Vengeance Child Read Online Free PDF

his trance. She had to crouch down to hear properly. ‘Tod . . . Tod Langdon. Tod Langdon. Walk . . . going for a walk.’ The syllables pulsed with their own unsettling rhythm. At first she thought Tod had bullied the younger boy. But no. Not Tod. He obsessively cut pictures of animals from old magazines. Many children here related better to animals than people. These pictures he carefully filed away in an old filing cabinet in the cellar. Love was too tame a description for his interest in wildlife. So there was no obvious reason why Jay should repeat the teenager’s name. ‘Tod Langdon . . . Tod . . . Tod . . .’ And that peculiar comment: ‘Walk, go walk, walk him.’ A mantra? A spell? Or a curse?
    Laura picked up the story of what happened all those months ago (without mentioning she’d found Jay in the kitchen, almost comatose, and uttering Tod’s name). ‘Tod Langdon had reached an age when he felt he was growing into a man. We should have realized that he’d outgrown Badsworth Lodge. One day he ran away. I think he wanted to prove that he was independent. That he could find a job.’
    â€˜Animals. He loved animals.’
    â€˜That’s right. I’m sure his plan was to go to a zoo and ask for work there, so he’d be close to them. Only he met some people . . . unpleasant people . . . who wanted to use him. They tricked him into stealing things from shops. From what I hear they secretly put drugs into his food so it would stop him realizing what he was doing was wrong.’ Jay appeared to be digesting what she told him so she continued. ‘Only there was a lot of anger in Tod. He kept it stored away in the back of his mind for years. You know, like something nasty pushed into a drawer, where you hope you’ll forget it, but never do. Anyway, the drugs let it out.’
    â€˜They say he went crazy.’
    â€˜It wasn’t madness. It was all those memories of bad things that had happened to him. He got so angry because it seemed to him everyone in the world had ignored the cruel things his father did to him, so he took his anger out on the world that was around him at that moment. Tod smashed windows in shops, which was very frightening for him and the people near him at the time. Then he hurt himself badly with pieces of glass.’
    â€˜You’ve told the truth.’
    She realized he wasn’t asking a question. ‘How did you know?’
    â€˜Tod told me.’
    â€˜He can’t. Tod’s . . .’
    â€˜He’s not dead.’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜It’s a place like this. Only there are bars on the windows. They don’t let him outside. Mostly he’s very tired because of the medicine they give him. The walls are painted green because the doctors say that colour helps keep the patients calm.’
    â€˜Jay, has one of the children told you about Tod?’
    â€˜I’m right, aren’t I, Laura?’
    She nodded, mystified. ‘But how do you know?’
    â€˜I’ve said already. Tod told me.’ He closed the comic. ‘Sometimes I take Tod for a little walk.’
    She tried to quell the shiver, but there was nothing she could do to suppress its creep up her spine. ‘I liked Tod. He didn’t deserve that.’ A more recent memory brought yet another shiver. ‘Yesterday. When we were talking about Maureen. You told me you took her for a little walk. What do you mean by that?’
    He said nothing. Exhaustion had drained the poor kid. Shame on me. I shouldn’t be interrogating him. He’s been through hell, too.
    â€˜OK, young man,’ she said brightly. ‘Time for bed.’
    His face darkened as a troubling thought struck him. ‘When we go to the island, will we have to cross the water by boat?’

Five
    Why didn’t you keep your mouth shut?