by Luca Veste
He looked up as if he was seeing the room for the first time, then got to his feet quickly. He banged into the coffee table, leaving the room in a rush. I followed him, as he went into the kitchen-diner and began moving things around the room.
‘Did you throw it out?’ I asked, hearing the desperation in my voice. ‘When you got back or something?’
‘No,’ Chris replied, now ransacking the room, pulling things from cupboards and then running out. I could hear feet pounding on the stairs, so had a look around myself. I didn’t find anything.
He returned quickly and jogged through the kitchen, tearing open the back door and going outside. I could see him through the window, opening up each wheelie bin and checking through its contents.
I closed my eyes and felt the sense of sadness wash over me.
‘Maybe she took it with her,’ Chris said, coming back into the kitchen and looking at me with pleading eyes. He took one look at me and began to shake.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I replied, but even I could hear the doubt in my voice. I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘She probably wanted to make sure she had it, for evidence or whatever.’
He looked at me again, then moved to the side and gripped hold of the kitchen counter. ‘No, she wouldn’t have done that. She didn’t even want to look at it. I’ve got to find her.’
I was almost pushed off my feet as he moved past me, not even grabbing a jacket as he picked up his keys and pulled the front door open. I chased after him, finding him getting into his car.
‘Wait,’ I shouted, wondering just how much his neighbours would be listening in now. If they didn’t already have a glass to the wall when he’d first screamed at me in the living room, then smashed up his dining room looking for the candle, they would be getting a front-row seat now. ‘Chris, let me come with you.’
He wasn’t listening to me anymore, slamming the car door shut and turning the engine on. The car was moving up the road before I’d even had chance to shut his front door behind me and get to my own vehicle.
By the time I was driving, he was long gone.
*
I slept that night.
I’m not sure what it was that made my body shut down without a problem, but maybe it had just had enough. Chris’s phone would ring and ring as I tried to contact him. Alexandra was doing the same for Nicola’s. We spoke a little after midnight, but she ended the call when she realised I was beginning to make little sense. Told me to go to bed and try again in the morning.
To lock up my doors and make sure I was safe. I told her the same.
I remembered turning on classical music on my phone – a ten-hour collection I found on YouTube – and not hearing more than a few minutes before the world turned black.
A dreamless sleep.
I was so out of it, so deeply asleep, that when the banging started, it seemed to only exist in a void of darkness. A black space, with just a rhythmic sound. A song started playing. One I recognised. It stopped after a few seconds, letting the silence grow again, before starting up again.
Silence.
Banging.
I woke up confused and bewildered. I could hear knocks and banging, so I pulled myself out of bed in a daze. Still half-asleep.
A crash against wood made me jump and I was suddenly alert again.
I pulled on lounge pants draped over the end of the bed and grabbed the baseball bat that had been lying under the duvet as I slept. Crept downstairs and realised the knocking was coming from the front door.
There was someone there.
It was still pitch-black outside. I rubbed my eyes and moved slowly to the door.
‘Who’s there?’ I said, but it only came out as a whisper, fear cutting off my voicebox. I coughed and cleared my throat before repeating myself. ‘Who’s there?’
A muffled voice that was instantly familiar to me answered. I didn’t hear what was said, but it made me cross the final few feet between me and the door in one long stride. I unlocked the door and swung it open.
The first thing I saw was Alexandra. She was red-faced and shaking in the cold.
The second thing I saw was what she was holding in her hands.
A red candle.
In a storm lantern.
Still lit. Still burning.
Thirty-Nine
I managed to get Alexandra inside before she poured out what had happened on my doorstep. I checked there was no one following her, then locked up behind her and moved her into the living room. Sat her down on the sofa as her shaking continued, and tried to take the candle from her hands.
‘No, don’t touch it,’ Alexandra said, gripping it tighter and holding it to her body.
I broke away and took a step back. ‘You’re freezing. You need to warm up.’
I did the good British thing and flicked the kettle on. Raced upstairs, chucked a T-shirt on and grabbed my phone.
A few minutes later, Alexandra had finally let go of the candle and its metallic housing. She was sitting huddled over it, both of her hands wrapped around a cup of tea.
‘He couldn’t get into my house,’ she said, her voice so quiet I almost couldn’t hear it.
I was kneeling on the floor near her, so I moved closer and placed a hand on her knee for comfort.
‘I heard him trying to break in, I think,’ Alexandra continued, her shaking hands lifting the cup to her lips and seemingly risking a sip of the drink. She blew on it at the last moment instead. ‘At least, I think I did. I barricaded the doors before I went to bed and all my windows are well secured. You can’t even get into the place with a key, once I’m inside. He settled for ringing the doorbell for a few minutes instead to get my attention.’
‘Did you see him?’
She shook her head in response. In the dim light from the lamp I’d switched on, she looked so different from a few hours earlier. Her eyes were flat and listless. Skin pale and taut with tension. I had to stop myself from embracing her and never letting go.
This was my fault.
‘I didn’t even open the door until half an hour had gone by. I didn’t want to go out, but I had to be sure, you know? After all, I was the last one pretending this wasn’t going on, wasn’t I? Aren’t you going to tell me I told you so?’
‘I think that’s below even me right now,’ I said, grimacing and smiling in equal measure. I rubbed my thumb against her kneecap and looked her in the eyes. ‘What happened after that?’
‘I checked about four thousand times, but I think he was gone by the time I opened the door. It was still on the chain, but I could already see it anyway. Feel it, almost.’
‘Did you see anyone?’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t stay in the house anymore. I got dressed, picked it up and did the twenty-metre dash in about half a second to my car. Came here. I didn’t know where else to go.’
‘You did the right thing,’ I said, but didn’t believe it. It seemed everything was falling apart and I included myself in that. There was a part of me that wasn’t even really sure that this was real or if it was some lucid nightmare.
My whole life felt like that though.
‘What do you think we should do?’ Alexandra said, her hands no longer shaking, her eyes becoming steelier by the second. ‘We have to work this out.’
‘I think any way we dress this up, we’re still in the same boat.’
‘One without a paddle, a million pin-sized holes, and on a river of shit?’
‘That’s the one,’ I replied, smiling without humour. ‘What we’re dealing with here . . . I don’t think there’s an easy way out of it.’
‘What do we know?’
We sat there for twenty minutes, as misty light began to enter the room from outside, going over everything we knew. The facts as we understood them, what they meant and how they fit into the whole picture. It wasn’t long before we came to the same inevitable conclusion.
It had to be the son.
It had to be revenge.
‘Oka
y, but that doesn’t help us figure out what we do next,’ Alexandra said, a hand going to her forehead and massaging it in thought. ‘Do you think the police would believe any of this? We have no more evidence than the rest of the online community and they’ve managed to ignore them successfully enough.’
‘We have a body.’
She looked at me for a second, then shook her head.
‘All that would show them was that there was a dead guy. It’s not like they would be able to figure out anything from that. If there were bodies out there of his victims, then maybe we have a shot in the long-term. For now though, we’d still have the same problem. I mean, unless you want to be arrested and denied bail?’
‘Would that a bad thing considering the alternative?’
‘Yes, prison would be a bad thing,’ Alexandra said, rolling her eyes at me and leaning forward to put her empty cup on the coffee table. ‘You wouldn’t last five seconds in there. Too clean-cut.’
‘Oh, and you would?’
‘I’d do a damn sight better than you.’
I let out a short bark of laughter and Alexandra sniggered next to me. I sighed and leant back into the sofa and turned my body to face her properly. ‘This is all my fault.’
‘No, it isn’t . . . ’
‘I killed him,’ I said, saying it out loud for the first time. In an instant, I could feel the rock in my hand as I brought it down on his head. ‘If I had controlled myself better, Stuart and Michelle would still be here. I dealt the final blow, as they say.’
Alexandra sat forward on the sofa suddenly, perching on the edge and staring at me intently. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘What happened,’ I replied, letting my head fall into my chest, unable to keep her gaze any longer. ‘We were all fighting with him, but he would have survived if I hadn’t finished the job. Things would have worked out a lot better if I had been able to control myself.’
‘That’s not what happened.’
I looked up at her, my forehead creasing in confusion. ‘I think I remember what I did.’
‘Obviously not,’ Alexandra said, shaking her head and moving closer to me. She laid a hand on my knee. ‘You weren’t the one who did that. I watched the whole thing. He was already gone by that point.’
‘Alexandra, it’s not the time to try and make me feel better . . . ’
‘I’m not,’ she said, becoming more vehement by the second. ‘He wasn’t moving at all when that happened. It was one of the others who ended it. Not you.’
I was back in those woods, seeing his eyes as I crashed a rock onto his head. The pleading look he gave me.
Then the memory became distorted, blurred. I placed my hands over my face as the night came back into focus. It was like I was there again. The sounds and smells. The fear and panic.
The silence.
I didn’t realise I was rocking back and forth until I felt Alexandra’s hands on my shoulders. I leaned into her, shaking my head as the memories faded and became fractured.
I wasn’t sure what was real or not anymore.
‘Matt, what’s going on?’
I pulled away from her, standing up and putting some distance between us. ‘I’ve spent the past year believing what happened that night was my fault. That’s what I remember.’
‘But it’s not true . . . ’
‘Maybe you’re not remembering it right,’ I said, feeling myself calm down now. That’s all it was. She was mistaken. It was dark that night – everything was chaos and she wasn’t sure of everything that happened. ‘There was a lot going on.’
She shook her head sadly and glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘I remember it perfectly. I’m not trying to minimise any of our roles that night and yes, if he was still alive we’d all be in a much better position now. That doesn’t mean you’re to blame for it though. It’s not your fault Stuart is gone. Or Michelle, if she is. Or Chris and Nicola or me.’
‘Why did you leave me then?’
It was a question I had never asked her – not even when she walked out the door. I had sat back and let it happen, the fight gone from me. We had spent weeks arguing about everything except what had happened that night, but knowing that was what was central to it all.
When it had come down to it, we just couldn’t live with that knowledge between us.
‘You think I left because I thought you were a murderer?’
I looked at her and shrugged my shoulders. ‘That’s what I’ve thought, yes.’
She blew out a breath and motioned to the seat next to her. I waited a second and then sat down next to her. We were a foot apart, but it felt like more.
‘I left because we were going to end up destroying each other if I stayed. It became a toxic atmosphere. I left because I was making it worse for you and you were making it worse for me. We were never going to make it through if we couldn’t deal with it alone. We were only making it harder on each other by being in the same environment. We couldn’t work it out in the same way as Chris and Nicola.’
‘We could have made it.’
‘Maybe,’ Alexandra said, resignation in her voice. Maybe regret. ‘We’ll never know.’
I could see where the conversation could lead. A path I could take, which could change our lives again. Put us back to where we were supposed to be.
It was there in front of me.
I couldn’t take it.
Instead, I told Alexandra about meeting Mark Welsh’s dad. Who he was, how he was, how he told me about looking for a son he never knew. Waiting for a closure that would never come. When I was done, I closed my eyes and spoke softly. ‘Stuart. Why does he meet that man?’
‘Because he’s feeling guilty and can’t let it go.’
‘What if there’s more to this than we first thought? What if it’s not because of what happened, but because of what he was.’
‘I don’t know what you’re saying . . . ’
‘Neither do I,’ I said, running both hands over my head and then interlocking them behind my neck. ‘I just, I don’t get it. I can’t accept that the Stuart we knew would do that. It doesn’t make any sense. What if it’s because he wouldn’t do that?’
I told her about my theory. That Stuart had possibly faked his own death, how easy it would be to tattoo a body, knowing that it would be used to identify someone quickly. If that body held Stuart’s ID, but he had been left unrecognisable, how easy it could be for this to work. As I spoke, I heard myself believing it less and less.
‘You really haven’t been sleeping well, have you?’ Alexandra said when I was finished. She looked at me with kind, disbelieving eyes. ‘You know how crazy that sounds?’
I opened my mouth, but having voiced my thoughts, I no longer trusted what I’d been thinking in the last few hours before I’d returned home.
‘I mean, let’s get this straight,’ Alexandra continued, speaking softly but with no less a straight tone of voice. ‘You’re suggesting Stuart may have what, faked his death because he is the person behind these candles being left?’
‘Well, it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.’
‘That’s because it is.’
‘It would explain why Michelle hasn’t been found,’ I tried, but I knew I’d lost the argument without a shot being fired. Mainly because I heard it out loud and knew it was stupid. There was something there though.
Another memory.
Stuart in an explosion of violence. A lad lying on the ground. Blood and shouting. Footsteps running away. New Year’s Eve, 1999. A police investigation that didn’t get very far. No one telling the truth. A lad who sustained heavy injuries, but thankfully nothing lasting.
How close it might have been to death.
I didn’t know if I could trust my memories anymore.
‘We’ve already agreed we know who is coming after us. We need to concentrate on that. I know you want Stuart to be okay, but we know he isn’t.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, dismissing my thoughts, my
recollections, my gut feelings. I looked for my phone and tried to call Chris again. When I got no joy, I tried Nicola and Michelle, watching as Alexandra was doing the same. I messaged Chris, making it easily double figures since I’d watched him drive away.
Call me. I can help. You don’t need to be on your own.
I let my mind drift, gazing over at the clock on the wall. An ugly red thing that Alexandra had picked out and I had never liked. I kept it after she left.
Almost six a.m.
I was still looking at it as I dozed off with her head on my shoulder.
Forty
I woke up with a start, having been asleep for a couple of hours. I had been dreaming but it faded in the early morning light.
It wasn’t the nightmare. I wondered if Alexandra being there had been the reason it hadn’t come, but I wasn’t sure. Perhaps my mind had just decided to give me a little respite.
I found my mobile and gave Chris a quick call. It was early, but I still expected him to answer. It went straight to voicemail, so I sent him a message instead.
The next course of action was in my mind instantly. What I needed to do next. I was annoyed with myself for not thinking of it sooner, but it had been a series of moments like those over the past week, as if I was always a step behind reality.
I left Alexandra sleeping on the sofa and walked quietly into my office. It didn’t take long to find the information I needed.
Jim Treador. The farmer who had bought William Moore’s place after he went missing. His son had sold it, which struck me as the final confirmation that he had known all along that his father was dead. Why sell it if he was just missing?
I heard movement from the living room and waited for Alexandra to appear. I turned in my chair and saw her in the doorway.
‘I can’t believe we slept,’ she said, yawning and stretching. While we hadn’t lived in the house together long, I still remembered her doing the same a few times. Getting up for work and finding me already in my converted dining room; a look of glee on my face, I imagined.
‘You still make weird noises when you’re asleep. Like a hamster or guinea pig.’