by Alex Barclay
‘Were the questions too difficult?’
‘No,’ said Duke. ‘I just…’ He looked away.
He caught her off guard then, lifting his head to stare right at her. Her heart leapt. She was close enough now to see the struggle behind his eyes. Duke saw only kindness in her face, but it flickered quickly and changed to darker images of faces he couldn’t trust, of reactions he couldn’t predict.
‘Nothin’,’ he said, retreating. ‘Couldn’t spell somethin’.’
She didn’t realise she had been holding her breath until she let it out.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Come on back inside.’
The office was tidy and homely, cream walls and floral wallpaper, sunflower chair rails and base boards. Children’s drawings covered a small bulletin board. Mrs Genzel sat behind her desk, short grey hair cut like a man’s around her soft, warm face.
‘Mrs Rawlins—’
‘Miss,’ said Wanda. ‘Can’t live with ’em…’ She shifted in the wide chair, withdrawing into it, making her crossed legs and the black scab on her knee the first thing the teacher could see.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Genzel. ‘Miss Rawlins, I’ve called you in here today to talk about Duke.’
‘That boy’ll be the death of me,’ said Wanda, blinking slowly, her head loose on her neck.
‘He was crying yesterday. He said his dog was dead. Someone had killed his dog.’
‘Sparky,’ said Wanda. She began scratching hard, her nails travelling up and down her thighs, trailing hot red lines. ‘Poor Sparky.’
Mrs Genzel watched her, frowning.
‘Is that true?’ she asked.
‘’Fraid it is. I came out in the yard Monday and found the little critter lying there, cold as a witch’s tittie – oops!’
‘What had happened to him?’
Wanda leaned forward. ‘No idea.’ She sat back again, twisting in the chair, leaning on her elbows, raising her body up, then sliding it back down.
‘I know Sparky was important to Duke,’ said Mrs Genzel. ‘He brought a photograph of him to show and tell in third grade, he used to draw pictures of him. He must be very upset.’
‘Yup,’ said Wanda.
‘Is there anything we can do to make this easier for him?’ said Mrs Genzel.
‘He’ll get over it.’
‘It’s not that simple…’
Wanda was already struggling up from the chair. She offered a limp wrist to the teacher.
‘Is everything OK for Duke? At home?’ said Mrs Genzel.
Wanda kept moving, towards the door.
‘I’m on my own, but I look after my boy.’
‘Of course you do. I was just…concerned.’
Wanda took a dramatic step forward. ‘Tsss!’ she said, stamping an imaginary branding iron onto her forehead. ‘Bad. Mom.’
Mrs Genzel stared at her. Wanda’s laugh ended with a small sigh.
‘Anyway, I gotta go.’
She left the office and checked her watch. It was late enough to wait for Duke. She slouched at the school gate and lit up a cigarette. She saw Duke trudge out behind the other kids. He walked over and she ruffled his hair, giving him a playful punch on the shoulder.
‘That Mrs Genzel sure is an ol’ dragon,’ she said.
‘I like her,’ said Duke. He walked home ahead. Wanda finally spoke, reaching out and spinning him by his shoulder towards her.
‘Jeez, Duke. I told you! I’m sorry about the damn dog, OK?’ She threw down her cigarette end and stamped it out with her boot and a twist of her leg. ‘Who’d a thought a few kicks would have sent it to its grave? Yap, yap yap, the damn thing.’
Duke stopped, rigid. He glared through her. All she did was smile.
The tiny mongrel reappeared through the powdery dust. When it settled around him, he flipped again, sending up another cloud. Duke couldn’t speak. He just watched. Wanda was waiting for a reaction.
‘Honey?’ She waited. ‘Honey?’ Her voice was razor sharp in his head.
‘Honey!’
‘What?’ he said, too loud.
‘What do you say?’
Duke’s heart was thumping. Sweat trickled down his back. He looked up at Boo-hoo, who stood tall over him, his legs spread, his hands on his hips, nodding and smiling. Then he looked back at the miserable creature skipping about in front of him. It was all so wrong.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Duke.
‘Whatcha gonna call it?’ asked Wanda.
‘Fucker,’ said Duke. Wanda hit him hard across the side of the head.
‘You tell him what you’re gonna call that lovely new dog!’ she shouted. ‘That’s a very kind thing someone’s done for you, Duke. You need to show some respect.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Boo-hoo. ‘He’ll know soon enough.’ He patted the boy’s head and went inside to wait with Wanda.
Duke didn’t follow. He picked up the skinny animal, held his wriggling body under his arm and walked to Uncle Bill’s house. Bill was standing in a clearing, his arm outstretched after releasing a young hawk.
‘That Bounty?’ shouted Duke. ‘That baby hawk?’
‘Yup,’ said Bill. ‘Just lookin’ after her a short while ’til Hank gets back.’ He glanced over at the dog. ‘Is that yours? A new one already?’
‘Mama got him for me.’
‘Oh. OK. Well just be careful—’
‘I’m not gonna let him go if that’s what you mean,’ said Duke.
‘It’s important because—’
He was interrupted by a car pulling up around the front of the house. He handed Duke the leather glove.
‘She won’t be doin’ anything,’ he said, nodding to Bounty. ‘I’ve got the meat in my bag. I’ll be back in a minute. We’ll start with her then.’
Duke put the dog down and held him between his calves as he slipped on the glove. Then he released his grip and the dog sprung into the clearing, dashing wildly from tree to tree. Bounty’s wings shot open. Her head darted from side to side. In a flash, she rose and swooped, fear driving her to an unlikely prey. The dog howled as her talons sank in. Duke’s eyes glazed over. He was only dimly aware of noise, flapping wings, frantic blurred activity. He brought his eyes back into focus for the final moments. Then silence.
‘What the hell is goin’ on here?’ said Bill, batting branches away as he ran through the trees by the house. He stopped when he saw the dead dog.
‘Did Bounty…?’
Duke nodded. He stared at the blood pooling out from under the body.
‘I’m mighty sorry that happened,’ Bill said. ‘After Sparky an’ all. I’m mighty sorry, little fella. The damn bird’s a dog-grabber, too young to know any better, got scared, probably—’
‘It’s all right,’ said Duke.
‘I shoulda told you the young ones can be like that—’
‘You did, Uncle Bill. You told me last week.’ He patted the man’s big hand.
They stood in silence. Eventually Bill went inside. He returned with a stack of newspapers and set a slim layer on the dirt to soak up the blood. Then he picked up the lifeless body and laid it across the rest of the stack, folding the pages tightly around it. He heard a sob behind him. He turned and saw tears streaming down Duke’s face, shudders cutting through his breath.
Uncle Bill wiped his hands on his overalls, then pulled Duke close, holding him tight as the little boy wept for a dog called Sparky.
SEVEN
Joe could feel the alarm pounding in his chest. His heart beat wildly. He realised it was the phone when Anna reached across him to answer it.
‘’Allo?’ she said. She listened, confused.
‘No, Martha. He came in about eleven-thirty on his own. Unless…I don’t know. Let me go check.’ She handed the phone to Joe.
‘Hi,’ said Joe. He let her talk. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m sure there’s—’ Anna walked back into the room, shaking her head. Shaun bounded in after her, frowning.
‘What?’ he asked, looking at both
his parents. ‘What?’
‘She’s not here, Martha,’ said Joe. ‘What time did you leave her?’ he asked Shaun.
‘About eleven thirty, quarter of twelve,’ said Shaun. They all turned to the clock. It was four-thirty a.m.
‘Oh my God,’ said Shaun, his eyes wide.
‘What would you like us to do? Is there anyone we can call?’ said Joe into the phone. ‘OK,’ he said, then put it down. ‘Martha’s gonna call some of the girls from school.’
‘But she wasn’t with any of the girls from school,’ said Shaun.
‘It’ll be OK,’ said Joe. ‘She could have met one of them on the way home. Why didn’t you walk her home?’ He hesitated. ‘Did you have an argument?’
When Shaun saw the concern in his father’s eyes he had to look away. There was no way he could tell him what happened tonight. Katie would kill him.
‘No, we didn’t,’ he said. He looked like he was about to cry. ‘She just wanted to walk home on her own.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Joe. ‘She’ll show up.’
For the past two hours, Frank Deegan had been staring at the ceiling. He had nodded off on the couch earlier, but a phone call had jerked him too wide awake to handle his regular bed time. It had been a hang-up, to make matters worse. He turned to look at Nora, asleep by his side. Raising himself up on one elbow, he lumbered out of bed, pausing to sit on the edge before standing. He tightened his navy pyjama pants and headed for the kitchen. He stopped at the counter, his short fingers hovering over a shiny foil bag of coffee grounds.
Nora had to be different, a coffee addict in a generation of tea drinkers. She would complain when she visited friends’ houses that they’d use the same instant coffee that they offered her a year beforehand, its granules in damp clumps against the side of the jar. Only the teabags were replaced regularly in most Mountcannon homes.
‘Vile,’ she would say to Frank, afterwards. ‘Vile.’
He looked up at the clock, heard the rumblings of his ulcer and ignored the call of caffeine. Instead, he put a small saucepan of milk on the stove and sat down at the table with the newspaper. He reached for his reading glasses with their thick magnifying lenses. He’d bought them from a stand in the pharmacy. Nora loved to poke fun at him and his super-sized eyes. He reminded her of something she could never remember. Sometimes he would look up from his book or paper just to make her laugh.
As he settled back into the chair, the phone rang.
‘Hello,’ he said as if it was ten o’clock in the morning.
‘Frank, it’s Martha Lawson. Katie didn’t come home last night.’
‘You mean the night before last?’ asked Frank.
‘No, well, tonight I mean. She should have been home at midnight.’
‘It’s five a.m., Martha, the night is still young for a teenager. Especially at the weekend.’ He rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Was she in one of the discos in town?’
‘No,’ said Martha. ‘She’s not allowed. She was in the village with Shaun. She wanted to walk home on her own for some reason and now she hasn’t shown up. Oh, hold on, Frank. There’s someone at the door.’
‘Well, there she is now,’ he said, rolling his eyes.
She came back on the line, her voice shaking.
‘It was just the Lucchesis,’ she said.
‘Oh, OK. Well, I’ll come over to you, so,’ said Frank. ‘Sure I’ll probably pass Katie by on the drive.’
‘Thanks, Frank. I appreciate it.’
Frank took the milk from the stove and reached for the Colombian roast.
Martha Lawson lived with her daughter in a small white bungalow with a large garden – a suburban home on a country road, a ten-minute walk from the harbour, a thirty-minute walk from the Lucchesis. Inside, the house was a blend of different woods, carpets and fabrics; a mahogany dresser with varnished pine coffee table, floral carpet with Aztec print drapes. Every surface was spotless.
Frank sat to Martha’s left on a brown sofa, his body turned towards her. She had a plain face, but most of the features that made Katie beautiful. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her eyelashes wet from tears.
‘I’m sure Katie is fine,’ said Frank. ‘I don’t know what she’s up to, to be honest, but whatever it is, I’m sure she’ll have a good explanation when she walks through that door.’
‘No, Frank, I really don’t think so. Please. I know Katie. It’s not like her at all. God knows, she could be dead in a ditch somewhere. You hear about these hit and runs…’
‘Don’t be worrying about things like that,’ said Frank gently.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is just, I’ve never…’ she trailed off.
‘It’s OK,’ said Frank, patting her hand.
‘Shaun called here for Katie at eight,’ she said. ‘She didn’t stick her head in to say goodbye, she just hopped out the hall door to him.’ She thought about this for a while. ‘I didn’t even say goodbye to her,’ she cried.
‘We don’t know anything’s happened to her,’ said Joe, who had been standing at the fireplace opposite. ‘And if we all got up to say goodbye to our kids every time they went out the door, we’d be up and down all day.’
Martha smiled, wiping her nose with a pink tissue.
‘Shaun said they had been hanging around the harbour, but she wanted to walk home on her own or something, so he let her.’ She glanced over at Anna and Joe. ‘She was supposed to be home at midnight.’
‘Where is Shaun?’ asked Frank, frowning.
‘He wanted to stay at home,’ said Joe. ‘And wait by the home phone. He figures she could call him on that because he doesn’t get a great signal on his cell.’
Shaun stared at his bedroom wall. His heart was thumping. He moved around, trying different positions to get a signal on his mobile, but he knew nothing would work. He used the portable phone to dial his message minder. There were no new messages. He tried his private line in the bedroom. It rang. He hung up. He checked the answer phone. There were no messages. He picked it up, pushed buttons, turned it over, put it down again. Still no messages.
There was a knock on the door. Martha looked around at everyone. They all stood up at the same time, but left her to answer it. Low muttering came from the hallway. Richie Bates, in his pristine navy uniform, bent his head to get through the door and nodded when he saw Joe and Anna. He was pale, but alert. His hair was still damp from the shower. He turned to Frank.
‘Howiya, Frank,’ he said sombrely, nodding again.
Martha walked in behind him, disappointed and exhausted.
‘Will you have a cup of tea, Richie?’ she said.
‘I’ll get it,’ he said.
‘You will not,’ she said. ‘Sit down there.’
She brought him out a plate of plain biscuits and tea in a china cup that looked lost in his big hands.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
After a long silence, Frank spoke up.
‘Sorry to have to ask, but was there anything wrong with Katie?’ He pulled out his notebook. The formality of Frank Deegan, out of context, sitting on her sofa as a policeman made her cry.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Martha.
‘Did you have an argument or anything?’
‘No, no, everything was fine,’ she said defen sively.
‘Was she fighting with anyone in school?’
‘She wouldn’t tell me if she was.’
‘You know with young girls, they could have been jealous or there could have been something—’
‘No. I know a bit of bullying goes on at the school, but she’s never been part of it.’
Frank searched for questions that wouldn’t alarm Martha at this early stage, but would reassure her that she was being taken seriously.
‘I’m trying to think,’ said Martha, ‘did I do something that annoyed her?’
‘Tell me what she did during the day today.’ ‘She went to school and was home straightaway afterwards. She didn’t have any homework, so she we
nt out to meet Shaun. She didn’t change out of her uniform. She came home on her own for dinner, then went upstairs and had a shower. She spent a good while getting ready. She had a lot of makeup on, which she normally doesn’t. I might have told her that she could have taken some of it off. I think that annoyed her.’ She looked up at Frank.
‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ he said.
‘I went into the kitchen then and I presume she took a jacket from the hall, because then she just shouted “See you later,” and off she went out to Shaun. I went into the hall after her, but she was gone.’ Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I don’t know why I had to say that about her makeup. She looked beautiful.’
Richie Bates stayed silent throughout the interview, but took notes every time she spoke. The bones in his hand were rigid. Frank wondered if the pen was going to snap.
‘Maybe she hated me and I didn’t know,’ blurted Martha. Everyone looked at her.
‘No,’ said Anna, rushing to her side. She patted her arm. ‘She loved you. We all know that. She’s just late home.’
The questions continued until Frank was satisfied he had enough information. But that didn’t mean he had any idea where Katie Lawson was.
The cottage, at the end of a damp, mossy lane, was five miles from Mountcannon and had lain derelict for fifteen years. Wooden boards crisscrossed the fractured windows, protecting the place from people less determined than Duke Rawlins. His hands tore at the rotting frame, pulling free parts of the brittle timber. Within minutes he was climbing through the back window into a dark, cramped kitchen. He breathed in the stale air, then worked on the rusted door latch, finally pushing the door open to the breeze.
He moved through the house, shining his torch over mahogany furniture, ragged net curtains and religious pictures, crooked on floral walls. The bedrooms were small and dark, barely lit by the tiny windows. A tarnished picture frame lay upturned on a sideboard. A strip along the centre of the photograph had been bleached white, where a gap in the boards had let shafts of sunlight through the window. He picked up the frame and slid out the photograph, letting it float to the floor. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out one to replace it. Uncle Bill stood in a faded XL denim shirt and jeans, his right arm extended. The sun was setting behind him and glowed orange, catching his brown hair and full beard. His left thumb was hooked into a brown leather belt that was too tight for his vast stomach. His smile was broad. Solomon sat on a bow perch next to him, one foot raised. Sheba was swooping through the air, poised to land on Bill’s gloved hand and collect her prize.
