Thirty-Two

I knew where they’d be going, and I knew the quickest way to get there too. I crashed through the woods, ignoring the roads, ignoring the paths, ignoring the thorns and twigs that scraped at me. I was almost at the bridge when I caught sight of them, just a flash of Stig’s grey sweatshirt between the trees. I ran faster, ignoring the ragged burning that tore at my chest.

Now I could see both of them on the bridge and they were struggling, her hand clawing at his face and her leg hooking in around his, trying to unfoot him. He leaned back to get away from her nails, those pink and white nails, rimmed in red now as she gouged at him. He leaned further, she lunged, and then he was over the handrail and falling.

“Stiiiiig!” I screamed and leapt forward. She came full at me and could have tipped me over without even having to try, because I was numb and stumbling. Instead she brushed past me, shoving me roughly with one shoulder, and then she was gone. “Stig!” I screamed again, bending over the bridge rail. I could see him far below, thrashing and wallowing in the water. I looked desperately to the steep banks at either end and took one step up onto the ledge to follow him, but then my mouth fell open and I blinked in amazement, looking down.

He had stood up, water coursing off him, his hair plastered down and his clothes dark. He had lost his glasses and his face looked naked as he stood there gazing up at me.

“How did Moped drown in this?” he called up. He waded under the bridge to the other side, and I crossed over it to see where he was going.“How did he drown in three feet of water?”

“They always say you can.”

“Not Moped,” said Stig.

“Maybe … ” I said, but I couldn’t finish it, because I didn’t know. “You need to get out of there before you freeze to death.” Stig nodded and began to wade, heavy-legged, to the edge and then pull himself up, holding on to tussocks of bracken and hauling his exhausted wet weight up the bank to stand beside me.

“How could anyone ever have believed Mope fell off that bridge and drowned?” he said.

“Because he was in there and he was dead,” I told him. “And everyone else was tucked up in their sleeping bags, so it was the only story that made any sense.”

“Only they weren’t and it doesn’t,” he said.

I shrugged off my cardigan and draped it around his shoulders. “Come on,” I said. “You’re freezing.”

But Stig turned away and began to fight through the brambles and bracken until he was twenty feet downstream from the bridge. He seemed to be searching for something.

“What is it?” I asked him.

He stood up with a round smooth pebble in his hand, looked up at the tree branch above him, shuffled a few steps along the bank, took aim and threw the pebble into the water. It made a deep, plunking noise, almost like a gulp, and disappeared, just the rings spreading out to show where it had been.

“‘See the rings pursue each other,’” I said. “‘All below grows black as night.’”

“I’m beginning to see what happened,” Stig said, then he gave an enormous shudder. “I need to go and get dry clothes.”

“I’m going back to see if Nicky’s all right,” I said. “I don’t care where she is or where she goes. You’re okay; that’s the main thing. And I can’t run anymore. I can hardly walk.”

“Open your shed and get my car out,” said Stig. “We’re closer to Rough House than the home.” And so we both turned for the path out of the woods, me limping and Stig squelching. We had got out onto the lane when an engine sounded behind us and a horn tooted. I turned round to see Duggie in his Volvo.

“They’ve got her,” he said. “The backup car coming in from the other road-end intercepted her.”

“How’s Nicky?” I asked. “Is he okay?”

“He’s sitting up in bed playing with his X-box and eating crisps,” said Duggie. “For God’s sake, Gloria, he’s the same as ever. It would have taken about half an hour for the sedatives to wear off. If you hadn’t been so hysterical she’d never even have got as far as she did.”

“Don’t speak to her like that,” said Stig. He was shivering even harder now, not small movements like shivering usually is, but violent jerks that shook his whole body.

“Open up, Duggie,” I said “And give us a lift to the house.”

He cast a look at Stig’s dripping clothes and then one at his upholstery, and his face was twisted up with a wry smile as he popped the locks and let us in. We both slid into the back seat. I put my arms around Stig and draped one of my legs over him.

“Christ, Gloria,” said Duggie.

“For the warmth,” I said. “He fell off the bridge, like Moped did. He’ll be lucky not to get hypothermia.”

“Except Moped didn’t,” said Stig. His voice was shaking so much I almost didn’t catch what he said, but Duggie heard it. I knew he did because the car swerved suddenly and then he braked too sharply before he righted it again.

“What are you on about?” he said.

“I didn’t understand why she saved you till last,” Stig said. “Even my dad’s payback wasn’t the grand finale. That was you.”

“Why who saved me?”

“Christ, haven’t you worked it out yet?”

“What’s that?” I said, peering out of the side window. We were almost at Rough House now, past the last cattle grid, and I could see something that didn’t make sense to me.

“Worked what out?” said Duggie, in that sneering voice of his. “Are you trying to get your dad off?”

“What is that?” I said, looking at a black haze in front of the house that shouldn’t have been there.

“I think Naismitth was scared of you,” said Stig, and the car jolted again. We were coming alongside the garden wall now, almost there.

“Oh God!” I cried out. “No! Duggie, stop the car. Walter!”

It was crows, a cloud of ravens and crows, swirling and cawing and endlessly pecking at the sack-covered hump that lay on the grass waiting for the hole that Stig never finished digging.

“Get away!” I yelled, bursting in through the gate and rushing at them, waving my arms. “Leave him alone.” Almost lazily, the birds on the ground hopped back and then lifted off, and the whole cloud of them flapped away into the trees. “Oh, Walter,” I said, feeling my legs go from under me, so that I was sitting down beside him. “Walter.”

Stig came over and stood beside me, stroking my shoulder.

Even through my sobs, Duggie’s footsteps sounded so peculiar that I turned away from the poor old dog, pulling the sack back over his pecked face and turned, watching Duggie strolling so casually towards us across the gravel and up the steps.

“Why would she be scared of me?” he said.

“Because she saw what you did,” said Stig. “She said all along that she had come out to check on us at eleven. Then, when she got really hysterical, she said she’d come out twice. She’d come out again. In the early hours. I get it now. She was telling the truth, wasn’t she?

“When my dad drove away she came out to check us again, but she didn’t get any further than the bridge because she saw what you did there and she was terrified by you. That’s why she was so blank and stilted when she heard the news. She already knew, didn’t she, because she saw it.”

“All very interesting,” said Duggie. “But complete bollocks.”

“In the morning, when we all came back with the news—except it wasn’t news to her—she realised what a mistake she’d made not raising the alarm right away. When you all turned on her and started telling lies about her, she couldn’t believe it. That’s why she was so completely crazy. She covered for you, Duggie, and you dropped her in it.”

“But she’ll tell them now, won’t she?” I said. “Zöe.”

Duggie’s face drained of all color.

“Of course she will,” Stig said. He was almost laughing, or the shudders were making it sound that way. “The penny’s just dropped this minute. He’s not very bright.”

“Did you throw Moped over the bank?” I said.

“No,” said Stig. “That’s not what happened. We all saw the clue to what happened when we were crossing the bridge in the morning to go back to the school. We all saw it and none of us realised what it meant.”

“Zöe is Naismith?” said Duggie. He walked over to the Rocking Stone and leaned against it.

“What did you see?” I asked.

“The Tarzan swing,” said Stig. “It was hanging down over the water instead of being hooked over the tree at the edge so we could use it. It was hanging straight down. He was on the Tarzan swing, wasn’t he, Duggie?”

“I don’t see what difference that makes,” I said.

“And Duggie was there,” said Stig. “How long did it take?”

“He came to try to scare me at eleven o’clock,” Duggie said. “And I chased him. He went to the swing. I managed to snatch his coat, just grab a handful, enough to slow him down.”

“So he couldn’t make it to the other side,” said Stig. “And you broke the rule.”

“What rule?” I asked.

“We had another rope,” said Stig. “And if anyone did a bad swing and got stuck, the rule was you had to fling them the rope and pull them back in.”

“He begged me,” said Duggie. He rolled around until both his shoulders were against the stone, letting his head fall back. It almost looked like a relief to him to be telling it at last. “On and on for hours. Snivelling and begging and pleading. Everything but apologising, and that’s all I asked him to do.”

“Hours?” I said. “He was just a little boy, Duggie. How many hours?”

“It was his choice,” Duggie said. “All he had to do was apologise, but he just hung there, swinging around and threatening me. God, who was he not going to tell? Then he went quiet, must have dozed off. And he just let go, slipped down, didn’t make a sound. Didn’t even make a sound when he hit the water. God knows how long it took, but it was just before the car engine, that I can tell you.”

“Five hours,” I said. “You stood there and watched for five hours while a little boy clung onto a rope.”

“All he had to do was say sorry.”

Stig and I were silenced then.

“And I went in after him,” Duggie said.

“You tried to save him?” I asked in a small voice.

“Of course.”

“Bullshit,” said Stig. “You were bone dry when you woke me.”

“All right,” said Duggie. “I took my clothes off first. So maybe it’s fairer to say I went in to drag him under the bridge. Not really to save him exactly. What’s the difference in the end? He was probably dead already.”

He shrugged, then he took a deep breath and swung round to face us again and something about the series of movements … Well, I had been wondering since he first leaned against it. But that was only a few minutes at most, nothing like five hours, and he was a grown man, not a little boy. I heard the grating as the rock started to move and then a cry of panic, but I didn’t see it. I had turned back to Walter, stroking his soft ears for the last time and holding one of his big velvety paws.