That Summer He Died Read Free

in-flight breakfast preparing for take-off.
    ‘You make it sound like a sports fixture,’ he said. ‘People died. Real people.’
    People like Daniel Thompson. . .
    ‘All I’m asking is for you to get your arse down to Grancombe and hang out there for a week. Talk to the pigs and the locals and the tourists, and find out what it’s like living with the knowledge that there’s a serial killer on the loose.’
    ‘I’m going home,’ James said
    ‘Sure, fine, I get it. You’re tired. So go and get some sleep. Then when you wake up, we can talk about this again. When you’re thinking more clearly. . .’
    James didn’t answer. He was already out through the door, eyes focused on his feet as he marched down the corridor.
    ‘Just think about it,’ Norm barked after him. ‘That’s all I’m asking. Just think about it and––’
    James didn’t hear any more. He was already in reception. He was opening the door and he was not looking back.
    *
    If James had had anything left in his stomach to throw up, he would have plastered it across his bed when he woke around eight that evening.
    But since he’d got home and had only just made it to the kitchen sink, where he’d introduced a new kind of American fast food to Britain, he hadn’t been able to hold anything down. So, here in his bedroom, nothing but air came up now.
    Forget it.
    Don’t get drawn in by the undertow. Don’t think about it.
    Bury it again.
    Bury it deep.
    That’s what he told himself, but that image of Daniel Thompson’s face staring into his own after all these years wouldn’t leave him, no matter how much James begged.
    Ghosts. Ghosts return to haunt the people who could have made a difference. Ghosts come back for the people who could have kept them alive.
    Only the guilty believe in ghosts.
    Only the guilty can’t make them go away.
    James stumbled through to the bathroom, shut himself behind the glass door of the shower, and took a beating from the water. He scrubbed at his skin with soap and brush. But, even as he did it, he knew that nothing was going to be strong enough to disinfect his mind, or leave him feeling clean again.
    He dried off and dropped the towel on to the floor, walked naked from the bathroom back to the bedroom. He passed the windows overlooking the King’s Road, careless of what other people might think if they saw him.
    This wasn’t about him any more. This was about who he once was. This was about an eighteen-year-old boy who’d left this very same flat nine years ago and moved to Grancombe for the summer, a boy who’d seen too much and had chosen to forget, a boy who hadn’t believed in the power of ghosts.
    Not like he did now.
    He rifled through the courier bag on the chair by the window and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniel’s he’d picked up after leaving the office, snapped the cap and drank.
    The liquid yo-yo-ed in his throat for a few seconds, then settled, warming his stomach like a hot water bottle. His breathing slowed for the first time since he’d woken and he settled down by the radiator, rubbing his back against it. He drank again. And again. And then he rolled a spliff, closed his eyes and let the high carry him away.
    Later, stoned, he found himself staring at his wardrobe. He got up and crossed the room and opened it, ripped the fallen clothes away from the base, uncovered a suitcase and jerked it out. It smelt musty inside when he flipped the catches. He stared for a twenty-four-hour minute at its contents.
    He dug out the envelope full of photos from beside the discarded digital camera beneath the jumble of papers. The snaps weren’t in any particular order. But all were from that summer he’d spent in Grancombe.
    There was one of him lying on a bench on the sea front. It was a sunny day. He looked at peace, midsummer-dreamy, even dead.
    Next came a load from a party on South Beach. He checked the faces and remembered whose eighteenth it was.
    Then there was Daniel Thompson, a snap