My mind sideslipped and spun. Every step set recognition thrumming in the air around me, like Morse code beating along a frequency just too high to catch. We had run here, scrambling sure-footed down the hillside along the web of faint trails; we had eaten streaky little crab apples from the twisted tree, and when I looked up into the whirl of leaves I almost expected to see us there, clinging to branches like young jungle cats and staring back. At the fringe of one of these tiny clearings (long grass, sun-dapples, clouds of ragwort and Queen Anne's lace) we had watched as Jonathan and his friends held Sandra down. Somewhere, maybe in the exact spot where I was standing, the wood had shivered and cracked open, and Peter and Jamie had slipped away.
I didn't exactly have a plan for that night, in the strictest sense of the word. Go to the wood, have a look around, spend the night there; hope something happened. Up until that moment, this lack of forethought hadn't seemed like an impediment. After all, every time I had tried to plan anything recently, it had gone spectacularly, galactically wrong; I clearly needed a change of tactics, and what could be more drastic than going into this with nothing and simply waiting to see what the wood gave me? And I suppose it appealed, too, to my sense of the picturesque. I suppose I've always had a yearning, in spite of the fact that I am temperamentally unsuited to the role in every possible way, to be a hero out of myth, golden and reckless, galloping bareback to meet my fate on a wild horse no other man could ride.
Now that I was actually there, though, this whole thing no longer seemed quite so much like a free-spirited leap of faith. It just felt vaguely hippieish-I had even considered getting stoned, in the hope that it would relax me enough to give my subconscious a sporting chance, but hash always makes me fall asleep-and more than vaguely dumb. I realized, suddenly, that the tree I was leaning against could be the very tree beside which I had been found, could still have pale scars where my fingernails had gouged into the trunk; realized, too, that it was beginning to get dark.
I almost left then. I actually went back to the clearing, shook the dead leaves off my sleeping bag, and started rolling it up. If I'm honest, the only thing that kept me there was the thought of Mark. He had spent the night here, not just once but regularly, and it didn't even seem to have occurred to him that this might be a frightening thing to do, and I couldn't stand the idea of letting him have one up on me, whether he knew about it or not. He might have had a fire, but I had a torch and a Smith amp; Wesson, although I felt slightly silly for even thinking of this. I was only a few hundred yards from civilization, or at any rate the estate. I stood still for a moment, the sleeping bag in my hands; then I unrolled it, wriggled into it up to my waist, and leaned back against a tree.
I poured myself a cup of whiskeyed coffee; the sharp, adult taste was oddly reassuring. The shards of sky dimmed overhead, from turquoise to glowing indigo; birds landed on branches and settled for the night, with businesslike, decisive exclamations and bickerings. Bats shrilled across the dig, and among the bushes there was a quick pounce, a burst of scuffling, silence. Far away, on the estate, a child called something high and rhythmic: Ally ally in free…
It came to me gradually-without surprise, really, as if it were something I had known for a long time-that, if I managed to remember anything useful, I was going to take it to O'Kelly. Not right away, maybe not for a few weeks, I would need a little time to tie up loose ends and set my affairs in order, so to speak; because when I did it, it would be the end of my career.
Only that afternoon the thought would have been like a baseball bat to the stomach. But somehow that night it seemed almost seductive, it shimmered tantalizingly in the air before me, and I turned it over with a luxurious giddiness. Being a Murder detective, the only thing on which I had ever set my heart, the thing around which I had built my wardrobe, my walk, my vocabulary, my life waking and sleeping: the thought of tossing it all away with one flick of the wrist and watching it soar into space like a bright balloon was intoxicating. I could set up as a private investigator, I thought, have a battered little office in some dingy Georgian building, my name in gold on a frosted-glass door, come to work when I chose and skate expertly around the edges of the law and harass an apoplectic O'Kelly for inside information. I wondered, dreamily, if Cassie might come with me. I could get a fedora and a trench coat and a wisecracking sense of humor; she could sit poised at hotel bars with a slinky red dress and a camera in her lipstick, to snare cheating businessmen… I almost laughed out loud.
I realized that I was falling asleep. This had not been part of my plan, such as it was, and I struggled to stay awake, but all those sleepless nights were hitting me at once, hard as a shot in the arm. I thought of the thermos of coffee, but it seemed like way too much work to reach out for it. The sleeping bag had warmed against my body and I had adjusted myself around all the little lumps and crevices in the ground and the tree; I was deliciously, narcotically comfortable. I felt the thermos cup fall from my fingers, but I couldn't open my eyes.
I don't know how long I slept. I was sitting up and biting back a shout before I was even fully awake. Someone had said, clear and sharp and right next to my ear, "What's that?"
I sat there for a long time, feeling slow waves of blood surging in my neck. The lights in the estate had gone out. The wood was silent, barely a whisper of wind through the branches overhead; somewhere a twig cracked.
Peter, whirling around on the castle wall and shooting out a hand to freeze me and Jamie on either side: "What's that?"
We had been outside all day, since the dew was still drying off the grass. It was boiling; every breath was warm as bathwater and the sky was the color of the inside of a candle flame. We had bottles of red lemonade in the grass under a tree, for when we got thirsty, but they had gone warm and flat and the ants had found them. Someone was mowing a lawn, down the street; someone else had a kitchen window open and the radio turned up loud and was singing along to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." Two little girls were taking turns on a pink tricycle on the sidewalk, and Peter's prissy sister Tara was playing teachers in her friend Audrey's garden, the two of them yakking at a bunch of dolls lined up in rows. The Carmichaels had bought a sprinkler; we'd never seen one before and we eyed it every time they put it out, but Mrs. Carmichael was a bitch, Peter said if you went in her garden she would smash your head in with a poker.
We had mostly been riding our bikes. Peter had got an Evil Knievel for his birthday-if you wound it up, you could make it jump piles of old Warlord annuals-and he was going to be a daredevil when he grew up, so we were practicing. We built a ramp in the road, out of bricks and a piece of plywood that Peter's dad had in the garden shed-"We'll keep making it higher," Peter said, "one brick more every day"-but it wobbled like crazy, and I could never keep myself from slamming on the brakes in the second before I took off.
Jamie tried the ramp a few times and then hung around at the edge of the street, scraping a sticker off her handlebar and kicking her pedal to make it spin. She had been late coming out that morning, and she'd been quiet all day. She always was, but this was different: her silence was like a thick private cloud all round her, and it was making me and Peter fidgety.
Peter flew off the ramp yelling and zigzagged wildly, just missing the two little girls on the tricycle. "You big ding-dongs, you'll have us all killed," Tara snapped over her dollies. She was wearing a long flowery skirt that puddled on the grass, and a weird big hat with a ribbon around it.
"You're not my boss," Peter shouted back. He swerved onto Audrey's lawn and swooped past Tara, grabbing the hat off her head as he went. Tara and Audrey shrieked in practiced unison.