Chapter 9
GRAHAM
The next morning, he wakes up, aching like he’s run a marathon and with a slight stomach ache from devouring the banana bread too fast. It had been a big slice.
He really needs to do something about his overall health and diet.
The local doctor has warned him that if he doesn’t start increasing his exercise and decreasing his bad eating habits, he’s at risk of heart disease, diabetes and all those other old-age conditions that he’s sure are right around the corner, like a creature waiting to jump out at him in the night.
Eating cheap, quick food and drinking whisky every night isn’t helping his mental state either.
Still, he’d rather die early than have his mind waste away and forget everything that’s happened in his life.
At least he won’t be leaving behind a wife or children who’d be forced to watch him decay and forget they ever existed.
Graham isn’t sure why he’s become so morbid with his thoughts lately.
Death is inevitable, he knows that, but he isn’t that old.
Hell, technically he’s still too young to retire.
What’s the age of retirement now for a man?
Sixty-five or sixty-six? It seems to go up every damn year.
He still has a decade of work ahead of him.
Maybe he needs to get himself a part-time job to keep his mind and body occupied because ten years is a long time. Plenty of years left, right?
Wrong. Not if he keeps eating crap and drinking whisky like it’s water.
Last night, after he’d walked back from the village meeting, full of banana bread and overloaded with more questions than when he arrived, he sunk a couple tumblers of his favourite tipple as he stared absentmindedly into the roaring fire in his lounge.
He always drinks his whisky with two ice cubes.
No more. No less. He’d listened to the wind and rain pelt against the window next to him and it had lulled him into a deep sleep.
Woken with a start, hours later, he’d then plodded to his bedroom and passed out.
No wonder his neck aches this morning, having slept awkwardly.
Or perhaps it was the previous morning’s adventures up the tree that have caused his muscles and joints to seize up like a tin man in a rainstorm; another delightful reminder of his aging body.
He doesn’t want to imagine what he’ll be like in ten or twenty years if he keeps going at this rate.
As he stands at his kitchen window, stretching his neck and back and waiting for the kettle to boil, he stares at the hill ahead, at the tree, thinking about what Frank and Karen had divulged about it last night.
The Hanging Tree.
A morbid name for such a spectacular living monument.
The rising sun is barely visible over the brow, sending a blend of orange and red cascading across the sky. Wow, it’s a beautiful morning, made even more glorious by the glistening dew on the grass.
The kettle clicks off, but Graham doesn’t make a move to pick it up because his eyes catch sight of something at the top of the hill.
No. Never mind. It’s nothing.
His eyes are still puffy and full of sleep, and he’s yet to officially wake up. He’s seeing things.
He has no plans for today, other than to dig over part of the vegetable plot that’s now mostly weeds.
Clearing it now, pulling up the roots, will mean it’s in the best condition come spring for him to be able to start afresh.
He also wants to find out more about Sophia Hammel, but after sleeping on it, he wonders if diving headfirst into another small-town mystery is the best use of his time these days.
He’s over that now. He’s got nothing left to prove.
Wait …
There’s something in the tree again …
No way. It’s not possible.
Without grabbing an extra layer to keep him warm, he yanks open the back door and makes his way up the hill towards the tree. His breath dances on the icy wind which rips around his body, but he isn’t cold. Not yet.
He keeps his eyes fixed on the tree as he walks and the closer he gets, the more he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing.
Another scarecrow hangs in the same place as yesterday morning, dressed in the same overcoat. There’s no frayed rope around the tree branch where he cut it yesterday. It’s like it has been there the whole time and he never removed it.
But it isn’t possible. Because he did. Remove it. Didn’t he?
This time, yesterday morning, he had cut the scarecrow from its rope, dragged it down the hill and stored it in his garage, ready to chuck on the next bonfire he lit.
He usually has one every few months to burn through the rubbish and cuttings from the garden.
The scarecrow had spent the night locked in his garage, along with the ladder and numerous other boxes and items he has in there.
Yet here it is. Back in the tree.
Graham reaches the bottom of the trunk and cranes his head backwards.
He then turns and scans the horizon, looking for anyone passing by, but it seems no one is up at this time of morning, not yet anyway.
Someone is playing a trick on him. Some local kids are pulling a prank on an old man, just like Frank Hammel had said.
Last night, no one had seemed in the least bit concerned about him finding a scarecrow in the tree. But why is it back here?
His body shivers against the cold. The wind is stronger up here than below in the valley, so he turns on his heels and heads back down the hill to his cottage. He bypasses the back door and walks straight to the garage, pulling the keys from his pocket and unlocking the door.
He flicks on the light.
The scarecrow is gone.
But the ladder is there.
Graham chuckles as he rubs the back of his neck.
Is this the start of him losing his memory?
It’s his worst nightmare, the idea of losing who he is, of him forgetting everything that’s happened in the past. Is that what’s happening?
Or have some local delinquent kids somehow broken into his locked garage, dragged the scarecrow back up the hill and hauled it up into the tree to mess with his head?
Neither scenario seems likely, but he does have proof that something happened yesterday.
His aching body. And the two pieces of paper in his pocket.
Graham slams the garage door shut, locking it. Double checking the bolt.
He looks up at the tree and sighs, the thought of repeating the retrieval process filling him with dread. No. The scarecrow can bloody well stay there this time.
Graham decides to go for his morning walk to clear his stuffy head and loosen up his stiff muscles.
He usually finds his strolls calm and enjoyable; a time he can spend listening to the birds and admiring the beautiful scenery.
Today is different. As the ground passes beneath his feet, all he can focus on is the damn scarecrow in that damn tree and what the hell a possible missing teenage girl and a drawing from a hundred years ago have to do with it.
It doesn’t make any sense and, the more he thinks about it, the more confused and frustrated he gets.
There’s no logical explanation for how he had brought the scarecrow down from the tree yesterday morning, locked it inside the garage to be dealt with later, but then the next morning it was back up in the tree, with the garage still being locked.
He laughs. Perhaps he really is getting old.
Is this truly the start of his downhill decline?
He isn’t old enough to have dementia yet …
is he? The thought crosses his mind and then he can’t get it out again.
Maybe it’s the start of something. Perhaps a visit to the doctor will provide some answers.
Hell, maybe he’d been sleep-walking, even though he’s never done that in his entire life and it hadn’t happened during the night, but in the morning.
In his mind, he has two choices: either he goes to visit Frank Hammel and asks him questions about his daughter, questions he doubts he’ll get answers to, or he goes back home and minds his own business.
There is a third option: call and ask the one person who has the right mental capacity to deal with these sorts of conundrums, someone who thrives on complex and strange occurrences.
Mr Stephen Mallow.
A very strange man who, when Graham first met him, he didn’t like one bit.
Mainly because he was a nosey journalist. As a detective, Graham knew how meddlesome and difficult journalists could be, especially when they sunk their teeth into a juicy story, especially one that could potentially catapult their career into the stars.
That’s what he thought Mr Mallow was after and he’d judged him too quickly.
Mr Mallow was also rather peculiar and, as much as he regrets it now, at the time when they met Graham had no understanding of what ADHD or OCD was.
He just thought the man was ridiculous, a menace and somewhat stupid, but once he understood the error of his judgement, he realised Mr Mallow was one of the most intelligent and unique individuals he’d ever met.
In fact, Graham wouldn’t have solved his last case in Cherry Hollow without the meddling, questioning personality of Mr Mallow, whose mind just happened to be wired differently to his.
Perhaps that was why they had butted heads at first, neither one of them willing to back down and Mr Mallow had that sheer determination to find out the truth, not caring who he pissed off in the process. Graham, included.
Mr Mallow had taught Graham a lot about mental health during their last case.
Back in Graham’s day, mental health wasn’t spoken about as widely as it was today and Graham admitted that, to begin with, he thought of it as nothing more than people being weak.
His father told him to never cry because boys, men, didn’t cry, didn’t show emotion, nor did they act weak or admit when they couldn’t cope.
They just got on with things. Now, it was more important than ever to talk about because the more a person kept their inner, dark thoughts trapped inside, the more the darkness took over, the more the creeping creature would torment them.
As an ex-detective, Graham knew more than most about that.
There was always a dark cloud of pressure bearing down on his shoulders, never letting up for a moment.
Everyone had expected so much from him. Ever since he was a young sergeant in the force, he’d wanted to help people, to solve crimes, bring people to justice, but it was never as simple as that.
Often, crimes didn’t get solved. Sometimes, people got away with murder or missing children were never found, or, if they were, they were found dead, and he had to deliver the news to their grief-stricken parents.
Some days, it had all gotten too much. But he never spoke about it with anyone. He carried that heavy burden all by himself. Until Mr Mallow showed him the error of his ways.
Graham shakes his head, dispelling the dark thoughts of the past, then turns and walks down another path, heading back home.
Now he thinks about it, perhaps it will be nice to touch base with Mr Mallow.
They had casually mentioned last year that they’d keep in touch, but seeing as they were both blokes who found friendship with other blokes a bit awkward, neither of them had taken the first step yet.
When Graham moved out of Cherry Hollow, he put the whole town behind him, including its residents.
Nothing on God’s green earth would make him go back there, but perhaps Mr Mallow fancied a trip to the middle of Wales to investigate a weird scarecrow found hanging in a tree, not once, but twice and to discover why the residents of this town didn’t seem concerned about a potentially missing girl.
Karen may have dismissed her disappearance, but Graham isn’t so easily persuaded otherwise. There’s something not quite adding up.
Graham arrives home, puts on a pot of coffee and scrolls to Stephen Mallow’s number.