The Walking Dead (Sucking Pit Series)

by Guy N Smith

  ‘You're upset about something.’ Her voice was soft and lilting, her smile melting into an expression of genuine concern.

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded, felt extremely sorry for himself all of a sudden, almost on the verge of tears. ‘I am.’

  ‘You'd better tell me all about it.’ She moved close to him, squeezed his hand, a grip that was chilly as though she had just washed in cold water. ‘Come on, let's see if I can help you.’

  ‘You can't.’ Minworth tried to avert his gaze but somehow couldn't, found himself gazing into those dark and very appealing eyes. ‘It's no good, nobody can help me.’

  ‘You won't know that unless you tell me, will you?’ She smiled again, a gentle movement of her mouth that had him wanting to cry even more. ‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved.’

  ‘Oh … all right.’ He gulped, felt his eyes start to water so that his vision was suddenly distorted; she reminded him of a reflection in a pool when somebody had tossed a stone into the water. ‘But you'll be bored to death.’

  ‘Try me then.’

  Falteringly, he told this young girl all about Grafton and the planning permission for the quarries, how he had got deeper and deeper into the deal until it was too late to pull out. How everything had gone sour. Claude Minworth felt a lump form in his throat as he finished his story, his voice wavering, every nerve in his body trembling. Damn it, he would have denied everything a few hours ago and now he had not only told May but also this strange girl. God, he was putting the noose around his own neck fast.

  ‘You … won't tell anybody else, will you?’ The plea came out accompanied by a sob.

  ‘No, of course I won't,’ her expression was thoughtful. ‘I told you I only wanted to help you.’

  ‘That's impossible,’ he groaned. ‘I've got myself into the biggest mess of my life. If I had the nerve I'd kill myself.’

  ‘That would be silly.’ She gave him another cold reassuring squeeze. ‘Your wife sounds a real callous bitch.’

  ‘She is, always has been.’ He spat the words out, no longer able to control his hatred for May.

  ‘Then why don't you kill her?’

  It took some seconds for the meaning of the girl's words to sink into Claude Minworth's confused brain. Surprise turned to shock and horror, but somewhere inside him a voice was whispering, the germ of an idea starting to sprout. He caught his breath, gulped. ‘What a terrible thing even to contemplate. That's murder!’

  ‘And she's done some pretty terrible things to you over the years, by what you've told me.’

  ‘They send you to prison for a long time for murder.’

  ‘And for corruption, too.’

  His mind numbed, went into a spin. Once, a couple of years ago when May had taken the car to go down to London on some WI business, he had considered, not very seriously because he knew he'd never have the courage to do it, tampering with the car so that it would crash. Brakes or steering, but he didn't have enough mechanical knowledge not only to carry out the sabotage but to cover up what he had done. It was a nice thought, though, and after she had left he had found himself hoping that by some quirk of fate she would have a genuine accident, hopefully on the M1 where the traffic hurtled along at such a speed that there were few survivors from any accidents. ‘Planning Officer's wife killed in horror crash on motorway.’ Eye-catching headlines in the Herald or the Mercury, maybe even a mention in one of the dailies. Too good to be true but he wouldn't shed more than a few crocodile tears at the funeral. But May hadn't crashed; she'd arrived safely back and started griping at him again.

  ‘But if they didn't catch you they couldn't send you to prison.’ She spoke as casually as though she was discussing some mundane topic at the vicarage garden party, polite conversation.

  ‘They'd catch me all right. They catch most murderers and, anyway, I'm not clever enough.’

  ‘They wouldn't catch you.’ There was a determined edge to her voice now. ‘Because I would see to it that they didn't. I promise you.’

  He found himself staring into those eyes again, dark orbs which flickered with wild passion and understanding, seeming to read those thoughts which he dared not put into words. ‘You're capable of it but you just need someone to help you. Like me. Without her you'll be free, able to do what you want. And if Grafton was dead as well, nobody would know that you'd taken his bribes, would they? Except me, and I'm not going to tell anybody.’

  Claude Minworth's body went cold, as cold as those slender fingers which were entwined with his own. A sensation of vertigo, holding on to his strange companion in case he lost his balance and fell, gazing into her eyes still and reading a lot of exciting things there which he didn't understand.

  ‘It makes sense, doesn't it?’ Her voice was a far-off murmur now, like the inexplicable whisperings inside his own head. ‘Doesn't it?’

  He nodded dumbly, felt his fear lessening, being replaced by another feeling, a more positive one. This girl talked sense. She wanted to help him, too, and they wouldn't give him any longer sentence for murder, no, manslaughter, than they would for corruption, If they caught him.

  ‘They won't catch you.’ She could read his thoughts, after all. ‘I give you my word. But we've got to plan this very carefully, Claude.’ He could not remember having told her his name but he couldn't be sure; it didn't matter anyway. ‘You've got to kill quickly and silently, make sure she doesn't scream or attract attention.’ The girl smiled sweetly, belying the cold-bloodedness of her words. ‘Kill her when she's least expecting it, no warning.’

  ‘There's an axe in the woodshed.’ His earlier stammerings had completely disappeared and he spoke as calculatedly as he did at the monthly Planning Committee meetings. ‘I could hit her with that. Hard.’

  ‘Good.’ Her eyes narrowed, bored into his own as if searching for something he had not told her. ‘And what about Grafton? He won't be so easy.’

  ‘He's coming to see me at home tomorrow night.’ Claude Minworth gabbled his words, an eager schoolboy blurting out the answer to a teacher's question before the rest of the class could beat him to it. ‘I could kill him then. Nobody will know he's come to see me because he'll want the meeting to be subversive because …’

  ‘Excellent.’ She raised a steadying finger. ‘But take your time. This is what you must do. Kill your wife, either tonight or tomorrow, and keep her body hidden. Then, when Grafton comes, kill him too.’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘I was just coming to that.’ A tone that reprimanded him for his interruption. ‘You will come back here, where I shall be waiting for you.’

  ‘But … where are we going?’

  ‘Don't you trust me, Claude? Do I have to spell everything out for you?’

  ‘No … of course not.’ A brief feeling of guilt, as he experienced when May admonished him, but it was gone almost at once. This girl was different. They would go away together somewhere, be happy. His pulses raced, his heartbeat quickened, but this time not with fear and apprehension but with something which also caused a pleasant, almost forgotten, feeling in the lower regions of his body. ‘I'll be back. Tomorrow night, sometime after dark.’

  ‘I'll be here waiting.’ Another squeezing of his hand and an unexpected peck of a kiss on the cheek with lips that were as cold as those fingers. And then she was gone, walking swiftly away, her dress billowing with her movements until the mountainous sand heaps hid her from his view.

  Claude Minworth felt more relaxed than he had done for years, whistled tunelessly to himself as he climbed back over that barbed wire fence and snagged his trousers a second time. That girl, whoever she was, had acted as the kind of therapy he needed, had given him a new purpose in life. He was going to enjoy killing May, and Grafton as well. Suddenly in his own mind it was no longer murder, rather a necessary job that had to be done.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Chris Latimer was aware of an unpleasant, nagging physical sensation in those few moments before waking. Realisation that he had a headache
, one of those which you woke up with and gradually got worse as the day progressed. He groaned softly, opened his eyes and winced at the early morning sunlight, closed them again. Then the memories of yesterday flooded back to plague him.

  He wondered for a moment if he was sickening for something, perhaps a chill after that soaking in the thunderstorm. He certainly felt odd. Somewhere in the house somebody was moving about, footsteps, voices. He glanced at his watch: 6 a.m. It was too early surely for the household to be moving. Nevertheless, if they were he had better join them. A premonition, but he threw it off.

  He swung his feet off the bed. The room seemed to spin and he had to wait for it to steady. Christ, his head was throbbing like a turbo engine had started up inside it. He grabbed a shirt, pulled it over his head, struggled into his jeans, and with sneakers still unlaced he made it out on to the landing. Down the stairs, clutching at the rail in case he fell, that feeling again that something was terribly wrong.

  ‘Chris!’ Samantha was in the hall below, Pamela by her side, both of them fully dressed. His heart seemed to miss a beat as he saw their expressions. Alarm. Something was wrong.

  ‘What's up?’ He stopped, looked from one to the other.

  ‘Carl has gone!’ Samantha snapped.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘He's nowhere in the house.’

  ‘Maybe he's …’ Latimer couldn't think of an explanation, nothing logical anyway.

  ‘He was restless in the middle of the night,’ Samantha went on. ‘Once I woke up and found him standing by the window just looking outside. When I spoke to him he didn't answer and eventually I persuaded him to come back to bed. But he didn't sleep, I could tell by his breathing. Then when I woke up a short time ago … he wasn't there! I've looked everywhere, Chris, in the garden as well, but he's nowhere to be seen. I'm almost out of my mind, I know he's very disturbed and …’

  That wave of dizziness returned, had Chris Latimer clinging to the banisters again. A sudden thought, an awful one, praying that he was wrong. They were all badly affected by yesterday, almost like having gone on some kind of ‘trip’. Carl Wickers had left his bed, left the house. There was only one place he could have gone.

  ‘I'll go and look for him.’ Latimer descended the stairs slowly. ‘You two stay here, I'll be back shortly.’

  ‘No, we're coming with you.’ Samantha and Pamela closed in on him, one on either side.

  ‘No, please.’

  ‘We're coming, Chris, because we know where you're going!’ Female fingers gripped his arms; any further argument was pointless and time-wasting. ‘Carl has gone to the Sucking Pit, hasn't he?’

  ‘I … don't know.’

  ‘He has. You know it and so do we.’

  ‘We'll check there first, anyway.’ He tried to sound casual but there was no disguising the tension, the fear in his voice. ‘We'll take the Subaru. It'll be quicker because we can make it most of the way down the Lady Walk in four-wheel drive. Come on, then.’

  Seconds later Latimer was backing the shiny maroon estate car out on to the road, Pamela in the passenger seat by his side, Samantha in the back, leaning forward between the front seats. God, I hope I'm wrong, he thought. He tried to think of a dozen reasons why Carl hadn't gone to the Sucking Pit but by the time he was swinging in to the Lady Walk entrance off the A51 he had not convinced himself of any of them.

  Changing into four-wheel drive, the surface hard-packed so that he would probably have made it anyway but he wasn't taking any chances. Wanting to speed but checking because of the girls; they were frightened enough already. He must not alarm them further.

  He slowed, came to a halt in the middle of the track, almost an anticlimax as the engine died. The three of them piled out, left the doors wide, bunched together as though they needed to boost one another's confidence to go any further.

  And then they heard it: distant strains of music on the still morning air, the surrounding quarries seeming to magnify the sound, beautify it like the sound of a harp in a huge empty cathedral.

  ‘What … is it?’ Pamela breathed, clutching at Latimer until her fingernails dug into his arm.

  He did not answer, the pounding inside his head seeming to increase in time with the beat, making him wince, wondering if by any chance he was still in bed and this was but a continuation of those earlier uneasy dreams. Reality though; familiar, but trying to place it.

  ‘It's a … a guitar!’ Samantha closed her eyes, the implication not lost on her, a sensation that she might faint. She could not take much more after yesterday.

  Latimer had to force his body into motion as though it had suddenly become petrified, communication between brain and limbs sluggish. ‘Come on.’ He broke into a fast walk, pulling Pamela along with him, Samantha close behind them. Oh thank God, he's still alive!

  Up the big mound, cursing beneath their constricted breath as their feet slipped in the soft sand, clawing their way up.

  And then they heard the voice, soft and rhythmic, coming from afar yet so clear that Carl Wickers might have been using his amplifiers, singing at some vast open air concert.

  ‘Roll me home, deep waters …’

  ‘Never more will I ever roam …’

  A slight pause, the guitar strumming slowly, mournfully.

  ‘It's him,’ Samantha burst past them in a monkey-like crawl on hands and knees, reached the top, showering sand back down on the other two. ‘He's there!’ She broke into sobs, kneeling there as though waiting for the other two to catch her up. Or perhaps she was afraid to go on ahead.

  ‘Take me back, deep waters,’

  ‘To the old ones that I left at home.’

  They saw Carl Wickers down below them, starkly framed against the sinister dark setting of the Sucking Pit. He was dressed in full western regalia, his Stetson slipped off his head and held suspended on his shoulders by the thong around his neck, white buckskin breeches spottled with mud, a relaxed posture as he leaned against a temporary fencepost staring fixedly up into the pale blue of an early morning sky.

  ‘Take me back, deep waters,’

  ‘Never more will I ever stray …’

  ‘Carl!’ Samantha screamed, at the same instant bursting into a headlong descent, falling, sliding, picking herself up. ‘Carl, can you hear me?’

  It was quite obvious to those following Samantha that Carl Wickers could not hear her, that he was totally oblivious of their presence. A chill prickled Latimer's spine. Now the three of them were on the gentle firm slope leading down to the pool, running, Samantha still in the lead.

  She reached the singer, pulled up in front of him, recoiled with a gasp of horror. His blue eyes met hers but he did not see her. His mouth opened. ‘Take me home, deep waters,’

  Chris Latimer pushed forward past Samantha, saw the vacant expression on Wickers' features and in that same instant his hand shot out, wrested the guitar from the other's grasp.

  Silence, a pregnant stillness for perhaps two or three seconds and then Carl's mouth opened.

  ‘Never more will I ever stray …’

  ‘What is it, what's the matter with him?’ Samantha's shout was on the verge of hysteria. ‘For God's sake tell me!’

  Latimer did not reply, knew in that moment of confrontation with his friend that the country-and-western singer was in some kind of trance, completely unaware of his surroundings. The ex-reporter's arm went back, a blur of movement as the flat of his hand struck sideways, a pistol-like retort as it made contact with the other's face.

  Carl Wickers staggered back with the force of the blow, stumbled and would have fallen had not Latimer caught him by his buckskins, pulled him back upright.

  ‘Carl, it's us. Chris, Samantha and Pamela. Can you hear me?’

  ‘Chris … Samantha … Pamela …’ Names pronounced in a meaningless monotone, eyes glazed but clearing slowly. ‘Chris … Samantha … Pamela …?’

  ‘It's us!’ Latimer resisted the temptation to shake the other. The trance was breaking; take it
easy and he'll be OK in a minute or two. Maybe we were just in time.

  ‘Carl, whatever made you come here?’ Samantha pushed close to her boyfriend, took his arm. ‘Why here?’

  ‘They wanted me.’ The reply was an intonation, those eyes shifting, staring across at the still, unbroken surface of the Sucking Pit.

  ‘They? Who're they?’

  ‘They wanted my music.’ His voice had sunk to a whisper. ‘They were listening, then … then you stopped me.’

  Heads turned, following the singer's stare, saw that sheet of water. For a brief second it seemed to ripple as though something lurking near the surface had dived back down into the depths. Then it was still again; it could have been a trick of the early morning light. Or an optical illusion.

  ‘Where … where am I?’ Carl straightened up, shook his head and drew his hand across his eyes, fingered the red patch tenderly where Latimer had struck him. ‘What the blazes am I doing … here?’

  ‘You've been sleepwalking,’ Chris Latimer snapped, before either of the girls could voice their thoughts. ‘No harm done.’ God, I hope not. ‘Come on, the car's back there. We can be back for breakfast in ten minutes.’

  The four of them were seated around the kitchen table; they had nibbled toast and tried to act normally. In the end they gave up. This façade was pointless. They had to face up to facts, if there were such mundane things as facts any more.

  ‘I can't remember a thing, not even getting out of bed.’ Carl Wickers leaned back in his chair, his eyes threatening to close, the lids heavy with loss of sleep. ‘Nothing at all until you hit me. Now I've got a thumping headache. Christ, I hope it's not a migraine, I've got a booking at nine tonight.’