Murder at Twilight

by Fleur Hitchcock

And we haven’t even cleared enough room under the wall of the shed to reach outside.

  We both stop, and stand and breathe.

  “Thank you,” he says. “I think I should say it, in case.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I say and, taking a deep breath, I drop to my knees, jamming my hand under the shed, willing it to go forward. A stone bashes my wrist, probably taking some skin off, and I force my forearm through the soil, but I’m running out of breath so I have to pull back to stand. But I can’t – my arm won’t come through the gap.

  Pull! My body screams. Pull!

  I pull.

  My arm won’t move. I’m stuck. Oh, god, I’m going to drown with my arm stuck under a shed wall rescuing someone I hate.

  And then Noah’s pulling me, yanking at my arm, his fingernails scrabbling to free my hand and we lunge backwards, both falling against the far side of the shed, our heads just above the water.

  We breathe. I listen to our breaths, the roar of the water, the slap of the rain on the roof. Tai, barking himself hoarse.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “S’all right,” he says. “How close were you to getting your hand outside?”

  “Near,” I say. “Very near.”

  “OK?” he asks, and we dive down. I feel him pull away the stone and I thrust my arm through, my hand breaking through to feel the soft muddy grass outside. I reach as far as I can, getting my shoulder under the side of the shed and patting the ground until I feel the hard cold steel of the iron bar.

  It’s not easy to get it back, I have to take three plunges to pull it against the side of the shed, and then Noah manages to get it sideways so that we can feed it through, and then it jams and then finally he stands with it in his hands.

  Now the water’s waist-high, and the sides of the shed are being buffeted by it.

  “Do you think the whole thing could end up being washed downstream?” he asks.

  “Don’t think about it,” I answer, diving down and putting one end of the bar inside the padlock that attaches the chain to the floor.

  “Is this going to work?” he asks.

  “Of course,” I say, sounding a million times more confident than I feel.

  We both lean on the bar. Once, twice, three times, each time the stupid thing just bounces out.

  “I’ll try the other end,” I say, and dive down again to jam it into the loop of the padlock.

  For a second time, we both lean. Something gives, and then something gives again and I plunge under the water to find the padlock hanging loose.

  “Yeah!” I stand up, holding the end of the chain in my hand. “You’re free – now, let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  The thing about being really cold is that you can’t feel much. Also, you can’t really control your muscles. I think I thought that it would be quite easy for Noah to lift me up to the roof and for me to climb out. I’m tiny, and he’s quite tall. It should be easy.

  But he doesn’t seem to be able to lift very well and my arms have frozen so that they feel like marshmallows. It takes four attempts and some rude words to get me up to the roof – and then I wonder just how I’m going to pull him up.

  I peer down into the hole where I know he must be.

  “Pass me the bar,” I say.

  There’s some splashing below and the iron bar appears through the hole. I use it to lever another panel off the roof and then, balanced on the wall, I reach down for the ladder and, fighting the horizontal rain, manage to post its legs into the shed.

  “Yes!” says Noah, and I hear him clambering out, his feet awkward on the rungs, his iron shackle clanging against the wood.

  Soon he’s sitting alongside me on the roof and we both start to shake, the deep cold of the water replaced by the icy wind and rain of the world outside.

  “Dark, isn’t it,” he stammers.

  “Yes.” I can’t actually see Tai any more. I can only hear him, his barks desperate above the roar of the storm.

  “Only wearing my school uniform,” he says.

  “Uh,” I say back. I’m wearing a wet coat and wet jeans. Socks but no shoes; I lost the wellies in the shed. Nothing about me is dry. Or warm.

  “We quite badly need to get off this island,” I say. “The water’s really deep and I don’t know if the shed will stand it.”

  “Hmm,” he says, and he slides down the roof in front of the shed and I hear his feet splash into the water.

  “Oh, god – it’s cold,” he calls.

  “Is it safe down there?”

  “Yes,” he calls up to me. “Water’s quite still just here.”

  For a second I think about trust, and Noah, and how the two almost never go together. I let go and slip slowly from the corrugations, dropping into the water, the soft earth of the island breaking my fall.

  We stand waist-deep in the dark water. Shuddering with the cold. The rain goes from hard wet rain to lashing rain, making me even colder.

  We are literally standing in the middle of the river. Out of the current, but still in the middle of the river.

  “Can you see the bridge at all?” I ask.

  There’s a long silence and then Noah says, “No. I can’t.”

  “OK – take my hand,” I say, and with my frozen socked feet, squinting against the rain dripping over my face, I wade across the island, into the current, dragging him towards where I think the bridge might be. The flow is so strong, my feet are pushed away each time I take a step and I have less and less confidence about where we’re heading. Halfway to where it should be he stops. “Why don’t we use the ladder and sit in the tree? We could wait it out?”

  I stop pulling on his hand and try to think, although it’s getting harder to think because I’m so cold and my brain seems to have stopped working.

  “Er…” I try to remember why he’s wrong. Why we have to make it off the island. “I think we’d die of exposure.” That’s it – I’m so cold, I need to get somewhere warm. “We’d be there all night. And…” I recall why I panicked. “Do you remember when we were little, the tree was under the water? Ducks clinging to the top of it?”

  I wait while Noah’s brain works it out.

  “Is this going to work, Viv?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  We begin to walk again. Not only are my feet washing sideways, they’re heavy. It’s like when you have a dead leg and you know your foot must have hit the ground but the rest of your body doesn’t seem to have got the message – but even weirder.

  I slap my foot against the grass and feel solid wood beneath my toes. Despite the water being waist-deep, I’m reassured.

  “Here,” I say, bringing Noah’s hands on to the railing. “Hold on to that.”

  “Oh!” he says, and I can hear the relief in his voice.

  Tai’s barking lessens. Perhaps he can see us. “S’all right, Tai, we’re coming back,” I shout.

  For a second, we stop, both of us gripping the rail, both of us breathing heavily. “So we go across the bridge, take the path over the water meadows, and through the woods. We could be home in half an hour.”

  “With crumpets,” he says.

  “With a warm bath.”

  “With fluffy towels and soup and a flushing toilet.”

  “Yeah,” I say, wondering why I don’t quite feel it’s going to happen. “Ready?”

  I slide my right foot along the plank, one, two, and then I step again. “Only one plank,” I yell. The water’s dragging my foot to the side. I wonder if we’re able to cross here. It might be too dangerous. I rock forwards and backwards, moving my weight from one foot to the other.

  It should be possible.

  Noah bumps against me, gripping my arm. “What’s happened to the other one?” is what I think he says as the remaining plank is swept away under my foot. I plunge into the river and I feel the air forced out of my lungs, the icy water closing over my head. The current drags me downstream. My hand tightens on the rail and I hang o
n. Icy prickles rush up from my feet, through my legs, into my arms, numbing my hands so that I can’t feel if they’re holding on to the wood or not. My clothes, my legs, everything is trying to whisk me away from the rail I’m hanging on to.

  “No!” I hear Noah yelling from somewhere above my head. “Viv!” he shouts.

  “Here,” I say, forcing my head up, still clutching the railing. “Grab.”

  His arm reaches mine and we grasp each other.

  It takes a few seconds to work out that he’s on the remains of the bridge, but can’t cross any further, and I’m being held in the stream by a piece of rotting wood and a single nail. It feels as if my coat is alive and actively trying to drown me and I try to shuffle it off my shoulders and all the while I’m struggling to breathe while my body’s having a panic attack.

  He pulls me and I let go of the rail, grabbing the post that’s still sticking out of the water until I’m right up close to him and we’re both perched in the middle of the stream, the force of the current so strong that I can’t imagine how I ever thought we could cross the bridge.

  “Thank you,” I mutter.

  “This is hopeless,” he says, which is when the headlights appear on the other side of the river.

  * * *

  In the darkness, I can’t really work out what’s going on, but soon a white shape appears on the water, upstream of the broken bridge – and it can float. On top of it there’s a figure holding a torch, but through the rain I can’t work out who they are. They shout something, which is taken off on the wind, and then the white boat bumps up against the remains of the bridge and without anyone saying a word, we launch ourselves inside, shuddering and shaking and mumbling “thank you”s into the storm. The boat’s an inflatable and floats us over what should be fields all the way to the woods. Probably a police boat. “Funny that they keep one,” I say to the wind.

  I’m vaguely surprised to see that the vehicle parked on the bank isn’t covered in reflective police markings, but I don’t really think about it as someone throws open the back of a dimly lit van and we stumble into the dark, shivering, Tai yapping and growling alongside us.

  “Well done, boy,” I say. “You raised the alarm.” I run my shuddering frozen fingers through his fur and he growls again. “Shh,” I say. “Shh now, boy, we’re rescued. It’s over.” While I peel off my wet socks and struggle out of my jeans and try to dry my legs with a blanket picked off a pile of dry bedding in the corner, Tai licks my face. I feel myself relaxing, almost into sleep, until a dark shape lunges forward and yanks Tai out by the collar, slamming the door.

  “What?” I shout.

  Tai barks, then yowls and there’s a thud, followed by a whine, and then the engine starts up.

  “What? What’s happening? Where’s Tai?”

  Alongside me I hear Noah peeling wet clothes from his skin and, like me, wrapping himself in blankets. “What d’you mean?” he asks, as the tyres slip on the wet leaves and we’re thrown back and forth.

  “They’ve just done something to Tai – and this is not right,” I say, suddenly wide awake and realising that we’re turning the wrong way and that we don’t seem to be heading back towards the house. Whatever we’re driving over is rough. We must be heading through the woods.

  “What?” says Noah. “Jesus, I can’t get warm.”

  “Stop,” I say. “Don’t take your clothes off – this isn’t a rescue.”

  As I say it, something makes the driver swerve and I’m flung across the blankets.

  “They’re not taking us home, and they threw Tai out of the van and…” I can’t say it. That thud, that noise, it didn’t sound good, and the tiny whine that came afterwards… “Get your clothes back on. Something’s really wrong.”

  “What? What the…?”

  I struggle to pull my jeans back up my legs. They’re so wet, and my legs are so cold, and my hands have no grip – it’s agony. Once I’ve got them on I try to get my socks back on but I can only find one.

  Alongside me Noah’s swearing at his clothes, and I imagine a wet school uniform is no better.

  “Where are we going?” I shout over the sound of the engine, but I doubt the driver can hear us.

  “So far we’ve turned left,” says Noah. “We should be passing through the village.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I say.

  “I got pretty good at this,” he says. “They moved me about six times.”

  I skid across the bottom of the van as we swing to the right and my shoulder crashes into the wooden lining. “Ow!”

  “Hang on to the metal bits,” Noah says. “Above the plywood – honestly, they’re easier.”

  Crouching, I take his advice and cling to the framework. At least this way my fingerprints are being left behind.

  “We should have stayed put,” he says.

  “And died of exposure?”

  “Might have been better than this,” he says, as we lurch again.

  “I suppose there’s no possibility that this is a weird kind of rescue mission,” I say.

  There’s a long silence and he says, “No, I don’t think there is.”

  Eventually, we turn down another bumpy track and stop. Somebody does something with a metal gate or a metal fence, then the van lurches forwards again before stopping a second time. There’s a kind of silence, a “trees thrashing in the wind and rain beating on the roof” kind of silence, and the doors on both side of the cab slam. Feet crunch on gravel and the back door is flung open before a very powerful torch beam shines in on us. Its light catches the twin barrels of what I recognise is a shotgun.

  “S’OK – we’re not going to do anything,” I say, almost unable to speak. Cold or fear? I can’t tell.

  The torch retreats and the person holding it shines it at a shed. It’s a much bigger shed than the one we were in before and this one’s not surrounded by water.

  “I think they want us to go there,” says Noah, shuffling towards the doors of the van.

  “OK,” I say, “that’s what we’ll do.” My words sound ridiculous – in fact my voice sounds ridiculous but I really don’t know how else to react.

  Grabbing the remaining blankets from the van, I follow Noah through the rain over pointy gravel towards a large white door that’s standing open. Inside, there’s a low light and we walk towards it. The moment we’ve gone through the doorway, the door slams behind us and I hear bolts sliding across.

  “Where’s Tai?” I shout. “I want my dog, Tai.”

  “Hey!” shouts Noah. “Hey!” But no one answers.

  I run to the window, hoping to get a glimpse of the van, but it’s been boarded up on the outside and all I can do is listen through the hammering rain as the engine surges, the metal gates clang, and then the sound of a motor gradually dies away.

  I sink to my heels, breathing hard, trying to blink away the tears of fright that have caught me by surprise.

  “That was scary,” says Noah, slumping alongside me, clutching his knees to his chest.

  “And they took Tai.” My voice fades as I say his name.

  “They had a gun,” he mutters.

  I stop thinking about Tai and listen to what he says. “A shotgun.”

  “Like it makes a difference.”

  “They’re local.” My mouth says it although I didn’t know my brain was thinking it.

  “Like how? Don’t people in other parts of the country have shotguns?”

  “It wasn’t like, sawn off – it was like clay pigeon shooting. I don’t think people in London have shotguns. I don’t think they need them. Also, how would a London person know about that shed?”

  “Maybe,” he says, slowly peeling off his socks. “Whatever. I’m not going to be able to get my trousers off because of this stupid chain.”

  “Did they have a gun when they grabbed you?”

  “Oh, god, I don’t know. Look, can we just try and get warm?”

  Shoving big thoughts to the side of my mind I try to be practical and not let
myself think about what’s happening to us. I examine the room for the first time. It’s a longish shed, this time plastered on the inside, like a proper room. The dim light comes from a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. In the corner is a cardboard box on top of some mangy cushions and along one wall there’s a big chest freezer, which is humming slightly. The room smells of damp and the brown carpet feels oily under my bare feet. It’s kind of like a Scout hut or something, but I can’t think of any Scout huts anywhere near us. Sure that they’ve gone, I risk undressing. Shakily, I get to my feet and tug off my sopping coat and soaking wet sweater. I wrap a blanket around my top half then, under cover of that, I unpeel my jeans for the second time. It actually feels colder without them and my legs are eerily pale and flocked with goose pimples.

  “Is that a blow heater?” says Noah, pointing to the wall from beneath the tent of blankets he’s wrapped around his top half.

  “I dunno,” I say, investigating the white thing attached to the plaster. It has on and off switches. I press on, and a red light appears. Nothing much else happens. “No,” I say. “But it might be another kind of heater – I don’t know what else it could be. Let’s move about. It’ll help us get warm.”

  Both of us shuffle around the space, our blankets hanging down to the floor. I can’t actually feel my feet or hands but I know it’s the middle of your body that matters. As I walk, I notice more about the room. There’s a piece of plywood tacked over what could be a fireplace, and a door at the far end, which I assume is locked, but when I pass it and flick down the handle – it opens.

  “Wow!” says Noah.

  It’s warmer than the room we’re in, definitely. The dim light doesn’t do much in the extra space so I flap my hands around searching for a light switch. Something bounces against my face – a light pull. I grab at it and tug. A small strip light pings into life and I see that it’s a storeroom with another freezer, switched on but locked. It’s this that must be warming the room. Then there are some shelves and, best of all, a lavatory.

  “Yay!” shouts Noah behind me. “Mine!”

  He charges past and slams the door, so I resume my march, swinging my arms, willing my blood to warm up. In passing, I run my hand over the maybe-heater and am rewarded with a slight warmth, which must be new. Should I hang our wet clothes on it or press our freezing bodies to it? In the end I decide the clothes need to win. With difficulty, I drape my jeans over the end, and my sock across the middle. I wish I had the other sock. I wish I still had my wellies.