Harvest (29 page)

David shouted down a command to
send the lift upwards and Jason responded by pushing the button for
the fourteenth floor. The machinery squealed high above, and the
lift roared upward. The air washed over Jason’s face from the hatch
and he breathed in the warm dusty smell like that of the
underground and found himself taking grim comfort in the familiar
role of being bullied.

Chapter
Twenty Three

Sixteen-year old Danny Jenkins
strode into the room he shared with his younger brother Kevin, who
sprawled on the top bunk listening to music through his headphones.
Danny nodded a greeting to him then swept his sports cap off and
flung it on the swivel chair at the computer before he crashed out
on his own bunk.

He ruffled his hair that had
been flattened by his hat and closed his eyes and let his body
relax into the softness of his bed. He heard the springs of the
bunk above him vibrate and tense as the weight of his brother
shifted, telling him that Kevin was staring down at him over the
edge. Danny kicked his foot hard against the underneath of his
mattress.

“
Fuck off you cunt,”
Kevin laughed.

Danny asked where their parents
were, and found they had gone shopping.

“
So what you been doing?
You came home well late last night – then you shot off out really
early?”

“
I know I got a
bollocking from mum last night.” Danny opened his eyes and tried to
control a wild smile. “I was with Leah last night.”

“
Dirty
bastard.”

Danny flinched as Kevin reached
down to thump him playfully but found he couldn’t reach. Danny
swatted his hand away.

“
What
happened?”

Danny couldn’t control his
smile any longer and it curled his cheeks so tightly they ached.
“We did it.” He ducked away as Kevin cursed at him and tried to hit
him again. Kevin clung to the side of the bed waiting for the
details. Danny closed his eyes and thought back to it. “Leah didn’t
want to be on her own last night, so we stayed out as long as we
could. Her family’s having loads of trouble with her younger
brother; he’s gone a bit nutty by the sounds of it, says he’s been
seeing things in their flat, I think he’s like it ‘cause people
have been going missing.”

“
Yeah, that’s why mum and
dad were freaked out last night; I think they were worried
something had happened to you too.”

“
Shit, yeah,” Danny gave
into his mistake of not even calling home. When they had called him
he hadn’t answered. He had been doing other things. “Anyway, we
just walked, all round the green outside, then when it got colder
we came back and just wondered the corridors. We ended up at the
very top of the staircase, outside the door to the roof. It was
locked so we just huddled up there. She got really upset, started
crying about everything, especially about Sarah going missing,” he
thought of the girl that had somehow gone missing on her way from
her flat to meet up with her friends outside. “I mean we weren’t
great mates with her but she was in our crowd.” He didn’t mention
that he had cried too, didn’t admit the fear to his brother. He
focussed on what came next, the burning heat, his fantasies that
were unexpectedly made real. “We were kissing and cuddling, just
playing about and then things started getting hot.”

Danny saw Kevin’s eyes sparkle
with anticipation and excitement clearly getting off on his story.
“Cool.”

“
Before long we were both
topless, and she let me unhook her bra.” Danny remembered the
infinite smoothness of her breasts and how they tensed under his
hesitant touch and his kisses. “Then she was kissing my chest and
stomach.” He remembered the feathery touch of her breath and the
heat of her tongue on his smooth stomach. “Then she went down on
me. Ah fuck, it was so good bro!” Danny felt himself go stiff, but
Kevin had retreated out of sight so he didn’t care. “Better than
any wank!” He laughed and played with himself idly in his tracksuit
bottoms. “Then she asked me to do her. We were naked in no time,”
he remembered how cold and hard the floor was, but it had helped
delay his excitement to something he hoped was acceptable. “Then I
did her, I just let her have it and she loved it,” he lied. He had
been slow and hesitant and worried each time she groaned and
grimaced, not knowing if he was hurting or pleasuring her. “I came
loads!” he was horny again; he would have to go to the privacy of
the bathroom in a moment. There was another feeling mingled with
his arousal, unformed and anonymous but definitely there. He tried
to ignore it.

“
I went to look for her
this morning. See if she was up for seconds,” he lied again. He
loved her, and she had been so worried the previous night he wanted
to make sure she didn’t regret doing what they had done, wanted to
check they were still together, that she loved him. His thoughts
darkened. “She wasn’t home. Parents said she had gone out early.”
He had rung and text everyone on his mobile but no one had seen
her. He didn’t know what that meant for them both, but he didn’t
want to think that it meant she had gone missing like Sarah
had.

His lust stifled him, leaving
him agitated and uncomfortable the longer he prolonged any
response. He wanted to revisit the hot memory of being inside Leah
but there was something distracting him. Something wriggled in his
mind beyond the dim possibility and fear that she could be missing.
An elusive feeling that frustrated him and teased him, as if his
emotions were trying to take a shape beyond the mould of his lust.
Suddenly he breached the gap and the feeling had an identity that
seized him. Anger. It washed over him with a scalding heat. He
couldn’t explain why, but somehow everything that annoyed and
frustrated him about his fourteen-year old brother came to his mind
one memory after another, goading him to respond to it, to lose his
control.

Craig opened his front door and
Vicki beamed in at him. The smiled vanished and she momentarily
paused in chewing her gum. “You look like shit…”

Craig rubbed his pallid face
with his good hand and it trembled slightly with weakness. “Cheers
Vicki, your making me feel so much better. I was only saying to
myself this morning that all I needed was a verbal
kick-in-the-teeth observation from Vicki to raise my
self-esteem.”

“Babe, if I was trying to raise
your self-esteem I’d shag you.” Vicki moved in close to him,
prodded her finger at his chin and trailed it down his neck and
chest to his navel in a play of seduction.

Craig pushed himself forward
from the doorway of his flat, forcing Vicki and her pointing finger
back into the corridor. He cocked his head to one side and spoke
through a false grin. “How would giving me something that you give
away so freely, make me feel special?” He had attempted to make his
words cheerful play, but for a brief moment he had meant to hurt
her, he had had enough of the teasing. He needed comfort not games,
someone to be there for him. Craig liked Vicki a lot, he had been
quick enough to work out that she wasn’t interested, so he was sure
she knew how he felt. They took turns to chase and run, a holding
pattern of endless moves into stalemate that kept their friendship
fun without it ending in an awkward rejection. However at a time
like this he needed someone he could really sit down and talk to.
Vicki was not that person, outside of her work she would bolt at
the first sign of a meaningful conversation, not out of a lack of
any intellectual or emotional intelligence, but because she seemed
genuinely uncomfortable with them.

“Ouch… Are you on the Joan
Collins bitch slapping course or something?”

“Sorry mate.” He rested his
head on the white glossed-wood and sagged against the door. “Not
much patience. I just feel so drained all the time.”

“You wish! I think that’s what
you need…
A good draining.
”

Craig gave in to her humour. “I
haven’t even got the energy for sex.”

Vicki briefly placed a
comforting hand on his shoulder. “Awww!” She gave him puppy dog
eyes and spoke in a coquettish Marilyn Monroe voice. “Not even for
me…”

“Fuck off.” Craig laughed and
realised she had turned his mood around. “Cheers…” he conceded.

“So come on then. What’s making
you look like you need your mum taking care of you?” She leaned
towards him and straightened his collar. “You were looking a bit
shagged-through-a-hedge-backwards yesterday too.”

“You always bring things back
to sex.”

She raised her eyes skyward in
an angelic gesture. “It’s a gift, what can I say? Nah, seriously.
You don’t look too good.”

Craig rubbed his face. “I know.
I just want to sleep all the time though. It’s so bad. One
consolation though is that I think I should be able to take this
sling off after today, my shoulder has loosened up.”

“Well, try and sleep. It’s not
like you have a full day. You might be going down with something.”
Vicki slid her fingers through his hair and felt his forehead. “You
don’t feel feverish.”

“I sleep alright, but I wake up
feeling as if I have been down the gym.”

“Is
not
having a full
day worrying you? I recommend you to everyone on the team, you
know?”

“It’s not getting me down
anymore than it normally does, and I know you do. Cheers. I just
keep having those bad dreams. They are fucking my head up.”

“Jesus, Craig. You freaked me
out enough with the drowned geriatric. Look, we can leave it for
today if you want.”

Craig stood away from the door
and drew himself into a solid stature. He couldn’t afford to turn
down a job. Despite Vicki’s apathy concerning his desire to get
into journalism she had been good to him and got him on board any
story she could. “Nah, you can look after me. Anyway you sounded
pretty keen on getting here sharpish. I thought we were meeting
later to go down the pub to do something on underage drinking. Even
though it means you’re probably getting
me
barred from my
local…”

She flashed a smile at him.
“No, that can wait. I got a call from my contact in the local
police. What is going on in your flats mate?”

His heart trembled, not knowing
how to answer her. He was revisited by his guilt at denying any
knowledge of what had happened at the Chamber’s flat, even though
she knew he had been there and been involved. Craig’s panic
subsided when Vicki didn’t wait for an answer.

“It’s just the weirdest stuff
seems to be happening here. You know another couple of kids went
missing last night?”

Craig shook his head and his
skin chilled, the walls seemed to draw sickeningly in around him.
He imagined Vicki’s direction of potential headlines: CHILD
SMUGGLERS, CULT ABDUCTIONS, and SERIAL KILLER SLAYINGS. None would
come close to a bearing on reality – whatever that reality was.

“Turns out a couple of people
have done a bunk too. Not shown up for work for a few days,
relatives unable to get hold of them. Nothing confirmed yet but ‘am
starting to wonder what’s going on. Got a frantic call from my
contact about five minutes ago on the way to pick you up and told
me to get here ASAP.”

Vicki walked backwards to the
lift as she explained. “Floor four. I said we would be there five
minutes ago.” Craig caught up with her at the lift. “He wouldn’t
tell me what was going on. Just to get my butt into gear and get
here before CID arrive.”

The journey three floors down
seemed slower with the anticipation and mystery of what they would
find. When the lift did arrive Vicki prized her way through the
opening doors in her eagerness to escape the lift and to get to the
story. She was like a kid at Christmas; he could imagine the
excitement of possibly being on top of a story before anyone else.
He followed on her quickening heals and readied the camera. He knew
they would need to be quick if CID were going to be coming. He
imagined a mother and father grieving, sobbing over a child
inexplicably missing from his or her bed. Craig was uneasy with the
prospect of Vicki blundering into the midst of it all with a front
of concern aimed at getting her to the story, to ingratiate herself
with the parents so they relied upon her as their link to the
public mind, at the best it would get her exclusives, or at the
least some great information or quotes to build a story around.

Vicki strode down the corridor
and addressed the waiting police officer as Stuart Balin. Craig
eyed him, a sheen of clammy sweat shone from the man’s pale drawn
skin, its whiteness intensified the colour of his carrot coloured
hair. Vicki’s tone was brief and familiar before it became distant
as her attention was clearly hijacked by the open door to the flat
that he stood guard at.

Balin held his hat limply in
his hand and studied it awkwardly. “Vicki, there’s no one here you
can talk to. I called you in when I got the call to come here but
this isn’t another disappearance, it’s a murder. No grieving
relatives for you to interview.” He plucked his shirt from his body
where the long dark wet patches were clinging to his sides.

“You got who did it?” Vicki
bobbed her head from side to side peering beyond the doorway, as if
she could see around corners if she swayed enough.

“Yeah, but we called for back
up when we got here and you just missed her being taken away. We
couldn’t let you talk to her anyway.”

“Her?” Vicki nudged Craig and
nodded to the doorway.

Craig prepared his camera but
wasn’t sure what she wanted him to capture. She pulled him to her
vantage point and pointed into the hall at a bloody handprint
smeared on the wall. Craig started shooting.

Balin swallowed uncomfortably
as if he was holding back from being ill, sickly mucous splayed
from his mouth as he spoke. “It’s fucked up. Wife just gutted her
husband over breakfast. Groin to gullet.”