If It Bleeds

by Bernie Crosthwaite

“You can turn off the tap now. It’s finished. It’ll take a little while to dry.” I began washing my hands.

  He unbent his long thin frame and stretched extravagantly.

  “That was cool. Thanks, Jude.”

  I smiled thinly, anxious to get out of the darkroom and see Harrison on his way, but he showed no sign of going. He slumped back on the stool, then seeing something on the floor, he folded himself in half and picked it up. A short strip of negatives. It must have fallen out of the grid during an earlier session.

  He held the strip up to the light. “Hey, here’s that picture you were banging on about.”

  “The river?” I snatched it from him and squinted at it. It was the fourth frame along. I could see the For Sale sign leaning over at a crazy angle.

  Harrison reached out to take it back.

  I jerked away from him, and in a blind reflex, grabbed his lighter and flicked it on. The negative strip burned up in one brief bright conflagration. I dropped the melting mess in the bin. Harrison had wanted this negative for some reason. There was no way he was going to get it now.

  He stared at me with blank astonishment. “What did you do that for?”

  “I — I — didn’t need it anymore.”

  He shrugged. “I just thought… these chemicals… naked flames and all that.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m an expert. I know what I’m doing.” My voice sounded shrill and unlike itself. “We’re finished here, Harrison. Let’s go.”

  “I can tidy up —”

  “No!” I brought my pitch down a key or two. “I’ll do it tomorrow. Daniel will be wondering what’s happened to us.”

  “You’ll give him the picture, won’t you?”

  “Yeah… yeah.”

  I nearly pushed him out of the basement and up the stairs.

  Through the open living room door I could see that Daniel was still on the sofa, nearly asleep.

  “Harrison’s just going,” I called. I hurried down the hall.

  “Bye, mate,” said Harrison, walking with infuriating slowness towards the front door, which I was holding open impatiently.

  “See you,” Daniel called faintly. “Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem. Get back in the zone soon, won’t you, mate? No more skiving.”

  I shut the door on Harrison’s pleasantries and leaned back against it.

  Daniel staggered from the living room. “I’m bushed. I’m off to bed now.”

  My heart went out to him. I couldn’t help it. He looked tired and thin, and his face, creased with grief and anxiety, was much older than its years. I could let him go to his rest and suffer a sleepless night myself, or I could tackle him now and get it over with. He might never speak to me again, of course, but that was a risk I had to take.

  “Before you go to bed, I need to ask you something.”

  “What is it?” he said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Come and sit down.”

  I guided him back into the living room where all the familiar objects seemed slightly distorted and too brightly coloured. I told myself it was the effect of working too long under the ruby light, then I told myself that was stupid. I knew what it was. It was fear.

  “Will this take long?” Daniel dropped on to the sofa while I took the chair opposite. “Is it about Lara?” He must have seen the look on my face. “Have you found out anything?”

  “I’ve found out lots of things, Daniel. But I’ll tell you about those some other time.”

  “What, then?” He sat up eagerly. “You know who killed her?”

  “No. If I knew anything for certain I’d have gone straight to the police.”

  “But you think you know?”

  I paused. “We’re getting off the point here.”

  “What is the point? Come on, Mum, spit it out.”

  “I need to go back… to when Lara was alive, to when you first met.”

  “That’s easy enough. It was the first time she came to the life-drawing class, last year, around Easter. Mr Keele had booked some other model but she couldn’t come that night.”

  “And Lara became the regular model for the group?”

  “We all wanted her to stay. So did Mr Keele. We had a few others, but mostly it was Lara. She was special, in all sorts of ways.” His voice vibrated with emotion. “You know all this.”

  “The fact is I’m a bad mum with the memory of a goldfish. Just remind me when you started going out?”

  “Not till November,” he said patiently.

  “And how did it feel… after you started going out with Lara… when she took all her clothes off to pose in front of the other people in the class, especially the boys?”

  He looked mystified. “Fine. I felt fine about it. Life drawing is sensual, but it’s not erotic. You’re concentrating so hard you just don’t think about sex.”

  He caught my sceptical look. Men were reputed to think about sex every six seconds. With adolescent boys I reckoned you could halve that time span.

  “OK. You do think about it sometimes, but you’re so busy trying to draw that foot or the shadow of the nose or the exact curve of the breast that you’re quickly back to the drawing board — literally.” He frowned. “Where is this going?”

  “I wish I knew, love.” I sighed. There was no way out, only forward. “When you were getting dressed at the hospital, I found this…” I took the bracelet from my pocket and placed it on the coffee table between us. “It fell out of your jeans.”

  Daniel looked stunned, his eyes flickering from me to the bracelet and back again.

  “But I gave that to Lara. On her birthday, just before Christmas.”

  “She didn’t give it back for any reason? To change something on it? For safe-keeping during the New Year pub crawl?” I was aware that I was feeding him ideas, but in my desperation to explain this aberration I couldn’t stop myself.

  “No.”

  “So how did it get into your pocket?”

  “I’ve no idea. She wore it all the time. I never saw her take it off, and she definitely didn’t give it back.” He shook his head. “I just don’t understand.”

  “You know the police have been looking for this bracelet. Their theory is that —”

  “That the killer took it from Lara as a kind of trophy. I know. I was there.”

  I let the silence between us grow, unable to find the right words.

  Then Daniel’s face crumpled, peeling back the years, making him into a little boy who had fallen over and needed comfort.

  “You think… I was jealous, so I killed her?” His voice ended on a thin high note.

  “Just tell me the truth, Daniel, however bad it is.”

  He reached out and picked up the bracelet. He stared at it for a long time. He took a deep breath and began to speak. “Lara was…”

  He stopped. He twisted his head towards the door. I heard it too. A clattering noise, coming from outside. “What’s that?”

  I stood up. The noise came again. It sounded like someone tripping over dustbins. Daniel struggled up from the sofa. I put out a warning hand.

  “No. I’ll see to it.”

  “It’s probably just a cat.”

  “Sure.” I was lying. It would have to be a cat the size of a hippo to knock a full dustbin over. “I’ll go and check it out. You stay here. In fact…” I put my hands on his shoulders. “Lock the door and don’t let anyone else in but me. Understand?”

  “Who do you think…?”

  “It’s just a precaution, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Give me that torch from the drawer, will you?”

  Seventeen

  I walked slowly toward the dustbin, waving the torch like an arc light, my boots crackling on frozen snow. As I expected, the bin lay on its side where it had been kicked over. The debris of Christmas lay scattered on the ground — turkey bones and wrapping paper and empty chocolate boxes. Around it was a mash of footprints, impossible to distinguish mine from any intruder’s. I shone the
torch down to the bottom of the long untidy garden. Beyond the thick tangle of bushes at the end there was a high stone wall and I doubted any intruder would have made their getaway in that direction. Which left the side passage.

  I edged along the back of my house, turned into the passage, my torch held out like a weapon. It was deserted, and the five-foot-high wicket gate at the end was bolted. They must have climbed over it. Unless…

  I retraced my steps to the back garden and flickered my torch over the grass. There should have been a sheet of virgin white snow, but a diagonal line crossed the lawn, ending at the gap in the fence that I often used to pop next door to see Rob and Denise. On closer inspection I saw the prints ran both ways, the escape route tracks messing up the ones underneath. But at least I knew which way the intruder had come.

  I switched the torch off. The snow seemed to give off a bluish fluorescent glow and it was easy to follow the tracks. I reached the fence and peered through the gap. The bedroom light was still on next door and I could hear raised voices. Another argument. If I could hear them, Hayley could too. She must be lying awake in bed, listening to her parents tearing their family apart.

  I stepped into their garden, staring up and down, eyes wide to catch any sign of the intruder. There was no one there. But I could see a dark line of footprints crossing the lawn nearer to the house. I ran quietly along the fence, passing the ferret cage. I could hear the scrabbling of small feet and caught the faint gamey smell of its lair. The light went out in the bedroom. I stopped, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. Then I ran across the lawn, following the dark track already laid down.

  I approached the side entry more cautiously, but like the other one, it was empty. There was no wicket gate at the end, just an ordinary gate with a latch. I ran down the pathway, stopping at the end, peering into the front garden. There was no sound apart from the howling wind. It cut through my thin shirt like a razor. A feeble street lamp cast a pool of hazy light on to the road but I could see no sign of movement anywhere. I waited a few moments. A car came by, driving slowly through the mess of snow and grit, and disappeared in the direction of the main road. Otherwise, nothing.

  Whoever had entered my back garden had melted away.

  I was about to give up and return home when something caught my eye. A flicker of movement on the other side of the street. A figure running across Weavers’ Field. It zigzagged from side to side as it went, recalling the erratic path Hayley’s ferret had traced across the same terrain. Then the figure straightened its course, heading down the slope towards the river.

  “Scumbag,” I muttered under my breath. I had no doubt this was my intruder, and though all I could see was an indistinct shifting shadow I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

  I crossed the road and ran on to the field. Marks in the snow were no help at all here. The white stuff had been churned up by children and dog walkers and boys who liked to turn their skateboards into snowboards, leaving great skidmarks across the ground. But it didn’t matter. My target was heading for the river and so was I.

  I got as far as a lop-sided snowman before I stopped to catch my breath. On this side of the field, well away from the streetlights, it was dark, almost pitch-black. Even so, I didn’t want to use the torch. It would mark me out like a spotlight.

  I progressed more slowly. Soon I could hear the roaring gush of the river. Having tumbled over one weir, it was racing over rocks towards the next one half a mile downstream, passing through the quieter reaches of the old millpond in its relentless journey. I began to tread carefully, unsure where the ground dropped away. I had no choice but to switch the torch back on, reducing the beam by putting my hand over it. I shivered, deeply regretting my lack of a coat. But I wasn’t going to give up now.

  I reached the top of the incline and peered over. I shone the beam along the bank, expecting to see a figure huddled there. But there was no one. Puzzled, I slithered sideways down the slope. A few metres along, a massive tree leaned out over the river, its roots exposed like the fingers of a hand. The ground behind had eroded away and left a sheltering space. I let the full beam of the torch play into the hole.

  Empty.

  I looked along the water in both directions. I could discount the idea of my adversary swimming to safety. A boat? After several weeks of dry cold weather the river was slightly less turbulent than usual, but it was still too dangerous for a small craft, with the hazard of large rocks and another weir not far downstream. Which meant they must have followed the bank. But which way? Muttering obscenities I took one last look — left, right. Every branch and leaf was thickly outlined with hoar frost. For a second I was distracted, wishing I had my camera with me. Then telling myself to concentrate, I looked again for signs of the intruder. But like the temperature, my success rate was well below zero.

  I was so cold I could hardly hold the torch steady. Sighing deeply, I realised there was nothing more I could do. The thought of home and warmth and a hot drink began to crowd out my sense of mission. I wasn’t really giving up, I told myself. I just needed to recharge my batteries and revise my strategy.

  At that moment I felt a sharp shove in my back. My feet left the ground. There was a split second when I was airborne, flying like a thrown stick, before I crashed into the icy water.

  I sank like a brick, numb with shock and cold. Flapping my arms, I rose to the surface, gasping, choking, turning in the current. I was hurled against one rock then another. I tried to grab hold of them but they were covered in ice and my fingers were too numb with cold. My brain began to freeze, the synapses shutting down one by one, cells losing power a million at a time. Then, after a few seconds my brain kicked back in. Get out of here, it screamed, you’ll die if you don’t get out now. I fought against the current, trying desperately to reach the bank. But what if my attacker was still there, waiting for me?

  Against all instinct I turned back into the flow and, unresisting, was carried along, spinning through whirlpools, trapped in eddies, crashing against protruding rocks. My blood was turning to ice, my limbs to stone. I could hear the distant roar of the weir up ahead. How many times had I walked along here, marvelling at its beauty and tranquillity? How many times had I taken photos? And never for a moment had I thought that being carried along in it was to be as helpless as a leaf blown about by a force-nine gale.

  The river began to sweep round in a bend, and from the declining strength of the turbulence, I knew I had reached the calmer stretch where the water changed from millrace to millpond. It seemed even colder here, and I splashed and kicked to move along and to keep my blood above freezing.

  My chest hit something hard with a crashing, splintering sound.

  Ice.

  My arms thrashed, breaking the thin covering up into shards, but the undercurrent here was swirling me further downstream where the ice was thicker, and soon became a solid unbreakable mass. I grabbed the edge of the ice floe and tried to haul myself on to it, but my foot was caught in the treacherous reeds the Raven was notorious for. I slipped away from the flatbed of ice, kicking and twisting, trying to free myself, but it was hopeless. I was dragged back down, down into the liquid world where I didn’t belong. The water closed over my head.

  It was cold and quiet, appropriate for a grave. I could hear the feeble gurgling of my blood, the fading thump of my heart. I was aware of every tiny capillary as it burst in my lungs. I reached down with both hands and pulled at the reeds. To my surprise they came away and I was floating free, swept along by the strong undertow. All I had to do now was rise to the surface.

  I bobbed upwards. My head hit something. I had been swept under the layer of ice. It cut me off from the air like a glass ceiling.

  I dived down, turned, hitting my feet on the bedrock, and shot to the surface with all the power I could summon. Arms extended, I punched at the ice. There was a dull grinding sound as it splintered. I punched again. It cracked like crazy paving but still there was no opening. My lungs were about to explode. With
one last effort I pummelled at the ice. At last it shattered and I stuck my head through the hole.

  I hauled myself on to the remains of the floe, only half-aware of the cracking sounds as it took my weight. I lay gasping and spent for a few seconds, unable to move another inch. I quickly realised I could just as easily die in the open air as under the water. Exposure wasn’t fussy that way. There was no alternative but to crawl across the ice and try to reach the bank.

  My wriggling movements splintered the fragile surface and I fell through it, back into the river. I thrashed through the sluggish water. As my ears cleared I realised the sound of the weir was very close now. It had a drop of about two metres. I didn’t have enough time to get out before I went over. I took a deep breath as the roar became deafening. I tumbled over the stone ledge, a piece of rag on spin cycle. I plunged down and skimmed along under water, then with all my feeble strength I forced myself upwards. My head broke through the drowning liquid and I was whirled along, panting like a dog.

  Up ahead I could see West Bridge, smaller than the bottleneck of East Bridge, the main artery into town, but still busy with traffic. Car headlights swept over me and away again in repeated arcs. The sight gave me absurd hope. I just needed to get to the bridge and on to dry land and I stood a chance. With one last effort I propelled myself to the nearest bank, now only a few metres away. When I hit mud and grass and churned snow I flopped, exhausted. For a moment dying seemed the easy option, anything else was just too much effort. An image of my overturned dustbin flashed up, then the running figure, luring me to my death.

  Bastard, I thought. No way are you going to have the last laugh.

  I got to my feet, trembling in every muscle, as weak as a newborn deer. The bridge loomed up ahead of me. There were steps from the path on to the roadway itself and my feet found these from instinct. Climbing them was more difficult, but dragging myself up the rail I emerged onto the bridge and with a shambling drunken gait made my way across, back to my side of the river. Drivers veered away from me when I was caught in their headlights. I didn’t blame them. I must have looked like a zombie.