by Kevin Brooks
‘Where are you going?’ she called back from the kitchen.
‘Just out,’ I told her. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘Hold on, Pete –’ she started to say.
But I was already closing the door.
I called round to Raymond’s again first, only this time I went to the front door. I kind of guessed that his mum and dad wouldn’t be very pleased to see me, so I wasn’t too surprised when Mrs Daggett opened the door and immediately started glaring at me. It wasn’t a very attractive sight. Her hair was all lank and greasy, her eyes were pale and slightly glazed, and she was carelessly dressed in a shabby old dressing gown.
‘What do you want now?’ she said, lighting a cigarette.
‘Is he back yet?’
She put her hand on her hip and stared at me. ‘Christ… how many more times d’you have to be told? We’ve already had your old man round here, poking his snout in –’
‘I just want to know if Raymond’s back, that’s all.’
‘No, he’s not back.’
‘Aren’t you worried?’
‘Not particularly.’ She took a drag on her cigarette. ‘What’s it got to do with you, anyway?’
‘Have you seen what someone’s done to his rabbit?’
She grinned. ‘He probably did that himself.’
I stared at her, shaking my head. ‘What if something’s happened to him? Have you thought about that? I mean, what if someone’s got Raymond –?’
‘No one’s got Raymond, for Christ’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘He’s probably just wandering around on his own somewhere, talking to the fucking sky or something…’ She took another puff on her cigarette, and as she hungrily sucked in the smoke and quickly breathed it out again, I got the feeling that maybe she wasn’t as unconcerned as she wanted me to think.
I watched her as she leaned out of the doorway and flicked some ash from her cigarette. The sunlight dulled her eyes. She blinked, sniffed. Leaned back in again.
She looked at me, jerking her chin. ‘What?’
‘Nothing…’
She shook her head. ‘Why would anyone want to do anything to Raymond anyway?’
‘I don’t know… why would anyone want to cut off a rabbit’s head? It doesn’t matter why, does it?’
She sniffed again. ‘Yeah, well… Raymond’s not stupid. He can look after himself…’ She looked at me, her eyes frighteningly intense. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘He’ll be all right.’
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say after that. We both just stood there for a second or two, waiting out the silence, then Mrs Daggett slowly moved back into the dimness of the hallway, her paleness fading into the gloom, and without another word she quietly closed the front door.
I went down to the river then. It had always been one of Raymond’s favourite places, and I knew he still spent a lot of time down there – just walking around, or sitting on the bank – and if, for whatever reason, he was simply hiding away somewhere, he couldn’t have picked a much better place. There were all kinds of sanctuaries down there – bits of woodland, old bridges, hidden pathways and tracks…
It was a good place to go to hide away from the world.
There was still a faint stink of burning rubber in the air, and as I turned the corner at the end of the path and headed down towards the river, I could see the wreck of the burned-out car smouldering away on a patch of wasteground over to my right. It looked like a Ford Focus, but it was hard to tell. There wasn’t much left of it. The tyres had burned off, the windows were smashed, and the chassis was just a scorched grey shell.
I didn’t pay much attention to it.
It was just another burned-out car.
Across from the wasteground, parked between the riverside path and a steep wooded bank, was a small white caravan. I guessed it belonged to the dreadlocked guy I’d seen climbing over the gate on Saturday night. I’ve seen him a couple of times by the river, I remembered Raymond telling me. He’s got a caravan down there.
And I wondered…
How well do you know him, Raymond?
Well enough to pay him a visit?
Well enough to trust him?
It wasn’t a particularly clean caravan, but it wasn’t disgusting or anything. It was just a bit grubby – mud-spattered, rained-on, dirty-white. The towing hitch at the front was propped up on bricks, and there was a cylinder of propane gas standing in the muddy ground beside the door.
I slowed down as I walked past the caravan, trying to see inside, but the windows were blanked out with sheets of cardboard taped inside. I wondered why… why block out your windows? And I wondered why I was so scared of knocking on the door.
Just do it, I told myself. What’s the matter with you? Just knock on the door, for Christ’s sake.
I knocked on the caravan door.
Nothing happened.
I knocked again. ‘Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?’
No one answered me.
I tried the door handle, but it was locked.
‘Raymond?’ I called out, knocking again. ‘Raymond… are you in there?’
Nothing.
I gazed up at the bank behind the caravan. It was higher than the bank in Back Lane, but not so thickly wooded. Industrial rubbish from a warehouse at the top of the bank was scattered among the trees – rusted bits of old machinery, polystyrene blocks, broken pallets, tangles of plastic packing material…
We’d built a den up there once, I remembered, a ramshackle old thing made from sheets of corrugated iron, and as I scanned the top of the hill, looking for any signs that it was still there, I wondered briefly why we’d always seemed to build our dens at the tops of steep wooded banks. I suppose we’d thought they were safe up there. Safe and secret, out of the way. The kind of place where no one can see you, but you can see them…
The kind of place that Raymond liked.
I couldn’t see the old den anywhere. No ruined remains, no rusted sheets of corrugated iron. I cupped my hands to my mouth and called out up the bank. ‘RAYMOND! RAAYMOND!’
There was no answer.
I called out again, louder this time, but there was still no reply. I thought about climbing up the bank to take a closer look, but there didn’t seem much point. There were too many places to hide up there, too many nooks and crannies… it’d take me all day to check them all.
So, with a final useless glance at the caravan, I headed off along the path.
The path that runs alongside the river is actually made up of lots of different paths, but they all head in the same general direction – along the river, through some little woods, under a tunnel, over a bridge, then round the back of some allotments and out on to a road called Magdalen Hill. If you go down Magdalen Hill, it’s a short cut to the town centre, but if you turn left and head up the hill, it leads you over a crossroads into Recreation Road.
And that’s the way I went after I’d wandered around the river for an hour or so. I’d gone through the woods, calling out Raymond’s name again. I’d checked all the hiding places I knew about around the tunnel and the bridge. I’d even searched along the riverbank wherever it was possible. But I hadn’t come across any sign of Raymond.
So now I was going back to the fairground.
I didn’t know if it’d do any good or not, and I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there, but it seemed like a reasonable thing to do – follow your tracks, go back to the beginning, see if there’s anything there.
∗
Everything was still pretty quiet along Recreation Road, but the sun was out now, and it wasn’t raining any more, so the streets weren’t quite so empty and miserable as they had been before. There were a few people around – an old man washing his car, a couple of young kids kicking a ball around, a hungover-looking guy shuffling down to the shops – but none of them said anything to me.
Although I didn’t stop when I passed Eric and N
ic’s house, I could see that there were a few windows open now, and the house didn’t feel empty any more. I wondered again why Eric had lied to me about getting home at three o’clock, and I tried to think if there was any way at all that it could be true. I would have been asleep at the time, so if he’d been really out of his head – so whacked out that he could hardly see – maybe he’d simply stumbled into the house without even noticing me? Or maybe he’d got the time completely wrong? Maybe it wasn’t three o’clock… maybe it was a lot earlier, or a lot later…?
Maybe…?
There were lots of other maybes, none of which I really believed, but I kept on thinking about them anyway, and by the time I’d reached the end of the road I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that even when I saw a familiar-looking figure shambling round the corner ahead of me, it still took me a moment or two to realize who it was. She was walking slowly – her head bowed down, her hands stuffed wearily into her pockets – and she didn’t look too happy. Her hair was uncombed, her make-up smeared… she looked as if she’d been crying. Her eyes were fixed miserably to the ground, so she didn’t see me coming until we’d almost bumped into each other.
‘Nicole?’ I said.
She looked up suddenly, slightly shocked, and stopped in front of me.
‘Hey, Pete…’ she said, blinking her eyes and running her hand through her hair. ‘What are you doing here?’
She seemed pretty dazed and blurry. A bit embarrassed too.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked her.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, forcing herself to smile. ‘I’m OK…’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah… why?’
‘You look like shit.’
‘Thanks a lot.’ She blinked her eyes again. ‘You don’t look so great yourself.’
‘Yeah, well… it was a long night.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I lost Raymond.’
‘You what?’
‘He went off on his own last night, at the fair… I spent ages looking for him, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. And he never went home either.’
‘Shit,’ said Nic. ‘Do you think he’s all right?’
I looked at her, suddenly realizing that she was the first person I’d spoken to who’d expressed any genuine concern for Raymond. I wasn’t really surprised, because although Nic hadn’t been too keen on him coming to the fair in the first place, I knew she’d always had a soft spot for him. There’d been other times in the past when she hadn’t always wanted him to be there, times when she just wanted to be with me, but even then she’d always been OK with him. She liked him. Not just for what he meant to me, or what I meant to him – although I’m sure that was part of it – but basically I think she just liked him for what he was. She cared for him.
And then I recalled the fortune-teller’s words: You have great kindness, she’d told Raymond. You care for others without thinking of yourself.
‘Did you see him at all last night?’ I asked Nic.
She ran her hand through her hair again and sighed. ‘Christ, Pete… I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember anything about last night.’ She blew out her cheeks and shook her head. ‘I don’t know… it’s really strange. I mean, I can sort of remember some of it, you know, like blurred flashes of things, but most of it’s just a blank.’
‘What about Raymond? Do you remember seeing him?’
‘Well, yeah… when he was in the den…’ She glanced awkwardly at me for a moment. ‘But after that… I’m not sure. I think I saw him somewhere at the fair… but I can’t remember when or where.’
‘Was he on his own?’
She closed her eyes and put her hand to her head, trying to remember. ‘I don’t know… I think I might have seen him twice. Or maybe that was someone else…’ She sighed heavily and opened her eyes again. ‘I’m sorry, Pete… I really can’t remember.’
‘That’s OK,’ I told her. ‘If you do remember anything, though –’
‘Yeah, I’ll give you a ring.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll be out for a while, so call me on my mobile. Have you got my number?’
‘I’ve got your old one somewhere, but I don’t suppose that’s any good.’
She was right – the number she had was at least three or four mobiles out of date.
‘Have you got a pen?’ I asked her.
She pulled a tube of lipstick out of her pocket, passed it over, and offered me her arm. I paused for a moment, watching as a police car moved slowly past us, then I took hold of her hand, twisted the lipstick, and started writing my mobile number on her arm.
‘Listen, Pete,’ she said quietly, ‘about last night…’
A drop of sweat dripped from my head on to her arm.
‘I know this is a stupid question,’ she went on, ‘but we didn’t actually do anything, did we?’
‘No,’ I said, pretending to concentrate on the lipstick in my hand. ‘No, we didn’t do anything. Don’t you remember what happened?’
‘Well, kind of… I mean, I remember some of it, and I know we started doing something, you know…’ She put her hand to her head. ‘God, I just remember feeling so weird… like my body was exploding. It was like I was totally out of control or something.’
I let go of her hand and gave her back the lipstick.
Nic looked at me. ‘I’m sorry, Pete… I mean, if I messed things up…’
‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘No one messed anything up. It was just a really weird night…’
She nodded sadly. ‘Yeah…’
I gazed back at her for a moment, wondering what to say, and then we both looked up as a helicopter passed low over our heads. The chopping sound of the blades filled the sky for a moment, and I shielded my eyes against the sun and watched the dark shape of the helicopter as it banked to the left and started circling over the recreation ground.
‘What’s going on?’ Nic asked me. ‘Is that a police helicopter?’
‘Yeah…’
‘Do you think it’s something to do with Raymond?’
‘I don’t know… probably not.’ I looked at her. ‘Listen, I’d better go…’
‘Are you going back to the fairground?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No… it’s all right, thanks. I’m just going to have a quick look round…’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah…’ I smiled at her. ‘You look as if you could do with getting home anyway.’
She looked at me. ‘OK… well, I’ll call you if I think of anything…’
‘Yeah, thanks.’
We stood there for a moment, neither of us quite sure how to end things, then Nic touched my arm, said ‘See you later,’ and started walking off. I watched her for a second or two, wondering briefly what kind of night she’d had with the waltzer guy, and whether or not she really couldn’t remember anything about what had happened in the den…
Then I shook it all from my head and got going.
In the summer light of a Sunday afternoon, the fairground seemed to have died. Without its lights, without all its music and its noise, it just seemed to lie there, jaded and dull. All its energy had gone. All its madness, its movement, its life… all that remained was a formless scattering of machinery, scaffolding, canvas and vehicles.
The funfair was moving on.
Some of the rides had already been dismantled and packed away, leaving large patches of dead yellow grass where they’d stood, while others were still in the process of being taken down. The sound of hard work drifted in the air as I wandered around – buzzing drills, thumping hammers, the dull clink of scaffolding coming down. The fairground people were too busy packing up to take much notice of me, and if any of them wondered what I was doing there, they didn’t seem to show it. I got a few glances, a few curious looks, but that was about it.
The whole place seemed a lot smaller than I remembered, and it didn’t take long to walk round and
take everything in. There wasn’t much left to see. The Portaloos were all gone, and most of the surrounding litter had been swept up and cleared away. The fortune-teller’s tent wasn’t there any more. There was no waltzer, no dodgems, no children’s rides. And in the place where the old-fashioned merry-go-round had been, or the place where I thought it had been, there was absolutely nothing. No patch of yellowed grass. No litterless imprint in the ground. No sign that it had ever been there at all.
I should have felt puzzled, I suppose. Or, at least, a little bit curious. But as I stood there by the fairground entrance, gazing over at the empty space where I thought I’d seen Raymond riding a horse-sized black rabbit, everything seemed so ordinary and drab that it was hard to feel anything at all. Even the sight of the police helicopter, standing alone in the middle of the recreation ground, and the patrol car parked down by the gates… even that didn’t seem to mean anything. The two uniformed police officers from the patrol car were just strolling round the fairground, occasionally stopping to talk to some of the fairground workers, but they didn’t seem to be in any great hurry. And the two figures inside the helicopter were just sitting there, not doing anything at all.
I looked over at the area where all the fairground vehicles and trailers were parked, and I wondered if I should try to find the fortune-teller. Rationally, I knew it was pointless, a complete waste of time. No matter how much she’d seemed to know about Raymond, I knew it was all just an illusion. Words, mind games, trickery… whatever you want to call it. It’s simply not possible to know about things that haven’t happened yet.
‘Excuse me.’
The voice came from behind me, and when I looked round I saw one of the uniformed police officers coming towards me.
‘Do you work here?’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Are you with the fair?’
‘No…’
He stopped in front of me, wiping sweat from his brow. ‘Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?’
‘I’m not doing anything,’ I said. ‘I was just… I don’t know. I was just looking around…’
‘Just looking around?’
‘Yeah…’
He looked at me. ‘What’s your name, son?’