One Night (8 page)

The moonlight faltered. Brent
Sedgeworth stood, legs apart, hands swinging loosely. Almost reflectively, he
said, ‘In a way you’re right. Pity that bloody dog broke his leg. Otherwise
none of this would have happened. We would have been up and away hours
earlier.’

I wasn’t fooled by this. I sneered,
‘And now four witnesses.’

He was momentarily confused. ‘What?’

‘Me and your friends. Max, Ron and
the girl they brought. They think you did it just as I do. We can’t all be
wrong.’

And this was the real point. The
reason he couldn’t let me live. I was a witness to that aspect of his
‘business’ as well. At the mention of Ron and Max, rage burned off him.

‘You little screw head! You think
you’ve got all the answers!’

There was a sound from the woods.
Something was creeping towards us.

In that split second, Brent took
his attention off me.

I turned and ran.

Racing a zigzag, I went into the
woods on the opposite side of the road. I ran as fast as possible, missing
trees by a hair’s breath, dodging branches, twisting, turning, sliding. I kept
the pace as far as I could, then I flung myself down under a thick spread of bush
and tried to calm my breathing. My heart was pumping like a piston high up
under my ribs. The shivery silence of the trees settled and I could hear my own
labored breathing. Leaves shifted under me, dank air pressing against my cheek.
There was a soft rustle of branches.

A cathedral quiet descended.

Then, soft as a baby’s breath, a
footfall.

Someone grabbed me by my hair.

Pain leached through my skull as if
someone had fitted me with a burning cap. I couldn’t even scream. My focus was
on trying to alleviate the agony as Brent pulled me out of my hiding place and
back to the road.

He threw me to the ground. Sobbing
with fright and pain, I tried to creep away but he lent forward and hit me
across the face. Instinctively, I kicked out at him. My foot struck him in the
stomach and he gasped. He dropped forwards, grabbed my arms, kicked my legs
apart and forced my arms flat to the ground stretched on either side of me in
the shape of a cross.

‘Getting enough yet?’ he asked.

I spat in his mocking, evil eyes.

He lifted one hand and
karate-chopped me on the side of the head. It felt as though my entire brain
casing had shifted.

‘Bastard!’ I screamed. ‘You
murdering
bastard!
’

He had released one of my arms. I
darted my hand at his face, scrabbling for his eyes. I had the satisfaction of
seeing a line of blood run before he brought the crushing weight of his arm
across my throat. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. My eyes felt as though
they would burst.

‘You stupid little cunt! You’ve got
everything screwed up! You think I’m going to let your
crap
ruin my
life? Think I don’t know about the stuff you used to say about me behind my
back to Mona? Think I don’t
know
how much you’d like to see me take the
rap for this?’ He had my head in both hands, squeezing. ‘Gonna fix that mouth
of yours, baby shoes. Gonna make you squeal.’

There was a shadow, like a great
bird flying over us. I thought my vision was failing. Then a noise like a
cricket ball hitting a bat.

With a grunt Brent jerked and rolled
to the side. I slithered away as he tried to rise to his hands and knees,
shaking his head like a wet dog.

The black shadow swooped again and
struck him in the face. I heard his neck snap back. With a strangled noise, he
fell face first into the gravel.

And lay very still.

For a long moment I watched him
warily, too frightened to let my gaze waver in case he rose up again. But he
was intensely still.

I looked up.

The girl who had been with Max and
Ron was standing there, her suitcase clutched in both hands, long, silvery hair
hanging like a torn curtain.

The dark, slanted eyes looked at me
without emotion.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘He would
kill you.’

2 AM

We sat on the side of the road while the girl wiped the blood from my face
with a ready-moist travel tissue. I was trembling so much, I couldn’t do it
myself. I looked at the bloodied, soggy mess in her hand.

‘Not all your blood,’ she advised
comfortingly. ‘Most his.’

We looked at the inert figure in
the middle of the track. Blood ran from under his face which was pressed into
the dirt. Inexpertly, the girl had used her coat belt to tie his hands behind
his back.

I spoke through lips that were
already beginning to feel fat and tight. ‘Is he dead, do you think?’

She shook her head, shrugged. ‘Maybe.
Maybe nose broken.’

I sat for a moment trying to
realign my vision which kept shooting out of focus. I felt beaten; bruising was
rising everywhere. There was an acute pain in my neck if I turned my head too
quickly. I tried not to do this.

I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘They put me out of car at end of
road.’

‘They threw you out?’

She stared at me. ‘They not take me
back. Difficult for them.’

‘So they just dumped you in the
middle of nowhere?’

She shrugged again, apparently used
to disappointment and disaster.

I was disgusted. ‘Were you making
your way back to the cottage?’

‘Nowhere else to go. I think you
will help me.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’
I said with some rancour. ‘Seems I can’t even help myself.’

The chill breath of the forest
slunk around us. The girl shifted, politely anxious.

‘We go back now, yes?’

I knew she wanted to move for
safety’s sake, but I was feeling as though the stuffing had been knocked out of
me. I just wanted to rest.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Galina.’

I waited but she wasn’t giving any
more. So I offered, ‘I’m Casey.’

She glanced at her suitcase.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Like a case. A
nutcase.’

Something moved in her eyes that
might have been a vestige of amusement. A thought occurred to me. I turned my
head quickly – too quickly. Pain clamped behind my ear. ‘Do you have a phone?’

She looked blank.

‘You know, a cell phone?’

‘No.’

I looked across at Brent
Sedgeworth, still facedown in the dirt. ‘Maybe there’s one on him.’

Galina looked understandably
reluctant.

I stood on wobbly legs. Warily we
approached Brent’s still form. I patted his jacket pockets, his trousers.

‘Let’s flip him over.’

We braced our hands under him, and
heaved. Brent rolled over. Runnels of blood poured from his nose, a purple graze
of torn skin ploughed across his left cheek. As we stared at him there was a
sound. I thought it was a groan but it could have just been the expulsion of
air from his lungs.

Quickly we checked his pockets, she
on the left, me on the right. Nothing. Brent was deathly still, his eyes
closed. Cautiously, we backed away. I had to point out our next obvious move.

‘We need to find a phone. We need
to call the police.’

‘
No!
’ she almost yelped.

‘Look, they’ll help you. Are you a
refugee?’

‘I look for my boyfriend.’

‘Your boyfriend is here?’

‘Two years.’

‘Where exactly are you from?’

She looked vague.

I let this go. It didn’t matter.
‘Your boyfriend’s not legal either, is he? You’re an illegal alien.’

She didn’t answer.

‘How did they get you here?’

‘Truck, then boat.’

‘And you landed on the coast here
at night? Then you needed a safe house. Was Brent supposed to provide you with
documents, a job?’

‘They say…’ She stopped.

I felt sick. ‘You would probably
have ended up as a prostitute. Did you know that?’

She looked away. ‘I am thinking…’
she said, frowning as if she was trying to put a puzzle together.

My body was aching all over. I was
losing patience. Fear, shock and grief were being overlaid by irritability.

‘Well, we don’t have time for you
to think! I have to find someone to report this to. You can come with me or
not. Your choice.’

She wavered, truly between a rock
and a hard place, as they say. I felt mean but I had to reach a phone. Her
problem was one more I couldn’t handle in one night, despite the fact she had
probably saved my life.

‘Come on,’ I urged. ‘We’ll find a
solution. You can’t stay here.’ I pointed at Brent’s immobile shape. ‘This man
may not be dead – and if he isn’t, you will be.’

She understood this. She had seen
the body in the cupboard. Automatically she bent for her case.

‘Dump that,’ I said. ‘We’ll come back
for it.’

Together we shoved the case under
some bushes on the side of the road. She looked at me with the barest
indication of a smile. ‘Glad I meet you.’

A track of dried blood split open
at the corner of my mouth. The pain made me wince. ‘Can’t tell you how glad I
am.’

We went back to the cottage to get my car keys. With all the lights burning it
looked like a cozy little home in the woods. The door which I had locked was
now ajar. I had to fight a rise of nausea as I pushed it open. The thought of what
lay in the yard made a vivid picture too big and too detailed to fit my mind.

Sticky rose from the couch, pleased
to see company. He was clearly a little rattled by the comings and goings in
the middle of the night. My heart squeezed as I looked at him. His mum was gone
and he didn’t yet know nor would he understand. When would the grieving for her
disappearance set in? How long would he mourn her lack of return? How could I
love him enough to make up for it?

‘The dog…’ Galina said, backing
away.

‘He’s harmless.’

I went forward and gave him a
stroke, ruffling his ears the way he liked. He licked my hand and settled back.
If he stayed put while I went for the police, it would be all right. I said to
Galina, ‘I’m just going to get my car keys.’

I ran up the stairs, stopped. My
bag had been turned upside down. My heart in my mouth, I scrabbled through the
mess of loose change, cards, papers, makeup, pens, tissues. My keys were gone.
If Brent couldn’t take Mona’s car, he had schemed to take mine. I felt drained,
defeated. We would have to go back and get the keys off him.

I went down the stairs. ‘Did you
find keys in that man’s pockets?’

She paused, nervous. ‘Keys? Yes,
there are keys. I think – ’

‘That’s okay. We’ve got to go back.
He’s got my car keys.’

We went out, closing the door but
not locking it.

The road was a desolate moon-gray under
scudding clouds. High above us, cold air was moving. There was the dank scent
of rain in the air. When we reached the spot where we had left Brent, there was
nobody there. The coat belt lay discarded in the sand.

‘Damn it!’ I almost shouted. ‘
Shit!
He’s gone! He’s got my bloody keys!’

Galina looked confused. ‘Must we go
back?’

‘Yes, there’s something I have to
do.’

I felt a kind of black madness
descending, as though I couldn’t see properly; a mix of anger, exhaustion and an
all-consuming need for revenge. At that point, it was all that was driving me
to action. I had no idea then that it would drive me to a level of violence
that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

With Galina in tow, I raced back to
the cottage, slammed in and grabbed a knife from the kitchen rack. Galina’s
mouth opened in shock and she stood back. I went outside. She stood in the
doorway watching me as I methodically slashed my car tires.

‘There,’ I said in triumph. ‘If I
can’t use it then he bloody well isn’t going to either!’

Galina and I walked in silence down the track. I used the torch sparingly.
There were moonlit moments between the moving clouds and at times the road was
bathed in silvery fluorescence. We reached the end of the track and turned
north on the narrow road. Now out of Witch’s Wood, the bowl of the night sky
was visible, hung with plumes of cloud. Stars pricked through clear patches. I
was glad of the cold air, a salve on my bruised skin.

We kept to the side of the road,
moving steadily, the quiet broken by the pad of our feet. Distantly I could
hear what might be a stream, and the cry of a hunting bird or predator in the
underbrush. But the over-riding quiet of the night landscape would have amplified
sound, and we didn’t talk. In my mind, like a brand, was Mona’s face; her dead
body collapsing on me, over and over, the red weave of wire cutting deeply into
the soft flesh at her neck…

We must have been moving for a steady twenty minutes when Galina tapped me on
the shoulder. ‘There – ’ she pointed. ‘Light.’

We found a leaning gate tied with
string. The knots were so tight, we gave up and climbed over. We wound our way
down a rough track into blackness. The lights had disappeared. I switched on
the torch. The track narrowed into darkness.

As we stood there, a gunshot echoed
through the trees, loud as a lorry backfiring, an explosive sound that ripped
past us like a sudden violent wind.

‘A hunter,’ I said, not sure. ‘It’s
just a hunter probably after – after something,’ I finished lamely, not sure
what one would hunt after dark. Rabbits, squirrels, foxes?

But it meant someone was there,
ahead of us, in the dark.

We pushed on down the track, rounded a corner and a double-storey house with a
high peaked roof came into view. Tiny leaded windows winked brightly. There was
an old van parked in front of the porch. The yard was in the same chaotic state
as Brent Sedgeworth’s but this looked like engine parts and old tools.

‘Like-minded neighbours,’ I
muttered.

We went up the steps to the front
door and knocked.

Silence spilled around us. There
was no sound from the house.