by Ryan Casey
I raised my head and let my shoulders fall to my side. ‘No thanks, I’m fine.’
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Donald said, returning the water to his rucksack. He looked away from me, slowly. I didn’t wait to risk anything. He could have tampered with the water, or it might not even have been water in the flask after all. We couldn’t get careless, not now.
‘Well, this is the spot. I’ll get digging.’ He walked towards the tree, stroking the bark up and down a few times, before crouching to his knees. This would be a perfect chance to capture him and tie him up. Force him to answer questions. But I was more transfixed by what it was he had buried underneath this tree. We looked on.
I expected Donald to pull a spade out of his large rucksack, so I was surprised to see him digging up the earth with his bare hands. That was a hell of a lot of digging to do if he was to bury us or even dig someone else up. Adam stared on, twiddling his fingers against his thumbs.
‘What sorta thing you digging up, Donald?’ Adam asked, pacing from side to side like a police interrogator. A fair question. Not too revealing.
Donald carried on, although I saw a smile peek from the side of his face. ‘You’ll see. It’s nothing too exciting in itself—well, to me it’s pretty beautiful. You’ll probably appreciate it.’
We stood watching Donald dig for what must have been several minutes. I offered to give him a hand, but he put his arm in the way, gently pushing me back onto the pavement. I flinched as he reached for me. He looked back and frowned. I was giving too much away.
‘This is something I need to do,’ he said. ‘Only I know what I’m looking for.’
‘Well why have you brought us out here then?’ Adam asked. I could sense the impatience in his voice.
Donald didn’t respond to Adam. Instead, he smiled some more. It didn’t take long before he pulled an old sock out of the ground. Weird. He must not have expected that to get in the way of his digging.
Things got even more curious, however, when Donald stopped digging and examined the sock. He curled it in his hands and tapped it against his chest, twice. It looked like something was in the sock, adding a bit of weight to it. Is it full of dirt? If it is, why is Donald being so weird around it?
‘It’s a sock,’ Adam said.
Donald stood up and turned to us. The sock was black with green lines around the toe area. He held it in one hand, debating what to do with the other hand, before holding it out in front of him and turning the sock upside-down. My heart fluttered again when I realised that this might all be part of some elaborate set up. Donald might have been here earlier and planted a knife or a gun. Maybe he was using this sock to make us feel comfortable before ramming dirty steel into the side of our necks. We were too deep in the woods to be found. No one would hear us if we screamed for help.
A knife didn’t fall from the sock. Neither did a gun or anything that could be used to hurt anyone. Instead, along with dirt and what looked like a crushed woodlouse, a small circular piece of metal slipped out. Donald held it out in front of him in between his finger and thumb, turning it like a model on the catwalk. It was a ring: a little dirty, but golden underneath. Donald smiled and inspected it from all angles. It was as if he had been reunited with an old friend.
‘Ah, she still looks the same as she did back then,’ Donald said.
The hairs on my arm tingled. I looked at Adam, who shrugged, wide-eyed and in a slumped stance. ‘Whose ring is it, Donald?’ I asked.
Donald continued to inspect the ring as if he were looking for something. I wondered if he’d heard what I said properly, so I coughed. Zoning out was becoming an annoying tendency of Donald’s. He looked through the ring, towards me, and put the ring back into the sock, not bothering to polish it off or give it a clean.
‘Someone I once knew,’ he said. ‘I like to keep it here because it keeps her alive in a sense. She loves this place. And she’d want to be here, buried here. At least that way I’m sure she’s still living through this place.’
I felt lost for words more than ever. I wanted my dad. He used to be good at talking his way out of situations like this. My mouth felt dry as warm tears grew behind my eyelids.
I remembered Granddad’s embrace with Donald. Donald’s eyes after he’d buried the girl. Who was she? That was a question we’d never thought to ask. We were so obsessed with figuring out whether Donald was a killer, getting overwhelmed by our own murder mystery, that we hadn’t even began to wonder who the girl was. Why was Donald burying her? What was the secret surrounding her, and did this ring have anything to do with it?
‘Who was she?’ Adam asked. I did a double take and my heart jumped, thinking he was echoing my thoughts about the dead girl, but I soon realised he was referring to the person Donald spoke of. Someone he knew a long time ago.
Donald crouched down again and began to bury the sock, even more dirt wedging between his fingernails.
‘Ah, well, some things aren’t for everyone’s ears, Adam,’ he said, his smile eroding. I could see redness in his eyes as he stood up and brushed his hands together.
‘Why did you bring us out here, then?’
Donald looked towards the sky. ‘It’s getting dark soon, so I should probably be getting you boys back. I wanted to share something with you. Some things you see don’t need explaining. Not everything has a reason. Just remember that. It could keep you out of a lot of trouble in life.’
*
Nobody said anything on the walk back. The woods were almost pitch black as we walked through them. It felt like the middle of the night in there even though it was only evening. I kept turning to Adam, checking he was still close. Donald led the way.
As the exit grew closer, Donald stopped and looked at his watch.
‘You alright, Donald?’ Adam asked, slowing down behind him.
‘Yeah. You boys run along, if that’s alright? I’ve got something to see to.’ He looked up and scanned the trees.
I turned to Adam, who shrugged and looked back at Donald.
‘Okay… well, we’ll head off,’ I said, as I began to walk away from Donald.
‘What have you got to do?’ Adam asked.
Donald rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ve got to see to something. Run along now.’
He winked. Adam and I crept off and began to run.
As we reached the exit of the woods, Adam stopped. ‘Liam, wait.’
I stopped running too and looked up at the dimming sky. Lights flickered on in nearby caravans. ‘But Gran and Granddad said not to be late.’
‘I know, and we’re not that late. But seriously, what the fuck was all that about?’ he asked. He started walking, slowly.
‘I dunno where to start,’ I said. ‘The ring? Who is the ‘she’ he was on about?’
Adam bit his nails. ‘It has to be the dead girl.’
I let the scenario run through my head as we walked down past Emily’s caravan. ‘But something doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘He was weird about it all. Like he cared.’
Adam coughed and let out a sharp, sarcastic laugh. ‘Liam, in case you haven’t noticed, he is weird.’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe. But it’s strange. First, the whole Carla thing. Then this. It doesn’t add up. Why would he steal Carla to look all heroic and then show us this ring?’
Adam curled his eyebrows. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’
‘Well, it seemed like he was showing us a secret in there, but not like a warning. I don’t think he knows we’re onto him, Adam. Or if he does… he’s trying to show us something.’
I heard shouting behind us and stopped in my tracks. I turned round and saw Emily’s dad leaving his caravan. He talked on the phone to someone and waved his finger around. ‘If you can’t keep a secret, that’s your problem,’ he shouted. ‘I’m not going to get done for your mess, and it is your mess.’
He pulled the phone away from his ear, rubbed his face, and walked up towards the woods.
I turned to Adam, w
ho watched with his mouth slightly ajar.
‘I think we need to have another think about things,’ I said.
Chapter Fifteen
Later, as I lay in bed, Donald’s final words rung in my ears like a church bell in the morning. ‘It could keep you out of trouble.’ Was he trying to warn us?
And Emily’s dad, on the phone. ‘It’s your mess.’ Something wasn’t right.
We went to bed that night knowing that we weren’t going to be getting much sleep. The rain plunked against the roof of the caravan, which didn’t help, but we were up for reasons much more serious than the weather.
Adam had his notepad out, the light above him just about illuminating his writing. He paused and put the pen in his mouth, as if he was trying to piece a jigsaw puzzle together.
‘Done,’ Adam said. He folded his arms and jumped back into his bed.
‘What d’you mean ‘done?’’
‘I’ve done. Finished a list of all the strange things. Everything Donald’s done that has been strange.’ He passed the book over to me. He had listed and bullet pointed everything from the beginning, when Carla went missing, right through to Donald’s revelation of the ring in the woods. Carla’s initial disappearance seemed so long ago. I felt like my brain had been moving at the speed of a train, unable to process everything at once. All of the sections had little notes next to them including areas for speculation, such as whether Donald kidnapped Carla from the beginning, or came across her and held her for a few days after we’d seen him in the woods. But the section with the ring had a big, bold question mark, the white of the paper shining underneath the scribbled black ink.
‘So do you think it was a cover up or not?’ Adam asked.
‘The ring? A cover up for what?’
Adam turned over, leaning on his pillow towards me. He licked his lips as if he were on to something. It was a similar face to the time he thought he’d caught something when Granddad took us both fishing. Unfortunately for him, it was just a pram wheel. ‘Well, think about it. He’s taken us out to the woods and acted all weird and made out as if he knew someone a long time ago, who he used to come to the caravan site with. Do you not think maybe this ring belonged to the girl and he’s using this to put us off our trail?’
I had thought about it, and the theory wasn’t too far off my own initial thoughts. Maybe he’d planted this all along as a ploy to get us into the woods and to attach significance to something that perhaps didn’t really matter.
‘So what you’re saying is the ring isn’t really a big deal?’ I said.
Adam reshuffled his pillow, cradling his head in his hands. ‘Well I’m not saying that for sure, but it does seem weird. I mean, he took us all the way out there to show us something without even telling us what it was. Does that not seem a bit weird to you?’
I was impressed, again, by Adam’s ability to think outside the box. Not many people my age could keep up with him in this department, let alone people his own age. ‘Yeah, it’s almost as if he was trying to distract us,’ I said. ‘Like he knew we would be debating things, what with us being into solving mysteries and everything, so just gave us something else to think about. Which means—’
‘—which means, he’s trying to stop us thinking about the body. He’s trying to distract us.’
It was a far-fetched theory, and definitely one of the more bizarre things we’d come up with. Then again, seeing a man bury a dead girl was hardly an everyday event to witness.
‘What about Emily’s dad?’ I asked.
Adam looked at his notes and scratched his cheek. ‘Well, we don’t know who he was talking to.’
‘It just seemed a little weird that he was on about secrets coming out and all that and he headed into the woods where Donald was. Don’t you reckon?’
Adam chewed at his lip, pausing to think. ‘I guess. We’ll keep an eye on Emily’s dad. Ask Emily if he’s been acting weird lately.’
‘There can only be one answer there,’ I said.
Adam chuckled.
‘So what’s this plan of yours?’ I asked.
Adam tutted. ‘Always me coming up with the genius ideas round here isn’t it?’ He winked at me.
‘Hey, it’s not always you,’ I said. I realised I’d raised my voice.
Adam smirked back at me. ‘I know, I know—only messing, cuz. Cool it.’
I felt the lump in my throat subside as Adam turned back on his pillow and closed his eyes. I could see the grin on his mouth. I couldn’t tell whether he was still laughing at me or whether he was on to something. He was the one with the information, and, if he wanted to keep it to himself, he could for as long as he wanted.
‘We stick to the plan. We’ve done step one and hung around with him. He’s acted weird. Now we go to step two.’
‘And step two is?’
‘We ask Kenny about Donald.’
I frowned and let out a laugh. Slow-walking Kenny wasn’t a man of gossip. He was the last person who would part with information. His wife was always the one who used to chit-chat about Whatshername getting pregnant, or Mr Whats-his-face getting killed on the telly. Kenny was always a quiet man. He made his garden features, he watched the snooker, and he sunbathed with a newspaper every morning, no matter what the weather was like. We never went to see him anymore, so it would be strange for us to suddenly roll up on his doorstep and start quizzing him on Donald.
‘And how exactly do we get info from Kenny?’ I asked, bemused.
Adam carried on smiling, his eyes still shut. I prayed he hadn’t gone to sleep, because I wanted to hear what he had to say. He was toying with me.
‘I’ve seen to that,’ he said.
I jumped over to his bed and hit his leg.
He winced. ‘Ow, alright, alright. Well, you know when I took the rubbish up to the bins before? Well, let’s just say the bag split all over his garden. I even popped a Lurpak carton on the nose of his garden dolphin.’
I tried to respond, but no words left my mouth, which dangled open.
Adam continued, grinning away. ‘When he wakes up, he’ll need a hand or two clearing his garden. And that’s when we happen to be wandering past. That way, he won’t be able to resist answering our questions.’
‘You’ve… you did that?’
Adam smirked. ‘Told you I’m a genius.’ He turned into his pillow, still smiling.
An idiot, more like. A bloody clever idiot. He reached up to his light without opening his eyes and flicked the switch.
Chapter Sixteen
The following morning, we got up and ate our breakfast as usual. While I was eating, I looked up and was startled by the sight of Emily at our doorstep. It took me by surprise, even though it probably shouldn’t have done. Maybe that’s how involved I was getting in this mystery. She hadn’t knocked but instead just stood there, waiting for us to emerge.
‘Oh, what’s she doing here?’ Adam looked at his watch and sighed impatiently.
‘Adam, we’ll have plenty of time,’ I said, as he slumped his shoulders. I knew he was probably bothered that Kenny had begun clearing up his garden. If we had nothing to help with by the time we got there, it would be harder to get him to talk. I didn’t like Adam’s tone, so I ignored him and got up to let Emily in.
As I opened the door, I noticed something different about Emily though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Her hair was tied tightly around her head. Her eyes were dark underneath. Her lips were red like when Mum wore lipstick. She stood, arms behind her back, without her usual smile. Her eyes were grey and distant.
‘You okay, Emily?’ I asked, trying to force a smile from her. I wanted to hug her, but I couldn’t bring myself to reach my arms out. Plus, it would be weird. I had no reason to hug her. She just looked… different. Something was out of place.
She nodded, her eyes not parting from mine. Was she shaking? She brought her hands forward before slipping them in her pockets and back out again. She didn’t know what to do with them. ‘Can I
come in?’ she asked. Her voice sounded shaky.
I was about to say yes when Adam stood up from the table and marched towards the door. ‘Look, we’re busy today alright?’ he said, pushing past me and leaning against the doorway.
I looked at him. The words made heat flush through my body. I looked back at Emily, who carried on staring right at me.
‘I… Okay, I’ll just—’ Her eyes finally broke from mine as she looked down at the floor. She began to turn away from the caravan.
‘Emily, you can come in. Gran and Granddad are out today. They went out to Lancaster early but we… well, we’ve got things to do, so we stayed back,’ I said.
She looked at me again and broke a half-smile. ‘Oh, well, if you’re busy I can, um, I can come again another time, maybe.’
‘No, I er—no! I didn’t mean that. You can come in if you want.’
What a stupid thing to say. We’ve got things to do. I was almost saying out loud what Adam was implying. He looked at his watch again, then up at Emily.
‘It’s okay, Liam. But, we’re still friends, aren’t we?’ she said.
Adam folded his arms together and rolled his eyes.
‘Course we are Emily, it’s just—’
‘It’s just you only want to hang out with us when it suits you. We might have something we need help with but you don’t give a damn.’ He turned to me. ‘Since when did you get so soft anyway?’ Adam interrupted.
Emily stood, mouth open, searching for a response.
My skin began to boil. I couldn’t contain it any longer. I grabbed Adam by the scruff of his shirt and pushed him against the wall. ‘Listen, there’s more to life than this stupid fucking mystery, Adam. We’ve got friends who need us. You can’t forget that. I know you need something to focus on right now, but sometimes you’ve got to let things rest for one bloody minute.’
Adam’s face flushed and his body went limp. He looked at Emily, red-faced, and tried to push my arms away. ‘Some—something to focus on? What’s that supposed to mean?’