Black Rabbit Summer

  He didn’t want feelings, he told me, he just wanted the facts.

  What happened next?

  Where did you go?

  Who did you see?

  What time was this?

  So that’s what I’d given him – the facts. Times, places, people, things… I just kept talking. Talking, talking, talking. I thought we’d finished when I got to the bit about waking up Mr Daggett after I’d found Black Rabbit’s head on the gate, but I was wrong. Barry had one more little surprise for me.

  As Gallagher wound on the video tape again, Barry said, ‘I’m sorry we’ve taken up so much of your time, Peter. And you too, Mrs Boland. And I’d like to thank you both for being so helpful.’

  He smiled at Mum. She just scowled at him. He looked back at me and continued. ‘I just want to show you something before we start going over your statement, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Mum sighed. ‘He’s had enough –’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute,’ Barry said. ‘I just need to clarify something.’

  Gallagher had stopped the tape now. The picture on the screen was a blurred shot of the ground – trampled grass, cigarette ends, litter. Then Gallagher pressed play and the image on the screen lurched upwards. The camera swung aimlessly around the fairground for a while, showing us dizzying pictures of the crowds and the lights and the rides, and then suddenly it steadied again – and now I knew where the cameraman was. He was standing near the Portaloos. I could see the rows of blue cubicles, the people going in and out… and I could see the ragged square of shadowed ground at the far end of the toilets. There was no sound on the film now, so I guessed the microphone had been switched off, and there was no sign of Stella either.

  ‘According to the timer on the camera,’ Barry said, ‘this was filmed at twenty past midnight. Stella was last seen heading off to the Portaloos about ten minutes earlier.’

  I stared at the screen, watching the camera as it panned slowly around the fairground. Then Gallagher hit the pause button, and the picture froze, and I was looking at a stuttered image of myself. I was sitting on a bench, a bottle of Vodka Reef in my hand. I was staring across at the patch of ground by the Portaloos. I looked lost – dumb and dazed, overloaded. In the background, another dazed-looking figure was standing on her own, quietly watching me from a distance. Her face was slightly blurred, and she was partly hidden behind the awning of a tent, but there was no mistaking those darkened eyes, those reddened lips… the slicked-back hair, the low-rise jeans, the flimsy little cropped white vest.

  It was Nicole.

  She was watching me.

  I leaned forward in my seat and squinted at the screen. Behind Nicole, about ten metres further back, another blurred figure was standing in the doorway of a tent. I recognized the tent. It was the fortune-teller’s tent. And there she was, Madame Baptiste, Lottie Noyce, watching Nicole as Nicole watched me, as I watched Pauly, as Pauly went after Eric and Campbell…

  And now here I was, sitting in this silent white room, watching it all over again.

  ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ DI Barry said. ‘Sitting on the bench.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  Feeling bad, I thought to myself. That’s what I’m doing there. Feeling bad. I’ve forgotten what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m wondering what’s the matter with me. Why can’t I do anything right? Why can’t I do anything?

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ I told Barry. ‘I’m just sitting there, you know… I was tired. I’d been looking for Raymond. I was just taking a rest…’

  ‘You just happened to be there?’ he said. ‘Ten minutes after Stella disappeared, and you just happened to be there?’

  I shrugged. ‘Everyone’s got be somewhere.’

  Barry looked at me, unable to keep the disbelief from his eyes. But he didn’t say anything. He just nodded at Gallagher, and Gallagher pressed play again, and I watched myself stutter into life on the screen – looking at the bottle of Vodka Reef in my hand, knowing that I shouldn’t drink it, that it wouldn’t do me any good, but not seeming to have any choice. I didn’t have any choice. The bottle just lifted itself to my mouth, tipped itself up, and the next thing I knew it was empty.

  I carefully put it down.

  Burped sweetly.

  And closed my eyes.

  The screen went blank.

  Twenty

  Mum didn’t say anything to me as DC Gallagher escorted us out of the interview room and led us down to reception. She didn’t look at me either. And as we followed Gallagher along the corridors and down the stairs, I wondered what she was thinking. Was she angry with me? Was she concerned? Was she shocked? Disappointed? There was no way of telling from the look on her face, but I didn’t think I’d have to wait very long to find out. Before we’d left the interview room, DI Barry had started arranging for someone to drive us home, but Mum had told him not to bother.

  ‘Thanks all the same,’ she’d told him, ‘but we’ll make our own way back. We’ve got a few things to do first anyway.’

  And I was pretty sure that those ‘things to do’ consisted mostly of talking to me.

  As we passed through the security doors into reception, Gallagher stopped by the open door and nodded towards the exit.

  ‘If you go through those glass doors and turn right,’ he told us, ‘that’ll take you out on to Westway.’

  I glanced at him, surprised at the squeakiness of his voice, and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t actually heard him speak until now. He’d been with us since ten o’clock that morning, and it was just gone two o’clock now. Four hours, and he’d never said a single word. Mind you, I thought to myself, if I had a voice like that, I wouldn’t say very much either.

  ‘All right?’ he squeaked at me.

  ‘Yeah, thanks,’ I told him, trying not to smile.

  As we started heading towards the glass doors, I could see that Mum was trying to keep a straight face too, and just for a moment everything felt OK. Mum was Mum again – the Mum I knew. The Mum who made me laugh at things I shouldn’t really laugh at – like men in bad wigs, or women in stupid clothes, or tough-looking policemen who talked like Mickey Mouse – and I knew if I’d looked at her then, we would have both started giggling like idiots. And that would have been fine with me. But just as I was about to look at her, something else caught my attention.

  The glass doors had opened and four figures were entering the reception area. Two of them were uniformed constables, the other two were Eric and Nic.

  They both looked pale and anxious – their heads bowed down, their eyes fixed worriedly to the floor – and neither of them noticed me at first. They were being led over to the reception desk on our left, while Mum and me were heading in the opposite direction, towards the doors, and for a moment or two it looked as if Eric and Nic weren’t going to notice me at all. Which would have been OK with me, because I had no idea what I was going to do if they did see me. Should I say something? Was I allowed to say anything? What should I say?

  But even as I was thinking about it, I saw Nic raise her head and look over at us. Her eyes widened as she suddenly recognized me, and almost immediately Eric sensed her reaction and he looked over at me too. I smiled awkwardly and nodded at them. Nic smiled back – just as awkwardly – but Eric was too tense to smile. All he could do was stare at me, his eyes burning with silent questions – what have you told them? did you tell them about me? did you tell them I lied to you? The intensity in his eyes transfixed me for a moment, and as I stared back at him, his face seemed to take over my mind. It was all I could see. Eric’s face. It was all there was to see. And as I gazed into it, I could see that it was changing again – shimmering, melting… the angles shifting, blurring that beautiful ugliness into something else. Only this time, it wasn’t Nicole’s face that emerged from the shimmer, it was a much more angular vision. A lean and chiselled face. Dark narrow eyes, a slightly crooked mouth, a high forehead topped
with cropped black hair…

  Wes Campbell.

  I saw trails in the air…

  My throat tightened, I couldn’t breathe.

  I smelled gas.

  A dark sweetness.

  I heard his voice: You don’t know anything. You didn’t see anything. This never happened.

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘Come on, Pete,’ I heard someone say.

  The voice sounded odd – slow and deep, thick and distorted.

  ‘Pete?’

  When I opened my eyes again, Mum was standing there staring at me, Eric and Nic were being led over to the security doors, and Eric’s face was pure Eric again.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mum asked me.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ∗

  I was right about Mum wanting to talk to me about things, and she didn’t waste any time getting down to it. As soon as we left the station, she led me along the pavement to a little grassy area beside some office blocks and sat me down on a bench. It was one of those places with trees and flower beds where office workers spend their lunchtimes sitting out in the sun, eating ice cream and drinking Coke. It was too late for lunchtime now, though, and apart from a few empty Coke cans and a scattering of ice-cream wrappers, we had the place to ourselves.

  It was hot.

  I was sweating.

  My throat hurt.

  As the traffic on Westway streamed up and down in the heat, filling the air with a grey haze of exhaust fumes, Mum started talking to me. She said she was sorry I’d had to go through all that, and she was sorry she hadn’t done more to help me. But, she told me, she was also very concerned about some of the things she’d found out.

  ‘I know you probably don’t want to talk about it right now,’ she said, ‘and I want you to know that I’m not angry with you, and that I’m not going to give you a lecture. But nevertheless…’

  Nevertheless.

  ‘You promised me you weren’t taking drugs, Pete,’ she said sadly. ‘And I believed you.’

  I looked at her. ‘I’m not taking drugs –’

  ‘Oh, come on… you just admitted it to DI Barry. You were in that den of yours, you and the others, drinking yourselves stupid and smoking pot –’

  ‘It was only a joint, Mum. And I only had a couple of puffs. And we weren’t drinking ourselves stupid –’

  ‘Only a joint?’ Mum said. ‘You think that makes it OK?’

  ‘No, but –’

  ‘Is this something you do regularly?’

  I shook my head. ‘It was just there, you know… someone lit a joint and started passing it round, and when it came to me I just had a couple of puffs and passed it on.’ I shrugged. ‘It happens, Mum. It’s no big deal. It happens all the time. I don’t even like it, really.’

  ‘But you still smoked it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s only cannabis, Mum. I mean, it’s not like we were smoking crack or anything. It was just a bit of dope.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever try it?’

  She hesitated. ‘We’re not talking about me…’

  I smiled at her.

  She frowned at me. ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But it’s not the end of the world either. Honest, Mum… it’s nothing to worry about. I mean, I’m not stupid – I know what I’m doing. If I’m at a party or something, and someone’s passing a joint round, I might have a couple of quick puffs, but that’s it. I’d never take anything else. And I’ve never bought any drugs in my life.’ I smiled at her. ‘I’ve got enough going on in my head as it is. I don’t need to take anything to make me feel weird.’

  Mum smiled at me then, and I knew she believed what I was saying, but as her smile quickly faded and the sadness returned to her face, I realized that believing me wasn’t enough. ‘It was just so frightening,’ she said quietly. ‘When I saw you on that video… the way you looked… God, you looked awful, Pete. It was as if you weren’t there.’ She shook her head at the memory. ‘Your eyes, your face, everything about you… I don’t know. It just made me feel really sad.’

  I didn’t know what to say to her.

  What could I say?

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I said.

  She smiled at me.

  And this time her smile didn’t fade.

  We sat there for a while longer, talking about Raymond and Stella and all kinds of other stuff. We didn’t really go into any great depth about anything, and I got the impression that Mum was just keeping me talking so she could check out the state of my mind. It felt a bit odd, actually, trying to behave how I thought she wanted me to behave, but I think I convinced her that – all things considered – I was coping with things pretty well.

  ‘Right then,’ she said eventually, looking at her watch. ‘I suppose we’d better start getting home.’ She glanced across Westway. ‘There’s a taxi rank just over there –’

  ‘Would you mind if I walked back?’ I asked her.

  She looked at me. ‘On your own?’

  ‘Yeah… I mean, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Pete. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be on your own right now.’

  ‘Please, Mum,’ I said. ‘I just want to be by myself for a while. You know, clear my head, sort myself out…’ I gave her a reassuring look. ‘I’ll be fine, honest.’

  She frowned at me. ‘Honest honest?’

  I smiled. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you’ll go straight home?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, OK,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’ll be all right. I need to get some shopping anyway. I’ll walk up to the Sainsbury’s in town and get a taxi back from there.’ She reached into her handbag and pulled out her purse. ‘Here,’ she said, digging out a £10 note and passing it to me. ‘If you change your mind, or if you get too tired or anything, just call a taxi.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, pocketing the note.

  ‘Have you got your phone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘All right then. Well, I’ll see you later.’

  ‘OK.’

  I watched her head off into town, and I waved at her when she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me, and then as soon as she was out of sight I started hurrying off to the taxi rank.

  It was around three o’clock when the taxi driver dropped me off outside Eric and Nic’s place. I paid him, watched him drive away, and then I just stood there for a while, gazing up at the house. There was no sign of any movement inside. Everything felt still and empty. And, of course, I knew there was no one at home – Eric and Nic were at the police station, Mr and Mrs Leigh were still away – but as I opened the front gate and started walking up the path, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something about the emptiness of the house that just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it somehow felt as if the house was expecting someone, waiting for someone… and I didn’t think that someone was me.

  I didn’t really think it was Eric and Nic either, but that’s what I made myself believe as I stepped up to the front door and rang the bell. The house was waiting for Eric and Nic to come back, that’s all it was.

  Nothing to worry about.

  The distant ding dong of the doorbell faded to silence inside the house.

  There was no one home.

  The house was empty.

  I stepped back from the door and made my way over to a wrought-iron gate at the side of the house. I took a quick look around – glancing down the street, checking the windows of the house next door – then I opened the gate and followed a pathway round to the back of the house. The garden was as ragged and wild as it had always been – tall trees, overgrown hedges, a lawn that looked like a meadow. A bonfire was smouldering at the bottom of the garden, filling the air with a pungent smell of burning plastic and cloth.

  I stopped by the back door and w
ondered what I was doing here.

  It was hard to think.

  Hard to know.

  What are you doing here?

  I don’t know.

  What are you looking for?

  I don’t know.

  Are you looking for clues?

  I don’t know.

  How are you going to get in?

  I don’t know… but I seem to remember that Eric and Nic usually leave a spare key somewhere… under a plant pot or something.

  Why didn’t you think of that the other night?

  I don’t know. I was drunk, screwed up… I didn’t know what I was doing.

  What are you doing?

  ‘Christ, it’s hot,’ I said, wiping the sweat from my head.

  I was looking around for a plant pot now – a plant pot, a brick, a garden gnome… anything that might have a key hidden under it. But there were dozens of plant pots, hundreds of bricks, thousands of possible hiding places… it’d take me hours to check every one. And I didn’t have hours. Eric and Nic had already been at the police station for over an hour… they could be on their way back any minute.

  ‘Shit,’ I said, reaching out for the door handle.

  It was a futile gesture, the kind of thing you do when you can’t think of anything better to do, but as I grabbed the door handle and gave it what I thought was a pointless shove, there wasn’t any resistance at all.

  The door swung open.

  It wasn’t locked.

  I stood there for a second, staring stupidly at the open door, then I stepped through into the kitchen and closed the door behind me.