The Runner

by P. R. Black

  ‘If that’s true, then this person who got in touch with me… is the actual Woodcutter?’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Glenn said, after some consideration.

  The horror of it dawned on her. She fed off his unease. ‘I mean, what does he want with me? And how does he know where I live? Where I run?’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘Oh come on – he knew where I run, for definite. The message was left for me. So was the puzzle.’ She swallowed. It was beginning to dawn on her. Out there, just outside Freya’s periphery, a hunter was sizing her up, making assessments, taking notes. And playing games. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘I wouldn’t leap to conclusions,’ Glenn said. ‘There’s lots of possibilities, here. If it is the Woodcutter, he’s taking a hell of a risk.’

  ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘Maybe your dad’s trying to get messages to you. Point you in the way of the bodies. Maybe he thinks it’s helping him get out of jail.’

  ‘That would make no sense at all. Who’d be doing it?’

  ‘He’s not short of admirers. Maybe even his lawyer. Make it look like the real Woodcutter’s out there.’

  ‘That doesn’t make me feel safe, either. Either it’s the Woodcutter or someone who writes letters to him. God, this is a mess.’ She had a sudden fantasy, vivid as moonlight breaching the clouds; her being startled awake, and a dark figure standing at the end of her bed. I’ll never sleep again.

  Glenn’s eyes seemed feverish behind his glasses, and he chewed his lips. He was enmeshed in his own world, his own fantasies, for a moment. ‘Well, a clue’s a clue. Whoever gave us it, we can work with it. For my money, there’s a good chance it’s the real Woodcutter. Or at least, the guy who killed Coleen Arden and Max Dilworth.’

  ‘So you’re saying that my dad could be innocent? He might be telling the truth?’

  ‘I’m just investigating a tip from you, based on a weird encounter. This could be nothing. My mind is filling in a lot of blanks, here. That’s one theory. But I’ll believe nothing until I see it. We’ve got to keep our eyes peeled, focus…’

  ‘Hey, we’ve got company.’ Freya nodded towards something ambling towards them over the lip of a hill. It was a dun-coloured cow. Its shoulders moved in a distinctly un-bovine manner, its massive shoulder muscles folding in on each other as it approached. ‘Nice to see some signs of life.’

  Glenn stopped. ‘Signs. We passed a sign, didn’t we?’

  ‘Not sure I remember that.’

  There was a beat or two.

  ‘I think there was a sign, all snarled up in the bushes, near that stile. I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Was there some yellow in that sign?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. But I have a question of my own.’ Freya pointed towards the cow, as it came closer. ‘Are those udders, or balls?’

  ‘Balls!’ Glenn yelled. ‘Run!’

  The beast bellowed, then, and gave chase, at horrendous speed. Freya tore off, the distance to the next stile closing rapidly, the fast pace no problem at all for her in her lightweight hillwalking shoes, even with the sodden ground. She glanced back at Glenn. He had fallen behind. While he kept his back straight and pistoned his arms, his gait was almost comically slow, as if he ran through treacle up to his waist.

  The bull bellowed again. It was bearing down on him fast. There was a good couple of hundred yards’ grace between them, but that was shortening, and fast.

  Freya ran back. ‘Give me the backpack.’

  ‘No, carry on…’

  ‘Give me the backpack, you berk!’

  Glenn shook his head. ‘Go on, get away. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You’ll be turned into a frigging shish kebab. I’m faster – give it to me. Life and death, here, mate. Don’t argue. I’m fitter.’ Without waiting for a reply, she snatched the rucksack off one shoulder. He sloped his shoulders to allow her to take the weight. Then they both took off. She still outpaced him until they reached the stile.

  ‘No arguments – after you,’ he said.

  She didn’t argue. She went up the stile, hurling the backpack over onto the other side of the field. Only then she saw the bull, and it was too close, fifty feet, less, its eyes bloodshot and bulging. I get it now, bullseye, she thought, as she reached for Glenn, his face stricken, as he placed one foot on the bottom rung of the stile.

  ‘You’ve got to jump!’ she screamed. ‘Jump!’

  His hands locked with hers, the bull bellowed, a sound she felt in the core of her chest and down her spine, like a thunderclap, and Glenn leapt, his feet scrabbling, as the bull collided with the wall with a terrible crunch.

  As they fell, the physics of it seemed all wrong, as if the rest of the planet had crashed into the bull instead of the other way around, but it had missed, and Freya’s backward momentum and Glenn’s forward motion combined, sending them both tumbling over the stile and into the boggy ground.

  They both lay side by side for a few seconds, breathing hard. They listened to the bull’s rage as it gored the wall, again and again.

  ‘Still alive?’ Freya said.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Nothing broken?’

  ‘Not physically. Mentally, maybe.’ Glenn sat up, and checked inside the rucksack. ‘I’m going to clock that up as a close shave.’

  ‘When this is over, I am going to get the biggest, bloodiest steak in history.’ Freya got up and helped him to his feet. She was muddy, but unbloodied. So was he. He’d even managed to keep his glasses. ‘I hope that we haven’t missed another sign, saying, “The Field Of Many Bulls”,’ she said, scanning the horizon for more beasts.

  ‘Me too,’ he replied. ‘I tell you what I’ve discovered today – I’m not the outdoor type.’

  ‘Nah, me neither. I’ll stick to cities, I think.’

  Glenn shouldered the rucksack, holding the small of his back and wincing. ‘At least we answered your question from earlier.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one about how fast I can get over the wall.’

  ‘Shall we check out this scary tree now?’

  ‘With luck.’

  They turned towards the many-armed shadow on the horizon.

  16

  The oak was coming into bud, but nothing about that scene or that tree suggested springtime, or rebirth, or any of the benefits of the season. It was an ugly tree, spectacular enough to take a picture of, but old, stunted and bloated.

  ‘No prizes for guessing why they call it the Hanging Oak,’ Freya said.

  ‘Think it was even more obvious about one hundred years ago. They cut off all the branches they used to dangle folk from.’

  ‘This whole place is a bit Wuthering Heights.’ Freya shivered, and gazed out across the bleak, uncultivated ground, bordered as far as the eye could see by a drystone wall up a slight incline. Thankfully, there were no animals, angry or otherwise, to be seen anywhere. They had just about recovered from their wildlife encounter – or at least, they had got their breath back.

  Glenn dropped the rucksack, keeping it supported upright between his knees. When he unzipped the top, and began to withdraw a long, clean wooden handle, just for a second, Freya thought he was going to pull out an axe.

  Instead, the head of a brand-new shovel appeared, gleaming like a freshly minted silver coin. He tossed it on the ground, and began to withdraw something else, a long black plastic-coated stick.

  Freya indicated the shovel. ‘We going to dig this entire field?’

  ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling we might have to. There’s another one in here, hold on…’ He pulled out a second, identical shovel. Then he began to fit the components of the other object. A large, flat disc at the bottom told Freya what it was.

  ‘It’s a pun,’ she said. ‘Test your mettle. He meant, test for metal. A metal detector.’

  Glenn nodded, and a cheeky monkey grin spread across his face. ‘Got to be honest – I’ve wanted an excuse to bu
y one of these for years.’ The metal detector didn’t look particularly high-tech, once it was assembled. The casing was beige, and apart from a digital control panel at the top, it might have been from the 1980s.

  Freya watched as Glenn focused on the LCD display, a laser beam blue glow reflecting off the surface of his spectacles. ‘Farmer going to be OK with this, yeah?’

  ‘There’s some dispute over who owns this field – nothing’s been planted here, and animals aren’t allowed in to graze, either. Stretches back to the days they put the tree back there to good use.’

  ‘That probably makes it more likely someone will come over here and bust our chops for digging it up.’

  Glenn shrugged. ‘Probably.’

  ‘And what’s your plan for when that happens?’

  ‘I’ll say that you’re an undercover cop.’

  She laughed at that. ‘When do I get a turn on the detector?’

  ‘I guess we can swap over at half-time.’

  ‘Just sweeping this whole field? Any ideas what we’re looking for?’

  ‘I should think that’s obvious.’

  It wasn’t totally obvious to Freya, so she remained silent. ‘Anything I can do to help, then?’

  ‘Take some pictures of me in action. Left hand side’s my best. I’ll do a pout for you.’ He walked over to the furthest corner of the field, the detector over his shoulder. She did take a picture of this, on her camera. On a whim, she took another in black and white, taking care to get the tree in. Black and white suited the tree a lot better; in silhouette its bulges and blemishes lost their texture, became less threatening.

  ‘I thought they hanged people at crossroads?’ Freya said.

  Glenn’s reply was distant. ‘This used to be a crossroads, years ago. The road’s been swallowed up, but you can just about make out the impression of where it was. It’s like having an old railway – you can still see where the embankments are. Same with the road. There used to be a town, round about here. All gone now. Just the odd bit of wreckage poking out of the ground. Rubble. Farmer bought it all over.’

  ‘Right. Whereabouts is the road, exactly?’

  Glenn signed, and shouldered the metal detector. ‘The tree’s at the crossroads, as you say. It’s in the middle. The road splits three ways.’

  Freya walked over to a crease in the ground. It was only noticeable from a certain angle, but there was a definite scar in the earth. ‘I think I can make it out… Looks like three roads, criss-crossing round about the tree.’

  ‘Yes,’ Glenn said, impatiently.

  ‘So, three forks, then. Or tines, if we’re being picky. And you usually are.’

  He stopped.

  ‘Our mystery man said, “the Middle Fork”,’ Freya continued. ‘That refers to what this place is called. I get that. But maybe he was trying to make things easy for us. He wants us to find something. I don’t think he’d want us to take all day about it.’

  Glenn stopped what he was doing, and came over to join her. ‘Fair comment. Let’s see what we find. There’s always the chance that it’s a hoax. Someone who knows you and read the paper… It’s a possibility. Part of me hopes that’s all it is, and this is a wild goose chase. If it isn’t, a multiple murderer on the loose knows where you live.’ At Freya’s stricken face, he raised a hand. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’ve had it in my mind all along. Don’t apologise. I just don’t know what I’m going to do about it.’

  ‘Let’s see what turns up.’ He actually patted her, once, on the shoulder. Quickly, he said: ‘Right. I deduce that we should be following the middle fork of the three, as it approaches the tree. We should probably start where this quote unquote, middle fork, reaches the tree, then travel along the road. That would be the simplest place to start looking. Was that what you meant?’

  ‘You read my mind.’

  They did so. Up close, the tree was even uglier. There was a bole fashioned in the middle, a deep, dark portal about seven feet above ground.

  ‘Reckon he meant that hole?’ Freya said.

  ‘Best to check.’ A sweep of the bole revealed nothing.

  Freya pondered a moment. ‘Maybe he left a clue in there? Seems an obvious place, if he’s being obvious.’

  Glenn swivelled his head towards her. ‘I’m not putting my hand in that hole for a million pounds. But you be my guest.’

  The detector beeped a couple of times, and they had to get to work with the shovels. Freya’s back ached, along with the soles of her feet as she kicked the blade into the earth. All they dislodged were worms, lots of them, and bottle tops.

  ‘This may yet take a while,’ Glenn said, gulping down water. ‘Maybe he’s not making it that easy for us.’

  ‘You have to ask… whenever we find what we’re looking for, assuming we haven’t done this for no good reason… what does he want?’

  ‘I have wondered what his game is. Assuming he’s the Woodcutter. Assuming he’s a real person.’

  Freya rested her elbow on the handle of the shovel. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I’m just being honest with you. Just speculating. You’ve come to me with an actual cloak-and-dagger story. If it turned out to be bollocks, many people would not find this surprising. I don’t know exactly what happened. I’m just going by what you said. For all I know, you just want to get me out here on my own.’

  Freya straightened up. ‘And, for all I know, you might know more about this than you’re letting on.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ He looked genuinely nettled, which was pleasing to her.

  ‘I mean, how did you get home the other night? At the pub?’

  He shrugged. ‘Taxi.’

  ‘Or maybe you followed me. For all I know, it was you.’

  ‘Realms of fantasy.’ He looked pained, though.

  ‘Just being honest with you.’

  ‘Well, let’s see what turns up. As you say, it’s just an idea. We could have put two and two together, and got…’

  The metal detector shrieked. They both flinched. He had been passing it over the path, absent-mindedly. It emitted a low hum, except for when it had picked up the bottle tops. But those had been mild pings; this was a full-on alarm.

  Glenn fixed the position, checking the readings. ‘Something substantial down there, for sure.’

  ‘This is very symmetrical. Look at the field, the wall, the tree. I’ve got a feeling we’re on the right lines.’

  They began to dig. The grassy clumps and the weeds came up, as did the stony ground. Bizarrely, the soil reminded Freya of cake mix, not entirely unappealing, if you discounted the beetles and worms who twisted away from the shovel blades’ crude intrusions. Something in Freya wanted to delve her hands into it.

  They soon found what they were looking for.

  ‘What’s that?’ Freya said, indicating something solid.

  ‘Wood,’ Glenn said, simply.

  ‘Surely it would have rotted down there?’

  ‘It’s been treated. Looks like some kind of lacquer. Watertight, anyway.’ He ticked a fingernail against it.

  They began to uncover it.

  ‘This is it, isn’t it?’ Freya said, quietly. Almost a statement, not a question.

  Glenn said nothing, but his face betrayed some excitement, his eyes quick. He took several photographs of each stage. Freya felt only a sense of dread.

  The end of the handle had been angled downwards, as if piled into the earth some time ago and left there. It was a long, strong shaft, as long as the handles on the shovels they used to turn the earth. The going got easier the further down they went, although it was more moist, messier. Their shoes and trousers became mired with rank soil, and the smell of it turned Freya’s stomach.

  ‘This is it,’ Glenn whispered, at length.

  The blade still looked new. It was thick, red-stained; the colour was like a lightning bolt in that drab surrounding, vivid as blood.

  ‘Jesus H Christ and his holy chariot,’ Freya said.

  �
��Don’t touch it,’ Glenn said. ‘Not with your fingers.’ He put on some clear plastic gloves. Then he began to dig around it, carefully.

  It was an axe, of course. Not new; and it had been there for quite some time. It stayed at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the line of the horizon.

  ‘It’s stuck in something,’ Glenn said. ‘Wait a second…’

  He reached into the earth, and began to lift out some of the muck with his hands. One great, fat earthworm squirmed clear of his fingers. He cried out in disgust, and Freya was about to make a remark about being spooked about a simple worm. Then she saw what he had cleared away.

  The blade of the axe was stuck fast in something brown and off-yellow, something that glared at both of them with caked eye-sockets. It was split cleanly down the middle, and thankfully they were spared the sight of its eternal grin. But there could be no doubt that they were looking at a skull.

  17

  In the shower a few days later, Freya noticed that some dirt still clung to some parts of her hands. It had wanted to cling to her, to burrow in deep in the grooves and loops. She had craved her bed when she got home, but now the shadows were alive, and every silence felt like a killer in every nook of the flat, holding his breath.

  The video app call startled her, and she was stunned to see that her hand was properly shaking. She had to tense her forearm to the point of pain to calm down the tremor.

  Glenn’s face appeared as an abstract series of blocks, pink and brown and blond. This building block effect merged quite beautifully with his glasses, before settling into a clear, if not sharp image on Freya’s tablet screen. He was wearing a collar and tie – stark white slit with red – but seemed to be in his front room. A table lamp provided some pleasant ambient light over one shoulder.

  ‘How’d it go, then?’ she asked.

  ‘Short answer: they know I’m a liar. It’s not the first time I’ve been interviewed by the cops, but this is the first time they think I did something wrong.’

  Freya frowned. ‘Have you done something wrong? I thought you’d done them a really, really big favour.’

  ‘I’m not telling them the whole truth. And I’m doing this for you. They’re suspicious about how I came by the information.’