“Hi hi hi. Sorry to interrupt! I’m—”
But when she saw them all standing there, all she could think was, how could anything this weekend possibly go right?
FRIDAY NIGHT/
SATURDAY MORNING
3
Hollis
The end of the bed sank under Hollis’s weight while he stared at the rectangular glow of light from his phone. Fully charged, but no messages and no signal. The little bars said he was connected to the Wi-Fi, but he couldn’t access his email or the internet. Was it a blessing, he wondered, if he couldn’t ask Linda what was going on? If he let this weekend play out, then questioned her later? His little girl—had she tricked him or had she no idea? Could he make it another hour without demanding an answer? He knew she kept her phone on at night. He could ring and ring and ring until she answered. He could already hear her crying, asking why he was treating her like a suspect. Telling him she had only wanted to do something nice. She hadn’t known.
Hadn’t known what?
Because Linda didn’t know anything about Caldwell Street or Cahill University. He’d made damn sure of that. Hollis shoved his phone in his pocket. The black void in his room matched the stillness of the house. The others slept now, or at least pretended to.
He wanted to go home, forget this weekend ever happened, forget that Linda had somehow got involved. Wanted to start work on Monday in his new suit and tie. Solve cases that had nothing to do with him. But the envelope sitting on the desk reminded him that if he left now, that future was impossible. He stood up and paced, typed out a text he hoped didn’t come across as accusatory.
Hearing Callum’s name had opened a box in Hollis’s brain, one that he’d taped up and filed away on a dusty shelf, like the forgotten evidence of a cold case. Now it was open, he couldn’t stop sorting through the contents.
The way Callum could appear in a room and no one noticed how he got there, despite him being over six feet. How he would volunteer to help with the dishes the night after, even if he hadn’t been at the party. The day Gran died and Hollis had to rush home, Callum had been the only other person in the house. He’d pulled Hollis into a hug, told him he’d contact his lecturers for him, get any notes he might need. It wasn’t just talk. When Hollis returned the next week, Callum had placed a stack of notes, organized by course, on his desk.
In the silence, Hollis kept trying to recall the sound of Callum’s voice, but it hid in the patter of the rain, the hiss of the radiator, the scratch of mice in the walls.
His texts again failed to send. He almost threw the phone against the wall, but thought better of it and shoved it in his pocket as he left the room.
The fire in the lobby glowed red, the peat burning without flame. A small lamp on the reception desk gave off a weak light. Hollis’s footsteps provided the only sound. He paused, unable to remember the last time he’d occupied a building that seemed so empty. His block of flats in Manchester had so many people coming and going no matter the hour, he sometimes felt like a train conductor. Here he felt like a ghost.
He slipped into the study and sat at the bar with a bottle of Glenlivet that had been left out, pretending, as he often did, to be an adult. He tapped his pen against his notebook, his trusty aid when he’d been a patrolman. The boys had bought him a new one for his first day as detective. That one sat, wrapped in plastic, on the counter at home, awaiting Monday like the suit and shoes in his closet. This old one still had the scuffs from when he and Landry fought. A few unfilled pages remained inside, plenty of space to jot down his thoughts on what had happened at Wolfheather House so far. He’d worry about Linda later. What mattered now was unraveling the web that brought him here.
So focused was he on writing that he didn’t notice that the door had opened. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he turned around sharply.
“Sorry.” Lorna clutched a book to her chest. “I didn’t think anyone was down here. I can go somewhere else.”
“It’s fine.” He nodded to the bottle. “Want a drink?”
She hesitated, then sat down, setting her book on the bar. “No point in lying. It’s what I came for.”
For several minutes, they drank in silence. Almost as if they were waiting for someone. Maybe they were, Hollis thought.
“Anything interesting?” She nodded toward his notebook.
“Just some notes. Trying to pick all of this apart, so I can piece it back together.” He tapped the pen against the paper.
“Don’t do that. Please.” She pressed her fingers to her temples.
“Sorry. I know the noise is annoying.”
“No. It’s not that. It reminds me too much . . . It makes me feel like we’re back there. You and me sitting quietly in the front room. Me with a book. You studying your notes, tapping your pen. It’s too much.” She looked into her drink. “Do you think we have PTSD?”
“Don’t know.” He thought of the nightmares that came to him at least once a year. “Probably.”
He set his pen on the bar, picked up her book. “Truffaut’s Hitchcock. Didn’t you read this at Cahill?”
“It’s even the same copy. Not as interesting as it was, though. I got rid of most of my things from that year, but I still haven’t been able to part with a book. You should see my flat.” She took the book back and ran her thumbnail down the spine.
“You folded down the corner of the pages,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
She looked younger in this light, with her hair in that same blunt cut, like she was using it as a helmet to protect herself against the world. But he couldn’t quite picture her as the girl she had been. Like she was a photograph damaged with age. The years had scarred her too much. But then again, he saw the same when he looked in a mirror.
“Hollis, do you think we deserve this?”
As a policeman, he was used to being asked such questions. But not by Lorna. Lorna always had answers, right or not. Not questions.
“I think we were young and stupid. The worst kind of stupid. And given the chance, I’d go back and change everything that happened.”
“But you can’t.”
“No. I can’t,” he said. “So maybe all the bad things that have happened to us since are some kind of karmic retribution.”
“And maybe we’re just very good at doing bad things.” From the back of the book, she pulled out the folded papers. They were missing their envelope now, but he recognized what they were. “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”
She held them out, but Hollis didn’t take them.
“Keeping secrets is what got us into this mess,” she said, “and secrets will only make everything worse. The more light we shed on ourselves, on everything, the less power he has over us. This person. Whoever he is.”
“It’s a short list of people who knew Callum wrote those Happy Wednesday notes,” he said.
“And an even shorter one of who knows what really happened that night. I trusted you back then, Hollis. After I felt confident you weren’t going to set the house on fire. That hasn’t changed.” She slid the folded papers across the tin bar. “I slept with a student. A potential student. Allegedly. One I was recruiting for the university.”