poofter!’ Angelo screamed at his companion. ‘You can’t do anything right, can you!’
Andrew was totally beside himself with shame. Everything he had done that day was turning out wrong. ‘I’m not a poofter,’ he whimpered.
Angelo had had enough of the larger boy’s antics. He ignored Andrew and wanted nothing more than to get to the fire and its blessed heat. ‘Go back home to your mummy!’ he called over his shoulder as he climbed the muddy bank.
Anger exploded inside Andrew at the other boy’s dismissal. He could imagine what Angelo was about to say to the others about what he had done and a wave of panic and disgust washed over him. He grabbed at Angelo’s ankle dragging him back into the water and in an act of mindless desperation forced the smaller boy’s head below the water, but Angelo used all his remaining strength and Angelo struggled back to the surface.
‘I’m not a poofter!’ Andrew screamed as he pushed the smaller boy back under again.
The sounds of Andrew’s screams reached Clyde and Tilley and they rushed down to the water’s edge. They thought Andrew must be in trouble and needed their help to get out of the river.
When they reached the darkened bank they searched the river’s edge and eventually found Andrew standing among the reeds. He was weeping uncontrollably with Angelo floating face down beside him.
Clyde jumped into the water thinking that he could revive the drowned boy, but when he rolled him over he suddenly realised that Angelo hadn’t drowned.
The dead boy’s head lay at an odd angle to his body and there were marks on his throat left by Andrew’s hands.
‘What the hell have you done, Andrew?’ said Clyde.
‘He kept calling me names! I’m not a pansy!’
‘Jesus Christ!’ swore Clyde. He looked up to where Tilley stood staring in shock at Angelo’s dead body. ‘Tilley!’ he said sharply. ‘Get this idiot out of here! Take your idiot of a cousin over to the fire and don’t let him out of your sight.’
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked shakily.
‘I’m going to do what the Old Codgers would want me to do. I’m going to fix things and make them right. I can’t let the team down.’
Clyde waited until Tilley had led her sobbing cousin away and then waded over to where Angelo’s lifeless form floated. Despite the fact that he was still very weak from his own encounter with the Iceman he knew what he had to do.
Gripping the body under the chin Clyde swam out into the river using a sidestroke. Just as he felt the grip of the Iceman once more he released his burden and slowly swam back to the shore.
When the body gets washed over the weir it will get battered on the cement and in the eddy below. If it gets washed far enough downstream the wounds on the neck might not be so obvious. Angelo will become one more of the Iceman’s victims.
Clyde was in a state of utter collapse by the time he slumped to the ground near the flames of Tilley’s fire. He could see that both Andrew and Tilley had been crying. ‘What will happen now?’ sobbed the girl.
Clyde looked up at his companions. ‘We know nothing. Do you hear me? We know nothing. When someone says that Angelo tried the Swim as well we need to say that we didn’t see him. When he doesn’t get out of the river they’ll assume that the Iceman got him and they’ll search downstream. Remember, we don’t know anything and we didn’t see or hear anything. Do you understand me?’
Andrew and Tilley nodded.
‘Don’t say anything. Leave it all up to me.’
‘He had no right to be there anyway,’ mumbled Andrew. ‘He never was one of us.’
‘Shut up, Andrew! Don’t say another word or I’ll drag you back out there and give you to the Iceman as well.’
Tilley said nothing. Her mouth was clamped tight in complete shock and disgust at what her cousin had done and what Clyde was prepared to do to cover up the crime. Deep down, she knew that she would never know peace while she remained in Henswytch. To be forced to look at Andrew and Clyde each day would remind her of the evil that she had been a witness to and she knew her own guilt in helping to cover up would haunt her forever.
Chapter 1
Tom Briggs
I
awoke long before either my alarm clock or the wailing of the imam calling the faithful to prayer.
While showering I leaned forward and placed my hands on the wall to allow the hot water to run over the scars on the backs of my thighs and legs. I noted that time was gradually allowing the angry red hue to subside into a more regular colour. In a few more months I hoped that they would be like all the other scars I had accumulated in my youth.
I soaped myself thoroughly and stretched languidly under the water while allowing the kinks in my aching knees to ease as the suds washed away.
The wounds hadn’t been life threatening, but they had been bad enough for me to have been airlifted out of Afghanistan to a military hospital in Germany. After a period of convalescence I had been cleared by the doctors and shipped home to England for a long course of physiotherapy and to recuperate. And so my second tour of duty had ended along with my hope of playing a part in the defeat of the Taliban. I missed my men and had hoped to be with them when our mission was completed, but I wasn’t fooled about our chances of ultimate success. In my heart of hearts I knew that it would take nothing short of a miracle to achieve peace by military means in that dusty country, and so I was more than glad to arrive home to my wife and young son.
The biggest disappointment had come after months of physiotherapy when the doctors had pronounced that I would no longer be marked fit for active duty. ‘You’re a commando, Sergeant Briggs,’ said my CO, ‘and you know even better than I do that a ninety per cent fit soldier is a burden to his unit in the field.’
Reluctantly I had to admit that he was correct and I had been forced to accept the job offered to me in the regiment’s armoury. It meant that I could stay with the regiment and that was important to me. I was not a qualified armourer so my tasks consisted in the most part of shuffling papers with the occasional visit to super-vise firing parties at the rifle range to break up the monotony. I soon tired of it and when my enlistment was up I had chosen not to continue with the sham existence.
‘What are you going to do now?’ asked my perplexed wife as she cradled my young son.
I shrugged. ‘I’m entitled to a pension. I’ll look around. There’s bound to be something out there that I can do.’
Half a year later I had been through a variety of jobs all of which I found to be of mind numbing uselessness and left them all quickly, convinced that the next one would be better, but they weren’t.
‘You could always re-enlist,’ offered Maria, knowing that that was where my heart lay.
‘They don’t want me on active duty and I don’t want a desk job.’
‘Well, you can’t go on the way you’re going. You’ll destroy yourself,’ she said, wrapping her arms around me and kissing me lightly on the ear.
I sighed and drew her into me, kissing her lips and breathing in her scent. ‘I’m a soldier. It’s all I know. It’s all I’ve ever known.’
Maria looked up at me. ‘Then do what you have to do. It will hurt me to have you go away and it pains me that I’ll have to spend my nights praying that you’re safe, but I can’t stand to see you the way you are.’
I nodded and knew that she was right.
So it was that I had done what many