Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(28)

He’s thirteen, at school, lining up naked by the communal showers with all the other boys after a football match. There’s triumph and the camaraderie of sportsmen in the air, but he’s been on the losing team. He kept to the edge of the football pitch during the game, dodging the ball, hoping that the team he was on would win. It was easier being on the winning team. He could be invisible on the winning team, but today he was on the losing side, and his teammates need someone to blame.

The cheers and shouts echo off the grimy tiled walls of the shower, and he can feel the anger rising in his teammates behind him. The losers need to blame the ultimate loser.

Tom stands shivering among the naked bodies. Among the smells of feet and sweat, flesh and mud. He wills Mr. Pike, the PE teacher, to hurry and switch the water on so he can run through the shower and then envelop himself in a towel. He tries to shield his own nakedness with his arms. His underdeveloped body feels vulnerable next to the athletic boys who are almost men . . .

Amid all this, he feels shameful lust at the sight of their toned bodies. He hates himself for desiring them as much as he fears them. He wants the cold tiled floor to open and swallow him.

Mr. Pike appears at the end of the long corridor through the showers, and he turns a huge metal dial on the wall. There’s a hiss and a spatter, and a moment later, the water runs and the steam rises.

“Go on, wash! Get in there,” Mr. Pike shouts. The steam cuts through the cold air. Tom is behind Edwin Johnson. Captain of the losing team. He has a broad, muscular back and firm buttocks. The jeers grow louder through the steam. Tom feels himself jostled from behind, hears a murmur, a loud mocking laugh, and a cold hand plants itself in the center of his back, and he’s shoved forward. His inadequate body makes contact with Edwin’s firm, meaty rump. Skin to skin . . . and he leaps back. Edwin turns with his face flushed with anger.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he says.

Tom shivers and feels a cold trickling in his nerves and tendons, and he feels sick. It’s fear.

“Sorry,” he says, stepping back, but there’s laughter again as another hand presses at his back and pushes harder. Tom trips and crashes into Edwin face-to-face. Naked.

“Get off me, fucking fairy!” cries Edwin. He’s angry, but Tom can see the anger in his eyes is mixed with fear.

“He fancies you, Ed . . . ,” says a voice.

“You shouldn’t let him touch you like that,” says another.

“Yeah, people will get ideas about you two!”

The steam is now curling up around them. Edwin’s fist seems to come out of nowhere and hits Tom in the jaw. His head snaps back and smashes into the tiled wall. The pain is intense, and he slides down the wall and lands on the concrete floor, hitting his tailbone with a sickening thud. There’s a thin line of blood where he hit the tiles.

Tom looks up. Edwin’s face is a mix of hatred and terror. Tom tries to get up, but it hurts; he’s numb.

“Get up, you fucking queer!” someone shouts. Getting up would be the thing to do. It would restore order. Getting up would be the mannish thing to do. Tom can see that lying on the ground makes them angrier.

Hormones raging. Looking for a fight. He hears his father’s voice in that moment before the attack: “Whatever happens in a fight, you must stay on your feet, even if you get the shit kicked out of you. Never let them knock you to the ground or you’ll be finished.”

The full force of a punch slams his head against the concrete and shatters his front teeth. A foot kicks him in the guts. Edwin reaches down and grabs at his ankles, and he’s dragged naked along the concrete floor. Hot water, fists, and feet raining down on him.

He remembers Mr. Pike’s part in all this. The glimpse of his red face at the end of the showers. The wild-eyed look of excitement at what’s happening. He does nothing and watches as the steam and the rest of the boys swarm over Tom, kicking, punching, stomping.



Tom didn’t know how long he had zoned out. When he looked down, he was in the shower cubicle next to the bath. He was washing and scrubbing at his skin. He ran his fingers over the left side of his rib cage, where there was a long, thick scar. The bruises and broken bones had all healed, but where Edwin had stomped on his rib cage, causing the bones to break and push through his skin, there would always be a scar.

Tom dried off and stepped out of the shower. From under the sink, he took out a set of white hazmat coveralls, long white socks, latex gloves, a bottle of antibacterial hand soap, and a scrubbing brush with a long wooden handle.

He placed them neatly in a pile on the chair by the bath and dressed in the socks and then in the hazmat suit, pulling the hood up over his head and adjusting the face mask so that only his eyes were showing through. Then he pulled on the latex gloves.

The large bath was now two-thirds full. Tom was glad for the fog on the mirror. He still couldn’t look at himself. He came back to the bedroom and carefully untied Hayden’s legs and unlocked the handcuffs on his wrists. He picked him up and carried him to the bathroom, where he gently placed him into the bathtub.

There was a fresh set of clothes waiting for Hayden after his bath. When the police found him—eventually found him, if at all—it would be impossible to gather DNA evidence.

Tom was planning to tuck him neatly away.





16


Kate and Tristan arrived at Shelley Morden’s house at two p.m. the next day. Eleven Park Street was a pebble-dashed terrace house on a sloping hill looking out over Exeter. The street was quiet, and the path in front of the gate was covered with chalk drawings and hopscotch grids.