by Jane Renshaw
‘Okay,’ said Bram as he came up behind him. ‘It’s okay. Let’s get you inside.’
Max straightened, and wheeled round.
Bram staggered backwards.
The face turned towards him was hairy, with a snarling mouth, long fangs –
It was a mask.
‘Christ!’ Bram yelped.
It wasn’t Max. Max wasn’t this tall.
And then the mask was up close, right in his face, hands were on him and Bram was trying to wrench himself free, the shock of what was happening paralysing his brain, his muscles. All he could do was throw his bodyweight backwards, try to break the guy’s hold, but he was too strong –
And then he suddenly let go.
Bram flew backwards to the ground, and the masked man laughed.
He laughed.
This was the bastard who had shot Bertie, shot the crows, shot at Bram, threatened his kids, terrorised his kids!
Are you a man or a mouse, Bram?
Next thing he knew, his muscles were exploding into action and he was jumping up, lunging forward and gripping the other man’s arms. He was slamming him back against the shed, and his head was bouncing off the metal hose bracket with a dull clonk and then he was coming at Bram again, growling low in his throat like an animal.
And like an animal, Bram felt something primeval overwhelm him.
Rage.
It flooded his brain, it swept away all fear, it swept away everything, everything Bram had ever felt or thought or been.
There was only the rage.
He launched himself forward and saw, as if from a great distance, his own hands on the bastard’s shoulders as his head bounced off the metal bracket, crack, crack, crack, until he was limp, until he slumped forward and Bram stepped back and let him fall to the ground.
He drew back his foot to kick him.
And then the rage was gone.
And there was only silence.
Silence, apart from the sound of his own ragged breathing, the cool night air ripping in and out of his lungs as he stood there staring down at the still shape. The torch he’d dropped was there on the grass. He stooped to grab it, but his hand was shaking so much he dropped it again.
‘Oh Christ, oh Christ,’ he whispered.
He fumbled for the torch and managed to switch it on. Made himself shine the beam on the guy. It shook all over the place, giving the illusion, at first, of movement.
But the man was still. Lying half on his side, face upwards. Mask upwards.
Choking on a sob, Bram dropped to his knees and pulled up the mask.
Finn.
It was Finn Taylor.
Bram put a trembling hand to the boy’s chest.
‘Finn? Finn?’
17
Bram shook Kirsty awake. In the gloom of the Walton Room she squinted up at him, shifting in the armchair. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she said with a little smile.
‘He’s dead.’ Bram’s voice was strangely calm. ‘I’ve killed him.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve killed Finn Taylor.’
She didn’t believe him. Of course, she didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe it himself as he told her what had happened, that he’d thought it was Max, about the shock of seeing the mask, the out-of-body experience when he’d found himself bashing the guy’s head against the hose bracket – the realisation that he wasn’t moving, the realisation that he was dead –
And then they were running, out onto the verandah and down the steps and across the moon-washed grass to the shed.
Bram stood sobbing as Kirsty dropped to her knees beside the still figure. She used the flashlight app on her phone, shaking in her hand, to illuminate Finn’s face, the dead, staring eyes, the sticky head wounds, the blood on the grass, brightly, improbably red in the harsh white light. She put the fingers of her left hand, shrinkingly, against his neck.
‘We need to call an ambulance,’ Bram got out. ‘But he’s dead. He’s dead, isn’t he?’
He fumbled his phone out of his pocket and powered it up. But then Kirsty was grabbing it from him.
‘Yes. He’s dead. There’s no pulse. There’s no point calling an ambulance.’
‘But he – he might not be–’
‘Look at him, Bram! Of course he’s dead!’
‘But we still – we still have to–’ He put out a hand for his phone.
She pushed it into her pocket. ‘Let’s just think this through.’ She took a shuddering breath, turning away from Finn’s body. ‘He’s dead. There’s nothing anyone can do for him. Is there? If we call an ambulance, you’ll be arrested.’
The harsh light from her phone lit up her face from below, like she was a kid with a torch trying to freak people out, trying to make herself look weird and scary. For a long moment, Bram couldn’t speak. Then:
‘I killed him.’
He had killed someone. He had killed that boy.
‘You’ll be arrested and the charge will be murder because it wasn’t self-defence, was it? He didn’t hurt you? There won’t be any defensive injuries on you?’
‘He came at me, he grabbed me, but… No. He didn’t hurt me.’
In the eery light from her phone, he could see that Kirsty’s face was stiff with shock but that she must have been soundlessly crying. There were tears shining on her cheeks, on her chin. ‘We could – make some? I could hit you? But forensics these days, they can tell all kinds of things, they can probably tell the size of the fist that made an injury… And even if we could mock something up, even if we could make it seem like self-defence… Look at him, Bram!’
Bram made himself look.
‘Look at all the blood! That’s not a result of self-defence! How many times did you whack his head on that bracket?’
Bram was sobbing again. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Way more than you needed to to defend yourself!’
‘I – it was like – it was as if I was possessed! As if it wasn’t me! I couldn’t stop myself!’
It was David. It was David who’d possessed him.
Are you a man or a mouse, Bram?
This was all David’s fault.
No it wasn’t.
He couldn’t shift the blame for this onto David. He’d done this.
He’d done this.
‘You were possessed?’ Kirsty’s voice shook. ‘How’s that going to sound in court?’
For a long moment they stood there staring at each other. It was as if they’d stepped out of their normal life into a twilight zone world which couldn’t possibly exist, which must surely be something they were imagining, something they watched on Netflix late at night and could switch off any time it got too disturbing, shivering and laughing at themselves and getting up to make some hot chocolate.
But this was really happening.
‘Bram?’ she said, finally.
‘We need to call an ambulance and the police.’
‘No one knows,’ Kirsty said, her voice now urgent. ‘No one knows it was Finn who was terrorising us, do they? If he disappeared, there’d be no reason for the police to think we were involved. If we dispose of the body–’
‘We can’t do that!’
‘– there’ll be nothing tying you to his disappearance. Who’s going to suspect you, unless we hand it to them on a plate? And why should we do that? Finn was terrorising us. It was his own fault that you were so freaked out by everything he’d done that you lost it.’
‘No,’ said Bram, trying to think, trying to get his head round this nightmare that had descended on them.
‘Bram, no one knows it was Finn doing any of it.’
‘They might. He might have had – accomplices. His friends–’
‘Okay, even if that’s the case, his friends aren’t going to go to the police and confess to that, are they? If Finn disappears, the police will have nothing to connect him to us. Finn is – was a binge drinker who got into trouble a lot. No one will be too surprised if he vanishes. It happens all
the time, young men getting drunk and disappearing, lying dead in a ditch somewhere or falling into – into a river…’ She stopped.
‘We can’t – try to cover this up! I have to tell the police what happened.’
‘And go to prison.’
Bram lifted his shoulders helplessly.
‘God, Bram!’ Kirsty was sobbing now. ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes in prison!’ She clutched him, clutched his shoulders, and then she was hugging him close. ‘It would break you, and I’m not going to let that happen!’
‘I would cope,’ he managed to say.
‘Of course you wouldn’t! You can’t go to prison. We need you. The kids and I need you.’ She pulled away from him but kept a grip of his shoulders. ‘We have to get him out of sight. Into the shed. We can deal with him – with it later, when Dad and Fraser have gone and Max is in bed… Bram. Bram!’ She shook him. ‘We have to do this. Okay? Okay?’
‘Okay.’
Neither of them wanted to touch him. Neither of them wanted to go near his head. In the end, they took a boot each and dragged him to the door of the shed.
‘It’s locked,’ said Kirsty, shining the flashlight from her phone on the padlock securing the door. ‘Where’s the key? Bram? Where’s the key to the padlock?’
He’d got a padlock to secure the door, he remembered now, after the incident with the weedkiller. He’d put the little padlock key…
‘Under that flat stone.’
He watched Kirsty stoop, the light from her phone illuminating her in fits and starts, turning her into a series of freeze-frame shots, into a strange, menacing figure that seemed to move in jerks, like something in a horror film.
She lifted the stone. ‘Got it.’
They pulled him – it – inside the shed, into the incongruously everyday smells of creosote and oil and new, resiny wood. The floor of the shed was finished with smooth, pale-grey, heavy-duty ceramic tiles that David had recommended for ease of cleaning, and Bram could see that Finn’s head had left a trail of blood, like a snail’s trail, across them.
He stopped, one large, booted foot in his hand.
He could feel the indentations of the sole, the roughness of the leather, the criss-crossing laces, and imagined Finn sitting on a chair in the boot room at Benlervie to tie these laces for the last time. He cupped the boot in his hand, the words going round his head:
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
‘Let’s get him back against the workbench, so if anyone looks in the windows they won’t see him,’ said Kirsty, her voice wavering on the last word.
They pulled Finn across the remaining few feet, turning as they approached the bench to bring him around so he was lying parallel to and slightly under it. Bram set the boot he was holding down carefully. Kirsty grabbed a blue tarpaulin and tucked it around Finn as if tucking one of the kids into bed, her hands gentle as she pressed it down over his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bram said. ‘Kirsty. I’m sorry.’
She nodded. Stood.
He followed her out of the shed.
He shut the door. Hooked the padlock into position. ‘Where’s the key?’
‘I thought you had it?’
They checked their pockets.
No key.
‘We must have dropped it.’ Bram took Kirsty’s phone from her and shone it on the grass.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Kirsty. ‘We need to find Dad and Fraser and Max, and stop the patrol. Get Dad and Fraser to leave. Then when Max is asleep, we can bury… bury Finn in the wood.’
‘Our wood?’
‘Yes. We can control what happens there. We can make sure no one… I don’t know, excavates there for drains or…’ She was already walking away. ‘Come on, Bram. We need to find them.’
As he walked after her, hardly able to take in what she had just said, he saw, briefly illuminated by the light from Kirsty’s phone, Henrietta, the wooden goose, standing there amidst the wildflowers staring at him, or so it seemed to Bram for one mad moment. He choked back a sob and looked away.
Bertie ran towards them, tongue lolling, across the grass of the paddock. Kirsty shone her phone behind him and Bram made out three indistinct figures.
As Bertie nuzzled him, Bram swallowed another huge sob. This innocent animal. Little did he know…
‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ was David’s greeting as he shone a powerful torch in their faces.
‘I’m not happy about this – it’s asking for trouble,’ Kirsty said. ‘Patrol’s over. Please, Dad, go home. Max, I want you back in the house and in bed, okay?’
The torchlight lingered on Bram. ‘God almighty, what’s up with you?’
‘Hay fever,’ said Kirsty.
Max was plodding along after Fraser, arms hanging by his sides as if he’d forgotten how to walk properly.
‘Boy’s done in,’ said David. ‘Fraser and me, we’ll just do a last circuit of the house and–’
‘No!’ said Bram and Kirsty together.
What if they decided to check the shed?
‘No, Dad,’ added Kirsty. ‘I think you’ve done your bit. Thanks so much. But it’ll be light soon.’
‘Not for another couple of hours.’
‘If anyone was going to mess with us tonight, they’d have done it by now. Even yobs need their shut-eye.’ How was she able to smile? How was Kirsty even functioning, given her complete abhorrence of violence of all kinds?
She was so much stronger than Bram. But then, he’d always known that.
David chuckled. ‘Okay, princess. We’ll get out of your hair. We could probably do with some beauty sleep ourselves before we have to be back on site bright and early in the morning.’
‘Aye, not so bright and not so early,’ Fraser muttered, stooping to pat Bertie.
When David, Fraser and Bertie had left and Max had stumbled up the stairs to bed – he’d probably be asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, thank God – Bram and Kirsty looked at each other.
‘We have to do it now,’ Kirsty said, as if reading his mind. ‘We can’t just leave him in there.’
Bram nodded.
‘There’s a spade and a fork in the shed. We might need a pick axe, for stones. Do we have a pick axe?’
‘No.’ His legs were shaking. He had to sit down. He stumbled to the armchair by the cold stove. ‘Why was he doing it, Kirst? Finn? What had we ever done to him? It was obviously nothing to do with Owen, Finn wasn’t even born when–’
‘Of course it’s nothing to do with Owen! He’s – he was just a little yob, Bram, doing it for kicks. A nasty little yob.’
Yes. A fortifying flare of anger shot through Bram. He’d been terrorising them. Finn had been terrorising them for no reason.
But he couldn’t stop his legs from shaking as they left the house and walked back over the grass to the shed. Bram averted his eyes from Henrietta this time. Neither he nor Kirsty spoke a word.
What more was there to say?
At the door of the shed, they both stopped, as if waiting for the other to open it. But when Bram tugged at the padlock to remove it from the loop, it wouldn’t budge.
‘Oh God,’ he whimpered. ‘It must have locked automatically, when I hooked it over the loop. But I’m sure I didn’t click the arm thing into place, I just left it loose!’
‘You can’t have.’
He shook his head. It was like some outside force had taken him over, like he really was possessed, his actions not under his control any more, not even registering in his brain. ‘I don’t remember. And I didn’t realise it did that! I didn’t realise, Kirsty, that it would lock itself automatically! And we don’t have the key!’
‘Okay, Bram, calm down! Let me try.’
But the padlock wouldn’t budge.
They spent a tense ten minutes sweeping the ground with the flashlights on both their phones, Kirsty snapping at Bram to stop whining about the key probably having been dropped inside the shed.
Bram ben
t to lift the stone the key had been under originally, although he knew it wouldn’t be there –
And there it was.
‘For God’s sake!’ Kirsty swooped on it.
‘I don’t remember…’
‘Right. Let’s do this. Bram, you’re going to have to hold it together. You’re going to have to help me because I can’t do this on my own. Bram?’
He nodded.
Kirsty fitted the key into the padlock, pulled it free and opened the door. Bram choked as he stepped inside after her – this wasn’t a garden shed any more, redolent of freshly cut timber and linseed oil and paint. It was a butcher’s shop, the air cloying with the animal smells of death. There was blood – so much blood on the floor, the stench of urine and shit –
The tarpaulin loomed up at the back of the shed, over the workbench, as if animated, puffed up, as if Finn’s life force had transferred to it and oh God, how did it get there? Someone had moved the tarpaulin! It always puffed up like that unless you stamped down on it as you folded it to get the air out.
Finn wasn’t there.
Kirsty was wailing, a keening sound coming out of her mouth, and Bram slowly turned his head to watch her, to watch her step across the shed to the stack of boxes under the window across which Finn was slumped, face down, the back of his head a mess of blood and bone and hair and – was that brain?
‘Oh God oh God oh God!’ Kirsty screamed.
Bram, as if in a dream, a nightmare, went past her to Finn. He put a hand on the boy’s back. Wet. He was wet.
He said, his voice seeming to come from far away, ‘Finn?’
The boy didn’t move.
‘He must have been trying to get out of the window!’ Kirsty screamed. ‘He isn’t dead!’
Bram pushed his hand between Finn’s chest and the boxes he was lying on, and put his other arm across his back, and heaved him up and backwards off the boxes. ‘Help me,’ he said to Kirsty. ‘Kirsty! Help me!’
They lowered him gently onto his back on the hard ceramic tiles.
Finn’s chest was wet too. In the shuddering light from Kirsty’s phone, he could see that it was blood. All over Finn’s black top. All over Bram’s hands. He made himself not flinch away. He pressed his hand on the boy’s chest.