Black Rabbit Summer (38 page)

The question surprised me, as I suppose it was meant to, and I found myself glancing instinctively at Mum. She looked back at me for a moment, equally surprised, then she turned to Barry.

‘If you’re going to ask questions,’ she said to him, ‘just ask them. Don’t give us all that
what would you say if I were to tell you
rubbish. Were Pete’s fingerprints found on the caravan or not?’

‘Yes, on the door handle.’

‘And you’d like to know how they got there?’

‘I would.’

‘Right, so ask him.’

Barry looked at me, trying to hide a hint of embarrassment. ‘All right, Peter. Your fingerprints were found on the door handle of Tom Noyce’s caravan. Would you like to tell me how they got there?’

It didn’t take long to explain everything: how I’d gone looking for Raymond on Sunday morning, how I’d seen the caravan down at the river and wondered if Raymond might be inside, how I’d knocked on the door and called out, and how, when
there’d been no answer, I’d tried the door. It was simple. The truth. The simple straightforward truth.

But I was pretty sure that Barry didn’t believe it.

‘Did anyone see you at the caravan?’ he said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’

‘I didn’t think it was important.’

‘Didn’t you see the blood on the caravan?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see Stella’s clothes?’

‘No.’

‘How long have you known Tom Noyce?’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘What were you doing at the fairground on Saturday when Stella Ross disappeared?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why were you sitting on that bench near the toilets? Were you waiting for someone?’

‘I’ve already
told
you –’

‘All right,’ Mum said. ‘That’s enough.’

‘What are you hiding, Peter?’ Barry said quietly.

‘He’s not answering any more questions,’ Mum said firmly, starting to get up. She looked at me. ‘Come on, Pete. We’re leaving.’

‘Sit down, please, Mrs Boland,’ Barry said.

She glared at him. ‘Is Pete under arrest?’

‘No, but –’

‘Are you going to arrest him?’

‘We’re just trying to find out –’

‘Are you going to
arrest
him?’

‘No,’ Barry sighed.

‘So he’s free to go?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Right,’ Mum said, turning to me and almost dragging me to my feet. ‘Come on, we’re going home.’

As I sat in the back of Dad’s car on the way home from the police station, all I could feel was a brain-deadening tiredness and a hopeless desire to go back in time and start all over again. I wanted to be lying on my bed again on that hot Thursday night, just as the sun was beginning to go down. I wanted to be busy doing nothing again, not caring about anything… I wanted to be happy enough doing nothing. And when the telephone rang, and I heard Mum calling out to me from downstairs –
Pete! Phone!
– I wanted to stay where I was, just lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, minding my own mindless business…

I wanted to make myself stay there.

Happy enough doing nothing.

I looked out of the car window. We were heading out of town now, heading home, and I realized that Dad was taking the long way round, so I guessed all the press reporters and TV crews were still camped out in the old factory car park. The sun was coming up, rising over the blued horizon in a blaze of burning orange, and as its tireless light streamed in through the car windows, I could already feel the first faint promise of another scorching day.

The back of my neck was sweating.

I couldn’t be bothered to wipe it.

‘Is there any news about Raymond?’ I asked Dad.

He looked at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘You might not realize it, Pete, but I’ve had more important things to think about than Raymond tonight.’ He shook his head, and his voice hardened. ‘I mean, what do you think we’ve both been doing all night? Do you think we’ve been sitting around thinking about
Raymond
?’

‘No, of course not –’

‘I’ll tell you what we’ve been doing,’ he said. ‘We’ve been trying not to panic, we’ve been trying not to imagine the worst… we’ve been ringing your mobile, ringing the police, ringing your school friends… Christ, Pete, we’ve been up all night worrying ourselves to death.
That’s
what we’ve been doing.’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘Don’t
ever
do that again. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah…’

‘And wherever you go,’ Mum added, ‘whatever you’re doing, always keep your mobile turned on.’

‘Yeah, sorry.’

‘Christ,’ Dad sighed. ‘Why can’t you just do what you’re
told
for once in your life?’

I looked at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘You told me that sometimes you have to do whatever’s necessary. You have to do what you think is right.’

‘Yes, I know –’

‘I’m only doing what I think is right.’

Dad sighed again. ‘Well, that’s as maybe…’

‘That’s what you
told
me.’

‘Yes, I know, but I didn’t tell you –’

‘Not now,’ Mum said, touching his arm. ‘Let’s just get home first, OK? We’re all tired. We need a rest. There’ll be plenty of time for talking later.’

Dad went quiet.

Mum looked at him for a moment, then she turned in her seat and smiled at me. ‘You must be hungry.’

I had no conscious intention of doing what I did next, and considering what Dad had just been telling me about how much pain and worry I’d caused, I’d like to think that it was beyond my conscience too. Or maybe I’m just making excuses. Maybe I’m just trying to kid myself that I had no control over my actions.

I don’t know.

But as the car pulled up outside our house, and Dad turned off the engine, I heard myself saying, ‘I have to go somewhere. I’m really sorry, but I’ll be all right. I just
have
to go somewhere.’

And as Mum and Dad turned round, their faces blank with disbelief, I opened the car door, stepped out, and started running.

I was perfectly aware of myself as I ran down Hythe Street and ducked into the alleyway – I could feel my tired feet slapping on the ground, I could feel the rush of air on my face, I could hear Mum and Dad shouting out after me, their voices strained with shock and desperation… and as I jumped up on to a wheelie bin and clambered over the wall into the old churchyard, I knew exactly what I was doing. I could hear Dad now, running down the street and following me into the alleyway, yelling at me to come back…

But I was gone now.

My awareness didn’t belong to me any more.

I couldn’t go back.

I had to keep running – out of the churchyard, down St Leonard’s Road, down towards the docks – I had to get where I had to go. I had to go back to the beginning and find the key to the end.

I don’t know how long it took me to get to Back Lane, but I’m pretty sure I ran all the way, and by the time I finally got there I was panting so hard and sweating so much that I could feel my body oozing out of my shoes. My legs were on fire, my arms were burning… I was sucking in so much air that it was making me feel drunk. I could feel the oxygen buzzing around in my head, making me dizzy, and for a while I thought I was going to be sick. But, strangely enough, I didn’t really mind the nauseous feeling. It felt OK… like some kind of weird, floaty sensation, as if something soft was hovering in my stomach. Like a small cloud of friendly gas.

So when I reached the point along the lane where the pathway led up to the den, I didn’t bother stopping to get my breath back, I just kept going – clambering up the bank, past the tree stump, through the brambles, up the overgrown path… until eventually I was back at the den again. Back to where it had all begun. Back to the same old brambles, the same old wooden boards, the same old faded blue roof…

Back to when? I asked myself. When
had
it all begun?

Four days ago?

Four years ago?

Four
friends
ago?

As I stepped over to the den and crept in through the door,
I wondered if that’s what it was all about. Friends. People you know. People you used to know. People you
think
you once knew, but you probably never did. You probably just knew a part of them, the part of them that was your friend. And the rest, the parts of them that you didn’t know – the twisted parts, the untrue parts, the parts you’re seeing now – well, back then you just ignored them. But now you can’t. Because now you
can
see it all, and now you know that ‘back then’ wasn’t all wonderful and innocent. It was just a time and a place, just like every other time and place. The only difference now is that the things – the people – that belonged to the old time and place aren’t here any more, and things that aren’t here any more don’t hurt any more. The only things that hurt are the things that hurt right now.

I stooped over to the far wall of the den and sat down.

The air was cool.

I could feel the sweat drying on my skin.

I looked around the den. There were no bottles left, no cigarette ends, no traces of Saturday night. It’d all be in a police laboratory now, I realized – chopped up in test tubes, sliced up under microscopes, liquidized in smart machines that whizzed round and round and analysed crap.

The right-hand wall of the den was buckled and broken, and I guessed that someone – a burly policeman, probably – had either fallen against it or given it a hefty kick. A fresh bramble stem was already beginning to creep in through the gap in the boards. It wouldn’t be long before more stems squeezed through, and then the hole would get bigger, and then more stems would squeeze through… until eventually the board would break and the brambles would take over and the whole den would start to collapse.

It wouldn’t be long.

It doesn’t matter.

A whispered voice.

It came from a placeless place somewhere in front of me, a place that somehow didn’t exist. In the middle of the den, but not in the middle of the den. Floating, but not floating, about half a metre above the ground. But the ground wasn’t there. And neither was Black Rabbit, or the fine gold necklace around his neck, or the single red flower that hung from the necklace like a pearldrop of honey-sweet blood. And Black Rabbit didn’t have Raymond’s face either. I watched in silence as Raymond blinked his shining black eyes, and a perfect red teardrop fell slowly from the flower on his necklace to the ground.

My hands were shaking as I turned on the phone, and my fingers and thumbs seemed to have doubled in size, so it took me a while to find the messages menu, and it took me even longer to key in the text, but after a lot of deleting and backspacing and swearing, I got there in the end.

This is what I wrote:

Because Eric had deleted all his texts from the phone, I had no way of knowing how he usually texted, so I had no way of knowing if
my message was sufficiently Eric-like to fool Pauly or not. I spent a few minutes trying to imagine what kind of texter Eric might be – did he abbreviate? did he use capitals? did he sign himself Eric, or E, or EL? – but I knew I was wasting my time. There was no way of guessing that kind of thing. All I could do was hope that Eric’s texts were pretty much the same as everyone else’s. Or, if they weren’t, that Pauly wouldn’t be in the right frame of mind to notice.

If the message behind my message was correct, I was pretty sure that Pauly’s frame of mind would be so messed up that he wouldn’t notice
anything.

I read through the message again, just to make sure that it couldn’t be misunderstood… then I pressed
OK
, scrolled down to
P
YG
, and hit
SEND
.

Pauly’s reply came almost immediately:

And that was it.

All I had to do now was wait.

It was a timeless fifteen minutes, and as I sat there in the cooling shade of the den, my mind drifting sleeplessly in the wooded silence, I tried to imagine how Raymond must have felt when he used to come up here on his own – sitting quietly among the brambles, breathing the warm earthy air, his eyes half closed, his head full of nothing…

Hidden away in a secret place.

No one knowing where he was…

‘Were you happy then?’ I heard myself wondering. ‘I mean,
when you came up here on your own… did it make you happy?’

I don’t know about happy…

‘But you liked it?’

It made me feel calm. I didn’t have to worry about anything.

‘What did you do in here?’

Nothing.

‘Did you think about stuff?’

No.

‘You must have thought about something.’

Why?

‘Because…’

Because what?

‘I don’t know… just because.’

You’re getting confused, Pete. You’re beginning to think you’re me.

‘I know,’ I grinned.

At least, that’s what you
think
you’re thinking. But you know what you’re really thinking about, don’t you?

‘What?’

You’re thinking about Pauly.

‘Am I?’

Yeah, you’re remembering those times when you saw him on his own and you hated him for reminding you of me, and now you’re beginning to realize that that’s why he hated me too, because I reminded him of himself. He could see himself in me. And that scared him to death.

‘I don’t understand…’

Yeah, you do. You just don’t want to admit it.

‘Admit what?’

How close everything is. Me and you, me and Nicole, Campbell and Eric, Pauly and me… we all could have been each other. I mean, if things had been just a little bit different, you could have been me, I could have been Nic, Campbell could have been Eric, Pauly could have been me –