Hide and Seek (21 page)

CHAPTER 44

20:44pm

They
were back at the front of the industrial estate. Steve eyed the mountain bike laid on the floor.

‘Is that your bike?’

‘Sort of. I borrowed it.’

Steve looked at him with his eyebrows raised.

Peter smiled. ‘Don’t ask.’

Steve nodded in acceptance and picked the bike up.

‘So what now?’

‘Well I think you should take the bike and ride back into town and go to the police.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to wait here for Celo’s call.’

‘You still think he’s going to call? You said he would call after you found me and that must have been fifteen minutes ago.’

‘
He’ll call. But I don’t think he’ll call while you’re here.’

‘How does he know you’re on your own?’

‘I don’t know. I feel like he’s been able to see me all day, like he’s watching me all the time.’

They both
surveyed the desolate landscape around them and Peter knew what Steve was going to ask.

‘Where the hell could he be to see you out here in the middle of nowhere?’

Peter just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Steve pleaded with him.

‘Don’t do this Peter. Come with me back into town and we’ll sort this out.’

‘No, I’m going to see this through.’

‘At least go to the hospital. Look at your arm, it’s still bleeding.’

‘It’ll be alright. I’ll get it looked at when this is all over.’

‘You’re really going to do this?’

Peter nodded.

‘You do realise that as soon as I see the police they’re probably going to ask me where you are and I’ll have to tell them.’

‘Yes, do it, chances are I won’t be here by the time they get here.’ Peter thought for a second. ‘Don’t stop for a police car. Go direct to the police station.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not sure, I may just be paranoid but at certain points today I’ve been sure that someone on the police force must be helping Celo. As I was coming up to here I saw a police car going the other way.’

Steve looked at him confused.

‘So what?’

‘Well, what’s a police car doing out
here at a closed down industrial estate this time of night?’

‘Police just drive around all the time.’

‘What? During a town-wide manhunt for a killer? And I’m pretty sure whoever was in the car must have seen me but they didn’t even stop to check me out, they just drove straight by.’

Steve acknowledged his reasoning.

‘Okay, I’ll go to the police station.’

He mounted the bike and put one foot on the pedal. He was about to push off when he gave one last uncertain look
at Peter.

‘Go on Steve, get out of here. I’ll be alright.’

Steve pulled off his jacket.

‘At the very least take this. It’s freezing out here.’

Peter accepted the jacket and put it on. Steve smiled. The small jacket, which fitted his wiry frame perfectly, looked tight on Peter and didn’t close properly across the middle revealing his chest.

‘You look like a Chippendale.’

Peter smiled.

‘Look after yourself and take care Peter,’ Steve said with genuine warmth.

Peter responded, ‘You too mate.’

Steve nodded and pushed off with the bike and started riding away from the industrial estate. Peter watched the lone figure cycle up Wolviston Road, disappearing under the blanket of night and reappearing briefly under the glow of the few streetlights dotted along the road until finally he followed the curve of the road out of sight.

Peter stood alone in front of the gates to the industrial estate. Everything was quiet except for the hum of traffic from town and the slight whistling of the wind as it blew across the road rustling the last few leaves and making them dance in the air. Peter could feel the cold and held the jacket closed with his good hand. He looked down at himself and smiled.

‘Chippendale. I wish.’

He had been surprised by his rapport with Steve in the brief minutes they had spent together. It was probably the most amiable they had been to each other since they had first met. Peter thought to himself that after the dialogue they had just had, especially under the circumstances, that maybe Steve wasn’t such a bad guy after all. However, he did think that once again he was no further forward with who Celo was. He had hoped, at various points in the day, that one of his friends would help him work out who the killer was. Not that it mattered too much now, because the game was over as far as the Excellent Eight were concerned, and now he just had the last task to contend with.

Peter felt a doubt creep into his mind about whether he was doing the right thing. Maybe he should have listened to Steve and just gone to the police. Throughout the entire day he had wanted nothing more than for this game to be over and
, in some respects, now it was. Yet he was going on with it, of his own volition. He thought about Steve’s remark. Could this grand finale be a trap for him?

Peter’s thoughts were interrupted by the muffled sound of the William Tell tune echoing from his pocket.

‘This is it,’ he said as he pulled out the mobile and answered it.

‘Hello Peter.’ Celo’s metallic voice rang out. ‘Congratulations on saving Steve. I knew you could do it.’

Peter responded sarcastically, ‘Thanks for putting the dog there.’

‘I didn’t put Cujo there. He belongs to the owner. He’ll be very upset to find his beloved dog dead. I suppose I could have warned you about it though. The bite must really hurt. Believe me
, I feel your pain.’

Peter looked around him and wondered how Celo could have seen what happened in the car yard. He tried to remember if he had seen any CCTV cameras in the yard but hadn’t noticed at the time.

‘Celo, you have no idea of my pain, but you’re going to.’

‘Still hell-bent on revenge for the ones you couldn’t save? Well, you mustn’t beat yourself up. You’ve done very well. I suppose it was unfair for me to add Gavin into the score as I did earlier. After all you weren’t really there so we could just say it’s a draw at 3-3.’

Peter gripped the phone tightly; his anger level was beginning to rise again.

‘Stop pissing around and tell me where you are.’

‘Have you ever seen the movie Chinatown?’

Peter was surprised by the question.

‘Yes, with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.’

‘That’s correct. Jack Nicholson plays a detective called Gittes. He sees something in a pond right at the beginning of the movie. He ignored it and set off looking for conspiracy theories as I’m sure you’ve had plenty of conspiracy theories on who I am throughout the day. In my opinion, Gittes could have prevented everything that happened if he had only looked more into the gold chain he saw in the pond at the start of the movie. But then again, if he had done that, there wouldn’t have been much of a movie would there?’

Peter tried to take in what Celo was saying to him but felt angry at another riddle.

‘What are you on about?’

‘What didn’t you look into when you started the game today?’

Peter remembered where he woke up that morning. As the day had gone on he had forgotten about it completely. He stared out towards Durden Woods as he replied.

‘Why did I wake up in the cabin?’

‘That’s correct Peter. That
’s where I’ve been living for the last year. You would have found all the answers there, if you had just looked closely enough.’

‘And you’re there now?’

‘I will be soon.’

‘What’s to stop me from going to the poli
ce right now and telling them?’

‘Absolutely nothing. It’s your choice Peter.
But you do want answers, don’t you?’

Celo hung up. Peter stood
, looking east towards the woods. A flurry of images raced through his mind. Gavin’s funeral, Colin’s body hurtling to the ground and landing with a sickening thump, Cheryl’s melted flesh as she lay shivering in shock on the floor, Laura’s dead eyes staring at him from an overflowing water tank.

He pulled the Bowie knife from his waistband and started running across the field and up the hill towards the
woods.

Hiding in the darkness at the corner of Wolviston Road, a person leaning against the fence observed him as he crossed the field.

CHAPTER 45

20:44pm

Peter reached the edge of the woods and climbed over the ramshackle fence that bordered it. He looked up at the trees which towered above him. He
moved silently through the woods, listening for any sound. He could barely see anything, and wished he had a torch. He hadn’t paid that much attention to where the cabin was and he wondered if he could find it again. He knew he had to find the main trail through the woods and find it from there. Peter crossed over the last piece of unsheltered land and entered the woods.

His feet crunched over the dead leaves that littered the floor of the forest. He looked around him cautiously as he walked, surrounded by
layers of thin barks, barren of leaves, standing like giant matchsticks. He stumbled repeatedly on the uneven ground.

This is it, he was thinking to himself. After all the events of today, he had reached the end of the trail and still had no idea what to expect. He considered each member of the Excellent Eight, searching his mind for any last clues which could prepare him for what
might come next. Gavin had died first, before he arrived in Bilton. His mind flitted through movies he had seen with unusual plot twists and wondered if anyone had actually seen his body. Could Gavin be alive? There was no chance that it could be Colin, the image of him falling to his death from the top floor of the flats played out in his mind again. Cheryl couldn’t possibly be involved. If she was, then she’d made an almighty sacrifice in allowing herself to become badly burnt. He wasn’t sure about Michelle. By now she would have discovered that her husband was dead, and if she didn’t trust him before, she certainly wouldn’t trust him now because he had lied to her. But was she involved in this anyway? It was hard to imagine a heavily pregnant woman being involved in such a heinous crime, but after all the events that had occurred today he decided that nothing could be ruled out and nothing would surprise him. Cas was next, his main suspect, but he had no idea why he would set up an awful game like this. Something must have happened to him during all those years where they’d lost touch, but why hold a grudge against the Excellent Eight? The possibility that maybe Cas was just a psycho; that there might not be a wholly logical reason for all this did cross Peter’s mind.

And then there was Laura. Peter felt an overwhelming sadness and guilt come over him again. If Cas was responsible for all this, not only had he put Laura in harm’s way in the first place but he had also knocked him unconscious and therefore prevented him from having a decent chance to save her.

Finally, there was Steve. Peter didn’t know what to think about Steve. He had come very close to being crushed by the compactor. Peter suddenly considered something he hadn’t thought about earlier. Maybe there was a failsafe on the compactor. He shook his head; he had heard the compactor crushing thin air after they had both escaped from the jaws of the mechanical beast. Still he wondered if maybe he should have confronted Steve a little more, maybe tried to trip him up somehow like he had tried earlier with Michelle. In the movies, if a killer was pretending to be someone else they would usually slip up by saying something which they couldn’t possibly know, therefore revealing themselves to be the killer. Peter read back over the conversation like it was a transcript in his mind but nothing unusual stood out. If Steve was involved, Peter had just let him walk away from the situation.

Peter climbed a small steep embankment and emerged onto the main walking trail which cut through the middle of the woods. The ground was cold and hard like clay and he kicked up dust as he started walking down the trail
, further into the heart of the woods.

Peter had considered all of the Excellent Eight
: Cas was his main suspect, and Steve was number two on his list. And what if it wasn’t someone from the Excellent Eight? Whoever Celo was, he knew a lot about the escapades they got up to as kids but that didn’t mean for certain that he was a member of the Excellent Eight. Again, he thought of something he should have asked Steve. Had he or any of the others spoken to anyone about their exploits? Maybe Celo had quizzed Gavin before he faked his suicide. It seemed a little unrealistic but it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. Was someone from the police force or the medical profession involved? He had considered it on more than one occasion today. It could be both. He had only spoken to Celo - which suggested that only one person was behind this madness - but he had no real idea how many people could be involved. The overriding question remained though, why?

Peter continued down the winding trail in the darkness. Ahead of him he could just make out the stump of a tree resembling a headless body sat down with its two arms hanging in midair. He remembered seeing the same tree shortly after he had left the cabin that morning. This was the point where he had joined the trail after leaving the cabin.

Peter left the path, heading back onto the uneven ground of the woods. His feet continued to crunch on the fallen leaves carpeting the forest floor. Diagonally ahead of him, coming from deeper into the woods, he could hear a slight rumbling noise like the sound of a petrol lawnmower. He continued walking and as he passed by a clump of trees he could see a light ahead which he surmised was a window of the cabin. He tried to recall whether any lights had been turned on when he was there that morning and decided there weren’t. If a light was on, somebody must be home. His hand clasped the handle of the Bowie knife as he walked forward towards the cabin. The rumbling sound grew louder as he approached.

Peter stopped twenty yards short of the cabin, under cover of the trees and surveyed the landscape around him. He realised that the rumbling sound he could hear was the sound of an electric generator coming from behind the cabin. He considered his options. Should he just walk in through the front door? What if it was a trap, as Steve had said?

He hunched over and scuttled forward towards the cabin and rested against the outside wall. He crept towards the window and peered in cautiously. The light was coming from a tall lamp standing next to the couch. There was nobody in the living room. He continued to watch, searching for any sign of life. Nothing happened. He looked to the other side of the front door, for any sign of a trap, but he couldn’t see anything that looked unusual or out of place.

Peter moved to the door of the cabin and, standing against the frame to protect himself, he turned the handle and pushed
it open. He hid as the door creaked and swung into the living room of the cabin. Nothing happened.

‘Coming, ready or not,’ he whispered.

He took a deep breath and walked inside, tensing and bracing himself for an attack. Nothing happened. He crossed over the living room and as he passed by the lamp he glanced down and noticed that the plug of the lamp was attached to a timer switch in the socket.

‘Shit,’ he said under his breath.

There might not be anyone here after all.

He looked into the bedroom where he had woken up only hours before. The bed was still unmade and flakes of mud were scattered across the floor from his muddied shoes. It didn’t look like anyone had been here since him. He continued into the small bathroom. The dirt rimmed bath sat there, the tap dripping slowly the same as it had that morning. The cabin was empty. Although Peter’s immediate feeling was a sense of relief that no one was here this was quickly replaced by frustration.

‘Where are you, you bastard?’

He
stood in the middle of the living room. He pulled out the mobile phone and checked the time; the display read 9:03pm. Celo hadn’t given him a time limit for this particular part of his game and now he regretted not asking him. He wondered if it was in keeping with the other clues he had had that day which was normally an hour. If that was true he was early for the first time today, and by his reckoning he would probably have to wait until 9:30pm.

Peter sat down on the couch and the plastic material of the cushions squeaked under his weight. The day had been so hectic and
frenetic that he found it strangely uncomfortable to find himself waiting for something to happen.

He looked around the cabin. It was extremely bare.
No television, no pictures on the wall, a few shelves hung from the walls but nothing on them. Whoever lived here certainly didn’t bother themselves with trinkets and basically lived off the bare essentials.

In the silence and lack of activity Peter could feel the dull throbbing pain in his arm grow. He lifted up the sleeve of the jacket and looked at the shirt tied messily around his arm. Two patches of red had bled through the entire material of the shirt to the surface. He stood up and walked to the far corner of the cabin, which constituted the kitchen, and checked in the cupboards hoping
to find a first aid kit. The cupboards held only the minimum of crockery, a couple of plates and mugs. There was no food. There seemed little hope of success, yet - in the last cupboard he checked - Peter found a green metal box containing first aid items. He took off his jacket and gently unravelled the shirt from around his arm. He ran the tap for a few seconds and then clenched his fist to tense his arm as he held it under the flowing water. He delicately stroked away the dry blood from around the two wounds as the water mixed with his blood and sloshed down the plughole. Now the majority of blood was gone the two puncture wounds looked even deeper and nastier than earlier. He turned off the tap and using the clean parts of the shirt, dabbed carefully around the wound to dry his arm. He took two large plasters out of the tin box and shuffled them uneasily over the wounds. He then took a bandage from the box and wrapped the whole roll around his arm. With a last grit of his teeth he tied the ends of the bandage tightly around his arm. He exhaled as the pain subsided. He inspected his handiwork.

‘Not bad
.’

He turned the tap back on and cupped handfuls and splashed his face, before taking a few much needed mouthfuls of cold water.

Peter put the jacket back on and was about to cross the room to the couch when he saw the black metal ring laid flat across the door to the basement of the cabin.

He remembered what Celo had said about the movie Chinatown. He had said that Gittes could have prevented everything that happened if he had only looked more into the gold chain he saw in the pond at the start of the movie. He had opened the door that morning but hadn’t gone down into the basement. An anxious knot twisted in Peter’s stomach. He picked up the Bowie knife from the kitchen worktop and moved to the door. Going down on one knee he gripped the handle and threw
it open.