Murder at Twilight

by Fleur Hitchcock

  We leave the pheasants in the ice. We need the freezer heavy if this is going to work.

  Pointing it at the chosen spot on the wall we shove as hard as we can. By the time it hits the plaster, it’s motoring, and it makes a huge dent.

  Slowly, we pull it to the opposite side of the room and get it rolling fast across the floor.

  Thump

  This time it smashes through the plaster and takes out a small wooden prop from the inside of the wall.

  “Excellent,” says Noah.

  The third time we charge, the freezer punctures the outside wall, and we discover that the shed is clad in wood.

  The fourth time, it loosens a vertical prop – and together we work the prop back and forth until it gives up and comes away in our hands.

  The fifth time, the freezer smashes through the wall and keeps going until it vanishes, leaving a waist-high doorway.

  We stare.

  “Wow!” I say.

  “Wow!” Noah says.

  Tiptoeing in my plastic-bag shoes I step through the wall of the shed and stop, sharp.

  “How did we not know this was here?” I say.

  “Water. More water?”

  Lit by a huge moon in a clear sky is what appears to be a lake. On its side in the lake is our freezer, bouncing lightly as the frozen pheasants leave and water enters.

  I turn to look at the shed. It is a shed. A lone building in a compound by a lake. It’s utterly unfamiliar, and yet we can’t be very far from home. There’s about a metre of land before the water begins, which must usually be a patch of grass, and huge chain-link fences that stretch out into the water on either side, and would presumably normally just be on land. We’re caught in a half moon of ground trapped between the water and the fence. Skirting around the shed we examine the metal gates, which are two metres high and locked.

  “I might be able to get over that,” Noah says, grasping the chain-link and pulling himself upward. I watch as he does. I don’t think I could get over it. I’m short and it’s tall. But I don’t say anything – and feel selfishly relieved when he fails and drops back to the ground. We pace the fence, looking for an imaginary hole or imaginary wire cutters. It just ends in the lake in both directions.

  “This is…” He sighs and kicks the wall of the shed.

  Swallowing a growing lump of fear, I stomp around, checking to see if there’s anything we could use to get away, when I have a sudden thought.

  “The freezer – it’s obvious!”

  * * *

  It takes a while to empty it. There must be a hundred pheasants inside, and we have to use the washing-up liquid bottle to get the water out of the bottom. And we can’t really see anything. And then we have the problem of the door.

  “We’ve got to take it off or we’ll tip up.”

  “But it won’t come off! Oh, this is ridiculous!” Noah says sitting back on the shore. “Hopeless – let’s just give up, wait for them to come back. Uncle P will pay, you know. We’re not going to die.”

  “No,” I say, thinking of the bloodstained bag. “No, that’s so not true! We really might die. Or I might. We’ve got to make this work.” In the moonlight I find the screw heads and, using my thumbnail, make a fumbling attempt to undo them.

  All I do is break my thumbnail.

  “What do we need?” sighs Noah, standing and turning back towards the shed.

  “A penny – a thin metal thing? Anything flat and narrow.”

  I drag the freezer towards the shore so that the light from the torn hole in the shed falls on to the screw holes and Noah reappears and hands me a fishhook.

  “What?” I say, looking at the tiny thing in my hand.

  “They’re very strong. Just watch out for the barb bit.”

  He tries one end of the lid and I try the other. Finally, just as I’m giving up hope, one of the screws gives in and begins to turn.

  “It’s working!” I shout, my voice horribly loud and bouncing across the water.

  It takes an age, all the time the moon’s tracking back over the sky and I know the morning’s going to come soon and with the morning, surely they’ll be back.

  Ping.

  The last screw falls inside the box.

  “Paddles,” says Noah and he races back to rip something off the outside of the building.

  Together we right the freezer and push it into the water and although it’s heavy, there comes a moment when the water takes the weight. I test it by bouncing my hand on the side and it seems to be relatively stable.

  “It floats!” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say, running back through the hole and grabbing the last blankets, and turning off the light.

  “What are you doing?” asks Noah.

  “Buying us time.” Wading through the water with my bag-covered feet, I clamber in and crouch in the bottom. “Try getting in,” I say.

  “Why are you down there?” he says, looking over the side.

  “So it doesn’t tip up,” I mumble. The freezer smells of old freezer smells, stale bread and rotting things. Noah stumbles in behind me, and we both try kneeling up a little.

  Our rectangular boat bumps on the bottom of the lake, but when Noah pushes down against the ground with a piece of wood, we bounce off and drift very slightly away from the shore. I watch the moon spin slowly from right to left and realise that we must be caught in a stream.

  “I don’t think it’s a lake,” I say.

  Kneeling up, Noah sticks his head over the side, making the whole thing rock scarily.

  “How far from the shed have we got?”

  “It’s getting smaller,” he says.

  I risk looking over the side. The shed is getting smaller, but we’re right in the middle of the water in a white box, moonlit. If they appear any time soon, we’ll be caught.

  Just as I’m thinking this, headlights swing through the trees over by the shed, and I hear an engine.

  Oh, no.

  “Paddle,” I say.

  Both of us kneel up and as quickly and silently as possible, we dip and push, dip and push, using the boards that Noah tore from the shed to get the freezer gliding through the water. Except that it doesn’t really glide, it sort of waddles, and I’m guessing that because it’s not boat-shaped, we’re not going to move as well or as fast as we could.

  The metal gates clank behind us. The engine roars and the van stops by the shed, which is now backlit by the headlights.

  With my plank in my hand I dig deep into the water, pushing forward, listening, while looking backwards.

  Bolts rattle, which must be on the outside of the door, and then a light appears in the ragged hole in the side of the shed.

  “What?” A voice bounces over the still surface of the water.

  “Quick, hang the blankets over the sides,” I whisper, and fumbling our planks back into the bottom of our boat, we dangle the dark blankets over the shiny white sides. There’s just one quarter that’s not covered and I pray that we won’t drift round. Barely breathing, we hide back in the bottom of the freezer.

  “Where the hell…?” says a voice. A local voice.

  Then there’s the low rumble of two people talking and then I hear the crisp sound of feet on the tiny shoreline.

  Someone yanks at a plank, the nail squeaks and they throw it in the water.

  More voices, and thumps, and then wet sounds as someone wades in and pulls something out of the water. The door, they’ve found the freezer door.

  Seconds later, feet sound, running on the shore, and then a torch beam plays over the lake, catching the trees on the other side.

  “Oh, god,” mutters Noah.

  Squishing into the bottom of our boat, I listen, trying to recognise the voices, using that as a way to stop myself panicking. But my mind’s already halfway to panic. Is it better to sit up and paddle – or lie down and pretend to be dead? If I die here, will I sink? Will anyone ever know what happened to us? Will the police think Mum and I were in league, that we k
idnapped Noah; that I tried to take him away from rescuers in a chest freezer with no shoes on?

  Stars pass over the rectangular patch of sky above us.

  We’re drifting away – but just not fast enough. They might even be able to wade out to us. And then we twist, Orion and the moon revolve, the freezer swings a whole three hundred and sixty degree turn.

  “Hey!” goes a voice on the shore.

  Bang.

  Sleeping ducks take off, squawking, and something patters on the surface of the water.

  “Shotgun pellets,” whispers Noah.

  Of course.

  The next shot sprays the side of the freezer with something that sounds like hail, and the last of the ducks take off.

  Then there’s a pause, and the freezer swings back, and I’m kind of aware that we’re moving faster because the moon disappears completely.

  Bang.

  The pellets hit hard and fast, one of them bouncing from the outside and tumbling into the freezer.

  Bang.

  Again, it’s a direct hit. Are they trying to sink us?

  “Paddle,” says Noah. He springs up, and I spring up alongside him and we risk three dips each while the distant sound of someone reloading a shotgun in the dark drifts over the water.

  “Down!” he shouts.

  Bang.

  They don’t let off the second shot, and we wait. Our tiny moment of paddling has moved us further into the stream and the sounds change. From the expanse of open water, we move to something narrower – there’s trickling water somewhere close, and when I look up I can see trees behind us.

  Bang.

  This time, no pellets hit us, and the voices are definitely distant.

  So slowly I can practically hear my bones move, I sit up and look over the side.

  “We’re in the river,” I say.

  Noah sits up beside me.

  There’s the faintest suggestion of pink in the sky behind the bony trees. And it reflects on the black water. Mist begins to rise all around us, and with the light comes the realisation of where we are.

  Just above the Blackwater Estate.

  “If we paddle, we could be home by breakfast,” says Noah, sitting up and rocking the freezer so much that a small wave crests over the side.

  “Sit down! You’ll tip us into the river.”

  Now we’re in the river proper, our “boat” is demonstrating why boats aren’t freezer-shaped. With every new current, it twists around, and more and more and more water seems to be coming in.

  “I think we’ve got a leak,” says Noah, energised, his halo of blond hair catching in the dawn light. “Yeah – here, look!”

  He’s pointing to a small hole in the end of the tank. And I see that it’s next to another small hole. In fact, there are masses of them, and they’re all letting in water.

  “It’s where the shotgun pellets hit us,” he says, flattening his hands against them as if that’s going to make enough of a difference. “They were definitely trying to sink us. And it’s working.”

  Ahead of us is a bridge. It’s the lane that crosses the tip of the estate – once we’re underneath it we’ll be in the estate again. The kidnappers will know that – and under normal circumstances they’d be on the bridge waiting for us, but everything’s changed. The whole landscape is under water. As the light comes up and the shadows recede, the effect of the rain becomes clear. The bridge, which should have a lane crossing it, stands alone in a lake anchored by the white railing that marks the road. The arches have disappeared under the water level, so that when we reach it, we just bump up against the side.

  “Now what?” asks Noah.

  “I think we should get out and walk along the lane,” I say.

  “But then they’ll get us – that’s mad.”

  “If we send our friend Freezer on his way downstream, they’ll think we’re still in it.”

  “Like a decoy?” he says. “That’ll never work. We should paddle to the side and get out in the woods.”

  I don’t bother to answer, and using my hands flat on the bricks walk the freezer along to the end of the actual brick bridge until it grates on the lane. I leap out, gasping as the freezing cold water reaches my armpits, bracing myself against the flow. “Get out! Hurry, we don’t know how long it’ll take for them to get here,” I shout, wading through the water.

  “You’re mad,” he says, slinging one leg over the side.

  “I’m right,” I say, pulling at the side of the freezer, feeling the wheels grip on the bridge. “We just need to…” The force of the water easily pushes the thing over the tarmac and shoots it out the other side, bouncing on the water and whirling away downstream.

  I watch it for about a second before struggling over the bridge, keeping the rail in my hand until the water level drops below my knees and I begin to feel as if I’m not going to be swept away.

  Behind me, Noah sloshes through the water, grumbling and mumbling, and I feel all my anger from yesterday seeping back.

  I try to run through the shallows and he doesn’t so the gap becomes bigger and that just makes me crosser. That brief time last night when we bonded again seems to have slipped away with the floodwater. He’s Noah Belcombe, and I’m me. Polar opposites.

  Am I jealous? I think about his entitlement, his rights, and yes, I am – but it’s not that I want to be him. He’s an old-fashioned mistake. I just want people like him, and his “generous” family, not to be. Full stop.

  I realise that what I want is equality – I don’t want us all to go around having to bow to Lord and Lady B. I don’t want Mum to wipe the mud from their boots, or the blood from Noah’s face. I don’t want them to be first class and us second.

  Right now though, Noah has shoes and I have plastic bags. That just about sums it up.

  Ahead of us the road emerges from the water. The Blackwater Estate is on our right, the woodland on our left, and behind us I hear the distant revving of an engine. It might be coincidence or it might be the kidnappers at the edge of the flood on the other side of the river.

  I don’t know how far a shotgun can fire, but I don’t want to find out.

  “Hurry up,” I say, splashing through the last few metres of the flood, but Noah’s heard the engine too and he’s finally moving at a decent pace.

  Unwelcoming woods rear up before us, bordered by a ditch full of water and brambles, and then a blackthorn thicket.

  “We can’t go in there,” shouts Noah, racing past me along the lane. “Keep going.”

  I try to speed up, but I’m so slow. It’s as if my limbs have filled with ice, heavy ice, and I waste more time looking back towards the bridge.

  I can’t see the men, but I can see the freezer, bobbing on downstream. A moment later, the engine sounds again and there’s a crunch of gears and revving, and whatever it is they came in turns and goes the other way.

  “S’all right.” My legs stop dead and I pant, leaning over, propping my hands on my knees to draw breath.

  As I straighten up, a little feeble sunlight warms up the road, and mist rises from everywhere – the water, the land, Noah himself.

  A rabbit pops out on to the lane, sees us and leaps back into the hedge.

  For a moment, everything feels really normal. Even standing in a pair of dead man’s socks on the side of the road.

  “The sawmill,” says Noah, sinking to his haunches. “It opens at eight. It must be nearly eight.”

  He’s right. Dave runs the sawmill. He’s OK – he’s a safe place to run to.

  Exhausted, we climb over a stile into a field of thistles. My plastic-bag shoes have almost completely disappeared, leaving knotted plastic around my ankles and Sanjeev’s socks, and it takes me ages to pick my way across.

  “Come on, loser,” says Noah.

  So we’ve both gone from love to hate.

  Perhaps that makes it easier – we can say whatever we like.

  “I’m not the loser. If I hadn’t been out there, you’d have drown
ed in that shed.”

  “They’d have rescued me; I’m too valuable,” he says.

  “That. That’s your problem,” I say, stopping to pick a thorn out of my foot. “You think you’re too precious to deal with the rest of us. Too … special. Too privileged. Don’t you? Eh?”

  “Shut up, Viv,” he says. “I’m too tired for this rubbish. I know you’re the salt of the earth and I’m a good-for-nothing toff, but we’re stuck in this together.”

  I do shut up. I’m too tired as well. Images of bed and duvets and warm feet flicker before me as I avoid the final few thistles and make it to the hedge. Awkwardly, we pick our way through a strand of barbed wire and a hawthorn bush and I’m forced to help Noah by holding the wire away from his golden tresses.

  “Rapunzel,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  In silence we trek over another field where the river is lapping at the side, the fence posts sticking out of the water like a pier.

  Bright fury fizzles down to a slow-burning ember about halfway across.

  We cross a track, and pause by the huge yew tree where Daisy and I used to sit when we were little. Its roots cover the bank, dry and dusty already as if it’s drunk every drop of water the flood could produce. Red sap clots on the trunk and I wonder if we could hole up here for a few hours and sleep, but Noah and his shoes march on.

  Limping, my bare feet follow. I remember his sneer when he saw me with my Herschel High friends at the bus stop last week as he went past in the St David’s minibus. Why did I bother to rescue him? And I think of all the names that I’ve ever wanted to call him. Tadpole, Inbred, Slug, and now I invent some more.

  I think about all the least lovely things on the planet and I say them out loud. “Cockroach, scorpion, puffer fish, what are those things that lie under the sand…?”

  “Weaver fish,” he says.

  “Oh, yes, weaver fish, pterodactyl, Komodo dragon, Japanese knotweed…”

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “Thinking of horrible things,” I say.

  “Mouldy cheese, school suet puddings, cough mixture, Grandma’s creosote cough mixture in particular. Woollen rugby socks, woollen rugby shorts, rugby, Latin, Mr Dexter the French teacher, gym, being shot at… Why?”