The Winter House

by P. R. Black

  ‘I’ve actually killed a man.’

  ‘You going to be sick?’ Seth said, uselessly. The boy peered at the crossbow he held in his hands, then pointed it towards the ground.

  ‘Nope. He’s definitely dead?’

  ‘As the proverbial doornail, son. That was a shot in a million.’

  Crispin grinned. ‘Awesome!’

  52

  Seth practised flicking the safety catch on and off on the handgun. A few feet away, Crispin peered closely at the body. ‘I’ll go to prison for this,’ he said, his back turned to Seth.

  ‘Not necessarily. I’ve got a question for you, though. What have you seen?’

  Pretty much everything. I saw what happened the other night; I heard the commotion at your house. I stayed out of the way. Then I heard gunshots…’

  ‘And you never told me?’

  ‘I didn’t know what happened. But I could guess.’

  ‘Question two – you moved the stuff out of the box. So, where is it?’

  ‘Yes. I came out and moved it away when I saw you had company. I guessed that’s what they were after.’

  ‘I don’t have to ask you the third question, do I?’

  Crispin struggled a little with this, but eventually he got it. ‘It’s safe. It’s out in one of my hides, on the east side. You’d struggle to find it. I thought about moving it off site for you and hiding it near my dad’s… But I also thought you’d need some help when I saw the three guys creeping around the woods.’

  The boy had stashed his crossbow in a backpack. He slid his arms through the straps, then cinched them tight.

  Seth was a long way from laughing, but there was some mirth in his exclamation: ‘I thought you were a birdwatcher! What’s with the Rambo gear?’

  ‘I hunt as well. Be a hypocrite if I didn’t. Barn owls have to eat. They have to kill to do it. Way I see it, you can’t be a nature lover and not also be a bit of a predator.’

  ‘What do you hunt, exactly?’

  ‘Squirrels make a very satisfying shot. Not too bad barbecued, either.’

  ‘All this time I thought you were a shy kid with harmless hobbies. But it turns out you’re a weirdo, after all! Thank God.’

  ‘I think you meant to say: “Thank you”.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Crispin. Good God. You saved my life, there. And for what it’s worth, you have bagged yourself a prize arsehole.’

  ‘He didn’t seem the nicest.’ The kid’s eyes had changed in the night. Now they seemed to shine among the falling snow and the effulgence of moonlight. Seth felt a curious twinge of fear. Kid just shot a man dead with a crossbow, and… he seems chuffed about it? Is there a psychopath out here with me?

  ‘Where are we going now?’ the boy asked. ‘Only… we can get off this property and away without anyone seeing us. Now, I’ve war-gamed this scenario quite a lot over the years. There’s a path…’

  ‘No, we’re going home,’ Seth said. ‘Come with me, if you like. Bring your crossbow, please.’

  53

  Vonny crashed into the bottom of the pool. The snow cushioned her, but it held her there, too. Just the right consistency to sink clean into. Cold shock; the white slap in the face, snow in her mouth and ears, so cold it burned. Handfuls of it, all collapsing, no traction. Her feet treadmilled uselessly, snow piling upon snow… How could it be so deep?

  Finally her head broke through, and before she even thought to look over her shoulder or haul herself out of the pool, a hand clamped on her shoulder and plucked her from the pool.

  The other hand closed around her throat, and then she was dangled over the dirty white space in the pool, with Cramond’s nose close to hers. She gripped the wrists that held her; there was nothing else she could do, but choke.

  Cramond’s suave façade had completely cracked. There was an awesome, feral leer on his face, eyes wide, teeth bared. ‘Game’s over! Isn’t it? It’s over!’

  Please, she tried to say. Please don’t…

  With a cry of disgust, Cramond threw her. She collided with a sunlounger and tumbled over the top, clothes sodden, hair clinging to her face, utterly frozen. She hunkered down, shivering, arms wrapped around herself.

  Cramond’s gun bit into the back of her skull. Vonny closed her eyes. ‘We’re going to go for a walk in the woods, now,’ he said. ‘Up you get.’

  ‘Coat… Please, can I have my coat.’

  ‘Nope, you can freeze.’ The sardonic element had returned, though he still looked furious, and was out of breath. Angry enough to kill me. Just one squeeze of the trigger away. ‘Up you get. Through the house. Come on.’

  Even the shelter from the snow was a boon, as Vonny shivered, leaving slushy footprints over the carpet. ‘There is no way you’ll get away with this, now,’ she said, her lips struggling to form the words, breath hitching in the back of her throat. ‘The police will surely be on their way. They’ll be here any minute. Any minute…’

  ‘I’m sure you said that before. Did you think I was coming here for a jolly? A walk in the woods?’ His face darted forward, the tip of his long nose punching Vonny’s cheek.

  ‘Killing me won’t help you.’

  ‘No – but threatening to kill you might light a fire under your clown of a husband. Let’s go. Maybe some torture. I’d rather not torture you. I don’t like that bit of the business. That’s for the perverts. But I’ll do it if it gets a result. Got it? That’s where we’re at now. So get moving!’

  He shoved her through the kitchen. There was no sign of Vinnicombe anywhere, though his handiwork was apparent; dust and chunks of plaster from where he’d drilled through the wall in a neat rectangle, then curls and slivers of steel where he’d made his way through the physical lock itself. It appeared he’d swept up – there were no footprints on the carpet in the dust. Already Vonny’s house was violated, utterly changed – its grid patterns and perfect curves switched one way, blackened another. It was like a pristine Rubik’s cube twisted at random. Even though Vinnicombe’s intrusion into her wall had a symmetry and precision to it, something in this rearrangement made Vonny sob.

  Then she noticed the cupboard door, ajar. Cramond saw it too. His face was a picture of horror.

  ‘Forget something?’ Vonny said, before she could stop herself.

  The door, where Prill had been shoved, was crudely, blatantly open. It seemed unlike the woman, Vonny thought, not to close a door over behind her. Maybe she was sending a message, in her own way.

  The front door was closed, however.

  ‘I’d say you’ve got a big problem, now.’

  Cramond shook his head. ‘This changes nothing. We’re leaving here with the stuff. And it is here, somewhere.’

  ‘Please, please let me take a jacket. I’m freezing.’

  ‘Yeah. Wait there.’ Cramond crossed over to the coat hooks next to the front door, and snatched up a fleece. He checked the pockets, feeling along the seams and pockets, and hurled it over to Vonny. She could not catch the coat; her fingers still wouldn’t work properly. She got to her knees and pulled the fleece up. She pulled it over her head. As she did so, she nudged the wall console with her elbow.

  As she popped her head through the neck of the fleece, the console flared blue. The legend stared her in the face: MOTÖRHEAD, THE ACE OF SPADES, Track 01, The Ace Of Spades.

  ‘Get the fuck back!’ Cramond screamed. ‘What is that?’

  ‘So sorry,’ Vonny said, ‘it’s our stereo. Just our stereo.’

  Cramond stole forward, peering at the pale blue light and the LCD lettering. At that point, Vonny raised both her hands… and in so doing, triggered the sensor.

  The sound of the bassline was colossal to begin with. Vonny swept her hand to the right, and put it as high as it would go.

  Turn this off! Cramond yelled, his words utterly lost in the noise. Now!

  Vonny shook her head and mouthed, I can’t!

  Cramond stood back and raised the gun. Vonny screamed, threw herself to the floor, a
nd covered her head.

  One sharp thunderclap somehow rose above Lemmy’s grated sandstone howl and the particle-accelerator bassline. It did not stop it, however. Vonny felt glass and plastic sprinkled on her scalp. She chanced a look through her fingertips: the console was spiderwebbed, the blue light extinguished, the ichor of the LCD display bleeding out through the shards of glass. But the music didn’t stop.

  Vonny saw the gun turn towards her; she braced to run, but Cramond kicked her thigh, and she dropped to the floor. Get up! She just about made it out. He must have been screaming. Up!

  He took her by the scruff of the neck, pulling her to her feet again. He bundled her towards the front door, and opened it, the gun hard against her skull, just behind her right ear. She smelled her hair frying against the hot metal.

  Then she screamed, silently. At the front door were two figures. Susie McCracken and PC Whelan.

  54

  ‘Keep watch,’ Seth told Crispin. ‘You see someone sneaking up behind me, shout.’

  Crispin nodded, and vanished into the treeline.

  Seth crept along the edge of the forest until he could see the top floor of the house, clear of obstructions.

  The snow still fell, but it was easy enough to make out the lights burning on the top floor. Like a cruise ship, he thought. There was no activity there whatsoever, illuminations aside. Seth glanced across at the front yard. Nothing. Over the top of the fence, he could just see the footprints leading through the snow down the pathway to the back gate.

  Dead men’s shoes, Seth thought, and shivered.

  He had killed men, now – and while his mind couldn’t quite process the fact, his body did. Maybe it was the cold; maybe it was the pain; or maybe it was his nerves that caused his hands to tremble. He clutched the handgun, to make the tremor stop. It worked up to a point. Cold hands, cold air, cold metal.

  Seth had never fired a handgun in his life. Crispin, who professed to some knowledge in these matters – naturally – told him that his supposition over the safety catch deployment had been correct.

  His stomach lurched as he moved; everywhere hurt, every piece of muscle, every gap between his ribs; then he thought of Vonny, and stole forward. It hurt to crouch; his knee had crossed beyond the turnstile of pain and into a worrying numbness. He couldn’t put much weight on it. Seth had seen enough five-a-side football injuries to know that this could be a big problem.

  Save it for later.

  Wincing slightly, he glanced over the fence. The front gate was about thirty yards away, wide open, inviting, big enough to get a bus through, and almost certainly some kind of trap. That was why he’d left Crispin keeping watch, though God knew where he was, now. He stared at his knee, sighed, and doubled back along to the outside corner of the fence, then trailed along to where the dividing wall separated out the front yard from the back garden, swimming pool and patio. The fence was six feet tall. It hadn’t been constructed with climbing in mind. Specifically, it hadn’t been designed with Seth’s damaged knee in mind. Nonetheless, he made sure the pistol’s safety catch was on, then scaled the wall.

  By Seth’s admittedly unOlympian standards, it was a ridiculous effort. He actually cried out, as he tried to gain a foothold, his fingers at the top of the fence, arms straining to take his own weight. Never much good at pull-ups. Never much of a fan of the gym, either.

  He got up and over, then considered a drop onto his better leg. He considered what weight ratios might do to his other knee upon impact; then something took the decision out of his hands, and he dropped, quickly, to the other side.

  That something was the sound of Motörhead. As loud as it could go – louder, maybe. The entire house seemed to distort or blur in the sonic detonation. For a moment, he saw some movement at the front door.

  There were two people at the front door of the house. One tall, one short. They were cast in silhouette by the full brightness of the main lights in the hallway, but Seth thought he recognised Susie McCracken. He crept closer, when he was aware of some change in the light; or perhaps it was an interruption in the patter of the slanting snow, a flaw in the weave cast from behind him. Whatever it was that alerted Seth, he paid attention to it, spun around, and saw Vinnicombe emerging from the caravan at his back.

  That bloody Tin Coffin. The death of me.

  The older man held a shotgun that seemed all too familiar; truncated at an almost identical point, similar stock visible through Vinnicombe’s gloved hands. Pointed right at him; and braced perfectly well. Seth’s neighbour might have been pleased.

  Vinnicombe’s lopsided grin threatened to slide off his face. He yelled loud enough to be heard over the music: ‘What’s that you’ve got there, pardner?’ he said, in a faux accent from a 1950s western. ‘That a shootin’ iron there? Don’t move a muscle, incidentally. Or it’s over. Throw it on the deck. Right in front of me. Do it now.’

  Seth stared at the gun in his hands, then tossed it into the snow. All of a sudden he felt tired, rather than frightened, or sick, or adrenalised. He had simply had enough. He missed the relative peace of the forest. When I get out of this, I’ll do some forest bathing. A nice, quiet stretch with the foliage for a mattress. Springy moss. Bliss.

  Seth raised his hands, but held his ground.

  ‘Over here, I said,’ Vinnicombe yelled. ‘Scoot on over, son.’

  Seth limped forward. Vinnicombe kept Seth covered, then kicked the handgun far away into the snow. ‘I’m going to assume you took care of Jay,’ he said, nodding towards the gun. ‘I hope you did him properly. Never liked the boy. Thuggish, you know?’

  Before Seth could open his mouth to reply, Vinnicombe’s arms blurred, ending in a terrific crack on the jaw.

  Seth’s lower face seemed to bisect, flexing and straining fit to break at the corners. The snow tried to kiss it better on the side of the head as he fell. He’d been hit with the shotgun, or the stock of it. Seth had barely seen the older man move.

  ‘Yeah,’ Vinnicombe went on, casually, as if nothing had happened, ‘I thought I would have to take care of him. Plan was to take him out the play, and grab the stuff for myself. Or at least, my share. I never made much of Jay, and as for our man in the house… he promises, but he doesn’t deliver. Lot of talk. Tough guy. But doesn’t have the nous, you know?’ Vinnicombe actually tapped his own temple with the barrel of the shotgun, as he might have tapped it with his finger. ‘Didn’t have the knowledge. Typical gaffer, you know? All plans, no practice.’

  Seth sat up. Vinnicombe delivered a sharp, ugly kick into his side, right in the centre of a waystation for his nervous system. It might have been luck, or it might have been some unspeakable expertise, but Seth’s entire body seized up as if struck by a lightning bolt; he jerked in the snow, and screamed out, along with Lemmy in the background.

  ‘Yeah,’ Vinnicombe went on, breezily. ‘I’ll say this to you, because I think it really is your last chance. It’s a good offer. I’m good for it, you know? The only chance you and your missus in there have of still breathing after tonight is if you tell me, right now, where you have stashed the gear. Me personally. As a token of goodwill, I won’t shoot you. If you give the stuff to me, then I will kill the boss in there, and be on my way. You can spin it to the cops however you want, but it’ll be as if I was never here. You can claim the win, if you like. Say you were the hero. Now you can’t say fairer than that, my friend. Given your current predicament. And believe me, son, when I say: I won’t make any idle threats. I’ll just kill you if you refuse. So what do you say?’

  Seth got onto one knee; a trail of drool stretched out towards the snow. His body was coming to a decision, whether or not to retch, and then the stubby shotgun barrel was brought down onto his knee – his good knee, as an extra insult.

  ‘Come on! Make a decision, big man. Make it a good one. Because I’ll level with you, I reckon I’ve had enough of this gig. And it’s cold.’

  ‘Let me consider that a minute,’ Seth wheezed. He began to crawl,
heading away from Vinnicombe, moving over to the western side of the lawn. He moved as fast as he could, arm over arm.

  Vinnicombe laughed aloud, a reedy, unpleasant sound, even as ‘The Ace Of Spades’ moved onto the second song, ‘Love Me Like A Reptile’. Seth glanced towards the house; there was no sign of Susie or the tall, gangly man he’d seen at the front door. The door itself was closed.

  ‘Where you going, pal?’ Vinnicombe said. ‘Escaping? Sunbathing?’

  ‘Just needed to stretch my legs,’ Seth said, wheezing. ‘Got to keep supple. Key to good joints.’

  ‘Mate, I’ll shoot you. I’ll pop you from here. Stop. Don’t waste your time.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Seth said, turning around and sitting up. ‘I’m done. And so are you.’

  The light changed. The flow of the snowfall was diverted. And the noise of the wheels had finally overridden the sound of Motörhead.

  Vinnicombe spun around, in time to see the raised silver lettering spell out APACHE before the caravan smashed him to the ground and rolled over the top of him.

  It hit him head-on, and threw him into the snow. The caravan barely slowed as it crushed him underneath; there was a jaunty flip, such as a loosened colt might perform, before the caravan continued onwards. Seth had an impression of Vinnicombe’s craggy face, eyes wide, mouth open in utter, fatal astonishment; then he went under.

  Seth gazed at the caravan as it careered past him, its momentum proving Vinnicombe correct in his earlier assessment. Seth might have been looking at a flying saucer making a pass over the top of the house, or a brontosaurus lumbering past him in somewhat stately fashion.

  It gained a little more speed before hitting the house. The metal struts halted its progress, but at least two of the immense ground-floor windows were gone in a near-phosphorescent shower of diamond shards in the snow.

  Seth got to his feet, slowly. Both knees, now.

  ‘Bastard,’ he said, spitting into the snow. He approached the tufted material that denoted the body in the snow, directly underneath the furrows ploughed in the snow by the wheels. He gazed at Vinnicombe’s face, turned slightly towards him. The man was dead, hands curled into claws, his throat and chest cavity horribly flattened out, like pounded dough.