The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller (26 page)

“No one goes to the road,” he said when he’d finished.

“What?” Darren looked about to cry.

“You go to the road. We’re all going to prison for murder.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “What did we do?”

“I’m telling you. We gotta think properly about this. We gotta do the right thing here.”

“The guy’s not even dead,” I said. “Look at him.”

John did. He turned back to the man and watched him for a while. There was a lot of blood now, leaking from where the knife cut into him, it was bright red and so thick it clung to the smooth black rubber of his wetsuit.
 

“Yeah but he’s gonna die. You can tell, wounds like that, in the stomach, it always takes a while to die. They can’t do anything about those wounds, even in hospitals. I’ve seen it in films,” said John.

We all watched the man some more. He was staring right back at us, and his mouth was moving like he was trying to speak but he couldn’t, he didn’t have the breath to get any words out and every time he opened his mouth, it was just blood that came out.

“If we try and get help, he’s still gonna die, the only difference is we’d go to prison,” said John.
 

“What’s with the ‘we’?” I asked. I don’t know how I dared say it to John but the thought of going to prison scared the shit out of me.
 

“Well I am aren’t I?” For a moment his eyes were pleading with me. “You ain’t gonna help him if you go to the road, but you’re gonna send me to prison. My knife’s stuck in his stomach. Who’s gonna believe it’s an accident?”

“I saw it, sort of. I can tell them.”

“They won’t believe you. They’ll have you for assisting, or lying to them. They’ll get you too Jesse.”
 

I felt panic rising up in me. I could see he was right.
 

“What about me?” Darren said. “I could go, I didn’t see anything.”

“Then you’d put us both away,” John said. He sounded suddenly tired. “And the guy still dies.”

“Face it. We’re in this together.”

We were all quiet for a long while. I was dizzy with it all.
 

It seemed like a long time until John spoke again, but when he did it was like he was back. Our friend, the problem-solving, calm and dependable John, the guy who always knew what to do. Always told us the right thing.

“I’ve got to make a sling. Jesse, give me your jumper.” I must have hesitated since he said it again. “Jesse, give me your fucking jumper.” I struggled out of it and was about to throw it at him but I saw he wouldn’t be able to catch it. His good hand was holding the broken arm.
 

“Tie the arms together. Right at the ends of the sleeves. That’s it, now put it over my neck. Carefully.”

I did what I was told and he gently slid one of the jumper’s arms underneath his own. He winced then swore out loud as he let its weight fall into the sling, then he puffed out a few deep breaths and held out his good arm.
 

“OK. Now help me get up.”

When he was standing he checked out the rest of his body and seemed relieved there were no other problems. Then he slowly made his way over to where the man was laying. He crouched down and inspected where the knife went in. I couldn’t even look at it.
 

“Jesse,” he called out to me without turning away. “He said he talked to you at the campsite, is he staying there?”

I nodded. “Yeah but I didn’t tell him any…”

“That doesn’t matter,” he cut me off. “Was he with anyone?”

“I don’t know, how would I know…” I suddenly remembered the car. “No. He had his board in his car. The passenger seat was wound down and the back seats aren’t split on those cars, so there were no other seats.” I felt pleased to have worked this out.
 

“Good. He said he was on his own here too, before the accident, he said no one knows he’s here.” John nodded to himself.
 

“Good,” he said again. “So no one knows he’s here. No one knows we’re here either. We know that. So how did he get here?
 

I thought back to what happened as I walked down. “I saw him drive past me, just before I turned off from the road.”

“Do you remember what car it was?”

“Yeah, red Nissan.”

“OK, very good. So we know he parked somewhere south of here in a red Nissan. We can find it so we can sort that. So we’ve just got to do something with the body.”

I must have been looking cos I saw the man’s eyes when he heard that. He could definitely still hear what we were saying and his face moved at those words. He tried again to mouth something, I think it was to me but I looked away again.
 

“He’s not really a body though is he?” I said. Part of me didn’t want to interrupt John in his flow, but this seemed kinda important. “Look at him. He’s still moving.”
 

This time John spoke really quietly. “Jesse I’ve told you, people don’t survive things like this.” As he spoke he reached out with his good hand and touched the handle of the knife, then pushed it slightly so the blade moved in the wound. The man gave out a low moan, then you could see him gritting his teeth. John held the knife delicately between the fingers of his good hand.

“Not so cocky now are you? You fucker.” He shook his head. “You should have listened to me. I told you to fuck off. Now we’ve all got a problem. We’ve got to work out what to do with you.” He gave the knife a little push, playfully, then stood up awkwardly.

Then the man made a big effort to speak to me. I could barely hear him but it was something like “kid, your friend’s crazy. You gotta get…”

“Shut up or I’ll put a fucking rock down through your head,” John interrupted him, and we were all quiet, waiting for what John was going to do next. Finally he bent down again and settled his fingers around the handle of the knife. When he was happy he looked the man in the eyes and spoke again.

“This might hurt a little.”

Then he pulled the knife out. It must have been wedged in harder than he anticipated because it got stuck half way out, a smear of bright red on the shiny silver blade. Then John had another go and this time freed it. Then he calmly washed the blade in one of the rock pools, and then the arm of his wetsuit, which still had a bit of sick on it. He totally ignored the man who was groaning now and had moved his arms over his stomach.
 

“Shit John. What’d you do that for?” Darren sounded dismayed. Where the knife had been the wound was steadily dripping blood, but now blood was gushing out of a three inch gash in the wetsuit and the flesh beneath it, coming out in little pumped spurts.
 

“It’s better this way,” said John. “It’ll be quicker.”

You could see the life slipping away from the man now. It looked like he didn’t care about whether we got help now. All his body was concerned with was damage limitation, emergency shutdown procedures. His eyes fluttered but he wasn’t seeing anything. He’d been holding his head up off the rock, but now it dropped down, a sharp angle of rock pressing into his cheek and forcing his mouth open, teeth grating on the barnacles. We just stood there watching while the rock pool filled up with crimson, treacle blood that turned to the same darkness as the thick ribbons of seaweed.
 

“It’s a body now.” John said a few minutes later, but neither Darren nor me replied.

“Come on. We can’t leave it here, the tide’s coming in, it’ll get washed away. Someone will find it if that happens.” John said.

I had one more go. “John this is fucking mad. We got to go and get some help.”

“No we don’t.”

“Yes we do. This is crazy. You’re crazy.”

“You and Darren, you’re gonna move the body up to the Rock.”
 

“You’re fucking mad. I ain’t doing anything you say.”
 

John turned on me, real angry now.
 

“Jesse I’m not saying this is fucking pleasant for any of us. But we’ve gotta do this. Unless you wanna be put in prison for a very long time we’ve gotta stick together. Now you get his fucking legs, Darren get his arms. Let’s move the fucker and get on with this.”

John was still holding onto the knife. I opened my mouth to argue again but he interrupted me, he held the knife up to my face and he was yelling like he’d never yelled at me before.
 

“
He’s fucking dead Jesse. Do as I fucking tell you.
”

I felt my lips quivering and tears at my eyes but I nodded and did everything just like he told me.

thirty-four

 
AT FIRST I took the guy’s arms and Darren took his legs, but that was never going to work. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to carry a body over rocks like that. Every time we tried to move him, we either couldn’t lift him over a boulder, or we slipped on the seaweed. We were going to hurt ourselves, and his teeth were getting cracked, falling out even and lumps of hair and skin were getting ripped off on the barnacles. But John made us keep going and in the end we just took a foot each and dragged him. We tried not to watch as his body slipped and skidded across the rocks. It was pretty gross. I nearly lost it, but John somehow kept us going. He’d stopped shouting at us by then and was encouraging us instead, telling us what a great job we were doing and how it was all going to be OK. I think he was enjoying himself by then. But anyway, eventually we had the guy up there in our little camp at the foot of the Hanging Rock.
 

“You’re doing great boys. Fucking great.” John said. We had the guy’s body spreadeagled on his back right in the middle of the little grassy patch where we used to hang out. It looked like his neck had broken somewhere along the way because his head was at a weird angle staring up at the sky. I wondered what the hell we were supposed to do now. It didn’t take long to find out.

“Now you got to dig a hole to stick him in.”

I didn’t say anything, just dropped to my knees and started scratching at the grass with my hands. But Darren didn’t move. I think he was just too tired. He’d just got off the water from a long session remember.
 

“We just gonna bury him here? Is that it?”

“Come on Darren. Just dig.” John started kicking at our driftwood chair and broke out a plank which he gave to Darren, I guess to use at a spade.

“How’s that going to help? It’s basically just rock.”

Darren had a point, as I was finding out. The little flat hollow underneath the Hanging Rock was the only patch of grass on the whole section under the cliff, but dig down and you hit rock right away.
 

“And we can’t just leave him buried here anyway. It’ll be weird, knowing he’s there all the while.”

 
John looked frustrated and he took the plank of wood back from Darren and started hacking at the earth one handed. He only got a few inches deep before he hit something solid.
 

“Fuck it. In the cave.”

“What?”

“We’ll put him in the cave. We’ll have to leave him there for now.”

Darren opened his mouth to protest but I nudged him and shook my head, and he sighed and took his place on one of the legs. We walked in backwards and went as far as we could, dragging what was left of the guy behind us. He probably lost another couple of teeth but we got him in there, and when we came back outside you couldn’t really tell that anything had happened there, except for the trail of blood leading right up to the entrance. It didn’t feel like we’d exactly solved the problem.

“I told you we can’t just leave it here.” Darren said again.

“We’re not just going to leave it here. But right now we’ve got to find the car. Get your stuff and follow me.”

John led us at a pretty fast pace so we didn’t get to talk much. But it didn’t take that long anyway. There was only really one place he could have parked, and sure enough, there it was. Red Nissan, sitting on the verge where the farm track left the road. We were lucky with the keys. I went down on hands and knees to look around and there they were, a little silver key ring dangling from the suspension coil. I pulled them out and went to give them to John, but he shook his head.

“You’re driving.” He held up his arm in my jumper sling.
 

“But I don’t have my licence.”

“You’ve been taking lessons though haven’t you? You’ve been saying how fucking good you are for ages anyway.”

“What about Darren?” I said.

“I’m not trusting Darren.”

“But…” I stopped. He had a point. “Oh fucking hell.”

I opened the driver’s door and climbed inside, then reached across and opened the passenger side as well. John told Darren to roll the seat up - the guy had it flat to take his surfboard like I remembered - then he made Darren get in the back and sat down beside me. He shut the door. The little car smelt of pine and warm plastic.
 

“Where we going then?” I said, trying to sound as sarcastic as I could.
 

But John didn’t answer at first, and when I looked at his face I could see he wasn’t sure himself. None of this was planned remember, he was making it up as he went along, and even John had his limitations.

“I dunno. We’ve got to find somewhere to hide the car so that no one finds it. A scrap yard or something. Or like a lake we can push it in.” He stopped and I could see him thinking hard.

“We could push it into the harbour?” Darren suggested. “You can drive right to the edge.”

“What? In the middle of the fucking village? No, it can’t be anywhere around here.” He flipped open the glovebox and started searching around while I looked at the car’s controls, wondering how far he was going to get me to drive. I’d probably overstated my driving skills to them at that stage. I watched John pull out a road map which didn’t make me feel any better.
 

“That’ll help,” he said. “How much petrol is there Jesse?”

I looked on the dashboard and felt a flood of secret relief when I saw it. “
Oh fuck
. It’s empty. Totally empty. We probably can’t even get to a petrol station.” I turned to John to see how he’d take this, but then I heard Darren from the back.