The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller

by Gregg Dunnett

  “This might hurt a little.”

  Then he pulled the knife out. It must have been wedged in harder than he anticipated because it got stuck half way out, a smear of bright red on the shiny silver blade. Then John had another go and this time freed it. Then he calmly washed the blade in one of the rock pools, and then the arm of his wetsuit, which still had a bit of sick on it. He totally ignored the man who was groaning now and had moved his arms over his stomach.

  “Shit John. What’d you do that for?” Darren sounded dismayed. Where the knife had been the wound was steadily dripping blood, but now blood was gushing out of a three inch gash in the wetsuit and the flesh beneath it, coming out in little pumped spurts.

  “It’s better this way,” said John. “It’ll be quicker.”

  You could see the life slipping away from the man now. It looked like he didn’t care about whether we got help now. All his body was concerned with was damage limitation, emergency shutdown procedures. His eyes fluttered but he wasn’t seeing anything. He’d been holding his head up off the rock, but now it dropped down, a sharp angle of rock pressing into his cheek and forcing his mouth open, teeth grating on the barnacles. We just stood there watching while the rock pool filled up with crimson, treacle blood that turned to the same darkness as the thick ribbons of seaweed.

  “It’s a body now.” John said a few minutes later, but neither Darren nor me replied.

  “Come on. We can’t leave it here, the tide’s coming in, it’ll get washed away. Someone will find it if that happens.” John said.

  I had one more go. “John this is fucking mad. We got to go and get some help.”

  “No we don’t.”

  “Yes we do. This is crazy. You’re crazy.”

  “You and Darren, you’re gonna move the body up to the Rock.”

  “You’re fucking mad. I ain’t doing anything you say.”

  John turned on me, real angry now.

  “Jesse I’m not saying this is fucking pleasant for any of us. But we’ve gotta do this. Unless you wanna be put in prison for a very long time we’ve gotta stick together. Now you get his fucking legs, Darren get his arms. Let’s move the fucker and get on with this.”

  John was still holding onto the knife. I opened my mouth to argue again but he interrupted me, he held the knife up to my face and he was yelling like he’d never yelled at me before.

  “He’s fucking dead Jesse. Do as I fucking tell you.”

  I felt my lips quivering and tears at my eyes but I nodded and did everything just like he told me.

  thirty-four

  AT FIRST I took the guy’s arms and Darren took his legs, but that was never going to work. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to carry a body over rocks like that. Every time we tried to move him, we either couldn’t lift him over a boulder, or we slipped on the seaweed. We were going to hurt ourselves, and his teeth were getting cracked, falling out even and lumps of hair and skin were getting ripped off on the barnacles. But John made us keep going and in the end we just took a foot each and dragged him. We tried not to watch as his body slipped and skidded across the rocks. It was pretty gross. I nearly lost it, but John somehow kept us going. He’d stopped shouting at us by then and was encouraging us instead, telling us what a great job we were doing and how it was all going to be OK. I think he was enjoying himself by then. But anyway, eventually we had the guy up there in our little camp at the foot of the Hanging Rock.

  “You’re doing great boys. Fucking great.” John said. We had the guy’s body spreadeagled on his back right in the middle of the little grassy patch where we used to hang out. It looked like his neck had broken somewhere along the way because his head was at a weird angle staring up at the sky. I wondered what the hell we were supposed to do now. It didn’t take long to find out.

  “Now you got to dig a hole to stick him in.”

  I didn’t say anything, just dropped to my knees and started scratching at the grass with my hands. But Darren didn’t move. I think he was just too tired. He’d just got off the water from a long session remember.

  “We just gonna bury him here? Is that it?”

  “Come on Darren. Just dig.” John started kicking at our driftwood chair and broke out a plank which he gave to Darren, I guess to use at a spade.

  “How’s that going to help? It’s basically just rock.”

  Darren had a point, as I was finding out. The little flat hollow underneath the Hanging Rock was the only patch of grass on the whole section under the cliff, but dig down and you hit rock right away.

  “And we can’t just leave him buried here anyway. It’ll be weird, knowing he’s there all the while.”

  John looked frustrated and he took the plank of wood back from Darren and started hacking at the earth one handed. He only got a few inches deep before he hit something solid.

  “Fuck it. In the cave.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll put him in the cave. We’ll have to leave him there for now.”

  Darren opened his mouth to protest but I nudged him and shook my head, and he sighed and took his place on one of the legs. We walked in backwards and went as far as we could, dragging what was left of the guy behind us. He probably lost another couple of teeth but we got him in there, and when we came back outside you couldn’t really tell that anything had happened there, except for the trail of blood leading right up to the entrance. It didn’t feel like we’d exactly solved the problem.

  “I told you we can’t just leave it here.” Darren said again.

  “We’re not just going to leave it here. But right now we’ve got to find the car. Get your stuff and follow me.”

  John led us at a pretty fast pace so we didn’t get to talk much. But it didn’t take that long anyway. There was only really one place he could have parked, and sure enough, there it was. Red Nissan, sitting on the verge where the farm track left the road. We were lucky with the keys. I went down on hands and knees to look around and there they were, a little silver key ring dangling from the suspension coil. I pulled them out and went to give them to John, but he shook his head.

  “You’re driving.” He held up his arm in my jumper sling.

  “But I don’t have my licence.”

  “You’ve been taking lessons though haven’t you? You’ve been saying how fucking good you are for ages anyway.”

  “What about Darren?” I said.

  “I’m not trusting Darren.”

  “But…” I stopped. He had a point. “Oh fucking hell.”

  I opened the driver’s door and climbed inside, then reached across and opened the passenger side as well. John told Darren to roll the seat up - the guy had it flat to take his surfboard like I remembered - then he made Darren get in the back and sat down beside me. He shut the door. The little car smelt of pine and warm plastic.

  “Where we going then?” I said, trying to sound as sarcastic as I could.

  But John didn’t answer at first, and when I looked at his face I could see he wasn’t sure himself. None of this was planned remember, he was making it up as he went along, and even John had his limitations.

  “I dunno. We’ve got to find somewhere to hide the car so that no one finds it. A scrap yard or something. Or like a lake we can push it in.” He stopped and I could see him thinking hard.

  “We could push it into the harbour?” Darren suggested. “You can drive right to the edge.”

  “What? In the middle of the fucking village? No, it can’t be anywhere around here.” He flipped open the glovebox and started searching around while I looked at the car’s controls, wondering how far he was going to get me to drive. I’d probably overstated my driving skills to them at that stage. I watched John pull out a road map which didn’t make me feel any better.

  “That’ll help,” he said. “How much petrol is there Jesse?”

  I looked on the dashboard and felt a flood of secret relief when I saw it. “Oh fuck. It’s empty. Totally empty. We probably can’t even get to a petrol
station.” I turned to John to see how he’d take this, but then I heard Darren from the back.

  “Turn the ignition on,” he said. “You need it on or the dial doesn’t register.”

  I realised he was right and when I turned the key the needle climbed at once to just over half full.

  “See? I told you,” Darren began but I told him to shut the fuck up.

  “Half a tank.” I said to John, hoping the plan was going to be finding somewhere to ditch the car long before we used all that up. But he didn’t answer, he was flicking through the map, his lips were moving as ideas ran through his head.

  “I’ve got it.” He turned to me with a grim look on his face. “It’s a bit of a trip though.”

  “A bit of a trip?” I said, feeling sick now. “Where we going?”

  “Buckle up. We’re going to the Badlands.”

  You know I’ve read a bit about murders and murderers since then. You could say I developed an interest in it, that’s understandable isn’t it? Anyway, it turns out that the reason most murderers who get caught do so because they make silly mistakes. They panic basically. They don’t think things through. They get rid of the evidence as quickly as they can, instead of as carefully as they can. It’s understandable, believe me I know, you get scared, you don’t want to be there, dealing with what’s happened. You take shortcuts. That was what me and Darren were like, but John wasn’t. And that’s what made him so good that day. His arm must have been killing him, but he hardly mentioned it. He wasn’t panicking, he was thinking. So he wasn’t making mistakes. And to come up with the plan he did, that young, that inexperienced, that was nothing short of genius. The only problem was it meant I had to drive most of the night.

  “What are you talking about? What are we going there for?”

  “OK Listen. He’s a surfer right? This guy. He’s here on his own. He told us no one knows he’s here. So he could be surfing anywhere. So where’s the most dangerous place to surf?”

  Both Darren and me stayed quiet, blank looks on our faces.

  “The Badlands. You’re asking for trouble if you surf there, everyone knows that. We just have to leave the car somewhere in the Badlands. When they find this guy missing they’ll think that the locals there did him. That’s where they’ll look for the body.”

  I wasn’t thinking that far ahead though. “Cornwall? You want me to drive to Cornwall?”

  John looked at the map before answering. “It’s three hours. Three and a half tops. You’ll be alright.”

  “But I’ve never driven further than the village.”

  “We’ll be fine. We’ll do it together. But we’ve got to go to the campsite first to get his stuff.”

  I didn’t say anything. All I was thinking was I had to drive this car for four hours. For a moment I wondered if I could come up with a plan of my own to stop this madness, but I knew I could never outthink John. I stared out the windscreen for a little while then I started the engine.

  There was no one else on the road but I still indicated to pull out, might as well start out properly. I pulled away, revving a little high and Darren started telling me what to do from the back.

  “You’re still in first gear. You’ve got to change gear.”

  “Fuck off. I know. I’m changing now.”

  “That’s fourth. You’ve put it in fourth. It’s going to stall.”

  “Fuck off Darren.”

  John was just sitting there giving me this encouraging look, willing me to do this.

  I drove the mile or so back down the road to the campsite and slowed just outside the gate. I could see Mum’s car was there parked outside the house. John flipped down the sun visors and told me to keep going, over to where the guy’s tent was pitched. I swallowed hard and did what he said. There was a little turn you had to make right by the house where you had to slow right down. We always used to glance out the kitchen window to see who was coming, whether they’d paid, whatever. I tried to get a bit of a run up to get through here fast, but I messed it up. I tried to change gear just before and missed it, and the engine juddered and stalled. We all just sat there staring at the kitchen window to see if Mum’s face would appear. Even John looked worried, but he stayed calm and told me to push the clutch down and try the engine again. It wouldn’t catch, just kept turning over with us sitting there right outside mum’s kitchen window. There was washing on our little line. Mum was definitely there.

  “You’re gonna flood it Jesse,” Darren said. My hands were shaking. I knew she was going to come out at any moment to see what the noise was.

  “Calm down,” John said. “Slowly.” He reached across and put his good hand on my arm. “Try it once more.”

  It was like the car did what he told it, just like we did. The engine caught and I pulled away like old people do, the clutch still half in, the engine revving way too hard, but we moved forward.

  I pulled up at the tent so the car was between it and the house.

  “Fucking hell that was close,” Darren said, and I just collapsed forward on the steering wheel, but John was onto the next challenge.

  “Careful when you open the tent,” he said. “We don’t know for sure there’s no one in it.

  So I got out again and looked around a bit. It didn’t look like anyone was there but I called out a tentative ‘hello’ and gave the tent a bit of a shake. No one shouted back, so I slowly unzipped the tent door. I don’t know what I would have done if there’d been someone in there. I expect John would have thought of something.

  It was empty apart from a camp mat and a sleeping bag and a few clothes scattered around, they guy wasn’t exactly camping in luxury, but that was good as it meant we could pack his stuff up more quickly. I ran around the tent pulling out pegs so it flopped down onto the grass. John opened the Nissan’s boot and got me and Darren throwing things in, putting the tent away neatly because John told us we had to make it look normal. When it was done I shut the boot and we all climbed back in. I put my shaking hands back on the wheel. That’s when I had an idea.

  We had to drive right through the village to get to the main road. And there’s a police station at the end of the main street. Wherever John wanted us to go, we had to drive right past it. I suddenly realised there was nothing John could do if I stopped. If I stopped and got out and ran inside and told them what had happened, then it wasn’t too late. For John maybe but not for me. If I drove John right to them, surely I wasn’t an accessory to murder or whatever John was saying I was. I’d be a hero. The boy who caught a murderer. That was all I was thinking as we left the campsite and drove up to the village. I had to do it. I wasn’t even thinking about the driving by then, just whether or not I could get out the car in time. But as we approached the police station and I slowed a bit, I could feel it was written all over my face what I wanted to do. I felt like he must be reading my mind.

  “What are you doing Jesse?” He gave me this look. I’d seen it plenty of times before, like when he wanted me to get more wood for the fire, or finish off a rabbit that had got caught in our traps. But it was darker this time.

  “Why are you slowing down?”

  The truth is I just didn’t have the nerve to do it. With his broken arm I could have stopped and run in there to the police - how was he gonna stop me - but my courage let me down.

  “I’m not. I’m just keeping to the speed limit. We don’t want to get busted for speeding do we?”

  He kept that look fixed on me for a long while, until we were all the way out of town. I couldn’t stop then, it was way too late.

  That trip, Jesus Christ. I’ll never forget that trip. At first there weren’t any junctions and we just had to follow the road. Even so I got a little traffic jam on my tail, and on every straight bit people overtook me and honked their horns. Then we got to the motorway, and we either went so fast I thought we were going to crash, or so slow cars nearly piled into the back of us. I nearly freaked out so much John had me stop at the first services. He made me drink c
offee and talked to me until I calmed down. He also bought aspirin or something, for his arm. He took four pills dry as soon as he got in the car and then he wound down the window and popped all the rest out of the packet onto the road. Then he did the same with a second packet, but he threw the boxes on the floor of the car.

  “What you doing?” Darren asked him.

  “A little misdirection,” he said. “Come on. We gotta get going.”

  That trip took easily double what John had said it would. We pretty nearly all died around Cardiff when a lorry joined the motorway, I didn’t know I was supposed to get out of the way and it fired it’s air horn at us, which made me swerve right across into the fast lane. I went right over the path of this old volvo and I could see the driver, white faced with shock fighting the steering wheel to keep control. But slowly I kind of got the hang of it.

  Even so it was way past midnight when we even got into Cornwall, and the Badlands were way down the bottom. John took us to a beach called Porthtowan. I wasn’t really part of the conversation by then, just following the white lines and going whichever way John told me to go. We found a car park overlooking the beach. There was no one around of course, it was three in the morning by then but even so we parked it in the corner, right out of the way.

  The idea was to dump the car there, but it was pretty cold so John told us to get some sleep first, and I was so tired I was out straight away. The next thing I knew it was getting light and John was shaking me awake. He made me pull some clothes from the guy’s bag in the boot, and leave them on the passenger seat, like you’d do if you were surfing. Then John made us wipe everything to get rid of fingerprints. Then he told me to lock the car and hide the keys. As I was kneeling down to do so there was this massive bang and glass started falling about my ears. As if I wasn’t shaken up enough by that point.