I examined the red baseball cap. It had a cartoon dinosaur on the front. The day I found it I’d almost burned it. Instead, I hid it in a drawer in my bedroom. It was a sign from Blyth, I believed. I’d asked for help and he’d given me this sign.
So it was that two weeks after the boy disappeared, I set out to cycle the six miles to Trecastle. I’d never learned to drive, much less owned a car. It never seemed necessary. The caravan park, I discovered after enquiring at the post office, was a mile northwest of the village.
Once there I was at a loss. I hadn’t given much thought as to what I’d do or who I’d speak to. I bought a tea from the café in the reception building and took it outside to a bench. I watched cars come and go, families setting out for the reservoir or the Black Mountain. More people left on bikes or on foot. Two girls approached the bench. One of them, a red-haired girl, stood looking up at me. “You’re the man with the bird,” she said.
I recognized her as one of the kids I’d met in Glasfynydd. I looked around for her parents.
“Is the bird here?”
“I don’t think you should talk to me.”
“Why not?”
Her friend laughed and said, “I knew it. I knew you made it up.”
“Made what up?” I asked.
The red-haired girl pointed at her friend. “She thinks I lied about the bird.”
I sipped my tea. “You mean Blyth. He’s around here somewhere. I expect he’s minding his business.”
“What business?” the other girl said.
“Bird business.”
“Does he do tricks?”
“When he has a mind to.”
“Call him,” the red-haired girl said.
I was about to call Blyth when a woman came out of the building. “Come here now, Ellie. You too, Lizzie. Stop bothering the man.”
I told her they weren’t bothering me. “We’re just talking.”
“Well, they’re not allowed to talk to strangers,” she said, agitated. “Not after what happened to that boy.”
“It’s okay, we’re not exactly strangers. Isn’t that right?”
Before the girl could respond, a man approached. “What’s going on?”
“He’s got a bird does tricks,” the girl said.
“Who are you?” the man said.
“He was talking to the girls,” the woman said. She made it seem like an accusation. The man glared at me. Another couple emerged from the building and stood watching us. The woman said, “He says they’re not strangers.”
“We met before, her and some others, in the forest a while back. We talked, that was all.”
“He had birds,” the girl said. “Two were dead and another one danced and did tricks.”
The other couple pressed forward. “What’s that?” the second woman wanted to know.
“He makes birds do tricks for kids,” the first man said.
“Are you staying at this site?” the second man said. “You know these kids?”
I shook my head and scratched my stomach. I felt tense and agitated, wondering if I should tell them about the red baseball cap.
“What are you doing here?” the first woman said. “Why’re you speaking to my girl?”
More people came out of the reception building. A dozen or so rooks gathered in the trees at the park entrance. The tension in the air seemed palpable as a gathering storm. I stood up. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”
“That’s right, you shouldn’t,” said another man. “Not when that boy’s still missing.”
“You like to play with kids, do you?” the first man snarled in my face.
“Why don’t you leave me alone?” I told him.
He grabbed the front of my shirt. “Why? What are you going to do?”
My hands flew up and clawed at his face. He fell and as I tried to move past him, another man got hold of my arm. I spun and we grappled, crashing over the bench. People surged around us as he punched me in the stomach. I caught his arm and bit him above the elbow, sinking my teeth through flesh until I heard him scream. The raucous cries of corvids suddenly filled the air, and I saw hundreds clamouring in the trees. The crowd screamed and shouted, oblivious to their presence.
“What’s all this?” somebody called out, pushing through the fevered crowd. “What’s going on?” It was Edward Owens, the man who had fixed up my house. “Stop all this,” he said, waving his baseball cap at the crowd, motioning for them to back away.
I saw Blyth with the other birds and sensed they were preparing to mob my assailant. I shook my head and mouthed the word no. Owens looked at me and at the other man. “I know this man,” he said. “He’s Wil Blevins, lives down the road there, in Cray.”
Somebody said, “He was enticing the kids.”
“You’re all concerned,” Owens said. “There’s a child missing, but Wil’s not the one that took him. I promise you that.”
I got up and stepped back from the man I’d fought with. He held his arm and examined the bleeding bite mark. He stared at me in disbelief. “Fucking lunatic bit me, for God’s sake!”
A woman wiped the blood with a tissue. “What’s he doing here?” she said. “Why don’t you ask him that?”
Owens stared at her, then turned to the others. “I told you all—I know him. I know he meant no harm.”
“Bastard paedo,” a voice in the crowd called out.
Owens steered me away. “You all right?” he asked.
The birds had fallen silent though their eyes were fixed on me. “I’m not hurt.”
“What’d you come here for, Wil? You have no business here.”
I knew he was right. It had been a mistake. He led me to my bike. “I thought I could help. I think I saw the boy.”
Owens shook his head. “You can’t help, Wil. You’d best be off home.”
“You think he’s still alive?” I looked over his shoulder at Blyth.
“I think people are right to be afraid,” Owens said.
I wheeled the bike out into road and set off for home.
Word gets around fast in small communities. I knew someone would come. I had been listening to a recording I’d made the night the boy had disappeared. Blyth had been roosting with a small parliament of rooks in the trees at the rear of the yard. I was listening for some correspondence between what was spoken then and his more recent utterings. But I found it difficult to concentrate in the light of what had happened at Trecastle.
The sound of the car turning into the yard came as a relief. I went out to meet him. The day was overcast and muggy. It had rained earlier and looked to do so again. It was the same policeman as before. He got out and surveyed the yard, his gaze slow and steady, as though searching for something in particular. Finally, his eyes found mine. “Wil. How are you keeping?”
“You didn’t drive all the way up here to ask after my well-being.”
“No. I didn’t.” He took out his notebook and opened it. “The last time we spoke, you said you hadn’t been in Glasfynydd the day Jon Walters disappeared. Any chance you were wrong?”
“Why?”
“I think you know why. I spoke with a girl called Ellie Lewis this morning. She says she met you in the forest the same day Jon Walters disappeared.”
I looked past him, to the rooks gathering in the old rowan, clots of darkness among the bright red berries. They seemed intent on us, like jurors weighing the truth of our testimony. “I spend a lot of time there,” I said.
“You said.”
“I lose track.”
“So, did you speak to her and some other kids that same day?”
“Maybe. I don’t recall the specific day.”
He wrote something in his book. “You remember any of the other kids? Could Jon Walters have been one of them?” He showed me the same picture that he’d shown before. The boy with the red baseball cap.
“I don’t think so.”
“You never saw him?”
“I can’t say—I don’t recognize him.”
“See, Wil. According to Ellie, and the parents, Jon Walters was with that group.”
My fingers and toes tingled with pins and needles. My chest tightened and I felt something pressing against the inside of my skull, something cold and immense trying to burst out into the air. “There were a lot of kids. I spoke to one or two. That boy, he might’ve been there but I didn’t see him.”
“Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Anyone else around? See, we believe now that somebody took him. That he was abducted.”
“Nothing,” I said, trying to recall exactly what it was I’d seen among the trees after the kids had gone.
“What happened up at the caravan park yesterday? A man claims you assaulted him.”
I stared at the ground and scratched my arm. “He attacked me. I was defending myself.”
“Well, lucky for you there’s a witness confirms that.”
“Owens?”