Thirteen Days of Midnight (5 page)

He didn’t stick around much longer after that day, and we moved up to Dunbarrow. Mum looked for jobs but never quite seemed to get one, and she got really into Positive Thinking and reading books like
Changing Your Life in Just Ten Days!,
but that didn’t happen for her either. Everything just stayed the same. I thought Dad might come back, but he never did, and things went on like that until he died.

I’m on edge when I walk back up our driveway from school, sky darkening already, but the house is a normal temperature and nothing has moved around since I left in the morning. Ham is happy to see me, prancing around in the hallway, and I can hear Mum playing one of her whale song CDs upstairs. I make myself some tea, and when it’s done I walk Ham down to the bottom of the nearest field and back. I decide that I really do want to go hang out, do some normal stuff with Mark and Kirk, maybe get to know Holiday a little better, forget all about breakfasts and books and Dad, so in the end I decide to get the bus down to the park.

I sit right at the front, on the top deck, so I can enjoy what little view there is in the darkness. The interior of the bus is lit up and the windows are black, and I get a decent look at the other passengers in the reflection without having to turn around. There are only two other people sitting up here, already on the bus when I climbed the stairs, and both are weird enough for me to take an interest. They’re men, older than me. They’re sitting at the very back. I think they’re talking to each other, but I can’t hear over the mumbling of the engine.

The guy sitting on the left side is tall and bulky, with a shaved head and flattened features. There are three gold earrings glinting in his ear, and he has plenty of tattoos on his arms and neck, though I can’t make them out in detail. He slouches in his seat, with his feet up on the headrest in front. He’s wearing a red-checked shirt, buttoned to the throat, with stonewashed jeans and cherry-red Dr.Martens. He has bright-white suspenders cutting over his chest. I didn’t know you saw skinheads anymore, not in the wild.

His friend is even stranger, sitting poised and upright, as if about to begin a piano recital. His hair is black and greasy, and he’s got a pointed black mustache. He would probably be handsome if it weren’t for the angry red blotches on his forehead and jawline. He’s wearing a navy-blue suit, a white shirt, and a rumpled purple cravat. This is an inadvisable look when going out drinking in Dunbarrow, unless you really like having pint glasses smashed in your face.

I don’t know how, but they must have realized I’m staring at them in the reflection. They stop talking and look at me. The skinhead gets to his feet. He must be six seven at least; his chest is overloaded with muscle. His shirtsleeves strain against his arms. He takes three strides down the central aisle, red boots clomping.

Should I turn around and say something? The guy is standing halfway down the aisle, holding the seats, staring at me. Kirk says if you have to fight someone bigger than you, then you should just try to hit them in the balls and run. If this skinhead gets any closer, I’m going to aim a foot directly into the crotch of his bleached Levi’s. I refuse to be antagonized by people who can’t move on from the youth culture of thirty years ago.

The guy takes another step forward.

I turn around and look at him properly. My face is unsmiling, jaw set. I’m trying to show I won’t be a pushover. We make eye contact, and I realize I’ve made a mistake.

In the flesh he’s even uglier, with an unshaved face the color of cheese. There’s a cross tattooed on his forehead, and a long white scar on his left cheek. His eyes are gray pools. Whatever it is that normal people have, that makes you feel like they’re decent and sane and still able to think — there is not one spark of it inside this man.

I hold his gaze, unable to look away.

In a few seconds’ time he’s going to leap at me and twist my head off like a champagne cork. I can already hear them making the announcement in assembly at school.
I’
m saddened to say that one of our best-liked students was decapitated on the top deck of the X45 on Tuesday night . . .

The skinhead grins at me, showing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth, and then he winks and walks back to his friend.

Before he turns around I think I hear him say something like this:

“Sorry, boss.”

I must have picked a, like, seven-leaf clover this morning and not realized it.

My legs are still shaking from adrenaline when I get off the bus in the center of Dunbarrow. The square’s not busy, but even though it’s a weeknight, there are a few groups smoking outside the pubs. I walk past, avoiding eye contact, and cross the bridge over the river, heading into the park.

It’s dark and still here, lit only with a couple of street lamps, but I know where to find my friends. It’s the normal crowd — Mark and the rest of the team, someone throwing a ball, Kirk and a couple of guys from his neighborhood, shaved heads and cigarette burns in their tracksuit bottoms. They’re all sitting around on the children’s play equipment: There are people up on the climbing frame, some girls laughing as one of Kirk’s friends pushes them on the merry-go-round. It rained earlier in the evening, and as I walk toward the park I see that each blade of grass is shining in the light from a nearby street lamp, like someone varnished the whole bank. Kirk spots me, lurches over, drunk already, holding out a big plastic bottle of cider.

“Luke, mate.”

“Hey Kirk,” I say. He topples into me, hugs me too hard.

“Luke, you’re all right, mate.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re all right, you’re all right.”

“I’m all right,” I echo. I don’t feel it. I’m keeping too many secrets. I’ve got more money now than Kirk’s parents probably make in a lifetime, and I don’t know how to go about mentioning it. What would he think of that? What if I told him who my Dad was? I’ve known Kirk eight years, and I barely know how to hint at what’s happened to me since Monday morning. He’s offering me the bottle of cider. I take it, swig as much as I can, hand the bottle back.

“Holiday’s here,” he says, then swills the cider himself. It’s cheap, nasty, tastes a bit like felt-tip pens smell.

“Really?” I say. Honestly, when Kirk claimed she was coming down, I took it with a big dose of salt. I’d assumed Holiday Simmon would have something better to do on a Tuesday night than drinking white cider in the park, but it looks like I was wrong about that. I can see the back of her blond head. She’s sitting at the bottom of the slide in the playground, next to some other girl.

“Go for it,” Kirk says, “get in there.”

“You think?”

“Don’t . . . don’t think too much. Just do it.”

“All right,” I say, and take another drink of cider. I don’t know why Kirk drinks this stuff. He pays a homeless guy to buy us booze, so I guess he probably can’t be too picky. I make my way over to Holiday. I’ve seen her on the sidelines of our games and had a few classes with her and stuff. I know her to say hello to, but I’ve never really spoken to her past that. She has her own circle of mates who aren’t quite the same as mine, and she had her boyfriend in Brackford — not to mention I’ve basically always been scared of her. I’m nervous right now, watching her blond head drawing nearer as I cross the park. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say. I remind myself that I’m a millionaire. Millionaires don’t have trouble with girls, ever. I try to get myself into the millionaire mind-set, cross the last few steps with a millionaire walk. There’s a queue of underwear models and French actresses waiting to take her place if she doesn’t want me. I mean, that’s if whoever left a breakfast for me this morning doesn’t gut me before Berkley can transfer the money . . . come to think of it, those guys on the bus were definitely looking at me . . . they know something . . . no, stop thinking about this . . . you’re talking to Holiday right now . . . she’s literally saying something right now. I need to reply. I need to stop thinking about hypothetical French women and hypothetical murders that might happen to me and reply to Holiday.

“Hello!” I say, sounding more shocked than glad to see her.

“Well, I was asking how your day went,” Holiday says, “but hello will do.” She smiles. I was already essentially struck dumb, but her smile completes the process.

She’s not exactly dressed up, wearing jeans and a North Face jacket, but she looks incredible, radiating the kind of casual beauty that’s a gift and can’t be earned. Her hair’s done up in a bun, and she’s wearing heavy-framed glasses, which I’ve never seen her in before. She’s still smiling, expectantly.

“Luke Manchett,” I say finally. “I’m on the team? The rugby team.”

Someone kill me. Strike me dead.

“We know who you are,” says the girl next to Holiday — named Anna or something?— thin and sour-faced. You can just tell by looking at her that everyone knows her as “Holiday’s friend.”

“Alice,”
Holiday says. “Luke, do you know Alice Waltham?”

“Nah,” I say. “Hello.”

“Hi.” Alice glances up at me with industrial-strength disinterest, and then gets a cigarette pack out of her coat and starts fiddling with that instead.

“Do you smoke, Luke?” Holiday asks me brightly.

“No,” I say. “Training. I mean, I can’t because of training.”

“I don’t smoke either,” she says. “Mum’s got a nose like a bloodhound. I’d never get away with it, even if I wanted to. But, like, I think my
little
brother
is smoking, and he’s twelve. Do you think that’s weird? To smoke when you’re twelve? I mean I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure he does. And Mum doesn’t say a
thing.
”

“Even twelve-year-olds don’t know what twelve-year-olds should be doing,” I say, which I don’t think really makes sense, but Holiday laughs anyway. I can’t believe we’re actually having a conversation. It was this easy the whole time. I just had to walk over and talk to her.

“Do you have any brothers?” Holiday asks.

“No, just me.”

“I ought to know that,” Holiday says. “My mum actually knows yours. They were on a Reiki retreat together or something. My mum’s into some weird stuff like that.”

“Oh,” I say, “I didn’t know that.” I’m really surprised to hear about Mum talking to anyone else in Dunbarrow. She’s never really been that interested in getting involved in the town. She’s happy to live in the countryside, and that’s as far as it goes. I don’t think she knows the names of the couple who live on our right-hand side. I have a sudden chill when I wonder if Mum told Holiday’s mum about Dad and the separation. Whether Holiday knows I’m Dr. Horatio Manchett’s son. If she does, she hasn’t shown it.

We talk a bit more, about school and exams and mutual friends, and somewhere along the line Alice snorts extra hard with contempt and gets up and leaves us alone, and I sit down on the slide beside Holiday. Things are going smoothly and our knees are just starting to touch when I look up and see something at the tree line, up the bank, that nearly makes my heart stop.

The two guys from the bus, the skinhead and Blotch-Face, are standing under the farthest street lamp. The skinhead is leaning on a tree, mostly in shadow. I can see the glim of a cigarette at his face. Blotch-Face stands ramrod straight, right under the lamp, and he’s looking directly over at me, like he wants me to see him watching.

“Luke?” Holiday says.

“Yeah?”

“Are you all right? You’re shaking.”

She’s right. My hand is fluttering on my knee. I grab at it with my other hand, to try to keep them both under control.

“I think . . .” I try to find a way of putting this. “I think there’s someone following me.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“These two guys . . . two weirdos. They’re right over there, at the top of the bank. Don’t look yet. Look slow. Over by the street lamp. They were watching me on the bus, and now they’re here. I’m serious.”

“What guys?” Holiday says, smiling.

“
Those
guys,” I say. “I can’t point at them. They’re by the lamp.”

“There’s nobody there!” Holiday punches me in the leg. “I know it’s nearly Halloween, but stop trying to scare me! My dad pulls this all the time. I’m not falling for it.”

“Holiday,” I say, looking her dead in the eye, “I’m really serious. There’s two of them watching us. Right up on the bank.”

“There’s nobody there,” Holiday says. “I know you’re messing with me!”

She just looked right at them. Do her glasses need a new prescription? Blotch-Face is exactly where he was before, staring at both of us. He’s probably six feet tall and right under the street lamp — you can’t possibly miss him. As I watch, the skinhead leans out of the shadows, says something only Blotch-Face can hear.

“Are you messing with
me
?” I ask. “How can you not see them?”

“See who?” comes Mark’s voice from behind. He claps me on the shoulder, making me start like someone fired a gun next to my ear. Holiday gasps, too, then giggles.

“Luke’s being a jerk,” she says. “He’s trying to freak me out.”

Her tone is light, jokey, but there’s a little hint of something else in her eyes. Like she’s starting to see that I’m genuinely scared.

“Am I nuts?” I ask Mark. “There’s two guys watching us up on that bank. Look.”

“Huh,” he says. “Well, if they were there, they’re gone now.”

He’s right. There’s nobody up on the bank anymore. Just a lone orange street lamp and an enormous dark oak tree, branches rippling in the wind that’s rising.

The night doesn’t really get back on track after that. Whatever moment me and Holiday were having is lost, and Mark stands behind us while he’s talking, so I have to crick my neck to look him in the eye. I keep waiting for him to leave, but he doesn’t. I can’t relax. I keep thinking about the two men and the breakfast, wondering if they put it there, wondering if they knew Dad somehow. After a while it starts raining again, and I take it as an excuse to leave. Holiday says something about a Halloween party at her house, and I nod without taking it in. The buses don’t run this late and I walk up to Wormwood Drive the long way, drizzle fizzing on the shoulders and hood of my raincoat, the gutter running with a shimmering flush of water. Every step I take I’m thinking of Blotch-Face and the skinhead, trying to work it out. Maybe they know about the money, are trying to get hold of it somehow? What exactly were the complications Mr. Berkley was talking about? Kirk’s been robbed for twenty quid — don’t want to think about what people would do to me for several million. I need a bodyguard or something. By the time I reach the crest of our hill, I’m convinced that the skinhead’ll be lunging out of every shadow, and when a car drives past, I flatten myself against a fence, wondering if it’s going to stop and unload a pack of ski-masked kidnappers. As I reach my road, I imagine that they’re already in my house. Mum’s alone, and Ham’s a coward: He’ll hide in the laundry room.