The dark side of my soul (11 page)

“How long you own car?”

It was a simple question. I could say that we had just bought it but then they would want the name and address of the previous owner. Things would get complicated so I stuck as far as possible to the truth. “Three years. I have owned it from new and it has not had any work done to it. Now I’m very sorry to hear about your grandmother but I am not responsible so I should be glad if you would please leave.”

Neither of them moved. They just watched me, noting my increasing apprehension.

“I know motors. I work on them. Yours has new front. Why you lie?”

“I’m not lying. You must be mistaken, now would you please go before I call the police.” My voice was raised, the tension undoubtedly showing.

They glanced at each other then the younger one regarded me with an evil smile. “Yes, good, we like that. We show police your car, show them work done. Please, call police.”

I couldn’t call the police and they knew it. “I don’t want any trouble. Just get the hell off my property.”

They looked at one another once more and this time I saw the old man give a faint nod. I went to close the door but found the dragon slayer’s booted foot in the way.

“We not leave till we know truth. Did you run over old lady, leave her to die in road?”

Put like that it sounded terrible. “No, no, you are wrong. I didn’t kill your grandmother.” The look on my face must have shown that I had something to hide.

“You run over grandmother in your car. An old lady, you do not stop to see if she is all right, to see if she is dead or alive. I can see in your eyes.” Once again the two men on my doorstep exchanged brief glances.

“Someone must pay,” The younger man was staring at me again.

“I don’t know what you are talking about. Now get out.” I was almost shouting now, intimidated and scared. I tried forcing the door closed but the boot remained firmly in place. I thought he was going to try to force his way in when I was suddenly aware of Sandra behind me. For an awful moment I thought she was going to confess but she remained silent.

Seeing her, the big gypsy seemed to change his mind. He looked at her for a moment and then his eyes met mine once more. “We come back, later, much later, when it is dark. Maybe tonight, maybe next night, maybe after that, but we come back. Maybe we rape wife, cut throat, maybe pour petrol, burn house but we come back. It is our way. Someone must pay.”

He gave me a long penetrating stare that told me this was no idle threat. He knew I couldn’t go to the police. He removed his foot from the door and the pair of them walked unhurriedly around my car and down the drive. Neither man looked back. They got in their old model black Range Rover and pulled away. The registration plate was almost totally covered in mud but as they drove off I managed to pick out some of the letters-TAR.

When they had gone I closed the door, took a very deep breath and turned to see Sandra in a dressing gown holding a very large kitchen knife.

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “Looks like you saved the day again,” I said it with total admiration.

“No, I didn’t stop him from coming in. He was always going to come back later. He’s a typical bully, wants us to fear him. You know the kind, he wants to dominate us, wants us to quake in our boots wondering what night he will come back. He knows we are the guilty party and that we can’t go to the police. The question is how did he find us?”

I considered her remark. “This is a small village. There’s a good chance that whoever was involved in the accident lives locally. Perhaps they’ve been checking out all the cars around here.”

“Why didn’t the police do that?” Sandra asked.

“I don’t know. It would take a lot of manpower I guess and you would have to know what you were looking for.”

I reflected for a moment on our situation. “But the thing is I’m pretty sure I know where they are staying. We daren’t wait around for them to come back. The bastard will probably come, like he says, at the dead of night and burn the house down. I’ll go this evening to his caravan before it gets dark, before he has a chance to come here. I’ll try to reason with him to stop the situation escalating but I’ll take the gun.”

Eleven

The pistol was loaded and the safety on. I was wearing a woollen fleece with a hood and the weapon was in my right hand pocket. The hood was important. I didn’t think there were any surveillance cameras in or around Sellinge, after all it only consisted of a number of dwellings and shops along the highway, a pub, a post office and a school, hardly a metropolis but you could never be sure these days, the damn cameras were everywhere, so I would use the hood just in case.

I was a little apprehensive but with the firearm in my pocket I felt comfortable as I drove along the motorway. I took the exit at junction eleven and joined the A road that led to Sellinge.

It was eight o’clock in the evening and the day had given way to a uniform greyness, the precursor to nightfall. Some cars had switched on their lights and a low mist was gathering on the fields on either side of me. I kept to a steady speed, still uncertain of what I was about to do.

Sandra and I had discussed our options all afternoon. We could do nothing and hope that the gypsies would have second thoughts about taking any further action; after all they had no definite proof that we were involved with the death of the old lady. Perhaps it had all been bravado, the wild threats being issued in the heat of the moment and when they had time to reflect, to cool down, they would change their minds about taking the law into their own hands. Somehow I didn’t believe that and even if they never came back we would still be unable to sleep at night for fear of possible reprisals.

Sandra could go to the police and own up to being the hit and run driver involved in the accident. She would have to pay the price and perhaps go to prison but that way we could at least tell the police about the threats of the gypsies. But what would the police be able to do about such threats; very little we suspected and it might somehow link us to the murders in the Forest.

The only alternative that we could see was for me to go to the gypsies and try and reason with them. If necessary I could admit that Sandra had been involved in the accident and try to explain that the woman had stepped out right in front of the car and that there had been no way to avoid her. Sandra had left the scene in a panic, which was stupid and we realised the hurt it must have caused them and we deeply regretted it but we could not change the past. We were incredibly sorry for their loss. The accident had changed our own lives as well (I did not plan to tell them exactly to what extent) If they were at all reasonable they would understand.

The whole idea suddenly seemed ridiculous. They didn’t seem the kind of people to empathise. This wasn’t going to work but what other choice did we have?

I passed the second of two roundabouts and was approaching Sellinge. The waste ground where I understood the travellers to be staying was coming up on my right. There were two cars behind me and I pulled over to let them pass. When the road was empty I started moving again.

Ahead to the right I saw a wide gap in the hedgerow and as I came to it I slowed to less than five miles per hour. I was just outside of Sellinge and as I peered through the gap I noticed a large dirty white caravan parked towards the rear of a fenced in area. A dark coloured vehicle which I did not have time to identify was parked just beyond the entrance near the hedge.

Even at my slow speed I was soon beyond the gap but I had seen enough to know that I was in the right place. I drove on a little further and when the way was clear swung the car around so that I was facing the opposite direction. I travelled back the way I had come and went by the piece of wasteland again, this time it was on my left. Easing off the gas until I slowed to a virtual standstill I was able to make out some letters on the registration plate of the parked vehicle-TAR. That was the confirmation needed, this was where the travellers were staying and it looked as though they were at home. I drove on for about three hundred yards to a small layby which fortunately was deserted, pulled in, stopped and switched off the engine.

My heart was already racing but without a viable alternative, I had to confront the man who had called on me that afternoon. I took several long deep steady breaths to try to calm myself before pulling up the hood of the jacket and getting out of the car. I locked it and put the keys in my trouser pocket before placing my hand on the butt of the gun in the fleece. That was my comforter.

Darkness had still not fallen, but the light was diminishing to that weird half-light that precedes the night. I started walking towards the waste ground. A few vehicles passed by but no pedestrians came into view. I began to wish that I had stopped closer to the site but then I did not want my car to be identified by some passer-by. It was safer where it was. Now and then I was tempted to turn around and go home but I knew that was the cowardly option so I ignored those inclinations and kept walking. My heart rate was increasing again.

When I reached the end of the hedgerow I hesitated at the opening. There were no gates or obstructions to entry except for the deep ruts and tracks that had been made by heavy vehicles when the ground was softer. With the recent dryer, warmer weather those imprints had dried out into a kind of mini moonscape with miniature ravines and valleys to be crossed with care.

The area of rough ground was fenced off at the back, separating it from the farmer’s field beyond and I could see no other way in or out of the enclosure. I took a final deep breath and began stepping over the little mountains and valleys of dried earth. The old black Range Rover was parked by the hedge to my left. It was the one that had visited me earlier that day.

I turned my attention to the caravan and realised that in fact there were two of them; one partly obscured by the other, the second smaller one at the back had not easily been visible from the road. They were sideways on from where I stood and although I could only see the end of the rear van poking out from behind the nearer one, I could see the whole of the side of the larger van in front. It had four windows, two on either side of a central door which was firmly closed. A wooden step was placed under the door to facilitate easy entry. There was no marked pathway to the doorway but the ground outside was level and mainly dirt with the occasional patches of scrubby grass. An untidy pile of old tyres stood at the far end of the site to my left and the surrounding area was littered with what appeared to be a mixture of automobile parts and various other metal objects.

I continued picking my way over the rough dry ground towards the first caravan which was about thirty yards away. I had to concentrate on my footing such was the depth of some of the deeper tracks and I had just stepped over the worst of them when without warning the door ahead of me was flung open and the big traveller came out.

He headed towards the pile of metal objects without looking up and was completely unaware of my presence. Dressed in the same blue boiler suit that he wore earlier in the day, he was carrying a piece of metal that looked like a crow bar. After he had taken ten or a dozen paces my own movement must have caught his eye as suddenly he stopped dead and turned in my direction. He gave me a perplexed look and I realised that with the hood pulled over my head he probably didn’t know who it was. I slipped the hood off and I saw recognition dawn on his face.

For a second he didn’t move then he began to walk towards me. Even in the fading light I could make out the gold earring and the gold teeth as his thin lips drew back in a kind of evil scowl.

He stopped about ten feet away. “What you doin’ here?” now he was closer I could see that the metal object in his right hand was a tyre iron and as he spoke he slapped it menacingly against his freehand.

For the first time I realised how big he really was. He must have stood well over six feet in height, maybe six four or five, with massive shoulders and a frame that looked as if he could move mountains. I stand about five feet nine with a stretch, have a skinny build and the last time I worked out in a gym was when I was a kid. This was a David and Goliath situation.

I was intimidated by his sheer size and muscularity and the fact that he had an effective weapon added to my nervousness but I kept my hand on the butt of the pistol and that gave me some reassurance. In any confrontation I would still have the upper hand.

“I have come to try and sort out our little problem.” I tried to sound reasonable and untroubled.

“You the one with problem. What you want?” He took a step forward and I was tempted to step back but I stood my ground.

“To talk about what happened to your grandmother.”

Suspicion floated in the blue lakes of his sunken eyes as he regarded me more intensely “Go on.” He came forward one more step.

“I didn’t run over your grandmother, my wife did.”

He stopped moving, his eyes scrutinising me.

I tried to keep my voice steady and even “My wife is a very careful driver. She was on her way home from a friend’s house when the old lady stepped out into the road right in front of her. My wife hit the brakes but she could not avoid the woman. The poor old lady went right over the roof of the car and ended up on the road behind her. My wife had never been in an accident before and she didn’t know what to do. She was alone and frightened. She was certain that she had killed the old lady and she panicked.

She drove off. It was wrong and when she got home I tried to make her call the police and an ambulance but she said it was too late for that. I know what she did was wrong and I am sorry, my wife is sorry. We are both living with a guilt that won’t go away. It has changed our lives.”

I tried to sound as sincere as possible even though what I said was only partly true and for a brief moment I thought I detected a hint of compassion but then his expression changed and the thin lips drew back, once more revealing the two gold teeth.

“You come here blaming you wife for your crime. Maybe it was her, maybe it was you. It doesn’t matter, Grandmother is dead and you expect me to say okay we forget, just like that.” He pointed the tyre iron at me. “You leave my grandmother in road and drive away. You leave her to die and you want me to forget.”

“No you don’t understand. There was nothing that could be done for her. She was dead, killed outright. No amount of help could have saved her.”

“You don’t know, not for sure. With ambulance maybe she live. I do not forget. Someone has to pay.” And with that he started coming towards me.

This time I took an involuntary step back, nearly fell but managed to regain my balance. This ape was not going to listen to reason. I could see that in a way his thirst for revenge was justified but what was I supposed to do, stand there and let him beat the hell out of me?

I had no choice. My hand was on the butt of the pistol and I started to pull it out of my pocket. The trouble was that it caught on the material. This was not the coat that I wore in the forest with deep convenient pockets. That had been burned. This was a woollen fleece with tiny pockets in which the gun was now wedged. The big traveller stepped closer and I frantically tried to release the pistol from the confines of the jacket. Why had I not checked this before?

He was only four paces away, the tyre iron held firmly in his right hand, a giant ogre ready to strike and I was sure he had every intention of doing just that. Without the pistol I was defenceless. Physically I was no match for him. I yanked at the gun in panic but it still would not come free. The tyre iron wielding maniac took a pace closer and began to raise the weapon, a manic stare on his face.

He swung the tyre iron and I managed to dodge it by leaping backwards. I felt the rush of wind as the heavy metal tool missed my head by no more than an inch. I staggered, stayed on my feet and somehow regained my balance. He came forward again, a terrifying look on his face.

I pulled at the pistol with every ounce of strength that I possessed and there was the faint sound of material ripping as at last it came free. I pointed it at the massive gypsy that loomed over me and he immediately stopped in his tracks, the iron raised above his head.

He was a little too close for comfort. “Back away,” I yelled and he looked from the gun to my eyes and then at the gun as though he was weighing the odds of being able to strike me before I fired. His face was full of hate, the thin lips drawn so far back that even in the gloom I could see the whole of the two gold teeth. We stayed like that for what seemed a lifetime then he slowly lowered the iron and took one tentative step back.

“You will not shoot, it takes man to pull trigger.” He was still weighing the odds.

“Yeah, sure, that’s what the last guy said. I sent flowers to his funeral.” That was true.

He watched me tentatively with those blue, deep sunken eyes and I could tell that he thought I was bluffing but there was just the hint of uncertainty. Although my heart was racing, with the pistol in my hand I felt more confident. Even with this giant muscular man I was in control, now I held the power of life and death. I was the one to be feared. Then I remembered the safety catch was still on. As before I eased my left hand towards the gun and flicked it off. I was still an amateur.

I could see annoyance in the big man’s eyes. He knew what I was doing and he realised that if he had swung the iron while he had the chance the gun would not have worked. He spat a great green globule into the dirt and regarded me with disgust. Then he inclined his head towards the caravan and yelled out in a deep booming voice. “Da, Da, get shotgun.”