by Guy N Smith
Her gaze followed the shoulder along, found the neck. A ragged torn stump, awash with scarlet fluid. Blood. He had cut himself shaving again, he was always doing that. In too much of a hurry, that was his problem. Rushing to go to work as if he hadn’t got a minute to live. He’d be lying there now with his mouth wide open, snoring away. If only she could reach him she would shake him awake, make sure that it really was him. Trying to call him, but all she managed was a whisper and he wouldn’t hear that.
She attempted to work out where his face was in relation to those squashed shoulders. But it wasn’t there. His head was missing!
Sometime later, much later, she began to scream hysterically.
Chapter Twenty-two
Jeff Beebee had opted for the beach rather than the indoor swimming pool, it seemed a waste of a rare British heatwave to spend the rest of the day under a roof. His intention had been to travel down to the shore on the chairlift, but when he saw the queue stretching from the embarkation point down to the scrambling area he decided to walk. There was no hurry, his main objective today was to use up time.
The beach was crowded; when the tide receded and exposed the sand then people would spread out. At the moment everybody was crammed on to the shingle below the miniature railway platform, beach towels and blankets spread out in an attempt to soften the sharpness of the stones.
He took off his jeans, relieved to be rid of their suffocating grip on the lower half of his body, exposed a pair of blue bathing trunks. He might go for a swim later; it was supposed to be bad for the heart to swim immediately after eating.
He wished he had brought a towel to sit on, shingle was so damned uncomfortable. There was a smooth rock just above the tideline which nobody seemed to have noticed. He lowered himself down on to it, it was warm, he would remain here for a while. He lay back, closed his eyes, time was beginning to drag again. He heard the approaching train, its whistle sounding on the bends through the dunes. Slowing as it approached the beach platform. More shouting and squealing, another arrival of children to swell the already overcrowded bathing area. The train started off again; Jeff wondered how the drivers stuck it, to and fro all day, the same route, the same scenery.
Another sound, an unfamiliar one, a kind of distant squeaking and groaning. He opened his eyes, saw what looked like a flotilla of air balloons approaching, the cable cars moving jerkily, passengers pointing at anything that attracted their interest. Aloft above the camp and its surrounding scrubland, an exhilarating experience until the novelty wore off. Maybe he would go back to the camp that way if there was a chance of a seat without too long a wait. He would see. Later. He closed his eyes again; if he could manage to doze off it would help to pass the time.
And then the screaming began, a shriek from somewhere along the shoreline, taken up by others as though in a pre-arranged chorus, gathering in volume like a dam that had suddenly burst. A ripple of running bodies, bare feet on loose shale, kicking stones, avalanching them. A stampede towards the sea, parents dragging or carrying their children, pushing others in a desperation for self-survival. Cursing, somebody falling, being trodden on. And in the background a screeching and grinding of tortured metal.
Jeff Beebee jerked into full waking, froze in horror at what he saw. Crowds rushed past him, towels and clothing abandoned where they had been discarded, a sinister array of children’s beach toys scattered on the stones as the rush to the tideline gathered momentum. Human lemmings, blind terror on their faces, still screaming.
He looked up, saw and understood. Oh, my Christ! One of the car supports on the chairlift had broken, the cab hanging at full stretch, swinging and twisting; the car following it picking up speed on the tilted main cable, sliding fast towards it. A mid-air collision was inevitable. There was no sign of the passengers in the onrushing vehicle, they had either jumped or else were cowering on the floor. That single wire could not possibly stand the strain, it was already fraying, strands snapping.
Jeff remained where he was, he was a hundred yards or more away, there could not possibly be any danger to himself, there was no point in joining the panic-stricken rush. Staring upwards transfixed, forced to watch, a subconscious countdown to the moment of impact.
It was like the whole bizarre scene was being enacted in slow motion, a crazy mid-air stunt put on for the benefit of the spectators. Two guys hanging from the damaged cable car, their legs kicking frantically, under sentence of death, their gallows about to drop them down on the jagged rocks below.
A sudden hush, a moment of sinister silence, the crowd below, the passengers above, were all silent as though they had accepted the inevitable. Even the careering car ran smoothly, a final display of dignity. Until metal crunched and squealed, tore and buckled. A mass of unrecognisable useless scrap being wrenched from its moorings, bodies falling, being thrown, writhing in a macabre attempt by Mankind to master the elusive art of flying, clumsy wingless birds with arms and legs kicking.
The two in the leading car dropped first, debris showering all around them. The cabs spun crazily, first one way then the other, ejected their remaining screaming passengers; then the cable snapped, and the twisted vehicles plummeted earthwards. Four convulsing skydivers, a human avalanche; two of them hit the top of the cliff face, crunched, an instant scarlet morass, rolling, sliding. The others missed the rock by a yard at the most, a clear fall until they struck the beach below, pebbles flying and skimming, bouncing. That was when the screaming began again, parents trying to shield their children from the sight, somebody being sick.
Miraculously the following cable cars had come to a halt, a safety device on the joints guarding against such an accident. Marooned occupants leaning out trying to see what happened, somebody already shouting for help. But nobody down below moved, shying away, waiting for others to pluck up courage to go forward; it’s pointless, they’re all dead, it’s not our job, we wouldn’t be any use anyhow. Everybody standing back.
Jeff slid off the rock, felt how his legs shook beneath him. Nausea, he might throw up; who wouldn’t? A premonition, more than that, a half-suspicion that was only just beginning to register in his confused brain. One of those figures, one that had been hanging out of the first car … no, it was too far from here to be certain; a trick of the mind. But he had to know, to be sure. He began to pick his way across the beach, not hurrying because he didn’t really want to see, hoped that somebody else would get there ahead of him.
He heard people moving, the herd instinct, following after him. They needed a leader; they had one now.
One of the accident victims was still alive; a girl with long dark hair, she reminded Jeff of Ann and it hurt, had his heart flip at first but it was quite obvious the other was not his girlfriend, she was too short. Her features were a crimson mulch, her mouth was blowing blood bubbles. Moaning, quivering, she couldn’t writhe in agony because her back was undoubtedly broken. Naked except for a pair of torn briefs that hung from a knee, blood drenched. Blinded but still conscious, a pet run over in the road, surrounded by helpless onlookers waiting for a vet to come and put it down.
Jeff thought the one lying by her side was female, too. A couple of girls holidaying together and it had ended in sudden violent death. This one was undoubtedly dead, she was lucky. A huddle of bloody flesh, her clothes ripped from one side, a couple of broken rib bones protruding. He jerked his head away, saw the man.
The latter was miraculously unmarked, no trace of blood unless he was lying on his wounds. But very dead, there was no doubt about that. Arms by his sides, legs just slightly apart, clothing soiled and scuffed but otherwise intact. The undertakers might already have been and laid him out, he looked so serene.
The last one was Norman, Jeff had braced himself for that, knew it even before he looked. The other’s face was battered, an eye gone and a strip of flesh dangling from a torn cheek. Lying with his legs crunched up, arms splayed, one eye still open and staring sightlessly at the cloudless blue sky up above. Still bleeding, sca
rlet rivulets trickling over the shingle and disappearing somewhere.
Up above, the passengers trapped on the chairlift were still screaming. A woman was hysterical and yelling something incoherent, probably the dead man’s wife. Jeff heard people coming up behind him, bare feet scraping on stones, hanging back. Ghouls who wanted to look but were afraid to come too close.
‘That girl over there’s still alive,’ somebody muttered.
Jeff Beebee turned. Three white-faced men and a woman, everybody else was keeping their distance. ‘Get some towels, do your best to make her comfortable.’ They needed somebody to tell them what to do, not that it would do any good. You went through the motions because it was your moral duty. ‘Don’t move her, though.’
The woman looked like she might be sick. One of the men turned away, stooped to pick up a discarded beach towel, stood there holding it. ‘Come on,’ he spoke to his companions. ‘We got to do something.’
‘How long before the ambulance gets here?’ the woman asked in a whisper. Nobody answered her and she followed in the wake of the men.
Jeff stood there looking down on Norman Tong. An hour ago the youth had been alive, frantic about his missing girl. Now it didn’t matter anymore and Jeff knew without any doubt that the girl murdered on the island had been named Sarah. He knew that just as surely as he knew that they had got Norman. An ‘accident’, probably so expertly engineered that a dozen enquiries would not reveal sabotage. Diabolically clever, no traces; the fact that they had killed three other innocent people as well was of no consequence. Norman had been too persistent, wouldn’t give up and go away. Like himself.
Jeff felt naked, exposed, a roebuck standing on open ground sensing the presence of the stalker with his high-powered rifle but unable to do anything about it. He turned, scanned the faces of the crowd, watchers who had moved in for a closer look. Holidaymakers, looking at himself because he had been the first to go near, grudgingly admiring him. Maybe a hundred in all, and any one of them could have been lusting for his blood. You’re next, Beebee. It’ll be an accident, just like this one. He shivered in the warm sunshine.
A long-wheel base Land Rover with the Paradise emblem on its doors had arrived at the railway platform. Men in grey uniforms were disembarking, hurrying down the steep narrow path. Security. Bastards, murderers! Jeff tensed, had an urge to flee, before it was too late, shrugged it off and stood his ground. They wouldn’t touch him now, there were too many people about. In the distance he heard the wail of a siren, growing louder by the second. They hadn’t wasted any time, just like they had been on standby, expecting this. Which was nonsense, he told himself. A hit man, maybe a couple, that was all it needed. Oh, Jesus, they were bloody clever!
He turned, began to walk away, expected to be called back but nobody shouted at him. They were all too busy looking at the dead and the injured girl. In all probability she was dead, too, by now. He hoped she was, for her sake.
Jeff headed for the dunes, kept away from the miniature railway track. Over to his left the occupants of the chairlift were still shouting and screaming. In due course they would be rescued. The corpses would be removed, the wreckage cleared, and by tomorrow everything would be back to normal.
Wandering aimlessly, a fugitive standing watching the Canada geese on the boating lake. There was barely a soul in sight, he reflected, everybody’s gone to gawp. This was one of those times when you found yourself despising the rest of the human race, wished that you were no part of it; a bird or an animal, anything.
He found himself walking in the direction of the main car park. Hurrying now, afraid of what he might find when he reached the end of the third row. Norman’s van, rusting, standing there waiting for somebody to come and take it away. He sensed the loneliness, the desolation that emanated from the ageing vehicle, a heap of scrap that knew its owner wasn’t coming back.
The Maxi was still there, parked next to the van. He walked round it, scrutinising it, eyeing the tyres; they were still inflated. Looking for any visible signs of vandalism; there were none. He unlocked the driver’s door with a hand that shook, slid in behind the wheel, hesitated with the ignition key. It might be booby-trapped! No, they were too subtle for that, their weapons were ‘accidents’ not cold-blooded undisputed murder. The engine fired, he let it tick over, checked the gears, backed the car out, parked it again and switched off. He was sweating, he felt sick.
Start it up again, drive away, don’t stop. Get away now! Only one thing stopped him – Ann Stackhouse!
Otherwise he would have gone, gate-crashed his way out of the main entrance if he’d had to. They wouldn’t dare to try anything in broad daylight with crowds of campers about, he was sure of that. But it didn’t matter because he wasn’t going anywhere. Except back to his chalet. If he fled from here then Ann went with him, there was no alternative.
He got out, locked the car up again, not that locks were any safeguard against this organisation. Tonight Ann would come to his chalet, he’d persuade her to go into town with him, deceive her if necessary. And once he got the car through those gates nothing was going to stop them; neither of them would be coming back. A glimmer of hope amid the bloody death, an escape route. His feeling of nausea receded but he was still tense. It was like a film he’d seen once about some POW’s who had dug a tunnel to escape from their prison camp. The waiting was the worst part of all.
The moment Jeff let himself into his chalet he knew that they had been there. No outward signs, no drawers tipped out, not so much as a wardrobe door left ajar. Everything, as far as he could tell, was exactly as he had left it that morning. Icy trickles up and down his back, his skin goose pimpling, checking everywhere in case the intruder might still be there hiding. Searching, looking for he knew not what. They were too clever for that, if there was a hidden device he would not find it. They had been checking on him. They had got Norman, he was next on their ruthless hitlist!
God Almighty, he couldn’t stop in here, not now. He changed out of his trunks, his clothes were still down on the beach, found a clean shirt. Get out there where there are people, ordinary holidaymakers. Safety in numbers, stick with them, play the machines in the amusement arcade or something. Don’t risk any rides or anything where they might engineer another catastrophe. Just concentrate on staying alive.
He didn’t know why they wanted him so badly but now they had an additional reason, he had been a buddy of Norman’s. He didn’t know anything, but he guessed, and that in itself was dangerous. He might ask questions, alert the media. Dead he was no threat to them. Christ, every minute was going to seem like an hour until tonight and he found himself dreading the darkness.
It was a game of waiting again, wishing your life away if you looked at it logically. He spent half an hour watching a game of football on the sports field, the semi-finals of the chalet competitions, he overheard a spectator remark; Yellow Camp versus Green Camp. Rough and tumble, the score was 5-4 at half-time to the shirtless Yellows. Jeff moved away, went on up to the outdoor paddling pool, a shallow rectangle where you could take your kids in safety, model colourful elephants to squirt you with their trunks; children were squealing with delight. A façade, he thought, you would never guess what was going on here if you didn’t know. And he didn’t know for sure. Only that they took you out like killing an annoying bluebottle if you got in their way.
He stayed there until six o’clock, the spray from the novelty fountains refreshing when the wind drifted it your way. People were beginning to get dressed under the cover of capacious towels, children being changed by their mothers. The day was drawing to a close, adults were relishing the nightlife. The cinema, perhaps, and then with the kids in bed and the convenience of a camp babysitting service, there was a late-night cabaret. Or you could go to one of the bars where there was a permanent extension of licensing hours.
Jeff noticed that the wine bar was open, it was as good a place as any to kill an hour or two; they offered a variety of bar meals, seafood salads, ca
viar and chips or just a baked potato with a choice of fillings. If you didn’t mind paying over the odds it was a civilised place in which to eat.
He ordered prawn salad and a glass of Morgon red. Maybe he should get drunk like an awful lot of people did here. No, he needed a clear head if he was to stay alive. Ann, too.
A sprinkling of early drinkers, they came from the luxury chalets, casual dress but you could picture them in dinner jackets eating at expensive restaurants and trying to get a deal through. Executives, property owners, it was anybody’s guess what they did. Jeff felt the odd one out, a self-employed jobbing builder. But, ladies and gentlemen, I did go to a public school. Wrekin College, if you want to check. Sod you!
His breathing was shallow as he walked back to his chalet. 9.30 and deep dusk, the street lamps were lit, shadows that could have hid an army. Or just one hitman. Looking about him, keeping to the tarmac, avoiding the walkways. Having to search for his own digs, they all looked alike. There was a roaring in his ears, the key in his hand didn’t slide into the lock as easily as it usually did.
Throwing the door right back, reaching round to find the light switch, ready to leap back outside if there was anybody there. There wasn’t. He let out his pent-up breath in a rush, left the front door ajar whilst he checked all the rooms, the wardrobe. They hadn’t been back, he didn’t think so anyway, but their ‘scent’ still lingered from earlier. A kind of tension in the atmosphere which you sensed, had you closing all the curtains.
Ann might come early, she had done before. He clung to that hope. No preliminaries, we’re going into town for a meal. Pray God they don’t try to stop us at the main entrance. Would they forestall him again, sabotage the car? Unable to sit down, pacing, wishing there was some routine chore that would occupy him, make the time go faster. But there wasn’t, not even a rack of washing-up.