by Jane Holland
‘Give me a good reason not to.’
He stares, then seems to gather his thoughts. ‘It could be the last straw for you.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Explain.’
‘Fuck.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘Okay, don’t get upset about this, but you’ve been … well, unstable ever since it happened. When I saw you in the club last night I was really worried, you seemed so wired. Like you’re deliberately on the look-out for trouble now, aiming to self-destruct.’
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘Why, because I went on a date with Denzil Tremain?’
‘Because to go into those woods could knock you back years in therapy terms.’ He meets my eyes. ‘I’m serious, Ellie. I don’t think you’re ready for this, and I don’t want to see you in any more pain.’
We’re standing behind the red brick wall of the vicarage. The back gate into the garden is closed today. I catch a brief movement out of the corner of my eye, the twitch of a curtain, and glance upwards. It’s the Reverend Clemo, staring down at us from an upper window. He looks intent, frowning from under heavy brows. As soon as the vicar realises I’ve seen him, he drops the curtain.
Tris follows my gaze. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
I keep walking, heading for the entrance to the woods. I remember how I burst out here that morning, covered in nettle stings and thorn cuts, and found the Reverend Clemo smoking, his Jack Russell dancing about his feet. That strange look on his face. It could have been guilt. Or am I just imagining things?
‘You coming?’ I ask, looking back at Tris.
‘I can’t talk you out of this?’
I shake my head.
‘Then I can hardly let you go down there alone,’ he says.
My body has cooled down considerably since I met him at the church. I stretch out my calves and hamstrings, using the same basic lunges and warm-up exercises I teach the kids at school. Tris shrugs, then copies me, dragging his right foot up behind and holding the stretch while he counts under his breath.
I hate my brain. It keeps thinking even when I want to shut it out and concentrate on my body. But something’s nagging at me and I can’t ignore it. Reverend Clemo was at school with my mother. Like Dick Laney too. And it was clear from that photograph in Laney’s office that he had resented anyone else getting close to my mother.
She must have been quite a catch for the local boys, I realise. But then my mother was beautiful. And kind too. Too kind to push Dick Laney away when he put his arm around her.
‘Sure you want to do this, Ellie?’
Something about the way he uses my pet name jerks at my heart. I finish stretching out my hamstrings and straighten up, looking at him sideways.
Apart from the mud-covered trainers, Tris Taylor looks exceptionally good in his running gear. Strong and lithe. Damn him. All that hill-climbing and fence-mending on the farm has given him muscular thighs, a narrow waist, and a tight backside. No, not bad at all.
‘Absolutely,’ I say, lying again. The truth is not always useful, I am beginning to discover, and on this particular occasion, a lie will serve me better. ‘How about you? Cold feet?’
‘What?’
He’s been staring down the track into the woods, but turns now to look at me, looking distracted. He’s pale, and his gaze keeps wavering, sliding away from me to those dark spaces between trees. It’s as though he’s looking for something in particular. Or someone.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’
‘Sorry,’ he says, as though suddenly realising what I said. ‘It’s not you. I had a row with Connor this morning.’
‘Seriously? I thought you two never argued.’
‘It was over something so stupid. Connor borrowed my trainers to take the dog out early, and got them covered in mud. He does it all the bloody time. I told him, why can’t you ruin your own shoes? Then I asked him to clean them.’ He shakes his head, scraping at the dried mud on one trainer with his other foot. ‘Connor threw them back at me, told me to clean them myself.’
‘Brothers.’
He grins. ‘Oh, we love each other really. You know what it’s like with families.’
I look at him speculatively. If his parents hadn’t adopted Tris, Connor would have been an only child. And later, when their mum left, he would have been an only child in a single parent family. Like me.
‘Not really. I’ve been protected from the horror of siblings. It can get lonely though, being an only child.’
‘Poor kid.’ Tris puts an arm round my shoulders, making a sad face. ‘Poor, lonely, no-mates Eleanor.’
‘That’s me.’
‘Well, I still love you. Even if no one else does.’
I look away, remembering the creepy note left tucked under the jeep’s windscreen wipers last night.
You’re my Number One.
I was insanely suspicious about Tris last night. My head was muddled with drink, my nerves on edge. Looking at him in the daylight, it feels impossible that Tristan Taylor could ever have written that note. At least, that’s my gut instinct.
But my gut instinct has been known to be wrong.
‘Look, Eleanor,’ he tells me quietly, ‘I have no problem with doing this. But I am genuinely worried about what kind of impact it could have on you.’
So we’re back to Eleanor, I think. Not Ellie anymore. ‘You don’t need to be worried.’
‘Really? You were acting pretty weird last night. Now you want to go back into the woods and risk falling apart again.’ He studies me, his expression brooding. ‘We’re good friends, and I don’t want to be rude, but what if this sets you off again?’
‘You make me sound like a dysfunctional siren.’
‘Not a bad description.’
I recall my father calling me a manipulative little bitch only an hour ago, and find it hard to smile.
‘Thanks,’ I say lightly.
‘You’re welcome.’
We’re good friends.
I suddenly realise I’m supplying a silent just before that good, and hating it. I bend to fumble with my laces, needlessly untying then relacing them in a loose double bow.
I glance round at him, my tone deliberately offhand. ‘Shall we get going, then? If the obligatory lecture is over?’
His mouth tightens but he shrugs. ‘Might as well. You lead.’
‘We can run two abreast most of the way, actually.’
‘Sounds fun.’
I pull a face at his lewd expression. He and Connor both love the dirty puns, but they never seem to push beyond that. Typical male banter, Hannah calls it, and claims she’s heard far worse at the hospital, especially on the night shift.
We jog down the sunlit track into the woods. I decided that reversing my route might be a good idea, help me see things in a different light. So we’re entering the woods behind the church, on the narrow overgrown track I used to reach the village after seeing the body. We slow to skirt the nettle patch, then walk single file for a while because the dirt track is so narrow and steep. That’s where I take the lead, and Tris falls in behind me.
‘Stay close,’ I tell him.
I hear water rushing and gurgling as we descend towards the stream. My body is warming up now, but my palms feel cold and clammy. The horribly familiar sound of the stream brings back memories of the day when I stood among these same trees, a scared six-year-old, and closed my eyes, listening …
I slow as the path widens out, then come to a halt fifty-odd feet shy of the stream, not entirely sure of my next move. Behind me Tris stops too. I hear his light breathing, and it reminds me of the shadow behind the hedgerow. The sound of a man breathing a few feet away in the darkness. It could have been him. He’s the right height and build. But then so is Connor, and so is my father, and the Reverend Clemo, and just about any male of six foot and above.
I stand, not speaking, listening to the sounds of the woods. Above us, an unseen bird calls out a shrill warning: Humans! Humans! Humans in the
woods!
Tris breaks the silence between us. ‘I have to say, I was surprised to see you on your feet after last night, let alone running.’
‘Four o’clock in the morning is a record even for me,’ I admit.
‘Denzil needs a punch in the head.’
I look round in surprise at the barely concealed tension in his voice. ‘Why? I told you, he got me home safe.’
I don’t mention my glimpse of the shadow man outside the cottage. I’m unsure whether it was real or imagined, and am still ashamed of the way I reacted last night. The primal fear that had me running into Hannah’s arms like a terrified kid, waking up a few hours later after a bad dream, sunlight in my eyes, exhausted but unable to sleep.
So much for my expertise as a martial arts teacher. That had been my big selling point when I first started interviewing for teaching jobs in Physical Education, that I could teach the students anything from karate and judo through to elements of aikido and Krav Maga. Yet faced with the possibility that my childhood bogey-man was back, those much-vaunted defences had crumbled like they were made of tinfoil.
‘Safe is always a relative term with you though.’ Tris looks even paler down here in the dim light of the woods; his skin is almost translucent under the tree canopy. ‘There’s only one reason a couple stays out until four in the morning. And it’s not so you can go stargazing on the moors.’
‘Oh my God, I wasn’t wrong last night. You really are jealous.’
‘No.’ He shakes his head vehemently. ‘Christ, no. You can date anyone else you like, I don’t give a shit. But Denzil Tremain is the wrong choice for you.’
‘Reasons?’
‘First off, everyone knows he does drugs. Deals them too, Connor says. And he deliberately got you drunk last night. I could see that as soon as I talked to you at the club.’
‘Stop exaggerating. I only had three or four drinks, for God’s sake.’
‘What was in them?’
‘I don’t know.’ I shrug it off, not wanting this conversation. ‘They were cocktails.’
‘Right, Denzil’s special drain cleaner mix. He might even have dropped a couple of Ruffies in there and you wouldn’t have known anything about it until it was too late.’
‘Denzil isn’t like that,’ I say, though I don’t believe it.
‘Convince me.’
I may have a blind spot where Denzil is concerned, but I know what Ruffies are, and he would never use the date rape drug. ‘I don’t need to. It’s none of your business. But take it from me,’ I tell him directly, ‘Denzil doesn’t need to drug women to get them into bed with him.’
‘Fine.’ He looks past me at the rushing stream, his face distracted. ‘Are you going to see him again?’
‘Denzil’s a good friend. Of course I’ll see him again.’
I turn away, finishing the conversation, and continue down the slope to the brink of the stream. It’s true that I’ve made some errors of judgement where Denzil is concerned. But they are my errors, and not up for discussion.
The stream is at its broadest here in the bottom of the wood, water constantly tumbling over stones, its busy gurgle louder now, no longer the low level hiss that seems to permeate the woods on a still day. The path becomes uneven at this point, thick with ruts, the track widening into a muddy clearing. The water’s not deep but is maybe five or six feet across, I would guess, measuring it with my eye. There’s a wooden bridge a little further ahead, a simple structure for walkers who don’t want to get their feet wet.
Tris comes to stand at my side. ‘So we’re here. At the stream. Where did you see the body?’
I stand there, looking right into untidy undergrowth, then left to the bridge. Everything is as I remember, except that the earth is less muddied than it was that day and the path is empty. I remember the stillness though. That’s missing today. Birds are chirruping all around us, and somewhere above us in the main body of the wood I can hear a party of walkers. The high voices of children, laughing and calling to each other through the trees.
‘I came round the bend over there,’ I tell him, and point to the exact place on the opposite bank. ‘From a distance, it looked like a fallen tree was lying across the path. The mind tries to make sense of things, I suppose. I wasn’t expecting to see a naked woman, so I saw a fallen tree instead.’
‘Shall we?’
I hesitate, then nod. We walk a little further along the track in silence, then cross the bridge one after the other.
There’s a dark, gleaming pool below, perhaps waist-deep, the air bright with flies above the water. I hesitate, staring along the stream to where it disappears into green shadows round the next bend, and try to quell the sickness in my stomach.
I need to confront Tris about the club last night, and the disturbing message on Denzil’s windscreen. I’m not one hundred percent convinced he left it there, but the more he condemns Denzil’s character, the more I feel he has a motive for trying to frighten me. Maybe it was initially intended as a lads’ prank, a collaboration between him and Connor. Maybe one of the brothers saw my anklet fall off on the dance floor, and the other wrote the note to spook me. I should just come straight out with it, ask Tris if he wrote it. It could be completely innocent, and nothing to do with the dead woman.
Something is holding me back though, playing on my nerves, my hair-trigger imagination, and that sense of uneasiness is intensifying the closer we get to the spot of my mother’s murder. Last night, this had seemed like the perfect place to speak to Tris alone. If he does not admit the truth here, he’s unlikely to do so anywhere else. But have I walked myself straight into a trap?
Tris leads me to the muddied edge of the stream, and we look back at the opposite bank where we had been standing moments before.
‘So?’
‘The woods were very quiet, not like today. It was still early, maybe half past seven, maybe a little later. I slowed down, and considered going back to the main path. But I’d already come that far. So I kept going, and walked straight towards her.’
‘You knew something wasn’t right?’
‘I was already nervous. I didn’t want to take this path. This is where … where it happened before.’
‘Where your mother was killed?’
‘Yes.’
He pauses, then looks around. ‘This exact spot?’
I nod.
‘Shit, I’m sorry.’
We both stare down into the water, standing shoulder to shoulder. Our reflection is vague and shadowy, moving constantly with the current. The trees behind our heads ripple on the water.
‘So what happened then?’
I look back, and it’s as if the whole thing is happening in front of me. I see the body on the path. The eerie way the light and shadows played on her skin. The number three on her forehead.
You’re my Number One.
That’s a threat, a promise. A warning not to be complacent. The killer has a step-by-step plan and he’s following it. He’s in control.
Thanks for the anklet.
That’s him telling me how clever and powerful and resourceful he is. How he can get to me at any time. Take whatever he wants from me. My life, potentially.
I remember Denzil setting fire to the note, then throwing it out of the jeep. The only piece of solid evidence that could prove I’m not imagining any of this. It could have gone to forensics. Did he destroy the note deliberately?
It’s an unsettling question. I trust Denzil, always have done. But there are doubts in my head now. I remind myself that I heard him drive away last night, so he could not have been the man watching me from behind the hedgerow. Still, he could have stopped the car a little further down the lane, then got out and run back through the field. He would have been out of breath by the time he arrived back at the cottage, of course. But I did hear odd rustling noises from the hedgerow, and then what sounded like somebody breathing …
He deliberately got you drunk last night.
‘Ellie?’ Tr
is prompts me.
I nod, saying, ‘Once I got closer, I could see it was a woman. She was naked. Maybe playing some kind of sick joke on me, I thought at first. She looked asleep from a few feet away. Then it became obvious to me that she wasn’t breathing. I stood there looking down at her, and I thought …’
‘Yes?’
I hesitate, seeing it again in my head, the horrible jarring misfit between the beauty of the woods and the corpse on the path. ‘I don’t know what I thought, actually. I stared for a minute or two, then something seemed to take me over.’
‘Something?’
‘Sheer panic,’ I admit, embarrassed. ‘It felt like I was six years old again and my mother was screaming at me to run. So I did exactly that. Only I didn’t take the bridge, then follow the path up to the car park, where I might have found help quicker.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s been bothering me.’
‘Which way did you go?’
‘I ran through the water over there,’ I say, pointing along the stream to where there are a few unevenly-spaced stepping-stones, ‘then ran up the steep track we came down today. Heading for the back of the church. It’s barely a path in places, and hell to climb going the other way. Yet that’s the same way I ran when I was six.’
I remember soft earth giving way under my trainers halfway up the slope, the violent lurch as I fell among nettles. ‘Maybe that’s why it felt like the right thing to do.’
Tris turns in a slow circle, studying the ground. ‘To cross the bridge, you would have needed to go past the body. It was probably easier to run sideways and through the stream.’
‘Easier?’
‘Less traumatic. You didn’t want to look at her that closely.’
I’m diverted by this explanation.
I turn too, scanning the narrow bridge, the path where the dead body lay that morning, then my chosen escape route through the stream.
He’s right.
‘Of course. I didn’t think of that.’
He smiles grimly. ‘Your brain again, making decisions for you without telling you why.’
‘Stupid brain.’
Tris takes my hand, squeezing it gently. His fingers are warm and comforting. It’s hard not to trust him. This is Tris, after all, and I’ve known him for years. But I can’t seem to shake the memory of that note last night. Thanks for the anklet.