Neil White is a criminal lawyer and a crime fiction author. His legal career has seen him as a defence solicitor as well as eighteen years as a Senior Crown Prosecutor. He still practises but as a freelancer, as most of his time is now taken up by writing. Neil is the author of twelve crime novels, the first five being the Jack Garratt series, published by Avon, which included the number one bestselling ebook, Cold Kill. He has also written the Parker brothers trilogy, and the latest novel, The Innocent Ones, is the final instalment in the trilogy involving defence lawyer Dan Grant and investigator Jayne Brett. He has also written a non-crime novel, Lost In Nashville, a story of a father and son who try to reconnect by travelling the life and songs of Johnny Cash.
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It was too dark.
He shouldn’t have agreed to wait here. It was too late now though. The meeting had been set up like this, someone wanting to talk to Mark Roberts, ace reporter.
Yeah, right. At least that’s how he’d pitched it, even if the reality was different.
He was in a park on the edge of Highford, high on a hill, a housing estate behind, nothing ahead but the dark silhouettes of the valley sides and the orange glow of the street lights in the valley below. There was a children’s playground at one side, the supports of the swings just skinny outlines, the roundabouts and climbing frames deserted, but the park was mostly about the views and the quiet.
During the day, it provided commanding views, bordered by high moorland slopes, tall chimneys grasping towards the sky like old grey fingers. At night, it was swallowed by the darkness that enveloped the valley sides.
He’d never heard of Highford until a couple of weeks earlier, one of those hidden-away places, a small dot on a northern map. He missed London. He yearned for the noise and the chaos and the pollution and the crowds. In the middle of winter, this felt like a different country. The people huddled. That was the best way he could describe it. From the cold. From the winds. From the rest of the world, it seemed. Trapped between hills so that it felt like no one ever had the chance or the will to leave.
He’d been in Highford for a week and it had dragged.
The people were different. It was hard to pin down why. Friendly, he supposed, and he liked that, wasn’t used to it, most of his life spent as just another face in the crowd, crammed into underground trains or lost in the rush of people always having somewhere else to go. In Highford, it seemed like people paused to say hello, to spend time with each other.
Perhaps that’s what happens when you’ve nothing else to do. You reach out.
That didn’t seem enough though.
He blew into his hands and tried to peer into the shadows in the park, dark and foreboding.
The weather was different up here. The winds blew hard over the barren Pennine landscape, where not even the valley sides offered much protection, Highford just one of a line of towns by a canal that threaded its way to Yorkshire. He’d expected it to be colder, but it was the rawness that took him by surprise, somehow cleaner and sharper, no lines of traffic to warm and pollute it.
He cursed himself for agreeing to the meeting. He would never have agreed to this in London, waiting in a dark and deserted place, but he’d been lulled into believing that nothing ever happens in Highford. Why would he feel threatened? He was the big-city boy from the glamorous south. Street-smart.
This was no ordinary meeting though. He was uncovering long-buried secrets, and that makes people desperate.
He could always bolt through the housing estate behind, accessible through a small alley, or ginnel, as they were known round here.
He clapped his hands together and wiped the dewdrop from his nose. He paced and stamped on the ground. Nine o’clock on a February night was not a time to loiter. The cold penetrated his boots and made him long for somewhere warmer. A small pub with a fire perhaps, one of those country places made up of small, cramped rooms and paintings of fox hunting. The moon caught the glint of a growing frost, the barren hilltops turning silver.
There was a noise.
He went still. It sounded close, but he couldn’t be sure. There’d been cars on the housing estate behind, just light hums, and not long ago a police siren had disturbed the night, a flashing blue light strobing the darkness, but this was different. This was closer.
He swallowed, nervous now. He’d made a mistake. He was too isolated. The ginnel was a trap, not an escape route. If there were other ways, he didn’t know them. He should have suggested somewhere further away, on neutral ground, because secrecy was a must, but had he been wrong-footed? He’d agreed because he’d got lost in his story, excited about his progress. Was he about to pay for that?
Another noise. A small crack, like the snapping of a twig.
He turned, his heart beating faster now, his nerves keener. There was someone there, he was sure of it.
‘Hello?’
He waited for a response. Nothing.
He might have got it wrong. He was in the countryside, which meant animals, and what could he know about how they sounded? It might have been a bird in a tree. He glanced upwards, where the edges of the park were bordered by large black shadows, the winter skeletons of sycamore and horse chestnut.
He looked back towards the ginnel, a small path, no more than twenty yards long with a street light at the other end. He should make for there and disappear into the estate, make an excuse, postpone for another day.
No, he couldn’t do that. He’d waited too long for this meeting. He wanted to run, but he fought the urge. He was there for a reason. He couldn’t back out now.
But why was there no message to explain the lateness?
There was a different noise, and it was closer now, like the quiet slide of footsteps on grass, squeaking under shoes, trying to stay silent.
His skin broke out in goosebumps. He had to get away. Something wasn’t right.
He turned on the spot, trying to track the sounds, because they seemed to be coming from all around him, as if the shadows bounced the noises back.
‘Stop messing around.’ His voice trembled.
Someone appeared in front of him, a dark figure.
He stepped back, yelped in panic.
The figure rushed him.
He started to shout but stumbled backwards, his shoes slippery on the frost. Something moved through the air. An arm, holding something dark and heavy.
He put up his arms to protect himself, but it wasn’t enough.
Something thudded into the side of his head and knocked him to the ground.
All sounds went dull apart from the harshness of his breaths, the fast drum of his pulse. The lights in the valley below swirled as he lifted his head, his body disobeying him as he swayed. He wanted to be down there, in the town, where it was safe, people living ordinary lives.
The lights were blotted out, the shadow there again, standing over him, arms high in the air, an object hanging down.
Before he could shout, there was another huge swing, and this time it seemed to move more slowly, the faint glow of street lights catching the gleam of something wet. His blood? Its arc made him shrink back, but still it continued towards him.
The thud seemed to echo as it crashed into his head, his thoughts scattered like splintering glass, the ground against his body and he couldn’t work out why.
His last thought was how the grass felt cold against his cheeks.
One more swing, one final crash of his skull, and then all the lights went out.
(C) Neil White 2019