‘Then you’ll have to stop me.’
He lunged for the door and flung it open, Jeanie slithering sideways out of his way as he tried to move his legs.
A clatter from behind knocked him to the ground and pushed the air out of his lungs. He felt the familiar weight of his brother on top of him, a lifetime of being smothered and crushed. He sensed the warmth of Charlie’s breath on his neck. He jerked his head backwards, wincing as his skull connected with Charlie’s face. Blinding pain in his head, his brain screaming. He heard Charlie gasp and felt his hold loosening. He pushed himself up on to his hands and knees violently and felt Charlie swing off him, heard a thud on the floor, but before he could turn a fist hit him on the side of the head where the lump was, more pain, a flash in his vision, then another punch to his liver doubled him over and Charlie was on top of him, sitting astride, blood and snot dripping from his nose on to Billy’s face, making him spit it away.
Charlie was holding his arms, pinning them to the floor.
‘You fucking cunt. After everything I’ve done for you.’
‘Fuck you.’
Charlie backhanded him, a soft warning not intended to hurt, but everything hurt now for Billy. Breathing, thinking, being alive, it was one long stretch of agony.
There was a growl, a feral, guttural rumble from Billy’s right. He and Charlie both turned to see Jeanie launch herself and sink her teeth into Charlie’s upper arm.
Charlie screamed and removed his hands from Billy’s arms, trying to grab Jeanie’s jaws and separate them, shaking his arm to get her off.
Billy threw his fists, connecting first with Charlie’s ear then with his chest. His brother made a sound like a balloon deflating and sank back. Billy pushed himself out from underneath, Jeanie still snarling and holding on to Charlie’s arm.
Billy caught a glimpse of Zoe standing in the hall a few feet away, tears in her eyes, a distraught look on her face. He scrambled upright, took a swing and landed a foot in Charlie’s stomach, doubling him over, Jeanie pulling at his sleeve as he crumpled.
Billy caught Zoe’s eye. He stared at her for a second, waiting for something, but nothing came.
He stepped over Charlie’s prostrate body.
‘Come on, girl.’ He pulled Jeanie away from Charlie. There was slobber all over Charlie’s T-shirt, the material ripped, a trickle of blood running down his arm.
33
Billy ran, Jeanie alongside him. His stride was erratic and he stumbled as he went on, but he kept running down the street, his heart thumping, his head pounding, his body aching and complaining, Jeanie right there next to him, tail wagging, looking up at him with big eyes.
‘Good girl,’ he said between gasps.
He kept on running, his lungs on fire, his legs heavy with every thudding step. Straight past St Leonard’s police station and up the cobbled lane that rose behind it to a tiny street. He turned the corner.
All quiet. He stopped and sank to his knees on the pavement, tried to gulp air into his heaving chest. He spat on the ground, it was black and slick. Blood. His own, maybe some of Charlie’s. He wiped his nose and it came away thick with blood and mucus.
He slumped on to his arse, his breathing slowly returning to normal. Jeanie fussed over him, in about his arms and legs, looking for attention. He gave her a tight hug.
‘Thank you, girl.’
He checked the back of his head. A damp patch on the bandages over the hole where he’d backwards headbutted his brother. His hand came away more pink than red, not like blood at all. What liquids were inside your skull? He popped two more Pervitin and a couple of Oramorph. Had to stay together a little longer.
Just over the rise in the road was Salisbury Crags, looming over him. The Radical Road slashed a faint line across its face, splitting the cliff from the gorse.
It was so warm, even in the middle of the night. It felt like he was breathing smoke, not air, the molecules clinging to his throat and lungs, scorching his insides.
He stood up and looked at his phone. Half three. The Radical Road filled his vision.
Not much time. Not much time left at all. He stood in silence. Jeanie sat down on the pavement and began scratching herself.
He looked at her, then at the phone still in his hand. Flicked through the menu till he got to Rose. Took a deep breath. Pressed ‘call’. Brought the phone to his ear.
Five rings. Answer-machine message. Long bleep. Deep breath. Steady voice.
‘Hi Rose, it’s Billy, your favourite trainee crime reporter. Listen, I have something to tell you. Hold the front page, and all that.’ He coughed out a laugh. ‘This is all going to sound insane, but everything I tell you in this message is true. I’m sorry. You trusted me, and I let you down. Big time. This story we’ve been working on, the Frank Whitehouse thing, you were right when you said I got too involved, but you don’t know the half of it…’
He rubbed a hand over his bandaged head, from the lump on his temple to the damp indentation at the back of his skull.
‘OK, so I just need to tell you everything. I don’t know how much time I have.’
He probed at the bandages over the hole in his head. It felt invasive and comforting at the same time. His fingers came away damp.
‘Anyway, when I finish, you’re going to have the biggest front-page scoop of your career, I promise you that.’
He gulped in air, found his throat sticky, struggled to swallow.
‘Right, here goes. I killed Frank Whitehouse. I was driving the car that hit him on Queen’s Drive that night. My mum’s Micra. A red family car, more than ten years old, see? The same car I gave you a lift in the next morning. That crack in the windscreen you spotted, that was where his body hit. Zoe and Charlie were in the car too, but I was driving. We were all drunk and wasted. Charlie steals drugs from hospital and we all take them. I can’t remember what we’d taken that night, but I was out of it. I shouldn’t have been driving, I know that. There’s no excuse. I’m not trying to make excuses.’
Billy wiped snot and blood from his nose, then tears from his eyes.
‘We stopped. Frank was lying in the road behind us. I wanted to call for an ambulance or the police, but Charlie and Zoe talked me out of it. We were all in shock. Charlie checked the body and thought he was dead. Charlie’s a fucking doctor, so I didn’t argue. A taxi came up the road. We panicked and carried his body off the road, rolled it down the embankment, then tumbled down ourselves. I was lying next to Frank.’
He tried to catch his breath, feeling the words pour out of him at last.
‘Except it turned out he wasn’t dead. We didn’t know that then. We left him there, got in the car and drove home. God, that was so fucking stupid. I don’t know why we did that. OK, that’s not true, I know exactly why we did it. We did it to save ourselves, to save our skins. But I’ve been living in hell ever since. Going over and over everything that happened. And, of course, to make matters worse, you called the next morning about the jumper. It was Frank, but he wasn’t where we left him. Which means he wasn’t dead at all. Maybe we could’ve saved him. He must have got up and walked away, then collapsed again.’
The tears felt like release, like a levee bursting and letting the floods wash everything away.
‘I should’ve told you. When I saw Frank’s body. I should’ve told you a million times that it was me, but I didn’t. I don’t know why not. I was lost. I’ve been lost since it happened. That bump on my head, that was from the accident. The aneurysm, I guess that was payback. For killing Frank, for all that crazy shit with Adele. Jesus Christ, Adele. What the hell have I done to her? This is all so fucked up.’
He stared at the Crags, dominating his sight, ghostly in the moonlight, towering over the city.
‘So everything that’s happened has been down to me. Jamie Mackie getting shot, that dog getting killed, the Mackies’ house burning down. Adele was pregnant. She lost the baby. And now the Mackies have taken Ryan Whitehouse. Adele’s boy. They’re meeting Dean soon.’
