Crook's Hollow

by Rob Parker

  Thor saw her clearly in the moonlight. The skin around her left eye was an angry purple, her lips bloodied and cracked. Her fingers were tipped with bloodied nails, where she had obviously tried to claw her way free. Her hair was slick with rainwater from the window, and blood trickled thinly from her scalp.

  It was wet all around her, and Thor’s nose pricked at the realisation it wasn’t just rain.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Roisin, between thin, shallow sobs, her eyes so alive yet scared. Thor didn’t know what she was apologising for, save for relieving herself, and, as his heart swelled with protection, he rushed to embrace her.

  ‘I’ve got you sweetheart,’ he said, cradling her. ‘I’ve got you.’ She sobbed against his shoulder. She was wearing the same clothes as she’d worn last night in her trailer. She had been tied up here since then.

  A gunshot rang out from down below, startling them. Another followed, then soon after, another.

  ‘We have to get out of here. Our families have gone to war,’ said Thor, as he started to fumble at the ropes holding her to the radiator pipes.

  ‘Where do we go?’ said Roisin, trying to angle herself to help him free her. The ropes had been heavily knotted, and it took time to undo them. She rubbed her wrists as she stood shakily with Thor’s help. ‘Do you know a back way out?’

  ‘Yes, follow me,’ answered Roisin, as she stumbled through the jumble of the room.

  The gunfire was sparse, but it persisted. A gunfight was ensuing below. They made it to the second floor, and waited for a second, looking over the banister to the bottom floor. When a gun was fired it was much louder here and each explosion cut through the house. They waited for a break in the action.

  The next shot was more muffled, and had clearly come from outside, but in response, glass tinkled on stone, someone screamed, and a male voice shouted ‘No!’

  That was their cue, and Roisin led, taking Thor’s hand. As they approached the entryway, one of the Crook brothers started crawling from the right-hand door across the hall towards the kitchen. He was holding his neck, and gasping, ‘Mummy… Mummy.’ Gunfire from the house erupted again, this time with much more regularity. The man on the floor was wide-eyed with terror and leaving a trail of thick red blood right across the floor.

  Thor had never seen anything so visceral, and his stomach turned. Roisin turned and pulled him away from the hall, deeper into the house. Down a short corridor lined with empty coat pegs, they were at the back stable door. They quickly slid the deadbolts free, but froze for a moment as Tilly Crook screamed. It didn’t sound like the scream of someone mortally wounded—it came out of a much worse pain. She had seen what happened to her son.

  The gunfire stopped.

  Thor and Roisin ran out into the night, off the back step and into the standing water at the back of the house, and ran towards the main drive and the cars.

  As they rounded the house, engines started up again. Thor recognised one of them, the old green Land Rover Discovery. It drove up to them and braked sharply. The driver opened the door: Wilkes Sr. Wilkes Jr. was sat next to him in the front passenger seat.

  ‘Thank God. Get in now,’ Wilkes Sr. said. His hair was rain-swept

  and wild, and his face was set in a combination of shock and grim determination. Thor and Roisin wasted no time and ran for the back seats, as another bloodcurdling scream from Tilly ripped through the rain.

  They set off, and Thor stole a glance ahead. In the second car, which he recognised as Hollis’s Jeep, sat three figures he guessed were Hollis, Crewe, and Mercy.

  ‘You all came to get us?’ Thor said, stunned.

  ‘When the police said you had got away, we knew there was only one place you were going to go,’ said Wilkes Sr. ‘You were right. They had her. I can’t believe it.’

  Thor pulled Roisin close to him. She was shivering and silent. Dad isn’t the only one going into shock, thought Thor.

  ‘What happened back there?’ Thor asked. Wilkes Jr. looked across at his father balefully.

  ‘I shot him,’ Wilkes Sr. said, in a voice barely audible over the pumping wiper blades. ‘I shot him, and I think I may have killed him.’ He glanced back at Thor in the rearview. There would be deep and severe consequences, and his eyes bore the weight of every single one of them.

  38

  The three-mile clip across Crook’s Hollow usually took five or six minutes, tops. Tonight, this night of emptied heavens and small-town hells, it was a slow, painful crawl to the war-drum beat of torrential rain on the car roof. Through the windshield, as Hollis’ more modern car pulled away smoothly into the black, water arrowed in the headlights like a soaked trip through warp speed in Star Wars.

  ‘What happens now?’ asked Thor.

  ‘I don’t know,’ his father said. ‘We’ll see what morning brings.’

  To Thor that sounded far too philosophical to be of any use. Wishing the night away wasn’t going to bring the sun up any quicker.

  ‘We need to see how the farm is,’ Wilkes Jr. said, eyes fixed ahead. ‘The well gone again?’ asked Thor.

  ‘Water everywhere,’ replied his brother. ‘The well was gushing out, and the yard was underwater. That was when we got the call and left. Christ knows what’s happening now.’

  ‘Where’s Mum and Rue? Where are the kids?’

  ‘Mine are at home. Seems OK out there. Rue’s is underwater. She’s stuck in Windle Heath in standstill traffic. Barry’s out on the roads, if you can believe that on a night like this, so the kids are upstairs at the farm with Mum.’

  ‘They could be trapped by now,’ Thor said. ‘Yep, they could.’

  Thor felt Roisin’s thumb on the back of his hand, rubbing back and forth softly. He leant against her and kissed her hair. She smelt of that shampoo he loved, but with an overlay of grit and grime. He couldn’t have cared less. He felt rather than saw his father’s hackles raise, as he shifted in his seat, but Thor preempted his protest.

  ‘Don’t Dad. Just don’t.’

  Thor could see his father’s hands flexing on the steering wheel. It was amazing how blood could still boil at such pointless history as Roisin’s lineage, that even now something so simple and genuinely innocent could fire up old angst like a classic car kept perfect but never used.

  As Wilkes Sr. opened his mouth to say something, a mighty impact shook the car on its axles, causing the rear end to tailspin. The occupants fell across each other, seat belts having been forgotten in favour of a hasty escape. Thor thought they must have hit a pothole, or maybe a deer. You couldn’t see anything in this weather. The car ran into a hedgerow, front end dipping slightly as it entered.

  ‘Christ!’ shouted Wilkes Sr.

  Thor righted himself in the back. ‘You OK?’ asked Roisin. Thor would have nodded, but over her head, out of the window, smudged into an ugly watercolour by droplets, he could see a car pull up. The headlights were off and Thor had a very bad feeling.

  ‘Go. Go. GO!’ he shouted.

  Wilkes Sr. turned to see what Thor was looking at.

  ‘Go, Dad, now!’ bellowed Thor, as a figure got out of the car and walked towards the Discovery. Wilkes Sr. suddenly grasped the situation and reached for the gear stick, slamming it in reverse. The car juddered backwards, hopping out of the hedge, when another all too familiar explosion blasted deafeningly close. The driver’s side window shattered, revealing Ward Crook, shotgun smoking and raised, soaked to the skin with hate etched on his features. Evil lit his eyes, and he raised the gun again.

  Thor and Wilkes Jr. both screamed for him to stop, but another blast and Wilkes Sr. jolted violently in his seat. Blood splashed the beige dashboard of the Discovery.

  Wilkes Jr. screamed but Thor couldn’t hear it—the blasts had deafened him temporarily.

  Ward lowered the shotgun and took a long look at the car. A veil seemed to hang in front of him. It was impossible to know what he was thinking, but clearly something had been done that for all the world could never be undone. Without
a word, Ward got back in his car, started it, and drove away.

  Thor pulled himself forward between the two front seats. ‘Who’s hit?’ he shouted, but Wilkes Jr. was already leaning over his father, answering the question. Thor looked at his father, who was slumped in the seat. The blood on the dashboard and wheel was arced in thin splatters, and the front of Wilkes Sr.’s jacket was a shred of dark fabric, torn pink flesh and deep red blood, welling slowly in the shallow cavity. The grim, unburnished reality of what man is made of hit Thor hard.

  ‘Dad!’ Wilkes Jr. cried, reaching for the wound with a stuttering hand but not having a clue on earth what to do about it. He put his hand on his father’s shoulder, and his features cracked in grief. He knew, from a farming life of bitter dirt and blood and life and death, that this was it. This is one you don’t get up from.

  Wilkes Sr.’s head slumped against the door frame, filling the gaping hole where the window should have been, and rain fell on his head and into his eyes.

  Thor crawled past Roisin, who was now curled in the footwell quietly sobbing, and got out of the car. He went to his father and put his hand on his cheek. He was deathly pale but with a pink blush on his cheeks that looked strangely like stage makeup, but was only the rain diluting the blood that had splashed there.

  The old man’s eyes creaked open, and a word dropped from his lips. It was Thor’s name, and for the first and last time, he called Thor by how he wanted to be known and not by how he was christened.

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ Thor said, his eyes full of hot tears. He leaned in close, his father’s breath soft yet stale in his face.

  ‘The safe. Please. Twenty-one, twenty-two, nineteen.’ ‘Yes, I’ll go.’

  Wilkes Sr. gave a slight nod.

  ‘I love you, Dad,’ said Thor, ‘and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  Wilkes Jr. was crying, his face buried in his father’s jacket. There was blood on his face too. Thor could do nothing but hold his father while the old man passed away in the rain, and Thor imagined that the heavens would stay open long enough for his father to pass through their gates.

  39

  They found a picnic blanket in the boot of the Discovery, covered in dog hair, but it was the best they could do. Wilkes Jr. split the seats down the back and he and Thor lay their father there, covered by the blanket.

  Wilkes Jr. sat behind the wheel, but getting his father’s blood on his hands proved too much for him, and he hadn’t even got the car in gear before he was a stuttering wreck again. Roisin was still huddled in the remaining back seat, shocked and unresponsive, her strength overtaxed.

  Thor took over, and edged the nose of the Land Rover slowly out of the hedge, bringing brambles with it that had got caught in the grille. When he was a kid he’d often dreamt of driving this car—his dad’s car. And now finally behind the wheel he came to two realisations, first, it was bloody smooth and light in its responsiveness, and second, he didn’t want it anymore. Not after what had happened, and what he’d just seen.

  He knew it would take a long time to come to terms with recent events, especially the plain awfulness of the last few moments, but he’d have to file that for later. This was all-out war now. Loxley versus Crook.

  ‘We have to kill them. We have to kill them all,’ muttered Wilkes Jr. between sobs.

  Thor was keenly aware that his brother was talking about murdering Roisin’s family—he hoped he didn’t mean her too. He just wanted to turn the whole thing over to the police. Thor himself was a fugitive, and now a murder had been committed. Any action by the Loxleys now would contribute to their own destruction.

  The next moments became a string of snapshots that Thor would come across from time to time—painful pictures accidentally scattered on an attic floor while you look for something else:

  —The lights of Loxley Farm in the distance, and the dreadful news they were bringing…

  —Pulling into the yard in a foot of brown water, seeing yet more water flooding out of the front door of the farmhouse…

  —The children’s faces in the upstairs windows peering out in confusion and wonder…

  —Seeing Wilkes Jr. fall to his knees in the flood, and Hollis, Crewe, and Mercy running to him…

  —The look on their faces as he told them, the way they looked at the Discovery as if disbelieving what they saw…

  —The awful anguished crying that followed…

  —Bunny Loxley screaming from the second floor as the news was taken up, her hands on her head…

  Thor looked back at the outline of his father in the back. How huge the man looked in death beneath his improvised shroud.

  The safe. Thor had fucked up so much between himself and his father. He owed his father. His last request must stand. The safe.

  ‘Roisin,’ he said. ‘Sweetheart, come here.’

  Roisin looked up at him slowly. Her gaze was passive, her features slack.

  ‘I need to go in, darling, OK?’

  Her breathing was shallow as a sparrow’s. But she nodded, and after a moment’s hesitation she opened the passenger door with a quivering hand.

  They started walking over to the house when Mercy, mad with grief and rage, marched up to them.

  ‘You bring her here? You bring her here!’ She poked the barrel of a short shotgun he’d never seen before almost right under Roisin’s chin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Roisin said, but Thor got between them. ‘She’s innocent,’ Thor said. ‘They had kidnapped her.’

  ‘I don’t give a flying shit,’ spat Mercy. ‘No Crook has any right here.

  Not now. Not ever. Not after what they’ve done.’

  Thor pushed the barrel away. ‘Mercy, please. She’s innocent. You need to take care of Dad. He’s still in the car.’

  Mercy looked at the Discovery in bewilderment.

  ‘God in heaven,’ she whispered, as she started trudging slowly towards the car. The brothers took her lead and followed. Thor looked at the windows upstairs but could see nobody. The flood waters would never rise high enough to be a risk to those upstairs. The kids would be fine until morning; they’d have to be, because Thor had no idea how to get them out if things got worse.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said to Roisin. ‘I’ll be right back, I promise. Then we’ll be away, OK? Get you warm.’ He kissed her.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Thor—about your dad,’ she whispered.

  They were both drenched now, rivulets pouring spouts off whatever angles they could find.

  ‘Whatever anyone says about it, whatever they think, it was never your fault. Never once,’ Thor said. He held her tight and whispered again, ‘Never once.’

  ‘I’ll be right back, OK?’ he said, as he gave her one last kiss. ‘Find shelter,’ he shouted as he ran to the house. He’d only just got her back and now he had to let her go again, a forced circumstance he fought against. But his Dad…. There was nothing else for it. If there was any wish of his father’s he should try to execute, he should at least have a go at his dying one.

  It took a hurdle over white water, to get over the front step and it was so angry, jutted and frothed by the two steps up and one back down, that he could have surfed it straight back to Roisin. In the kitchen he was shocked to see how bad things had gotten—two or three times worse than yesterday. Now, it was nearly waist deep and churning, a geyser.

  He passed as quickly as he could through the kitchen and into the hall, but that still was up to his knees. He wondered if he could even get at the safe, let alone open it.

  It was the disaster he expected. The surface of the flood water was

  a gently rolling carpet of old paperwork. The desk still stood proud, the contents of the table top still exactly how they had been left, completely at odds with what was happening below it. Something humped, with sleek black fur, bobbed in the water by the desk. At first Thor thought it was an otter, but then he knew: Ruby. He’d been forgotten again, poor bastard.

  Strangely, it was the biggest sign yet to Thor that things ha
d properly gone to shit.

  He didn’t dwell on it. The safe was a huge, cumbersome brute that was so much a part of the furniture at Crook’s Farm it would probably have a shout at the estate in probate now that Wilkes Sr. had passed. It was next to the filing cabinet in plain view, its combination wheel just a few inches above the waterline.

  Twenty-one, twenty-two, nineteen.

  Thor took the dial and spun, hearing the catches work their magic like he remembered from childhood.

  A light snap and he pulled the door open with effort. A thick wad of drowned paperwork dislodged and presented itself. The safe stood five feet high, with a shelf marking every foot, so only the last two shelves were above water. Thor was hugely relieved to see that his father had still retained a modicum of common sense: on the top shelf, above the water, was a white, three-fold envelope, and written on it: THOR. It touched him again, his father writing his name how he preferred it.

  He grabbed it, and he saw that underneath his name were three bullet points, etched in the same block-capital scratching:

  ·THE DEED

  ·THE TRUTH

  ·YOUR WILL

  So much of that threw Thor a curveball he could never hope to read.

  The Deed. The deed to his land. A church bell clanged in his head: the break-in at his flat above the post office. This must have been what they were after, it had to be. Thor had completely forgotten about it, more preoccupied with the impact of the scenario than its physical implications.

  The Truth. Thor had no idea what that meant. None at all. He couldn’t believe his father had anything to do with all the shit that had gone on in the last few days, so, barring some kind of huge about-face betrayal, Thor was stumped.