Chapter Eight Rotten Timber
Rotten Timber
Jake tapped out a restless rhythm on the cracked leather of the steering wheel.
Kick. Snare. Kick-kick. Snare.
It was his beat. The one living inside him and keeping his head from running too far ahead of him. It kept his hands busy, too. From launching out of this van and knocking on the door he was court-ordered not to go near.
Parked along a narrow side street off the market square, he kept the old stone terraces in his periphery.
They leaned into one another, slate roofs dipping unevenly with hanging baskets swinging from black iron brackets.
A butcher’s van had double-parked further up the road, back doors open, raw meat scents drifting in the air.
Somewhere nearby, a church bell marked the quarter-hour.
And across from him, above a small hardware shop with sun-faded paintwork and a handwritten “Back in five” sign in the window, sat a modest first-floor flat.
Cream curtains, too thin to hide anything properly.
A plant on the sill that had seen better days.
The curtain twitched.
Jake didn’t turn his head fully. He wouldn’t stare. That way led to trouble.
But he caught the motion all the same.
This was a typical Hartswick mid-afternoon lull. No traffic beyond the occasional tractor rumbling past the end of the street. A pensioner shuffling along with a shopping trolley. The smell of someone’s washing drying somewhere out of sight.
Ordinary.
That was what made it worse. Because, as usual, like last time, things…carried on. Nothing stopped. Everything was still the same despite the place having swallowed two people now.
Kick. Snare. Kick, kick, snare.
He clenched his jaw as the curtain in the flat moved again, subtle but noticeable, and the beat under his fingers grew heavier. He tapped his foot to bring in the bass.
He knew this feeling. This tightening in his chest. The way his pulse stopped feeling like blood and started feeling like momentum.
He’d lived most of his adult life one wrong decision away from proving everyone right about him.
Ex-con. Violent. Unstable. Calder’s version of events was probably still stamped somewhere official for anyone to read. To paint a picture of him.
He struck his fingers harder on the steering wheel.
He could go up there. He could knock.
Kick, snare. Kick, kick, snare.
The idea pulsed in his head in time with the rhythm under his fingers.
Kick. Snare.
Thud, thud, fill.
The want to go bash through that wall bloomed fast and hot, reckless as a lit match.
He’d been here long enough for the engine to cool twice over.
Long enough for a woman with a spaniel to pass, glance at him, then pass again ten minutes later.
Long enough for the whole damn town to notice that he was once again here, once again obsessing, and once again with no proof other than his own instinct.
On leaving Deacon, he hadn’t come straight here.
He wasn’t that mental. No. He’d done the proper stuff.
Driven loops along the market square. Out past the Co-op.
Up towards the playing fields. Further still, towards the disused quarry where teenagers sometimes went with cheap cider and reckless behaviour, where he’d had his first blowjob from a boy from the neighbouring school.
Then he’d checked the bus shelter on the edge of the bypass.
The bench by the river. The lay-by near the old farm track.
Places he knew. Places he’d searched before.
Every hedge and hollow holding the same stupid, desperate thought: she’ll be there. She’ll step out. She’ll say she’s fine.
Robyn hadn’t stepped out.
Nor had Emily Fisher.
So he’d then found himself here. Again.
He glanced at the dashboard clock. 14:37. Fifteen hours had passed since another young girl had left a pub and vanished into the dark. An almost impossible thing. To disappear in such a small town without so much as a whisper.
Though, of course, there were whispers.
Among the right people.
Ones he couldn’t chase down in daylight.
He tightened his grip on the wheel as one of them nudged at the edge of his mind.
Something about certain lads. Certain places.
Certain girls going there. The sort of thing people said after a few pints, then laughed off as if they’d said too much.
He’d followed that thread once. Years ago.
It led nowhere worth finding. To locked gates.
Long drives. A feeling he wasn’t welcome before he’d even stepped out of the van.
But Robyn? In that world?
No. That wasn’t her. She wasn’t one of them. And he doubted seventeen-year-old Emily Fisher was either. So he dragged his focus back to the road. To where he was.
Three strides. That’s all it would take.
He could be out of the van, up the narrow stone steps and in two sharp raps on the door, he’d be standing in front of him again.
He could sort it properly. No waiting. No sitting still while everything in him itched to move.
He could shove his way into that flat and tear it apart.
Search every cupboard, every drawer. He didn’t need evidence.
Didn’t need a warrant. Or whatever the living fuck it was the police claimed to need while they sat on their arses and let leads rot.
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
Then he flipped on the radio, needing noise, anything, to cut through the spiral.
Maybe the news would break in. Tell him she’d been found.
Give him something to work with. That might link back, however loosely, to Robyn.
Static crackled first. Then music punched through, sharp enough to slice the thoughts clean out of his head.
Good.
That was better.
Loud. Solid. Decent music to anchor him to the seat instead of marching back up those steps and doing something he couldn’t take back.
Then a guitar riff tore through the cab.
Hard. Clean. Familiar. He’d upgraded the speakers when he’d taken the van off his dad.
He’d needed the bass. The kick. To feel it in his chest. But now every note came biting through, every string vibrating in his chest. He didn’t need to look at the display to know who the band was.
Nor did he need the presenter crowing about “the lads from Leeds smashing it again, ready for their largest arena gig to date in Manchester this weekend.” He knew their sound.
He’d known it when it bounced off sticky pub ceilings and sweat-darkened walls.
When amps blew mid-set and they laughed it off, shirtless and invincible.
When the future had felt so close, he’d sworn he could step straight into it.
The opening bars swelled, climbing towards the chorus. Towards the drum fill. His drum-fill. He gritted his teeth.
Then switched stations before it hit.
Silence cracked through, then a local voice cut in, crisp and urgent. “—high-risk missing person investigation underway in Hartswick. Police have confirmed seventeen-year-old Emily Fisher was last seen leaving The King’s Arms at approximately eleven-twenty last night…”
Jake stilled.
“…Detective Inspector Harrison Black has appealed for anyone with information to come forward…”
He listened to the clipped excerpt of the appeal as it rolled across the radio, Harrison’s clear voice cutting through the top-of-the-range speakers. There wasn’t a tremor in it. Professional. Calm.
Nothing like the riot going on inside Jake’s skull.
That voice pressed into his chest and forced clarity into place. Slowed him. Grounded him. It was ridiculous, really. That a copper could be the one to pull him back from the edge when all they’d ever done was mishandle things before. Robyn. Him.
But here he was.
He let out a breath and turned the key. The engine caught with a low growl, and he eased the van off the verge, pulling back towards town.
And as he did, it felt as though he was driving back in time with all the high-vis jackets punctuating the pavement near the woodland shortcut.
And all those patrol cars sitting at angles they never usually did, blue and yellow panels breaking up the familiar stone.
Officers moved with purpose instead of small-town laziness.
Exactly as they had thirteen years ago.
So getting himself firmly in the present, he headed for the school instead, where kids spilled through the gates for kicking-out time.
He mounted the kerb half an inch too far, tyres nudging the white zigzags outside the entrance, then killed the engine.
Silence dropped into the van like a lead weight.
He didn’t want to turn the radio on again.
Too many memories were bursting out of it today.
So he rested his hands on the wheel and started tapping again.
Kick. Snare. Kick. Snare.
Then it built.
Kick—kick. Snare. Kick. Snare. Kick-kick-kick.
He rolled his fingers across the wheel in a tight little fill; the pattern rattling through the hollow cab.
Ba-da-da-da — crack.
He caught sight of Teddy within a tide of uniforms, earphones in, head down, thumbs flying over his phone. The kid would walk straight into traffic if no one stopped him.
Jake wound down the window. “Oi, Ted.”
Teddy glanced up, squinting against the light.
Jake jerked his head to the passenger side. “Get in.”
“You making sure I get home now and all?” Teddy shot back, already halfway across the pavement.
“Aye. Summat like that. In.”
Teddy rolled his eyes, but he rounded the bonnet and hauled himself up into the far passenger seat. Jake pulled away from the school gates, and Teddy was back on his phone before they’d hit the corner.
“How was school?” Jake asked.
“Boring.”
“It’s meant to be.”
Teddy looked up at him, wrinkling his nose. “What?”
“School. It’s meant to be boring. Teaches you how to be bored. ’Cause life in’t all video games and drama.”
Teddy scoffed and went back to his phone.