The Retreat(60)

‘What?’ I joined him at the window.

‘I saw someone. Over there, on the driveway. Look.’

I peered into the darkness. The clouds shifted, revealing the moon.

There was someone standing near the top of the driveway, facing us. It was too dark to make out their features, to even tell if it was a man or a woman. But a suspect immediately came to mind.

Before I could say anything, Max dashed from the kitchen and out of the front door. He called out, ‘Hey!’

The person moved, down the driveway, away from the house. Max headed after them. I followed, catching up and falling into step beside him. The figure was running now, only just visible as a flickering shape on the horizon of my vision.

‘I don’t think it’s a power cut,’ Max said. ‘Look – there’s a light on in a house over there, on the hill.’ He pointed towards the nearest neighbour.

The person we’d seen on the driveway had stopped running. I couldn’t see their face, but I was certain they were watching us, waiting to see what we did. Could it really be Glynn Collins? A knot of fear formed in my stomach. If I was right, he’d already dealt with three people who’d threatened to expose him. I hadn’t even stopped to think that I was the obvious next target.

In which case, I was walking straight into his trap.

‘Come on,’ Max said, and broke into a run. The shadowy figure ran too. I had no choice but to follow.

There were pot holes on the path, and I stumbled into one. Max grabbed my arm to stop me from falling. I glanced across at him and saw that he was grinning. He was enjoying it, like it was a game. He increased his pace, leaping over a huge puddle. I guessed this was an escape from his other worries: money, his career, marital woes. This was a little adventure.

We reached the narrow lane that bisected the trees and stopped. The lane stretched left and right, and directly ahead of us was a copse. The main road was beyond that, and a little further on, the river. Our quarry was no longer in sight.

‘Which way did they go?’ Max asked.

I held up a finger. ‘Listen.’

Rustling came from the copse ahead. ‘This way,’ I said, jogging into the trees where I was swallowed by darkness. The ground beneath my feet was mulchy, slippery, and I grabbed a skinny tree for support. I waited for Max to catch up, as he was carrying our only source of light. He stopped beside me and swung the phone left and right, light bouncing between the trees like a will-o’-the-wisp. Tentatively, we pushed through the branches, Max swearing as something scratched his face. He lowered the flashlight and I hurried blindly on, the lizard part of my brain screaming at me to get out of these trees, even if greater danger lay further ahead. I was sweating and my heart was beating faster than ever before.

I crashed through the final line of trees and stumbled, my knees hitting the rough tarmac.

Max pulled me to my feet. ‘You all right?’

I was too high on adrenaline to feel pain. I heard a twig snap ahead of us. ‘I think he’s heading to the river.’

Max nodded once, and strode into the final thicket of trees, their branches still bare from winter. I took a deep breath and joined him, pushing through until we emerged on the path that ran alongside the river.

‘This is where Julia’s husband drowned,’ I said in a hushed voice. ‘The exact spot.’

The water swept around the bend, sucking in starlight and snuffing it out. A curtain of mist hung over the far bank, casting the trees on that side as shadow play. Max looked around while I stared at the water, then hissed, ‘There!’

Max dashed off to the left, vanishing into the copse. I did the same, pushing through into a clearing between a circle of trees. I strained to locate the light from Max’s phone. There it was, to the right, dancing among the branches. I drew in a breath, afraid to speak.

I heard Max say, ‘Show yourself!’ A pause, then, ‘What are you doing?’

It seemed he had come face to face with the person we’d been pursuing.

There was a scuffling sound, the crunch of twigs breaking and cracking. A grunt and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. The spot of light from Max’s phone disappeared.

‘Max?’

I was frozen to the spot. I muttered to myself, ‘Come on, come on, move’, and managing to unstick my feet, I started towards the place in the trees where Max had been standing, pulling aside a pair of saplings that guarded the spot.

And then: noise behind me. Footsteps on wet leaves. I started to turn.

An explosion of pain in my head. I fell, blind. Hit the earth.

Darkness.





Chapter 31

I awoke in a world of pain and cold. My eyes opened but I was blind. My lungs tried to suck in air and my body flooded. My arms flailed but there was nothing to hold.

Maybe it only took a second for my brain to make sense of where I was, what was happening, but it felt like much longer. An eternity of confusion. By the time I figured it out, my palms felt solid ground beneath them.

The riverbed.

I was in the water.

The pain in my head was indescribable, like hot knives in grey matter. Inside my head, a wave of blackness tried to drag me under, my brain wanting to shut my body down, but a shred of survival instinct fought against it. I was drowning. Somehow, I marshalled the forces of my body, pushing against the riverbed and kicking upwards, flailing in the black, freezing water, feeling it dragging me back down like a creature—