‘Beware of Jack! He’s out tonight,
He’ll sneak to your window and give you a fright!
So keep an ear open for his hyena laugh,
In case he’s creeping along your path!’
I could hear Will sniggering from next to me but I didn’t find it funny; there was something niggling at my mind but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The thought completely disappeared when I heard the two girls laughing from the other beanbag. They both stood up and walked hesitantly over to us.
The blonde girl coughed and whispered, “I’m Jess. And she’s Lizzie.”
I was a bit surprised by them coming over but tried to hide it. “Well hi there, Jess and Lizzie. I’m Beth, and this is Will. But pay no attention to him.”
They both giggled as Jess elbowed Lizzie in the ribs.
Lizzie glared at her friend before turning to me and Will and asking, “Do you know about the lady buried in the tree?”
I looked at Will, not sure how to reply. He shrugged. Helpful. “That’s just a silly old story. You don’t need to know about that.”
The one called Jess seemed embarrassed, but she stepped forward and handed me the legends book they were looking at, pointing at the open page. “How about him? Have you ever seen the ghost dog?”
I looked at the page and saw yet another highly creepy drawing of a giant black dog walking down a misty country lane. I looked around me as if making sure no one was listening. I’d heard Norman tell this story, I bet I could do it just as well. I’d just need to edit it to make it child-friendly.
“I have, actually.”
Jess and Lizzie looked at each other in excitement then both asked, “Where?” at the same time.
I answered in a hushed voice, “Down near Coley Farm. It was in the dead of winter last year, and I was visiting the old lady who lived there. She was ill and I was taking her some soup.”
Will snorted next to me and I elbowed him in the ribs. “Anyway, I left and started walking home in the dark, and I could feel something watching me, something following me.”
The girls held hands and one of them actually gulped.
“I pretended I hadn’t noticed and carried on walking, picking up my pace to try and get away from whatever it was that was hiding in the shadows. Anyway, my shoelace came undone and I tripped over it, landing on my knees. Bending down, I saw that I was bleeding.” I paused for dramatic effect. “And that’s when I heard the growl.”
Lizzie gasped.
“So I slowly turned round, knowing that I couldn’t possibly outrun it now, and there it was. It was the size of a horse. Its teeth were gleaming in the moonlight and its eyes were red like the Devil.”
Will laughed again but I ignored him. I was on a roll.
“We looked at each other for… oh, it must have been a couple of minutes, and then it started walking towards me.”
The girls leaned in closer to hear my lowered voice. Jess opened her eyes wide and whispered, “What happened?”
“Well, it crept towards me ever so slowly, but I was frozen; too scared to move. It eventually got to where I was cowering on the ground and it bent its giant furry head towards me…”
The girls spoke in unison again. “And?”
“And… it licked me all over my face! Man, that thing had bad breath.”
The girls sighed in relief before laughing.
“Then it got distracted by a cat and ran off down the lane!”
The girls looked delighted at my story-telling skills. Take that, Norman.
“So it wasn’t a ghost, then?”
I lowered my voice again. “Well I can’t say for sure… but I’ve never seen a dog vanish into thin air like I did that night.”
Lizzie and Jess gasped again, but they were still giggling.
“And on that note, girls, we have to go!” I handed them their book back and they ran off, whispering to each other as they went.
I looked over at Will for the first time since I started telling the story and laughed at his mixed expression of amusement and disbelief.
“Beth… that’s how stories like Spring Heeled Jack get started.”
I rolled my eyes at Will. “Oh come on, it was just a bit of fun. Anyway, that story’s been doing the rounds for years.”
“Yeah, because of people like you! You’re turning into Norman; in sixty years’ time it’ll be you in the pub surrounded by tourists.”
I shuddered at the thought.
I was just about to stand up when I heard a beeping noise telling me I’d received a text. Retrieving my phone out of my bag, I was surprised to see it was from Max. He never sent me messages, ever. I opened the text and read Max’s stunted sentences, my stomach fluttering.
‘Hey Beth. Saw Connor in the pub with Norman last night, around ten. They were talking and I heard Emma’s name. It got heated and the owner asked Connor to leave. Norman looked scared. Thought it might help you in your ‘quest’ or whatever. Don’t tell Rach, she’d freak. Peace. Max.’
Last night. Connor went round to the pub and had a fight with Norman after he’d been to see me. After I’d told him about Norman at the funeral.
Pieces of the puzzle seemed to be slowly fitting together, but I didn’t yet know how or why. I re-read the text then passed my phone to Will, who read it quickly. “Connor was having a go at Norman about Emma? What the hell is going on?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”
***
We stood up and started walking towards the exit, but just before we got to the door something near the desk caught my eye. It was a simple white sign with an old photograph of the castle and the words ‘Get to know your local history! Enquire at the desk’ written underneath. I grabbed Will’s arm and steered him over to the woman on duty.
She looked overworked and annoyed, but she was trying to be helpful. “Yeah, we’ve got a new computer system. All of the local newspapers for the past hundred or so years have been archived, along with newsletters and other publications. You can search for stuff, so you don’t have to scroll through all the articles. If you want to use it, you’ll have to get a token from me. I’ll need your names, too.”
I looked at Will and he nodded back. Little Forest was behind the times in many ways and this newspaper archive was a big step forward for the village (you’d usually have to venture to Willowton for that kind of thing). And it could be a big step forward for us, too.
I gave the woman our names and she handed me the ‘token’, which was really just a piece of card with a code written on it.
“The computer’s in the little room at the back. You’ll need to sign the token back in when you’re done, if I’m not here just go ahead and grab the book.”
We thanked her and walked over to the small room which had two brand new computers in. We sat down and entered the sequence of numbers into the login box.
The computer seemed to think for a minute or so and then we were up and running. I immediately went to the search box and typed in ‘Connor Maguire’. The search came up with no results and I slumped back in my chair. I didn’t think there would be anything on him, of course, but a little part of me hoped he might have popped up somewhere in Covershire at some point.
I looked at Will and shrugged.
“Try Norman.”
I typed in ‘Norman Carter’ and the computer gave me a much better response. There were a few articles featuring other people with the same surname, but some actually featured the Norman Carter of Hill Top Farm, Little Forest.
There was a scanned in page of a local newspaper from around seventy years ago. The headline read ‘No Leads on Mystery Woman’ but it was the ‘Local Farmer Wins Big’ article that featured Norman. His father had won a farming competition and Norman had apparently ‘helped him to victory’. There was a grainy black and white photograph of Norman sitting on his father’s shoulders, holding up a trophy. It shocked me to see him looking so young.
It was even s
tranger to see him with his father; the thought of him having actual parents seemed far too strange.
From what I could make out from the photograph, Norman’s father was beaming at the camera, clearly thrilled at having won. Little Norman was also smiling, but he was looking off to one side as if in thought, or as if he’d just seen something that had grabbed his attention. I scanned the article quickly but there was nothing out of the ordinary.
His name popped up in various other pieces, mainly due to his helping out at various village fêtes and farming events, obviously in the more quaint years before the Fright Fest started becoming a regular event, dominating all other annual traditions.
The next mention I found of him was his wedding announcement to Miss Doris Spotwood; there was a photograph of them together, looking lovingly into each other’s eyes. The mention after that was the obituary of Mrs Doris Carter.
I glanced at Will, who looked exactly how I felt - guilty. Here we were, researching this poor old man for reasons I wasn’t even sure of, and what do we find? The obituary of his wife whom he had loved for his whole life. I felt a bit disgusted with myself.
“I think we’d better stop this now.”
Will nodded and we logged off the computer. When we got to the desk there was no one there so Will took the book from the back of the counter and opened it to the most recent page. He noted down the time, signed both of our names, and was just about to close the book when he stopped, his mouth hanging open in an almost comical fashion.
“What?”
Will looked up at me and said one word: “Connor.”
I leaned over to look in the book, gasping when I saw what he meant; on almost every line of the two open pages was written ‘Connor Maguire.’ I looked at the times the token was logged out and then in; the sessions lasted from between twenty minutes to two hours. I looked at the dates. Connor had been coming here for over two weeks, ever since he first came to Little Forest. Hell, it was before I even knew he was in Little Forest.
I exchanged a shocked look with Will as he said, “I knew he was up to something.”
“He was definitely lying about not coming here then, that sneaky little…”
Will cut me off. “Well, from the sounds of it, this all has something to do with Emma.”
I nodded.
“So, what do we do next?”
***
What we did next was go to the park, mainly because it was near the library and also because it was near the cemetery where Rach had witnessed the argument that had started this whole thing off; I thought maybe we’d see Norman wandering through the graveyard or something.
Well, you never knew.
We sat in the empty bandstand - which was only really used during summer and at Christmas - and discussed Connor and Norman. Will was even writing notes down in an old, ragged notebook. We were the most rubbish and ridiculous-looking detectives of all time.
“OK, so what do we know for sure?”
I lay down on the floor of the bandstand and stared up at the roof. The white paint was flaking off, uncovering the dark wood underneath. I had a vague thought that the Best Kept Village Committee wouldn’t be too happy with its state, before pulling my mind back to the subject at hand. “Well, we know that Connor Maguire arrived in Little Forest with his mum, apparently having never been here before. We also know Emma died soon after and was found in the woods.”
“By a DCI, no less.”
I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see me doing it. “Don’t tell me you think he did it.”
“Hey, you’re the one who thought it was weird.”
“It is weird. I’d like to know what he was doing in the woods at seven a.m… but it doesn’t mean he has anything to do with it.”
Will was frantically scribbling in his pad. “Right, and Emma had a head wound but died by choking on her vomit, due to being extremely drunk.”
“Right.” I knew that at any moment Will was going to ask me about Emma outside The Pit again. It only took three seconds for him to try and bring it up.
“And she died, when?”
I tried to keep my voice level. “Between eleven and midnight they reckon. Twelve-thirty at the latest, I think.”
He wrote this down. “And John heard her shouting at someone…”
“Uh huh.”
When he realised I wasn’t going to elaborate he carried on. “OK, so John thinks she wasn’t alone and that someone else was there, and he also thinks the head wound may not have been the result of a drunken accident.” His tone of voice was business-like and the way he was speaking made me smile to myself. He was definitely getting into this.
I nodded slowly. “She was wearing killer heels though…”
Will stopped writing. “Why is that significant?”
“You’ve obviously never tried walking in heels, in the woods, while drunk.”
“Have you?”
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“So you think she probably did just trip over?”
I shrugged. “I’m saying it’s a definite possibility. She could barely walk in them when she was at The Pit.”
“Right. So, Connor - he had a massive fight with Norman Carter soon after he moved to Little Forest.”
“In the cemetery.”
“In the cemetery,” Will repeated while writing it down. “We also know Connor’s very touchy about the subject, and has yelled at you on more than one occasion for bringing it up.”
“And he’s also warned me off Norman.”
“And the woods.”
I tilted my head towards Will. “What?”
“Didn’t you tell me he warned you off hanging out in the woods before he left your house?”
“Well, he warned me about hanging out with you.”
Will stared at me with his eyebrows raised. “When I was hanging out in the woods. Why would he be worried about me? He’s never even met me.”
He was right. Connor’s hug (and that damned wink) had confused me, set my mind off on a different track. Of course he was warning me off the woods! I shook my head in disbelief at how stupid I was. How many of Connor’s other comments had I taken the wrong way? “You’re right, he was warning me about the woods.”
Will just rolled his eyes at me. “And where was Emma’s body found?”
My head was getting far too confused now. “OK, but why would Connor warn me about going into the woods if it was him who had killed Emma?”
“He probably doesn’t want you snooping around the crime scene.”
I gave him a look of disbelief. “Really? Oh, and write down the fact that Connor’s been researching… something… in the library. Pretty obsessively by the looks of it.”
Will nodded.
“Then there’s him snooping through my phone and going through my kitchen cupboards. Explain that one.”
Will tapped his pen against the paper in an annoyingly erratic rhythm. “Well, the phone implies he either wants to find out more about you, or about someone you know. Someone you’re in contact with, someone you might have had texts from, someone whose number he might want to get.”
I thought about my closest friends and couldn’t even begin to understand who he might have been wanting to find out about.
“And you say he was going through the cupboard where all the bills and stuff are?”
“And my mum’s diary.”
“So maybe he wanted to find out about your mum, or someone she knows.” He paused. “Someone you both know?”
“Well, technically, that could be anyone in the village.”
He started writing this down then stopped. “Oh, yeah.”
“Shouldn’t we put something about Norman down in your little case book?”
“Sure. Like what?”
I didn’t know. “Just that he’s obviously got something going on with Connor. And the whole argument when Emma was mentioned.”
“Which we only know from Max.”
“So?”
/> “If ever there was an unreliable witness…”
I nearly laughed. “I know what you mean. But I actually think that underneath all his… er… stonerisms, Max might be pretty smart.”
“How the hell did you get to that conclusion?”
“Just a hunch. Anyway, we have to go on what we’ve got, no matter who told us.”
Will shrugged and carried on writing. “OK. And then there’s Norman and your mum being all creepy-horror-movie at the pub. And then…” he hesitated. “Then there’s Veronica.”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “You’re not telling me you think V has something to do with all this?”
He seemed to think about this, then shook his head slowly. “I don’t think it’s necessarily all related, I’m just saying all this stuff started happening at the same time. Connor moving in, Emma dying, Veronica going AWOL. That’s a hell of a lot of coincidences.”
I shook my head vigorously. “No way. V is the last person in the world to have anything to do with Emma, she hated her, and I’ve never even seen her in the same vicinity as Connor…” (stalking aside), “none of it fits.”
“You sure? You just said she hated Emma.”
“Not enough to want her dead.”
Will continued talking while writing in the book, clearly not wanting to look me in the eye while he said the following. “I’m just saying, hatred sounds like a motive to me.”
I wished I had something to throw at him. “You’re not seriously suggesting…” I couldn’t even say the words. Yes, it had occurred to me - very briefly - how weird the timing all was, but I didn’t actually believe she could have anything to do with Emma. “You and I both know V.”
“Do we? Do we know why she stopped talking to us? Why she seemingly hates everyone in the village? Do we know what she’s been doing over the past couple of weeks? Who she’s been talking to? Not to mention the whole glass-throwing thing. Do I need to say ‘violent streak’?”
I lay back again, disbelief coursing through my body. “OK, forgetting for a moment that you’re obviously mentally unhinged, do you not remember that night? V was with us the whole time. Pretty solid alibi if you ask me.”
Will sighed in exasperation. “I’m not saying she physically went and hit Emma over the head with a rock, but people can have accomplices you know, they can make arrangements. We both know she had a crush on John. Maybe the two of them…”