Nothing but Meat: A dark, heart-stopping British crime thriller Read online

  She shrugged like a petulant child.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ he said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I think you’ve got so used to covering up for him you’re on the verge of being beyond help.’

  ‘Things have changed.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘When do you think? Since you came back, since yesterday afternoon you fucking idiot. Do you think I like looking like this? Do you think I want you to see me like this?’

  ‘Of course not but don’t you understand that it breaks my heart to see you covered in cuts and bruises. I want to help you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘He always was a prick.’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘You’re defending him again.’

  ‘I’m struggling to admit the truth, all right? Especially to you. There’s so much going on right now, I just need time and space to sort things out in my head. I need to solve this fucking case. It matters to me.’ She tipped her head back and massaged her closed eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘It’s almost as if I can’t move forward until I’ve seen this through.’

  Their eyes locked and they were one again. ‘It’s always been you Nathan,’ she said, ‘and I hope you feel the same way I do, but please don’t pressure me, I just need a little time. I know what I’m doing.’ She paused and shrugged. ‘No, actually that’s not true, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to get through it. This situation didn’t happen just because you’re here, it’s been on the cards for a long time now; you were just the catalyst that set events in motion. I just need you to trust me -’

  ‘Of course I trust you.’

  ‘- and to wait for me. If you want to?’

  He shrugged casually. ‘It’s what I do. It’s all I’ve ever done.’

  She felt mildly embarrassed and couldn’t help but look away. She was about to tell him that what he just said was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her but he continued, ‘And while I’m waiting for you, it would really mean a lot to me if you came to the funeral with me.’

  Walk Through Fire:

  Part 3

  Guilty Party - 1991

  Simone was drunk and people were everywhere. She was exchanging deep slobbery kisses with a lad called Brian and as he squeezed her nipples through her bra and tried his luck with her inner thigh she wondered vaguely if the neighbours would call the police. She didn’t really care if the police turned up; it wasn’t her house that was on the verge of destruction, it belonged to some dumb kid whose parents believed would be responsible enough to look after it while they were away for the weekend.

  Since Nathan had moved away Simone had gone through a period of mourning and come out the other side. Now she was going through a period of debauched teenage experimentation as she tried to clear the final memories of Nathan from her mind. He was gone; he left without saying goodbye and it was pretty obvious he wasn’t coming back. She was getting over him and she needed a fresh perspective and a new outlook on life.

  She found herself strangely jealous of Laura who remained continually unattached and drifted from one boy to the next with careless abandon. But at the same time Simone knew Laura was searching for something everyone craved whether consciously or not. No matter how frivolous Laura’s wanton ways gave her the appearance of contentment, Simone knew she was simply searching for happiness, just like everyone else.

  Simone moved Brian’s hand from her chest and pushed him away. He looked annoyed but Simone ignored it. She stood up, took a swig from her can of warm Red Stripe, lit a cigarette, and went to find Laura.

  The house was thick with smoke and awash with spilled beer. Glassy-eyed teens yelled at each other through the music and Simone had to climb over people on her way upstairs. Laura was in one of the bedrooms with Brian’s mate Joe. Simone had last seen her with a joint in one hand and Joe in the other as she snapped the door shut and left Simone to the mercy of Brian’s groping hands. But since then the party had grown stale and Simone wanted to leave, she considered knocking on the door and telling Laura she wanted to go but what was the point? She went back downstairs and told Brian she was leaving and asked him to tell Laura she had gone home when Laura had finished with Joe.

  Simone pushed her way through the hallway and spilled out of the front door and into the street with the other drunks. She left the noise and the smoke and the shit music and called a taxi from the phone box down the road.

  In the time since Laura’s disappearance Simone had spent hour after hour considering the night in which she left Laura alone and with no means to get home.

  She read every newspaper article and spoke to everyone who saw her that night and tried to piece together Laura’s final movements.

  All Simone imagined had no bearing on what may or may not have occurred; it only served as a way for her to deal with the guilt she felt and an attempt to understand what her friend had gone through in those final hours. She needed to put that terrible evening into some kind of order and try to understand what might have happened.

  Simone heard Joe boasting to others in the school corridors about his sexual antics that night but there was something in his tone of voice and something hidden behind his eyes that said he was a liar.

  Simone lay in bed at night; eyes closed in the darkness, somewhere between being awake and being asleep and used all she knew about Laura and all she had learned about that night to imagine what had happened to the friend she left to walk home on her own.

  Laura didn’t know or couldn’t remember the name of the lad she was with but they had the master bedroom to themselves. She used her hands and mouth on him and tried to coax him into her but it was like pushing dough into a purse. He was drunk - but apparently not too drunk and after some perseverance she managed to get him where she wanted him – inside the rubber and inside her. He tried his best but he was basically an embarrassment; like an eager puppy humping Grandma’s leg on Boxing Day and she found it more irritating than satisfying. He was clumsy and rough and lost it completely when someone burst into the room and flicked the lights on and off. The interruption broke his concentration and turned him back to putty and he slipped out of her for the last time.

  She smoked a cigarette while he snored and then climbed out of bed and got dressed. She left him passed out naked on the bed and deliberately left the lights on and the door open. She told everyone she saw on her way back down stairs to take a look in the parent’s bedroom, knowing she could savour his embarrassment at school on Monday.

  She asked around for Simone but no one knew where she was. Laura did a couple of circuits of the house and saw Brian was getting off with someone else. She went into the garden and tried to make out faces in the darkness but she didn’t recognise anyone of consequence.

  She couldn’t believe Simone had left the party without telling her. She had been a right misery since Nathan had moved away, but fucking hell it was about time she got over it. She grabbed a can of lager from the kitchen, found somewhere to sit down and skinned up. A couple of girls started talking to her and fidgeted impatiently for their share of her joint after she lit it. Get your own pot you tight cunts she thought to herself and deliberately smoked it slowly and selfishly while they watched like drooling dogs. When there was less than an inch left she passed it to the less needy of the two, took a final swig of lager and went outside. She didn’t have money for a taxi and decided to walk home, maybe even hitch a lift if she could.

  Something Laura said that night played on Simone’s mind. They had been drinking before they got to the party and as they made their way to the house Laura had made a passing comment about not having enough money to get home. It was no problem, Simone had told her; she had money for a taxi. Simone had forgotten the conversation seconds after they had it – she was drunk and there was a party to go to. She didn’t remember the conversation until the next day when Laura’s parents called to see if she had spent the night at Simone�
��s.

  ‘We were hoping she was with you, she hasn’t come home you see, and we haven’t heard from her.’

  It still took time for the memory of the conversation to blossom; Simone’s first instinct was that Laura was probably still at the house with some boy snoring next to her. But then it came in a wave of horror and Simone sat on her bed with eyes wide and her hand over her mouth as the memory of the conversation came flooding back with the terrible realisation that she had left her friend stranded alone with no way of getting home.

  Simone was stricken with worry and made her way back to the house to see if Laura was still there. Simone walked past empty cans and bottles that littered the front garden and the family car that was now parked in the driveway. The owners were home. Simone could hear the growl of a vacuum cleaner as she rang the doorbell. Fury answered in the guise of the father of the lad foolish enough to open the door of the family home to hundreds of drunken delinquents, hell bent on destruction and debauchery.

  ‘Were you here last night?’ he said angrily.

  ‘Is a girl here? I’m looking for my friend.’

  ‘I should bloody sue! You’ve destroyed my home you and you criminal friends. You should see the damage you’ve done.’

  ‘Is she here or not?’

  ‘No. No one is here but my son and he’s fucking lucky to be alive. He’s clearing up the mess you made – I should make you clear up the garden. Pick up all the beer cans and the condoms – it’s disgusting. You lot make me sick. I’ll tell you now, I’m going to your school tomorrow morning and I want everyone who was here last night to be accountable for the damage.’ Simone was too hung-over and too worried about Laura to care about his threats; she said thanks and walked off while he shook his fist at her. ‘What’s your name?’ he shouted. ‘I’m going to make sure your parents hear about what you’ve done to my house. You disgusting child you should be ashamed’

  After a few days, many search parties were formed and tasked with scouring the surrounding fields and woodland, they were made up of both police and civilian volunteers, Simone included, but even after covering every square metre of the surrounding area they failed to find any trace of her save for her pink, size five Chuck Taylor Hi-Top trainers that were discovered in a ditch by a secluded layby.

  Laura had been missing for over a month and Simone was sick with worry, her weight plummeted and she was barley sleeping and when she did manage to drift off she found herself waking, drenched in sweat, thrown from a nightmare. Laura was dead, she just knew it. Thoughts of what could have happened to her wormed their way into her mind and she couldn’t stop imagining a scenario where she found Laura’s body in the river. Simone couldn’t shake the sound of the shrill whistle as she signalled her find to the other members of the search parties and waited while they gathered around the corpse and made arrangements to pull her from the cold water. Their search was over, they had found her. Laura was twisted and tangled, snagged on an overhanging branch, her clothes torn and her underwear missing, exposed for all to see. In Simone’s mind Laura had been repeatedly raped and tortured and finally suffocated before being disposed of.

  There were suggestions that Laura had just run away and people still had hope of finding her alive but Simone was convinced Laura would never have runaway; she had no reason to and never even hinted at it.

  Simone couldn’t put the images of Laura’s naked body out of her mind and struggled to imagine that there would ever be a happy ending. Simone was sure Laura had been abducted. ‘They found her shoes for fucks sake!’ she screamed in response to anyone who mentioned the runaway theory.

  Laura hadn’t been seen since leaving the party and everyone who attended was thoroughly interrogated. The police managed to trace her movements but ultimately struggled to get any significant information. She left the party alone – no one paid too much attention. A witness saw a young girl climb into a car late at night. She matched Laura’s description but the driver was unseen and the car generic - dark in colour, possibly an estate. They most likely went to the layby as that was where her shoes were found but beyond that the trail went as cold as the river water in Simone’s nightmares. The police followed the leads but got nowhere and the investigation slowly wound down over a period of months.

  Simone struggled to clear her mind of the images she conjured when she thought of what could have happened to Laura and as time passed it was the not knowing that really tested her sanity. If Laura had been found in the river, just as she imagined, as terrible as it would have been Simone and everyone else would have had closure and the police may have found a piece of evidence needed to finally bring whoever did it to justice but Laura Stewart was never found and the picture of what happened to her remained incomplete.

  Simone was crushed by guilt and could barely look Martin in the eye. Only two of them remained; Nathan had moved away earlier that year and now Laura was missing and presumed dead.

  They went out together a few times as friends; to the cinema and to restaurants and when he made his move she reciprocated. How could she refuse him? She would let him take whatever he wanted if it helped ease the burden of guilt she felt since she left his sister to walk home alone after the party.

  If she had only waited for Laura...things would be so different.

  In the early days Martin was a teddy bear; he got angry and threw tantrums but he never took it out on her. He seemed to respect her as a woman and respect her decision to become a police officer.

  Martin had no defined career path, but he had the gift-of-the-gab and a cruel detachment that suited his choice to move into sales. He moved from job to job, going wherever Simone’s education took them. At the time she thought he was allowing her to be who she wanted to be, she naively thought he was sacrificing his career for hers but she would come to understand that he had made no such sacrifice – he had no plans for the future, he only wanted to keep her with him, giving an inch here and an inch there, just enough rope to make her believe she was in control, while all the time making sure she never strayed too far and most importantly of all, never feeling capable of living life without him.

  Over the years she grew to love him, or at least she thought she did, but in time she realised she had just grown used to him. Was there even a difference? She tried to convince herself that the love she felt for him was as real as love could get and any other love – true love, was just fantasy. All that really existed was the world she had made for herself, a world where she flinched at the tantrums and took the beatings. The idea of leaving him became as fantastical as the idea of true love. If she left him he would be crushed and she couldn’t bear the weight of more guilt on her shoulders. It was guilt that always had, and always would, chain her to him like slave to master.

  Simone married Martin on a rainy day in May and she kept her maiden name. It wasn’t an issue to her but the decision not to take Martin’s surname both angered and embarrassed him in equal measure and when he demanded an explanation she told him it was because she wanted to keep her identity. The explanation was a weak one and she knew it didn’t satisfy but it was just enough to silence his parents, especially his father. When she made the choice she never realised she would have to explain herself and when she tried she realised that she couldn’t even understand it herself let alone explain it to anyone else.

  It was one of the many things that kept her awake at night, her mind would run wild with the swirling frustrations of regret and mistake that had defined her life and she silently asked herself whether she really loved Martin or not. It was a question that shadowed all other thoughts but the answer was even darker. It tried to force its way from the recess of her mind and when it did she pushed it back, not even daring to think it, but she knew in her heart that it was the only explanation. She didn’t love Martin and she never had.

  During the endless nights in the hushed darkness of their bedroom honesty and truth won out and she managed to snatch one single thought from the cage of crazy paranoia that
Martin could somehow hear her thoughts or read her mind across the swell of pillows that separated them – she would ask herself; if, had she married Nathan instead, would she have taken his surname?

  Would she have become Simone West?

  It was a simple question and the answer was clear but the answer was criminal: Yes, in a heartbeat.

  She wanted to whisper her name as it could have been. Mouth the words out loud just to hear how it sounded.

  Simone West.

  But she didn’t dare.

  17

  Simone couldn’t sleep. She wrestled with the bedcovers that tangled uncomfortably with her sweaty body and stuck her feet out of the single bed in an attempt to cool down in the heat of the room.

  It felt foreign and awkward to be a guest in someone else’s home especially if the home wasn’t really big enough for guests. Lucy’s spare room was more of a study than it was bedroom and Simone knew she was in the way. Lucy and her boyfriend were forgiving and accommodating and Simone couldn’t be more grateful for their help but she felt that she needed to stay small and act as if she wasn’t really there at all.

  She turned over and felt a pulse of pressure in her bladder; she wasn’t desperate for the toilet but it was enough to add to her discomfort and restlessness. Ordinarily she would have gone to the bathroom and relived herself without even thinking about it but as she wasn’t at home she was caught in the debate of whether to hold on until morning or risk disturbing the home owners and reminding them of her presence.

  She wondered if her bed was being slept in – was Martin there, nursing his bruises? Nursing his pride? Or had he chosen to stay elsewhere so as to avoid more confrontation as Simone had?

  She couldn’t have cared less if she never saw him again but she no choice in the matter, it was unavoidable; they had business to attend to, issues to resolve. Divorce papers to sign.