Silas Nash Book 1: Hush Hush Honeysuckle: Chapter 9 ( b)

It was tough for Max to make friends when he was boarding at a private school. Jon and Bobby still called him a posh git at every opportunity, but they were all good mates.

Then Max went off to university, Jon did a plumbing course at college and dropped out after the first term, and Bobby went off the rails. He did some time with youth offenders and dropped off the grid after that. They kept in touch for a while, but Max hadn’t seen him in years. Jonathan was done with plumbing, took a job as a packer in the candle factory and had been there ever since. Max went on to build his empire, and while it was an unbalanced friendship, what Max had in brains and finance, Jon and Emily made up for in love and always being there for him.

‘We don’t know anything about this animal. We’ll need her medical records for a start.’

‘I very much doubt she has any, Jon. There’s a squat near where I saw her owner. There’s a good chance he’s sleeping there. I’ll see what I can do, but don’t expect much background. Seriously, Jon, I’d keep her if I could. Her name’s Mia. She loves scratches behind the ear and ham, and she farts like a nuclear weapon. Enjoy her.’

Max wasn’t looking forward to seeing Mia’s previous owner again. If that dog had ever been to a vet, he’d be amazed, but Jonathan was a stickler for doing things properly and wouldn’t let up. He was worried in case the dog had been microchipped, considering how Max came about her. It was ludicrous, but Jon had insisted that Max track the man down and get a receipt. A bloody receipt. The guy probably couldn’t write his name. But to shut Jon up, he agreed to try and track the man down and see if they could at least have a grown-up conversation. It was a fool’s errand. You couldn’t reason with people like him. But he would have one walk past the squat to see if the lad was around. He figured that covered his promise. He couldn’t get a receipt if Max didn’t see him, could he?

When he got to the house where Mia was being beaten in the street, he saw something glinting in the gutter. It was a dog tag in the shape of a bone, and it had the single word Anthrax. No address or phone number, so defeating the purpose of a tag, but there it was.

He should have left it to the filth of her former life, but it was a symbol of who Mia had been. He slipped it into his pocket. He seemed to be collecting names. First Paige and now Anthrax. It could be his new hobby, name collecting.

Max jumped out of his pondering when he heard sirens on the next street. He rounded the corner and saw an ambulance and two police cars outside the old building that had once been Bar Continental. When the bar shut down, it was empty for some years—home to the rats and the spiders. Nobody seemed to be taking ownership of it, or doing anything to restore it, so squatters had moved in, and the council didn’t seem to be bothered. Better to have them contained than sleeping in shop doorways.

Somebody was taking photographs, and a policeman was putting yellow tape around the area. There was something slumped in the doorway, but Max couldn’t get close enough to see.

‘Hi, I was going in there. Well, not going in, not if I could help it, but I wanted to see somebody that—er—lives there. What’s going on?’ he asked one of the policemen who had been at the community search. They’d had a chat over wellington boots and hot soup.

‘Who were you coming to see?’

‘I don’t know, some lad. I didn’t get his name. Just wanted to ask him about his dog?’

‘His dog?’

‘Yeah, it’s nothing, really.’ Max craned his neck to see what was going on. He saw the object slumped in the doorway and followed a pair of brand-new trainers along the legs of filthy jeans to a face that was instantly recognisable.

‘That’s him. Shit. That’s the bloke I saw kicking his dog.’

‘You need to move back. This is a crime scene, and we have to keep it clear. When did you see him?’

‘Yesterday.’ Max gave his details and told the young police officer everything he knew while the policeman wrote it down.

‘We may need to speak to you again. I expect we’ll want to interview you. You may be one of the last people to see him alive.’

‘No problem, officer. You know where to find me.’

First Henry, now this no-hoper, it was time to get out of Dodge. Men were dying all over the place. He felt everything closing in on him. The town was depressing. He’d pack a bag properly this time and get away in the van for a few days. If anybody wanted to speak to him, it would have to wait until he got back. He couldn’t decide between Scotland, Ireland or Wales.

That night he booked into a proper campsite just over the Welsh border and into North Wales. The view over Colwyn Bay was stunning, and it made him glad to be alive. He spent an hour setting up camp, and he pitched his awning alongside the van. It gave him shelter and as much space as he could need for his gear. Having the awning up made all the difference. Now, he had somewhere to put up an external table and chairs, and it was big enough to stand up and walk around in. He even had a separate bedroom area to get changed.

Once he had his obligatory cup of tea, he dragged his chair outside to watch the last of the sun dropping like a mirage into the bay. A flock of Barker geese flew in murmuration over the sands as the tide went out before the birds reached their evening roost. Being able to get away in his van gave him a sense of calm that he hadn’t felt before. Time didn’t matter, and he was away from everybody and everything he knew.

He chatted to some other campers as they passed but wasn’t put out when they didn’t want to stick around for a beer. Each to their own. They weren’t the friendliest people and seemed in a hurry to get away from him. He watched as they went to speak to the farmer who owned the site. They stopped to speak to another couple halfway across the field, and they went with them to the camp office, where the farmer was outside. He saw one of the women pointing towards his van but was oblivious to the fact that he’d done anything wrong. He’d only just got there and hadn’t had time to be bad yet.

It didn’t even seem odd to him when the farmer knocked on the door of the van next to him and then went across the field with the family next door. Both of the adults had a sleepy child in their arms, and they were taken into the office. He watched as the lights went on. He should have sensed something wasn’t right but was one of those people who thought the whole world loved him. There are people persons, and there are non-people persons. Max was one of the first.

Somebody ran across the field and passed his van.

‘Bastard, you’ll get yours. You’re all over Facebook, you monster. There’s a call out for your van and everything. How did you expect to get away with it?’

Max went inside for his phone and loaded it up. He saw the newsfeed. His van. His numberplate. And the heading Have You Seen This Van? It had been shared with him four times in the last hour. The van wasn’t registered to him yet. Damn, something else he’d forgotten. If the police came at him, he’d blame it on his condition.

He didn’t have time to read the police statement underneath the picture of his van. But he saw the words Do not approach this van. It could be dangerous. Four police vans screeched into the campsite and surrounded his campervan. Somebody was shouting at him on a loudhailer.

‘Step out of the van with your hands in the air.’ He repeated it three times. ‘Do as we say, and you won’t be harmed.’

What the Hell?

Max came out of the van and into the darkening field to be blinded by spotlights pointed at his face. He was battled to the ground and cuffed.

‘What’s your name?’ A man had stepped forward, but he could only see his boots. They were still shiny despite the grass on the field.

‘What’s going on? I haven’t done anything.’

‘Your name, Sir.’

‘Maxwell Jones.’

‘Maxwell Jones. We are arresting you on suspicion of murder You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand what I’ve just said to you?’

‘Yes, but this is messed up, man.’ Before he could say anymore. Two uniformed police officers pulled him up and threw him in the back of one of the vans.

He heard them congratulating themselves. He had been arrested on suspicion of murder, but that’s all he’d been told. Who was he supposed to have killed? Henry, obviously. Max was in the back of a black Mariah, not even a regular van. This one had no windows and was reinforced with a wire cage and a black steel shutter between him and the front seats. Minutes later, he was driven at speed down the A-roads, and he felt the difference in road surface when that changed to the smoother Tarmac of the Motorway. It was amazing how much he could tell from the darkness inside the van. He banged on the separating wall and shouted until his voice was hoarse.

He was being taken back North. But why?