The Night Hunter (2 page)

Last week I didn’t get home until midnight and I was locking my car door when Eric the neighbour called to me, indicating Grant was in the back garden again. We found my brother sitting naked on the grass sobbing his heart out. The security lights from the house glistened on his sweat, making his skin shine, which made him look like a young gladiator. Except for the tears streaming down his face. He said one word when he saw me.

Sophie.

Eric and I helped him back into the house. It was the only time I was tempted to tell him that I knew Sophie was safe and well. Thank God I didn’t as it might not be true. I have kept quiet for fifty-seven days. She asked me to keep her secret and I will. It is black and white. For some reason that I still do not know, she had told me she had to go away – those were her exact words,
go away
. Not run away, just go.

Tonight the house is quiet but tense. The dark blue Axminster and Regency stripe seem oppressive after the light summer evening. The smell of garlic and basil drift out to meet me; I can hear Radio Four chat from the kitchen. I drop my rucksack and catch sight of myself in the mirror. The physical changes are gradual so I don’t notice them but Mum always recoils a little when she sees me. My acne is worse, there’s a little more growth of hair under my chin. The whites of my eyes are still clear, the irises still the colour of Bournville. Small reminders of the girl I used to be. I was never the prettiest of children, I was never going to be a Sophie. Dad said I had the face of the Mona Lisa, enigmatic and alluring. But then my dad always lied to make up for all the times in my life when I didn’t get the joke, when I didn’t see the point. He made sure that I didn’t feel different; he made me feel special.

Mum appears from the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron and we hug. Beneath the garlic, I can smell juniper. She stands back, looking at me, then drops her eyes. She witters her usual rubbish about the weather and the drive up north – was my car OK?

My responses are the usual and I go upstairs to see my old bedroom, ‘the office’, to see if there are any developments. I do this every visit, but this time my interest is genuine, because since yesterday Sophie
is
missing.

There’s nothing new, so I go into Sophie’s room. I need to focus my feelings and see if anything has changed, if I have missed something. I think of the room the way it was when Soph was around: a complete tip with clothes piled on the floor and her bed looking like the linen table at a jumble sale. Now it is very tidy, the duvet cover millpond smooth. The empty hook of her graduation photograph is still stuck on her bedroom wall, a faint dust mark outlining where it had been. Like Sophie, it has gone but has left a trace.

Everything else is the same. The room is the familiar blaze of colour born of her infamous impromptu painting party – three pizzas, two huge tins of paint and some drunken friends from uni. It took Rod hours to clean it up.

After Sophie ‘disappeared’, Avril had asked us all to look carefully at this room and she watched me intently as I was the only one not crying. Mum told them I was ‘like that’. Avril used all her police training but I am not easy to read. I know I see things with a clarity that other people can’t, and that clarity comes from lack of emotion. Under the scrutiny of Avril, I had to point out that Soph’s gym bag was missing, the new Calvin Klein one that was too good to fill with sweaty running kit. Then Mum had a moment of sobriety and pointed out that Soph’s favourite Cossack boots had gone. Then Rod, for some reason, asked about the expensive VB jeans Soph had bought in New York. Those were also missing. And so the police started to draw their own conclusion; Sophie had gone of her own free will. So nobody was sending out search parties or wasting police time. I was relieved about that, partly.

There was no harm done. The small silver locket that Gran left her was gone, of course. She wore it all the time, even when running. In that locket was a picture of Mum, Dad, Grant and me. Wherever she is, I like to think that she has us with her. In the drawer are her graduation presents, the good watch from me and the gold ankh from Mum.

Her bedside table is free of clutter, the alarm clock is upright. Sophie would always slam it face down the minute it rang. There’s a small pile of books, her usual romantic Victorian stuff and her copy of Christina Rossetti – it falls open at
Goblin Market
, of course, our favourite poem. I recall her laughing at me in the way that those who possess a good imagination can laugh at the pedantic nature of those of us who do not.

We were very drunk when we found the petrified forest in Victoria Park, hidden behind an ugly fence that we climbed over. We found the path and descended into the old quarry where somebody found the remains of an ancient forest. Sophie found goblins. We sat at the bottom, the stone walls stretched high above us, right up to the canopy of leaves that hang on to nothing. Sophie stuck her toes in the lily pond and watched the dragonflies and the ferns that danced in the air currents. She told me to imagine goblins squatting out of sight in the shadows, watching us watching them.

It became ‘our place’, our Goblin Market.

I think of the times that Soph and I spent there, laughing and drunk, she reciting and me not quite getting it.
Goblin Market
. Soph and Elvie. Laura and Lizzie. Rossetti’s poem was alive, it was written for us and only us. Laura, the sister who loved life and got into trouble with the pleasures of the goblins, and Lizzie, the one who was sensible and came to Laura’s rescue.

I pointed out that goblins didn’t exist.

She said the whole poem was allegorical. She held my shoulders and stared into my face. ‘But you are Lizzie and I am Laura. This poem was written for us and this is our Goblin Market.’ It’s something important to Soph, and therefore important to me. I read the poem again, pages of it, but it is the last verse that speaks to me now
. To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray.

Sixty-three days ago, Soph had stood in front of me and held my arms in hers, forcing me to look at her face. ‘Elvie?’ she said. ‘Listen to me. I think I’m going to have to disappear. I have to go away.’

I hear the radio being silenced and Mum shouting down the phone. I think I’ll stay up here for a while, the drama will wait.

I pick up the picture from the window ledge, a photograph of Sophie and three pals red-faced with cold, standing on the side of a mountain. Soph has her blonde hair in twin plaits that run from her temples back to a single plait at the back, a style she picked up from Eric’s wife. This photo would be taken on one of her working holidays when she promptly charmed her way out of doing any work. She is hugging the other girls in the picture but I don’t recognize any of them. Soph was a magpie, the way she collected friends. She was the most open person I have ever met, yet recently she felt she could tell me nothing. With the benefit of hindsight, she had not been herself for months.

Deceit changes people.

I look out the window and note that Rod is digging in the back garden, trying to work off Mum’s cooking. Oddly, Grant is with him, sitting on the wall. He looks muscled and fit as he yells down his mobile. As he stops, Mum starts downstairs. This is typical of our family, one in the kitchen and one in the garden and they communicate by shouting on the phone. As I watch he cuts the call and pulls his baseball cap from his head to reveal that he has shaved the hair off one side of his head, but that’s better than the barcode beard he had before. My wee brother has been developing his own special psychosis since he was thirteen. It was a long, slow drift but the drift is now gaining momentum.

Grant waves over at Eric, our next-door neighbour, who has wandered into his own garden. A little chat over the fence, which I read as a sign that Eric engages him more than Rod does. No surprise there. Eric loves his garden; he almost lives in it when he’s down here and not up north in his ‘country retreat’. It’s majestic, from the fine lawns near the house to the oriental pool at the bottom, with its huge flower beds, statues and the marble pillars that he has just had engraved. It is surrounded with shrubs and the centrepiece is the waterfall that drives the water clock. I raise my hand and the movement catches his eye. He gives me a little wave. I owe Eric a lot; he got me the job at Ardno looking after the Coco Pops kid. He thought he was helping his boss out; in fact, he was throwing me a lifeline that saved my sanity. He turns and points out something of his latest project to Grant. Grant is pristine clean while Eric is a shambling teddy bear of a man, dirty jeans tucked into muddy boots, standing in his garden and loving every minute of it. They are still deep in conversation when I hear the door open at the bottom of the stairs. That will be Mum about to call me. Dinner is ready.

I take a deep breath; this is not going to be good.

And so I go slowly downstairs for another meal of badly cooked pasta with a huge side portion of angst for dessert. In the dining room Rod is already sitting in his chair, caressing a bottle of wine with his head tilted back, eyes screwed up as he tries to read the label through his varifocals.

‘Your face will stay like that if the wind changes,’ I say. I am not good at humour.

‘Hello, sweetheart, how are you?’ He does not raise his eyes from the label. ‘Your mum said you’d arrived. Have you seen this, half price at Waitrose? Tempranillo. Do you fancy a mouthful?’

I shake my head. ‘I’m driving straight back.’

He nods. ‘You enjoying it, being nanny for the filthy rich?’ He makes no eye contact; he is listening to the kitchen where Mum is angrily banging plates around. Rod drops his voice. ‘Eric doesn’t know of any other jobs, does he? Digging or labouring? Grant needs something to get him out and about.’

‘I clocked the new haircut.’

‘Grant is …’ He stops as the door opens. Mum comes in, cradling hot plates with her oven gloves. Rod places a mat near to her. She goes into this strange catering mode when she is reluctant to talk about ‘it’, whatever it is. Sophie’s disappearance, Grant’s problematic mental health or my physical health.

This meal will follow its usual pattern. At some point Mum will smile at us and say, ‘This is pleasant.’ Then Grant will come in, sit down and sigh his way through the pasta. Mum will tell him that he might get on better if he ate his broccoli. At this point Rod will start a monologue as no one can bear the silence.

There is a bang at the back door. I get up to see what is going on but Rod puts his hand on mine. Mum’s voice is the banshee screeching of a mad woman.
Look at the mess! Can you not take your shoes off?
Rod looks at me with a raised eyebrow. This is not the first time.

‘It’s not that I ask you to do much, just take your shoes off at the door!’

‘Get a fucking job and a fucking life! Don’t ask for fucking much …’ Grant stomps past the dining room door, limping slightly. He does not look at us.

‘I’d just be happy if he got out of his bed before three in the afternoon, and into his bed before three in the morning,’ mutters Rod in a conspiratorial whisper.

Grant slams into his seat, pulls his baseball cap down and folds his arms, his perfect features set in a mask of bitterness.

‘Good evening,’ I say with some sarcasm.

He ignores me.

Mum comes in with a huge dish of burned lasagne which would easily feed twelve.

‘That looks very nice, Nancy,’ says Rod, as he always does.

Grant sighs with boredom at the family pleasantry. So far the meal is following its usual plan.

Mum then sits, lifts a serving spoon and starts again. ‘I mean, it’s not as if I ask you to do anything. Just make a bit of an effort, get a wee job. It’s been a year now. And your hair is a disgrace. Who will employ you with hair like that?’ The spoon swings about a bit.

‘Somebody employed Elvie with a face like hers. So tell it to the hand …’ Grant’s palm blocks Mum’s face. The serving spoon stops in the middle of the béchamel sauce backswing. ‘’Cause I ain’t listening. You’re screwing Dad’s mate and this …’ the finger points to the lasagne, ‘… stinks.’

‘Elvie is …’

‘Elvie is, Elvie is …’ He mimics Mum’s voice with uncanny accuracy. ‘Elvie is a fucking freak.’

Suddenly Mum stabs the serving spoon at him, swinging it round so fast that the sauce whiplashes and splatters the wallpaper. She loses her grip and it bangs off the sideboard before coming to rest on the carpet.

Grant stands up, his chair tumbles and hits the wall behind him. He sticks his face right in my mother’s. ‘Fuck you.’ He holds her gaze, then slowly walks out. Then he pops his head back. ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

‘Grow up,’ I say quietly.

‘You talking to me? You talking to me?’ He points his finger at me. I stand up, our eyes lock. He senses something and backs down before strutting off without the charm of De Niro.

Mum gets up from the table and wipes her hands on her apron before dabbing the stains on the wallpaper with it. She then returns to the kitchen and we hear the chink of the gin bottle coming out of the cupboard.

I realize that Rod’s hand is over mine. I pat the back of it. ‘Not exactly the Waltons, are we?’

It’s going on for half ten by the time I manage to escape. Mum wanted to talk and Rod let her. The lasagne lies congealed and uneaten in assorted locations in the dining room – the serving dish, the plates, the carpet, the wall. Mum wanted her hour of happy families and it was a small price to pay.

So by the time I hit Loch Lomond side it’s nearly eleven. The Polo is nippy round the sharp bends. Clever engineering might have smoothed out the corners of the road but God made the geography of the place. Get your road position wrong with an HGV coming round the corner and you’re either crushed under its wheels, smashed into the sheer rock face or drowning in the freezing waters of the loch. The rolling peaks of Ben Lomond lie as a dark shadow, watching, barely visible in the night air. It is a very pretty road. But deadly.

I am listening to some old Elvis on the CD player, thinking that he would get nowhere on
The X Factor
nowadays.
Elvie is the name of my greatest flame
, my dad would sing to me. The music of Elvis seems an odd passion for a headmaster, yet I feel it is the strongest link I have to him, a link to a past where life was easy because Dad sorted things out. All these songs hold a memory in a way that nothing else does. The irony is that now I look a bit like Elvis. In his younger days.