Dead People

by Ewart Hutton

  I sank to the ground and did as I was told, trying not to remind myself that this was a classic execution arrangement. He slipped the loop of a cable clip over my hands and onto my wrists, and pulled tightly, the thin plastic cutting in painfully as the ratchets caught and held.

  I opened my eyes experimentally. He had a huge flashlight trained on me. I could see nothing past it. I kept my head to the side, my eyes averted from the beam. I didn’t want to look down; that would make me appear too much like a victim.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ There was a taint of tension in his tone, although he had obviously been aware of my presence for long enough for it not to have come as a surprise.

  ‘I came here to head off the carnage.’

  ‘Are there more of you outside?’

  ‘No, I’m alone. No one else in the force knows I’m here. I promise you that.’

  ‘That’s a bit fucking stupid.’

  ‘Listen to me.’ I put command into my voice. It was vital that he saw me as an equal. ‘I worked it out, Owen. I knew you’d be holed up in here. And I knew you’d have guns. Probably more than that shotgun. I came here on my own to stop you killing other people, and then probably getting killed yourself.’

  ‘Are you offering yourself as a sacrifice?’ I heard the puzzlement in his voice.

  ‘You won’t shoot me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘There’s no advantage to you. Work it out.’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘You haven’t been doing this at random. Every time you’ve killed someone you’ve gained something from it. It was justice with the ones you killed for Rose. Insurance from Evie. A diversion from Bruno. There’s no gain from killing me. I’m a policeman. You’ll just be hiking up the wrath-storm.’

  ‘I would be gaining time.’

  ‘That’s what I’m offering you. You don’t need to kill me for that.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s over, Owen. I know what went down. Greg has realized too. Soon everyone else will. I’m giving you a head start.’

  ‘Greg won’t turn me in.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to. They know about your place in Port Eynon. No matter how carefully you think you’ve cleaned it up, we’re going to find traces of Evie.’

  He was silent, absorbing the logic of that. ‘Why are you here? Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘I’ve already explained. I want you out of here. Sooner or later, someone’s going to put things together the way I did. I don’t want you here when they do, because they’ll come in force and they’ll come armed.’

  ‘Since when have you cared what happens to me?’

  ‘If we’re being brutally honest here, Owen, I don’t give a fuck what happens to you. But I do care about my colleagues. I don’t want a load of twitchy cops facing up to an armed gunman in a mineshaft. You’re going to end up dead, and the chances are that some other people are too, and I’m trying to prevent that. That’s why I’ve come here to warn you. It’s over now. But you still have some time left to act. If you stay here we’ll find you. I’m not promising you anything. If you run we’ll probably still catch you, but at least that way there’s options open for you, and who knows, you might even get away.’

  Without eye contact I had to imagine him weighing it up.

  ‘I’ve got this place wired.’

  ‘Why?’ I had already figured that out, but it was important to let him hear my surprise. I needed to persuade him that this was out of character. An act of desperation.

  ‘In case it comes to negotiations.’

  ‘You’re holed up in a rat trap, Owen. That’s not the way you play it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re a planner and an enactor. A soldier. You work through the contingencies, calculate strategies, move yourself forward. But most importantly you give yourself space for manoeuvring. You’re not the kind of guy to dig yourself into a hole and threaten to blow yourself up. That’s for losers.’

  ‘How the fuck do you know so much about me?’

  ‘I recognized your gift to your sister.’

  ‘Are you trying to shit me?’

  I looked at him as directly as I could without scorching my eyes on his flashlight. ‘Why did you bury them where you did?’ I asked quietly. ‘No matter how hard I looked at it, I couldn’t see any significance in that place.’

  The silence extended for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer.

  ‘When we were kids, Rose and I found a dead buzzard up there. Not a mark on it. We each held an outstretched wing and it was as big as us. Looking back, it had probably been poisoned. But to us it was perfect. It was as close as we had ever been to something wonderful. Something so powerful. So we buried it. And that became our special place.’

  ‘You were very close to her?’

  ‘She was my sister. She trusted me to do things for her. She relied on me. I found her future husband for her. When they had children I was going to be the best fucking uncle in the world.’ He was quiet again for a moment. ‘And then those bastards killed her!’ he spat out.

  ‘I heard that it wasn’t deliberate,’ I suggested carefully, ‘that it might even have been our guys.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They were the cause of it. They killed Rose. They didn’t deserve to just pick up a new life and go on as if nothing had happened. They had to pay.’

  ‘We only found three bodies. What happened to the fourth?’

  ‘He died before I could get to him.’

  ‘His former compadres catch up with him?’

  ‘No, thank Christ. If those pricks had got there first the others would have scattered. No, just to prove that there is a God in His Heaven, leukaemia got the bastard.’

  ‘Did you use your MI contacts to find them?’

  ‘I asked around. I had to be patient. I had to work fucking hard to find the right source.’

  ‘That’s why it took so long?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You waited about two years after the first one. Why didn’t the other two get spooked and cut and run?’

  ‘Because I kept him alive.’ I heard the pleasure in his tone.

  ‘You imprisoned him for all that time?’

  ‘No. Not literally alive. Only on paper. I kept paying all his bills.’ He laughed. ‘And spending his Social Security payments.’

  ‘The other two were married?’

  ‘The other two were bastards who gave up any shred of human dignity when I came for them,’ he spat at me angrily.

  I veered away from the danger topic and let him see me gesture towards the dead-sex tableau. ‘I understand why you stole the skeleton, but why did you take Redshanks?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The body at the archaeological dig.’

  ‘That thing’s a pile of plastic.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The Northern Ireland connection spooked me. Then you and the so-called professor looked like you were getting chummy. I had to make sure that MI hadn’t rumbled who the bodies were, and that you weren’t pooling information with them. When I saw what they had in that tent, I realized it was a surveillance gig and had nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You still took the body.’

  ‘An exercise in disinformation.’ I heard the cocky smirk in his voice.

  ‘How did you meet Evie?’ I asked it quickly, trying to fit it in as part of the seamless flow of the conversation.

  He was silent. I didn’t push it. I had heard the pride in his voice. He was enjoying the recounting. It went hand in hand with the power he felt he had over me.

  ‘I was in the UK between jobs. I had just finished a tour in Afghanistan and was waiting for the security clearances to go through for the job in the Nigerian oilfields. I was having some renovation work done at home, so I was staying at Cogfryn. I saw her a couple of times standing by the road.’

  ‘Near Pen Twyn?’

  ‘A lay-by
just down from there. The next time I saw her I stopped and asked if she wanted a lift. She said no, she was waiting for someone. But the look she gave me, I got the impression she was sorry about that. So, I went and parked down the road, just out of sight. I was curious.’

  ‘Gerald Evans picked her up?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I was leaning against my car. I was looking buff, if I say so myself. I made a point of giving her the look as they went by.’

  ‘You had a nice car?’

  ‘BMW M3. How did you know?’

  ‘Evie liked nice cars.’

  ‘I went back there the next week. I could tell that she was attracted. She told me about the Evans gig, how it creeped her out, but she needed the money.’

  ‘You offered to pay her?’

  ‘That’s how it started. It wasn’t sex at first, it was just a bit of fun. I could afford it. And it stuffed Gerald Fucking Evans.’

  ‘But you told her not to tell anyone about you?’

  ‘That began as a bit of a joke. I was playing the man of mystery.’ He went silent. ‘Funny that, isn’t it? Do you think these things are meant to happen? That somehow, even right at the beginning, subconsciously, I knew what I was going to have to do to her?’

  I didn’t want to get into a cosy speculation about predestination with him. I also didn’t want to tell him that I knew why he had made Evie promise not to tell anyone about him. That he hadn’t wanted his mother to know that he was hanging out with someone she would have regarded as inappropriate. ‘She moved in with you?’ I asked instead.

  ‘She kept harping on about how much she hated Dinas. How she felt protected by me. How much she loved me and couldn’t do without me. By that time, I was driving her up and down to the Gower on Saturdays. She was getting a feel for the place. I thought, Fuck it, she’s attractive, not bad company, all right in bed, and with my job I didn’t have to be around her all the time. Let her look after the place when I’m away.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘She lost her fear of the big wide world, and got to be a bit too fucking free. Started hanging around with the third-rate wannabe surfers down there. The dope-and-cider brigade and their mash-up barbecues on the beach. I was thinking of turfing her out the next leave I got, and then Mum sent me a cutting from the paper.’

  ‘The wind farm?’

  ‘Of all the fucking hills in Wales!’ he declaimed bitterly. ‘I panicked at first. Thought I could never go home again. Then I thought about Mum and Dad, what they would think when they heard. After that I started thinking a bit more carefully. That there was still a chance their excavations might miss the bit that was dedicated to Rose.’

  ‘Or, even if they did, there was a way round it that wouldn’t lead to you?’ I ventured.

  ‘It took some fucking working out,’ he said, sounding pleased with himself. ‘As I said, it’s strange the way things fall into place. Because Christ knows how I would have managed it if Evie hadn’t turned herself into a slut.’

  ‘Or if Bruno Gilbert had been normal?’

  ‘No one was going to miss him. It was a kindness, in a way. What kind of a life did the crazy old bastard have?’

  I wanted to tell him that this place would miss Bruno, that his loss diminished the natural balance, but I forced myself to keep quiet. He had reached the end of his narrative. He knew that he had decisions to make.

  I could tell by the movement of the torch beam that he had just checked his watch. I felt my heart rate surge. It was the gesture of a man who was preparing for action.

  ‘Where’s your car?’ he demanded.

  ‘At the gate.’

  ‘Keys?’

  ‘Left-hand pocket.’

  ‘Turn round, face away from me.’

  The torch beam jiggled. I heard the faint sound of metal against rock, and then felt his hand in my jacket pocket rooting for the car keys. He had had to put the gun down to release a free hand. Was there an opening? I flashed through the permutations, and realized that, with my hands tied and my back to him, I didn’t even have surprise on my side.

  And I didn’t want to jeopardize his momentum.

  He took his hand out of my pocket with the keys. I was conscious of him rearranging himself. He would have the gun under control again. This was the point, I recognized, where my forward planning had stopped. From here I had left it deliberately vague and fluffy.

  ‘Let’s move,’ he ordered.

  He went down the tunnel backwards in front of me, keeping the torch pointed in my face. I had to shuffle along like a penitent on my knees, my hands still tied behind my back causing me to sway painfully against the walls.

  He stopped before we reached the entrance. I saw the shotgun for the first time as he poked it into the torch beam. The barrel had been cut down. It was a vicious short-range weapon. ‘From now on you are going to be totally silent,’ he instructed. He pushed the gun forward. ‘Put your forehead against this.’ I hesitated, hearing the tension in his voice. He jabbed the barrel at me, barely missing my right eye. I leaned forward until I felt the metal pressing on my forehead. He lowered his voice. ‘I’m turning the torch off now. We’re going to continue in the dark, without a sound. If I stop feeling that pressure against this fucking gun, I’m just going to fire both barrels into the dark and leave what’s left of you here. Understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ I wasn’t going to argue. He had gone through a mood change. Now that we were moving, he had revved-up to righteous anger. He was cranking himself up for flight. Becoming more dangerous.

  ‘Your life is now in your hands. Just keep your head pressed to the metal.’

  The light went out. The centre of my universe was now a painful pair of third eyes that felt as sharp as pastry cutters against my forehead, and I made them the focus of my entire being as we commenced our shuffle down the tunnel again, him in front of me, moving backwards, as before.

  We emerged into the shaft. He removed the gun barrel from my forehead, and grabbed my bound wrists and pulled me upright. It took me a moment to realize that we were no longer in total darkness. I looked up. Above me it was more deep dark blue than black. As I adjusted I started to make out stars. The hatch on the sluice deck above was open as I had left it.

  ‘Turn round,’ he hissed quietly.

  I complied. This was where he was going to hit me over the head and leave me. I clenched my eyes shut and tensed myself, preparing for the violence.

  The sudden sense of a cord tightening around my neck was even more of a shock because of its unexpectedness. I started to throw my head around to stop him getting a strangulation hold, but stopped when I felt the now familiar gun barrel tighten itself painfully against the hollow in the back of my head at the top of my spinal column.

  ‘I’d stop struggling, if I were you,’ he advised with a chuckle, sounding pleased with himself, ‘the gun’s strapped to the back of your head, so you’ll either choke yourself to death, or you’ll cause my finger to jerk on the trigger.’

  ‘This is crazy, Owen,’ I whispered, trying to fight down the hysteria that a sawn-off shotgun welded to the top of my spinal column was creating, ‘I’m only going to slow you down.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, and start climbing,’ he hissed, steering me over and pushing me against the metal rungs on the side of the shaft. He straddled me and pushed against my back in a tight creepy intimacy as we climbed up like a pair of conjoined and clumsy toads.

  He stopped us just before the lip of the shaft, and, using the shotgun to control me like the stick on a Balinese puppet, he forced me to raise my head up over the rim. I was a human white flag. He was using me as a sounding board for either a searchlight or a shot.

  But the night stayed still and dark.

  ‘Okay,’ he whispered when he was satisfied that the night was not going to break apart, and we continued the awkward stumble out of the shaft.

  We stood there at the top of the shaft in silence as he took his bearings. The skewed geometry of the climb had c
aused the cord around my neck to nearly choke me, and I used the respite to haul in big reserves of air.

  I was the only sound. I became aware of it. My heavy breathing was the only thing that was disturbing an otherwise total silence.

  It was unnatural. The night seemed to be holding itself in an expectant suspension.

  He pushed me forward, using the shotgun like a goad to the back of my head. There was no moon, but the cloud cover was light enough to navigate by silhouette, the track showing up as a lighter entity between the darker masses of Bruno’s twisted shack and the trees and matted undergrowth.

  What was he going to do at the locked gate? I had mixed feelings about the problem that that was going to present to him. He was either going to have to take the risk of untying me to get me over, or he was going to have to abandon me on this side. But if he did that, what sort of a state was he going to leave me in?

  We turned the corner on the track that led to the final approach to the gate. I did a double take. Was it a trick of the dim light?

  The gate was open.

  I tensed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Owen whispered angrily, picking up on my reaction.

  I shook my head. I could make out the darker outline of a car on the far side of the gate.

  ‘Is that your car?’ he whispered tensely.

  ‘Yes,’ I lied.

  We shuffled forward. The night broke apart. The car’s headlights erupted on main beam, pinning the two of us in the middle of the gate opening. The blue strobe light on top started flashing to reinforce the message. I turned my eyes away from the light onslaught and gagged as the cord tightened on my neck and the gun barrel gouged even harder into the back of my head.

  ‘You bastard,’ Owen hissed into my ear as he socketed himself against my back.

  ‘I didn’t—’ I started trying to tell him that I was as surprised as he was, but he cut me off with a twist of the gun barrel that tightened the cord like a garrotte.

  ‘There’s a gun tied to the back of his head,’ he yelled out.

  The voice came out of the light. ‘You’re making things even worse for yourself, Owen.’