The Drowning Ground (29 page)

All of the accounts were the same. But one write-up in the local paper also ran a half-page photo. It was the same photo Hurst had had in the back of his drawer. I put down the paper, asked the librarian for a photocopy of the article and marched out into the cold. I got into my car and drove to Lower Quinton, where I sat inside my car, listening to the radio crackling on the dashboard. Then I stepped out, locked the door and walked alongside the village green.

I blinked and looked around, as if surprised to find myself back here in the village. Across the grass, on the other side of the green, I caught a glimpse of grey and then sudden light as the winter sun sparkled briefly on the pond's surface through the trees. I passed the old broken-down bench in the middle of the green. I took one quick backward glance at the village before making my way through the wall of trees that surrounded the pond.

There was a single gate at the far end of the chainlink fence that encircled the pond. Again, I was struck by the pond's size but more so now. The branches of some of the older trees reached all the way across the top of the fence and hung over the ice. The local kids had heaved a few rocks at the fence, trying to break it. The rocks now lay encrusted in the surface of the pond, along with arcs of hardened earth and pieces of torn grass.

I took a step forward and leant against the fence. The water beneath the ice rippled with a strange urgency into the freezing rivulets of mud. There was a faded yellow sign that had been put up on a pole in the centre of the pond. It showed a silhouette of a man pitching forward into a sharply edged black hole.
DANGER: THIN ICE
.

I stared at the pond for quite some time. Then I decided to try the gate, and when that didn't budge, I took off my coat and placed it neatly in the crook of a branch. Then I climbed the fence and lowered myself to the ground on the other side.

I walked to the edge of the ice and with all my strength stamped at the edge of the water. Nothing happened. I tried again and again. A few moments later the first splintering crack went shooting along the surface. The water began to bubble beneath, ominous and slow. And then it began to pour through the crack. The crack opened wider as the edges fell and toppled beneath the surface. The water spread and brushed against the snow, which melted, revealing the dark clean ice.

From somewhere far off came another splintering crack. Another sound, louder this time, from somewhere near the centre. The water began to move, to push. Bubbles streamed upwards and broke against the roof of ice. I gazed at the gently lapping surface. I was very still for a moment. And suddenly I knew.

41

I spent the rest of the day finding out as much as I could about the accident on the pond. Everyone seemed to remember those two boys being dragged lifeless to the banks, and all the accounts were fundamentally the same as those that had appeared in the papers. But I kept on knocking on doors and asking about it. And all afternoon I kept on hearing the same story repeated over and over. It was getting dark by the time I decided to try the shopkeeper in the village shop.

She was wearing a drab housecoat, and she looked impatient and tired out. But her expression changed when I asked her about the pond. It was one that I had got to know well during the afternoon. I could almost hear her thinking, pond? What pond? It was as if she had forgotten it was there, though it was right across the road. It seemed that for the shopkeeper, like many others in the village, especially those who had been there for a number of years, the pond had slipped permanently out of view and remained invisible behind the wall of trees. That was until you brought up the accident. Now, looking at the pond through her dusty shop window, I couldn't help thinking there was something undeniably secretive about the way it almost seemed to be receding out of sight, as if the trees and shrubbery had conspired to shield it from prying eyes.

The single customer in the shop was already heading towards the counter, dragging a battered wicker basket behind her like a reluctant dog. She placed a bottle of milk along with some teabags next to the till and waited while the shopkeeper rang it all up.

‘Billy Mathews,' the shopkeeper said without warning, as she handed over the change and waited with amusement for the customer's look of vague puzzlement to change to recognition. ‘Thought you might remember,' she said quietly.

The customer looked up at me quizzically.

‘He wants to know if I know anything about the pond,' the shopkeeper explained.

‘Two lads died out there years back,' I said. ‘I was wondering if you might remember it. Perhaps you even saw it.'

‘Billy Mathews,' the other woman repeated slowly, putting away her purse, ‘now there's a name I haven't heard in a while.'

Whatever errand she might have set out to do next could clearly wait; she shifted towards the counter and placed her bag in an alcove beneath the shop window. She smiled at the shopkeeper and said, ‘Billy Mathews. My God.' Then she laughed. It came out like a bark, and the shopkeeper and I both jumped.

‘Billy Mathews?' I said, confused. ‘I want to know about two brothers … Ned and Owen Taylor. Who's Billy Mathews?'

But both of the women ignored me.

‘God, he was a little sod, wasn't he?'

‘Oh, I wouldn't go as far as that,' the shopkeeper said. ‘He weren't that bad. High spirits, that were all it was. Anyway,' she added, ‘must be thirty years now.'

‘Try forty,' the customer said bluntly. ‘Of course he was older than me, so I didn't know him as well as Helen,' she said, looking at me.

The shopkeeper managed another weak smile. ‘Well, it was only two years – doesn't make much difference now, does it, Eleanor.'

Eleanor looked at her as if she had just said something absurd and then said, ‘It was the council's fault those two boys died. That pond's a lot deeper than it looks.'

The colour in her already ruddy cheeks rose as she lapsed into thought about the village council. ‘Oh, they had all kinds of wonderful plans as usual,' she said. ‘They were going to restore the pond to its former glory as a kind of memorial to Billy Mathews. Those were their very words: “its former glory”,' she said and gave another one of her barkish laughs. ‘Though what for I'll never know – so we could all enjoy endless picnics by its banks, I suppose, and feed the ducks. But of course, there weren't any ducks out there. There never have been.'

‘So they weren't the first to drown out on the pond?' I said, shocked.

She looked at me very seriously and said, ‘No, they weren't. After what happened to Billy, they were going to cut down all the trees and build a little wooden pier so you could go stand in the middle of it. And they were going to build a white fence all around it, so none of the kids could get near it again.

‘They said it wouldn't take long – three weeks tops' – she drew out the words slowly – ‘three weeks to drain it and pump out the silt, and then a few months for the rain to fill it. Nothing could have been simpler,' she said, letting out a long and exaggerated sigh. ‘Took three weeks just to drain it.' Her face formed an expression of acute disgust. ‘The stink of it was absolutely awful. There was no getting away from it for months. And it was deep, that pond. No one could believe just how deep. It seemed to go down for miles and miles – like a big black hole – which, when you come to think of it, is exactly what it is. The council lost enthusiasm for it after that, and were off to go and mess up something else.'

She moved forward to the counter. Her voice had taken on a solemn edge. ‘That wasn't the worst of it, though. The thing is, they never got around to building a proper fence, which was about the only decent idea they ever had. That's how the Taylor boys managed to get in there much later.'

The shopkeeper shook her head. ‘I watched him,' she said. ‘We all did, didn't we, Eleanor? Load of us kids traipsed on over with Billy. To see if he were going to do it.'

‘Did it for a dare.'

‘He walked right into the middle of the pond,' the shopkeeper said. ‘He wanted to walk across it only once – that's what he said he were going to do – but then of course he started showing off.' She laughed. ‘Started doing these silly pirouettes on the ice. You remember that, Eleanor, how he kept on going round and round?'

Eleanor smiled grimly. ‘Yes, Helen, I remember,' she said.

The shopkeeper nodded her head vigorously, as if she had just recalled something else. ‘He used to wear those thick black glasses like Buddy Holly. And he was always breaking 'em or losing 'em.'

The shopkeeper's eyes had grown dim, I noticed, as if she were seeing herself once again as a child amongst the group of children gathered around the banks of the pond. And it wasn't hard for me to imagine myself amongst them too. For a moment, it was as if I had traipsed out in the cold with all the other children and was now craning my neck and staring at the boy on the ice.

‘We'd all been banned, you see,' the shopkeeper said. ‘The moment the pond froze over, they told us in assembly that we weren't to go anywhere near it. He probably wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been out of bounds. He was laughing and shouting and falling on his backside and us lot were all too, and he was daring us to do the same,' the shopkeeper went on. ‘Though of course none of us would, even though the ice looked pretty thick.'

‘God, I very nearly went on myself,' Eleanor said, shuddering.

‘You weren't the only one. That's what they said later. Said it coulda been a lot worse. Most of the boys had half a mind to follow him. But none of 'em did go in the end. And then, just as he was about to come back, the ice broke and he was under.'

The shopkeeper put her hands in the pockets of her housecoat and said, ‘He just disappeared. There was no warning.'

‘Just a noise,' Eleanor said, looking straight at me, ‘like a gun going off and that was that. One second he was there and the next he was gone. If he'd been a bit closer to the edge, we might have been able to reach him and pull him out, but as it was he was right in the middle when the ice broke. Took us a few moments to react. We were just children. Then we started to throw things out there – someone threw their coat, I think – towards the hole, and someone else threw a branch, I think it was. But we were so young we didn't really know what to do. And then we started to try and smash the ice, but it wouldn't shift. Of course, by then someone had gone running off for help. But it was far too late already.'

The shopkeeper folded her arms and looked once more across the green. ‘He was dead by the time they dragged him out.'

I stared out of the window, across the road towards the green. The path leading to the thick wall of trees was nothing but a barely perceptible meandering line with thick leather leaves strewn in the snow all around it. But at that moment it was as if I were watching not Billy Mathews stepping on to the ice but the Taylor boys.

From above, it looked like they were playing in the jaws of some animal, its black endless throat rushing out of the cold hard darkness to envelop them. And all the while Rebecca Hurst, unable to help herself, laughed. Her laughter was loud in the sharp winter air; it echoed through the trees. And, revelling in the attention, they turned, and, like Billy Mathews, did a final pirouette, caught in the jaws of a trap that had already begun to close.

42

I slipped out of Lower Quinton in a matter of minutes, and before I knew it I was on the final stretch of road to Sam Griffin's house. His village was tucked away high in the Cotswold hills, and the road was covered here and there with patches of black ice. It had begun to snow again.

When my phone rang from the passenger seat of my car, I slowed down and picked it up.

‘Looks like Brad Hooper was right,' Graves said.

‘She was at home?'

‘Yes. According to the school records she was anyway,' Graves said. ‘Rebecca complained that she was feeling unwell just after 11.00 – that's when the kids have their first break. She went to see the school nurse. Then later, after lunch, she complained again that she was feeling sick. This time the nurse phoned her home. I've been asking around, and some of her old teachers think her stepmother Sarah might have come and picked her up just after lunch. Of course, no one's really sure about that. She could have gone home on her own. She lived close enough, so they might have just sent her off.'

‘Are you sure it was the day Sarah Hurst died?'

‘Yes,' Graves said. ‘They chuck away the attendance records after a while, but the medical records are different. They have to keep them for five years. So they're all on the computer.'

‘So she was there, then. She was in the house all along.'

‘Well, I'm looking at a printout and that's what it says. So either she was faking it, or she was genuinely feeling ill.'

There was a brief pause. The snow had been ploughed high on either side of the road, forming a long tunnel. The village looked like a big smear of light at the end of it. ‘I suppose you know you're in the paper, sir.'

‘What?' I said quickly.

‘It's some damned journo,' Graves said and sighed loudly. ‘They've got a picture of you. It made the late edition.'

‘Oh, Christ,' I said. ‘What does it say?'

There was rustling in the background as Graves reached for the paper. ‘“Brave Mum Breaks Silence in Missing Murder Case”,' he read out loud. There was another pause. ‘Gail's mother. Bit of a hatchet job, I'm afraid,' Graves said.

‘Nothing about Rebecca?'

‘No.'

‘Good.'

A few kids on bikes were calling out to one another in the village. One stopped, packed a snowball and threw it at the car. It missed and went skittering to the other side of the road and disappeared down a drain.