13 Minutes (16 page)

She’d just reached the short, narrow path when she caught sight of something in the gloom. A glint of metal through branches. Someone was parked in the lane. Someone was watching Jamie McMahon’s house. Her stomach dropped. It was DI Bennett, or one of her lackeys, keeping their eye on Aiden. The cold suddenly forgotten, she started to text him but then stopped. Why worry him? Let them watch, she thought angrily. They wouldn’t see anything. Aiden was innocent.
Fuck you, Detective Inspector Bennett
, she thought.
Fuck. You.

Twenty-Five

TAKEN FROM
DI CAITLIN BENNETT’S FILES:

EXTRACT FROM NATASHA HOWLAND’S NOTEBOOK

So, finally I have a clue
and
an ally in figuring out what really happened that night. I’m feeling a bit better already. It’s been a long day but I want to write it all down before I (try to) sleep.

I had an itch in my head that bugged me all last night so that even when I woke up (silently gasping for air in the way that’s become normal since I got home) it was the first thing I thought about. Not the whispering voice in the void in my dreams. Not the thirteens I see everywhere. (Thirteen hairs in my hairbrush yesterday. Thirteen exactly. I pulled them out carefully and counted. I laid them on my dressing table. Thirteen dead minutes, thirteen dead hairs. Go figure.) And not Nicola Munroe and her bloated corpse. In some ways I guess this thing just out of reach was a gift. But it felt like a scab, itching at me and driving me mad. They think Aiden has something to do with all this. It’s almost comical. He didn’t kill Nicola Munroe and he sure as shit didn’t throw me in the river. I knew this. I knew it in the itching of something in my head. Not my memory – it’s still not coming back – but something else. Something I
should
have grasped but was just out of reach.

It was only half-past four when I woke up this morning, but I dragged my jogging gear from the bottom of the wardrobe. I dressed in the dark, got everything ready and then climbed through my window and down the tree, letting myself out of the side gate, like I must have done that night. I fell into a steady pace and let my mind relax. It’s strange how much I’ve come to enjoy running. I’ve missed it over the past week or so and my legs were happy to stretch out and shake away the tightness of inactivity. I’ve grown strong. I liked the feel of my muscles and sinews working together as my feet pounded confidently along the paths in the darkness. Within minutes I was no longer cold. My face was flushed. I wasn’t breathing that hard, though. I know my rhythm. I wonder what Hayley would make of it if she saw me. Natasha, the runner. We all have our secrets.

It was dark and nearly all the town was asleep. I was off the main road for most of my run and it was eerily silent, just the
whump
of my trainers and the steady pants of my breathing. I went down by the river and through the woods. I should have been afraid, out there alone in the darkness and so close to the river, but I wasn’t. I was exhilarated. As I headed home just after five, I felt good. Proud of myself. I could even ignore that I’d been counting my paces in my head and restarted every time I hit thirteen.

The day passed in a haze. I was
there
at school – I huddled with Hayles and Jen and told them about the police and how they thought maybe what happened to me and Nicola Munroe’s death were connected – but I wasn’t really there. They asked why the police wanted to talk to Becca and I shrugged. I didn’t tell them about Aiden. And although they nodded, I saw them glance at each other and the scab in my head itched some more, and I wondered what they were hiding. Was there something they weren’t telling me? They suffocated me throughout the day with their adoration and by the time we got to the read-through after last period, I could barely breathe. I felt like I was in the river again.

I smiled at Becca. She looked tired. I wondered if she’d been awake while I was out this morning. She smiled back and I could see her relief that we were still okay. Beside her, Hannah watched me the way a mouse might a cat. I didn’t even look at her. She’s a nothing, really. Maybe Becca thought I was going to ignore her after the Aiden thing. She thought wrong. I wondered about texting her my next chess move when they were reading bits that I’m not in. Thinking about texts made the scabs itch again. I looked at Hayley and Jenny. The scab in my head came loose and I knew what was bugging me: the wrong-number text message.

That’s when I knew I had to talk to Becca.

*

She didn’t want to come out, of course. She wanted to go and see her boyfriend. She kept asking what the fuck we were doing out there – how was it going to help Aiden? But I needed her and she never could refuse me. She was still grumpy, though, I could tell, despite being relieved I’d kept to myself the fact that the police questioned us about Aiden. She was cold and miserable and I hadn’t explained myself very well, but I needed her to come with me. To see it with me, if there was anything to see at all.

We had torches, huge dad-type square ones from my garage, not the type your mum keeps under the sink. I’d told my mum I was at Becca’s. She’d told hers she was at mine. Neither would be happy if they knew we were out in the woods in the dark. In fact, they’d both be hysterical.

‘It’s about the text. The one I had that night,’ I’d tried to explain, ducking under branches. The paths were slippery with mud from the thawed snow. Our torches shone wide streaks of white light ahead of us, as if we were walking beneath dual moons.

‘What about it?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know the number – it could have been from anyone – but it said to meet in
the usual place
.’

‘And?’ She swore under her breath behind me as a twig snagged her.

I pressed on, still trying to explain. I’d told the police it didn’t mean anything to me, which is true. It didn’t. But then I started thinking that it didn’t mean anything because I didn’t recognise the number. If I ignored the number, then maybe it might mean something. I’d timed the trip and conversation pretty perfectly for dramatic effect. I pushed back the last branch and stepped into the circular clearing – mine, Hayley and Jenny’s secret meeting place.

Becca’s eyes went really wide at the thought we met out here.

And we had sometimes. Not for ages, but it was always our place for avoiding everyone. Somewhere to get high. Play some music. Dick around.

I could see it hurt Becca. She thinks she should have been part of that. ‘It’s how we would say it sometimes, if we were on the phone or whatever. “
Usual place?
”
or “
Our place?
” – pretty much like in that text.’

‘But why didn’t you answer it?’ Becca asked. ‘And why would either of them use a different phone?’ They were good questions. I don’t know the answers. Becca lit a cigarette, inhaling hard.

‘I don’t know.’ I said it slowly. ‘But thinking about it kept me awake. I’ve been thinking about it all day and I just had a feeling – maybe it’s my memory coming back to me? Maybe we came here that Friday night? I mean, can they really prove their alibis? They say they were at home, but then so was I supposed to be. And in my dreams I’m in this terrible dark and I hear this girl whispering my name and I can’t move. Maybe it’s not a fear of the water. Maybe it’s something to do with them.’

The way Becca stared at me, I couldn’t decide if she thought I was crazy or not. I was babbling like an idiot, that’s for sure. I needed to find proof. Proper evidence to convince her. I swung my torch across the ground, heading towards the fallen log. ‘It’s been itching at my head all day and I finally thought of coming out here to have a look. I needed you with me – I didn’t want to come alone. See if we can find something, or not. To stop me feeling like I’m going crazy.’ I could see Becca was touched that I’d thought of her. But who else was I going to ask? Who could I trust like I trusted her?

Becca moved her torch beam across the clearing, eyes focused. I did the same, both of us quiet in the search.

‘Look.’ Becca had crouched and was staring at something. I added my torchlight to hers so it was almost too bright to look. And then I saw them, too. Filthy and falling apart after being covered in snow but I knew what they were. What they meant.

She said it first: ‘Vogue cigarette butts,’ she said. She was grasping one.
Hayley.

I tried to talk/think it through. ‘They can’t be that old. She’s only been smoking them a little while. Since she fell and had that wrist support a few months ago. She switched to them then – I remember because Jenny copied the
Vogue
writing onto her cast thing. But we haven’t been out here in ages. Probably not since February last year. ’

Becca looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you haven’t, but they might have? You said they’ve been acting weird. A bit secretive? Maybe they were coming here without you.’

I’d wondered that, too. Becca has always been cleverer than she gives herself credit for. That’s why she’s good at chess. She looks at all the possible moves and remembers those that went before. I swung the torch away, light skimming across the ground towards a tree, and something shone gold and silver in the light. Easier to spot than the cigarette butt. An empty Crunchie wrapper. I had to say it out loud to Becca: ‘I must have been here – Crunchies are my chocolate fix this year.’ Becca got up and carefully trod across the small clearing. She didn’t touch the wrapper. ‘Jenny’s always on a diet and Hayley only eats chocolate when she’s training for a race.’ I was thinking out loud, too.

‘And you honestly don’t remember anything?’

I shook my head, feeling completely weirded out. It was getting colder now night had fallen and in the torchlight we must have looked like characters in some found-footage horror movie. ‘I know Hayley and Jenny have been different recently, like they’re keeping something from me, but they wouldn’t
hurt me
, would they?’ I stared at Bex, wanting confirmation, but she didn’t give me any. Instead she looked behind the tree, and then scanned her torch up and down the bark. Her face was tight, serious. Pale – and not just from the cold.

‘I mean, it’s crazy,’ I said. Suddenly I wanted a cigarette even though I’ve never inhaled in my life, apart from once when I was thirteen and it made my head spin so badly I thought I was going to puke. It was all becoming too real. ‘
This
is crazy. What am I even thinking? They’re my best friends.’

‘Look at this,’ Becca said. ‘Around the back of the tree.’

I went to where she was pointing and saw a piece of frayed rope, green tent rope, maybe, on the mossy earth, almost lost against the background.

‘Maybe they tied you to the tree,’ Becca said. ‘Holy shit. I mean, Jesus fuck, Tasha, could they do that?
Would
they do that?’ We were silent for a few moments, only our ragged breathing breaking the silence in the woods. Both of our hearts were racing, though, with the thought of it.

‘
Why
would they do that?’ I asked. She didn’t answer. Her body had tensed, alert and aware. Focused. She suggested we scour the clearing, look for anything odd, and I did as I was told, bending over and searching for any clue as to what happened here. My nose ran and I sniffed hard, heard Becca doing the same, both of us hunched over the muddy ground.

‘But why would they tie me up?’ I had to ask after a few minutes’ silence. ‘And why let me go if they did?

Becca was still looking at the tree. ‘Maybe you got yourself free and ran away? Maybe it was a joke that went too far? Maybe you fell in the river after you’d run away?’

I stared at her. ‘But we’re talking about
Hayley
. Hayley and Jenny.’

She was all tough sympathy as she ran through it: ‘We still don’t know what happened here, but I do know this – the text said to come to the usual place. This is
it
and it looks like you’ve all been here – recently, too. And if you
were
all here and you were just pissing around –’ she paused to emphasise what was coming next, words I didn’t want to hear her say ‘– then why haven’t they said anything?
Why didn’t they say anything when you were found?
’

‘I don’t know,’ I muttered, stamping my feet to ward off the cold.

‘You brought me here,’ Becca pointed out. ‘There must be part of you that thinks they’re involved somehow.’

‘But what about Nicola Munroe?’

‘What about her?’ Becca straightened up, thinking it through again. ‘She was found in the river. That’s not proof that what happened to you is linked; she might have gone in the river up by Maypoole and washed down here. Aiden is the only other connection at the moment, and he didn’t even really know her, and he didn’t do anything wrong.’ It was sweet to see the defiant lift of Becca’s chin as she said that. She doesn’t have to convince me, though. I believe her. I know Aiden’s innocent. ‘And it’s not like he’s been stalking you or anything, has he?’ she finished.

She tried to make the question sound like a confident statement but I heard the insecurity in it – her need for some reassurance.

‘Of course not. I’d kind of forgotten all about him.’ I chose my words so carefully. Even if I really don’t get it, he’s Becca’s whole world. I don’t want to upset her or alienate her. I need her.

‘So what happened to her and what happened to you are probably entirely separate events,’ Becca concluded, glancing around her again. ‘Maybe you should call that Bennett woman. Tell her about this.’ She looked at me. ‘I can’t do it – she’ll think I’m just trying to get Aiden out of trouble.’
She needs me, too
,
I realised.

‘But what does any of this prove?’ I shrugged, helplessly. ‘Nothing. Just that at some point recently we were all here. Or they could claim they were here without me and one of them ate the chocolate. Or that someone entirely not them just happened to be dog-walking through the woods. There’s nothing here to prove we were here
that
night.’ She knew I was right. This was flimsy at best. And they’re my friends. I don’t want to go to the police and accuse them of something without being sure. I mean, shit . . . what if this is just my head being mental? They’ve probably done nothing.