Chapter Twenty-Six
It was absolutely dark. The kind of complete darkness you never get in a town, where even during a power cut there’s people with lanterns and candles and generators. This was the dark of the deep countryside or, as Megan put it ‘like being inside a water buffalo’. I’ve no idea why it would be darker inside a water buffalo than any other ruminant, but that’s Megan for you.
Somewhere below us an owl boo-hooed, and an unconvinced blackbird twittered, a pheasant clattered skywards to my left and I grinned to myself. Underfoot the ground was still boggy, and every step felt like walking through undigested dinners, but the air had lost that shrapnel-feel of snow and settled down into a rain-tinged mildness. My right hand was loosely clasped in Megan’s, she in turn held Vivienne’s. Eve and Isobel were likewise joined to us, as we stood in a row on the hilltop and waited for the dawn. We must have looked like a set of paper cut outs, silhouetted as we were on the crest of the rising ground, joined hands outstretched, braced to meet the coming dawn.
‘So, you performed sex magic as a charm?’ Vivienne tugged at Megan’s hand until she turned and Vivienne and I were drawn face-to-face. ‘That was very enterprising of you, Holly.’
‘What exactly did you do?’ Megan’s grin was visible even in the dark. ‘I mean, was it complicated or did you go for the easy stuff?’
‘We . . . look, it was a charm, all right? We . . . said words and stuff.’
‘I bet you did.’
I gave Megan a shove and whispered, ‘It’s only for Vivienne’s benefit.’
‘So you didn’t do “sex magic” with your man?’
I thought of the gentle way Kai had held me, the curative power of his kindness when we’d made love amid the tears and the pain. ‘Well, it was pretty special.’
‘And that’s all? It’s just sex?’
I pulled my hand out of hers. ‘It was a charm. I was doing Vivienne a favour, and now at least I’ve put her mind at rest.’
Megan nodded. ‘Good thinking. A bang with results.’ She went quiet for a moment. ‘So, if you’ve done the charm, why are we up here waiting for the sunrise?’
I sighed. ‘Because it’s the solstice.’ I said enigmatically and turned to face the horizon. I had hoped for something symbolic, the golden glow of sunrise perhaps, but in Yorkshire in December you settle for what you can get, and we got a bleak, bleaching of the darkness to the east, a roil and bluster of cloud barely splitting enough to let a pale pink come through.
‘That colour would make a lovely blouse,’ came Eve’s voice, very matter-of-fact, making Megan giggle.
‘Ssshh. Think solemn,’ I whispered at them out of the corner of my mouth, but I could feel Megan’s hand shaking as she tried to stop the giggles. Nerves were making us all hair-trigger and a touch hysterical. At the end of the line I could see Isobel jigging from foot to foot desperate for the toilet and Vivienne’s body a little hunched over by the weight of contrition.
‘Sorry. But we’re not going to be long, are we? I don’t know how long that rope will hold Rufus.’ We’d tied him up outside the cottage, Meg didn’t trust him either inside or to be left in the car, since he tended to eat soft furnishings and pee against anything upright.
The air lightened still more. A few birds began to get the idea and sleepy twittering broke out in selected trees, a whirl of rooks took to the sky and began a noisy bickering above us as they climbed on the early-morning breeze. I could see the faces of the women now, all a little high on what we were doing. ‘He’ll be fine.’
A nod and I dropped Megan’s hand, walked a few paces forwards and held my arms up into the air. It was a huge coincidence that at that moment the sun broke free of the horizon and let the first rays trickle along, illuminating me nicely. Behind me, Megan was humming ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’’, and I would have kicked her if that hadn’t meant shattering my illusion of serenity.
The sunlight brushed the tops of the trees below us and I let my eyes drop from scanning the heavens to peering through the forest. A ratcheting drone told me all I needed to know. ‘Brace yourselves,’ I muttered. ‘Here we go.’
The first bike broke cover. It jetted towards us in uneven spurts caused by the cloying mud. As it reached the bare hilltop, another shot up behind us, with a third zigzagging up the path until three bikes rode a circle around us, staying just the far side of being offensively close. All three riders were hooded and helmeted, their machines bearing no number plates or identifying marks apart from a rather amateurish double B insignia painted in black on the dark red of the petrol tanks.
I stood my ground, keeping my eyes on the gradually spreading patch of sunlight at my feet. It smelled of moss and crushed grass and was nicely stable, and all the while I could hear that ghastly buzzing and the sound of the women behind me grouping together. Vivienne and Eve had been in on the plan, but I’d kept it quiet from Isobel and Megan. Isobel, because I was afraid she’d panic, and Megan because I was afraid that she’d come armed, and now they were a collective of fear and scared reassurances stamping a defensive circle at my back.
For a few moments it was an impasse. The bikes rode around us as though we were a wild west wagon train and they were some kind of native attack force until I was afraid that this was all they were going to do. Scare us then ride for the hills. But then I realised, incrementally, the circle was growing smaller and tighter. The riders were herding us closer together, almost up one another’s tailpipes in their attempts to stop us breaking free. The smell of exhaust fumes was dizzying. I fought the urge to go round, to try to keep my eye on any one rider, and let them circle. I stood still and waited.
It didn’t take long to come. From an inside pocket, while the rider steered single handed, the shotgun appeared, unfolding its length into the winter sunrise like Death’s calling card. Okay. Now we’re in business.
‘Are you going to shoot me?’ I shouted above the engines. ‘Go on then.’
‘Nah. Too easy.’ The voice came muffled through the black balaclava. ‘Too traceable. One thing I’ve learned, if you’re gonna do something, make sure it leaves no marks.’
‘So?’ I was moving now, keeping him in my line of sight. ‘What’s on the agenda for today? Locking me up in some shed again?’ Keep him talking . . .
The bike dropped to the ground, engine whining until it stalled in a flurry of blue smoke, and he stepped towards me across it. The gun barrel waved at the group of scared women. ‘I’m thinking something more up close and personal. What I should’ve done to you last time, straight off. Thought I’d save you for later, y’see. Big mistake, should’ve done you there and then. And after that, your wog girlie here is going to find out what a white man’s cock is really all about. And if this lot even so much as think about shopping me — well, I know where you all live, don’t I?’
Vivienne squeaked. The two remaining bikes had idled to a standstill behind us. I could feel the eyes, watching and waiting behind the helmets — those unidentifiable helmets. ‘Okay,’ I said.
There was a visible double take. ‘What?’
‘I said okay. Go on, do it.’ And then I made my mistake. Let my eyes flick upwards, beyond the muddy circle to the lone tree which guarded the edge of the path where it entered the forest. To the man standing underneath, arms folded across his chest and legs braced.
‘Shit, she’s got company!’
‘It’s fucking Rhys !’
Sunlight flashed on the gun barrel, arms came from behind and locked me down. Isobel screamed. Eve gave a grunt, there was a sound like a kick connecting and then a muffled swearing but the arms didn’t loosen. They tightened and I couldn’t breathe. There was the smell of sweat and leather, the unpleasant moistness of a damp biker’s jacket pressed to my face like thick skin, no air and the ground falling away beneath me.
The mud hit the back of my neck like a slap and I began to struggle beneath the man holding me down, writhing and biting and jerking my head. But it was too late.
‘He’s over there!’ A shout and then the abrupt violence of the gun firing which cut the noise into nothingness for a second. When I could hear again, it was panic. Eve was moaning, a kind of tearless crying, and the three men were arguing.
‘You fucking moron. You weren’t supposed to hit him!’
‘I was trying to scare him off.’
‘You shot him.’
The arms released me and the weight of my captor moved suddenly as he climbed to his feet. ‘Nah. I was pointing at his feet, not his fucking head.’
A sudden punch, which I heard rather than saw, which sent a body landing next to me on its backside. ‘You fucker . What do we do now?’
The three men started swiping at one another, helmets cracked together and jackets creaked and tore, sounding like mating time in a leather furniture showroom, as fists and arms flailed and connected. I struggled to my feet and stared across at the body lying underneath the tree, then I started to run with my feet skidding, three steps forward and one step back until I reached Kai’s fallen shape hunched and huddled across the roots of the leafless oak.
‘Kai! Oh God, don’t be dead, please don’t be dead!’ I reached out and took his hand, but it flopped inertly onto the earth. I grabbed his shoulders and shook. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen!’ My tears fell onto his pale, chilled skin and ran down into his hair. ‘Don’t do this to me, Kai Rhys, you bastard, don’t die on me!’ My voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Please. Don’t let me lose someone else that I love.’
‘You should always start this kind of conversation by looking for the exit wound.’ Kai’s voice was so level and its tone so coolly amused that I found I was looking around for the ghostly shade that spoke. ‘That was your first mistake.’ His eyes slipped open. ‘And the second was telling me you love me.’
I suppressed the startled noise that rose. ‘But . . .’ was all I could manage. Then I slapped him on his shoulder. ‘You’re alive.’
He closed his eyes again. ‘Well, yes. But it makes a much better ending for my piece if someone shot me, don’t you think? Besides’ — a cool hand rummaged inside his jacket and brought out the tiny, but very powerful camera — ‘I’ve got it all. In all its megapixelled glory.’ He shook the camera gently. ‘It does sound too, y’know. Borrowed it off my photographer.’
I opened my mouth a couple of times but words refused to come out. They were forming a disorderly queue in my brain though. ‘You . . . are such a . . . journalist ,’ I managed.
‘When I saw him point the gun I decided to take a dive. Better all round if he thought I was out of things. Besides,’ a lazy drift of his fingers pointed to the gang fight that had erupted on the brow of the hill, where the rest of the girls had long since been left to their own devices, ‘they’ll do all the hard work for me.’
‘But . . . I thought . . . where are the police? I thought you had the police watching through your telescope?’
‘They’re on their way.’ He tapped his ear. ‘I’m Bluetoothed up the wazoo. They’ve been watching all right. All we need now is to find where the drugs are before one of them gets them all shipped out and the case is dropped for lack of evidence.’ He pointed again at where two of the men had a third down on the ground and were explaining to him where he’d gone wrong, with the teaching aids of both boot and fist. ‘Of course, that has yet to dawn on these morons.’
Eve was doubled over, sitting on a muddy outcrop and rocking. ‘She thinks you’re dead too,’ I said, gazing at her over the trio of scrapping helmets.
‘Yeah, resurrection will have to wait until the police get here. It’s only them thinking they’ve killed me that’s keeping their minds off you lot. If I were you I’d get those ladies off the hill and somewhere safe.’
‘But . . .’
His lips rose to mine and the words I’d been about to say vanished in hot breath and heartbeats. ‘Kiss of life. If anyone asks,’ Kai whispered, letting his head drop back onto the mossy ground again. ‘Now go.’ He tapped his earpiece again. ‘Police are on their way. You and the girls vanish off to Vivienne’s place, I’ll catch up with you there.’
‘Won’t there be questions?’
A manic grin. ‘Probably. And I should warn you that I am going to lie outrageously.’
‘Well, you are a journalist.’
I headed back. Vivienne was leading everyone down the path towards her cottage, carefully not turning around to watch the increasingly bloody fight, which I managed to circumvent by tracking around the hilltop. As I dropped below the skyline, I heard the crackle of radios and the heavy-booted running of several men in police-issue footwear, then the gunning sound of a motorbike engine.
‘Shit!’
‘What?’ Megan panted alongside me for a second, chest bobbing like two buoys on a choppy sea.
‘One of them is trying to get to the drugs.’
‘There are drugs ? As in, little plastic baggies being sold in nightclubs? I thought you said they were poachers!’ she puffed.
‘I may have been a little economical with the truth.’ I stopped running, Meg’s words kicking an idea into the front of my brain. ‘And I think I know where they’ve put the stuff.’
‘But Holly . . .’
‘I wished for excitement, remember?’ I wheeled away from her and headed down over the lip of the hilltop into the wood, splashing through runny mud, keeping one ear on the rattle of the motorbike engine which sounded as though it was heading along the dry ground on the ridge.
Heading out through the woods to the gully where I’d hidden after my escape from the shed. To where, it had just dawned on me, there had been an awful lot of plastic sheeting and loose earth, just the kind of thing you might expect to find if someone had, for example, wrapped and buried a load of drugs, in the middle of nowhere, where no one ever went.
I tripped over my own feet as I ran. The bike engine was just ahead of me, so I kept going, following the sound, although my memory for places — honed by years of having to keep a mental image of locations in case of sudden need — told me that the gully was in the bottom of the valley and the bike was still running along the ridge. Suddenly the note of the engine changed, I saw the mossy outline of the innocent-looking shed where I’d been trapped just in front of me and realised that the bike was being ridden directly down the slope. I took a deep breath and sprinted amateurishly through the leaf mulch, slipping and sliding on the debris with the sound of the dirt bike whining in my ears.
Kept going, on through the trees. There was still a covering of snow on the floor of the forest, but all footprints were long gone. I had to run navigating by instinct, fear, and the vague memories that had formed as I’d hurtled through the trees afraid for my life. I found the gully the same way I had last time, by sliding down into it, rolling and jolting with my legs out in front of me and my shoulders catching on roots and branches, and I just had time to duck behind one of the low-growing ivy-covered bushes that littered the slope before I heard a bike drop with a dying drone. The engine cut out and there was a sudden green silence, broken eventually by a crashing slide as one of the men — I didn’t know which of them I’d been chasing — came plunging down the slope, broke his fall by grasping at a stump of elder and swung around to start digging with both hands in the side of the hollow, tearing plastic and swearing loudly and emphatically.
I didn’t think. I leaped out from behind my cover and confronted my nemesis, Big Ginge himself, who was pulling small white blocks from the earth, dusting them off and slipping them inside his leather jacket. ‘The police are on their way,’ I said, making him jump and drop one of the packets. ‘They’re just arresting your mates.’
‘Then I had better hurry, hadn’t I?’ He was still helmeted, so the words were slightly muffled by his restricted cheeks, but his visor was open to show that he didn’t look even slightly worried. ‘And you had better stay out of my way.’
‘No.’ I went to push him away from the drugs but he was solid and wrapped in leather and my full-body charge just ricocheted off him and left me sliding through the mud. ‘I’m not letting you go.’
A sigh and the final pack slid into the pocket. ‘You have no choice.’ And he turned around and hit me hard on the side of the head with his fist, almost unthinkingly. As I sprawled down, vision clouding, I saw him start to zip up his jacket and head back towards the fallen bike and I had the sudden, horrific vision of these blokes getting away with it, of Kai’s face if he realised he’d failed to stop them. I grabbed and got hold of an ankle clad in neopropylene and, as my vision started to clear, I pulled.
Big Ginge slithered in the mud and went down, knees first, onto the ground. Packages fell from his jacket and he swore again, began groping around trying to replace them, while I held on to his leg and kept pulling in an attempt to stop him from moving. He started to kick, loosening my hold and catching me in the ribs with his foot. Breathless, I let go and he kicked me again, rolling himself until he could get purchase to stand. ‘Stupid fucking women,’ he stood over me now. I tried to get another hold on him but the mud sucked me down and my buzzing head and blurry vision meant I couldn’t see well enough to get a proper grip. I shook my head but it made things worse, the bushes and trees that lined the sides of the depression began to swing and nausea grabbed at my stomach. My heart had begun to pound, panic-fuelled, now that the adrenaline of the chase had worn off, and I was beginning to realise that I might have made a really stupid mistake. ‘Should have just shot you when we had the chance.’
And then he kicked me in the head. The world went black and all I could smell and taste was blood but I could still hear, and what I heard was a sudden scratchy dashing sound, a snap and my ginger captor screaming ‘No, get it off, get it away!’ and then a low, growling, grunting sound. After a pause so long that I wondered if I’d passed out, there was the sound of running feet and lots of voices in a cacophony of yelling, and snarling, but the kick wasn’t followed up with any more bodily violence, so I curled myself into a little ball of pain around my aching head and let myself drop into unconsciousness.