Black Rabbit Summer

  Sorry about that, Pete, Stella said, nodding at the security guy. I didn’t know it was you. She flicked back her perfect blonde hair and smiled at me again. How are you, anyway? You look GREAT… God, I haven’t seen you for –

  Raymond? I said, looking into his eyes. Are you OK?

  He nodded.

  Come on, I told him. Let’s get out of here.

  Hold on, Stella said to me, what do you think you’re doing?

  I just looked at her.

  She glanced at Raymond, gave him a squeeze, then looked back at me. Ray’s with me tonight, she said with a smile. I’m showing him how to have fun. You’re welcome to join us, if you want.

  No, thanks.

  Raymond was beginning to look uncomfortable now. I could see the growing fear in his eyes, the anxiety, the confusion. It was almost as if he’d only just realized where he was and what he was doing.

  Come on, Raymond, I said quietly. I’ll buy you a hot dog.

  He flicked a quick glance at Stella, then started to move away from her. She tightened her grip on his shoulder and pulled him back.

  What’s the matter? she said to him. Don’t you LIKE me any more?

  He grinned awkwardly at her.

  She smiled at me.

  It was at that point that I’d glanced at the guys with the camera and the microphone, and as I sat there watching myself now, it was a really disquieting experience. Just for a moment, as my eyes looked right at the camera, I was watching myself watching myself. The fairground Pete Boland; the interview-room Pete Boland. Something white. Then and now. Something sad. Joined together. In and out of time…

  And suddenly I was hearing Raymond’s voice in my head. I mean, we don’t live in the past, do we? And we don’t live in the future. So that only leaves the present. But when’s the present? When IS now? How long does it last? A second, half a second… a millionth of a second? You can’t just be alive in a millionth of a second, can you? It doesn’t make sense.

  None of it made any sense to me.

  I turned my attention back to the screen and saw myself walking up to Stella and stopping right in front of her. I looked at her for a moment, then leaned forward and spoke quietly into her ear, so no one else could hear what I was saying.

  And no one could.

  ‘Turn it up, Terry,’ DI Barry told Gallagher, leaning in towards the screen as Stella whispered back to me.

  Gallagher pressed the volume control, but Stella had already stopped whispering to me, and the two of us were just standing there – Stella smiling coldly at me, while I just looked back at her. As I watched us watching each other – in a crackle of full-volume silence – I saw again the mocking emptiness in Stella’s joyless eyes. It was the look of a girl who truly believed she was the only worthwhile thing in the world.

  After a second or two, the screen-Stella started speaking again, her voice booming out too loudly from the speakers.

  YOU’RE GOING TO WISH YOU HADN’T DONE THIS.

  AM I? I heard myself roar.

  She smiled. YOU’VE GOT NO IDEA…

  Gallagher pressed the volume control again, trying to turn it down, but he must have hit the wrong button or something, because all at once the speakers in the interview room made a horrible crackling noise, and just for a moment the soundtrack became strangely distorted. The background noise of the fairground got louder and more muffled, booming dully like underwater explosions, and the babbling chatter of the crowds seemed to phase in and out of time, like some kind of weird choral nightmare. I watched, entranced, as the screen shimmered, the picture faded, the brightness dulled… and then suddenly the speakers crackled loudly again – a big crashing sound – and everything was back to normal. The music, the lights, the crowds, the rides…

  Stella and Raymond.

  I watched as she laughed and took her arm from his shoulder. I was only looking after him for you, she said to me. You can have him back now. She glanced at Raymond. All right?

  He nodded at her.

  Go on, then, she told him. Go and get yourself a hot dog.

  As I watched Raymond look at me, I suddenly felt really tired again. I was too hot, too sweaty. My body was aching all over, my head was buzzing with too much of everything. I wanted to reach out to the screen and say something to Raymond, something helpful and reassuring, but I knew it was pointless. He wasn’t there any more. He wasn’t there, he wasn’t here…

  I watched myself step over and take Raymond by the arm. The camera stayed on us for a while as I quietly led him away, and then it lost interest in us, sweeping away over the crowds, blurring the lights against the dark sky, before finally re-focusing on Stella. She was staring after us, watching us go – her eyes cold, her mouth cruel and ugly, her jaw clenched tight.

  Gallagher stopped the tape.

  The silence was overwhelming for a few seconds, and all I could do was stare at Stella’s face on the screen, frozen in its cruelty, and wonder what was inside her head at that moment. What was she thinking in that millionth of a second? What was I thinking? What was Raymond thinking?

  ‘What did you say to her?’ Barry said quietly.

  I looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Stella… when you were whispering to her. What did you say?’

  ‘I told her to stop fucking about with Raymond.’

  Barry nodded. ‘Is that what you thought she was doing – fucking about with him?’

  ‘I know that’s what she was doing.’ I looked at him. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, you just saw her – she was playing with him, laughing at him…’

  ‘How do you think Raymond felt about that?’

  ‘He told me afterwards that he didn’t care. He said he knew she was taking the piss, but it didn’t really bother him.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  Barry shrugged. ‘It seemed to bother you quite a lot.’

  ‘So?’

  He smiled. ‘I’m not criticizing you, Peter. I think you’re probably right – I think she was fucking him about. And I think you had every right to be angry about it. I would have been angry too. And if I was Raymond, I think I would have been really angry.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but you’re not Raymond, are you?’

  He looked at me for a long time then, staring thoughtfully into my eyes, but I was too tired to do anything about it. I just looked back at him, letting him think whatever he wanted. Eventually he took a breath, looked down at the table, and almost immediately looked back up at me again. ‘What did Stella say to you when you told her to stop fucking about with Raymond?’

  ‘ “Or else what?” ’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s what she said – Or else what?’

  ‘What do you think she meant by that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you think she was threatening you?’

  ‘I didn’t think anything.’

  Barry glanced across at the picture of Stella’s face still frozen on the screen. ‘She doesn’t look very happy, does she?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  Barry looked back at me. ‘Why didn’t you say anything about this before?’

  ‘I told my dad that I’d spoken to Stella.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him that you’d seen her with Raymond, though, did you? And you didn’t say anything about it when DS Kesey spoke to you either.’

  ‘Kesey never asked me about it.’

  Barry shook his head. ‘Didn’t you think it might be important? Raymond’s missing, Stella’s missing, her clothes have been found, her bloodstained clothes… and you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t mention anything about meeting the two of them together at the fair because no one asked you?’ He stared accusingly at me. ‘It’s a pretty poor excuse, Peter.’

  He was right, of course. It was a poor excuse, and there wasn’t much I could say to make it any better. So I didn’t say anything.

  Barry stared at me
for a second, then he did his looking-down-at-the-table-then-looking-up thing again. I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to achieve, but I guessed he knew what he was doing.

  ‘Had you been drinking?’ he asked me.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Before you met Stella.’

  ‘Yeah, a bit.’

  ‘How much is a bit?’

  ‘I don’t know… I suppose I was slightly drunk.’

  Barry smiled. ‘Slightly drunk?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What about Raymond? Was he slightly drunk too?’

  I shook my head. ‘He didn’t have much to drink.’

  ‘What about drugs?’ Barry said. ‘Did either of you take any drugs?’

  I was acutely aware of Mum sitting beside me now, and I desperately wanted to say no – no, of course we didn’t take any drugs, absolutely not… but there was something about the way Barry was looking at me that made me think he already knew. He knew we’d been drinking, and he knew we’d been smoking dope too. And I really didn’t want to let him catch me out in any more lies.

  So, forcing myself not to look at Mum, I said, ‘I had a couple of puffs on a joint, that’s all. But Raymond didn’t touch it.’

  ‘A couple of puffs?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing stronger?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who had the cannabis? I mean, where did it come from?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Was it yours?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Whose was it then?’

  ‘I don’t know… one of the others must have brought it. I can’t remember.’

  ‘One of the others?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So that’d be either Paul Gilpin, Eric Leigh or Nicole Leigh? Is that right?’

  I shrugged.

  He looked at me, nodding his head. ‘All right… well, we’ll leave that there for now. But I think –’

  ‘Is this going to take much longer?’ Mum said suddenly.

  Barry looked at her. ‘We’ve only just started, Mrs Boland.’

  ‘In that case, I think Pete needs a break. He’s had a tough time over the last few days, and he hasn’t been getting much sleep. Is there somewhere we can go for a cup of tea?’

  Barry looked at me. ‘Do you want a break, Peter?’

  There was nothing I wanted more than a break, but I knew that would mean talking to Mum about things, and I really didn’t feel like talking about those kinds of things right now.

  ‘I’m all right, Mum,’ I told her. ‘I’d rather just get it all over with, if that’s OK with you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you want them to get you a drink or something?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. I mean, if you want a cup of tea…’

  She shook her head.

  Barry said, ‘So we’re all OK to carry on?’

  Mum nodded.

  Barry looked at me. ‘Peter?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good.’ He turned to Gallagher and nodded. Gallagher reached down to the bag at his feet and pulled out a large plastic evidence bag. He placed the bag on the table in front of me. ‘For the benefit of the tape,’ Barry said, ‘I’m now showing the witness a yellow rucksack that was recovered from Raymond Daggett’s back garden.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you recognize this, Peter?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s mine.’

  ‘Can you tell me what it was doing in Raymond’s garden?’

  ‘I left it there on Saturday night, before we went to the fair.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The bottle of wine was in it, the one I stole from Dad. I didn’t want Mum to see it when I left the house, so I put it in the rucksack. When I got to Raymond’s, I left the rucksack in his shed.’

  ‘It wasn’t in the shed when we found it.’

  ‘I know –’

  ‘What time did you get to Raymond’s on Sunday morning?’

  ‘About six thirty –’

  ‘And what did you see when you got there?’

  My voice trembled a little as I told him what I saw – the blood on the ground, Black Rabbit’s head impaled on the gate, the smashed-up hutch in the garden, the bits and pieces scattered around the shed doorway, the headless remains of Black Rabbit…

  ‘That must have been quite upsetting for you,’ Barry said.

  ‘Yeah, it was.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who might have done it?’

  ‘No.’

  He nodded. ‘Did you touch anything while you were there?’

  ‘Yeah, the gate. I opened the gate. But I used my elbow.’

  ‘Did you touch anything else?’

  ‘No… I was sick before I went through the gate.’

  ‘Sick?’

  ‘I threw up.’

  ‘Right… but once you’d gone through the gate, you didn’t touch or move anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK.’ He turned to Gallagher again and held out his hand. Gallagher reached down to the bag and brought out two more evidence bags, small ones this time. He gave them to Barry and removed the rucksack from the table. Barry placed the two clear envelopes on the table in front of me. ‘For the benefit of the tape,’ he repeated, ‘I’m now showing the witness two items found in a recently recovered article of clothing that is believed to belong to Stella Ross.’ He looked at me. ‘Have you seen either of these two items before, Peter?’

  I was already studying one of the objects in front of me. In fact, I was more than just studying it, I was mesmerized by it. It was a pebble – a shiny black pebble. Round and flat, about the size of a £2 coin, it was the kind of pebble that’s perfect for skipping across rivers. It was a beautiful thing – glossy and smooth, shiny and black – but the most astonishing thing about it, and the reason I couldn’t take my eyes off it, was the strange little stick-figured picture that had been painstakingly scratched into its surface. It was a picture of a rabbit. The crude simplicity of the etching somehow gave the natural perfection of the stone a weird kind of extra dimension, an extra beauty, and although I’d never seen Raymond scratching a picture into the surface of a pebble, I just knew it was the kind of thing he’d do. Find a pebble, clean it up, scratch a little picture on it…

  Swallowing hard, I turned my attention to the other object.

  It wasn’t quite so mesmerizing as the pebble – just a shortish length of fine gold chain, the chain of a necklace. A broken necklace. There wasn’t anything distinctive about it – no charms, no markings – but it somehow seemed vaguely familiar. I didn’t know why. There was just something about it, something that reminded me of something…

  ‘Well?’ said Barry.

  ‘What?’ I said quietly, staring at the pebble again.

  ‘Have you seen them before?’ Barry asked.

  ‘No…’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I nodded. ‘What are they?’

  ‘They were found in the coin-pocket of Stella’s shorts. Are you absolutely certain you’ve never seen them before?’

  ‘I’ve never seen them.’

  ‘Have you ever been in Raymond’s bedroom?’

  I looked up at him. ‘What?’

  ‘His room, Raymond’s bedroom. Have you ever been in it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just answer the question, Peter.’

  ‘Well, yeah… I’ve been in his room. Not recently, though…’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  ‘I don’t know… years ago, when we were little kids.’

  ‘How little?’

  I shrugged. ‘Six, seven years old… something like that. Raymond’s parents started getting a bit funny about things around then… they didn’t like other people being in the house. So whenever I went round to Raymond’s after that we spent most of our time in his garden.’ I glanced at the pebble again, then looked up at Barry. ‘What’s this got to d
o with anything?’

  ‘This pebble,’ he said, tapping the plastic envelope, ‘it’s very similar to a number of other pebbles we found in Raymond’s room. Same colour, same size, same markings.’ He looked at me. ‘It also has Raymond’s fingerprints on it.’

  ∗

  I found it really hard to concentrate after that. DI Barry didn’t say anything else about the pebble or the necklace, he just started asking me all about Saturday night again, and I started telling him what he wanted to know… but I was only semi-conscious of what I was saying. Half of me was just opening my mouth and letting the words come out – I did this, we did that, I don’t know, yes, I think so – while the other half, the inside half, was thinking about Raymond’s pebbles. Why didn’t I know about them? Why hadn’t he told me about them? And why had he given one to Stella? I mean, it wasn’t hard to imagine him doing it… smiling shyly, mumbling awkwardly… you don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to… I mean, I know it’s a bit… well, you know… I mean, if you don’t like it… and it was easy enough to imagine Stella taking the pebble from his hand… looking at it, maybe laughing at it, then stuffing it carelessly into her pocket.

  But why?

  And why hadn’t he given one to me?

  I would have really liked one of those pebbles… I could have kept it next to my porcelain rabbit on top of the chest of drawers. But then maybe, I thought, maybe Raymond only gave the rabbit-pebbles to people he didn’t like? Maybe they were some kind of bad-luck charm, something he gave to people who’d pissed him off. Or maybe…

  No, I didn’t want to think about that.

  The pebble meant nothing.

  Just like everything else.

  Stella means star.

  The star’s going out tonight…

  Stella’s going out…

  None of it meant anything.

  ∗

  By the time I’d finished telling Barry about Saturday night, and Gallagher had written it all down, and I’d read through what he’d written, and I’d watched Mum read through it all, and I’d signed it at the bottom of each page… by the time I’d done all that, I’d just about had it. I was drained, exhausted, sick of talking, sick of sitting in that dull white room, sick of everything. I’d told Barry a lot more than I’d told anyone else – mainly, I think, because I was too busy thinking about Raymond to concentrate on lying – but there was still quite a lot that I hadn’t told him. Wes Campbell, for instance. And Nicole’s behaviour in the den, and afterwards at the fair, and almost everything that Raymond had said to me that night. I’d told Barry about the fortune-teller, which he seemed to find pretty interesting, but I didn’t go into any detail about what she’d said. I’d even told him about the guy with the moustache. But when Barry had asked me what he looked like, and where I’d seen him, and why I thought he was worth mentioning, my answers were so vague that Barry had stopped listening after a few seconds.