Having tried and failed to apologise, Kit headed home. He took the foot path that skirted the edge of Wicker Copse and came out on Blackboy Lane, turning back to see the whole of the village laid out below him. A breeze blew warm and gentle along Morton valley, barely troubling the leaves, the river curved gently in a twisted ribbon of greenish blue. It was an evening destined for memory, almost too still and too perfect in itself.
Kit knew why he’d stopped. He wanted to cry for Josh, for Mary, for himself, and the whole shitty mess they’d made of their friendship; but his eyes remained dry and the simple apology he wanted to make choked his throat. So Kit took off his jacket, and set out for Wintersprint and the cluster of knocked-through cottages he occasionally still called home.
“Kit Newton?”
Nouveau, he almost said.
And then Kit took a look at the man asking and those standing behind him. They’d been waiting at a blind corner screened by brambles on one side and a roofless barn on the other. A spread of elder could be seen through the barn door. Someone had hacked it back to the roots but it stubbornly insisted on resprouting.
The man at the front had gelled hair, a grin, and a photograph, which he compared one final time to the boy standing in the middle of the road in front of him.
“Yeah,” said someone behind. “That’s the little fuck.”
There were five of them, perhaps three or four years older than Kit. Hired muscle mostly, track-suit bottoms, branded tee-shirts, and gold chains. They’d have hated Kit anyway, even if they weren’t being paid for the pleasure.
Pulling a spring-loaded cosh from his pocket, gelled hair flicked it to its full length and tapped the end against his own palm. “One arm and one leg,” he said. “And I’m to tell you, that’s getting off lightly. Feel free to argue, because we can make this as hard or easy as you like.”
“Who sent you?” asked Kit.
The man grinned, and grinned even more when Kit bent to retrieve a broken stick from the roadside. “Oh well,” he said. “It’s your choice.”
The others stood back, raised their eyebrows at each other or stared around as if the rolling fields behind the barn were some alien landscape. One of them even pulled a phone from his pocket, fingers stabbing at its keys as he kept half his attention on Kit and the rest on some text he was answering.
No one was taking this seriously, Kit realised. Hurting him was just a tick on a list, like filling a car with fuel or remembering to buy beer on the way home. A job they’d been given…
Somehow that made things worse. “Who?” Kit demanded.
“Why would I tell you?” Gelled hair tapped the weighted cosh against his hand, anxious to get things moving. “We’re just doing a favour.”
“A favour?”
“How do you think these things work?”
“I don’t know,” Kit said.
“Well, guess what?” said the man. “You’re about to find out.”
The first swing of the cosh smashed Kit’s stick, splintering the wood an inch or two above his fingers. Reversing direction, the man began to sweep the cosh towards Kit’s elbow, harnessing all the energy in its coiled handle.
Two histories hung on the flick of that wrist. In the first, Kit’s ulna smashed under the weight of the blow, a single sliver of bone skewering muscle in what was almost a clean break. This was the most likely outcome, until Kit stepped into the blow and used his arm to block the handle, twisting his body sideways as the weighted end of the cosh snapped round.
Flesh tore, staining the cotton of Kit’s shirt, but it was surface damage only, little more than split skin and blood. If the blow had landed, his elbow would be broken, the fight over, and his leg next in line. Instead Kit now had control of the fight, moving so far into the moment that his Sergeant would be proud of him, if the man hadn’t already been dead.
Flicking upwards, Kit’s own hand was moving before he’d even had time to decide he wanted to fight, the splintered stub of stick he held rising towards the attacker’s jaw, ready to punch through to his brain. But in the last second gelled hair threw back his head, and Kit’s stick scored its way across his cheek and splintered against bone overhanging the man’s left eye.
Instinct made gelled hair clasp a hand to his face. So it was instinct that drove a splinter of wood the final few millimetres into the man’s eye, blinding him. By then the cosh was already in Kit’s hands and he’d cracked the knee of the man closest, stepping over him to reach the person behind. Kit smashed his phone, fingers, and wrist first, in a single blow, before moving on to a leg.
One arm and one leg, Kit took the price from each of them, swiftly and brutally, sparing only their leader, who was on his knees in the road, his hands covering his face.
“Who sent you?” Kit demanded.
When gelled hair refused to answer, Kit knelt in front of him and gripped the man’s little finger, prising his hand away from his face. There was little blood and no sticky liquid running down his cheeks like egg yolk. Just a sliver of wood about the length of a needle protruding from the corner of one eye.
“Tell me,” said Kit, reaching for the splinter.
On his way back to the cottages Kit passed their car. A black Jeep with smoked windows and chrome bars on the front. The glass in the windows was good quality, though it cracked eventually under blows from the cosh, having crackled into tiny diamonds first.
A top-of-the-range, hands-free phone system came with the Jeep, at least it looked ready-built into the dash, so Kit called an ambulance. Leaving the Jeep, he used a bridle path to reach the old main road to London. There was nothing he wanted from his father’s cottage at Wintersprint, and he didn’t recognise the Kit Nouveau who’d broken all those bones or smashed up the Jeep, though Kit guessed his father had always been there inside him, waiting.
Sometimes, decided Kit, the only safe choice was to walk away from yourself. So he did.
CHAPTER 36 — Monday, 25 June
“So what did he want?” asked Neku.
“Who?” said Kit, looking up from his bowl. Somehow Neku had found fresh udon noodles in Soho, and breakfast had been waiting when he finally staggered out of the shower.
“That policeman.”
“Not sure,” said Kit.
“But it was about Mary O’Mally’s suicide?” Neku’s Japanese accent made the first and last parts of Mary’s name sound identical.
“I thought it was,” admitted Kit. “At least to start with. Now I’m not certain.” Aggression and interest had faded from the moment Sergeant Samson realised Kit hadn’t seen Mary in years. It blipped again at Kit’s mention of a letter and disappeared altogether when Kit admitted this had been six months before and the contents entirely personal.
“She didn’t mention boyfriends?” said Sergeant Samson.
A shake of the head was all it took to make the uniformed officer reach for his cap, push back his chrome stool, and remember, at the last minute, to thank Kit for the barely touched can of Coke.
“A friend of the family?” asked Sergeant Samson, on his way out. He was nodding towards the roof garden door, which stood slightly open.
“Something like that.”
“How long’s she been in the country?”
“Less than a week,” said Kit. “She’ll be going home soon.”
“Just as well. Still, she’s pretty. I’ll give you that…” The big man paused on the stairs. “I mean, for a Chink, obviously…”
Now watching Neku ladle the last of the warm noodles into his bowl, Kit wondered how much of that particular conversation she’d overheard and which part of it was making her alternate between frowns and an anxious smile.
“Mary left a suicide note,” said Neku. “So why don’t her parents believe it?”