Now You See Me

by Chris McGeorge

  He mulled the question over in his mind. He had been running from it ever since Matthew had called him, ever since he had learned of the Incident. What did he think happened? Six went in. Only one came out. Now you see them—now you don’t. He had no idea where they went either.

  But he was going to find out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There was something niggling at him as Stanton led him back through the rabbit warren—something on the edge of his mind that he couldn’t quite get a handle on. Something important.

  Stanton deposited him back in the entrance hall without a word, and he nodded his thanks.

  “Mr. Ferringham,” boomed a somewhat-familiar voice.

  He looked up to see a small, thin, mousy man in a terra-cotta-colored suit coming toward him with his hand outstretched. Robin took it without thinking.

  “I’m Terrance Loamfield, Matthew’s defense. We spoke on the phone.”

  “Yes. Yes. Of course.”

  “You warmed him up for me?”

  “What?”

  “You saw Matthew just now, yes?” Loamfield was squirrelly. He looked like a man who would run away if you so much as glanced at him aggressively—not a solid candidate for a defense lawyer. “Never seen a boy so deluded in my life.”

  “If you think he did it, why are you representing him?” Robin said.

  Loamfield’s face stretched into something horrible and he laughed. “You kidding? Case like this is going to be big. Doesn’t matter what side of the battlefield you’re on—you still make the history books.”

  “Nice,” Robin said, wondering why he’d even bothered asking.

  “I assumed that’s why you were here too,” Loamfield said, and Robin’s stomach turned just at the insinuation.

  “That’s my business,” Robin said.

  “Hey.” Loamfield held up his hands, including the one carrying a black briefcase. “I don’t get paid to ask questions.”

  Actually you do, Robin thought, but said instead, “You were appointed as Matthew’s representative?”

  “Yes,” Loamfield said. “Matthew didn’t have an attorney. And he didn’t find one himself. So, they appointed me.”

  Robin watched him. A man in his natural habitat. “They? Who are they?”

  Loamfield smiled. “I’m afraid I have an appointment to keep.” Loamfield gave Robin a wide berth as though he might catch some humanity.

  Robin quickly turned. “Mr. Loamfield.” He looked back. “You said Matthew had no chance in hell of getting bail on Friday. What would change that?”

  Loamfield chuckled. “By Friday? You’re an optimist. Optimism doesn’t get you far in this part of the world.”

  Robin shrugged. He’d had more than enough of this man. He just wanted an answer to his question.

  And he finally got it. “Do something the police haven’t,” Loamfield said. “Find someone else who could have done it.”

  Loamfield grinned and turned away, nodding to Stanton, who was still hovering about. Robin turned the other way, a bad taste in his mouth.

  As he made his way back to the main entrance, he found his eyes drifting over to the waiting area. There were a few people waiting—an old couple looking out of place, a father with a teenage boy and a young woman. Their eyes met.

  The young woman, barely more than a girl, wearing a hoodie with her hands tucked inside, was watching him. She had headphones on and was regarding him with a strange intensity. He pulled his eyes away, shook off her gaze and continued out of the building.

  He didn’t see her follow him to the entrance and watch as he got into the rental car and pulled away.

  He didn’t see as she pulled out her phone and took a picture of the license plate.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Robin’s niggling feeling followed him all the way back to The Hamlet, and when he got back to his room, he found himself looking through his folder of articles. Something Matthew had said had struck something in his memory, something he had read or found or something.

  The papers spilled off the desk and onto the floor and Robin cursed under his breath. He knew he wasn’t a detective. He wasn’t used to this kind of stuff. But he had to do this. If he wanted to find out what Matthew knew about Sam.

  And wasn’t he invested enough now? Couldn’t he admit it? He needed to know—what had happened to the Standedge Five? And how was this connected to Sam? Because he really couldn’t imagine any scene where Matthew killed his friends, and even if he had, what had happened then?

  But he had to prove Matthew wasn’t responsible somehow. And he couldn’t do that without first understanding what actually happened.

  Robin scooped up the papers in a clump and threw them on the bed. What he was looking for wasn’t there. He got out his notebook and looked at the notes he had taken during the visit.

  He had written ASCEND in bold capitals—gone over it multiple times so it bled through to the next page. It must have looked similar inked onto the five wrists of the Standedge Five. The more he looked at the letters, the less he saw.

  He got his laptop out and connected to the Wi-Fi. He found himself scrolling through the same online articles, the same pages, examining the same pictures. He didn’t even know what he was particularly looking for. Ending his journey, he found himself visiting the personal Facebook pages of the Five, not entirely knowing why. He scrolled through the comments of people mourning the lost—hundreds and hundreds of them. Nothing jumped out at him. He randomly went to Rachel Claypath’s About page and scrolled down. A normal young woman.

  And then...

  He found himself getting closer to the screen.

  He opened a new tab and went to Robert Frost’s About page. And then Prudence Pack’s. And then Edmund Sunderland’s. And finally Tim Claypath’s. His niggling felt satisfied. He’d seen it without even knowing he’d seen it.

  He popped them all out into different windows and lined them all up.

  At the bottom of all five About sections, alone, isolated, was the word—

  ASCEND.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Well, I always liked Matt. We used to hang out back in primary school. We were best friends—until, you know, they came into the picture.” Benny Masterson was moving some very unprepared parts of a dead pig around the closed butchers’ shop and it was very distracting. Robin was standing as far away as possible.

  It was the next morning—Tuesday—and Robin had been waiting for the butchers’ to open, when Benny let him in early. The young man seemed almost impossibly friendly, clashing with his gruesome surroundings.

  “I saw them a few times. Around the town. Without Matt. So I told him. Didn’t know he was going to ‘go postal,’ did I?”

  Robin opened his mouth and some kind of smell entered. He masked a choke and then pressed on with his question. “This was recently that you saw them?”

  “Yeah,” Benny said, “I saw them just before the Incident, in the basement of The Hamlet. That was their usual place. Didn’t bother me—kept them out of the way. But yeah, they were there. When I told Matt about it, he went quiet, but I could tell he was fuming. That’s why I didn’t tell him about the other times.”

  “The other times?”

  Robin had to wait a moment as Benny ducked in the back and brought out a pile of what looked like lambs’ livers. Sure enough, he placed them in the counter display by the very same label. “Yeah, I saw them a few other times too. They were at the Claypaths’ at Christmas, even though Matt had told me over a pint they were all staying at their unis. I went over to give the Chief their Christmas order—turkey the size of Spaceship Earth and all the trimmings. Had to strap it onto my bike just so it wouldn’t bounce off if I hit a curb. Anyways, the Chief opened the door and I could hear them all having a grand old time in the front room. Knew Matt wasn’t there ’cos I’d seen him on
the way shoveling snow off Frank Jaegar’s driveway. You know Frank Jaegar? Owns The Grey Fox. Nice guy.

  “Anyways, same thing happened when I went to deliver at New Year’s. They were having duck. Who has duck for New Year’s? Not me, at least—not on my wages.” He gave out a great guffaw.

  Robin wanted to stay on track. He looked at his watch and saw that Standedge Visitor Centre would be opening soon. “You don’t seem to like the Standedge Five very much.”

  Benny smiled as he struggled with a string of sausages. “What gave it away? Don’t write that down in your little book, mind. I’ll deny it. Truth is, none of us other kids liked them very much at all. The grown-ups treated them like the sun shone out of their collective arses and we could never really understand exactly why. Probably something to do with the Claypath twins. Maybe they were just all happy the twins calmed down.” Benny came to the end of the link of sausages and thus to his sentence.

  “Calmed down? What do you mean?”

  Benny smiled. “Back in primary, those two were utter psychopaths. Tim used to bite people and Rachel used to accuse people of touching her—you know, on the... But put both of them together and they were evil geniuses. They used to trap animals, you know. They started off with rats and what have you. Used to corner them and play with ’em—like cats play with food. Then they progressed somewhat—rumor has it they got a cat themselves once.”

  “What do you mean by ‘got’?”

  Benny picked up a batch of steaks and started unwrapping them, placing them inside the counter. “What don’t I mean would be more apt. It was never proved but kids round the playground said Tim took it out in the woods and skinned it alive. Just a rumor, maybe a tall tale. But still, makes you shiver—makes you think.”

  “He skinned a cat?”

  “Allegedly. There weren’t no proof, but you know kids—there doesn’t need to be. Anytime a cat went missing, we always thought it was the twins. Hell, even to this day, I’d think that one was him if he weren’t dead.” Benny waved a raw steak in the general direction of a wooden noticeboard. There was a poster of a black-and-white cat named Mittons with the headline MISSING. Benny looked at it for a soul-searching moment. “You think they actually wanted to call it that or they just misspelled Mittens?” He thought for a moment and then shrugged the thought away.

  Robin didn’t follow the diversion. “But the group calmed the Claypath twins down?”

  “Yeah. Well, that or the rumors died down anyway. To some they just became more boring after—kids like to gossip, I guess. But I think all the adults of Marsden were happy to see them settling into something. The adults heard the whispers of the stuff that they were doing and they were obviously a little unsettled.”

  “The adults heard about the cat?”

  “Yeah. No surprise. You can’t take a dodgy poo in Marsden without it being written up in the Chronicle.” He paused, his hand outstretched to reposition a steak as though he had disgusted even himself. Then the moment passed and he continued. “People round here gossip faster than usual.”

  “Is there anyone in the community who doesn’t like the Claypaths?” Robin said.

  Benny scratched his chin, leaving a small amount of animal blood mixed in with his stubble. “Liz Crusher maybe.”

  Liz Crusher. The name rang a bell and it took Robin a second to remember where he’d heard it. The woman who had had an argument with Tim Claypath on the side of the Huddersfield Narrow the day of the Incident, according to Matthew’s story. Robin wrote her name down. “Why Liz Crusher?”

  “Well, that’s the easiest question you’ve asked me yet,” Benny said, smiling. “It was her cat.”

  Robin raised an eyebrow. “The cat that Tim Claypath skinned?”

  “Allegedly,” Benny added.

  Robin nodded and closed his book. Benny had finished loading the counter and had come out around into the shop. “Thank you, Benny. You’ve been a great help.”

  “Anytime,” said Benny. “Just, you know, make sure to cite me. Spot in the acknowledgments wouldn’t go amiss either.” He went to clap Robin on the back but mercifully thought better of it, given he was still wearing the gloves covered in blood.

  “Acknowledg—” Then it dawned on Robin what Benny was talking about and what Amber had said two nights ago.

  “I told you—gossip.” Benny beamed and Robin took his leave.

  Benny shut the door behind him and Robin looked back as the young man turned the Closed sign to Open. Their eyes met through the glass, and they nodded to each other.

  For them both, the day had just begun.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Standedge is closed for the season. I’m afraid there are no tours going through the tunnel now until after the winter. Good day.” The small, frumpy woman in the blue polo shirt emblazoned with the Canal & River Trust insignia went to close the door, but Robin shot out a hand and stopped it.

  He was standing outside the Visitor Centre with the tunnel, chained and gated, looming off to his left. The canal was deathly silent—no traffic, not even ducks. The Visitor Centre was similarly devoid of life, standing empty and dark. Robin wouldn’t have known anyone was in there if he hadn’t seen the woman arrive.

  She clearly wished he hadn’t.

  “Can I just ask a few questions at least?” Robin said through the open crack in the door.

  The woman sighed. “I need to clean the cobwebs out of this place, and then go to my other two jobs, so you’ll have to be quick.”

  “That’s fine,” Robin said, “of course.”

  The woman opened the door to let Robin in, and quickly shut it behind him, as though there were a thousand other people demanding entry. Then she went round a corner and disappeared.

  Robin looked around. He was in a small reception area with a wooden counter and a stand full of leaflets and brochures. Behind the counter there was a chalkboard with a faded menu written on it—a few months ago, it seemed a cheese ploughman’s was on offer, among other things. To the right of him, there was a cut-through to another room. It seemed the Visitor Centre doubled as a café.

  Lining the walls were pictures of Standedge all throughout the years—modern ones, drawings of schematics, old photos of men in mustaches with pickaxes clunking away at rock. There was also a pinboard with pictures of all the Trust staff, although all Robin could discern before the woman came back was that Matthew was not there.

  “Taken down,” the woman said, when she saw what Robin was looking at. She had dragged out a mop and bucket full of soapy water. She started sloshing the mop in the water.

  “You’ve heard the gossip too?” Robin asked.

  The woman tutted as the water sloshed over onto the floor, annoyed, even though Robin was sure that was going to be her endgame anyway. “Don’t need to hear anything. I can read your type like a book. Know what you city people would come to a place like this for.”

  “And what am I here for?”

  The woman looked up, rested the mop against a wall and folded her arms. “Blood.”

  Robin got out his notebook, not even trying to hide it. In a way, he guessed the woman was right—as long as she was talking metaphorically. “Well, so long as the pleasantries are out of the way, I had a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not before mine,” the woman said. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Robin Ferringham. I’m a...”

  “No, I know who you are,” the woman said. Gossip had attached itself to his name. Was it really making the rounds of Marsden already? Where did the chain begin—and did Roger Claypath have something to do with it? “What I’m asking is who you think you are. Waltzing around town with your little notebook like you’re Hercules frickin’ Poirot.”

  He opened his mouth to correct her on the name, but shut it again—she didn’t seem like someone who would appreciate it.

&nbs
p; “You should be ashamed of yourself. This was exactly what everyone didn’t want—what we were trying to avoid. The Chief said it best—Murder Tourists. That’s what you people are. Want me to take your photo by where McConnell killed them all? Be nice for your wall, wouldn’t it?”

  “Wait,” Robin said. There was a lot to unpack and the woman wasn’t about to give him time. He put his notebook back into his pocket, partly for the act of it and partly because he couldn’t write fast enough anyway. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  The woman almost looked like she wasn’t going to tell it. But eventually she conceded. “Martha. Martha Hobson.”

  “Martha, what did you mean by ‘trying to avoid’?”

  Martha turned her nose up, but talked nonetheless. “We didn’t want your kind coming here. All looking for the Standedge Five. Playing armchair detective. Pretty much exactly what you’re doing is what we didn’t want.”

  “How did you try to stop this, though?”

  “It was Chief Claypath mostly. Held a town meeting a week or so after the Incident. Pretty much everyone was there—to show solidarity to the Claypaths, as well as the other families—” She said other like they were lesser. “We all agreed unanimously that Marsden should be protected. We know that the guilty party is already found. No need to make a big fuss—no need for this to be a big thing. Because we knew it would be if the ghouls had their way.

  “I mean, we’d seen it in action. How many god-awful people go to get a snap by the room where that television detective was held now, eh, ever since that awful thing happened up there last year? Our world is getting overrun by bad guys, and the idiots who romanticize their every move. Murder Tourists.

  “Good was the Standedge Five. Those kids were wholly good. And now they’re gone. Because of a boy I used to eat my packed lunch with. Even went through Standedge with him on a couple of occasions. And we don’t want him to be glorified. We want to remember the Standedge Five without having to remember him too. That’s what Claypath proposed and that’s what we all agreed to.