The Killing Woods Page 18

  And about how she’d said something to me that had made me angry? What about that?

  About how I’d found this collar?

  It’s like something has unbolted in my brain: it started after talking to Emily on the Leap. It’s like I’ve widened a door and everything’s whooshed inside: all these images and mixed-up thoughts. I go back to the picture.

  ‘The police will think I chased Ashlee to Shepherd, ‘ I say. ‘They’ll look at this picture and think it’s my fault she was there!’

  Mack stares at the rabbits. ‘But you walked her back to her shortcut. Remember! That’s what you told them.’

  ‘I don’t remember it, not one bit. I don’t even remember the Game finishing. I was too drunk, Mack, and you know it!’

  I’m thinking about being in that hollow. Fooling around with Ashlee. I’m thinking about how much dust she’d given me. I wouldn’t have even been able to walk straight, let alone walk her back to her shortcut.

  Mack reaches towards the bench, grabs the skinning knife. ‘You walked her back,’ he says firmly, waving the knife at me. ‘You’re a fool if you say anything different.’

  I’m touching the collar in my pocket, wrapping it round my fingers. I’m thinking ’bout how I just knew this collar was inside that tree. I should tell Mack about that too.

  ‘Give it me back,’ I say.

  But Mack holds Shepherd’s picture away from me. ‘Listen, Damo, no one except you is going to look at this picture and see the Game in it. Seriously. Not even Emily Shepherd!’

  He’s staring at me.

  ‘Then why did she show me?’ I say.

  ‘I dunno! ’Cause she’s trying anything? She’s desperate? She wants you to go to the police and get the heat off her dad?’

  He grabs me round the back of my neck, which feels weirdly soothing, like how a cat would pick up its kittens.

  ‘You’ve got to stop this,’ he says. ‘Shepherd has admitted. And whatever you do, or don’t, remember it won’t make any difference now.’ He squeezes the back of my neck until I look at him. ‘You’re a good person, Damo. The best! If your first thought was that you walked her back, then you walked her back. You don’t lie.’ He leans closer, his eyes pleading. ‘Go home and chill. If Emily Shepherd goes to the police, she goes to the police. You’ll be all right, I mean it.’

  He lets go of my neck. But I don’t feel all right; I don’t feel like the best. And I am someone who lies. I’m remembering Emily’s intense gaze, the words she’d said to me on the Leap: you were the last person to see her alive . . .

  ‘You know, she could think it’s me,’ I say. ‘It’s possible. Emily Shepherd could think it’s me that did everything.’ I choke on air as this thought sets in. ‘She could think her dad drew this picture as some kind of, I dunno, like a warning or something . . . if she tells the police that, if she convinces them I’m in that picture and so’s Ashlee, and that I’m chasing her, then . . .’

  In one quick movement, Mack takes the skinning knife and slices the picture.

  ‘That is crazy,’ he says, scrunching the two sides into tight balls. ‘Don’t you even think that! It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.’

  He’s so determined, I shut right up. He aims the bits of the picture at the sink. One goes in, one doesn’t.

  ‘Stop going mad,’ he says. ‘You know what’s true. Shepherd wanted to kill her – he’s been charged for it.’ His eyes hold on to mine. ‘It’s not the army you’ll end up in if you keep up with all this, Damo, it’s a loony bin.’

  He walks round the other side of the bench, then pulls one of the rabbits towards him like the conversation is over. He makes a cut at the back of its neck, starts ripping the fur away. I flinch like an idiot. He’s trying to act normal, I know he is, he’s trying to act like it’s a normal Saturday and we’re doing normal things, but the pulse in his temples is beating stronger now, and he’s doing the skinning too fast and rough. He’s ruining that pelt.

  Maybe I am just going mad. Maybe Emily Shepherd is just trying to set me up. Or maybe there is something else. Is it Mack who’s not saying something? Not wanting to believe it? He’s got the knife clasped in his hand so tight his fingers are white round it.

  I think about that animal path. The bunker in the middle between the hollow and Ashlee’s track. I think about Shepherd watching us all those months ago.

  ‘Why did he even draw it?’ I say. ‘Why did he even watch?’

  Mack stops pulling the skin over the rabbit’s shoulders. ‘He didn’t!’

  Ed turns over on the couch then, and we’re both quiet. There’s so much I got to say, but I see now Mack’s not going to listen. He’s hellbent on sticking to that story I threw them the morning after.

  ‘I didn’t walk her back to that track,’ I say, quieter this time, watching Ed bury his head into a cushion.

  ‘You didn’t do anything bad either!’ The knife – wet from the rabbit – is waving in Mack’s hand. He holds it up towards me as he speaks. ‘If you even start thinking you’ve done anything, you’ve ruined yourself. Your life’s over. Good as. You wouldn’t be able to live with it. No one in the army’s going to let you in with doubt like that. Don’t you see?’

  And I wonder, for a second, whether this is just about the army, whether it’s just about us serving together someplace – staying brothers for always, teammates. Mack chucks the ruined rabbit into the sink on top of the ball of Shepherd’s sketch. I watch rabbit blood seep into the paper.

  ‘You know what this is?’ Mack says quietly. ‘It’s grief. Sadness!’ He nods at me. ‘I get it! I understand why you feel guilty. You brought Ashlee into our Game, you were the one who was meant to look out for her . . . but mate!’

  I look away, my eyes hot and weird-feeling.

  ‘Mate, sometimes things happen that we can’t control.’ He moves his head so I’m looking at him again. His eyes look red and sore too. ‘Damo, we can’t always be everywhere.’ His voice is lowered, and serious. ‘Sometimes people do their own thing and sometimes you can’t do nothing about it. This isn’t your fault.’

  ‘I could’ve done something,’ I say. ‘I could’ve . . .’

  ‘You’re a good person, mate. I’m looking out for you. And I know you just need to sleep. That’s all.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Everything about me is aching, though, wants to be lying down. My stomach is a hollow, hungry hole. Over on the couch, Ed mumbles something. Mack walks over to him and digs into one of his coat pockets. ‘You go back to sleep and all,’ he says.

  When Mack comes back he’s holding out one of Ed’s joints, fat and a little squashed and fragrant. ‘This help?’ he says. ‘Or I got some sleeping pills somewhere too, or some of my dad’s antidepressants? Booze? Or Ed’s other stuff? Walking pharmacy, me!’

  I almost grin. Because this is the old Mack; it’s not the Mack I just been seeing right through, who I know is almost as worried as me. But I still got my hand on that collar in my pocket and a hundred questions in my head.

  ‘You did what you said,’ Mack repeats. ‘Even if Emily Shepherd goes to the police, it’ll be all right.’

  I don’t hold his gaze.

  I wonder what he really thinks of me. What he believes. Maybe, like me, he just doesn’t know any more.

  So I take the joint. Because now I got an idea how I could use it.

  37

  Emily

  The closer I get to our lane the worse I feel. I start to run. It was different, in that bunker, being so near to Damon with no one else there, watching him shiver, having his arm around me. It had felt like I’d needed to show him that sketch. Now, the further I’m away from him, the more I’m not so sure.

  What have I done?

  I slam open the wooden gate to our lane, hear it bash against a tree trunk, bash into the thoughts in my head too. The thoughts that say – so what if Dad drew Ashlee as a deer? So what if he’d seen her in these woods before that night? Even this doesn’t make him a
killer. It just makes him someone who liked to draw people as animals, like he’s always been. It makes him someone who watched. Who waited.

  Why didn’t I think this through before? Why does my mind jump around so much with what it believes?

  Again, Joe’s mum sees me coming and ushers me into their kitchen, rubs a teatowel or a towel or something up and down me to get me dry.

  ‘You’re soaking,’ she says. ‘Where’ve you been? The woods? Does your mum know?’

  And I’m nodding and I’m trying to evade her. Because I’m looking for Joe, and I’m already moving for the hall.

  ‘He’s not here, love,’ she says.

  And that stops me.

  ‘I thought he was with you, to be honest,’ she adds.

  I must look really confused because his mum comes towards me again and wraps an arm around my shoulder. ‘Why don’t you wait for him upstairs? Stay and get warm at least?’

  And I don’t have any other options right now apart from go home and explain to Mum about the mess I just got myself in. I hear Joe’s dad and Finn in the living room, singing songs, but they don’t come out. I wonder if Damon gets this too, people avoiding him. I wonder what he’s doing with that sketch.

  I’m grasping on to the banister, pulling myself up so fast I’m tripping on the stairs. It’s Joe’s fault I showed Damon that sketch. It’s Joe’s fault because he didn’t listen to me this morning, and I got mad. It’s Joe’s fault because he’s meant to be my friend and now everything’s changed.

  And where is he anyway?

  As I try Joe’s phone again, I pick through things in his room. On his bookshelf I see a ticket stub from when we went to the cinema months ago and saw that dumb sci-fi film. I find a note I passed him in class. When I flip through his half-done homework, I see the games of Hangman we’d played on the sides of his exercise books. We’d done all this when we’d been proper friends, months ago. Why didn’t I just make Joe listen to me?

  ‘I’m waiting in your room,’ I say into his voicemail this time. ‘You need to tell me what’s going on. And I need to tell you.’

  I’m sick of secrets. Sick of not knowing what everyone is thinking – not knowing the whole of it. I slump into Joe’s desk chair and my hand is in a fist before I realise, pressing into the desk. His computer screen comes back on with a jolt. Investigations should be about interviewing every single person who ever knew anything about the victim, putting it together in some genius, objective machine that calculates the right story. Maybe we’d get to the truth then. Or maybe there would still be secrets lurking someplace, dark cracks through it all?

  I thump my fist on the desk, and the screen shakes. It’s strange that Joe’s left his computer on – wherever he’s gone, he must have gone in a rush. I start clicking on things. If I sit here any longer, just waiting for Joe, I’ll go mad. I need something to do. Because, right now, I want to get in a taxi and go to Dad’s prison and apologise, talk and talk. I want to go to Damon’s house and get that sketch back.

  I click into Joe’s photo programme. I’ve seen most of Joe’s photos before, but never all of them. And I need to think about something else – see something else – something other than that sketch. Something other than Damon’s shaking lips in the bunker, the way his eyes had darted to mine. I need to calm my mind before it panics big time – before I start thinking I’ve just done the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.

  But Joe has hundreds of photos of Darkwood on here, so my mind isn’t going anywhere new. I flick through picture after picture. Joe really is obsessed, capturing the trees in all the different seasons, day and night. His pictures make the woods look powerful and mysterious and huge, like the woods in Dad’s bedtime stories.

  There are a couple of photos of the bunker too. My hand quivers over the mouse as I look at them. I’ve never shown Joe the bunker, though I have told him about it. Did he follow me there to find it? Follow Dad? In these photos the entrance lid is open, and the hole looks like a dark pit. Joe could have sold these shots to the papers. I shift on his desk chair, suddenly uncomfortable. Why would Joe hide this from me? What else has he hidden?

  I’m curious now. So I start to go through every folder, even the trash, which has hundreds more shots of trees and leaves. And that’s where I find it: a photo of me. I’m side on, face serious, the shot taken a little distance away. I’m going through the gate from the lane into Darkwood, maybe I’d been going to collect Dad. As I keep clicking through, I see more shots of me in the trees, all of them shadowy, half in focus. And I’m swallowing hard now and trying not to chuck the computer keyboard across the room – because I don’t know when Joe took all these photos. And because there’s a photo of Dad here too. In it, he’s curled forwards, crouching in the woods. His head is bowed towards a pile of dried branches. He looks empty, totally alone, like a hollowed out tree trunk hit by a storm.

  Joe took these shots without ever asking either of us?

  I click through more photos of dark, overgrown passages through the woods. But there’s no more shots of me or Dad or the bunker. Maybe they were one-offs. Could he have snapped them when he’d been with us after all?

  I stop on another picture.

  At first I think it’s of me again, but the girl in this picture is taller and curvier, the sun glints gold on her hair. I gasp, can’t help it. This time it’s Ashlee Parker who is slipping through the trees. And it looks like she’s unaware of her picture being taken too.

  I stare for ages. What is she doing there? Why is Joe watching? The next shot makes me breathe in harder. Because, in this photo, Ashlee Parker is posing, staring into the lens and leaning forward. Her lips are parted slightly and her eyelids are half closed like she’s trying to copy some sort of sexy model pose, like she’s trying to look seductive. Her eyes glint, sparkly make-up smeared around them. She looks sexy and confident – like a kind of bad girl rockstar – not like the Ashlee Parker at school.

  How has Joe got this shot? Why?

  My hand is shaking as I try to move the mouse around the screen, as I furiously try to find the date that these photos were taken. I click on info and see it: June, not long before we broke up for the summer holidays, two months before Ashlee died, round about the time Joe got dropped from the cross-country team. I click through the rest of the photos, but there are no more of Ashlee. No more of me or Dad either. No more of the bunker.

  I go back to that close-up of Ashlee. I’ve seen so many pictures of Ashlee Parker in these past few weeks, but there have been none that look like this. Strangely, the picture of her that seems closest is Dad’s sketch – where she’s half wild deer. I gaze at her, I’m practically willing her to open her mouth and talk. Tell me what happened – that’s what I’d ask – tell me what happened that night. Tell me why Joe has this picture of you!

  There are bits of twigs and ivy threaded through her hair, mud on her cheeks. If it weren’t for her stylish signature scarf draped around her neck, she could have stepped from some survival film.

  I grab my phone, start ringing Joe again. Looking at this photo is making me nervous. Because now I’m sure that Joe is hiding something, something big. Because suddenly it feels as if I don’t know him at all. But as soon as his phone starts to ring this time, his bedroom door is opening and there he is, inside this room and walking towards me.

  ‘I got your message,’ he says, all in a rush. ‘I tried to wait for you earlier, but . . .’

  And I want to know where he’s been, and I want to ask him, but now that he’s here, so tall and right in front of me, I can’t find my words. I stumble up from the desk as he steps closer.

  ‘Emily? What’s wrong?’

  Joe’s frowning, looking around. It’s not long before he sees what is open on his computer screen. I watch his face turn pale.

  ‘I can explain that,’ he says quickly. ‘That’s what I’ve just been telling the police about. All of it.’

  38

  Damon

  As I
round the corner to our street I see there’s a cop car parked outside where our flat is, and I freak then – really do – because even though I know I got to go to the cops with all this stuff in my brain, I know I’m not ready for it yet. Because maybe this means that Emily’s done it instead. Can cops move this fast? Could they be looking for me already?

  I skid to a stop and back up against some shop window. I breathe in cold air, feel the sting in my throat. Maybe they’ve been tracking me, seeing where I been going and how I been acting. I start shivering all over, still not proper warm from earlier. My stomach is empty as fuck.

  I rub my hands over my eyes. I know what this is: the cops just want to fill me in on the case, that’s all. They’re probably even DC Kalu and DC West – the ones who interviewed me; the ones who’ve been checking in with me pretty regular. They just want to keep me informed about how everything is going. But they’ve never arrived in a regular cop car before.

  I pull Ed’s joint Mack gave me from behind my ear and stick it in my pocket instead. I can’t think about that yet. But soon . . .

  A crowd of kids dressed as zombies stalk past me then, jolting me, talking about some party they’ve got going on tonight. I move round them and out on to the pavement so I can look up at our kitchen window. Mum’s not at it. She’ll be in the living room instead, offering the detectives tea and saying I’ll be back soon. And I want to be back soon. I want to be back in my flat with no police there, asleep to everything. And I almost do it . . . almost just keep walking to the door and buzz the bell: I could just tell Mum where I been and what I been doing. This could be a chance, these cops being here. I could go inside and straighten out everything in my head. It could all be OK like Mack says.

  I could also write my own prison sentence.

  I need to be sure before I go through those cop station doors. I need to remember. Everything.

  I hesitate, watching those zombie kids ’til they go round the corner. What kind of idiot tells the police the stuff that’s going round his head?