How did Bobby spend the night? I wonder if he’s looking for me or watching Julianne and Charlie. He’s not going to wait for me to figure this out. I need to hurry.
Hatchmere Lake is fringed with reeds and the water reflects the blueness of the sky. I stop at a red-and-white house and ask directions. An old lady, still in her dressing gown, answers the door and mistakes me for a tourist. She starts giving me the history of Hatchmere, which segues into her own life story about her son who works in London and her grandchildren whom she only sees once a year.
I keep thanking her and backing away. She stands at her front gate as I struggle to start the Land Rover. That’s just what I need. She’s probably an expert on cribbage, crosswords and remembering license plates. “I never forget a number,” she’ll say, as she rattles it off to the police.
The engine kindly turns over and fires, belching smoke from the exhaust. I wave and smile. She looks concerned for me.
Vicarage Cottage has Christmas lights strung over the windows and doors. Parked on the front path are a handful of toy cars circled like wagons around an old milk crate. Hanging diagonally across the path is a rust-stained bedsheet with two ends tied to a tree. A boy squats underneath with a plastic ice-cream bucket on his head. He points a wooden stick at my chest.
“Are you a Slytherin?” he says with a lisp.
“Pardon?”
“You can only come in here if you’re from Gryffindor.” The freckles on his nose are the color of toasted corn.
A young woman appears at the door. Her blond hair is sleep-tossed and she’s fighting a cold. A baby is perched on her hip sucking on a small piece of toast.
“You leave the man alone, Brendan,” she says, smiling at me tiredly.
Stepping around the toys, I reach the door. I can see an ironing board set up behind her.
“I’m sorry about that. He thinks he’s Harry Potter. Can I help you?”
“Hopefully, yes. I’m looking for Rupert Erskine.”
A shadow crosses her face. “He doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Do you know where I might find him?”
She swaps her baby onto her opposite hip and does up a loose button on her blouse. “You’d be better asking someone else.”
“Would one of the neighbors know? It’s very important that I see him.”
She bites her bottom lip and looks past me toward the church. “Well, if you want to see him you’ll find him over there.”
I turn to look.
“He’s in the cemetery.” Realizing how blunt the statement sounds, she adds, “I’m sorry if you knew him.”
Without making a conscious decision I find myself sitting down on the steps. “We used to work together,” I explain. “It was a long time ago.”
She glances over her shoulder. “Would you like to come in and sit down?”
“Thank you.”
The kitchen smells of sterilized bottles and porridge. There are crayons and pieces of paper spread over the table and chair. She apologizes for the mess.
“What happened to Mr. Erskine?”
“I only know what the neighbors told me. Everyone in the village was pretty shook up by what happened. You don’t expect that sort of thing— not round these parts.”
“What sort of thing?”
“They say he came across someone trying to rob the place, but I don’t see how that explains anything. What sort of burglar ties an old man to a chair and tapes his mouth? He lived for two weeks. Some folks say he had a heart attack, but I heard he died of dehydration. It was the hottest fortnight of the year…”
“When was this?”
“August just gone. I reckon some folks are feeling guilty because nobody noticed him missing. He was always pottering in the garden and taking walks by the lake. Someone from the church choir knocked on the door and a man came to read the gas meter. The front door was unlocked, but nobody thought to go inside.”
The baby is squirming in her arms. “Are you sure you won’t have a cup of tea? You don’t look too good.”
I can see her lips moving and hear the question, but I’m not really listening. The ground has dropped away beneath me like a plunging lift. She’s still talking. “…a really nice old man, people say. A widower. You probably know that already. Don’t think he had any other family…”
I ask to use her phone and need both hands to hold the receiver. The numbers are barely legible. Louise Elwood answers. I have to stop myself from shouting.
“The deputy headmistress at St. Mary’s— you said that she resigned for family reasons.”
“Yes. Her name was Alison Gorski.”
“When was that?”
“About eighteen months ago. Her mother died in a house fire and her father was badly burned. She moved to London so she could nurse him. I think he’s in a wheelchair.”
“How did the fire start?”
“They think it was a case of mistaken identity. Someone put a petrol bomb through the mail slot. The newspapers thought it might have been an anti-Jewish thing, but there was never anything more said.”
A rush of fear becomes liquid on my skin. My eyes fix on the young woman who is watching me anxiously from beside the stove. She is frightened of me. I have brought something sinister into her house.
I make another call. Mel picks up immediately. I don’t give her time to speak. “The car that hit Boyd, what happened to the driver?” My voice sounds strident and thin.
“The police have been here, Joe. A detective called Ruiz…”
“Just tell me about the driver.”
“It was a hit and run. They found the four-wheel drive a few blocks away.”
“And the driver?”
“They think it was probably a teenage joy rider. There was a thumbprint on the steering wheel, but it matched nothing on file.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Why? What’s this got to do…”
“Please, Mel.”
She stumbles over the first part of the story, trying to remember whether it was seven thirty or eight thirty that evening when Boyd went out. It upsets her to think she could have forgotten a detail like this. She worries that Boyd might be growing fainter in her memories.
It was Bonfire night. The air was laced with gunpowder and sulfur. Neighborhood kids, giddy with excitement, had gathered around bonfires built from scrap wood on allotments and waste ground.
Boyd often went out of an evening for tobacco. He went to his local for a quick pint and picked up his favorite blend from a liquor store on the way. He wore a fluorescent vest and a canary-yellow helmet. His gray ponytail hung down his back. He paused at an intersection on Great Homer Street.
Perhaps he turned at the last moment, when he heard the car. He might even have seen the driver’s face in that fraction of a second before he disappeared beneath the bulbar. His body was dragged for a hundred yards beneath the chassis, caught in the twisted frame of his motorcycle.
“What’s going on?” asks Mel. I imagine her wide red mouth and timid gray eyes.
“Lucas Dutton, where is he now?”
Mel answers in a calm, quavering voice. “He works for some government advisory body on teenage drug use.”
I remember Lucas. He dyed his hair; played golf off a low handicap and collected matchbooks and blends of scotch. His wife was a drama teacher. They drove a Skoda and went on holidays to a campground in Bognor. They had twin girls…
Mel is demanding an explanation, but I talk over her. “What happened to the twins?”