The Sick Rose (37 page)

Daniel, toolbag on his back, scaled a downpipe and went to work. He threw a tarpaulin down and Paul pulled it taut so that it made a chute for the sheets of copper to slide down in relative silence.

He patrolled the rear wall of the school, found the back door and for a second thought that someone else with the same idea had got there before them, that by some incredible coincidence some rival thieves were planning to strip the roof that night. There was a yolk-coloured toolbag containing the tools of their own trade, snips and bolt cutters and saws, but then his eye travelled along the wall to see heavier machinery, a row of unidentifiable tools and a cement mixer, and he noticed that everything was rimed in a coat of light grey dust. He pulled open the bag just in case and saw, on the top, a set of instructions for installing a new surveillance system, carelessly tossed in along with a warranty and what looked like a contract for the job. This was the kind of thing his dad used to do. The line-drawing picture on the front of the brochure looked familiar; when recognition came, it was with a swift, sinking feeling like a pebble thrown in a lake. Paul crept around the side of the building and looked up at the underside of a camera that wasn’t out of date, that was cutting-edge. It was the thing they had taken for a defunct lamp-post but now it was obvious that this sleek, modern curve with its black shell like a spaceman’s helmet wasn’t a streetlamp. It was one of those ultra-modern cameras hidden behind a protective shell, so sensitive that they picked up on the smallest movements and followed them with efficient, electronic eyes. As far as he could determine he was safe down here but Daniel, up on the roof, removing copper panels with the ease of someone peeling foil off a chocolate bar, would be captured in close-up. He turned the page of the instruction booklet, wondering if they had by some remarkable foresight included directions that would allow trespassing amateurs to disable the system and erase the records of their crime. A falling sheet of bright metal missed his head by inches. Paul let out a yelp and Daniel’s head appeared over the guttering.

‘What are you – are you fucking
reading
?’

Paul automatically hid the booklet in his jacket before looking up. Daniel was hot; he’d pulled his hood off. Paul opened his mouth to tell him about the new cameras and then bit back the warning. All it takes after we get home is one call to the police, he thought, and you won’t be following me to Sussex. You won’t be able to follow me anywhere. He shivered and wondered if he could really do something like that.

‘Keep going,’ he said, frightened and excited by the ease of his treachery. ‘One more and we’ve filled up the car, I reckon.’

‘I want this first.’ Daniel stood on the tip of the roof, as though on the prow of a ship, the tips of his fingers stroking the weathervane. The silvery cockerel swivelled squeakily on its permanent perch, its beak telling them that the wind had just changed from east to north-east.

‘That’s only aluminium, it’s not worth it.’

‘I don’t want to sell it, I just
want
it,’ said Daniel. ‘Like a trophy.’

‘Whatever,’ said Paul.

‘It’s set in fucking concrete or rock or something,’ said Daniel. He used his screwdriver as a chisel, chipping away at the encasing stone. A crack split the air like a sonic boom as it finally gave way. Both boys froze, turning automatically to where the village was behind them, expecting people to come running. But the light that came on was much closer than that.

In the murky playground it had been a dark shadowy block that the boys had assumed was an extension of the school buildings, but now that a light shone from its low square window it was clear that they were looking at some kind of residence. A low fence separated it from the rest of the grounds and a ruthlessly tended garden was visible behind it. A little red front door swung open to reveal the short, stocky figure of a man in late middle age or early old age. Paul’s first thought, surreally, was that he looked like a little hobbit coming out of his hole. He was holding a torch. The beam picked its way up the school building, brick by brick, until it located Daniel, weathervane in his hand. The little man walked towards them, his feet accidentally falling into the painted hopscotch pattern. He came to a standstill at the foot of the giant snakes and ladders.

‘Put it down, lad,’ he said. He had a soft northern accent. ‘The police have been called.’

‘Piss off out of it, Grandad,’ said Daniel. Paul remained hidden at the rear of the building, watching everything through the gap between the wall and a pipe. He came close to shouting out a double warning; to Daniel, to run away now before the police came and to the old man, not to antagonise Daniel.

‘Don’t call me Grandad,’ said the man. ‘My name is Ken Hillyard, I’m the caretaker here and you’re trespassing. I’m not scared of you, you know.’

‘You should be,’ said Daniel. Still clutching the weathervane, he swung clumsily down the front of the building and stood at the other end of the painted snake. He was a good head and a half taller than Hillyard, and a lifetime younger, but the caretaker didn’t look afraid. If anything, he looked amused.

‘Smile, lad,’ he said to Daniel, who fell into the trap of following his gaze until it met the all-seeing eye above. His eyes travelled from it to the white box cameras and then to the black and yellow signs.

‘Signs are there, lad,’ said the caretaker. ‘Or can’t you read?’

In that line was every teacher who had ever ignored Daniel, every time Carl had dismissed his future, every kid who’d called him thick. He took another step towards the caretaker. Paul saw the arm holding the weathervane twitch and felt his own legs move correspondingly, as if to run in and break up the fight before it happened. But to do that would mean putting his own face on camera. He stayed still and hoped that Daniel’s preservation instinct would trump pride and temper.

‘What did you say?’ His voice was tense and too tight, like a pulled thread about to snap.

‘I said, the signs are there, can’t you
read
?’ said the caretaker.

Paul knew what was going to happen, because he knew Daniel so well. Afterwards, he told himself that he could never have covered the ground in time to stop it, but at the time it felt like he spent minutes deciding whether risking exposure was worth saving the man from violence. He had a furious internal debate. If I get there early enough, I might prevent blood. If I get there too late, there might be blood and I don’t know how I will react to that. Either way, my part in this will be recorded and my future is as good as over. Daniel lunged like a fencer, his long legs effortlessly covering the length of the painted snake. His face was as blank as stone but the caretaker’s features were distorted by fear and the beginnings of an animal scream that was silenced forever as the arrow marking north pierced his eye with a pop and was buried up to the hilt. The momentum behind Daniel’s charge had been such that he took another two staggering steps, the body carried along, before skidding to a halt and letting the body drop.

Ken Hillyard was gone by the time his back made contact with the playground floor, death having come even more quickly to him than it had to Paul’s father. No blood issued this time, just an ooze of clear liquid like a tear from the centre of his eye. The other, unbroken eyeball was blind and unblinking.

Paul’s heartbeat marked the seconds until he was able to talk.

‘Daniel, what the fuck have you done?’

He finally let go of the weathervane and turned to Paul with a look of horrified surprise. It was the kind of expression you’d expect from a witness to a murder, an innocent bystander, someone who hadn’t seen it coming.

The decision to run was silent but unanimous. They left behind the copper, and the toolbag remained on the roof where Daniel had left it. They unlocked the car easily but Daniel’s hands slipped on the steering wheel and it took him two goes to get the key in the ignition. They drove to the complex crossroads, one they had stripped of its signage, thinking it would be a laugh to leave motorists stranded. Each way looked identical, each exit alternately plausible and implausible. Paul lost his sense of direction, as though someone had blindfolded him and spun him around. The sat nav was taking forever to switch on.

‘Which way?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Use the sat nav!’

‘I’m trying!’ But although Paul had hit the ‘home’ icon, the little screen displayed only the navy night-time negative of a map, a single snaking street and a cursive figure telling them how many seconds it had been since the GPS signal was lost. Thirty seconds. Now forty seconds. Now fifty. Paul shook it hard.

‘Fuck,’ said Daniel, and took a left, at which point Paul knew nothing except that it definitely wasn’t left. In the distance they could see the glowing escape route of the A13 but the road they were following seemed to be curving slowly in the other direction and there didn’t seem to be any side roads that might lead them the right way. Rather, the road got bumpier and narrower and they were approaching the dead end of a five-bar gate when the sat nav came back to life and said, like nothing had happened, like they had all the time in the world, like they weren’t going to hell,
Turn around when possible
.

They became aware of the first flash of blue as Daniel executed the manoeuvre. It grew closer, bathing the late summer landscape in a wintry light. Daniel stopped the car mid-turn so that it rested at a tilt on the uneven camber of the lane. Paul found himself looking up at Daniel, who took Paul’s face in his hands and held it. ‘Whatever happens, you say nothing. Nothing.’

‘But Daniel—’

‘Not a grass,’ said Daniel. ‘Never a grass. What are you going to say?’

‘Nothing,’ said Paul.

‘Run in opposite directions,’ said Daniel. ‘That way at least one of us goes free.’ He pressed the latch that opened both doors. Paul found a gap in the roadside hedgerow and began to tread the uneven ground of an upward-sloping field. The last he saw of Daniel was his back as he vaulted the five-bar gate, his frantic movements slowed to a lazy grace by the pale blue strobe of the police car lights.

Chapter 50

January 2010

After making the suggestion, she had slept on it. In the morning it had seemed more, not less, necessary. She acknowledged the horror of it all once, spending the morning alone in the office, staring at the tapestry as though the little lovers in it would come up with a better idea, but looking at their wall-hung world only reminded her how much she stood to lose if Carl Scatlock was not stopped, and soon. From that moment she decided to be professional about it, treating the murder as a project that must be followed through, on time and without setbacks. Thinking like this helped her to speak about it in brisk tones that left no space for interruption, either from Paul or from her own chattering conscience.

It had been his idea to spend the rest of the week in the hotel. She had been touched when he had insisted on paying, calling it a late Christmas present and throwing in a remark about wanting to share a bath with her. The snow was melting frustratingly slowly, each day only exposing a few new pocks of brown earth, and the caravan was, if not inaccessible, then impossible to reach without leaving a crisp trail of footprints telling Carl Scatlock exactly where he could find them. Neither of them trusted him to stay away for the promised four days, and to concede him the power of surprise would have been foolish, possibly to the point of suicide.

They ended up in a Motel Inn at an ideally dull business park between Leamington and Warwick. Its distance from Kelstice and its small population of expense-account transients granted them vital anonymity. Sanctuary was the reason they voiced to each other but Louisa knew that this little holiday was also a kind of last hurrah. What they planned to do would change everything between them. Their relationship had not yet experienced the most basic test, that of being in the public domain; who could tell how they would be together after they had colluded in killing a man? And that was only if it went right. If it went wrong . . . well, that was something neither of them was willing to consider. There was no Plan B.

They hatched Plan A in the bleakly corporate setting of the Motel Inn bar, sitting on a banquette covered with the same pattern as the curtains and bedspread in their room. She took charge; she had to, not just because it had been her idea and because she was older, but because she was afraid that if she relinquished any of the control he would lose his nerve. He said he was as sure as she was that it was unavoidable, but his silences when they were discussing the mechanics of it suggested otherwise. They drank pints of lager and spoke in unhappy whispers under the curious eye of the hotel barmaid, who was also the receptionist who had booked them in and the waitress who took their breakfast order.

They started with the disposal of Scatlock’s body and worked backwards. Louisa knew that the only place where the ground was soft enough to dig was the car park. Its raised position meant that it was never eclipsed by the shadow of the Lodge and received all-day sunshine; the snow there was all but gone and the ground was insulated by a semi-permeable membrane, designed to let rain into the water table while simultaneously blocking weeds. The gravel was piled at the side, waiting to be distributed across the site by Nathaniel on his first day back. It would be easy to roll away the sheet and easier still to roll back over his body. Crucially, the diggers were already parked at the top of the hill.