The Hiding Place, page 5
A notebook is open on my lap. On the first page I’ve written four names, with scribbled notes beside them: Chris Manning, Nick Fletcher, Marie Gibson and, of course, Stephen Hurst. The old gang back together, on paper at least. The ones who were there when it happened. The only ones who knew.
Fletch, I have discovered, now runs a plumbing business in Arnhill. Hurst is on the council. Marie, I couldn’t find anything about online, but she may have married, changed her name. Beside Chris’s name I have simply written: “Deceased.” Although that doesn’t really cover it. Not at all.
At the top of the next page are two names: Julia and Ben Morton. Beneath, I’ve jotted more notes, mostly gleaned from the Internet and the newspapers—neither wholly reliable, I know. If newspapers are the place where facts become stories, the Internet is the place where stories become conspiracy theories.
What I do know is this: Julia had a history of depression. She’d just finalized her divorce from Ben’s father (Michael Morton, a solicitor). She had stopped her medication, requested a leave of absence and taken Ben out of school. Oh, and after she bludgeoned her son to death—before she blew her own head off—she wrote three words in blood on the wall of Ben’s bedroom.
Not My Son.
In summary—hardly the actions of a balanced mind.
I’ve printed off two pictures and paper-clipped them inside the notebook. The first is of Julia. It looks like it was taken at a work event. She wears a smart suit, hair tied in a loose ponytail. Her smile is wide but her eyes are tired and guarded. Take your picture and leave me alone, her face says. I wonder if that’s the reason the newspaper chose it. This is a woman about to break. A woman on the edge. Or maybe just a woman irritated at being forced to pose for a stupid photo.
Ben’s is a school photo. His smile is wide and engaging, front two teeth slightly crooked, tie done up neatly for (probably) the first time ever. The reporters have trotted out all the usual platitudes: popular, a good student, plenty of friends, a bright future. They say nothing of the real boy. Simply a cut-and-paste job from their stock “dead child” folders.
Only one article hints at something more. A shadow skimming beneath the sun-dappled surface of Ben’s imagined existence. In the weeks before he died an unnamed school source claimed that Ben had been acting strangely; getting into trouble, absent from classes: “He was weird. Not himself.”
I think about the words Julia wrote: NOT MY SON. An icy fingernail caresses the top of my spine.
I chuck the notebook onto the coffee table. My phone rings, “Enter Sandman” piercing the cozy silence. I tense, then pick it up and glance at the screen. Brendan. I press Accept Call.
“Hello?”
“How’s it going?”
“Good question. Still working on the answer.”
I wait. Brendan is not the type of friend who calls just to inquire about my well-being. If there are no reports to the contrary, he presumes I am alive, which is good enough.
“Someone was asking about you in the pub the other night,” he says.
“Someone?”
“A woman. Small, blond. Pretty, but kind of hard.”
My stomach cramps, my bad leg throbs harder.
“Did you speak to her?”
“Feck, no. I slipped out as soon as I saw her. Some women just radiate bad news.”
“Okay. Don’t go back.”
“But they serve the finest steak-and-kidney pie outside of my dear old mammy’s kitchen.”
“Get a cookbook.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“No shitting. Don’t go back.”
“Christ.” There’s the click of a lighter and the sound of inhaling. “What did you do? Pawn her jewelry? Run off with her life savings?”
“Worse.”
“You know what my dear old mammy would say?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“The quickest way to bury a man is to give him a spade.”
“Meaning?”
“When the feck are you going to stop digging?”
“When I find the treasure?”
“The only thing you are going to find, my friend, is an early grave.”
“I love our little chats. They’re so uplifting.”
“If you want uplifting, watch Oprah.”
“I have a plan—”
“You have a death wish.”
“I just need a bit of time.”
He sighs. “Have you ever thought you need professional help?”
“When I’ve sorted this out, I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.”
He ends the call. I do think about it. For about ten seconds. I owe Brendan that. We’ve known each other for around three years, shared an apartment for a year and a half. He was there for me when no one else was. But Brendan is a recovering alcoholic. That means he is into things like confession, forgiveness and redemption. While I am more into keeping secrets, bearing grudges and holding on to resentment.
Sometimes, I wonder how the hell we even became friends. I guess, like a lot of relationships, it was a mixture of circumstance and alcohol (on my part, at least).
We used to see each other regularly in a pub close to where I lived. Casual hellos morphed into conversation one night. We began to sit together and chat over a drink—orange juice for Brendan, Guinness or whiskey for me.
Brendan’s company was easy, undemanding. About the only thing in my life that was. The foundations of my comfortable middle-class existence were fast crumbling beneath my feet. My job was hanging by a thread and I was struggling to make the rent on my apartment. When I was six months in arrears, my landlord came around with his two burly brothers, kicked me out and changed the locks.
My choices of accommodation were suddenly limited. Should I choose the studio apartment with the suspicious stains on the walls, or the basement flat with mold and what sounded like a tap-dancing ensemble living upstairs? Not to mention, I was restricted to looking in the sort of neighborhoods that Batman might think twice about sauntering around on a dark night.
That was when Brendan suggested I move in with him.
“Feck. I’ve got a spare room that’s just wasting gas and electricity.”
“That’s a kind offer, but I can’t afford much in the way of rent.”
“Forget the rent.”
I stared at him. “No. I can’t.”
He gave me a look. “As my dear old mammy would say: ‘You can’t fight the wolves at your door when you’re wrestling a lion in your living room.’ ”
I considered. I thought about my other options. Forget lions; I might well wake up to find rats nibbling my eyeballs.
“Okay. And thanks.”
“Thank me by sorting yourself out.”
“My losing streak can’t last forever.”
For a moment his face clouded. “It better not. From what I’ve heard you owe money to people who don’t take installments—they take kneecaps.”
“I’m working it out. And I’ll pay you back. I promise.”
“Too feckin” right you will.” He grinned. “I enjoy a nice back rub before bed. Don’t hold back on the massage oil.”
—
I reach for my beer, realize it’s empty and crumple the can in my hand. I stand to get another then decide a visit to the bathroom might be in order. I walk across the living room and flick on the hallway light. It grudgingly ebbs into life. I place my foot on the first stair. It creaks, predictably. As I climb the narrow staircase I try not to think about Julia Morton dragging her son’s body up here, step by creaking, laborious step. An eleven-year-old boy is heavy. And deadweight is heavier. I remember.
The landing is cold. There’s no radiator up here. But that’s not it. This isn’t normal cold. Not the cold I experienced when I first walked into the cottage. This cold is different. Creeping cold. A phrase I haven’t thought about since I was a kid. The type of cold that wraps itself around your bones and settles, like a lump of ice, in your intestines.
I can hear something too. Faint but persistent. An odd rustling, clicking sound, like air in the pipes. I stand and listen. It’s coming from the bathroom. I push open the door and pull on the tattered old light cord. The light flickers on with an irritating low hum, like a dying mosquito.
The cold is worse in here. The noise is louder too. Not air in the pipes. No. That clicking, skittering sound is something else. Something more familiar. Something more…alive. And it’s coming from the toilet.
The seat and lid are down. Not because I am in touch with my feminine side but because I have a slight phobia of open holes. Drains, overflows. Any hole in the ground. Last night, before bed, I went around and placed all the plugs in the plugholes. Now, I reach forward and tentatively lift the toilet lid.
“Shit!”
I leap back, so fast I almost lose my footing and crash to the floor. Somehow, I manage to grab hold of the sink and keep my balance. I don’t have such great control over my full bladder. A spurt of warm urine trickles down my leg.
I barely notice. The inside of the toilet bowl is moving. Teeming with a mass of small, shiny black bodies. Clickety-click-clicking as they scurry around, like a moving sea of excrement.
“Christ.”
A shiver of revulsion ripples through me. Along with the faint echo of a memory:
It’s the shadows. The shadows are moving.
I lean on the sink, breathing heavily. Beetles. Fucking beetles.
After a moment I step forward and raise the lid again. The swarming increases, like they sense I’m here. A couple make a break for it and start to scramble up toward the rim. I hastily slam the lid back down, trapping them between the two bits of plastic. They crack with a satisfying crunch.
How the hell did they get in there? The bowl must be dry so they’ve come up the pipes, but still? I reach for the bleach, take a deep breath, flip the lid once more and squirt the whole bottle down the toilet, drenching the scuttling insects.
The chittering and skittering increases. Some scramble up the side of the bowl. I grab the toilet brush and force them back down. Then I flush the toilet. Again and again until the cistern groans and there’s nothing left in the bottom but a small scum of water and a few floating black corpses. Just for good measure I grab some toilet paper and stuff it down the waste pipe to plug it up.
I sit down on the edge of the bath, or rather my legs give and the edge of the bath rises to greet me with a hard bump. Beetles. Fuck, fuck, fuck. My heart is hammering. I’m sweating, despite the cold. I need a drink, and a cigarette. But more than that, I need a fix. For the first time since I arrived here. For the first time in a long while. I need something to calm my nerves and steady my shaking hands.
I fumble in my pocket for my phone. BT isn’t coming to install broadband until next week, but I have 3G. Just. Online is second, even third best. But like an alcoholic reaching for the rubbing alcohol when every other bottle has been drained, needs must.
I bring up a web page. “Vegas Gold,” it declares in appropriately glittery gold writing. The irony of playing “Vegas Gold” while sitting on the edge of a mold-encrusted bath in jeans wet with urine is not lost on me. My thumb hovers over the link.
And that’s when I hear the crash from downstairs.
“What the hell?”
I hobble as fast as I can back down the narrow staircase and into the living room. A blast of cold evening air smacks me around the face. The curtains tussle and grapple in the wind. A jagged hole gapes in the living-room window and shards of glass litter the floorboards. Tires squeal, an engine revs and the high-pitched whine of a moped fades into the distance.
In the middle of the room I spot the source of the damage. A brick with a piece of paper wrapped around it, secured with a rubber band. How original.
I walk forward, kicking the slivers of glass out of my way, and pick up the brick. I unpeel the paper. It’s thin and lined, torn from an exercise book. As welcome messages go, it leaves something to be desired: FUCK OFF CRIPLE.
7
You know you’re getting older when the police are getting younger. I’m not sure what it says about you when the police are getting smaller.
I stare down—way down—at PC Cheryl Taylor. At least, I think that’s what she said her name was. Her tone is brusque, her demeanor cool. I get the impression she would rather not be here. Perhaps I’m keeping her from a major heist, or the evening takeaway run.
“So, you say someone threw the brick through your window at approximately 8:07 this evening?”
“Yes.”
Approximately one hour ago, so whoever did it is long gone by now. Still, at least it gave me the chance to change my jeans.
“Did you see anything?”
“I saw a large red house brick in the middle of my newly air-conditioned living room.”
She gives me a look. It’s one I’m familiar with. I seem to get it a lot from women.
“I meant anything else?”
“No, but I heard a moped accelerating away.”
She makes some more notes then she bends down and picks up the house brick.
“Do you need to bag that or something, check for fingerprints?”
“This is Arnhill, not CSI,” she says, putting it down again.
“Oh, right. Of course. Sorry, for a moment there I thought you were interested in catching whoever did this.”
She looks like she’s going to retort then bites back whatever comment she was about to make and simply says, “The note?”
I hand it to her. She studies it. “Not so hot on spelling.”
“Actually,” I say, “I don’t think that’s a mistake. I think it’s deliberate. To throw me off track.”
One thin eyebrow rises. “Go on.”
“I’m an English teacher,” I say patiently. “So I see bad spelling a lot. This isn’t one of those words that students get wrong, and if they do then they get the whole thing wrong. They don’t just miss a ‘p.’ ”
She considers this. “Okay. So can you think of anyone who would do something like this? Any enemies, people with a grudge.”
I almost laugh out loud. You have no idea, I think. Then I consider. I’m pretty sure Hurst or one of his mates is responsible. But I’ve no witnesses, no evidence and, bearing in mind the little chat I had with Harry this morning (Christ, was it only this morning?), I don’t want to put my job in jeopardy. Not yet, anyway.
“Mr. Thorne?”
“To be honest, I only moved in recently. I’ve not had time to piss too many people off yet.”
“But it seems you’re working on it.”
“Obviously.”
“Right, well, we’ll look into this, but it’s probably just kids. We’ve had some trouble with kids from your school before.”
“Really? What sort of trouble?”
“The usual. Vandalism. Trespass. Disorderly behavior.”
“Ah, takes me back.”
“If you want, an officer can come to the school, give them a bit of a talk on social responsibility, that type of thing.”
“Will that do any good?”
“Last time my sergeant did it he came back to find someone had let all the air out of his tires.”
“Maybe not then.”
“Okay. Well, here’s your crime number, for insurance purposes. Any more trouble, call us right away.”
“I will.”
She pauses at the door, seems to debate something. “Look. I don’t want to make your night even worse—”
I think about the skittering, scuttling beetles.
“It’d be hard.”
“But did anyone tell you about this place?”
“You mean, what happened here?”
“You know?”
“It came up.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
She glances around and can’t quite disguise the shudder of distaste that scurries across her face. Something clicks.
“You found them, didn’t you?”
She hesitates before answering: “My sergeant and I were first on the scene, yes.”
“That must have been difficult?”
“It’s part of the job. You deal with it.”
“But you still wouldn’t want to live here?”
A small shrug. “You can never really clean away blood. Doesn’t matter how much bleach you use, how hard you scrub. It’s always there, even if you can’t see it.”
“Comforting. Thanks for that.”
“You asked.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“I suppose,” she says cautiously.
“Could there be any other explanation, for what happened here?”
“No sign of a break-in, no evidence of a third party involved. Believe me, we looked.”
“What about Ben’s father?”
“At a client dinner that night.”
“So you think that Julia Morton just cracked, killed her son and herself?”
“I think you’re asking a lot of questions for someone not bothered by it.”
“Just curious.”
“Well, don’t be. It won’t do you any favors here.” She tucks her notebook into her pocket. “And I was only letting you know about the cottage in case the rental agent hadn’t informed you of all the facts.”
“Thanks…but I don’t think the cottage is a problem.”
“No.” She gives me another look, one I can’t quite read. “I think you’re probably right.”
—
The glazier arrives fifteen minutes later. He whacks up a board over the broken window, informs me, “Thar’ll b’fifty quid,” and that a new window will take “abarru week.”
