The Challenge

by Tom Hoyle

I sat in an empty cell and wasn’t interviewed until late on the Saturday. I think that’s because they were waiting to see what they found. Every time the outer door opened, or the hatch of my door slid back, I thought they were going to tell me that Blake’s bloodied remains had been discovered.

  It was then only a matter of time before they started to reconsider Will’s death.

  And Mike’s.

  When they interviewed me, I sensed a confidence that it wouldn’t be long before they discovered an ugly truth – or truths.

  The interview started at about 5.30 p.m. on the Saturday.

  My gran sat on a blue plastic chair to my right, and there were two police officers opposite. The man, who introduced himself as Detective Inspector Leslie, did all of the talking.

  I pulled down my sleeve to hide the cuts on my arm and hand.

  After formalities came the ominous words of a caution: ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.’ He coughed. ‘Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, is there anything you would like to tell us?’

  I didn’t say anything, but the room wasn’t silent. I could hear the steady tick of the clock and the gurgling of a radiator. There were raised voices outside.

  ‘It’ll be easier if you tell us straight away what has happened to Blake.’ DI Leslie leaned forward. ‘We know that you were angry with him and threatened to kill him. Tell us how you see it.’

  Two words – ‘I don’t . . .’ – escaped from me before the door opened and Mr Thatcher swept in and relaxed into a chair next to me.

  DI Leslie listened to some whispered words from a younger policeman who had followed in Mr Thatcher’s wake.

  ‘Will you be charging this boy?’ Mr Thatcher asked, his hands resting casually on the table in front of him. He had no notes, no jacket, no tie.

  ‘That depends on the outcome of this interview,’ said DI Leslie.

  ‘I thought it might depend on the production of actual evidence.’

  DI Leslie: ‘We have a missing boy!’

  ‘That,’ said Mr Thatcher, ‘is the absence of evidence. And the absence of evidence will enable my client to walk out of here – either now, or in –’ he glanced at his watch – ‘about twenty hours.’ Mr Thatcher paused for about five ticks of the clock. ‘But the compensation we will claim for wrongful arrest will rise with each passing second.’

  ‘Hold on,’ spluttered DI Leslie. ‘He came in with the missing boy’s phone.’

  ‘Oh – arrested for theft, is he?’

  ‘And you know full bloody well he was seen arguing with him earlier in the evening.’

  Mr Thatcher raised his eyebrows. ‘So you are charging him for breach of the peace? Who made the complaint?’

  DI Leslie swore. ‘You know that this is ridiculous!’

  ‘You need to stay calm, Detective Constable.’ There was a slight pause. ‘Sorry, I mean Detective Inspector.’ Mr Thatcher wore a resigned look. ‘You must be aware of the irregularities in this arrest. I would like to bet that the police didn’t identify themselves as such, nor did they tell my client he was under arrest. All highly irregular. And my client is under seventeen: his arrest must be unavoidable, not just because he had a few cross words with a classmate who has done a runner.’

  DI Leslie couldn’t bear to look at Mr Thatcher. He thumped the table. ‘OK. Get the boy out. But I want to know where he will be – and if I find one speck of him or his clothing anywhere near a crime scene, he’ll be back.’

  Outside, I slipped into the back seat of Mr Thatcher’s Mercedes next to my gran. Mr Thatcher looked at me in his rear-view mirror. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ Mr Thatcher replied. ‘I know that you didn’t have anything to do with the boy’s disappearance.’

  My gran squeezed my arm. It was comforting to know that people were on my side.

  Mr Thatcher continued: ‘And it wasn’t in anyone’s best interests for you to be dragged into talking about things the police need not know.’

  Mr Thatcher dropped Gran and me at home on his way back to Timberline. We stood in the road as the lights of the Mercedes disappeared down the lane. Above them, above the trees, I saw the Lantern Room at the top of Lakeside House, lit as always, overseeing the village.

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Gran. ‘Let’s eat. You can tell me what I need to know.’

  I missed out all the bits of the story that illuminated the central horrible truth: that I had flown into The Twins’ web. In fact, I didn’t mention The Twins at all.

  ‘I had an argument with a friend and now he’s missing. He’s probably run off somewhere,’ I concluded. ‘Gran, it’s as simple as that.’ If only. I was still haunted by the thought that I had done something.

  Upstairs, something drew me to look at Will’s Rough Book.

  But something had been added to the box: a plastic bag. And half sliding out of it was a pale blue coat.

  It was like falling down a hole, only to find that you haven’t reached the bottom – that the ledge you’re on is creaking and snapping and then you’re falling and falling again until THUD – you smack against solid concrete.

  It was the coat Blake had worn to the party.

  I dashed to the window and closed the curtains, catching a glimpse of the Lantern Room of Lakeside House lit up down the road. But Mr Winter couldn’t look directly into my room from there – the angle was wrong.

  I held the coat up and a Wordsworth Academy ID card fluttered on to my bed, face down. I flicked it over with a fingernail, gingerly, trying to avoid contamination or fingerprints. As I feared, there was a picture and a name: Blake Caudwell.

  Then my attention was back on the coat and two red blotchy smudges near the top. Blood. I looked at the cuts on my left arm and wrist. The pattern and length matched. It was my blood.

  I breathed deeply – in and out; in and out – my shoulders rising and falling in exaggerated fashion. I felt claustrophobic. Totally alone. Beyond crying.

  I had to be logical. I retreated into a corner of my brain, away from emotion, away from myself.

  It was my blood. Not Blake’s. I hadn’t been home after the party, so I couldn’t be a psycho killer without knowing it. It was impossible that I had somehow had the coat with me all the time – the police would have seen it. It couldn’t have been me.

  But who else would believe that?

  My phone pinged.

  Sam:

  Hi Ben. Hope you’re not finding

  this too much of a challenge . . .

  Attachment

  NOVEMBER 2011

  THE LANTERN ROOM

  I know you’ll think I should have gone to the police. The thought did cross my mind, but it wasn’t just that I would have turned up with the bloodied coat of a missing person – think what they would have made of that – but also that I was terrified of being caught for what actually happened to Mike only a week before.

  I felt like a puppet dangling on The Twins’ strings. If I did go to the police, I was certain Mr Thatcher would ensure I was found guilty of at least one murder.

  I could and should have gone to pieces. But there was a hard pebble of determination that resisted everything and everyone, including The Twins. Perhaps it was born out of my fury at what had happened to Will and what was now happening to me. I had to take control. It’s what Will would have done. It’s what The Twins had done.

  The first part of every magic act is to convince the audience that everything is as they expect it to be.

  I sent a text back to Sam:

  Everything is screwed up. I’m gonna

  stay in this room until it all goes away

  The Twins, supposing it was them, could tip off the police at any moment – what if their Challenge was to get me into prison for as long as possible?

  I had to hide the coat, but not in the usu
al places (sock drawer, under the mattress, behind a picture frame), nor in the creepy locations I imagined a murderer would use: in the shed or greenhouse, under a floorboard. I shouted: ‘Gran, can I use your nail scissors for a sec?’ It was the blandest reason I could think of for going into her room. A magician knows never to make a move furtively if you can make it openly.

  ‘Yes. That’s fine, dear,’ she called back from the bottom of the stairs.

  I moved quickly as her steps came closer. I took one of her old winter coats off the hanger, hung Blake’s coat on it, then slipped my gran’s back over the top, and put both of them in the wardrobe.

  Her voice came from nearby. ‘Have you found them?’

  I coughed and clicked her wardrobe shut an instant before she turned the corner into her room. When she came in, she found me nibbling away at the nail on my left thumb. ‘It’s strange that this was annoying me, despite everything else going on,’ I muttered.

  Once I knew that Gran was asleep, I went into the kitchen to get myself a glass of water. While the tap was running, I took a cardboard packet of frozen cod from the freezer. Then, quietly, quickly, I taped Blake’s identity card to the inside of the packet and put the fish back inside. With the tap running a second time, I put the packet to the back of the freezer, behind a bag of peas.

  The letters from ‘Will’? I really wanted to keep these in my bedroom, but this was exactly the thought I had to fight.

  I listened for noises from my gran’s room – nothing – then tiptoed to the cupboard under the stairs. At the back, behind a rainbow-coloured feather duster and a plastic broom, was an old vacuum cleaner, now replaced by a newer model. I eased off the front plastic cover and a thin cloud of dust mushroomed into the air as I pulled out the bag used to collect the fluff. I then dropped Will’s letters into the bag and replaced everything.

  Perhaps I had gone mad. I’d never been this methodical.

  Upstairs: silence.

  In the drawer in the sitting room were my granddad’s binoculars. They were old and heavy, but magnified everything amazingly.

  I turned off the kitchen light and crept into the back garden. In my dark clothes it would have been difficult to see me – inside the shed, I was surely invisible. I cleared cobwebs and mouldy grime off the window and looked behind the houses and above the trees: there was a clear line of sight to the Lantern Room of Lakeside House, about half a mile away. It was 11.15 p.m. but their light was still on.

  Why the hell was someone up there at this hour?

  I tried to focus on the room at the top of the old house. Even resting my elbows on an old lawnmower, the magnified circle wobbled and vibrated. But if I squinted, I could make out a smudge that was surely a person.

  Suddenly, the Lantern light went out. As if it made any difference, I held my breath. Perhaps it was because a car was coming down the lane, lights on full beam, illuminating the trees and faintly throwing a grey tinge on Lakeside House.

  For a second, I thought I saw a glint in the window. Maybe I imagined it, my brain convincing me that someone was up there, looking back at me, binocular to binocular.

  I was certain Mr Winter was my best chance of confirmation that someone had broken into our house.

  Worries and ideas bounced around inside my head that night after I returned to my room. I slipped into sleep a few times but woke at the slightest noise.

  About 6.30 a.m., there was the ping of a text.

  Jack:

  It’d be good to see you this morn

  The police had suggested that I stayed in Compton for a few days: they said it was because the situation was ‘confused’ and ‘people wouldn’t understand’. They wanted to know exactly where I was, ‘just in case you’re needed for inquiries’. But they didn’t say that I couldn’t meet with people.

  I sent a text back:

  Time?

  Jack:

  9

  Me:

  Where?

  Jack:

  C u by the church

  Where Will had been found.

  After breakfast, I told my gran that I was going ‘out for some air’.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ she said from the kitchen at the back of the house. ‘The police said that they would call back again at lunchtime.’

  It was an overcast, windy day, and a few leaves swirled in the air as I took the route that Will had on the day that he died. Yellow and black Do Not Cross tape flapped in front of Mike Haconby’s empty house. The graveyard and church stared back, cold and stonily silent.

  I looked up to the Lantern Room and there was Mr Winter, a distinct shape behind the greyness of the glass. My witness.

  The Twins didn’t arrive on bikes as I expected. I was slightly early, so wandered through the graveyard, past weather-beaten flowers and a small wooden cross that had tilted sideways at a forty-five-degree angle, and saw the boat cutting across the Lake, driven on by strong winds. It could have been Will, back from the dead, but then I saw the two people on board.

  ‘Hi, Sam. Hi, Jack,’ I said, as loudly as possible as they neared the shore.

  ‘Hiya, Ben.’ I couldn’t tell them apart. I think it was Sam.

  Then I saw the name on the boat. Evening Cloud. I thought back to Will’s Rough Book and how I couldn’t make sense of the imprint of the triangle with two words inside: E-something and Cloud (?). Now I realized it was a sketch of The Twins’ boat, Evening Cloud.

  It was the first time I had the upper hand. I turned to face Lakeside House, pulled out my phone and quickly switched it to record. Then I waved at the Lantern Room.

  The figure behind the glass raised a hand in acknowledgement.

  When I turned, The Twins were dragging the boat on to the gravel at exactly the spot where Will’s body had been found. I spoke quietly and calmly: ‘You knew Will, didn’t you? You sailed with him. You were friends with him. And Will kept it all from me.’

  The Twins immediately stopped and looked at one another. The wind blew the rope of the church’s flagpole against the metal. It whipped and chimed for ten seconds. The Twins both looked at me, silently, as if they needed time to communicate telepathically.

  I nudged my phone nearer the top of my pocket so that the microphone would pick up anything said.

  ‘Come in the boat with us,’ said Sam.

  I looked at the restless water, frothy with wind. ‘I’m not keen.’

  ‘It’d be good for us to be out in the open,’ said Sam (let’s suppose I had them the right way round). ‘Nowhere to hide. No secrets.’

  ‘We have things to tell you,’ said Jack.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘A lot has happened. Too much.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Why don’t you get aboard,’ he said. ‘And we will tell you everything.’

  I looked at the brooding Lake Hintersea, then back at the Lantern Room of Lakeside House. Mr Winter waved, three times – and I waved back.

  The Twins saw. I have you now, I thought. You will not be able send me over the edge. I shrugged away Sam’s help and clambered in, feeling like one of those crazy kids in a horror movie who put themselves in danger instead of running away. But where would I run to?

  We pushed off from the edge and I felt the unsettling, insecure confusion of sloshing water. The boat sank and rose. The Lake was like The Twins – unpredictable, powerful, deep.

  We didn’t speak until we were a couple of hundred yards from the edge.

  ‘You were with Will last Easter, weren’t you?’ I said. I had to take them through it logically. My hand rested against my phone.

  Sam held out his hand and wiggled his fingers as if beckoning me. For a second I thought he was asking me to stand up. ‘Your phone,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I swore. ‘You can use your own.’

  ‘If you don’t hand over your phone, you’ll never know,’ said Jack. ‘It will always be a mystery – like a magician’s trick.’ He clicked his fingers.

  I pulled it out of my pocket and it made a couple of quick
pinging sounds as I pressed the red button. I had nine minutes of recording.

  Sam’s hand sprang out and grabbed it before I could stop him. ‘You won’t need this any more.’ And he dropped my phone into Lake Hintersea.

  My hand trailed in the water in a pathetic attempt to retrieve it. ‘You bastard!’ I said. ‘You complete bastard!’ I looked over the edge, trying to get a sense of our position, wondering if a diver could find something the size of a phone – and even if he did, whether it would actually prove anything.

  ‘You should be more trusting,’ said Sam. ‘I thought you were a Challenger with us.’

  I told them where they could stick that idea.

  ‘You know who painted this boat with us?’ said Jack.

  I looked away. There were a couple of other boats on the lake, but they were too far away to help. But, as always, we were within sight of the Lantern Room of Lakeside House.

  ‘There’s actually only one piece of evidence that Will was our good friend,’ said Sam. He pointed at three initials to the right of his seat: WC, ST, JT. Will, Sam, Jack. ‘Scratched after we painted it. A mistake. We haven’t made mistakes since.’ Sam worked at the WC with the end of his key. The W became a set of hatched squiggles; the C became a distorted circle.

  ‘You’re going to prison for a very long time,’ I said.

  ‘I think not,’ said Jack. ‘Our family has been playing what you might call “Games” for generations. In any case, Will just sort of happened. The plan was for Will to go missing for forty-eight hours, that old Challenge, which he agreed to, even to the point of writing the letters we dictated, and then he started to think it wasn’t such a good idea. And then we . . .’ Jack looked away as if he was remembering the series of events. ‘And then he slipped.’ He stared me in the eye.

  It was the matter-of-fact-ness that terrified me. ‘What?’ Desperate, fearful, I looked back to the shore. ‘I want you to take me back. I have to check in with the police at lunchtime, you know.’

  Sam pulled in the sail and we bobbed around the water, rotating very slowly. ‘Let’s not forget,’ he said, almost to himself, ‘that you killed Mike Haconby and, it certainly looks like, Blake Caudwell – whose body is still to be found . . .’