back and giggling at the applause.
The boys were egging her on. The music was too loud.
Outside, there was a patio and a swing seat. I was getting some fresh air, drinking a Bacardi Breezer, watching three girls and two boys smoking a joint. They offered me some. Told me their names. I told them mine. I coughed when I tried to hold the smoke in my lungs, but I kept trying because I wanted them to like me.
That’s when I saw Tash in the garden. She was puking. Callum Loach was with her, holding back her hair and making her lean over so she didn’t mess up her dress.
Callum was tall and strong and played football. Tash had been teasing him all summer. I remember her wearing a bikini and parading past him at the leisure center. Later, when she rubbed suntan oil on her shoulders, she pulled one triangle of her bikini top aside so that he got a glimpse of her breast. Callum looked embarrassed. Tash laughed.
Now he was looking after her. He went and got her a bottle of water, wiped her face and unhooked her belt because it was too tight around her waist.
Then Aiden turned up, eyes jittering and his skin all waxy. He told Callum to get his “faggot hands” off Tash.
Even though Tash was completely wasted, she told Aiden to piss off, but he didn’t listen.
“Is he a good fuck for a faggot?” he screamed.
“Better than you,” she said. “Maybe you should ask for some pointers.”
“Wha? From the dickless wonder?”
“At least I could find his dick.”
Toby Kroger and Craig Gould laughed. Aiden tried to slap Tash, but Callum pushed him away. Next came a punch, which missed by a mile. Everybody laughed. Aiden sulked.
Callum offered to drive us home. He had his mum’s car. Tash had the window open and her head resting on the door so the fresh air could sober her up. I was in the back seat, feeling woozy, but glad to be away from the party.
When we got to the farmhouse, Tash still felt sick and wanted Callum to drive her around a bit longer. She rested her head on his shoulder. “I want to kiss you but my mouth tastes like puke.”
“That’s OK.”
“I could do something else.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
That’s when Tash remembered her handbag. It was back at the house. It had her mobile phone and some of Hayden’s stuff so she couldn’t leave it behind. So we drove back to Abingdon and Callum went inside.
He came back out and I saw him looking around. Craig Gould and Toby Kroger were yelling something at him. I noticed that Aiden’s car was gone. Callum opened the driver’s door and I saw Aiden’s Subaru coming towards us. I yelled out, but there wasn’t time.
Aiden didn’t brake. Nothing locked or screeched. There was a sickening crunch of metal on bone. The impact threw Callum up and over the bonnet of Aiden’s car, spinning him backwards through the air. It was like watching an acrobat tumbling, head thrown back, almost graceful until he landed with a dhoof! sound and crumpled.
Aiden kept going. Gravel spraying.
Callum lay on the tarmac with his arms flung wide, blood in his hair, and an innocent trickle coming from the corner of his mouth.
Tash screamed. She kept screaming, even when she didn’t make a sound. It was like that painting of the melting face screaming. Munch. We studied it in art. That’s what she looked like.
I grabbed Tash and pulled her away. I pulled her along the road. I left her sitting on the grass and then ran between houses, hammering on doors, screaming at people to call an ambulance.
Emily was there. I’d almost forgotten about her. She kept wailing that her mum was going to kill her and that her dad would use it as another excuse to get custody.
Doors opened and people came out onto the street. I don’t remember their faces. I wanted to run. I know it sounds stupid, but I thought if I could run fast enough, I could stay ahead of what had happened. That Callum wouldn’t be dead and I wouldn’t have to see him tumbling through the air and hear the sound of his body hitting the tarmac.
He wasn’t dead, but I didn’t know that then. An ambulance took him to hospital and the doctors induced a coma, keeping him alive with machines that kept his heart pumping. But they couldn’t save his legs. The bones had been crushed and one was already partially amputated, so they kept going and finished the job.
These memories are flooding back to me, filling my lungs, making it hard to breathe. I take a big gulp of air and look at my hands, which are bunched so tightly that my fingernails have left red marks on my skin.
Muddy light has broken through the gloom outside the window. Another day begins.
21
Isaac McBain lives in a shack on the edge of a building yard that smells of mildew and wet wood. Ruiz knocks on the door, but there’s no answer.
I peer through the dirty front window. In the gloom I see a living room full of indistinct lumps of furniture, a bar fridge and a fifty-inch flat screen. The man has his priorities. Along one wall is a record collection: hundreds of vinyl albums stacked upright on shelves; a lifetime of music, catalogued into genres and filed alphabetically.
“Can I help you, lads?”
The voice belongs to a big man with tight curls, who is standing behind a wire fence. Dressed in a Nike sweatshirt, baggy trousers and expensive trainers, he’s holding a bull terrier on a shortened leash. The dog lunges at the fence, all fangs and fury but no bark. The animal’s voice box has been removed or damaged in a fight. The man jerks at the chain, hauling the terrier off its feet.
“We’re looking for Isaac McBain,” I say.
“Who told you he was here?”
“His son.”
Most of the man’s attention is focused on Ruiz.
“Are you debt collectors?”
“No.”
“You work for the Connolly brothers?”
“No.”
This must be Vic McBain. Natasha’s uncle.
“It’s about Natasha,” I say. “Did Isaac tell you?”
“Yeah, he told me. What was Natasha doing at Radley Lakes?”
“We don’t know.”
There is another long pause. The bull terrier has calmed down.
“Nice dog,” says Ruiz.
“He could rip your throat out.”
“Must be good around the kids.”
Vic rubs his mouth. “You look like a copper.”
“Used to be,” says Ruiz. “Now I’m doing a bit of freelance work. Better hours. Fewer rules.”
“Isaac didn’t turn up for work today. Can’t say I blame him.”
“Any idea where he’d be?” I ask.
“Drunk by now. Self-medication. Dulls the pain.”
“Where does he normally drink?”
“The White Swan in Abingdon.”
Vic McBain turns away and walks back through the muddy building yard, between the racks of scaffolding pipes and lumber. The dog limps after him, nosing at a metal drum and casually cocking a back leg.
The White Swan is one of those pubs you won’t find unless you’re a local or a lost traveler. We had to ask twice for directions. The only interior lighting consists of the neon tubes above the bar and the ambient glow from
