Corpse Road

by David J Gatward

  Harry was confused. ‘Why? What are you on about?’

  ‘Earlier? You said nowt instead of nothing. It’s a slippery slope, boss. A very slippery slope. Dangerous, too, if you’re not careful.’

  ‘Good God.’ Harry sighed. ‘What an awful thought.’

  Jim laughed. ‘Before you know it, you’ll be just like the rest of us, and you know what that means, don’t you?’

  Harry stopped and turned to face the PCSO. ‘No, what?’ he asked.

  ‘Cheese and cake, boss.’ Jim grinned. ‘Cheese and cake.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Sitting in the passenger seat of the Vauxhall Astra Incident Response Vehicle, Matt was doing his best to not give Jen the impression that he was absolutely bloody terrified. But that was a little difficult to do, with the car skipping along the Cliff Gate Road and through the Buttertubs Pass, like a happy bouncy mountain goat, and being driven by someone who, as far as Matt could tell, obviously had ambitions to be a getaway driver.

  ‘You okay, there?’ Jen asked, dropping a gear for a corner just ahead before taking it with ease.

  And she was whistling, Matt noticed, which didn’t help, either. It wasn’t that she was driving like a complete idiot, just that she was driving fast and with exceptional skill, and it was rather unnerving. He realised then that he had somehow managed to brace himself tightly into his seat, his knees jammed against the glovebox, hands gripping anything they could find. ‘Oh, I’m fine, yes,’ he said, attempting to relax. ‘So, where did you learn to drive like this, exactly? The Dakar Rally?’

  ‘I did the advanced driver response course a while back,’ Jen said. ‘Remember?’

  Matt certainly did remember, but he’d not been in a car with her since then, and the difference in the way she handled the vehicle was as dramatic as it was traumatic.

  ‘So, you enjoyed it then?’

  ‘Yeah, it was great fun,’ Jen said. ‘You should have a go yourself.’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ Matt said, as another corner came and went as though it wasn’t really there.

  Outside the car, the weather was on the turn, Matt noticed. It hadn’t quite started raining, but the sky was certainly grey with depressing promise. The clouds were low, erasing the fell tops from view. The bright greens of the fields and moors had fallen to a darker shade, and he could see wind dancing through the long grass and the tall ferns of bracken which cloaked the fells. God, it’s a beautiful place, he thought, somewhere he knew he could never leave. It was also somewhere he would always do his best to serve, and to somehow try and preserve that beauty in whatever way he could. Because the beauty wasn’t just in the place, the physicality of the ancient, glacial landscape that they were now speeding along, but the people, the history. And that made it all the more important to do what he could to get to the bottom of what had happened the night before.

  ‘So, how long have you been with the rescue team?’ Jen asked.

  They were at the bottom of the road now, and she took a left, turning onto the road which led through the small village of Thwaite, its grey stone, slate-roofed houses sitting low and quiet under the watchful gaze of Kisdon Hill.

  ‘Can’t say that I know, to be honest,’ Matt said. ‘Years.’

  ‘So why did you join?’

  ‘Because I made a tit of myself when I was young and stupid,’ Matt said. ‘You know, before I became all old and wise.’

  Jen raised an eyebrow. ‘How so?’

  ‘Got lost down an old tin mine.’ Matt sighed, the memory of it all as fresh as the day it had happened. ‘It was my nineteenth birthday. Got pissed the night before with a couple of mates, on Thunderbird, would you believe? The next day, off we went, thinking we were invincible.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Oh yes, very seriously,’ Matt said. ‘Lost down a tin mine. Not fun at all.’

  ‘No, I mean you got pissed on Thunderbird?’ Jen’s voice cracked with laughter. ‘I mean, who drinks that?’

  ‘We did,’ Matt shrugged. ‘It was all about bang for your buck back then.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well,’ Matt began, sifting through the memories to make sure he had them in the right order, ‘you see, one thing you always take with you, whether you’re above ground or below, is a map, right? I thought my mate Dave had it. He thought I had it. And the other lad, can’t remember his name, well he thought I had it as well. But none of us thought to check who actually had it until we’d been underground for over an hour.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Yes, ah, indeed. Blame the Thunderbird! And tin mines, they’re pretty wet as well, like. So, there we are, lost in this mine, and we come across this cavern. A flooded cavern. We’ve no idea where we are, which route to go back, and we have no choice but to swim across the bloody thing to this huge rock in the middle, which had clearly fallen from the roof at some point, which didn’t exactly make us feel any better. It was an experience, I can tell you.’

  ‘All sounds very Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ Jen said. ‘So, what happened? You clearly didn’t drown.’

  ‘No, but our lights died, didn’t they? Thankfully, we’d had the good sense to leave details with another mate just in case we didn’t get back when we said we would. Which we didn’t.’

  ‘So, the rescue team was sent out?’

  ‘Yep. He called them out and they found us a few hours later, cold and pretty scared to be honest. We’d kept ourselves occupied by scoffing the food we’d taken with us in an old army ammo box, you know, Mars bars, Kendal Mint Cake, and a flask of hot chocolate. Marzipan, too.’

  ‘Wait, what? Marzipan?’ Jen exclaimed.

  ‘Don’t knock it,’ Matt said, waggling a knowing finger. ‘What you do, right, is get it out of its packet, flatten it out with a rolling pin, wrap it in cling film, then stuff it up inside your caving helmet. Genius!’

  ‘Yes, but marzipan?’ Jen said again, her expression one of abject horror. ‘That stuff is disgusting!’

  ‘Anyway,’ Matt said, ‘we were rescued. We weren’t in any real danger, but we were starting to suffer from the cold. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my whole life as I was when the rescue team turned up in that mine. So, I decided afterwards to give back by joining them. I also married one of them a few years later.’

  Ahead, Matt saw the road fork and just beyond it, on the left, stood Keld Lodge.

  ‘Just pull up in front,’ Matt said, and Jen eased the car off the road, up against a drystone wall.

  ‘You don’t mention Joan much,’ Jen said, unbuckling her seat belt. ‘How is she? Haven’t seen her for a while.’

  ‘Not the best,’ Matt said. ‘Misses the hills, you know? Bloody arthritis, and she’s only a couple of years older than me. Not that it stops her hammering about on that wheelchair of hers. Calls it her chariot. She’s more dangerous than you are in this!’

  Outside the car, Matt pushed away thoughts of his wife, which wasn’t exactly easy when they were with him every hour of every day. Not that he resented it, just that he wished he could do more for her, the same he knew she would do for him.

  ‘Never been here,’ Jen said, as they climbed out. ‘Bit posh for me. Driven past a fair few times though.’

  ‘On your way up to the Tan Hill pub, I should imagine?’

  ‘Love it there,’ Jen said. ‘Bleak and beautiful. One of those places where the worse the weather gets the better the pub is.’

  Across the road, Matt led the way through the front door. Inside, the air was rich with the smell of the breakfast which had been served a couple of hours ago, all sausages and black pudding and fried bread, and Matt’s stomach rumbled. A man and a woman walked past him, fully kitted out with walking gear, chatting away, faces full of smiles. He tried not to think about how Kirsty had been the day before, setting off into the hills, excitement in every footstep, but doom waiting for her on the moors. They reminded him of himself and Joan, back when they’d been able to head out
onto the hills together. Good times, long ago now.

  In the bar he found one of the staff to talk to, a young woman, dressed smart, with a smile that could have given the sun a run for its money when it came to brightness.

  Matt introduced himself and was greeted with even more smile and a friendly New Zealand accent.

  ‘How can I help?’ she asked.

  ‘Just need to ask a few questions about someone we think might have popped in here yesterday,’ Matt said. ‘Do you know who was on duty?’

  ‘I was,’ the woman said. ‘Fire away.’

  Jen came over to stand with Matt.

  ‘Can we take your name and phone number first, if that’s okay?’ Matt asked. ‘Just in case we need to follow anything up?’

  ‘Sure,’ the woman said, giving her name as Ellie Matthews, then her mobile number. ‘So, what do you need to know?’

  Jen pulled out the car keys. ‘First off, do you have a Porsche in the car park?’

  ‘Not sure, but you can go check,’ Ellie said. ‘Just out the back, through those doors over there.’

  Jen nodded thanks and made her way out through the doors, following some quick additional directions from Ellie. A couple of minutes later, Jen popped her head around the door. ‘Yep, the car’s out there. I’ll just call it in then go out for a closer look.’

  Jen gone again, Matt turned to Ellie. ‘The photo I’m going to show you is a few years old now, but if you saw the owner of the car yesterday, you’ll recognise her from it I’m sure.’ He then pulled out the photo of Kirsty on her wedding day which Harry had shown them all earlier.

  Ellie glanced at the photo. ‘Yes, I remember her. Is she okay? Has something happened?’

  Matt ignored the question. ‘Can you tell us anything more about her? If she said anything about why she was here or what she was doing?’

  Ellie looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘She was very chatty and excited, like she’d never been camping before. Said she used to come up to Swaledale as a kid and that was why she’d come back, sort of a homecoming kind of thing I think.’

  Matt jotted notes as Ellie spoke. ‘Anything else? Did she mention if she was meeting anyone, for example?’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘No, not that I can remember. She was on her own, asked if she could leave her car here, and that was it, really. We don’t usually allow people to do that, because the car park is for those who are staying overnight, but she has a room booked for this evening anyway, so it wasn’t a problem.’

  ‘So, she was due to stay here tonight, then?’ Matt asked. ‘Did she leave anything with you to look after while she was away?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ellie said. ‘There’s a suitcase up in her room. Oh, and she said that the trip was a little treat for herself, that she was getting away for a bit of “me time,” I think.’

  ‘And you’re sure she didn’t mention anyone else?’

  ‘As sure as I can be,’ Ellie replied.

  Jen appeared once again through the doors and walked back over to Matt and Ellie. ‘Ellie, has anyone else been in asking for her at all?’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘Not me, anyway. Perhaps one of the other staff. I can ask.’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ Jen said.

  Matt thanked Ellie for her time then followed Jen back outside. ‘You think someone followed her?’

  ‘No,’ Jen said, ‘I know someone followed her. Look . . .’

  Matt looked down to see that Jen was holding an evidence bag, inside which was a short note written on a piece of plain paper.

  ‘Shit,’ Matt said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Jen replied.

  Chapter Twelve

  The post had gone live an hour ago and the messages were still pouring in. The ones who got it, the ones who understood, who shared his pain, his rejection, they were loving his work. Loving it!

  The adrenaline had been such a rush that he was sure that even now, over twelve hours later, he was still riding high from it. And it felt good.

  The look on her face! Ha! Served her right. Served them all right, didn’t it? Because she was just the first of so many more, and they were all going to get what was coming for them. And it was a storm, that’s what it was, a righteous storm against every Stacy and every Chad. They had it coming, every single one of them, and a surge of adrenaline rushed through him at the thought of it.

  A storm . . . Yes, that was absolutely the right word. This was a storm and he was the wind that started it. And soon others would join in, would follow him, and together they would wreak such havoc that the world would have no choice but to sit up, to take notice, and to listen.

  And this was why he’d picked her first, the ungrateful bitch. Everything she had, her nice house, her posh car, her husband, and she still wasn’t happy, wasn’t satisfied? Yeah, she’d had it coming and she’d deserved it. She’d been made an example.

  So, who was next? He’d been planning the first for a few weeks and hadn’t given much thought to the next stage—where he would go from here. But there had to be another one if this was going to have the impact he wanted it to, if he was going to have any chance of making this storm really happen. One just wasn’t going to be enough. Yes, one was a start, but another, well that meant things were continuing, didn’t it? And then there would be another, and another . . .

  He checked his post again, the messages still increasing in number, filling his screen with praise and adoration.

  You’re our soldier!

  Dude, you’re our hero!

  Who’s next? Who’s gonna get it?

  Can’t wait to see the next Stacy get what’s coming!

  All hail the new Ultimate Gentlemen!

  These messages were for him! People he’d never met in his life, from all over the world, sending messages just to him, saluting him, praising him, worshipping him!

  He liked that some of them were calling him their soldier. Because that’s exactly what he was, right? He had all the gear, had read up on everything he needed to, spent too many hours to ever count watching YouTube videos to make sure that what he did was as good as it could ever be. And he’d practised and practised until he was unstoppable.

  He leaned back in his chair, resting his head in his hands, and stared at the ceiling. This first operation had been such a success, he giggled at the thought of it and what he was going to do next. He was excited, that was for sure, and felt more alive now than he ever had done in his entire life. But now, he needed to think. To put his mind to where to take his crusade next because really, that’s exactly what it was.

  And then an idea struck him. Of course! Yes! Why hadn’t he considered it before? It was so obvious, wasn’t it? And no one would expect it, would they? It would be the most wonderful surprise!

  The simplicity of this idea made him giggle, and as he opened a new window on his screen to see a tiny flashing dot against a map, the giggle soon became a laugh, and one which was as cold as the steel blade he’d used the night before.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Harry pulled his car into the drive of a detached house with a large, double-door garage to its right, and enough lawn out front to play a good game of croquet.

  ‘You ever played croquet?’ Harry asked, his thoughts deciding to give themselves an airing.

  ‘Can’t say that I have,’ Jim said with Fly on his lap, licking his chin. ‘Why?

  ‘You’re not missing much,’ Harry said. He hadn’t a clue as to why anyone would want to play such a stupid game. He’d never seen the point. But then, he felt like that about most games and sports. He just couldn’t get excited about winning, or losing, a game. It was fun to have a game of cards down the pub, throw some darts, but the winning, well, that had just never grabbed him. He’d tried a few times to show interest, particularly during his years in the Paras, because loads of the lads had been into football or whatever. Since then, though, he was pretty sure he’d not watched a single game.

  ‘You don’t see it on television, do you?’ Jim said.<
br />
  ‘What?’

  ‘Croquet,’ Jim said. ‘There’s darts, isn’t there? Snooker. Croquet’s kind of the same.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Jim gave a convincing nod. ‘They’re not sports, are they, they’re games? So why isn’t croquet on TV?’

  ‘Bowls is,’ Harry said.

  ‘Exactly!’ Jim exclaimed.

  ‘I think you’re onto something here,’ Harry said. ‘A new Saturday afternoon show, perhaps.’

  ‘There’s other things you could show as well,’ Jim said, Fly now on his back across Jim’s lap, enjoying a tummy tickle. ‘Quoits, for example.’

  ‘Good one.’

  ‘Skittles.’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  ‘Welly wanging.’

  At this, Harry frowned.

  ‘Welly wanging?’

  ‘Did you not go to the Hawes Gala?’ Jim asked.

  Harry had indeed ventured into it for a whole afternoon, thanks to much haranguing by Liz and Matt. And it had certainly been an experience. Not least, because he was pretty sure that, from the moment he’d stepped across the bunting-strewn entrance and onto the field it was held in, he’d actually travelled back in time.

  ‘So, you’d have seen the welly wanging!’ Jim said.

  Harry was none the wiser, but he could very much remember his day at the Gala. Not just because the fancy dress parade, which had trundled through the marketplace before ending up in the field, had been a joy to behold, so long as your definition of joy was to witness the true horror that people can achieve when given too much time, an awful lot of crepe paper and paper mâché. But also because of the stalls that had surrounded the edge of the field, with everything from the coconut shy booth and wooden boat swings, to the local Methodist minister being locked in the stocks, a pet show, and even a very popular activity which involved sliding along a horizontal pole to crack an opponent across the face with a hefty pillow and send them into the mud below.