The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller (39 page)

“We don’t have enough fuel to fly around thinking about it. And we can’t explain. We can’t land with… We can’t land with that. We have to go through with the plan.”

“What do we do about Jesse?” Natalie’s voice was flat and empty of emotion.

Dave didn’t answer.

“Are you going to convince me to kill him too?”

They flew onwards for another ten minutes, the only sounds over the wind and engine was the sound of Natalie’s sobbing. Eventually Dave interrupted her.
 

“Look I don’t know what to say Natalie. I don’t know what to think. But we’ve got to deal with the situation we’re in now. We’ve got to stick with the plan. There’s no choice.”

She turned to look at him, streaks of tears still visible on her face. She couldn’t speak but she managed to nod.
 

Dave took one hand from the controls and wiped his brow, leaving his hand there as if he just wanted to shield his eyes from what they were witnessing. “There.” He pointed to the seat next to where John Buckingham’s body was.
 

At first she didn’t understand, but then she realised that he was telling her to get on with it. Without speaking she knelt down on the floor of the cabin and, with two hands, began to drag Dave’s bag out from under the seat. When it was free she unzipped the top and looked inside. It contained lead weight belts, the kind used by divers.

“You’re going to need to slip them around his waist, one by one. They’re heavy, be careful.”
 

Without a word Natalie pulled out the first belt, thick black webbing threaded with four dull silvery weights, each two kilograms. The way Buckingham’s body was leaning against the window there was a gap between the small of his back and the seat and it was easier than she feared to pass one end of the belt through the gap and around his stomach. Then she pulled the belt tight around him and buckled it up.
 

“Put them all on,” said Dave from the front. “I’ve read there’s something about gas that makes them float after a while. We don’t want that happening.”

She pulled two of the other belts out and did the same but there wasn’t room for the final one.

“Do his legs. Put it around both of his legs. That’ll be fine.”

 
“I am Dave. I bloody am OK?” She did so, and when she was finished she sat back and stared at what she’d done.
 

“OK,” Dave said. “Now hook your arm through the seatbelt. When he goes the weight will shift. The autopilot might not keep it stable.”

Without replying Natalie threaded one of her arms through the straps in the seat next to Buckingham.

“OK,” she said again.

Dave looked around until he was satisfied the horizon was empty. Then he flicked a switch down and sat for a moment with his hands above the controls, not touching them. Then he carefully climbed out of his seat and squeezed through the gap into the rear cabin.
 

“Let’s do it,” he said.
 

She looked into John Buckingham’s face as he reached across to pull open the door. The skin had gone very pale and the eyes were still open, the mouth as well, in a way that looked as if he were about to speak, but his chest was still, there was no breath moving in and out of the body.
 

Dave slid the door open. The noise of the engines flooded in, and thick wet air was forced into the cabin. Natalie recoiled from the opening and the drop below, she was glad Dave had made her hook her arm through the seatbelt. Together they pushed, only needing to roll the body over towards the door before gravity took over and pulled it out and away. The helicopter rocked first one way then the other, so they saw the last part of the fall. The arms and legs tumbling, spinning so that the head was going to hit the water first. It hit in a trough between swells, a strange white splash on the blue-back surface of the ocean. It sank at once but left a residue for a few moments before the action of the wind and the waves caused it to fade away. And then that too was gone.
 

Dave chucked all the food out afterwards. He emptied the champagne bottle out of the open door, then tossed the bottle down, and then did the same with the coffee flask. It might have looked odd had they landed with no supplies, so they had others, not laced with poison. Then he slid the door back closed, and the noise and buffeting disappeared. Dave flew the chopper north, back towards the path they would have flown had they ever intended to travel to Ireland. Then twenty minutes later he took a deep breath, and flicked open the radio channel.
 

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.” He gave the tail number and position. He said that their passenger had just jumped out. He told the Coastguard they were holding position over where the man had hit the water but there was no sign of him. They stayed for there for half an hour, talking intermittently on the radio until a Sea King took over. Then they headed back to Bristol.
 

They were met by two police officers. They both gave a statement, separately. It wasn’t hard to make sure they matched up. John Buckingham had said nothing other than a polite greeting. Neither of them had noticed him slipping out of his seat belt. They’d both looked around when they heard the door opening. No. There was no chance to stop him. No. He hadn’t say a word. Could it have been an accident? It didn’t look like one. It looked like he jumped. Any idea why? No. None at all. It didn’t take much to look shook up. That came naturally.

epilogue

I’M SITTING ON my board in the clearest water in the world watching Darren pick off a small wave. We’re over a coral reef, a few hundred metres out from a beach where palm trees are swaying in the morning offshore. There’s a bar there. Just a few tables really, and a fridge packed with beer, but it faces the ocean and it’s right on the break. I can just make it out when the waves go flat.
 

It’s warm. Warm enough that I’m just wearing shorts, and I can feel the salt drying on my back, pulling my bare skin tight. It does rain here, but not like Wales. And I don’t think it’s going to rain today.
 

We’ll surf for a couple of hours and then go in. We’ve both got things to do before we open up. I’ve got a few investments to check. After that, well, we’ve both got girlfriends here and I was planning on spending the afternoon with mine. They’re local girls, dark skin, dark hair. Young. Mine’s the prettier one but the funny thing is, they both cost the same.

We won’t open up until it gets dark. We could do. But I’m not in it for the money. No point killing ourselves.

What happened next I’m guessing from what got reported in the papers. It was quite a story for a few days. Not really because of John. Businessmen kill themselves all the time. Deals go wrong. Shit happens. It’s hardly news.

No, it was the Sienna angle that made it newsworthy. Heartbreak for Hollywood’s golden girl. Lots of opportunities to print more pictures of her looking sad. Sad with her cleavage hanging out. Sad in skimpy shorts. She looked pretty good sad. There was suspicion too at first. Not that she was involved, no one suspected John’s death was anything but suicide. But some people wondered if she’d been a little bit of a naughty girl and that had pushed John over the edge, so to speak. No one seemed to suspect the pilot of the helicopter had the slightest thing to do with it. Why would they? Suited me just fine though. If I ever run out of cash I’ve got a number to call.
 

And her heartbreak didn’t last too long. No reason why it would of course, it’s not like there was anything special about John. Not really. And a few months later she was photographed being consoled by her Hollywood co-star in the Caribbean. Sad in a bikini. Actually scrub that. She didn’t look sad. It was just her in a bikini and a ‘steamy embrace’. And the publicity was great for the film. It was a big hit. I watch it most days.
 

But I can’t talk any more. Darren’s paddling out again. I shout out to him and he smiles at me. He always smiles at me when I call him Darren. And I only do call him that since I can’t pronounce his real name. He turns around as soon as he reaches me and takes another wave in. It’s funny really because that’s just what the real Darren would have done. It’s a shame in a way. He’d have loved it out here.

 
Thank you for reading
The Wave at Hanging Rock
. I hope you liked it.

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Thank you again for reading!

Gregg Dunnett

September 2016

acknowledgments

I never thought I’d write an acknowledgements page for this book, not unless it got published properly. It just seemed a bit pretentious. But as time went on I realised there was quite a long list of people who helped to get it into a publishable state, whether that was the self publishing or traditional route. And so it would be wrong for me not to acknowledge them, even if it made me end up looking a bit self-congratulatory. Plus, I realised, an acknowledgments page gave me the advantage of spreading out the blame for those people who didn’t think the book was any good. With that seed firmly planted, here goes:
 

First those kind people who agreed to read an early version. Jane Lavery, Jenefer Roberts, Colin Bainbridge, Helen Gleed, Maria Lopez & Lucy Clarke. Particularly Lucy, who tore the early manuscript to pieces, but told me how to put it back together again so that it made sense. Lucy knew how to do this because she’s a real, properly published novelist with four brilliant books selling around the world. That’s invaluable, inspirational help to an amateur like me. If you’ve not come across her books yet, check her out at www.lucy-clarke.com

 
Also deserving of a special mention is Jane, whose enthusiasm was infectious, and encouragement relentless. Thank you Jane. Later readers were Ian Leonard, Colin Bainbridge (again), Jono Dunnett, Alun Williams, Sue Williams, Tez Plavenieks, and Maria Lopez (again). Thank you all for wading through and pointing out the many bad bits that still remained.
 

Thanks to Rob Earp for all the work in putting the cover together and designing my website. Thank you to Jono for building the website and all the other bits that independent authors need these days, like decking. It all looks so professional I’m counting that no one will notice the book’s only average, at best.
 

Thank you to Maria & Allegra for your proofreading eyes. I re-inserted a few typos once you were done just to make you doubt yourselves…

And finally to you if you’ve read this far. Thank you for being one of my early readers and I hope you liked it.

about the author

Gregg Dunnett worked as Staff Writer and Photographer for the best-selling windsurfing magazine Boards for nearly ten years. He was sent around the world testing equipment and reporting on competitions and locations. Eventually Boards went bust, which wasn't entirely his fault, and he eventually turned to writing novels instead. His first to be released is
The Wave at Hanging Rock.

He lives on the UK’s south coast with his Spanish partner Maria and their two young children.

Gregg on why he writes:

"I’ve always wanted to do two things in life, to write, and to have adventures. When I was a kid I imagined grand affairs. Kayaking across Canada, cycling to Australia. Whole summers in the Arctic. Did it happen? Well, partly.
 

I’ve been lucky, I spent some years abroad teaching English. I worked in sailing schools in Greece and Spain. I really lucked out with a job testing windsurfing boards for the magazine I grew up reading. I made a questionable decision (ok, a bad decision) to buy a windsurfing centre in Egypt. I’ve also done my fair share of less exciting jobs. Packing and stacking potatoes on a farm, which got me fitter than I’ve ever been in my life. I did a few years in local government which taught me that people really do have meetings that result only in the need for more meetings, and they really do take all afternoon. I spent a pleasant few months in a giant book warehouse, where I would deliberately get lost among the miles of shelves unpacking travel guides and daydreaming. I’ve done a bit of writing too, at least I learned how to write. Boards Magazine isn’t well known (it doesn’t even exist today) but it did have a reputation for being well written and I shoe-horned articles in my own gonzo journalism style on some topics with the most tenuous of links to windsurfing. But the real adventures never came. Nor did the real writing.
 

Then last year, my brother announced he was going to become the first person to windsurf alone around Great Britain. I don’t know why. Apparently it was something he’d always wanted to do (news to me.). It was a proper adventure. It was dangerous, it was exciting. Even just talking about it he got on TV, in the papers. Some people thought he was reckless, some thought he was inspirational. Lots of people thought he’d fail.

But he didn’t. He made it around. He even sailed solo from Wales to Ireland, the first to make the crossing without the aid of a safety boat. I was lucky enough to be involved in a superficial planning level, and take part in a few training sails, and the last leg of the trip. But he did ninety nine percent of it on his own. One step at a time, just getting on with it. That was quite inspiring.
 

In a way it inspired me to pull my finger out. I’d been writing novels - or trying to write novels - then for a few years. But it was touch and go as to whether I was going to be one of those ‘writers’ with a half-finished novel lost on a hard drive somewhere, rather than someone who might actually manage to finish the job.