August 1. 1.30 pm.
They sounded like.....
He watched from up on the hill, listening to them calling to each other. He blinked his eyes hard, once, twice, against the glare and for a moment their cries sounded like...
He was going up now, into that cold place where he remembered
....."I have to go home mister." The girl had said, clear and high.
She stopped her bike. Here at the edge of this waste ground where the pools of run-off drainage water lay black and deep in places, overhung by fronds of willow and the umbrella leaves of giant hogweed that looked just like jungle rhubarb in the steamy gulleys.
"Not far," he'd said, blinking against the sunlight on the slick surface. "You'll like it."
"I don't see a rabbit," she'd said, looking up at him in quizzical innocence. There was the slightest hesitation in her eyes, the merest flicker of doubt. But they were beyond the low bridge now. Here the pathway was narrow and it forked three ways and he knew this place from a long time ago.
"Just down here," he told her. "You'll like it." He blinked furiously. Under his tongue, the familiar surge of saliva squirted juicily. "What's you name?"
"Lucy."
Lucy. Lucinda. The light. He remembered that from the priests.
And the light was in his eyes.
He stood back to allow her past and she pedalled forward, concentrating on avoiding a piece of broken bottle. He let her get a yard ahead then stooped. Quick as a snake. His hand clamped around her mouth and in a smooth motion he lifted her upwards. His right hand shot out and grabbed the seat of the bike. She squirmed, but he was too strong. He turned and slung the bike high over the stand of hogweed. It spun in the air, red and silver, flickering in the sunlight, to land with a splash.
She kicked her heels and he felt her fear sizzling through her, letting it arc into his own body.
Dung fly. The sound came back to him and fell out of his mouth. He repeated it again and again, just under his breath as he made his way quickly along the path. No-one came. He crossed the water, wading knee deep through the reeds and iris stalks and then he was past them, reaching the heavy cover of the far side. He travelled some distance, stopping only once to settle her up in his arms to make the carrying easier and in his head the thrilling vibration was as pure as the hum of a mosquito.
She shuddered, shaking her head from side to side and the air snuffled through her nose. He glanced down, and saw her eyes roll madly and the fear was wide and clear in them. After a while he got through the scrub and reached the bridge. In an instant he was under the span. The door swung open with hardly a squeal. He turned, pulled the girl behind him. Her foot hit the ground and a little red sandal flipped off. He hooked it back towards him with his foot, leaving a heavy cleat-mark on the damp clay.
He pushed the door shut. The girl hiccuped, sending a delicious shiver through him. He waited until it passed and then he turned and sat down on the wide metal pipe that carried water down from the reservoir. He loosened his hand from her mouth, confident now.. She did not cry. A small groan escaped her but her whole attention was focused on getting air into her lungs. He let her have one or two breaths, great whooping scoops of air and then he closed her up again.
"Blow," he said, and all she heard was the deep rumble of his voice in the dark. "Blow hard."
She blew hard, clearing both nostrils. When he was satisfied she could breathe easily, even though the lungs were bellowing fast as a rabbits, he reached down and found her foot, tugged hard at the sock until it came off, balled it in his hand and then used his thumb to force it between her teeth. She shook head with violent desperation and a spasm rippled through her, but he persisted until she made no sound. He could feel the shiver and knew she was beyond crying out for the moment. He knew the fear was running around inside her. It would chase her down in to the valley of the shadow and she'd come through the other side, up in the cool, place where there was no pain, the place that he himself could reach.
She knew. The certainty of it came off her in waves, like electricity. There was no escape. She would die here.
Whatever thou doest to these, the least of my children, you do also to me
In the dark, he nodded and he smiled a sly smile. My Lord, why hast thou forsaken me...? His desolation was past now. He was.
I am who am!
He reached for the mtches and lit the little lamp by sense of touch. It flared, sent up a sputter of smoke and then began to glow. He turned to look at her, a small form, pale and shaking uncontrollably, a frightened bird caught in a trap. Her eyes were wide and fixed on him and in them he saw the knowledge.
Dung fly.. the eyes of a child far away, begging him.
The lamp guttered and Conboy's flies buzzed in the shadows and the voice of the priest had come back to him.
"Holy orders. A gift from God. To make sacrifice to him."
But there was no god here.
After a while he crossed to her.
Interlude:
"We knew, or at least we were fairly sure at that time, that it had to be somebody who knew the area," Angus McNicol said. "That was what we thought at first and we pulled in the usual suspects, shirtlifters, flashers, the whole gamut. The Hopkirk boy, he could have been just a one off, and that's what we thought, until we found the girl. We'd spent six years teaching men how to kill and were bad people then, just like there are bad folk now. Look at your Nilson's and that nutcase down in Hungerford and god save us, those babies in Dunblane. And nutters like the Jonestown mob who think they're doing it all for the glory of god."
Angus leaned back against the thick upholstery of his easy chair and ran his fingers through a thick head of white hair.
"After we found Lucy Saunders we realised he knew that access duct to the chamber under the bridge. "But how local is local? "I mean it could have been somebody who had been in the town before and moved away. I thought it had to have been some fellow who played around the Rough Drain and up the stream as a boy and knew the paths. But you have to remember when it was.
"What I man is that there were no credit cards or the like. "There was more work then, at least more than there is today and people came to work the bottling lines for the summer and then were off again. There were potato-pickers and dry-stone wallers, and teams of folk who'd come in to help with the fencing for the forestry commission, or digging the drainage ditches up on the Langcraig moors for the plantations. A lot of movement in those days, when you were doing the twist and growing your hair long. Don't think I forget giving you a toe up the arse for breaking that street light over at Station Street." He grinned again and the eyes twinkled.
"The only thing we had was that people noticed more. If it was somebody who lived in the town, he'd have been recognised and a stranger would be noticed. That's why that poor Indian fellow got such a beating up by Arden Road. Our man man was cunning enough, though he took risks and let himself be seen a couple of times. That made him arrogant and maybe not in control of himself.
"He was a big fellow. Bigger than me probably, going by the weight he put on his toe-tector boots. And he took a size twelve, which is about normal for a big man. He had dark hair and he blinked all the time as if he had something in his eye and that's how the name got around. We had his fingerprints, mostly from the old surgery where they found the Hopkirk lad and they didn't match with anything on CRO file. We could have done with some of this computer technology then. Press a few buttons and you've got it. Then It was all done with files and teleprinters.
"We had casts made of his boot-prints and we had pictures of his bite-marks that showed he'd a bottom tooth mising. Fabric from his jacket, hairs from his head and his crotch and we had bugger-all really because Twitchy Eyes, he was a nobody. He just came and he went.
"Oh, we knew he had religion, Christian religion, from the pages of the bibles he left. You know this place. We've been murdering each other for years in the name of God Almighty and there's nothing to chose between them all. This man left the word of God covered with shite and flies, and he was killing as well.
"When I think of what he did to that wee girl under the bridge, I tell you, I still wake up some nights and my hands are clenched so tight the nails are digging half-moons into my palms. If I had got that bastard, pardon my language, if I'd got him when I was on my own, I'd have torn his arms off, I kid you not."
Angus McNicol drained his glass, but he did not smack his lips as before. He put it down slowly.
"I would have done to him what he did to those people. I'd have done to him what he did to that poor wee soul under the bridge, and I'd have made it last. And then I'd have buried him."
Interruption:
Angus McNicol's face had twisted with anger when he described in detail what had happened to little Lucy Saunders in the mud under the bridge, and I believe then that he would have done what he said. He'd have killed the killer. The memory for him was as clear as day, as defined and sharp as if it had happened only yesterday. Some memories are like that.
Here I have to intrude. Author intrusion. My editor will scream blue murder and I'll have to explain that sometimes when you tell a story, you have to find your own way through it and round it, and that's just the ones you make up and knit together from the ideas in your head. Maybe one or two of you have read my other books under my pen name, and you'll know I butt in now and again, but hardly ever. But that's in the stories I made up, or at least the ones which I dragged out of my nightmares to make into horror stories and chillers to help me get rid of the dreams.
Now I know the dreams will never go away because this is where they all live.
Back then. Back in the memory, hunched in the shadows under the bridge like the troll waiting to eat the billy goats, under the bridge like the man with the twitchy eyes. Under the bridge with the smell of rot and the buzzing of the flies.
When I spoke to Angus McNicol I let him have only half of the truth. I told him I was researching for a book, but I had no intention of writing one then, not a true story. I was asking for myself, in the hope that I could find some meaning for all of that, for the monkey that's been hunched on my shoulder, pressing down with the weight of the years. I thought I could find a cure, a magic bullet, that would kill the thing off and rid me of the dreams.
Dreams don't give up easily, and memories don't give up at all.
In the end, I had to admit that part of it was just a need to bring the memories right out into the open and face them in the light of day instead of running away from them. I honestly don't know if it's done me one bit of good.
But writing it down lets me spread it around a little, maybe in the hope that a nightmare shared is a nightmare halved and I know that might sound a little bit flippant. I am just not sure any more.
Anyway, a little more patience and I'll be out to leave you on your own if you want to read further. I've tried to put the thoughts into people's heads, to express them the way they were thought. Not an easy job, but further along there will be occurrences that explain enough, that gave me hints as to what thought processes - some of them murky and dreadful - were going on.
Also, for many years before I sat down to write my first book, and for some years after that, I worked as a newspaperman, checking out facts, digging in under the surface of things, and I'm still proud of the little card tucked in my wallet that tells me I'm a journalist, a reporter of fact, a life member of a tarnished, but still honourable breed, no matter how governments wriggle and twist. Some of the stuff I got from Angus McNicol and some of it I dredged up my memory and a few other facts I got from digging around in some old dusty places. Maybe I've taken a bit of licence here and there, but I don't believe I've gone over the bounds. I want to impart some of the taste, the bitter apples and hard pears and exotic black grapes.
But remember also that the five of us boys knew reach other, had known each other and you know what it's like being a kid of thirteen or so, just getting ready for your hormones to kick in, getting set for big strides into that big world up ahead. You can't keep a secret and you try to keep a promise and most of the time a thought's in your head no longer than the time it takes to speak it out, spit it out. Mostly we knew, just at a glance, what each other was thinking.
Five of us.
There was Corky with his drunk of a father banged up in Drumbain Jail and not for the last time either. There was Danny and his father who had given up a good paying job in the shipyards to start at university and spent all of his time either studying or praying and threatening everlasting punishment from an angry god. There was Doug whose father was already in Toronto, run out of town by his wife's shame and the need to take his family out from under the cloud. There was Billy and his strange failure to accept his inheritance, nurturing his belief in a father who did not exist, or who lived and battled only in Billy's imagination. There was Tom Tannahill who had watched little sister slowly die of leukaemia in the front room of their house while his mother was out at the shops and who walked with the knowledge of death shadowing his steps.
Five of us.
And yet despite the storm clouds of those strange and crazy times, we were trying to grow our hair long and get away from those slick-quiffed old fogies who jived to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. We wanted to be different from teddy-boys like Phil Corcoran and Pony McGill with his cratered face. We wanted to be like Donovan, trying to catch the wind and we had a ticket to ride. Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates were our heroes on Rawhide. Old William Hartnell was Doctor Who, going through time in a police box and that was the mind-blowing marvel that made adventurers of as all. Woolworth's still had wooden panels on the counters and sold bags of broken biscuits for a penny. And a policeman could still kick your arse and send you on your way to sin no more.
It was a year when everything was exploding and we had no control over it and we knew that Mick Jagger was telling the truth when he strutted up and told us this could be the last time.
Because it was the last time, and even then, in the warm summer sunshine, struggling up the hill with a bellyful of grapes and chicken, lugging the packed tent and (unsuspected by us) a strange man's eyes drilling into the back of our necks, we knew this would be the last time.
The world was changing and plans were in the air. In a couple of months, in less than a year, most us would be scattered to the winds. Jobs were hard to find even then, and besides that, other things had happened that set in motion the irrevocable machinery beyond our control.
There was the knowledge of the past season, from spring through to summer, still fresh in our minds, the realisation forced upon us that sudden death could come out of the blue, in the cold light of day, whether by accident, or creeping sickness, or looming shadow under the trees on the Rough Drain. There was the prescience of the year to come that would change things forever.
Maybe it was to save something of it all, keep the essence of us intact that we went up the hill searching for the decoy target, looking for the Dummy Village. It was our last chance to find that Eldorado before it was gone forever.
Maybe even then, we were trying to find ourselves before it all slipped away from us and got lost.
And maybe that's what I set off to do when I began all of this. Who really knows? I don't.