Through the windscreen, Suzie notices Cathy has moved out of the circle of headlights and is now little more than a light moving between the trees a short distance away. She rolls down the window, gritting her teeth against the cold. “Cathy?”
Cathy doesn’t turn. The light dims, grows brighter, dims again. As if she is moving it around. Suzie flicks the radio back off, and the silence swarms violently in. They’re a long way out of town here, maybe even out of reach of a mobile signal. She can’t help but remember all the sleepover ghost stories she’d sat through, her hands pressed over her ears but her fingers spread so a little sound could still filter through. That troublesome, persistent curiosity, ever present. Joseph Bray with his axe—or had it been a butcher’s knife?—hacking his family intopieces while the snow fell. The lights that were said to flicker in the places where the shadows grew fattest beneath the beeches and oaks. They lured you in, those lights. There were old stories about children who followed them off the path and into the woods who never came out again—
Bang!
Suzie screams, gripping the steering wheel so tightly she is almost convinced it will snap off in her hands. Cathy’s hand, slapping on the roof as she leans in the window, her face flushed with the cold. In one hand, her phone. The other is pointing off toward the trees.
“Holy shit, Suzie, there’s a truck! We found it, I can’t believe it! Danny’s directions were absolutely spot on!”
Suzie climbs out of her seat, her legs treacherously unsteady. Fear is running through her as black as volcanic glass. Cathy tugs her by the sleeve, still talking a mile a minute, her eyes gleaming with a crazy light Suzie recognizes from school.
“I had to brush the snow and leaves off the roof but I’m positive it’s the same truck we saw in the CCTV. I bet if I could open it, I’ll find something Hazel left inside. Maybe her purse.”
“We’re not breaking into the truck, Cathy.”
Cathy laughs scornfully. “Ha! You’re kidding, right? We’re trying to find a missing woman, Suzie, not earn a Girl Guide badge. I know you don’t want to hear it, but sometimes you have to break the rules to get results.”
They follow Cathy’s footprints, deep divots in hard-packed snow that crunches under their feet. The humped shape reveals itself slowly, emerging from the dark like something rising out of water.
Cathy turns her phone light toward it, and Suzie gasps.It’s thesame truck, she thinks immediately.Has to be.She moves closer, cupping her hands at the driver’s window to peer inside the cab. She doesn’t need Cathy’s phone light to see that it’s empty. There’s some litter in the footwell—a couple of takeaway coffee cups and food wrappers—but nothing out of the ordinary, certainly nothing incriminating. She puts a hand on the hood. It’s cold to the touch, but that doesn’t reassure her. On the contrary, it could mean the driver is heading back to it right this moment.
She walks to the back of the vehicle and turns to Cathy. “You know we need to look under that canvas, right?”
Cathy visibly wobbles. It’s a tremor that seems to run right through her, from the ground up. Her face visibly pales. “You do it. I can’t face it.”
Suzie considers this. If Hazelislying under that tarp, she’s likely already dead. The temperatures have been below freezing all day, and the nights are even colder. A spray of snow has settled on top, as if it hasn’t been moved in some time. Suzie has never seen a dead body before. She wonders if it will be like the movies, where there is a little beauty in it: rolled-back clouded eyes, lips slightly parted. As she holds her hand out for Cathy’s phone, she knows it won’t be. It will be brutal, like the weather. Like nature itself, with its rot and decay, the softening and liquefying of all things.
“Okay.”
Suzie clamps the phone between her teeth so she can work the strap holding down the cover free with both hands. There is a sensation of detachment in her as she lifts the corner of the canvas, as though she is drifting away from her body. A helium balloon, rising over the trees. Even as she shines the light into the dark, cramped space, her mind is orbiting somewhere far above her, buffering her from the shock she is certain is coming. A glassyeye, a clawed hand, stiff with rigor. But there are only tools lying there. Spades. A rake. A long length of hose.
“Nothing.” She exhales, laughing slightly. She looks up at Cathy. “Just gardening stuff.”
“Gardening?”
Cathy walks around the truck to stand beside Suzie and look beneath the canvas for herself. Her expression changes. Hardens, Suzie thinks. Like a crust of ice.
“What?”
“Huh. That man, the one I talked to at Belle Vue. He was a gardener. He was planting hydrangeas in the flower beds. He works for the council.”
Suzie can see Cathy is working toward something. It’s like untying a knot in the heart of the brain, so that it can free all the loose ends.
“Fuck. I talked to him about Hazel. He came into my house! Into my son’s room!”
“Cathy—”
“‘Drive safe,’ he said to me. ‘Think of your sons.’ Isn’t thatweird?”
“Did you get his name?”
“Andrew.”
Suzie is pulling her phone out of her pocket.
Cathy frowns. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the police.”