Connor sighed in exasperation. “Come on, Beth. I just want to make sure we’re not overheard; I’ve never told this to anyone, and I don’t want it gettin’ round the whole bleedin’ village.”
I thought ‘fat chance of that’ but didn’t say anything; despite my original fear after bumping into him, I was intrigued as hell.
“There’s no one around, let’s just do it here.” I tried to sound firm. It didn’t work.
I watched as Connor shook his head in frustration, before he looked me up and down with his eyebrows raised. It took me a while to realise why.
“Who are you supposed to be, anyway? A zombie teenager?” His cheeky smile was back, and it seemed so real and infectious that I relaxed a little more.
“Suicide School Girl. It happened in the sixties. Another uplifting Little Forest story.” I gave him a brief smile, which he returned. After a few more seconds of hesitation, I reluctantly crawled through into the hole, with Connor following after me. I prayed that I wasn’t doing something incredibly stupid, but something in my gut told me that Connor wasn’t going to hurt me.
I just hoped my gut was right.
Holding my breath, I tried not to think about the tiny dimensions of the hole I was currently cramming my body into.
Before I knew it, we were in one of the building’s larger rooms (not that you could really call it a room anymore with half of the roof gone), one that used to be the dining room if I remembered correctly. It seemed to be even colder in here compared to the woods - if that was possible - and Connor noticed me shivering.
“Here, take this.” He passed me his jacket and I was too cold to refuse.
“Thanks. So what’s going on?”
Connor hesitated, then sat down on the floor and motioned for me to do the same. “It’s a long story, but I’ll break it down for you.”
I sat on the cold, dusty ground as he put down the torch, the beam facing off towards the wall so it wouldn’t blind either of us. I was reminded of camping trips I used to take with my dad when I was little; we would sit round the fire and he’d tell me all the popular village ghost stories while I listened with morbid fascination. My stomach churned as I remembered my dad’s face back on Main Street.
Shivering again, I looked over at Connor, who still seemed reluctant to talk. “Go on then.” I hoped he actually was going to tell me the truth and not just make up some lame story to keep me quiet. I’d had enough of lies recently.
“So I know you’re wonderin’ about a few things.”
I nodded, ‘a few things’ being an understatement. Something in his tone of voice and his body language put me at ease. This was the Connor I’d first been introduced to: nice, charming, polite. I started to feel more relaxed, relaxed enough to ask a few of my own questions.
The first question I had in my head turned into a demand when it came out my mouth. “The first thing I’d like to know is why you were looking through my phone and in my cupboards.”
Connor’s face coloured. “I wasn’t very subtle about it, was I?”
I shook my head.
“I’m really sorry, Beth. I’d seen Norman bein’ all friendly with your mam and I thought you might know somethin’, I guess I was hopin’ to find some kind of clue. I was just clutchin’ at straws, trying to find out anythin’ I could about Norman.”
“Norman.”
He nodded, then hesitated. “Also, you should probably know…”
“What?”
“I followed you to the hospital, when you cut your arm.”
I couldn’t quite comprehend what he was saying. “That was you outside my curtain! What the hell were you doing?”
“I know, I’m sorry. I was up early drivin’ around - I couldn’t sleep - and I saw you and Will go by in the taxi. I got a quick look at your arm and was worried that a certain someone had attacked you… I followed you there to check on you.”
“So why didn’t you just come into the cubicle?”
“I was goin’ to, but I chickened out. I kind of got the idea you were suspicious of me.”
I laughed without any humour. “You think?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want to freak you out.”
I tried to process everything. “Wait… what certain someone are you talking about?”
Connor paused, a silent question of ‘who do you think’ pasted on his face. “Norman Carter.”
I leaned in closer. Was he actually going to tell me the full story? “Why would Norman attack me?” I left out the more natural question of how someone in their eighties would go about attacking a twenty-one-year-old girl.
Connor’s face darkened, and I experienced a split-second of panic; panic that everything he’d told me about being able to trust him was one huge lie.
“I’m only tellin’ you this so you’ll leave it well enough alone. I meant what I said about Norman; you don’t know how dangerous he is and I don’t want you gettin’ caught in the crossfire. So if I tell you everythin’, will you promise me you’ll stay out o’ his way?”
I was extremely intrigued now, and for the first time since leaving Main Street, Veronica and that whole sorry mess was pushed momentarily from my mind. “Yes.”
Connor looked dubious but carried on anyway. “Right, well the first thing you need to know is that despite what me mam says, me dad didn’t die in Dublin.”
I nodded. “I know.”
He did a double take, thought for a moment, then seemed to accept my response. “O’course you do. Well, as you probably already know then, he left me and me mam. She doesn’t know this but he came to England and travelled around for a while. He kept in touch with me by text and the occasional postcard, only occasional though because he worried that me mam might take a day off and get the post before me. Even more rarely, he would call me. I missed ‘im like crazy and I loved hearin’ from ‘im, but he never wanted me mam to know. He said a clean break would be better; if she was reminded of ‘im all the time, it would be harder for her. So, sure, I went along with it.”
He paused briefly, taking a deep breath. “One day I received a postcard from ‘im with a picture of Little Forest Castle on it…”
I actually gasped. “When was this?” I didn’t remember any other Irish people having been in Little Forest recently.
“About six years ago. He passed through a lot of places, not stayin’ anywhere for too long, and I was used to the generic messages he put on the cards: ‘Found a new village, it’s extremely English. Miss you’, that kind of thing. But the Little Forest one stood out.”
He stopped talking and I thought I’d better wait for him to tell me in his own time. Then I got impatient. “Why?”
He sighed. “Because it was the last postcard I got from ‘im. In fact, it was the last communication I ever had with ‘im.” His eyes glazed over for a second before he breathed in deeply, visibly pulling himself together. “So when me mam suggested movin’ to England a few years later… I pretended to look online at villages in the middle of the country and… I told her that Little Forest sounded perfect for us.”
I was starting to feel very uncomfortable. “So she doesn’t know the real reason you moved here?”
Connor’s forehead creased. “No. But it’s OK; she likes it here.”
I remembered her sitting in the canteen at the shopping centre and wondered if Connor was lying to me or if he was just lying to himself. “So, did you find anything out about your dad?”
Connor hesitated again. “There wasn’t much to go on at first, but I asked at the local hotels and found out he’d stayed at the B&B near the church. And…” he looked at me, unsure of whether to go on.
“I won’t tell anyone.” I meant it; who did I have who I could confide in now, anyway? Even though I now knew the truth about Veronica, I’d never felt more alone.
Connor carried on. “He signed in, paid for his three nights, but never signed out, and he left loads of his clothes in the room. The owner of the B&B said that happened sometimes
, but it didn’t sound like me dad at all.” He frowned. “He was very tidy and very methodical; he did everythin’ by the book, and he wouldn’t have left without signin’ himself out and handin’ in his key. I asked the owner if she knew anything about what me dad had done in Little Forest, and she told me he’d mostly hung around with a man called Norman Carter at the Village Inn.”
I nodded slowly, still scared but glad I hadn’t been completely mad about something going on between Norman and Connor. And if Connor’s dad had mostly hung out at the Inn, that would explain why I hadn’t heard much about him; my mum didn’t work at the pub six years ago and I would have been too young to get in. I waited for Connor to carry on.
“So I went to the Inn and asked if anyone knew Norman and if he’d been in that day. Sure enough, they told me he had and that he’d just gone to the cemetery to put flowers on his wife’s grave. I felt bad about disturbin’ him when he was doing that, but I didn’t know when I’d get another chance to talk to ‘im.
“When I got to the graveyard I heard Norman mumblin’ to himself as I walked towards the gravestones, and I caught some of it: he was mutterin’ about the woods and the castle and he said something like ‘I won’t let the nosy outsiders discover your secret’. When I addressed him, he seemed afraid but angry. Really angry. I figured he was a bit xenophobic or somethin’ because as soon as he heard my accent…” He shrugged.
“Anyway, he asked me what I wanted and I asked him if he knew my dad. He immediately got shirty and tried to avoid the question, not denyin’ it or anythin’. I kept pressin’ ‘im and he got more and more agitated. Well, I finally had enough and asked ‘im what he meant about outsiders and secrets. He looked insanely angry then, his veins looked like they were goin’ to pop out of his head. He walked up to me, said ‘Stay away from me and my wife’, and then walked off.”
I started involuntarily shivering again, remembering the breakfast table set for two. “And his wife…”
Connor nodded. “It sounds like he never really got over her death, from what I’ve found askin’ around. Well, I started investigatin’ Norman and his farm as much as I could at the library, and started lookin’ around the woods as well. See, that’s the other thing people told me about Norman: he’s only ever in four places: at home, in the pub, in the cemetery, or in the woods. And from what he was mumblin’ about in the graveyard, I figured the woods was a logical place to start.”
I was a bit lost. “To start what?”
Connor hesitated again. “To look for me dad.”
I didn’t say anything; I honestly didn’t know what to think. After a few minutes I opened my mouth and hoped something vaguely coherent would come out. “You think your father is…”
“Buried in the woods, yes.”
***
I stared at Connor in disbelief. He couldn’t be serious, surely?
“You think Norman killed your father?”
“Not just me dad… Emma and John, too.”
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. “Emma’s death was an accident, and John’s just missing, he’s not dead.”
Connor stared back at me, his face blank. “Is that really what you think?”
I hesitated. Yes, I’d been toying with the idea of some kind of village conspiracy, but it was only really ever half-hearted (let’s just say other things had been distracting me recently).
But Norman, a killer? A serial killer? He was in his eighties!
“I don’t know - he’s creepy, sure, but a murderer?”
Connor nodded. “People can surprise you.”
They sure can. Either all of my concerns about Connor had been unbelievably wrong, or he was a very, very good actor.
A thought suddenly occurred to me. “What were you talking to John about that night? The night he went missing?”
He rubbed his eyes before answering; he looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in at least a week. “I was tryin’ to find out if he or Emma ever had anythin’ to do with Norman. I thought that if I was right about me dad, Norman could have had somethin’ to do with Emma’s death. I was worried that…”
He hung his head.
“What?”
“I’m worried that I put the thought of Norman into John’s head and that he might have gone lookin’ for ‘im. When he disappeared, well… you can guess what I thought had happened. I was so angry at myself.”
He looked up at me, his handsome face twisted in a pained grimace. “I’m really sorry I took it out on you. Everythin’ was so messed up.”
I remembered how terrified I’d been of Connor that night on Main Street; it seemed like so long ago now.
Connor’s beeping phone cut through the silence and he fished it out his pocket, looking at the display. “Just Mam.” He put it back in his pocket without another glance.
“Don’t you want to reply to her?”
“Nah.”
His thoughtlessness disturbed me; didn’t he feel guilty at all about dragging his mum all the way over here on false pretences? I thought back over everything Connor had said and realised that the thing really bothering me wasn’t his ridiculous ideas about Norman being a murderer, but the way he’d lied to his mum. He’d shown complete disregard for her feelings by keeping his dad’s communication a secret from her, and he’d dragged her all this way just so he could go around accusing an old man of murder! I thought again of Jackie staring into space while her tea went cold, and wondered if she’d been like that back in Ireland.
Their ‘new life’ in the English countryside was a complete sham, and I couldn’t help but equate it to my newly discovered messed-up situation, which was formed of so many lies I couldn’t even begin to count.
“So, do you have any evidence?”
“Against Norman?”
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. I decided I wasn’t afraid of Connor anymore; I just thought he was a bit of an idiot. All of the previous attraction, the power he’d had over me, the allure of being dangerous or whatever crap I’d been inexplicably thinking, was now completely gone. “Of course against Norman.”
“Apart from the dress, no.”
“So what makes you so sure about your dad?”
“Well… every time I mention either me dad or Emma to ‘im, he goes on the war path. He spends hours walkin’ around the woods at night, Emma died in the woods… and when you think about it, wouldn’t it be the perfect place to hide a body?”
Of course I’d thought about it, I’d been thinking exactly that since the story of The Woman in the Tree was doing the rounds at school. “But Emma’s body wasn’t hidden, it was just left where it was.”
Connor nodded knowingly, as if he’d put a lot of thought into this. “That’s the bit I don’t get.”
“Look, the police are pretty sure that Emma’s death was an accident.”
“Unless the police are coverin’ it up for some reason.”
Great, now he was beginning to sound like Will. I ignored the sharp pang that shot through my chest when I thought of Will (the one I used to get when thinking about Veronica), and looked at Connor sceptically. “Why on earth would they do that?”
He just shrugged. “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t trust that Rick Wood fella as far as I could throw him.”
On that point at least, we both agreed.
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for your dad.”
“I’d think so too, if it wasn’t for the clothes and everythin’ he left in his room. I can’t think of another explanation for that, other than he went out one day, expectin’ to come back, and didn’t.”
“Did you get any of his stuff back?”
“No, they’d got rid of it years ago. The woman who owns the B&B could remember what he left though - clothes, trainers, paperbacks, his address book, toiletries. He would never have willingly left all that behind. His wallet wasn’t there, which is what made ‘er think he might have left Little Forest, but he’d take that with him anyw
here. He’d never leave all his IDs, or his drivin’ licence or anythin’, behind in a hotel.”
Driving licence. A vague image of a small wicker basket floated into my mind, the word ‘Possessions’ in thick, black writing.
Connor carried on. “From what I can gather, he was dressed to be out in the elements when he left; he didn’t leave his long, waterproof coat behind, or his boots he used for walkin’, or his umbrella. I wondered if he’d gone for a walk in the woods and… well…”
I’d stopped listening to him, the last sentence washing over me completely. A long coat, walking boots, an umbrella.
“What kind of umbrella did your dad have?” I could hear my voice shaking.
“He had…” Connor realised what I’d asked and he stared at me, frowning. “Wait, what?”
I shrugged, not knowing what I could possibly say to make that seem like a normal response.
“After all I’ve said, that is your question?”
I didn’t want to mention the Garden Man. “I was just thinking… Norman has an umbrella.”
He looked as exasperated as I’d been a few minutes ago. “Many people do.”
“Was it one of those really long ones, one that reaches to the ground and has a giant point? Black, kind of grubby?”
Connor looked at me like I was mad. “Yeah… I’ve got the same one. Why?”
I cut him off. “Connor, what did your dad look like?”
“A slightly more normal question than the umbrella thing…”
“What did he look like?” I asked again, more urgently.
“Tall, dark brown hair, cut shortish, standard build…”
I took a deep breath. “Did he have any distinguishing features? A birthmark or…”
“A scar.” My stomach flipped. “Just under one of his eyes. He got it from when his best friend whacked him one with a club durin’ crazy golf. We thought he might have banjaxed his eye, but in the end it was grand.”
“Which eye was it?” Left, I knew it was the left.
“Again, what does that have to do…?”
“Connor.”
“Alright! It was his…” he looked off to the distance, trying to remember the face of his now possibly deceased father. “Left. Definitely left.”
“OK then.” My own memory flickered back to Connor and his dad (as I now knew) outside the bookshop. As soon as I did, I remembered why his dad (or the Garden Man as I’d been thinking of him then) had looked so familiar. Out of all the bored-looking punters at the Doctor’s Surgery pub in Renfield, one of them had looked paler, much sadder than the rest. He’d been there as Connor and I had drunk Poison Punch and talked about ghost tours. He’d seen that woman come up to me. He must have been watching us the whole time.