by Simon Lelic
And Mason. I knew a bit more about what he was doing, too. At least, I thought I did. But when he stood up in that cave, clasping that broken bottle, I realized I didn’t know as much as I’d assumed.
“What the hell, Mason?” said Luke, who had got to his feet first. None of the rest of us were very far behind. The whiskey had gone right to my head, so when I stood up I almost fell over again.
“This isn’t fucking funny, Mason,” said one of the girls. Cora, I think.
“Do you see me laughing?” said Mason, pointing the bottle like a gun. “Now answer me. Who was it? Was it you, Cora? Is that why you’ve been acting like such a bitch?”
“Was what me? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Sadie! As you well know!”
Cora made a sound like there was something caught in her throat. “You’re . . . what? You’re seriously suggesting that one of us killed her? That I did?”
“Or maybe it was you, Abi,” said Mason, turning. “Or you, Fash.”
“Me?” I said. “You think I had something to do with it? What happened to . . . to searching? To trying to find out the truth?”
“What the fuck do you think we’re doing right now?” he spat at me. “Although, while we’re on the subject, maybe you can explain why you were so eager to help me in the first place. Were you worried about what I’d find if I went without you? Is that why you walked straight past Sadie’s phone?”
“But I . . . I didn’t see it! Honestly, I . . .”
“Help him?” Cora said. “Help him do what? What the hell is Mason talking about, Fash?”
I was standing there shaking my head. I couldn’t believe what Mason was doing. “You lied to me,” I said to him. “You told me you wanted to search for Sadie! That’s why you had me round everybody up. To form a search party. That’s what you said!”
Because that’s the thing. That’s what I lied about before. One of the things I lied about, anyway. I told you the search party was my idea, that I hadn’t seen Mason since the day Sadie went missing. But that’s not true. He came to me, you see. On day three, I guess it was. After he’d been at the station with you lot all day, and people around town had started talking. More than talking. By that point, everyone had pretty much decided. You know, that Sadie was dead, and that Mason was the one who’d killed her. And his dad had accused him as well. Well, not accused him exactly. What he did was punch him in the stomach. He’d come home from the pub and apparently he’d been getting a load of grief from all the regulars, so come kicking-out time he’d stumbled home, and he’d dragged Mason from his bed, and he told him if he didn’t own up, he’d throttle him and chuck his body in the river—the way everyone was saying Mason had done to Sadie. And when Mason denied it, that’s when his dad put a fist in his gut. Which he’s done before when he’s been drunk, but this time, apparently, his dad had no intention of stopping there. He made to hit Mason again, with a poker this time, but according to Mason he was so far gone that when he raised the poker he staggered backward, and that’s how Mason got out of the house. He barged his way past, and out the front door, and he ran until he reached the river. And that night, when he was out there on his own, that’s when he came up with the idea. To form a search party, is what he told me when he came to me the next day. And what he said was he needed my help, because there was no way the others would agree if he asked them, not when they probably all thought he was guilty, too. He even suggested what I should say to them: that the police were looking in the wrong place, and that we knew the woods better than anyone—all the lines Cora had noticed him using himself.
But it was a trick. A lie to get me to do his dirty work. He just wanted us all together, away from help and off our guard. Somewhere he could watch us, test us, trap us.
“You need to hear this, Luke,” said Mason, still brandishing the bottle, and blood dripping from his hand. “You need to listen to what they’ve got to say for themselves.”
“Mason, Jesus,” said Luke. “Put that down, will you? You’re . . . you’re bleeding. And you’re going to get someone hurt!”
Cora was looking from me to Mason, and back again. “You tricked us?” she said to me. “You and Mason were planning this from the start?”
“No! I wasn’t planning anything, I swear it! Mason came to me asking for my help. What exactly was I supposed to do?”
“But . . . the search party,” said Abi. “Does that mean we were never really looking? That the search party was never really real? What about Sadie? About her being hurt, lying out here in the woods somewhere . . .”
Even in the dark, Mason’s expression was plain enough. Disgust, ridicule, revulsion: you name it, it was written on his face.
“Sadie’s dead,” he said. “It’s obvious she’s dead. It’s been obvious since the day she went missing!”
“But . . . how can you be so sure?” I asked him, whining like a little kid.
“Because I know what the police do,” said Mason. “Remember? They threw it all in my face. They even sat there and watched me cry.” He adjusted his hand around the broken bottle, and I realized how badly he was bleeding. How much it must have hurt.
And not just the cut.
“Plus,” he went on, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “if she were still alive she would have let me know. One way or another.”
Which, even given everything I was hearing, made me feel kind of sad. That he thought that. That he probably even believed it. He really loved her, you see. Far more than she could ever have loved him.
“So was it you?” said Abi. “All the stuff that’s been happening. The phones, the water, the noises we’ve been hearing in the woods . . .”
“Don’t give me that,” said Mason, rounding on her. “Don’t try and play all innocent. Why the fuck would I have messed with the water? The phones, maybe, if it had occurred to me, and if there’d been any reception out here in the first place. But I wanted you out here, remember? Why would I give you an excuse to go back? Which, by the way, is all any of you have been looking for since this started. So why don’t you tell me, Abi? Why were you so desperate to go home? What was it you were worried we would find?”
“Nothing! I wasn’t worried about anything! It was me who found Sadie’s phone, remember?”
“Too right I remember,” said Mason. “I remember you falling over yourself to pick it up. Because it was sitting there as plain as day, and you knew that if you didn’t, either me or Luke would have. And then you wouldn’t have had a chance to delete whatever you needed to in order to remove any link to Sadie. But you forgot about the photo on the lock screen, didn’t you? The passcode, too. Unless you simply ran out of time. Or maybe you freaked out when you noticed the blood.”
“No! That’s not what happened! Tell him, Fash! You saw me! I didn’t delete anything.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was still busy trying to come to terms with what was happening. With what Mason was doing.
“What happened, Abi?” Mason pressed. “Did you not know Sadie had the phone on her when you killed her? Did it slip out of her pocket when you were getting rid of her body? Or maybe . . . maybe it was never Sadie’s in the first place. Maybe you planted it deliberately—to fool the cops, to pull the search in the wrong direction. You bought the cheapest phone you could get, uploaded that photo, changed the code so it was the same as Sadie’s, and then—the finishing touch—applied just a dab of Sadie’s blood. Except it backfired. Just when everyone was about ready to give up, you accidentally gave us a reason to keep looking.”
“Mason, listen to me,” said Luke. “This is crazy! None of what you’re saying makes sense. Why would Abi want to hurt Sadie? Why would any of us?”
Mason ignored him. “Because you know that’s what the police think about Sadie’s bag, don’t you?” He was looking at Abi, but it was obvious he was talking to
us all. “That it was put by the river deliberately, to make it look like Sadie had fallen in. They think the killer put it there. They think I did!”
Abi went white. I guess we all did.
“You’ve always been jealous of Sadie,” Mason said to Abi. “Of how popular she was, of how pretty.” He spat the word, and it was as though he were spitting at Abi. “Is that why you started all those rumors about her online? All those lies?”
Abi started shaking her head, faster and faster.
“Except it didn’t work, did it?” Mason went on. “It didn’t make you any less of a leper, and it didn’t make your dad suddenly love you as much as Sadie’s dad loved her. So what happened after that, Abi? Did Sadie find out? Did you argue? Did you kill her just to shut her up?”
Abi’s head was still moving from side to side. Her eyes were screwed up tight, but not enough to stop her tears.
“Stop!” she said. “Just stop! I didn’t. I never. Cora, please . . .” She turned to her right, begging Cora for help.
“Make up your mind, Mason,” Cora said. “Was it me who killed Sadie? Or was it Abi? Or maybe it was actually Fash, which is what you seemed to be implying before. The truth is you haven’t got a clue, have you? You’re plucking theories out of thin air, seizing on anything that will deflect attention away from you.”
“You’re right,” Mason said to her, with a smile that was anything but. “Maybe it was you. Because Abi wasn’t the only one who was jealous of Sadie, was she?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I wouldn’t have wished this, you know,” Mason said, in a voice I guessed was supposed to be Cora’s. “Maybe you didn’t know Sadie as well as you think you did.” He sneered at her, and shook his head. “You think I don’t know how much you hated me and her being together? You think it wasn’t fucking obvious?”
Cora cracked something like a smile herself. And even though I hate to say it, and maybe it was just because of the light, but I’d never seen her looking so ugly. “You arrogant shit,” she said. “You actually think I’d kill someone over you?”
“And Fash,” said Mason, ignoring Cora and turning to me. “You’re just as bad. We all saw exactly how much you fancied Sadie. So tell us, what happened? Did you come on to her and she rejected you? And you just lost it? It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t that what they say? Poor repressed little Fash, always the victim, always so under his mother’s thumb. Was it getting to you? Had you had as many knockbacks as you could take?”
My mouth fell open, but Luke stepped forward before I could speak.
“Listen to yourself, Mason. You’re talking shit! Saying one thing and then the other, just like Cora said.” He made a move as though to seize the bottle, but Mason took a step back.
“That’s because I don’t know what happened!” he said, with something between anger and desperation. “I don’t know who I can trust! For all I know, you killed Sadie.”
Even in the dark, I saw Luke’s face go purple. For a second, he looked as though he was going to hurl himself forward, broken bottle or not. “Sadie’s my sister,” he said. Not loudly. But in as frightening a voice as I’ve ever heard. “I’d sooner kill myself than hurt her.”
The bottle wavered in Mason’s hand, and for the first time I saw him show a flicker of doubt. But then he looked at me, Cora and Abi in turn, and his whole body seemed to tighten.
“Do you want to hear something, Luke?” he said. “Do you want to know why the police were so convinced it was me? Because they think Sadie was killed by someone she knew. Someone she trusted, who could have lured her out of the house. Which, yeah, puts me in the frame, but also applies to every single one of them.” This time he swung the bottle in an arc. Without any of us realizing, I think, me, Cora and Abi had clustered together. “And there was something else . . . something they found in Sadie’s bedroom. Something anybody here could have planted.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but even so, I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.
“They found a test. Hidden away in her stuff. A pregnancy test.”
All at once inside the cave there was a silence, so heavy that for a moment it drowned out the rain.
“Sadie was pregnant?” said Cora, in shock, or horror, or both.
“I didn’t say that,” Mason hissed at her. “I said they found a test. Half a one. A two-pack, with one of the thingamajigs missing. To make it look like Sadie was pregnant. Which gave the police the one part of the case against me they were missing. It gave them motive. They think I wanted Sadie to get rid of it, or to keep it, or whatever she didn’t want to do.”
Even Luke shrank backward as he tried to process what he was hearing. Me, I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to.
“But the thing is, me and Sadie were careful,” said Mason. “Always. There’s no way she would have had a pregnancy test. She wouldn’t ever have needed one. So what I want to know,” he went on, holding up the bottle again, “is the answer to the question I asked at the beginning. Which one of you did it? And which one of you tried to trick the police into thinking it was me?”
I looked at Luke, hoping that if anyone could get through to Mason, he could. But Luke seemed almost to have shut down. His mouth was hanging open, and his eyes were focused on the floor. Abi was no help either. She was staring at Mason, shaking her head uselessly.
“Mason, listen to me,” said Cora. “Nobody tried to frame you. I swear it. We’re your friends. We’re Sadie’s friends. We would never have tried to hurt either one of you!”
“So where were you, Cora?” said Mason. “If you’re my friends, how come I didn’t hear from any one of you after Sadie went missing? Even you, Fash. I had to come to you to ask for help, remember?”
To trick me, he meant. To use me.
But on the other hand, I guess he had a point. I mean, I could only imagine how he must have felt. How it might have seemed like we’d turned our backs on him. But it wasn’t that. Not for me, anyway. The truth is, there was another reason I was staying away. The same reason that, when Mason came to me, I agreed to do what he asked.
“Maybe I didn’t come to see you,” said Cora, “but I tried to help you. I did. I just, it didn’t . . .” She was looking at Luke as she spoke, but before she could explain any further, there was movement in the shadows outside. Even Mason noticed from the corner of his eye.
“What the fuck was that?” he said.
I looked at the others, to see if they’d seen it, too. Luke was frowning out into the darkness. Cora and Abi glanced at each other, as though . . . as though they were sharing something. You know? A thought, a realization . . . something.
And then there was a noise, like someone running through the undergrowth, and Abi shrank back against the wall of the cave.
“Oh shit,” she was saying. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit . . .”
Luke darted forward, but stopped when Mason swung the bottle.
“Cut me if you want,” said Luke, with the jagged glass centimeters from his face. “Go on. Do it. It’s the only way you’re going to stop me getting past you.”
And I guess he must have seen something in Mason’s eyes. Capitulation, hesitation, whatever you want to call it. And then Luke was moving again, out of the cave, across the stream and scrabbling up the bank.
“Luke!” yelled Cora. “Wait!” She sounded afraid—even more afraid than she was of Mason, I guess, because she was suddenly running for the woods, too. And by this point I don’t think Mason knew what to do. In fact, in spite of the broken bottle, he looked about as terrified as any of us.
All of a sudden Abi started running as well. Whether to go after the others, or to get away from whoever was out there, I don’t know. And then it was just me and Mason left in the cave.
“Mase?” I said. “We need to go after them, Mase.” I edged forward,
close enough that I could hear the raggedness of his breathing. “I swear to you, the stuff you were saying . . . it’s not true. None of it. But whoever’s out there . . . maybe they know what happened to Sadie.”
The bottle twitched in Mason’s hand. He looked at me, out into the darkness, then back into the recesses of the cave.
“Fuck!” he suddenly roared. And when he turned to face me, there was so much fury in his eyes, so much frustration, I could have sworn he was about to lodge that bottle in my throat.
And then he was gone, out of the cave and into the rain. Before I knew it he’d been swallowed by the darkness.
I only hesitated for a moment, and then I was running for the woods, too. And I don’t know about the others, but the only thing on my mind was to help my friends. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, I swear it. All I can think now is that we’d have been better off remaining exactly where we were. In spite of Mason. In spite of the bottle.
We should have stayed and taken our chances in that cave.
FLEET WAS WALKING the estuary when he discovered the inscription. He hadn’t been looking for it. He’d had no idea it was there. He’d only come down here in the first place in an attempt to clear his head.
The promenade ran beside the water’s edge, funneling the river into the sea. At some point in the past two decades, the council had scraped together enough money to lay some paving, paint the railings, install a few Narnia-style streetlamps—to put just enough gloss on the area, in other words, that any visitors might at first glance consider it a pleasant place to take a stroll. The local tourist board had even planted several pairs of coin-operated binoculars, perhaps in a halfhearted attempt to recoup the town’s investment. But just as the railings had started flaking, and every third streetlamp was out, the slots on the binoculars had all been blocked up with chewing gum. Now passersby were denied the dubious pleasure of watching in close-up the tatty fishing boats setting out on the steel-gray water, or the golfers on the course across the river swatting their balls wildly into the wind.