The Shadow Friend

by Alex North

  But not Charlie’s dream diary.

  I frowned.

  Where was that?

  It took me a moment to realize it must still be upstairs in my mother’s room. When I had seen Carl outside earlier, I had put it down on the bed before following him to the playground. I went back inside again and climbed the stairs slowly. The landing was almost pitch black, as though the house was gathering the night inside itself, and when I walked into my mother’s room, it was full of shapes and shadows. But the diary was obvious: a stark black rectangle on the stripped mattress.

  I picked it up.

  Am I doing the right thing, Mum?

  What my mother would have wanted me to do had been foremost on my mind all afternoon. She had decided to steal the diary from Carl for a reason. After so many years of hoarding guilt, perhaps a part of her had wanted the truth to come out. But equally, at that point her mind had been slipping. She had kept Carl’s secret all this time. Because they had been friends, if not more.

  Am I doing the right thing?

  I wasn’t sure what she would say if she was here now, and the dark house offered no more answers than the night sky outside. Maybe there weren’t any, I thought. Perhaps life was just a matter of doing what you thought was best at the time and then living with the consequences – as best you could – afterwards. What would my mother have said if she was here now? Probably that I was a grown man. That she’d raised me and protected me as best she could. And that she was gone now, which meant I had to decide what to do for myself.

  A noise downstairs.

  I stood still for a moment.

  Listening.

  Nothing more. It was just the house stretching out after the heat of the day, preparing to sleep. Maybe on some level it even knew what I was about to do, and was readying itself to be locked up and forgotten for a time.

  I took the diary out on to the landing.

  Then hesitated, looking down the stairs.

  It was very dark down there now, and the house felt even more filled than it had before. My spine started tingling. Since returning to Gritten, I had never felt entirely alone in here, but that had been because every corner and surface contained memories. Right now, I was feeling a different kind of presence.

  Someone is downstairs.

  The thought came from nowhere.

  There was no reason to believe it was true. Everything that had happened here had been down to Carl trying to frighten me away. And yet the silence was ringing in my ears, and some primal part of me was on edge.

  I stared down at the front door. I’d put the chain on when I arrived. The back door was unlocked, though.

  Could the sound I’d heard have been that door clicking open?

  You need to get outside.

  Once the thought came, it was suddenly urgent.

  I went down the stairs, moving quickly but trying to stay as quiet as I could, wincing at every quiet creak. At the bottom, I glanced behind me along the dark corridor. The kitchen was dark and the back door was closed. There was nobody there.

  But as I turned back and reached for the chain to unlock the front door, the ghost of a man stepped out from the shadows in the living room beside me. He moved so fast I hardly had time to register him before pain exploded in my lungs.

  The world spun about me, and the darkness in the hallway filled with stars.

  38

  ‘He’s lying about something,’ Dwyer said.

  Amanda stared down at the monitor on the desk and nodded. The screen was showing footage from the camera in the interview room. Carl Dawson was sitting at the desk there, his elbows on the surface and his face obscured by his hands. What was left of his hair was pushed up, splayed by his fingers. It had been ten minutes since they’d left him alone for a break, and as far as she could tell from watching the monitor he hadn’t moved at all.

  He’s lying about something.

  He’s lying about a lot of things, she thought.

  For one, Dawson claimed to have been back in Gritten for several days. To a certain degree, that fitted with activity they’d found on his credit card, but it didn’t make sense in other ways. Why was he here? He’d come to see Daphne Adams, apparently, but that didn’t add up. He’d returned to Gritten on the day before her accident, and yet when they checked with the hospice, there was no record of him ever visiting her afterwards. So what the hell had he been doing?

  ‘He had no answer when it came to Daphne,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, he clammed up. Because he’s lying.’

  ‘Is he, though?’

  ‘Of course he is,’ Dwyer said. ‘If he came to see her, he failed pretty miserably. Let’s be honest, it’s not like she was doing a lot of running around.’

  ‘No.’

  Dwyer was right, and yet a flicker of doubt remained in her mind. For some reason, Dawson wasn’t telling them everything, but she thought there was a grain of truth in what he had said. It was like they had one picture and he had another, and some parts matched while others didn’t. Perhaps he really had come to see Daphne Adams, but there was more to it than that, and despite the hours of pressure they had put him under, he wouldn’t explain what it was.

  There was something they were missing.

  Dwyer said, ‘Don’t you like him for the killings?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She looked at him. ‘You still do, I can tell.’

  He shrugged. ‘We can link him to all three victims. We know he was here in Gritten at the time Billy Roberts was murdered. And it’s not that long a drive back home. So yeah, I like him quite a lot.’

  ‘Motive, though?’

  ‘Years of domestic abuse on file. Perhaps he finally snapped.’

  Amanda looked at the screen.

  Dawson still hadn’t moved.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  ‘Here’s what I think,’ Dwyer said. ‘Dawson comes back here for some reason – let’s say it’s possible it really was to see Daphne Adams. She’s dying, he’s upset. He’s had a miserable fucking life, and he’s full of resentment. And there are all these bad memories in Gritten. So he stews for a while, then ends up tracking down Billy Roberts and it all explodes. Afterwards, he goes home and loses his shit with his family.’

  ‘Then comes back to have a chat with Paul Adams?’

  Dwyer shrugged again.

  ‘If you believe that’s what they were really doing.’

  Amanda had no answer to that. Paul had clearly been wrestling with something back at the playground. When she had first met him, she had been confident he was telling her the truth, which made it that much easier to notice the difference when he wasn’t. But she also had a feeling that whatever he wasn’t prepared to tell her, it was something separate from the murders. If he had known anything about the killings, she was sure he would have told her. Appearances could be deceptive, of course, but he struck her as too decent for that.

  ‘I can’t see them being in it together,’ she said.

  ‘They’re in something together.’

  ‘Paul had no motive to hurt Eileen and James.’

  ‘He did for Billy Roberts, though.’

  ‘Sure. But when I spoke to him, I really don’t think he even knew Billy was out of prison. Honestly, I think Paul has done his best to forget what happened here in Gritten. I read people well, and he was genuinely shocked when I told him.’ She gestured at the monitor. ‘And, of course, that’s the other thing.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Carl Dawson’s face when you told him.’

  That moment back at the playground was still etched in her mind. And ever since they had started the interviews, Dawson had seemed like a broken man to her. There had been no bursting into tears, shouted denials or collapsing with shock. There was an emptiness to him, but also a strange kind of resolve. As though he had carried heavier weights than this before, and whatever it took, he was going to do so again now.

  Dwyer looked at the screen.

  ‘I still like him fo
r it,’ he said.

  Amanda sighed to herself. Whatever her reservations, there was a good chance that Dwyer was right. And anyway, especially with Paul refusing to talk, Dawson was all they had right now.

  ‘Round three?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, let’s.’

  The office they had retreated to was only two doors down from the interview room. As they reached it, Amanda’s phone rang. She took it out of her pocket, wondering if it might be Paul. But she’d programmed his number into her mobile, and she didn’t recognize the one flashing up now.

  ‘You make a start,’ she told Dwyer. ‘I’ll join you in a second.’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  Carl Dawson looked up as Dwyer walked in, his face still lost and empty, and then the door closed, blocking her view. She answered the call and leaned back against the wall.

  ‘Detective Amanda Beck,’ she said.

  ‘Detective Beck?’

  It was a woman’s voice. Amanda couldn’t place it, but even with just those two words she registered the urgency and panic.

  She leaned away from the wall.

  ‘Yes. Who is this, please?’

  ‘It’s Mary.’

  ‘Mary?’

  ‘Mary Price? You came to our home a few days ago to talk about our son’s murder. I really need to speak with you. I’m so scared.’

  Michael Price’s mother. Amanda recalled sitting in a front room still scattered with the boy’s possessions, the air saturated with grief, desperate to be anywhere else.

  ‘Mary,’ she said. ‘Of course. Please try to calm down.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You don’t need to be sorry.’

  ‘I should have called you sooner. I just didn’t … Oh God.’

  I’m so scared.

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong, Mary.’

  ‘My husband.’

  Dean Price. Amanda remembered how the man had suddenly left the room, unable to accept that his son had been killed because of the story she’d told them both. Are you saying my son was murdered because of a ghost? And the threat she’d sensed in him. The barely concealed violence she had felt bubbling below his surface.

  ‘What about him?’ she said.

  Mary was crying now.

  ‘I think he might have done something bad.’

  39

  The hall light clicked on, and I found myself staring at a pair of combat boots.

  They kept swimming in and out of focus. I was lying curled up on the polished floor, trying desperately to breathe through a pain in my lungs that was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It seemed like the man had barely moved, but he’d somehow hit me in the stomach with such force that he’d knocked the air from me and made it impossible to draw in more.

  ‘Shallow breaths,’ he told me. ‘You’ll live.’

  His voice was blank and emotionless: stating the facts without really caring about the outcome. But it turned out he was right. The effect of the impact subsided gradually, and I managed to draw in small mouthfuls of air, the pain flaring less with each one.

  The whole time, the man stood there waiting as I recovered, entirely motionless. Somehow I knew better than to attempt to stand up – that he wanted me on the floor, and that I’d simply be knocked down again if I resisted – but after a moment I risked looking up at him. He was standing in the doorway to the front room, dressed in dark combat trousers and a black sweater. His body seemed thin and wiry, and built for violence. His hair was close-cropped. I didn’t recognize his face, but the expression there was as implacable as his voice had been.

  In one gloved hand, he was holding a hunting knife.

  Terror began humming in my chest.

  ‘What do you want?’ I managed to say, each word making the pain in my chest flare.

  The man ignored me, shrugging off a backpack I hadn’t even noticed until then. With his free hand, he reached inside and then tossed something in my direction. I flinched as it landed on the floor beside me with a clatter.

  Handcuffs.

  ‘Put them on,’ he said.

  Every instinct in my body told me not to. But even if he hadn’t had the knife, and I hadn’t been lying powerless on the floor, I could tell I was no match for him physically. That he would simply put them on me himself, and it would hurt a lot more if I made him do it.

  He took a step closer, turning the knife in his hand.

  ‘I won’t tell you again.’

  ‘All right.’

  I picked up the handcuffs. They were solid and professional, with little distance between the cuffs. Police issue, I thought – or military, perhaps. And there was that air of authority to the man, as though controlling and hurting people came naturally to him.

  I slipped one cuff over my left wrist and clicked it shut.

  ‘A bit tighter,’ he said.

  I did as I was told.

  ‘Now the other.’

  I repeated the action with the other wrist. The action rendered me helpless, but I had been already. Maybe there was even some comfort in the knowledge that he felt the need to restrain me. If he wanted to kill me, I would surely be dead by now.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said again.

  And again, there was no answer.

  Instead, he squatted down and looked me over dispassionately. The knife was much closer now, and I could see it was serrated on one side, thin and wicked on the other. The way the man looked at me, it was like he was examining a carcass he had been given the task of butchering, and a chill ran through me as I realized there might be other reasons to restrain me, and that there were worse fates than simply being dead.

  I felt a buzzing against my thigh.

  My phone ringing.

  The man heard it too and reached into my pocket. He examined the screen for a moment, then placed the mobile casually on the floor and sent it spinning away into the dark front room.

  He held up the knife.

  ‘Do you see this?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This means you and I are going to have a talk.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Be quiet. The talk will go on for as long as it needs to. If you don’t give me the answers I want, I will hurt you very badly until you do. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because I know you have those answers. I know you know what happened to Charlie Crabtree and where he disappeared to.’

  I blinked.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been thinking this was – a robbery, perhaps? But I remembered Billy Roberts now, and how shaken Amanda had seemed after coming from the scene.

  The talk will go on for as long as it needs to.

  The man placed his knee on my side, leaning down and pinning me to the floor, then traced the tip of the knife over my shoulder.

  ‘I have no idea what happened to Charlie,’ I said.

  ‘Really? Why were you planning to burn the evidence, then?’

  I tried to think.

  ‘I just wanted to be done with it all. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

  That seemed to anger him. The pressure of his knee on my side increased, and he moved the knife to my cheek. I felt the tip of it pierce the skin there, a fingertip away from my right eye.

  ‘You know what happened to him,’ he said.

  I could tell him the truth, but I didn’t want to, and from the expression on his face I thought he was planning to hurt me whatever I said. Despite the situation, I felt anger flaring up inside me. Fury that, even after all these years, Charlie still had the capacity to get to me, and determination that it was going to stop.

  ‘Tell me where Charlie is.’

  The tip of the knife suddenly went in deeper, and I winced as the man turned his hand, needling the blade against my cheekbone. The pain wasn’t terrible, not yet, but the glinting metal filled my right eye, and the anticipation was worse.

  You need to tell him a story.

  ‘Hague,’ I said.

>   The name came from nowhere, arriving in my head as suddenly and violently as the van that had taken Hague’s life.

  The beginning of a story.

  Now I just needed to find the rest.

  But for now, the blade stopped turning as the man considered my answer. It was taking him a second to place the name, but I could tell it was familiar to him. He must have read through the same online forums as I had.

  A moment later, the knife moved away from my face.

  ‘The boy who was killed in the accident,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not him. His older brother. Rob Hague – that was his name.’

  I had no idea if that was true.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He was in prison, but he got out that year. There were rumours circulating about what Charlie had said on the rugby pitch that day. Some people thought that Charlie really had caused the accident, and Rob Hague was one of them. He blamed Charlie for killing his brother.’

  It was a complete fabrication, of course, but now that I’d started to tell it, I realized I could see it unfolding in my head, the way I had on rare occasions as a teenager when I sat and planned out my stories. Rob Hague and his friends cruising round in their car. Looking for an opportunity to deal with Charlie, and finding him wandering alone near Gritten Wood after he woke up and abandoned Billy among the trees.

  Dragging him into the car.

  A beating that got out of hand.

  ‘There were three of them,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember the other names. After Charlie died, they panicked. They kept his body wrapped up in a roll of carpet in the trunk of the car. Later on, they got rid of the body in the woods and burned out the car.’

  ‘Where in the woods?’

  ‘There’s an old well.’

  ‘The wells were all searched.’

  ‘Beforehand. So where better to hide a body?’

  I held my breath as the man thought about that. I needed him to believe the story enough to buy me some time. I had no idea what I was going to do with that time, but I did know I didn’t want him to start hurting me. That whatever happened, it was going to be on my terms.