Like Clockwork

18

The boy walked ahead, his buttocks moulded by the tight trousers, T-shirt clinging to his slight chest. The path across the beach to the tidal pool was slick with rain and seaweed abandoned by the receding tide. He turned into the lee of the wind, sheltered by the curved wall that led to the open sea. Waves thrashed over the black rocks, waiting for the return of the lulled storm. The first real storm of the winter, thought the boy, absenting himself from what was coming. Fifteen minutes of being there but not being there, and he would have the money he craved.

The man – fiftyish, paunchy, yet still muscled – braced himself against the rough concrete. Unzipped himself.

‘Strip.’

The boy hesitated.

The man yanked him forward. ‘Strip. And kneel.’ The boy capitulated. What did it matter being cold for a while, having mussel shells cut into his knees? It would be over so soon. The boy took off his clothes, his dark skin goose-pimpling in the cold. The man pushed him down, hands clamped at the base of the boy’s slender throat. He moved him slowly at first and then faster. The boy obeyed the terse orders, drifting loose now above the pool. Mind closed. Eyes, on instruction, open. It was when the man pulled him back for a final, choking plunge that he saw her lying between the rocks. The man finished, pushed him aside, enjoyed watching the boy scrabble for the negotiated notes he threw at him. And was gone. Back for dinner with his wife and daughter.

The boy pulled on his clothes, his eyes held by the pale undulation of the girl’s body. He picked his way over to her, chilled by her stillness. He put his hand out to draw the wisp of her expensive top over the displayed breasts. He draped a ribbon of seaweed across her face, shutting out the blinded eyes. She was ice-cold to the touch. He felt sick as he ran back towards the road, away from her. He looked back once when he stopped to tuck the money into his pocket, then he caught a taxi home.

He heard his mother’s soothing mutter calm his stepfather as he took the staircase up to his bedroom. His curtains were open. On the other side of his window Lower Main Road, deserted now and wet, trailed away towards Salt River. He shut his eyes, but all he saw was the girl, alone and dead on the rocks. Her long hair would be floating on the tide soon. The boy opened his eyes again but still she lingered, her right hand arced in a ballerina’s beckoning, a mute plea.

He had to help her, but there was no way he was going to call the cops. He picked up his phone, checked for airtime. There was enough for an SMS. He riffled through the heap of papers on his desk. Right at the bottom was the folder he had kept from the documentary course he had done in the holidays. Dr Clare Hart. That was her name. She had given him a card when he had talked to her after a screening of one of her films. He had seen in the paper that she was involved in the investigation of the other murdered girl. His thumbs whirred across the tiny keys, forming the condensed message. He pressed ‘send’ and the icon swirled back and forth across the screen. Then it was gone. The boy sighed with relief: the dead girl was gone too. She was someone else’s problem now.

He drew the curtains, then felt behind his abandoned tennis racket on top of the cupboard. The small wooden box had not been moved. In it was everything he needed to bridge him into the next day. He took the syringe out, admiring its slender elegance as he fitted the needle. The burner was lit, then the powder dissolved on the spoon and was drawn into the syringe – the vein on his thigh eager for the needle. He avoided the soft inside of his arm. It was the first place an inquisitive teacher would look, and it made his clients wary. They liked to sully his innocence themselves. He pulled the blankets over himself and subsided into a chasm of sleep.