What We Saw

Chapter Eleven

Although it rained the next morning, it was a rather warm and sunny afternoon. Adam and I were out in the garden. The birds sang and children played on the beach somewhere in the distance.

I could hear the faint pattering of a dog’s feet against the road, but I didn’t pay much attention to the sound. Adam was showing me how he could do ten keepy-ups with the football.

‘But it doesn’t count if you let the ball hit the floor,’ I said.

Adam went a strange shade of red. ‘Who says?’

‘Well, everyone knows…’ I stopped speaking as I noticed Adam gawking at something behind me. His jaw kept on falling towards the ground. I turned round to see what he was looking at.

Carla ran towards us, and Adam sprinted back at her. ‘Carla! Oh, Carla, I—Carla, where’ve you been, girl? Silly girl, you silly girl.’

Adam cuddled her as she licked his face and put her paws all over him. I wanted to feel joy. I wanted to be able to be excited—and I wanted to be relieved to be reunited with my dog, our dog. I wanted to be blown away that Gran’s faith was right all along, but I wasn’t sure if Adam had missed what I’d seen. Carla’s rescuer stood with his hands in his beige jacket pocket, his glasses dangling on the end of his nose, a smile of victory across his face. He stared straight into my eyes and winked.

‘Told you she’d find her way back to you, boys,’ Donald said.

Gran and Granddad joined us outside to see what the fuss was all about.

‘Oh! You came back! Oh you came back, you good girl,’ Gran said. Donald stood tall. Gran ran over to him and wrapped her arms around him.

‘Thank you so, so much,’ she said. ‘We thought she’d gone. We thought you’d gone, didn’t we, eh?’ She turned to Carla, who jumped up towards Gran and licked at her face. Donald was Gran’s hero right now. Granddad shook Donald’s hand, and he returned his greeting with a nod of the head. Adam looked at me now, his mouth wide open, and looked back at Donald. Nothing seemed real. I couldn’t get my head around anything. Maybe Donald had stolen Carla. Maybe he had found her. I couldn’t work it out. My mind spun like a malfunctioning Ferris wheel of ideas.

‘You must come in for a brew, Donald,’ Granddad said.

Donald waved his hands and laughed.

‘No, no—we insist. Come in for a brew and eat with us. It’s the least we can do.’

Donald turned towards me. ‘As long as that’s okay with you, boys?’ he asked. His smile twitched at the sides. My hands rattled and a lump grew in my throat.

Gran ushered us inside, giddy with excitement as Carla jumped around.

‘After you, boys,’ Donald said, holding his arm out and leading us into our own caravan.

I felt trapped. First he’d somehow got Granddad on his side with the embrace that day, which seemed like forever ago. They’d laughed and joked together. Was this all a part of his plan? He knew we’d seen him burying the girl. He was playing us around, pulling the strings, like that really freaky puppet show my mum once took me to see, Punch and Judy. He had to be playing us.

My gran put the kettle on and Donald took a seat in our living room. Carla hopped in front of the fire, taking to the spot like she’d never been gone. She was asleep within seconds.

‘She’s bound to be a tired girl,’ Donald said. ‘Who knows where she’s been or what she’s been up to?’ He looked at me again and smiled.

I knew. Adam knew. We didn’t know the specifics, but we didn’t need to. We knew enough.

Gran made us all hot pot. I hated hot pot anyway, but right now I couldn’t even eat all the ice-cream in the world. Swallowing those soggy carrots and potatoes was never an easy feat, but it was worse today. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever eat properly again.

The low hum of the television on mute was ghostlike as we waited for Donald to tell us how he’d come across Carla. Adam and I sat rigid on either side of the table.

‘I was up in the woods. Wandered off the path a bit, ended up at the old caves,’ he said, a speck of carrot wedged between his front teeth. ‘I hadn’t been that way for a while, but I heard a bit of rustling in the trees above. Thought it might be that stag from the other day ‘cause it sounded like it definitely had four legs. Sure enough, old girl comes running towards me.’

Adam’s eyes shot down at his hands as Donald looked in his direction. I struggled to swallow my last forkful of hot pot. I wanted to be sick.

‘I can’t thank you enough, Donald,’ Gran said. ‘With everything going on lately, we didn’t need another upset did we, boys?’ She smiled and turned to us for approval. A weight had been lifted off her shoulders with this rare bit of good news. Maybe Donald had done this and planned it all along to give us something to be happy about. It was an outlandish suspicion, but it made sense. Gran was the happiest I’d seen her in days, pottering about the kitchen, preparing to serve her homemade cheesecake.

‘I just don’t get where she’s been all this time,’ Granddad said. ‘I mean, sure, dogs find their own ways to survive out there, but she’s spoilt rotten, this dog. No way has she made it for five days on her own.’

I turned to Donald, awaiting his response. Granddad’s cheeks went pink. I knew he knew something wasn’t right. I wanted to say something. I needed Donald to slip up.

Donald was cool, tucking into his dessert with composure. ‘If you ask me, she went running off after the stag. Who knows where the stag got to? But y’know, dogs are clever. Maybe Carla waited on the path or something like that. I don’t know.’

‘She looks so healthy, though,’ Granddad said. ‘She certainly doesn’t look malnourished.’

‘Perhaps she ended up in Bareslow. You just never know. Someone could’ve been looking after her.’

I felt the weight of everything bubbling in my body. ‘You.’ I muttered. The bubble of tension burst.

Gran turned to me. I looked up. My cheeks felt warm. Donald frowned at me. Shit. I’d blown our cover.

‘You what, Liam?’ Gran asked.

I felt the lump growing in my throat again. Adam tapped his spoon against his bowl. Everybody’s eyes pierced through me.

‘Thank—thank you. For finding Carla. Thank you.’ I looked up at Donald and smiled before gazing at my hands and scratching at the back of them. Adam stopped banging his spoon, and his shoulders relaxed.

I wondered for a second whether what Donald had said about Carla being looked after was a hint or whether I was looking into it too much. But we couldn’t be complacent. This was a full blown investigation and, as things stood, Donald didn’t seem to suspect us. I started to doubt that he had seen us in the woods that day after all. But what grounds would he have for stealing Carla? It was so confusing. But we had a case, and we would solve it. We had to.

I looked over at Adam as he twirled his spoon in his fingers, melted cream sliding down into the bowl. He looked at Donald, but not at his eyes; he inspected his body, his hair, everywhere but his eyes. I didn’t know what Adam was thinking, but I did know it had to be to do with the case. Looking at his body language. Looking for signs.

After a cup of tea, Donald finally left. I felt a sudden lightness as he walked out of the door. He turned round when he reached the end of our drive. ‘I hope I see you boys in the den again soon. I’ve got another chair for you. Bring Emily along too. Not seen her for a while.’

I shuddered when he said Emily’s name. It wasn’t really the way he’d said it, not like some cartoon villain or anything like that. He didn’t whisper it out, while curling his eyebrow upwards, or anything silly. It was just the way her name escaped his mouth. The fact that he knew every little detail about us. He knew about our den and about who we hung around with. He’d even given us stuff: gifts, chairs, company. He’d taken us deep into the woods at night and let us talk to him about mysteries and ghost stories.

If he had killed the girl, I wondered if he’d done it before our trip to the caves. I kept thinking about us sitting around that flashlight, with the moths dancing in the beam, listening to a murderer.