Happy Sunshine: Part 2
One poor decision might cause a seismic shift in my life.
This series is becoming very fun to write. I hope you’re all enjoying it too. For those of you wondering where Happy Sunshine is set, it’s an imaginary village based in Suffolk, England. I’d intended this to be a three-part series, but that might be going out the window. For now, here’s part two…
(audio coming tomorrow)
My strides are laboured under the scorching noon sun. Sweat is pouring from my skin; I'm a wet sponge being squeezed dry. My eyes are focused on the floor, watching my steps. Running is something I avoid, particularly through the forest. I’m the killjoy who tells anyone within earshot that you should never do it. Too many unknowns lay beneath the dying leaves, loose soil and fallen trees. One misstep and your ankles twist, or worse, break. If fortune has abandoned you completely, you might catch yourself in an old hog trap: a snapping jaw of iron more than happy to take your leg from you.
Today I have a good enough reason to run. Hogs eat fast and eat everything: skin, hair, teeth and bones. Jamie was a big lad, taller than most his age. But he would make light work, inhaled in a matter of hours. I slip on a mound of leaves and feel the gritty earth between my teeth. It tastes as it should, and I spit it out. Now I’m by the tree where I found his bloody cap, but my sight of the valley is obscured, so I stop for a minute and listen for a chorus of grunts and snorts.
He’s dead, I think, trying to place the voice. Nuances thrive in communities like ours. Both good and bad belong to village life. And knowing everyone, or at least being aware of them, is one example. I’ll let you decide which side it falls on. There’s no doubt I’ve heard the voice before, but it doesn't strike me as his. The Jamie I remember had a thicker accident; the voice I heard sounded like an implant. It was the voice of someone who hadn’t grown up here. It came from further south. He’s dead, I think again, tracking the vocal inflexions with my finger. It was not Jamie. That boy leant on his e’s as a man with a limp leans on his cane. And he would have almost certainly added a stretched-out 'boooi' to the end. So who is it? I haven’t heard a sound since I began to listen, and I’m only getting warmer. Panic is setting in, whipped up by the voice I can’t put my finger on.
The valley floor is damp, almost swamp-like. It’s where the rain funnels through when we have a downpour. But more than the squelchiness underfoot, I’m hit by the smell. It comes in waves, pushed my way by the exhale of summer and my heavy steps. Rancid decay and wet earth replace the usual concoction of wildflowers, baking bark and windswept wheat. I move forwards with timid steps, trying to avoid complete submersion. It takes less than a minute to lose my foot in the mud. I put it back on and carry on towards the chestnut trees hanging above the gorging hogs a couple of hours ago. They've left clear signs of their presents: beds of mud indented on the floor and an intensifying smell. He’s dead, I think again, and a cold shudder runs through my spine, almost splitting me in half. If he is, and he died here, the end of his life was something too gruesome for the most twisted mind. Then I find something I don’t want to see. Clothes. A t-shirt I can only imagine was blue when he stretched it over his head and a sock, with nothing unique about it other than a circular hole by the toes. I turn the shirt inside out, looking for a name written on the label or, at the very least, a logo. Maybe I’d seen him wearing it before? But there is nothing, just mud and that smell. I’ve got two more ziplock in my backpack, so I put the sock and T-shirt in one. My bag’s turning into an evidence locker. The mud around my feet is churned like a messy plough field. They’d been digging for food, not eating something on the surface. At least that was a good sign. He’s dead, I think again. Maybe, but even if he is, he’s not been eaten. A part of me wants to run back to Jack’s and let him help me put all of this together. But I don’t. I double back on myself, reclimb the hill and head towards the mystery voice again.
“So, you’re messing with me,” I say into the open air. The only ones to reply are the birds. But I haven't come to speak to them.
“If you want to be dramatic... Now’s your time. I’m listening!” I shout, and now even the birds are quiet. From here, I can see a frame of the motorway: no more than a porthole made of twisted branches and blossoming flowers. I watch it for a second or two before the panic that held me in its grip an hour ago returns. One by one, police cars dart past, heading towards the village in a convoy of sirens and lights. It’s only now that I find it strange that they’ve left it so late. Yes, he might be camping in the woods. But four days is quite a long time for a kid to go missing with no signs. And his mother is notoriously nervous. But today is the day they decided to come, no doubt to sweep the forest thoroughly. Just at the moment when I’m deep within it with a bag of evidence. Something feels planned. I feel tricked.
For the second time today, I break my rule and start running back to the village. In all likelihood, they'll stop at Andrew's farm first and speak to the parents before heading to the forest. But even with a little delay, I have a fraction of the time to make it back.
I’ve not stopped since I started, and my shoulders are all but bleeding from my backpack rubbing against my sweat-soaked shirt. But I’m nearing the village; the ground is clear of coke cans, almost too perfect for a forest, and when I look up, I can see her thatched roofs through the thinning horizon of trees.
“Jul!” It’s Jack, whispering as loudly as he can. I stop and look left at his call.
“Why are you here?” He never comes into the forest. Not even to its edge.
“I came to get you. The police are here.”
“I know,” I say, “I saw them from the motorway.”
“That explains the sweat... come on, we'll sneak back through the field. It's tall enough to give us cover.” We start wadding our way through his field, keeping our heads low.
“Find anything?” He asks, and even though I knew he would, I hadn’t had time to think of my reply. It felt like a sliding door moment. One poor decision might cause a seismic shift in my life. I point to my bag. “Don’t say you have remains in your bag?”
“Remains!”
“Ssshut up! Your voice will carry,” he whispers again.
“No remains, just clothes. I found clothes. I heard something too.”
“Jesus! Okay. Let’s get back.” We lengthen our stride, desperate to reach his cottage.
We are at the edge of the field now, and it's only his stretch of forgotten lawn separating us from his rooms of antics and the leaking roof. Here, through the towers of wheat, we see the yellow, blue and white convoy parked up in Andrew’s yard.
“Wait a minute,” Jack says. “It’s too risky to dart to the house… If they see us like that, they will think we are avoiding them. It only takes one of them to glance our way.”
“Just stand up straight, and walk like we’ve not seen them.” We do exactly that, and as soon as we’ve broken our cover, a baby-faced officer looks our way and gives us a nod of acknowledgement.
“Busted,” I say under my breath.
“It’s fine."
Our second coffee of the day hits the same walnut surface at three-thirty. Sue’s a little surprised I'm here. I’ve never been here in the middle of the afternoon.
“You look a little worn out,” she tells me, resting her hand on my shoulder.
“It’s muggy in the forest. I haven’t sweated so much in years,” I add, wondering whether or not it makes me sound guilty.
“Well, that means good mushrooms, no?” She asks.
“Usually.”
“What do you mean… usually. You didn’t get any?” Jack says, almost more upset about the lack of fungi in my bag than the police hovering around town or the clothes I just told him about.
“Someone beat me to it.”
“But no one knows the forest like you. That’s what you always say,” He protests, realising the risotto would have to wait a day or two.
“I know it better than any person. But more creatures call it home than me,” I say, sipping my coffee. The police are getting closer, we can hear their knuckles knocking on front doors, and we are both pretending like we don’t notice. My backpack is between my legs, and the closer the knocking gets, the more they sound like a gavel.
“I’ll be back in a sec,” I say, and head inside to use the toilet. If you need to hide incriminating evidence, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better spot. Here you don’t have to resort to the usual nooks and crannies. The basement, behind the toilet, under the bed or at the back of the wardrobe; besides, these are the first places they’ll look if they decide to search. But inside one of fifty antique violins, in a secret desk drawer or wedged in a piece of the Berlin wall are spots they’ll take a while to find. I’m alone upstairs, but Sue’s pottering around on the staircase, polishing the sparkling bannister. She always cleans when she's stressed. There’s no time to pick three separate locations, so I dump all my ziplock bags in a Victorian vanity table's hidden drawer. It’s finished with polished wood, mahogany or walnut, and its mirror has long since given up its perfect reflection. And like so many pieces of furniture carefully crafted for the aristocracy, it’s a labyrinth of false levers and secret cubby holes. Jack brought it years ago; at the time, it was one of his most treasured items. Now it's been relegated to a dusty corner in his smallest bedroom.
“Just in time,” Jack says as I rejoin him in the garden.
“What?”
“They're next door,” he says, pointing to his left.
“I wonder if Winton is a part of the convoy?”
“God, I hope not. I can never take him seriously. Especially when he’s pretending to be in charge.” He’s right on the money there. Winton always looked so silly in his uniform and even sillier with his deputies at his side.
There’s a knock at the door. Finally, the knuckles have made it. Sue answers the door; she has never done that for me, but when someone with an ounce of authority comes calling, she’ll start acting like the housekeeper of a royal estate.
“Officer” We hear her say and can’t help but chuckle at the old-time-y voice she’s performing.
“How are you doing, Sue?” In an instant, Jack rolls his eyes. It’s Winton.
“Well, at least we won’t have any drama,” Jack says and stands up in anticipation.
“Gentlemen,” Winton says as he walks into the back garden.
“Show me your warrant, you bastard.”
“Whoo down, boy. I’m not searching, and your maid let me in... so technically, you're screwed,” He says triumphantly. We’ve known him long enough to know he’s relieved to be with us. He would have hated nothing more than talking through the village and listening to the half-baked theories of the Karens and the old biddies. “Besides, I don’t have to. I already know who the killer is,” He says and looks straight at me. “Been to the forest lately, Mr Cross?”
“All the time. You know it takes time to hide a body,” I say as straight as I can manage. But as soon as the words have left my mouth, I know I should have resisted. Winton might be a good friend who can hear my sarcasm, but the juniors accompanying him aren’t. They start to shuffle on their feet, and the one on his right, a spotty face with a beer belly, rests his hand on his taser. Winton spots him too.
“Don’t worry, officers. He's just making a bad joke. He hasn’t got enough body strength to hide a body.”
“And what about you?” I ask.
“What about me?”
“Have you got enough strength to catch a murderer?”
“Jesus, Jul!” Jack says, and he has a point. Maybe I’m pushing it a bit.
“You’ll find out in a week or two.”
“I’m sure it won’t take you that long,” I say, backing down.
“So, PC Plod. What can I do for you?” Jack takes over.
“I just need a few questions answered. Then we’ll be on our way.”
“Coffee, anyone?” Sue asks from the doorway. Winton nods his head, and then a chorus of yeses follows.
Their questions are all tame and dull; address, occupation, relationship with the missing, opinions of Jamie, opinions of Jamie’s family, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.
I’m not sure what I was expecting but at least something with a bit more bite. And maybe my disappointment led me to find Winton and tell him about the voice, or maybe, I was always going to do it. But why I never retrieved the muddy shirt and sock or the bloody hat is a mystery. I was scared, even with Winton, that revealing it would incriminate me. After all, he's still a detective. And in all likelihood, in a place like this, this case would make or break his career. I found him hovering in the kitchen, looking at the pictures stuck to the fridge. In the middle, there’s an old yellowing polaroid of us three, all showing our scars after we fell out of a moving shopping trolley we'd used as a bobsled.
“Who’s idea was the bobsled anyway?”
“Jack’s. He’d just got a copy of Cool Runnings, remember?”
“Oh yeah, and we kissed an egg before pushing off.”
“But ours cracked when we crashed.”
“Argh, yes. Some things are only possible in the movies.”
“So…” I start, and he turns to me sternly, like he sees the worry on my lips. “Jack told me about the boy this morning.”
“You only found out today?”
“Yeah, well, you know how it is. It wasn’t something to worry about until it was. Everyone assumed he was camping.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Exactly. But today, I went looking in the forest.”
“And?”
“And I heard a voice.”
“A voice? What do you mean?”
“It was right on the other side, near the motorway. I tried to find whoever it was, but I couldn’t see anyone.”
“What did it say?”
“He’s dead!”
“Jesus. Anything else.”
“Yeah, well, he started by calling my name."
“Did you recognise it?”
“For a second, I thought it might be him. But if I'm honest, I can't be sure.”
“And what about Jack?”
“What about him?”
“One of my officers saw you both walking from the forest back to his house after we arrived.”
“Oh, that was nothing. He’d seen you lot coming and thought he’d come and get me before I turned into suspect number one. But that was before we knew you’d be in charge.”
“You know I still have to explore you both.” He said, pronouncing the word explore like we were towards the top of the list.
“I guess you do. But you don’t think we did anything right?”
“I’d say you have the benefit of the doubt. But the village is small: give or take a couple, there are only thirty people up to it. The rest are kids, wheelchair-bound or so fat they could never manage to kill anyone, let alone a teenage boy. So if I overlook two of the thirty, I’d be doing a pretty shitty job.”
“And you think he’s dead. I mean, you’re sure?”
“That, I cannot say. Even to you.”
“Fair enough.”
I should have said then. 'By the way, I found the clothes in the woods, and they're hidden in the Victorian vanity upstairs in the spare bedroom.' Not because I felt guilty but because I knew people would whisper; I knew it would look worse later. But each time I thought the words might escape my lips, my throat dried up, and I couldn’t speak. Another minute passed, and then Jack came to find us.
“You’re throwing the big questions around, aren’t you?” He says, landing his hand on Winton’s shoulder. He always did it before clamping down and making Winton sink to the ground.
“Don’t try it, my friend. Legally speaking, I can shoot you with two weapons, and I hate to waste a taser. They’re fifty times as expensive as a bullet.”
“Ha, I guess this is how they all start. Given a few more pins on that lapels, and you'll be abusing power like a cop in the eighties.” Jack says, taking his hand away.
“Alright, boys, I should go. Do me a favour and let me know if anything weird happens. And don’t be fooled. Any of these people around you could have done it. It’s always the quiet ones.” He’s about to leave, but then he stops under the door frame, unbuttons his shirt sleeve, rolls up his shirt a turn and holds up his form arm. “Look, I still have a scar from that bloody bobsled.”
Jack and I do the same; I have a scar on my elbow, and Jack has one along the length of his wrist. "Okay, boys, I need to carry on. See you around,” Winton says as he walks out to rejoin his juniors outside.
Jack and I deflate a little, finding the edge of the kitchen counter to lean on.
“Must be weird,” Jack says, pointing his eyes past my shoulder at the gaggle of police officers walking down the road.
“For Winton?”
“Yeah. Imagine you’ve been in the force for ten years, and the first murder case you get is in the village you grew up in.”
“I’m surprised he’s allowed to. Isn’t there a conflict of interest or something like that?”
“I guess, but I suppose they’re so short on numbers that they would have sent a dog if they had to,” Jack says, and we are silent for a beat or two. I know what he’s thinking, and I’m sure he knows I know.
“I put them upstairs in the spare bedroom,” I say, and he sighs. Then just as he pushes himself off the counter and takes a breath to say something, Sue arrives.
“Isn’t he lovely,” She’s radiant, almost blushing, “I always knew that boy would do something good with himself, and now look, he’s a detective!”
“Yes, he was always the most… benevolent,” Jack says with a grin sliding along his lips.
“He’s not a priest,” I say.
“Not benevolent then. What about just?”
“That’ll do.”
“Green washes you both out. Just because you’re both wasting your youth drinking expensive coffee on expensive tables doesn’t mean you’re any better,” Sue chastises us before disappearing into the garden.
“The table wasn’t even that much. It’s worth twice what I bought it for now. And she's one to talk. Did you hear her change voice as soon as they came in,” Jack says, and I can’t help my eyes rolling.
Suddenly, I’m struck with an idea. Maybe there’s a way to check the voice I heard in the forest. His parents must have a video clip of him talking. Maybe, I could save everyone the headache of hunting down a murderer if I can prove the victim never was a victim in the first place.
“Do you think Andrew will see me?” I ask, to the room more than Jack himself.
“Why?”
“I think the voice I heard was Jamie. But I can’t be sure.”
“Really, what did it say again?”
“It called my name. Then it started shouting, he’s dead!” I explain, trying my best to imitate.
“Sounds like a Stephen King plot.”
“God, I hope not.”
“So you just need a clip of his voice?”
“Yeah, and surely they won’t think I’m guilty. They’ve always been pretty reasonable.”
“They are… but you don’t have to bother. I have a voice note,” Jack says, already scrolling through his messages.
“I didn’t know you spoke to him that much.”
“He’s been getting into woodworking. He's pretty good too. I’m helping him set up a customer base, and the boy loves to send voice notes.”
Jack found a clip and played it. It’s Jamie from a few weeks ago talking about his germinating ideas. “I’m thinking I start with stalls, or maybe coffee tables, something small that I can perfect…” I’m listening carefully, waiting for the e’s. And they bring me good news when they arrive. His accent has softened from what I remembered. He’s turned his voice into something far less interesting. He’s dead, I think again.
“So?” Jack asks, breaking me out of my daydream.
“He’s not dead,” I say, stepping towards the door.
“Where are you going?” Jack replies, stopping me with his hand.
“Where do you think?”
“But it’s five, and there are more police here than residents.”
“I’ll be quick.”
Love, Luke