Stick or Twist

by Diane Janes

  ‘I’ve got a little pen,’ she said, ferreting in the same drawer from which he had earlier extracted the nail scissors, and pulling out a thin, delicate object enamelled in a pattern of dark flowers, with a tassel dangling from the end.

  ‘Excellent.’ He tried to achieve a positive tone. It seemed a good moment to foster a sense of team spirit.

  The sheet of paper presented more difficulty. She offered to tear a page out of her pocket-size diary, but he explained that it wouldn’t be big enough.

  ‘Even though we’ll be pushing the key really slowly and gently, to stop it from flying out of the keyhole, we can’t guarantee that it will fall absolutely straight, so we need to be able to cover as wide an area as possible – and don’t forget, we have to keep part of the paper on this side of the door, so that we can pull it back again.’

  ‘Couldn’t we push the key out, then hook it back under the door, using a metal coat hanger?’

  He hesitated. The idea was not without merit, but he had to allow for not being able to see the key. Suppose they inadvertently pushed it further away?

  ‘We should keep that in reserve,’ he said. ‘Surely we’ve got something that we could use for the key to fall on?’

  ‘Pages from a book?’ She proffered a paperback, swiped up from the table.

  ‘Not big enough.’

  ‘Not one on its own. But push two or three under, lengthways, and you’ve got something as big as a sheet of A4. Pull them in one at a time, and you’ve got your key.’

  She was quick thinking, he had to give her that. He nodded encouragement, while she tore out a page at a time from the latest Peter James thriller, working in elaborate slow motion, for fear of the sound of ripping paper. He took them from her and lined them up carefully, sliding each in turn as far as he dared, out towards the landing. Once four sheets were in place he crouched before the door and began manoeuvring the ladylike little pen, a millimetre at a time into the keyhole. He slowed the operation still further, when he felt the pen encounter the resistance of the key. It was vital that it toppled down onto the paper. If he was over hasty, and the key shot from the lock too fast and bounced out of reach, they were sunk.

  The key fell with a faintly audible sound of metal against paper, the noise muffled by the carpet beneath it. He gripped the torn-out page directly in line with the lock and eased it under the door, almost sobbing with relief when the flat metal head of the key appeared on his side of the door.

  ‘Bloody clever,’ Jude whispered at his side, like him, half-disbelieving of their success. ‘That was absolutely amazing.’

  He decided not to tell her that he had borrowed the idea from an old episode of Doctor Who. Instead he straightened up and turned to ask, ‘Where did you hide my car key?’

  ‘It’s in my coat.’

  ‘Where’s your coat?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘It’s still in the living room. It’s the coat that got dragged off me, when Rob started knocking me around.’

  He hesitated for no more than seconds, before saying, ‘We can’t risk trying to get it. We need to get straight out of the front door and leg it for the road. If we keep walking, we’ll find help eventually. The most important thing is to get away from him.’

  She nodded. ‘Straight down the stairs and out of the door.’

  ‘As quietly as you can. We must get out without him hearing us.’

  ‘Right.’

  He fitted the key with elaborate care and turned it in the lock, before easing the door open. As he stepped out onto the landing, two shots rang out in swift succession.

  FORTY-TWO

  Peter was finding it increasingly difficult to stay awake. There had been another text from Hannah, this time urging him to go home, but he knew that wasn’t really what she wanted, so he had responded by promising to stay. He had moved out of the driver’s seat, where the wheel got in his way, and taken up a marginally more comfortable position, sitting diagonally across the back seats, so that he could stretch out his legs. Even so there was very little room. He was reminded of a conversation they had once had about the lack of space for sexual congress in the rear of a saloon car, which in turn set him back to thinking about their visit to the lay-by in Foxden Woods, in connection with their review of the Thackeray case. It had been the first occasion on which Hannah had propositioned him. That was only a matter of weeks back, but it felt like aeons ago.

  When he woke, it was with a painful jerk to his neck. He struggled upright, momentarily confused by the discomfort and darkness. When he checked his phone, he saw that it was shortly after midnight. He had been in the middle of a dream, in which he had lost his warrant card, and although he knew it must have been a dream, he instinctively felt for the familiar rectangle of plastic in his inner pocket. He realized that he must have been thinking about giving up the job – subconsciously, if nothing else – just before he had fallen asleep. The thought of handing in his warrant card must have been preying on his mind. It was the final thing he would have to do. The symbolic act which signalled the end of his police career. He’d heard ex-coppers say they felt naked without it. The card went everywhere with you. It said what you were, who you were – and then it was gone. Would an endless round of ‘Valerie’, ‘Peggy Sue’ and ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ – or as Ginny had put it, a load of oldies for a load of oldies – mostly tracks from before he had been born – really fill the gap?

  At that moment he remembered that he hadn’t renewed the pay and display ticket on his windscreen, but when he peered forward, he could discern no penalty notice stuck under his wipers. The car park attendant probably didn’t work at night. Bloody disgrace anyway – making people pay to park when they needed to visit the hospital.

  Now that he had been awake for a minute or two, he realized that though poorly lit, the area wasn’t completely dark. Still a rapist’s dream, he thought. Plenty of shadows to lurk in, while waiting for some hapless nurse or lone female visitor to walk across the mostly deserted spaces, as she returned to her car. He decided to move to a space nearer the door, not because he was so far away as to put Hannah at any risk, but to save her from having to walk more than a few feet, when she finally emerged. He had just resumed his position in the driver’s seat and fired the engine into life when he saw her coming out of the main doors. She paused on the threshold, looking lost and alone. He switched on the lights and brought the car up to the door for her, giving her a long, wordless hug once she had climbed inside.

  ‘Straight home?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  FORTY-THREE

  At the sound of the gunshots, Jude grabbed Mark’s arm so hard that he all but cried out.

  ‘He’s shot Stefan!’ Her voice emerged as a weirdly subdued wail, only fractionally louder than the whispers in which they had been communicating before.

  As he prized her talons from his shirt, he was tempted to say that of course he has shot Stefan, because you, you daft cow, gave him the information which enabled him to set a trap for this Stefan – whoever he is, or was – and shoot the bloke as soon as he came in at the kitchen door. However with an armed lunatic downstairs and pinpricks of fear racing all over his body, it was clearly not the moment for recriminations and instead he hissed, ‘Come on,’ then demonstrated the need for urgency by taking off down the stairs at breakneck speed.

  In the gloom of the unlit hall, the front door seemed to be a ridiculously long way away. Fractions of seconds stretched into slow motion, like a nightmare in which imaginary pursuers gained ground as his arms and legs mysteriously failed to function. This aberration of time afforded him the opportunity to think. To realize that Jude, grief-stricken though she may have been over the assumed demise of the unseen Stefan, was right behind him. To ask himself how he ever came to be in this predicament. Had it all begun with that under-insured building burning down? The stupid decision to accept a loan brokered by Chaz? Or did it go back even further? To his determination to break away from his father a
nd the safety of the family business? There was even time for him to wonder whether these surreal and terrifying circumstances were in fact no more than a dream.

  He reached the door at last. Its solidity brought him up short and in a moment of confusion he couldn’t recall how to unfasten it. Jude arrived beside him and said something about a catch. There was always a catch, he thought. Always some bloody catch which tripped a bloke up at the last minute. They were getting in each other’s way now, as each scrambled to get the door open. It jolted ajar, only opening a couple of inches before it was brought up short by the tangle of their feet, as they trod on each other in their attempts to step out of the way. Then he heard the kitchen door unlatch and the next second there was another shot, deafeningly close, and they were tumbling out of the door, with Jude grabbing his arm and all but dragging him around the side of the house, saying, ‘Not that way,’ as he made an abortive dart towards the path up to the field.

  He knew at once that she was right. Rob would expect them to go that way and he was only a pace or two behind. There was no point in heading for the lane, because they didn’t have the car keys anyway. Rob couldn’t shoot at them if he couldn’t see them. He wondered how much that bullet had missed him by. Perhaps it hadn’t missed at all. He remembered hearing that some people didn’t initially realize that they had been shot. He suppressed an instinct to stop and feel for any telltale bleeding, focussing instead on following Jude, who was a little ahead of him, and appeared to know where she was going. Of course she did – this was her childhood holiday home. No – wasn’t that just another lie? She probably didn’t know where she was heading at all. This appeared to be confirmed a moment later when she fell heavily and he almost tripped over her. He swerved out of the way, making no effort to stop and help her. It was every man for himself now.

  A moment later he crashed to the ground himself. So far as he could gauge, he had gone full tilt into some kind of fence. Already breathless from running, the collision knocked the last of the stuffing out of him. He sat on the cold, wet, night-time grass and massaged a bruised patella while taking stock. It was very dark out here at ground level. If he kept still, it was possible that he could remain unseen.

  Jude’s arrival at his side instantly exploded that theory. ‘He’s looking for us.’

  ‘I’ve found a fence,’ he said, making it sound almost as if a fence were some kind of useful implement in a contest between unarmed escapees and a pursuer with a gun.

  She seemed to think for a moment, then said, ‘It runs parallel to the cliff path. There’s a gate in it. You remember? We went through it.’

  He didn’t remember. He didn’t care. ‘Maybe we can hide somewhere – until it gets light?’ He inflected it as a question. She was the expert on the locality after all.

  ‘On the beach,’ she whispered. ‘He won’t think of us going down there.’

  Well who would? He thought. The path down looked bloody dangerous in daylight, so attempting to get down it in complete darkness must rate as suicidally stupid, but then he thought of something else. ‘Didn’t you say that your friend Stefan was bringing a boat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So there will be a boat on the beach? A boat we could use to get away in?’

  ‘Yes … if he went ahead and brought it.’

  ‘Beach it is then.’

  Beach it is then? What was he thinking? Making it sound like some sort of holiday picnic? What shall we do today, children? Oh, it’s such a lovely day, let’s all go to the beach. He hadn’t much fancied that treacherous-looking climb in the daytime, and now he was blithely proposing that they undertake it at night. Beach it is!

  Surmounting the waist-high fence was complicated by the fact that it was topped with barbed wire. Mark swore under his breath as he stabbed his hands and tore his clothes, but he eventually dragged himself clear, only to hear Jude whispering, ‘I’m stuck.’

  ‘Just pull yourself free.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  A big part of him said ‘just leave her’. It was dark. How could he possibly help her, when he couldn’t even see the problem? All the same, he stopped, grabbed her outstretched arms and dragged her towards him. Brute force was often the answer, but in this case it was a mistake. The barbed wire which had been snagged in her jeans now ripped through the fabric and scraped across a good six inches of the flesh of her inner thigh, and though she tried to swallow the involuntary yell generated by this latest assault on her body, the sound she made lasted long enough for Rob to pinpoint their position. The act of freeing her had turned them into sitting ducks and in barely a moment another bullet was whistling overhead, its passage almost simultaneous to the report of the gun.

  ‘Get down,’ she hissed.

  The instruction was entirely unnecessary, because he had already dropped onto all fours.

  ‘How much ammunition does he have?’

  ‘How should I know?’ She sounded half exasperated, half distraught. He could hear her breath coming in choky little gasps. ‘I didn’t even know he had a gun.’

  ‘How good a shot is he?’

  ‘What? I told you – I didn’t know he had a gun. I don’t think he knows anything about guns at all. I think we should try to reason with him.’

  ‘And I think we should keep heading for the beach.’ He was keeping his voice so low that he couldn’t even be sure if she had heard him, but he demonstrated his commitment to the plan by beginning to crawl backwards, ignoring the slimy feel of the damp turf beneath his palms, keeping his face towards the direction from which the bullet had come and his rear towards the edge of the cliffs.

  ‘Rob,’ she called.

  She was going to try it. Madness. Absolute madness. Their best chance was to try and stay hidden, while continuing to move as far away from the man with the gun as possible, but instead this lunatic was intent on giving away their position. He tensed himself, waiting for another shot to come, but instead he heard her call again.

  ‘Rob …’

  No answer.

  ‘Rob. Listen to me. There’s nothing to be gained from shooting me – or him. Let’s talk this out. The three of us.’

  Still no reply.

  ‘Rob, please. We’ve all messed up here. But if we work together we can sort it out – cover it all up. Two more dead bodies isn’t going to help you.’

  Mark began to move again, continuing to work his way backwards as fast as he dared, figuring that her voice would mask whatever sound his own stealthy movements were making. She doesn’t get it, he thought. Alive we’re two witnesses to the murder of this Stefan character. Dead, we’re two bodies who he might be able to use to stage some scenario in which he doesn’t appear to figure at all. He was tempted to shout out to her, but what was the point of giving away his position too, when she was evidently intent on orchestrating her own destruction?

  Suddenly he heard Rob’s voice, unnervingly near at hand. He had evidently been homing in on Jude’s every utterance. ‘All right then. Stand up so that I can see you. I need to see that there aren’t going to be any tricks.’

  ‘First you have to throw the gun away,’ she called out. ‘So that we can be sure you aren’t going to shoot us.’

  There was a pause. Mark stayed where he was, still on his hands and knees, not daring to move a muscle as he peered into the darkness. The only sound now was the whisper of the sea. Little frothy wavelets, rolling up the gentle slope of the beach, dozens of feet below.

  Rob’s voice came again. ‘I’m throwing it away now.’ A second later came the very faint thud of a heavy object, hitting the turf. ‘It’s gone.’

  Jude’s voice came again. ‘OK. I’m standing up now. Mark, you should stand up too.’

  He wanted to shout to her but it was too late. He could not see her, but he knew that from the landward side, she would be silhouetted against the paler light of the sky. He did not see her fall, but he heard the single gunshot, and the lack of any cry or protest seemed an ominous confirmation of
what he was sure he knew.

  It was a stone, you stupid idiot, he sobbed, inside his head. He threw a stone.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Peter had been bracing himself for Hannah to be in pieces, but she was calm and dry-eyed by the time they let themselves into the house.

  ‘I’ve already cried so many tears for Clare that I think the well’s run dry.’ She smiled at him ruefully. Big tired eyes, surrounded by a smudgy combination of mascara and lack of sleep, looking out over a mug bearing the incongruous legend If it feels good …

  He had offered to make tea and a snack as soon as they got back to the house, but it had turned into a joint effort, with him putting the kettle on, while she made toast. Comforting staples, carried into her sitting room, where the living flame gas fire did its best to warm the occupants, swathing everything in a pale glow of pseudo firelight, marginally enhanced by an energy-saving bulb in the lamp.

  As they sat next to one another on the sofa, comfortably close, sipping tea, Peter struggled to know what he ought to say. Maybe nothing. Hannah just wanted him there and he knew she was sick of platitudes – people trying to put a positive gloss on something as shitty as your thirty-five-year-old sister dying of cancer. It was not the moment for clumsy attempts at verbal consolation.

  It was Hannah who broke the silence. ‘It makes you think … something like this. At first I used to think how awful it was that Clare would leave behind two little kids, but in these last few days I’ve been thinking the opposite.’ She paused, but when Peter made no attempt to respond, she continued. ‘At least she’s left a legacy. Two lovely children. I mean, that’s the best kind of legacy, isn’t it? I’ve always thought that I would have kids, but being a copper kind of gets in the way.’ Another longish pause. ‘I’m thirty-one. Thirty-two next month.’