The Judas Tree, page 26
The act itself had been quick. The others watched in a semicircle around them. Silence had fallen over them like a mantle. The only sound he could hear was a soft whimpering from Crawford. He’d hated himself, sickened but at the same time filled with such rage, a rage he couldn’t control. He couldn’t explain it. Now it seemed heinous, toxic, but then his instinct overwhelmed him, this need to dominate, to punish, to show everybody who had the power. When he pushed himself away from Crawford, blood from his face covering both of them, the boy had slumped on the ground like a beaten puppy. He watched with contempt as Crawford struggled to pull his trousers up to cover his skin that looked ghostly white against the deep browns of the woodland floor. Farrow turned away. He still remembered the revulsion he felt. Still remembered how he had used every piece of strength inside him to muster his bravado. He straightened his shoulders. Faced the others. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure about a hundred feet away. Will English. They locked eyes just before the boy fled. That look on his stricken face, a picture of disgust, horror and reproach, would stay with him forever.
Crawford finished tying him to the chair and stood up, running his hand through his hair to neaten it.
‘I am going to take the gag off your mouth. If you yell or shout, even just one syllable, I will stick this through your throat without a second thought. Do you understand me?’
Alastair stared at the penknife in his hand and nodded. Luke raised the knife and came closer to him. He held his breath, preparing for the pain that might come. He felt a sawing motion as Luke cut through the tape that held the rag in place, tugging his skin where it stuck to him. Luke pulled the gag from his mouth and Alastair flexed his jaw. He considered calling Luke’s bluff and shouting for help, but there was a look in his captor’s eye that kept him quiet.
‘You know,’ Luke said, voice flat and soft. ‘People who rape children are the lowest of the low.’
‘Rape?’ Alastair stuttered. ‘Jesus Christ, I did no such thing. I was teaching you a lesson. Teaching you some respect. That’s how it was done back then. You know that.’
Luke laughed then, the type of laugh you might hear down the pub with the boys – an unbridled laugh of amusement. He lifted the blade. ‘This is the very same knife I cut you with that day. You left me at the foot of that tree, bleeding and sore, violated, alone and petrified. And you know what I did after you’d all gone? I searched for this knife. I stayed there, until it was too dark to see, until I found it. It took a long time. It had travelled some way when you smacked it out of my hand. But it was my friend’s knife, his most beloved possession. It had a message from his father, who wasn’t the nicest of men, but you know how these things are. Will loved that knife and I wanted to find it for him. When I found it, feeling with my hands in the undergrowth, I felt as if I’d won the lottery. In the end though, I decided to hang on to it.’
Luke advanced on Alastair.
‘Stay away from me!’ cried Alastair, fear and anger melding into one indistinguishable rush of emotion. ‘Stay away or you’ll pay for it.’
‘I’ve already paid for it – every day of my life since that afternoon.’
‘You’ll go to prison. If you kill me, you’ll go to prison. Is that what you want?’
‘Like you went to prison?’ Luke looked at him and smiled, his eyebrows raised. ‘Not everyone gets punished for the crimes they commit. You should know that better than anyone. And anyway, a bit like you did, I’ve got it covered. I’m not going to go to prison. Someone else is.’
‘Enough now,’ Alastair was panicking. A paralysing fear had begun to creep over him. He wanted this to stop. ‘What do you want? You don’t have to hurt me. Is it money? Do you want money?’
‘Money?’ Luke said with a smile. ‘No, I don’t want your money. I’ve plenty of my own.’
‘Then what?’ Farrow thought of Will, of what he’d said in the pub, of wanting to hear remorse. ‘You want me to say sorry? Is that it? I’ll say it then. I’m sorry. OK? I’m really, really sorry.’
‘Your apology means nothing to me.’
As he spoke Luke Crawford walked over to him and lifted the blade. Calmly and methodically, he drew it down the other side of his face. Farrow yelled out and as he did so Luke grabbed him by the throat and brought his face close to his. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he spat. ‘That’s what you said to me that afternoon. Do you remember? You said shut the fuck up.’
Alistair Farrow began to whimper. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I have a family.’
‘I know all about your family. They seem nice enough. In a dull, suburban kind of way.’
‘Don’t hurt my children,’ he whispered. He thought of them all asleep in their beds. Would Diane be wondering where he was? Would she have called the police by now? Or would she be snoring in bed, blissfully unaware of the danger he was in?
‘I’m not going to hurt anybody. Except you.’
Farrow began to scream then. Luke’s hand was over his mouth in an instant. Pressing against him, squeezing so hard he feared his jaw might shatter.
‘Do you know what happened to me after you defiled me and left me in the woods to limp back to school alone in the dark?’ Luke asked him then. He loosened his grip on his face and lowered his hand, lifting a single finger as a warning not to scream. ‘I told my housemaster – I know, telling tales, that kind of behaviour would have got me into serious trouble, but I figured you couldn’t do any worse to me – and the man sent me straight to the head. Drysdale said I was lying. He said that lying about things like that, spreading muck about respectable members of the school was akin to treason. But I insisted. So I was sent to the nurse and told to sleep on a camp bed in her office. Nobody sat with me. They turned the lights off and left me alone in the dark. No windows, no lights, pitch black. It was like lying in a coffin in the ground. I lay awake all night feeling dirty and confused, my body throbbing with pain, desperate for someone to tell me I was going to be OK. I was terrified, abandoned and broken, a child ruined. Ruined, as it turns out, forever.’
As he spoke, spitting the words out like poison, he dangled the penknife back and forth.
‘I tried everything I could to get on with some sort of life. I was driven. Everything I did I did so I could put what happened behind me. I studied, kept fit, worked hard. Searched the world for someone to love so I could salvage my life. I thought that would make it better. If I had my own family to love and look after, to protect from animals like you, I could prove to the world and myself that life could be good. But I was wrong. You ruined me. You stole my life.’
Luke came up behind Farrow, pulled his head back and stroked his fingers gently down his exposed neck. ‘My wife died because she couldn’t deal with me. She tried to help but she couldn’t.’ He bought himself close to Alastair’s ear. ‘You know why nobody can help me? Because of you,’ he whispered, his breath hot on Alastair’s skin. ‘Because of you I can’t even help myself.’
Alastair tried to shake his head. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he rasped. ‘What have you got to gain from killing me?’
‘It’s not about what I have to gain. It’s about having nothing left to lose.’
Alastair Farrow struggled against the bungee cords that held his feet and hands in place as Luke bent to rummage in a holdall at his feet. He came out with some grey gaffer tape, picked up the piece of rag and pushed it back into Farrow’s mouth, then wrapped the tape twice around his mouth and head as he pulled back and forth in desperation, panic engulfing him.
Then Luke leant close to his face. ‘Do you remember what else you said to me that day?’
Farrow stared up at this man, his crazed eyes locked onto his, his panic levels surged again. There was an eerie calm to his voice that chilled the dead, stale air around them. He looked up at him, those eyes burning with hatred, that mouth twisted into a bitter snarl. Fresh fear gripped him as he fought against the cords that tied him, tugging and twisting like a snared rabbit desperate to free itself.
Luke leant forward and whispered close to his ear, his breath hot, words creamy with intent. ‘You said, This will teach you.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Harmony was tidying the cushions on the sofa when she noticed the dark saloon pulling up and parking on the road outside the building. Two men got out of the car, both wearing sombre suits and serious expressions. They exchanged words before walking away from the car. She craned her neck and saw them climbing the steps to the main door.
She jumped when the doorbell rang.
She went to buzz them into the building, smoothing her hair as she did. ‘Hello?’ she said, as she opened the door.
‘I’m DC Fletcher,’ said one of the men as he approached. His grey suit was crumpled, his white shirt greying on the edges of his collar. He was older than he’d seemed from the window, with deep, craggy lines, a large nose that had been broken on more than one occasion, and a small scar through one of his eyebrows. He flashed his identification at her and she leant forward to read it.
‘Is everything OK?’ she said.
‘Does Will English live here?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking from one to the other. ‘He’s my husband.’
‘Is he in?’ asked the other, a younger man with sandy hair and matching eyes and the sallow skin of a heavy smoker.
‘He’s in the garden.’ She turned and gestured unnecessarily to the back of the flat. ‘Shall I call him?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ said the older man patiently.
Harmony nodded. ‘Would you like to come in?’
The two men came through the front door and she directed them to the living room. They made the room seem small and overcrowded. She went to the back door and called for Will. He was on his hands and knees, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, a sheen of sweat coating his sun-reddened face, weeding the bed to the left of the lawn. They’d both been too tired to think about work, so Will had phoned Frank first thing and told him he wouldn’t be in, and Harmony had called in sick. Alice told her to take care and that she was happy she was finally looking after herself. They’d ended up leaving Gill’s just after midday, with Harmony driving so Will could sleep, though she’d found it hard to keep her own eyes open on the monotonous stretch of motorway. They’d both gone to bed when they got back and had a few hours’ sleep, and when Will woke he went straight into the garden. He told her he wanted to make the most of the last few hours of sun, but she suspected he was still trying to come to terms with the idea of her with Luke. He’d need time; she knew that.
‘The police are here,’ she said to him in hushed tones. ‘They want to talk to you.’
Will looked surprised. He stood up and dragged his arm over his damp, earthy brow.
‘Do you know why?’ he asked, as he walked up towards her.
She shook her head. ‘They didn’t say. Maybe something to do with Luke?’
‘Why would it be to do with him?’ he asked sharply.
She shrugged and lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t know? All the phone calls and texts. And …’ She hesitated. ‘And, well … I went to see him. To tell him to stop calling me. And there were all these photos in his flat.’
‘What photos?’
‘Photos of us. You and me. Taken without us knowing. I should have told you …’ She paused, unsure why on earth she hadn’t told him about the photographs. ‘He’s not well, Will. He needs to see someone who can help him.’
Will nodded and headed towards the house, brushing earth from his shorts and smoothing his sweaty T-shirt as he went.
Harmony glanced up at the sky, which was the blue of a robin’s egg with a few white clouds hanging as if suspended by invisible threads. A group of children walked past on the other side of the wall. They were laughing and joking. She heard a snippet of their conversation, two boys discussing football, then a ball bouncing and their happy voices faded as they walked away.
She followed Will down the corridor. The two men straightened their shoulders. ‘Will English?’
‘That’s right. How can I help?’
‘I’m DC Fletcher and this is DC Jones. We’d like to invite you to the station to ask you a few questions.’
‘Can I ask what about?’
‘A man’s been reported missing. His wife said a man called the house last night, around ten p.m. and said his name was Will English. Her husband took the call then left to meet him. He hasn’t been seen since and hasn’t turned up for work, and there’s no answer from his phone.’
‘And this woman said it was me who called? That’s definitely what she said?’
‘Yes,’ said the older man.
‘But I didn’t. It has to be a different person with the same name.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind coming with us, we can discuss this at the station.’
Will turned pale as a corpse and fear swamped Harmony.
‘Will? What’s going on? Do you know anything about this?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing at all.’ He turned to the policemen. ‘Who is it who’s missing?’
‘The man’s name is Alastair Farrow.’
Harmony gripped her hands behind her back in the hope the policemen didn’t notice how much she was shaking.
Will opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. His eyes flicked back and forth. She could see his brain turning over.
‘Couldn’t he be at a friend’s or sleeping off a heavy night, or something? He hasn’t been gone long?’ The words left her mouth before she could stop them.
‘It’s out of character. The wife says he never misses work. He was in a state when he left the house. We tend to follow things up. Better to make a few simple checks at this stage.’
‘Do you need me to come with you now?’ Will said then.
‘Yes, please.’
Will took a breath and nodded. ‘Would you mind if I wash my hands and change into some clean clothes? I’m pretty dirty from the garden.’
DI Fletcher hesitated for a fraction of a second before nodding.
Will left the living room and went into their bedroom.
‘Will you excuse me?’ Harmony asked.
‘We’ll wait in the hallway,’ the older man said.
Harmony followed the men into the hall. DI Fletcher checked his watch. The other man opened the front door. She was filled with the sudden urge to flee, to get Will and run, down the corridor, out of the kitchen, over the garden wall and away.
Will had changed his shorts for a pair of jeans, and taken his T-shirt off which lay at his feet. He was bent over the basin, using his cupped hand to wash under his arms and behind his neck.
‘You need to tell me where you were last night,’ she whispered. ‘When you were gone yesterday. You were gone for hours. Where were you?’
He turned the tap off then reached for the towel which hung over the edge of the bath and patted his face and neck dry. ‘I didn’t call Alastair Farrow last night and I didn’t meet him.’
‘I called people. Left messages. People know you were missing.’
‘You think I’ve done something wrong?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No, of course not.’
He rubbed his face and shook his head, then sighed. ‘Look, I went to my father’s grave, OK?’ His brow furrowed, as if hearing those words surprised him.
‘What?’ She followed him out of the bathroom and into their bedroom.
He took a clean T-shirt from his drawer. ‘I sat beside it. For most of the night. Before that, I drove to my parents’ old house. I snuck in over the fence at the bottom of the garden and walked around. Sat in the places I had done as a child – in the hollow in the copse, on the swing – thinking about things. About you and Luke. About how everything was fucked up and how much I blamed my father for things I did wrong. And then I realised it was all such bullshit. It hit me like bricks. Blaming other people – my father, the school, Alastair Farrow – was a cop-out and I have to start taking responsibility for the decisions I make.’ He paused. ‘I’d been blaming all these things for my decision to have the vasectomy, for my fear of having children, for keeping things from you. Giving myself all these excuses. But you have to take responsibility for your actions, don’t you?’
She braced herself as an unwelcome image of her and Luke came into her thoughts. ‘Yes, blaming others for our mistakes is too easy.’
‘Anyway, that’s when I decided to go and see him. His grave. Mum and I had talked and she said some things that really stuck. It got me thinking about how unhelpful it was to carry so much anger around. I drove to the church and sat by his headstone and ended up telling him I was sorry. Not to him, sorry about our relationship. Our missed opportunity. I told him we were trying for a baby and I was going to be a good father,’ he said. ‘Then I lay down next to his grave and closed my eyes and, for the first time in my whole life, I felt close to him.’
For a moment she didn’t move, but then she smiled and stepped forward to put her arms around him.
