by J. S. Mahon
“There’s only one thing I like about all that you’ve just said,” he said with a grin that bared his yellowing teeth.
“What’s that?”
“The bit about the 140 quid next month. My car’s pretty knackered and if you’ve got that kind of cash, which you must have, it’ll come in very handy. It’ll count towards the grand, of course,” he said with a smirk that I’d have liked to wipe off his face. It would have been like swatting a fly. I knocked back the rest of my pint, told him that the name of next month’s pub was written on the inside of the envelope, and left.
On walking back to my car I felt a very peculiar and unexpected feeling of elation. He’d just dug his own grave, albeit a watery one, and all being well I’d be seeing him before our next appointment, but instead of drinking beer and taunting me, he’d be falling down that gully where I’d be greeting him with the only thing the sly, greedy little bastard deserved; death.
After that meeting there was no looking back and the next Saturday I parked up on the road beside the terraced houses at about eight o’clock and pulled on my old green fishing jacket. It was a drizzly morning and I was confident that with the poor visibility and my makeshift camouflage – I was also wearing dark green trousers and brown boots – nobody would spot me behind the bushes. As I trudged across the fields, fingering the coil of eighteen pound sea-fishing line in my jacket pocket, I realised that an hour or two from then I might be killing a man. I also knew that I may have to make the trip many times before I caught him, but as my years of fishing had got me used to waiting patiently for a strike, this didn’t bother me too much.
I was glad that it was a poor sort of day for my first attempt, as it would hopefully persuade any walkers who might use the path to stay at home. When I reached the spot I was pleased and relieved to see that the two rocks were still where I’d left them a month earlier and now looked like they’d been there forever. It would have been easy to kick the smaller rock over the edge and the fact that no-one had done so showed that very few people went that way. I carried on up the path a few hundred yards to check that nobody was coming down it and on returning I was able to see that nobody was coming up it either, so I set to work. I had already made a strong sliding noose on one end of the line, so all I had to do was loop it around the biggest rock, tighten it, pass it over the smaller one and press the line into the path between them. It was a good thing that it was wet as it enabled me to plaster some earth over the line to hide it from view. I dropped the remaining coil down the gully and surveyed my handiwork.
The line was only visible where it passed over the rocks, so I smeared some earth onto them before walking off and approaching the trap from a few yards away. I could just make out the line going over the rocks because I knew it was there, but I was fairly confident that nobody else would spot it. On dry days, I reflected, it might be best to give it a miss, as it would be far more difficult to obscure the line so well. I lowered myself down the slippery slope, uncoiling the line as I went, hopped over the stream and settled down behind the bushes. After getting myself as comfortable as I could on the damp grass, I tightened the line to enable me to lift it between the rocks with a quick tug, before releasing it enough to let it trail down the gully rather than hanging in the air and perhaps catching what little light there was. Satisfied with the setup, I got up and scoured the stream for a suitably lethal rock. I selected one a little larger than a bowling ball and with no jagged edges because I didn’t want to produce any more blood than I had to. I lifted it above my head and thrust it to the ground with all my might. I was sure that little Dennis’s malicious brain would not survive a blow like that.
Then I settled down to wait, feeling very much like a fisherman with two floats to watch. Should anyone come up from below there were a couple of sections of path where I would see them coming, but if they came down off the moors I’d have very little notice of their approach. I shifted my position behind the bushes in order to look out and listen for anyone coming down, while still being able to turn my head to check the lower slopes. I lay there for almost three hours that morning and I can’t tell you how much I missed my fishing chair, but apart from the discomfort, it didn’t seem like all that strange a thing to be doing. For someone who has never fished it would have probably been hell, but whenever my thoughts began to drift I reminded myself of the £940 that I still ‘owed’ Dennis and willed him to come trotting along that path.
At half past eleven I decided to call it a day and I’d just crawled to my feet and started to rub some life back into my legs when I heard voices coming from up the path. I lay back down behind the bushes and felt my heart thumping. I heard a woman’s voice chirping away and a couple of grunted replied. Their passage through my trap would be a good test of its invisibility and would also enable me to judge the time I’d need to spring to my feet and be over Dennis before he had time to get up. When the couple, the same one I’d seen some weeks earlier, passed between my rocks in single file, rather than watch their progress down the path, I imagined the first of them, the woman, tripping over the line and rolling down the gully. One, two, three, four, five seconds I guessed it would have taken her to come to rest beside the stream, just enough time for me to have reached her with my weapon, which I then realised I ought to leave on the path side of the stream rather than with me in the bushes.
When they had gone out of earshot I got to my feet, scrambled up the gully, and dismantled the trap, feeling pleased to have had this little dress rehearsal after a fruitless morning’s wait. On my way back down to the lane I observed the terrain closely, knowing that I would have to traverse it at night and would be wise to use a torch as little as possible. Crossing the field to my car I reviewed the second part of my plan and realised that I had overlooked one important detail. Later that day when Barbara was out I threw an old towel into the car boot.
The following day, another damp and dismal one, my three hour vigil was even less productive as nobody at all ventured along the path and I realised that it might be many weeks before Dennis fell into my trap, especially if I stayed away on the dry days. Luckily patience had always been one of my virtues and I knew that I would get him eventually.
5
Two consecutive dry weekends meant that the first Tuesday in October came around before I’d had another chance to lie in wait for Dennis. Home life went on as usual and Barbara didn’t seem to suspect that anything was on my mind. Some people have thought me a cold fish over years, especially after the events that I’m describing had taken place, and it’s true that when I went about my daily business during those months I had no trouble in putting the terrible thing that I was plotting out of my mind. Looking back, I think my affair with Linda caused me more anxiety than the Dennis business, probably because I knew that cheating on Linda was wrong, whereas killing Dennis, to my mind at least, seemed perfectly justified at the time.
When I met Dennis to give him his fourth payment I had put the usual £20 in the envelope and told him so before taking it from my pocket. His face dropped immediately and I feared that the harsh words that he seemed to be forming in his mind would make us look conspicuous in the rather rough pub that I doubted either of us had ever visited before.
“There’s no way I could have got 140 quid together, Dennis, unless I’d known it was going to be the last payment,” I said in as calm and pleasant a voice as I could muster.
“You’ve let me down,” he hissed between his teeth. “My car’s in the garage and I can’t get it back till I’ve paid for the repair. The head gasket went,” he added, as if it had been my fault.
“Wait a minute,” I said, before going to the toilet. In the grimy cubicle I took another six tenners out of my wallet and put them in the envelope. I’d taken the precaution of bringing extra cash – all I had left, in fact – in case he reacted badly to me not fetching the amount he’d demanded, and the fact that his car was off the road made it less painful to part with. The last thing I wanted was for him
to be grounded, after all.
“There’s eighty in there now,” I said on my return. “It’s all I’ve got.”
“Right, thanks,” he said when he’d pocketed it. “With no car I can’t get out to where I like to run from, you see, and as I’m still not working it gives me something to do.”
“Right,” I said, nodding, as if I agreed that it justified his blackmailing me. I was tempted to ask him where he liked to run from, but knew that it would be stupid to do so. What he’d said did give me an idea that I’d overlooked until then, however, and as soon as I’d finished my pint and wished him a hearty goodbye, I walked back to my car to mull it over.
Having always worked Monday to Friday myself, apart from the occasions when I’d had to do overtime at the weekends, it hadn’t struck me that as Dennis was out of work he might well go running during the week too. On my normal days when I started work at two in the afternoon, I could easily go up the moors to my beloved bushes, as Barbara was working almost full-time at Woolworth’s back then and your mother was at college. If I went every wet day, I thought, surely I could get the whole thing over with within a couple of weeks and be able to resume my normal life.
By the time I got back to my local I was quite excited by this idea, but on thinking it through more carefully I realised that it wouldn’t do. I could kill him, all right, but when would I dispose of the body? That had to take place during pub time, give or take an hour or two, and if I left work early that day even the dumbest detective would find out if I ever became a suspect. No, it would have to be a weekend job and if it took me until Christmas then so be it. There was no point planning a near-perfect crime and then messing it up through impatience.
I had always taken pride in my work, you see, which is why I was foreman and later went on to be works manager at the factory, and this job of work was no different. Not only did I want to remove Dennis from my life, but I wanted to perform the deed as flawlessly as possible. I didn’t want to look back on it and think, ‘Bloody hell, I was lucky to get away with that,’ but rather to see it as a job well done, something I could take pride in. I know that sounds a bit cold and calculating, but I suppose that’s the way I’ve always been about most things.
I don’t want to bore you, Tommy, (That phrase made me laugh when I read it at two in the morning, my eyes like saucers.) so I won’t go into detail about all the hours that I spent lying behind those bushes that autumn. Very few weekends were completely dry, so I didn’t miss many days, but apart from a nasty fright one Sunday when some kind of hiking group came clumping up the path, I only ever saw that same couple and three or four other people during the dozen or so mornings that I spent there, including some very wet ones.
It was a Sunday morning in early December when all my hours of waiting finally paid off. It had been a wet and windy night, but when I left the house at half past seven, allegedly on one of the long walks that Barbara had got used to me taking and which I always told her about in some detail, the sky was clearing and I was pleased that I wouldn’t be getting another drenching like the day before. It had become quite a routine by then and Dennis having told me the previous Tuesday that his car was once again in tiptop shape, thanks to my donation to its upkeep, made me hopeful that I’d be making it ownerless before Christmas.
I rigged up my trap and settled down behind the bushes at about half past eight and it was about an hour and a half later that I heard a snorting noise further up the path, like someone blowing their nose using a finger instead of a handkerchief. I cupped my ear and made out rapid footfalls, so I pulled in the slack line, wrapped it around my hand, and waited. Whoever was coming was coming fast and when a figure appeared around the bend I had about two seconds to check that it was Dennis and pull the line tight.
He was moving so fast that when his left foot hit the line, yanking it off the smaller rock, he flew straight over the edge and hit the slope half way down before rolling the rest of the way. By the time I’d sprung to my feet and jumped over the stream he’d lifted his head and seen me. It wasn’t till I picked up the rock that he realised what he was in for and just as I was about to bring it down on his head he rolled over and started pushing himself to his feet. I remember clearly the tensed calf muscle of his right leg as he made to thrust himself out of my reach and, fearing that he would get away, I threw the rock from my chest and caught him on the side of the head, almost tearing his right ear off.
He lay there whimpering and clawing at the ground while I retrieved the rock. I put my right foot on the middle of his back to stop him moving and thrust the rock down onto his head, closing my eyes as I released it. I removed my foot from his back and took a pace to the left before opening my eyes and bending over to get my breath back. When I turned round I saw that the back of his head was crushed and there was blood pouring from the gash behind his dangling ear, so I grabbed his ankles and dragged him across the stream, leaving his head and upper body in the water. I looked up and down the path and at the blood flowing from his head into the water and it was then and only then that I had a moment of panic and nausea due to what I had done.
When I’d calmed down there seemed to be less blood coming from his head, so I lifted his ankles and pulled him gently out of the stream and over to the bushes. I knew he was dead, but I bent over to listen for breathing just the same, before laying him on his side with the torn ear facing upwards. I examined the back of his head where his skull was broken and found that the lethal blow had produced a lot less bleeding than the first one. I pushed his body right into the bushes and pulled his feet up towards his head. When I retraced my steps across the stream I realised that my feet were sodden, but my main concern was the patch of blood on the grass where he had fallen and further traces of it along the ground. After washing my hands in the stream I took my water bottle out of my knapsack and poured its contents onto the grass, before refilling it and repeating the process several times, dragging the sole of my boot over the area as I did so. After washing my boots in the stream I clambered up the gully to the path and surveyed the scene below.
I couldn’t see any blood and it was hard to believe that such a brutal incident had just taken place in so peaceful a setting. After walking up and down to check that Dennis’s body wasn’t visible, I set off down the path with a squelching step and hoped to God, or the devil, that no dog walkers would decide to use it that day. I still felt quite agitated, but by concentrating on the path that I would be walking up for the very last time that evening, I was feeling reasonably calm by the time I got back to the car, and even more so after I’d managed to get into the house without Barbara seeing my wet socks. That afternoon I made a point of chatting to your grandmother about our plans for Christmas and other things of interest to her, so when I decided to go to the pub a little earlier than usual she didn’t protest.
I drove down the lane using just my sidelights and after turning round and parking up against the gate by the field I put on a thin brown rain jacket and the damp boots that I’d left in the car boot. I could see a faint light in a second floor window of the farmhouse a few hundred yards down the lane and I prayed that nobody would drive down there in the next hour.
It was a mercifully clear night and with the help of an almost full moon I was able to walk up the path to the gully without using the small torch that I carried. The first thing I did on reaching the body was to take two plastic bags and a roll of insulation tape from my jacket pocket. I pulled first one and then the other plastic bag over his head without looking at it too closely, before securing them around his neck with plenty of tape. Over the last few months I’d seen a lot more of Dennis’s ugly mug than I’d wished to and I didn’t fancy looking at it in its present state. Nor did I want any dried blood in my car boot. I lifted his stiffening body by the hips and it remained bent enough for me to crouch down and hoist it onto my shoulder. He can’t have weighed above nine stone, but it was nothing like carrying a live person, who would move with you as you walked, and it
was a tremendous effort to get him up the gully and onto the path. After a short rest I set off down the path and walked as fast as I could, only stopping to move the body from one shoulder to the other.
About fifty minutes after parking up I’d stuffed the body into the boot and driven off down the lane, barely conscious of the sweat that was pouring off me. It was a huge relief to get back onto the main road, but I still had the last part of my plan to carry out and I told myself to stay calm as in a couple of hours’ time it would all be over.
It took me just over half an hour of very cautious driving to reach the lodge and if there had been a car parked on the lane leading down to it I don’t know what I’d have done, but I knew the chances of that on a Sunday evening in winter were very slim. I managed to get the body onto my shoulder from the boot and carried it the hundred-odd yards along the lodge to the place I had chosen, before dumping it on the ground and returning to fetch the weights, rope, towel, tape, a large plastic sack and a sharp penknife.
I pulled Dennis’s running shoes and socks off, before cutting off the rest of his clothes and putting it all in the sack. I didn’t find any keys and he wasn’t wearing a watch or rings. I then dragged the doubled up body as near to the shore as I dared and passed the rope underneath him. I tied a strong knot and wound the rope once around his waist before unscrewing the ends of the dumbbells and pulling off the weights. There were twelve of them altogether and I threaded each one onto the rope before passing it around the body twice more and tying another knot. I then screwed the ends back onto the dumbbell bars and pushed them under the rope around his waist.
After pulling and shoving the weighted corpse even closer to the edge, I walked off around the curved path with the rope and when I reached the end of it I was satisfied that I’d gone far enough around to be able to drag him a good ten yards from the shore, where I’d been assured that the water was already very deep. I wrapped the end of the rope around my right hand, tensed it, and leant back with my feet firmly planted on the ground. When the body splashed into the water I hauled in the rope as fast as I could in an effort to drag it to the deepest spot before it touched the bottom. When I could move it no more I found the end of the rope and walked along the bank to see how much of it was clear of the water. I reckoned I’d got the body exactly where I wanted it, which was just as well because I couldn’t budge it another inch.
