by A J Waines
‘Five years is a long time,’ I said. ‘You haven’t picked up an American accent.’
She laughed. ‘I’m too British for that.’
Mel woke up and started making a fuss. I could only see her nose and dribbling mouth poking out from the oversized hat.
‘Here we go…’ moaned Mark. Jodie elbowed him roughly.
‘Okay, little one,’ she cooed, stroking Mel as she yawned and kicked in the sling. ‘Sorry, guys, nature calls,’ she said. ‘See you in a bit.’
‘Shall I come and help?’ I offered.
‘Not this time,’ she said, leaving me behind. ‘She’s got a stomach upset…’
‘Aw – gross!’ said Mark, making a puking sound.
‘Anyway. Stuart’s here.’ she said, raising an eyebrow.
I sat back down again.
Jodie and Mark looked at each other, then at me. ‘We’ll leave you and Stuart to have a nice chat,’ said Mark, taking Jodie’s hand and pulling her upstairs.
I was about to invite Stuart through to the fire, when he looked at his watch. ‘I can’t stop,’ he said.
‘Oh. Did you want to meet for a drink later?’
‘Er – not this evening, I’m afraid.’
His tone had changed; he sounded formal, like we were work colleagues. I made light of it and took him to the door. He barely acknowledged me as he left, narrowing his eyes as he stared out into the moribund afternoon. My world shrank as I closed the door.
I took a quick bath, then tuned in to the local radio in my room. The weather dominated the broadcast; more heavy snow was on its way. There was no more news about Brody – no mention that they had a name for the abductor. They must either still be looking into it or have dismissed me as a crank caller.
I went to the window and watched as tiny flecks of white began spilling from the sky. Flakes landed on the glass inches from my face clinging on in single star shapes. I thanked each one, willing it to stay there; more snow meant Charlie would remain hidden and we were safe – for now.
I must have entered the kitchen without making a sound, because it was a few seconds before either of them registered my presence. At first, I thought Mark was leaning, hip to hip against Jodie at the sink, but when they whisked around, I saw it was Karen. She had a towelling turban on her head so I couldn’t see any of her hair.
They broke apart awkwardly and I was tempted to apologise, only doing so would have highlighted the fact that something had been going on between them. They both looked daggers at me. I wasn’t sure if I’d caught them in the middle of a steamy argument or in a moment of forbidden passion. Either way, it left me unnerved.
‘I’m getting supper ready,’ I said, walking purposefully towards the larder.
‘I had an idea, didn’t I?’ said Mark. Karen gave him a blank look. ‘I thought I’d go over to Duncaird to get a takeaway from the pub,’ he went on. ‘They do burgers and chips to go, apparently. I’ve checked the lane and it’s passable. Save you the bother tonight, Alice.’
‘Oh. Great. Thanks.’
Karen walked past me to the fire and I joined her. She was sitting with her knees up against her chin. She had let her hair down – it was still wet and hung like solid spikes over her eyes. Underneath, her pupils caught the flickering of the flames and glowed like black beetles.
I tilted the rocking chair towards the fire and sat down. I heard Mark’s voice in the hall then the door-knocker rapped twice. There were more voices – a female voice, jovial, light-hearted and Mark’s sullen tones in reply. Then I heard him call Jodie and the door slammed.
After that, it went quiet.
The silence between Karen and I opened into a frosty chasm and I hugged myself, instinctively, as I built myself up to asking the burning question.
‘Karen? Why did you invite me here?’
She didn’t move, kept her gaze on the mercurial flames.
‘Karen?’ I repeated.
She slowly turned to face me. ‘You’ve changed a lot since Uni, haven’t you? You were so innocent and, dare I say, easily led, back then.’
‘I know. I was more like thirteen, instead of eighteen,’ I admitted.
Karen pursed her lips. ‘I asked you as a way of saying sorry. I should have kept in touch and I failed miserably.’ Her gaze went back to the fire and I waited, but she added nothing else.
I wanted to ask about Charlie, but the others could return and barge in at any moment.
I was getting increasingly jittery about the fact that we’d simply left him in the byre, lying there, ‘waiting’. Waiting for us to decide his fate. We were going to have to do something with him one of these days – he couldn’t stay where he was for ever. And we’d have to act soon, because every time the temperature crept above freezing his body was sinking into increasingly foul states of decay.
I left Karen and went through to the kitchen, just as the others came back. Mark dropped a white plastic bag on the table and we tipped the burgers out onto our plates. I gathered cutlery and Jodie found tomato sauce. Karen sat down and didn’t say a word.
‘Stuart was in the pub,’ said Jodie, without any preamble. She was picking out the small chips and adding the larger ones to Mark’s plate.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘On his own?’
‘I knew you were going to ask that,’ Mark said. ‘He was with a stunning red-head and they left arm in arm.’
‘No – he wasn’t!’ interjected Jodie. ‘He was talking to some other guy.’
‘They looked a bit shifty, actually – seriously,’ added Mark. ‘They were poring over a map – very intense. Then Stuart handed him an envelope.’
‘You’re right,’ said Jodie, nodding. ‘It did look dodgy. Stuart kept looking up – you know the way people do when they’re checking to see if anyone’s watching them. A bit of a giveaway if you ask me.’
Stuart had told me he didn’t know anyone around here. I didn’t know what to think.
We were all mucking in with the washing up, later, when Karen idly asked Mark who had been at the door before they went out for the takeaway.
‘The biddy who owns the place, I think. Mrs Eller…’
‘Ellington,’ Karen corrected.
‘Yeah – that’s it.’ He opened the back door with his roll-up nipped between his fingers, ready to light up. A blast of freezing air made me take a step back. ‘I dunno what she wanted – something about needing to get into the barn – the byre – whatever it’s called.’
I shot round, a dirty plate in my hand. Karen stood perfectly still.
‘When…when does she need to get in?’ she asked.
‘It’s no big deal. She said she has a key – it was just a courtesy call in case we saw any strange blokes down the track. She’s got re-fitters or decorators coming.’
‘When?’ I said.
‘Who are you two? Bill and Ben?’ He stared at his grubby trainers. ‘Tomorrow…lunchtime? I dunno. I wasn’t really listening.’
Karen’s eyes flashed at me as I dropped the plate into the soapy water.
‘I’m going to fix my nails,’ Jodie called out to Mark and anyone else who was interested. I gave her a weak smile and watched her go. With Mark outside, Karen nudged the back door with her foot, so it was nearly closed, and dragged me into the sitting room.
My throat had shrunk to the diameter of a straw. ‘Oh shit, oh shit,’ I chanted, turning in little circles.
She pulled at my arm. ‘Stop it,’ she hissed. ‘Stop this right now!’
I made myself stand still in front of the low flames and watched them spit and crackle, then break open one after another.
‘It’s too dark to do anything now,’ Karen whispered. ‘We’ll have to do it early tomorrow morning.’
‘Do WHAT?! What are we going to do with him?’
‘Do with who?’ said Mark, easing open the connecting door.
‘None of your business,’ snarled Karen. ‘Go away.’ He sniggered and backed up in jerky robot steps, pulling the door t
owards him.
All the while, there was a latent curdling in my stomach. Somehow we had to find a way out of this impossible mess we’d created for ourselves.
‘I don’t know yet,’ she said, twisting her lip to one side. ‘Meet me in the morning at seven-thirty on the dot.’ She turned at the sound of the wailing baby monitor and left the room.
I closed my eyes and fought the urge to take in too much air. Slow and easy breaths. Slow and easy. I couldn’t afford to have a panic attack now. I needed to conserve all my energy so I didn’t fall apart.
My head felt like it was trapped inside a spin dryer by the time I got into bed. The sleepwalking incident had pointed the finger at me, but as time went on, I was having more and more doubts. A thought suddenly occurred to me. What if Karen wanted to let me carry on believing it was me, when in fact she was the one who’d killed him? It made sense logistically. Once Charlie had got into my room, she could have hit him from behind.
I reached for my bottle of sleeping tablets. How else was I meant to sleep at night with all this turmoil going on in my head? Not only that, but by tomorrow morning we needed to come up with one hell of a magnificent plan for getting rid of Charlie. And I didn’t have a clue.
Chapter 28
Dawn was still off-stage, hovering in the wings when my alarm went off. I opened the curtains and brought my hand to my mouth. I’d never seen a snowfall like this; tall drifts were banked up against the trees, the walls, blocking up all the gates and fences. Icicles hung like tubular bells from the edge of the bird table. Such a dramatic transformation had taken place in silence, overnight.
As I reluctantly peeled off my bathrobe, I felt a blast of cold, as though I’d thrown open the window.
I crept downstairs and pulled on my coat and boots at the front door. When I tried to open it, nothing happened. I couldn’t even get the key into the lock; icicles must have formed over the keyhole. I went from room to room – every windowpane was splintered with frost, an L-shaped frill on the outside like a Christmas card.
Shit.
I heard a door open upstairs and Karen crept down to join me, holding her finger to her mouth.
‘Kitchen,’ she whispered.
I followed her to the back door. This one did open, but with an odd creak. We were greeted with a thick wall of snow reaching to a foot below the top of the door frame. It was shoulder height; I couldn’t believe it.
‘What are we going to do?’ I whispered, the powdery tufts blowing into my face. ‘We can’t get out.’
Her frown softened. ‘No one can get in, either. That’s good. No one can reach us.’
‘Yeah, but that won’t put off workmen who live around here. They must deal with these conditions all the time.’
‘Okay – but it’ll take them longer than normal to get through to us. The snow against the house is only a drift – over there it’s about a foot high at the most. We’ll just have to be quick.’
‘There’s a shovel in the scullery,’ I said, louder than I meant to.
‘Keep the bloody noise down,’ she hissed, flapping her gloved hands at me as she headed, instead, for the cellar door in the hall.
‘What if Mel wakes up?’ I whispered, when she came back, a spade in her hand.
‘She won’t.’
Time slipped by as we chipped and chipped, hacking at the white mound that had tried to seal us in.
‘It’s going to take us ages,’ I said, stopping and leaning against the cupboard inside the door. We hadn’t even made it outside yet.
‘Stop moaning and get on with it,’ she instructed without stopping.
When we finally crossed the threshold, having built waist-high banks of snow on either side of us, I was exhausted. The chill bit into my fingers and turned our breath into clouds of fog.
A gnawing, icy wind came at us in repeated harsh bursts. It was a spiteful and vindictive cold – that made you want to do only one thing – turn back.
‘Right, now we make a path,’ said Karen getting on with it.
I began scooping away the snow with the shovel, carving out a groove towards the track. The scene before me melted into a blur as my eyes watered with the cold.
Karen was right, by the time we reached the track, the level of snow had dropped and only reached our knees. She stood upright and rubbed sweat from her forehead with her scarf. I turned around and stared at the bank of snow that had come crashing against the walls of the cottage like a freak frozen wave.
‘Bloody hell…’
‘Good,’ said Karen, ignoring me. ‘It’s barely light – there won’t be anybody about.’
We managed to scramble through the snow from then on. I pulled up my hood and kept my head down against the gusts. An even fiercer wind was brewing and it was snowing again, coming down in large flakes. Clusters of them caught on my eyelashes and blinded me for a second. I brushed them away impatiently.
‘Are you going to tell me what the plan is?’ I demanded, catching up with her.
‘Tell me your ideas, first,’ she deflected.
Before I’d been sucked down into sleep by my sleeping tablet last night, I’d run through all the murder plots I could think of, from films and police dramas.
‘We could make it look like he fell in the byre. There’s already a hole in the roof – we could make it look like a beam came down on top of him…’
‘Stage an “accident”?’
‘Yeah. It would explain why he was covered in snow.’
‘We can’t risk it – the wound on his head wouldn’t match. And where are we going to get a massive wooden beam big enough to have fallen down and killed him?’ I pictured the byre. She had a point; there’d been nothing that big lying around. ‘In any case, anyone who comes to the byre will know the hole has been there a while. It didn’t just happen overnight. Mrs Ellington wouldn’t be fooled.’
‘Yeah – but maybe with a fresh fall of heavy snow, like we had last night…it would have taken more of the roof down…’ I was clutching at straws. I knew we wouldn’t get away with it that way.
I was wheezing by the time we got there. While Karen unlocked the padlock on the side door, I leant against a stack of wooden pallets to get my breath back. I glanced out at the horizon. I could see that dawn was already on our heels keen to catch up with us; the sky splashed with blood red streaks.
‘Perhaps we could leave him by the roadside,’ I said. ‘Make it look like he was hit by a car.’
Karen put her hands on her hips. ‘It’s the same problem – his injuries won’t be consistent.’
‘Mmm – how about we move the body again,’ I suggested wearily, ‘hide him in the woods?’ I was fed up by now; I was the only one coming up with all the ideas and Karen was shooting them down, one by one.
‘Bury him?’ She thought about it, but not for long. We were standing by the icy mound by now, like relatives in a cemetery visiting a new grave. ‘The ground will be rock solid. No – we have to get rid of him for good.’
As if we hadn’t done enough already, the idea of getting rid of his body for ever felt like an unforgiveable sin. Until now, there had always been the potential to come clean and tell the police the truth. Once the body was gone that door would be closed. My gut was telling me, however, that it was all we could do.
By now, following my phone call, the police would be out looking for him. We’d gone too far – there were no other options, if we were going to stay out of prison. Nevertheless, I knew, once we’d disposed of him for good, it would eat away at me for the rest of my life. I’d brought my phone with me and glanced down at the number nine on the keypad. I was tempted to press it.
Karen saw what I was doing and swung me round, roughly. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she growled, pressing a torch into my other hand. ‘Come on, we’ve got a job to do. We’ve got to clear away all this snow and get him back into the wheelbarrow.’
I did as I was told from then on, moving like a zombie, following instructions, trying not
to look, trying not to think about what we were doing. Charlie was floppy when we got to him, but bloated and stinking like no other smell I’d ever come across, the snow having melted and refrozen in stages. I had to squeeze my nostrils shut as we stood over him. I was glad I’d not eaten any breakfast, but still I wretched, bringing up liquid.
‘For fuck’s sake, Alice. Get something to clear that up.’
I rummaged around in the boxes near the newly installed sink at the back and managed to find a full bottle of disinfectant. I inhaled long and hard on opening it, sniffing the rich antiseptic fumes in an attempt to drown out the putrefying stink that was following me around.
I drizzled the neat liquid over the mess and used an old-fashioned mop, dipped in snow, to clear it away. Karen waited for me, her arms folded.
‘Okay – on the count of three…’ She grabbed Charlie’s shoulders, I took his ankles and we swung him into the barrow. We stuffed the tarpaulin around him, covering him as quickly as we could. Karen lifted the handles and started to push the barrow round to the side door. I was struggling to keep it from tipping over with one hand, training the torch beam on the floor with the other. Thank goodness he had a small frame.
A sudden shudder of hysteria made me want to laugh. We probably looked farcical, like a scene from Laurel and Hardy; two hapless creatures struggling with an unwieldy body in a wheelbarrow. It might have been funny had it not been so abhorrent.
I held on to my forehead, suddenly too hot, stars starting to sparkle in front of my eyes. I steadied myself against the wall.
‘What are you doing? Come on – let’s go,’ said Karen, and we steered him out into the breaking daylight. The near distance was clear and snowbound, the far distance pure mist. I couldn’t see the outline of any trees or mountains. That was good – one factor in our favour.
‘What if someone sees us?’ I said, switching off the torch and dropping it into my pocket.
‘They won’t. Just keep moving.’
‘What about his rucksack?’ It was still lying on the floor under the pond liner.
‘We’ll burn it later.’