by Jackson Lear
They stayed until the police rang, asking if Ian knew where Warrick was. A moment later, Warrick’s mum called in tears, saying that Warrick went out to see Ian and Daniel that morning and now the police were asking if anyone knew where he was. She demanded to know why the boys were in such trouble.
53
Josh
The media storm hit Luxford within hours. The first crisis came from the discovery of a dead woman in a tunnel. The second came when Warrick’s phone was found by the entrance of that tunnel and he hadn’t been seen since lunch time.
At eleven p.m. Josh returned home with eyes wired from coffee and bloodshot from stress. Hannah looked up from the news. “Did they find him?”
“No,” said Josh. “Anything from the TV?”
“Nothing useful, just a dead woman has been found and a boy’s gone missing. So what happened?”
Josh kicked off his shoes and went to the kitchen to boil the kettle. “They called every parent at St. Bart’s to see if Warrick was at their place. They’ve even checked the school to see if he’s hiding in some random classroom. He’s not there. It’s now too dark to do us much good but a lot of people are still out there and will be until dawn. Others are going to sit out on the street tonight and keep an eye on the roads in case he just happens to wander along. Do you want a tea, or something?”
“No, it’s too late for me.” Hannah stood to watch Josh move about in the kitchen. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“No,” said Josh, as he dropped a teabag and splash of milk into an empty mug. “There are really only two possibilities to what happened to him. From what I’ve heard, the scene in the tunnel is pretty horrific, so, best case scenario, Warrick found the girl and stumbled out of there in complete shock. Like, complete shock. He dropped his phone and wandered off and is now so lost that he can’t find his way back home. The other scenario is that the murderer found him, but if he did then I guess there would have been blood near the tunnel, which there wasn’t, and Warrick’s phone would have been picked up and thrown away. So, logic is telling me that Warrick is still alive. He’s just walking around, lost, somewhere.”
“I hope he’s okay,” said Hannah, as she turned back to the TV and pulled at her fingers. “I keep thinking back to when I was thirteen and of all the dumb things I used to get up to. Nothing as dumb as this, just breaking into my mum’s make-up box and using all of her expensive perfume to make myself a little more glamorous. I can’t imagine finding a dead body stuffed in a tunnel. I can’t even imagine going to look for one in the first place.”
“Yeah,” said Josh, automatically. “That is quite stupid.”
“I keep think about what his parents must be going through.”
“I expect they’re dying a thousand deaths,” said Josh. He certainly sat through enough school assemblies with Catherine’s parents giving a speech about safety. They always talked about what it was like on the first night, slowly realising that Catherine was missing and detailing the agony of not knowing what was happening to their daughter, just to drive the point of terror home into the kids. The Shievers kept going until someone burst into tears and ran to the bathroom. Once there was a kid who passed out and fell to the ground.
No doubt the Mickelham’s had it worse. The Shievers had a larger thread of hope, that there was no obvious danger for Catherine except that she couldn’t be found. But going to find a murdered body, finding it, then disappearing completely in broad daylight ... It didn’t take much imagination to picture Warrick being strangled and thrown into a ditch.
The kettle clicked.
Hannah stared back at the TV, her eyes wide and her mouth slack. “This is all happening right down the road.”
Josh glanced over and saw a reporter standing in front of the Luxford police department.
“It’s all people are going to be talking about,” said Hannah.
Josh watched the reporter give a recap of the main events. He had driven past the lights and cameras as he tried to gauge how long it would take before the news teams decided the dead girl’s murder was stale and move onto something else. He bet on two days. Unless, of course, Warrick was found dead. Then those two days would stretch to three.
“How’s Claire doing?” Hannah asked.
“I can’t really say ‘fine.’ It could have easily been Ian out there and not Warrick.”
“But he did go out there with his friend.”
“Yeah, Daniel. At least there were two of them.”
Hannah shook her head, chastising Warrick for going alone. “How’s Ian?”
“I imagine he’s terrified of the attention,” said Josh. “If Warrick isn’t found then I’m guessing the guilt will cripple him for years. He might even think that it’s his fault that Warrick went out there.”
“Is it his fault?”
“It’s a little too soon to be blaming thirteen year olds for acting like thirteen year olds. Either way, he’s going to have to suffer through this for a lifetime.”
“So he should, letting his friend walk off like that.”
Josh took a steady sip of tea. He didn’t expect Hannah to apologise for saying that was technically true, but he had known Ian since the day he was born. Everyone Ian knew would focus on this moment as the pinnacle of his childhood.
Still, something nagged him about Ian and Daniel’s reaction to the body. Neither of them went to the police straight away. They knew the police should be informed but it’s like they took a vow of secrecy for something they should have had no involvement in. The only explanation for keeping her death a secret was that they would have to admit being out of bounds. Unless maybe being out of bounds wasn’t the worst thing they got up to that day.
“Did you tell the police anything?” Hannah asked.
“Yeah. Anthony and I had to go over what we talked about with Ian and Daniel.”
“And what was that?”
Josh pointed to the TV. “Well, that’s the result.”
“You’re not going to give me any details?”
“Not tonight.”
“So what the hell am I supposed to tell my mum?”
Josh took another steady sip of tea and shrugged. “Tell her whatever you want.”
“She thinks we live in the murder capital of England.”
“I bet you fifty pounds she’s wrong,” said Josh.
Hannah rolled her head to glare at her boyfriend. “There’s no way I’m raising my kids in this town. Not if there’s a chain of murders going back for as long as you’ve lived here.”
Josh remained impossibly still as he considered the exact phrasing of Hannah’s words. “As far as I know, only one person has been murdered here.”
“What about Catherine?”
“Probably murdered.”
“Which is two.”
“But she was never found,” said Josh. “She could be living in Monaco right now for all we know, alive and well. Even so, two people being murdered in twenty years means that we live in one of the safest places in England.”
“Oh, bullshit. Whenever you and Anthony are together you talk about the shit you used to get up to, like pillow fights in the middle of the night in another suburb, or whatever you dumbasses got up to. It’s always one-upping each other and everyone else to see who is the dumbest or the most alpha.”
“That’s barely true,” Josh said.
“No? It’s been getting worse. You go to work and nothing seems to happen, you come home and we have dinner without saying much to each other, then you piss off to your secret room so that you can read through old diaries about the life you had twenty years ago like it was more interesting then than what’s happening now.” Hannah turned to glare at the TV …
… not realising that her boyfriend had picked that moment to let the argument spiral out of control.
Josh lowered the mug to the kitchen counter. “You know, you’ve been pretty snarky lately. What’s going on?”
Hannah reeled around. “I’m snarky?”
“Yeah. You.”
“What the fuck, Josh?”
“‘What the fuck’ indeed. I’ve just spent the last six hours talking to the police and actively looking for a kid who’s probably scared out of his mind. I come home and you start picking a fight about what you’re going to tell your mum. And you’re blaming a couple of thirteen year olds for not acting like adults. Do you know how that sounds?”
“Well, you know more about what’s going on than the news because Anthony’s dumbass nephew did actually find a dead body, so because of that I decided to ask you about what’s going on as you know more about it than they do. But, you know, whatever. It’s like you just came home and wanted a fight.”
“Then excuse me for being too tired to go into detail about what I was up to for the last six hours. It’s been a difficult day. Thankfully it can be summarised as: there’s a murderer in town. A hundred people went down by the train tracks to look for Warrick. We didn’t find him. Does that help to clarify anything?”
“Oh, fuck you, the next thing I know is you’ll be updating all of your Catherine maps and trying to find a pattern in who killed both of them. You’ll be in your secret room for eighteen hours a day looking for something in your diary that will tell you who this tunnel woman’s murderer is. This is probably a dream come true for you.”
Josh fell into a deep glare as silence took over. The tremor in his chest was building. There was an outside chance that Hannah could feel it as well. “What’s happening here?”
Hannah waved her hands in front of her as though she was trying to pluck the right combination of words out of thin air. “We don’t see each other anymore. You come home and cover the dining table in maps of the town from twenty years ago, you go off to your study to read old diaries. We see each other for half an hour a day and then say, ‘it’s been a weird week’, but it’s been a weird week for months. You spend more time on some dead girl than on us.”
“I’ve tried to keep you involved in that.”
“And it’s gone nowhere and you are actively looking for a murderer. Pretty soon a witch hunt will start. When was the last time we even left the house together and did something that was more exciting than going on a shopping run?”
Josh pried his mouth open.
“And the wedding doesn’t count.”
“It counts.”
“You considered it an obligation, remember? That you were my plus one. That was a chore for you. When was the last time we did something together?”
It was coming. The locks around their defences were breaking free and all he needed was for one … little … push. “I’ve invited you out lots of times.”
“Huh, yeah, like when?”
“The gym, for starters. You’ve had a standing invitation to come along. There’s a flyer on the fridge for you to use.”
“I want something fun that we do together, like hiking or mini-golf, or going in a fucking hot air balloon.”
There it was. Josh went for the kill. “Like what your sister did?”
“Exactly like that,” said Hannah. “She and Mark do something new all the time. They take cooking courses, they do pilates, they go hiking and camping.”
“I’m not much of a camping person.”
“And for her thirtieth birthday he took her on a hot air balloon ride at dawn. Flew right over Devon.”
“Yes, you and your sister have tried to one-up the other your whole lives.”
Hannah narrowed her eyes to pin point. “Fuck you.”
“But she’s a lot more insecure than you are.” Josh grimaced at himself. He had meant it the other way around, that Hannah was the shyer and more insecure of the pair, but his mind scrambled the words and now he had almost redeemed himself in the fight. It was time to recover. “You know, Mark doesn’t actually like those cooking courses, or the pilates, or the camping.”
“How would you know?”
“I asked him. Whenever we go to see them we’ll be standing over the barbeque, chatting away. And you know what he talks about? Nothing involving her. Not once. Not ‘a little.’ Nothing. He talks about trying to get away for a few days to go snowboarding or if I want to join his online party of dwarves and raid a few abandoned castles. I’m guessing all those fun activities they do is only fun for one of them.”
Hannah threw her hands into the air. “Then he’s being nice!”
“Does she do anything nice for him?”
“Maybe you should ask him.”
“Maybe I should ask you why you think your life is so miserable with me that you need to fantasise about the life your sister has, hoping that someone like your brother in law is standing by, ready to whisk you off your feet and treat you the way you’ve always wanted.” Josh stared at Hannah, waiting for the volcano to erupt.
It didn’t come. She turned back to the TV and pushed the volume up just enough to show that she was done.
Josh stared at her for another few seconds, giving her all the necessary time to resume their break up. But the longer he waited the more the locks fell back into place. The silent treatment was in full swing.
He scooped up his tea and walked off to the spare room. It took all of his control to close the door quietly and not let Hannah know that she had actually got to him. The moment he was alone he started pacing around the room, mapping out exactly what was going to be lost and won by the morning.
When he came out, the TV was off, the lights were off, and Hannah wasn’t in bed. Her house keys were gone as well. As was her car.
Fine. Let her go in a huff. The mortgage is in my name anyway.
The alarm blasted him in the morning. Two hours later he was still in bed. He stirred with the vaguest sense that he had received a message.
‘Warrick is alive. He walked halfway to London and has a concussion. He was chased by the murderer. He’s now in hospital.’
Josh sat up in bed and stared at the phone. “Jesus Christ.”
Just how close did he get to the murderer if he has a concussion? he wondered.
Josh looked across the empty bed. He went downstairs as carefully as could, half hoping that Hannah was asleep on the sofa, half hoping that she still wasn’t home. The house was painfully quiet. Her car was still gone. There was no note on the kitchen counter.
He called Claire for more details on Warrick’s condition. She wasn’t able to provide much, just that there had been rows of jars with dead animals inside, and that he had been chased away by someone he called ‘The Beast’.
The kid went out alone, found possibly the scariest thing he would ever find, and outran a deranged murderer while suffering from a concussion. Josh’s opinion of Warrick rose to the highest order. The kid had balls, that was for sure. He was stupid beyond belief for hunting down the dead body and then for getting caught by ‘The Beast’, but everything after that moment took more stamina and determination than most of the adults in Luxford had ever summoned in their entire lives.
The jars with dead animals inside, Frankensteined together, confirmed it was Toads. He was haunting Luxford all over again. Only now he had moved on to stringing a woman up like an angel with her wings spread out, ready for her to fly away.
54
Anthony
There was no way Anthony was going into work that day. Not with Toads on the loose. He spent most of the day pacing around the house, checking every window and debating whether every interior door should be left open or closed. If they were open he could see into every room quickly. If they were closed it provided some kind of safety against an intruder.
They won’t find him, he told himself. He’s been around for thirty years and no one knows who he is or where he hides. There’s got to be a thousand pipes, ditches, overgrown brambles, sheds, and empty houses in town, and still no one has any idea where he goes.
At 11 a.m. Josh came over, much to the relief of Gemma. At least with Josh there to distract Anthony, Gemma could watch over the kids and let them sit in front of the TV without th
eir father walking around on red alert.
Anthony led Josh into the kitchen.
“How are you doing?” Josh asked.
“Fucking miserable.”
“Did you sleep much last night?”
“No. We camped out in the lounge on the air mattress. Tom thought it was fun. Gemma and I stayed up all night watching them sleep. The TV was on mute and we kept refreshed the news on the laptop every minute. God knows how much caffeine I’ve had in the last twenty four hours.” He glanced at the box Josh brought over. “What have you got there?”
“You remember when Catherine Shievers disappeared?”
The news blasted her name on an almost constant cycle as soon as one of the neighbours told a reporter that it was happening all over again. “What about her?”
“You and I did a little detective work back in the day.” Josh pulled out the diaries and flipped through them. “We made maps of the whole town and Suspect 100, also known as Toads, was our prime candidate.”
“Would’ve been helpful if they caught him back then,” mumbled Anthony.
“Come on, he was thirteen and built like a twig. There’s no way he could’ve overpowered someone two years older than him.”
“Starts to make sense now, though.”
“Except no one ever found Catherine. This woman in the tunnel was found. And stretched out like an elaborate angel. Back then we mapped out the whole area, looking through every tunnel we came across and still no one ever found her.”
Anthony shrugged. “So he put her elsewhere. Or someone else did this. Or she was bipolar and made it all the way up to Glasgow on a high and fell into the wrong crowd.”
“Someone would’ve found her if that was true, so no. She’s been hidden all this time.” Josh leaned over the kitchen counter and saw Tom and Sarah watching TV while Ernie lay on his belly looking bored. “We did six months of research back then, despite what our parents wanted.”