by Keith Dixon
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
I FELL FOUR FEET, then the rope caught and I was snapped to a halt. Searing pain shot through my upper arms as they caught the tension on the rope. My forehead bulged as though it would burst, scattering brains and blood on the rocks below. There was nothing beneath my feet. My head bounced off the stony side of the cliff edge. I hung there for several seconds, helpless.
But my arms below the elbow were free. Stretching my neck to look up, I saw the cliff edge only a foot above me, and above that, Hampshire’s broad, pale face, white against the dark sky. He was grinning his toothpaste smile, though the strain of holding my weight pulled his mouth down at the edges. He must have been kneeling with his legs apart, the rope tied around the rock that he’d used as a brace looped a couple of times around his upper body. For a moment we were linked together, bound by the blue and yellow umbilical cord that held us both in stasis.
‘It’s good this, isn’t it?’ he said tightly. ‘Never got the chance to do it when I was in the Regiment. Thought about it, though. Took this opportunity to give it a dry run. All I do now is give one magical heave, and you’re all unravelled. It’s been a pleasure dealing with such a cooperative client. Thank you and goodnight.’
I struggled with my arms, trying to raise them, waiting for the tension that held me to go slack. The sound of the waterfall hitting the rocks below rose up and surrounded me, and for a moment I forgot the thunderous pain that gripped my forehead and eyes.
Then suddenly he was distracted. He looked back over his shoulder and I heard, faintly, another voice. Hampshire said, ‘What the fuck are you still doing here?’
Working my arms up, I sawed with the penknife at the bottom loop of the rope that bound me. Instantly it came away and all of the loops unravelled, releasing me to fall.
But I’d found a toe-hold for my right foot and a grip for my left hand, so when the ropes came free I was already supporting myself, my nose close to the cliff. I smelled the wormy, rich loam of the exposed dirt, breathing it in with rasping breaths. I reached up with the fingers of my right hand and grabbed the cliffside while still holding on to the knife. Looking up, I saw Hampshire’s face come back into focus above me. The smile was gone.
‘You little wanker,’ he smiled, and drew back his fist.
‘Grow up,’ I said, and jabbed the penknife into the side of his neck. The rage and the pain bursting in my head was funnelled into my arm as the knife broke his skin and dug deep. He looked down at my arm, as if intrigued to find out where it had come from. Then he broadened his smile and pulled my hand, and the blade, from his flesh, twisting my hand till the knife fell from it. Blood pulsed from his neck and splashed on my face. I grabbed the cliff face tighter.
‘Nice try,’ he said hoarsely. ‘You need an anatomy lesson to find the right place. Here, take this.’
He reached down and placed his hand over my face, pushing me away from the cliff. His eyes glittered like diamond chips in the moonlight as he strained against my grip. My back began to arch and the grip of both my hands loosened as he strained to push me off. I kicked my feet deeper into the rockface.
Then there was the sound of a dull thump, and the smile on his face froze. His eyes continued to stare at me and he bent further down as if to get a better view.
But he kept coming, falling headfirst towards me, all restraint gone, heedless of his destination. I flattened myself to the cliff, my fingers clawing into the stony earth as he dropped like an expert diver intent on breaking the surface with barely a mark. His body flashed past my eyes, riffling with the sound of a sail in wind. The rope that had been looped around him uncoiled and snapped, then fell limply after him. He began to turn and twist in the manner that he’d predicted for my own fall, his arms spreading out and spinning like the blades of a propeller as he gathered speed.
I was glad I didn’t hear him hit the ground.
