The Hollow Tree, page 20
“. . . maybe we can consider boarding them, so that . . .”
She thought of the pale face of Daniel, dead on the pages of the newspapers. The face from memory, from a time now lost and gone. Unless time did not run to the future and back to the past. Unless there was no time, and he was still alive, and she was dead. Her children were both alive and dead. And Nigel, this stranger, was both alive and dead, both from the past and the future, as well as the instant and the present, which was now already gone.
She was sitting on an expensive sofa in her temporarily intact house, which was also a house of ashes, a house sunk in mud by the swollen river, a house of stone, a house rendered by fire, a house of weeds and ivy. She briefly saw a white body in water, a detached arm spiralling in foamy eddies.
“. . . slightly more than half of the house, given my investment in it over the years,” he went on.
In Deepdale. We’ve found something.
The heavy face of her dead father, the police inspector, the man who had led the search for, and not found, Andrew all those years ago, rose to her eyes.
Her father, who had not interviewed her, and not interviewed Gary Watson, and not interviewed the friends all together, who had closed the case while Andrew’s flesh was still on his bones.
Her father, dead now. Dead in his disgrace.
“Don’t you worry, our Alison, this will all blow over,” he had said.
Now Nigel would blow out of her life, too, and she had to return to the source of her discomfort. The place she had left and rejected but still called to her in dreams and daydreams. Tyrdale, the North, was still with her now, in the south, in London. The folded land, within her. It was always there with her. She had to make it real again, and return. She had to leave the life into which she had escaped.
Nigel burbled on.
“. . . and seeing their daddy in love—really in love, for the first time—can only be good for them, to be around my own personal joy . . .”
She needed to go back there, now. Andy had been gone for years. Now Daniel was gone. Who remained? Who else was there? All the faces of the past were rising from the mud of time.
We need to talk, the message had said.
Alison stood up.
“Okay, thanks. I think I need to go,” she said. “I’ll be away for a couple of days. Can you cope with the kids?”
He held a hand to her. “Darling,” he said, his eyes brimming.
It says Jet.
“Fuck off, Nigel,” she said. She left the room and walked slowly up the stairs, to pack.
She threw clothes in a bag.
The past was suddenly here again. It was as if it had been pulled, crashing through the serried fading coulisse of intervening years by a sudden yank on its ropes. And now it was fully present, in all its blurred, degraded and half-forgotten reality. Shaky on its temporal strings, but there, in front of her, as real as a stone, or a moor, or a tree. As real as her collapsed clothing in her dark brown bags.
She half ran down the stairs, and flung her belongings in her car.
She drove north through the day, and the evening, moving relentlessly forward down a lightless tunnel, as if she was speeding down the course of a vein.
21.
Bax had moved too far, and too fast. He was unsure of the path he was following. But the only way was forward.
He parked his black car a mile from the house, in a mossy dark lane near a stream, hidden by a barn and overhanging trees. He walked in the deepening twilight towards the distant village. He climbed over walls and crossed fields, avoiding the roads, to reach the house at the end of the row. As he drew closer, he could see someone moving inside.
Bax wore black gloves, and his sleek body was wrapped in black cotton and leather. He crouched and ran like a cat.
He had left Watson at Scar Top. The glass had been moving. Their friend had been speaking. And the MP, as was his way, had drawn comfort. Thinking of it, Bax shook his head.
Bax halted by the back wall of the garden, as still as a bone. He waited. A dim light glowed within the house. The garden was darkening, the trees and outbuildings becoming silhouettes, the light moving from the outside to the inside. Natural light withdrew and electric light advanced.
He flexed his fingers within his black gloves. He drew the knife and moved it from palm to palm. It weighed little. Lighter than a gun, and, unlike a firearm, untraceable.
Bax peered up, and observed the stars scattered above in their array, like the cocaine crumbs scattered across Watson’s obsidian table.
He moved again, a shadow within shadow, through the garden. He reached for the back door handle, and, as he knew it would be, it was open. He turned it slowly and crept into the kitchen, blade in hand.
He waited a while and listened. There was movement above—someone was running a bath. Water was filling a tub, with a slow and constant rumble. Music was playing somewhere. A man’s voice was humming against guitar and pattering drums.
Bax leant against the fridge for a moment. On the fridge door, attached by magnets, were photos of a couple in various years and states: on holiday, at a beach, with some old relatives. There was one of a young girl, the same woman as in the other photos, but in a school uniform, her face pale and anxious.
He moved slowly to a door. He smelled cannabis, and the folk music was louder now. Upstairs, the running water had stopped.
The music was now a woman, singing sadly over minor chords. He could not pick out the words. There was golden, shaking light moving around the edges of the door.
Bax gently pushed and then moved around the door, his knife drawn and held high, ready to strike. The music was glowing from a large set of speakers. Candles were glimmering. Shadows hung tremulous around the room.
He turned quickly, sensing something large and moving. But it was too late.
A large, bearded man with an axe brought the blade down with force, and it caught Bax full in the face. His face collapsed. His skull cracked and splintered into itself, imploding from the weight of iron and muscle. There was a gasp, and a crack, a popping noise, and his released blood fell in a sheet.
His body crashed to the wooden floor. Bax’s face was now a sudden open envelope of bone and blood, cartilage, tongue, gum, and teeth. The nose was destroyed and the opened mouth was agape. The long knife in his hand gently dropped onto the wooden floor.
He had fallen into a small occasional table. Candles had fallen. Some had been snuffed out by his warm blood. Wicks hissed. Others still flashed and flamed on the wooden floor. Their light shook on Bax’s remaining eye. Candle wax dripped on his unfeeling skin, and hardened to a new coating.
Karl, astonished, dropped the axe with a loud clunk. Blood dripped from his beard. A tooth rolled to a stop in the doorway. Sloppy liquid fell from the ceiling.
“Fuck me,” he said to himself. Something wet and thick was gathering on his forearm.
He stepped heavily over what remained of Bax, and yelled up the stairs, “Bev!”
“What? I’m in the bath.”
“I think you need to come down.”
“What was that noise? Have you broken something?” she shouted from the warm water. “I’m in my bath, yer daft apeth! What is it?”
Karl ran a bloody red hand through his thick bloody hair. “I’ve killed some fella with the ornamental axe!”
22.
“So where are we then?” Ranald said. His voice thick as liquorice down a clear line from the north of the north.
Shona was sitting on her bed at the bed and breakfast, laptop beside her, her stick on the floor.
“Well, where the fuck are we, indeed,” she said. She ran through, in brief, her travels, discussions, and discoveries.
“So, let’s recap: we have this guy who killed himself, from this school in the north of England, and this tragic class of which he was part,” Ranald said. Somewhere in the background of his voice, dogs were barking.
Shona flung herself back on her bed. “Yeah. Dan, our suicide, was part of this tiny group of sixth-form students. Early 1990s.”
“Who else was there?”
“Andrew, Viv’s older brother. He went missing ages ago, and is still missing. He is dead, of course. But no body found. The police basically gave up. Viv spoke about him at the wedding that never was.”
“Does she know you are there?”
“No chance.”
“Is she likely to find out?”
Shona rubbed a hand over her face. “I haven’t really thought about it properly yet,” she lied.
“Okay, who else—anyone interesting?”
“There is Beverley, part of that class. I interviewed her. She told me about the Ouija sessions. She lives in a village near Ullathorne. Council worker, folk singer, partner, no kids. Not sure I believe everything she says.”
“Good copy?”
“Yeah, nice material, but all background.”
“Fine, all right,” Ranald murmured.
“Then there was this other lad, Robert Stang—Bobby. Big guy. He joined the army, is also back in town, works at a factory.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“No, not yet. I’ve only just got here.”
“Okay . . . maybe you should.”
“I will. Then there is this other lass, Alison, who was the star of the class, and moved to London. Made herself a successful career in finance.”
“Goody Two-shoes.”
“Exactly. Head girl. Her dad was a police inspector in the town.”
“Oh, aye? What was his name?”
“Harmire.”
“Name rings a bell, but not sure why.”
“And then there is something quite interesting. The local MP was in the class, Gary Watson.”
“What, ‘sink the boats’ Watson?” Ranald said. He seemed to whistle, away from the phone.
“The very same,” Shona said. “I don’t know how close he was with Daniel, but he was there. In that class.”
Ranald seemed to think for a while. “This makes it all much stronger already: it shouldn’t be too hard to try and get a comment from him, that’s a story in itself. We can do a full backgrounder for you. I’ll get one of the fellas to do a cuttings file and ping it across while you are there.”
“Thanks—anything about his childhood in particular,” Shona said.
“He’s one of the coming stars, isn’t he? He’s been on ‘top ten MPs to watch’ lists for a while. His voting and speaking record speaks for itself. It’s as you would expect. He’s good on the telly. Good speaker. Can you meet him? Has he commented on our suicide?”
“No. No one’s made the connection, I don’t think. Why would they?”
Down the line, Shona could hear him tapping a pen against something.
“Oh, and I have words from the mother,” she said, quietly.
“The suicide’s mum? Fabulous! Any help?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure we can use them.”
“Right, okay,” he said, uncertainly.
There was a silence.
“How’s Shetland?” she said, after a time.
“It’s braw today,” he said. “What’s it like there?”
“I’m a city girl. All this space and silence makes me itchy. It’s pretty, but rural, repressed and hard.”
“I had a girlfriend like that once,” Ranald said.
“Funny.”
“How you getting on with Terry?”
“She swears too fucking much,” Shona said.
Ranald laughed. Then recovered: “Look, I think you need to speak to Watson. And this Daniel, you said his caravan was burned out?”
“Immolated. Oh, we . . . came across some of his stuff.”
“How?”
“I won’t incriminate you by association. It was in the shack I mentioned. There’s a camera—a disposable one, it needs developed.”
“Wow, well that could be something?” Ranald said, unconcerned about where or how it had been found. “You definitely need to get that developed. Look, Shona, there’s something going on here. I mean, I think you have almost enough for a colourful feature as it is, what with the death, the tattoos, the house sale, the caravan, the shack with the tramp, the Ouija board sessions, the school link and so on, but . . .”
“I need more on Watson,” she said, nodding. Outside, the town’s lights were slowly coming on. A string of white lamps lit the main road beyond the trees. It was a cloudless night. The sky was dark, but sprayed with an arc of stars, more than she had ever seen in Glasgow or Edinburgh.
“Can you stay a couple more days? Get Watson if you can. Surely he’s doing some kind of election stuff. Oh—wait . . .”
“What?”
“Here on the old interweb—your man Watson is doing his campaign launch at a hotel in Tyrdale. Near a waterfall? It’s on his website. Some place called the Fosse and Rainbow? Near the Great Fosse—is that . . .”
“Yeah, that’s a massive fuck-off waterfall around here. When is that?”
“Friday—two days.”
“Fine—I’ll try to pin Watson down there?”
“It’s a plan. Make sure Terry is with you. And until then, dig as much as you can, and get a load of colour, too. School friends, relatives—all that palaver.”
“Thanks, Ranald.”
“How’s your old man?”
“Och, Dad’s on the mend,” Shona said, tightly. “He has a fucking nun looking after him.”
“How do you mean? What—a real nun?”
“Yeah, she used to be a nun. Now she harasses my old man. I’ll tell you more another time.”
“Okay, it’s late and I need to walk the dogs. What you doing next?”
Shona could hear keys being jingled. She had not visited Shetland for many years. She imagined Ranald in a self-built house on cliff edge, staring out at the immense steely sea, the massive sky.
“I think I need either to go on a long walk or get a long drink,” she said. “Or both.”
“Sounds like a plan. Look, thanks for all this, Shona. We’re getting somewhere. You’re good,” Ranald said.
“Well, I knew that already,” she said, smiling, and signed off.
She looked out onto the darkening world. She wanted to get some air. She felt the dead breath of the care home still in her mouth, settling in her lungs. She realised three things: she missed her father, she needed a walk and she was hungry.
The street outside was dark and wide. She walked hesitantly at first, wondering whether to follow the main road into the marketplace, or take another route into town and find another path. She remembered a chip shop on the main street, so she headed that way. A car passed slowly.
She walked on, the only noise her feet and the occasional tap of her stick. She walked on and reached the marketplace, and the wide main street. The stone buildings were dark now. A man was smoking outside the Lion. A couple of youths leaned on the wall outside another pub, the Green Man, chatting and drinking from bottles.
A wave of loneliness suddenly filled her. She thought of Viv and felt a sudden nauseating wave of terrible dread. She stopped walking and leaned against the closed door of the butcher’s. She felt a sob building within her, like a sudden wave. She held her face with her hand for a while, and gripped the stick as hard as she could.
“Fuck off,” she said. “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off. Idiot.”
She opened her eyes, and wiped her face and looked out, beyond the town. In the city, Shona was often lonely. In the countryside, she felt alone. She felt tiny in this place. Walking in a world on a greater scale than she could fill, or within which she could have a sense of meaning. Beyond these old stone houses was the ancient silent dark. The silence sunk into everything—the air, the light, the stone, the surrounding trees. Even the river was silent now, running darkly somewhere out of sight. Edinburgh, her home, was quiet, thrawn, introverted, interior—but not like this. Glasgow, where she had grown up, was never quiet. Everything was noise, there. She missed it. But she was also hungry. And she had half a story.
And so she wiped her eyes, and walked on. The chip shop’s glow was exaggerated in the darkening evening—a puddle of golden and rich light. She clattered up the short steps. There was another customer standing, short and bulky. He was wearing a long grey winter coat with its collars up, a suit, and shiny black shoes. He looked out of place. Behind the glass of the fish and chip display, a small pink-faced man was shovelling chips like a stoker feeding an engine. He had a small white cap on his head. He was sweating, his arms a blur.
“Two fish,” he suddenly barked.
The suited man nodded and said, “Aye.”
Shona waited by the door. He turned and looked at her. He had a boxer’s face: pummelled and smooth. A nose broken years ago. Small white burn scars in array around his ear.
“How’s Mr. Watson?” the chip man said, swaddling the food in brown paper. He flipped the package around in his fingers.
“Ready to go again,” the hulking man said. He flicked another glance at Shona. She opened her phone and pretended to look at it.
“He’ll walk it,” the chip shop man said. “He’s a good solid Ully lad and speaks plain sense. I knew his old man, you know. Fine man.”
He handed over the food and the man paid with a fifty-pound note. Shona moved out of his way as he barrelled past her, trailing the smell of expensive cologne.
The chip shop man looked up from behind the blasting heat of his work. “What yer havin,” he said, his face impassive.
Within a few minutes, Shona was jamming slimy hot fish into her mouth and her pocket was lumbered with a can of cold Coke. Her mouth blanched at the tang of vinegar and salt, the crackle of hot batter. She walked slowly to the park beside the ruined castle. It was on a height, crowned by trees—the edge of the woods.
Her phone suddenly buzzed. She swore and sat on a park bench, and put the fish and chips and stick to one side. She wiped her hand on her jacket and picked out her phone. Distant lights glittered on a far road in the darkness.
It was Viv. The phone buzzed on. Shona did not want to answer. But she answered.
