The Elephant Tree

by R. D. Ronald

  ‘So I’ll just say I haven’t seen you if anyone comes asking again?’ Jack asked, sidestepping Scott’s last comment.

  ‘I don’t know Jack, I haven’t done anything wrong. Not really wrong anyway and I don’t know where Twinkle is, so tell them what you want.’

  Scott turned the handle on the apartment door, left and closed it softly after him. The lights in the hallway seemed brighter than when he’d arrived moments before. Scott moved his hand over the sensor to summon the lift then rubbed his forehead, trying to work loose the tension before it could cement itself into a headache.

  He squinted against the harsh glare that poured out of the empty lift as the doors opened and he walked inside. He pressed for the lobby and thought back over Jack’s reactions, or rather lack of them, as he’d read through the letters. His absence of visible emotion was fairly typical of Jack when dealing with any serious issues, another one of his finely honed abilities. But to learn that your own father may not be who you thought but actually your uncle? Scott couldn’t wrap his head around it, no reaction at all. Nothing.

  The lift stopped periodically on other floors, letting people on board, so Scott moved to the back of the car to make room. As the doors parted onto the lobby, Scott waited as the other passengers disembarked and caught sight of Neil seated in the lobby waiting area behind an open newspaper.

  Neil saw Scott as he strode over, put down the newspaper and turned to face him.

  ‘What’s with the paper, you on a stakeout?’

  ‘Sort of yeah, Elizabeth saw you coming into the building so I came down here to wait for you leaving. Figured if you were in to see Jack you wouldn’t be very long.’

  ‘So what is it? Have you seen those guys again who turned you over?’

  ‘No but I’m still keeping away from the bars. I have seen a detective Fallon though, asking all kinds of stuff about Twinkle but also about you.’

  ‘Yeah Jack filled me in already.’

  ‘Do you know where Twinkle is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well he seems to think you’re the best route to find him.’

  ‘I’ve pretty much just been through all this with Jack upstairs, nice to see you man, but if there’s nothing else,’ he said, and after a second began walking to the exit.

  ‘Just watch your back, Scott.’

  Scott spun back around to look at Neil.

  ‘I’ve been keeping a low profile, hardly been out at all, but Elizabeth remembered where she’d seen one of the guys that jumped me. It was in here, in this building. Couldn’t have been anything to do with me either ‘cause at that stage I hadn’t even met her.’

  Scott nodded, not really understanding what it meant, and left.

  He walked briskly back to the car pulling up his hood against the sharp winds that whipped at him once he’d left the cover of the building. Snow was falling heavier now.

  Scott got into the car, started the engine and used the wipers to clear the layer of snow from the windscreen. He knew he should start the drive back up to the mountains before the weather got worse, but wanted to pick up a few things from the house first and just take a little time out to try and think through what was going on. He knew he couldn’t stay around the city too long. The fact that he’d seen Twinkle die at the hands of McBlane and then he’d vanished would make them uneasy. He couldn’t risk running into any of them and he knew McBlane would have eyes everywhere.

  Scott pulled out of the car park and drove past the Walker building again to turn onto the main street. Two men in a stationary dark green Volvo opposite appeared to watch him as he drove by. This is crazy, Scott thought to himself. All this stuff from Jack and Neil has just made me paranoid. I’m finally about to make some decent cash and get away from this place and now I’m jumping at shadows. I’ll get back to the house, relax, maybe have a drink or two and if I feel up to it, then I’ll make the drive. If not, then I’ll go first thing in the morning.

  He turned on the radio and pressed the preset buttons till he found a station he could tolerate. Something mellow to help slow his thoughts. No-one had followed him from the Walker building he reassured himself, took a deep breath and settled back into the seat.

  The gravelled patch on the approach to the house was covered with a thin layer of unblemished snow. Scott parked up, walked to the front door and let himself in. The house was in complete darkness, but he slowly walked from room to room turning lights on to make certain he was alone.

  Satisfying himself that the house was empty, and again cursing his newly developed hyper tension, Scott went into the kitchen to make some coffee. He didn’t know exactly what it was he’d be looking for around the house. Just to poke around for any other things his uncle may have hidden to shed more light on what he’d learned about his family.

  The kettle clicked off as a cloud of steam billowed from the spout, fogging up the kitchen window. Scott began pouring the boiling water into a cup with a teaspoon of instant coffee, and heard three loud thumps on the front door. His nerves immediately began to jangle like sleigh bells. His hand holding the kettle wobbled, spilling boiling water onto the counter, and he dropped the spoon. He put the kettle back onto its stand and trying to compose himself, strode to the door.

  ‘Scott Lawrence?’ a man in a dark grey suit asked, holding out a sheet of paper as he opened the door. ‘I’m Detective Fallon, and this is a warrant to search the premises,’ he said, without waiting for confirmation that he was indeed the named person on the warrant.

  Fallon waited on the step while presumably another detective and three regular policemen pushed past into the hallway and began searching rooms. Fallon was around six feet tall, medium build, was clean shaven and had short brown hair cut in an unremarkable style.

  ‘Sorry for the intrusion Scott, you want to come have a seat with me while I ask a few questions?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t have a choice, so follow me,’ Scott said, and led the way through to the living room.

  ‘Give us a minute,’ Fallon said to a uniformed officer who had begun searching through magazines and papers under the coffee table. The policeman nodded and closed the door after himself.

  ‘Alright, what’s this about then?’ Scott asked, folding his arms in his lap.

  ‘Well, I’m sure you already heard from speaking to your brother and your friend Neil that I’ve been asking around for the whereabouts of a certain friend of yours.’

  ‘Twinkle, right; but I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend.’

  ‘What would you call him then, a work colleague, a business partner?’ Fallon asked, and as much as Scott wanted to instantly dislike the man, he couldn’t deny he had a certain affable air to him. Not the arrogant self righteousness that he’d come to expect from friends who’d been in similar situations before. He still maintained his guard though, aware this could simply be a ruse to get him to trust the detective and open up to him.

  ‘I would just call him someone who I had the occasional drink with while out in the city.’

  ‘OK, I’ll save the round and round here with you Scott and lay my cards on the table. How’s that sound?’

  Scott nodded and waited for the detective to speak again. Fallon licked his lips thoughtfully and readjusted his seating position on the couch so he was more directly facing Scott.

  ‘Twinkle is missing,’ he said, and flicked open the thumb from his clenched left hand he had laid on his knee. ‘He’s involved in a shooting outside of a certain nightclub.’ He uncurled a finger. ‘There’s way more to it than that, as the guy who was shot is a two bit scumbag and I doubt the bouncers would even report if they saw it happen, let alone try to catch the guy that did it. Let’s face it, who’s to say they wouldn’t get shot in the process?’ Another finger uncurled. ‘You and Twinkle are close.’ Another finger flicked out, and he raised his right hand, palm out, to silence Scott’s protestations as soon as he began to make them. ‘You know something about what’s going on,’ he said, extending his
little finger, leaving an open palm held out towards Scott.

  This time he didn’t make a move to silence any rebuttals Scott might make, but Scott wasn’t making any, he just sat in silence looking back at Fallon.

  ‘There’s something else going on here Scott, I know that. And I’m pretty sure you’ve managed to get wrapped up in it. I have my suspicions, but the people I’m after cover their tracks really well, and that’s if they even leave any tracks at all. The warrant here is just a formality. I’m not expecting to find anything regarding either Twinkle’s current whereabouts or the shooting at the club, which is why we’re here now instead of weeks ago. It’s you I wanted to see,’ he said, and looked Scott straight in the eye, digging around in his head for a reaction.

  He slipped the previously outstretched palm into an inside jacket pocket, withdrew his card and offered it to Scott. ‘If you’re involved in any way, by choice or by accident, then I think you may end up needing my number.’

  Scott took the card and slid it into a pocket without looking at it or saying anything.

  ‘We almost done then lads?’ Fallon shouted, angling his head towards the closed living room door but keeping his eyes on Scott.

  A few seconds later the door was partly opened by the other detective, who put his head through the gap and nodded. Fallon stood up and looked to Scott, as if expecting him to do the same. Scott remained seated.

  ‘Alright Scott, I’ll be seeing you then,’ he said, and walked back into the hallway closing the living room door after him. Scott waited until the sounds of heavy footsteps filed back outside and he heard the latch of the front door click back into place as it locked after them.

  The whole episode had taken probably less than ten minutes from start to finish. Scott felt slightly shaken by the intrusion but more confused than concerned from the manner of Detective Fallon. He went back into the kitchen and re-boiled the kettle, filled the remainder of his earlier cup with water and picked the spoon off the floor. Taking a sip from the cup he slid his other hand into the pocket containing Fallon’s card, his forefinger tracing a line around its edge. He withdrew the card, tore it up and dropped the pieces into the trash. It wasn’t as if he’d have any need to call the man.

  * * *

  Scott woke early the next morning and immediately went to the window to see if the weather had been kind during the night. Anxiously pulling back the curtain, he revealed a scene that would have been more welcome on a Christmas card than on his front garden as a thick layer of snow carpeted everything in sight.

  His own personal search, the previous night after that of the uniformed intrusion, for anything that once belonged to his uncle, had yielded nothing in the way of letters or any other such nuggets of information. In fact the only artefact from the past that had been revealed on his insistent poking and prising of the various objects had been dust.

  Scott had bundled together a selection of clothes for both cold and warm weather the previous night, thinking of the varying atmospheric conditions of his living in the cabin and working down in the cave with Jeff. The house here had nothing left to offer Scott; for all he knew it may have been the last time he’d spend the night here.

  He called to Boris out of habit before remembering he’d left the dog with Angela up in the mountains. Taking his bag, fit to burst with all of his clothes he’d crammed into it, he left by the front door and walked to the car.

  Unlocking the door, Scott removed a balled up t-shirt before dropping the bag into the car. He used the t-shirt to scrub off the majority of snow from the outside of the car.

  Climbing into the driver’s seat, Scott silently said a prayer to whichever deity may have been listening before turning the ignition key. To his amazement the old engine turned over first time and coughed into life.

  Scott took it steadily along the country lanes as snow and ice lay in patches along many stretches of the tarmac. He was sure McBlane hadn’t simply forgotten about him, and Scott didn’t want to chance his luck further by driving closer to the city than necessary to meet up with the highway, so he took an indirect route along deserted stretches of road past farmland, adding over an hour to his journey time.

  Eventually the highway beckoned with its many wide, snow free lanes, allowing Scott to push the speed of the Renault up as high as it would go without the risk of skidding on any unseen ice. The old car reluctantly accelerated at his insistence before topping out at around 75mph.

  By the time Scott took the turning off the highway for the mountains, snow dominated the landscape in every direction. The only discernable feature of the tractor he’d noticed from the first trip was a mirror poking defiantly through its thick blanket covering of snow.

  As the road gained in altitude, Scott had to suitably reduce the speed with which he navigated it. A few times he’d lost traction already and struggled to bring the car back under control as the wheels spun out on the frozen surface. By the time the signpost for Black Acre Woods came into view, Scott knew he would never get the car up the dirt road to Jeff’s, so changed route and drove towards Bloody Bush instead.

  An incline about a mile before the village finally proved too much for the old Renault. Scott had managed to get about halfway up but had been repeatedly defeated by the amount of ice and severity of the slope. Finally giving up, he manoeuvred the car as far onto the grass verge at the side of the road as he could, took out his bag and began to walk the rest of the way up to the village.

  No snow was falling but the biting wind cut through Scott’s clothes, quickly chilling him. He hurried along the road towards Bloody Bush, hoping that he might strike lucky and catch Jeff in the village stocking up on supplies. There’d been no other vehicles on the road for miles, so persuading a local farmer to give him a ride for the remaining few miles didn’t look to be a strong possibility.

  Smoke drifted lazily from a chimney at the pub, spurring Scott on at a faster pace to get inside out of the cold. Icy water had begun bleeding through his shoes and slowly turned his feet numb.

  No sign of Jeff’s pickup parked outside either the pub or the post office; in fact there were no signs of any cars coming or going at all, footprints being the only violation in the covering of snow.

  Scott went into the post office and shoved the door closed after him. If the tinkling bell above the door wasn’t enough to alert Maurice of his presence, then the current of icy air that invaded the shop on his entry would have been.

  ‘Shut the door,’ Maurice barked at Scott, then hacked up a knot of phlegm from his chest and spat into something behind the counter.

  ‘Has Jeff been in, or Angela?’ Scott asked, and stamped his feet by the door to remove any excess snow.

  ‘Nope, haven’t seen either of them for a few days.’

  ‘Shit. My car got stuck in the snow about a mile down the road.’

  Maurice nodded and returned his attention to the crossword in the open newspaper on the counter.

  ‘You have any words of wisdom here to help me out then, Maurice?’ Scott asked as he walked to the counter and slumped against it dejectedly. He knew the 4x4 parked outside that never seemed to go anywhere belonged to Maurice, and unless it was broken he hoped to be able to wangle a lift up to Jeff’s place. He’d let Maurice come to the conclusion in his own time. Drag it out so he could fill himself with self importance, let him feel that he was saving the day.

  ‘My brother has a farm nearby,’ the old shopkeeper said, slowly rubbing his chin between finger and thumb, ‘I could maybe ask if he’d tow your car up the road with his tractor, leave it in the car park outside there at the Boar.’

  This was an unexpected bonus. Scott agreed and thanked Maurice, fished the car keys out of his pocket and dropped them beside the newspaper.

  A minute passed before Maurice looked up again at Scott who still stood waiting.

  ‘What, you want to buy some stamps?’

  ‘I couldn’t help but notice your truck out there Maurice. Any chance I could trouble you
for a lift to Jeff’s place?’

  ‘Nobody to watch the store. What if people come wanting to buy up all my stuff?’

  Scott saw his train of thought and went to grab an armload of groceries which Maurice happily rang up and put into a box for him.

  ‘Alright, I’ll take you,’ Maurice said, after Scott had paid for them, eased himself out of his seat and walked to the shop door.

  Scott picked up the box and followed him outside in time to see another evacuated mouthful of phlegm go sailing across the empty lot before disappearing below the level of the snow. The old man jumbled a large key ring until the correct one became apparent and unlocked the car doors.

  ‘You not gonna lock the shop up?’ Scott asked as they climbed in.

  ‘No point,’ Maurice answered, ‘no-one’ll be out in this weather anyway.’

  The drive up towards Jeff’s was as undisturbed by tyre tracks as the car park had been back in Bloody Bush. Either Jeff had gotten finished with the business quickly or more than likely he wasn’t back yet.

  ‘Thanks a lot Maurice,’ Scott said, as he picked the box of groceries out of the car, ‘I’ll be sure not to shop at any of your competitors.’

  Maurice grunted, acknowledging Scott’s sarcasm, and circled his truck around for the journey back down. Scott heard the familiar raking cough through the partially open window as the truck drove off.

  ‘You’re back just in time to help me prepare tonight’s dinner,’ Angela said smiling, as Scott carried the groceries through to the kitchen. He put down the box and she slid her arms around his waist, pulling him towards her, and pressed her lips softly against his before whispering in his ear that she’d missed him.

  ‘Jeff should be back anytime now,’ Angela said, ‘I thought that must be him when I heard the front door open.’