Killing Woods (17 page)

‘You know what this is?' Mack says quietly. ‘It's grief. Sadness!' He nods at me. ‘I get it! I understand why you feel guilty. You brought Ashlee into our Game, you were
the one who was meant to look out for her . . . but
mate
!'

I look away, my eyes hot and weird-feeling.

‘Mate, sometimes things happen that we can't control.' He moves his head so I'm looking at him again. His eyes look red and sore too. ‘Damo, we can't always be everywhere.' His voice is lowered, and serious. ‘Sometimes people do their own thing and sometimes you can't do nothing about it. This isn't your fault.'

‘I could've done something,' I say. ‘I could've . . .'

‘You're a good person, mate. I'm looking out for you. And I know you just need to sleep. That's all.'

‘I can't.'

Everything about me is aching, though, wants to be lying down. My stomach is a hollow, hungry hole. Over on the couch, Ed mumbles something. Mack walks over to him and digs into one of his coat pockets. ‘You go back to sleep and all,' he says.

When Mack comes back he's holding out one of Ed's joints, fat and a little squashed and fragrant. ‘This help?' he says. ‘Or I got some sleeping pills somewhere too, or some of my dad's antidepressants? Booze? Or Ed's other stuff? Walking pharmacy, me!'

I almost grin. Because this is the old Mack; it's not the Mack I just been seeing right through, who I know is almost as worried as me. But I still got my hand on that collar in my pocket and a hundred questions in my head.

‘You did what you said,' Mack repeats. ‘Even if Emily Shepherd goes to the police, it'll be all right.'

I don't hold his gaze.

I wonder what he really thinks of me. What he believes. Maybe, like me, he just doesn't know any more.

So I take the joint. Because now I got an idea how I could use it.

37

Emily

T
he closer I get to our lane the worse I feel. I start to run. It was different, in that bunker, being so near to Damon with no one else there, watching him shiver, having his arm around me. It had felt like I'd needed to show him that sketch. Now, the further I'm away from him, the more I'm not so sure.

What have I done?

I slam open the wooden gate to our lane, hear it bash against a tree trunk, bash into the thoughts in my head too. The thoughts that say – so what if Dad drew Ashlee as a deer? So what if he'd seen her in these woods before that night? Even
this
doesn't make him a killer. It just makes him someone who liked to draw people as animals, like
he's always been. It makes him someone who watched. Who waited.

Why didn't I think this through before? Why does my mind jump around so much with what it believes?

Again, Joe's mum sees me coming and ushers me into their kitchen, rubs a teatowel or a towel or something up and down me to get me dry.

‘You're soaking,' she says. ‘Where've you been? The woods? Does your mum know?'

And I'm nodding and I'm trying to evade her. Because I'm looking for Joe, and I'm already moving for the hall.

‘He's not here, love,' she says.

And that stops me.

‘I thought he was with you, to be honest,' she adds.

I must look really confused because his mum comes towards me again and wraps an arm around my shoulder. ‘Why don't you wait for him upstairs? Stay and get warm at least?'

And I don't have any other options right now apart from go home and explain to Mum about the mess I just got myself in. I hear Joe's dad and Finn in the living room, singing songs, but they don't come out. I wonder if Damon gets this too, people avoiding him. I wonder what he's doing with that sketch.

I'm grasping on to the banister, pulling myself up so fast I'm tripping on the stairs. It's Joe's fault I showed Damon that sketch. It's Joe's fault because he didn't listen to me this morning, and I got mad. It's Joe's fault because he's meant to be my friend and now everything's changed.

And where is he anyway?

As I try Joe's phone again, I pick through things in his room. On his bookshelf I see a ticket stub from when we went to the cinema months ago and saw that dumb sci-fi film. I find a note I passed him in class. When I flip through his half-done homework, I see the games of Hangman we'd played on the sides of his exercise books. We'd done all this when we'd been proper friends, months ago. Why didn't I just make Joe listen to me?

‘I'm waiting in your room,' I say into his voicemail this time. ‘You need to tell me what's going on. And I need to tell you.'

I'm sick of secrets. Sick of not knowing what everyone is thinking – not knowing the whole of it. I slump into Joe's desk chair and my hand is in a fist before I realise, pressing into the desk. His computer screen comes back on with a jolt. Investigations should be about interviewing every single person who ever knew anything about the victim, putting it together in some genius, objective machine that calculates the right story. Maybe we'd get to the truth then. Or maybe there would still be secrets lurking someplace, dark cracks through it all?

I thump my fist on the desk, and the screen shakes. It's strange that Joe's left his computer on – wherever he's gone, he must have gone in a rush. I start clicking on things. If I sit here any longer, just waiting for Joe, I'll go mad. I need something to do. Because, right now, I want to get in a taxi and go to Dad's prison and apologise, talk
and talk. I want to go to Damon's house and get that sketch back.

I click into Joe's photo programme. I've seen most of Joe's photos before, but never all of them. And I need to think about something else –
see
something else – something other than that sketch. Something other than Damon's shaking lips in the bunker, the way his eyes had darted to mine. I need to calm my mind before it panics big time – before I start thinking I've just done the worst thing I've ever done in my life.

But Joe has hundreds of photos of Darkwood on here, so my mind isn't going anywhere new. I flick through picture after picture. Joe really is obsessed, capturing the trees in all the different seasons, day and night. His pictures make the woods look powerful and mysterious and huge, like the woods in Dad's bedtime stories.

There are a couple of photos of the bunker too. My hand quivers over the mouse as I look at them. I've never shown Joe the bunker, though I have told him about it. Did he follow me there to find it? Follow Dad? In these photos the entrance lid is open, and the hole looks like a dark pit. Joe could have sold these shots to the papers. I shift on his desk chair, suddenly uncomfortable. Why would Joe hide this from me? What else has he hidden?

I'm curious now. So I start to go through every folder, even the trash, which has hundreds more shots of trees and leaves. And that's where I find it: a photo of me. I'm side on, face serious, the shot taken a little distance away. I'm going through the gate from the lane into Darkwood,
maybe I'd been going to collect Dad. As I keep clicking through, I see more shots of me in the trees, all of them shadowy, half in focus. And I'm swallowing hard now and trying not to chuck the computer keyboard across the room – because I don't know when Joe took all these photos. And because there's a photo of Dad here too. In it, he's curled forwards, crouching in the woods. His head is bowed towards a pile of dried branches. He looks empty, totally alone, like a hollowed out tree trunk hit by a storm.

Joe took these shots without ever asking either of us?

I click through more photos of dark, overgrown passages through the woods. But there's no more shots of me or Dad or the bunker. Maybe they were one-offs. Could he have snapped them when he'd been with us after all?

I stop on another picture.

At first I think it's of me again, but the girl in this picture is taller and curvier, the sun glints gold on her hair. I gasp, can't help it. This time it's Ashlee Parker who is slipping through the trees. And it looks like she's unaware of her picture being taken too.

I stare for ages. What is she doing there? Why is Joe watching? The next shot makes me breathe in harder. Because, in this photo, Ashlee Parker is posing, staring into the lens and leaning forward. Her lips are parted slightly and her eyelids are half closed like she's trying to copy some sort of sexy model pose, like she's trying to look seductive. Her eyes glint, sparkly make-up smeared around them. She looks sexy and confident – like a kind
of bad girl rockstar – not like the Ashlee Parker at school.

How has Joe got this shot? Why?

My hand is shaking as I try to move the mouse around the screen, as I furiously try to find the date that these photos were taken. I click on
info
and see it: June, not long before we broke up for the summer holidays, two months before Ashlee died, round about the time Joe got dropped from the cross-country team. I click through the rest of the photos, but there are no more of Ashlee. No more of me or Dad either. No more of the bunker.

I go back to that close-up of Ashlee. I've seen so many pictures of Ashlee Parker in these past few weeks, but there have been none that look like this. Strangely, the picture of her that seems closest is Dad's sketch – where she's half wild deer. I gaze at her, I'm practically willing her to open her mouth and talk.
Tell me what happened –
that's what I'd ask –
tell me what happened that night. Tell me why Joe has this picture of you!

There are bits of twigs and ivy threaded through her hair, mud on her cheeks. If it weren't for her stylish signature scarf draped around her neck, she could have stepped from some survival film.

I grab my phone, start ringing Joe again. Looking at this photo is making me nervous. Because now I'm sure that Joe is hiding something, something big. Because suddenly it feels as if I don't know him at all. But as soon as his phone starts to ring this time, his bedroom door is opening and there he is, inside this room and walking towards me.

‘I got your message,' he says, all in a rush. ‘I tried to wait for you earlier, but . . .'

And I want to know where he's been, and I want to ask him, but now that he's here, so tall and right in front of me, I can't find my words. I stumble up from the desk as he steps closer.

‘Emily? What's wrong?'

Joe's frowning, looking around. It's not long before he sees what is open on his computer screen. I watch his face turn pale.

‘I can explain that,' he says quickly. ‘That's what I've just been telling the police about. All of it.'

38

Damon

A
s I round the corner to our street I see there's a cop car parked outside where our flat is, and I freak then – really do – because even though I know I got to go to the cops with all this stuff in my brain, I know I'm not ready for it yet. Because maybe this means that Emily's done it instead. Can cops move this fast? Could they be looking for me already?

I skid to a stop and back up against some shop window. I breathe in cold air, feel the sting in my throat. Maybe they've been tracking me, seeing where I been going and how I been acting. I start shivering all over, still not proper warm from earlier. My stomach is empty as fuck.

I rub my hands over my eyes. I know what this is: the
cops just want to fill me in on the case, that's all. They're probably even DC Kalu and DC West – the ones who interviewed me; the ones who've been checking in with me pretty regular. They just want to keep me informed about how everything is going. But they've never arrived in a regular cop car before.

I pull Ed's joint Mack gave me from behind my ear and stick it in my pocket instead. I can't think about that yet. But soon . . .

A crowd of kids dressed as zombies stalk past me then, jolting me, talking about some party they've got going on tonight. I move round them and out on to the pavement so I can look up at our kitchen window. Mum's not at it. She'll be in the living room instead, offering the detectives tea and saying I'll be back soon. And I want to be back soon. I want to be back in my flat with no police there, asleep to everything. And I almost do it . . . almost just keep walking to the door and buzz the bell: I could just tell Mum where I been and what I been doing. This could be a chance, these cops being here. I could go inside and straighten out everything in my head. It could all be OK like Mack says.

I could also write my own prison sentence.

I need to be sure before I go through those cop station doors. I need to remember. Everything.

I hesitate, watching those zombie kids 'til they go round the corner. What kind of idiot tells the police the stuff that's going round his head?

So I stay, undecided, watching a crisp packet being
blown across the road. When my phone rings and I see that it's Mum, I turn it off. Get the panics all over again, only ten times worse. It feels like they're coming for me . . . the police, Emily, Mack, Mum . . . everyone's closing in. It's like I got to work out my story, and fast. It's like I've only got one more chance.

39

Emily

J
oe is pulling me down the stairs, and I'm shouting at him before we're out of his house, trying to make him explain.

‘Not here,' he's hissing.

His mum's waiting in the entrance to the kitchen, two cups of tea in her hands. ‘Where you two off to?'

‘Nowhere!' Joe yells, still dragging me behind.

And already we're out of the house, and this time I'm pushing past him.

‘Why were you sneaking about in my room anyway?' he yells after me. ‘I would've shown you!'

‘But you didn't!'

I'm marching on ahead, towards the park where Joe
and I always used to talk.

‘It's not what you think Em, honestly!'

I don't even know what I think. I'm practically running to get to the end of our street and on to the main road, desperate to get somewhere we're alone.

I look in front windows, see people watching telly. Would they close their curtains if they knew Jon Shepherd's daughter was looking in? If they knew the boy behind me had taken photos of Ashlee Parker looking like
that
in Darkwood? The side gate squeaks as I enter the park. When I get to the swings, I turn on Joe.

‘I wasn't doing anything!' he says.

But he doesn't look at me. He sits awkwardly in a swing, like a grasshopper folded into a thimble. ‘High as you can go?' he says, pushing his feet against the ground to make the swing move. ‘Just one game?'

I hold the chains still, won't let him move. Seeing who can swing highest before chickening out seems ridiculous right now – playing a stupid kids' game! I kick the wood-chips viciously, making them fly up. ‘When did you take that photo of her? Why?'

He wiggles the swing back and forth, trying to get it out of my grasp, keeps avoiding my gaze. His eyes dart to the climbing frame as if he wants to be on that instead. I push him backwards, hard enough that he has to hold on to the swing chains to stop from tipping off.

‘Say something before I go to the police myself,' I demand. ‘About you! About how you're hiding something to do with Ashlee Parker! About how you did
something with her you never told me about!'

Joe goes red at that.

‘Why did you follow her?'

There's this angry feeling inside me, waiting to come out into a scream or a punch that's directed right at Joe.

He opens his mouth, hesitates. ‘I . . . I thought I was following you.' His fingers grip on the chains. ‘To begin with I did – that's why I took the first photo in the trees. You –
she –
looked like . . . I dunno . . . part of the woods. It was a good shot.'

I let the swing chains go, remembering Joe's other photos too. ‘Why would you even follow me? Why do you keep following me?'

Joe stands, shuffles from foot to foot as he towers over me.

‘And why didn't you tell me any of this?'

Joe's eyes flick to where a couple of children have come into the park. Immediately he starts walking, giving the roundabout a push as he passes and making it whirl. I get an image of leaning against Joe on that roundabout, sometime before the summer holidays, how his hand had pressed mine as we'd spun. We'd been with Kirsty and Beth and the rest of them, talking about what careers we'd have after school. Kirsty had said Joe fancied me and I'd laughed in her face. Maybe I'd been right to mock it. Maybe it was really Ashlee Parker he'd fancied all this time. Maybe he'd done more than just fancy her.

I jog to catch up with him. ‘Where you going?'

‘Somewhere private.' He turns left out of the park gates
like we're going towards town. ‘Listen, Em,' he says quietly. ‘I was taking photos for my project that day, I saw Ashlee, nothing dodgy. I was trying to catch the summer evening light on camera.'

‘Ashlee Parker's not a summer evening,' I hiss.

‘I know, but I
had
to take that first shot . . . and the second, well . . .'

He stops talking as we pass a group of men, stumbling from town and heading for the pub on the corner. One of them has a
Scream
mask pushed back on his head – a halfhearted attempt at Halloween. As we squeeze past on the pavement, I feel their stares sizzling into me; it's obvious they know who I am, maybe they're even army guys who knew Dad. If stares could physically hurt, there wouldn't be much left of me by now – not with the way this lot's looking. I get a sudden understanding of why Mum wants to move towns and get away from people who stare and hate without knowing the whole of us. Then I think of the photographs on Joe's computer and realise that I don't know the whole of him either. Maybe no one knows the whole of anyone. Even Darkwood's got secrets.

Joe takes the next left on to the footpath that circles around the back of the park. It is more private here, but this path goes past the barracks too and that brings its own kind of memories. When we're halfway along, with the park on one side and the barracks on the other, Joe stops. I watch the wind rattle the fence like it's clawing at it and I think about when Dad and I had stood with our noses pressed against this wire, when Dad was trying to
explain what he did inside.

‘I train,' he'd said. ‘To go away and protect people.'

But what he really should have said was –
To go away and kill people. To kill people who have families and stories. To kill innocent civilians too.

I shove Joe's shoulder to get his attention. He starts hesitantly, telling me again how he'd thought he was following me that day.

‘Then you just disappeared,' he says. ‘The next thing I know I'm getting jumped on from behind, hands around my neck and grabbing me.' He stops and finds my eyes. ‘It was Ashlee Parker – she leapt on me and took my camera! Right off my neck!'

‘Don't be an idiot.'

He leans in. ‘I'm serious. She crept up and stole it. Then she just stood there laughing.'

‘Bullshit.' That anger inside me swells. Because this doesn't sound like Ashlee Parker. And if Joe really fancied her, why doesn't he just say it? Why is he spinning me lines? ‘Tell me the truth, Joe!'

‘I am!'
Joe rubs his knuckles across the side of his face. ‘OK, listen,' he says. ‘So, Ashlee stood there with my camera, and she said she'd only give it back if I took a photo of her – one photo – that's all.'

I raise my eyebrows.

‘So . . . I didn't have a choice, did I? It was my camera – she had it. I had to!'

I don't believe him. ‘Why would she want a photo anyway?'

I turn my head and look through the wire that separates us from the barracks, press my fingers against it . . . Dad said he went off to protect people when really he went off to kill. Everyone lies. No one tells the whole truth. There are dark cracks in everything. Even Joe.

‘She wanted a good photo,' Joe says quietly. ‘I guess for Damon, or, I dunno, . . . I think she was just having fun.'

I glance up at him. ‘So why didn't you tell me?'

‘I guess . . . I dunno! . . . I didn't want you to . . .' He struggles for words.

I shake my head, not understanding. I watch his neck flush.

‘You don't know all of it,' he adds. He squints at something behind me, thinking. ‘The photos aren't the worst.'

‘So . . .?' I cross my arms.

‘So . . .' He sighs. ‘After I took that second photo, Ashlee came up close to me – like,
right up
close . . . and . . . well, she kept going on about how I was a good runner, and about how I should play some game with her or . . . or something like that. She was being really nice. Flirting, maybe.'

I'm frowning. This doesn't sound like the Ashlee Parker I knew from school. This sounds like someone made up. Like Joe's fantasy.

‘Yeah, exactly,' Joe says, noticing my reaction. ‘I was confused too.'

‘What else?'

Joe's cheeks turn beetroot. ‘Well,
that's
what's strange.'

‘Go on.'

‘So . . .' He swallows.

‘So?'

‘So, Ashlee put one hand on my waist and she reached up towards me. She touched my skin, like, right here . . .'

Joe puts his cold fingertips to the side of my neck and I shiver. He strokes me there gently. ‘Like that,' he says, softer, thinking. ‘I thought she was about to . . . you know . . .'

I jerk away from him. ‘What? Kiss you?'

I almost laugh, and Joe sees it. But I can see by how red he goes that this is what he meant. It's ridiculous. Because Ashlee Parker was the prettiest girl in the school and there's no way she'd kiss a boy in the year below her, no way she'd kiss Joe Wilder. And anyway, she had Damon Hilary.

Joe turns away, jaw clenched. ‘You think I'm a loser now, right?'

I try to imagine it. Ashlee close enough to Joe that he thought she liked him – that he thought she'd kiss him. I imagine Joe bending his head to Ashlee and being clumsy and unpractised and soft, his breath like Juicy Fruit. It makes me feel weird – uncomfortable – and like I know Joe even less.

‘Thing is,' he continues. ‘I knew she was just teasing me, knew she wouldn't have really done it . . . but still . . . I still stood there waiting . . . wanting her to . . . hoping.'

He puts his thumb in the side of his mouth and gnaws at the nail, rips bits off. He's still not looking at me.

I remember how close my face was to Damon's in the bunker, and on the bike trail, and how I'd wanted to kiss him. Me wanting to kiss Damon was worse than Joe
wanting to kiss Ashlee. Wasn't it? And I'd wanted to keep that secret too.

‘And Damon?' I say. ‘You didn't care about what he'd think?'

Joe takes a breath. ‘Damon was there.'

‘What?'

‘He might've even been watching the whole thing, I don't know. Either way, he came out of the trees pretty quickly.'

‘Well, you were just kissing his . . .'

‘No! I wasn't. Ashlee was standing really close, but
nothing happened!
Just that photograph!' This time Joe holds my gaze fiercely.

I'm still thinking about how mixed up this all is, how tangled my emotions are, so I just look at him and wait.

‘Damon pushed me against a tree,' he says. ‘Thumped me right into it! He said he was going to kill me!' Joe's eyes are boring into mine, urging me to understand. ‘And something else weird?' he says. ‘Ashlee laughed. She pulled Damon off me, but she was laughing like it was a game. They were both kind of . . . weird, revved up.'

I drop his eye contact. ‘Where have you got this story from?'

He shuffles his feet. ‘It's not a story.'

But would Damon really be like that? Would Ashlee? And has Joe really gone to the police about it?

‘Why are you doing this?' I say.

Joe shakes off this question with an impatient twist of his head. ‘How closely did you look at that second photo,
Em?' he says. ‘Did you notice anything?'

‘Only that it didn't look like Ashlee,' I say fast. ‘Only that it looked like she was acting some part!'

Joe squints at the barracks. ‘Yeah,' he says. ‘But did you see the marks on her skin? They're there, tiny ones, you can see them round the edges of her scarf.'

I stare at him. ‘What are you getting at?' There's an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

‘On her neck,' he says again. ‘I mean, maybe they're love bites or something, but they could be . . .' He's still looking across at the barracks. ‘I mean, maybe Damon could've been playing rough with her all this time.'

My eyebrows shoot up.

Joe shrugs. ‘He could've been.'

I start shaking my head, which makes Joe move nearer and grab my shoulders. ‘It was just a thought! But, well, as soon as I started thinking it, I had to go to the police then, didn't I? I mean, photos like that could be evidence . . . thoughts like this . . .'

‘Evidence of . . .?'

‘Well . . . evidence of him hurting her . . . doing something . . . and then with Damon being in the woods again last night. It's all adding up . . . it's suspicious!'

My anger flares. ‘If you thought that, why didn't you tell the police about it weeks ago? Why didn't you say anything when they arrested Dad? Why didn't you tell
me
?'

‘Why do you think I was at the police station just now, Em?' His anger matches mine, almost. I lean away from it, surprised.

He's got no right to be angry. I'm not the one who's been hiding pictures of Ashlee Parker. I'm not the one keeping secrets.

‘You told them everything then?' I say. ‘About wanting to kiss Ashlee too? About following her through the woods like a stalker?'

Joe's eyes narrow. I push him, try to shove him and his stories away. I don't know if I'm angry because I believe him, or angry because I don't. I stand on tiptoes and look him in the eyes, as close to as I can. I try to imagine Damon playing rough with Ashlee – I do! – I consider it for about a second before I remember his arm around me in the bunker and how he was trying to make me warm. I think about Ashlee teasing Joe like he's said.

‘Ashlee wasn't like that,' I say. ‘Neither is Damon. You only have to talk to him to know.'

Joe rolls his eyes.

I'm thinking about my lips so close to Damon's that I could have kissed him – twice now. I'm thinking about how he'd been gentle with me and kind.

‘You told the police something wrong.' But my voice is quieter now, less certain.

And I'm also thinking of how angry Damon had been on the Leap, how he'd held out his hand and pointed it at me like a gun. I'm remembering the words he'd used when he'd talked about my dad. I want to look at Joe's photo of Ashlee again – look for the marks, the teasing in her eyes. Could Joe be right about any of it?

Then I remember something else. ‘You didn't listen to
what I was trying to tell you earlier,' I say. ‘You didn't even look at that sketch I had. The one with Ashlee in it, Dad . . .'