‘If you have to, I have to. Maybe for the same reason as you.’
What does that mean, Drover thinks. He says, ‘Eh?’
‘We have to stay to see William as well. On this special day.’ It’s like she’s trying to give him some kind of coded message. She’s saying some words very deliberately.
‘Oh, I see,’ he says, but he doesn’t see anything at all. ‘So we’re in the same boat, then.’ He’s totally confused but that answer seems to settle her a bit. She looks as if she’s just understood something.
‘The same boat, yes,’ she says, slowly, then takes another sip of her drink.’ So tell me about the other boy. Peter.’
‘What about him?’
‘His face also rings a bell. Have we met before? No, wait a minute. Wasn’t he in the newspaper for some reason?’
Drover’s pulse picks up pace. Yes, he was, and Drover knows exactly why.
But there was nothing to connect Drover.
‘I think he said he was,’ he says. He decides to take a leaf from Pete’s book; be honest. Only he’s going to be a bit Pete and a lot Drover, honest but not completely truthful.
‘That’s where I saw him,’ she says. ‘Something to do with an accident, wasn’t it? Was that what made him backwards? I can say backwards, can I? I mean, I have your permission, you being his bodyguard?’
‘He’s special,’ Drover says. His mind is split. He has to get her out of the room and he has to protect himself and Pete. ‘And, no, it wasn’t the accident. He was special before that.’
‘A death,’ she says, thinking out loud. She settles back into the sofa and raises one arm to drape it across the back. ‘His father’s death,’ she says.
‘Should we be doing something in the kitchen?’ Drover swallows hard. ‘I mean, like getting some supper ready or the like?’
‘No. What happened to his father?’
‘No idea.’
‘Really?’ Then: ‘That’s it! A robbery,’ she says, and Drover feels the sweat building up under his collar. The room has turned very warm.
‘Maybe we should make some sandwiches.’
‘For whom?’
‘For William, when he gets back.’
‘You don’t know him at all, do you. When was the robbery?’
‘I imagine you and your husband are hungry,’ he says. ‘It’s getting late. Maybe you shouldn’t trouble yourself waiting after all.’
‘No trouble.’
‘You could find him in town, perhaps.’
‘No trouble,’ she repeats.
It’s like talking to a brick wall.
‘Two years ago.’ She answers her own question. ‘Wasn’t it a bank or something?’
Drover can see her hand falling behind the sofa and swinging up and down lazily. She sips her drink and stares at him over the rim of her glass.
‘Can’t remember,’ he lies.
‘A bank rings a bell, too. Yes, a couple of years ago now, wasn’t it? Just before I changed jobs. There was some bungled burglary and someone got shot, and this boy was left alone. Hello?’
She has noticed that there is a gap between the sofa and the wall. She is moving her fingers from one to the other, measuring the distance. She looks at the gap.
Don’t look over the back, Drover pleads with her in his mind. If she looks over the back she’ll see half a dead father-in-law, the rest of him wedged under the sofa.
‘That’s unusual,’ she says, looking at the span of her fingers she’s just measured the gap with. Drover feels a bead of sweat run down his face. ‘But, that’s right, isn’t it?’ She turns back to him. ‘I remember because he was a bit… special. That was him, wasn’t it? In the paper, losing his father because of a bank raid?’
‘It’s getting very late,’ Drover says to deflect any more questions. He relaxes a tiny bit as she sits forward again.
‘So good of you to look after him.’
‘He’s a friend,’ he says. ‘Has been since we were at school. He needs me.’
‘And what do you get out of it?’
He can hear more footsteps overhead and Pete’s voice droning on. He’s telling one of his stories. That should keep them out of the way for a while. Good one, Pete.
‘Hmm?’
‘What?’
‘What do you get out of the relationship?’
‘It ain’t no relationship, we’re just friends. Look, why don’t you give him a ring and see when he will be back?’
Drover has no idea why he said that. He turns around to face away from her so as to hide his face as he screws it up and thinks, shit!
‘Hmm,’ is all she says, and he has never heard anyone sound so distrustful before. ‘Problem there,’ she says.
He composes his face and turns back to her. She’s standing up now and is at a side table, holding a telephone with its wire trailing. ‘Looks like he got fed up with us calling him and…’ She stops, looks from the dead phone to Drover’s dead pan face. ‘Unless someone else did this?’
‘Not me,’ he says, and is actually genuinely shocked that anyone would think he would vandalise someone else’s house.
‘Ah,’ she says, and gives him an unnerving smile. ‘Maybe he didn’t want any interruptions during his… party.’
‘Maybe.’
‘But I am still a little concerned.’ She puts down her glass. ‘It’s dark out there, no moon yet, and it is not like him to wander far from home on any day, let alone his special night.’
If she was hoping for an answer then she is out of luck. Drover can think of none to give. He is too busy praying that she will go upstairs with the others. He’s mapped out his moves and route. As soon as the coast is clear he’s given himself a minute and a half. If he can’t find the keys on the way to the garage he will stash the body under the sacks and clutter until he can find them.
‘What?’ He is aware that Pam has said something and is leaving the room.
‘I said, back in a minute. I left my mobile in the car.’
‘Right,’ he says, and suddenly believes in God.
He watches her go and listens. Upstairs he can hear Myles laughing and he knows Lily is going to be clinging onto Pete’s every word. Pete’s voice is more animated, a story is in full swing. They won’t be coming down any time soon. He hears the front door open and peeks out into the hall just in time to see it close as Pam goes outside.
Drover looks at the sofa.
Ninety seconds, starting now.
Fourteen
PAM HATES TO BE UNCERTAIN and, as she closes the front door behind her, she is feeling very uncertain. She pauses for a second and breathes in the damp night air. It is cool and invigorating after the inside of the house. She has never liked being inside that building because of who lives in it, but, she thinks, after tonight things will be different and she looks forward to spending more time here.
She steps from the porch to the gravel path and a bright light clicks into life. The security light over the door blasts onto the path ahead, some of the closest trees and the beginning of the drive. The track disappears from view a few yards ahead, swallowed up by the night. Pam turns left and walks towards the corner of the house.
There was something out of place in that room, she thinks, not just the two boys. There was something, a clue, and she hasn’t yet found it. She flashes through the room in her mind. She can place all the knickknacks, all the photos, books, paintings, records, all the disorder, and they all feel right. But there was something out of place. The sofa was away from the wall, but then it always was. William said it was that way so that he could get behind it and serve people over their shoulders. She always felt that was a strange thing for him to say, seeing as how he never entertained visitors, not in the usual sense.
She reaches the end of the house and rounds the corner where she is immediately plunged into darkness. The security light clicks off and there is nothing lighting this side of the property. She curses, and wishes she had brought a torch. But the car is just up ahead. She puts out her hand and squints, but her eyes cannot adjust to the dense darkness. She shuffles her feet forward until she reaches the garage wall that protrudes at right angles from the house. She follows that to her right, the gravel crunching beneath her feet, until she reaches the corner. The car is just around to her left somewhere.
She looks up to the sky. There may be no moon yet but there are thousands of stars. The great spray of the Milky Way slashes across the night like glittering graffiti, beautiful but useless. She looks down to the darkness; even this amount of stars cannot light her way.
Her legs feel cold as a soft breeze plays around her ankles, but there is no sound from the trees, no rustling leaves, no birds settling in for the night, no night cries of hunting animals; just the sound of her cautious tread on the stony path. She stretches her fingers out. The car must be dead ahead, there’s a darker patch of darkness just there.
A cold breath of wind on her neck makes her shudder and she quickens her pace, shuffling one foot in front of the other more quickly, keeping her feet close to the ground, expecting her shins to bang into something any second.
A touch on her shoulder brings her up short. She cries out and turns, backs away from the darkness and comes up against the boot of the car. She holds both hands out defensively.
‘Who’s that?’ she calls. Her voice is strong. She recalls some self-defence class of years ago. She feels the solid security of the car behind her and inches around the side to the passenger door. ‘Who’s there? William?’
No reply, but someone definitely touched her. She reaches down and behind to find the door handle and opens the door.
Yellow light spills out from the car illuminating a small patch around her. She is alone, of course. She imagined it. She growls to herself. It’s not like her to get spooked. I’m just unsettled, she thinks as she slips into the passenger seat. Discovering strangers at the house, and on tonight of all nights; them and William’s sofa. There was something erroneous about the sofa.
She clicks open the glove compartment and finds her phone. It has a torch function and she switches it on. Shining it around outside the car as she gets out, she can tell that its beam is no match for the darkness. The night around her smothers all but the closest light.
Having closed the car door, she makes her way back to the front of the house. But now she is aware of an echo. As she puts one foot down and hears it grate into the gravel, so a copy of the sound materialises then fades right next to her. She reaches out to her left but there’s nothing beside her except the feeling that she is not alone. Tricks, she thinks, feeling sweat beneath her arms, simple auto-suggestion. It’s the trees and whatever lies behind them in the impossibly dark night. Another step, another copycat crunch of stones.
‘William?’ she calls again, but there is no reply. It’s only the sound of her footsteps echoing back off the walls, she tells herself. Some kind of reverberation caused by the damp autumn air and the stillness of the night.
She takes another step.
And hears something loudly dragging through the gravel behind her.
Spinning, she holds her phone out like it was a gun and points the ineffectual beam of light towards the sound. She can just make out the back of the car, she can see her light reflected in it and, somewhere inside the car, she can see two small points of yellow light. She moves the beam of the torch and aims it straight at them. They seem to shrink back and cower down. Was that a pale face she saw? A child? Without thinking, she takes a step towards the car. Who on earth is inside it? She returns to it calling, ‘Hello?’ But when she gets there and shines the light in, the car is empty. She flicks the torchlight around inside, but nothing. Of course there is nothing. It was the reflection of the torch in the mirror.
She is aware that her breathing is tighter now, faster, and that she is sweating in the dank, cold air. She wants to get back inside. She turns and heads back to the house.
Turning the corner, she knows that the security light will come back on and, when it does, she feels instantly calmer. She switches off her torch and hurries back towards the front door.
She is five feet away when the light clicks off, plunging her back into pitch darkness. She waves her arms to activate the sensor but nothing happens. Never mind, she can see the light behind the front door now. Nearly there.
An invisible hand on her shoulder, long fingers, cold, bony, nails pressing into her flesh. The stench of something putrid and long dead wafts across her face. She feels sick, she gags. A freezing breath of wind blows through her hair, her legs feel week and she staggers forwards towards the door.
She trips on the porch step and stumbles past, calling out, ‘Myles!’ She regains her balance and turns, body tense, ready to fight back.
But there is no one there. There is, however, a row of uneven yellow dots just beyond the tree line. Five, ten, twenty pairs of narrow, jaundiced points of light glowing in the undergrowth, forming a circle around the house.
‘It’s starting,’ she whispers to herself and realises that this is the most afraid she has been in her life. She is furious at herself for allowing it.
Pam reaches for the front door and bangs on it.
‘Myles!’ she screams out. ‘Myles!’
The lights in the forest take a step forward, towards the house.
Drover closes the door to the cupboard under the stairs. Gasping for breath, his wet back screaming out in pain and his arms weak and trembling, he turns to face the front door.
‘Shit!’ he whispers. ‘I just needed another half a minute lady.’
He can see the woman’s shape pressed up against the glass and he can certainly hear her shouting. Upstairs, he can hear footsteps as the others come running. He checks himself, no blood from the body, nothing out of place. He just needs to calm, recover, and pray that no one opens the cupboard door.
‘Myles!’
He hears Pam shout out once more as Myles’s legs appear at the top of the stairs and he comes running down. Drover dives into the kitchen and hides behind the door. Through the crack he sees Myles let Pam in. She looks white and angry. She marches into the sitting room and her husband follows. Drover notices that he is carrying some kind of sports bag. Pete and Lily come down from upstairs, no longer holding hands, and also go into the sitting room.
Perhaps, Drover thinks, they will stay in there long enough for me to get the body from the cupboard to the garage. But the sitting room door is open, it’s too close, it’s too risky. Just stay there a minute and think, Drover. Just think.
Pete is the last one to hurry back into the sitting room. The woman is swigging from her glass at the same time as her husband is trying to pour more drink into it. He is spilling some. She slaps his hand away and Lily is laughing and saying, ‘Pam, have you seen a ghost?’
‘I’ve seen a ghost,’ Pete says. This is a subject he knows something about. But no-one wants to hear his story now. The woman says, ‘Shut up, idiot,’ and Pete feels hurt like he always does when someone calls him that. But the hurt will quickly pass.
‘What’s happened?’ Myles asks, taking the opportunity for another drink. Pete thinks these people are drinking too much.
‘My dad said it’s wrong to drink too much,’ he says. ‘He said drinking alcohol will kill you one day.’
‘Shut up,’ Pam barks again, and puts her glass down on a table. ‘I’m fine, just a little spooked that’s all.’
‘You?’ Myles says.
‘What by?’ asks Lily.
‘Nothing, just the night. The light went out, you know, one’s mind plays tricks.’ She sits up on the edge of the sofa and looks at her mobile phone. Then she looks up at the clock. ‘I am recovered now.’
She punches in some numbers and holds the phone to her ear.
‘Ask him when he’s getting back,’ Myles says, but Pam waves him away like he was some kind of annoying wasp.
Somewhere in the room music starts to play.
“Yes, you have a secret you hide.”
Pete watches as Myles looks sharply at the pile of records by the record player on the other side of the room.
“I agree you’ve a darker side.”
He watches Myles as he looks slowly back to his wife, his face a picture of puzzlement. Pete notices that Lily has sat in a chair and crossed her legs. She looks like she is thinking. Perhaps, like Pete, she is wondering where the song is coming from.
Pam looks up from her phone and looks directly at her husband as if he had done something wrong. Then she looks at Pete and there’s something in her stare that makes him very afraid.
“But I can’t let this…”
‘Myles?’ she says.
Myles throws up his shoulders, his face is all confusion.
Lily starts laughing and pointing to the sofa. Pete’s blood runs cold. Where’s Drover?
“…feeling go to waste.”
Pam puts down her phone and gets onto her knees. She lifts the material around the bottom of the sofa and looks underneath it. She looks from left to right and then sits back.
‘I think it’s coming from…’
‘Quiet, Myles.’ She kneels up and listens.
“You’re such an acquired taste.”
Pam bends down again and runs her hand under an armchair. When she rights herself she is holding a mobile phone. The music plays louder. She slowly gets to her feet and turns her accusing stare to Pete.
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