Black Wood (6 page)

Gray tried not to roll his eyes. Brotherstone was being his usual officious self, it seemed. Well, two could play that game.

‘Could you step away from the car please, sir.’

Brotherstone’s jaw dropped, yet he complied. His face had turned puce. ‘Don’t you “sir” me, laddie. This is a serious matter. I’ve been saying for
years
that the Track has been cultivating an unsavoury type of behaviour, and what I saw this morning just confirms that.’

‘And what was that, exactly, Mr Brotherstone?’ Gray took his notepad and pen from his pocket. He wrote:
Incident Report. The Track
. Then the date. He glanced at his watch, then neatly wrote down the time. He looked at Brotherstone and had to suppress a smile. He took the phrase ‘hopping with rage’ to a whole new level.

‘Do you find this amusing, Sergeant Gray?’ He emphasised the rank, like it was a dirty word.

‘Not at all, sir. Maybe we should go inside?’

The small crowd parted as they neared the house, and Gray spotted Brotherstone’s son, Pete, hovering in the open doorway. He was a thin streak of a lad, always slumped at the shoulders, trying to make himself disappear. He slunk back inside and vanished into the kitchen. Even if he hadn’t been in the house before, Gray would’ve known it was the kitchen, because all of the houses in the estate shared exactly the same layout. Once you’d been in one, you’d been in them all.

Brotherstone’s looked pretty much like it had when he’d bought it from the building firm. Neutral magnolia walls, bog-standard beige carpet. It was definitely lacking a woman’s touch. His wife had died not long after they’d moved in.

She’d been a quiet, mousey woman, from what Gray remembered. Even her illness had come and gone without much fanfare. Brotherstone’s obnoxiousness and waistline had increased in equal measure since the woman’s funeral. Brotherstone seemed to have taken a particular dislike to him after that. Gray suspected it was because the man knew that he understood his grief, but his stubbornness prevented him from accepting any support. Brotherstone didn’t want anyone’s sympathy. Yet Gray felt sorry for him, despite the slagging they gave him for his community nosiness. It couldn’t be easy bringing up a son like Pete with no mother around to help.

Brotherstone ushered him into the living room, which housed a brown leather sofa, a matching recliner and a TV of approximately the same size as Gray’s car. A single blown-up photograph hung on the wall behind the sofa: a grinning Mr and Mrs Brotherstone sandwiching a small, scowling boy. The whole room made Gray feel sad.

Gray sat on the sofa. Brotherstone perched on one arm of the recliner. He didn’t look comfortable and Gray fully expected the thing to topple over.

‘OK then, Mr … is it OK if I call you Martin?’

Martin nodded, waved a dismissive hand. He seemed to sag then, like the stuffing had been knocked out of him. ‘It was Pete who saw him first. His bedroom faces right out onto the Track. Our room’s at the front.’ He coughed. ‘My room, I mean.’

Gray nodded. ‘Can we bring Pete in? I’d like to hear this from him.’

Martin shook his head, a bead of sweat that’d been clinging onto his meaty forehead suddenly losing its grip and catching Gray on the cheek. Gray winced inwardly, letting Martin continue. ‘Not just now. He’s a bit … agitated. I can tell you exactly what he told me.’

Oh aye
, Gray thought.

‘But you didn’t actually see anything yourself?’

‘No.’

Gray wrote on his pad:
Son? Unreliable?

‘I can tell you.’ Gray turned to find Pete standing in the doorway.

‘Petey …’ Martin said.

Gray shushed him with a wave of his hand.

‘What did you see, Pete? You can tell me. I’m going to write it down in this notepad.’ He held it up. ‘See?’

Pete dropped his head, then spewed out the words without pausing for breath. ‘He was wearing a balaclava. Like the SAS. He was tramping about in the bushes. He had something in his hand. I couldn’t see what it was. He was too far away. I tried to look in the telescope but then it was too late and he was gone and I didn’t see him again after that. Then I told Dad. Then after that I looked again and got the telescope and that’s when I saw the girl.’

Gray felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. ‘The girl? What girl?’

Martin stood up. ‘He gets confused sometimes. There was no girl. Was there, Petey?’

‘Dad! There was a girl. I told you about the girl. I told you she was—’

The lad was interrupted mid-flow as Gray’s phone blared out ‘A Town Called Malice’, slightly too loud. Pete flinched and ran out of the room. Gray shrugged a sorry, but Martin glared at him anyway and followed his son out of the room.

The ringtone started up again and Gray stabbed at the answer button and shouted ‘What?’ into the phone.

It was Beattie.

‘You need to get round to Alder’s Avenue. I’ve just had Kevin Brownlee on the phone. Apparently his daughter’s been approached by some weirdo up at the Track. You there now?’

Gray stared at the phone. ‘Was he wearing a balaclava, by any chance?’

‘Aye, how’d you know that?’

‘You better give us the address.’

Gray left Brotherstone to deal with his son and told him he’d be back later. The address that Beattie had given him was only five minutes away by foot, but he took the car anyway. It wouldn’t look good for him to turn up on foot for this.

As he drove the short journey to the Brownlee house, he thought about the exchange he’d just witnessed. Why was Brotherstone trying to stop Pete from talking to him, telling him what he’d seen? There
had
been that thing a few years back. The thing with the little girl in the swing park … The mother accused Pete Brotherstone of trying to lure the girl away, but Pete’s explanation was that the wee girl had been crying and he was trying to take her home … The whole thing had been swept under the carpet. By Martin Brotherstone and a wad of cash, Gray suspected. But Gray had always believed the boy’s story. He’d go as far as to bet his treasured scooter that Pete Brotherstone wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Jenny Brownlee’s house was in a cul-de-sac much the same as the one he’d just left. The houses were the same identikit type, only these ones were a bit smaller than the one the councillor lived in. Same generic lack of character. Same beige frontage with random pieces of moulding to make them look like they hadn’t come straight from Ikea.

Gray’s own house was a 1930s cottage with white pebble-dashed walls and a triangular half-porch that leaked every time it rained, and which somehow Gray never got round to fixing. He told himself it added to the character when, in fact, his cottage was the same as all the others on the terrace.

His front garden was concreted and served as a parking space for his beloved Lambretta. He kept it beneath a custom-made oilskin cover and had it bolted to the house with a heavy metal chain so big it would be easier to cut away the wall of the house than break one of the links.

Didn’t stop the little bastards from trying, though.

In contrast, Jenny Brownlee’s front garden was a neat square of bright-green turf, separated from its neighbour by a border of neatly pruned yellow roses. Someone was clearly a gardener. The effect was spoiled somewhat by the sight of Jenny’s dad, Kevin, standing on the front step wearing a scowl that would sour milk.

Gray parked in the empty driveway and killed the engine.
Here we go then
.

‘Morning, sir. Mr Brownlee, is it? Mind if I come in?’ Gray nodded his head in the direction of the open front door.

Brownlee nodded and stepped aside to let him in. Gray was about to walk straight through to the lounge but stopped himself just in time.

‘Aye, through there,’ Brownlee said.

The lounge was an eye-stinging explosion of colour. The complete opposite of the beigey, magnolia’d interior of Brotherstone’s house. A huge L-shaped red-fabric sofa took up most of two walls. The majority of the dark laminate flooring was obscured by an enormous orange and yellow circular rug. Unsurprisingly, a flat-screen TV hung on the far wall; below it, a modern-design chrome electric fire. Gray noticed the oversized beanbag in the corner of the room and prayed that he wouldn’t have to sit on it. He couldn’t understand the things. Uncomfortable to sit on, impossible to get back out of, and they made that annoying crunchy noise whenever you moved.

‘Here, I’ll move.’ A tall stringy man in a tight white T-shirt, black lycra tights and bare feet stood up from the sofa and took himself over to the beanbag, where he sat back down with a crunch.

On the other end of the sofa, a girl sat with her legs curled under her, an untouched mug of tea on a small table placed nearby. She looked miserable. Gray suspected there was more than a hint of hangover in the mix.

Gray sat and waited for Kevin Brownlee to come into the room before he spoke.

‘So,’ Gray said, taking out his notepad and pen. ‘Jenny? That’s right, isn’t it?’

The girl nodded.

‘And who’s this?’ Gray asked, looking towards the man sitting uncomfortably on the beanbag.

‘Dave Morriss,’ the man replied. ‘I—’

‘Dave’s the one who helped Jenny up at the Track,’ Kevin Brownlee butted in. ‘I’ve had to put his shoes and socks in the bloody washing machine.’

Jenny made a small choking sound and Gray turned towards her, hoping for some insight.

‘I puked on his shoes,’ Jenny said. She pulled a stand of hair across her mouth and sucked on it to try to hide her smirk. ‘I got a fright.’

Kevin Brownlee stood up. ‘Oh, it’s funny now, eh? Wasn’t that when Mr Morriss kindly brought you back here while you were bubblin’ and greetin’ your wee eyes out, eh?’

Gray heard the crunch as Morriss shifted uncomfortably in the beanbag.

‘Oh really, it was no trouble, I—’

Gray raised a hand. ‘Right. OK. Maybe if I can hear from Jenny first, Mr Morriss? Then you can tell me what you saw. Make sure I’ve got the full picture, eh?’ He turned back to Jenny. ‘In your own time.’

Jenny sighed. The sigh said I’ve already told all this to my dad and he’s pissed off with me for causing trouble and now I suppose I’ve got to say it all again to you now, don’t I? Gray had heard the sigh before. He called it the ‘Teenage Sigh’. It was used regularly by all youths accused of doing something wrong, doing nothing at all, as a first response to a question as innocuous as ‘How are you?’ Teens, it seemed, viewed all attempts at conversation directed at them by an adult as highly suspicious.

‘He was just standing there in the trees.’

‘Did he approach you?’

She frowned. ‘Kind of. He started walking towards me. He … he snapped a stick. It sounds stupid now.’ She turned towards Dave Morriss, who was still sitting awkwardly on the beanbag, and smiled. ‘He saved me,’ she said, pointing at the man, who opened his mouth to say something.

Gray silenced it with a raised hand.
Wait your turn, son
. He scribbled in his notepad.
No physical contact
.

‘Did he speak to you? Make any sound at all? Anything you could identify?’

Jenny shook her head again, bit her bottom lip.

Gray changed tack. ‘OK. Can you tell me what he looked like? What he was wearing? Height, build, anything like that?’

Jenny sat up straight on the couch. ‘Well, he was tall … like you. A bit skinnier than you, though. I suppose you’d call him “lanky”. He was in jeans and a black fleece. Nothing unusual. No, like, logos or badges or anything …’

She paused, and Gray nodded at her to continue.

‘I couldn’t see any part of his face or his hair. Because of the balaclava, you know? His head must’ve been boiling.’

The girl seemed more relaxed now, Gray thought. Now that the danger had passed, she was enjoying her moment in the limelight. It wasn’t unusual. Unfortunately, though, she wasn’t giving him very much to go on.

‘Anything else you can tell me, Jenny? No matter how small, anything. Did you see what he had on his feet? Was he carrying anything?’

‘No. Sorry.’ She bit her lip again, dragging at a piece of skin. ‘He just looked normal …’

‘There
is
something else actually, officer.’ There was a rustle of shifting polystyrene beans as the man stuffed into the beanbag finally stood up.

Gray was about to tell him to wait, then thought better of it. The man was desperate to talk. ‘Go on.’

Dave Morriss cleared his throat. ‘There was something wrong with his face. I saw it as he turned, just before he ran off. Jenny wouldn’t have noticed …’ He glanced across at the girl and gave her a tight smile. ‘She was, er, vomiting at the time.’

Gray’s ears pricked up. ‘Something wrong with his face? I thought he was wearing a balaclava?’

Morriss nodded his head enthusiastically, reminding Gray of one of those little dogs that people put on the back shelves of their cars. ‘Yes. Yes, he was. But I could see there was something wrong with him underneath … his face looked too big. Bumpy. On his cheeks? I think maybe he had some sort of deformity … which is maybe why he was wearing the balaclava?’

Something wrong with his face
. Something pinged in Gray’s memory. Something he hoped might push itself further towards the surface sooner rather than later. ‘Doesn’t explain why he was lurking in the bushes, scaring young girls, though, does it?’ Gray said. ‘Deformity or not.’

‘No. I suppose not. Just, well … Maybe you could look up some doctors’ records or something for the area. Maybe you’ll be able to find him like that. He might be registered disabled or something? I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, or anything, but—’

Gray cut him off. He was rambling now. ‘Thank you, Mr Morriss. I’ll certainly be exploring that as a possibility. I’m wondering, though – what makes you think he’s local?’

Morriss and Jenny exchanged a glance. Jenny spoke. ‘Because he ran up through the back of the houses. The cut-through is tiny. No way anyone other than a local could know about that …’

Gray flipped his notebook shut. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘you’ve both been very helpful.’

Kevin Brownlee, who’d been listening to the exchange from the doorway, said, ‘I’ll see you out, Sergeant Gray.’