by Luca Veste
“Alexandra, it’s not the time to try to make me feel better.”
“I’m not,” she said, becoming more vehement by the second. “He wasn’t moving at all when that happened. It was one of the others who ended it. Not you.”
I was back in those woods, seeing his eyes as I crashed a rock onto his head. The pleading look he gave me.
Then, the memory became distorted, blurred. I placed my hands over my face as the night came back into focus. It was like I was there again. The sounds and smells. The fear and panic.
The silence.
I didn’t realize I was rocking back and forth until I felt Alexandra’s hands on my shoulders. I leaned into her, shaking my head as the memories faded and became fractured.
I wasn’t sure what was real or not anymore.
“Matt, what’s going on?”
I pulled away from her, standing up and putting some distance between us. “I’ve spent the past year believing what happened that night was my fault. That’s what I remember.”
“But it’s not true.”
“Maybe you’re not remembering it right,” I said, feeling myself calm down now. That’s all it was. She was mistaken. It was dark that night—everything was chaos and she wasn’t sure of everything that happened. “There was a lot going on.”
She shook her head sadly and glanced at the clock on the wall. “I remember it perfectly. I’m not trying to minimize any of our roles that night, and yes, if he were still alive, we’d all be in a much better position now. That doesn’t mean you’re to blame for it though. It’s not your fault Stuart is gone. Or Michelle, if she is. Or Chris and Nicola or me.”
“Why did you leave me then?”
It was a question I had never asked her—not even when she walked out the door. I had sat back and let it happen, the fight gone from me. We had spent weeks arguing about everything except for what had happened that night, but knowing that was what was central to it all.
When it had come down to it, we just couldn’t live with that knowledge between us.
“You think I left because I thought you were a murderer?”
I looked at her and shrugged my shoulders. “That’s what I’ve thought, yes.”
She blew out a breath and motioned to the seat next to her.
I waited a second and then sat down next to her. We were a foot apart, but it felt like more.
“I left because we were going to end up destroying each other if we’d stayed together. It became a toxic atmosphere. I left because I was making it worse for you, and you were making it worse for me. We were never going to make it through if we couldn’t deal with it alone. We were only making it harder on each other by being in the same environment. We couldn’t work it out in the same way as Chris and Nicola.”
“We could have made it.”
“Maybe,” Alexandra said, resignation in her voice. Maybe regret. “We’ll never know.”
I could see where the conversation could lead. A path I could take, which could change our lives again. Put us back to where we were supposed to be.
It was there in front of me.
I couldn’t take it.
Instead, I told Alexandra about meeting Mark Welsh’s dad. Who he was, how he was. How he told me about looking for a son he never knew. Waiting for closure that wouldn’t ever come. When I was done, I closed my eyes and spoke softly. “Stuart. Why did he meet that man?”
“Because he’s feeling guilty and couldn’t let it go.”
“What if there’s more to this than we first thought? What if it’s not because of what happened, but because of what he was.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Neither do I,” I said, running both hands over my head and then interlocking them behind my neck. “I just, I don’t get it. I can’t accept that the Stuart we knew would do that. It doesn’t make any sense. What if that’s because he wouldn’t do that?”
I told her about my theory. That Stuart had possibly faked his own death, how easy it would be to tattoo a body, knowing that would be used to identify someone quickly. If that body held Stuart’s ID, but he had been left unrecognizable, how easy it could be for this to work. As I spoke, I heard myself believing it less and less.
“You really haven’t been sleeping well have you?” Alexandra said when I was finished. She looked at me with kind, disbelieving eyes. “You know how crazy that sounds?”
I opened my mouth, but having voiced my thoughts, I no longer trusted what I’d been thinking in the last few hours before I’d returned home.
“I mean, let’s get this straight,” Alexandra continued, speaking softly but with no less a straight tone of voice. “You’re suggesting Stuart may have what? Faked his death because he is the person behind these candles being left?”
“Well, it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.”
“That’s because it is.”
“It would explain why Michelle hasn’t been found,” I tried, but I knew I’d lost the argument without a shot being fired. Mainly because I heard it out loud and knew it was stupid. There was something there though.
Another memory.
Stuart in an explosion of violence. A lad lying on the ground. Blood and shouting. Footsteps running away. New Year’s Eve 1999. A police investigation that didn’t get very far. No one telling the truth. A lad who sustained heavy injuries, but thankfully nothing lasting.
How close it might have been to death.
I didn’t know if I could trust my memories anymore.
“We’ve already agreed we know who is coming after us. We need to concentrate on that. I know you want Stuart to be okay, but we know he isn’t.”
“You’re right,” I said, dismissing my thoughts, my recollections, my gut feelings. I looked for my phone and tried to call Chris again. When I got nothing, I tried Nicola and Michelle, watching as Alexandra was doing the same. I messaged Chris, making it easily double figures since I’d watched him drive away.
Call me. I can help. You don’t need to be on your own.
I let my mind drift, gazing over at the clock on the wall. An ugly red thing that Alexandra had picked out and I had never liked. I kept it after she left.
Almost six o’clock
I was still looking at it as I dozed off with her head on my shoulder.
Forty
I woke up with a start, having been asleep for a couple of hours. I had been dreaming, but it faded in the early morning light.
It wasn’t the nightmare. I wondered if Alexandra being there had been the reason it hadn’t come, but I wasn’t sure. Perhaps my mind had just decided to give me a little respite.
I found my cell and gave Chris a quick call. It was early, but I still expected him to answer. It went straight to voice mail, so I sent him a message instead.
The next course of action was in my mind almost as instantly. What I needed to do next. I was annoyed with myself for not thinking about it sooner, but it had been a series of moments like those over the past week.
I left Alexandra sleeping on the sofa and walked quietly into my office. It didn’t take long to find the information I needed.
Jim Treador. The farmer who had bought William Moore’s place after he went missing. His son had sold it, which struck me as the final confirmation that he had known all along that his father was dead. Why sell it if he was just missing?
I heard movement from the living room and waited for Alexandra to appear. I turned in my chair and saw her in the doorway.
“I can’t believe we slept,” she said, yawning and stretching. While we hadn’t lived in the house together long, I still remembered her doing the same a few times. Getting up for work and finding me already in my converted dining room, a look of glee on my face, I imagined.
“You still make weird noises when you’re asleep. Like a hams
ter or guinea pig.”
“How would you know what sounds they make?”
I shrugged my shoulders and took the defeat. “The son sold the farm to a guy called Jim Treador. I’ve just found his contact information. I think he’s our best bet of finding him.”
She walked over to me and looked over my shoulder at the screen. “He wouldn’t have sold it if he thought his father was still alive.”
“That’s what I was thinking. A little later than I probably should have, but it’s been a bit of a hectic twenty-four hours.”
“What should we do then?”
I leaned back in the chair and swiveled it a few times. Picked up my phone and held it in the air. “Call him.”
Alexandra left to put the kettle on, leaving me to dial the number I’d found. A man answered after a couple of rings.
“Hi, is this Jim Treador?”
“Speaking,” a gruff voice said, the sound of traffic in the background. “I hope you’re not going to try to sell me anything.”
“No, nothing like that,” I replied, discarding lie after lie before I settled on one. “My name’s David Clarke. I work for the BBC producing documentaries.”
“Right…” Jim said, a hint of surprise and wariness in his voice. “You sure you have the right number?”
“We’re currently making a program concerning missing people,” I continued, allowing the lie to spool out and take form. “I understand you have a connection to one of our main subjects.”
“I doubt it. I don’t know anyone who is missing.”
“Ah, I was under the impression that you now own the farmland that once belonged to William Moore?”
A moment of silence followed, which I allowed to go on for a few seconds.
“Of course,” Jim said finally, his voice lower and deeper. “I was approached by his son a few months back. I felt it was only right to make sure it was kept in good hands.”
“Well, we’re hoping to bring some more publicity to the case, given it was a little overshadowed by a more high-profile one around the same time.”
“The boy from the music festival. Yes, we know all about that one.”
“Right, so that’s the main focus of the documentary—the missing persons cases that aren’t featured as prominently as they perhaps should be.”
“I’m not sure how I can help out with this.”
I paused, hesitating on how to proceed. With caution, seemed to be the best bet. “Well, we’re trying to make contact with Mr. Moore’s son, but we’re finding it a little tricky.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So we were hoping you might be able to help us out with tracking him down. He’s unaware of the documentary at this time, and we want to make sure he’s happy with his father being featured and that he has as much chance to assist as possible.”
Another period of silence. I imagined Jim standing on farmland now—a big, burly man with arms that were bigger than my entire body. I had no idea where it came from, but the image stuck. He could have been a much smaller guy, sitting in a field wearing a tweed jacket, surrounded by cows for all I knew. Behind me, I felt Alexandra’s presence again. I looked over and saw her standing in the doorway, holding a cup of tea in her hands.
“I’m not so sure about this,” Jim said, more than suspicion in his voice now. “We’ve had a few of you journalists sniffing around for the past year now.”
He said the word journalists like it was the worst insult you could say to someone. I ignored it. “Look, we have a vested interest in this project, hoping it brings a lot of publicity to cases that are overlooked.”
“And get publicity for yourselves while you’re at it, no doubt.”
“That is one of the by-products of these types of shows, I’m willing to admit,” I said, guessing correctly—I hoped—that Jim Treador valued honesty above anything else. “We want to make a show that is watched by people, talked about on social media, the subject of much discussion. That’s how this business works, after all. Word of mouth and all of that.”
“It was a shame what happened to William,” Jim said, his voice softening now. He made a tutting sound before he spoke, as if he were talking about the price of something rising, rather than someone going missing. “He wasn’t exactly well liked around here, given he didn’t talk or mix in with his neighbors. No one really knew anything about him. It was just bad timing, because of what happened to that boy. They couldn’t care less about him when they had a fresh-faced lad to concentrate on. First time I met his son was after that. He seemed a good sort, if a little quiet. Older than I’d been expecting. The house is in a right state, but that was expected. We heard William’s wife died years ago, but that was all we knew really.”
“That’s why we’re hoping to get in touch with him. I’m sure he’d like as much help to get details of his father’s story out as possible.”
“I doubt you’re doing this for nonselfish reasons though,” he said, a deeper tone coming over the phone. Mildly mocking, but a hint of menace underneath it. “Tell me, is this just another ploy to get more behind that young lad from the music thing on TV? Only, we had to deal with all kinds of underhanded stuff last year. Is this documentary going to really be about what you’re saying?”
“You have my word on that.”
“You know, I haven’t even got a TV. Couldn’t put up with the right-wing bias on your programs.”
I frowned, catching a questioning look from Alexandra. I waved it off but couldn’t hide my surprise at the political leanings of the man. I wasn’t exactly good at reading people, and it turned out I was even worse when it was just over the phone.
“I’m just asking for any help you can give to help us contact Mr. Moore’s son,” I said, trying not to sound too desperate. The more he talked, the less I was convinced he would actually tell me anything I hadn’t already heard the previous day. “I promise we will treat him with respect. If he doesn’t want to participate, then that’s our involvement over and done with.”
“Good. The guy has been through enough as it is.”
I gave a thumbs-up to Alexandra, who nodded and handed me a pen. I noted down an address and checked it over with Jim.
“That’s the forwarding address he gave me,” he said, ready to hang up now, it seemed. “I don’t have any more than that. I paid him a fair price; we dealt with it between us without any other hassle.”
I paused, then wrote down underneath the address the words paid in cash and underlined it. Pointed to it to get Alexandra’s attention.
“Thank you, Mr. Treador,” I said, looking at the place-name he’d given me. Something about it rang a bell, but I wasn’t sure what it was. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Just make sure you don’t cause any trouble for the bloke. He’s had enough of that in the past year, with his father going and leaving him behind on his own. I’ll see you.”
The phone went dead, and I turned to Alexandra. “Well, that wasn’t as difficult as I’d been expecting.”
“A TV producer?” Alexandra said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Some story, that. Where did you pull that one from?”
“I have no idea. Seemed to work though.” I picked up the address I’d written down and studied it again. “I feel like I know this for some reason. Does it ring any bells with you?”
Alexandra took it from my hand and looked it over. Tilted her head, as if that would shake free a memory, but then shook her head. “Not at all.”
I took it back from her and opened Google Maps on my computer. Put the address in and was none the wiser. “It’s about an hour from here.”
“What do we do?”
I thought about it and knew I’d already made a decision. I had no doubt Alexandra would disagree with it, but it didn’t make any difference. There was only one way out now.
Well, two, if you didn’t discard th
e more sensible idea of going to someone a little more professional.
“What’s our thinking about going to the police now?” I said, knowing the answer but needing to hear it one last time. “Do we have enough to make them see things from our perspective?”
Alexandra gave me a wearied look and leaned back against the wall. She mimicked holding a phone to her ear. “Hello, Officer? Yeah, we killed a bloke a year ago who we think is a serial killer that you don’t believe exists. Buried his body in the woods, and remember that missing lad from Brock Hope? We moved his dead body and then it disappeared. We think the serial killer’s son is now trying to get revenge on us.”
“I take your point. It doesn’t mean we couldn’t tell them a different story though.”
“Is there any version where we’re not carted off to an institution?”
I thought about it and couldn’t come up with anything. “If you need an idea about how to trick some bloke into thinking I work for the BBC, apparently that’s the only lie I have.”
“Then what do we do?”
I wanted to tell her what I was going to do, but that way would only lead to arguments and division. Instead, I picked up my phone and tried to call Chris. This time it rang a few times before it went to voice mail. I placed it back down and looked up at Alexandra. “Remember that place we stayed at in Blackpool?”
“The place we stayed one night and then came home because it was so bad?”
“Exactly,” I said, standing up and feeling the stiffness in every joint. My muscles ached, but I didn’t feel as tired as I had been. “Who would think to look for us there?”
Alexandra smiled at me, and I wanted to scream with anger at myself for lying to her.
For pretending I would be there with her.
Forty-One
It’s only an hour’s drive across the M58, north on the M6, then the M55, and Blackpool reveals itself in all its nostalgic glory. The B&B was somehow still standing. I pulled up outside, and it took us five minutes to be shown to a dingy room. It overlooked an alleyway and was possibly last redecorated in the seventies.
