The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller (32 page)

At first I didn’t think he was serious. It was so stupid, but I knew him too well. It made sense to him.

“How can we go to the police? When we were involved? They’ll put us in prison too.”

He shook his head. “Not if we both tell them the same story, that we saw John do it, then they’d put him in prison. We’d be on the witness protection scheme or something.”

I looked at him, sitting there leaning forward over the table. “So you want to blackmail John?”

He looked surprised by this, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that what he was suggesting might have a name. Then he nodded.
 

“Blackmail. Yeah. That’s right.”

I stayed quiet.

“And he’ll do it, he’ll pay us Jesse. He’ll have to, cos of all the things he would lose.”

Still I didn’t answer him.

“And just think what we could do with money Jesse. We could go away. We could move out to Indonesia or something, just you and me. We could open a bar by the beach. Just you and me Jesse.”

But I just got up and went to bed.

forty

I SHOULD TELL you something about Darren’s bar. According to him, that’s what we were saving for. He’d read a story in a magazine once about two guys who moved to Indonesia and opened a beach bar. They went surfing in the days, and they worked at the bar every night. He’d been going on about it for years. How we’d surf these tropical waves, and serve cold beers to beautiful girls all night. Sometimes he’d even adjust the daydream to allow Angel to fit in with it. In his fantasy she wasn’t allowed behind the bar, but he could just about cope with the idea of her wiping the tables down.
 

Sometimes I went along with the daydream, but other times I told him to get real. You had to have loads of money to do something like that. I never had any money, and even though he was working, he never actually saved anything. Whatever he got paid from the garage he spent right away in the pub or in the off-licence. Darren’s Indonesian bar fantasy was just that, a fantasy, and at first I figured his blackmail idea fell into the same category.
 

 
But I also figured that with Mum gone, quite a lot was going to change. It’s not like I wanted Mum to die or anything, but now she was gone the campsite was mine. Which meant I could sell it and do something else. Don’t think for a minute I ever seriously considered Indonesia, but I did think I could do something with my life. Maybe I could follow John’s path and go to London. Anything to get me out of Llanwindus. But I got a nasty shock a few days later. I looked through the accounts of the campsite. And even though I wasn’t great at maths I could see it wasn’t that good. I finally understood why Mum had climbed into her overalls to sort out the drains instead of phoning a plumber for all those years. Ten years after she’d bought the place, we still owed more on the campsite than it was worth.
 

If that was depressing, it quickly got worse. With Mum gone the work began to pile up pretty quick. For a while I did what I could, but it was impossible. I was running the shop and checking the campers in and out, while Angel was padding round in her bare feet, puffing on a joint and helping herself from the shelves. There was the grass to cut, all the stock taking, the fucking showers that never ran hot. And you’ve got to remember I was the owner of the site by then. I wasn’t going to be the one cleaning the toilets too. Anyway, we seemed to get a run of people who just complained all the time, so one day I just closed the gates and didn’t let anyone else in.
 

Except Darren. He kept coming. And whenever Angel was out of earshot he never let up on his new idea.

He tried to draft the blackmail letter. He showed it to me and I could see it was hopeless. He wasn’t completely illiterate, but writing wasn’t his strength, and this wasn’t the sort of letter where you could get help at the local library. But even allowing for all the mistakes he’d made, there was something convincing about the letter. When I managed to understand Darren’s points at justifying
why
John owed us so much. I had to admit, it made sense. We
had
helped John a lot that day, and it
was
all John’s fault. And unlike him for some reason we hadn’t been able to shake it off so easily. It
had
affected us. We’d both fucked up our exams soon after it happened, it’s hard to concentrate on history when you’re worried the police are going to arrest you for murder any minute. John did owe us something for that. And now John had so much. And we weren’t asking for a fortune. Just enough to get us set up somewhere. Make a fresh start. Then John could forget about us. He wouldn’t have to worry about how we were getting on. It made sense when you thought about it.
 

And on top of all that I also figured out that if
I
didn’t help Darren write his letter, then he’d eventually get someone else to help him. He’d promise someone from the garage or the pub a share of the money, cos he was easily stupid enough to do that. And if I let that happen we could lose control of the whole situation real quick. And I suppose I thought that if Darren was going to get some money, then I should get some. That was only right. That was only fair. After all I drove the car for John. I helped him more than Darren did. So in the end, I didn’t really have a choice. I guess that’s how I ended up helping Darren to write his blackmail letter.
 

Darren agreed to have it all done in his name. He even wanted it that way. Since Mum had died it was like he wanted John to know how much he hated him. He really wanted John to believe it was just Darren screwing him over. Like he was smart enough to do that. That was fine with me, but when I looked John up on the internet and found out how much he was worth, I told Darren we had to ask for more money. And he was OK with that too.
 

It felt quite exciting the night we finished the letter and put it in the envelope. I wrote his name on the front and then added
strictly private and confidential, to be opened only by Mr John Buckingham
underneath. I underlined the
only
three times to make sure it went right to him. We took it to the postbox in the village and bought eight cans of beer to celebrate. Darren spent the night talking about how we were finally going to Indonesia. For a little while I started to believe it too.
 

The letter was pretty simple. It told John to pay the money directly into Darren’s account, a one-off payment to buy his silence for helping to cover up his crime. If John didn’t pay, Darren would go to the police and tell them everything. But we were convinced he would pay. And when he did, Darren would give half to me. I’d tell Angel the money came from the campsite. She didn’t know it was in debt at that point.
 

Every night that week we checked Darren’s account on the internet, each time expecting to see the money showing up, but each night it was the same, a few hundred quid in credit, and just a few transactions. Twenty quid at the off-licence or at the Spar. Darren thought the letter might have got lost in the post. I started to worry something else might have happened.
 

Then John made his move. One night Darren didn’t come around. He practically lived at the campsite by then, so I had to phone his house to see where he was. His mum answered the phone. She was in tears but she managed to tell me. Darren’s brother had been killed. He’d got into a knife fight near a club in Cardiff. A knife fight for fuck’s sake. Darren’s brother the pacifist. The vegetarian. The biggest pussy you could ever meet. There was no way he’d got into a knife fight. It was John. This was John giving his answer to Darren. He must have slipped out into the city night and stalked Darren’s brother until he left some night club, then pulled him into an alleyway and stabbed him over and over again.

But that wasn’t enough for John. I got a message too. Since I’d been a bit closer to Darren for a couple of weeks Angel had been a bit pissed off with me and she’d gone back to her flat. The same day I heard about Darren’s brother I got a call from Megan, Angel’s housemate. She’d never called me before so I knew it had to be bad news. And it was. There was a scummy little park near their flat, and sometimes people used the toilets there to inject. Not Angel, she was never into heroin. She wasn’t a junkie or anything like that. But that’s where they found her anyway. She was on the floor in a cubicle, the needle was still stuck in her arm, the plunger pressed in. For once her blue lips were nothing to do with make up.
 

There was nothing to connect the two deaths. At least nothing we could tell the police. But we knew it was him. The knife he stabbed Ben with had an eight inch blade. It was a hunting knife, just like the one John had used at Hanging Rock all those years ago. I don’t know, maybe it was even the same knife. There were no fingerprints, no other evidence, no witnesses. He must have gone from there straight to see Angel. We never told her what John was really like so it would have been easy for him to get her to follow him. I don’t know how he got her to take the drugs, probably he just forced her. The toilet cubicle was open at the top, so once he’d done it he could have just climbed out. But the police didn’t accept that, they said that because the door was locked it must have been an accidental overdose. They didn’t care really. Good riddance. To them she was just another fucked up junkie kid from a care home. To me she was my only chance of ever getting away from John.

forty-one

“THAT WAS SIX months ago. It was when I finally realised what John was. The kind of person he really was. He’s not like other people. He doesn’t have the limits other people have.” Jesse shook his head, as if he still couldn’t quite believe it. “It’s like something out of the movies.”

The others said nothing, and after a moment Jesse went on. “I still think the guy at Hanging Rock - your husband,” he glanced at Natalie, “I still think he was the first, but I know he’s killed others since then, not just Angel and Ben but others as well. He likes it. It’s how he gets his kicks. If you go after him you’ll make yourself a target. He’ll hurt you too.”
 

Jesse sat back against his chair and it took them a moment to realise he’d finished.

“Well?” Dave spoke finally. He still sounded angry. “Is that it?”

“Yeah. That’s about where we are.”

“Well I’m sorry. I’m sorry to hear about all that’s happened to you, but this doesn’t change anything. We still have to call the police. Right now.” But as sure as he sounded, he didn’t touch the phone, instead he glanced over at Natalie. She didn’t look back, her eyes seemed to be focussing on a small point on the far wall.

Jesse sighed, even rolled his eyes a little bit. But he sounded defeated.

“OK. Whatever. I guess it’s your choice. I’m only trying to help.” He gave Dave a weak smile.

“Whatever he’ll do, maybe you can deal with it. You know?”

Dave glared at him and picked up his phone but he hesitated again.

“I just thought she’d want to know. What with her sister’s kids and all.” Jesse went on.

Dave’s head snapped back around to Jesse. “You say that again I’m going to wring your filthy neck.”

“Christ man, calm down. Shoot the messenger and all. I’m just trying to explain it to you.” Jesse had his hands out in front of him, palms up.
 

“Sometimes I want to tell the police too. I want to find a way to end this nightmare. But then I think a bit more and I know I can’t. The police won’t believe me, they won’t do anything to him, and he’ll just punish me more. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll just kill me. Maybe it won’t even hurt too much. But there’s other people. Darren, his mum and dad. John knows all about them. And if he wants to hurt me more, there’s plenty of ways. And he won’t hesitate. He doesn’t
fuck around
. Don’t you understand what I’ve been telling you?” Jesse’s eyes were staring at Dave. Pleading with him, it calmed them both down.

“Look, Mr… Jesse. I understand the situation perfectly. But we cannot let a threat stop us doing the right thing - this is a police matter. I mean how do you think this is supposed to end?”

For a moment Jesse said nothing, then his shoulders slumped, and it looked like he might cry. “You’re still not getting it. It’s not just me now, is it? Her sister and the…”
 

Dave cut in quickly. “I don’t think you should say that again. It’s preposterous.”

“What am I gonna say?”

“You’re going to spout some nonsense about Natalie’s family being in danger, but it’s ludicrous.”

Jesse opened his mouth but didn’t speak. Instead his tongue explored his teeth.
 

“He came to my house,” Natalie said. Neither of them could tell who she was speaking to.

“After they killed Jim he came to my house and watched me. What did you say he called it? Insurance.”

Jesse nodded, not taking his eyes off Dave.

There was a long silence. Eventually Jesse broke it.
 

“Let’s try it your way. You tell the police. What are they going to do? If you manage to convince them you’re not mad they
might
go and interview John Buckingham, successful businessman with a famous girlfriend. They might politely ask his side of the story. Maybe they’ll show him photographs like you’ve shown me. Does he know Jim Harrison? He’ll say he’s never heard of him, and he’ll be convincing because believe me he can be
fucking convincing
when he lies to you. Maybe he’ll call his lawyers, expensive lawyers. Maybe it’ll all be so friendly he won’t even need to. And when the police walk away, he’ll get to work. I don’t know that he’ll start with the kids. Maybe he won’t. Maybe he won’t fuck around this time and he’ll just kill us all. Move on. But I doubt it. I know John and that’s not the way he works. I think he’d enjoy himself. I think he’d find where they go to school. I think he’d lure them into his car, or an old van. I think he’d gag them, tie them up. I think he’d make sure they knew they were going to die, he’d show them the knife, he’d stick it in slowly and…”