The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller (7 page)

“Aren’t we going to an airport?” Natalie said.

“No need,” Jim replied and as if to show what he meant he swung the helicopter around so that Natalie’s window was looking almost straight down at the beach below her. Then they levelled off and descended towards the lawn of the building, she went from seeing only its roof to seeing it from ground level, an impressive white-painted building, like a country house. And then with the lightest of bumps the skids of the helicopter found the lawn and then the whole weight of the machine was pushing into the grass. They stopped moving and became a part of the normal world again.

The restaurant was obviously expensive, the tablecloth was thick and heavy, the cutlery shone. The cream walls were minimally decorated with abstract art, perhaps to not distract too much from the view out of the windows, where small waves lapped against the shore. But to Natalie it was the helicopter that stood out most, sat on the middle of the lawn, a constant reminder that this was really happening.
 

A man in a white dinner jacket showed them to a table. He seemed to know Jim. Despite his dress he wasn’t at all formal, they exchanged jokes, him in a lilting accent that sounded fake at first it was so absurdly Irish. He complimented her without embarrassment.
 

“I’ve been out here a few times before,” Jim explained once the waiter had settled them in and retreated. “Clients. They come out here to impress their girlfriends. They spend all evening telling them how good the breakfasts are. Can you believe anyone would fall for that?”

She hadn’t let herself think about getting home until then. But as he spoke she wondered if she was just the latest woman to sit opposite this man, totally at his mercy. She felt a flush of indignation at becoming ensnared in a situation to his advantage.
 

“Red or white?”

“Sorry?”

“The wine. They say you’re supposed to have white with fish, but I say have what you like. It’s not like anyone’s watching.”

“White.”

“Good choice.”

The waiter came back at the signal from Jim and after a serious discussion, walked smartly away to fetch a bottle.
 

“So does it always work?”

His frown showed she’d lost him.

“Your
clients
, getting you to fly them out here with their girlfriends. Does it always work for them? Do the women always stay for breakfast?” She smiled at her emphasis on the word, to show him she didn’t believe for a moment they were really clients.
 

He thought for a moment then broke out into a smile. “You don’t believe me do you? I really have only ever been here with clients. I usually get to sit in the bar, drinking mineral water, just in case it doesn’t go well for them. That’s how I know Sean so well. We’re the only people here not pissed by midnight.” He smiled at her then went on. “Drinking and flying, there’s no police up there but it’s still not the done thing.”

The waiter returned with a silver bucket, the neck of a wine bottle poking out from its bed of crushed ice. He pulled the cork with no fuss and poured a small amount into Natalie’s glass for her to try. It was delicious and she said so. The waiter filled her glass then looked to Jim’s, but he placed his hand over the glass so that it remained empty. With a nod the waiter settled the bottle back into its bucket and retreated again.
 

“But to answer your question, I’ve flown three clients out here. And I’ve had three breakfasts. They really are good.”

Natalie suddenly didn’t care if he was lying. She laughed out loud, then reached over and picked up the bottle. At first she made it look as if she just wanted to read the label, but then she rested its neck against the rim of Jim’s glass and watched as the wine flowed out.
 

 
“They better be.”

eleven

IT WAS LATE summer, nearly two years had gone by since I moved to Wales and we were fishing from the pier. We were going for flat fish - flatties we called them cos that’s what they were back home in Oz. We had a couple of crab lines down to get bait. We didn’t fish that often, only when there was nothing else to do, but it was that sort of a day - grey, a bit windy, the ground boggy and soaked from rain. Crabs were easy to catch. First you had to climb down the rusty iron ladder on the side of the pier and twist off a few big juicy mussels from the thick wooden legs, then grab a rock and smash them open until the orangey-yellow meat was exposed, bits of iridescent-blue mussel shell tearing into it and releasing the juices. Then tie that to a line and drop it down. The crabs were quick to find it, you only had to wait a minute or so, and they were so stupid they would hold onto the smashed mussel even when you pulled them up out of the water and onto the pier. Even if the wind caught them and knocked them into the pier legs, the crabs would still try their best to hold on. I didn’t much like the next bit.
 

It was ok to smash mussels up, I know they’re alive really, but in a way they’re not. Killing them was like smashing a nut or something. The crabs were different. They’ve got little eyes on stalks that watch you, and they’ll scuttle away and hide in a corner if you don’t hold onto them. But fresh crab meat was the best way to catch flatties, and you had to kill the crabs to get it.
 

Darren was the best at killing crabs. His brother taught him the technique. He was down in Swansea, training to be a vet, and he was a vegetarian. The technique was to hold the crab by the outside of its shell and quickly stab the knife down between the two eyes then give it a little twist. The legs would kick and clatter on the deck for a bit, but you could tell it was dead right away, and once it wasn’t moving it was much easier to cut up, or if it was a little one, to just thread a hook straight through it. Then you could cast it out and although you maybe still felt a little bit guilty, you knew it was out there helping to attract a flattie which you were gonna eat. So that was OK. Even so I was happy enough for Darren to do the killing.

We’d been there maybe half an hour and I’d climbed down to get the mussels and was putting my shoes back on while John and me watched Darren pulling up his crab line. There was one crab on the end, quite a big one, pretty feisty. It was holding on to the bait with one pincer and waving the other in the air like it was warning us to stay back, like it was a dangerous predator or something. With his arms outstretched, Darren swung the line over the side onto the pier decking then gave it a jerk to make the crab fall off. It didn’t have far to fall and landed upright, now with both its pincers waving in the air. Darren used the blade on its flat side to hold the crab in place, while he got in a comfortable position to dispatch it.

“Why do you always do it like that?” John asked, from where he was sitting with his back to the wall.
 

“I told you. Ben told me to do it this way. It hurts them less.” For some reason John often got a bit annoyed when Darren mentioned his brother.
 

“Still hurts though, having that knife stuck in your head.”

“Yeah but not for as long. You don’t want them to suffer.”

“It’s only a crab. What does it matter?”

“It’s just better this way,” said Darren. Ben was nine years older than us and only John ever thought to question the wisdom those extra years brought.
 

“Maybe it makes them better bait?” I said. I’d learnt by then the warning signs for John’s moods, but not how to ward them off. “I mean maybe they release some chemicals or something if they’re in pain that puts the flatties off.”
 

“More likely to be the other way round if you ask me,” said John, and he scrambled to his feet.
 

“I mean, think about it. If you’re a flattie, you’re going to want to eat injured crabs in the sea, cos you’re less likely to get pinched on the fin or something, so you’re going to want to sniff out those injured chemicals.”

Darren looked troubled by this. He was still holding the crab down with the knife, the blade bending under the pressure he needed to use, the crab slowly flexing the legs it could still move.
 

“I think it’s more to do with just not being unfair to the crabs,” he said. “Ben says you should try and make them not suffer.” He made no move to kill the crab. It was like he knew what was coming and was powerless to stop it.
 

John said nothing but he crouched down low right in front of the crab and stared at it for a long time. Despite its situation it was still trying to eat a morsel of mussel flesh that it had ripped off from the line.
 

“Doesn’t look too worried to me. Look, it’s still trying to eat.”

We only had two fishing rods, John’s was the best one with a good casting reel. Darren’s was a bit old and knackered. I think it used to be his brothers. Mum didn’t have enough money to buy me a rod.
 

“I know,” said John, still crouched down in front of the crab. “Let’s test Jesse’s idea. Pull up the other crab line Jesse, get another crab. We’ll put Darren’s injured crab here on one rod and a dead one on the other, and we can see which is better at catching fish.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” I protested.

“Yeah it was.” The way John said it was all magnanimous, as if he was too generous to take the credit himself. I wanted to argue but I didn’t. Instead I moved over to the second crab line and tugged it gently. It felt heavier than just the mussel so I knew there was another crab on it. For a moment I considered pretending I hadn’t caught anything, but I felt John watching me.
 

“That’s it, pull it up,” he said.

I did so and when the bait broke free of the water there was another crab attached, clinging on with its back legs while its pincers delicately fed it morsels of mussel meat.
 

“That’ll do, bring it up here and kill it Jesse. Darren can injure his one a bit.”

You might wonder - with me saying this now - why didn’t we see John for what he really was back then? Why didn’t we get the hell away? The truth is I don’t know the answer, I’m just telling you how it happened. And it’s not like John was a monster, at the time it felt more like he just hated limits, wherever they were. He would search out our limits and push them, test them, force us to go beyond what we were comfortable with. It wasn’t just killing crabs. It was jumping off cliffs, he’d make us go higher, it was diving down to explore the rocks when the sea was still, and when there were waves it was making sure we were all looking for the biggest one, or the gnarliest one. Whatever we did he was always pushing us, and that felt… I don’t know, intoxicating. He charged the air around him with this charm and energy. We were addicted to just being near him. Because he made us better people. At least that’s what he somehow made us believe.
 

“Come on, you can do it. Here.” John often kept a hunting knife strapped to his ankle, and he unsheathed it now, handed it to me. I’d pulled my crab over the pier’s deck now and dropped it down, where it continued to eat, oblivious to its fate.
 

“You’ve got to do it. If you’re gonna fish I mean.” He settled back on his heels to watch. I’d seen that John’s technique was always much rougher than Darren’s. He would just stick the knife kind of casually into the crab’s back and then attend to his line and hook, or sometimes just chop the crab straight in two and pick one half up to put on the line. I didn’t know which way I was supposed to do it, and felt the weight of the knife in my hand, trying first a stabbing grip, then changing my hand over to more of a cutting action.

“Just stick it in. Come on.” There was a curious look on John’s face, he was watching me, not the crab.
 

I changed back to the stabbing grip and held onto the crab at the edge of its shell, where its pincers couldn’t reach. I brought the point of the knife down on its back and pushed a little. The shell was too thick to yield and I didn’t have the courage to keep pushing. Instead I looked up at John, to check I was doing it right. He nodded with enthusiasm so I raised the knife quite high and then released it, using its own weight to drop down. That way it was like I wasn’t quite responsible.
 

It didn’t work, the point of the knife didn’t go in, but the shell cracked a little and some greeny yellow slime oozed out.
 

“Eeewwy, gross,” said John.
 

“Kill it properly Jesse,” said Darren.
 

Kinda horrified that I’d hurt it I turned my head away and brought the knife down again, this time much harder, and then twisted the blade like I’d seen Darren do. I felt the blade crack through the shell and bite into the wood of the decking boards.

“That’s it. Now cut it in half and put it on Darren’s rod,” John instructed me. “Then cast it out, while Darren injures his one.”

I normally didn’t much like threading the hook through, but I was glad of the distraction this time, and like with the mussels, the thing in my hands already felt like a piece of meat, rather than something with thoughts and feelings, not that I knew if crabs had all that stuff. Even so I was glad when I’d cast it out of sight and it sank invisibly into the flat grey water. But Darren still had his crab fidgeting under his knife and he and John both looked at it, although they were thinking different things.
 

“Maybe pull one side of his legs off,” John suggested. “We could put the hook in one of the leg sockets and out of another one.”

The uncertainty was painted all over Darren’s face. “I don’t know. Ben says you shouldn’t…” he began, but he stopped, knowing that mentioning his brother just wound John up.
 

“We could pull its legs off after its dead?” he suggested. The crab’s eyes swivelled from one boy to the other, as if following the conversation, as if it knew this was Darren’s last hope.

You could see that John considered this. “In a funny way,” he started, “I don’t think it would mind being used as an experiment. Its death is for something that way. Something important.”