by Gary McMahon
Peering around the edge of the shed there was a stocky figure. It was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a black and red striped Dennis-the-Menace sweater. Royle took a step backwards, more surprised than afraid, and went instinctively into a fighting stance: fists raised, back leg taking his weight, shoulders hunched. Later, he’d be impressed by his presence of mind, but now he just stood there, wondering if there was going to be an attack.
“It was there when I came out here to hang up the washing. Just… just peeping round the corner like that, watching me. Creepy bloody thing…”
Royle lowered his hands and walked forward, closing the distance between him and the figure. The day’s warmth seemed to fade. The breeze became a little stronger, and colder.
It wasn’t a real figure, of course. It was some kind of bonfire guy… or, more accurately, a scarecrow, just like Barnes had said on the phone. He’d recognised within seconds that it wasn’t a living person, and yet still he’d readied himself for action. It was the face that had caused him such an extreme reaction. At first glance, it had looked real, like a person’s features staring at him… but now that he was drawing closer to the scarecrow, he could see that there was simply a photograph attached to its head.
The scarecrow’s jumper was torn in places, so the stuffing was hanging out. The torso was stuffed with what looked like old newspapers, bills and receipts, and even a few tattered old one pound notes — a monetary unit that was taken out of commission in 1984. This stout upper body was mounted on a stick that was as broad as a man’s calf, one end of which had been sunk deep into the earth to support the strange, jerrybuilt figure.
Royle stood before the scarecrow and examined it closely. The stick was in fact a tree branch. The bark had been stripped away to reveal the pale timber beneath, but the wood was untreated. He could still see the faint marks from whatever blade had been used to lay bare the natural wood grain.
He was trying not to look at the photograph that was plastered to the front of the scarecrow’s head until he’d calmed down, but still it drew his gaze.
The photograph was a portrait of little Connie Millstone, the daughter of the house and the first of the Gone Away Girls. But this was no ordinary photograph: it was old, faded, and sepia toned. Royle thought it looked stylised, like the Victorian death photographs he’d once seen in a book but never forgotten because they’d been so disturbing. But even worse than the still pose and the mordant tone of the shot, was the fact that Connie’s eyes were closed, and upon the lids someone — perhaps even the missing girl herself — had drawn in a thick black pen a crude representation of eyes.
Royle stared at the photograph.
It was a startling image.
His vision blurred; tears filled his eyes. For a moment he thought he might even faint.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and took a minute just to clear his head. He had to focus on what was in front of him and ignore any other references or connections his mind came up with. This was not a Victorian death study; it was a photograph of a missing little girl, perhaps the last one ever taken of her. In the photograph, Connie looked the same age she’d been when she went missing. So it wasn’t a recent shot; this had been taken at least five years ago.
He tried to remain calm. He owed the family his full attention. He owed them that, at least.
Was this some kind of sick joke, carried out by local kids on the anniversary of the girl’s disappearance? The idea was feasible, but to Royle it just didn’t feel right. There was more to this than what was immediately on show, some kind of reason hiding beneath the surface. Why would anyone go to the trouble of constructing the weird scarecrow and obscuring its face with the image of the missing girl? It didn’t make sense; it was overly complicated for some nasty practical joke.
But who else could it be? This family had no enemies. Quite the opposite, in fact; they were well liked, and most people in the area empathised with them for what had happened to their only daughter.
“Craig…” Mrs Millstone’s voice was still quite far behind him. She was afraid to come any closer. Maybe she expected the scarecrow to come to life and start hobbling along the path towards her?
“Just a minute…” He let out a long breath and stared at the image pasted over the scarecrow’s face. He committed the face to memory, even though it was already there, along with the rest of them, burned into his brain like a brand.
He turned around. “The photo… Is it one of yours?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t been too close, but I was close enough to know that I didn’t recognise it. Why would we have a photo with scribbles on her eyelids, anyway? It’s… it’s awful, like something out of a horror movie.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to check.”
She nodded. “Can we go inside now?” She turned away without waiting for an answer. “I’ll make another cup of tea.” Her voice was tiny, like that of a child. She was clinging to the everyday rituals of making tea, offering her guest refreshments, and in truth she was clinging to her sanity.
Royle followed Mrs Millstone along the uneven cement path, resisting the urge to look behind him to check if the scarecrow had moved.
He knew it hadn’t. That was silly. It would be impossible.
But still he couldn’t bring himself to look and see.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“OKAY, MARRA. JUST keep me posted. You know you’re always welcome back here.” Erik Best stared at the wall, distracted, as he spoke on the phone. There was a crack there, in the plaster. He’d never noticed it before, but it started at the corner of the double door frame and made a rough diagonal line up towards the ceiling. There were ragged cobwebs around it, but there was no sign of any spider.
He said goodbye to his friend Marty Rivers, who was now living in London for the foreseeable future, and walked across to the doorway. He peered at the crack, wondering how it might have formed. The house wasn’t new, but it was in good repair. He’d spent a fortune on having that doorway widened and glass doors installed, about six years ago, when he decided to invest some money in the property. It shouldn’t be damaged. The workmanship had been top notch. He’d handpicked and supervised the workmen himself.
He stood on his tiptoes but was still too short to reach the top of the door frame. He shook his head and turned away, pacing across the room to the front window.
“Marty, Marty, Marty…” The guy had been his best bare-knuckle fighter and one of the most reliable men on his payroll. Something had happened a few months ago, up at the Needle — one of Marty’s old school friends had been stabbed by a piece of shit kid from the estate. He’d died on the spot. Marty had gone down to London to speak to the friend’s pregnant missus, and now he’d decided to stay there, to become some kind of surrogate dad to the imminent arrival. Erik had put out feelers to see if any names came up regarding the stabbing, but so far nobody was talking.
He looked out at his garden and tried to gain pleasure from what he saw. The plot was huge; the boundary fence adjoined a small wooded area, beyond which was a private field. Erik had made a lot of money over the years and this place was his haven from the stress of his business world. He knew a lot of dodgy people, consorted with all kinds of low-life criminals and high-class scumbags, but he’d not once invited any of them into his home. It was out of bounds, and hopefully out of reach. A man like Erik Best tended to make enemies, and the less those enemies (or even friends) knew about his private life the better.
Private life… now there was a phrase. These days, the only private life he had time for consisted of sex with the kind of slappers who worked in the low-rent pubs and clubs where he arranged security, or the occasional orgy with some punters from the fights. The middle classes; they always got horny after watching bloodshed. In the past, he’d enjoyed a lot of action that way, but these days all he wanted was safety and security, someone to hold in the night.
Abby Hansen had once offered him the kind of lifestyle he now craved. Whe
n she’d been raising Erik’s daughter, little Tessa, he’d kept his distance, but as soon as the kid went missing he wanted to be part of their lives. It was just like him to want everything after the offer had been withdrawn. His timing had always been off in matters of the heart.
We never know what we’ve got until some fucker takes it away, he though, watching a small grey squirrel run across his lawn. He wished he had a gun in his hand, just to shoot something that was alive. Make it dead. It was a primal urge; a deep-rooted instinct. To kill. To destroy.
Few people had known that little Tessa Hansen had been Erik’s child until she went missing. Even the bloke Abby had been living with at the time of her disappearance — his name eluded Erik, like so many other things lately — didn’t have a clue. He thought the girl was his own. The truth had only been let out into the open because of a traumatic event. They’d only fucked a few times, and she’d fallen pregnant easily. One drunken night when she puked up her pill; a tiny life conceived during a booze-inspired grapple. More of that bad timing, he supposed… what he would give to be able to be her father now, to raise her and teach her about the world. But it was not to be.
He turned away from the window and sat down in his favourite armchair, craving a few grams of coke. He was trying to cut down on the drugs, but the opposite seemed to be happening: he wanted more and more, relying on pills and powders to give him succour from the shitstorm around him. He knew it was bad form, and that his body would be suffering, but somehow he just couldn’t manage to kick those bad habits. Indeed, ones he thought he’d overcome years ago were returning with a vengeance.
When his mobile started to ring, he almost ignored it. But it was one of the business phones, and he tried to make it a rule that business always came first — even before his so-called fucking private life.
He took the phone from his shirt pocket and thumbed the answer button. “What is it?” No pleasantries for Erik Best; no pleases and thank yous. Just straight business talk.
“Erik… I mean, Mr Best. It’s Hacky.”
One of his little lapdogs; a scruffy kid on the Grove estate he sometimes paid to keep an eye on things. One of the many; just another small cog in the mighty Best machine, each one oblivious of the rest yet working in harmony to protect him and to keep the wheels of commerce nicely greased.
“What is it, Hacky? I’m busy, so this had better be fucking good.”
A pause; then someone whispering in the background, rushed and excited. “Aye, it’s good. I think it is, anyway. For you, like. The thing is, I’m not even fucking sure what it is…” Another pause, this one longer.
“Go on, Hacky. Tell me about it.” He settled back into the chair and closed his eyes, still thinking of Abby Hansen. But not as she was now, all thin and haggard and defeated; no, Abby as she had been a few years ago, before grief got hold of her and turned her into a listless punch bag. The Abby who had always been the boss in bed and who’d never put up with any of his shit.
“You know you always tell me to ring you if I see something weird?”
“What do you mean by weird, Hacky?”
“You know. Weird. Dead strange, like. Anything out of the ordinary on the estate… you always tell us that however small it might seem, a weird growth can sometimes have long roots. That’s what you say, innit?”
Erik sighed. “Yes, son. More or less.”
“Okay, then. I got summat weird. One of them things… the things you want to know about.”
Erik opened his eyes. He glanced again at the crack in the wall. It was just the same; it hadn’t grown, or moved.
Moved? How the hell could it do that?
His mind wasn’t straight. He was drifting off into irrelevant areas, focusing on stupid, pointless concerns. He needed to concentrate, to live in the now and not the back then. “Come on, marra, spit it out, will you? I have better things to do.” But did he? Did he really?
“The thing is… the thing… oh, fuck, man. Listen, if I tried to describe it you’d think I was tripping or summat.”
“And are you?” Erik leaned forward, ready to end the call and organise a little beating for Hacky, just to warn him not to waste Erik’s time. “Were you laying it on a bit heavy last night, you and the boys? Did one of you cook up a batch of cheap smack?”
“Nah, I’m clean. Had a few beers and a smoke round me brother’s place, but nowt else. Nowt daft, like.” He sounded proud, as if this short period of abstinence meant something important in his broken life.
“Listen, Hacky, tell me what the fuck this is all about or I’ll have your legs broken.”
This time the pause was longer and held an intensity that had not been present before. Erik listened to the static on the line. He thought for a moment that he could make out other voices in there; voices and a soft slow clicking sound, like distant maracas. But then it faded.
“Remember Monty Bright?”
That got Erik’s attention. “Yes. Of course I remember Monty.” They’d been friends and sometime enemies, comrades and occasionally business rivals. Theirs was always a complex relationship, but one that often created a lot of mutual wealth. Monty had run a loan sharking business, and Erik had been known to fund some of Monty’s bigger deals. They’d been silent partners many times, mostly in security companies and anything where hired muscle was required. They’d drawn blood together, fought hard men, and shared slutty women. They’d even organised a few boxing bouts, matching local fighters for a cash prize. On the level. Everything above board. Just for the hell of it.
“It’s got something to do with him… with Monty.”
“Monty’s dead, Hacky. He died in the fire when his gym burnt down, remember? My gym, now, that is if your fucking brother and his mates hurry up and get that fit-out job finished.”
“Just come to the estate and take a look. Meet us at the gym. There’s nobody working there today. You really need to fucking see this, man. It’s… it’s… shit, I don’t know what the fuck it is, man. It’s weird. Weird, with fucking long roots…”
Erik checked the time; it was past lunchtime but he hadn’t eaten a thing. He wasn’t even hungry.
He had nothing better to do. It was a depressing thought, but it was true.
“Okay, I’ll be there in half an hour. If this isn’t good, you’d better run hard and run far, Hacky my boy. If I’m wasting my time here, it won’t just be your legs that get broken. And I might just break your brother’s, too, for slacking on the job.”
“I know,” said the kid on the other end of the line. “Just come and see.” Then he ended the call.
Erik’s mind was still on Abby Hansen. If he had business on the estate, then it wouldn’t be out of order to maybe pay her a little call. See how she was. Find out if she needed anything. He knew that he was being stupid, that she’d pussy-whipped him without even trying, but still he could not stay away. She was like a drug; he needed her, even if it was like this: brief, unwanted visits, during which she usually verbally abused him. Stolen time. Tense, bruising moments spent in her company when she didn’t even want him there, not now.
He locked up the house, checked the dogs — two border collies; Rocky and Apollo — in their kennels and set off for the Grove. On his way there, through the winding roads of the Northumberland countryside, he wished again that Abby would wake up and see what it was he had to offer, how good it could be for them both if she dropped her guard, let him back in.
Erik had never lived on the Grove. He’d been born in Byker, in the east end of Newcastle, and from a very young age had demonstrated that he could take care of himself. His father had enrolled him in a boxing academy when he was five years old. He’d beaten everyone they put in front of him, and graduated through the age and weight classes with ease.
His teenage years had seen him go off the rails and he began street fighting rather than using his craft in the ring. Erik was always bright enough to know that, unless you were truly dedicated, the fight game would never make you rich.
He lacked the application and willpower to become a champion; his skills were purely natural, and a wide lazy streak coupled with habitual indiscipline meant that he could not stick to any kind of training regime.
So he used his skills in other ways.
Years ago he’d realised that he didn’t have to fight every battle himself. He surrounded himself with tough guys, men who were strong and fast but lacked his cunning and intellect. He set up illegal fights and made a fortune. When he’d made enough money he bought an old farmhouse a few miles from here and started hosting bare-knuckle bouts in the Barn, a small outbuilding with thick stone walls and neglected horse paddocks — he’d employed Hacky’s brother and his gang to do the building work there, too.
He also ran a security firm that provided pubs and clubs with trained door staff, big blokes who knew exactly what to do if trouble started. Erik saw himself as a primitive renaissance man; a facilitator; an entrepreneur: he was the Donald fucking Trump of the mean streets and even meaner housing estates.
Now, at the age of fifty-one, he was what his younger self would have considered wealthy. He owned a large, beautiful home, several other properties, two well-trained dogs, had three cars in the garage, but lacked someone to share it with. There was a time when Abby Hansen would have walked over broken glass to live with him, but that time was long gone. These days she’d rather cut herself on the scattered shards than stand by his side.
The Concrete Grove… why would she want to stay here? Their daughter wasn’t coming back; she would never come home. This place was the dark centre of a universe Erik could barely even understand. He cruised through it, that alien universe, and he used it and its denizens for personal gain, but he had no idea how it really worked. Like a black hole, it sucked everything towards it, bleeding them dry: Monty Bright, his absent friend Marty Rivers, the once beautiful Abby Hansen… all of them drawn inexorably towards the black centre of this place, screaming silently as it ate them alive.