Stick or Twist

by Diane Janes

  ‘You’re still grieving for your sister,’ Peter said gently. ‘This might not be the best time to make any big decisions about your own future.’

  ‘It seems like an ideal time. As one life ends, a new one begins.’

  The statement hung in the air for a moment before he put his mug on the table and slid his arm around her. ‘Two o’clock in the morning isn’t the best time to discuss something as big as this. Come on, McMahon. Let’s turn in.’

  When they got to the bedroom, he could see that Hannah was almost too tired to undress, and she fell asleep within minutes of her head hitting the pillow. He was tired too, but for once sleep eluded him. Instead of achieving pleasant oblivion, thoughts pinged to and fro across his brain like an electronic table tennis match. After about forty-five minutes, he became convinced that he wasn’t going to get to sleep, so being careful not to disturb Hannah, he inched the duvet sideways and sat up, preparatory to swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

  Hannah stirred beside him. ‘Don’t be scared,’ she said. ‘I’m not trying to trap you. You can say no. Or you can say yes, but not be involved.’

  ‘I’m not scared. I’m not even thinking about that. I’m going to get a glass of water.’

  ‘You’re a lousy liar, Peter.’

  He stood up and walked across to the tiny en-suite, where he was obliged to make good his statement by filling a glass with water and sipping it. He only remembered too late, as the stale, tepid liquid filled his mouth, that he should have run the tap first. He hadn’t intended to get back into bed, but knowing that she was awake, probably watching him, it somehow became a point of honour not to acknowledge that unaccustomed insomnia had almost driven him back to the sitting room.

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘Yes.’ He faked a yawn, as he climbed reluctantly back under the duvet.

  ‘You won’t leave right away, will you? You’ll stay until after the funeral.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m in a hurry to go?’

  ‘You only moved in to keep me company, right? While things were tough.’

  ‘Do you want me to leave?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then I’ll stay – at least until after the funeral.’

  He felt her relaxing back into sleep, her breathing becoming regular and even. Probably dreaming about watching him kicking a football about with a toddler in an Arsenal strip. Hold on – where the heck had that come from? (And anyway, it would be an Ipswich strip, if it was her dream.) He tried to clear his mind, but sleep remained elusive. He tried to focus his thoughts elsewhere but everything returned to Hannah. Hannah sitting on top of her desk as they worked their way through the Thackeray review, swinging one foot back and forth, as she said, ‘It has always surprised me that the cupboard was empty, ready and waiting for her. Who has an empty cupboard in their house? My cupboards are all stuffed to capacity. Open any of them and something is liable to fall out on to you.’

  It was true, he reflected, that Hannah was a terrible hoarder – but it was also true that there was something off-key about that kidnap situation. Hannah again: ‘Compared with a lot of victims, she actually got off quite lightly. Think of all the people we’ve seen, with their faces black and blue, broken ribs. He hardly touched her face, didn’t actually break any bones.’

  What he had taken as an almost flippant observation: ‘It’s almost as if he let her go on purpose … The way he left the van door open, then let her get away into the woods …’ abruptly took on the mantle of a shrewd observation.

  There were a dozen pieces of the puzzle which taken in isolation could have meant very little: the oddly controlled violence, the oft-made observation that the assailant could have done just as well by forcing his way into the house one night, making Jude Thackeray give him her pin numbers and the combination to the safe, while wearing a Mickey Mouse mask, so that she never got to see his face. There was the apparent carelessness of the attacker in being caught on CCTV at the garage, which in reality could have been just another facet of the plan, providing some hard evidence of his existence which ensured that Jude’s story was believed, while giving the police nothing to go on regarding his actual appearance.

  That old friend of Nanna Mina’s with the odd-sounding name – Miss Salt – hadn’t she remarked that Jude had entertained ambitions to be an actress? Wasn’t that in line with the exact words Hannah had used to describe the episode in the woods, where Jude had foiled her captor and escaped certain death? ‘The last act in the play …’

  At the time her words had almost annoyed him with their jokey undertone, but lying beside his colleague several weeks later, with a hint of dawn creeping into the bedroom, it finally came to him that everything added up to a situation which had been carefully stage-managed.

  FORTY-FIVE

  In spite of the sense that his limbs were disintegrating beneath him with fear, Mark forced himself to think. It was obvious that having taken out Jude, Rob would come looking for him next and would start by walking towards the place where he had seen Jude go down. That would entail negotiating the barbed-wire fence, and would bring him to a point only a few yards away from where Mark was crouching now. His best hope therefore, was to put some more distance between himself and Jude. It was no use just backing up towards the cliff edge until he fell over it. He needed to find the start of the path. He tried to remember how far away it was and what it would look like in the dark. He remembered that there had been a couple of raised bumps in the ground, where the path began. Surely they ought to stand out, even in the relative darkness?

  He knew that Rob must be coming in his direction, but he couldn’t hear any sound and this encouraged him to begin moving again, starting by edging crabwise and then turning a half circle and crawling directly towards the sound of the sea. He felt even more vulnerable, now that he had his back to his pursuer. You could stride across the grass much faster than you could crawl, which meant that Rob could be right on top of him in no time, but he dared not stand up and make a run for it, lest he provide a target against the sky, as Jude had done.

  He tried to put all thoughts of Jude from his mind. The knowledge that Rob had almost certainly killed the unknown, unseen Stefan, had been terrifying in its implied consequences for his own safety, but the idea of Jude lying somewhere nearby, blood pooling around her, the life gone from her body, made him feel physically sick. He had held the woman, made love to her, and whatever scheme she might have been hatching against him, the reality of her death was too awful to contemplate. He tried to push away the thought that his own death must be near. The situation seemed hopeless. Crawling low to the ground, it was impossible to make out anything more than a couple of feet ahead, so what possible hope could there be of finding the path down to the beach, or indeed of finding his way anywhere in particular?

  Two more shots, one straight after another, sounded from a few yards behind him. Jude had not been killed by the original shot then? But that evil, ruthless swine had found her and finished her off, at close range – and it was his turn next. In his head, he heard the crowing, distorted voices of a couple of Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz, chorusing ‘She’s really most sincerely dead.’ Sick thoughts, crazy thoughts. He had never liked those bloody Munchkins.

  Rob, standing six feet tall and knowing roughly where to look, would have the perfect vantage point from which to hunt him down and pick him off. Oh God, how had he ever ended up in this situation? Even when things went bad, even when Chaz had been threatening him, couldn’t he have turned to his family, or even gone to the police? The scheme to resolve all his problems by marrying a bit of money seemed so ridiculous now. A big-league con, attempted by a lower league player. A ridiculous gamble. He had always been attracted by a long odds bet. Now his supposed lifeline was dead, one of her accomplices was dead and pretty soon, he would be dead too.

  Was it all his fault? If he hadn’t embarked on this last, wild throw of the dice, maybe Jude would still be alive? But no, he t
hought. It was not entirely his fault. She had targeted him too. He could reasonably consider himself a victim – of her, of the man who had posed as her brother, of smooth-talking Chaz and all his bloody contacts and schemes … and finally of sheer bad luck. The cards had been dealt and he had picked up an especially bad hand.

  He sensed his danger before his adversary made a sound, jerked his head to look over his shoulder and became aware of the dark figure, almost on top of him. He lashed out with his right arm, but met only thin air, doing marginally better when the kick he aimed as he rolled onto his back made contact with something solid. It was only a glancing blow, insufficient to do any real damage, but it was enough to disrupt the dark shape’s progress, and forced him to skip back a step.

  Mark had never been a fighter, but the instinct for self-preservation was strong. He hurled himself forward at the figure’s legs, grappling him to the ground, alternately hitting out and grabbing for a hold. It was too much to hope that Rob would drop the gun, but if he could work his way up to find the hand that held it, wrestle for possession … when hope is a slender thread, you grasp onto it as best you can. He thought it unlikely that Rob would risk shooting wildly in the dark, with his target in such close proximity that he was quite likely to hit himself, and this hunch was swiftly proved correct, because instead of employing the weapon for its usual purpose, Rob brought it down between Mark’s shoulder blades with sufficient force that he groaned. A second blow found the back of his head with such a sickening crack that Mark wondered whether his skull had been fractured.

  The moments which followed were confused. Mark’s head was awash with pain and though he battled to stay on top of his opponent, he was conscious of losing the struggle. Rob wrestled him onto his back, then attempted to clamber astride his chest, while Mark flailed against him, feeling as if he was pitting foam rubber limbs against iron girders. He attempted to use his legs, but the effect was something akin to a toddler, drumming his heels on the carpet in a tantrum. Then the carpet abruptly gave way. The earth crumbled and his legs were hanging out over the void. In the same instant Rob, superior position finally achieved, straightened up to take aim and slid backwards with a yell of alarm which seemed to echo on and on, drowning out the sound of falling flesh, bone, turf and earth.

  The lingering scream was replaced by the insistent whisper of the sea. Rob was gone. The gun was gone. Mark lay still for the length of time it took for another three or four small waves to break on the sand, after which he pressed his hands gently down onto the turf and inched his legs shoreward. He managed to haul his knees and lower legs clear of the void and levered himself into a sitting position, flexing his legs and drawing up his knees in readiness to slide backwards again, when a second sound mingled with that of the waves. It was the whispered trickle of earth and small stones, followed by a chink as one pebble bounced off another, then the ground gave way again and Mark rode with it, leaning back like a child on a slide in a public park.

  FORTY-SIX

  Cats are creatures of habit. The cottage which lay on the far perimeter of Jigsaw’s nightly patrol had been shut up and deserted for most of the summer, but he had continued to visit it regularly, much as he returned to other successful scavenging and hunting grounds. In previous seasons, the summer months had been marked by the regular arrival of various humans who had lived in the cottage for a while. None of them stayed very long and all of them disappeared as mysteriously as they had come, but a not inconsiderable number of them had been pleased to see a feline visitor and some of them had been only too willing to share scraps from their suppers, tasty bits of meat and fish, far superior in quality to that which was provided at home.

  Being an extremely sensible, experienced patroller, Jigsaw always approached with caution – even when the place appeared to be deserted. He checked for scents, taking care to leave some of his own, just in case any other cat had the temerity to come out here, then kept his eyes and ears open, as he drew closer to the building. Tonight he could see that there were some lights shining inside the place, which nearly always meant humans, though not necessarily the right kind of welcome: strange people were like strange dogs – unpredictable.

  There were no human noises coming from the place. (This was also unusual. Humans were noisy creatures, by and large.) Perhaps there was no one around after all. Jigsaw made a leisurely circuit of the house, investigating an outside drain and pausing to rub his scent glands against a doorpost. No sign of anyone sitting outside, but that was no surprise. It was dark and damp after all. However when he looked in through the big windows, he could not discern anyone in the main downstairs room either.

  As he reached the open door at the other side of the house, he heard a couple of loud bangs. Being a country cat, he was familiar with distant gunshots, though he knew that they seldom came at night. The open front door interested him far more than the bangs. He had already heard some similar noises earlier on and dismissed them as not of significance from a hunting cat’s point of view. The open door represented far more interesting possibilities. It was more often the big glass door at the other side of the building which was left open, but one entrance was as good as another to Jigsaw, who strolled confidently into the hall and entered the kitchen.

  This was usually the point where one of the house’s occupants reacted with either pleasurable surprise (cue friendly eye contact, and a weave around the ankles) or some degree of hostility (cue swift exit, via the same route by which you came in) but the only human occupant of the kitchen was slumped awkwardly against the kitchen door, with his legs stretched out in front of him, and his head slumped forward. Jigsaw had never seen, or smelled, a person like this before and he slowed his approach, sniffing suspiciously, keeping his ears pricked for any sound and readying himself for a speedy retreat, should this prove necessary.

  Dark liquid had soaked the man’s shirt and pooled onto the floor, which was sticky beneath Jigsaw’s paws. The interesting smell seemed to be intimately connected with the liquid, which reminded him of a combination of fresh road kill and some raw liver which he had once made off with, after someone had left it unguarded on a kitchen worktop. He was just leaning forward for an exploratory taste, when his sensitive ears picked up a lingering scream of distress in the distance. Jigsaw was well used to the eerie night-time sounds produced by the local fox and owl population, the cries of nocturnal hunter and hunted leaving him generally unmoved, but there was something in the quality of this particular scream, which made him decide at once that it was time to leave.

  Turning away from the recumbent figure on the kitchen floor, the cat headed back towards the front door, knowing that once outside there were multiple escape routes. It was not an undignified retreat, but he moved in a swift, loping walk, which could convert in a heartbeat to a dash for safety, should this become necessary. As he headed back down the hall and across the slate step which led into the garden, his four paws left a pattern of neat, carmine prints in his wake.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Unlike Alice’s legendary fall down the rabbit hole, Mark Medlicott’s fall down the Cornish cliffs was a short-lived affair, ending almost before it had begun, as the right side of his body collided with a pinnacle of something solid, which brought him up short before he even had time to frame a scream.

  He held his breath, waiting for the second, inevitable, fatal slide to begin. Seconds ticked by, possibly minutes, but nothing happened. He was conscious of the ends of his fingers, pressing painfully into the earth and stone, crushing his nails in an attempt to dig into non-existent handholds. Eventually he dared to breathe again: a series of cautious inhalations while he took stock of his position as best he could, all the time trying to remain absolutely immobile. His right side and most of his weight had come to rest against a bank of earth, studded with stones, which formed an apparently solid barrier from the level of his upper thigh to at least his shoulder. In the meantime his left leg was fully extended down a sloping bed of earth, which for all he
knew, formed an unbroken route to the beach and might be as dangerously unstable as the ground which had given way beneath him at the cliff edge. It was too dark to make any kind of visual assessment, though his ears told him that the water’s edge was much closer than it had been a few moments before.

  Moving his head by inches, he tried to see how far he had fallen from the top, but the cliff at his back was an impenetrable wall of darkness, and he was afraid to incline his head too much, lest it even slightly alter his balance. He decided that it was out of the question to attempt any improvement to his position until he could see what he was doing, not least because his last efforts had precipitated a landslide and all but killed him.

  The uneasy thought crossed his mind, that maybe, in spite of that terrible, lingering cry, Rob had not made it to the bottom either, but was perhaps sharing his ledge in the darkness, gun at the ready and murder in his heart. Life had lately descended so far into the surreal, that anything seemed possible. Then he heard an alien sound, coming from somewhere far below him. A hideous animal moan which told him that though Rob had fallen much further, perhaps even all the way down to the shingle beach, like Mark, he had – at least for now – survived the experience.

  He tried to blot out the sounds by focussing on his own situation. He was not apparently injured – or at least no more than badly bruised. No tell-tale rattle of falling stones or whisper of crumbling earth warned of imminent instability. If he could manage to keep absolutely still until the sun came up, he might be able to see a way up – or down – the cliffs. He had no idea what time it was, but the summer nights were short.

  What if there wasn’t a way up or down? Suppose he needed someone with ropes, or even a rescue helicopter? Was anyone likely to pass by and spot him clinging there? Fishing boats perhaps? A farmer? Wasn’t there something called the South West Coastal Path? This was the south west coast, wasn’t it? Friendly hikers to whom he could yell were probably tramping past from dawn to dusk.