Lost Summer

by Stuart Harrison

  Adam got to his feet and gingerly tested his weight on his knee. It hurt, but not badly. Logic told him that if his suspicions were right, he would find what he was looking for further down the hill, so he began his search fifty feet beyond the place where the wreck had come to rest. Using the scarred tree as a reference he covered the ground in a methodical pattern, working sixty or so feet on either side, ranging back and forth in lines ten feet apart.

  The slope was gentler than up by the road but working by torchlight didn’t make his task any easier. Several times something caught his eye but when he got down on his knees to check there was nothing there. After almost an hour he was far enough down the hill that he couldn’t see where he’d started. He rubbed his numbed hands together and thrust them inside his coat to get warm. As the circulation returned it felt like small blades jabbing the tips of his fingers. Countless snowdrifts punctuated the darkness. Any one of them, he thought, could hide what he was looking for.

  He heard a movement close by, the sound of something skittering down the slope, but when he shone the torch he couldn’t see anything. Once again he resumed his pattern, slowly moving back and forth in straight lines sweeping the beam before him in a narrow arc, looking for some disturbance, something out of place.

  And then finally he found it.

  Beneath a holly bush, where a patch of ground was partly concealed, the beam fell on disturbed earth. A rudimentary attempt had been made at concealment and there were signs of animal activity. For some time, maybe a minute or more, he couldn’t move. Though this was what he’d expected to find, he supposed part of him had hoped that in the end he was somehow wrong. He was overcome by a sense of hopelessness. If he had missed this, and it had been there right before his eyes from the beginning, then what else had he missed?

  He sat down heavily on the cold ground.

  He wasn’t sure how long it was before he became aware that he was no longer alone. Though he hadn’t heard anyone approach he felt a presence nearby and when he turned around he saw a figure standing in the trees silently watching him, holding a shotgun loosely in one hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Angela stopped to catch her breath at the fence at the end of the lane. She was puzzled that Mary was heading away from the town. Beyond the fence a set of tracks led out across the snow-covered field until they were lost in the darkness. She was tempted to go back and phone for help but the snow was getting heavier and if she lost Mary now she knew the chances of finding her in open country on a night like this were remote. Mary would surely end up freezing to death.

  ‘MARY,’ she yelled, her voice sounding muffled. The beam of her torch penetrated no more than thirty or forty feet into the darkness and suddenly seemed laughably ineffective. She called out again but she knew it was hopeless. Mary’s tracks were already softening as fresh snow began to cover them though it was still apparent that she was barefoot. She had come out shoeless and wearing nothing more than a cotton nightdress.

  With a backward glance to the house where the lights of the windows beckoned invitingly, Angela climbed the fence and began to run across the field, stumbling as she lost her footing on the uneven ground and occasionally falling headlong. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her clothes were wet but she barely noticed. Snow filled the air, turning a familiar landscape into something alien, disorienting her so that when she reached a stone wall she wasn’t sure where she was. Mary’s tracks led down the hill on the other side. Nearby an oak and two elms grew in a corner of the field and Angela suddenly thought that she must be heading towards the river where it skirted the bottom end. She guessed then that Mary was going back to the cottages.

  She began to run faster.

  Mary’s tracks skirted the edge of Castleton Wood and then veered across the old meadow. Angela slowed to a walk. Her heart was pounding both from exertion and a rapidly growing sense of unease. A light flickered in the darkness from the direction of the cottages. It bobbed up and down and then abruptly vanished. Somebody with a torch. Was it Mary, Angela wondered? But she was sure Mary didn’t have a torch. So who else would be out there on a night like this?

  She switched off her own torch and started across the meadow. It was pitch black and she had to walk but by the time she drew close to the last cottage her eyesight had adjusted enough that she could make out Mary’s tracks again. What worried her was the other set that had appeared. She stopped, her heart leaping in her chest, and then instinctively she moved close to the cover of the wall.

  After a few seconds a dim glow appeared ahead of her coming from inside the end cottage. She hurried to the first window and looked inside. A faint light receded as somebody turned the corner at the top of the stairs. She ran around the back and when she reached the door it was half open, the kitchen inside utterly dark and silent. Angela hesitated. She was certain that Mary was in the house, but somebody else was in there too. She tightened her grip on the torch and stepped over the threshold.

  The smell hit her at once. The same damp and cloying air of decay that she had noticed the night before, only now there was something doubly oppressive about it. She moved as quickly as she dared, feeling her way along the wall. When she reached the door to the passage she heard a creak from the floor above. She went quickly to the foot of the stairs. The light up there was very faint. She pictured the landing beyond the corner and at the end of it the door to the room where they had found Mary. Her heart was pounding hard now, pumping adrenalin through her system.

  Don’t think, Angela told herself. Just do it. She started up the stairs, feeling her way along the banisters, her eyes glued ahead. A step creaked slightly beneath her weight and she stopped dead, hardly daring to breathe.

  Abruptly the light at the top of the stairs went out.

  And then she heard something. A low moan. A terrified childlike sound that slowly grew in pitch and she knew she had to do something. She started to run and when she reached the corner she sensed rather than saw a shape in front of her and instinctively she raised her arm to protect herself. Something hit her and the force of the blow knocked her off balance.

  In the brief instant before she fell backwards she screamed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  ‘What’s the gun for?’ Adam asked.

  David came closer. He looked terrible but worse than the way he looked was the mad light in his eyes. He was holding the gun loosely with the barrel pointing towards the ground. Adam wondered how far he would get if he made a lunge for it. Not too far, he thought.

  ‘You got what you came for then, Adam.’

  ‘What I came for?’

  David stopped a few feet away. ‘You know where I was last night?’ His tone was almost conversational, though it didn’t match the way he looked.

  Suddenly Adam had a premonition of what the answer might be and David almost smiled.

  ‘I went to the house. My house. You know what I saw?’

  Adam thought again about making a lunge for the gun, but as if David knew what he was thinking he changed his grip and held it with both hands across his body.

  ‘I was looking through the study window,’ David said, and now there wasn’t a shred of humour in his eyes. ‘How was it? Was it everything you’d dreamed of? Don’t be bashful, Adam. I want to know. Did it feel good when you fucked her?’

  ‘Listen, you’ve got all this wrong.’ Adam started to get to his feet.

  He barely saw the butt of the gun swing towards him. It smashed against his cheek and sent him sprawling to the ground, the mingling metallic taste of blood and snow filling his mouth. For a few seconds he was dazed. Pinpricks of light floated through his vision. He got to his knees, breathing hard, bent over on all fours. His head was spinning and he wanted to throw up. Fuck, he was going to die. He spat blood and a jagged fragment of tooth and when he probed the back of his mouth with his tongue he felt a splintered edge.

  He kept his eye on David as he hauled himself to his feet, wary of being hit again. His kn
ee hurt like a bastard. He must have fallen on it badly and it hurt even more when he put weight on it, but if he was going to have any chance at all of surviving the next few minutes he needed to be on his feet. The gun was pointing at him now.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come back, Adam.’

  ‘Bit late for that isn’t it,’ he said thickly.

  ‘None of this would have happened.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to shoot me, is that it? Do the fucking job properly this time?’

  David’s glance flicked to his knee. Some shadow crossed his eyes.

  ‘How’re you going to explain that?’ Adam said. He was talking fast, slightly manically, he thought. He knew he sounded scared, which was fine because he was. ‘You’ll go to prison, David. They’ll lock you up and throw the bloody key away. What about Angela? What about Kate?’

  There was a glimmer of response when he mentioned Kate.

  ‘Think about it,’ he went on, seizing the advantage. ‘Think how she’ll feel. Kids at school whispering behind her back. Making fun of her. Parents who won’t want their children to hang out with her. Is that what you want? Think about what it’ll be like for her when everybody knows her dad is a murderer.’

  David snorted. ‘What the fuck do you care? Ever since you got here you’ve been trying to prove I killed those lads.’

  ‘I know. But I was wrong.’

  That took David by surprise. The gun dropped an inch or two, and then it came up again.

  ‘What’s the problem, Adam? Wasn’t it as good as you thought it would be, is that it?’

  ‘Listen, this isn’t about Angela.’

  ‘Bullshit. You’ve wanted her since the day you came back. I knew it the second I saw you. That’s what this has all been about for you. You wanted her to think I killed those lads so you could get to her.’

  Was that true? Yes. Partly. ‘She didn’t believe it though. Even now I don’t think she believes it.’

  ‘You’re a fucking liar.’

  But he wasn’t lying. ‘Alright, I’m not denying that I thought you killed them, or that I wanted Angela to think so too. I wanted her to see what kind of person she was really married to. But she didn’t believe me. Maybe just for awhile she had her doubts, but you know why? It wasn’t because of me, anything I said. Not entirely anyway. It was you. You did it yourself. The way you’ve been, the drinking. You think she didn’t know something was eating away at you? You should have told her, David. You should have talked to her. That’s why we’re here now. And last night? She didn’t really want me. She never has. She just needed somebody to turn to and I was there.’

  For the first time uncertainty appeared in David’s eyes. And it was all true, Adam thought heavily. He’d known it last night. He’d felt it even as he and Angela had made love. He’d felt the distance between them, and he’d known then that he couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t make her feel about him the way she did about David. And David was at least partly right. This had been about her in a way. Only not the way David thought.

  He looked at the gun that was still pointing at him, bitterness souring his throat. ‘Go ahead. Pull the trigger. You could always say it was an accident. Say you thought I was a fucking deer.’

  There was a reaction. An involuntary flinch. But Adam couldn’t decipher it. Suddenly he wanted to know the answer to the question that had always been there in the back of his mind. Nothing else mattered. Whatever happened now he wanted to hear the truth.

  ‘So, come on, David. You can tell me now, there’s nobody here but us. Did you mean to do it? Did you know what you were doing?’

  He was surprised at the bile in his voice, at the rush of venom. It erupted out of him.

  ‘What’s the problem? It’s a fucking simple enough question! I don’t think you planned it, did you? I never thought that. Well, hardly ever anyway. I’ve always thought it was more likely a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing. You turned around and you saw something and you pointed the gun because you were bored and cold, and then what happened? Did you stop and think? Did you remember how you shouldn’t ever aim at anything unless you’re certain of what it is? That stuff must have gone through your head. Then what? It moved didn’t it? But it wasn’t a fucking deer! I fucking moved! It was me!’

  Jesus. Adam gulped to catch his breath. His chest was heaving and his heart was thudding like a hammer against his chest. He looked away, turned his eyes to the sky. What a joke! His vision was blurred. There were tears in his eyes for fuck’s sake!

  When he looked back at David he had dropped the barrel of the gun so it pointed at the ground again. He supposed he should be relieved.

  ‘You know what really got to me? When I was lying in that hospital and you and Angela came to visit, I knew. The second I saw the two of you together I knew what was going to happen. I mean, I wasn’t even surprised. Did you think I hadn’t noticed the way it was with you two before that? And you know what the joke is really? Before I woke up in that hospital. I didn’t fucking mind. Not that much. Because it was practically over between Angela and me anyway. We were never going anywhere. I knew that.’

  Adam laughed grimly. How come the hardest truths to reveal are always the ones we know about ourselves? The way he had known this all along.

  ‘So, you see, you just had to talk to me, you fuck! You didn’t need to blow my leg off! You didn’t need to sneak around behind my back. None of it was necessary.’

  And that was what had really hurt. The thing that had eaten into him like acid. It had blighted his soul. The absolute truth was that he really had known that he and Angela weren’t going to make the distance. If David had come to him and said, ‘Look, I can’t help the way I feel and I think she feels the same way’, then it really would have been okay. But David had betrayed him. Betrayed his fucking loyalty, their friendship. Which he had already proved for fuck’s sake because he hadn’t told anyone what he knew about Meg’s disappearance. He had shown that he was as good as Nick.

  But that hadn’t mattered. When push came to shove, David had done something he never would have done to Nick. It was never really about Angela, it was never really even about Meg. It was about a single act of disloyalty, of fucking betrayal.

  And he saw from David’s expression that he knew it.

  They stared at one another while the snow settled on their heads. It was cold and hushed.

  ‘I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was a deer,’ David said at last.

  Adam wanted to believe him. Even now he wanted to, but he saw a different truth in David’s eyes. The truth was he didn’t know himself. He probably never had.

  But it didn’t matter. He saw that now. It couldn’t be undone now.

  What mattered was the shallow grave behind him.

  If there had been any doubts in Adam’s mind they were dispelled when David saw what was under the holly bush. At first he was puzzled and then as he realized what he was looking at his expression turned to disbelief.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Her name is Jane Hanson.’ The name registered. ‘You knew her?’

  David tore his eyes from the grave. ‘I met her a few times.’

  ‘She asked you about the planning committee?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You knew she and her friends were trying to prove that you had bribed some of the councillors for their votes?’

  ‘Of course I knew.’

  ‘Which is why you attacked the camp? My guess is you were trying to frighten them away.’

  Guilt and shame jostled briefly with defiance in David’s eyes. ‘It got out of hand. Some of the men had been drinking.’

  ‘And Jane wasn’t there anyway?’

  ‘No, it turned out she’d already left. At least that’s what I thought.’

  ‘You were right,’ Adam said. ‘But she went to Durham, not back to London.’ It was clear David didn’t understand the reference to Durham.

  ‘Tell me what happened on the night of the accide
nt,’ Adam said. ‘I know somebody phoned you from the lodge. You went up there didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ David admitted. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Your number was on the phone account. I got it from the lodge.’ David didn’t know what he was talking about, which meant, Adam thought, it couldn’t have been David who’d tried to kill him that night at the lodge. It must have been Nick. ‘Who phoned you?’

  ‘The lad. Ben. He said they had some information which would put an end to the development and they wanted to talk to me.’

  Adam had puzzled over this part. If Jane and Ben had believed David was the person who was blackmailing Hunt, why not just go to the police once they had the evidence? Why talk to David at all? But he thought he knew the answer. They had wanted to persuade David that the game was up without involving the police, since it would have been Hunt’s wife and their daughter who would have become the real victims had the whole story come out.

  ‘But by the time I got there,’ David went on, ‘they had already left.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘About nine. I went to the office before I drove up to the lodge. I needed time to think.’

  ‘So, you didn’t see them at all?’

  David hesitated, and his eyes darkened with the haunted dreams he had tried to drink into submission.

  ‘You found the car, didn’t you?’ Adam guessed. ‘After the accident?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a hint of relief in David’s voice at finally admitting something he had kept secret since that night. ‘On the way back from the lodge. They were all dead. There was nothing I could do. But I didn’t know about this.’ He gestured to the grave.