The Glister (21 page)

Give me some time to think, and a few clues, and I can usually work things out. And on my first day of being completely alone, wandering around the headland, not sure what to do about Dad, I get the first real clue. That's what the world does, sometimes: sometimes it gives you a gift, pure and simple; other times, it gives you a clue. Which is like a gift that you have to work for. Though you could say that the world is full of clues, if only you know how to read them. Clues, gifts. These are what we use to make sense of the world. Otherwise there's nothing. You don't got to have faith, like Miss Golding says in Religious Ed. Faith isn't a gift. Gifts have to come from the world, not from inside your own head. Clues too. It all has to come from somewhere. I mean, there are perfectly respectable people, philosophers and such, who think that the world is something we imagine, that it's all just an illusion we make up as we go along. Which means I'm making up the plant, and the murders, and my dad sicking up blood all over the kitchen floor. Of course I am.

My clue is a complete accident, a one-in-a- thousand chance. I'd spent my last night sleeping in the attic, just shacking out on the floor with a duvet and some pillows—I didn't want to sleep in my own bed, because I'd started thinking I would be the next of the Innertown boys to go, and they would be coming for me soon, just lifting me out of my own bed, like they did Tommy O'Donnell. I didn't want to sleep out on the headland either, though, because I wanted to be near Dad, that first night at least. I don't know why, it was just a sentimental thing. I couldn't do anything for him, and I knew I'd have to leave him soon. I'd wanted to lay him out neatly on his bed, but then I thought that would remind him of that face in the misty light, old Laura, young woman with all her life ahead of her, etc., etc., and I didn't want that. Besides, it would have been too much of an indignity to cart him up those narrow stairs. So I set him in the big armchair, more or less sitting up, as if he was reading, or listening to the radio. I thought about burning that album he'd been looking at, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I thought about giving it to him to look at while he sat there, waiting for his heavenly reward or whatever, but I couldn't do that either. So I just sat him up in the chair, and turned on the radio. Quietly, but loud enough so he could hear, if there was some wisp of something left in there, some trace of consciousness or memory or spirit burning out silently in his head, like a dying ember. You get people who think that death isn't the end of your life, it's the beginning of the next stage in the journey, and maybe the soul hangs about for a while, taking stock, or whatever. I'm not sure I'd go along with that—probably not—but you have to allow for every eventuality, especially when it's your father you're dealing with. You only get one father, and the one I got wasn't that bad, he just wasn't lucky. On the other hand, maybe he got the luck he wanted. Before that night, I'd always felt sorry for him. Because, his entire life, all he'd wanted to do was love somebody. That was the one gift he had, a strange, quiet talent for loving. The person he loved was Laura, and if she had loved him back, he would have been happy, no matter what else happened. But that night, I wasn't sorry for him at all because, in a way, he'd got what he wanted. He got to love somebody, which meant that he'd been able to use his one good gift. Maybe it didn't matter whether Laura loved him or not. Maybe, for him, that wasn't what it was all about.

So I slept on the floor of the loft, then I packed a bag with a few bits and bobs, food and coffee and such, so I could make myself little camping meals, like the Moth Man does. I figured, if he could do it, so could I. Maybe I'd get myself a van, nick one from the Outertown sometime and drive off, be a nomad, get away from here. First things first, though. I said goodbye to Dad, and I took all the money I could find around the house; then I headed out. It was a fine summery day, warm already, even at that early hour. I made my way across the back garden and out, through the gate in the fence, then down along the little alley behind, all the wheelie bins there, one at each gate, solemn and secret, full of clues and stories, like black tabernacles. At the end, I looked out to check if anybody was up and about, but the only living thing I saw was Mrs. Hatcher's white cat, the one all the kids referred to as Mrs. Hatcher's Pussy. The Innertown kids had a lot of virtues, but originality wasn't one of them. I suppose Elspeth was a bit of an original, though it would have been better if she hadn't tried so hard.

Elspeth. When I'd stood her up, she'd left that note saying she would come round later. I'd forgotten about that. What she had said in her note could only mean one thing, which was very tempting. Very. Still, I'd have to be disciplined and stick to the plan for a while. I could get in touch with her later, explain about Dad. Use him as an excuse.

So I'd got safely out of the Innertown and I'd stowed my bag of stuff in my special secret hiding place, like all kids have, even when they're getting a touch long in the tooth for special secret hiding places, then I started out for the West Side, so I could hole up in the woods for a while and get some time to think. That's when I come across Morrison, the policeman, standing all by himself in a little clearing among the trees, all quiet and thoughtful-looking, all preoccupied. So preoccupied that he doesn't even see me, though he looks up just a moment after I duck into cover, like he's felt me there or something. Sensed my presence. Or, maybe,
a
presence. Because, as odd as it seems, I think he must have been praying, or something like it, when I came across him. He'd just been standing there, looking at something on the ground, his head bowed down, like somebody who's standing beside a grave, saying goodbye. That's what I should be doing, of course. Standing by my father's grave and saying goodbye. Saying a prayer for him, maybe.

Anyway, I must have disturbed Morrison because, even though he doesn't see me, even if he doesn't think anybody else is there, his concentration is shot, and he just turns round and walks away—quick, like all of a sudden he doesn't want to be there anymore—and I have the place to myself. I wait awhile, a couple of minutes, maybe more, before I come out from where I am hiding. I have the idea that this
is
something. I even think it might be a clue. I don't want Morrison coming back and finding me, because if he does, the clue might be lost forever. Sometimes a clue is that slender: you catch a glimpse of someone when he thinks he's on his own, and you see another side to him. Something you didn't know about before.

When I am sure he's gone, I wander out and cross over, all innocent, like some kid just farting about in the woods, to see what it was he had been looking at. It had been low down, on the ground, over by the edge of the clearing. It takes me a moment to find it, or not so much to find it as to figure out what it is. Because at first I think it's just some garden stuff that somebody has dumped out there. It's only when I get close that I can see that it's an actual garden, with carnations and poppy plants and a little rosebush that looks as if it has just recently been planted. All around the plants, around the roots, somebody has set out pebbles, like the ones you get on the beach, all smooth from the sand and the water, bright shiny pebbles and pieces of colored glass and bits of broken china. It's like a magpie's garden, or maybe those nests that bowerbirds make, the ones you read about in nature books and such. I saw a program about them on TV once—probably one of those bird programs David Attenborough used to do. One of the few complete sentences I remember Dad saying—it must have been when I was still pretty small, maybe even a toddler—was during one of those Attenborough programs. Or maybe at the end, when the credits were rolling. That would have been more likely. It would have been a respect thing. Suddenly I remembered it like it was yesterday and I remembered the exact words he said.

“When you get a program like this,” he said, “it's almost worth paying the license.”

So here's this little plot of ground, half garden, half Isn't-Nature-Wonderful, bowerbird, hushed-Attenborough-tones natural mystery—but I'm asking myself what it's for. Why is there a garden out here, in the poison wood? A little garden of flowers, like some graveyard plot? And what is Morrison doing here? Is it him, planting flowers out here, in the middle of nowhere, like some nutter?

Even then, it takes me a few moments to see how stupid I'm being. It isn't a garden, it's just what it looked like when I first saw it. Sometimes, you have to trust those first impressions. Even if they're not quite spot-on, they can be clues. This isn't a garden, it's a grave. Something is buried here. Something, or somebody.

And then it occurs to me that Morrison isn't a nutter, he'd gone there for a reason and that reason had to do with the lost boys. He was there to tend a grave. But whose grave? Could it really be that one of the boys is buried out here, where our mysterious policeman has made his little garden? Is Morrison the murderer? Because all the boys are dead, that's obvious. Morrison is the one who's been saying otherwise, he's the one who put it about that the boys had all gone off on a Dick Whittington, with their little knapsacks and their ten-league boots, their talking animal friends by their sides. You have to wonder why he puts so much effort into that. Does he believe it himself? Or does he have something to hide? Somebody killed the lost boys, and he's getting away with it all these years. Who else to commit a whole series of murders, and then get away with it, other than a policeman? Who else could cover it all up and make sure there wouldn't be any kind of investigation? I mean, he looks capable. He's a bit of a mystery, everybody says so. Even if he isn't the killer, he has to be in on it. The question I am asking myself at that moment, though, is why?

Then I know. It isn't Morrison, of course. It isn't him doing the killing, or kidnapping, or whatever; he's just covering it up. He knows the real killer and he's protecting him. Or maybe there's more than one killer. Maybe there's a whole gang of them. Maybe the boys aren't dead, but somebody has them somewhere, for who knows what reason. Maybe the people in the town are right and it really is some kind of experiment. I feel sick when I think of that, not at the thought, because I've heard it often enough before, but at the idea that it might actually be true. We can calmly entertain the most terrible thoughts, if we're not sure they are true. But then, suddenly, they
are
true, and we feel sick to our stomachs. Morrison probably feels sick too, and maybe he's feeling guilty about what he's got himself into, and that's why he's made this little garden in the poison wood. But then, why here? Why not in his own garden at home? His secret plot. Out here, where anybody might come across it, this pathetic little garden is vulnerable. I can just imagine what would happen if Jimmy and his crew found it. Why not put it somewhere else, where he could protect it?

But I know why. I look off in the direction where Morrison disappeared, but nobody is there. It's just me, in that silent part of the poison wood that even the kids avoid. Long ago, the first boy disappeared in these woods, and after that his best friend vanished too, so the place is a bit jinxed in some people's eyes. Not in mine, though. Nowhere on the headland is bad or unlucky, and everywhere has its own history. This wood has poison running in its veins, in the sap of every tree, in every crumb of loam and every blade of grass under my feet, but it once was a place where lovers went to be secret, girls whose dads wouldn't let them go out with boys, husbands whose wives didn't give them love, wives whose husbands were never there, sneaking off in pairs to hide among the trees and bushes, fucking and talking and making plans about how they would get away. That's part of the history too. This garden is part of the history, and my finding it is part of the history. So it's also part of the history when I kneel down and start to dig, pulling out the plants and scattering the glass and pebbles, digging down into the dark earth to find what is hidden below. Because something
is
hidden here. I'm not saying I've found a body, I just know that there is a clue somewhere in all that dirt and grass and poison. I have to dig a long time: deep, deeper, deepest. I'm afraid that the policeman will come back and find me, but I can't stop; it's part of the history of the place that I should dig, and keep digging, till I find my clue. Though when I do, it isn't what I had expected—but it is a clue, nevertheless. A tiny, significant clue.

A watch. A boy's prized possession, a good watch, fairly expensive by Innertown standards. It's all gummed up with rust and dirt, and the crystal is broken, but I know it's still a clue, not just some piece of rubbish somebody has thrown away out there. So I rub off the dirt and scratch at the rust and, after a while, I see that there is an inscription on the back of the watch, an inscription I can just about make out. It says:
To Mark from Auntie Sall.
It seems to me that this is a loved thing, something a boy would only have lost if he couldn't go back to look for it, and though it isn't conclusive, though it wouldn't stand up in court, Your Honor, I know what it is and I know who it once belonged to. Mark Wilkinson isn't buried here, but this is where his ghost has remained, because this is where what he most loved was broken. Morrison knows that. That's why he made the garden. He is praying to a ghost—but why?

Then I guess it. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I know I am right. It's forgiveness. He is praying to this ghost for forgiveness. Yet, surely he knows that forgiveness does not come without repentance? Surely he knows that, to be forgiven, he must confess his sins, if only in his heart, and so make his peace with the world? And how can he do that, if nobody helps him?

After that, I leave the grave site, or the memorial garden, or whatever it's meant to be, and I head back into the far reaches of the plant. I'd been thinking, before, about going back to see Elspeth, but I know that will have to wait, for later, or maybe forever. For the moment, I have to be alone. For the moment, I have work to do.