by Steve Mosby
It was the school holidays, and Mum and Dad were busy with their own work. Me, I felt slightly restless; I was in need of some activity and I went searching for it. I walked into Owen’s room that day to find him squatting beside his bed, getting his things together. He looked up as I opened the door.
‘Jesus.’ He turned round, angry. ‘Don’t you knock?’
‘Sorry.’
‘As if you are.’
‘I’m just bored.’ I peered down. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘Have you got to know everything? I’m going to play in the woods.’
‘Can I come too?’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘Please.’ I shuffled in the doorway, trying to think of a way to convince him. Then I remembered what my friend Jonny and I had found a couple of weeks earlier: ‘I know a good tree we could climb. I worked out how to get close to the top. It would take ages to figure it out on your own.’
‘What makes you think I’d want to?’
But he looked at me standing there, and it must have been clear he wasn’t going to shake me off. He sighed. Nothing clings like a little brother.
‘All right.’
So we made our way outside and down towards the woods.
My childhood memories all exist in saturated colours; everything is exaggerated. That day, the world was full of bright greens and deep blues, and it was so sunny that the garden seemed to be shimmering gently. When I breathed in, the grass smelled rich and warm and sweet, and I had to waft away midges as we reached the bottom. The air was so hot it was like clearing steam from a mirror. As I climbed over the fence behind him, I was already sweating.
We walked a little way in. The grass gave way to the parched brown earth of the woods.
And suddenly, everything went dark.
It wasn’t because of the trees. The sunlight was still cascading down between the branches, dappling the ground and sparkling around the outline of the leaves above; I remember looking up to check. This darkness was different. It was all on the inside. A feeling that something was wrong. And the further we walked, the worse it got, as though my soul was falling into shadow. There was a storm gathering, and I could sense the distant rumble of an enormous cloud unfolding slowly towards me …
I stopped. Owen took a second to realise, then turned around.
‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve gone all pale.’
‘I want to go back.’
‘Huh? Five minutes ago you wanted to come.’
I looked amongst the trees. I didn’t know what I was frightened of.
‘Something’s wrong,’ I said.
‘What? Jesus. Why do you have to be such a baby?’
Taunting me like that would normally have made me angry: turned my hands and face into little fists. That day, I barely even registered it.
‘Something bad’s going to happen,’ I said.
He stared at me for a second, and I could read the expression on his face. Why am I having to put up with this?
‘Go home if you want,’ he said. ‘I never asked you to come, did I?’
He turned around and started walking off.
‘Owen.’
‘Shut up.’
I stood there, watching him move away, and everything inside me was screaming to make him stop, or to go with him and try to prevent whatever was going to happen.
‘Owen!’
‘Shut up, baby.’
Then I heard something, although not with my ears. It sounded a little like a crack of lightning - except it was a beautiful day and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
That was what happened. This is what didn’t: the noise started me moving, but in the wrong direction. I turned around and ran home as fast as I could. And I never saw him again.
I had plenty of time to think, of course.
Now that I’m older, I understand what happened that day a lot better. I can rationalise and explain it; in fact, it’s part of my job to do just that. I can tell you all about confirmation bias and coincidence. That I only remember it because what happened later made me concentrate on the event and turn it into something bigger and more important than the irrelevant daydream it really was. Tragedy does that; afterwards, everything gathers meaning and weight. In reality, it had probably just been a slight uneasy feeling - one that my subconscious had elaborated and gilded over the years. Maybe it was even the onset of a headache that I’ve forgotten about since.
The truth is, I’ll never know.
One thing I am certain of is that it wasn’t a psychic flash. There was nothing I could or should have done because of it. It had no connection to Owen’s death, and so there was no need for me to feel guilty, and no need to blame myself for something I had no reason to do.
I know that, but the lesson remains with me.
That’s how it happens. The things that are important will slip away if you let them.
‘Dave - wake up.’
Someone was shaking me. I opened my eyes and saw that morning light, the colour of butter, was extending in a solid wedge from the skylight. Sarah was crouched down within it, fully clothed, her hand on my shoulder and a look of concern on her face.
‘What?’ I said.
‘You were having a nightmare.’
‘Was I?’ My mouth was too dry. I made an effort at sitting up, propping myself on my elbow, and picked up the glass of water from the bedside table. I took a swallow. ‘I can’t remember.’
That wasn’t entirely true. The dream had fallen to the floor and smashed into dim pieces, but even as they skittered away from me I could make out the details on a few shards. The warmth of the day. Owen’s face. Me turning, running away from him.
Sarah sat back on her heels. ‘It looked like it.’
‘Thanks for waking me. What time is it?’
‘Half eight. So I was going to anyway. I’ve got to head out now, and I wanted to say goodbye this time.’ She stood up and ruffled my hair. ‘You look cute when you’re sleepy.’
I did my best to smile. ‘You look cute when I’m sleepy too.’
‘Works for me. Shame I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at seven thirty tonight, then? The Olive Tree?’
It took me a second to place it, and then I remembered.
When I’d finished talking to Choc last night, the first thing I’d done before coming back inside was send a quick text message to Tori’s mobile, asking if she was okay. No big deal, I thought; no harm in it. Then, I’d come back upstairs to find Sarah waiting for me in the kitchen with two glasses of wine at the ready; she handed one to me without speaking, and clearly expected an explanation in return. And obviously, the way Choc had dismissed her, she deserved one. I was even more annoyed with him for turning up - and then with myself for ever getting in the position where he would have a reason to.
So I apologised. Profusely. It was difficult to explain who Choc and Cardo were without detail I didn’t want to give, so I just told her the basics. They weren’t old friends - more like vague acquaintances, but ones you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of. They didn’t want to talk to me. They were looking for Emma, so I told them she’d moved out.
I wasn’t proud of lying. But it was a small lie, told for what I hoped were good reasons. I was doing my best to leave behind the mistake I’d made and move on with my life, and I resented Choc for coming here and dredging it up for me to deal with. I told myself I wouldn’t lie to Sarah about anything I did in the present, and I meant it.
Suggesting The Olive Tree for tonight hadn’t been part of any effort to placate her. She’d accepted things by then and we were sitting in the front room, drinking our second glass of wine and chatting as normal again. The restaurant had been her idea.
‘Yeah, sounds good,’ I said now.
‘I’ll look forward to it.’ She leaned over and kissed me on the lips, then walked over to the bedroom door. ‘Catch you later, then.’
I smiled. ‘You will. Take care.’
After she left, I
allowed myself to lie back down for a minute, waiting to hear the front door go. When it did, I blew out slowly, then picked up my phone from the bedside table. I had a message.
I opened it and read:
Hey there. Sorry for silence. Am fine, just busy. Hope u r too. Maybe catch up sometime soon. Tori
I felt almost absurdly relieved. After all that, she was fine.
You fucking idiot. Of course she is.
I was about to put the phone back down, but then something struck me. When had she sent it, for one thing? It must have come through fairly late on. I clicked back until I found it.
Four in the morning.
That wasn’t like her. The whole time we’d been together, she was almost always in bed for half-nine, ten at the latest, and not up again until the last possible moment in time for work. There’d only ever been a handful of times when I’d had texts from her in the early hours, and the explanation had always been the same. She was with a guy.
That had always made me uneasy too, but this morning there was something more to the feeling than plain jealousy. Something else was wrong with the message. I re-read it, trying to work out what it was.
When I did, it became all I could see.
The offices for Anonymous Skeptic consisted of one small room on the first floor of a rather plush block in the city centre. Everything in the building was uniform and new, from the wooden fittings in the offices, via the neat carpets and paint jobs in the hallways, all the way to the potted plants and bland, abstract watercolours on the walls. There was secure parking out back, meeting rooms available upstairs, and magazines and water-coolers in the corridors. In the reception downstairs our nameplate rested, a little uneasily, between those of web designers, translation agencies and accountants. Most of them earned more money in a day than we saw in a month. We couldn’t really afford it, but it was good to have a base.
It was almost one o’clock when I finally arrived. Rob was on the phone, but he acknowledged my presence with a wave of his pen and a disapproving look at his watch. I was busy sipping coffee from a small plastic cup when he finished the call.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said loudly. ‘Did you enjoy the gig last night? I spoke to Nathan this morning, and he said that it all went according to plan with Andrew and the necklace. Dead on, you might say.’
‘Yeah. We got him.’
‘Nathan also said you weren’t around at the end. You were supposed to meet up, weren’t you? Get a few quotes. I thought we agreed?’
‘Yeah, we did.’ I’d forgotten about that. ‘I’m sorry. Something happened.’
‘Something? What kind of something?’
I glanced over. He had that look on his face: the expression that said he would go on and on until he got the truth out of me, and that he suspected he wouldn’t like it much when he did.
‘Here,’ I said.
The digital recorder was on the desk in front of me. I’d already listened to it again that morning, and I selected the right file now and played it. The sound of Thom Stanley’s final performance before the interval filled the office. The recording was pretty good - you could hear every word - and as it played out I kept an eye on Rob to check for his reaction. He held a pen between his hands, using his heels to slowly rotate the chair back and forth. Giving away nothing. Except when Sarah asked if I was okay, at which point he grimaced.
‘That’s rubbish,’ he said at the end. ‘I hope you know that.’
‘Yeah. But it got to me at the time.’
‘I warned you about this.’
‘There’s something else. I got a strange text from her.’
‘From Tori? Like the strange phone calls you get from her?’
‘No, not like them.’
I walked across and showed him the message.
‘She’s never up at that time,’ I said. ‘Plus, she always signs her texts off in the same way. ‘Tor xx’; with a double kiss. In all the time I’ve known her, every single text, she’s finished it like that.’
That was what was wrong with it.
In the early days of the magazine, Rob and I had attended a Ouija-board session that was more convincing than most. We’d attracted a ‘spirit’ that claimed to be the grandfather of a girl who was present, but she was unconvinced by it and got very frightened. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the spirit; it was that she didn’t believe it was her granddad. She thought it was something else, pretending to be him.
Rob had taken the piss out of her in private afterwards, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to. I knew it was rubbish, but the idea of it unnerved me. You don’t have to believe to find it creepy. What she said had got my mind working: if it wasn’t her grandfather, then what was communicating with her? And where was her granddad?
I’d had that same feeling looking at my mobile.
But if so, who was it, and where was Tori?
Rob looked up from the phone and stared at me. Was I kidding him?
‘Am I being ridiculous?’
‘Yeah, you are.’
He handed the phone back and sighed.
‘I don’t know what you expect me to say. Have you texted her again?’
‘Of course. I left a message asking her to get in touch. I’ve tried ringing her too, but the phone’s switched off. I tried her work. The girl in the office says she’s off sick.’
He spread his hands. ‘Well, there you go.’
‘I called her house and there was no answer.’
‘Jesus Christ, Dave. You’re a hair’s breadth from stalking her, you know? Maybe she’s asleep. Or perhaps she’s having one of her episodes. Have you phoned the hospital?’
‘Not yet.’ I hadn’t thought about that. ‘But she wouldn’t be allowed her mobile in there.’
‘Maybe you should try anyway.’
I walked back over to my desk. ‘Maybe I will.’
I found the number for Staunton Hospital online, studiously ignoring Rob as he made ostentatious head-shaking gestures on the other side of the office. When the hospital answered, I asked to be put through to Ward Eight.
A woman answered. ‘Reception. How may I help?’
‘Could I speak to Tori Edmonds, please?’
‘Just a moment. Is she a patient here?’
‘I think so, yes.’
I heard her sorting through paperwork. Then she picked the phone back up.
‘I’m sorry. We don’t have anyone here by that name. Are you sure you’ve come through to the right department?’
I hung up.
‘Should we call the police?’ Rob asked himself.
I ignored him, wondering what to do next. On the way over here, I’d decided I had to do something. My mind kept returning to that phone call I’d had when she was in hospital. At the beginning of all the mistakes I made, the first was very clear: I’d promised to be there for her, and I hadn’t been. No matter what I told myself now, that feeling - that urge - wasn’t going to go away on its own.
I gathered my things together and stood up.
‘I need to get some fresh air.’
‘What? You only just fucking got here.’
I shrugged my coat on.
‘Dave—’
‘I need to be sure, Rob. Okay?’
He looked at me for a second, as though unable to believe I was putting us both through this, then dropped his pen loudly on the desk. Dismissing me.
I closed the door and headed downstairs.
I’ve just got to be sure.
Chapter Seventeen
Friday 2nd September
At half past one, for the second time in as many weeks, Currie and Swann drove up the hill into the Grindlea estate.
‘This is going to be interesting,’ Swann said.
Currie nodded. When they’d come here to interview Frank Carroll, he’d thought about how volatile the neighbourhood was - that if the residents wanted, they could barricade the bottom of the hill and keep the police out. The fact that Charlie Drake and his crew a
ll lived here.
One fewer now, if reports were to be believed.
One of the locals had called the incident in a little over an hour earlier. The man had heard a disturbance during the night, but thought little of it until later on this morning, when he was leaving for work and noticed his neighbour’s door was ajar. Out of concern - he claimed; Currie had his doubts - he’d gone inside, where he’d found the occupier dead in the living room.
Alex Cardall.
There was a time - not even very long ago - when Sam Currie would have exchanged his career, possibly even his life, for five minutes alone with Charlie Drake or Alex Cardall. After Neil had died and Linda had moved out, when he was left with that sagging house full of spaces, it eventually reached the point where it was all he could think about.
The drug dealers who’d supplied his son.
The people who were responsible.
One night, he’d driven into the Grindlea Estate and parked halfway up the hill. He’d been drinking - but only a little, and his head was sharp and focused. He kept his thoughts clear, free from the emotions boiling below the surface. Although he hadn’t articulated to himself what he was going to do, he’d allowed his body to follow its course and come here, fooled his mind into believing this was something happening to him rather than an action he was carrying out. He’d sat in his car a little way down from Charlie Drake’s home, teetering on a precipice. And finally, after a period of time that could have been minutes or hours, and hadn’t really felt like time at all, he’d started the engine and driven home again, unable to go through with whatever he’d been considering.
At first, he’d felt like a coward - that his inability to act was yet another example of failing his son - but in later months he looked back and saw the event in a different light. Currie understood violence very well, along with the motives behind it. People hurt others for many reasons, but the most common one by far was because of weakness and feelings of inadequacy. Violence was often about stamping your authority on the world: about being unable to land a punch on the shadows inside you and so hitting outwards instead. The man who starts a fight in a bar probably doesn’t know the person he beats up, and doesn’t care about them at all, and each angry punch is directed at something far more nebulous than the person in front of him. Currie understood that, just as he would understand, months later, when he met Mary Carroll, that the wounds on her leg were something similar.