Deadfall

by Lyndon Stacey

  Linc set off to find his brother, for the first time cursing the numbers of people who had turned up to the fair. When he found Crispin he was, predictably, taking photographs. Still gallantly wearing his costume and wig, despite the temperature, he'd lined up a group of costumed youngsters of primary school age and was managing to keep them amused while he took shots of them in various poses, presumably for the benefit of their doting parents who looked on indulgently.

  Crispin was clearly as popular with children as he seemed to be with everyone else, Linc thought admiringly as he approached, and would no doubt take to fatherhood like a duck to water when the baby arrived.

  The baby.

  Nikki.

  The reason for his errand came back to Linc with a jolt and he slowed to a halt in an agony of indecision.

  'Sir?' Reagan had appeared beside him. 'What do you want to do abou—'

  'Jack,' Linc cut in, seizing on the forester as the answer to his dilemma. 'I've just got to nip down to the mill for something. Can you take over for a minute? Crispin's busy. I'll have my radio, if there's a problem.'

  'I . . . yes, I suppose so. Is something wrong?'

  'No, not really. Just something I left there the other day. I shouldn't be long.'

  Reagan looked surprised, probably wondering why he didn't send someone else to fetch whatever it was, Linc thought, as he hurried towards the house, returning a mechanical smile and polite answer to one or two people who spoke to him on the way.

  In the yard, he made for the office and his car keys. It was almost unbelievable that, in spite of everything, he'd felt more able to trust Jack Reagan than his own brother. Nothing less than his worry for Josie would have been strong enough to drown his wretchedness at the thought.

  Car keys in hand, he sprinted across to the Morgan, which was the easiest to remove from the gridlock in the yard, only to find that in his haste he'd let Tiger out and he was now sitting on the back seat with an expression that indicated his determination to stay there. Linc had no time to waste in dragging a recalcitrant dog out of the car and back to the office, so contented himself with swearing at him as he slipped into the driving seat. Putting the car into gear, he caught sight of himself in the rear-view mirror and realised that he was still wearing the tricorne with its attached ponytail. Within moments it had joined the astonished dog on the back seat.

  He had no wish to draw undue attention to himself by accelerating down the drive at high speed, and so kept his impatience in check until he was clear of the house and entering Mill Lane. Once there, however, he floored the pedal, and within a couple of minutes was turning down the slope into the mill car park.

  Stopping in a spray of asphalt beside Josie's E-type and another car he didn't recognise, Linc leaped out, leaving the car door open, vaulted the gate and raced for the mill building, almost tripping over Tiger, who was not about to be left behind.

  'Jo Jo?' She was nowhere to be seen. 'Josie!'

  He heard the panic in his own voice and thought briefly how daft he'd look if Josie came round the corner just now, having been for a walk round the millpond while she waited, as she thought, for Pierre the photographer.

  Just at the moment he'd gladly look foolish.

  The mill itself was kept locked when the workmen weren't there, but Linc paused to try the handle, just to be certain. He'd given Josie a key so she could show her colleague around.

  It turned, and the door swung in.

  'Josie?' He peered into the gloomy interior. 'Josie? Are you there?'

  His voice sounded dead; as though the wood of the old building had somehow soaked up the noise and stifled any resonance.

  Linc's heart was thudding heavily.

  Inside or out? Where should he search first? Where lay the greatest danger?

  The answer had to be the millpond.

  Leaving the door swinging, he ran on along the front of the mill to its corner and over the footbridge that spanned the tailrace. Following the path left-handed, he passed the massive wheel where it hung, greased and ready for milling to start the following week. Ahead, the millpond stretched away from him, the light breeze raising only the slightest of ripples to disturb the sky-blue reflection on its surface. To his right the overflow pounded down the steps of the weir and into the bypass stream.

  No sign of Josie.

  He shouted again, the pitch of his voice rising as his anxiety did, and suddenly he heard it: a thin reply, barely audible over the rushing of the weir.

  'Linc?'

  'Josie? Where are you?'

  'Linc? Help me!'

  He looked down to his left where water lapped lazily at the sluice at the end of the millrace. At first, half-blinded by the bright reflections on the millpond, he could make out nothing in the comparative gloom beside the building, but as his eyes adjusted he saw Josie at last.

  With one arm hooked over the woodwork of the sluice gate, her face was white and there was desperation in her dark eyes. 'Josie! Hold on!' Linc's mind was racing. What to do? His first impulse, that of jumping in beside her, was not necessarily the best course of action. What if he couldn't get out either? A rope or a ladder would be a sensible precaution. The builders would have used ladders and ropes. Somewhere there would be one or the other. There had to be.

  'Hold on!' he repeated.

  Josie's head tipped back, her beautiful long hair floating round her shoulders in the greenish water, and she looked imploringly up at him.

  'I can't,' she moaned, weakly. 'You have to help me.'

  'I will,' he promised. 'But first I have to leave you for a moment . . .'

  Even as Linc said the words he saw her eyes widen with panic. He opened his mouth to reassure her, then realised that her gaze had shifted beyond him, and whirled round to locate the threat.

  He was only halfway round when the threat located him. He caught the briefest of glimpses of a powerfully built man in a white tee-shirt, before a chopping punch caught him on the side of his face and sent him reeling backwards. His second stumbling step missed the edge of the millrace and he fell, without a hope of saving himself, into the cold dark water below.

  SEVENTEEN

  LINC WENT INTO THE millrace backwards and head first. After the warmth of the day, the water felt icy and the shock as he went under made him gasp and inhale a quantity of it. A cacophony of bubbles surrounded him as he plunged downward, finally slowing as his body's natural buoyancy asserted itself and began to return him to the surface.

  Momentarily stunned by the force of the punch, Linc was at first disorientated and unable to help himself, but after what seemed an age of drifting weightlessly, his head cleared and he kicked hard for the light. He rose through shoals of silvery bubbles and broke the surface, coughing and spluttering as he struggled to get air into his lungs.

  Someone was calling his name in a high, hysterical voice, and as he rubbed his eyes to expel the water, a pale blur resolved itself into Josie's terrified face, barely five feet away. On his right the stone wall of the mill rose a sheer forty feet or so, its lowest window some six feet above his head; on his left, more stonework, only three feet high this time but that was three too many. Newly pointed, when the pond was drained, it offered no hand or toehold whatsoever, and had the added disadvantage of being patrolled by the man in the tee-shirt, although at present he was nowhere to be seen.

  Linc was furious with himself. How could he have been such an unwary fool? He'd raced to the mill because he was afraid Josie might be in trouble, but the horror of finding her in the water had temporarily driven everything from his mind except the problem of how to rescue her as quickly as possible.

  Still cursing his own stupidity, he kicked towards Josie, who remained clinging to the sluice gate at the end of the channel. Beyond her, even more darkly impressive from this angle, the buckets of the mill wheel arched away, five feet wide and towering to some five or six feet above her head. The wash from his undignified entry was still lapping heavily at the perimeters as Linc r
eached Josie, and she was worryingly low in the water.

  'Josie love – are you all right?' Linc had to speak up to make himself heard over the rushing water of the weir.

  She didn't look all right. She was shivering violently and, close to, he read the strain in her eyes. He caught hold of the wooden sluice with one hand and slipped the other under her arm to support her, but she winced at his touch.

  'You're hurt. Where does it hurt?'

  'My arm,' she cried. 'I tried to swim out, but I couldn't . . .'

  'Did you see who it was?'

  'No. I've never seen him before. He just came at me out of nowhere . . .'

  Her voice broke on a sob and Linc soothed her.

  'Shhh . . . Josie, look at me. We'll go together. I'll hold you up. All you have to do is kick your legs, if you can. We'll head for the jetty, okay?'

  She nodded mutely and Linc pushed away from the sluice gate to swim round behind her. Sliding his forearm under her armpit and around her body, he told her to let go and lean back against him, and after a fractional hesitation, she did.

  Their only hope of getting out of the water was to swim out of the millrace and along the back of the mill building to the jetty and the metal ladder set in the retaining wall of the pond. If they turned the other way, they would be drawn inexorably to, and over, the pounding waterfall of the weir, the result of which Linc didn't care to contemplate. Why, oh why, he thought, hadn't he had another ladder set into the wall of the millrace?

  Kicking with both legs and sculling with his free arm, Linc began to swim backwards towards the millpond, wondering as he did so where the tee-shirted man had got to. Could it be that he'd done his worst and decided to cut his losses and leave?

  Linc didn't have long to wonder.

  They had barely started their swim when he became aware of a change in the water around him. Almost insignificant at first, but gathering in strength, a current was beginning to develop, pulling them back towards the sluice. Initially he couldn't think what was happening, and then he saw the great buckets of the waterwheel start to slide downwards.

  Someone inside the mill had opened the sluice gate, and the wheel, so long redundant, had begun to turn.

  As the tug of the millrace increased, Linc swore and redoubled his efforts, urging Josie to do the same. He wasn't sure whether the gate would open far enough to allow a body to be pulled through and on to the wheel, but he wasn't especially anxious to find out. His loose-fitting Georgian costume dragged heavily, slowing him down, but after a brief, panic-inducing hiatus their combined strength won the day and they made slow but steady progress towards the millpond once again. Linc was just thankful that Josie had changed out of her long, cumbersome dress before coming to the mill.

  But their tormentor hadn't finished with them.

  Josie gave a cry and Linc looked up to see the man's burly figure cross the footbridge and come towards them at a run. Wearing a blue cotton scarf tied gypsy-style round his semi-shaven head, the man had a ring in one ear and tattoos on his forearms, and even though Linc was not exactly at leisure to observe him carefully, he felt there was something familiar about him. What concerned him more at that moment, however, was just what he intended to do with the length of four by two timber he was carrying. Linc had an unhappy feeling he knew, and kicked even harder, feeling Josie do the same, but there was never going to be any contest.

  Coming alongside, the man leaned out and started to jab the piece of wood energetically in their direction. Mercifully, it was too long to be easily wielded and his first attempt fell short, but the second landed with uncomfortable force on Linc's shoulder and the next cracked painfully into his elbow, sending pins and needles shooting up his arm, and causing his grip on Josie to falter.

  At this point, a welcome interruption occurred in the shape of a furiously angry brindle tornado which appeared seemingly from nowhere and attached itself gamely and, no doubt, painfully to the calf of the burly man, growling ferociously all the while.

  If he'd had the breath to do so, Linc could have cheered, as with a curse the man stopped stabbing at him and Josie and tried, with little success, to detach Tiger's steel-sprung jaws from his lower anatomy. Fortunately, the wooden rail was too long to be used at such close quarters and it consequently took him quite a time to disengage the enthusiastic dog. He finally managed it by dint of a series of vicious kicks with his other foot.

  Tiger gave a high-pitched yelp and then backed off, still barking, leaving the man free to get back to business with the length of timber. However, the dog had bought Linc and Josie valuable time and they were now only a couple of feet from where the channel opened out into the vastness of the millpond.

  Linc forced his weary limbs to extra effort and, perhaps seeing this, their attacker changed his tactics. Coming to the very edge of the millrace, he held the rail high and pushed the end of it into the angle of Linc's neck and shoulder. Before he had time to try and dislodge it, the pressure increased and he found himself going under, dragging Josie, whom he was still holding, down with him.

  For a panic-stricken moment, Linc held her even tighter as she began to struggle but somehow he managed to override his instincts, loosen his grip and push her towards the surface. Being forced away from the man on the bank and ever deeper, Linc fetched up against the wall of the mill building.

  He was trapped.

  Drowning.

  He thrashed his arms and legs in a frenzied attempt to free himself, his ears buzzing and his lungs and throat bursting under the strain.

  The pressure on his shoulder slackened, and then increased sharply, and Linc hit the wall with a thud that forced most of the pent-up breath from his body in a rush of bubbles and caused him to gulp in a quantity of water. Strangely, all at once his panic left him, and in the calm that followed the answer became clear. He couldn't get to the surface or away from the wall, so he hooked his fingers in the stonework and pulled himself deeper still, hoping to take himself beyond the reach of the man with the rail.

  The tactics were successful. As he went down, the pressure eased and Linc was able to slide sideways and free himself. Looking up towards the light, he could make out the blue jeans and white tee-shirt of the man above him, and as he kicked for the surface, he angled away from him towards the millpond. By the time his head broke clear of the water, the buzzing in his ears had increased to a roar and his chest and lungs were cramping with air starvation.

  Coughing and choking, Linc could do nothing except tread water at first, while at the top of the wall, the burly man lined up his wooden rail for a fresh onslaught.

  All at once it came to Linc where he'd seen the man before. Weeks ago, when he'd visited the doctor after his encounter with Beanie and his gang, he'd seen this man outside the health and fitness club with Nikki. Given that, he thought grimly, there seemed little doubt that this was her personal trainer; the man she'd known in London and for whom she'd subsequently provided a reference. The name Terry flashed into his mind: Terry Fagan.

  Damn her! Linc thought. Damn Nikki!

  In order to get within range, Fagan was forced to move forward to stand on the edge of the footpath; on the very edge, Linc noticed, an idea rapidly forming in his mind. Still wheezing, he concentrated on the end of the timber as it lanced out and, as it came within reach, caught it in both hands, twisted to one side and tugged it sharply down towards the water.

  It worked, at least partially. Overstretched as he was, Fagan was pulled off-balance, let go of the wood and teetered on the brink of the millpond, arms swinging wildly. When he finally won his fight to stay on the bank, Linc wasn't sure whether to be glad or sorry. He'd love to have dragged Fagan into the pond, but on the other hand, the idea of having the big man next to him in the water wasn't quite so appealing.

  One problem dealt with, at least temporarily, Linc looked round desperately for Josie but couldn't immediately see her. With only one good arm, she surely couldn't have got far.