The Challenge

by Tom Hoyle

I heard fingers click as I shuffled into the garden. The Twins were on the lake side of an old shed.

  They gave me no time to have final doubts. As soon as I arrived, there was a nod and we slunk towards Mike’s bathroom window. The small one at the top was open for ventilation, and that meant Jack could lean through and open the larger bottom window with the hooked stick. Will’s house had the same set-up, and I’d told The Twins we once had to break in when Will locked his keys inside. It’s difficult to know when I passed the point of no return, but I suppose it was going through that window.

  The house was filthy. My torch lit a brown shower curtain and bath tiles edged with mouldy black. The toilet was stained and the cork tiles at its base had peeled back. It smelt musty. Years of smoking had seeped into the fabric.

  We came out into his hallway, next to Mike’s blue bag of tools and opposite a small table. The telephone, the cord wrapped round it, sat on top.

  ‘Be careful with that torch,’ said Sam. ‘You’ll be seen from the road.’

  The kitchen was also a mess. Blackened saucepans sat on the stove and the sink was full of plates and mugs. A glass of stagnant water sat on the windowsill, a couple of cigarette butts floating in it. In the corner there was a silver bowl with some scraps inside. The cupboard behind had an industrial-sized packet of dog food.

  Jack used the top end of the stick to mix the poison into the bowl, and he added a handful of dog-food pellets.

  I heard Sam creaking up the stairs.

  ‘Sam, we’ve got to get going,’ I hissed. ‘Sometimes he’s back before eleven.’

  The floor above us squeaked as Sam moved across. Then Jack and I heard three solid knocks.

  I followed Jack past the front door and up the stairs. Odds and ends were left everywhere: one stair had an old speaker, the next a plastic bag full of what looked like tins for recycling. The carpet was worn threadbare in the middle.

  Upstairs, the room straight ahead was a bedroom. I flashed my torch inside: a single bed; clothes scattered over the floor.

  ‘In here!’ Sam spoke in the loudest whisper possible. ‘Quick!’ He was in the next room along, which was something like a spare room or box room – it was full of junk in plastic bags. At the time of Will’s disappearance, the police had taken ages to go through everything meticulously.

  Bills and papers, driving licence, chequebooks and the like, old and new, were scattered on a desk along one wall. But it was something else that had caught Sam’s eye. He swore. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  His little finger, gloved in pale yellow, pointed at a pad of notepaper. There was no doubt: it was exactly the same as the paper used for Will’s notes. It was exactly the same – I even remembered a little dark speck in one corner that ran through all of the sheets. This wasn’t just the same type of paper; it was the very same pad.

  I was enraged. It wasn’t a controlled, useful anger. I was a boiling whirlpool focused on revenge. Mike seemed weak and pathetic. Not really human. Scum. He was a bulbous-red-eyed killing machine; he was the sound of fingers scraping down a blackboard. He was the opposite of The Twins.

  I couldn’t think beyond how we’d been separated by only a thin strip of tarmac, how many times I’d wandered up his path, how many times we’d spoken, how many times we’d spoken after Will died.

  ‘This man deserves more than a dead dog,’ said Jack.

  ‘Maybe we should wait here and confront him when he arrives?’ I suggested. ‘Three against one. We could do him in.’ I imagined pushing and shoving, maybe some punching, then calling the police.

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘He deserves much more.’

  The Twins looked at one another and smiled.

  Attachment

  NOVEMBER 2011

  THE INCIDENT IN THE NIGHT-TIME

  Sam glanced at his watch and started to walk downstairs. ‘Let’s go to the kitchen.’

  I was worried he was going to suggest infecting Mike’s food with rat poison, but that would have been very difficult, given that the only open packet I’d seen was sugar. Mike ate from tins.

  It was Jack who went to the gas taps on the stove first. ‘Thinking of these?’

  Sam nodded. ‘We might have half an hour. Let’s leave these on and see if Mike does the job for us. If he lights a cigarette or turns on a light – it’ll blow.’ He looked at the four gas taps. ‘We can turn on one each.’

  ‘No,’ I said, holding my hands to my chest. ‘I think I’ve changed my mind. There’s enough evidence for the police to be involved. We can have Mike rotting inside a prison until he dies.’

  ‘Will Capling was your friend,’ said Jack. ‘You need to do this. It’s a Challenge.’

  ‘No. I don’t think it’s right,’ I whined. ‘I don’t care about Challenges.’

  Their faces hardened.

  ‘Come on. Guys?’ I looked from Twin to Twin for support. There was one second when I thought that they were going to break into smiles. But I had jumped on to ice that I thought to be solid . . . and plunged through into arctic water. I couldn’t understand the sudden change. These were The Twins – my heroes.

  ‘I don’t think it’s right,’ Jack mocked in a high-pitched voice. ‘I don’t think it’s right to hurt the man who murdered my best friend. We should kiss his arse instead.’ He wiggled from side to side, flopping his arms around.

  ‘What?’ My insides felt thin and watery. ‘Why are you acting like this?’ It was the first proper disagreement I’d ever had with The Twins.

  ‘You don’t really care about Will, do you?’ said Sam, smoothly, the voice of reason. ‘He never meant much to you. You probably don’t give a shit about us either.’

  ‘I don’t like this. We can’t kill someone. Can we?’ Surely they understood? ‘I don’t want to do something I shouldn’t.’

  Jack laughed at me, then turned to his brother with intense seriousness. ‘We’re running out of time.’

  Sam grabbed my face – he didn’t hold hard, but it would have been impossible to move. ‘We’ve brought you this far and you can’t change your mind now.’ His hand moved to the side of my neck, still firm, but mock-friendly. ‘We’re special. We’re supermen. We can do anything.’

  Jack moved my arm so that my hand was on the tap. ‘Come on. This man is nothing compared to us.’

  Sam switched one. The gas hissed out.

  Jack switched a second. ‘Now you have to turn on one of those taps.’

  It was only a gas tap. Just something that made the house smell; not much worse than blowing cigarette smoke around. We weren’t shooting him or sticking a knife into him. I only had to twist a bit of plastic. Mike’d probably smell the gas, think he’d made a mistake, turn it off, and open the windows. What did it matter?

  But this reasoning didn’t really convince me. Deep inside, I knew this was attempted murder. OK? I KNEW IT. I HAVE TO SAY THAT. I KNEW IT. AND I HATE THAT I DID IT. But I was confused. Let’s just face it: I made a mistake – and then it was impossible to go back and put right.

  I switched one of the dials and more gas seeped into the room. Brain-paralysing fear spread into me.

  One of The Twins, I’m not sure which, turned the fourth. The room already smelt.

  I rushed towards the bathroom window and then out into the garden; behind me, I heard the kitchen door close. I nearly raced back in and turned the gas taps off, but Jack and then Sam were clambering out of the bathroom window, and that meant I couldn’t easily get back in. After some difficulty, the window was closed with the hooked stick.

  We crouched in the garden behind the shed and Sam made us check that we had everything.

  Jack quietly pressed his hand against Sam’s. ‘That was possibly our best-ever Challenge.’

  ‘I’m absolutely shitting myself,’ I said. Incomplete, pathetic, weak sentences spilt out of me. I ended with: ‘. . . don’t want to do this.’

  ‘You can go back in there if you want to,’ said Sam. ‘But we’re not.’ Neither Twin was going to move.
‘You should go back to your house and pretend nothing has happened. If you say anything, you’re on your own, because we weren’t here.’

  ‘I certainly wasn’t here,’ said Jack.

  ‘And neither was I,’ said Sam.

  (I know that I still should have gone back into the house – I do get that.)

  We crept down to the bottom of Mike’s garden, which was only separated from the path along the river by a broken fence. Rocks pressed in the pit of my stomach. ‘Where’re your bikes?’ I asked in a low, listless voice. Perhaps The Twins would notice how worried I was and take me back inside.

  ‘We didn’t come on bikes,’ Jack said, nodding further down the bank of the river. ‘We came by boat.’

  Tied up next to the rowing boat at the bottom of Lakeside House was a small yacht: oars inside, outboard motor, sail tied to simple mast.

  ‘I didn’t know, I hadn’t seen . . .’ They hadn’t mentioned sailing. I hadn’t thought to ask.

  The Twins smiled. ‘You should get back to your house,’ Sam said. ‘It’s dangerous round here.’

  I ran through the field next to Will’s empty house. The night seemed darker, the Lantern Room at the top of Lakeside House brighter. It was a long way away, but this wasn’t a creation of my guilty conscience: there was definitely someone standing in the window.

  I knelt in the living room and prayed that the gas would fail or Mike would smell it and open the window or something miraculous would happen to get me out of a terrible problem. I also prayed that I hadn’t been seen. I should have smashed down the front door and explained everything to the police.

  Instead, I sat watching the clock slowly tick.

  Mike’s van rumbled to a stop at 11.18 p.m. Shortly afterwards there was a bark from Bullseye and a slamming van door. The usual sounds.

  The clock became intolerably loud.

  Fifty-five minutes after we had turned on the gas taps, Mike Haconby entered, must have smelt the overpowering fumes, and instinctively switched on the light. That caused a tiny spark. That spark ignited the gas.

  The ticking clock was replaced by an explosion that rattled the windows; next came the pitter-patter of fleck-like debris blown on to the glass by the breeze; finally, the dull roar of fire.

  Upstairs, my gran’s screams came out as desperate croaks. ‘I’m dialling 999!’ she shouted. ‘Something terrible! An accident!’

  ‘Yes, an accident,’ I said to myself, numbly pulling back the living-room curtain. I imagined the scene from the middle of the Lake, supposing that was where The Twins were, in their boat.

  ‘Benny! Go out and do something!’ Gran shouted. I heard her speaking to the emergency services.

  The fire had yet to take hold on the road side of the house, and it was only when I ran out into the middle of the road that I realized Mike Haconby hadn’t been incinerated by the fire, but propelled down his hallway towards his front door, which was about five paces down his path. All of the glass in his windows had been blown out, and rubbish from inside the house was strewn across his garden. Fire had already taken hold in the kitchen.

  Mike’s body was lying just inside the front door. Above him, smoke threaded its way towards the open air. My run slowed to a jog as I went up the path – it wasn’t the fire that frightened me; I wanted to hope that he was still alive, just for a few more seconds. ‘Are you OK?’ I stupidly said as I knelt down next to him.

  In films, when people die, it’s really tidy – after the bullet, they hold the point of impact, look shocked for three seconds, then fall to the ground and lie still. But people don’t really die like that. Mike’s burned face is something I see when I close my eyes at night.

  One of the lies I’ve told for over five years is that Mike was dead when I found him. But there was a bubble of blood that popped as he spoke: ‘Why?’ He winced.

  ‘What?’ I said, my hands shaking cut and blackened shoulders.

  ‘Why?’ It was little more than a push of air.

  ‘You bastard!’ My hands were squeezing. ‘You did it, didn’t you? You killed Will.’

  ‘No.’ One of his eyes was crusted shut, but the other widened. ‘No. Promise.’

  I waited for him to say more, but nothing came, and then I saw that his eye was lifeless and staring.

  ‘Mike? Mike?’ I shouted, pushing his chest in a hopeless, inept attempt at resuscitation. I dug my nails into my own chest, agonized, desperate, alone. Mike was gone: the gulf between life and death absolute; and yet just two hours ago, a thin sliver of time, tantalizingly small but totally impossible to bridge. If only I could go back two little hours . . .

  My panic focused on myself – getting caught, being made to pay, feeling guilty. What if I’d left evidence behind? The police sometimes found tiny fibres or hairs that caught criminals. What if The Twins decided to tell? What if they lied and said it was all my fault?

  The fire was beginning to spread down the hallway towards the front door; dark smoke was gathering and billowing. I coughed and the heat made my face tingle as I briefly looked up towards Mike’s picture of Lake Hintersea. Behind the thin smoke, I saw the title at the bottom of the picture (it was actually a print, not the original, but I didn’t know that): Across Hintersea towards Timberline Lodge by M. W. Winter. The view was from the Compton Village side of the Lake towards Cormorant Holm and the water beyond, with Timberline in the distance. I had no idea where the picture had come from.

  My gran was in the road in dressing gown and slippers, moving as fast as she could towards me, screaming, unable to form words.

  I grabbed Mike’s arms and started to drag him away from the house and down the path. He was heavy, and I could only move him half a pace with each heave. The local newspaper later said that I was a hero for trying to give him dignity.

  Bullseye, I found out later, had died instantly. Initially, I’d been worried about harming a dog, but on that night I never considered him once.

  I managed to drag Mike about two-thirds towards the gate as my gran wailed. ‘Another death in our tiny lovely village,’ she said over and over, quieter and quieter, as she calmed.

  After I placed Mike’s arms by his side, I looked up towards the Lantern Room of Lakeside House. There was someone there – a figure in the light. What if he had special binoculars to see in the dark? I was consumed by a dizzy, hand-shaking panic – a panic fuelled by the explosive thought of having to kill someone else to cover my evil tracks.

  A few people arrived in this time: two cars were driving past, and the people in the house further north around the Lake. The couple in the first car tried to resuscitate Mike, but it was a swirling and bleak fifteen minutes before the paramedics and police arrived, then another five for the fire engines.

  The fire had severely damaged the Hintersea side of Mike’s property and had begun to creep into the roof space of the houses on either side, including Will’s house. The road side wasn’t charred, but black smudges hung against the walls, lit by the flashing lights of three fire engines, two police cars, the paramedics, and an ambulance. Hoses snaked past firemen standing in Mike’s garden; water dampened down the house long after the flames had been defeated.

  I was standing next to my gran in our front garden when The Twins arrived with their parents.

  I saw Mr Thatcher talking to one of the policemen and pointing towards me. He was still speaking when the PC brought them over. ‘. . . Seen clearly from the other side of the Lake,’ was his final line, then he put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Ben, I hope you’re OK. We were watching TV together when Ann noticed the glow in the distance. The guys insisted that we come over and check you’re OK.’

  Sam and Jack were wide-eyed and terrifyingly convincing in their innocence. ‘Hi, mate,’ they said. ‘Do you know what happened? We could see it from our house.’

  ‘There was an explosion,’ I said lamely. ‘That’s what I know.’

  The Twins’ mum looked at me sympathetically. ‘Poor Ben. You’ve been through so much. You m
ust be desperately churned up inside.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She turned to the policeman and spoke quickly, though calmly. ‘The boys and I came back from dropping a present off about – oh, the ten o’clock news started as we went up the drive – and we didn’t spot anything then. What time did it happen?’

  There was no way that she could have been with the Twins at ten o’clock, and the idea that they’d sat down together and watched TV was crazy; they weren’t that sort of family, anyway.

  ‘It was about eleven,’ I muttered, looking at the passing fireman rather than her. ‘I s’pose you were distracted by the television.’ It just came out – I wanted to let them know I knew it was a pack of lies.

  ‘Probably,’ she said sweetly, as if indulging me. ‘It’s horrible to say, but there were a lot of explosions on the screen.’ She turned to the policeman. ‘We let the boys choose the film on a Saturday. I’m not a Bond fan.’ Another smile at me. ‘Anyway, is there anything that we can do?’

  I shook my head. It hadn’t occurred to me that The Twins would have their parents produce an alibi.

  My gran went inside and Mr and Mrs Thatcher walked along the road with the policeman. I stood alone with The Twins and looked around to make sure we couldn’t be overheard. The fire engines rumbled loudly and firemen called to one another.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ I said, terrified that The Twins had made a mistake by letting their parents into the secret. ‘What have you told them?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Sam. ‘We like a Bond film on a Saturday night. Very cosy.’

  ‘Yeah? So which one was it?’ I was losing myself in anger and desperation. Perhaps I should have showed them to be liars in front of the policeman.

  ‘A View to a Kill,’ said Jack, with a tiny snort of laughter.

  Sam whispered in my ear. ‘Or maybe Live and Let Die.’

  I put my hands in front of my mouth to hide my words. ‘Guys, I can’t believe you’re joking. We’ve killed someone. A person. A human being.’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ said Jack.