And then Bennett’s brother was standing up and holding Daniel tight by the arm.
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. I didn’t—’
‘Look what you did to her, you freak!’ Flecks of spit flew off his lips as Bennett tried to drag his brother away. ‘If your dad dies then I reckon you deserve it.’
Daniel ripped his arm free and pounded down the stairs as he heard Bennett calling after him.
Once he was outside, he walked quickly away from the house, gulping in the night air to cool him down. He passed a fence overgrown with clematis, the yellow flowers like a collection of tiny, faded stars. He stopped to breathe their perfume and tried to let it wash away what had just happened. But Daniel’s mind was sharp and quick now as the night air nipped at his neck. It began to play tricks, telling him people had known what he’d done. He heard the click of a camera phone and saw a picture of him shouting as everyone stared back. He heard Bennett’s brother again: ‘. . . you freak.’
Daniel sat down on the low wall bordering a garden with the dark against his back and the street lights throwing down an orange haze. He thought long and hard about Amanda and the others, telling himself over and over again that he couldn’t have known what would happen. That he had not done anything on purpose.
The Men Who Died Twice
62
Daniel tried to sleep, but all he managed was to slip into some hazy state when he closed his eyes. He could see the bedroom again and he could hear the arms snapping over and over.
Eventually, he padded down the landing, past his aunt’s snoring, and went downstairs to sit in the dark of the living room with the curtains open, watching the street. When a blue BMW pulled up outside the house, he hoped he was dreaming it, but knew he wasn’t. Mason heaved himself out and stood up, looking around. Fastening the middle button of his jacket, he walked purposefully over the road.
Daniel listened to his footsteps echoing down the path at the side of the house and then they stopped.
When they started again, he knew that Mason had climbed the fence.
And then Daniel got up and went and picked up the landline phone from its station in the hall.
By the time he reached the kitchen, Mason was already clicking the back door shut behind him. There was a lock pick in his other hand. He didn’t seem surprised to see Daniel.
‘It isn’t a dream this time,’ said Mason.
‘I know.’
‘Where’s the phone I gave you?’
‘I lost it.’
Mason took out an iPhone and scrolled through it for a number and hit the dial button and waited. Upstairs the faint sound of a ringtone started. Mason clicked off his iPhone.
‘My aunt’s upstairs.’
‘Don’t worry about that, she won’t hear a thing. I promise.’
Daniel took the landline phone out of his dressing-gown pocket, his thumb raised over the call button.
‘What are you going to do, call for backup?’ Mason pulled out a chair from the small round table and sat down. ‘How are you getting on with finding the flask?’
‘Not so good.’
‘Really? But it’s your top priority.’
‘There was nothing at Ashwell Lodge.’
Mason took a deep breath and let it out and the room seemed to swell. He dialled the number for Daniel’s phone again and they heard the ringtone upstairs once more.
‘It’s the truth.’
Mason clicked off his iPhone again.
‘But you see my dilemma? Now that I know you’ll lie to me, how do I know I can trust you?’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Maybe you want the flask for yourself.’
‘Why would I want it?’
‘For the same reason I do. It’s very valuable. And because I always think the worst of people.’
Mason spread a big hand on the table and seemed to be counting that all his fingers were there. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone, Daniel?’
‘I was scared.’
‘Of what?’
Daniel felt his brain firing. He could hear it sparking. Something glittered on his tongue. ‘We went to Ashwell Lodge, but we didn’t find anything. We tried making the fit, but we couldn’t make anything happen.’
‘So you were avoiding me because of that? Because you were scared of what I might say.’ Mason was completely focused on him, like a tiger about to spring on to its prey.
‘Yes. Something’s broken inside Rosie. It’s too dangerous for her to make the fit. I don’t know if it’s her chemotherapy. But we need to wait and see.’
‘But I can’t wait. I want that flask.’ Mason sighed. Folded his arms. ‘I know your father’s got pneumonia. One of my little birdies told me. You need Rosie. I need Rosie. Time’s a-ticking. Where is she? I went round to her house, but there was no one there.’
Daniel hesitated, wondering what to say.
‘Where is she, Daniel?’ growled Mason.
‘At her gran’s.’
Mason drummed his fingers on the table and then he nodded and stood up, and Daniel took a step back.
When Mason came closer, Daniel raised the phone and pressed his thumb lightly on the call button, but the man just put his arm round the boy’s shoulders and hugged him. ‘Come round to Lawson’s house in the morning. I’ve got an idea that might work. That we need to test out.’
He rubbed Daniel’s head as if the boy was a dog. ‘Don’t look so glum! You’re important to me, Daniel. You’re special. Rare. You were saved, brought back from the brink of death for a reason, like I’ve always said. There are bigger things at work here than either of us can comprehend, and who am I to jeopardize that?’ He grinned. ‘Now let me out of the front door, will you? I’m not climbing over that bloody fence again in this suit.’
63
Mason was sitting in a brand-new armchair in Lawson’s living room, the sunlight dappling his black-suited legs as the green tops of the trees moved outside. Daniel was standing in front of him like a naughty schoolboy. The beige carpet beneath his socked feet was brand new.
Mason pointed at Daniel’s socks. ‘I don’t want muck on it, you see.’ He rubbed a set of black-socked toes up and down the pile. ‘I wasn’t sure about the colour. What do you think?’ And Daniel just nodded. Mason wafted his hands around him as if trying to touch the sunshine as it came through the window. ‘Done the whole lot. Lick of paint. Curtains. Freshened the place up. I might rent it out again. Or I might not. I can do what I want.’
Mason took out a silver Colt 45 from his jacket pocket and placed it on the arm of the chair, with the muzzle pointing directly at Daniel, and the boy held his breath. Mason said nothing for a while and then rubbed at a spot on the barrel with his thumb.
‘What did you call those insects again, the grasshoppery ones?’
‘Cicadas.’
‘Seeec-ahhhh-daaas,’ repeated Mason. His fingers began tiptoeing backward and forward over the gun. ‘I told you I’d retire if you got me the flask. The deal’s still on. If you find me the flask, you get to dodge the bullet, Daniel. Rosie too.’
He picked up the gun and pointed it at Daniel and pulled the trigger and there was just a dry click. But Daniel heard a bang and flinched anyway and clasped his hands to his stomach and looked down, half expecting to see blood bubbling through his fingers. And then he blinked and he was staring at Mason again, the sweat on his back as prickly as hair.
Mason grinned. ‘We won’t have to see each other ever again, unless you want to come out and visit on your holidays of course.’
They heard a car pull up outside in the lane and the engine being turned off. Car doors opened and clunked shut.
‘Perfect timing!’ Mason slapped his thigh. He stood up and straightened his suit and locked the gun away in a drawer as Daniel heard footsteps coming down the path towards the house. Two pairs of feet, he thought.
The front door opened and slammed shut and Daniel heard footsteps walking down a set of stairs.
�
�Why don’t you make yourself a cup of tea?’ said Mason. ‘Give us five minutes and then we’ll get started.’
‘Started doing what?’
Mason grinned and walked out of the room and then he stopped, beckoning Daniel to follow.
‘I’ll have one too. Milk and two sugars. Sorry about the mess in the kitchen – give me a shout if you can’t find what you need. We had a break-in last night. Some vagrant. Didn’t steal anything as far as I can tell. Just trashed the pantry, looking for grub even though there was hardly anything there. He was high. Drunk. I don’t know. Nasty business.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Nastier for him though.’
Mason opened a door beneath the stairs and disappeared down a set of concrete steps to what Daniel presumed was a cellar.
He walked on down the hallway and opened the kitchen door. Tupperware boxes were stacked on the work surfaces. Cardboard boxes too. He filled the kettle and flicked the switch and stood looking for a teabag until he plucked one from a white ceramic pot.
As he dropped it into a mug, Daniel stared at a hip flask sitting on the worktop near the sink. He recognized it immediately because it was Bennett’s.
He stood watching it, as if it was a bird about to flit away. He could hear Mason’s muffled voice talking in the cellar as he crept quietly to the pantry door and looked inside. The blond pine shelves had been pulled down and were stacked loosely on the floor. The new paintwork on the walls had been scratched and scraped and thumped with something hard and black leaving dints in the plaster.
Daniel stood looking around him, thinking about why Bobby had come here. What reason he must have had. Mason’s voice burbled downstairs, bubbling up through the floor like some dark spring. Suddenly, Daniel heard his great booming laugh.
When he found himself staring at the black rubber doorstop screwed into the floorboards, he wondered if what he was thinking might possibly be true. That Bobby had seen that the flask was hidden somewhere in the pantry when he and Bennett had asked him to look for it and had lied to them. He knelt down quickly and grabbed hold of the doorstop and pulled. The small section of floorboard came away, popping free of four magnets attached to the joists below, the brown nail in each corner shorn flush to the underside of the piece of wood.
There, lying in a nest of cotton wool, was a small golden flask, almost a perfect circle about the size of a small paperweight, with a cap screwed on tight. When Daniel looked closer, he saw how beautifully made it was, the fine gold dimpled, looking as soft as tissue paper.
‘Oh, Bobby,’ he whispered. ‘Bobby, what have you done?’
When he heard someone coming up the cellar stairs, Daniel picked up the flask and hid it in his pocket, then slotted the piece of floorboard back down on to its four magnets.
The kettle clicked off as he stood by it and Jiff walked into the kitchen.
‘Mason wants his tea.’
Daniel held up the mug with the teabag in it. ‘Just coming.’
‘I’ll have one ’n’all. Milk and two sugars. Like Mason. There’s some digestives knocking about somewhere too.’ Jiff fumbled with the Tupperware boxes till he found the half-open packet. He stood eating a biscuit, watching Daniel make the tea. When he smiled, little crumbs dropped from the corners of his mouth.
64
A large section of the cellar had been covered with black plastic sheeting, held down at its four corners by cement blocks. It hissed like an angry thundercloud tethered to the floor as Mason walked across it, sipping his tea.
Sitting on a wooden chair in the corner of the room was Rosie, Jiff stood next to her and drank from his mug too and said nothing.
Mason nodded approvingly. ‘I’m going to make you chief tea-maker from now on, Daniel. You have many talents.’ Mason smiled at Rosie. ‘You both do. That’s why I’m sure one last push is what we need to find this flask.’
Mason put his tea down on the floor and motioned at Jiff to do the same. The two of them walked across to a chest freezer that was in the far corner of the cellar and both started to put on pair of black leather gloves which had been sitting on a chair.
The tiny red light in the bottom corner of the freezer’s front panel was illuminated, as bright as a cherry. Daniel was still wondering what might be inside as the two men stood at either end and heaved up the lid.
They lifted out Lawson’s frozen body, the ice cracking and falling from his shirt, his black hair brittle with frost.
Daniel heard Rosie gasp and he went to her and put his arms round her as the two men struggled with the heavy frozen body.
‘I’ve found it. The flask,’ he whispered as he hugged her close.
The body bumped down on the black sheeting like a rock when it was laid down.
Blood had frozen in icy pearls around Lawson’s mouth. The stump of his arm looked like the end of a frozen joint.
When the leather fingers of the men’s gloves peeled up off his body, they made little popping sounds.
The cold flowed like dust over the lip of the freezer as Mason bent down and rapped Lawson on his forehead. ‘Anyone home?’ He grinned and turned round to look up at Daniel. ‘About as talkative as your dad.’ Jiff laughed. ‘Course he might tell us a few things using the fit. Why don’t we give it a try? One big push. I’ve been saving him in case he might be useful. In case he wasn’t telling me everything I wanted to know.’
Jiff slapped the lid of the freezer shut. Mason sat down in a rickety wooden chair. He plucked an iPhone from his pocket and dialled a number.
When Frank’s face appeared on the screen in a Skype call, Mason beamed. ‘Who you got there with you, Frank?’
‘Rosie’s gran,’ came back the tinny reply.
‘And what are you doing?’
‘Having a cup of tea.’
‘So are we! Daniel makes the best, Frank. Even better than you!’
‘I doubt it.’
Mason turned the phone round so Rosie and Daniel could see the screen. With a free finger, he pointed at the frozen body of Lawson.
‘You don’t need him warmed up, do you? To help, I mean? How about the gloves? Do you need them?’
‘Stop,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘Just stop. We think we know where the flask is.’ Mason looked at Daniel for some time, saying nothing. Lawson’s body was already beginning to melt, drip-drip-dripping on to the black sheeting.
‘I knew it,’ said Mason. ‘I knew you were lying.’ He chuckled and slapped his hand on his thigh. ‘So show me where you think it is. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.’
65
Daniel pulled up the false floorboard in the pantry at Ashwell Lodge and took out the silver-plated box. When Mason reached for it, Daniel shook his head.
‘There’s more,’ he said and opened the box, revealing the severed finger inside with the black twine around it. Daniel pointed to the symbol on the wall. ‘We think there must be four of these symbols to go with the compartments in the box but so far we’ve only found three. I’ll show you the others.’
And he did.
Mason, Jiff and Rosie followed him through the rooms of Ashwell Lodge, with Frank watching them on Skype as Mason held out his iPhone. ‘He’s my insurance policy,’ said Mason. ‘I’ve got no reason to trust you at all.’
Daniel showed him where the golden wedding band was hidden and the lock of hair.
He put them in the compartments of the silver box and hooked the pieces of twine to the clasp in the centre of the lid in the same way the finger was attached.
‘There’s one more item to go in,’ said Daniel. ‘But we don’t know where it is. We think it’s hidden somewhere in one of the downstairs rooms, at least that’s what Rosie saw. But we couldn’t find it.’
‘Which room?’ asked Mason.
‘We’ll show you.’
Daniel and Rosie led them into the room that might once have been the dining room. He pointed at the mattress. ‘We sat here for some time, trying to work it out. But Rosie didn’t see anything.’
&
nbsp; Rosie was watching Daniel. Listening to his every word. She licked her lips. ‘I might feel ready to try again,’ she said.
Mason’s eyes sparkled. ‘Go on, Rosie. I’d like that very much.’
When she closed her eyes, Daniel knew she was pretending to make the fit. There was no pain in his chest. No blood from her nose. The strain in her face was an act and, when he realized, he put his hand to his chest as if pretending to feel something, making her performance seem all the more real.
‘It’s somewhere,’ she whispered. ‘It’s somewhere in this room.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mason was walking around, inspecting the walls for another symbol. ‘I don’t see anything. There’s nothing here.’
‘It is,’ she hissed. When she opened her eyes and sat down on her haunches, she looked up at Mason. ‘I need a rest.’
Daniel pointed to the fireplace. ‘Why don’t you go and check that end of the room? I’ll look this end while Rosie takes a moment.’
Daniel listened as Jiff and Mason searched the wall and then knelt down and inspected the hearth. He held his breath as he listened to them rooting around like pigs in the dust and the grime.
When Jiff stopped and cursed excitedly, he didn’t look round. He waited for them to prise up the loose tile.
‘We’ve found it!’ shouted Mason. ‘We’ve got it.’ Daniel turned and saw Mason holding up the human tooth by its black piece of twine. ‘Give me the box. Let me have it.’
Mason put the tooth in the compartment and hooked the piece of twine round the clasp.
‘What do you think happens now?’ asked Mason.
He was about to ask again when Daniel pointed. ‘Look,’ he said.
A misty, shadowy figure was emerging from out of the floor and drifting towards him.
‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’ whispered Mason. He gripped Daniel and turned him to face the ghost. ‘Can you see him, boy? Can you?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Daniel. He thought he heard Jiff cursing, but his heart was pounding too loudly to hear properly as the ghost drifted closer, just a dark silhouette in the shape of a man.
All Sorts of Possible Page 19