“No,” he spluttered. He tried to clear his throat and gain control of himself, he tried again. “No, it wasn’t him.”
“Then who was that man?”
***
Except for a few suggestions on what direction they should go in, no words passed between Amanda and Brenden as they walked back to her car. She could see that the boy was still very distressed from the incident in the store, and as much as she wanted to comfort him she felt that if she tried to help the boy she would only end up making things worse. She knew what was going on in his mind; he was battling with the scar of a memory left by his attack; an attack that had taken everything away from Brenden he had previously known. Indeed, in light of the circumstances, she believed the boy was holding up well: the tears were gone, and the only real sign to anyone walking by that anything was wrong was the occasional mumbled sob, something which Brenden was always quick to contain. So instead of trying to do anything that could hinder the boy from his own efforts, she just did her best to lead the two of them through the streets of Caldborough, while keeping an eye out for the attacker, should he return.
When they finally reached the mostly empty grey car park, Amanda placed Brenden in her Clio as quickly as she could and strapped him in. Without asking him whether he wanted it or not, she put the radio on and, as Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney’s ‘The Girl is Mine’ provided a bit of background noise, she told Brenden that she had to make a call to the school to say that he was safe and found.
To her mild irritation, the drizzle started again as soon as she got out of the driver’s seat. However, she did not want Brenden hearing her conversation with the deputy, so she would just have to bear it. She made her way to the navy blue doors of the pub, hoping that the building would provide her some protection against the rain, and retrieved her phone from her pocket.
When she opened up the flip case, the phone immediately started to ring; the caller was unknown. She scanned around to see if anyone was watching her, but the only people she could see where those in the cars passing on the nearby road and Brenden, who was flipping through the radio channels in her car. It was just a coincidence, she was sure.
“Hello?” she said tentatively.
“Hello,” said a woman’s voice on the other end of the line. “I’m looking for Amanda.”
“You’ve found her.”
“Ah, good. This is Mary speaking.”
“Mary?” replied Amanda, a little taken aback as the first idea to occur to her was that her friend from the Tunnels had found a way to call her.
“Mary O’Hare, we met the other day.”
“Oh sorry, of course,” Amanda said with more than a hint of disappointment.
“I heard that you left town, and just wanted to know when you would be coming back.”
“I’m sorry?” replied Amanda incredulously
“Look, I think we might have got off on the wrong foot the other day. It’s just, well, the thing is, there was a reason why I’d didn’t want to talk to you. I was afraid.”
“Afraid? Of what.”
“I can’t tell you right now. Not over the phone, it’s too risky. We’ll have to meet face to face. Just call me when you get back.”
“But, Mary, what this all about?”
“I can’t say. Not yet.”
The line went dead. Before she really realised what had happened, Amanda spoke a few pointless hellos into the phone. It had all been so abrupt and out of the blue, and it had raised so many questions, all of which remained unanswered, that Amanda was tempted to ring Mary back immediately to try and get some clarification. However, when she tried, Mary’s phone was engaged.
She took her time getting back to the car, giving herself the space she needed to get her thoughts straight before returning to Brenden. She watched him, still flicking through the radio channels, as she approached, and when she opened the driver’s door she even managed a smile.
“So what did they say?” asked Brenden.
“Who?”
“At the school.”
Amanda resisted the urge to swear in front of the boy and contented herself by tightening her grip on the steering wheel to let out her frustration at her own forgetfulness.
“Oh, I couldn’t get through,” she lied. “But it doesn’t matter, we’ll be there soon enough.”
***
Amanda had been waiting as patiently as she could in the deputy’s cupboard of an office for what had been a very long twenty minutes. A few times, she tried to occupy herself by examining some of the tired yellowing papers and carelessly discarded books that lined much of the floor of the small space around her, but most were in languages she could not understand. The ones that were in English – or French, of which she had a rather shaky, but sufficient grounding in – seemed to be in something akin to the academic language she remembered from her university days and was glad to have left behind. So, instead of inspecting what she presumed the deputy had just left around to impress anyone who had to suffer the claustrophobic space of his office, she had eventually pulled out her phone and tried to distract herself with a game.
But it was no use, as much as she tried to concentrate on the vivid colours and repetitive actions of the game, her thoughts about the events in the store kept on returning to her, urging her to find the deputy so that she could determine what he knew about Brenden’s unknown assailant.
She had seen the deputy when she had arrived back at the
