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

by Gregg Dunnett

  “I can’t reach him.”

  Dave glanced back at the situation, then forward again at the controls. “You’ll have to squeeze through back there.”

  “No. I can’t”

  “It’s alright. He’s out cold. Come on.”

  Natalie heard the urgency and fear in his voice and asked herself why it fell to her to do this part. She told herself. Because you can’t fly a helicopter.

  “Oh fuck it,” she said. “Hold this.” She gave Dave the needle and unbuckled her seat belt. She pushed her arms through the gap between the two front seats and stepped through, squatting on one of the rear-facing seats facing Buckingham. Now in the back of the aircraft she could hear his breathing, a rasping sound. She reached forward and took the syringe from Dave and without hesitation slipped the plastic guard from the needle. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but outwardly she felt calm. Like she was acting out a dream, it didn’t matter what she did because it wasn’t real, couldn’t be real.

  Buckingham’s eyes were still shut, his handsome face looked relaxed now, his skin tanned, the thick cotton of his shirt was slightly open, revealing his chest. A few yellow hairs had escaped and shone where the sunlight hit them. She reached out with the syringe and slowly held it over his leg, the needle pointing downwards. A drip formed on the tip and then fell onto the fabric of the trousers where it instantly spread out and began to be absorbed. She watched his eyes. They didn’t flicker. She held her breath.

  She knew about injections. How un-tensed muscles would allow the slender metal to pass unnoticed between their fibres. How she could then gently depress the plunger and the deed would be done. She knew he wouldn’t wake up. It would be painless for John Buckingham.

  But that had been how it would work when discussing the plan in her kitchen. Here, in the back of a helicopter a few hundred feet above the Irish Sea with the softened growl of the engine and the wind noise, with this man so close to her, the smell of him in her nostrils, it suddenly felt impossible.

  She forced her hand to move but it wouldn’t. She wondered in a wild moment if she might need to use her other hand to make this hand obey, use two hands as if pushing against a magnetic field. But then her arm dropped, as if on its own, or like there had simply been a delay in receiving its instructions. The result was not the smooth, firm action she had planned, but a half-hearted jab with a needle, it penetrated the leg, bounced out again and then jabbed in again under the weight of her arm. This time it stayed in place, but only just under the skin. She panicked and pushed the plunger in some way and the material of his trousers turned wet and dark.

  She realised she was screaming. An inhuman sound of frustration and fear. She tried to push the needle deeper but she did so at an angle and the needle stuck, but she pressed the plunger harder anyway. Anything to be done with this. And then Buckingham’s eyes flicked open and met hers. She snatched her hand away from the syringe as if it had electrocuted her. It nearly came with her hand, instead staying there, lying flat now on the top of his thigh, still one third full. He looked down and saw it.

  Buckingham stared at it for a moment, then turned his eyes towards Natalie, sitting opposite him, her hand over her mouth, her frightened eyes staring at him.

  “What the fuck?” he cried. “What the fuck is going on?” His voice was slurring wildly. “You just stabbed me?” He went to brush the syringe off his leg but the needle was embedded and he only succeeded in sending it deeper, pushing a little more on the plunger. He cried out in pain.

  “Jesus!”

  Dave spun around so fast he nearly lost control, and the helicopter juddered underneath them, slewing sideways through the air. Somehow John Buckingham was the first to recover.

  “What is this?”

  Dave looked forward to correct the aircraft but then turned around again. “Don’t play innocent. You know what’s going on.”

  “The fuck are you talking about man?” Buckingham’s eyes were wide awake now. His nostrils flaring. He glanced down again at his leg.

  “What have you stuck in me?”

  The noise in the helicopter seemed to have grown louder. “We know all about you,” Dave shouted through clenched teeth. “We know you killed Jim Harrison. We know all about you Buckingham. The champagne was drugged. She’s just injected you with enough tranquilliser to drop a horse. You’re fucked. This is where you pay for your crimes.”

  John stared at Dave in amazement then opened his mouth to shout something back, but then closed it again.

  “Shit,” he said at last. “You’re… You’re killing me?”

  “Too fucking right. What did you think? We’d just let you take us out one by one?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about. Are you insane?”

  “It’s no good lying,” said Dave.

  Buckingham looked down at his leg again, his breathing coming fast and hard. “Lying? What am I lying about? What have you stabbed me with? What the fuck is all this?”

  He was looking at Natalie now. But she said nothing, she stayed pressed into the opposite corner from him, she wasn’t screaming now, but panting hard, bringing herself back under control.

  “I said what is this? What have you stabbed me with? Bitch?”

  “What does it matter?” Dave shouted back.

  From somewhere John managed a laugh. “This is insane. This isn’t fucking happening. You’re lunatics. You’re what? A pair of crazies? Is that it?” He looked around as if there might be some way out, and then there was a silence in the cabin. Natalie didn’t know why she spoke, only that he had to know what this was about. She had to justify her actions.

  “You killed my husband. You know what we’re talking about,” she said.

  When he answered his breath was coming in heavy lumps. “The fuck you mean lady? You just fucking stabbed me for no reason.”

  “You killed my husband.”

  “Fuck you.” He screamed it this time. “I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Llanwindus. Eight years ago. The Hanging Rock. The man you killed was her husband. My friend. We know all about it,” said Dave.

  This stopped John. His mouth hung open. “The Hanging Rock? Oh shit.” He held his hand to his brow, then pushed against the seat in front of him, as if trying to make more room to breathe. “This is about Jesse. Jesse’s sent you to kill me.”

  Suddenly a huge spasm rocked his body. He tensed up, the muscles on his neck bulging, his head jerking back and forth. Natalie, watching from the back, thought he was dying, but then he banged his hand to his chest and he roared out in pain. Then he sat back taking shallow breaths, sweat dripping from his face.

  “Jesse. You’ve been sent by Jesse. What the fuck has he told you?”

  It was a strange form of guilt that was driving Natalie now. Guilt becoming infused with uncertainty.

  “He told us you killed Jim,” she said. “My husband. That you stabbed him at your secret place. Hanging Rock.”

  Buckingham didn’t answer and Natalie wondered if he could still speak. After a moment she continued.

  “He said you made him and his friend cover it up so they were involved too. They tried to blackmail you about it and you killed again. His friend Darren, you stabbed his brother, and you made his girlfriend take an overdose. He said there were probably others…” She stopped as Buckingham closed his eyes.

  “I fucking bet he did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  There was a long silence, but eventually Buckingham opened his eyes again and looked straight at her. “And you believed him? You believed that sociopathic fucking…” He shook his head. “I bet he did say that. And a whole lot more. Whatever it took.”

  There was another silence. But this time the truth began to dawn.

  “Look lady, you better believe me. I never killed anyone. That man, your husband, it was Jesse who stabbed him.”

  For a moment there was nothing but the thrum of the engines and the sound of breathing. Then Natalie repli
ed.

  “What?”

  John Buckingham’s shoulders sagged forward a little as he spoke.

  “I was there at Hanging Rock when it happened. But I didn’t kill anyone. It was Jesse. He had this obsession with how we were the locals there and we had to protect it. Then one day this guy turned up and Jesse went apeshit. He grabbed his knife and tried to scare him off. The guy even tried to walk away but Jesse ran after him and stuck the knife in his back. Then it went crazy, the guy was tough, somehow he broke Jesse’s arm, but Jesse got his hand on the knife again and then he just kept sticking it in, again and again.”

  Buckingham stopped talking and the only sound was the growl of the engines and the wind buffeting the front of the aircraft.

  “I helped him cover it up though. Darren and I both did. I shouldn’t have. I was young, scared. I was supposed to be his mate. And Jesse can be pretty persuasive.” John gave a short laugh. “He got you to try and kill me, didn’t he?” He glanced down at the needle still lying flat on his thigh.

  Natalie looked at it too, wondering how much could have leaked onto his trousers. How much had slipped into his bloodstream. “What about the others?” She said suddenly.

  Another spasm seemed to hit Buckingham and he screwed up his face to resist it. When it passed he answered, but his voice sounded weaker, more distant.

  “Darren’s brother was a nasty, violent little shit. I heard he got into a fight outside a nightclub. Maybe that’s all it was, maybe it was Jesse. Jesse always hated him, so I wouldn’t be surprised. And Jesse’s girlfriend? She was a junkie. Maybe she took an overdose? Or maybe Jesse helped her take one. I don’t know. After Hanging Rock I just tried to get as far away from him as possible.”

  “But that can’t be right,” Natalie was speaking quickly now. “Why would Jesse try to blackmail you if it was him who had killed Jim? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I don’t know about any blackmail. I do know he asked me for a job.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “About six months ago. After his mum died. And he doesn’t need money, believe me that campsite’s worth a fortune. No. He wanted to come and work with me. He wanted it to be like the old days, the two of us running around London together. Going to parties. Probably with Darren hanging on as well.” He shook his head.

  “Did you give him a job?”

  “Did I give him a job? Did I give a job to the man I watched kill someone when he was sixteen for no fucking reason? No. Funnily enough I didn’t. I bought the biggest fuck off alarm system on the market, I warned security at the office that he was a stalker and I told him if he ever came near me again I was going to the police even if it ended up with me in prison as well. I thought it did the trick. Until now.”

  Natalie shook her head, not quite able to accept it yet.

  “But you recognised me when you got in the helicopter. I saw you. If you’re innocent how would you know me?”

  “I’m not innocent lady. I’m not innocent. I found out about the guy Jesse killed. I read he had a wife. All that. So yeah. I knew who you were. Didn’t expect to fucking see you sitting up front today. But I figured it was just a weird coincidence.”

  “But it’s not a coincidence that you used this company. That alone proves there’s something not right about you.”

  “Yeah maybe. I thought giving you business… It was like a little way of… I don’t know. Making amends.”

  Buckingham closed his eyes again and no one spoke for a minute while Dave piloted the chopper further out to sea. Then he sniffed and opened his eyes again. “What is this? In my leg. Am I going to die?” He turned to Dave. “There any point turning around and flying to a hospital?”

  Dave hesitated. Finally he said: “We’re about thirty nautical miles off the Pembrokeshire coast. We could get back in maybe a half hour.” He didn’t make any move to turn them around though.

  “I understand,” Buckingham said. “I get it. I mean why you’ve done this. Jesse makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do. He did the same to me. You get me to hospital, I swear I’ll say this was all an accident. Some fucked up weird accident. I won’t do a thing to hurt you.”

  Dave looked around at Natalie. They stared at each other for a moment and then she nodded. “Turn around Dave,” she said.

  Buckingham looked at her. “Thanks,” he said.

  For a few moments no one spoke and Dave threw the chopper into a hard looping turn. As he did so Buckingham’s face split into a grin. “So what were you gonna do anyway? How were you going to explain the dead guy in the helicopter?”

  Natalie didn’t answer and Buckingham turned to Dave. “Huh?”

  “We were going to say you opened the door and jumped out. They’d assume it was suicide. When the police looked into you they’d realise what you were. Maybe they’d figure your conscience caught up with you. Who cares? There’s no reason for us to have anything to do with it.”

  “Wow. Simple. But fucked up.”

  Buckingham allowed his head to fall sideways against the window. He looked like he was ready to sleep, but then he spoke again.

  “You know the first time I ever met him he told me he killed his own dad. Some science experiment thing that went wrong. He told me how his dad beat him up when he was little. I don’t think that was true either. But I wasn’t getting on too well with my own dad then and he thought it gave us something in common. It was weird. I guess I was impressed in some way. He said he only meant to hurt him, but it went wrong. He put too much gas in, or something, he ended up making a bomb. But that’s why he came here. Cos he fucking blew his dad up. If that hadn’t happened he could have lived out his psychotic little life thousands of miles away. None of this would have to happen. Not to us anyway.”

  He spasmed again, only harder, and this time it never looked like he was coming back from it. His neck locked again and his limbs jerked. His face turned from red to purple, then a white froth formed at his mouth. His eyes stared at Natalie the whole time, and then they burst red as the blood vessels split open. And then his arms and his chest stopped jerking, he just stopped. His head fell back, his mouth left open. His fingers continued to twitch, but nothing else moved.

  For a while the only sound was the thump thump of the blades overhead and the muffled roar of the engines. Dave stared straight ahead, his fingers light on the control as though the smoother they flew, the less real the moment was.

  Eventually Natalie leaned forward. She held a hand close to his neck, and after a moment’s delay she touched three fingers against it. She watched his mouth and chest. When she spoke she sounded matter of fact, resigned. “He’s not breathing.”

  The blades thumped on. Dave didn’t turn his head.

  “Say something Dave? Did you hear him? He’s not breathing. I’ve killed him and he didn’t do it.”

  Dave still wouldn’t speak.

  “Dave, talk to me. Please talk to me.”

  forty-seven

  “WE’VE GOT TO go through with the plan.” It was the first thing Dave had said for fifteen minutes. Natalie had long given up and was staring out of the window, her head angled so that she could see nothing of the body still slumped up against the window behind her.

  “We don’t have enough fuel to fly around thinking about it. And we can’t explain. We can’t land with… We can’t land with that. We have to go through with the plan.”

  “What do we do about Jesse?” Natalie’s voice was flat and empty of emotion.

  Dave didn’t answer.

  “Are you going to convince me to kill him too?”

  They flew onwards for another ten minutes, the only sounds over the wind and engine was the sound of Natalie’s sobbing. Eventually Dave interrupted her.

  “Look I don’t know what to say Natalie. I don’t know what to think. But we’ve got to deal with the situation we’re in now. We’ve got to stick with the plan. There’s no choice.”

  She turned to look at him, streaks of tears
still visible on her face. She couldn’t speak but she managed to nod.

  Dave took one hand from the controls and wiped his brow, leaving his hand there as if he just wanted to shield his eyes from what they were witnessing. “There.” He pointed to the seat next to where John Buckingham’s body was.

  At first she didn’t understand, but then she realised that he was telling her to get on with it. Without speaking she knelt down on the floor of the cabin and, with two hands, began to drag Dave’s bag out from under the seat. When it was free she unzipped the top and looked inside. It contained lead weight belts, the kind used by divers.

  “You’re going to need to slip them around his waist, one by one. They’re heavy, be careful.”

  Without a word Natalie pulled out the first belt, thick black webbing threaded with four dull silvery weights, each two kilograms. The way Buckingham’s body was leaning against the window there was a gap between the small of his back and the seat and it was easier than she feared to pass one end of the belt through the gap and around his stomach. Then she pulled the belt tight around him and buckled it up.