Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

The Man Who Ate People by Peter Lovesey

1991’s EQMM Readers Award winner, Peter Lovesey, is the author of eighteen novels, including the historical series featuring Sergeant Cribb, a Victorian sleuth whose further adventures were chronicled in a television series shown in the U.S. on PBS’s Mystery. The author is also adept at capturing the social milieu of our own day, as we can see in this story of a group of school children with a summer vacation before them and a restless need for adventure...

No one knew the girl. She turned up at the rec one Friday morning in the summer holiday when the hard lads from Class 5 were doing nothing except keeping the younger kids from using the swings. Gary and Clive were taking turns at smoking a cigarette. Podge Mahoney was trying to mend a faulty wheel on his skateboard. Daley Hughes and his brother Morgan were on the swings — not using them in the conventional way, which would have been soft, but twisting them so that the chains entwined. The rest of the bunch, including Mitch — by common consent the most mature — lounged on the grass talking about the bikes they wanted to possess.

None of the girls from Class 5 ventured anywhere near. This incautious miss strolled up to the unoccupied swing, backed against it to push off and started swinging, her eyes focussed far ahead, excluding the lads from her vision. Thin, pale-skinned, with a straw-coloured ponytail, she was in black jeans and a white T-shirt.

Several heads turned towards Mitch for a lead. Mitch possessed the coveted first floss of a moustache and he generally spoke for all of them if required. He leaned back on his elbows and said, “Someone wants a swing. Give ’em some help.”

Paul, the boy Mitch had addressed, said, “Come on,” to Clive. The pair got behind the girl on the swing, waited for it to come to them, tucked their fingers over the seat and heaved it forward. When it had soared high and swung back, they gave it another push, straining high to catch it at the peak. The rest of the lads chorused support with a rising “Wooooo!”

Against expectations, the girl didn’t scream. Indeed, as the swing soared to the high point of its arc, almost level with the crossbar, she brought her knees up to her chest to secure a footing. Then she braced and stood upright — an acrobatic feat that few, if any, of the watchers would have essayed.

The ironwork groaned. Paul and Clive stepped out of range, for the girl was imparting her own momentum to the swing, hoisting it still higher by getting leverage bending her knees and virtually kicking the seat upwards. She looked capable of going right over the top. She was fearless. The mocking chorus had already died in the throats of the watchers. The girl kept the display going for long enough to demonstrate that she was doing it from choice. When at length she signalled the end of the ride by straightening on the swing, making herself a dead weight, there was an awed silence. After the swing was still again, she remained standing on the seat, arms folded, only her left shoulder lodged against the chain to keep her balanced.

“What’s your name?” Podge Mahoney asked. He’d given up fiddling with his skateboard.

“Danny.”

“That’s a boy’s name.”

“Danielle.” She made it sound like Daniel.

“What school?”

“Grantley.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s a private boarding school.”

Roger, who was a good mimic, repeated the statement in the accent of the private boarding school.

The girl was undeterred. “What are your plans for today? What are you going to do?”

“Nothing much,” said Podge.

“That’s our business,” Mitch said, sensing that the girl was trying to gatecrash.

“Mind if I join in?” Danny asked.

“Course we mind,” said Mitch. “Piss off.”

“I can get cigarettes.”

“Fags?” said Clive. “You can get fags?”

“We wouldn’t take bribes,” said Mitch, and several faces fell.

“What are you, a gang, or something?”

“No,” said Mitch, who was known, and respected, for the honesty of his statements.

“I want to join.”

“Don’t be so dumb.”

Clive added, “Find some girls to play with.”

She shifted her position on the swing just a fraction and braced her legs, imparting a shudder to the structure. “Who’s going to make me?”

No one answered. Podge walked across to his skateboard and started taking an interest in the wheels again.

She was a scrap of a girl really, but her manner unsettled everyone. She said in her elegant voice, “Anyway, you look like a gang to me. If you were a gang, what would one have to do to join?”

All eyes turned in Mitch’s direction. No one else was capable of answering such a hypothetical question. Until now, nobody had thought of the group as a gang. They were just the kids from Class 5, obliged to hang about the rec until they thought of something better to do. At the end of the summer they would go to secondary schools and be dispersed among a number of classes that would be called “forms.” For these few remaining weeks they clung to the familiar.

Mitch pondered the possible entrance requirements of the hypothetical gang. He was sure it wouldn’t be enough to say that girls were excluded. This one was unlikely to accept the logic that she was different.

He had to think of something she wouldn’t contest. At length he said, “If we were a gang, which we aren’t, I’d make a rule that anyone who joined had to show their thing.”

The rest didn’t share his seriousness. There were cackles of amusement. Morgan said, “Girls haven’t got things.”

“Shut up, toerag.”

The laughter stopped, quelled by the force of Mitch’s putdown. Nobody wanted to catch his eye.

The girl Danny said, “If I do, am I in?”

Mitch was finding it difficult to cope with her erratic reasoning. Clinging doggedly to reality, he said, “It isn’t a question of being in or out. We don’t have a gang, okay?”

“Anyway,” added Clive to the girl, “you wouldn’t dare.”

Nobody anticipated that she would take them up on the dare at once, in broad daylight, in the rec, in full view of any grownups who happened to be passing. She unfastened the top button of her jeans and called across to Mitch, “You won’t see from over there.”

She proposed to display herself standing on the swing. For a moment everyone held back in awe. Then Podge Mahoney took a step closer. It was the signal for a general advance. Daley and Morgan disentangled themselves from the other swings. A half-circle formed in front of the girl. Mitch, on his dignity, had to decide how to react. The others had left no doubt of their commitment. If he missed this, he’d be like the kid sent early to bed the night they showed Jaws on TV. He was the last to his feet, but nobody noticed, or cared. The girl Danny had turned an intended humiliation into a show of power.

She gripped the front of her jeans and said, “Ready?”

A couple of heads nodded, but no one spoke.

In a slick movement she slid jeans and knickers down a short way. Most of 5A had been initiated into la difference at some time in their lives; none so publicly, nor with such nonchalance.

“All right,” she said as she drew the jeans up again, “someone else’s turn.” She pointed to Mitch. “Yours.”

The tension broke to howls of laughter, gleeful at Mitch’s discomfiture and relieved that Danny hadn’t pointed to anyone else.

“On the swing, Mitch!”

Mitch glared at Clive, who had made the remark. Of all the lads, Clive was the one he would have counted on to support him. How could loyalty be so brittle? “Shut up! Shut up, the lot of you!”

They didn’t shut up, so he had to continue to shout to be heard. “This ain’t a bloody game. It was to see if she could join some gang, but there ain’t a gang, is there?”

Someone said, “Chicken.”

Someone else said, “Get ’em off.”

It only wanted someone to shout, “Debag him!” and they would be on him like wolves.

Then Danny the girl, still aloft on the swing, spoke up. “Mitch is right. There isn’t a gang, but if there was, I’d be in. Who’s going to give me another swing?”

Shouts of, “Me!” sprang up all round her.

Mitch’s dignity was preserved. His authority was in tatters, and he couldn’t think where he had made his mistake.

In the week that followed, Danny dispelled the summer boredom with marvellous suggestions. She knew a way into the dump where the scrapped cars were heaped high. It was her idea to cross the railway lines and build a camp on the embankment out of old sleepers and slabs of turf someone had left there. She turned the multistorey car park into a Cresta Run, using supermarket trolleys as sledges. When they were told by the attendant to stop, she negotiated a fee of twelve pounds with the fete secretary for pushing leaflets under the wipers of cars. The experience unified the group as never before. They actually were becoming a gang.

Yet Danny’s influence was discreetly managed. She made no overt bid for the leadership; rather, she made a show of deferring to Mitch, seeking his approval. She would let him distribute the cigarettes she brought with her most mornings. Sometimes she let Mitch carry the day with his own suggestions. Unfortunately, when the daily cry of “What shall we do?” went up, Mitch could never think of anything they hadn’t done before, so there were days when they played football or went fishing complaining that it was a drag.

He knew he ought to do better. His lack of originality depressed him. He lost sleep trying to think of new challenges. In the bleakness of the night, all he could see in his mind’s eye were the faces of Class 5, mouths downturned, eyes glazed in boredom. It wasn’t as if they lived by the sea, or in the country, where adventures were to be had. No circuses ever came through their suburban town. No pop concerts. No marathons. Not even Billy Graham.

The idea, when it came, almost escaped Mitch. Like a butterfly it fluttered within range and eluded his grasp. He captured it clumsily at the third attempt.

Over breakfast one Monday, submerged in gloom at the prospect of another meeting in the rec, he failed to hear his father the first time.

“Wake up, lad.”

“Wha’?”

“I was saying that somebody slipped a leaflet about the fete under my windscreen wiper — in my own garage.”

Mitch did his best to produce a sunny smile. “That was me, Dad. I had a few left over. Me and some of the kids—”

“Some of my friends and I.”

“We were going round the car park Saturday.”

Mr. Mitchell’s eyebrows bobbed up. “Helping the church fete committee? Making yourselves useful for a change? Whose idea was that — yours?”

“Em, one of the others, I think.”

“Never mind. I like it. I won’t be going to the fete myself, but I approve the spirit of the venture.” Mr. Mitchell had long nursed an ambition to see his son as a boy scout, but Mitch, with a distaste for uniforms, had refused to join.

“Why aren’t you going, Dad?”

“On principle, son. I don’t approve of a certain gentleman they’ve invited to open it.”

“Sam Coldharbour?” Mitch was stunned. He had long been convinced that his father revered people who achieved things. Sam Coldharbour had climbed Everest and walked across America. He had boxed for Britain in the Olympics. He was the most famous person for miles around. Moreover, the Mitchells hadn’t missed a fete in Mitch’s lifetime. Mitch’s father had twice been chairman of the committee. “Don’t you like him, Dad?”

“It isn’t a question of like or dislike. I don’t know the man personally. It’s just that I’m unwilling to shake the hand of a man who behaves as he does.”

“Now, Frank,” said Mitch’s mother in the voice she used to stop conversations that threatened to offend.

“What does he do?” asked Mitch.

“Not over breakfast,” said Mitch’s mother.

“The man may be a hero to some, but he isn’t to me,” Mitch’s father insisted on saying, more to Mrs. Mitchell than the boy. “He isn’t even discreet with his philandering.”

“What’s philandering, Dad?”

“It’s misconduct.”

“Frank, please!”

“But it’s true. The man preys on women — ladies, I mean.”

“Prays — like in church?”

“No, you stupid boy. I used the word ‘prey’ in the sense of hunting.”

“Hunting — like a tiger?”

“A wolf, if you ask me.”

“Frank!”

At the rec an hour or so later, Mitch related to an enthralled audience what he had learned about Sam Coldharbour, the man chosen to open the church fete. “My dad calls him a wolf.”

“A werewolf?” said Roger, eyes popping.

“I said a wolf. He goes philandering. Any of you lot heard of philandering before? No? I thought not. Well, I’ll have to tell you, won’t I? It’s hunting ladies. Mr. Coldharbour goes around hunting ladies.”

There was a thoughtful silence.

“What does he do if he catches one?” Podge asked.

There was some coarse laughter. Class 5 knew what men and women were supposed to do together.

“You’re wrong,” said Mitch, with his regard for the literal truth. “What do wolves do if they catch people?”

“Kill them?” said Clive, after a pause. Class 5 also knew a lot about horror and fantasy.

“Eat them?” said Daley.

Mitch opened his hands in a gesture that seemed to say there was no accounting for the things grownups got up to.

Morgan pulled a face and said, “Ugh.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Danny. “People don’t eat each other in Worcester Park.”

Mitch rose to the challenge he had anticipated ever since Danny had gatecrashed. “Why not?” he demanded. “He didn’t always live here.”

“He’d have to be a cannibal, and you can see he isn’t,” said Danny. “How many of you lot have seen Mr. Coldharbour?”

Half a dozen hands were hoisted.

“Well, then,” she said, as if the matter were settled. She walked to the swing and gave it a push.

Mitch was about to defend his assertion by claiming that anything his dad said was the truth when he thought of a better riposte. “He’s travelled all over the world, Sam Coldharbour has. He’s been up in the mountains and through jungles and on desert islands. He must have met some cannibals on one of his expeditions. If a cannibal asks you to come to a feast, you don’t say no. That’s how it started, I reckon.”

“You reckon?” said Podge.

“Yes,” said Mitch with decision. “I reckon. He joined in a cannibal feast.”

Clive came to his aid. “And then he got a taste for it. Once you’ve tasted human flesh, everything else tastes like old socks.”

“Podge’s socks,” said Roger, and everyone laughed, including Podge. They needed to laugh.

Boys of that age are not fastidious about much, and they’ll talk about anything. They argued lustily whether cannibalism could be justified for survival, but it was clear that whatever they claimed to the contrary, few, if any, cared to think of it close to home.

Danny the girl listened, contributing nothing else. She waited for the arguments to run their course and then said, “Isn’t it time we decided what to do?”

Mitch proposed cops and robbers and everyone groaned.

That evening Mitch heard his father on the phone talking about the fete. Someone from the committee was evidently trying to get him to reconsider his decision to stay away, but he was adamant. “I don’t need telling Coldharbour’s fame will increase the attendance no end, but I have my principles, Reggie. I don’t approve of the fellow. I don’t care for the way he conducts his life... The women are what I’m talking about, and what he gets up to at that disagreeable house of his in Almond Avenue... All right, I may be behind the times, but I try to lead a decent life. I’ve seen Coldharbour in action. I was at the tennis club dance last autumn when he was supposed to be partnering Hettie Herzog. He got a sight of that pretty little girl who works in the cake shop — Linda? Belinda? — something like that. She’s married to the chap who runs the bar. He cut Hettie stone dead and started nuzzling Linda in front of her husband. I didn’t enquire what happened later, but I’ve a pretty good idea. What could the husband do? Coldharbour boxed for England. He’s had four different women since then, to my certain knowledge. Married or single, they’re all meat and drink to Sam Coldharbour. No, I don’t wish to meet him. I don’t wish to go within a mile of the man.”

Mitch listened with fascination that turned to awe. If there had been any doubt before of the news he had conveyed to Class 5 — and he had rather overstated his confidence — such doubt had just been removed. Four women... all meat and drink to Sam Coldharbour.

The next morning found Mitch in Almond Avenue staring through the railings at Coldharbour’s house, a modern construction with flat roofs and arched windows distinctly out of keeping with the mock-Tudor 1930s houses on either side. The grounds were spacious enough for a tennis court and a good-sized swimming pool, with diving board. While Mitch was staring in, thinking about the owner, he had his idea.

He came straight to the point when the gang assembled at the usual place. “You know what Clive said about eating people?” Since nobody appeared to remember, he said, “Once you get a taste for it, you can’t stop. It’s like drugs. Sam Coldharbour’s had five women this year.”

“Eaten them?” piped Roger in horror.

“My dad says they’re meat and drink to him, married or not.”

“Who said?” asked Danny the girl. It took a lot to alarm her, but there was a gratifying glint of concern in her eyes.

“I told you. My old man.”

Danny said nothing else and no one questioned the statement. After all, Mitch was always so scrupulous about the truth.

“I’ve thought of a brill dare,” Mitch went on. “On Saturday, when old Coldharbour opens the fete, he isn’t going to be at home for an hour or so, is he? Well, who’s coming for a swim in the cannibal’s pool?”

He might, perhaps, have phrased it more invitingly.

“Can’t swim,” said Podge.

“Just a dip in the shallow end, then.”

“I’m going to the fete with my mum,” said Paul.

“Chicken.”

“It’s a great dare,” said Clive with more craft. “If all of us do it, I’m in.”

“I got athlete’s foot,” said Morgan. “I’m supposed to keep it dry.”

It was Danny who swung the decision by simply saying, “I’ll be there, Mitch.”

Seven others were shamed into enlisting.

The fete organizers were rewarded with brilliant sunshine on Saturday. From behind a builder’s skip in Almond Avenue at 1:55 P.M., eight of the would-be bathers watched Sam Coldharbour drive out between the stone pillars of number eleven in his BMW.

“All right, who’s coming?” Mitch challenged the others.

Podge said, “Danny ain’t here yet.”

“She must have chickened out,” Clive said. He gave Mitch a supportive smile. “What do you expect from a girl? We can’t wait for her.”

Mitch led them in, sprinting full pelt up the drive and across a stretch of lawn to the green-tiled surround of the pool. Lattice patterns of sunlight made the water look specially inviting. Mitch stripped completely, ran to the diving board and took a header in. Clive followed. Some of the boys had prudently put on swimming trunks under their clothes, but no one wanted to risk derision, so everything came off. Immersion made them feel secure. Soon they were shouting and splashing each other as if it were the town pool.

At some point Mitch came up from a dive and saw Danny standing by the edge. She was dressed as if for church, in blouse, skirt, socks and shoes. Her hair was in bunches tied with white ribbon. He grabbed Clive’s arm and pointed. Clive wasn’t going to miss an opening like this. He called out derisively to the others, “Look who’s finally turned up.”

“My mother made me go to the fete,” Danny explained. “I only just got away.”

“Coming in?” Mitch called out.

“There isn’t time.”

“Course there’s time.”

“There isn’t. He’ll be back soon. When I left, he was walking round the stalls, but it won’t take him long to get round. You’d better get out.”

They hesitated, each boy swivelling his head to see if one of the others was willing to climb out first. Truth to tell, the hard lads of Class 5 had turned coy. Their naked state in front of the girl — the girl with no inhibitions about her own body — was a more immediate concern than being caught and eaten by Sam Coldharbour.

She said, “I think I can hear the car.” She turned to look along the drive.

There was turmoil in the water. Modesty abandoned, everyone struck out for the side. Lily-white bottoms were everywhere exposed, bent over the tiled edges of the pool in the scramble to get out.

“It’s him!” Danny shouted.

To shrieks of alarm, the bathing party broke up. No one had time to put on clothes. They grabbed their things and scampered across the grass, dropping garments as they fled.

A squeal of brakes from Sam Coldharbour’s BMW added to the panic. The car skidded and stopped, raising dust. Coldharbour leapt out and sprinted after someone. Mitch saw enough to convince himself that it would be suicidal to try to get through the gate, so he made for the railings some way down. He flung his clothes over, grabbed the top and hauled himself up. He perched up there a moment before leaping to the pavement. The sense of relief at getting out was so overwhelming that it took him a second or two to realise that he was standing naked in a suburban street. He went behind a tree and struggled into his clothes. He was a sock short, but he didn’t care.

Further along Almond Avenue, Podge had made a similar escape. He’d left both shoes in the garden.

Daley and Morgan came running from the other direction. “Anyone get caught?” Morgan asked.

“Don’t know,” Mitch admitted. “Let’s go back to the rec. That’s where we’ll meet.”

“If he did catch anyone—” Podge started to say.

“Your shirt’s inside out,” Mitch interposed.

Members of the bathing party arrived at the swings at intervals and told of narrow escapes and grazed flesh and missing garments. Clive insisted that he’d been thrown to the ground by old Coldharbour and only got away because he was still wet and too slippery to hold. Nobody placed much reliance on things Clive said.

Roger had gone straight home feeling sick, but all eight of the bathers were accounted for.

“What about Danny?” Mitch said. “Did anyone see Danny get out?”

“He was chasing her,” said Podge. “I saw the cannibal chasing her.”

“She’s an ace runner,” said Clive. “She’ll turn up soon.”

His optimism wasn’t justified. The shadow of the swing lengthened and faded in the dusk and Danny didn’t come.

“She must have gone straight home,” Clive said eventually.

“We ought to make sure,” said Podge.

“How can we, you fat git?” Mitch rounded on him. “We don’t know where she lives.”

“We ought to tell the police or something.”

“If she doesn’t come home, her mum will report it.”

Mitch’s faith in grown-ups prevailed. It was conceded that nothing could be done and they dispersed, after vowing to assemble again at the same place next day. “And I bet she turns up as usual,” said Clive.

In reality, Mitch had a horrid conviction that Clive was mistaken. Danny would not turn up, and he was responsible for the adventure that had gone so tragically wrong. In bed that night, he struggled to reassure himself that somehow his father must have been misinformed and cannibalism had not broken out in suburban Worcester Park. No one could get away with it, even if they were so ghoulish as to try. But the fears returned at intervals through the night.

In the morning everyone except Danny turned up at the rec. The optimists among them said they should wait. Clive wanted to go to the police right away.

“No,” said Podge. “They don’t believe kids like us. We’ll get done for trespassing, and it’ll get in the papers, and our new schools will know about it.”

“What are we going to do, then?” said Clive. “We can’t just forget about Danny. She’s in the gang.”

“It was never a gang,” said Mitch.

“Was.”

“Wasn’t.”

“Was.”

“While you’re arguing,” said Clive, “Danny might still be alive. She could be killed any minute.”

Mitch may have been short of original ideas, but he was sharp enough to tell when his leadership was under threat. This was a moment for action. “We’re going back to the house.”

“What?”

“We’re going to get Danny out. If we stick together, there’s enough of us to take on anyone, even old Coldharbour. Strength in numbers, right?” He held a fist aloft.

“Right,” said Clive, raising a fist.

“Right,” said the others with less animation.

For mutual encouragement, they marched like a platoon to Almond Avenue, swinging their arms high and trying to stay in step. At the railings of Sam Coldharbour’s house they halted.

“Look,” said Morgan.

Anyone cherishing the hope that the man who ate people might have slipped out for an hour, to church, or the paper shop, or to walk the dog, must have felt a draining of enthusiasm at the sight of the prominently muscled figure reclining beside the swimming pool on a sunlounger.

Mitch, however, was equal to the challenge. He believed that they were capable of rescuing Danny if she was still alive. And he did accept responsibility for what had happened to her. This was the right way, the man’s way, to put things right. He felt like a leader now.

He explained how they would take care of Sam Coldharbour.

They climbed over the railings at the place where the foliage was thickest and crept like Indians around the perimeter, using the shrubs as cover, and staying close to the railings. The reclining figure continued to recline. No one else was in the vicinity of the pool.

A toolshed stood close to the railings near a kitchen garden, and this was where they headed first. Their luck was in. It was unlocked, and there was room for everyone inside. Better still, the shed was well-equipped. The boys started arming themselves with garden tools. Roger had a large wooden mallet. Morgan and Daley started to wrestle for possession of a scythe.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mitch said in a voice that shamed them all. “Put those things down. We don’t want to get in a fight.”

“We might,” said Podge. “We need to arm ourselves.”

“Bollocks,” said Mitch. “We need both hands free. Our weapon is surprise.”

So it was that in a moment the Class 5 assault team emerged from the toolshed armed with nothing more lethal than several lengths of rope and a narrow-mesh net, of the sort used for keeping birds off red-currant bushes. This was the most dangerous stage of the operation, for they had to cross an open stretch of lawn.

Mitch led the advance, his eyes fixed on the recumbent figure of Sam Coldharbour. The eight small boys moved stealthily but rapidly towards the ex-Olympian, who still didn’t stir. His eyes opened only when Mitch was so close that he blotted out the sun.

This was Mitch’s first close sight of the cannibal’s face, and it was not so frightening as it had been in his mind’s eye. The teeth were not the vampire fangs he had pictured and the eyes weren’t, after all, narrow slits edged with red. Close up, Sam Coldharbour was unremarkable, the more so when an oily rag was spread over his face and the net thrown across the entire length of his body and held down by six boys, while two others passed ropes around to secure him to the frame of the sunlounger. Morgan, who was strong in the arm and good at knots, drew the ends of the ropes tightly together and fastened them. Sam Coldharbour was efficiently trussed, his protests muffled by the rag. It had all been done so rapidly that Mitch doubted if any of them had been recognized.

“Leave him,” he ordered. “We’re going into the house.”

With a perceptible swagger, he led his commandos across the patio and up to the house. The patio door was slightly open. It squeaked as he pushed it aside. He had never been inside a house so modem looking, or so large. There was steel and leather and stripped pine and huge plants in white containers. “You three take the downstairs,” he told Clive, Daley, and Roger. “We’ll try the bedrooms. And remember,” he said in an afterthought to Clive, “to look in the freezer.”

The house was silent except for their footsteps on the spiral staircase, which was made of wrought iron, painted white. With a silent prayer that they would find Danny still alive, Mitch progressed to the landing and opened the first door. The room was some sort of office, with maps on the walls. He tried the next. A bathroom. Then discovered a bedroom with a single bed, a featureless room devoid of anything notable except what Podge noticed — a pair of blue and white trainers half hidden under the bed.

“Those are Danny’s.”

“She’s here, then,” said Mitch.

“She was,” said Podge in a low voice.

Mitch shuddered. “We’ll try the other rooms.”

Two more unoccupied bedrooms.

The last door on their left was ajar. Mitch pushed it open, and stood staring. The room contained a huge circular bed, out of keeping with the other furnishings, which in Mitch’s opinion were silly for a bedroom — a glass-fronted cocktail cabinet, a fridge, a music centre, pink-tinted mirrors the length of two of the walls. When his gaze travelled upwards, he saw that another vast, pink mirror was attached to the ceiling.

It was in the reflection on the ceiling that Mitch noticed something stir in the untidy heap of bedclothes. “Someone’s there!” he told Podge. “Come on.”

He approached the bed, with Podge observing a judicious step behind him. For a worrying second or two Mitch wondered if he was in error. The bedclothes were quite still.

Then they were flung aside and a red-haired woman sat up and shouted, “What in the name of Satan...?”

The words didn’t trouble Mitch so much as the sight of her rearing up from the bed, not unlike a ship’s figurehead he had once seen in a maritime museum. She was bare-breasted and gave every appearance of being carved out of oak and painted bright pink with dabs of crimson on the points of her chest. No doubt the effect was partly due to the light from the mirrors and partly to Mitch’s immaturity. Female torsos in general had yet to persuade him that they were anything but grotesque.

Without even covering herself, the woman demanded, “Just what do you think you’re doing in here?”

“Looking for someone,” answered Podge, over Mitch’s shoulder.

Mitch found his voice. “Our friend Danny.”

She said, “Danny? You’re friends of Danny? Bloody liberty — I’ll have her guts for garters. Get out, the lot of you. Out!”

He heard the others act on the order. Before going after them, he stood his ground long enough to say, “You want to watch out. It could be you next.” Far from being grateful for the advice, the woman gave signs of rolling out of bed in pursuit. That was too much for Mitch. He fled.

Downstairs, Clive was waiting for the others. “She ain’t here,” they said in chorus, and Clive added, “We’re too late.”

“Did you look in the freezer?”

“It’s stacked to the top with peas and things from Sainsbury’s. We couldn’t move all the stuff.”

From the bedroom upstairs the woman shouted, “I’ll call the police.”

“We’ve got to get out,” said Podge. “There’s nothing we can do, Mitch.”

“Danny must be dead by now,” said Clive. “If the police come, they’ll find out.”

“That lady upstairs won’t call them,” Mitch said, trying to calm his troops. “She’s in it. She knew about Danny. Is there anywhere we haven’t looked — a cellar, or a garage?” He knew as he spoke that any gang leader worthy of the name would have said something more positive.

Morgan said, “I don’t bloody care. I’m off.”

“Me, too,” said his brother Daley. “Who’s coming?”

Not everyone was so frank. One or two muttered inaudible things before they followed Morgan out.

“Wimps!” Mitch called after them.

If the slur was heard, it was not heeded. The “gang,” all of it, including Clive, deserted. Mitch stepped out to the patio and watched his friends in flight, the seven he would have claimed as his closest mates, haring along the drive towards Almond Avenue. He knew for certain that his authority, his credibility as leader, was gone forever. They were the quitters, yet he would be blamed.

He still felt driven to find out what had happened to Danny. He was about to go around the side of the house in search of a cellar when he became conscious of something that shouldn’t be. Some part of his brain was functioning independently, trying to convey information, an observation. He stared about him uncertainly.

Then he realised what was amiss: the swimming pool was deserted. Sam Coldharbour was no longer beside it, tied to the sunlounger. The sunlounger itself was gone.

If Coldharbour was free, danger was imminent.

He heard a sound close by, and swung around. It wasn’t Sam Coldharbour standing behind him, and it wasn’t the woman from upstairs. It was Danny.

She was in shorts and a T-shirt, and was barefoot. She said solemnly, “Thanks, Mitch.”

“We thought you were dead,” he said in a whisper. His real voice wouldn’t function. “Come on, let’s run for it!”

She said in her flat, unexcited way, “There’s no need to run.”

“He’ll get us.”

“He won’t.”

“There’s a woman as well.”

“She’s my mother,” said Danny, then added, “I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. Your dad was right, too. She’s another stupid woman who got tricked by Sam Coldharbour. He told her she was adorable, and stuff like that. She moved in here four weeks ago. School had broken up and I had nowhere else to go.”

“You mean you lived here all this time?”

“Stayed here.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I was ashamed.”

“When you didn’t come out last night, we thought you were caught. Podge saw him chasing you.”

“He did. He was in a foul temper. He grabbed my hair and pulled me inside and spanked my bum. Him! My mother thought it was a real joke. She locked me in my room for swearing at him. She sided with him.” Danny’s lips drained of blood as she pressed her mouth shut.

Mitch said, “We thought he was going to kill you and eat you.”

“That was dumb.” She gave a faint smile. “But I’m glad about what you did.”

Mitch shook his head. “We did bugger all except tie him up.”

Then Danny surprised him by catching hold of his wrist. “I want to show you something.”

Still keeping hold of him, she led him across the patio and over a stretch of lawn to the tiled surround of the pool. She pointed into it.

A breeze was sending ripples across the surface and for a moment Mitch thought the body underneath was struggling. It was not. Sam Coldharbour, roped to the lounger, his face still covered by the oily rag, was motionless at the bottom. The water was only a metre or so in depth, but sufficient to have drowned him.

Mitch turned to look at Danny, his eyes huge with the horror of what was down there. “We only tied him up. We didn’t do that.”

“I know,” said Danny.

Mitch glanced down at the smooth surface of the tiled surround and saw how simple it must have been to push the lounger over the edge. He knew what Danny had done, and he knew why. But he stopped himself from speaking prematurely. He turned away from the pool, biting his lip. Finally he said in his usual considered way, “It must have moved because he was wriggling. He wriggled to try and get free and it sort of moved. He couldn’t see where it was going. It was an accident.”

His eyes glistened. He despised himself, even when Danny squeezed his arm.