The Hollow Tree, page 23
“Might be worth it, though—speak to the editor, mention Merrygill’s death? He’s bound to know about it. If nothing else, we can quote him or her in the piece and give an extra lick of local colour.”
“You want me to lick people now?” she said.
Ranald laughed. He seemed to be in an uncommonly good mood.
“Fine, I’ll speak to the paper,” she said, propping herself up in the bed. “An old pal of mine worked on it, long ago, strangely enough.”
“Yeah? Well, drop her into the conversation.”
“He. John Fallon. He was my boss at the Glasgow Mercury before it went bust. He taught me a lot.”
“Oh, aye, the name rings a bell—where’s he now?”
“In the ground. Died a while back.”
“Ach, joined the majority. Well—see if dropping his name helps grease the wheels a bit.”
Ranald ended the call.
Shona undressed and showered. She remembered she quite liked staying in hotels, bed and breakfasts; they came with bathrooms that she didn’t have to clean herself. Fresh towels. New shampoo. Sometimes even bathrobes. She pulled the white robe on, and looked into the mirror in the small, neat shower room. She wiped her hand across it.
When she had been young, not long after her mother died, she had taken to staring into mirrors. Until her eyes blurred, and her face disappeared. The background and the foreground become one. Her face would merge with shadow and blur and smeared vision. The reflection became a hole, an aperture into nothingness. Then her eyes would hurt and she’d have to close them, wrinkle them up and shake her head. And then, always, she would check in the mirror that she was still there, and understand that nothing in reality had changed. It never had. Her face was her face. Her eyes looked back at themselves, reversed. Nothing else. Her mother never walked into the frame of the mirror.
Shona heard voices in the breakfast room downstairs, and her phone rang again, buzzing and bleating.
“Fuck off,” she said, and left the shower room to pick up the call.
It was Bernie.
“Is Dad okay?” Shona said immediately.
“Hello, love, yes, he is. But he isn’t,” Bernie said.
“Which?”
“Well, my love, we had another rather horrible letter from the allotment people today.”
“Right?”
“It says they are going to terminate his tenancy. And charge him for a contractor to clear it up after he loses it. It’s a terrible letter.”
Shona swore under her breath. “Okay—well. There’s not much I can do from here. I’m busy, I’ll be back at the weekend.”
“But we don’t have much time to sort it out, Shona. I went down there last night and it really is a state. I mean . . . those wooden pallets holding the compost, they’ve all collapsed. Those bushes are out of control. And I am absolutely convinced there are rats in the shed. It’s a fine mess. And you know he has his enemies on that allotment. There’s been nothing done for months, and with you away . . .”
“He’s been in hospital after a heart attack! Of course it’s a mess. Maybe I can call them. Is there a number?”
“Not a heart attack—angina. That’s different.”
“What-the-fuck-ever,” Shona muttered.
“No number,” Bernie carried on. “It’s an official letter. I don’t think you realise, Shona. If Hugh loses the allotment”—and her voice suddenly became a hard whisper—“it will be awful for him. He lives for that place. And you, of course. He won’t have a reason to leave the house.”
“I know. Well, he can leave the house to see you.”
“That’s nice of you to say. But he needs that patch of earth.”
There was a silence. Bernie wanted Shona to do something.
“Look—I’ll see if I can find a gardener or something who can get to work on tidying it up. Before the allotment gestapo arrive next week.”
“Can you come back now?”
“No, I’m working. I have a job to do.”
“But your father—”
“I understand. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be back in a day or two. Okay?”
“There is no time, Shona,” Bernie said.
“I know that.”
“Well, all right.” Bernie sighed. “I might see if any of the other allotment people can help, but I doubt it. I mean, we’re all mainly pretty old and decrepit, and your father with his heart and me with my hips, and no one really has enough energy even for our own patches, although there’s a young family over by the alders who have . . .”
“Okay, Bernie,” Shona cut in. “I get it. How is Dad?”
“He’s just up, and watching the cricket.”
“Cricket? Jeezo, he must still be sick,” Shona said.
There was some mumbling in the background of Bernie’s line—and the sound of Shona’s father, saying something. Shona asked what he’d said.
“He said it is still an English preoccupation and he wants to understand it more,” Bernie said.
“Look, I will sort something—must go—bye!” Shona said, who was beyond an acceptable limit of irritation.
She dressed swiftly and left the room.
Through the doors that opened onto a small garden overlooking an open field, Shona could see the tall woman from last night. She was deep into a heated conversation—her head nodding, her eyes screwed up.
Ashley appeared, smiling, and asked Shona what she wanted for breakfast. Shona was looking at the tall woman, still, and Ashley lowered her voice.
“One of Mam’s old friends, turned up last night out of the blue. Lucky we had a room free,” she said.
“Oh, aye?” Shona moved closer to Ashley to appear appropriately conspiratorial. She could smell Ashley’s shampoo and perfume.
“Yeah,” Ashley said, her eyebrows rising, “there was a right carry on.”
“About what?”
“I found that old shirt in the woods—well, that Jess found. I brought it back, wish I hadn’t. Mam has been fretting over it and Alison there went plain mental when she saw it. I poked me neb in last night, but they were hard at it, so I went to bed. Bloody hell.”
Shona asked for a couple of bacon rolls and a coffee, sat down and looked out the open doors to Alison, still rowing on her phone. She heard the name “Nigel.” Something about children, about money. Alison was a handsome woman, with sleek hair. Her clothes were simple and expensive.
While waiting for her breakfast, Shona looked at her phone. Ranald’s email had arrived. It was a massive file, with ten attachments. She opened one, and slowly the PDF unfurled.
It was a picture of a cutting from the Mirror from 1992. There was splodgy typeface and a black-and-white photograph. It was page thirty-four. An even page, at the back of the book. The headline read: MYSTERY AS BOY 18 VANISHES.
The article outlined the story, in simple, effective and direct tabloid writing, of Andrew Banks. How he had been out with friends, out drinking in the “small northern market town” and then gone missing. Police had searched parked cars and gardens, and dragged the river where they could. Posters had been put up. Tracker dogs in the woods. A helicopter from Cumbria had swept the moorland. Nothing found. A short quote from the Banks family solicitor. No mention of Viv, or her parents.
A policeman, Harmire, was quoted. He said: “We appeal to Andy to come home. His family are beside themselves. He may have gone to visit friends and stayed over—if so, please get in touch. No one will think less of you if you turn up now.”
As she read on, Ashley arrived with Shona’s breakfast. There was a small square picture of Harmire in uniform, fuzzy and indistinct. A long face, and intense eyes. He was smiling. The caption said: Cops: No Sign of Teen.
Shona expanded the photo with her fingers, and looked over at Alison, who was now facing the doors of the breakfast room. The same long face, the same penetrating eyes.
As Shona ate, distracted, she was suddenly struck with what she once described to Stricken, who recognised it well, as “news panic.” It was the desperation to get the crucial interview for a story—the overwhelming, consuming need for it. Her skin began to tingle around her eyes. There was tension in her shoulders. She needed to speak to Alison. Alison was outside, and as far as Shona could see, the only way into the building from the garden was through the French windows of the breakfast room. So, she waited.
A small brown dog with tight curly hair and a face of joy suddenly trotted into the room. Its paws clipped on the stone floor. Ashley followed behind, wearing an anorak. She had a dog lead wrapped around her weaker hand.
“This your last day here, then?” Ashley said.
“Think so—one more night,” Shona said, “but maybe two.”
“You been busy?” Ashley asked, pushing the dog—who had suddenly stood up on two legs—down.
“Busy enough,” Shona said.
“You’ll be glad to be out of here and back to the city.”
“Maybe.”
Ashley looked at Shona and blinked slowly, as a cat might do. “Well, I’m off to walk Jess here. Hopefully she doesn’t find any more relics this time.”
Jess was beside herself now, running around in a circle, hopping up and down.
“Will your mum take the shirt to the police?” Shona asked.
“Oh, you know, I don’t think so,” Ashley said, suddenly distracted. “Ta-ra, then.” And, along with the prancing, bouncing dog, she left. The front door slammed and, after, the dog barked from somewhere outside.
Shona looked to the garden again, but Alison was gone.
“Fuck’s sake,” Shona said, rising from her seat, grabbing her things, and moving to the open doors. She saw that in the far corner of the backyard a small gate led to the fields. A track wound its way across a field and down to the tree line and the river.
Shona followed Alison. The air was sharp. The wet grass tickled the skin between her socks and her jeans. The air was chill, and sharp.
The path, although not paved or gravelled or mown, beat a clear way across the large field down to the river. As the field dipped even steeper, she saw a large drystone wall, with a gate set in it. Beyond, there was another field—but overgrown and abandoned. It was full of clumps of tall thistles, and small sinkholes of mud and sand. Somnambulant sheep, shaggy and dyed, were rooting in the grass.
Alison was staring into the river. A dog-walking couple moved past her in matching red waterproofs. The man may have nodded to her, but she was unmoved.
Shona approached her, squelching on the lumpy ground, her shoes wet. The only sound was her feet and the river’s numb roar.
Alison did not turn as Shona approached. Shona had long learned to if not ignore, then just roughly ride over nerves when speaking to strangers. She found volume helped.
“Hi,” she said, on reaching Alison.
Alison turned to her. She had been crying. Her eyes were watery and red, and the edges of her nostrils were inflamed.
“Hi,” she said, and turned back to the river.
White bubbles floated steadily on its brown surface. A large, detached branch was rotating steadily on its way downstream. In the eaves of the far side, several ducks bobbed.
“So: you’re the news reporter,” Alison said.
“I’m the news reporter,” Shona said. “Guilty as charged.”
“Peg told me you’re in town.”
“I was at the wedding.”
“Where Dan died.”
“Yes. I found his body,” she half-lied.
Alison turned, her face unreadable. “What do you want from me?” she said. Her voice still had the flatness of the north in it. But it had been stretched and remoulded by decades of life in London.
“A chat.”
“Yeah, I’m not one for chatting,” Alison said. She turned back to the river, glancing again at her watch.
“What are you waiting for?” Shona said.
Alison shook her head. “Can you leave me alone, please?”
“I want to speak to you about Dan,” Shona said.
“I don’t want to talk about poor Daniel.”
“I am trying to find out why he did what he did.”
Alison looked at Shona, her eyes unmoving. “Good luck with that,” she said, and finally she turned away. Her phone bleeped, and she took it from her pocket and began to speak into it. “Yes, Derek?” she said, and moved away, following the path downstream.
Shona thrust her hands in her pockets and watched Alison move away, down the riverside path overhung with old trees.
Shona pulled out her phone. She opened a map application and looked at where she was. For a moment the blue marker pulsed and flared, the GPS not knowing where she was, or how the signal could be tracked onto the large empty land. But soon it found its coordinates, and beside a blue stretch of water—RIVER TYR—she found herself represented by a small blue dot on a yellow path. Closer than they felt, the town’s brown buildings spread out behind her, flat and featureless, a grey diagram.
Alison was walking down a path marked on the map. Shona zoomed in on it with her fingers. The path went past the town’s sewage works and over more fields, until it came to a large bridge which carried a two-lane road over the river. Over the bridge, about a mile from where she stood, hidden in trees was the ruin of an abbey. Angleton Abbey, the map said.
Alison had now disappeared into the tree line. Shona wondered if she was heading for the abbey. She began to follow her, and the river, downstream. The thistles here seemed abnormally high, their thorns as long as steel needles. The riverbank was high above the water and ragged: here and there, sand and mud collapsed into the brown river.
She picked up her pace. The river had become shallower—shoals of stones were showing above its waters. She glimpsed Alison ahead of her, walking steadily, talking into her phone, following the path, which became darker ahead as trees clustered and thickened.
As Shona walked on, peering ahead, the river became white—it ran steeply down, now, over rocks and rapids. It made a deep growl as it battered, suddenly furious, over the rocks, the steps of stone. And through the thickening trees, as if to match the violent waters, a black stone bridge rose threateningly through the trees. She could see Alison climbing the path, to the bridge. Her hands thrust into her pockets, her head down.
Shona watched Alison walk to the bridge. If she crossed the bridge, she would follow her to the other side, and to the ruined abbey. If she did not, she would turn, and see her back at the bed and breakfast.
Watching the small figure rising to the bridge, hearing the rush of the water, and the darkness of the woods, Shona felt a sudden pang of fear. A cold grip in her chest, in her heart.
Her phone rang. She swore, and fished it from her pocket. It was Terry.
“How do,” Terry said, jauntily, albeit with a voice slightly thickened by a hangover.
“So, you made it home alive,” Shona said.
“Where are you? You sound like you’re in a tunnel.”
“By the fucking river again. I’m . . . working.”
“Don’t believe it. Yeah, made it home. No alarms and no surprises.”
“Fuck’s sake, Theresa, that’s not right. Drunk driving. You’ll kill someone.”
“Och, I’m fine—anyway, it seems this town will be in the news again soon.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think it’s you, you might bring death and destruction wherever you go. First the lovely Scottish wedding which turns dark, then you come to this sleepy town and everything goes pear-shaped. They’ve found a body in the woods.”
“What woods?”
“Woods over the other side from the town—Deepdale. Somebody was walking their dog this morning and found a dead body in the stream. Just heard it on the local radio.”
“Fuck,” Shona said. “I was going to go and have a look at that place. Any more details? Who is it?”
“Nope, just that the cops have declared it a suspicious incident, and are investigating. The main path to Deepdale is taped off. I could get in from the western end, park up the high fell . . .”
“Maybe it’s just some poor old sod had a heart attack. Dropped dead in the woods. I don’t think it’s worth spending the effort trying to get near. It isn’t really why we are here.”
“Maybe so. Deepdale is old trees, primeval woodland. You can get lost there. Anyway, this MP thing tomorrow, the campaign launch, you want me to come and get pictures?”
“Yeah, for sure. We’ll need snaps of Watson on the stump, doing a speech, whatever. And a full formal portrait. It’s near the waterfall, isn’t it?”
“Yep, dramatic. I think I have a number for his election agent—some fella called Knott, if I remember from last time. I could ring ahead, get some time squared off for us? And you need a lift, I take it?”
They arranged a time to meet, and the call ended. Shona watched Alison’s head bobbing along the battlement parapet of the bridge as she crossed over to the other side.
Shona followed. The path was steep now, and her stick slipped on wet soil and caught in undergrowth. There was tiredness in her breath. The river roared below.
She crossed the river. Emerging through trees, on the south bank of the Tyr, the shattered Angleton Abbey stood, resplendent in its ruin. There were large sheet walls, and empty windows. Its nave still stood, huge but broken and roofless. Its chapterhouse was long collapsed, its stones taken in days long past for farms and outbuildings. Henry VIII had destroyed this abbey in his fury, and its White Canons were dust and bone. At its centre were the remnants of its quad, and beside it, the only intact space—a small chapel.
Alison Harmire was there.
26.
Shona struggled up the hill to the abbey. Her side was sore, and her gin hangover was now hanging heavy on her tired limbs. Her stick was clarty with mud. She had walked slowly around the towering ruins. They were stark and sad, with no sign that humans had ever lived there, slept there, ate there and worshipped there.
But it was not all rack and ruin. The central chapel stood as if new. She pushed through the door, and stood at the back of the nave. Instead of a stone altar, there was a bare wooden table. On it was a brass crucifix on a stand, and two simple candles. A bible was resting on a folded pale cassock, which glittered with gold stitching.
