“What the fuck was that?” I said rolling back on the floor. John was standing above me, looking into the passenger window that he’d just stoved in with a brick.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” I asked.
“I told you, a little misdirection. “ Then he said:
“Come on. Let’s see if we can find some breakfast and get outta here.”
It was still so early we had to wait a bit, but eventually we found somewhere that did a full English, and me and Darren ate while John figured out how to get us back home. We got a bus first, I don’t remember where to, but then we got on a train up to Bristol, and then Carmarthen. Again I slept most of the way. But when we got there John made us leave the station and go to the high street. We went into every shop that looked like it might sell fireworks and we bought as many as they’d sell us. It was coming up to bonfire night so there were loads available. John did all the talking, he passed for eighteen pretty easily by then, and it cost a load, but like everything else he just put it on his credit card. If I’d known he had access to so much money I’d have stopped him stealing so much from the campsite shop. Anyway. He bought so much I had to make more room in my bag by snapping the sticks off from the rockets and throwing them away. We didn’t get back on the bus until we each had a backpack filled to bursting with fireworks.
It was too late by the time we finally got back to the village so we sneaked into the campsite and spent the night in our caravan, not putting the lights on in case Mum saw we were there and came out to offer us food or something. I don’t think any of us slept much.
John woke us up at first light again. He looked tired that day. His arm was all sorts of blue and purple and swollen so it was twice the size it should have been. For a moment I didn’t think he was going to be able to go through with it, and that scared me, the thought that Darren and me might have to do it on our own. But he fitted his sling again and got on with it. He made me sneak over and get all the petrol from the campsite’s sit-on mower, then we had to hike back out to the Rock. It was fucking heavy carrying it all. Our last expedition to the wave at Hanging Rock.
It seemed unreal walking down there that day. It was a stunning dawn, the sun rose up behind us and the oranges and reds and browns of the leaves were crisp against the lightening sky. It made it all the more ridiculous what we were setting out to do. I remember thinking I didn’t want that walk to end. I didn’t want to see what I knew we’d find at the end of it. I don’t exactly believe in God but I was praying that somehow the guy hadn’t been dead after all, that he’s woken up from his trance, scrabbled around to put his teeth back in and walked off somewhere. That maybe all we’d really done wrong was steal the guy’s car.
But when we arrived back at the foot of the Hanging Rock it was all like we’d left it. The only difference was it looked like some animals had been in the cave and had a go at the body. It’s not like he was hard to find I guess.
We all sat down around the bags of fireworks and one by one, we opened each one up and poured the black power into Darren’s backpack. We filled it up and then packed it down hard, we got maybe twenty kilos of the stuff in there. Then John carried it to the bottom of the crack behind the Hanging Rock and wedged it in as far as he could reach. He poured half the petrol into the bag as well, so that it sagged and it sat there in a stinking oily puddle. Then he laid out one of the ropes we used to anchor the lobster pot as a fuse, splashing that with petrol as well. He was concentrating so hard the whole time he didn’t speak. Darren and me just stood there watching and waiting.
“Ready?” John stood half way between us and the towering Hanging Rock, at the end of his trail of rope and petrol. He held his lighter in his hand.
For a moment I was taken back to the last time I saw my Dad, and I thought that it would be kind of ironic if this was the last time I saw John alive as well. But I just shrugged like I didn’t care anymore and then nodded.
John struck the lighter and cupped the flame with his other hand. Then he crouched down with the flame. For a while I thought nothing was going to happen, but then I saw a little flicker of yellow and blue dance away from him in the sunlight.
He jogged backwards until he was standing next to us when the flame reached the petrol-soaked bag of whatever the hell they put in fireworks to make them go bang. I’d been half sure that nothing would happen but I was way wrong. It went up instantly with a big ‘whumppp’ that made the entire cliff face shudder. The whole thing moved, shuddered, then the toe that the Hanging Rock rested on had nothing to push against and it bulged out, held for a moment and then spluttered forward. A few pathetic sized rocks blew out but no more than we could have heaped upon the body in five minutes of effort. I looked at John and started to say “What now?” But he didn’t answer, he had his head back and was watching the top of the Hanging Rock.
It was swaying. Actually swaying. Then, at the base, there was a crack, a tiny thing at first, but growing and spreading and splitting so fast it was like your eyes couldn’t keep up with it. It raced up the rock and then across and then the whole thing was moving. The whole enormity of the Hanging Rock, and a good deal of the cliff face behind it were suddenly in freefall.
“Get the fuck back!” John yelled and didn’t wait for us, he turned and ran out on the smooth rocks towards the point. Darren grabbed my wrist and began to drag me away. All I could hear behind me was the thunder of a massive avalanche of rocks. I only went a few steps before tripping and I put my hands over my ears and eyes and wondered if I was going to die.
But we’d already been standing out past the end of the cliff, so the avalanche went right past us. The noise was immense though. It roared and boomed and it shook the ground, and then it did it again when the noise echoed back from the other side of the bay. I opened my eyes to see tidal waves heading out to sea, smacking into swells as they arrived into the bay. They slapped into each other and fanned upwards, stopping each other dead in their tracks. But then slowly, everything settled back down and then I was watching a new set of waves come in, and when the did they were different. The rocks had slumped out much further than we thought they would and gone right out onto the reef underwater. The next wave to come in, and the wave after that, and all the waves after that for ever and ever, instead of peeling the way we knew so well, they got half way down the reef and then they just stopped, crashed into the rocks like this wasn’t anywhere special at all.
And where the Hanging Rock had been there was only a cloud of quickly clearing dust and hazy blueness. A slump of gently settling rock stretched from the bright new cliff face right down and out into the water, the black, rounded, seaweed covered rocks by the water’s edge replaced by crisply outlined new ones. There was no fire left, either blown out or just buried too deep where no oxygen could reach it. The body of the man, his surfboard, our camp, it was all buried underneath. And you could see right away, it was gone forever.
thirty-five
NATALIE SAT AT the table in silence. Half thoughts chased themselves around her mind like leaves caught up in an eddy in the wind. Then she closed her eyes and like the wind was shut off, her thoughts began to settle.
At last she knew. Jim was dead. There was no longer a residue of hope that something else might have happened. He wasn’t living somewhere, his memory erased. He hadn’t left her in punishment at what she had done. He was just dead. Dead for nothing. Dead because of one of his stupid fights, picked at the wrong place and the wrong time. She felt empty. Not sad, not angry, not even particularly curious. Just empty, letting the story wash over her as if it were one of the waves the man had described at this Hanging Rock place.
Dave was different though, he did look angry. And when he spoke he sounded incredulous. “You could have saved him.” he was saying. “If you’d have got help, you could have saved him. Why the hell didn’t you?”
The man didn’t answer. He didn’t even look up from the table at first. As he’d told them the story he’d been animated,
his eyes darting around the room. Now he was slumped in his chair. Then he shrugged.
“I told you. And it probably wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“I’m going to phone the police.” Dave said and he pulled his phone out.
The man glanced at him, then at Natalie but again he said nothing, just watched while Dave began tapping the screen on his mobile until it purred at them in the quiet, the same tone three times. A voice answered loud enough so they could all hear it.
“Emergency operator, which service do you require? Fire, police, or ambulance?”
Dave asked for the police and the woman said she was connecting him.
A new look had come onto the man’s face now, uncertainty, and then a new voice came through the speaker of the phone saying “Police, where are you calling from please?”
Suddenly Jesse looked directly at Natalie and shook his head urgently. “Not the police. Not yet. You don’t know everything yet. Make him hang up.”
They both heard him, but neither did anything.
“Make him hang up,” Jesse spoke quietly, but there was something in his voice that made Natalie listen.
“Make him hang up,” he said again. “Someone could get hurt. You’ve got a sister haven’t you? With little kids? Two boys?”
Natalie snatched at Dave’s arm, knocking the phone from his hand and onto the tabletop.
“How do you know that?” she hissed.
The voice on the phone asked Dave again where he was calling from and they all stared at the phone.
“Hello caller?” it said. “Is there anyone there? What is the nature of the emergency?”
“Hang it up Dave,” Natalie spoke very quietly.
He watched her for a moment then very slowly picked up the phone. He breathed a couple of times, then he spoke into the phone. He told the woman he was sorry. He said kids had got hold of his phone. The voice sounded doubtful, reluctant to end the call, but he pressed the button to silence her.
“How do you know about my sister?” Natalie said to Jesse.
He looked resigned.
“I need to tell you the rest of the story.”
“How do you know about my sister’s boys?” Natalie’s voice was angry now, but her face was white.
“Is that a threat? Are you threatening her? Is that what this is?” There was plenty of colour in Dave’s face.
“No. Not from me anyway.” Jesse put out his hands in front of him. “You don’t understand.”
“Then I think you’d better tell us pretty quick,” Dave said.
Jesse took a deep breath. He looked around the room as if there might be something there to help him explain, but finally settled his eyes on Natalie’s. “It’s John. You’ve got to understand this is all about John. You talk to the police, you’re making a move against John. And you do that if you want, but you better understand what you’re up against. You better know you’re gonna take him down properly, because if you don’t, he’s gonna come after you. And you really don’t want that to happen.”
Dave still had his phone on the table. He looked like he was itching to use it.
“Just what exactly are you saying?”
“Let me tell you the rest of the story. You’ll understand.”
Dave looked at Natalie and their eyes locked for a moment, then she nodded.
“Go on,” said Dave.
thirty-six
JOHN SPENT A few nights in the hospital, but even after that, when I called his house, it was always his dad who answered. And he never let me speak to John. He said he was resting or something. That was weird. Normally he’d just sound pissed off that he was acting like John’s answering service and call up the stairs. But whatever his dad thought, with all that had happened I needed to see John. So I decided to go round anyway.
When I got to the house his dad’s car wasn’t even in the driveway. I thought for a minute there was no one there, but the kitchen door was open so I let myself in, but then I thought that maybe John’s dad was there anyway, just his car wasn’t. That thought made me nervous so I was really quiet. I went upstairs but quietly, and right away I felt better because I could see John in his room, or his back at least. The door was open and he was facing away from me, doing something at his desk. I couldn’t see at first, but then I could. He was struggling to tear something out of a newspaper, the fact that one of his arms was wrapped in plaster almost from the armpit wasn’t helping.
“What you doing?” I said.
He jumped.
“Fucking hell Jesse. What are you doing here?”
I didn’t really understand the question. Just over a week before we’d covered up a killing together. It felt to me like we had something to talk about.
“What do you mean, what am I doing here?”
“How did you get in?” He asked. He was holding himself funny. I thought at first it was the plaster cast, but then I saw he was trying to hide the paper.
“Through the door. Like normal people.”
He ignored this. “My dad’s here,” he said instead. What he meant was, what was I doing just walking in when his dad was home.
“His car’s not here.”
“He’s back any minute I mean. He just went out to the shop.”
“Yeah maybe.” Since that subject was done I asked him again.
“So what you doing?”
“I’m not doing anything.” He said again, but I was standing over his shoulder now, and he couldn’t hide the paper without it being obvious. Besides, I’d already seen what he was doing.
“That’s about the guy isn’t it? What you’re reading. What does it say?”
For about a second it looked like he was going to deny it. Then he slid the paper over to me.
“Here.”
I read the story. It was a local paper, but not local to here so I don’t know where he got it. And it didn’t say much either, just a few lines that a search had been called off, and the guy was presumed to have drowned. It did have his name though. It gave me a funny feeling reading that.
“Jim Harrison,” I said. “I didn’t really think of him as someone with a name.”
John gave me a funny look at this and I felt a bit stupid.
“I mean, not like a person with feelings and stuff. You know, a family. I wonder if he had any kids?” I looked at John like he might know the answer.
John continued to look at me for a little while. Then he obviously decided to ignore me, and went on tearing out the article. When he’d finished he pulled open his desk drawer and took out a folder. He opened it and I could see a couple of other clippings from newspapers. He put the new one with the others and closed it again.
“No. No kids. Not his anyway.”
I didn’t understand that, but I knew it meant John was in one of his weird moods. He got like that when he wanted to freak you out a bit, to play with you.
“What do you mean by that?” I said. But I didn’t really want to know.
“I mean there’s kids at the house, but they’re not his. From what I could tell they’re his wife’s sisters.”
There hadn’t been anything about that in the article I just read, and it didn’t sound like the sort of detail you’d read in a paper.
“How d’you know that?”
A smirk appeared on his face. It twisted his features so that for once he didn’t look handsome. He looked nasty.
“I went to have a look.”
“You did what?”
“Calm down. I wanted to check they didn’t suspect anything. I just waited outside, had a look in the windows. I didn’t knock on the door or anything.”
“Why?” I said again. For some reason I remembered that time we sneaked up to look in the old house. The old man asleep with his shotgun.
“Look it’s no big deal. I just wanted to have a look. I went down on the train to check it out. I just wanted to be sure. It’s just a bit of insurance.”
“Insurance for what?”
�
�I don’t know. That’s the point of insurance isn’t it?”
The smirk was gone, replaced by a look of calm assurance. And already it was working on me. I didn’t get it, but it seemed a reasonable thing to do. Until later when it just seemed plain weird.
Then there was a noise downstairs. “My dad’s back,” he said, and he slipped the folder back into his drawer and locked it. “Come on, we’ve got to go.” Before I could ask why he was leading the way downstairs, and out of the side door, so we didn’t run into his dad.
“What’s the problem?”
“Shut-up Jesse. Just come with me,”
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him, then led the way out into the garden. I’d hardly ever been in his garden, we weren’t exactly in the habit of checking out the shrubbery.
“What are we doing?” I said. Then I had a horrible idea.
“Shit! Have you been found out? Does your dad know? Is that why you didn’t want me to come around?” I felt my gut contract at the thought and I jerked my head around to see if there were any police cars on the drive. I hadn’t seen them when I turned up, but they could be sneaky, they were clever like that.
The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller Page 22