by Chris Simms
‘Get out of here!’ Rick shouted.
Jon saw a look of alarm appearing on Salvio’s face and the man took a step back, one hand reaching into his leather coat. Without breaking his step, Jon swung a fist, connecting hard with the side of Salvio’s head. He crashed against the wall and a snub-nosed handgun thudded to the floor. As he bent forward to try and pick it up, Jon grabbed the man’s collar and pulled the leather coat half-over his head, tangling the other man’s arms up in its sleeves. He let fly with a knee and Salvio’s head snapped back, two teeth spinning off to the side, the bloody stump of one clicking off the wall.
Before Salvio could fall over, Jon gripped him by the shoulders and reversed him out of the flat, marched him across the walkway and bent him over the balcony. Railing digging into the base of his spine, his arms started windmilling about.
‘Jon! Jon, for fuck’s sake, stop!’ Rick grabbed at him from behind.
Jon held the other man over the edge. Somewhere he could hear birdsong trilling out and the sky was now tinted with orange above him. He yanked Salvio back onto the landing and threw him against the metal grille of the nearest door. Cowering there with his arms raised, Salvio tried to look up. Shrugging Rick’s hands off, Jon cuffed the pimp across the head, the slap of his palm echoing off the far wall.
‘Please . . . !’ Salvio gasped.
Jon cuffed him again and then again, forcing the man back, droplets of blood peppering the wall with each blow. They reached the stairwell and Jon changed hands, slapping him even harder. Salvio swayed for a moment at the top then crashed down the flight of stone steps. He came to a stop at the bottom, one wrist bent at an unnatural angle.
Jon jumped down the steps, grasped him by the hair and lifted his head up. ‘You see who I am? You see?’ His voice boomed around the empty stairwell.
Salvio tried to focus. ‘I know who you are,’ he gasped. ‘Dave’s brother, you’re Dave’s brother.’
‘That’s right, you piece of shit. Which makes me that kid’s and that girl’s family. Go near them again and I will snap your arms and your legs, one after the other.’ He clamped his fingers on Salvio’s lower jaw, holding his head steady so he could look into the other man’s eyes and whisper almost affectionately. ‘Then I’ll stamp on your face until even that rank whore who shat you out will have no idea who the fuck you are. Understand?’
Salvio tried to say something, blood bubbling from his mouth.
He let the other man go. ‘Understand?’
Salvio wiped at his lips and chin, nodding as he did so.
‘Understand?’
‘Yes! Yes, I understand.’
‘Get up.’
‘What?’
‘Get up!’
Salvio struggled to his feet, cradling his broken wrist. Jon advanced on him once again, forcing him round the corner to the top of the next flight. Salvio glanced fearfully over his shoulder.
‘Now fuck off out my sight.’
Salvio immediately turned round, and without a word, started hobbling down the steps.
Before Jon got back to Zoe’s front door he could hear voices raised inside. Rick’s, then a female’s. He walked slowly down the corridor and looked in the last room on the left. A holdall was on the double bed and Zoe was stuffing clothes into it, eyes wild.
‘I can’t. I cannot do this.’
Jon spoke. ‘Salvio’s not coming back. Not ever.’
She looked at him for a second before ramming more clothes in. ‘I can’t be here. I can’t do it, not without Dave.’
‘Zoe,’ Rick implored. ‘Calm down. Try and think – Jake needs you.’
‘No!’ she yelled. ‘He doesn’t need me. I’m the last fucking thing he needs. He needs Dave, but Dave’s dead.’ She started pushing the last of her clothes into the bag, weeping as she did so.
Rick held both hands towards her. ‘Zoe, what will happen to
Jake if you walk out on him?’
She paused for a moment, then looked up at Jon. He felt a jolt go through him as her eyes bored into his. ‘You’re Dave’s brother, right? He talked about you. You’re Jake’s uncle and you’ve got kids.’ She leaned forward, dragged a file out from under the bed and thrust it at Jon. ‘Dave put that together. It’s got all Jake’s records from hospital and that. Dr Griffiths’ number, everything. Here.’
Jon looked at the file in her shaking hands.
‘You’ll look after him, right? I can’t. Not now, not on my own.’
‘Zoe,’ Rick pleaded. ‘Don’t leave, for God’s sake.’
Her eyes were still on Jon. ‘Here.’ He took the file without a word.
‘Zoe, let’s just sit down,’ Rick whispered.
She grabbed her holdall, squeezed past Jon and out into the corridor. With tears streaming down her face, she touched her fingertips against Jake’s door, turned to the right and vanished from Jon’s view.
‘Christ,’ Rick hissed, stepping round Jon and into the corridor. ‘Zoe, stop!’
‘Let her go.’
‘What?’
Jon looked at his partner, who was staring back at him, mouth half-open. ‘Let her go.’ He turned his head, eyes sweeping across the bedroom. Cracks of sunlight were now forcing their way round the gaps in the curtains, bathing the room in a warm glow.
Epilogue
Jon watched as his mum placed a crumpled plastic bag on the grass, then lowered one knee on to it. Tesco. Not for the first time the make of bag struck him as completely out of place. Maybe he should get her something more in keeping with their surroundings. Did any shop have black bags?
She took the bunch of withered flowers from the vase, lay them to one side and inserted fresh ones. Daffodils, bright and somehow alert as a light breeze played over the grave.
Jon regarded the headstone, hardly able to believe it had now stood there for several months.
‘David Paul Spicer. Born February, 1973 , died 17 April, 2006 . Aged 33 years. Sleep peacefully, our darling boy.’
His dad stepped forward, helping Mary back to her feet. Before standing fully, she swung an arm to scrape the plastic bag up, carefully folding the faded flowers into it. He watched his parents in silence. Their arms were now around each other and he thought they hadn’t seemed this close in a long time.
‘Lay-bir!’
His head moved to his right where Jake was crouched, finger pointing at the grass.
‘That’s right, ladybird,’ Ellie replied, bending forward with her hands between her knees. She gazed down at the top of the boy’s head, a dreamy look on her face.
‘O!’ Jake’s chin lifted and Jon could make out the insect’s blurred wings as it rose into the air. The creature vanished into the longer grass beneath a nearby bush and Jon’s gaze returned to Jake, still amazed at how closely he resembled Dave.
‘Fly away, ladybird,’ Ellie sang quietly. ‘Your house is on fire and your children are gone.’ She reached out a hand to stroke Jake’s hair.
‘Fly ’way lay-bir,’ he replied. Taking Ellie’s hand, he struggled to his feet. Slowly, she led him towards the gravel path. Jon realised that, as usual, his father had skirted round him without a word. The old man took his grandson’s other hand and the three of them set off for the cemetery gates, Jake tottering happily along in the middle as autumn sunlight threw their shadows far in front.
Fingers slid round the inside of his elbow and he looked down to see a hand, then an arm, being linked through his. ‘Bet it takes you back,’ he said. ‘Having a little one in the house all over again.’
There was a hint of sadness in his mother’s smile. ‘It does,’ she replied. ‘So much life makes me feel younger, too.’
Jon looked at Jake, and reflected on how his nephew now slept in the very same bedroom he’d occupied as a child. He thought of Ellie and her little flat, his own bed just a single mattress on the floor in her box room, his work shirts hanging from coat hooks along the picture rail.
A low honking sound and he looked up to see a V o
f Canada geese departing for their winter feeding grounds, slipstream of the older birds helping the younger ones along. Mary took a step forward. ‘Let’s find a bin for these.’
‘OK.’ And though he knew no one else was behind him, he couldn’t help look over his shoulder for Alice and Holly.
Author’s Note
While many issues are touched upon in this novel, that of the sad and obsessive characters who steal rare birds’ eggs is perhaps the most interesting.
However, I wouldn’t want anyone to overestimate the threat these people pose to Britain’s birds of prey. True, egg collectors do a lot of damage, but it is nothing compared to the slaughter committed by gamekeepers and others working for private shooting estates across Britain.
The Peak District National Park is one area that, due to large swathes of it being privately owned, has far fewer breeding birds of prey than it could support. In fact, it’s easier to see nesting peregrine falcons in the centre of Manchester than it is in the Peak District.
Tragically, the region could viably support numerous pairs of our most charismatic raptors – including hen harriers, goshawks, buzzards, red kites and peregrines. But, to protect populations of grouse, these birds of prey are illegally trapped, poisoned or shot – and their nests destroyed – whenever they try to colonise certain areas within the National Park.
To read more about the issue, visit the RSPB’s website: www. rspb.org.uk. Along with details of their campaign to protect our birds of prey, you’ll find a fascinating report on criminal activity in the National Park, entitled ‘Peak Malpractice’.
On the subject of national parks, the idea for Dave’s murder is based on a real-life case that occurred in Exmoor’s National Park in March, 2002. The body was that of a dark-haired man in his twenties. His identity, and that of his murderer, remain unknown.
Acknowledgements
For expertly guiding this novel through its stumbling first drafts, my gratitude to Stephanie and Jane at Gregory & Company and then Jon at Orion – ably backed, as ever, by Jade and the rest of the team.
It always surprises me how people are so willing to give up time to some weirdo who contacts them out of the blue with strange and disturbing research requests. For this book, thanks go to:
Guy Shorrock – Chief Investigations Officer, the RSPB.
Janet Fiddler – midwife, Stepping Hill hospital.
Darren Kilroy – A & E Consultant, Stepping Hill hospital.
Andy Timmis – the Cheshire Falconry Centre.
The staff at the National Park visitor centre, Edale.
Juanita Bullough from the Eagle Eye Inc.
Nessy, for your Morse-like knowledge.
Any inaccuracies were either made for dramatic purposes, or are mistakes on my part.
The ideas behind the story
This was, in many ways, a strange novel to write.
Parts of the plot had been floating around my head for a while, waiting for the right story to come along. Without giving too much away, that includes the elusive egg-collector who, DI Spicer believes, is key to the investigation.
Egg-collectors – those strange individuals who scale trees and cliffs to strip the nests of rare birds – are a peculiarly British lot. (A hang-over, apparently, from the days of empire when oologists would scour colonial territories collecting samples.) My research into these people led me to the RSBP’s chief investigation officer. He enlightened me as to how what often starts as a boyhood hobby often comes to exert a dark and all-consuming power over the collector’s life.
Part of the plot that evolved as I wrote the story was the plight of Zoe, the murder victim’s girlfriend. I really liked the idea of having DI Spicer believe there was a second character out there, who he suspects is also key to the investigation. In Zoe’s case, she is trapped in a flat high up in a derelict tower block. With no phone, no neighbours and the estate’s gang trying to track her down, she if effectively a prisoner.
I called the book The Edge to hint at a central theme of the novel: heights. Much of the action takes place dangerously close to some very big drops – a warning for any reader who might suffer from vertigo…
Cut Adrift - Prologue
Graceful and white, the sheet of sea water rose above the bow of the ship and was shredded by the wind. Instants later the haze of droplets struck the windscreen of the bridge, filling it with a sound like wet cement hitting the inside of a mixer. All visibility momentarily lost, the vessel continued its sickening lurch and the man gripping the metal railing felt the same fear as when his torturers’ footsteps used to halt outside his cell.
Then the wiper swept the sliding layer of liquid from the glass and he glimpsed sky again. He lifted his fingers to the network of thin scars that encircled his throat. The skin had been left to heal badly, the tissue so heavily puckered in places it seemed to drag the corners of his mouth down to expose a jagged row of lower teeth. ‘How far west do you intend to go?’
Keeping both hands on the ship’s wheel, the master glanced at the radar screen. ‘As far as I need to avoid that whore of a storm.’
To their right, a black anvil of cloud pressed down on the horizon. Snakes of foam had begun to streak the sea around the ship and every time a crest formed, its tip appeared to smoke in the gathering gale.
The man’s fingers lowered from his ruined throat. ‘And we’re already six hours outside the shipping lane?’
‘At least.’
‘So this will cost us a full day, maybe more?’
‘Better that,’ the master replied, ‘than we sail into the vicious bitch over there. See? There is already movement on the containers up on deck. I can’t afford to have any go over the side.’
Cursing, the man braced himself as the ship now began to roll sideways. They’d been delayed by almost two days getting through the Suez Canal. Now this. The people in America who awaited their arrival would not be happy.
A chair, broken free of its restraining clips, rolled across the gleaming floor to bump into the backs of his legs. He kicked at it, sending it crashing over on its side.
Below them, sea water that had been sloshing aimlessly around the deck began streaming to starboard as the heel of the vessel increased. But, before it could pour from the ship’s deck, another wave hit. Vapour exploded up then was whipped towards the bridge as if being sucked into the vent of a monstrous machine. Their view of the forty-foot metal containers lined up across the deck disappeared. Then, as the wiper swept back across the glass, the man blinked with astonishment. He could see two women. Wearing jeans and thin tops, they clung to the corner of a container, hair whipping about as they waved frantically at the bridge with their free hands.
The man’s thick eyebrows bunched, forming a solid line across his brow. ‘What . . . ?’
Beside him, the master’s face turned white.
A mass of cardboard boxes appeared from nowhere and began washing about the deck. A third woman appeared from one of the narrow gaps running between the rows of containers, this one clutching a suitcase. Several of the wooden pallets on which freight was placed inside the containers glided into view, followed by a mass of yellow objects. Ducks. Hundreds and hundreds of grinning plastic ducks.
‘The doors to one of the containers must have come loose.’
‘Come loose?’ The man turned to the master, fury thickening his voice. ‘How many people have you got down there?’
‘Me? They’re not mine.’
‘Whose, then?’
‘Mykosowski. He gave the instructions.’
‘Mykosowski?’ The man thought about the ship’s owner, probably sitting in his London office and contemplating how much money he’d make this month. The stupid, greedy bastard.
‘How many?’
The master’s cheeks puffed out momentarily, air escaping from his lips with a fleshy pop. ‘Just under fifty.’
‘In one container?’
‘Two. About twenty women in one, all the men in another.’
‘Where did you pick them up?’
‘Karachi.’
‘Pakistan? They were already on-board when you docked at Umm Qasr?’
The master nodded. ‘Once we were clear of Iraqi waters, they were moved to a pair of containers up on deck.’
‘Where are they going?’
‘The deal is to drop them off the British coast before we dock at Felixstowe.’
Bottom teeth exposed in a silent snarl, the man glanced down once more. The deck was now completely covered in a bright yellow layer of ducks, dozens cascading into the sea, boxes and wooden pallets following them. More heads were now peeping from between the rows of containers. Arabs. Possibly Chinese. A man wearing a Pakistani shalwar stepped forward, waving a lit distress flare above his head.
Nervously, the master of the ship ran a hand over his mouth. ‘They’ve opened the other container. Shit.’
Several cardboard boxes had split open, leaking bunches of skipping ropes. They washed about among the ducks like the tentacles of ocean creatures seeking prey.
The man slammed a fist against the side of an anglepoise lamp, sending it swinging on its hinge into the console. The bulb inside shattered and shards of glass fell onto the master’s chart. ‘Drop them off in what?’
‘There’s a lifeboat in each container. No markings, nothing to link them to this ship once we set them down. After we were well clear, they were meant to light those distress flares—’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘What?’
‘Are there any other ships nearby?’
The master examined the radar once again. ‘No. We’re on our own out here.’
‘Slow the ship down and bring her round.’ He turned to a shaven-headed man who had, until that moment, been standing silently by the door to the bridge, back pressed against the wall, knees slightly flexed in readiness for the ship’s roll. The top of one of his ears was missing. ‘Marat, get the others. Put your wet-weather gear on and meet me on the forward deck.’