Murder at Twilight

by Fleur Hitchcock

It’s boggy underfoot but a ridge of chalk runs through the field and I’ve walked it so many times I find it easily in the gloom. Two stiles later and I’m wondering about turning back. We’re almost at the edge of the estate and Tai keeps stopping to sniff the air and look behind us as if we’re leaving his territory. Quite soon the path will reach the lane where the blackberry bushes grow high on both sides. It’ll be even darker there. I pause, listening to the rain on my hood, and look back towards the woods. It’s beginning to look creepy under the trees. To my right, the river still reflects the sky, steely and cold, with apricot sunset streaks. Here, the river splits. One side is the weir, with a plank bridge that crosses it. In the middle is a small island, which is the ancient fulling mill site, the mill itself gone, long before I was born. It was something to do with cloth, I think. But just now, the island has almost disappeared, marked only by a hut and an old wild pear tree. On the far side is another plank bridge that crosses the actual mill race, a narrow strip of scarily fast and dangerous water, even when it’s not in flood. It’s where the water wheel used to be. There are still a load of giant iron cogs lying on the river bed, the remains of the mechanism. Upstream is the flat grey mill pond. An expanse of apparently still water that in the summer we always wanted to swim in but Mum said was too dangerous. Just now it looks very cold.

  Downstream the river becomes one, an enormous mass of grey thundering down towards the house and Alchester.

  I stand on the footpath and stare across at the island, watching the water consuming it. Something moves on the edge of the plank bridge. Something’s caught. A bird?

  I peer harder – no, it’s a cat. Tigger? Stuck on the island. He doesn’t want to cross the bridge.

  At the same time, Tai spots him and begins to bark.

  “Shh, boy, shhh. Tigger’s scared; you’ll make him scareder.”

  Tai doesn’t care and goes on barking. He races to the bridge and barks again. Tigger retreats to the pear tree.

  “Don’t go up it!” I say out loud. Tigger, the most fearless cat in the world, crouches, terrified.

  For a moment the rain stops, although the wind doesn’t.

  “Stay, Tai,” I say in my most severe voice. “Wait.” I point a finger at the ground and Tai sits. The second I leave, he rises to all fours again. “Stay,” I say again. He sits again, panting, little barks bursting out all over the place.

  There’s a coot calling somewhere on the water. A pair of ducks swoosh on to the mill pond to sleep for the night, safely out of the reach of foxes, and Tigger looks over to me and mews. I head towards the first bridge. The river’s so high that when I reach it, it’s brushing the underside of the planks, oozing through the wood and pooling on the surface. There should be a drop in water level to my right, below the weir, but the river’s almost flat, there’s so much water. I wonder if the level’s still rising. I know that flooding doesn’t happen instantly, that it can take hours to reach its highest point.

  I completely understand why the cat doesn’t want to cross. I’m not sure I want to cross.

  Behind me, Tai lets out a string of barks.

  I watch the water for a minute. It’s rising. Fast.

  In the gloom I take a moment to work out if the second bridge is going to be crossable. I don’t want to get trapped here.

  Grasping the slimy wooden rail, I walk carefully over the water. It boils and hisses on both sides, so fast and so powerful that I nearly turn back. But in three paces, I’m across.

  The ground is spongy underfoot, breathing water out as I press down with my feet, and I try to forget that in the past I’ve actually seen the island disappear under the water. Completely.

  “Here, Tigger,” I say, but I don’t really need to say anything because he leaps into my arms, jamming his head beneath my chin, under the hood. “What on earth are you doing here? Where did you come from?”

  I stand under the bare branches of the pear tree watching the water skim over the second bridge. It’s not as safe as I thought; in fact, I’m not sure it’s going to be possible to cross.

  “We’ll have to go back the way we came. I hope it’s the right side of the river for you, Tigger.”

  As I wade to the bridge clutching the cat under my right arm, the rain starts again, lashing sideways under my hood. I shuffle really slowly over the wire-netting-covered boards.

  Careful, Viv.

  “Nearly there,” I say, wondering how far from the river I can leave the cat. He mews and claws at my coat. In front of me the trickle of water crossing the bridge becomes a rush, and behind me a racing roar as it thunders over the old mill workings.

  And something else. Thumping?

  Banging?

  I turn and listen, but Tai starts to bark again.

  “Shh, Tai,” I say. Over the water’s roar it’s hard to make anything out, exactly – but there’s definitely something thumping, and I don’t think it’s a log caught in the weir.

  “Hello!” I shout. There’s nowhere for anyone to be – I can see around everything. There’s only the shed itself.

  I splash on to the grass, moving away from the bridge and back towards the woods until I’m on solid ground. Tigger seems to know when to leap, and twists from my arm, landing neatly on the grass and trotting off into the gloom without a backward glance. Tai lunges towards him but I grab his collar and listen.

  Nothing.

  “Hello!” I shout, back towards the shed.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Quickly, I turn and wade back over the bridge until I’m on the island. This time, Tai follows me.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  “I think it’s coming from the shed, Tai.”

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Tai starts barking hard. Backing away from the shed, he ends up dog-knee-deep in the water and leaps forward, barking even more.

  It could be an animal – but would an animal beat so evenly on the side?

  Noah?

  Could it be?

  I walk right up to the shed, my feet almost out of the water.

  “Noah?” I call into the tiny gap at the bottom of the shed.

  For about ten seconds the banging comes back frantically.

  “What? It is you?” Instinctively I reach into my pocket – of course, no phone. No one’s going to come and help me get him out.

  Mixed feelings crowd into my head. Part of me wants to leave him in there, because after all, what do I owe him? But the grown-up side of me knows he’s in real danger of drowning and we have to get him out.

  “But how, Tai. How?”

  I glance at the river. The second bridge is very definitely under fast water and now my feet are actually splashing in the grass. I could run all the way back to the house through the woods – it would take me half an hour at least, but in half an hour the island might be completely under water. Tai turns and trots away from me back over the bridge. His feet splash as he goes. He must know something about this, like how long we have until the island disappears.

  “Hang on!” I shout, racing around the outside of the shed. The back is very nearly submerged, the river lapping at the corrugation. The door at the end is fastened with a huge shiny padlock. I pull at it in the desperate hope that it might give way. It doesn’t.

  “I’m gonna get you out,” I shout again. “It’s just I don’t have my phone, the police took it.” The corrugated iron is strong and goes top to bottom with no apparent way of levering it off. Hooking my fingers under the side I try to pull, but nothing moves.

  The thumping comes again from inside.

  Beneath my feet, the water is creeping across the whole island, covering everything but the tallest blades of grass.

  Now, on the other side of the river, Tai barks and dances madly in the watery grass.

  “I know, Tai, but you’re not helping.”

  Noah thumps again. I’m guessing the water’s
appeared inside the shed too now.

  “Yes, yes,” I say. Splashing over to the mill race and feeling the ground around the hatches above it, I search for an iron bar that ought to be there because it’s used to open and close the hatches. All the hatches on the estate have iron bars with hooks in the end to raise and lower the huge wooden gates that control the flow. They’re usually just lying in the grass. If you know where to look. With the water rising around my wrists, I fumble all around where the bank should be. It would be perfect – I could lever off a sheet of the corrugated iron – but there’s nothing there, just masses of ice-cold water that within seconds has covered my ankles.

  “Doing my best,” I call. Both the plank bridges have vanished. They’re marked by the rails but there’s no other sign that they’re even there.

  Tai’s still barking, but he’s quite a long way back from the water now. He knows it’s going to flood.

  It’s also very nearly dark. This is getting scary.

  Noah thumps again.

  “Stop it – you’re not helping either. I’m not going to leave you but I can’t find a way in.” The roots of the pear tree are out of the water and among them I spy a short iron bar. Perhaps that’s what I’m looking for, in which case it’s shorter than I remember, but I can’t find anything to lever it against except for my foot and the ground’s so squishy it just sinks in.

  “Argh!” I throw the bar down. It bounces against the side of the hut and disappears under the water.

  Noah thumps on the walls again. “Yes – I know!” I shout. “I’m still here, still trying.”

  And then I see the ladder. “Hang on,” I say.

  Leaning against the other side of the pear tree is a fruit ladder – old but solid – and I pull it against the shed. Four rungs up and I can see the roof panels properly, and they’re not as secure as the walls.

  In almost complete darkness I feel for a gap and slip my fingers into it, pulling and pulling until there’s a pinging sound and the whole sheet comes loose and I can drag it across.

  “Yes!” I say, peering down into the darkness. “Noah?”

  A pale blob looks up towards me. “Mmmm,” it says.

  The roof is slippery, and the runnels of the corrugation are full of black crumbly stuff that sticks all over my hands but I make it to the top of the ladder and balance on the top of the wall.

  Noah – because it is Noah; I can see the blond mane – shakes his head. “Mmm – mmmm,” he says.

  “What?” I say, almost enjoying the fact that he can’t speak.

  “Mmm, mmmm,” he says with urgency.

  I glance behind me. There’s no one here – why’s he warning me?

  “I’m coming down,” I say, swinging my legs into the gap and squeezing through. There’s a moment as my feet dangle when I could change my mind and climb out, and that’s when I realise that the reason Noah’s shaking his head is that we won’t be able to get out again. Even with a hole in the roof.

  I grab at the corrugations above my head, trying to haul myself up, but there’s no grip and my fingers slide across the roof.

  Flump.

  I land in the water, in almost complete darkness. There’s a triangle of dark sky above me and the faint silhouette of Noah’s head.

  “Well at least I can untie you,” I say, ripping off the tape that’s been stuck over his mouth.

  “Ow!” he squawks. “Ow! Well, that was intelligent. Now you’ve completely blown our chances of getting out of here.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I say. “Well, I might just slap another piece of tape over your gob and leave you to rot.”

  “You might as well have done. You’re a total idiot, you know that?!”

  “What?”

  “More than averagely idiotic, I’d say, actually, because any other deadhead would have noticed that climbing into a box without a way out was fatheadedly unthinking.”

  I’m almost impressed by his insults. Luckily he can’t see my face.

  “I’m a complete idiot?” I say. “You’re the idiot – getting yourself kidnapped! And you could at least say thank you to me for trying to help you.”

  “Oh, yeah, thanks. Thanks a bunch for nothing. And – like I did this on purpose! You think I wanted to be kidnapped? And why have the police got your phone?”

  “Because they have. And perhaps you did want to be kidnapped. Perhaps, somehow, you got yourself kidnapped – just so that your dumb lord and lady whatnot parents would sit and weep buckets—”

  “Are they?” interrupts Noah. “Weeping, I mean?”

  “Yeah. And the whole estate’s running round like ants trying to find you – except for Mum.”

  “Why not Marion? I’d have thought she might actually be quite upset if I was kidnapped.”

  My anger vanishes and suddenly I feel sad and actually quite afraid. “Mum’s been arrested – or something. I haven’t seen her for two days. The police took her. They think she kidnapped you – with Sanjeev.”

  But Noah hasn’t caught my change of mood. “Oh, how simply dreadful for you. I’ve been kidnapped, living in sheds, weeing in a bucket – and now I’m going to drown. And you haven’t seen your mum for two days but at least you know that she’s tucked up safe and sound in a police station. I could have been dead for all you knew. And who’s Sanjeev?”

  “Your PE teacher. And actually we’ll both be dead soon,” I say. “We’re both going to drown if we don’t get out of here.”

  Noah draws in a breath as if he’s going to say something and stops.

  “Are we really?” he asks. “Where are we?”

  “At the remains of the fulling mill – in the middle of the river. The river that’s burst its banks.”

  He pauses. “It’s reached my ankles, like, really fast,” he says. “Thing is, Viv,” and his voice goes all serious, “although you can undo my hands, I’m attached to the shed.”

  “How, attached?” I ask, picking at the rope around his wrists.

  In answer he shuffles and I hear the clank of a chain.

  “Chained?” I say. “Seriously?”

  “It’s an old-fashioned actual shackle, I think, around my ankle.”

  “Oh, my god that’s, like, so ancient history,” I say crouching down and fumbling around in the dark, feeling his feet under the water. I find a ring padlocked around his ankle; it’s as thick as my thumb. I chase the chain to the side of the hut where it’s padlocked to a huge metal loop coming out of the floor. I let out a long sigh.

  “You can’t undo it, can you?”

  I shake my head, then realise that he can’t see me.

  “We’re going to die here,” he says, his voice quite cold.

  “Nah,” I say. “You’re too valuable, aren’t you? They’ll be back. And listen to Tai – he’s not going to stop barking until we get out of here.”

  “Dunno,” he says in the end. “I’ve never seen them, you know. Never heard them speak. Even though I’ve asked them questions. Perhaps they don’t care.”

  For a moment, I don’t say anything. Tai is barking. He’s barking his head off; surely someone at the house can hear him. Surely. “Was that photo real – you know, of you and the newspaper?” The rope on his hands is wet and swollen, but it loosens and soon it falls in the water at our feet.

  “Yeah – it was scary. They sat me on a chair, handed me a paper and I stared at a mobile phone while they took pictures.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In a shed – a different shed. I’ve been in a lot of sheds. Oh, that feels better…” He rubs his hands together.

  “Who do you think it is?” I ask, trying to sound cheerful and normal and feeling along the bottom of the shed. The water is actually flowing in quite fast. My wellingtons are only just tall enough.

  Noah sighs. “I don’t know – they’re big. Men. They never speak. I’ve never seen them.”

  “What d’you mean, you haven’t seen them?” I run my hands around every inch of the walls, searching for a
nything that isn’t smooth iron. Anything that I could use as a lever. I’m going to keep him talking. He’s scared, I can hear it in his voice, and me keeping him calm is keeping me calm.

  “I haven’t seen their faces. They wear balaclavas – and gloves. They wear them all the time.”

  “How often do they come?” I have a sudden thought and try and orientate myself, peering up through the hole in the roof until I can see the pear tree.

  “Once a day – sometimes morning, sometimes evening. I think they’ve been here for today. They fed me some soup. They moved me here last night. Before that, I was in another shed. I’ve no idea where that was – not by the river though.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, kneeling on the floor of the shed and letting the icy water flow into my wellingtons. I begin to claw at the floorboards, which are softer than I’m expecting. Long splinters of wood come away in my hands.

  “What are you trying to do – dig our way out? In case you haven’t noticed, the ground’s under water? Duh?”

  “You could help me,” I say. “And I’m not digging my way out – I’m trying to reach something that’s outside on the ground. If I’m right we might be able to grab the iron bar that I dropped outside a few minutes ago. It must be really close.”

  Tai’s barking steps up a pace. He now sounds completely frantic. “Oh, Tai,” I mumble.

  “I wish I’d had him when I was taken,” says Noah. “They’d never have got me.”

  Although we manage to pull the wood of the flooring away, digging is much harder, and made harder still by the rising water. We’ve barely made an impression before the water’s at my armpits and I have to pull my head up to breathe.

  “It’s not going to happen,” says Noah. “I think you should get out – I could lift you up – and try and get help.”

  “I’ll keep going, at least for a bit,” I say.

  I don’t say, You might drown while I’m getting it. If this island floods properly, even the pear tree will end up underwater.

  Noah doesn’t answer – but I sense him moving faster, just as the cold and wet begin to get to me and I slow down.

  Then the water gets so high that we actually have to dive under.