Scarlet Wakefield 02 - Kisses and Lies

by Lauren Henderson

  Without consciously deciding where my feet should take me, I’m finding myself following the drive that winds past the castle. Turn right, and it leads to a walled area which must be where they park the cars; turn left, and it’s a long expanse of macadam with no end in sight, lost in a thick stand of trees beyond the marshy grass that grows profusely around the castle. Unsurprisingly, I turn left, every instinct telling me to take the direction that leads out of here, away from Castle Airlie and any more nasty secrets it may contain.

  I wish I could just keep walking. If I had my wallet on me, I almost think I would. What a temptation that would be—just keep walking till I hit the road, stop a car, ask the way to the station, wait for the next train back to Glasgow and then to London. Never look back. Leave the mystery of who killed Dan for someone else to solve. I know it wasn’t my fault, and isn’t that all that matters? And now I’ve seen what Dan was capable of, my zeal to solve the puzzle of his death has abated a little, I must admit. . . .

  I’ve been walking very briskly, needing some physical exercise to clear out the skin-creeping sensations that have been itching at me ever since I found those Polaroids, and I’ve already reached the woodland I saw from the castle. The drive cuts straight through it, but it’s much colder here, the thick growth of trees blocking out the weak autumn sun. I tilt my head back and see that the trees on either side of the drive have started to grow together, meeting high above, forming a sort of canopy that shuts out the pale silvery sky. Damp wraps round my shoulders, and any light that filters through the leaves is dark green and heavily shadowed.

  Perfect. I step off the drive and onto the mulch that lines the floor of the grove of trees. It’s covered with damp leaves, and I squat down and brush them away until I’ve cleared a decent-sized patch of ground—moist, fertile dark mud. Then I extract the Polaroids from my pocket, together with Dan’s lighter, which was the other thing I took from his room, and, one by one, careful to hold them as long as I can over the patch I’ve cleared, I set fire to them and watch them curl, blacken, and burn away to shreds.

  It smells horrible. This was another reason I had to come outside: I didn’t want to be doing this in the bathroom and have people wondering why there was a nasty acrid smell, not to mention black smoke, oozing out from under the door.

  I work my way through the stack of photos. But I leave the ones of Plum and Lucy for last. I hesitate when I reach them, debating whether I should burn them at all: wouldn’t Taylor say that I should keep them? The ones of Lucy could be evidence, after all, if it was Lucy who killed Dan, part of her motive for hating him enough to want him dead. And I suppose the same could be said of Plum. Besides, what about keeping the ones of Plum in case she ever tries anything on with me again, just as she kept that video clip of Nadia? Maybe it’s weak and stupid of me to want to burn them. But there’s a vulnerability about her in these photos, no matter how much she’s doing her porno poses, that embarrasses me and makes me want to get rid of them. No one should have photos like this of themselves in their enemy’s hands. Not even Plum.

  I decide to compromise. I’ll burn all but one Polaroid of each of the girls. And if it turns out that neither Plum nor Lucy had anything to do with Dan’s death, I’ll burn those, too. But the risk that I might need one of these photos for evidence is too steep for me to run. It isn’t only about me, after all: it’s about catching a murderer. Even if the victim’s turned out to be some sort of serial semi-porno photographer, that still wouldn’t be justification for killing him.

  I shove two of the photos into my back jeans pocket, buttoning down the flap for safety. Then I take one from the remaining small pile, hold it up, and set fire to the corner. It crumples slowly, plastic melting onto itself, the images of Plum pulling down her knickers and Lucy with her legs in the air forever faded and dissolved. And I feel so much better when it’s a tiny crumpled piece of black gunk dropping to the forest floor that I know I made the right decision. I pick up the next one and hold the lighter to it eagerly—and then the next, and the next. When they’re all gone, I feel almost as weightless as a bird in flight. And I know that when I’ve burned the last two, the release will be even bigger.

  I wish I could do it right now.

  I push the leaves back over the spot and mess them around a bit, so you couldn’t tell they’d ever been disturbed. Then I stand up and look around me. I take a long, deep breath, thinking about chemistry class and the process of photosynthesis: trees making oxygen, cleaning out pollution, creating fresh forest air. I feel that I’m freshening my lungs, purifying myself of everything I just saw, making myself clean again.

  And then, from nowhere, Jase’s smile pops into my head, and I sigh.

  He hasn’t been in touch with me since our day at the lake. Not even a text asking if I’m okay, or thanking me for not telling my grandmother about what his loony father did.

  So is that it? Is whatever was starting with Jase over before it really began?

  I feel tears pricking my eyes, and I blink them back. At least this “relationship,” for lack of a better phrase, had a better ending. At least nobody died.

  I think about going back to Wakefield Hall after this, and what I’ll say if I see him again. And then I jump right back to the present, because how can I think about going back when I still have so much to do here? And a tight time schedule, too? Well, one thing’s for sure: I won’t be asking to stay on longer. Thank God I’ll be leaving before Callum’s birthday, at least.

  I realize how awful it must be for Callum: the normal excitement he would feel at being eighteen all destroyed, the excitement at every birthday ruined, because every single birthday from now on will also be a terrible reminder of his dead twin. No wonder he can’t bear to look at me, the girl he thinks killed his brother, or at least had something to do with the mystery of his death. I’d probably feel exactly the same.

  I clear my throat, and the sound is such a shock in the quiet of the woods that it startles me, even though it’s a noise I’ve made myself. I shiver, and it’s a purely primitive reflex, the fear of being alone in the woods, even though I’m not exactly lost—I’m just a few paces away from the drive. A car could come along at any minute.

  But it won’t. Because there’s nothing around here at all but forest and marshland and Castle Airlie, far behind me, and I would hear a car from miles away. There’s no car coming. I’m alone in this grove of trees. The sound of my breathing is the only noise besides the wind hushing the leaves overhead, and the occasional rustle of a bird landing on a branch.

  And then I hear it: a twig, cracking as loudly as a pistol shot.

  Followed almost immediately by the crack of what sounds like a shotgun firing.

  I haven’t jumped this high since I was doing gymnastics. I take a huge leap and hide behind the biggest tree trunk I can see. Flattening my back against it, I try desperately to control my breathing and avoid making any sound whatsoever.

  I’m hoping madly that I am just being completely paranoid. Because the alternative is much, much worse.

  That would mean someone’s shooting at me.

  fifteen

  LIKE A RAT IN A TRAP

  My back is pressed so tightly to the tree that I can feel every scratchy sticking-out piece of bark digging into my spine. I don’t care. I flatten myself even tighter against the trunk and make myself breathe through my nose to keep as quiet as possible. Even in this damp climate, the leaves overhead are drying out for autumn, and they rustle in the wind, dead dry things tumbling slowly to the ground. My ears are straining so hard to hear any sound around me that it feels like they’re pointing out at the corners.

  Birds land on branches, twittering softly to one another.

  More leaves rustle above my head.

  Nothing else.

  And then, another shot. Closer now, and sounding, in this quiet forest, incredibly noisy. Its echoes reverberate through the trees, followed immediately by the equally loud noise of the birds that have settle
d on the branches above me taking off in a cloud of flapping feathers, squawking noisily.

  This time, I’m so scared I don’t jump. I don’t think I manage to breathe for the longest time. I’m in a cold sweat—my palms are clammy, but I’m too frightened to move even to wipe them on the legs of my jeans. My heart is thumping like a kettledrum, so loud it’s hard for me to hear over it. So when I hear the rustle of leaves, I can’t tell where it’s coming from.

  But I’m pretty sure it’s not overhead.

  I can’t stay here. If someone’s coming closer, stalking me, I’ll be a sitting duck. I look down at what I’m wearing: trainers, skinny dark blue jeans, gray sweater. I pull up the neckline of the sweater and tuck it in over the top of my T-shirt to hide the latter’s bright blue color. Good: I’m all dark shades now, nothing that would make me easy to spot. And it’s lucky I’m dark-haired. A blonde would be much more visible.

  Then I survey the ground. It’s thickly covered in leaves—leaves that are sheltered enough by the tree branches above not to be moist with rain and humidity, which means they’ll crackle when I walk on them. Anyone who might be stalking me with a shotgun (oh God, don’t panic, Scarlett, don’t panic) will hear exactly where I am.

  I reach up instead and grab on to a branch, and pull myself up into a swing. I tuck my legs up into my chest and come up on the upswing in a tight ball, judging the moment till I’m at the right height to kick my legs out forward in a big jump, letting go of the branch as the jump takes me forward, my legs shooting out, my whole body flying through the air in a long line, back arching, arms back. And I land where I was aiming, by the roots of a nearby tree, close enough to the trunk so that there aren’t fallen leaves lying there, and I come down fairly silently. My feet land first. Then my knees bend, my back rounds, and I squat down, hands touching the ground, and breathe through my nose as quietly as I can.

  I listen again. Nothing.

  I huddle a bit forward till my nose and one eye are sticking out round the side of the tree. I see tree trunks, the black tar of the road, and the gold and red and brown of fallen leaves. Nothing else. No flash of color that doesn’t belong in a wood.

  No shine of light on a shotgun barrel.

  There’s a tree very close to this one. I take a deep breath and do a big frog jump, landing in a squat again and managing to clear the fallen leaves. I have to move, but at least I’m limiting my visibility. Only dark colors—I reach up to check that the blue of my T-shirt isn’t showing. And I’m making as little sound as possible. Someone hunting me would expect, after the first couple of shots, that I would run away in panic, scattering leaves noisily in my wake, or freeze with fear in my hiding place.

  I’m doing neither, which may confuse them.

  I really, really hope it confuses them.

  This tree is too far from the next one for me to jump, though. I look up instead and form a plan. Climbing up the trunk, with the aid of all its knots and crevices, isn’t too hard, though, as always, I wish I were barefoot. I’d take the pain of bare skin against scratchy bark and nasty little branches any day for the security of knowing that my rubber trainer toe isn’t going to pop out of a place I’ve wedged it into because I don’t have enough traction or control. At least my hands are bare. I reach the branch I want and scamper along it like a squirrel, on all fours, moving swiftly, and then I lift up, grab the branch of the next tree, and launch up, using my upper-body strength and my abs to tuck up my lower body and swing my legs over to the trunk, where they hang, scrabble, and miraculously find a foothold. I slide down the trunk, wincing as my sweater catches on a big knot, and land fairly silently at its base.

  I look back. I’m quite a distance now from where I started.

  Then I hear something that chills my blood. It’s a heavy metallic click, faint but distinct. I’ve never seen anyone reload a shotgun in real life, only in films. So maybe it’s just my lurid imagination that is causing me to think that what I just heard was someone snapping the shotgun barrel back into place, having loaded in two more cartridges.

  Maybe I’m imagining that I’m the target. Maybe someone’s just out shooting birds or rabbits or whatever people shoot in Scotland in October, and I’m just working myself into a frenzy because after all, someone’s already killed one son of this family and got away with it, and now they might be trying to do the same with me—

  Bang! Another shot. Birds squawk and scatter leaves. The shot was closer this time, I’m sure of it: the echoes last longer.

  I look around me desperately. The woodland’s still thick, but even if I reached the end of it that would be worse: back to the castle is wide-open grassland, making it much easier for someone to aim right at me and then claim it was a terrible shooting accident. At least in the forest, I have a lot of shelter. As long as no one comes around the tree where I’m crouching and puts a barrelful of birdshot in my stomach.

  Bang! The second barrel fires. Forget my hands being sweaty now—my entire body is clammy with terror. Panic sweat is horrible: it feels like the fear is melting you down, weakening you, till you’re paralyzed with it, your muscles too soggy to move.

  I have to do something. I can’t be caught here like a rat in a trap. And I’m scared, too, that if I don’t move now, soon it’ll be too late.

  So I start to climb. This time I go up and up, swarming up the tree as quietly as I can, higher and higher, till the branches are thinning out so much I don’t feel safe putting my weight on them. I wedge myself into a fork in the branches and wiggle around cautiously till I get as comfortable as I can. Which isn’t very comfortable at all.

  It’s two in the afternoon now. By five, it’ll be dark. I can come down then and make my way back to the castle under cover of darkness. If I have to wait three hours in a tree, even shivering with cold and with twigs digging into my back, I’ll definitely choose that over Option B—possibly meeting a killer armed with a shotgun.

  Castle Airlie is behind me and to the left. I can make out the gray expanse of the Irish Sea in front of me, and to my right the drive winds away out of the woodland, through an expanse of more marshy grassland and the occasional oak tree, round a rising hill where I lose sight of it. The canopy of leaves below me is so dense that I can’t really see anything below me in the wood, no matter how much I peer down. Occasionally I think I catch a glimpse of some movement, but nothing I can identify. Still, if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.

  I break off a twig that’s trying to burrow into my leg, and settle in for a long wait.

  I’m not exactly sleepy or tired, but there’s something about sitting still for a length of time that makes your head nod and your eyes want to close. So when the sun briefly breaks through the cloud cover, and I see a sparkle of rare sunlight hitting metal in the distance, I have to blink and rub my eyes and focus closely to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.

  Not someone running with a shotgun, the sun glinting off the barrel. No one could move that fast. It’s a car, coming down the drive. Toward Castle Airlie. Which means it’ll have to pass through this stand of trees.

  I’m out of the fork I’m wedged in and swinging myself from one branch to another like Tarzan, only I bet his hands were a lot more callused than mine from doing this on a daily basis. I’m skinning my palms—I’ll have grazes later, I can tell. But right now, there’s so much adrenaline pouring through me that I don’t feel any pain, just a desperate hope.

  I bound down to the forest floor, catch my breath, and start gingerly moving from one tree to another, ducking over so I don’t make an easy target, heading all the time in the direction of the drive. I pause behind a wide oak, waiting, listening, relying on my hearing because I can’t risk putting my head round the trunk in case the person with the shotgun sees me. For a while, I don’t hear anything, and I start to think that maybe the car’s going another way, one I couldn’t see from my perch in the tree, and I panic: if it does, then I could really be in trouble, because I’ve probably made enou
gh noise for the shooter to work out where I am—

  Oh, thank God! The roar of an engine reverberates through the wood. I dash out onto the drive and stand there waving my arms frantically, hoping there’s been enough time for the driver to see me. . . .

  It’s a big, beaten-up Land Rover, pale blue, with bars over the front to help herd sheep or something. All I know is that those bars look unbelievably scary coming at me fast down the drive. But I don’t have any choice. I stay where I am, terrified but determined, flailing in demented semaphore with my arms. The Land Rover screeches to a halt about two inches from my face, and Mr. McAndrew’s head pops out of the window as he yells:

  “Scarlett! What the hell are you playing at, young lady?”

  His brows are drawn down just like Callum’s; he’s frowning at me just as furiously. And I can honestly say I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life.

  sixteen

  HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?

  “Who was firing a gun by the drive today?” Mr. McAndrew bellows as he storms over the drawbridge and into Castle Airlie. I follow on his heels, half skipping to keep up with him as he speeds furiously along the corridor and into the Great Hall. “Everyone! In the Hall! Now!” He claps his hands.

  “Lachlan?” Mrs. McAndrew comes running down the main staircase, her voice anxious. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” Mr. McAndrew shouts. “What’s wrong is that someone was firing a shotgun in the trees by the drive today, according to Scarlett. Which is strictly forbidden, because we all know how dangerous it is. Someone could be walking there. Or what if it hit a car?”

  “Mr. Mac?” says Moira, coming through a door at the back of the Hall, wiping floury hands on an apron. “What’s all the fuss and bother now?”

  Her hair is sticking up, and I’d guess she’s been pushing it back with floury hands, pre-wipe, because it’s got a white streak at the front which makes her look unintentionally comic.