by Sue Nicholls
Maurice weighed up his next move. He could let her mount her bike and then mow her down with his car as he had originally planned, but now he was here it would be so much better to finish her with this rock before she left. As if to help, Twitch propped her bike onto its stand and stooped to adjust her socks. With a furtive look in both directions, Maurice tiptoed up behind her. She was humming under her breath, and the smell of sex rose from her body. For several seconds, he hovered, frozen by the enormity of what he was about to do. All around, the woodland rang with sound. A blackbird trilled a repetitious melody, and from somewhere in the distance, amid the chortling of ducks, a woodpecker drilled and stopped, drilled, and stopped. From every direction, hedge sparrows, finches and tits chirped and whistled. Maurice raised his arm and closed his eyes. The rock hung in the air then plunged down and connected with Twitch’s skull. There was a wet crunch, and her singing slurred to a groan. There was a thud as her body landed on the pathway.
With blood thumping in his ears and a churning stomach, Maurice dared to open his eyes. Twitch lay on her side, facing him with her eyes closed. Blood and brain matter spilled onto the ground from a deep cleft in her skull, but she was not dead. Dust from the dry earth danced in and out of her nostrils, and her breasts, still naked under her shirt, rose and fell almost imperceptibly. He rejected the horrible idea of hitting her again, but he knew he must move her, so he gripped her by the ankles and heaved her along the gravel path, leaving a snail trail of blood and brains in her wake. When she was hidden from the road, he went back over his route, kicking at the stones to cover their tracks, his breath racing in and out. Then he pelted to the car. The cart landed with a rattle on the footpath and he fumbled underneath for the rope and towed it back to Twitch. She lay on her back, still unconscious, her hair stretched in a long mass behind her, with twigs and leaves caught up in its curls. Maurice took an uneven breath and grasped Twitch under her arms. She moaned, making the panicky knot in his gut squirm even more.
It was harder than he expected to get her onto the trolley, and he whimpered with frustration, cursing Paul for not adding brakes. But after wedging the bloody stone behind one wheel to keep it steady, he slid his arms under her knees and shoulders and hefted her up like a sleeping child. Her oozing head lolled onto his chest, leaving smears on his shirt, then it fell backwards over his arm, and the ends of her hair brushed the path. With a heave and a gasp, he dumped her onto the wooden surface and secured her in place with the bungees. Next, he stuck the rock between her knees and trundled her across the open space where the picnic had been, and pulled the trolley down the bank into the frigid water. With his feet sinking into slimy mud and catching in coils of tree root, he towed the heavy kart through the shallows, grunting furious encouragement to himself: ‘Come on. Keep going. You have to do this!’
He had tethered the boat to a rotting post, and the pull of the water had dragged it to the extent of its rope, out into the lake. Still hauling the trolley, Maurice waded deeper, gasping as frigid water seeped through his trousers and up his torso. As the trolley entered deeper water, its rear end with its heavy burden, sank low in the water leaving only Twitch’s head and breasts above the surface. The water was now up to his armpits and giving a final yank on the rope, Maurice grasped the dinghy and with clumsy fingers, secured the trolley to a cleat on its stern.
The roar from the outboard motor sliced through the peaceful evening, making his heart pound harder. With a knot in his stomach, he scanned the perimeter of the lake. But in the cordoned off park, the only sounds were from the gentle grumbling of ducks, and piping of moorhens paddling in the vegetation. An aeroplane growled overhead, leaving its white spoor across the cornflower sky. Maurice ducked, imagining the distant passengers spotting him through their tiny port holes.
The little dinghy puttered across the lake with the trolley lurching in its wake. Water flowed over Twitch’s unconscious face, and Maurice turned away and fixed his eyes on his destination.
At what he judged to be the deepest point, he cut the engine and pulled the trolley alongside. Twitch’s blood bloomed about her head in a pinkish cloud as Maurice, on his knees, looped the rope attached to the bag of rocks, around Twitch’s neck and sliced through the bungees that held her onto the trolley. Next, he teetered to his feet and put both arms around the heavy sack. The boat lurched, and he braced his feet against its sides, then with his last bit of strength, he jettisoned the sack into the water. With terrible timing, Twitch’s eyes opened and she stared up at him - or did he imagine that? The rope snapped tight round her neck and with a jerk, she vanished into a messy whirlpool. As the water settled back to tranquillity, air bubbles streamed to the surface, and Maurice leaned over the water and retched.
Back on land, he smashed a hole in the dinghy’s base and aimed its rudder at the centre of the lake, then he yanked the starter rope and sent the little vessel chugging away from him. It struggled on, shipping water and slewing to the left before the motor cut out and it sank from view. When it had gone, Maurice looked about him. If he tried, he could almost persuade himself that nothing had happened here. But the speeding of his heart reminded him of his awful act.
He had promised Fee he would look after Sam and Josh that afternoon. She had practically begged, and acceptance was out of his mouth before his brain had engaged. Now, the prospect of entertaining the boys seemed impossible.
With clumsy fingers he wrapped the trolley in sheets of black plastic and secured them with the remaining nylon rope. He had thought of sinking it in the lake with Twitch, but it was so buoyant that it would have required more rocks than he could have lifted.
Because the children were coming tonight, his plan to dispose of the trolley must wait until tomorrow. There was a spot some miles away. A new section of motorway under construction, with drainage pipes in a deep ditch along its edge. It would be a relatively simple job to push the blood-stained trolley far into a conduit.
On his way to collect the boys, he threw Twitch’s bike into a ditch outside Chelterton and pitched the parcelled-up trolley into the garage where it teetered on top of the pile of junk that covered most of the floor. His children did not seem to notice his shaking hands and distracted manner when he fed them KFC and took them to the cinema. In the darkness he stared at the movie, but a gorier image played over and over in his head. Afterwards, he marched them to the car, desperate to be home.
The moment he strapped Josh into his seat, the child fell asleep and remained in deep slumber, hanging over Maurice’s shoulder all the way to bed. Maurice and Sam sat before the television for half an hour before Sam too went to bed.
With the boys settled, Maurice dropped onto a kitchen chair and threw Scotch down his throat – glass, after glass, after glass.
~~~
The next morning, the boys begged to go swimming, but Maurice could not face it. He fed them a story that their mother was expecting them back to buy new shoes.
When the phone shrilled, Maurice jumped, and the knife he was using to butter Josh’s toast clattered to the floor.
‘Hi Maurice, it’s Fee.’
He forced an upbeat tone. ‘Hi Fee. How are you?’ He stooped to throw the hairy knife into the sink.
‘Fine, thanks.’ Fee said. ‘No. Worried, actually. Twitch didn’t come home last night. I was expecting her for dinner, but she didn’t turn up.’
Maurice lowered his voice and left the kitchen, closing the door behind him. In a worried tone he said, ‘You think she's OK?'
‘I hope so.' She relayed Twitch’s story of an outing with her art class friends. ‘I can’t imagine what’s happened to her, but can you keep the boys for a while?’
‘No problem. Try to stay calm, Fee. There’s bound to be an explanation. Let me know when she turns up.'
The bottle of whisky called to him, but he decided that taking his children swimming was now a good idea. It would distract them all.
After the palaver of a swim, he took the boys to Paul, who cook
ed pizza for the kids. Mick was already there, and while their kids watched television, the three made whispered plans to recruit Gloria, Mick’s mother, to help Fee with the children should Twitch not return.
Maurice was almost convinced by his own acting, until his phone rang and caused his heart to race once more. It was the police, requesting a photograph of Twitch, so he left the boys with Paul, and drove home to meet them. After pulling out the contents of his sideboard, he found a picture that was not too old and passed it over, holding it face down, so he did not have to look at her happy countenance.
~~~
The trolley still perched on top of Maurice’s rubbish, but he was in no state to deal with it. Apathy swamped him, and soon, the new road was completed and his plan to hide the trolley there was thwarted. Summer blazed on, and Lymeshire, like the rest of the country, was beset by drought conditions. In Maurice’s garden, the grass crisped into straw and deep cracks opened in the clay soil. On the TV and radio, messages nagged people to use washing up water on their flowers, take a shower in preference to a bath and put a brick in their toilet cistern to save wasting the precious resource.
In Chelterton Park, where he often took the children, the ground shifted so much that trees collapsed across the footpaths and a fissure snaked from the road at the top, through the woodland, and beyond to the edge of the brown park.
On a walk with the boys, Maurice halted at the edge of the crack. Holding tight to their hands the three stared into a deep crevasse. Together, they ran their eyes along its path into the forested fringe that protected the park from the road. Around them, the roots of displaced trees clawed at the air from trunks that slumped like craggy dominoes. A short distance above, on the road, men with theodolites who had been measured the tarmac surface, departed in a Land Rover, apparently satisfied that there was no danger of subsidence.
That night, when darkness had fallen, Maurice, dressed in black, crept to his garage and lifted the door a grinding inch at a time until it was high enough to duck under. He allowed himself a flash of his torch to identify the position and angle of the trolley, gripped it by its rope and edged it from its perch and onto the drive. All around him, blank windows stared into the darkness, and he waited a minute, straining his ears for disturbance.
Satisfied nobody had heard him, he hefted the trolley into the car and inched the vehicle from the street, leaving his headlights off until he was clear of the estate. Outside the park he struggled to get the trolly through a kissing gate, then loosened the plastic so that the wheels would turn and hauled it up the steep climb to the footpath and woods beyond. Every few feet, he stopped to catch his breath and check his surroundings, and when he reached the crack in the path, he dragged the cart over roots and around fallen trees to the place where the fissure was widest.
The beam of his torch brought the crumbling sides of the hole into brief relief. If he could just get his cumbersome package through the narrow opening, it would drop about six feet into a wide artery deep inside. It was important to get the angle right or the thing would become stuck halfway.
He gritted his teeth and held the parcelled up tumbrel to his chest. It was heavy, like a body - like Twitch’s body. His mind veered from that thought and he cocked one of his legs across the trench. As he stood astride the hole, hugging the cart, he prayed the ground would not give way under his weight. With supreme determination he gave the trolley a twist to line it up with the hole, let go of it and leapt to safety. It dropped halfway then hung, suspended on tree roots that clutched at the wheels. Maurice squatted and jabbed at it with one foot. ‘Go on. In you go,’ he implored silently, and gradually, by miniscule degrees, it struggled past the obstructions and at last, landed in the chamber below and toppled onto its side with gentle bump. Loose soil rained down after it and Maurice kicked at the crumbly edges of the fissure until the cart was lost to sight.
THE MEN, SUMMER 1999
After Paul’s trial, he, Mick, and Maurice galloped through the grandiose court entrance and down the wide, marble steps to the pavement. Paul’s face was stretched into a wide grin. He had not realised how tense he was until his ‘Not Guilty’ verdict had been pronounced. Now, he was giddy with delight.
‘I need a pint and I need it now,’ he shouted, and the friends scanned the area for a hostelry.
‘There’s one.’ Mick pointed to an establishment a hundred yards along the road, appropriately named The Judge and Jury. The wigged judge on its sign glared down at them, but undeterred the three men bowled in and craned their necks to locate the bar. They squeezed between men and women in dark suits: barristers and such like - Hooray Henries, Paul called them - not the company they would have chosen under other circumstances, but Paul’s desire for alcohol was great, so they bought three pints and quaffed them straight away, standing at the bar.
‘Come to mine,’ Paul offered, and they pushed a path, back through the loud and opinionated crowd, and escaped into the fresh air.
With Maurice in the driving seat of his estate car and Mick and Paul in the back, the three set off to Paul’s, chuckling every few miles. ‘I can’t believe you did it.,’ Mick said.
‘Yeah. He was good that barrister,’ Paul said, and belched.
Mick and Maurice dumped themselves into chairs in Paul’s living room, and Paul went into his kitchen. ‘I was hoping for a good result, so I bought these.’ He came out carrying two bottles of champagne. ‘I’m still in shock, but this might help.’ He forced off the cork and it shot up, hitting the ceiling. They all cheered.
They raised their glasses to ‘Freedom,’ and ‘Justice,’ and soon they were very drunk. Paul poured his fourth glass of champagne and gave his friends a furtive look.
‘Matter of fact, it wasn’t,’ he slurred.
‘Wasn’t what?’ Mick asked.
‘It wasn’t justice…’
PAUL AUTUMN 1996
This was one of Paul’s days to have Kitty and he rang the bell of the house in Crispin Road, excited to see the child he missed beyond words. As usual, she was not ready, and to his surprise Fee invited him into the kitchen and offered coffee. His hopes rose. Perhaps she had realised that leaving him was a mistake and wanted to try again. He watched her body language and his hopes faded; replaced by a sense of dread. There was something on her mind and his suspicion grew that he would not want to hear it. As he watched her staring at the kettle as if it could not boil on its own, his unease grew.
‘Paul?’
His fists tightened under the worktop. ’Yeah?’
‘I need to tell you that I’ve met someone. I haven’t told Kitty yet. I thought you ought to know first.' Then, casual as you like, she poured the coffee into porcelain mugs and slid one across the counter to him, saying, ‘Still black with no sugar?’
‘How long?’ The coffee scalded Paul’s tongue, but he hardly noticed.
‘Oh, a while now. The thing is…’ she drizzled milk into her cup, ‘Will and I want to go on holiday, and I may need to call on you to have Kitty while I’m away.’
‘Holiday?’ He could not believe she would contemplate anything like that when Twitch was still missing, and their kids were in such a state?
‘We won’t go until November,’ she said, ‘Hopefully all this investigation will have finished by then.’
Hopefully? What if it wasn’t?
She looked him in the eye, and he averted his eyes. Then she said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t blame you, but the pressure of the last few weeks has been huge. I won’t be away for long. Only a fortnight.’
‘Two weeks? Two weeks.’ Paul jumped to his feet making his stool rock. ‘You’re leaving Kitty, not to mention Josh and Sam, who have just lost their mother, for fourteen days?’
Fee’s face closed into an expression that he recognized. Argument was futile. In a quiet and haughty voice, she said, ‘Paul, please be quiet, Kitty will hear you.’
That was when he lost it. Not that he hit her or anything, although he was
close to it, but he yelled a lot, and she got all uppety and school-teacherish.
Later, when he and Kitty walked Topsy in the park, he was still steaming, but Kitty skipped along beside him, oblivious, chattering and throwing sticks for the panting dog. When he returned her to Crispin Road, Gloria came, bright faced, to the threshold and ushered Kitty inside. As the door closed, he heard the woman hiss, ‘Kitty, we’ve got a secret mission…’
Lying in bed the following morning, Paul regarded the ceiling, trying to recall vacations he and Fee had taken. The one in the Lake District was fun, he thought... but paused in his musings. Did Fee go with him on that holiday? It was unlikely since he now realised that he had taken the motorbike and a tent. His then wife was not a fan of outdoor life, especially under canvas. He wondered who had been to Cumbria with him. Possibly a mate; not another woman; he had never been unfaithful to Fee, no matter how tempting the prospect. He thought back to his early days with Fee. Where did they holiday? Once Kitty came along, they hardly went anywhere. Fee’s job meant she worked long hours and forewent holidays in favour of deadlines. Early on though, they had been to Dorset for a long weekend. Rented a sagging little cottage with low beams that touched the tops of their heads when they waked through the rooms. They stayed in bed mainly, sleeping, fucking, and drinking. Then in the mornings they would creep out to eat Full English Breakfasts at a greasy spoon on the A35. He bloody hoped Fee wouldn’t take this new man (Will, did she say his name was?), to that same place. Nah. She wasn’t up for that kind of thing anymore. Greasy spoons? Good God; perish the thought.
~~~
When the time arrived for the holiday, Twitch’s body had not yet turned up. But Fee went anyway, without telling Paul where. He told himself it was nothing to do with him, but the temptation to follow them was strong.
