A Thoughtful Woman

by K T Findlay

  Alan interjected. ‘We found Bob Harland’s pub! The little sod lives in Wesser Bech and goes to the Anchor pub on the beach. We went in this evening and beat the crap out of him!’

  Emma’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘Oh you silly boys! You’ll get arrested!’

  ‘Nah!’ said Tim. ‘We marched in, grabbed him under each arm and frogmarched him to the beach where we gave him a good kicking. A couple of his mates tried to stop us, but when I booted one of them in the crotch he went down like a sack of spuds, and the other took off like a rabbit! We didn’t break any bones. We just gave them some really deep bruises, and maybe Harland’ll be able to have kids, and maybe he won’t!’

  Alan jumped in. ‘And we made sure the mongrel knew that if we got any grief for it, we’d be back to do a whole lot worse! We told him he was bloody lucky he was getting off so lightly.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tim laughed, ‘then we went back into the pub and bought rounds of drinks for everyone there for the next two hours! The publican’s sweet, and so are the patrons. Harland’s not exactly well liked. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble.’

  ‘I even bought a bottle of Cointreau, dad’s favourite. We can celebrate a little bit of justice for once.’ said Alan firmly.

  Sally laughed. ‘Well, brawling in a pub is a bit juvenile for two lads in their twenties, but good for you! I’ll have a glass.’

  Emma still looked very worried, but soon joined in the laughter and went to get the glasses.

  By midnight they’d consumed a lot more than just the one bottle of Cointreau, and merry wasn’t the word to describe their condition. Too tipsy to drive, Sally stayed the night.

  3 A little knowledge

  On Thursday and Friday while Sally and Emma were getting on with their individual lives, James and Freddy cycled out to Swelton, walking into the moors and checking the valley streams for any signs of Terry Walker. The closest they came was a dead sheep, badly buried under a bush. It had been hard work and they were still fast asleep on Saturday morning when Sally and Emma renewed their explorations and headed back to the flying fox.

  Sally led the way past it, continuing their explorations through the trees, up the west side of the river to the main road, across the bridge and back downstream on the Throcking side. At first the track followed the river closely, but as they approached the flying fox, the ground rose where the river had cut through the low hill. At the top, they got off their bikes and climbed up onto the platform above the bluff.

  Hanging from the wire running to the concrete block on the other side of the river was a pulley with two carabiners. A handset for the rider hung from one of them, and Sally worked out that the other must be for a rope to haul the pulley back up again. She looked closely at the padlock that currently secured the pulley to the mast. It was relatively cheap, and there was a small code number by the keyhole, which she noted down.

  ‘Surely people don’t just hang from it?’ asked Emma.

  ‘I think they clip a safety harness to one of these two carabiners. It’s just not here now, like the rope to pull it back up. I guess the people that use it bring the rest of their equipment with them.’ said Sally.

  She looked around. The flying fox was set in a large rectangular field bounded by dry stone walls. Apart from the trail there was only one other visible way into the field, a gate onto the road at the diagonally opposite corner. They rode over to look at it.

  ‘Gosh it’s a bit narrow for a vehicle gate.’ said Emma.

  ‘Very.’ agreed Sally. ‘I’d certainly not get the Range Rover through here. But, on the other hand…’ She scratched her ear in thought.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Emma.

  Sally grinned. ‘This has potential, on the escape side anyway.’

  Emma shook her head. ‘It’s a wire to nowhere. There are only two ways out of the other side. They’d cut you off easily.’

  Sally nodded. ‘Probably, but let’s keep it in the back of our minds. Anyway, time for lunch I think. Let’s go to my place.’

  They rode through the lanes to the coast and cycled across the front of Ornamental Estate to Throcking. There, Sally took the first left and led Emma heaving and straining up Farthing Street to the top of the hill and a beautiful, modern house surrounded by well kept fields. After parking their bikes in the left hand side of the double garage, Sally led Emma through the internal door into a large kitchen family room. The entire west wall was a single sheet of glass, providing a stunning view over the Sky river valley and out to sea, flooding the room with light.

  ‘Glorious.’ breathed Emma.

  ‘There’s your place.’ said Sally, pointing across the valley.

  ‘Gosh.’ said Emma, ‘You can see my flags so clearly!’

  ‘Good isn’t it? Now, walk this way. I want you to see something special.’

  Sally turned left and walked across the wooden floorboards into a large lounge dining room. There, in pride of place, sat a beautiful greenwood chair. It was almost throne like, with wide flat arms and a strong, high back.

  Emma stared. ‘It’s gorgeous. It must have cost a fortune!’

  Sally nodded. ‘Yes it did. It’s handmade, from greenwood. No nails, screws or glue. It’s held together by the way the wood dries. It takes a huge amount of skill to make. I commissioned it after Graham’s court case.’

  Emma looked at her. ‘Why? Did he always want one?’

  Sally shook her head. ‘It’s a very special design. Here, bend down and look at this.’ Sally pointed to seemingly decorative pieces of wood underneath the arms, close to the front. In the bottom of each one, was an indentation about an inch wide. ‘You can secure somebody’s wrists with a simple leather strap. That slot stops it sliding about. Do it tight enough and it won’t move.’

  She walked to the back of the room, and pulled a cloth from what Emma had assumed was a standard lamp. Underneath was a strongly built steel frame with a long thick screw at the top. Sally placed it behind the throne, and threaded coach bolts through four countersunk holes in the chair’s back. Then she went to another corner of the room, and brought back a strange looking clamp which she attached to the screw on the top of the frame.

  ‘And this,’ she said, ‘is a rather special kind of headrest. I built it myself with Graham’s tools. Here, try it. Come on, I won’t hurt you.’

  Gingerly, Emma sat down. Behind her Sally spun the screw, lowering the clamp onto Emma’s head. She felt a firmly stuffed cushion pressing gently onto her scalp.

  ‘Now, imagine you have a strap around your chest, One around each wrist, and one around each ankle.’

  Sally twisted the knobs on either side, and two more of the cushions squeezed into Emma’s left and right temple. Another twist and a final cushion secured her forehead.

  ‘Without the straps around the chest, wrists, and ankles, you can just duck down and get out, but you couldn’t if they were in place. Your head would be locked in position.’

  Emma wriggled free. ‘Dear God, how on earth did you think of this?’

  Sally shrugged. ‘Sleepless nights I guess. Lots of time to let the imagination flow. Rage.’

  ‘So you really meant it. You’re actually going to kill them!’ gasped Emma.

  Sally just smiled.

  Nervously, Emma looked around the room, trying to decide if she should flee or ask more questions. She firmed on the latter. ‘But you’re surely not going to kill them here? You’d never get the blood out of the floor.’

  Sally laughed. ‘There won’t be any blood.’

  Emma’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then how…’

  Sally went back to the corner of the room, and returned with a curved piece of thin, transparent plastic. She held the two ends and looped them around so they touched. It now formed a cone with its point cut-off, leaving a narrow open circle at that end.

  ‘It’s like a vet collar for a large dog. You know, the ones they use to stop them tearing out their stitches. I’m going to stick this around their neck wi
th medical tape, and I can put a strap through these slots in the top of the plastic, up over their head to the head brace to keep it in place.’

  Emma gesticulated with her right hand, encouraging Sally to go on.

  ‘Then, I take my lead from the Mikado, and make the punishment fit the crime. They killed through drink, they’ll die through drink. With a water tight seal at the bottom, I can add any liquid I want, at whatever speed I want. At a certain point they have a binary choice, they can swallow, or they can drown. Just how pissed they get before they die, is at least partly up to them.’

  Emma looked at her in astonishment, and then putting her hand in front of her mouth, had a fit of the giggles.

  ‘Oh I love it! That’s just beautiful.’ she gasped when she came back up for air.

  Sally smiled. ‘Like I said darling, the killing is the easy bit. The hard parts are getting them here, and not getting caught.’

  ‘Well,’ said Emma, ‘you’ve certainly brought it to life. Seeing this, it doesn’t seem like a game anymore.’

  Sally laughed. ‘It’ll be fun, but it’s not a game, unless of course we change our minds later. Anyway, this is just my idea. You feel free to come up with your own. They don’t all have to go the same way! Come on, let’s eat.’

  Emma nodded uncertainly. ‘I don’t think I’m as creative as you, at least not in ways that we can actually do.’

  Sally wagged her finger. ‘You don’t know unless you try!’

  After a good lunch, Sally led Emma out onto the road again, but to Emma’s surprise Sally took her left to the end of the road, and opened the gate into the field. They carefully took the dirt and stone path that zigzagged down the west facing slope to the bottom of the hill.

  Once there, Emma could see that the hedge that separated the field from the main road wasn’t the straight line it had seemed from above. In the middle, it had been extended into a square, like the world’s simplest maze. On the north side of the square was a gate, which Sally opened to allow them through, and then to their right was a gap in the hedge onto the main road between the two villages.

  ‘You see? By having the gate set so far back, and the hedges planted this way, cars don’t even notice there’s a gate here. It’s my secret entrance, but there’s another trick to it, look across the road there.’

  Directly opposite the gap in the hedge was a very small lane, almost a driveway. ‘That’s called The Narrows,’ said Sally, ‘for obvious reasons! It’s absolutely one-way traffic for cars. If you meet somebody, one of you has to backup, plus of course it’s a very tight left or right corner onto the main road, which is why almost nobody uses it. So on a bike I can pretty much come and go as I please, and nobody knows.’

  Sally made sure there were no cars in sight before leading Emma across the road and back into the twisting lanes. They were just a few hundred yards from the Sky river bridge when a beautiful blue Jaguar came around the corner towards them. Sally pulled in behind Emma to make room for it and nearly crashed into her when Emma hit the brakes.

  ‘What the hell…’ complained Sally.

  ‘That was Holmes!’ cried Emma, twisting around to watch the car disappear towards the sea. She launched herself into a stream of invective lasting a full sixty seconds without pause or repetition.

  Sally looked at her in wonder. ‘My God! You’d be great on Just a Minute! Where’d you learn to swear like that?’

  Emma grinned sheepishly. ‘You can’t raise two boys without learning a thing or two!’

  Sally nodded. ‘Impressive! However, it might pay to remember we’re trying to make people believe we’re getting over it. You never know where witnesses might be lurking.’

  ‘Witnesses?’ asked Emma.

  Sally pointed to a nearby gate. More than a dozen cows were pressed up hard against it, staring at them in wonder.

  Emma burst out laughing. ‘Okay! Point taken. Let’s carry on.’

  ◆◆◆

  ‘That was even more interesting than last time.’ said James, watching them through his binoculars. He and Freddy had bought the makings of a nice lunch from the café in Little Throcking and cycled up to Throcking Castle to plan the next stage of their explorations. Freddy had spotted Sally and Emma wheezing their way up the hill to Sally’s place, and since then they’d been taking it in turns to watch them.

  ‘Mrs Nixon did seem to be pretty upset when our lawyer appeared. There’s a grudge there I think.’ said Freddy.

  ‘The question is, how big?’ concurred James.

  ‘And does Mrs Mellors share it?’ Freddy wondered. ‘I certainly like her rear entrance. Very clever. You and I never spotted that on Wednesday when we went past it.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ agreed James. ‘I think these two are worthy of further attention. You keep an eye on them and I’ll pour you another tea.’

  ◆◆◆

  Emma led Sally up to the main road and across the Sky river bridge. About a fifth of a mile on the other side, she came to another unscheduled halt.

  ‘Look at that!’ she said. ‘How’s that for a name?’

  A trail ran off on both sides of the road. The signs called it The Widow Maker.

  Sally grinned. ‘Well, we’re both widows. Let’s do the southern end first.’ and so saying, took the lead.

  There was nothing to indicate why the track had such a strange name, until it shot suddenly out of the scrub and turned hard left across an almost vertical slope. Sally managed to shout a warning to Emma as she hit the brakes and skittered her bike around the corner, her tyres dancing on the very edge of the track. Fighting not to panic, she gently scrubbed off her remaining speed as she followed the sweeping path down to the stream below. Emma, who’d had enough warning to be able to stop before the corner, followed her down at a more comfortable rate to the beautiful, wide pool at the bottom.

  ‘Well, now we know why it’s called the Widow Maker!’ she said when she joined Sally.

  They laid their bikes on the ground and explored around the pool. The stream wasn’t very wide, but it was vigorous and had cut this narrow, twisting gorge through the land on its way to join the Sky river.

  ‘Why didn’t we notice this when we were riding up the river bank?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Because it must be that little stream the wooden bridge goes over, and look how the gorge twists and turns. You can’t see through it. I don’t think we saw it through the trees, that’s all.’ Emma postulated. ‘One thing’s for sure. I’m not going up the other side of this pond!’

  Sally looked. The track wound its way up another bluff, but it was even narrower than the bit they’d come down and there was a horseshoe shaped curve at its highest point. An incredibly brave person might just be able to cycle it, but the slightest mistake and they’d fall all the way down to the rocks around the pool. Pushing the bike wasn’t an option either, because there just wasn’t the room.

  Sally nodded. ‘Okay, I agree. It’s too dangerous. But,’ she stroked her chin, ‘I wonder where it comes out?’

  Emma rolled her eyes. ‘Hah! That means you still think it’s possible!’

  ‘I just want to see where it goes, that’s all.’ Sally was smiling, but Emma didn’t believe her for a second.

  They retraced their tracks to the road. It wasn’t easy going back up the bluff, but it was doable. When they reached the main road they cycled back to the Sky bridge, then south down the riverbank. They spotted the stream this time, but despite actively looking for the other end of the Widow Maker, they saw nothing.

  Sally called a halt when they reached the flying fox. ‘We must’ve missed it.’ she said. ‘Let’s look from the other direction.’

  Emma sighed, but turned to follow. Slowly they made their way back north and this time Sally just managed to spot a very narrow valley, hidden by the scrub. Now she knew what to look for, she could just make out the trail. She pushed through the bushes.

  ‘This is it! We’ve found it!’

  Emma laid down her bike and joined her.
‘It’s a bit tight for a bike.’ she said.

  ‘There’s room enough to hide them on this side of the bushes. Let’s go for a walk.’

  The trail was even narrower than they’d expected, very twisty, and not at all ideal for cycling. However, just five minutes later they were at the top of the bluff, looking into the pool from the southern side. The path down looked no less frightening than it had before.

  Sally twisted her mouth in thought. ‘You know, we might just –’

  ‘No.’ said Emma firmly. ‘This time there is no we. If you want to be crazy, this one you do on your own.’

  ‘Fraidy cat.’ said Sally smiling.

  ‘Grown up.’ countered Emma. And on that responsible note, they walked back to their bikes, and rode home to Emma’s.

  ‘You know,’ said Sally as Emma handed her her gin, ‘if I can get my bike down to the Beck pool, that flying fox is absolutely in play, because then there is a third way out, and nobody would expect it.’

  ‘Yes dear.’ said Emma primly, as if pretending to indulge a husband’s latest prognostication.

  ◆◆◆

  Back at the castle, Freddy and James had packed up once Sally and Emma had reached the trees surrounding the flying fox, and ridden down to see where they’d been. In the lead, James received the same surprise as Sally. He managed to save himself by grabbing hold of a stout branch as the track disappeared in front of him, but he couldn’t save the bike, which tumbled down to the stream below.

  ‘Well, look on the bright side,’ said Freddy looking at the tangle of twisted metal in the water below, ‘perhaps now the boss will fork out for mountain bikes. He’s going to have to cough up for a new one in any case, might as well get a good one.’

  They walked down to the pool to retrieve the ruined machine, and then fossicked around, looking for anything that might point to Terry Walker. In the end they gave up and carried the wreckage back to the top and walked back to the BnB.

  ‘There’s more to those two women than meets the eye.’ said James as he opened the front door. ‘They’ve got a sense of purpose that goes way beyond a bit of exercise.’