The Hollow Tree, page 25
She woke with a start.
It was dark. There was a loud, repetitive noise.
Someone or something was knocking on her door.
28.
Her door trembled slightly as the knocking went on.
“Hello?” Shona said, foggily.
“It’s me,” a voice said.
Shona, tendrils of her mind still drifting in her dream-heavy sleep, her body leaden, swung her feet from the bed. She looked to the window—it was dark outside, and streetlamps were buzzing on the silent road.
“Who is me?” Shona whispered.
“Ashley,” the voice said.
Shona moved to the door and opened it, and on the dim landing was Ashley, clad in baggy clothes, pale-faced.
“What’s up?”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure—but why?” Shona said, opening the door.
Ashley snuck past her, her sock feet silent as a cat on the thick carpet, and sat on the bed. Her hair was mussed and tangled. “See that thing I found in the woods?”
Shona closed the door and leant against it. She was vaguely aware she had now blocked Ashley’s exit.
“Sorry—the thing you found in the woods? The shirt,” Shona said. There was a mild irritation in her mind.
“Yeah, the football shirt. I wanted to tell you something about it. Mam has it now. She’s out away with it, with her friend.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I saw you, walking across the fields, following that Alison. You’re a journalist, you must be after something.”
“I am, and you’re right. I’m always after something.” Shona smiled and ran a hand through her hair.
“Are you hungover?” Ashley asked with a sudden grin.
“Not anymore.” Shona sat down on the chair by the dresser. “Tell me about the shirt, then?”
Ashley looked down at her hands. She held one with the other. “It was a strange thing to find in Deepdale right enough.”
“Yeah—and your mother has it?”
“She’s kept it. I think she was going to take it to the police, but she didn’t. I saw it in the kitchen cupboard. Now she’s gone out with Alison, taken it with her.”
“Right—so why are you telling me this?”
“Because of that name—Jet.”
Shona leaned forward. “Right?”
“Well, thing is, last night, when she and that Alison were talking—when you came back late—they said how they used to go into Deepdale with their pals. About how they would go there to drink cider or whatever.”
“Yeah?”
“Alison said the shirt belonged to their friend, that one who went missing. She said it was definitely his. Because of the name on the back. Jet was Andrew’s dog. Then they had a row over what to do. Now they’ve gone off with it.”
Shona’s heart was pounding now. She felt suddenly hot, almost feverish. “What has your mother told you about Andrew?”
“They were pals,” Alison said. “I don’t know. Mam did have other friends. She spent a lot of time with my dad, really. By sixth form, Dad was in Darlo, at the college, so she spent a lot of time there. He was studying accountancy. But yes, she knew Andrew Banks, she’s mentioned it before how she was part of that group. And how sad it was when he disappeared.”
“Has she ever mentioned what they got up to, that group?”
Ashley smiled and faintly blushed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what they did together?”
“What, having it off and that? Gross. No.”
“No—has she ever mentioned them doing weird stuff?”
“What, drugs?”
Shona stood up, and walked to the dresser. In the mirror she could see them both, reversed. Both dishevelled, in their own ways. Her stick on the floor by the bedside table. Her bag thrown in the corner.
“No, I don’t think so,” Ashley said quietly. “Although.”
“Although?”
“There was this old story she used to wheel out now and then when Songs of Praise was on the telly, or some religious thing on the news. Actually, we were watching The Exorcist and she mentioned it.”
“And?”
“Oh, just, when they were all in sixth form. One of the lasses, one of Mam’s friends from church. She came into the sixth form common room and threw holy water on that Gary Watson.”
“She what?”
“Yeah, she was evangelical. Can’t remember her name now, Mam would tell you. Anyway, she steamed into the common room. Watson was asleep, apparently. She marched in and threw the water on him. Mam says she was half-expecting Watson to melt away on the spot.”
“Holy water?”
Ashley shrugged. “That’s how the story goes.”
“Now why would anyone do that?”
“Maybe because that Watson is a total prick? I dunno.”
There was a sudden, deep silence. They both sat, and the night deepened.
“Did you see what he said about . . . disabled people?” Ashley said quietly.
“I didn’t. What did he say?”
“He’s denied it since, mind.”
“I’m sure he has. What was it?”
“There was a thing in the Mirror—he was at some posh lunch in London, and he said disabled people should think about whether they actually contribute enough to society. He asked whether we were actually just ‘ballast.’ Mam went tonto.”
“What did he mean by it, do you think?”
“I think he thinks we’re worthless,” Ashley said. “A drain on society. A burden.”
“Well, if he thinks that, he’s a fucking cunt,” Shona said.
Ashley burst out with a sudden shocked laugh. “You Scottish people don’t mess about.”
Shona smiled and dipped her head. “We can’t afford to. And anyway, where did your mother go? With Alison?”
“They might have gone to the pub. Bev’s band are playing again, I think? Maybe they went to see them. Are you going to ask Mam about the shirt? Can you please not say you heard about it from me?”
“I knew about it already.”
“How?” Ashley’s eyes were wide.
“I have my sources.” Shona tapped her nose.
Ashley turned to Shona with pleading eyes. Her lips were wet. She had become pale. “How, though?”
“I saw it, in the kitchen. When you were discussing with your mother.”
“Oh, okay. So, you can say that.”
“Yes, I can say that. But I did not know Jet was the name of Andrew’s dog.”
Ashley looked hard at Shona. “Well, you do now. But you didn’t hear it from me, right?”
“I can say his sister told me, I am a . . . friend of hers.”
Ashley stood up and moved to the door, but paused, her hand on the plain white doorknob. She was looking down at her feet. As if remembering.
Shona sensed there was something else Ashley wanted to say. “Was there anything else your mother and her friend said last night?”
“There was,” Ashley said, nodding, speaking quietly, almost to herself.
Shona waited.
“Mam said they had to do the right thing. No, to take the right path,” Ashley said. “And Alison said they had no time to waste, or something. Then she said something a bit weird.”
“And what was that?”
“She said they had to do what some other fella said. They had to speak to him. Some guy called Sorley. Mam kind of shivered all over, and then you came back, and it all ended.”
“Sorley?” Shona said. Her heart seemed to suddenly turn in on itself, like the snap of a blown sheet in a sudden gale.
“Dunno who Sorley is, like. Must be another friend from school.”
“Maybe,” Shona said, to say something.
Ashley righted herself, and looked at Shona, and turned the door handle.
“Well see ya then, ta-ra,” she said, and suddenly left. Her feet pattered in the hall.
Shona washed her face, and moved downstairs, to the quiet hall, and got ready to go back out into the night. Before she left the lodge, she texted her father:
Dad—Hope you are OK. Is Bernie looking after you? I am coming home soon. Love you—S
The night was cold, winter lingering in the darkness.
Where would they be? Peg and Alison were here somewhere. They might be in a pub, but the town had several. She might have to try them all. She decided to start at the Lion, where Bev’s band played.
She realised, as she crossed the cobbles to the pub, that she should have called the Tyrdale Times, but had slept through the afternoon and early evening. Tomorrow, she told herself.
There was music playing in the pub, but it wasn’t a band. She could hear from the street that a single acoustic guitar was chiming its way through a carousel of minor scales.
She pushed at the door of the pub, and entered a bowl of light. On a low stage, a large man with a beard was sitting, bowed over an acoustic guitar. With one hand he was tightening a string, his eyes low to the frets. At the bar, a man was drying glasses, looking up at a TV, which was showing the evening news with subtitles. The prime minister, pushing back his lank hair, was making a speech outside Number 10 about the general election, which would be held in six weeks. His wife—glassy, immaculate, impermeable—stood beside him, surveying the gathered press corps. The barman was shaking his head.
There were a couple of old men by the bar, damp and antiquated in tweed, muttering to each other over short drinks. One had no hair, the other had too much, squeezed under a green bunnet. Near the slot machine in the corner, which madly flashed in Technicolor, a middle-aged couple were playing dominos. By the stage, some young people in black were sombrely reading their mobile phones. The carpet was loud and old and light bent and splintered from bar brass and optics.
The guitarist looked up as he prepared to sing his next song. Shona recognised him. It was Karl, Bev’s partner. He stared at her for a while, and then said, breathily into the microphone, “This is an old one and a true one—‘Rufford Park Poachers.’”
He played a skeletal riff on the guitar, his large fingers moving spryly over the strings. He plucked a lonesome arpeggio. As he sung, the beautiful melody rose and fell, and the guitar chimes held and supported the melody for a time, drifted underneath, and then let go. Karl was a solid and hairy man, maybe six foot five, and he sang with a clear tenor that rang true.
Everyone was watching and listening, even the old men at the bar, and Shona realised she was standing in the middle of the taproom by herself. She moved to the bar and ordered a Jack Daniel’s and Coke.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. The glinting dark brown drink arrived and she paid, and by the time she had, the phone had stopped moving. She picked it out of her pocket and looked at it. She had missed a call from a private number. But then it buzzed again: a voicemail.
She half suspected it to be a work call. But Ranald always called from his home line or his mobile. It could be from Hector Stricken, but he usually texted. It was likely a call back from Gary Watson’s PR operation. She pressed the button to listen and put the phone to her ear, just as Karl’s song came to an end and the sparse crowd clapped.
The message began. There was the sound of rushing, of air moving in a stream over obstacles and around barriers. A keening—a whine of gale moving over the moor.
Then, a voice—deep, uneven, rolled over the howl and tunnelling roil.
“Sandison. I am fine now. I can talk. He left me a lot of money. He left the banks a lot of money. It was a settling of debts. He was ready for his final journey. To go beyond, so he could come back.”
There was a pause.
“I am here if you want to know more. He has seen what will happen. He’s seen it already. He is in the stones. In the rocks and stones. Goodbye, Sandison.”
The voice ended, and the wind returned. Just the flow of air through rock and heather, over lichen and stone. For minute after minute the rolling wind continued, and then, with a clunk, it was gone.
Shona stared at her phone.
“What the actual,” she said, quietly. She could not call back, as the number had been withheld.
A large frame was in front of her. It was Karl.
“So,” he said.
“Nice tunes,” Shona said. “Can I buy you a drink?”
She noticed his hairy right hand was shaking. His eyes were pink and tired.
“I guess you’re looking for Bev, and what-have-yer.” He leaned on the bar; he looked ready to collapse.
“I am,” Shona said.
He pointed to a bottle on a shelf and the barman nodded.
“You all right, Karl?” she asked.
He stared ahead. “Aye, right enough,” he said, flatly. “Get a bit nervous when performing, like.”
“Fair enough. Was that an old folk song, or one of yours?”
He poured the bottle of amber drink into a straight glass and had a sip. “No, it’s an old folk song. About the rich fucking the ordinary folk. Nowt’s changed.”
Shona nodded. She thought of her father. He would love this chat. And Karl and Beverley clearly thought alike. They were a close couple. They thought and acted alike.
“I thought Bev would be on tonight,” Shona said.
“The band were meant to be on”—he nodded—“but it’s just me. Bev has something to do. She said it couldn’t wait.”
“She’s meeting Alison and Peg,” Shona said, looking at him directly.
He stared at his drink. He said nothing, and drank.
“Is that right? A reunion?”
“I dunno,” he said, low, his hand shaking.
“Karl, back on in ten?” the barman said, tapping his watch.
“Aye, sure,” Karl said.
“Karl, I just want to catch up with them all together, for my article . . .”
“About that poor Daniel, I know,” he said, mumbled.
“Do you know where they’re meeting?”
He looked at her. He leaned towards her, his massive head creating a shadow, his hairy face haloed with harsh pub light.
“I’m not gonna say it twice,” he said, “so listen on, and reckon.”
“Okay, Karl,” she said, gently.
“There’s something weird going on in the dale. Something dark. Since you’ve been here. Or since Dan topped himself. There’s been . . . incidents. I can’t say more. Bev and them are down at the mill. Fuck knows why. I just want everything to go back to the away it was. Quiet. You know they’ve found a body?”
“Where?” she asked. There cannot be another body, she thought.
“In the woods. Deepdale. Bobby Stang,” he said.
“Ah, right,” she said. “Yes, I heard.” Her mind withdrew from a small panic. A part of her suddenly wished she had spoken to Robert Stang first. But now he was gone.
“Did you hear he was stabbed? Stabbed to death. There was . . . there is someone going around killing people, Shona. That’s a bigger story than poor Dan. Isn’t it? Bodies everywhere, and a murderer. Not poor Danny—that’s not a story.”
“I know what a story is. What do you mean, bodies everywhere?”
He looked at her, his eyes wide. His face flushed. There was a tang of sweat.
The barman said Karl’s name again, and his shoulders sank.
“I’m off,” he said, and sloped back to the stage. Some people clapped, and he wiped his brow and raised a hand.
Shona looked outside. It was dark, with loneliness in every shadow.
Karl picked up his guitar again. He strummed his way through three more songs: all sad, all forlorn, all in the minor keys. One of them, “John Ball’s Blues,” was very long, building to a heavily strummed climax.
“When Adam delved and Eve span/ who was then the gentleman?” he sang, over and over.
Karl was upset, even as he sang. There was something clenched in his tone, something nervous in his body. At the house he had seemed full of bonhomie, a largeness and capacity. Here he looked diminished and scared.
She sat at the bar for the twenty minutes of the set, drinking whiskey and Coke. Karl sang well. Shona was on the verge of texting Terry about nothing in particular—she could not think of a subject matter—when there was a pattering of pub-applause as Karl’s slow, sad music came to an end.
“Nice one, Karl,” someone hollered from a dark corner.
Karl put his guitar in a soft grey case and looked over at the bar. He saw Shona and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. He nodded at the barman, who poured a pint instantly.
Karl lumbered over as piped rock hits filtered through the pub’s PA.
“Still here, then,” he said.
“Looks like it,” she said. “I just want to chat a bit more.”
“What for?”
“Well, I think you have something to tell me.”
“Oh, aye?”
“You’re talking to me now aren’t you?” She smiled.
He looked around the bar. His massive neck was red from sweat. Neck hair plastered on it.
“Where is Bev?” she asked again.
“There’s a place out back,” he said, as if not to Shona, but into his pint. He trudged to a door near the dark jukebox. Shona followed. It looked like a fire exit. The door opened into the cool air and silence of the night.
She was in a lane between the pub and the next building, and at the end was a sliver of electric light, where Karl was standing now. She followed him.
There was a backyard, filled with empty beer barrels, some pallets and boxes, recycling bins, bounded by a low wall. Past the low wall was a sheer cliff face, heavy with trees, and the river. On the other side of the Tyr, the streetlamps glowed orange and the streets were silent. A single lamp glimmered on the wall.
“You never heard it from me,” he said, at last. Karl was smoking a joint, and the sweet smoke was blown from the river back to Shona and the lane behind. Shona leant against the green wall and waited.
“Okay,” she said, softly.
“It were called Sorley. Funny right?”
Shona’s heart bumped again, but she did not show any emotion. The smoke dragoned from Karl’s joint. It drifted across her vision of the land below the cliff, as if the town’s lights were gleaming in a cloud.
