The bog bubbled around him and rose to his armpits. Its touch was cold, final. A stench of mud and rotting leaves reached his nostrils. Matt closed his eyes and waited for the end. But now the bog was toying with him, creeping upwards centimetre by centimetre, lovingly drawing him into its embrace.
The beam of light hit him before he even heard the noise of the engine. Out of nowhere a car had appeared. It had veered off the road and now it was parked right on the edge of the bog. A man got out, barely visible behind the glare of the headlamps.
"Don"t move!" a voice commanded. "I"ve got a rope."
But the bog, as if afraid it was going to lose its victim, tightened its hold. Greedily it clung to Matt, its hands spreading over his shoulders, pushing him down.
"Hurry!" Matt shouted.
The mud was touching his chin. He forced his head up despairingly, staring up at a pale moon that had at last come from behind the clouds. Only seconds remained.
The bog pulled. The stagnant water rose over his head, up his nose, into his eyes. Now only his hands remained above the surface. But then he was struck by the flying edge of a rope. Smothered, blind, he groped for it. And found it. He held his breath and tightened his grip.
And then he was being hauled up towards the surface. His lungs were bursting. With a cry, he opened his mouth and sucked in. And breathed air. The man pulled on the rope and he felt himself being dragged forward. His waist cleared the edge of the bog with a loud, sucking noise. He kicked out with his legs, still clinging on to the rope. A strong hand grabbed him and pulled him clear. Exhausted, he collapsed on to firm ground.
For a moment he lay there, retching, getting the filthy water out of his system. Then he looked up. And recognized Richard Cole, the journalist from the Greater Malling Gazette.
"You!" he gasped.
"What the h.e.l.l...?" Richard was equally surprised.
"How..."
"What are you doing?"
The broken questions hung in the air.
Then Matt took control of the situation. "Not now," he said. He was thinking about the dogs. They might have lost his scent when he was in the bog, but they would find it again soon enough. "We have to go."
"All right. Can you get into the car?" Richard leant down and helped Matt to his feet. Matt could feel the slime dripping off him. He wondered what he must look like.
The car was standing near the side of the road with its engine running. Richard rested Matt against the bonnet, then went round to open the pa.s.senger door. There were piles of old newspapers and magazines on the front seat and he began throwing them into the back to clear a s.p.a.ce. Matt was edging round to get in when he saw them.
The dogs had emerged from the wood. They were in the middle of the road. Watching. Waiting.
"There..." Matt whispered.
"What?"
Richard turned and saw them. The dogs were just ten metres away. Their tongues were hanging out. Their breath rose in white clouds. Their eyes flickered. Richard held up a hand. "Nice dogs! Stay!" he muttered. He reached into the car and pulled out a can. "Get in," he said to Matt.
"What are you...?"
"I"m going to put them down."
Painfully, Matt eased himself into the front seat, his eyes fixed on the waiting dogs. Water oozed out underneath him and dripped on to the carpet. Richard fumbled in his pocket and produced a handkerchief. Slowly, forcing himself not to panic, he unscrewed the lid of the can and pushed the handkerchief into its neck. Matt smelled petrol fumes. Richard found a lighter. The dogs crept forward, suddenly suspicious, and Matt knew they were preparing themselves for the final leap. Richard flicked the lighter against the handkerchief and hurled the can towards them.
The first dog had just left the ground when the can hit it and exploded into flame. Burning petrol sprayed over the second dog, instantly setting it alight. The fire roared around them. With an unearthly howl, the dogs fell back, one curling itself into a ball, the other snapping at its own hide in a vain attempt to devour the cause of its agony. Fire had been their creator. Now fire destroyed them.
Richard slid over the bonnet and landed next to the driver"s door. He got into the car, slammed the door, threw the gears into reverse and stamped on the accelerator. The back wheels spun, then found a grip, rocketing the car backwards. Matt felt a thump as they drove over the body of one of the dying creatures. But where was the other? He looked around, then yelled out as, still blazing, it slammed into the windscreen, launching itself out of nowhere. For a few seconds it was in front of him, its dreadful teeth centimetres from his face. Then Richard changed into first gear and wrenched the wheel. The dog spun away. Matt looked out of the back window. The flickering remains of one carca.s.s lay in the middle of the road. The second had got snarled up in the wheels, but as the car sped forward it fell free and was tossed to one side.
They drove through the night for half a mile without speaking. The car was filled with the smell of the bog. Water was dripping out of Matt"s clothes, on to the seat and on to the floor. Richard pulled a face and opened the window. "So, do you mind telling me what that was all about?" he demanded.
Matt didn"t know where to begin. "I think something is happening in Lesser Malling," he said.
Richard nodded. "I think you could be right."
MATT"S STORY.
Richard Cole lived in the very centre of York. He had rented a flat above a souvenir shop in one of the city"s most famous medieval streets: a pretty, cobbled pa.s.sageway called The Shambles. The flat was arranged over three floors, a series of oddly shaped rooms piled on top of each other like children"s building bricks. A kitchen and a living room took up the first floor. Then, above, there was a bedroom and a shower. And finally a narrow flight of steps twisted round to a spare room built into the roof.
The place was in a shambles itself. All the furniture looked as if it had been rescued from a skip a as indeed much of it had. There were old clothes everywhere, unwashed plates piled high in the sink, CDs, books, magazines and half-written articles shuffled together in a way that would surely make it impossible to find anything. The walls were covered with posters, mainly old American films. Richard"s laptop was on the kitchen table, next to a box of Weetabix, a half-eaten can of baked beans with the fork still sticking out, and two pieces of very cold toast.
Matt had felt awkward as they climbed to the first floor and it was worse now that he was in the flat itself. He was very aware that he stank. Richard left him in the kitchen and came back with a large towel.
"We can talk later," he said. "Right now you need a shower. And we"ll have to get rid of those clothes."
"Have you got a washing machine?"
"Are you kidding? The washing machine hasn"t been built that could handle all that muck. They can go in the bin and we"ll buy you some more tomorrow. I"ll find you some of mine to wear in the meantime." Richard pointed upstairs. "You"ll find the shower easily enough. Are you hungry?"
"Starving."
"Well there"s no food in the house. I"ll go out and get something while you get changed."
Half an hour later the two of them were sitting in the living room, surrounded by Chinese food from the takeaway at the end of the street. Matt had spent twenty minutes in the shower, only coming out when he had washed away all traces of the bog. He was now wearing an old York University T-shirt with a towel wrapped round his waist and nothing on his feet. He hadn"t been aware how hungry he was until he had begun eating. Now he was feeling stuffed.
"Nice place," he said, looking around.
"I was lucky to get it," Richard said. "It"s very cheap. Not that I"m here very much. I normally eat at the pub..."
"Do you live on your own?"
"I had a girlfriend until about a week ago. Unfortunately she took a liking to cla.s.sical music."
"What"s so bad about that?"
"Now she"s going out with an opera singer." Richard went to the fridge and took out a can of beer. "You want anything to drink?"
"I"m all right." There was a brief silence while Richard sat down again. Matt knew that they both had a lot to explain. "How did you find me tonight?" he asked.
Richard shrugged. "There"s not much to tell. After you left the office, I thought about some of the things you"d said. It all sounded pretty stupid, to tell the truth. But there were parts of your story... Well, I couldn"t get them out of my head. And I had nothing else to do."
"So you went to look at Omega One?"
"Let"s just say I happened to be pa.s.sing."
"You knew where it was?"
Richard nodded. "The man who built it still lives in York. He was a scientific adviser to the government back in the sixties but he"s retired now. Name of Michael Marsh."
"Did you meet him?"
"About six months ago. He got a knighthood from the Queen and I had to do a story about him. He"s an unbelievably boring man. Lives in a big house near the river. He collects matchbox labels. If the worst comes to the worst, I may give him a call and we can go and see him. He may be able to help."
"So you decided to visit Omega One in the middle of the night..."
"It was on the way home from the pub. What"s the big deal? I was near by so I thought I"d drive past. And then I heard someone shouting for help and that was how I found you."
"That"s not possible." Matt thought back. "I didn"t shout for help."
"I heard you."
"I may have yelled once. But I didn"t even hear your car. You were suddenly just there."
"Maybe you shouted without realizing it, Matt. I mean, you were panicking. You were probably out of your mind. I know I would have been."
"How fast were you driving?"
"About fifty. I don"t know."
"Were the car windows open?"
"No."
"Then even if I had shouted, how could you have heard my voice? It"s not possible."
"You have a point," Richard admitted. "But then how do you explain that I swerved off the road in exactly the right place and came straight to you?"
"I can"t," Matt said, in a quiet voice.
"Look, I heard someone. All right? I pulled over and there you were, up to your neck in-" He broke off. "You"re just lucky I hadn"t decided to stay for another pint. But now you"re here, maybe you should tell me a bit more about yourself."
"Like what?"
"I don"t even know your full name. You say your parents are dead but you never told me how you ended up living with this woman ... Mrs Deverill." Matt looked away. "You might as well tell me now," Richard went on. "It might help me work out what we"re going to do."
"Are you going to put me in the newspaper?"
"That"s the general idea."
Matt shook his head. "You can forget it. I don"t want anyone writing about me. I don"t want anyone to know about my life."
"I think you"re forgetting something, Matt. You were the one who came to me. You told me you had a story..."
"I needed your help."
"Well, maybe we need each other."
"I don"t want to be in the papers."
"Then you shouldn"t be in my flat." Richard put down his can of beer. "All right," he said. "That"s not fair. I"m not going to throw you out. Not tonight, anyway. But to be honest with you, I don"t really need a fourteen-year-old in my life. So I"ll tell you what I"ll do. Tell me your story and I promise I won"t publish it until you say. OK?"
"That"ll never happen," Matt replied. But he nodded. "All right."
Richard reached for a notebook and a pen, just as he had when they first met at the newspaper office. He sat, waiting.
"I don"t really know where to start," Matt said. "But since you asked, my full name is Matthew Freeman. I was sent to stay with Mrs Deverill because of something called the LEAF Project."
"The LEAF Project?" Richard had heard the name before. "Isn"t that one of the government"s big ideas? Some sort of crazy scheme for dealing with juvenile offenders?"
"That"s right. That"s what I am. I was arrested for breaking into a warehouse. A man got stabbed."
"You stabbed him?"
"No. But I was there when it happened. I was to blame." Matt paused. "Maybe now you won"t be so keen to help me."
"Why not? I don"t give a d.a.m.n what you"ve done. I just want to know why you did it." Richard sighed. "Why don"t you try starting at the beginning? You may find it easier."
"All right." Matt didn"t want to do this. His social worker, Jill Hughes, had always tried to make him talk about himself. "You have to take responsibility for who you are." That was one of the things she had always said. But the more she had pressed him, the more reluctant he had become, until their relationship had dissolved into a hostile silence. And now this journalist was asking him to do the same. Had he finally found an adult he could really trust? Matt hoped so, but he wasn"t sure.
"I don"t remember very much about my parents," Matt said. "I thought I would. They only died six years ago, but bit by bit they"ve just sort of ... faded away. There"s not much of them left.
"I think we were happy. We lived in a pretty ordinary sort of street in Dulwich. Do you know it? It"s in south London. My dad was a doctor. I don"t think my mum worked. We had a nice house, so I suppose there was a bit of money around. But we weren"t that rich. The last time my parents took me on holiday we went camping in France. I must have been about seven then."
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
"No. There were just the three of us. And there wasn"t much family. My dad was actually born in New Zealand and most of his family"s still over there. My mum had a half-sister called Gwenda who lived in Ipswich. She visited us a few times but they didn"t get on. Gwenda was nothing like her. When I was small, I used to think she was really boring. I never dreamt..."
Matt drew a breath.
"Anyway, my mum and dad were killed. They were driving to a wedding in Oxford, which was about two hours away. I was meant to go too, but at the last minute I didn"t feel well so I stayed behind with a neighbour."
Matt stopped. Richard knew that he wasn"t telling the whole truth about the wedding. He could see it. But he didn"t interrupt.
"There was an accident," Matt continued. "A tyre burst while they were crossing a bridge. My dad lost control of the car and they went over the side and into the river. They were drowned." Matt paused. "The first thing I knew about it was when the police came to the house. I was only eight years old but I knew straight away.
"After that it"s all quite jumbled. I spent quite a bit of time a it must have been three or four weeks a living in a sort of hostel. Everyone was trying to help but there was nothing anyone could do. The real trouble was that there was n.o.body to look after me. They tried to get in touch with my dad"s family out in New Zealand but n.o.body wanted to know.
"And then my mum"s one relation turned up. Gwenda Davis, from Ipswich. She was sort of my aunt. We met and she took me out for lunch. We went to a McDonald"s. I remember that because my dad never let me eat fast food. He used to say it was the worst thing anyone could eat. Anyway, she bought me a burger and chips, and there we were, sitting in the middle of the noise and the plastic tables, with a big clown looking down at us, and she asked me if I wanted to move in with her. I said I didn"t. But in the end what I wanted didn"t make any difference because it had all been decided already. I moved in with her" a he paused a "and Brian."