Fell of Dark

by Reginald Hill

  I set off at once bearing to the left to put the garage between me and the house, but stumbled on a bed of onions and fell flat on my face. At that moment the back door opened and a woman came out. I lay very still, but she was in too much of a hurry to avoid the rain to look towards me, and dashed into the garage. A car started up. I waited till it had left the drive before standing up again, an onion in my hand. I was about to throw it away when suddenly I had an idea. If I was to be on the run, I would need food. I looked around, and twenty seconds later had a couple of onions, a bunch of carrots and also some runner beans stuffed into my knapsack. Then I set off up the lawn, along the drive and out of the front gate, into the road.

  Now I was faced with a very important decision. I could turn right and move out of the town, along the road which eventually would take me back to the Derwent Hotel and Borrowdale. Or I could move into Keswick itself. This road would take me back past the police station. Indeed I could see the crowd standing outside the station all staring with great interest at the blank face of the building.

  Neither alternative had much appeal. But I certainly didn’t want to go anywhere near the Derwent. In any case, they would have their cars out along the roads in no time and I would be a sitting duck. On the other hand, to walk back down to the station, though it was the kind of boldness which always paid off in fiction, did not attract me much either.

  My mind was made up by two things. A police car pulled out of the station yard and turned in my direction and a little knot of walkers, looking like some strange religious order in their dripping oilskin capes, came trudging along from the other direction.

  I tried to give the impression I was sheltering in the lea of the hedge, and as they passed I tagged on at the back, my head down, hat pulled low against the rain. The police-car accelerated by and disappeared from view, but I was now firmly committed to moving back into the town.

  The walkers I was following stopped when they reached the crowd outside the station.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked one of my adoptive companions of a bystander.

  ‘I’m not sure. They’ve got those fellows who murdered those girls in there. And everyone seems to be running around like mad.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re preparing the rack and the iron-maiden,’ said a wag.

  ‘That’s what they need,’ said an elderly man who I felt sure wore a boyscout’s uniform under his riding mac.

  The teenagers in the vicinity looked at him with interest.

  ‘You’d like that then would you, dad?’ asked a rather dirty-looking girl.

  The scoutmaster did not reply, but turned away, calling, ‘To me, Twenty-Third Troop. On parade,’ and several young boys detached themselves reluctantly from the crowd.

  I complimented myself on my powers of observation, then cursed myself for my lack of them as I suddenly became aware of Copley standing in the front yard of the police station slowly scanning the crowd. I crouched down and began adjusting my shoe-lace. When I peered forward again, he was gone.

  The rain suddenly came down harder with that personal vindictiveness only rain in the Lakes seems to have. The onlookers began to disperse except for the hard-core of sensation-seekers, the same semi-circle of emotionless faces you see outside 10 Downing Street, at times of crisis; at the gates of the famous who were dying, being born or getting married; peering greedy-eyed at celebrities, at street-accidents, at fires, floods, and the scenes of murders. They remained as anonymous and as interchangeable as film-extras.

  Before moving off I paused for a moment as an interesting thought struck me. Perhaps the real murderers were standing there, blank-faced, rain-swept, their bodies under their passive oilskins racked with unimaginable emotions. So powerful was this impression that I almost turned back, but the urge to survival was at the moment greater than the desire for vindication.

  So I drifted away, trying to look as if I was attached to one group or another, but as we got nearer the centre of town, they were nearly all siphoned off by the shelter of cafés or souvenir shops. I strode on doggedly through the down-pour, knowing I had to get out of Keswick before Melton finally decided he had better plug up the town. But when I turned into the street where the bus-station was situated, I knew I was too late. A policeman stood there, talking to two young men and looking at something they were holding out to him. It could only be some form of identification. He nodded, then replaced whatever it was – driving licence, library ticket, letter – in their wallets, and went on towards the buses, laughing to each other.

  I shrank back into a doorway. At first I gave Melton credit for super quick thinking, but I quickly realized that this check had probably been going on all day. Here and elsewhere. It was probably intended as a frightener. It frightened me. I waited till the constable turned away and slipped back quickly into the main street. It would be pointless trying the railway station. That would be covered also. The rain was bouncing up off the pavement like hailstones, a small gale was whistling along the street about knee-height, I was hot and sticky under my badly ventilated mac.

  Jesus! I thought. And I’m innocent. Why on earth should I run? And had it not been somehow that I could not bear the thought of being stared at from those dull grey faces, I think I would have turned there and then and made my way back to the police-station.

  As it was I was so dejected and disorientated that at the next street intersection I stepped heedlessly off the kerb almost into the path of a large car.

  It squealed to a stop, the window was wound down, a face peered out and a voice said, ‘Mr Bentink?’

  I stood and looked down silently, prepared for re-arrest or rather arrest, as technically I had not been arrested yet. Or even charged for that matter. It was Annie Ferguson.

  She looked up at me disapprovingly, as she had done in the hotel, I recalled.

  ‘Good-day,’ I said.

  ‘You are getting wet. Can I give you a lift anywhere?’ she asked with cool good breeding. I was surprised, then realized that as far as she was concerned, I was merely a recent acquaintance – not an escaped suspect in a murder case. Melton had not had time for that kind of publicity – in fact, he doubtless hoped he’d be able to avoid it.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and climbed in beside her. The rain ran down the crevasses and gulleys of my plastic mac and dribbled on to the thick-piled carpet. She made no comment but stared at this with some distaste. I was rather surprised. I had not imagined she was the type of girl who would put machines before men.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, gesturing at the water.

  She caught my meaning instantly.

  ‘No. It’s not that. I was looking at your legs.’

  I glanced down, surprised, and was again surprised at what I saw. My right trouser leg had sustained a severe tear and the white flesh revealed through this was scored with a nasty-looking scratch through the congealing surface of which fresh blood still oozed.

  The sight of this coupled with the luxurious padding of the seats which coaxed my body to relax suddenly made me realize what a state I was in. Both my legs were extremely sore, my left kneecap aching as much as my right calf. My wrists and forearm were very stiff and the palms of my hands were badly abraded, a fact which was partly concealed by the thick layers of mud which clung to them as it did to my shoes and the lower part of my trousers.

  ‘What on earth have you been doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh I went cross country to get out of the rain,’ I adlibbed furiously. ‘Tumbled over a couple of times.’

  ‘And you didn’t seem to miss much of the rain either,’ she said, starting the car. ‘Where can I drop you?’

  I indulged in a sudden fit of coughing while I thought this one out. The further away, the better, was the only real answer. But if I mentioned a distant destination, obviously she would only take me round to the bus or railway station.

  ‘You sound as if you’ve caught a cold.’

  In fact the cough, simulated to start with, had rapidly dev
eloped into the real thing.

  ‘No,’ I spluttered. ‘I’m all right. How far are you going, Miss Ferguson?’

  She looked at me curiously.

  ‘I’m going to Cockermouth, actually.’

  ‘Really? That would suit me fine. If you don’t mind giving me such a long lift that is.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said without enthusiasm and the car moved off. ‘How were you going to get there without me? Not walk, surely?’

  ‘Oh no. Bus. Yes, bus.’

  ‘Really? You were walking away from the bus-station, you know.’

  ‘Was I? I don’t know Keswick very well.’

  A silence followed and I grew tense as we approached the outskirts of town. If I knew my Melton he would have a road-block up before the Carlisle and Cockermouth roads separated, if he was bothering with road-blocks, that is.

  He was bothering, of course. It was such a simple procedure in a town situated like Keswick. A couple of cars could plug it like a wine-cask. And I saw the car he was using to plug the North exit coming up fast behind. What had held it up, I don’t know. Perhaps the policeman who manned it had been caught up in Peter’s struggle. Certainly I felt that Melton would have had it in place ten minutes earlier if he had had his way.

  ‘The floor is awfully wet,’ I said, taking a duster out of the glove compartment. ‘I’ll mop it up, shall I?’ So saying, I crouched down as low as I could get and began dabbing away at the carpet. Annie looked down in amazement at my puny efforts. I was still sufficiently awake to matters other than my own peril to remark what a very fine pair of legs she had. My only hope was that the police would not come up fast enough to overtake us, and seeing only a woman in the car, would not have any interest in any case. Whether he would have stopped us had he overtaken the car, I’ll never know, for he was foolish enough to blow his horn impatiently as he came up behind and began to pull out to get by.

  ‘Road-hog,’ said Annie; a delimitation sign came into view, she put her foot on the accelerator and the powerful engine exploded into violent action. We soared away from the car behind (at least, I assume we did, for I was keeping as low as possible during all this) and a few moments later were out of danger. I sat up and looked back. The police car had stopped where the A594 curved away from the 591. As I had guessed, Melton was not using two cars where one would do. They had missed me by about five seconds.

  Annie slowed down a little and smiled apologetically.

  ‘Sorry if I bumped you, but I can’t abide people who make excessive use of authority.’

  She had a very pleasant Scots lilt to her voice and her face when she talked was like an illumination of her words, a kind of visual aid, animated, her meaning revealed in every feature. She sat, minute behind the wheel of the big car, but not dwarfed by it. The strength in that supple body was obviously in control of the power in that great engine.

  She caught me looking at her, and her animation was quickly replaced by the social mask she had adopted the previous night.

  ‘You don’t like the police then?’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ she replied. Then, ‘You’ve been at the police station today, haven’t you? How did you find them?’

  I was startled for a moment, but then remembered her father.

  ‘Ah yes. I saw your father there. How did he get there so quickly? He was still in the Boot Inn when we left.’

  ‘A policeman called soon after breakfast. He was looking for you, actually.’

  Melton must have got a lot of people out of bed very early indeed, I thought, to be after us by breakfast.

  ‘When he learned you’d gone, he made a telephone call, then started asking questions.’

  ‘About us?’

  ‘Oh no. About who’d been out walking the previous day, and where they’d gone, what they had seen. In the end, he asked Daddy and that little Italian waiter if they could possibly come to Keswick to see Superintendent Melton. Daddy was not very keen at first, but when he told us what it was all about, he naturally said yes. We were going on to Cockermouth to stay with friends in any case, so we just packed up and came. We even brought Marco, so the police did well out of us.’

  This explained a lot. Obviously what Marco and to a lesser extent, Ferguson, had told the police at Boot had been phoned in to Melton and this is what caused the change of our plan and our own arrival at Melton’s HQ. From being possible witnesses, we had become suspects. And the more they talked to Marco, the more suspicious they would be. It struck me that here was the cause of Peter’s sudden desire to avoid telling the truth about meeting the girls a second time. Marco’s Italian outburst at the station must have told Peter that his shirt was found, and that his relationship with Marco was known and that he was a prime suspect. Perhaps the hysterical Italian had painted things blacker than they were. Perhaps Peter, quicker than I was, had recalled that one of the girls had got blood on her. So he had decided to lie. And had warned me of his decision, certain that good old Harry would back him up.

  I suddenly wondered if Melton also spoke Italian.

  ‘Where’s your friend?’

  Where indeed? I thought, but answered, ‘Oh, he went on ahead to book us in somewhere. There were a couple of places I wanted to have a look at, but he didn’t feel up to it.’

  ‘You must be keen in this weather.’

  ‘Where’s your father? Not still with the police surely?’

  ‘Oh no. He was soon finished there. No one keeps Daddy longer than he feels it necessary.’

  She laughed at the thought, but I smiled at the thought of even blunt, honest Ferguson, the broadcast panel’s delight, getting away from Melton if he wished to keep him.

  She went on, ‘We had lunch with some people he knows just outside Keswick and he’s stopping on there till this evening. But they’re a bit old for me, really, and I did tell our friends in Cockermouth we’d be there for tea, so I’ve left him behind. They’ll drive him over this evening.’

  We had now turned off the main road and were passing through Braithwaite village. The road now began the long steep ascent up to Whinlatter pass. I settled back in my seat and pretended to be enjoying the scenery, but now for the first time since I had kicked that poor policeman in the stomach I had a moment to think. I glanced at my watch. Only twenty minutes had elapsed since I had made my break. It seemed like hours and the sunshine of the day before, already remote in the police-station, now seemed to belong to a different continent.

  I spent little time analyzing why I had acted as I did. Panic, fear, the terror most of us have that the machinery of society which we control can turn on us and destroy us.

  But of more concern to me was my immediate future. I suppose I had some vague notion about proving my innocence or getting out of the country, but the immediate goal seemed to be survival in every sense of the word. I had no delusions that Melton’s activities were going to be confined to Keswick and district. The whole county, and to a lesser extent at first perhaps, but becoming greater as time passed, the whole country were going to be involved. When I had been a boy, my favourite games had always involved pursuit. Not that that is anything unusual, of course. Nearly every child loves hide and seek, loves that feeling of intoxicating peril as ‘it’ gets nearer. But this had occupied all my youthful fantasies. I had in my mind escaped a million dangers; had faced and survived the onslaughts of the most terrible enemies, giving them the slip with consummate ease; had lived out rough in the bleakest countryside with the minimum of supplies. Left naked in the snow, I had made a bear-trap with myself as bait and killed the stunned creature with a dagger of ice, skinned it, used its fur for warmth, its flesh for food, and survived to wreak the most terrible vengeance. Dropped in the ocean, I always found a dolphin’s back to climb upon. Adrift in space, I colonized planets. Snake-pits, firing-squads, gallows; secret-police, armies, alien-beings; jungles, deserts, polar wastes; all had nearly taken me, but none could quite succeed. I used to be continually surprised by the ease with which
escaped prisoners were always caught and at one stage had even contemplated getting myself sent to Dartmoor so I could be the first man to get right away. The first part of this ambition at least was practically in my grasp, I thought ruefully, as I looked back at that daredevil creature of my mind. For now I was in the reality, although I was involved in nothing more immediately perilous than sitting in a large, comfortable car being driven by an attractive girl away from my pursuers. I felt sick with panic, faint with despair.

  Something of this must have shown. Annie glanced at me and asked, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. It’s just this cold I’m starting.’

  She reached forward and rummaged in the glove compartment.

  ‘Try this.’

  ‘This’ was a large silver flask with her father’s initials engraved on it. I opened it and sniffed, then drank deep, coughing as the whisky seized my throat.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said from the bottom of my heart. ‘It’s pure malt, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? It’s probably unsullied by the eyes of an exciseman if I know Daddy.’

  ‘He seems to be a remarkable man.’

  She glanced at me, then accepted the remark as the compliment I genuinely intended, and her eyes shone with pleasure.

  Whoever got this girl, I thought, was going to be measured very carefully indeed against the standards of Richard Ferguson Esq.

  We were almost at the top of Whinlatter now, the road was beginning to level off and some of my panic was melted away by the glow of the Scotch. I began to plan my next move when we reached Cockermouth. The word would obviously be out for me by now, but it seemed unlikely that every town in the district could afford to keep a watch on all outgoing transport. With a bit of luck I could slip out of Cockermouth, preferably by train, and head for the nearest large centre of population. Alternatively I could try to hide out somewhere in this remote countryside, but looking out of the window at the dripping, black-trunked pine trees which lined the road, I dismissed the thought. This terrain would do Melton’s work for him. No, it had to be people. Cockermouth was too small. I would make for Carlisle. Even Carlisle was not exactly a bustling metropolis – a castle, a cathedral, and two traffic jams – but it was at least an important railway junction, offering a vast choice of exit routes. Yes, Carlisle it must be. I took another swig of Ferguson’s whisky and complimented myself on having made the right decision when I walked into Keswick instead of out of it.