He hadn’t come! Or he was disgusted with them for being five minutes late, and had gone away. ‘What can we do?’ could Michael set up the detour sign behind Jake’s van and then run the half mile down the road in time to pull the horse out of the van while Jake was still stopped, looking at Carrie’s body? Could Carrie do that while Michael lay in the road? Impossible. They could not do it without Lester. Carrie sat down on a heap of stones with her head in her hands. Michael began to walk home, exaggerating his limp. The dry grass and twigs in the ditch stirred and heaved and became Lester, jumping up like a grinning jack-in-the-box. ‘Just trying out my camouflage,’ he said. ‘Come back, young Mike!’ Michael came back, limping less. ‘I knew you were there all the time.’ Carrie and Lester left him in the hollow tree and ran off down the road towards the bridge. They did not talk. They knew what they had to do. They stopped at the agreed place, just before the bridge, and Lester took a bottle of tomato ketchup out of his pocket ‘Blood,’ he said.
