Survivor Read online

  SURVIVOR

  One mysterious death on the Ultimate Bushcraft adventure holiday is tragic, but a second, then a third is suspicious . . . But who can you trust when everyone around you is a suspect? As numbers dwindle, the chances of survival plummet. Staying alive has never seemed so guilty.

  Nobody is safe . . .

  Dedicated to the people I remember when

  I walk around the Botanical Gardens

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 1

  STATEMENT #1

  CHAPTER 2

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 2

  STATEMENT #2

  CHAPTER 3

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 3

  STATEMENT #3

  CHAPTER 4

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 4

  STATEMENT #4

  CHAPTER 5

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 5

  STATEMENT #5

  CHAPTER 6

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 6

  STATEMENT #6

  CHAPTER 7

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 7

  EVIDENCE #1

  CHAPTER 8

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 8

  STATEMENT #7

  CHAPTER 9

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 9

  EVIDENCE #2

  CHAPTER 10

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 10

  STATEMENT #8

  CHAPTER 11

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 11

  EVIDENCE #3

  CHAPTER 12

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 12

  NOTES FROM THE UNSOLVED CASE OF GEORGE MURMAN, 1946

  CHAPTER 13

  STATEMENT #9

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 14

  A REMINDER OF A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

  CHAPTER 15

  EVIDENCE #4

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  This is everything as it happened. So you understand what it was like – how difficult it was. I can’t remember it all exactly, what people said, how they looked . . . But it’s close enough to the truth, I think.

  George Fleet

  CHAPTER 1

  (NEARLY A YEAR BEFORE):

  THE FIRST PART OF GEORGE FLEET’S STATEMENT

  I’ll tell the story from the beginning. Right from the very start.

  Yes, I’ll be honest. I don’t tell lies – at least not unless I really have to. I’ll just say it as it was.

  None of it would have happened if I hadn’t missed a bus.

  I arrived just in time to see the red lights of the number 6 slip away into the distance. When the next one arrived, I headed upstairs to avoid a gang of boys I didn’t recognize. I sat halfway down on the right to avoid empty lager cans near the front. Isn’t it weird? After everything, I still remember little things like rolling lager cans.

  So, you see, I was more or less level with the window of the flat when the bus stopped to pick up some passengers by the war memorial.

  I had glanced at the football scores on my phone and was about to text Louis – who is still my best friend – when I realized that the cloudy red light in the flat’s window wasn’t a reflection of the setting sun, but flames. I saw smoke creeping out from under the eaves of the roof.

  I said, ‘That building’s on fire!’ It was more to myself at the time, but even when I shouted people looked away, thinking I was crazy. They didn’t even check to see if there were flames. People don’t see danger when it’s right in front of their noses.

  As I stared at the flat, the net curtain moved and a hand slammed against the windowpane.

  Afterwards, when I heard my voice on the emergency services recording, I was amazed at how calm I sounded. My voice still had that low boom that I hate, but I basically sounded cool and in control. Not that I can remember making the call or advising them to send an ambulance and at least three fire engines. Everyone said that it was remarkable, that bit about the three fire engines – they seemed to think it was stranger than what I actually did. I suppose I imagined three fire engines blocking the road. Everyone laughed when they found out that I’d said excuse me to the people on the bus’s stairs as I pushed past. ‘Excuse me, but that building’s on fire.’

  I didn’t ever really decide to help; it just happened, like I was sliding down a slope, unable to stop myself.

  There was a bit in the newspaper about how I left my rucksack with the driver and asked an old guy to stop the traffic. If I left my rucksack with the driver, I must have already decided to go inside the building. But I wasn’t thinking. I was just pulled towards the flat as though a magnet was drawing me on.

  ‘Fire – up there!’ I hollered.

  A man shouted at me while I pounded on the door. ‘What the hell are you doing, lad?’

  ‘Fire!’ I pointed up at the window, still calm, just urgent. ‘There’s someone up there!’ I didn’t panic, even then. I sort of saw myself from the outside, like I was an actor, like I couldn’t be hurt, not badly hurt, anyway.

  All of a sudden, everyone seemed to grasp that there was a disaster happening. A big guy, white T-shirt stretched over muscles, was passing at exactly the right moment. He shoved his shoulder against the door twice, there was a crack and a snap and it splintered open. Swirling smoke crept towards us, like fingers reaching for the fresh air. Sorry for the metaphor – or simile – whatever – I know that this isn’t an essay for an English lesson – but I really saw it like that at the time. Fingers. I thought of horror-movie fingers.

  ‘Open the window!’ people shouted. ‘Break the glass and jump down!’ others yelled. At the time, no one was sure why the woman didn’t open the window properly, but later we knew that she couldn’t, that it had been painted shut. The words ‘she’s got a kid’ filled the street and my brain. Flecks of glass showered down on us and there was a desperate high-pitched scream – a nails-down-the-blackboard screech – followed by coughing and spluttering.

  The big guy who’d knocked the door down raced into the building first.

  I went in after him. I had thought before about doing heroic things, but they never involved dashing into a burning building. I had imagined sword fights, light-sabre battles (I feel embarrassed writing that), flying an aeroplane into a war zone, standing up to bullies against improbable odds (yet I avoided those boys at the back of the bus: some hero!), but I didn’t think of any of this when I went in.

  I went in because . . . I suppose I would have felt bad if I hadn’t. I went in because it was automatic. Because I heard them say ‘she’s got a kid’. I didn’t think that I was only a kid myself; I was fifteen at the time. I’m only sixteen now, of course, though it feels like longer than a year since it happened. Much longer.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ someone shouted behind me. ‘Stop being an idiot!’

  The big guy had stormed ahead and was standing next to the young panicking woman when I followed him into the flat. He was trying to drag her away from the window, but she fought against him, slapping and screaming, determined to keep her baby next to the small pane she’d managed to smash – and what little fresh air there was.

  ‘Jump down!’ I heard from outside. ‘We’ll catch you!’ A large group had gathered below and were ready to catch anyone who fell. They didn’t understand about the window. You see – people outside, looking in, don’t always understand.

  The room was hot. It was skin-reddeningly hot – only just bearable, and flames were leaping up from the sofa and running up the wall. But it’s the smoke that kills, they said; the firemen told us later that flames are there as a warning for the smoke.

  Unable to get close to the window, I was surrounded by the fumes and held my breath.


  The big guy was the true hero. He smashed the rest of the glass then pulled the baby from his mother. ‘No,’ she gasped and coughed, ‘don’t throw him – he’ll die.’ She still fought to stay in the man’s way despite her confusion. ‘Give him back,’ she mumbled.

  I took the baby off him. The kid was heavier than I expected, and not moving. I ran off immediately, crouching down to avoid the worst of the smoke, breath held, baby pressed to my chest, while behind me his mother still fought the other guy, delirious with panic and confusion and the effects of the fumes.

  It was, of course, water that saved my life. Not the water from hoses, those were still six or seven minutes away, but a lifetime of swimming, breath-holding competitions and diving off piers and rocks. I held my breath throughout as the poisonous smoke surrounded me.

  And so I became a hero. ‘Saint George to the Rescue’ was the headline on the front page of the local paper, and similar puns on my name were made in the national press. I was on the TV. I had saved a baby’s life. The big guy had saved both mother and baby, but he got second billing.

  Imagine being responsible for saving someone’s life. But it was just chance – the bus stopped, I looked out of the window, someone tough was passing. But without these chances the first of a terrible series of dominoes would not have fallen. And I wonder, right now, whether it might actually have been better for me not to have saved that kid’s life at all.

  [Here ends the first part of George Fleet’s statement]

  THE OTHER CHAPTER 1

  (SAID IN THE HOUR BEFORE):

  HIM

  Shut up! Now it’s MY turn to speak. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll listen.

  Just you and me. At THE END of the story.

  You know that this is not a happy ending. No. Not happy FOR YOU at all.

  But you deserve an unhappy ending.

  And they all lived unhappily ever after. Because that’s what they DESERVED.

  THE END

  I’ve done quite a bit, haven’t I?

  Haven’t I?

  Quite a few have

  DIED.

  They deserved it.

  Bastards.

  Useless bastards.

  Mostly useless. Mostly bastards. One or the other, anyway.

  And all of it is your fault.

  TIME FOR JUSTICE.

  DING DONG.

  JUSTICE CALLING.

  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  I always knew he was a bad person: that’s what you’re thinking. I can see it on your pretty – your pretty pathetic – face.

  Who are you kidding? You don’t know me. You don’t know anything.

  You don’t know WHO I am or WHAT I am or what I DID.

  You don’t understand because you are so wrapped up in your own life, so far up your own arse that you don’t know anything about anyone. Least of all me.

  But now you know that it was me.

  Yeah. Yeah. It was ME!

  Oh I’m so sorry! Please let me cry about it. Please help me.

  No. I’m not sorry. They deserved it.

  And are you so different to me anyway?

  That’s why I really hate people like you. You do what you can for yourself, and would kill for your own family, which means for YOURSELF. It’s all about you.

  We’re all in it for ourselves.

  We’re all animals. I’m just freer. I’m the animal that roams where it wants and kills when it wants. The KING of the jungle.

  Who doesn’t like winning? And what’s killing? It’s the ultimate victory. No one persecutes the lion because he kills. I’m the LION. Even the cute little robin kills worms. Stick that on your Christmas cards: THIS ANIMAL IS A KILLER.

  You think I’m evil. But that’s a LIE. Evil doesn’t mean anything. It just means that I’m different to you. Freer (I love that word, free, free, FREE); more free than you.

  Now that we have some time, let me tell you about the first person I did in. Are you sitting comfortably?

  It was JUSTICE, this one. Once upon a time there was a boy who came into class. He had hair like yours. But that’s just a coincidence.

  Anyway, you’re distracting me. You shouldn’t do that. If you do it again, I’ll hurt you.

  In the beginning there was a boy. He came in when he shouldn’t have, into the class, and started smiling and showing off and sapping my energy. He was like a parasite, living off us, feeding on us, just so that HE could laugh and FORCE others to laugh – which was MY job. So it was JUSTICE what I did.

  I suppose you want to know how I did it.

  Easier than A, B, C.

  Miss Rogers, Miss Rogers – that’s me speaking, very sweetly – he just stepped out, Miss Rogers. Into the road, Miss Rogers.

  And we were free of him. Free of the bastard cuckoo who had invaded the nest.

  I hated him.

  But there’s one name I hate more.

  GEORGE. GEORGE FLEET.

  I remember that first moment I saw GEORGE in the airport. Pathetic.

  I think I should stop and let you think about all of this. I’m suddenly a bit tired. You’re making me tired. But I’m not finished yet.

  I’LL BE BACK.

  And stop looking at me like that. I DON’T LIKE IT.

  STATEMENT #1

  I’m Louis, George’s best friend, and I’ve been asked to say a few words about him.

  The first thing I want to make clear is that I trust George and he’s still my mate.

  We all thought George was a good guy. A great guy. He was pretty amazing at football. And swimming. Swimming most of all. He was, like, the best in the county. Like a fish.

  The thing was, we all thought he was a dude, but he would really get on with the teachers at school as well. Partly because he was clever. But partly because he just didn’t do anything nasty. Like, not ever. I don’t know how he’s got himself into this mess, but I trust him like a brother. I’d trust him with my whole life, man.

  Oh yeah. The fire. That shows you what he was like. Jeez, I bet you wouldn’t have gone running in there in a thousand years. Not likely that I would have. But he just does it. No crap, straight in, saves a kid’s life. That’s George. And then he was, like, ‘I didn’t really think about it – it just sorta happened.’ If it was me, I would have been using that on the girls big time, strutting around like a boss. He was still the same old George, though. Exactly as he was before. Funny, nice, top guy.

  A million pounds says he’s innocent. Ten million. I know this guy, and you don’t.

  (Do I have to say anything more?)

  CHAPTER 2

  (SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE):

  THE SECOND PART OF GEORGE’S STATEMENT

  There was a lot of fuss after the fire.

  As well as being in all the papers, I was visited at home by our MP, and patted on the back, literally, by the headmistress. There was a special presentation in assembly showing the three fire engines and burnt-out flat. A few people were annoying about it, but most seemed proud that someone from our school had actually done something positive. Girls certainly thought it was impressive. To be honest, I’ve always been fairly popular with them and have a long-standing girlfriend, Jess. We might, if everything turns out OK, end up being like one of those couples who get together at school and then last forever (she has stuck with me through what has happened – for the record, she’s completely and totally amazing).

  But you don’t need to hear about that, really. I have to explain how I came to go to Australia.

  Jess and Louis came with me to the reception at the mayor’s house a couple of months after the fire. It was the sort of party that adults moan about beforehand and afterwards but seem to enjoy at the time. All the so-called significant people in Southend were there: councillors, a vicar, important local people . . .

  ‘Ah – here’s the hero,’ said the mayor. I remember his tanned face shining above his sparkling chain of office. ‘I’m honoured to meet you, young man.’ I didn’t even kno
w Southend had a mayor until all this happened.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Mayor,’ I said, remembering my lines, glancing up at Mum and Dad. They were smiling broadly and standing taller than usual. A bit embarrassing, really.

  ‘He’s always been such a good boy,’ my mum said later in the conversation, making me cringe. ‘Even as a baby he didn’t really cry.’

  After about an hour or so, we all gathered in the main room of the mayor’s grand home. Someone tapped a glass and we stopped talking. I remember the mayor’s words because they were so completely over the top.

  ‘I have been hearing a lot about this young man,’ he roared. ‘A jolly good egg. He’s a brilliant swimmer – one of Southend’s, no, one of Essex’s, finest – and a great example of a solid local chap.’

  I caught Jess’s eye. Louis had that slightly openmouthed, one-eyed-squinting look that usually comes before his funny remarks. He was obviously dying to crack a joke.

  ‘He’s also a tremendous football player. But, best of all,’ the mayor thundered on, ‘he’s a very brave boy.’ The word ‘brave’ went on so long I thought it would never end. ‘A supremely courageous boy. A life-saver.’

  Everyone clapped and Jess and Louis whooped and whistled. I wanted to shrivel up.

  ‘I am delighted to announce that George Fleet is also the recipient of a National Badge of Courage, of which only four are handed out each year.’ The mayor turned to a man on his left. ‘And I would like to invite our very special guest, Mr Basil Franklin, to hand out the award.’

  Basil Franklin was more important than a mayor. He was something called a Permanent Secretary from the government in London. The mayor was even more pleased about Basil Franklin’s presence than mine, which was a huge relief.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Mayor,’ said Basil Franklin. ‘As you say, only four of these awards are handed out each year and, thanks to the munificence of an anonymous donor, they carry material as well as honorific reward.’

  The words hazed out. I had no idea what this man was saying. He was too clever to talk to ordinary kids. But soon it was clear even to me that the award brought with it a prize – a big one.