by Mark Hill
38
Perry drove two wheels onto the verge and cranked the handbrake. A necklace of light moved across the darkness at the top of the field opposite, traffic snaking along the M11.
He reached across to the glove compartment, digging his elbow into Elliot’s ribs, to take out two balaclavas and then something that made Elliot nearly shit himself with fear.
‘Why the hell did you bring a gun?’ Ignoring him, Perry slapped the dash shut and palmed the weapon, a squat, ugly thing, into his pocket. ‘I asked why—’
‘What does it matter?’ Perry swung round, nostrils flaring. He had barely spoken on the way, not that Elliot was clamouring for conversation, but his surly silence had frayed Elliot’s nerves.
‘What does it matter?’ Elliot tried to keep the rising panic from his voice. ‘You said nobody would be here, you said they were on holiday!’
‘I didn’t say anything like that,’ Perry sneered. ‘If Owen wants to spin you a line it’s his call. And, anyway, it’s just two old people; try not to wet your knickers.’
‘I’m not coming in.’ Breaking and entering, burglary, that was bad enough, but this was a home invasion, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and Elliot wasn’t going to cross that line. That’s not the kind of man he was. Not now, not ever.
‘You’re coming in,’ insisted Perry, pulling the balaclava over his head, ‘or Owen will have something to say about it.’
No way, no fucking way was Elliot going inside. He spoke very slowly, so there was no misunderstanding him: ‘You’re on your own.’
Perry leaned in close to intimidate, his eyes small, hard pellets inside the black fabric of the balaclava. ‘Fine, you can drive. Just make sure you’re ready as soon as I come out.’ He snatched a rucksack from the back seat and winked. ‘Back in a mo.’
Elliot watched anxiously as Perry walked up the lane towards the big house, half hidden by swaying pampas grass, at the top of a long, curving drive. No good was going to come of this, he knew that much. When Owen found out Elliot had refused go in with Perry he would withhold the money. Elliot hadn’t held up his end of the bargain, he’d say, hadn’t played his part. Elliot would be back to square one. He’d promised Rhonda he would get the money. They needed it to get away.
On top of that, Perry’s body language, the casual way he sauntered up the drive, told him everything he needed to know about what was going to happen inside.
Minutes later, Elliot thought he heard a scream.
He slammed his hand on the dashboard – this couldn’t be happening! – and yanked the balaclava over his head. The wool pricked his scalp. He could barely breathe.
Elliot ran up the drive, the front of the house jumping in his eyeholes, and saw the front door was ajar. There wasn’t another home in sight, but – he heard raised voices, a moan – it was stupid to take such a chance. In the hallway he rushed towards the sitting room, but getting the angles wrong inside the mask, he ill-judged the turn, cracking his shoulder on the doorframe.
An elderly man in a cardigan cringed in a chair. Seen through the narrow eyeholes of Elliot’s balaclava, the room swerving all over the place, the man looked as if he was clinging to the armrests as the chair was swept about on a turbulent sea.
‘No!’ pleaded the man. ‘My wife!’
Elliot’s heart leapt into his mouth when he saw Perry standing over an old woman. The scene swung up and down, visible only in fragments. The woman on her knees, arms lifted protectively above her head, long hair spilling from a clip onto a shoulder. Perry, jabbing the weapon, screaming: ‘Open it!’
‘No,’ she moaned. ‘I don’t know what you’re—’
‘Open – the – fucking – safe!’ Perry grabbed her neck. Pressed her to the floor, stuck the gun at the back of her head.
Elliot turned, fleetingly seeing the old man’s pale, rigid face whip past the eyeholes. And when he spun back, sweating beneath the hot, itchy fabric, panic rising in his chest, he couldn’t find Perry and the old woman. He could only hear Perry screaming: ‘Open it, open it, open—’
And then, from behind Elliot: ‘Please! Don’t hurt my wife!’
‘Open the safe, or I’m going to—’
Eyes flashing with anger, Perry pressed the weapon into the woman’s neck. Her moans were lost in the thick carpet. Elliot couldn’t see a safe, couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t breathe, had to do something.
‘You! Move it!’ Perry jerked the gun towards a cabinet, and Elliot realised that he was screaming at him. He stumbled forward, catching his foot on the tasseled edge of a rug. His chest was about to burst. There wasn’t enough air in the room, not enough oxygen in the world, to fill his lungs. He pushed the cabinet along the shagpile to reveal a safe set into the wall.
‘We’ve got a problem here,’ said Perry to the old man, who rocked backwards and forwards on the chair, ‘because I’m going to need a code, we ain’t got a code—’
‘Then let’s go,’ said Elliot urgently.
‘We ain’t going till we’ve got the code.’ Perry’s head snapped up. ‘Or these two old farts are dead!’
He wrenched at the woman’s shoulder, dragging her head off the floor, the weapon’s barrel swinging carelessly in his other hand. ‘I’m going to count from five and if that safe isn’t open when I get to zero you’re going to die.’
The man wept, tears pouring down the hands covering his face, wetting the cuffs of his shirt and glistening on the plain gold wedding band he had worn for thirty, forty, fifty years or more.
‘Ain’t no time for tears, fella,’ snarled Perry, ‘just numbers.’
‘Perry,’ Elliot stepped forward, ‘don’t.’
Perry’s eyes burned with rage at Elliot’s use of his name. ‘Five!’
‘Don’t do this!’
‘Four!’
The old man pressed his hands together as if in prayer, as Perry traced the gun barrel along his wife’s hairline and down her temple, resting it in the hollow of her wet eye socket.
And the woman said something, but Elliot couldn’t hear what it was. Burning up, he pulled the balaclava off his head. They could see him now and he didn’t care.
‘Put it back on!’ screamed Perry.
But it was too late, because the old man, white with fear, with dread, looked Elliot full in the face. And Elliot wondered how long they had been married, this couple. A lifetime, judging by the framed photos of kids and grandkids around the room, by the numerous mementoes of a marriage, a union cemented more strongly with every minute, month, decade.
‘Three!’
And Elliot, angry now – enraged by the old fool’s stubbornness, his willingness to get himself and his wife killed for cash and stupid trinkets that don’t mean a thing if you’re lucky enough to possess the love and companionship of another person, just one person, to help you through this terrible, shitty life, to pick you up when you fell – surged forward. ‘For fuck’s sake, tell him! Tell him the code!’
‘Two!’
Then the old man squeezed his eyes shut, and his mouth opened and closed – but nothing came out. A mewling sound came from the carpet. Elliot lurched to Perry. ‘She’s trying to tell us, she’s trying to—’
But Perry, insensible with rage, was leaning over the woman. ‘You are this close, this close, from getting your brains blown out!’ And then he straightened his gun arm, execution-style.
Elliot shouted: ‘No!’
And the old man tipped forward, slammed face down into the rug, a stuttering moan coming from his mouth, a froth of spittle arcing across his cheek. His arms and legs thrashed, his body was wracked by spasms.
‘Please,’ wailed the woman. ‘He’s having a fit.’
Elliot kneeled to take her trembling, anguished face in his hands, looking her in the eyes, almost in tears himself.
‘Please,’ he whispered desperately, the smell of petrol, of soil, filling his nostrils. ‘Tell us and we’ll go.’
And she told him – seven eight four ni
ne seven one, seven eight four nine seven one – between juddering sobs, before crawling on her hands and knees to the jerking body of her husband.
And Perry flew to the safe.
39
1984
In the dead of night they carried Sally’s body to the bottom of the garden, along the narrow path beneath the copse of trees. Gordon held the front of the rug and Elliot and Connor struggled with the other end. Toby walked behind, snivelling. The moon and stars disappeared as they stumbled with the heavy load beneath the canopy of leaves and reappeared above the wall at the bottom. A petrol canister was propped there, a pair of spades.
Gordon had earlier locked the three boys in the office with the body while he went to fetch the equipment, and to tell the Dents to get the other kids to bed early. Connor, Elliot and Toby couldn’t help but stare at the body and the fingers of blood probing every crack in the floorboards. Toby didn’t stop weeping. Finally, Elliot gave up telling him to pack it in.
Taking a torch from his pocket, Gordon ran a beam of light along the length of the rolled-up rug. Sally’s feet hung limply out the bottom, the chipped varnish on her toes catching the light. He threw the torch down and sat on the rug, slipping off a shoe to rub his foot, emitting little smacking noises of satisfaction.
‘You lads are doing me a mighty favour, and I appreciate it.’ Gordon took out a flask. ‘The thing is, Sally wanted it both ways. She wanted everything I had, but she wanted me to change, she expected me to be something I’m not. I’m not excusing what I did, but it’s the truth. When you boys are older you’ll realise that you’ll always be stuck with yourself.’
Connor asked: ‘What do we do now?’
‘You’re going to dig a bloody great hole is what you’re going to do, against that wall.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Come on, chop-chop.’
Connor and Elliot dug at the dry earth, which crumbled easily beneath the spades. They worked in silence as Gordon sat and watched, drinking steadily.
‘You boys have been good friends to me. You don’t know how difficult it can be, the burden I carry.’ His fingers absently stroked the rug. ‘I loved that girl, but she had a mouth on her. I’m a patient man, but she pushed me too far.’
Below the topsoil the ground was damp, and they lifted great chunks of it. Elliot tore ferociously into the earth. His shoulders ached as he dug the spade into the earth. Lifted a clump of mud, dropped it onto the pile. Dug the spade into the earth, lifted the soil, placed it on the heap.
‘I won’t forget this.’ Planting his legs apart, Gordon lowered his head into his hands. ‘This is a special moment, so it is. We’re bonding, the four of us, because we’re in this together now, for all time. You’re my late-night buddies,’ he glanced at his watch, ‘you’re my Two O’Clock Boys. That’s what we are, we’re pals for life, the Two O’Clock Boys.’
Then Elliot became lost in robot labour – digging the spade into the earth and tipping it to the side, the smell of soil filling his nostrils – and it was a while before he realised Connor had stopped digging, and was listening to Gordon’s snores.
‘Come on, let’s get this done.’
There was a cold gleam in Connor’s eye that Elliot understood immediately. ‘We’ll do it now, while he’s asleep, and then we’ll go.’
‘You can’t!’ said Elliot.
‘We do it now.’
‘What about the kid?’ Elliot stammered. ‘He’ll tell his parents and then what?’
But Connor climbed from the hole and stood over Gordon.
‘Connor!’ Elliot lunged forward. ‘You can’t just—’
‘Shut up!’ Connor hefted the spade, turned it in his hands so that the dull metal edge would cleave Gordon’s skull into two. ‘We’ll never have a better time.’
‘You can’t!’
Elliot grabbed at him, but Connor pushed him off. Gordon’s chest heaved with each guttural snore. Connor lifted the spade above his head, his arms shaking violently, damp palms slick on the wooden shaft.
And he still hadn’t swung it down when Gordon’s head snapped up to leer at Connor and the spade trembling above his head.
‘Finally, let’s see what you’re made of,’ he said quietly. ‘I believed you had it in you to go the whole way, lad, but you’re just like those others. Weak, like Elliot. A victim, like our friend Toby. I thought I saw something in those cold eyes of yours, Connor; I really thought you would be different.’
Gordon lifted himself from the rug, taking a moment to brush down his trousers before taking the spade from Connor. ‘You want to see how it’s done again, do you, boy? Let me show you.’
He walked to Toby and threw him into the trench, then picked up the canister to slop petrol all over the boy. The stench of the liquid lifted into the air, making Elliot’s eyes sting. He stumbled back, blinking. Toby screamed, scrabbling around on the mud like the cockroach on his plate. Gordon poured the petrol until the boy’s hair, skin and clothes were drenched.
‘Watch me.’ Gordon pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicking open the lid to spark the flint. A long, flickering flame whipped in the night air. ‘This is how to do it.’
‘Don’t,’ said Connor.
Toby screeched. Elliot shook violently. Connor stepped forward. ‘He’s got family, Gordon, people who love him and who are waiting for him!’
Gordon swayed above the trench. A shelf of mud gave way beneath his feet and he almost toppled forward. There was a deafening rush of noise and a mail train hurtled past a few feet away, shaking the trees. Elliot saw, but couldn’t hear, Toby’s frenzied shriek. The flame danced violently in Gordon’s hand.
‘He can’t go home, Connor,’ said Gordon, when it had passed. ‘Not now.’
‘Yeah,’ said Connor quickly. ‘You’re right, but we’ll talk about it tomorrow, when you’re … when you’ve got a clear head.’
Elliot heard the bones in Gordon’s neck crack. Then the lid of the lighter snapped shut, and he threw it at Connor. When the boy caught it, it was hot to the touch.
‘Get him out of there.’ Gordon stared at Sally’s body. ‘Burn her and then fill in the hole. Cover it with leaves and branches. When I come back tomorrow, I don’t want to be able to see it. I’ll make sure the kids stay out of the garden for a few days.’
Then he stumbled back through the trees to the house, and Elliot scrambled into the hole to pull Toby out. ‘Get back to the house and wash, and stop crying.’
‘Leave your clothes,’ said Connor.
The boy undressed, shivering with cold and fear. They threw his clothes into the trench and Toby went whimpering up the path. Elliot and Connor dragged the rug containing Sally’s body into the hole, splashed petrol onto it and set it alight.
Smoke and sparks lifted into the air between them. Connor pulled his T-shirt over his nose against the smell of burning flesh.
‘You gonna have a family, Connor?’ asked Elliot, as they slumped against the wall listening to the crack and fizz of the fire. Entranced by the flames leaping off the rug, Connor didn’t answer.
‘I’m gonna have a wife,’ continued Elliot. ‘And loads of kids. I’ll bring them up right; they ain’t ever gonna be afraid of nothing. I’ll be a dad, a proper dad …’ He threw a stick into the flames. ‘Just got to get out of this place first.’
Neither of them spoke for the rest of the night. They dozed. By the time the sky began to swell, and the stars faded in the sky, the flames had dwindled. They shovelled mud back into the trench, smothering the last embers, avoided looking at the smouldering corpse. When the hole was filled, they covered the fresh soil with leaves, branches and large stones as best they could.
At dawn, shouts drifted down from the house – the other kids were awake – and Gordon came along the garden with a bucket of hot water so they could wash. He stared at the disturbed earth, made the sign of the cross on his chest, and left without saying a word.
Exhausted, the two boys walked up the path beneath the trees towards the house,
in the cloudy grey wash of the morning.
40
They accelerated up the narrow lane, flew along it, headlight beams carving out the way beneath the thick canopy of trees. Too fast along a road barely wide enough for a single vehicle.
Elliot braced himself against the dash as Perry wrestled with the tight turns, wanting to be as far away from the house as quickly as possible. He felt sickened. This wasn’t who he was. How could he have been so stupid? Now he could never look Rhonda or Dylan in the face again.
But he didn’t want to die, and they were taking the bends too fast, the wheels shuddering off the green verges, Perry barely paying attention to the road as he screamed at Elliot.
‘They saw you! You used my name!’ His face was scrunched tight with anger, the cords in his neck snapped taut. Flecks of his spittle spotted Elliot’s cheek. ‘She saw your face! You said my name! You said my—’
He gunned the engine harder, and the car swerved. The sharp fingers of an overhanging tree tore at the roof. Elliot, filled with terror, shouted: ‘Watch the road, watch the—’
And on a bend he had a split second – no more than that – to register a vehicle coming the other way. ‘Car! Car!’
Perry swore, jerking the wheel to the left, the angry blare of a horn bearing down on them, and the car careened up the verge. Elliot was thrown against Perry’s shoulder as the passenger side lifted. Perry’s hands clenched the wheel, wrestled to regain control as it jerked left and right and left. Foot scrabbling frantically for the brake pedal, finding the accelerator instead.
The engine moaned. Shrubs and bushes hurtled towards them, sticks and branches cracked against the windscreen, obscuring their view as the car plunged over the verge and into the undergrowth. Perry found the brake – and pressed hard.
Both men were propelled forward. Elliot’s head flew into the dash. His neck whiplashed. Perry’s chest smashed against the wheel.
The car spun on the soft earth and careened to a halt.