“Yes, that’s right. He lives with his mum, Jackie.”
Rick wrote this down in his notepad and turned to Rach. “And have you seen John recently?”
She shook her head. “Not since Emma’s funeral.”
“And how did John seem at the funeral?”
I interrupted before Rach could get a word in, suddenly furious at the police for thinking that John had something to do with Emma’s death. “How do you think he was? His girlfriend had been found dead, and he blamed himself for not going after her. He was a mess… he’s been a mess ever since it happened, including when I saw him in Renfield.”
Rick stared at me intently and I immediately regretted the outburst. Instead of berating me, though, he changed the subject. “This Connor, have you known him long?”
I glanced at Rach uneasily. “Not long, since he moved here around three weeks ago. Or maybe less, I’m not sure…” I could feel myself going into rambling mode and trailed off before I said something I really regretted.
“And is he friends with John?”
“No, well not that I knew of, but I’ve only really hung out with him a few times… I really couldn’t tell you, sorry.”
“Was he being violent towards John in the pub?”
“No, not violent.”
“Are you sure? This is important.” Rick’s questions were coming quicker now, and his voice was much louder than before. He obviously thought he was onto something.
“Yes, I mean he looked like he was making John uncomfortable, but…”
“Uncomfortable? How do you mean?”
“I mean, he looked like he might be pressuring him…”
“Pressuring him?”
Rach was staring at me with wide eyes and I tried to back track, not wanting to make it out to be something more than it was. “No, I don’t mean that… I mean, everything had been making John uncomfortable, really. As I said, he was distraught over Emma and…”
“Connor Maguire was asking John questions, and making him ‘uncomfortable’? Did he raise his voice or show any signs of anger?”
I shook my head. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, Connor’s voice was so low I couldn’t tell what he was saying.”
Rach could clearly see how distressed I was getting, so she jumped in with her own question. “So, are you, er, searching the area for him?”
Rick stared at me for a while longer before turning to face Rach. “We’re starting our search in Renfield as he was last seen there.”
I started shaking and Rach put her hand on my arm. “Are we finished?” Her tone of authority in the face of two policemen impressed me, and Rick’s face softened as he looked at us both.
“Yes, thank you.” He put his notepad back in his pocket again and stood up, with DS Lawrence following suit. “We’ll be in touch if we have any other questions.”
I watched them walk out and turned to Rach as soon as the door had closed. “Oh God, John… I hope he’s OK. And Connor!” I thought I was going to start hyperventilating. “I didn’t mean to do that, but I couldn’t lie to them. Do you think he’s going to get in trouble?”
So much for not getting on Connor’s bad side.
I took a deep breath, trying to get myself under control while Rach smiled and insisted, “He’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t so sure.
***
I’d called Will as soon as I was sure the police had left, and he’d tried to calm me down but without much success. I was counting down the hours of my shift so I could see him in person (if only I had a boss who let me leave whenever I wanted), and when it turned seven, I almost ran to the staff room to grab my bag.
I said bye to Rach - who still had another hour to go - and opened the heavy glass door, emerging onto Main Street.
I was walking towards the residential area when I saw Connor ahead; he was standing under one of the old-fashioned lampposts, his face lowered but his dark eyes fixed in my direction. My heart thundered in my chest.
A fleeting thought passed through my mind as I looked at him; standing under the lamp, leather jacket illuminated by the light, he had a major James Dean vibe going on.
This illusion disintegrated as soon as I heard him shout.
“Beth!” His fiery Irish voice boomed down Main Street and a passing couple looked up at his infuriated tone.
I considered turning and walking in the opposite direction but the only thing that lay that way was the castle and the woods - neither of them good places to run to with Connor in tow. Instead, I pulled myself together and walked towards him, trying not to catch his eye too much.
He yelled at me while I was still five feet away. “Did you tell the police I had somethin’ to do with John’s disappearance?”
I immediately wished I’d gone the other way. The flashes of potential anger I’d seen with Connor before were nothing compared to how he looked now, and as I replied, I wondered if he really did have something to do with John going missing. With Emma. With everything.
“No, of course not.”
“Then why the hell did they take me down to the station and question me for two bleedin’ hours?”
I looked up in surprise, properly registering his face for the first time since I’d seen him standing in the glow of the street lamp. His cheeks were bright red and - despite the cold weather - there were beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead.
“They took you to the station?”
Connor nodded, clearly too furious to say anything else.
“I’m so sorry. They asked me if I’d seen John and I couldn’t lie! I told them about him appearing in the pub in Renfield and… about you asking him questions upstairs. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
His eyes narrowed. “What exactly did you hear upstairs?”
I felt my phone in my trouser pocket, wishing I could get it out and ring Will. “Does it matter?”
“Well if it means I’m somehow the lead suspect in a murder case then yes, it does!”
His voice had been getting louder and louder and I looked around instinctively to see who was on the street. With the exception of the lights coming from the Diner, and Rach who was at the cinema with Graham at the end of the road, there didn’t seem to be anyone around. The couple from before had now turned off into another street, leaving me alone with Connor.
“Murder case? I thought John was just missing?”
Connor opened his mouth to speak and then hesitated. “He is, I’m just assumin’…”
“Why would you assume he was murdered?”
His face drained of colour and he, too, looked around to see if anyone was present. “Well, the police dragged me in for ‘a few questions’ which lasted so long I missed the start of me shift. It seems like they’re kind of thinkin’ along those lines.”
His voice was quieter now but his eyes were filled with a hatred that I hadn’t imagined possible. He was rapidly going beyond the realm of dark and mysterious stranger and into the land of full on psychopath.
I tried to reason with him, more aware than ever that we were alone on Main Street. “Connor, will you please listen to me? The police asked me what I saw and I told them. I tried to tell them it wasn’t anything major but they just took that one piece of information and… well, they ran with it. They must be desperate for any leads. I’m sorry.”
“Well they’re not so desperate now they think I’ve done it.”
“I’m sure they don’t think that…”
“Oh yes, because o’course an interferin’, stupid little girl like you would know what the police were thinkin’.” He spat out the word police and I stepped back instinctively. I couldn’t believe I’d voluntarily got into a car with this man.
“Connor, you’re scaring me.”
“Oh and I suppose you told the Inspector that I was scarin’ John? You just… you have no idea.”
A rattling sound suddenly burst through the silence, and I looked behind me in shock at the doors of the post office. They
were closed and locked at this time of night, but it sounded as if there was someone inside. Someone trying to get out. “Can you hear that?”
“Don’t try and change the subject, it’s not goin’ to work.”
The sound continued. “I’m not! I think there’s someone in there…” I looked at Connor and then at the door again.
“Beth, will you stop! There’s no one in there, there’s no sound, I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re playin’ at. If you hadn’t noticed, I’m a bit pissed off here!”
Connor looked like he was about to explode: eyes bulging, veins popping.
The rattling sound was louder than ever. I strained my ears, thinking I could hear some mumbling over the racket. It may have been just my fear of the current ludicrous situation, but I thought I heard a frustrating-sounding sentence seep through the locked doors: “Got the wrong damn portal again!”
I laughed to myself in surprise. “Are you seriously telling me you can’t hear that?”
“No!” Connor lunged at me, pushing me back roughly against the post office doors with a force that knocked the wind out of me. The rattling stopped as soon as I made contact with the cold wooden door.
“Hey!”
Connor let go of me and turned round at the voice, which had come from a man whom I couldn’t quite identify from the shadows on the other side of the street.
I took my chance and pushed past Connor, running off towards the estate and not stopping until I got to Will’s house.
As I knocked on the door, the tears I’d been holding in started running freely down my face, and I waited until Will’s mum opened the door.
“Hello… Beth? Are you OK?”
I shook my head, unable to speak. Stephanie Wolseley called Will’s name over her shoulder and held her hand out to me. I took it and stepped into the warm hallway. She took a tissue off the side table and handed it to me, looking extremely awkward but concerned nonetheless.
Within ten seconds Will appeared at the top of the stairs, running down when he saw the state of me. “Beth? What’s wrong?”
I used the tissue to wipe my eyes and then tried to smile as he got to the bottom of the stairs. When I still couldn’t say anything, he pulled me in for a hug while Stephanie watched on helplessly.
Will looked back at her. “Any chance of a cup of tea, Mum?”
I smiled into his shoulder. In Will’s family, tea would solve everything.
I didn’t, however, think it could solve this.
***
A few hours later, I was sitting in Will’s bedroom at the foot of his bed, having told him everything about the police and Connor. The radio was blaring out some exceedingly cheesy pop song and the warmth of Will’s room was already making me feel much better. I was on my third cup of tea.
“I’m really sorry if I freaked your mum out.”
Will waved my comment away. “Nah, I’ve already told her how strange you are.”
“Great, thanks.”
My phone beeped and I dug into my bag to retrieve it. “It’s probably just Rach checking up on me,” I told Will. “I think I scared her a bit as well.”
When I flipped open my phone, however, it wasn’t Rach’s name that appeared on my screen; it was an unknown number. I opened the message to see who it belonged to and nearly spilled my tea all over myself.
Will noticed my reaction and came and sat next to me. “Not Rach, I’m guessing?”
I shook my head and read out the text.
‘Beth, this is Connor. I got your number from Rach, like you suggested. I’m sorry if I scared you earlier, I was just knackered, and angry with the police. I hope you’ll forgive me. Connor.’
I was trying to figure out if Rach would have just handed over my number to him so easily after this afternoon, when Will interrupted.
“You suggested he get your number from Rach?”
I frowned at him. “Not now, Will.”
“Right, sorry.”
“Do you think he means it? It’s a bit formal, isn’t it?”
“I’ve got absolutely no idea. But I wouldn’t go getting into any cars with him in the future.”
I nodded. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
I re-read the text while Will watched.
“So, are you?”
I looked up. “Am I what?”
Will sighed, obviously at my slowness. “Are you going to forgive him?”
I looked at my phone, trying to think. “I don’t know…” I never knew with Connor.
Will made his exasperated noise, a sort of mix between a sigh and a growl. “Beth, he scared the crap out of you. Do you know what you looked like when you turned up here?”
I cringed, trying to imagine. “I can guess.”
He wasn’t letting this go. “I think we can safely say that after everything that’s happened with Connor, he’s not the kind of guy you should be dishing out second chances to.”
I shrugged, knowing he was right, but for some reason not able to completely jump on the Connor-hating bandwagon just yet. Surely I wasn’t shallow enough to let his looks and undeniable charisma cloud my judgement? I sincerely hoped not.
Will stood up and started pacing back and forth, as much as his small room would let him, anyway. “Man, if Connor ever goes near you again, I swear I’ll rip his charming Irish face off!”
His own face was turning an alarming shade of red and his voice had become extremely high, and I tried my hardest not to laugh at him. “You’ll rip his face off? As sweet as that is, I think that’s going a bit too far.”
He wandered over to the radio, turning it off and enveloping the room in silence. “Unless, of course, there’s another reason you’re willing to forgive him?”
I finished drinking my tea slowly, not wanting to look at him. Not wanting to lie to him. “Will… I’m not into Connor.” The words came out harsher than I’d intended.
I kept my gaze on my now empty mug, so I didn’t see his expression as he walked back to the end of the bed. He sat down next to me on the soft, cream carpet, taking the cup out of my hands and bending his head down to look into my own lowered face. “Beth.”
I looked up at him slowly. His unkempt hair was dangling in his eyes; in all the excitement of the last few weeks he’d obviously missed his most recent haircut. It made him look older.
“What?” This question came out quieter than my previous statement. In fact, it was almost a whisper.
He reached out and tentatively took my hand. “I don’t trust Connor. I don’t know what he has to do with Emma or John, but there’s definitely something wrong there.”
I nodded, knowing he was right.
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
I nodded again and gave his hand a quick squeeze before letting it go. It was going to take me a while to get used to this kind of talk coming from Will; a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have thought there was one serious bone in his body.
I smiled at him, grateful to have someone I could talk to, somewhere I could come to get away from the weird direction my life seemed to be taking.
“I won’t get hurt.”
He smiled back. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
As it turned out, that wasn’t a promise I should have made.
Chapter Seven
The following night I was sitting in my room, feeling far too depressed to even think of going out anywhere. Apart from work, I hadn’t really been ‘out’ since mine and Connor’s trip to Renfield, and considering how that ended, I didn’t think it really counted.
I was back in my gloomy post-V-fight mood and I couldn’t snap out of it. My parents were away in Birston at some stupid-sounding convention, where middle-aged people dressed up and danced around pretending they were from the Middle Ages. Yes, really.
It was good to have them out of the house but I’d also been bored to death for the whole day. I’d dyed my hair, cleaned my room, drawn some new tattoo designs, and had been s
itting with Keaton watching old black and white movies for the past six hours in an attempt to forget about what was going on. When I got fed up of that, I decided to just go to bed.
I was trying to avoid thinking about John - hoping he’d just decided to take off for a while rather than the horrible alternative - but it was easier said than done.
I kept nearing the calm depths of sleep when I’d think of him hunched over that whiskey, head in hands, looking like a shell of his former self, and I’d jolt awake again.
It was a couple of hours later and I’d only just managed to drift off properly when my phone rang. I fought my way out of my dreamy haze and felt around on my bedside table (nearly knocking my glass of water over in the process) until I reached my mobile. I looked at the caller display and groaned as I answered.
“Will, what the hell? I’m asleep. Or was.”
“Powers, shut up and listen.” His business-like tone immediately woke me up and I dragged myself to a sitting position.
“What is it?”
“Connor.”
“What? Where are you? You sound muffled.” I reached out and turned on the bedside lamp. My clock read 1:23 a.m.
“I’m in the woods. It’s raining. I’m trying to keep my phone dry under my coat, and I don’t want to speak too loudly.”
“It’s one in the morning, why are you in the woods?”
I tried to picture the unending darkness, the groups of identical trees, the claustrophobia of the night. I shuddered.
There was a pause. “I was listening to music in my usual place and I… kind of… fell asleep. Anyway, I woke up and was just finding my way back to the path when I saw a light, like a torch. I hid behind a tree and after a while, I could make out who it was. It was Connor.”
My mind reeled. “What was he doing?”
“I don’t know for sure… but he seemed to be looking for something.”
“Has he gone now?”
“Yeah, he’s gone. But Norman might still be around.”
It took a couple of seconds for that to sink in. “Norman was with him?”
“Not exactly… Norman came after Connor left.”
“And what the hell was Norman doing?”
“He didn’t really seem to be doing anything.”
“No person in their right mind would go wandering through the forest in the small hours of the morning without any purpose.”
“Yeah, I know. Look, all I can say is that he had a torch too and he was just walking around. Like patrolling, or something.”