Time Lapse

by Pete Trewin

  ‘So what are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Whatever you want. Hide it? Bury it? It’s in the back of the Merc.’ She looked at him. ‘I told this Stroller to get lost. Maybe it was him who crashed into us. It’s a bit of a coincidence.’

  ‘But it was Sefton’s car.’

  ‘Neither of us saw the driver. Whoever he was he was out to get both of us.’’

  ‘Or it was set up.’

  He smiled at her but she didn’t smile back.

  ‘You don’t trust me do you?’ he said.

  He approached Sefton’s house via the wooded escarpment of Frodsham hill. He found a spot overlooking the back of the house and settled in with his binoculars. It was certainly a big house. Too many bedrooms for one family. Set in extensive grounds. Tennis courts, the lot. What would it be worth? A million pounds? All this messing around for a measly forty grand.

  After half an hour he moved round to where he could see the front of the house. The parking area was empty. It looked like Sefton was out. Chris crept through the trees until he was at the back of the house.

  He climbed onto the wall and looked around. Something had changed. The pile of branches and rubbish by the wall had been moved to one side. He dropped down, grabbed the biggest branch and managed to pull the whole lot back to where he remembered the pile had been. He uncovered a low mound of recently dug earth.

  He pulled the pile back over the mound.

  The back door was unlocked.

  He took it steady, moving carefully through the kitchen and into the hallway. He could hear a TV. He stopped and listened. Curious sounds. Some sort of film. Gasps and groans. He edged into the doorway to the living room. Ed was sitting in an armchair with his back to him so only the back of his head was visible. On the big screen, a porn movie was in action. It was difficult to see what was going on. Limbs, mouths, nipples, cocks.

  Chris slipped back into the hallway and quietly searched the house. No change. Same pile of dirty dishes in the sink but with the addition of the remains of a fish supper. He sat down at Ed’s computer and checked the browsing history. He’d certainly been busy that morning, googling holiday destinations and exchange rates.

  Chris crept back downstairs. He armed himself with a carving knife from the kitchen and walked quickly in front of the screen.

  Ed was tied up, with gaffer tape around his mouth. Naked. Cuts and bruises. Blood had dribbled down onto his arms and dried. His face was grey and smeared with dried blood. The boil had burst, leaving a string of yellow pus and blood curled across his forehead. He’d been there a long time. Smell of urine. Chris turned the movie off.

  Ed’s eyes opened.

  ‘You look a right mess,’ said Chris. He removed the tape from Ed’s mouth.

  Ed gasped for breath. ‘Water,’ he croaked.

  Chris fetched a glass of water and a dampened tea towel. He let Ed drink the water then wiped his lips and face.

  ‘How long have you been there?’ Chris said.

  ‘Hours. The bastard tortured me. I nearly suffocated to death. A real psycho...’ He stopped. Speaking was obviously a great effort. ‘He wants the money,’ he whispered. ‘Says it’s his. He was one of the original robbers.’

  He stared at Chris.

  ‘You think I’m a monster, don’t you? But I’m a pussycat compared to this fellow.’

  ‘Did you tell him that you’d given the money to Alison?’

  ‘Yeah. She’ll be OK.’ He swallowed. A dribble of blood ran down his chin. ‘She’s got Herbie to protect her,’ he said, his voice so quiet that Chris had to lean over and put his ear close to Ed’s mouth. ‘This fellow’s a right cunt.’

  ‘Did he take your car? So it wasn’t you that crashed into Alison?’

  ‘He took the keys so he must have taken the car. What happened to Alison?’ He choked on the last word and sagged back into the chair. He spat out a mouthful of blood. It ran down his chin.

  ‘What did this feller look like?’

  Ed’s face was suddenly pale.

  ‘Well....’ he whispered.

  He slumped down, his eyes staring. Chris checked his pulse. It was weak.

  He stood for a moment. He went to the cabinet on which the TV sat. The bottom drawer was full of videos and CDs, the covers brightly coloured and leaving nothing to the imagination. He pulled the drawer right out and there it was. Neatly arranged to fill the space at the back. Ten thousand. Give or take a few fistfuls.

  He was almost back at the car when he remembered the memory cards. Cursing, he trekked all the way back, this time following the easier path rather than the route through the undergrowth, He checked the house, front and back. Nothing. He retrieved the cards and glanced into the living room as he passed. Sefton was gone, pieces of tape and splashes of blood on the chair and the floor. Chris left as quietly and as quickly as he could. At the van, he inserted the first card into his laptop. Nothing. The second one showed a man entering the house by the front door. He looked big and ugly, built on an even larger scale than Ed; heavy with muscle.

  He drove along the side of the hill to the car park. It was empty. He had the basics for an abseil; rope, slings, harness and an abseil device. And a shunt on a sling for protection.

  Although abseiling was routine to an experienced climber, it was also the most dangerous part of the whole business and had cost many climbers their lives. A bird flying out of a crack or a kid throwing a stone, once you let go of your abseil device that was it. He preferred to have the security of a shunt which, if you took your hand off it, locked on the rope and held you until you released it.

  Everything was quiet as he walked through the woods. The paths were drying out after the rain of recent days. Not even the usual dog-walkers were about, just the shush-shush of traffic on the motorway in the middle distance. He had two rucksacks, one on each shoulder; one with the abseil gear and a smaller one with the money and the gun.

  It didn’t take long to set up the abseil using slings on a couple of half-grown birch trees. The mini-cave was just below the top of Time Lapse. It was on the upper section, easier but still hard enough, that was invisible from above or below.

  He slid easily down on the abseil device until he was on the ledge with the cave. He released the shunt so that it gripped the rope, steadied himself and reached round for the rucksack.

  ‘It’s you again!’ came a voice from below. ‘I might have known! I’m definitely calling the police this time!’ It was quite a way down to the bottom but the person’s voice was loud in the quietness.

  He turned and looked down. The peregrine lady was taking a photo of him on her mobile phone.

  ‘Be my guest, madam,’ he shouted down. ‘Your photo should show that I’m nowhere near your bloody shite-hawks!’

  ‘There’s no need to be rude, swearing like that.’

  ‘On the contrary, I think there’s every need to swear, seeing as you wouldn’t help me the other day when I was stuck. That was worse than being rude. Anyway, I like peregrines. If I saw someone disturbing them I’d report it myself.’

  She stamped away.

  He watched her go then carefully hid the rucksack in the back of the little cave. He leaned over to look down the final section of Time Lapse. It looked bloody difficult. Then he saw it. The small hold that he’d been reaching up for. He abseiled down to it and locked the shunt. The hold was sharp and would take four fingers. Perfect. It was supposed to be bad form to check a route from abseil. The best style was “ground up”. But he wasn’t doing this for the climbing mags or the guidebooks. It was for himself.

  He climbed back up, hard enough in trainers and jeans - a couple of times he had to pull on the rope - moving the abseil device and shunt up as he went.

  Only someone climbing the route might spot the rucksack in the back of the cave. And there wouldn’t be too many of them.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Stroller had to park close enough to the school to see what was going on, but not too close. If he m
ade it too obvious people would think he was a pervert. That was worse than being a murderer these days. He couldn’t see much of the school beyond the high perimeter steel fence. Single storey. Grey brick. Nondescript.

  Sefton’s Jeep seemed to be going OK after the collision. Solid construction. He’d parked up the road and doubled back through the trees to watch what happened next. No cops, just an ambulance for the big chauffeur. And this cunt in the white van who had helped rob the money in the first place.

  There was the kid now. His red tracksuit a beacon, just like Sefton had said. He sidled out of the door then out of the school entrance and into some shrubbery. Stroller slowly got out of the car and walked along the road, like any pedestrian. The kid scampered out of the shrubbery further along and onto the pavement. Stroller followed him to a railway bridge. The kid turned off down some steps at the end of the bridge. Stroller followed, keeping his distance. The railway had long gone, leaving a leafy walkway in a deep cutting with high sandstone walls on either side.

  The cutting curved to the right and Stroller lost sight of the kid. He quickened his pace but there was no sign of him. The bases of the sandstone walls were thick with brambles and saplings with lots of places to hide. He walked along to where the cutting ended and he could see back gardens to houses on either side.

  As he walked back he saw something move high up. There was a cave near the top of the cliff-face. As he got closer, a small head popped out. The face was evenly featured and olive complexioned under a mop of curly black hair.

  ‘Are you a weirdo, mister? If you are then I’ll set the bizzies on yer.’

  ‘No, I’m not a weirdo,’ Stroller said. ‘I’m looking for my dog. I was walking him here this morning and he ran off.’

  ‘What sort of dog?’

  ‘It’s a Pit Bull. Black and white.’

  ‘Never seen it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  ‘It’s break time.’

  Stroller pulled a bush to one side. A series of square shot holes and more rounded holes led up to the cave about twenty feet above.

  ‘Come on down from there.’ Stroller did his best to sound friendly.

  ‘You are a weirdo. ‘

  ‘No I’m not. What’s up there?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s just a cave.’

  Stroller tried to climb up but his new brogues wouldn’t fit into the holds. He jumped for a large hold, got it and pulled up. He was strong enough but too heavy. He sagged down. He managed to pull up again, using all of his strength. His hands were now in a hole just six inches from the base of the cave.

  ‘You are a weirdo. I’m going for the bizzies.’

  ‘And how are you going to do that?’ gasped Stroller, out of breath and just about hanging on.

  ‘There’s a secret tunnel at the back of here, cunt-face.’

  ‘You little twat!

  Stroller grabbed for the ledge but his fingers slipped. He was off. The fall wasn’t that far but he felt something give in his knee as he hit the ground.

  TWENTY NINE

  Chris turned off Aigburth Road by the cricket club and drove down to the car-park at the southern end of Otterspool Promenade. He put in a call to Dennis as soon as he was parked up.

  ‘Hi, Dennis. No, I don’t want any more information from the police database. No, I’ll take full responsibility. Look, this is more straightforward. Where are the local mental hospitals? Right. I thought that was the one. I’ve got two names. William Beamish and another one who goes by the nickname of Stroller. Yes I know it’s not much but see what you can do. Probably both recently discharged. Yes I know it’s protected information. I’ll take full responsibility.’

  The day was lovely and clear. The sun had just gone in behind a wispy cloud and a light wind was whipping the surface of the Mersey. The tide was well in. A dog-walker and a couple of kids on bikes. The Wirral skyline on the other side of the river. Factories and blocks of flats. Faint outline of Welsh hills beyond.

  The high sandstone wall was not mentioned in the official guidebooks but it was a very handy training venue. Pink sandstone blocks, rough-hewn with natural holds. A wall and steep slabby retaining buttresses. As usual he had to flick away several dog turds but once he got going the climbing was highly enjoyable. Three days since he had last tried Time Lapse. He did a few slabby problems on the buttresses to warm up then did a full traverse there and back. Much of it was relatively easy, using the holds on the faces of the blocks and the gaps where the mortar had been worn away, but in a few places it got very thin, almost to Time Lapse intensity. By the time he had finished his breath was ragged and his heart was beating. His fingers ached from the tiny holds and he had incipient cramp in one leg from the small footholds and smears.

  He felt good. It was often that way in climbing or running. After an enforced lay-off you came out raring to go, batteries recharged.

  He sat down on his climbing mat and loosened his boots. He took a swig of water from the bottle he carried in his small rucksack.

  His mobile went.

  ‘Hi. Dennis here. Have you get any more silly assignments? Stroller, I ask you? Well, you’re in luck. A fellow called Kevin Walker was discharged from the institution in question a couple of days ago. Not much imagination, eh? Stroller...Walker? Anyhow, Mr Walker has a bit of past history.’

  ‘Go on’

  ‘He’s murdered two people. The first was a security guard in a Royal Mail railcar robbery years ago.’

  ‘Like the Great Train Robbery?’

  ‘Yes, but on a smaller scale. It was a bit of a thing at the time. The second murder was of a fellow inmate in Durham jail which resulted in him being sent to the mental institution.’

  ‘So how come he’s out and roaming the streets?’

  ‘Government cuts. And it seems like he’s a reformed character.’

  ‘Convinced the doctors that he’s a reformed character, more like.’

  ‘He was a bit of a celebrity in there.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘He got the highest score in the Standard Psychopathy Test. Ticked every single box. The first in the history of that institution.’

  ‘What, like having no conscience, no empathy for others?’

  ‘That kind of thing.’

  ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘William Beamish, released shortly afterwards. He’s different. Delusional schizophrenic. Probably linked to a catastrophic head injury suffered in his teens. Comes up with all sorts of fantasies. Not dangerous according to his doctors. So they let him out too.’

  ‘Thanks, Dennis. What’s the world coming to when we empty the lunatic asylums onto the streets?’

  ‘Not politically correct, Christopher. You should know better than that.’ There was a pause. ‘So will I have a job for much longer?’

  ‘Of course you will. We’re working on the plan.’

  Chris switched the phone off and leaned back against the sandstone buttress. He closed his eyes.

  ‘Hey, mister.’

  He opened his eyes. Two kids standing next to their bikes. Maybe eleven years old.

  ‘Have you done Everest, mister?’

  THIRTY

  Jimmy Dooley opened the window of his stationary cab, cleared his throat and spat with fury onto the street. An elderly woman standing at a bus stop by some shops stared at him. Road works again. This time it was Aigburth Road. Gas Main Renewal the sign said. Why couldn’t they do it at night when everyone was tucked away in bed? He was on the wrong side of the city and he was already half an hour late.

  He turned into Aigburth Drive and the scenic route around Sefton Park. He saw a familiar figure walking on the other side of the road. The person was a little way ahead and had his back to Jimmy but from his height and the straggly hair hanging in rats’ tails over the collar of his scruffy coat, Jimmy could see that it was the street preacher. No rucksack this time. Jimmy slowed down as if he was looking for a fare. At the junction with Lark Lane the pre
acher opened a gate to one of the park entrance lodges. He put a key in the door and went in.

  Jimmy speeded up, turning into Lodge Lane and then Edge Lane. Soon he was over the ring road and on his way to Crokky. Another week of this and he’d be packing it in. After a while the odds caught up with you and you’d be pulled over. It was always the mules and low-down people that got caught, never the bigwigs like Sefton. What a twat that man was.

  The road bent round and the Crokky tower blocks came into view. Soon he was pulling up outside the chippy. It stood with five other shops on the edge of a huge demolition site, on the other side of which was a sprawling council estate. Apart from the chippy, there was a newsagent that sold everything from lottery tickets to cans of beans and toilet rolls. The other three shops were boarded up. And covered in graffiti.

  Crokky Crew Rule! was the favourite.

  Business was slow as usual. The chippy was too far from any customers once the tower blocks had been demolished. Jimmy had read all about it in an Echo a customer had left in the cab. He seemed to be getting more and more time to read the Echo these days. The corpy, in its wisdom, had demolished half a dozen tower blocks with the intention of building new two-storey houses on the site. But guess what? No money from the government for new council houses and no private developer in his right mind would build houses there.

  And that was why Chin Chung was in business with Jimmy’s crew. Jimmy felt sorry for him. He had to put up with all sorts of abuse, assaults and taunts, even fire bombs once.

  ‘Bag a chips, luv,’ Jimmy said as he walked into the empty shop.

  The girl behind the counter nearly cricked her neck as her attention was dragged away from the Chinese soap playing on the little telly high up in a corner.

  ‘You’ll have to wait while the fryer warms up.’

  ‘Right you are. Lots of salt an’ vinegar. Is Chin in?’

  ‘In the back. He not happy.’

  Chin was sitting at the table with his head in his hands. He lifted his head up when he saw Jimmy.