Devil You Know Read online

  The place seemed quiet, dead almost.

  Where was everyone? Usually there were people milling about on the balconies, chatting in doorways. Especially in summer. Now there was no one, just me and this silent stranger right on my tail. Had the neighbours been warned? Something was going to happen. ‘Stay indoors, don’t be a witness?’ It had happened before, attacks in broad daylight. No witnesses. It was how it worked round here.

  I searched in my pocket for my key as I ran. I belted around a corner and took the chance to glance at my back. Only a shadow, that was all I saw, all I needed to see. He was still behind me, whoever he was. I took the stairs leading to my walkway two at a time. Now I was sure I could hear footsteps, clanging on steel. Speeding up when I did. Footsteps coming closer. But I was well ahead. I could still make it. I dared another glance back. A black shape seemed to loom at the top of the stairs. I couldn’t make out anything else, and didn’t waste time looking harder. I was almost at my door. My hands shook, the keys jingled. Don’t let me drop them, I prayed. I fumbled for the lock, couldn’t get the key in. It was like a scene from some old movie, or some bad dream. I just couldn’t seem to fit the key in the lock. The footsteps were coming closer and closer.

  I felt as if I was ready to scream.

  Forty-Two

  The door was hauled open. “What the heck’s wrong with you?” It was Vince, and for once I was so glad to see him. I fell inside the house.

  “Was somebody after you?” Vince almost lifted me from the floor. “Were you being chased?”

  He stepped out of the front door. I held my breath waiting for a fist, or a baseball bat to swing against his face. “There’s nobody there,” he said.

  He closed the door. I stumbled into the living room, flopped onto the sofa, still half expecting someone to kick in the front door and come flying into the flat.

  “Must have been my imagination,” I said. But it wasn’t, was it? Someone had been after me, just like they had been after Baz.

  “I wish you would tell us what’s going on. Me and your mum, we’re worried sick about you.” His voice was soft. He sounded as if he genuinely cared. I said nothing. “Logan, are the boys that attacked Claude after you?”

  “Nothing’s going on. I thought somebody was chasing me. It was probably my imagination.”

  “The somebody that attacked Claude?”

  “We don’t know who attacked Claude.”

  “Was someone after Gary, is that why he scarpered? If you know anything, we could go to the police. I’d go with you. You would get protection if that’s what you’re scared of.”

  He was still thinking it was another gang after us. Just another gang on the estate. He didn’t know how bad it was. The Machans after me, and I go to the police? They’d be bound to find out. They’d warned Claude we were to say nothing. They’d find out I was the one who’d grassed. Another reason to come after me. Or after Mum. Oh yeah, that would be a good plan. I’d never be free of them. Never.

  So again, I said nothing. Not because I didn’t want to. Because I didn’t know what to say.

  Vince sat down in the chair across from me. He leaned forward as if he had something real important to say. “Logan? You know your mother’s worried about you. She thinks you need someone to talk to… a professional. Would you talk to them, Logan? Maybe you could tell them what you can’t tell us.”

  I felt my whole body stiffen. A professional. I knew it was coming to this. Then they could put me away somewhere, forget about me. And it would be just her and Vince. I felt sick at the thought of it.

  He waited, he must have thought that would make me talk, but I still said nothing. I stared past him, as if I was in another world. In a way, I was. Another scary world. Between the devil and the deep blue sea.

  “Logan?” he asked again, and still I didn’t answer. He gave up eventually, turning back to the television with a resigned sigh, and I stood up and went into my room, pulled out my phone and called Baz. He was the one I wanted to talk to. I told him everything that had happened.

  “Just the way it happened with you,” I said.

  “Maybe too much like the way it happened with me.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You never actually saw anybody, Logan. Maybe because there was nobody there.” He laughed. “You do have some imagination, you know?”

  “There was somebody there. It wasn’t my imagination.” I didn’t want him to think that.

  “Shouldn’t have told you somebody came after me,” Baz said. “That might just have made you think somebody was after you too. Might have been somebody innocent, a neighbour. Your imagination would do the rest.”

  “It wasn’t my imagination!” I almost shouted it down the phone.

  “Ok, keep your hair on,” he said. Then he added. “I believe you.”

  “You know what I think, Baz? I think maybe Gary isn’t coming back, that’s what I think. He’s not coming back because he can’t.” It was the first time I had put it into words. “What are we going to do, Baz?”

  He didn’t answer for a while. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Nobody’s gonny miss us.”

  He had plucked the idea out of my own mind. It was what I had been thinking, but I’d been too afraid to actually say it aloud. He was right. And what Vince had said had frightened me. They were going to get someone to talk to me. Someone to get into my mind, my deepest thoughts. I didn’t want that. And then they’d put me into care. If I was going to leave, it would me my decision, not theirs. Anyway, I was maybe putting them in real danger just being here. My mum was sick of me, and Vince would be glad to see the back of me. They could play happy families when I was gone from here.

  This was the answer to everything.

  “I just don’t know where we could go,” Baz said. Unsure for once. And for once, I felt I was in charge.

  “I know where we could go. Aberdeen. We’ll go back to Aberdeen. I’ve got friends there. They’ll hide us, look after us.”

  There was a rap on the door. I closed over the phone.

  It was Vince. “Are you talking to yourself again?”

  “I was saying my prayers,” I said.

  Baz was right. We had to get away from here. By this time tomorrow, I would be gone.

  Forty-Three

  I phoned Baz first thing in the morning. I’d hardly slept, awake most of the night working out what we would do. “We’ll have to go to school,” I told him, in charge for a change. I couldn’t miss school, if I didn’t turn up they would get in touch with my mum right away. They had to do that if I wasn’t there. It was that kind of school. “But we’ll meet up later. My mum’s working. A double shift. So I won’t be missed for ages.” He was up for it too. So we made our decision. We would leave that evening. “Unless Gary comes back,” I said. If he came back we would stay, find out what had happened to him. You don’t know how I hoped he would come back. I even asked Mum to phone his house before I left for school, just to find out.

  “You’re really worried about him, aren’t you?”

  What did she want me to say? I hesitated. “Naw, still think he’s hopped it. Had an argument with his dad, he’s always having arguments with his dad. Why should I worry about him? He never worries about me.”

  I’d said the wrong thing obviously. She looked disappointed.

  “I thought you liked Gary.” She said it as if I was a stranger, as if she didn’t know me. You know, I think if she hadn’t said that, I might have changed my mind about going. I might have stayed. But I knew then she didn’t really care about me any more. She had Vince and his son – her new family. I was nothing.

  She did call Gary’s house. I knew just from her side of the conversation there was still no word about him.

  “His poor mum’s worried sick,” she said, as she put the receiver back.

  I was worried too, but I couldn’t show it, could I? I shrugged my shoulders. “He’ll be fine. Gary’s the type that’ll always be fine.”
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br />   Again, it was the wrong thing to say. She couldn’t hide the disappointment in her eyes. She picked up her coat. “I’m away to work. Remember, I’m working a double shift tonight.”

  I stepped in her way. “Don’t you ever get fed up supporting him? You work. He doesn’t. You’re a mug, Mum.”

  She shrugged my hand away. And were those tears in her eyes? “Vince is my husband, Logan. He’s a good man. Why can’t you see things the way they really are, Logan? Why is it so hard for you to accept the truth?”

  “By what your ‘good man’ told me last night you won’t have to put up with me much longer, eh? We’re getting a psychiatrist to talk to the nutter in the family.”

  “Vince shouldn’t have told you that.” Her cheeks burned bright red. “I wanted to speak to you about it.” She sighed. “And it isn’t a psychia—” She couldn’t bear to speak the word. “It’s just someone for you to talk to. A counsellor. You’re scared of something, Logan. There’s something wrong with you, and you won’t talk to me. You need help.”

  She moved toward me, as if she was going to hug me. I stepped back, wrapped my arms around myself. Body language: stay well back. Didn’t want her near me.

  She let out a sigh, and shook her head, finished with me. “I’m trying to do my best for you, Logan. I think you need someone professional to help you.”

  If I hadn’t already made my decision to leave I would have made it then.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she left. “We can talk about it then.”

  I stood at the window and watched her run across the concourse, heading for the bus stop and the bus that would take her to work, pulling her coat around her against the stiff breeze.

  “No, you won’t, Mum,” I whispered. “You won’t see me again.”

  Forty-Four

  I didn’t walk to school with Lucie, and I didn’t wait for her after school. I tried to avoid her the whole day. I was afraid that if I talked to Lucie I might change my mind about going, and I didn’t want to change my mind. I headed home and packed up my rucksack with some food that wouldn’t be missed and some fresh clothes and my sleeping bag. Vince had bought it for me, hoping we could go on camping trips together, so we could ‘bond’. The sleeping bag had never been used.

  Vince wasn’t in. So I made myself something to eat and left my dirty dishes in the sink. When he did come in he would assume I had gone out after my tea to meet Baz. Let’s face it, he was the only mate I had left.

  Baz was waiting for me at the precinct, sitting on the wall outside the takeaway. He had a rucksack swung round his shoulder, and his hoodie was pulled up over his cap. He turned when he saw me and for a second I saw him exactly the way the CCTV camera might have captured him.

  “Ready?” he beamed his big white smile at me.

  I threw my rucksack in the air. “For anything,” I said.

  “So how are we travelling?” he asked.

  “Pity we can’t drive,” I said. “We could steal a car.”

  “Hey, how about if we nick a couple of bikes?” The idea made him laugh. I thought he was serious. He laughed even harder when he saw my reaction. “Hey, don’t get skidmarks on your boxers. I’m kidding.” He slapped me on the back. “Let’s go.” He called back to me as he walked. “So, how are we getting to this Aberdeen?”

  I suggested we avoid buses and trains for the first couple of days at least.

  “So, no bikes, no buses, no trains. Tell me again why we’re walking to Aberdeen?” he said.

  “Baz, there are CCTV cameras everywhere. I want us to be careful. We’ll be spotted. This is the Big Brother age.”

  “Rubbish. Look at Gary. Now you see him.” He snapped his fingers in the air. “Now you don’t. Vanished without a trace.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason for that.” I said.

  “You think they’ve got him? You think he’s wearing a cement overcoat by now?”

  I didn’t answer that. He was putting into words the terrifying things I’d been thinking.

  “No.” He shrugged the idea away. “Think about it, illegal immigrants go missing all the time, and escaped convicts, and children. Never found. Don’t tell me about Big Brother. If you don’t want found in this country…” He swung round, like a magician doing a trick. “You can become invisible.”

  And do you know, for a moment I half expected him to disappear before my eyes.

  “I’d still feel better if we steered clear of the CCTV cameras. I’m not as confident as you are.”

  “Well, ok, even Confident Baz will go with your wishes. Let’s hitch a lift. We’ll head for the motorway. The lorry drivers are great, they would stop for us. We could be halfway there before anybody even knows we’re gone.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t like the idea of hitching a lift, travelling in the dark with a stranger. My mum’s warnings still rang in my ears.

  “Come on, what do you think?” he said.

  And of course, I gave in to him. “You’re the boss.”

  I let Baz lead us then. He knew this estate. I didn’t. We headed through streets and alleys, behind shops. It seemed to take us ages. It was even more exciting because I didn’t know where we were going. For all I knew we could have been going round in circles. In fact there were times I was sure we were.

  “Haven’t we passed this building before?” I pointed to a red car parked outside a block of flats. “I’m sure I’ve seen that car…”

  “Hey, all these tower blocks look alike, and how many red cars are there? I am trying to make sure we’re not being followed.”

  “So you think we are being followed too?”

  “You’re one paranoid boy, do you know that?”

  “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.” It was an old joke but it made Baz laugh and laugh, and after a while I laughed too.

  Forty-Five

  Yet, as dusk began to fall, I couldn’t get over the feeling that we were being followed.

  “It’s all in your imagination,” Baz kept telling me when I’d stop and look behind me. “There’s no one after us. I told you, the way I’m going, no one could follow us.”

  I wanted to believe that, so I stopped checking behind us all the time.

  “Hey, I’ve been thinking,” Baz said. Then he laughed. “Not something I do often, eh? Who says we find somewhere to kip for the night, and then, first light we head for the motorway?”

  I was so relieved. I’d been dreading going on to the motorway, especially at night. “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  We bought fish and chips from a van on the street. Well, actually I bought it: a big fish supper that we shared between us.

  “Have you not got any money?” I asked Baz. He always seemed to hang back when it came to paying.

  “Keeping it for when we hit the road. I mean really hit the road. Hey, we’re in this together.”

  He gave me a high five. I gave him one back even though I hate high fives, think they’re so phoney. I noticed people looking at us as if we were daft.

  We squeezed our way through a broken steel fence into an old junk yard and sat in a corner behind some empty portacabins, eating our fish and chips and talking about what we were going to do next.

  “This is the best thing for us, mate,” Baz said. “We’ll be safe in Aberdeen. Hide out in the Highlands. They’ll never find us.” He put on a really phoney Scots accent. “We’ll rrroam the heatherrr hills,” he said, rolling his ‘r’s. “We’ll searrrch oot the Loch Ness monsterrrr.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “If they can’t find a big thing like Nessie, why should they find us?”

  Yet even in the few hours we’d been gone, I had almost forgotten who ‘they’ were. Distance, time, even a little of it, had made it seem simply like a nightmare. I would wake up soon.

  Baz stopped eating. He looked at me as if he was reading my mind. “You don’t want to go back do you?”

  “No way,” I said without hesitation. I di
dn’t want to go back. What was I going back to? I looked at my watch. Almost 11 o’clock. I still wouldn’t be missed. If Vince was home, he would just assume I was out with Baz. He might be annoyed I wasn’t in by now, but he wouldn’t do anything. I could almost see him, standing by the window, checking his watch. Perhaps going out onto the walkway as if watching for me would bring me home earlier. And Mum’s shift didn’t finish till well after midnight. She’d remember our argument, and think I was staying out late to annoy her. I’d done that before. She would think I was out with Baz too. It would be tomorrow before either of them realised I wasn’t coming back at all. If anyone cared.

  And when they did? Who would they call?

  Not Claude’s mum, or Gary’s. Would they be as reluctant as Gary’s family to involve the police? But Gary had run away before. I hadn’t.

  Or had I?

  I seemed to have a vague memory that I had, once upon a time. A faint memory from long ago. When I was really young.

  Or was that a dream I had once had?

  Lucie might miss me. Tomorrow, she might wonder why I hadn’t come to school. I pictured her waiting at the park. Checking the time, sitting on a swing, watching for me.

  But Lucie wouldn’t do anything. She thought I was weird. Hadn’t she told me that? “You’re as weird as I am,” she had once said. “That’s why we get on so well.” And if she heard that Mum had been planning for ‘someone’ to talk to me, she’d understand. She’d believe that I would run away rather than that. She was the only one I had told about the fire and my suspicions about the Machans, but she’d say nothing about that.

  Would my mum phone Baz? No. My mum didn’t have his mobile number, and didn’t know his home number either. So it might be another day before they realised we had gone off together.