture, anticipating objections before they were raised: ‘We say nothing, they know nothing. The girl was on her own when I sold them to her. So people say we were dealing, so what? We weren’t the only ones. Have we been caught with drugs? No. People who scored off us, they gonna be reliable witnesses? No. Off their faces, that’s why. Our word against theirs.’

He walked a couple of paces away and knelt down on the ground. He ripped up some turf and pulled the pills from his pockets, set about burying them, planting them like seeds. He tugged the wash bag over and emptied out what was left in there, too, then threw the bag away into the bushes. ‘We say nothing and everything’s gonna be OK.’

‘It’s not right,’ James said. ‘We killed her.’

‘It’s too late for an attack of conscience now.’ Anger burnt in Alex’s voice. ‘It was an accident. Not like a fucking murder! What good’s grassing ourselves up gonna do? We’ll ride this out, just like we always have.’

James stood up. ‘I don’t want any part of it.’

‘Forget it,’ Alex said. ‘You’re in it now. Up to your fucking neck. Same as us. You got no choice.’

‘I’m going,’ James said.

‘Going where?’

‘Home. I didn’t deal. I didn’t sell shit. This is nothing to do with me.’

Alex side-stepped into his path. ‘You think a judge’ll believe you? You never heard of conspiracy?’

‘I don’t care.’

Alex smiled mockingly. ‘Oh, you care all right, James. That’s your problem: you care too much.’

Their eyes were still locked.

‘So, go,’ Alex said finally, his teeth still showing in that ferocious smile. ‘Go home and sleep. If you can. . . if Murphy lets you. But you’ll keep your trap shut. You’re not gonna let yourself be the face in the papers, no matter what you think now. Don’t kid yourself: you’re no better than me.’

‘Fuck you.’ James did walk then. ‘Fuck you both,’ he shouted back.

But even as he sped up, as he broke into a run, even as tears rolled free from his eyes and he started to sob, even then he knew in his heart that Alex was right. About everything. About keeping quiet. About James being too afraid to speak out. About James being afraid.

*

He got back to Alan’s house and turned in just as the sun was turning out. He took two Valium and prayed that he’d black out.

But he didn’t. Too much shit still in his system. Too much paranoia. He just lay there, sweating, crying, with bass lines throbbing over and over and over through his mind. He threw up twice, all over himself. He didn’t get up to wash it off.

Murphy came for him about an hour later. James heard the pounding at the door. Then came Alan’s shouting. James lurched towards the stairs. The house felt fuzzy, like it wasn’t real, like none of this mattered any more. Murphy’s barked commands felt like they were being played at the wrong speed.

Alan wouldn’t look at James as he came down to the door. Murphy was already waiting, another cop beside him. Lights flashed outside. An engine purred. Alan didn’t follow as they marched James to the car.

What happened next. . . the only experience James could relate it to was the night he’d spent after hearing about his parents’ death. Sleep deprivation. Total alienation. Bubbled, adrift in space, spinning further and further away, waiting for his oxygen to run out, knowing he could never be rescued, waiting and wanting to die.

He felt nothing as Murphy and the police driver took him straight down to the station. He didn’t answer their questions, couldn’t interpret their words. Numb head. Dream state. Entranced. Not happening to him. Someone else. Some piece of scum. A car journey where Murphy’s vitriol provided the only soundtrack, where James said nothing. Same as Alex knew he would. Seeking sanctuary in silence; safety in denial. Old enough to go to prison now. All of them. Old enough to be deemed responsible for their own actions. The whole world swelled up as though it would suffocate James. He waited and wished that it would.

Face-slap.

In the station now. A bare-walled room that smelt of piss.

‘How does it feel to have a death on your conscience?’

‘I don’t know.’

Face-slap.

‘Where’s Howley?’

‘I don’t know.’

Face-slap.

‘Where’s Thompson?’

‘I don’t know.’

Face-slap. Face-slap. Face-slap.

‘She was her parents’ only child.’

But soon the numbness wore off. Then James was left with what he’d done. And here was the sick bit: as the beating continued, as Murphy and the other cop went in and out of the cell, every slap they delivered felt right, felt so deserved that the pain transformed itself to pleasure, the punishment to reward.

Murphy was no longer the animal. Just the zookeeper. James belonged in this cage with him. He needed to be smacked back into civilisation. She was dead. Victoria Cooper’s eyes had been closed for ever. He might as well have slashed a blade across her throat and watched her bleed out. He’d done it. As much as Alex. He’d led her to her killer and had watched him pass her poison. James needed to be punished. He needed to be cleaned.

Face-slap. Face-slap. Face-slap.

But there would never be enough.

*

James didn’t go into Grancombe for two weeks after Murphy let him go. In that time, Alex and Dan called round once. From an upstairs window, he watched them standing by the door waiting for an answer. Alex’s shades were in place, as was Dan by Alex’s side – somewhere, James now suspected, he’d always be.

The Spitfire was parked in the yard, showroom-stunning. James wanted to puke at the thought of where the money had come from to pay for it, what it had really cost. He wanted to scratch it, to claw off its paint. He wanted to release its handbrake and watch it roll backwards down a hill and into the gaping blue sea.

He didn’t go down to greet them. No point. He already had the answers to the only questions he wanted to ask. The local paper had filled him in on that front. No one had been charged in connection with Victoria Cooper’s death. It would go down as Misadventure. They were all in the clear. Free to carry on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

Only that wasn’t what James wanted.

The two-week self-imposed exile gave him time to think, restore order to the anarchy of emotions and thoughts in his mind. Sort out your head first, then think about sorting out your life. What he’d done was wrong. There was no escaping that. And what he’d done was permanent. No amount of grieving or guilt was going to raise Victoria Cooper from the grave. It was too late to fix her body’s temperature-control system, ice the massive explosion of heat, disintegrate the clotted blood in her arteries and veins, repair the organ and tissue damage that had sent her reeling out of consciousness on the dance floor.

So, where did that leave him? With the past chiselled in stone, the only hope of redemption for him lay in the future. That was a story he could write any way he chose. He’d stolen Victoria Cooper’s life. The least he could now do was ensure that his own wasn’t wasted as well. Let something good grow out of the bad. Nurture a flower from the grave. Be true to yourself. Be happy. He owed her that.

Once James made this decision – to move forward rather than back – his first thought was to return to London. Get away from Grancombe. Leave it all behind. Make a fresh start. But running away wouldn’t solve anything. It was himself he had to face up to; and he’d be there in London, just the same as here. It would be as futile as attempting to outrun his own shadow. So, what to do here? No point in staying locked away any more. He’d seen what that had done to Alan. He’d focused so far in on himself that the outside world had effectively ceased to exist for him. He was still bolted inside his study, incommunicado. That wasn’t what James wanted for himself. He wanted to be reminded that he was still human. He wanted emotions, warmth. He wanted to feel alive again. He wanted people to look at him and care.

He wanted someone good – someone like Suzie – to look at him and not turn away.

*

He left the house on a Wednesday afternoon and walked down to the Surf School on North Beach. It suddenly looked small, insignificant: a wooden shed wedged between a fishing shack and an outboard-engine repair shop. Like the whole town behind it, its glamour had been erased for him, a sandcastle swept into sludge.

He ducked through the open doorway and approached the counter. A old Blur tune played. There was a handbell there, with a piece of paper Sellotaped to it which read RING FOR SERVICE. In a back room a radio played. He rang the bell.

Simon appeared in the doorway a few seconds later. ‘Hi, James,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘You been waiting long? I’ve been sleeping on the job again.’

James had met him a few times before. Used to see him at beach parties. Beach bum incarnate. Worked at the Surf School in the summer. Hibernated during the winter in a nest of sinsemilla, according to Dan.

‘How’s tricks?’ James asked.

‘Good, you know. Sun’s out. Can’t complain. How about you? Didn’t see you at the bash on South Beach on Saturday. . . You been OK? Alex said you’d done a bunk.’

‘Just taking some time out.’ James coughed, cleared his throat. ‘How is Alex?’ he said.

‘Hard to tell. All that shit at Eagle’s Point. . .’

Shit. . . so that was all it added up to? The death of a girl?

James gazed around the walls at the equipment-hire prices and posters. ‘Suzie here today? I passed Surfers’ Turf earlier on my way over. . . saw that it was closed.’

‘Yeah, she’s out with a couple of kids, teaching at the moment.’ He checked his watch. ‘Should be back soon. They only paid for an hour. You want me to let her know you called by?’

James shook his head. ‘No, don’t worry. I’ll wait for her outside.’

He sat on the nearby car-park wall and smoked, gazing across the beach at the oiled tourists frying like bacon on a pan, and the kite surfers cutting back and forth across the bay.

He saw Suzie emerging from the surf about twenty minutes later, sealed in a fluorescent pink wetsuit that had been cut off at the elbows and knees. She heaved the surfboard out of the water and wedged it under her arm, then stretched down and unfastened the cord which linked it to her ankle. A couple of boys in black wetsuits and carrying short boards came splashing up to join her, and the three of them stood talking for a couple of minutes. The boys laid down their boards on the sand and, standing on them, crouched and slowly rose to their feet. They practised the exercise a few more times under her gaze, then she left them there and padded up the beach towards the Surf School.

‘Suzie,’ James called, sliding off the wall, walking across the sand to join her.

She pushed her wet fringe back and rubbed the saltwater from her eyes. The quartz from the sand sparkled like diamonds on her cheeks.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘Just thought I’d see how you were.’

‘Yeah?’ She stood the surfboard upright in the sand next to her and rested her elbow on it. ‘London get boring, did it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, that’s where you’ve been, isn’t it? That’s what Dan said. Said you skipped back there after Eagle’s Point.’ She read something in his face. ‘He’s talking crap as usual, then?’

‘Yeah,’ James said, ‘I haven’t been anywhere. Just out at Alan’s.’

‘Bored of hanging out with Dan and Alex. . .’

‘That and. . .’ He just spat it out. ‘And what happened to that girl. I just needed time to think.’

‘Yeah?’ She was looking into his eyes, trying to read him.