The Deviants (6 page)

We looked everywhere for Mort – all the Rittmans' businesses, the pubs, up and down the High Street, the bins in the alley at the back of the seafront hotels, Tesco car park,
and finally the pier. Corey went inside the kiosk to ask the manager if he'd seen him – sometimes cats went there for fish scraps. It was starting to drizzle, and Max rubbed his hands up and down my arms. The breeze from the sea was a cold one, and my cheeks were getting sore with wind chill. Max must have been freezing too. He only had his Street Reaper sleeveless hoody on,

‘He's a bloody nightmare, isn't he?' he said, teeth beginning to chatter.

‘Dressed in a daydream,' I added, moving his hair from his eyes and cuddling him in close. He looked good today. He was wearing the basketball vest I'd bought him for his birthday, skinny jeans and his new Vans. ‘You saw Zane hanging around, didn't you? Opposite Corey's house?'

‘Yeah, I did.'

‘I don't want to leave him on his own today, Max. Just in case.'

Just then, Corey came out of the shop with a massive bag of sweets, crisps and cans.

‘For you guys,' he said. ‘For helping me look for Mort.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘But we should get back. Maybe Mort's gone back to yours?'

Corey shook his head. ‘He won't. He's too scared.' His face radiated terror. ‘Oh my God – what if Rosie's got him?'

‘Why would she have him? She lives in the back of beyond. It's a bit unlikely,' I said, trying to head him off.

‘Ooh, I dunno,' said Max, suddenly enthusiastic. ‘If a cat's gone missing in suspicious circumstances, Roadkill Rosie's got to be involved, hasn't she? Old Witchy Woo herself.'

The Brynstan-on-Sea grapevine had declared years ago that Rosie Hayes was a witch. Any animal that went missing, Rosie was the prime suspect. Sometimes we'd seen
her as kids, hanging out at the farm with Fallon, but more often than not she'd be out in the tractor, or just going somewhere in the ‘Torture Truck'. People said worse about them now: Fallon had been expelled for sleeping with a teaching assistant, and people said now she was some kind of prostitute. Rosie was a gypsy, possibly even a serial killer. They stole cattle, had bats in their cellar, fed their pigs on human remains. There was talk of skulls in the freezer, body parts left out for the bin men, even an amputated you-know-what in the kettle on her stove. You know how people talk – rumours appear like cracks in egg shells and before long giant eagles have taken to the air.

Neil had done a lot to help spread those rumours.

‘I reckon Mort'll be in a pie by now,' said Max. ‘Ooh, I've got a hell of a peck on for Mort 'n' chips. Remember Rosie's suspicious stews? You never saw the same cat twice round their house. And the stories Jess used to tell us about Witch's Pond?'

‘Stop winding him up,' I said. ‘All that stuff about the cannibalism and the Witch's Pool is crap. We know Rosie – at least, we used to.'

But Corey wasn't laughing. ‘She might have picked him up, just by accident. She does that – we know she does. The farm was always crawling with stray cats when we used to go there. Could we go out and look? Just to see?'

‘No way!' said Max, the smile wiped off his face. ‘My dad would never forgive me.'

Corey looked confused so I filled him in. ‘It was because of Rose that they recorded an open verdict at Jessica's inquest. Rose insisted she saw her walk in front of the bus. On purpose,' I added, quietly.

‘Stupid cow,' Max grumbled. ‘Mum'll go loopy if she knows we've even thought of going out there.'

‘It's unlikely Rosie picked up Mort anyway,' I told Corey. ‘I vote we go back to yours.'

‘No! Please, we have to try. Missing animals
always
end up there.'

‘Corey, come on, be logical. Rosie never comes into town any more.'

‘But we've tried everywhere else. Please?' This time, he was brimming tears, his eyes all huge behind his glasses. Going to Whitehouse Farm meant nudging a hornets' nest, as I knew perfectly well, but I couldn't talk him out of it. He seemed desperate.

‘Fine, we'll go out to Rosie's,' I sighed. Max made an outraged noise at once. ‘We won't stay long. Your parents won't ever know we were there. You can drive us, can't you?'

‘Uh, no,' he scoffed. ‘My car's only two months old. Some of the roads out that way are just dirt tracks.'

‘There's a bus to Cloud that stops twice a day at the bottom of our road,' Corey said. ‘I've seen it on the timetable. There's one at lunch and one back at teatime. I'll pay.'

‘Damn right you will,' said Max.

Just then, a car rolled along the seafront and came to a stop next to us. The driver's window rolled down. It was Neil, in his glimmering midnight-blue Jaguar.

‘Alright, son?' He beamed, showing teeth whiter than the seagull slime on his windscreen. He always looked uglier, each time I saw him, despite the amount of surgery he'd had to fix his nose. Max beamed back at him, loping over to the car and leaning against the door frame.

‘Alright, Dad? What time's the guy coming to pick it up?'

A Renault Clio beeped behind. Lazily, Neil threw a rude hand gesture as it overtook, gunning its engine.

‘About six he said, give or take. Got a brand new Porsche
coming in a couple of weeks.' He was telling me, more than anyone else.

‘What are you going to do till then?' I asked, though I already knew the answer. Max had told me.

‘Garage is providing a hire car. Mercedes Sport. Just to tide me over. You coming round to see the Porsche when it arrives? Jo's going to do a lunch. Get all the family over.'

‘Yeah,' I said, unenthusiastically. ‘That'll be nice.'

‘Good. What you up to now, then?'

Max spun Neil a yarn about how we were all going into town to look at some new phone as Corey hung back with me and we wandered over to the sea wall to watch the tide vomiting up clumps of seaweed and lager cans, leaving a trail of foamy spit on the steps.

‘He hasn't changed then,' said Corey.

‘Nope.' I smiled. ‘Still a knob head.'

‘Do they still live in that massive bungalow overlooking the bay? The one that backs onto the dunes with the big black gates…'

‘… and panoramic views of Brynstan Bay and outdoor pool and three en suites and gold taps. JoNeille.'

Corey laughed. ‘Jo and Neil. How corny? I always envied Max though, having a garden that backed onto the beach. Well, the dunes, anyway. Ours backs onto a dog toilet.'

‘Don't be fooled, Corey. Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.'

‘Huh?'

‘Nothing. It's just this stupid quote Dad's got framed in his study.'

‘Max'll inherit all that when they croak, won't he?'

‘He's not interested in the money,' I said. ‘Not really. Max would be happier working for a living, I know he would. He just hasn't got any incentive to at the moment. He's
certainly not arsed about all the businesses, the arcades and the garden centre and that.'

‘He owns the Pier now, doesn't he?'

A salty breeze stung my eyes. ‘Yep. Yet another Rittman Inc property. It's like a cancer in this town.'

‘Doesn't Greenland sponsor your running? He can't be that much of a knob head.'

‘Oh he is, believe me. And it's only while I'm winning. He's still a twat.'

‘Huge twat,' Corey added.

‘Colossal.'

‘Mammoth.'

‘Gargantuan.'

‘Humungulous!'

We were laughing by the time Neil sped off down the seafront and Max returned to us.

‘What are you two giggling about?'

‘Nothing,' I said. ‘Come on, we've got a cat to find.'

‘Yeah,' he said, flinging an arm around me. ‘And a serial killer to ask about it.'

*

I don't know why I didn't try harder to talk Corey out of going to Whitehouse Farm. Maybe a part of me wanted to go back. A pretty sadistic part. Maybe I wanted to be reminded of a place I used to go as a child, before everything went wrong. I don't know, I really don't.

But anyway, we took the lunchtime bus to Cloud, the tiny village on the outskirts of Brynstan, where ‘Roadkill Rosie' lived. It had been a while since any of us had been out there – Fallon had been the only reason. We'd befriended her in primary school, on the basis that she would do anything for a dare; ‘Don't Dare Fallon' became one of our
catchphrases. Take your knickers off and throw them at that windscreen. Jump off Devil's Rocks. Steal a Chocolate Orange. Flick a chip at that policeman. Go past the preaching Christians on the corner of the High Street singing that song about blow jobs. She'd do it all. She had no fear. She was also the kindest person I'd ever met.

The bus ride was endless, just like tomorrow seems like next year when you're a kid. I drifted into a daydream of the past. We were in the lounge at JoNeille – me, Max, Fallon, Corey and Zane – and we'd made a den out of the dining chairs, with some king size bed sheets draped over the top. All around the inside were sofa cushions, and in the middle we'd got ourselves a midnight feast of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, crisps, Haribos and cans of cherry Tango. Suddenly, a head parted the flimsy wall, giving a terrible cry.

‘Wooooaoaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhh!'

‘Argh! Jessica, don't scare us like that!'

‘Ha! What are you lot doing in here?'

‘Dad said we could make a den and sleep in here tonight.'

‘Have they gone out?'

‘Yeah. Some dinner dance thing. Where have you been?'

‘Just out, Beaky Boy.'

‘Can you tell us a story, Jess?'

‘Oh, not another story, Ella.'

‘Yeah, please, Jess. Tell us a really scary one.'

‘You can't handle a scary one, Zane. We had to call your mum when I read you some
Silence of the Lambs
, remember?'

‘I won't cry this time, I promise. Please.'

‘OK. Give me an idea, then, and I'll tell you a scary story about it.'

‘Ummm…'

‘Cats!'

‘Cats? All right, then, Corey, cats it is. Hmm. Well, OK. There's this Edgar Allan Poe story called ‘The Black Cat'. Have I told you that one before?'

‘No. Tell us now!'

‘OK, well, a long time ago, there once was this man who lived in this house with his wife and their cat—'

‘What was the cat called?'

‘I don't know. Maybe Claude or something. Yeah, Claude. Anyway, Claude was black, black as night, and the couple who owned him loved him very much. Then, as time went on, the man started to drink way more than he should—'

‘Was he sad about something?'

‘Yeah, he'd probably lost his job or something or he hated being married, something like that. Anyway, he started taking out all his problems on the cat. When he was drunk he got moody, and the cat was always around, rubbing against his legs and meowing for food. And one day, this cat got on the man's nerves so much that he took it out into his back garden…'

*

The bus dropped us off on the corner of Long Lane, and we walked the rest of the way until we came to the grubby sign for Whitehouse Farm, me with a gnawing throb of dread in my chest. Weirdly, it hadn't changed at all in the years since we'd last been there. The mud-spattered jeep was still parked in a garage next door; the field opposite was still barricaded with three rusty shopping trolleys, linked end to end with rope. The sweet smells of hay and dung still hung in the air, and, despite my fear, I felt strangely happy to be back.

‘Go on then,' said Max, nudging Corey forward. ‘Go and see if Mort's there. Then we can go.'

Corey took one look back at the everlasting lane we had just walked down from the bus. I saw him take a deep breath. Then he led us inside, one by one.

‘Oh my GOD!'

FlapflapflapflapflutterflutterflutterScreeeeeech!

‘Get it off! Get it off me!'

‘AARGH!'

‘What the HELL is THAT?'

‘Jesus!'

Hell had been unleashed, and we were in the middle of it. Things squawked and screeched at me from branches, flapping about beneath the corrugated plastic roof. There were living things everywhere; creatures, birds,
things
crawling over my feet. Rabbits, ferrets, cats and an earless Jack Russell terrier brutally shagging a wig. Everywhere you looked were scruffy, eyeless or legless animals: a furry, flappy, feathery nightmare.

‘Shut the door, quick!' a voice shouted, and Corey dived behind us to bang it shut.

All the way to Cloud, I'd held on to one hope – that Fallon Hayes might not be home. That we could just ask Rosie if she'd seen Mort, commiserate with Corey when she hadn't, then walk back to the pub on the main road and call a cab back into town. But the curt instruction had come from a girl – a long-legged, green-eyed girl with slightly buck teeth, a platinum blonde confusion of hair, and thick make-up. She had once been my best friend.

I took a deep breath. ‘Hi, Fallon.'

‘Was it strange, being back there again?'

7

Back at Whitehouse Farm

T
hat's the weird thing. It was like the last four years hadn't happened.

‘Oh, it's
you
guys!' she said, stroking a trembling white rabbit. ‘Hi, Ella!'

‘Yeah, hi.' I nudged away a teacup Chihuahua in a sailor suit that was trying to piss on my trainers. ‘How are you, Fallon?'

She was smiling. A genuine smile, full of joy. She still had the same riot of freckles, like a leaf blower had blasted them to the four corners of her face. I hadn't expected her to be quite so happy to see us.