The Red Road (14 page)

“ESP?” Baz asked.

“Electronic Shock Protection. It
means that if you jog it, it won’t skip.”

“Cool,” I said, handing it back.

“It’s sort of pointless given
that I’ve got a stereo here that plays CDs,” he admitted. “But
it’s what my folks bought me.”

“Sure, but you can listen to it in
the library, and it’s easier than stretching the headphone cord
from your stereo to your bed,” I said, nodding to the distance
between them.

“So, they’re definitely sending
your brother back to the Gulf?” Baz then wanted to know, realising
too late as I shot him a look to say it was a subject we should avoid
for now.

“My folks don’t want him to,”
Sam said. “But he wants to go. He says he misses all the other
soldiers when he’s not with them. He says he does get a little
bored when he’s out there though, but he doesn’t really get on
with being back in the everyday world right now.”

“There’s a term for that, I
think,” I said, clicking my fingers to try and remember. “Stockholm
Syndrome?”

“That’s the hostage thing,”
Silverman said, without looking up from his calculator.

“Institute something,” Baz
ventured.

“Institutionalised,” I said.

“I’m not sure it’s that,”
Sam shook his head. “Anyway, my mom and dad don’t want him going
back because they say it’s far too dangerous out there. He’s been
shot at a few times and was quite near an explosion that went off
late last year.”

“Did you tell your parents about
what happened here? I mean, what
really
happened?” I asked.

“They already knew, and they
weren’t too keen on me coming back here this term, to be honest.”

The statement got the dormitory’s
attention, Simmons and the two Smiths paying Sam some attention, even
Silverman looking up from his calculator.

“Really?” I asked.

Sam nodded. “They said they didn’t
want me to be over here if that sort of thing was going to be going
on.”

“Yeah, but it was probably done by
someone who likes little boys. Not something that’s going to bother
us,” Simmons said, though he glanced to the two Smiths as he spoke.

I found it odd how some talked about
the murder as if it wasn’t a big deal, especially those in the
Clique. That was the problem with those sorts of people – so long
as it didn’t directly affect them or anyone close to them, they
didn’t care; it was more of an inconvenience than anything else.

“Do they know who did it yet?”
Charlie Smith then asked, as Simmons turfed him and Darren Smith off
his bed, so he could finish making it.

“I don’t think so,” Darren
Smith said. “I don’t think they’ve even got a suspect.”

“Can’t they just use DNA
testing?” Baz wanted to know. “They could get it from his clothes
and find out who did it that way, easily.”

“It’s not something you can just
do overnight, you pleb,” Simmons once again took a jab at Baz’s
cockney background. “It’s not like on TV where they put it in
that spinning thing ...”

“Centrifuge,” Silverman
supplied.

“... whatever, and get the
results,” Simmons finished.

“And even if they could, they
would need everyone’s DNA on record, and that would take ages to go
through,” Darren Smith said.

“Yeah. And besides, he wasn’t
wearing
any clothes. The pervert had stripped him naked,
probably to fiddle with him before he killed him.”

“Maybe even after,” Charlie
Smith said.

“
After
?”

“Some people are into that sort of
thing.”

“What the fuck is wrong with some
people?” Simmons asked angrily.

“So, your mum and dad wanted you
to stay in America?” I looked back to Sam.

“I think they were just saying
that,” Sam said. “Cody is going back out to Iraq soon, to help
with the no-fly zone stuff that’s happening over there. It’s
still really dangerous, though.”

I understood what Sam meant without
him having to explain further. Sam’s parents already had one son
who was of great concern to them, putting his life on the line in a
foreign country and fighting a war. They didn’t want their other
son to be in danger of losing his life, too, should another murder
take place. Should the murderer strike again, would they pick a
larger target this time? I briefly recalled the sight of Scott
Parker, lying face up in the bushes. He had been a small boy, quite
thin, even for his age. Had that been why he had been picked, because
he had been easy to grab and carry? Sam was hardly thin or small, but
still ...

The dormitory door then opened and
in walked Brian Donald and Terry Lindsey, of Tudor House, another two
members of the Clique. They looked briefly around the dorm, glancing
over to Sam, Baz and I, before focusing on Simmons.

“Alright? What you doing?”
Donald asked.

“Not a lot,” Simmons said.

“Want to come to our dorm,
instead? Or we can chat in the Tudor common room.” I could hear the
forced disgust in his voice that Simmons might be sharing a dorm with
people such as Baz, Sam and I, those Donald considered beneath him.

“Sure,” Simmons said, picking up
his wallet and keys and starting out immediately.

“Wait for us,” Darren Smith
said, he and Charlie Smith following quickly after them.

“You two dweebs aren’t allowed;
you have to stay here with Crotty’s gang,” Lindsey joked, to
laughter from the group as they departed, the dormitory door slamming
behind them.

“Nice people at this school,”
Baz commented. “Did you get anything good for Christmas?” he
asked me.

“Oh, yes,” I said, lifting a CD
case off my shelf and handing it to him.

“
Red Blood
?” Baz looked
confused.

“
Red Hot Chili Peppers
,”
I said. “
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
is the name of the album.”

Sam looked over Baz’s shoulder,
the pair screwing their faces up as they looked over the cover and
track listing. “Never heard of them,” Baz said. “Is it any
good?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, grinning.
“You’re going to love this.”

Baz and Sam both did, and so I made
them copies on tape, something to listen to as the term commenced and
we continued to revise for our mock GCSEs.

Chapter Eleven

B
eing
a Catholic school, we were expected to attend Mass every Sunday, at
ten. Most went along with this without fuss, although others
attempted to get out of it by hiding in various parts of the school –
their dormitories, their rooms, in little known places around the
campus, and sometimes even the classrooms themselves.

Though Mass
lasted only an hour, we were required to arrive at the church at
least fifteen to twenty minutes before, and be on our best behaviour
while there. The teachers and monks would watch us like hawks,
knowing that here, in full view of the churchgoing public, we were
representative of the attitudes of the pupils at St Christopher’s.
The church, St Christopher’s Catholic Church, was also
our
church, and so we were expected to show the utmost respect for it and
everyone who graced its doors.

The abbey itself was enormous. Being
one of the few places of worship for Catholics for many miles around
(others were apparently just small chapels, considered satellite
buildings to the main abbey), it attracted a great number of
parishioners. Because of this, the church would often recruit a
handful of school pupils to help perform various duties – handing
out newsletters, helping the old to their seats, making sure people
had hymnbooks and sheets, preparing the tea afterwards, performing
altar service, and handing out communion. The latter two were fairly
uncommon, usually being handled by parishioners themselves or laymen.

I was never bothered about having to
attend church, quite indifferent to it, but I would prefer to avoid
it where possible. Even so, hiding out in the school during the
service carried a number of risks. Staff (and sometime even monks!)
would regularly patrol the grounds to ensure that stragglers made it
in on time, and to also catch those who had decided not to attend.
The punishment for being caught could involve anything from a Sunday
detention to being put on the
Murga List
. Neither of those
were at all appealing. Therefore, the best thing to do was often to
volunteer for the duty of handing out the hymnbooks and newsletters
to parishioners as they arrived. Owing to its size, the church
featured a number of different entrance hallways, meaning it was easy
to perform the job of handing out the various books and sheets of
paper, before then fading away either to the very back of the church
(and then making a sneaky exit in the latter half of Mass) or not
going in at all.

On this particular Sunday, Sam, Rob,
and I had decided to slip away from church during communion. Not as
early as we would have liked, but we had seen too many teachers and
monks patrolling the grounds today for us to risk disappearing any
sooner.

“Are you going to go to church
when you’re at university?” Rob asked in a whispered voice. I
could tell he was being extremely sarcastic.

“No, I think I’ve had enough
church to serve me for one lifetime,” I replied, just as quietly.

I
watched the parishioners a few rows in front of me, to see if their
ears were twitching as they picked up on our conversation. I had
found the best time to talk was either during hymns, readings, the
Gospel, or any other time someone was speaking over the microphone,
the sound effectively preventing my voice from carrying too far. It
could also help to hold a hymn sheet in front of your face to prevent
anyone from seeing your lips moving during the non-singing periods,
too.

“I get the whole religion thing,
anyway,” I carried on. “It’s just about love and respect and
not doing harm to others. That’s all that God wants us to do. It’s
not hard. I’ve learned the lessons.”

Rob turned to me with a look of
disdain. “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “I only come here because
we’re made to. It’s all nonsense really.”

Nonsense? I made to say something.

“Oh, stand,” Sam interrupted.

We did so, looking to the Order of
Mass we had been handing out and putting in an effort to make it look
as though we were singing the next hymn.

“What do you mean nonsense, Rob?”
I asked. “You think this is all a waste of time?”

Rob didn’t answer me. Either he
didn’t hear me or he was choosing not to respond to the question
right now.

I cast an eye over the others in the
church. We were typically seated in our houses when we were here,
dozens of black suits sporting a variety of coloured, patterned ties
to distinguish ourselves. Butcher’s was red, Tudor green, Enfield
purple, Cookson grey, and Martin a sky blue. The heads of houses’
ties added gold trims to various parts of the patterns, while the
head boy’s tie was pure black and gold, regardless of the house to
which they belonged. The order of seating was also determined by
year. Older boys (that is to say the sixth formers) would sit towards
the back, the younger years seated progressively closer to the front.
Never right at the front, however, as those seats were reserved for
the regular parishioners. A smattering of different clothes would
break up the black blazers, the parents of some of the boys who would
be heading home for the Sunday, or perhaps just being taken for a day
out if their parents lived too far away to make the journey
worthwhile.

I saw a few heads turning in our
direction, other boys who would either be wondering why we were
sitting so far back, so close to the doors, or would have worked out
that we were planning to end our Sunday attendance prematurely.

At
the same moment, I sensed the doors behind where I was standing open
soundlessly, and I glanced around to see a man, dressed in his Sunday
best, enter, who then, after a momentary scan of the seating, came to
stand alongside us. Sam, Rob and I exchanged some bemused glances as
he did so. There was plenty of other seating available in the church,
so there was no need to join our solitary row. We said nothing, but
just nodded to him as he made eye contact. I automatically passed him
one of the Order of Mass sheets. The hymn soon ended, and we sat back
down.

“Hiding at the back, eh, boys?”
the man said after a time, speaking only so loudly that the three of
us could hear him.

We started. Who was this man? Was
this one of the sixth form tutors that we didn’t know about, one
that only came to the school a couple of times a week to teach?
Perhaps one of the laymen that worked and lived on the grounds? Or
maybe even one of the regular parishioners, who was wise to our game
of dodging out of going to church and had moved back here to ensure
we remained for the duration.

“Just making sure that any
latecomers can get seats and know what the hymns are,” Sam
supplied. His voice lacked conviction.

The man stifled a chuckle, smiling
without showing any teeth. “Don’t worry, lads, I used to do the
same myself. I’m an old boy.”

“Oh?” I asked, still keeping my
voice low. “You used to come here?”

Everyone else was focused on
the communion preparations that were going on by the altar. One of
the sixth formers was performing altar service duties for the first
time, and a number of the boys were keen to see if he dropped
anything or made a mess of the proceedings as his nerves got to him.

“In the seventies,” our
companion said. “I was in Churchill House. What houses are you in?”
he wanted to know, glancing to our ties.

“Butcher and Martin,” I said.

“Ah, Martin was still being built
when I was here. My name’s Adrian Willis, by the way. Nice to meet
you,” the man introduced himself.

I had never heard of him. I wondered
whether he had once been head of school or head of house. They tended
to make more regular return visits to the school than most others,
mainly to meet with the teachers they had once known and sometimes to
give talks on post-school life, careers, and that sort of thing.