All These Perfect Strangers (33 page)

Taking hold of the sides of the manhole, I jumped. My legs only half pushed, my feet slipping on the chair. Arms gripping, legs kicking furiously, I was swimming in the air, trying to propel myself upward. I kicked hard again, lurched forward and my hands thrust into the space, reached a beam and I scrambled up. I was through.

The air was hot and so thick with dust that I gasped and coughed as if I had taken in water. The only light came up through the hole. Cautiously, I moved an arm around, feeling for the torch that had been there last time.

But there was no torch.

The air swirled in clouds, disturbed by my movement. As I sat there with my legs dangling through the square trying to remember the way, I noticed a pair of footprints on a beam near me, as crisp in the dusk as on wet sand at a beach, a trail to follow into the dark.

The square of light lit up a few of the vertical beams around me. They stood there as dark as the trees from last night. Then, I had run away from danger, but now I was walking towards it, and it was probably the same person in both instances. Logic and time were disappearing and something more primitive had taken their place inside me: the honing of senses, the pulse of adrenalin.

I could have jumped back down into the world below and taken the consequences but instead I began walking along the horizontal beam, carefully putting my foot into each footprint as if pretending I wasn't there, as if none of this was really happening.

As I reached the first vertical beam, I hugged it tightly, swaying slightly. I held my breath and listened. I could hear the scurry of tiny feet. Rats perhaps, trying to work out what the disturbance was. I could almost feel their teeth on my skin, and my heart began to thump.

The roof got lower and I ducked my head further and further. Finally, almost bent double, I could see the chinks of light, the lighter grey in the black of the wall. Something scuttled down my arm and I jerked forward, almost falling off the beam but catching a rafter at the last moment. In straightening up, I smacked into the side frame. Pain flashed red across my eyes. Steadying myself, whimpering, I put my hand to the top of my head. My hair was sticky. Blood smeared my fingers.

I needed to get out. In desperation I banged my hands against the side of the roof and caught my palm against a metal fastening. Pushing the hatch open, I heard the dull clang on the tiles outside. The sky appeared and I half fell, half stumbled onto the roof.

The world was the colour of milk.

I shut my eyes and slowly opened them again, squinting in the light. The white discoloured and shapes began to form. A fog wrapped the building like gauze. The air smelt of leftover smoke and wet pine.

I blinked again.

Tiles the colour of weathered wood. Moss and dew making them slick.

Michael sitting on the roof, watching me.

I scrabbled across the tiles and perched myself at the other side of the hatch. A careful distance. I felt my head. Blood spotted on my hand. Scrapes on my arm, a couple of nails torn . . . not so serious.

I waited for what was going to happen next.

‘Have you ever been up here during the day?' he asked.

I shuddered. Cold was seeping into my bones. ‘Only once. At night. Weeks ago.'

‘Oh, I know about that.' His voice was bitter. ‘I followed you up here. I've followed you everywhere.'

And I knew that was true. The ever-present flicker at the corner of my eye. The dark shadow in the bush. The face across a room. But I was not ready to bring him into sharp focus yet so I looked at a small black bundle lying nearby. The balaclava, I guessed.

‘Did you take that from my room?' I asked.

A nod.

There was something thin and sharp next to it. A screwdriver.

‘Do they really belong to Rogan?'

‘I think so. I mean, I took them from Rachel's room, but I am assuming she took them from his when she worked out that he attacked that girl, Alice. They've been useful, but don't worry, I'll return them to their rightful owner in time for the police to discover them.'

Carefully, he picked up the screwdriver in gloved hands, angled so that a sudden spike of sunshine pierced through and illuminated the stained black edge.

‘Hard to believe that it could do so much damage. That you could literally chisel the life out of someone.'

My chest felt tight. ‘You left the balaclava there last night for me to find. You weren't in your room at all. It was you who chased me.'

A nod.

‘And you're going to frame Rogan for Leiza's murder?'

‘That depends on you. If you keep fucking him, like you did here that night, as you probably did last night in Marcus's office, then yes, I will. But to be honest, even if I don't, he's in enough trouble already. Isn't he?'

The sun disappeared again, as if it had seen enough.

‘The problem is, Pen, I don't think you understand all that I've done for you.'

I took a deep breath as though drinking in the sky.

‘Why don't you tell me, then?'

So Michael told me his version of the last few months. Events I knew but now saw again distorted through his dead-eye gaze. The story of a boy who stole into someone's room to set an alarm clock for the early hours and found a rolled-up balaclava, a screwdriver and a news -paper article about a murdered policeman with the name of the only girl who had ever kissed him scrawled on top. What I worried would repel people only attracted Michael more. He watched me even more closely. So closely, that he noticed me storm out of the girls' toilets one night at the bar and crush something over Rachel's beer.

‘It was how you smiled when you handed it to her. A beautiful, genuine smile. Nothing fake about it. No pretence. I wanted you to smile at me the same way.'

He followed Rachel outside and watched her stumble to the river. She fell down and sprawled on the bank, possibly overdosing already, possibly not. It was hard to tell, he said. It was taking so long. He wanted to watch her die, this girl who tormented him. Partly, because he hated her, but also because he was curious. What did death look like? How did it feel?

In the end, he became impatient. He dragged her into the shadows where the river was deep and held her face under and in that grey water, synapses sparked and a neural pathway was completed and Michael's world was changed forever. It was like hearing music or seeing colour for the first time. A revelation, he said.

He ran to college, got changed, climbed into my room to leave the article so I would know I was safe. He saw the Rohypnol sitting out and took that with him. All my secrets protected. Heading back to the bar to find me, he saw Rogan and me kissing, holding hands and walking out the door. Following us, he watched as we discovered Rachel's body, saw Rogan stuff Rachel's bag full of drugs and realised that with Rachel gone, he was the new finder of secrets. Rachel's mistake had been that she couldn't keep them. Michael was sure he would.

‘I decided not to tell you. Punishment for Rogan. But then that day in the laundry when I was washing the clothes I had killed Rachel in, I overheard Leiza threatening you.'

‘Not threatening,' I whispered. ‘Talking to me.'

He looked at me dismissively, a snarl in his voice. ‘Leiza was a threat. Her whole campaign was a threat. Any police investigation was. They nearly caught you last time. I couldn't risk losing you.'

‘You killed her.'

Michael nodded. ‘I didn't just want to kill her. I wanted to send a message. Everyone else would think it was part of the attacks. Blame the Screwdriver Man or the bikers at the bar. But really it was for you. That's why I left the Rohypnol. I was the only person who knew what you had done to Rachel. I wanted you to realise all that I had done for you. That we killed Leiza together just like we had killed Rachel.'

He sat there and smiled at me, the savage smile of someone who truly believed that. What he had done was more than a gesture. My tablets tied me to both deaths.

He kept talking about his plans but I couldn't listen. I didn't want to hear any more. I thought about the people who had been caught in Michael's web. Rachel. Leiza. Even Nico. He had thought, like everyone else, that the bikers killed Leiza. He went to the police and ended up dead. Even Rogan and Marcus, guilty of their own crimes, were now wrapped up in something far more sinister.

I thought about them and I thought about me. How responsible was I for all of this? How guilty should I feel? I had spent all semester studying subjects that professed to have discovered the formula to allocate blame, to apportion guilt. But courts never find people innocent. They find them not guilty. There is a difference. Here, I was not innocent. I was not blameless. Most of what Michael thought had been distorted through the fairground mirror of his mind, but he had seen me clearly, perhaps more accurately than I was willing to admit. For a fleeting moment I had wanted to kill Rachel, and I, out of everyone, should have understood the repercussions of acting on a murderous impulse, on decisions made in the blink of an eye.

A breeze picked up, moving through the trees, poking holes in the mist. It tasted cold on my tongue.

The day Tracey and I had stolen from the gift shop had been cold.

‘Let's get something to eat.' Tracey pulled my arm as she walked into Cook-a-Chook. The thick-necked owner looked up in anticipation when the bell rang. His sweaty face soured when he saw it was us.

‘Let me guess, one chips with gravy to share.'

The cheapest thing on the menu.

‘Two Cokes as well,' added Tracey.

‘Youse are big spenders.' He grunted, reaching into the fridge behind him.

‘Pay the man, Pen,' said Tracey. She was broke as usual.

Annoyed, I handed over the money. ‘I'm supposed to be saving for Mother's Day. If I don't get something, she's going to nag me for the rest of the year.'

Tracey laughed. ‘She's going to nag you anyway.'

She picked up the aluminium foil container, careful not to squeeze it so the gravy wouldn't spill. The door dinged on our way out.

‘Maybe we should try the gift shop?' I asked.

‘Dunno,' said Tracey. ‘You'll look guilty and give the game away.' She fished out a chip, swore when a blob of hot gravy landed on her wrist and thrust the container at me.

‘I won't.' I balanced it in both hands, feeling the heat radiating outwards. ‘Besides, you said it was easy. That the guy's too busy reading his newspaper to notice.'

Tracey sucked the gravy off her skin and said nothing.

‘You're chicken,' I said. ‘Dare you.'

There was a red welt where the gravy had been.

‘All right,' she said. ‘But only because I haven't got anything for Mother's Day either.'

·  ·  ·

I began all this.

Michael stood up on the roof.

‘Now you know my secrets and I know yours. We'll keep each other safe,' he said.

‘No.' My voice was as thin as vapour. I wasn't sure he heard what I had said, but he turned and looked at me.

I spoke louder this time, the wind catching my words, hurling them at him.

‘We're never going to be together.'

He began to slowly crawl towards me across the tiles like a spider. The door to the roof lay between us but all my courage had been used up. I couldn't force myself to get any nearer to him.

Suddenly, he began to move unbearably fast.

Too late for the door now. My only thought was to put space between him and me.

I began clambering up to the top of the roof, my numb feet sliding on the wet tiles. But momentum was on his side and as I reached the top, his arm stretched out and grabbed my foot, a gloved hand against my icy skin. Clinging to the roofline, I kicked back viciously and felt something give way. He let go and I threw my body over the far side. My clothes and feet snagged on loose tiles as I slid down away from him, grabbing at an old roof turbine to help stop my fall. I only just managed to slow down before the edge. Tiles cascaded over the side and I could hear them smashing down the four storeys.

I thought I could hear movement below us. A sluggish world was beginning to wake up.

I stayed as close to the edge as I could, trying to brace myself on the uneven wet surface. Michael came over the ridge. As I watched him move down the roof, part of me couldn't believe that Michael would actually hurt me. But the screwdriver in his hand told me otherwise.

Indistinct voices began floating up towards us, curious and puzzled. I tried to scream but the sound caught in my mouth. No one could help. I watched him come nearer. His nose was broken. I had done that much. I felt a surge of hopeful anger, a moment of exhilaration. This wasn't some monster and I wasn't a scared fifteen-year-old. I hunted around for something to use as a weapon. A cracked piece of tile broken by my fall was lying near my feet. It fitted in my hand perfectly. There was a weight to it, a sharp edge.

‘You're smarter than this,' Michael said. ‘You don't need to be scared of me.'

In a single movement, he knocked the tile out of my hand and pushed me backwards onto the roof. My head slammed against the surface and, pinned together, we juddered towards the edge, my feet scrabbling to push back on the gutter and not slide off the roof.

He lay on top of me now. I could feel his heartbeat in my chest. In the struggle, the screwdriver had sliced a large cut near my eyebrow. A flap of skin. Warm blood trickled out of me.

I looked straight into the light-blue eyes that I had tried to avoid. Blood began to cloud my vision but I saw the truth at last. There were similarities between Michael and me that couldn't be denied, but fundamentally we were different.

I was a survivor and he was not.