Edge

by Nick Oldham

  In his turn, that was also what he ultimately wanted.

  Somehow he could not quite let go of being a cop. He knew he was being weak and stupid – but.

  FB came out and stood beside him. He grunted a greeting and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, lit one up. Henry didn’t even know FB smoked. It came as a bit of a shock, but he made no comment.

  FB blew a lungful of smoke into the atmosphere.

  ‘E.T.?’ FB asked.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Phoning home?’

  ‘Ahh.’ Henry nodded, getting the cinematic reference.

  ‘Still shacked up with that landlady?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘Nice.’

  FB inhaled more smoke, hissed it out through his nostrils and stared at the rain in the fluorescent glow of the street lights. ‘You phone home a lot?’

  ‘Not as much as I should,’ Henry admitted. ‘Big mistake not to.’

  ‘Yeah,’ FB said pensively.

  ‘I thought I’d be different, y’know, with this one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Made too many mistakes with Kate, then left it too late to put right. I tried, but she was gone before—’ Henry stopped, wondering why he had begun to say all this here and now. In all the years he had known FB, the two of them had hardly spoken a personal word with each other.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ FB said, surprising Henry.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Oh ay.’ FB took another drag. ‘I made mistakes like that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, my wives didn’t die—’

  ‘Your wives? You’ve had more than one?’

  ‘On my third now. First two couldn’t hack it, both pissed off and we got divorced quietly. I’m not proud of it, but I only realized too late that the important thing is family, not work … though you can never repeat that,’ he warned Henry.

  Henry shook his head, realizing he knew so very little about that side of FB.

  ‘Going to make it right,’ Henry said determinedly.

  ‘Good for you,’ FB said. He took a final drag on the cigarette and flicked it out on to the footpath where it sizzled in a puddle. ‘We going to bust some bollocks, then?’

  Henry nodded.

  Tooled up, Henry and FB set off from the police station towards Bacup, then bearing off to Whitworth. Henry was driving a type of vehicle he had not used for many years, and remembering just how uncomfortable a Land Rover could be. Hard seats, terrible suspension, foot pedals that required a ton of power to operate, steering that required lots of biceps muscles and windscreen wipers that were virtually ineffective in clearing rain off the windows. And a heating system that blew only cold air so the windscreen was constantly steamed up.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Henry whined, wiping the steamed-up window with the back of his hand and having to open his door window a crack to get air to circulate, in an effort to keep the screen clear. The pay-off was that rain came through and soaked his shoulder.

  ‘Used to drive these all the time,’ FB said, ‘when I was in uniform.’

  Henry didn’t respond. Despite the drawbacks, they were actually good vehicles for policing places like Rossendale, dependable and sturdy. They went up and down hills very well.

  He drove on, still thinking about Alison and about phoning home and his unreliable history.

  He tried not to have regrets or carry any guilt from his past, but he still blenched when he thought about Kate, his now dead wife. In a roundabout way, she had been introduced to him by FB, inasmuch as Kate had been unfortunate enough to discover the body of a missing girl and the then very young Henry had taken a witness statement from her. That was the start of their relationship and subsequent marriage.

  Much to Henry’s distress, he realized he had given her too many unpleasant times during their marriage but even though they had got divorced at one point, Kate had really stuck to Henry, and following their remarriage he had really tried to be the husband he should have been in the first place. Sadly it had been a relatively short-lived period because of the very aggressive cancer that invaded her body, and she died before Henry could really give her the life she deserved. That was one regret he allowed himself.

  His own life had moved on with Alison Marsh, to whom he was now engaged. In Alison he knew he had found a gem, but there were still times when he found himself putting work first again when he didn’t need to, especially at this late stage in his career.

  And the awful truth was, he really did not need to be making his way to a bleak farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, on a stormy night, to knock on the door of a bunch of toe rags, but here he was. Driven to do it. The knock on the door could have waited until the morning and any sane person would be at home, tucked up in bed, spooning up to a hot-arsed partner.

  Which was probably the crux of the matter.

  He wasn’t completely sure if he was normal and sane.

  ELEVEN

  Johnny abandoned the Peugeot at the top of Oak Street in the Facit area of Whitworth. Although he knew he had to move quickly, he realized that driving the car straight up to Charlie’s farm, even in the pouring rain, lights off, would be foolhardy. What he needed to do, if he was to have any chance whatsoever of rescuing Annabel and the baby from Charlie’s clutches, was get up to the farm by stealth. He had no plan other than that. He had no idea where she would be or even if anything untoward had happened to her. For all he knew, they could have kissed and made up, but he doubted that.

  Charlie forgave no one, ever. Especially not a pregnant girlfriend.

  Johnny knew the area well, and by ditching the car on Oak Street he could take a short cut via the fields and footpaths on to the moors to sneak up to the farm.

  He was soon creeping through the darkness.

  After sinking the remaining mouthful of lager, Charlie Wilder screwed up the can and threw it fiercely against the living room wall before releasing a disgustingly powerful belch.

  He picked up the sawn-off shotgun and held it diagonally across his chest, then broke it open and pulled out with his fingernails the spent cartridges used during the robbery – the ejector spring did not work – threw them down and slid two new ones in from his pocket, then snapped the weapon shut.

  He focused on the gun for a long time before raising his eyes and looking at his brother Luke and friend Jake. His eyes were set deep and dark in his skull now, fearsome in their intensity and hatred.

  ‘Well?’ he asked Luke.

  ‘What?’ Luke answered with trepidation.

  ‘Is she alive?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ Luke babbled.

  The brothers locked eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Luke said again, weakly. His nose had started to bleed again and he held several pieces of scrunched-up kitchen roll to it. He was feeling dithery and afraid now. He had been outside the bedroom earlier, listening to what was happening inside as Charlie exacted his revenge for Annabel’s unfaithfulness.

  Then it had gone silent and a moment later Charlie had appeared at the door, his face strained and terrible, and pushed Luke aside, at the same time ordering him to ‘sort the bitch out’.

  Swallowing and terrified, Luke had slowly entered and seen Annabel on the floor, curled up into a tight foetal ball, gasping for breath, clutching her stomach and emitting a low, pitiful, moaning sound.

  Luke stood watching her, not knowing what he should do, still covering his own face with a blood-soaked kitchen cloth. He wasn’t sure if his nose was actually broken, but it was his own fault for letting that cop at the hospital get too close to him.

  He watched her while she managed to get on to her hands and knees, her head hanging loosely between her arms, blood dripping thickly from the facial injuries – even worse, there was blood between her legs. But he did not move to assist her as she dragged herself, leaving a smear of red across the carpet, into the en suite bathroom and slammed the
door behind her.

  ‘She’s still in the toilet, I think,’ Luke said. ‘Doesn’t look good.’

  ‘What are we going to do, Chas?’ Jake asked.

  Charlie’s death stare turned slowly to the other gang member. ‘If you’d managed to run her over, we wouldn’t be in this mess, would we? You can’t do frig-all, you lot.’

  ‘I nearly got her,’ Jake said defensively. ‘But that cop pushed her out of the way.’

  ‘Whatever … take her out to the stable,’ he growled in a low, deep voice. ‘Tie her up, then we’ll have a think.’

  Jake remained transfixed, unmoving.

  ‘Like now,’ Charlie said. ‘Both of you, get her, take her to the stable and tie her up like the fucking animal she is.’ He swung up the shotgun. Both ducked. ‘Now,’ he screamed, making them surge into action.

  She was back in the bedroom, perched on the edge of the bed, when Luke and Jake entered.

  ‘Luke, Luke,’ she said, speaking through a mouth that had had six teeth either knocked out or loosed. Her eyes were black, swollen, and there were terrible marks on her neck, around her windpipe. ‘Help me, please, I think I’ve miscarried.’

  Luke hesitated, a quick weighing up of the pros and cons, then thought better of it. There was no way he could help her. Instead, he steeled himself and strode over to her, grabbed her arm and heaved her to her feet, saying, ‘Got what you deserved.’ He swirled her across the room to Jake and between them they half-carried her along the landing, down the stairs to the front hallway where Charlie, the shotgun held across his chest, waited.

  She was light, easy to manhandle, had no fight in her. Luke and Jake had no trouble dragging her between them on her knees, the ground tearing at her flesh, into the stable where Johnny had previously been held.

  They dragged her to the same loose box, then Luke bound her wrists with flex and yanked her across to the wall, ran wire between her wrists and secured her to an animal tethering ring like the one to which Johnny had been tied.

  As he worked through the scenario, Luke could see no good end to this. Charlie had gone mad, of that there was no doubt, but to stand up to him could be disastrous.

  Luke stood up. ‘Done. She’ll not get out of this.’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘What we doing about those prossies?’ Luke enquired delicately, remembering the two women locked in the cellar.

  It was a question Charlie could not answer well. ‘Hassan’s supposed to be coming for them at some stage, don’t know when. They can stay there till then.’

  Charlie turned and headed back to the farmhouse.

  Luke and Jake exchanged a look, then followed.

  ‘I want to kill him and I want to kill her.’

  A long shiver shot through Luke Wilder’s whole being at his brother’s words, which were spoken quietly, but with the venom of a cobra. He now seemed to be in some kind of demonic stupor.

  The three young men were back in the living room.

  Jake hovered by the front window overlooking the yard and the stable opposite.

  Luke was sitting across from Charlie who was on the settee, trying to control his breathing.

  ‘Bro, bro,’ Luke said softly. ‘You need to take a step back from this. I know how you’re feeling, mate, I know how you must be hurting—’

  ‘No you do not know how I’m feeling,’ Charlie said, angling his head towards Luke, his eyes in deep shadow. ‘I feel like I’ve had my guts torn out by Jack the Ripper, that’s how I feel.’ He exhaled long and hard. There was another can of lager in his hand. He tipped it to his lips. ‘And that’s how I want him and her to feel. I want to rip their insides out. I want to plunge a carving knife into their guts and disembowel them. I want to hang them both up by their ankles and let them bleed out a horrible, painful death with their innards hanging down in front of their faces. That’s what I want.’

  Jake’s stomach turned at the thought.

  Luke said, ‘That’s not going to happen, Charlie.’

  ‘You challenging me?’

  ‘No, no I’m not, Charlie, but we need to sit back here and think things through.’

  ‘Why? Why should I?’

  ‘Look, man,’ Luke said pleadingly. ‘You have to back off here … this should have been a great day, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, should have been – and it was until I was betrayed,’ he spat.

  Luke tried not to let his eyes roll in irritation.

  ‘So …’ Charlie sat upright, stared at Luke. ‘Did you know that Johnny was banging her?’

  ‘No,’ Luke lied firmly.

  Charlie saw through the untruth, but rotated his head slowly to Jake, who shrank under the gaze. ‘What about you, Jake boy? Did you know?’

  ‘No, honest, Chas, I didn’t,’ he insisted, but his body language – the shrugs, the jerks, the tics – indicated otherwise.

  ‘Liars, both of you.’ Charlie sat back, disgusted.

  ‘Charlie,’ Luke tried again, plaintively. ‘We don’t need any more shit today. We took out that screw and got away with it. We pulled a job and downed a Paki, and we got away with that, too. Why don’t you just cut these two loose? She’s just a friggin’ girl after all, a nothing. You can have any girl you want. But if you top her and top Johnny, then we’ll achieve nothing. Don’t you get it? The cops’ll be on us like a ton of rocks. And Johnny won’t say owt to the cops, because he’s too shit-scared of you. Me and Jake’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, mate … but you have to let this go.’

  Luke and Jake stared expectantly at Charlie, who seemed to be taking it all in, seeing sense perhaps.

  Then a hint of movement in the yard outside caught the edge of Jake’s vision.

  Hiding behind the wreck of an old tractor, Johnny had seen his three friends drag Annabel across the yard from the house into the stable. It had taken all his willpower not to rise, shout, confront and intervene. He had remained silent and still, even though a fierce rage churned inside, not foolish enough to show his hand because of the shotgun – that he, Johnny, had supplied, together with lots of ammunition – in Charlie’s hands.

  The wait for them to reappear from inside the barn was never-ending.

  His imagination made him feel faint as he wondered what they could possibly be doing to her. She looked as though she had already suffered greatly under Charlie’s fists, but the lighting in the yard was poor and all Johnny could really make out was the fact that Jake and Luke were dragging her across the ground like a carcass.

  They came out and ran back to the farmhouse, Charlie storming ahead of them.

  Even then, Johnny did not move.

  He remained concealed in the shadow thrown by the old farm vehicle, watching the house.

  It looked as if they had gone back for the duration.

  Johnny started to creep slowly on his hands and knees towards the stable door. He kept to the deep shadow, focusing on moving slowly, deliberately, and getting to Annabel without being spotted.

  Eventually he reached the stable door. This was where he became completely still again, now on his haunches. He looked across at the farmhouse, seeing Jake’s figure at the window with his back to the yard, the curtains not drawn. Jake’s shoulders rose and fell as if he were shrugging.

  The three were obviously in deep discussion, probably arguing.

  Johnny seized that moment, pulled the stable door open wide enough to ease through the gap.

  Once inside he came up on to his feet, feeling the tug of stitches on his buttock. The shot of pain made him jerk, but then it was forgotten as he saw Annabel tied up in the same loose box he had been in.

  She wasn’t moving.

  ‘Need a fag,’ Jake said. ‘Going out.’

  Charlie and Luke glared at him, said nothing.

  Jake fished a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his pocket, and a disposable lighter, and fitted a cigarette between his lips.

  After one last, surreptitious check of the brothers, he left the room, walking past
the under stairs door that led to the cellar on his way out. The thought of the two prostitutes locked in the blackness down there sent something unpleasant slithering through his veins, but he carried on out and stepped into the open porch that protected the front door.

  Here he lit up, inhaled, exhaled, and squinted across at the stable.

  Johnny turned her over carefully. She was not moving, didn’t seem to be breathing.

  ‘Babe,’ he whispered, terrified, and fumbling desperately he started to unfasten the bindings that held her wrists together. ‘C’mon, babe.’

  She was still, lifeless.

  Was she breathing?

  Was her heart beating?

  He could not tell, could not be certain.

  As he turned and lay her gently on her back, her head lolled as if it was on a broken spring.

  Johnny knew nothing about first aid, but he pushed two fingertips into the soft flesh of her neck, just under her jaw, feeling for what he thought was a pulse on the jugular. He bent over, trying to concentrate, to feel something.

  Possibly.

  He removed his fingertips and put his ear to her nose, listening for an intake of breath.

  Nothing.

  The stable door creaked.

  Jake stepped in edgeways.

  Johnny looked over, saw who it was and said, ‘She’s dead.’

  It was as though Jake hadn’t heard the words. ‘You need to get out of here, Johnny. Charlie’s going to kill you,’ he whispered hoarsely.

  ‘I said, she’s dead.’

  ‘I heard … and so will you be unless you get lost. You got to run, Johnny. From a mate, you got to run.’

  Johnny wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.