A Private Haunting (13 page)

The counsellor was a liar or a fool. Those images were going nowhere, no matter all those conversations and all the milligrams of the drugs that made muddy shapes of the dying and a mumble of their animal screams, but the images all the more unsettling for being not quite visible and not quite audible. The counsellor was captivated, he wanted more.

So after telling him how he killed the Afghan girl Fletcher told him about his little sister.

The counsellor had flushed, trying to hide his exhilaration but obviously thinking conditions,
syndromes
. Fletcher helped him down the diagnostic path, gave him detail, easy-flow nonsense about searching for pictures of young girls in magazines which he would rip into pieces and bury in parks and woods, roadside verges. It was priceless, the way the counsellor's concern mingled with his professional pleasure and touched on such hilarious self-importance.

It wasn't too often the counsellor came across a Corporal Fletcher. He could see the bland consulting room now, sitting again in that chair, not a couch like in a film, just a hard black plastic chair and nowhere to put your elbows. Hands held up in front of his face, Fletcher was demonstrating how he ripped the pictures.
The shreds fall like confetti
, he told the counsellor.

The village teams were going to search this area tomorrow. He imagined the excitement of coming across a patch of disturbed ground, digging down to a pile of ripped up paper, obviously a picture of a girl, a teenage girl like Lacey. They would cluster round, thinking about a dark figure, stooped in the middle of the night, dirt under the fingernails. And the longer he thought about that crouching, digging figure the more familiar became his doubt.

 

Two hours later he finished the sweep. No paper shreds in the blackberry bushes, no tell-tale disturbances on the ground. He climbed back inside The Skull and checked the binoculars. Mary and Mortensen were gone. The only movement was the shifting colours of the traffic lights on the river. He swept east to west and back again, searching for a similar monochromatic certainty about something that might or might not have happened here. The edgy panic had gone. It was bizarre to think he could do something as unsettling as rip up pictures of young girls. And then bury them? No one passing him on the street would suspect this of him, as he wouldn't think it of them. That's the thing, we're all so normal until we aren't.

Jonas was in Big Haakon's kitchen. Dirty dishes and his fat dog Freki. A howling wind drove hailstones against the window. Axel was standing beside him, shouting
duck and dive,
duck and dive
as Haakon danced round him, boxing-gloved hands hanging loose then suddenly jabbing, Jonas always a moment late to protect himself. Mary appeared at the window. She was laughing.

‘You getting up today?'

‘Go
away,
Axel.'

‘Who the hell is Axel? You're not in Viking land now, boy.'

Jonas flailed, surfacing from sleep and trying to re-root himself in space. Big Haakon kept on pummelling but the voice wasn't his. He opened his eyes to Eggers's grinning face, appearing and disappearing behind the white pillow that he was beating him on the head with.

‘What's the deal, man, stop doing that!'

‘I'll stop doing it when you get up. Or maybe I won't.'

‘Christ sakes!'

‘Blas-
phemer
!'

And Eggers whacked him savagely, full on the face, forcing Jonas to roll over and get up.

‘You made it. Well done. I thought you were dead to begin with. First few thumps you barely moved.'

‘Is this punishment then?'

‘Eh?'

‘For voting no.'

Eggers threw the pillow at him. ‘If you like.'

‘Could have been worse.'

‘You saw Dave and his friend.'

‘Thanks for that.'

‘Don't thank me, Jonas. I could've slapped you too.'

‘What are you doing here anyway?'

‘You still half asleep? You told me to pick you up.'

Jonas nodded vaguely. He looked behind Eggers at the open door. The chair he'd jammed under the handle the night before to prevent Fletcher getting in was over by the window. It had a pile of clean underwear on it, the pile he put on the floor when he moved the chair.

‘How'd you get in?'

‘Eh? The key, dumbass, the one you leave under the plant pot. That's another dumbass thing to – '

‘Not the front door. The bedroom.'

Eggers looked at him carefully. ‘Get the pills, will I dear? How did I get in? Through... the...
fuckin
... door.'

When Eggers went downstairs, Jonas pulled it open and shut a few times, making sure it still fulfilled its function as a normal and not a magic door. He moved the chair back under the door handle and pulled it down. The handle got stuck under the back-board and the door wouldn't open. So how had Fletcher got inside? Had he come in the bloody
window
?

Across the landing the spare room door was closed. Maybe he was in there and maybe not.

‘You coming then?'

‘On my way.'

Jonas already hurrying down the stairs. No way he was hanging around for the bearded ninja in the red shorts to come swinging out of the loft and kick him in the throat. No sign of Fletcher downstairs either. Just his coffee mug on the table beside Eggers and an open sun room door. Eggers might have looked at him strangely, or maybe it was just Eggers being Eggers. He nodded at the open door. ‘Thought you were paranoid about another break-in?'

 

Councillor Bacon preened on the green. A tweed-jacketed peacock of grave demeanour. But the strap of his megaphone was rainbow coloured, a dash of Gay Pride which gave a fruitier counter-impression, the venerable councillor as a ripe old queen. He was helped onto a bench and waved his arms for quiet. The whole village seemed to have turned out, briefed by Bacon in the fizzing rain.

Jonas scanned the crowd, clusters of families and friends under a hundred umbrellas. A police officer in a yellow bib stared at him, the gaze locked on every time Jonas glanced up. He looked round but not too closely. Told himself no one else was staring, no other hints that the magazine story was out.

It would, of course, just like he remembered. Right now someone, maybe that staring cop, was firming up the cartoon snowball, ready to roll it down the hill and swallow him up.

His thoughts drifted to Lacey, Bacon just a buzz on the edge of his consciousness, avoidable, unlike the girl. His stomach turned when he thought of last night's conversation with Mary. Heat in his cheeks now, hotter the more he turned it over. He kept his head low but when he looked up again there she was, twenty feet away and frowning, probably wondering about his big red face.

That British comedy show from the 1970s, his dad loved it. Jonas couldn't remember the name. The one with the big finger that would come down from the sky. That's what Mary's appraising glance felt like. A comedy finger, pointing right at him. All it needed was a sudden klaxon and the crowd scattering, Jonas caught in the spotlight from a police helicopter.

 

The Day-Glo search teams straggled out of the village towards Ragley Woods, spilling like the rain onto the road. Jonas was in Group One, the western team. When they veered onto the muddy river path, Group Two kept on the road, heading for the 4x4 access, coming in from the east. Both groups would rendezvous at Smitty's Leap in the dead centre of the woods.

At 9 am precisely a whistle blew sharply, spooking a flock of river ducks to flight. Left and right of Jonas at ten metre intervals were people he didn't know. Team West headed into the trees to look for Lacey, who wouldn't be found because when did that ever happen?

At least Jonas liked the woods. They were imperturbable. Made him think of druids in the cool dawn. He'd thought about bivvying down with them when he arrived in the village. But a car park notice-board told him Ragley Woods were used for academic research. The metal cages in the trees were for analysis of bird behaviour, the staked-off areas around badger sets to investigate territorial patterns. Chances are there were cameras. He didn't want to be filmed building a shelter, a white-skinned Bigfoot with darting eyes. So he headed instead for the sickly copse of car-stained white-beam down by the dual carriageway.

 

Team West found nothing. Closest they got was a boiler suit. An excited shout after lunch brought everyone running to a stagnant pool. A piece of dark fabric was just visible under the murky water, a quick hook and grab with a hazel switch and.... Jonas chuckled, nudged the man beside him.
Imagine what his wife said when he came home
in just his boots
. The man just stared.
C'mon
. Lacey had a great sense of humour! He decided it best not to tell him this.

 

The ghost men appeared soon after. He'd left the line for a piss and was zipping up when there they suddenly were. It wasn't until they hurried closer that he noticed the black balaclavas.

Then Jonas was running and they were running and sometimes you slip and sometimes in the worst of places, like now, foot on a wet root and
thaaar
he goes,
Jonas tumbling down a bank but savvy enough when he hit bottom to curl into a ball, brace for the kicks.

‘Watch your step there, Thor.'

He tensed.

Nothing happened.

A long minute later he sat up. Cautious like, but no one around. Beside him, rain pattered a magazine left open at the centrefold. A young woman in a cheerleader's outfit lay with her legs spread, hands cupped round her breasts. He lay back down and whacked his head off the ground a few times. He should go running after the balaclava men with a Formula One safety flag, make a frantic T with his hands. Time out lads, time
out
, slow this all down!

He remembered the policeman on the village green staring at him. Off-duty down the pub. A few pints, a few loose words. Everyone but Jonas wanted to be the centre of something.

Mary kicked at a rotten log. White shreds of dead wood spilled onto the wet grass, like maggots. Her thoughts of journalists were automatic, as was the nausea. She was all over the TV.

The morning shows of Sky, BBC and ITV all led with Mary. Each news anchor settled a straight-from-the-box sympathetic frown and delivered variations on the same theme,
local anger
…
an overspill of frustration
… And over the shoulder of each a similar freeze-frame of Mary's angry face, the mobile phone footage of her outburst on the green repeated again and again.

Turning TV off and radio on she heard a trailer for the morning phone-in, the supercilious presenter – who used to present an '80s game show – intoning about
media prurience… the close-knit rural community
, blah-de-banalities that had her switching off again.

Because of Mary a fourteen-year-old had gone missing all over again, the girl she was now searching the woods for. The rain made it worse, saturating the world in the melancholy reason for being there, her hiking boots leaking as the downpour met warm earth and created a steam-like haze that made vague coloured daubs of the searchers to her left and right.

Her husband had cried off from the search. She'd got in at 1 am the night before but he hadn't appeared until three. He crept around in the dark then fell over.
That's how
I must have tweaked my back
, he said in the morning, his breath like something had died in his mouth.

Not that a bad back stopped him shoving a hand between her legs. Mary closed them tightly then opened them. She was thinking about Jonas, the look on his face as he watched her hoovering his living room. She liked it. She wanted that look. She'd been wearing her yoga pants, the ones that showed off her bum, and a loose white shirt. It was hot, natural to leave a couple of buttons open. Like an erotic movie,
Emmanuelle
the Maid
. All so very, very English.

Her husband would probably be more appalled by the cleaning than the flirtation. She'd be demeaning herself, or rather him, bringing him way down in the estimation of his poker friends, his
P-Buds
, as he called them. The supermarket was bad enough, but cleaning? He'd hate it, which gave her a sense of satisfaction that was wildly out of proportion. She moved her legs further apart. Maybe he'd even be a bit jealous, his wife bent over in a strange man's living room, lazily running a hoover back and forth, his eyes on her. She pushed her husband's shoulders and he obliged, moved down, did what he was good at.

Then Lacey flashed. She remembered what Fletcher had said and felt repulsed: by Jonas, by her husband's hands, by herself. She curled into a ball and thought about jacking the job, before deciding it depended on what he told her that evening.
I'm going to
tell you something
.

Jonas had been at the 7 am search briefing. She saw him briefly. When he chose the western group she joined the eastern. It was his fault she felt so apprehensive. Instead of just telling her, he'd made a big thing of it.
Come round tomorrow
night
. All these people looking for Lacey and no one knew what Mary Jackson knew, not that she knew anything. A sudden whistle shattered her thoughts. A man was waving his arms at her and shouting. She was too far ahead of the search line. She had to move more slowly. She stared at the ground and imagined coming across something, a trainer or a t-shirt. Just don't make it a person. Her stomach lurched when a shout brought people running. But the Wellington boot was falling apart and must have been there for years. She wondered who'd left behind a lone green boot, now an adopted part of the mud and beech husks, the grey roots gnarling out of the earth like bones.

The search took a 10 am break. Mary was soaked. Lomax the butcher ambled over, face the colour of a sirloin steak. She cringed inwardly when he said he'd seen her on morning TV.

‘You're a legend,' said Lomax.

She wondered if her husband would think the same when he caught up with the news.

When Lomax walked off she noticed Adam. He was standing under a big beech some metres away, talking to Jackie Eggers, Dave from
The Hand and
Shears
and someone she didn't recognise. Dave jabbed a finger in Eggers chest and the man she didn't know pulled him back.

Mary had gone to high school with Dave. He was a nutter then and still was, worked the saw-mill and had two vicious kids. He waved at Eggers dismissively and he and the unknown man hurried away. Eggers shook his head and looked to the sky. Adam had disappeared.

Cousin Adam.

Mary had cousins, and didn't know much about them. Yet it seemed odd that cousins from different countries found the opportunity to dislike each other as much as Jonas and Adam. She imagined her daughter, mock-serious.
How very unusual, mother
, then laughing. Mary missed their conversations, Kitchen Confidential they called it. Andrea wanted to come home and help with the search. Mother and child, looking for someone else's daughter. The idea was unbearable. She remembered when Andrea was Lacey's age, boys becoming interested, men.

Men like Jonas? Again, she thought about what Adam had told her and Jonas still had to.