Murder at Twilight

by Fleur Hitchcock

  So he disappeared from school. Either someone has taken him – I dismiss that immediately. Or…

  Teachers. Did he ever say anything about any teachers? At all?

  Why did she ask that? Is Noah in love with his art teacher? Has he run away with someone? But I don’t think anyone would fall in love with Noah. In fact, I can’t think why anyone would want him at all. He’s not cute, or charming, or funny or lovable. The only thing I can think is that he might have run away to make a protest.

  That’s almost possible. The last time we had a real talk – a proper conversation – was just before we left our junior schools. He told me his father wanted him to become a lawyer, like his uncle Peregrine, who’s loaded. The idea was that he’d save the Blackwater Estate for future little Belcombes. Earn loads of money. He didn’t mind the money bit, but he didn’t want to have to do the studying. He wanted to be something else. Work with wood or maybe design things. He didn’t really know, but he knew it wasn’t a lawyer.

  So perhaps this was just to upset his parents. Make them listen.

  I think back to his mother weeping on the sofa. He’s certainly achieved that – but then he’s also upset my mum, or at least made her go off with the police, and all the staff at Blackwater are running around, and there are four police cars and a load of people in white scrabbling in the dark and the cold.

  In fact, if he’s sulking, he’s making it everyone’s business.

  I pour the boiling water into a mug and add tomato-coloured sand. Stirring it into gloop I take it to the table and instinctively reach for my phone but it isn’t there. The policewoman’s got it. “This is bad, Tai,” I say. “I’m cut off from the world.”

  Tai growls at the door. He lets out a little bark.

  “Tai?”

  Yapping again, he dances around the mat, running back and forth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Unnerved, I approach the door sideways and peer through the window. Dave and Chris are out there chatting, halfway up the steps. They must hear me, or Tai, because a second later, Chris knocks on the door.

  I let out a long breath. For some reason that made me really tense.

  “Does that dog of yours need to go for a walk?” asks Chris, sounding super cheerful. “I thought you might be a bit nervous with all the commotion – don’t know who’s out here tonight. I could take him with me.” He bites his lip. He definitely isn’t as relaxed as his words and I wonder what it’s like for all the estate workers – each one hauled off for questioning in turn.

  Tai looks up at me, his tail wagging. “Thank you,” I say.

  “C’mon, lad – c’mon Tai.” From the darkness, Dave lets out a little whistle. Tai stands in the doorway, looking up at me.

  “Go on,” I say. “They won’t hurt.”

  Tai sniffs the air outside, and steps back.

  “Here, lad.” Chris crouches and gently strokes Tai’s head. Tai lets out a little sneeze, but he still won’t go outside.

  Dave leans forward and tries pulling at Tai’s collar. Tai growls and Dave drops it as if it’s hot. “Funny old dog,” he says. Tai’s never liked Dave. Nor have I. There is something formidable about him. Perhaps it’s because he never says anything. He used to frown at us when we were little and we played around the sawmill. Mum said it was because it was a dangerous place to play. I reckoned it was because Dave doesn’t like children.

  “Oh, go on, Tai – please,” I say.

  But Tai won’t move.

  “Sorry, Chris, I don’t really understand, but maybe he’s spooked by all the blue lights. I think I’d better come too,” I say, reaching for Mum’s super-thick duffel coat and her wellies. At the last second I grab the set of keys that have a torch on them.

  “S’pose so. If you don’t mind doing a bit of looking about for the boy. We’re still checking the estate.” Chris leans forward and ruffles Tai’s ears. “Daft dog.”

  “No, of course not,” I say, jamming on a pair of gloves.

  Dave wanders back down the steps. “Speak to you later, mate,” he says to Chris, and then, “Night, Viv.”

  I lock the door and follow Tai and Chris into the courtyard. Chris whistles and his dog, Lady, trots silently out of the shadows. Lady’s a proper Border collie, a real sheepdog. She’s trained and obedient. Tai is untrained and only does things for love. Or food. For a few minutes we walk in comfortable silence, Tai racing in circles around our legs, Lady keeping just out of the way of our feet. The police are still checking the Mini, while the front door of the house is open, and people are moving around inside. I can’t see who though.

  Chris opens the gate that leads into the gardens. “Keep our eyes open, eh?”

  “Yes,” I say, wondering whether I actually want to find Noah.

  Our feet crunch from gravel to frozen grass.

  Above us the first stars twinkle. It’s ferociously cold. So cold that my ears hurt even under my hood. I look up at the black shape of Chris next to me. He’s massive, almost twice my height, and very reassuring. All my life he’s been the bear of the estate – large and safe and reliable – although Mum’s always said, “Still waters run deep” and tapped her nose. I heard a rumour that he might once have been a pub fighter, but that could just be estate talk.

  He’s always been a part of my life. Just like the river he looks after, I suppose. A presence.

  A long flapping sound begins on the water and a slow whoop, whoop as a bird takes off.

  “Swan?” I ask as the wings creak over our heads.

  “Yup,” he says.

  We walk on a little further. Woodsmoke drifts across us from one of the cottages, sweet and kippery. “You’d never seen a swan,” starts Chris, “when you came here. Remember the day you and your ma arrived – fresh off the plane from Singapore?” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Swan, swan, swan! You chased them everywhere – right into the river. Fearless, you were.”

  “Did you rescue me from the river?”

  “Both of you in the end. You and the boy.”

  “We got on then, I think,” I say, trying to sift through the memories to a time when Noah and I actually might have been friends.

  “Mebbe.”

  We swing around the corner of the sheds. “Though it seems only a second later that I came across you two fighting like proper boxers.”

  It must have been four years later. We were about six. Not for the first time, Noah had pushed me into the river and then blamed me for playing near the bank. Like it was my idea, and he’d heroically hauled me out instead of what he actually did, which was to run off and laugh up a tree as I struggled not to drown. I’d gone for him, kicking and punching. “You gave me some of your soup from your thermos because I got so told off by Lady B I didn’t want to go home.”

  “Ha,” Chris laughs. “Never seen a girl fight like you. Dead handy with that fist.” He stops and sniffs the air. “If I hadn’t pulled you off, you would’ve seriously hurt him.”

  I take it as a compliment and smile to myself.

  As we pass the tall yew trees that mark the entrance to the gardens, he grabs my shoulder. “Shh, hear that?” he asks.

  I stop and listen. I can’t hear anything. I peer into the darkness, imagining faces in the foliage.

  I don’t come in here much any more, but I used to wander in with some of the other children from the estate. There was a girl called Daisy with a younger brother and sister, Seb and Molly, but they moved away when their parents got another gardening job in Wales. We played here but mostly we messed about in the shallows, searching the bottom for treasures. Bottles, buckles, coins. Paddling in the ice-cold clear water over the squidgy gravel bottom, crayfish and tiny minnows brushing our feet. Sometimes we swam and it was so cold I could hardly breathe, and on hot days we might jump from the bridge into the deepest part of the river and run out screaming from the cold. Noah didn’t join in much. Perhaps he wasn’t allowed to.

  I shiver. It’s not the weather to think about col
d water.

  “Did you hear anything?” he asks me.

  “Nope,” I answer.

  “Must have been a rabbit,” he says, and we walk on and I feel the tension in the air. It’s as if he’s expecting to find something – Noah? A stranger?

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickle and I shake my head. Next to me Tai stops, sniffs and shivers.

  “Someone walked over your grave, dog?” mutters Chris.

  One star shines low in the sky in the band of almost-green almost-blue that throws the chimneys of the house into silhouette. Leafless trees hang overhead as we make our way around past the greenhouse to the orchard. I try to stick to the path, but my hood catches in the branches so I have to walk through the fallen apples left out for the blackbirds in the long grass.

  “Mind out for the squishy ones,” says Chris.

  I don’t manage to avoid them. Some are crunchy, but others are soft, my foot releasing a quick smell of cider and vomit. Over to our right two torches flash in the hedge. That’ll be Shona and Tony, the gardeners.

  “All right?” Chris calls to them. “Found anything?”

  “Not a peep,” Tony calls back. “Give it till midnight.”

  “Such an idiot,” I say under my breath.

  “Wha’s that?” says Chris.

  “Noah – I just think – oh – why would Noah run away tonight – when it’s so cold? He’s stupid. It’s just attention seeking.”

  “Not for me to say, but he’s not the brightest button in the box,” says Chris, ducking under a branch. “Perhaps he’s gone to a friend’s house – forgot to tell anyone.”

  “I don’t think he’s got any friends.”

  “Ah,” says Chris.

  “All this fuss – police and everything. And Mum,” I say, feeling crosser and crosser. “You know, when we find him, I’m going to kill him. I don’t know why I didn’t do it earlier.”

  Chris says nothing.

  “Thing is – all the disruption, he’s got no idea of what he’s done. When he comes back, when he’s made his silly little point, he’ll think everything’s normal. But it won’t be because my lovely mum’s spent all evening being questioned by the police and being suspected. It’s not fair – I’ll hit him again.”

  “Thump him once today, did you?” asks Chris, sounding amused.

  “Er – well, not really a thump…” I backtrack. “I kind of gave him a nosebleed.”

  “Ah – that’s why they’re all over the car then.” We walk on. “Did you tell them that?”

  “Yeah, but I think they think I did it on purpose – or that Mum stabbed him or something.”

  “Oh, I don’t expect they think that. They’re questioning us all, you know. Lord B took a hell of a grilling.”

  “So it’s not just Mum.”

  “No – it’s not just your mum.”

  We swing round to walk the other side of the orchard. “Do you know when he disappeared?”

  “Mid-afternoon,” says Chris. “But everything’s rumour, you know how this place is. The police don’t tell us nothing.”

  In his pocket, Chris’s phone rings and I listen as he talks to someone at the other end.

  “Yes, yes.”

  The rectangle of yellow shines on to his grey stubbly cheek and I drift off as he swings around, with his back to me, talking and listening.

  “I’m walking with young Vivienne as it happens.”

  Beneath my feet the grass rustles, the splinters of ice falling around my boots, the ground hard, like iron. Inside the boots, my feet are freezing too. Tights just aren’t enough to keep this kind of cold out and this is far too cold for a person to sleep under a hedge. Noah must have found somewhere under cover, but where would he go? Why would he do it? Why would he keep it going so long?

  You fool, Noah. But this time I don’t say it out loud.

  “The dump – over by Pond’s End – yes, sir, if you say so.”

  I scour the landscape in my head.

  Woods.

  Dens.

  Farm.

  As the tiny streak of sky turns totally dark, I remember the dump. It’s forbidden. Well, at least it always was. It used to be a collection of farm machinery surrounded by random pieces of rusting metal, barbed wire and stuff left over from before the Second World War.

  “I’ll go together with Vivienne. Sharp eyes and that.”

  He listens.

  “Uh-huh. OK, we’ll take a look then. I got a torch.”

  The phone goes dark. “Come on, Viv – let’s see if he’s hiding down there.”

  At the end of the orchard is a gate that lets us out into a small field. With cold fingers I struggle with the loop of baler twine that holds it shut. Chris reaches over my shoulder and opens it easily. While he closes it, I stop and listen.

  A screech owl.

  A fox.

  Maybe a distant pheasant, and all around us the cold falls, a vertical icy wind heading for the earth.

  Orion shines overhead.

  We don’t need to speak, we both know the way, and we walk on, the dogs snuffling and dancing around our legs. Tai seems happy with Lady, even if he wouldn’t go on his own with Chris.

  Frozen tussocks catch on my wellies, and we stomp across the field, heading towards the river. A little way to our left, a two-plank weed rack crosses the narrowest part of the stream. There’s wire netting over the wood, so it shouldn’t be too slippery, and a thin hand rail, but I take it carefully. I don’t want to fall in, not because I’d drown, but because it would be just another thing to make me even angrier with Noah.

  The other bank is boggy and not yet frozen and we pick our way through two strands of barbed wire rather than walking all the way along to the stile, but my coat snags on the lower strand. Fiddling about in the dark, with my tiny key torch lighting up one finger at a time, I curse Noah until I manage to free myself and follow Chris over the next field towards a distant clump of woodland. Sheep rustle in the dark, looming towards us and then trotting away. Chris whistles to Lady, who pads obediently alongside him. I have to hang on to Tai’s collar to stop him chasing after the sheep.

  “Hello, sheep,” I say, aware of their smell of warm wool and poo. There’s a slight crunch with each step, and the cold begins to eat into my lower jaw. Noah, I am so going to kill you when I find you.

  As we reach the brow of the field, we’re met by another fence. I pull the wires apart and lift my foot into the gap.

  “No need for that,” says Chris, and he lifts me like a small child straight over the top, while he hurdles the wires as if they weren’t there.

  “Oh,” I say, landing back in the grass. Ahead of us, the little group of trees seems bigger, darker, and I keep stomping towards it, telling myself that there’s nothing at all spooky about it – even though, when we were six, we named it Dead Things Wood, because we’d found a dead rabbit and then a dead fox hanging on the barbed wire, like someone had put them there. And besides, Chris is very near. I can’t see him, but I can hear him.

  The trees loom over us, the bare branches of ashes and beeches cupped against the sky. Cutting it out, holding me in.

  “Torch time,” says Chris, startling me, and the pool of bright light makes the black around us even blacker. “I’ll check right down the far end – there’s a shed I keep some tools in. Wait here and I’ll be back. Don’t move.”

  The light of the torch bounces off metal and hedgerow, and fades as Chris vanishes up to the left. I don’t really remember a shed, but I do remember a car. A black, mossy car.

  The more I stare into the dark, the surer I am that I can make out its shape. Carefully, I pick my way into the trees until the muddled mass of forgotten farm machinery reveals itself behind the ring of trunks. In the distance I can see Chris’s torchlight bouncing off the undergrowth, illuminating patches of green and spots of brown. Straining my eyes in the darkness, I stop at the edge and look down. It’s not a cliff so much as a steep chalky slope and I know that at the bot
tom is the old car with one headlight and no wheels. I shine my pathetic torch down the slope until it catches on something metal. Then something glass.

  Yes.

  The beam reflects from the windscreen, which is scratched but intact, and I wobble it over the doors, swinging it back and forth so that I can see if anyone responds.

  There’s no sign of life but I slither down the slope, catching my hand on a bramble and sliding part of the way on my bum.

  The car sits heavily in the middle of everything else. Doors closed.

  “Come on, Viv,” I say, and grab the driver’s door, yanking it open and standing back. From a couple of paces away I shine the light on to the inside. Bindweed has grown through from the back seat and now trails undisturbed across the steering wheel.

  Frost falls through a rusted hole in the roof.

  There’s no one there, and no one’s been there for a while.

  “Damn you, Noah Belcombe. Where the hell are you?!” I shout to the stars, and run for Chris.

  Mum’s there when I get back and she leaps to the door.

  “Where have you been?” she says, grabbing the coat off my back and kneeling down to help me with my boots.

  “I went out with Chris, took Tai for a walk, and we were looking for Noah, like everyone else,” I say, wriggling out of Mum’s coat. “Where were you?”

  I pull at my tights. There’s a big hole in the toe.

  Mum sits back and I see that she’s white and red and streaky like someone who’s been in tears for hours.

  “I’ve –” She flaps her hand. “S’OK,” she mutters.

  “What?” I say. She’s not telling me something. “Where did you go? When did all this happen?”

  “Half past four?” she says. “I went to pick him up and – he didn’t come out of school.” She’s staring at her hands as if the story’s written there. “It took until ages later for the school to be sure he really wasn’t there – and then I went into the headmaster’s office and he rang the Belcombes, and the police because – Well, he rang the police.”

  “So why are they searching here?”

  “Someone said they saw him catch the bus out of town – or they saw someone in a St David’s uniform catch the bus. I think that’s what the police think…”