What We Saw

Chapter Fifteen

Later, as I lay in bed, Donald’s final words rung in my ears like a church bell in the morning. ‘It could keep you out of trouble.’ Was he trying to warn us?

And Emily’s dad, on the phone. ‘It’s your mess.’ Something wasn’t right.

We went to bed that night knowing that we weren’t going to be getting much sleep. The rain plunked against the roof of the caravan, which didn’t help, but we were up for reasons much more serious than the weather.

Adam had his notepad out, the light above him just about illuminating his writing. He paused and put the pen in his mouth, as if he was trying to piece a jigsaw puzzle together.

‘Done,’ Adam said. He folded his arms and jumped back into his bed.

‘What d’you mean ‘done?’’

‘I’ve done. Finished a list of all the strange things. Everything Donald’s done that has been strange.’ He passed the book over to me. He had listed and bullet pointed everything from the beginning, when Carla went missing, right through to Donald’s revelation of the ring in the woods. Carla’s initial disappearance seemed so long ago. I felt like my brain had been moving at the speed of a train, unable to process everything at once. All of the sections had little notes next to them including areas for speculation, such as whether Donald kidnapped Carla from the beginning, or came across her and held her for a few days after we’d seen him in the woods. But the section with the ring had a big, bold question mark, the white of the paper shining underneath the scribbled black ink.

‘So do you think it was a cover up or not?’ Adam asked.

‘The ring? A cover up for what?’

Adam turned over, leaning on his pillow towards me. He licked his lips as if he were on to something. It was a similar face to the time he thought he’d caught something when Granddad took us both fishing. Unfortunately for him, it was just a pram wheel. ‘Well, think about it. He’s taken us out to the woods and acted all weird and made out as if he knew someone a long time ago, who he used to come to the caravan site with. Do you not think maybe this ring belonged to the girl and he’s using this to put us off our trail?’

I had thought about it, and the theory wasn’t too far off my own initial thoughts. Maybe he’d planted this all along as a ploy to get us into the woods and to attach significance to something that perhaps didn’t really matter.

‘So what you’re saying is the ring isn’t really a big deal?’ I said.

Adam reshuffled his pillow, cradling his head in his hands. ‘Well I’m not saying that for sure, but it does seem weird. I mean, he took us all the way out there to show us something without even telling us what it was. Does that not seem a bit weird to you?’

I was impressed, again, by Adam’s ability to think outside the box. Not many people my age could keep up with him in this department, let alone people his own age. ‘Yeah, it’s almost as if he was trying to distract us,’ I said. ‘Like he knew we would be debating things, what with us being into solving mysteries and everything, so just gave us something else to think about. Which means—’

‘—which means, he’s trying to stop us thinking about the body. He’s trying to distract us.’

It was a far-fetched theory, and definitely one of the more bizarre things we’d come up with. Then again, seeing a man bury a dead girl was hardly an everyday event to witness.

‘What about Emily’s dad?’ I asked.

Adam looked at his notes and scratched his cheek. ‘Well, we don’t know who he was talking to.’

‘It just seemed a little weird that he was on about secrets coming out and all that and he headed into the woods where Donald was. Don’t you reckon?’

Adam chewed at his lip, pausing to think. ‘I guess. We’ll keep an eye on Emily’s dad. Ask Emily if he’s been acting weird lately.’

‘There can only be one answer there,’ I said.

Adam chuckled.

‘So what’s this plan of yours?’ I asked.

Adam tutted. ‘Always me coming up with the genius ideas round here isn’t it?’ He winked at me.

‘Hey, it’s not always you,’ I said. I realised I’d raised my voice.

Adam smirked back at me. ‘I know, I know—only messing, cuz. Cool it.’

I felt the lump in my throat subside as Adam turned back on his pillow and closed his eyes. I could see the grin on his mouth. I couldn’t tell whether he was still laughing at me or whether he was on to something. He was the one with the information, and, if he wanted to keep it to himself, he could for as long as he wanted.

‘We stick to the plan. We’ve done step one and hung around with him. He’s acted weird. Now we go to step two.’

‘And step two is?’

‘We ask Kenny about Donald.’

I frowned and let out a laugh. Slow-walking Kenny wasn’t a man of gossip. He was the last person who would part with information. His wife was always the one who used to chit-chat about Whatshername getting pregnant, or Mr Whats-his-face getting killed on the telly. Kenny was always a quiet man. He made his garden features, he watched the snooker, and he sunbathed with a newspaper every morning, no matter what the weather was like. We never went to see him anymore, so it would be strange for us to suddenly roll up on his doorstep and start quizzing him on Donald.

‘And how exactly do we get info from Kenny?’ I asked, bemused.

Adam carried on smiling, his eyes still shut. I prayed he hadn’t gone to sleep, because I wanted to hear what he had to say. He was toying with me.

‘I’ve seen to that,’ he said.

I jumped over to his bed and hit his leg.

He winced. ‘Ow, alright, alright. Well, you know when I took the rubbish up to the bins before? Well, let’s just say the bag split all over his garden. I even popped a Lurpak carton on the nose of his garden dolphin.’

I tried to respond, but no words left my mouth, which dangled open.

Adam continued, grinning away. ‘When he wakes up, he’ll need a hand or two clearing his garden. And that’s when we happen to be wandering past. That way, he won’t be able to resist answering our questions.’

‘You’ve… you did that?’

Adam smirked. ‘Told you I’m a genius.’ He turned into his pillow, still smiling.

An idiot, more like. A bloody clever idiot. He reached up to his light without opening his eyes and flicked the switch.