The Boy in the Well

by Dan Clark

“How do you know they were watching you if a mask was covering their face?”

  “I guess that I can’t say for sure then. But it was starting to creep me out.”

  “Understandable. Please carry on.”

  “I started heading towards them. I was making my way over, through the pub, when this person stood up and took off.”

  “And you think it could have been the person in the werewolf costume who attacked Mr Cookson tonight?”

  “I don’t know. But why dash out of the door when I make my way over? Anyway, after I got home last night, I found a note had been posted through my mother’s letterbox.”

  DS Hughes leans forward a little closer. “A note?”

  Carolyn nods. “The note said to meet them at the old steelworks, that Myers Steel place, and that they had information which could help me.”

  DC Dixon returns with three mugs of coffee. He places one in front of Carolyn. She reaches for it immediately and takes a sip. She’s so thirsty that she needs something, anything, to line her stomach and replace the sour taste of adrenaline in her mouth. She grimaces as the hot liquid burns her throat.

  “Thanks, Mike,” DS Hughes says. She stirs in a sugar before turning back to Carolyn. “What information could this person help you with?”

  Carolyn hesitates to tell them. They already believe I’m crazy. Seeing corpses that aren’t there and wasting police time. But this person that attacked Barry tonight needs to be found and locked away.

  She stays quiet.

  “Mrs Hill?” DS Hughes says.

  “I’ve been asking questions about the disappearances of Elwyn Roberts and Dylan Lloyd. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it, but I guess it probably does.”

  DS Hughes pulls an agitated expression towards her partner, who sighs and scribbles in his notebook. The gelled hair on Mike Dixon’s head stands perfectly still as he writes. His light auburn goatee matches his hair.

  “Make a note of The Red Fox pub. We’ll need to pull the CCTV from last night and take a look at this werewolf person,” DS Hughes says, then turns back to Carolyn. “Do you still have the note?”

  Carolyn doesn’t answer. Her mind has been swept away, thinking of the blood spilling out of Barry earlier.

  “Mrs Hill!” DS Hughes says, loudly. The nurses from the far side look over.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you still have the note?”

  “Yes, I think so. It should be in my room, at my mothers. The coat… I found a coat… Do you have it?” Carolyn shouts.

  DS Hughes holds her hands up and tells Carolyn to calm down. The two nurses turn and glance over again before going back to chatting quietly.

  “Yes, it’s in Evidence,” DS Hughes answers. “We’ll be sending it off to Forensics once the Lloyds have seen it and can confirm it did belong to Dylan Lloyd.”

  DC Dixon coughs and clears his throat. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to hurt Mr Cookson?” he asks. “Do you have anybody in mind who might have sent you the note?”

  Carolyn scans her mind as she bites at her fingernails. She thinks about mentioning Owen Lloyd, the night he ran her off the road and almost broke her back. But then why would Owen Lloyd tell her to come alone, knowing that she has no means of transport? Besides, Frank Lloyd would have him under a watchful eye for quite some time.

  “Oh God… Oh it must be… It must have been him!” Carolyn shrieks, not realising she’s speaking out loud.

  DS Hughes and DC Dixon give each other a curious look before Hughes turns back to Carolyn.

  “Who do you think it might have been?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Why do you think it could be this Patrick Sawhill who attacked Barry Cookson?” Mike Dixon asks as he makes a note of the name.

  Carolyn stands holding her mouth.

  “Mrs Hill?’’ DS Hughes asks.

  “Sorry. I’m going to be sick!” Carolyn mumbles through her hands as she runs off to the Ladies. It’s a quick-thinking excuse to get herself away. She needs to buy herself some time to think up a story believable enough not to incriminate herself or Barry. She isn’t expecting the vomit to be a reality until she enters the cubicle, and a second later she’s hunched over with her head in a toilet. The image of the blood leaving Barry’s side is sickening, and it will stay with her for the rest of her life.

  Carolyn could never look at blood and not feel queasy. Even watching those paramedic shows on TV with Simon always turned her stomach. The worry in Barry’s eyes, and the paleness of his face, had shaken her; this huge man was lying on the ground after being attacked from behind.

  But it’s now clear that if she’d gone alone, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  Carolyn remembers the concentration on Barry’s face, his expression showing her he must have been imagining this is the end, losing his life and never seeing his daughter again. More sick flows and hits the toilet water. She wipes at her mouth and washes her face before returning to the canteen.

  “I followed a man called Julio Alcala to Patrick Sawhill’s party accessories shop. I learned his name from a news article.”

  “What party shop is this?” DC Dixon asks.

  “P’s Party Accessories. It’s a small unit in the industrial park.”

  “Oh yeah, I know it.”

  “It’s a good thirty-minute drive from Julio’s home,” she says, taking a sip of her coffee now that it has cooled. “He visited after closing time and went into the shop… unit… whatever you want to call it. He was in there for roughly ten to fifteen minutes, then left with something that he put inside his jacket. I have no idea what it could be.”

  “And what, you think it could be this Julio Alcala or Patrick Sawhill that spotted you following him?” Carolyn can’t help noticing the sarcasm in DS Hughes’ voice. “They found out and came after you?”

  DC Dixon is keeping up with the story, writing as quickly as he can.

  “No… I went the party shop one day to try to find out what could be going on. I know that it must sound ridiculous to you both. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  The two detectives don’t reply.

  “At first I thought it was drug-related,” Carolyn continues. “There is this door which is locked, and behind it is a shelf with a laptop on. The door was open on the day I visited and the laptop was already logged in and ready to use. The owner had to leave the shop for some reason or the other, and my gut was screaming at me to search through it. I was sure that something was up.”

  Carolyn breathes out. Her hands are still shaking from earlier, but the coffee seems to have calmed her a little and brought back some colour to her face. She’s convinced her story sounds real enough to keep Barry and her out of trouble. She just prays that Patrick Sawhill doesn’t have a home security camera showing her breaking and entering his home and stealing his laptop. She’s unsure if it is a crime to search through another person’s belongings, but she had to get as close as possible to the truth.

  “Do you usually snoop through people’s things, Mrs Hill?” DC Dixon asks, stroking his goatee.

  “No, never. But I—”

  “So you think Patrick Sawhill got wind of you going through his computer, and knows you saw something that you shouldn’t have?” DC Dixon asks, cutting her off.

  Carolyn shrugs. “I don’t know. But something seemed dodgy about the files I went through. Look.” She pulls out her phone and shows the two detectives the pictures she took that night. Hughes and Dixon squint and look at the files on her phone. The broken screen makes it hard to see anything.

  “I’m not sure if this is illegal, or of any interest…” Carolyn tails off.

  “Go on,” Hughes says.

  “The storage room at the party shop… unit… whatever. There are cuttings from a clothing magazine of young girls modelling bikinis and summer wear. I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it if the place catered for fashion and beachwear. But it doesn’t.”

  The two detective
s pause for a moment. Dixon writes something down and Hughes stays silent, thinking. She takes a sip of her coffee.

  Carolyn goes on. “You do know Julio Alcala has a criminal record and is on the Sex Offenders’ Register, don’t you?”

  DC Dixon turns to DS Hughes and taps his pen on the pad. “I knew I’d heard that name before.”

  DS Hughes turns back to Carolyn and stares at her. Then she leans over to her partner and whispers into his ear. He stands and heads out of the canteen with his phone at the ready.

  “Do you need a lift home?” Hughes asks Carolyn.

  Carolyn accepts gratefully. On their way through the hospital, they stop by the ward Barry is on and speak with a nurse, who tells them that Barry has finished in surgery and he had a two-inch stab wound. Thankfully it seemed to have missed his vital organs, but he’s lost a lot of blood and is now resting and won’t be able to answer any questions.

  DS Hughes parks on Jeanette’s drive, next to her returned Polo. Carolyn leaves the car saying goodbye to Dixon. He replies with a grunt and continues tapping at his phone. She heads for the door with DS Hughes following behind. Carolyn tries not to inspect her mother’s car too obviously. They enter the bungalow and Jeanette leaves the kitchen after hearing Carolyn’s key in the door. She looks at Carolyn in confusion.

  ‘‘I’ll explain in a moment, Mum,’’ Carolyn says. She turns to DS Hughes and points. ‘‘My room is in there.’’ DS Hughes heads into Carolyn’s room with a plastic evidence bag in hand. DS Hughes places the note and the envelope into the bag, thanks Jeanette and sees herself out.

  “What’s going on now?” Jeanette asks. “What was it that DS Hughes took from your room?”

  Carolyn is too distracted to answer. She is watching the detectives reversing out of the drive and heading off down the road.

  “I need you to pack a bag. We have to stay in a hotel for a night, okay?” Carolyn says, her voice on the verge of breaking.

  “What is going on? Why are you acting so strangely?”

  “Please, will you just do this for me? I’ll explain in the car. Please.”

  Jeanette looks at her daughter’s face and agrees. She leaves the room and begins packing a bag.

  Carolyn considers taking a shower. Her skin begs for the warm water, to wash away the bitter air and the speckles of Barry’s blood. But she decides to leave it until she and her mother are safe. Carolyn shoves some clean underwear into a bag, along with two pairs of jeans and a few jumpers, then stands back at the curtains, watching in case the person who attacked Barry, the person who led them to the Myers Steel works, is out there.

  Five minutes later, Carolyn and Jeanette are in the car and heading down the driveway. Carolyn watches all mirrors in turn, checking that they aren’t being followed. The car is spotless inside. It has undergone a thorough valet which has made it look almost brand new. It even drives more smoothly.

  “The keys had been posted through the letter box when I got back from the church,” Jeanette says, inspecting the new interior of the car. “It can’t have been that bad.”

  “Huh?” Carolyn grunts, her mind occupied on Barry.

  “When you went off the road, it can’t have been that bad… the damage I mean. The car looks great.”

  “Oh right, yeah,” Carolyn says. “It looks great.”

  “So… What the hell is going on, Carolyn?” Jeanette asks. She turns in her seat and is now facing her. “And don’t lie to me!”

  Carolyn thinks about telling her mother some silly lie, anything but the truth. Instead, she decides she ought to know. She has the right to know.

  “Barry’s been stabbed, Mum,” Carolyn says, her eyes filling with the tears she’d suppressed at the hospital. She sniffs and wipes at her nose using the back of her hand.

  “What? Why? Who on earth stabbed him?” Jeanette asks, pulling a tissue from her bag and handing it over.

  “I don’t know. DS Hughes went into my room before to bag a note that was posted last night, when we got home from the Halloween party.” Carolyn wipes her eyes.

  “A note? I don’t understand,” Jeanette says.

  “The note was addressed to me, instructing me to go to the old steelworks. I was only gone five minutes, ten at the most. When I came back… I found Barry on the ground, bleeding,” Carolyn says, turning a corner and keeping an eye on the rear-view mirror for any following headlights. There aren’t any.

  Carolyn explains the note, the coat she had found with Dylan Lloyd’s name inked inside it, and the party shop owner’s laptop. She leaves out the part about herself and Barry breaking into Patrick Sawhill’s home to retrieve it.

  After a thirty-minute drive, mainly consisting of Jeanette screaming at Carolyn as though she was back at school, they arrive at the Traveller’s Stay, a cosy-looking B&B.

  Chapter Thirty

  Carolyn parks the car at the back of the B&B, next to a rusted campervan with deflated tyres. Her idea is to hide it from anyone that drives in to park, though she needn’t worry; it looks as if they’re going to be the only guests. Hiding the car makes her feel paranoid. She puts it down to shock.

  Jeanette’s upset, angry even. But at least she’s also safe.

  Once inside the Traveller’s Stay, Carolyn can see there is nothing cosy-looking about the bed-and-breakfast. The pictures that she’d found online don’t match the room they’re in now; this one is small and snug, and crammed with dated furniture that’s thick with dust and deep with scratches. She could swear it isn’t even the same building; the architecture doesn’t match. Though she’s not going to complain. She desperately needs a shower and somewhere to rest – a place nobody knows where she and Jeanette are.

  The owner of the B&B is a nosey elderly woman who smells of cigarettes. She’s attempted, and failed, to mask the cigarette odour with a tangy perfume, one that must be as old as the furniture itself.

  Carolyn tells the woman that their kitchen has flooded and that they’ll need a room for the night, possibly longer. She hopes that Barry being stabbed will give the police a good enough reason to search Julio Alcala’s home, along with Patrick Sawhill’s shop and laptop.

  Not that she knows much about police procedures.

  Carolyn’s paranoid mind tells her that Patrick Sawhill and Julio Alcala must be the ones involved in all of this, the ones who retrieved the decaying body from the well, the ones watching her at the Halloween party in The Red Fox, and the ones who attacked Barry. It must be them, or at least an accomplice of theirs. After all, they’re the only people she can think of who’d have a reason to silence her.

  Carolyn stands in the bathroom and calls the hospital at just gone midnight to check up on Barry. The nurse informs her that nothing has changed, and that Barry is still sleeping. She leaves her mobile number with the nurse and asks that she rings her if there is any news.

  It’s now 4:00 am, and after showering, ordering a takeaway (not that Carolyn has eaten much of it) and filling Jeanette in with the details she missed during the car ride, Carolyn is wide awake and listening to her mother snore and grunt in the bed opposite. The cheap, itchy blanket is pulled right up to Jeanette’s face and she is mumbling things like Leave her alone and It’s our fault. Carolyn assumes it’s stress caused by what she’s just told her. It must be playing on her mind.

  Carolyn brings her mind back to Barry. The thought of him being paralysed and unable to work or walk properly again, due to her foolish decision of not consulting the police, rests heavily on her mind. The thought causes her to feel like fleeing to the bathroom to throw up. The thought of having to contact Barry’s daughter, Amy, and tell her that her father is dead or paralysed, brings her to weep into her mouldy-smelling pillow. She agrees that, if Barry comes through this, she’ll support him and make it up to him. Whatever he needs, she’ll provide, even if that means selling her shop in Leeds to pay for it.

  After hours of trying, Carolyn finally begins to drift off to sleep. She’s hugging the spare pillow tightly betwe
en her arms, dreaming that she’s sitting on the fallen tree at the bottom of the winding path. Next to her is the coat that belongs to Dylan Lloyd. The fog is thick around her, thicker than earlier on, making it almost impossible to see more than a few metres ahead. When she hears the rattling in the bushes, it isn’t the hungry raven that emerges this time, it’s Patrick Sawhill. He’s clutching a huge butcher’s knife with fresh blood along the blade and a demonic grin on his face. Barry’s screams as he’s attacked and left for dead are piercingly loud, and his cries echo around her, bouncing off the trees before fading out into the wilderness.

  Carolyn and Patrick Sawhill’s eyes meet. He moves forward, and Carolyn doesn’t give him the chance to get any closer. She runs.

  Patrick Sawhill begins chasing after her. Only in this dream, Carolyn’s legs refuse to work properly; they feel tired and limp. Patrick Sawhill, overweight as he is in reality, isn’t having any trouble breathing or running. Here, in Carolyn’s dream, he comes at her with the speed of an athlete, slashing his blood-smeared blade side to side, barely missing Carolyn’s back as he chuckles loudly.

  Carolyn runs through the woods; she tries screaming for help but her throat is blocked. It feels as if she’s swallowed an apple whole. She can only just breathe.

  She runs, jumping over tree branches and landing in puddles full of sloppy mud. Her foot becomes stuck in the mud. Patrick Sawhill is catching up; she can hear him coming through the trees. She pulls and pulls until the earth finally releases her foot, though it keeps her boot. She hasn’t the time to reach for it, so she turns and runs on without it. Thorn bushes nick at her legs and tear at her clothes, and stones pierce the sole of her foot while leafless branches whip at her face. Running alongside her, in partnership with the fat man, is Julio Alcala. He too has a wide, inhuman grin reaching to the deep scar on his cheek.

  Finally the trees begin to thin out. She holds her hands out in front of her and pushes through the branches until she comes to the opening.