Altered Life

by Keith Dixon

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  THE PAIN IN MY head started thrumming in the cheek that Hampshire had hit. Another migraine was about to start up. Great timing. It was as though someone was applying a series of electrodes to my right cheek, then to my temple, then up on to my forehead. The pain modulated from the burn you feel from a slap on the face to the deep, resonant torment of a knife that has punctured flesh and is now twisting and turning, tearing sinew and muscle apart.

  I could do nothing. I felt myself going limp from the pain. Hampshire had my arms tied behind me and pulled upwards, so that I began to bend double. I dug in, and started to plant my feet to leap backwards into him, but was immediately pushed forward and mechanically pulled back in the rhythm he’d already established.

  ‘Don’t be foolish,’ he said. ‘I’m good at this. Let’s go for a walk.’

  He prodded me closer to the edge of the cliff, ten paces ahead. The person wearing the red jacket had vanished. We were alone. The ground was scattered with loose pebbles and was uneven, and I struggled to walk straight. Over the rush of the waterfall I could hear his breathing and smelled his strong deodorant. I had a sense of him looming above me, two or three inches taller and twenty pounds heavier. Despite my own height and strength, I was in trouble. As we came closer to the cliff face, he jerked me to a halt.

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ he said. His hands moved down over my body, patting for shoulder arms, belt buckles or holsters, leg knives. He found the sap in my sock and pulled it out. He rapped me lightly on the buttocks with it. ‘Naughty little tosspot,’ he said. ‘I’ll have that.’

  ‘Eat it,’ I said.

  He hit me harder on the buttocks.

  ‘Be nice. You’ll live longer. Not much, admittedly.’

  He pushed me forward again, and I had the sense that he wasn’t going to stop. My forehead and right eye throbbed so hard I could barely set one foot in front of the other. I wanted to sink to my knees, but he pushed me on.

  ‘Keep going,’ he said. ‘Don’t get shy after coming all this way.’

  ‘Going to push me yourself?’ I said. ‘Typical SAS. Keep me in the dark, kill me off, then blame somebody else.’

  I got a tug on the rope that nearly pulled me on to my back.

  ‘I thought you’d be a tough old bear,’ he said. ‘Heard it in your voice, that first conversation. You weren’t going to give up. Maybe it’s the Yorkshire in you. Had to keep an eye on you then. Throw a scare into you from time to time. Just for fun.’

  ‘Your Beemer’s got a nice scrape down the side.’

  ‘Oh well.’

  ‘And I take it that was you who tried to frighten Laura on the phone?’

  ‘Hated doing that, actually,’ he said. ‘Such a cliché.’

  ‘But you had to cover your tracks.’

  ‘Did my best. People always let you down, don’t they? In the end?’

  ‘This is Rory.’

  ‘Not really, but him as well. Major tosspot he turned out to be. Actually I was talking about Tara.’

  ‘So she was in it with you. She wanted Brands and you were happy to help, because Rory fired you.’

  We’d come to a halt near the edge. I could see the lights from a village half a mile down the valley. Between here and there was a drop of a hundred feet on to boulders the size of cars. Hampshire took up the slack on my lead and came up close. Casually, he threw three loops of rope over my head, pulling each one tight so that my arms were cinched against my body, immobile, with my hands tied behind me. His icy breath came floating over my shoulder as he pulled the last loop tight and then stood back.

  ‘Great detective work,’ he said. ‘Completely arsy-versy of course. Did Suzi tell you the Rolls-Royce story? I bet she did. She tells everybody. It’s part of my character, Dyke. I’ve got an obsessive nature. When Brand fired me I was not an happy boy. And I thought bugger it, I don’t have to put up with this from a jumped-up tosspot like him. So I started having some fun with him. I’d already started seeing Tara, who liked a little danger, so I roped her in. No pun intended, old man. We worked out there was a mutual benefit. She didn’t like what he was doing to a perfectly good business, so we thought we’d have it off him. Couldn’t get any investors to play ball, though. Had to come up with another solution.’

  ‘Tara would never murder anyone.’

  Hampshire laughed quietly. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. ‘That was one tough cookie. I never did get the point of her marrying Brand. Nor you, if it comes to that, not that I know you very well. I think it was a money thing in the end. Women, eh? Just when you think they’re different from what you expect, they do something to fit the stereotype.’

  ‘Tosspots.’

  ‘Exactly. Though strictly speaking you can’t have a female tosspot.’

  ‘Do you resent the fact that she was married to me?’

  ‘Good God no.’ He seemed genuinely incredulous. ‘The past is the past, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t you believe it influences the present?’

  ‘Oh don’t go philosophical on me, Dyke. If you must know, like all the best criminals I’m an existentialist. The past is too painful and the future is unknown. The present is all that’s worth focusing on.’

  ‘So was she with you that morning?’

  ‘Course not. Let myself in. Rory thought we were going to talk business—thought I had an offer for him. That’s why he agreed to the six o’clock meeting, you see. He thought there was something in it for him. Funny thing, Dyke. I hated him and in the end I didn’t much like her. But it’s weird—I wanted them both to like me. How does that happen?’

  ‘Perhaps they were decent people.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I got to the office first, let myself in, gave him a telling off, broke his neck.’

  ‘But he knew something was happening. That’s why I was there the day before, when you and I met.’

  ‘I was wondering about that. Interesting. Well, you know him—paranoid. Though I suppose it’s true Tara and I had spoken to a couple of people. Potential partners. I suppose they’d made one or two inquiries, which he’d heard about. Tara was never careful, was she? I couldn’t care less. It was him I couldn’t stand really.’

  By now I’d opened the small penknife that I’d had in my hand since leaving the hotel. Hampshire had missed it in his search because it was small in my hand. Now he wasn’t paying attention. He was comfortable and happy to show off. The rocky ground crunched under his feet as he shifted his weight almost casually. He was distracted by his own sense of importance.

  ‘See that cliff,’ he said. ‘You’re going to enjoy the ride. As we speak, the rope around you is being held on a friction device, a figure of eight kind of thing. Now you can’t see me, but I’m looping the slack around a big rock just behind you. What happens is, I push you off and hold on to the rope. The friction device holds you in place for a while. Then I yank the rope, you unwind like a spinning top, the knot on your wrist unties, and you go rolling like a barrel off Dungeon Ghyll and smash like a bastard on the rocks. It’s about a hundred feet. And not a mark on you—apart from the broken bones and fractured skull, of course. Oh, and I suppose there’ll be some rope burns, but what the hell.’

  ‘I was seen leaving the hotel with a note from you.’

  ‘Not from me, chum.’

  ‘Your clients know you’re out here.’

  ‘Don’t get desperate, Dyke. Stay cool. They think I’m having a bath before coming down for a drink. Which of course I will, in about half an hour or so. Anyway, you’re talking as if I give a damn, which at this point in time I actually don’t.’

  ‘Had enough?’

  ‘You could say that. I’ve seen some things, Dyke. Been all over the world. Done some things as well. I’ve just got to an age when it doesn’t seem worth the candle any more. I thought it might’ve been fun with Tara, she was a bit of a rush. But when it came down to it, she didn’t want to play. Not with me, anyway. I liked her well enough, but I ju
st can’t seem to do relationships. Don’t know how they work. Just like a man, eh?’

  ‘Is that why you killed her? I said.

  ‘Found her, did you? You can blame yourself for that. When I saw her with you that night, at her place, I thought she might be blabbing. Couldn’t take the risk. Bopped you on the head and took her with me.’

  ‘Brave to kill her, weren’t you.’

  ‘Oh don’t get noble. Didn’t really want to do it, but to be honest, I couldn’t be in two places at one time. I had to be here, didn’t I, with the clients. ’Fraid that was it for the luvverly Tara.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Even my best friends say so.’

  A thought occurred to me. ‘Where were you when you phoned Laura? Where were you holding Tara?’

  ‘’Listening in, were you? Might have guessed. I was just down the road, in a hotel room. Had her itty-bitty screams on tape. Just played ‘em back down the phone line. Then walked down the street and into the office. Shouldn’t have bothered, should I? Didn’t throw you off.’

  I paused in my struggle with the ropes. I had only a limited arc of movement back and forth to cut them, so even though the knife was sharp it was taking some time. Also, because Hampshire was behind me, I had to appear to be struggling with the ropes, not cutting them. I hoped he was too busy with his mechanics to notice what I was doing. My breathing sounded harsh in the dead quiet of the night, and my vision blurred as I looked straight ahead, over the drop, at the lights of the distant village. That familiar sense of falling into nothingness came over me with all its attraction, the letting go, the sense of weightlessness ... the relief.

  The moon had risen further, illuminating a clear, bright sky. I felt my blood coursing through me. I was fuelled by adrenaline, my arms and legs pumped up but still so powerless that the blood echoed in my head as it beat from one side of my skull to the other, pounding away like a tide caught in a narrow inlet. The pain in my head was agonizing, but I had to talk, keep him thinking and talking.

  ‘So it’s all about your little game,’ I said. ‘Rory pissed you off by giving you the sack. You didn’t like him doing the Critical Parent thing, so you thought you’d get your own back. Showing off with the clues. Tara was a threat because she was being childish. It’s all very petty for a big boy like you. Not very adult. Aren’t you ashamed?’

  ‘Don’t be fucking stupid, old man,’ he said. His voice had tightened and I had the feeling he was winding in the rope to brace himself when he pushed me over the edge. ‘After what I’ve done for this country? Waiting for twelve hours face down in African dirt, waiting for a so-called minister—who you know is actually a high-order scumbag—to get out of his chauffeur-driven car so you can plant one between his eyes. Why should I be ashamed of wasting an arse-clinker like Brand? Does nothing good for anyone. Wants everything he can’t have. Verbally beats up anyone he can, just because he can think quicker than most. Should get a knighthood, me, for services to industry. Tara, now, she’s different.’

  ‘She saw through you. Knew what a vicious thug you were.’

  ‘You’ve got balls, Dyke, give you that. Now just take a step forward, if you would.’

  ‘Why was Tara different?’

  ‘Let’s not get into that now. I told you before, I don’t do personal stuff.’

  ‘Now is all I’ve got.’

  ‘Fair point. Another step, please. OK, thank you. Tara was different because she wouldn’t listen to me. Most people listen to me. That’s why I’m a good consultant. You know, consultancy’s a bit of a con. We sell expertise for extortionate amounts of money, but we haven’t got a clue. Every situation’s different. Every workplace, every group of people, every social dynamic. So when you’re a consultant you soon find out that nothing works. You go in with your usual ideas that you adapt to every situation, but it’s all bollocks really. Clients are entertained and amused, and sometimes even learn something. But the only ones who can really change what happens in the workplace are those who hold the purse strings. And they don’t come on teamworking courses because by and large they don’t like working in teams.’

  ‘She didn’t like what Rory was doing with the company,’ I said. ‘The software division and so forth ...’

  ‘Correct,’ he said, more breathless now. ‘I tested the damn program and it was crap. But that was one more reason for me to leave. If that was the way we were going, then I was out of there.’

  I was distracted by the ropes around my wrist suddenly breaking apart. I held my hands together, holding my breath. ‘You’ve got to move with the times,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a shepherd tending his flock in a field,’ Hampshire said. ‘A guy roars up in a big four-by-four and says, “If I can tell you how many sheep you’ve got, can I have one?” The shepherd says, “Yeah, OK.” The man goes into his car and pulls out a satellite dish that he hooks up to a computer screen. After a minute he turns to the shepherd and says, “You’ve got four hundred and twenty-three sheep.” The shepherd stares at him in astonishment. “That’s right,” he says. The man says, “Can I go get my reward?” and the shepherd says OK. The guy goes into the field, picks up an animal, and walks back to his car. At which point the shepherd says, “If I can tell you what your job is, can I have my animal back?” And the guy says, “All right.” The shepherd says, “You’re a management consultant, aren’t you?” The guy looks at him amazed. “How did you know that?” he gasps. The shepherd says, “You roll up unannounced, use some fancy equipment to tell me something I already know, then prove that you haven’t got a clue about my job. Now, can I have my dog back?”’

  ‘Funny.’

  ‘Clients love it. Makes them think they’re in on the act. The thing is, it’s true.’

  ‘We were talking about Tara.’

  ‘It’s clever, this. You’re really stretching it out. Much good it’ll do you.’

  ‘Does the person who helped you know they’re next?’

  This time Hampshire didn’t reply immediately. I braced myself for a blow on the head, but nothing came. When he spoke his voice was lower and more considered.

  ‘Very good. I was right to take you seriously. No, I doubt that person is thinking very much about what happens next. Forward planning not a strong point. I had to do it all. Good on loyalty and bitterness, though. That’s why we worked together so well. For a one-off gig. Okay, up you go.’

  I was hoisted suddenly from behind and walked forwards towards the edge of the drop. My head roared with pain. I could see the dark line of the cliff edge coming towards me. My arms were trapped both by his massive arms and by the rope that was still wrapped tightly around me in three loops. I could smell his sweat now, beneath the higher note of the deodorant—rank and oily, like the inside of a mechanic’s boot.

  ‘You stink,’ I said.

  ‘I love you too,’ he said, and dropped me into the void.