Last to Know: A Novel(66)

There was no time to be wasted. Despite being small, Diz was too heavy for me to carry and from the bushes I pulled the small hand cart, like the little red Radio Flyer only this was old and brown and full of splinters, must have been rescued from some charity garden sale years ago, until I came across it, and it was finally coming in useful. I strapped Diz onto it, knees under his chest, sort of in a fetal position. Then I stood and looked about me. This was my most vulnerable moment. Anyone taking a walk might come round that bend and see me. I had to move fast.

Only I know the pathway through those brambles leading up the hill to the well, not that far really, perhaps five hundred yards, but it’s a secret kept for years now. No ordinance map has ever shown the well’s location, no local has ever so much as mentioned its existence. There’s a small lean-to erected long ago, someone’s dream vision of escaping the real world: merely a stunted walled-in mud-brick room, roofed in bamboo, laced with branches and leaves. In one corner I have provided a bucket for the necessary relieving of nature’s call. Not that I cared, I just didn’t want to have to play the heroic rescuer wading through filth.

I rolled Diz off the cart onto the floor then bound his hands in front of him with a strong piece of vine I had previously cut from the undergrowth. A second length secured his ankles, more loosely though, so he might make it across to the bucket without having to be carried. I was avoiding carrying him not because of his weight, which was meager, but because he might smell me, recognize me the way an animal does. For good measure, I tied his thighs together. Now I was sure he could not move.

I stepped back, took a look at my handiwork, went to the corner where I had stashed the coil of rope, took it and threaded it around his neck, securing it with one of those seafaring knots Boy Scouts are sometimes taught, to get their badge. This one was better than that though. I had practiced long enough to make certain I knew what I was doing.

So, there I had Diz, on the earthen floor, propped against the mud wall, rope around neck, chin drooping on his chest, tethered arms sticking out in front of him, thighs strapped, ankles bound.

I was in complete control of his future.





50


It was later that Rose realized Diz was not in his room. A hungry eleven-year-old always showed up in time for meals, or anything in between, but not this evening. She went onto the deck and yelled his name, noting that the small boat was still at the jetty. Diz was not allowed to take the boat out alone without first asking permission and telling them exactly where he was going, and why.

She went back inside and got the big brass handbell then stood on the deck, clanging until her ears ached, but still Diz did not appear at his usual fast trot from around the corner, or from the woods, or a walk to the village to get a smoothie. He’d told them Tweedies made the best ever and his father told him they’d been doing it like that since he was a kid and he prayed they would never change the recipe.

Still, Rose felt sure Diz had not gone there today because he would have had to ask her for money since he’d already spent his allowance on fishing lures and a video of punk rockers so loud she’d had to ask him to use his earphones so the rest of the house wouldn’t be deafened.

She stopped ringing the bell and had pushed the sleeves of her red T-shirt up her arms, staring, a little worried, at the lake. Then she heard a car crunch up the sandy road and swing to a stop. Thinking it must be Diz, that someone had given him a lift back from the village, and that she was gonna have to give him hell for going there alone, without asking her, she ran round the side of the house and saw Harry’s dark green Jag.

Harry was in love with Mal but it didn’t stop his heart from giving a little lurch when he spotted Rose, standing forlornly under the trees in her too-large white shorts that drooped to her lovely knees, and her breasts rounded at the V of her red tee, with her long brown curly hair floating sideways in the sudden breeze that rattled boats against jetties and soughed in the treetops like wind in a fairy story. Beyond the white clapboard house, the lake was suddenly all silver sparkle, reminding Harry of Christmas ornaments. The only thing that spoiled this image was the despairing droop to lovely Rose’s shoulders.

Squeeze stuck his head out of the car window and Rose went and tickled his ears, though even now she couldn’t help thinking it would be nicer to be tickling cute Harry Jordan’s ears, set flat against his head, but of course that was an irrelevant thought. She was a married woman and Harry had a gorgeous girlfriend. Rose knew she was gorgeous because she had seen her on TV.

Harry got out of the car and gave her a hug that lingered only fractionally too long. There was, they both knew, a little something between them, that frisson of electricity which, notwithstanding other obligations, other loves, other lives, would always be there. Another time, another place perhaps something could have happened, but, Rose told herself firmly, not now. And with what she had going on with Wally and the family she had other things to think about.

“I don’t suppose you spotted Diz on your way through the village?” she asked, stepping back.

“No, I didn’t.” Harry opened the door for the dog and it bounded out in one long solid leap. “Like a bird in flight,” Harry marveled, laughing as Squeeze, freed, ran madly round.

“Kicking up his heels.” Rose smiled. “I guess if Diz is out there, Squeeze’ll find him.”

Any thoughts about Rose as a woman fled from Harry’s mind and he became a cop again; he wasn’t that worried; boys were boys and Diz might be up to anything, but with proximity to the lake there was always concern.