John hit the wall at a sprint, vaulting over, ignoring the scrape of his knees on the top or the judder in his ankle as he landed. His lungs ached, but he had to keep going. Panic was driving her. All he had to fall back on was his own strength. He almost stumbled on tree roots, and his knees gave way as his feet hit hollows in the path, but still he kept on going. She was still within sight, a dark shadow moving quickly, not heading for the long path towards Oulton but for the road, hoping to stop a passing car.
Dawn looked back as she ran though. A mistake. It slowed her down, so that he gained on her and could hear her fear coming out in yelps and cries, audible over the thumps of his feet and the urgency of his breaths. She wasn’t going to make it to the gate.
He got within ten yards of her, and Dawn went to her knees, gasping for breath, her arms over her head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she cried, between gulps of air. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I won’t do it again. I was weak. I’m scared. I’m sorry. Forgive me.’
John stood over her, his heart beating hard in his chest, his lungs dry from exhaustion. ‘Why did you run?’
Dawn scrambled to her feet, and so John grabbed her, to stop her running again. She looked down and her shoulders started to heave with sobs.
‘It’s not going to end how you think, believe me,’ she said. ‘There is no rebellion, no uprising. So help me, please, just let me go.’
John pushed her to her knees. His fists clenched and Dawn shrank back, frightened, her eyes frantic. ‘Don’t hurt me.’
He closed his eyes, one hand gripping her shoulder. He breathed through his nose, deep and angry. A flush crept up his cheeks.
‘Why are you trying to escape?’ he said in a growl. ‘We have to stay together. It’s important.’
‘You sound like Henry.’
‘Of course I sound like him. We are part of the same group. We have the same ideals, don’t we?’
Dawn shook her head and started to laugh, but it was hysterical, tears streaming down her face.
‘You say
we
, but you don’t know who Henry is.’
‘I know what he has taught me.’
‘Bullshit! It is all fucking bullshit. You know nothing.’
John shook her by the arm, his own eyes blazing now. ‘I know that if you get away, you’ll talk about Henry, and so whatever great plans he has, they won’t happen, and so it will all have been for nothing.’
She yanked back. ‘Fuck Henry. Fuck Arni. Fuck you. All of you. Think about Henry. What do you know about him? I mean, really know?’
John paused at that, and his mind went back to what he knew about Henry before he arrived, and what he had been told. He shook his head. ‘I know him differently now.’
‘From what? The petty thief? The burglar? The fraudster? What about the sex offender, that kid at the party? Did you know about that? He doesn’t mention that too much, does he, how he went to prison for buggering some teenage boy.’
John swallowed. He glanced back and could see people gathering outside the house, just visible through the trees, cast against the light shining through the doorway.
‘Why do you think he ended up hanging around with the likes of us?’ Dawn continued. ‘Because he was shunned everywhere else. For his violence, his attitude, the way he thinks the world owes him for his own failures.’
‘You need to keep your voice down,’ John said. ‘We’ve all trodden difficult paths to get here.’
She screeched with laughter and then wiped her mouth with her hand. ‘Do you believe all that? It was fun, John, that’s all. But Henry had to take control, because he does that, likes being the focus, except that this time people listened to him. And if they want to believe it enough, they start to believe it, because it gives them answers. But it was never meant to be like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Murder.’
John’s eyes widened.
‘We were peaceful, loving,’ she continued. ‘Not killers.’
‘Who has he killed?’ John’s grip loosened on her arm.
‘Look around you,’ she said. ‘The stones you’re so fond of, the Seven Sisters.’
John was confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ When he didn’t answer, she continued, ‘It’s not a memorial, or a legacy, John. It’s a graveyard.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘People have tried to run away in the past, or have stood up to him, or not done as he said.’ She flicked her hand towards the field. ‘They are all there, under the ground, a stone for each of them.’
John looked over, the blood rushing through his head making sounds disappear, the shadows amongst the trees getting darker.
‘Seven?’ he said, eventually.
‘Get a spade, John,’ she said. ‘Dig around the stones and you’ll find them, the ones who tried to leave. That was the message – that if you threaten Henry, you die.
Fear
keeps us together, not love, or fellowship, or revolutions.’
John tried to take in what Dawn had just said. He looked back towards the field again, and the stones seemed different now. Darker. Colder. He looked at the woman in front of him, and he thought back to the nights he had spent with Henry, the truths that Henry had asked him to believe.
‘I’m scared, John,’ Dawn continued, her voice broken by sobs. ‘That’s why I’m still here, because I’m a coward. Henry made us take part, like it was some kind of thrill taken too far, our joint secret.’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘You’ve heard of Billy Privett, and that poor girl, Alice, who was found in his pool?’
‘Billy Privett? What has he got to do with this?’
‘Because he’s got money, and Henry wanted it, like he wants yours. That’s all you are, an asset to be stripped. You’ve got a house, and you’ve got money. Henry saw it in the paper.’
‘But what about the girl at the party, Alice?’
Before Dawn could explain, Gemma appeared further along the path, striding towards them. Her mouth was set, her fists clenched.
Dawn looked up at John, her eyes pleading, tears making a slow trail down her cheeks.
Gemma marched past him and grabbed Dawn by the arm.
‘Back to the house,’ Gemma barked at her, and then looked at John. ‘Henry said someone would betray us. Don’t listen to her.’
And with that, Gemma pulled on Dawn, making her get to her feet. Once she was standing, Gemma gripped her hair and started to drag her, stumbling, back along the path.
‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ Dawn shouted, her voice desperate. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
John walked behind them. He looked at the standing stones as he got closer and started to think that he should have let Dawn escape, because what if she was telling the truth, that there were people under the ground? Then Gemma turned to smile at him, and he felt the same flutter in his chest whenever she did that. A glow, a warm feeling inside, despite what had happened. He knew then that he couldn’t leave just yet, because he couldn’t abandon Gemma. He loved her, he had known that from the start, and so he would do whatever it took to keep her safe.
Charlie moved quickly along the alley, despite the pain in his shoulder, always keeping an eye on the exit, waiting for someone to appear. The walls were high, and so for as long as he kept in the shadows he was safe. Then he passed an open gate, a thin stream of light just reaching across the bricks. He glanced in and saw someone he recognised. A client, sitting on his back step, smoking.
‘Patrick?’ he said, sighing in relief.
The smoker stopped and peered into the gloom, his cigarette disappearing into his hand. ‘Who is it?’
Charlie stepped into the light that was coming from the kitchen door.
‘Fucking hell, Charlie Barker,’ Patrick said, laughing. ‘What the fuck are you doing, creeping around behind my house?’
Charlie shrugged, and then winced as his shoulder sent a sharp stab of pain. As he looked down, he saw that his suit was ripped where his knees had hit the floor. ‘Trying not to get killed.’
Patrick must have noticed Charlie’s blood-stained and torn clothes, because his gaze went to his body and then back up to his face. His look grew serious. ‘Oh yeah, man, I heard about Miss Diaz. It was on the news. What the fuck’s going on?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ Charlie said, breathing heavily, the relief chasing the adrenaline away. ‘Except that some people don’t like the idea.’ He looked at his hand. It was shaking. ‘Look, can we go inside, Patrick? I need some help.’
Patrick nodded and got to his feet. ‘You’ve always been there for me, man. Come in.’
Charlie mumbled his thanks and followed Patrick inside.
The house was a typical terraced house, except without the kitchen extension. There was a room at the back and one at the front, and then straight onto the street. Once the door closed, Patrick opened out his palm to reveal what he had been smoking outside, and Charlie got the hot, sweet smell of relaxation.
Charlie reached out for it, and as he passed it over, Patrick looked surprised. Charlie inhaled deeply, the roach wet from Patrick’s lips, but it was what he needed. ‘I wasn’t always a lawyer,’ he said, and the pain began to recede from the wound in his shoulder.
‘What the fuck happened to you, man?’ Patrick said, his voice low.
‘I fell down some steps,’ Charlie said, and then passed the reefer back. ‘Have you got a car?’
‘Depends who’s asking,’ Patrick said, and grinned.
Charlie smiled, despite himself. ‘Call it legal privilege.’
‘I use an old Corsa,’ he said. ‘It’s out the front, but if anyone asks, it’s nothing to do with me.’ He reached over and grabbed some keys from a worktop. ‘Bring it back when you can.’
As Charlie thanked him, he noticed something in Patrick’s eyes, and realised what it was: gratitude for Charlie never looking down on him. Charlie had put forward Patrick’s excuses over the years as if he believed in the whole truth of them, and so Patrick saw him as an equal, despite the letters after his name and the lawyer label. Charlie had turned to Patrick because he knew Patrick would help him, and he was right. This was Charlie’s circle of support, and he needed them. And what Charlie knew about his clients was that although their morality seemed to point in different ways to most people, they would always help out someone in trouble, because they recognised some of that need in themselves.
Charlie shook Patrick’s hand and then cut through the house. In the living room was a young woman he had seen trailing Patrick at court, a lank-haired brunette with homemade tattoos on her wrist and blackened teeth. She didn’t look up when Charlie went in, and then he spotted the bottle of bargain sherry. There was a young child, maybe eighteen months old, lying alongside, playing with a cuddly toy, but his mother was fast asleep, in a stupor.
Charlie looked away. He didn’t feel like judging. Not today.
‘Thanks, Patrick,’ he whispered, nodding down at her.
‘Don’t worry about speed cameras,’ Patrick said. ‘The plate goes back to a scrapped Ford Mondeo. Nothing will come back here.’
‘There are some things I don’t need to know,’ Charlie said, and then clicked the door closed, before bolting into an old sky blue Corsa.
It started on the third turn, and as he drove along the terraced street, Charlie started to feel some of his dread lift. He needed to get to the office. He knew where the video would be, and if it was important enough to murder for, he knew he had to get it before Amelia’s killers found it.
His mind went back to Donia. He should call the police, he knew that, but something made him uncomfortable about her. It was all too neat. She arrived to do work experience, and then people started dying. The people in black knew where to go. Was it all a set-up, Donia in on the whole thing? They had threatened to hurt her, but what had it been? Hair-pulling? It could have been an act.
The journey to his office was brief. He drove to the end of the road and then some way up the hill.
He didn’t go in the front way, where the takeaway owner might tell someone that he’d seen him. Instead, he drove to the street behind and then went into the alley that came out behind his office. There were black wrought iron streetlights lining the route, so it made it harder for people to hide there. Charlie blocked the alley with the car. He had a quick look round as he got out and then dashed into the yard, before running up the fire escape that went to the rear door of the office.
Charlie didn’t turn on any of the main lights once he was inside, because he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Instead, he closed all the blinds and relied on desk lamps.
He went to the desk in reception and found the key for the safe. That was where they kept all the videos, in a small storage cabinet in the reception area. As he fumbled with the key and unlocked it, he saw rows of discs. They were logged by file reference, a sticker on each case. Charlie couldn’t remember Billy’s reference, but he knew it would begin with PRI. His fingers clicked through the discs, but there was no disc with Billy’s reference on.
Charlie slammed the door closed. If the master disc had been in there, they had taken it, which was why they had left the knife behind and not killed him. They thought they had everything. The letters that Linda hadn’t got round to posting. The disc from the cabinet, if ever there was one. But if they had those, why were they still hunting for something?
He went into Amelia’s office. It was obvious that the police had been through it. Not looking through the files, but checking drawers and at the back of cupboards. As he looked, Charlie felt the sadness for Amelia rush at him, the shock of seeing her dead, and how she died. He picked up a photo frame she kept on her desk. It was her family again, close and smiling.
Tears jumped into his eyes, took him by surprise. She was a young woman, beautiful, her life unfulfilled. He thought he could still smell traces of her perfume, and he expected to hear the click of her heels or the angry snap to her voice. He wiped his eyes, angry with himself. He had no time for grieving now.
Amelia’s client files were not in cabinets, but on shelves, in alphabetical order, alongside large folders that contained materials from whenever she went on a training course, the compulsory hours they both had to do to keep their practising certificates. Charlie’s just piled up on the floor until they made their way to the bin.