The Child Across the Street: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller Read online

  The Child Across the Street

  An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller

  Kerry Wilkinson

  Books by Kerry Wilkinson

  Standalone novels

  The Child Across the Street

  After the Accident

  Close to You

  A Face in the Crowd

  The Wife’s Secret

  The Death and Life of Eleanor Parker

  Last Night

  The Girl Who Came Back

  Two Sisters

  Ten Birthdays

  The Jessica Daniel series

  The Killer Inside (also published as Locked In)

  Vigilante

  The Woman in Black

  Think of the Children

  Playing with Fire

  The Missing Dead (also published as Thicker than Water)

  Behind Closed Doors

  Crossing the Line

  Scarred for Life

  For Richer, For Poorer

  Nothing But Trouble

  Eye for an Eye

  Silent Suspect

  The Unlucky Ones

  A Cry in the Night

  Short Stories

  January

  February

  March

  April

  The Andrew Hunter series

  Something Wicked

  Something Hidden

  Something Buried

  Silver Blackthorn

  Reckoning

  Renegade

  Resurgence

  Other

  Down Among the Dead Men

  No Place Like Home

  Watched

  Available in Audio

  After the Accident (Available in the UK and the US)

  Close to You (Available in the UK and the US)

  A Face in the Crowd (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Wife’s Secret (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Death and Life of Eleanor Parker (Available in the UK and the US)

  Last Night (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Girl Who Came Back (Available in the UK and the US)

  Two Sisters (Available in the UK and the US)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  The Girl Who Came Back

  Hear More from Kerry

  Books by Kerry Wilkinson

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Killer Inside

  After the Accident

  Close to You

  A Face in the Crowd

  The Wife’s Secret

  The Death and Life of Eleanor Parker

  Last Night

  Two Sisters

  Ten Birthdays

  The Child Across the Street publishing team

  One

  TUESDAY

  I was reading an article the other day that listed the most British things. It contained the usual items, like black cabs and red phone boxes. There was the Royal Family, Big Ben, roast dinners, rain, sarcasm, the BBC, Churchill, cricket, fish and chips, flat beer, country pubs, and a whole bunch of other things. What articles like that always miss, however, is something with which almost any Brit can identify. The thing that every single living person born on these Isles knows only too well. It’s ingrained into our souls from birth. As much a part of our day-to-day lives as pounds and pence, or wondering how Piers Morgan has a career.

  What that article missed was the sheer, unrelenting hell we go through when using public transport to travel a relatively short distance.

  Today, for instance, my first train was late. According to the shifty-sounding station announcer, heat had made the rails buckle. From there, I missed my connection onto a second train and had to get the later one. By that point, the bus I was supposed to be catching at the other end had already gone. The next bus was cancelled for an unspecified reason, so I had to take two more buses to finally finish on another bus, operated by a different company, with separate pricing, and which only takes cash and, naturally, offers no change. After almost losing the will to live on at least three occasions, here I am, a little over one hundred miles from where I started, eight-and-a-bit hours later.

  Home.

  Well, sort of home.

  As the final bus pulls away with a guff of noxious exhaust fumes, I glance up to where the clock atop the building reads 4.05 p.m. The sandblasted building was a library when I was a kid – but now there are wooden boards across the windows and a large sign that says something about a planning application.

  There are stars in my eyes as I blink away from the blue sky and take a moment to figure out where I am. This whole area is familiar and yet… not. It’s all that little bit tattier than when I was last here. Everything from the pavement to the road to the surrounding houses seems to be covered in a grainy dusting of sand or dirt. The hedge a little up the road is so overgrown that it’s enveloped more than half the path. The pub on the other side of the street was once teeming with people, a hub for old men, with spiralling smoke pouring from the door each time it opened. As with the library, the windows are now boarded up, each of them tagged with spray-painted, joined-up scrawl.

  The wheels on my suitcase catch in the cracked pavement tile. As I wrestle it free, I narrowly avoid bumbling into a patch of nettles that have swarmed over and around a nearby wall.

  It’s home but it’s not. It’s like I’m in an alternate universe; this one grimmer and grimier.

  It’s only now I’m finally off the succession of buses that I realise how hot it is out of the shade. In my mind, when I was growing up, Elwood had long summers of endless sun. My friends and I were rarely inside during the holidays and I’m back there again now, with the heat prickling my arms and legs.

  I pluck the bottle from my bag and have a sip as I take in the poster stuck to a lamp post that’s advertising the Elwood Summer Fete on Saturday. It’s all standard stuff – I guess bouncy castles and face-painting never go out of fashion – and yet there’s a sense that these sorts of thing were once so personal to me. An inflated moment of ego in which I’m surprised this could continue while I was away.

  After the drink, I continue along the street, avoiding the bloated hedge, and then cross the road before I find myself close to George Park. It was l
ong after I’d left Elwood that I realised the park had been named after the King, and not some random local named George. I’m almost past that when the back of my hand starts to itch. I’m already scratching when I realise it’s because I’m so close to the house in which I grew up. This route was on my walk home from school and the corner at the edge of the park was where my friends would go one way and I’d go another.

  There are children playing on the far side of the park, dots in the distance, though their excited shouts carry on the breeze.

  I shouldn’t have come.

  I thought I would be fine, but this place is too much.

  A glance back to the stop only reveals what I already knew – that the bus has gone. It’s almost two hours until the next one, if it even arrives, so what am I to do? I could stay. Maybe I should stay. I have things to do.

  I’m brought back to the present as there’s a squeal of tyres from beyond the hedge that rings this edge of the park. It’s only a few steps to the corner and I turn to see cars parked along both sides of the road. That’s another thing that’s changed. Not everyone had a car back then, let alone two or three to a house. I could cross this road at any point, but now the only gap appears to be here on the corner.

  I almost look away.

  Almost.

  In between the parked vehicles, stopped in the centre of the road at the turn into Beverly Close, is a car. It’s frozen in time and then, in the moment it takes me to blink, there’s another squeal and it surges away, disappearing around the corner and out of sight.

  The thought that ‘everyone’s always in a rush nowadays’ has already gone through me when I realise how old it makes me feel. Nowadays. As if there was a time when people were happily late and nobody ever hurried.

  I almost reach for my bottle again, but then I start to walk towards the junction instead. The wheels of my case click-clack across the pavement tiles and it feels like I’m being drawn there. As if a secret part of my brain knows something, even though the rest of me hasn’t caught up.

  When I get to the junction, I realise the cars aren’t parked as tightly as it appeared. Faded double-yellow lines are painted at the intersection and there’s a large gap in between the park itself and the Beverly Close sign. There’s a verge separating the two, clumped with overgrown grass and mangled plants and bushes that have grown into one another. The area is littered with crisp packets and chocolate wrappers, as well as something that’s definitely out of place.

  I see the wheel first.

  It’s almost swallowed by the crown of swaying grass, but light catches one of the bent spokes and, as I take a few steps closer, I realise the wheel is attached to an upturned bicycle. The rear wheel is crumpled in on itself, almost folded in half. The entire back half of the bike has creased in two and the front wheel is detached, embedded in the encompassing branches of a bush.

  It’s past the bike, at the bottom of the gully, where the horror lies. I want to look away but can’t stop staring at the contorted shape of the boy. One of his shoes has somehow flown off and is upside down in a nettle patch. I find myself focusing on that because everything else is too awful to comprehend.

  It’s hard not to gag at the unnatural kink in the boy’s shattered arm – and then, underneath, the grass is no longer the same shade as the surrounding green. Instead, it’s drenched a crimson red as, from somewhere in the distance, the drifting sound of playing children continues to hang in the air.

  Two

  I don’t actually remember calling 999. There’s a blank, as if I’m working on some sort of autopilot. The next thing I know, there are sirens in the distance. I’m at the bottom of the ditch, standing over the boy, phone in my hand, though there’s a gap in me getting here.

  ‘Is he…?’

  There’s a woman at the top of the verge, with an apron tied around her waist. I turn between her and the boy, unsure what to do. I did a first-aid course for my job years ago, but my head is empty. I don’t want to make things worse by moving him, or doing something else damaging.

  ‘He’s breathing,’ I reply, though that’s more or less all I can say. I look back to the boy where his chest is rising ever so slowly. There are smudges of dirt and blood across his face and his T-shirt is ripped across the middle.

  More people appear at the crest of the gully, presumably coming out of the local houses. They all stare down to the boy and then me, as if I either know what to do, or had something to do with this. The sirens are deafening now and it’s only a moment until I’m drenched with a strobing blue. Minutes must have passed.

  It feels like I’m watching everything happen instead of being a part of it. A woman in a uniform guides me back up to the street and then leads me off towards a police car. A pair of paramedics pass us, heading towards the boy. An ambulance has blocked off the street on one side, with a couple of police vehicles on the other. Their sirens have silenced, but more wail in the distance.

  ‘I’m Tina,’ the officer says.

  ‘Hi,’ I reply, blankly.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Abigail.’ A pause and then: ‘Abi, really. Abi Coyle.’

  ‘Did you see what happened?’

  I take in the officer for the first time. I turn forty next year and she’s perhaps a decade younger than me, with a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks.

  ‘I don’t, um…’ I’m trying to speak, but the words aren’t there.

  In the meantime, Tina half turns to one of her colleagues and nods towards the road behind us. I’d not noticed before, but there’s a wide skid mark that intersects the junction with Beverly Close. The black of the rubber arcs like a crescent across the grey tarmac.

  ‘There was a squeal,’ I say. ‘Like a car skidding.’

  The second officer has taken the hint and is shooing people away from the street, back towards their houses. As he does that, another ambulance pulls in and two paramedics clamber down and hurry across to the ditch.

  Tina asks something else, but I don’t catch it. I stare past her instead, watching as the new set of paramedics disappear over the bank to join the original pair.

  ‘We can do this later,’ Tina adds.

  ‘There was a car,’ I say.

  ‘Do you know what colour it was?’

  ‘Dark… I think. Maybe black, or…’ I find myself stumbling and then tailing off before I add: ‘I don’t know.’

  I try to remember – but the clarity is not there. There’s the shape of a car in the road, but it’s like the memory is monochrome. There’s no colour; no depth. It’s like I saw a photo, rather than actually experienced it.

  People are still outside their houses, but everyone has been moved away from the road itself. I open my mouth, but, before I can say anything, a figure darts across the intersection. She weaves around an officer whose arm is outstretched in a weak attempt to stop her. He catches her as she reaches the ditch, holding her back as she stares at the scene below.

  They are too far away for me to hear what the officer says to her but, as he tries to move her away, the woman turns back to him and shouts: ‘He’s my son.’

  I’m not sure when I start moving but before I know what I’m doing I’m most of the way across to her. I feel Tina trailing, though she’s made no effort to stop me. When I lock eyes with the woman, there’s a moment in which it feels as if I’ve tumbled through time. She doesn’t see it – but it’s no surprise, she has other things on her mind.

  ‘His name’s Ethan,’ she tells me. There’s a tremble to her voice, though there’s a firm undercurrent, as if she knows she has to hold it together. It was always her way.

  ‘There was a car,’ I tell her.

  The male officer and Tina hover, though neither of them say anything. Down below, three paramedics are crowded over the top of the boy, as a fourth stands a little further back. His arms are behind his back, his face stony and giving nothing away.

  ‘You found him?’ she asks, turning between me and her
son.

  A nod.

  She turns back to the boy, though we can see little other than the hunched paramedics. There’s probably noise; the chatter of voices, cars on surrounding roads, or those kids on the far side of the park. It feels silent, though. As if the world has stopped spinning. Then she twists back to me and squints slightly. The face of a woman who can’t quite believe what she’s seeing.

  ‘Abi…?’ she asks, doubting herself.

  Another nod.

  She gulps and turns back to her son. ‘It’s Jo,’ she says.

  I have no idea what to say. There’s only one thing that matters in the moment and it isn’t me. I reply in the only way I can, offering a solemn, and unreturned, ‘I know.’

  Three

  It’s a blur as the paramedics eventually bring Ethan up the bank on a stretcher and put him into the back of an ambulance. Jo follows and then, as they head off to hospital, it’s left to Tina and the rest of the police to figure out what’s next.

  A police officer is already taking photographs of the skid mark, while more uniformed officers have appeared to talk to residents. Tina asks me a few more questions, though I’m not sure how much help I am. I stumble over answers until she takes my phone number and closes her notebook.