Simon Brett - Murder Unprompted

He reached the top of the mound and looked down. The stream, like the hills, had moved. He now had no idea where he was.

He looked at his watch. Eleven-twenty. He had to be at the Variety Theatre in Macklin Street at seven-thirty that night for another performance of The Hooded Owl. If he wasn’t there, he rather feared Paul Lexington might have come to the end of his understudies.

The sky was dull, with a foreboding of rain. He set off briskly in what might be the right direction, but found it difficult to get up any speed over the snagging grass.

He changed his mind, and set off in another right direction, but this offered only more hills. Over each new brow, more hills.

He tried another way, now slightly sweating from anxiety. He didn’t care what he found, the car, the stream, or the hut that was the purpose of his visit. Anything that would give him his bearings again. He listened out for the trickle of water, but the wind offered nothing but rustling grass, now very loud in his ears.

Another hill-top gave on to more hills. He turned randomly at right angles, and set off at a lolloping run. His foot caught in the grass, and he sprawled headlong.

He picked himself up and breasted another mound.

Thank God. In the crease of the hills beneath him, in a channel of rushes dark like body-hair against the brightness of the grass, was the stream.

And at the bottom of the dip stood a small stone hut with a broken-backed roof.

He followed the stream down towards it. Presumably once the building had been a shepherd’s hut, even his home perhaps, but it was long derelict. The thatch of what remained of the subsided roof was streaked with the dark green of lichen.

It was a dank and unwholesome spot.

And yet he could see how different it must have looked in the summer, how it would have appealed to Alex at the beginning of his supposed new start, and to Lesley-Jane in the throes of her first grown-up affair. It had what all lovers seek, secrecy, privacy, exclusivity. Charles could picture the smugness with which Alex Household would have sat in such a sanctuary and discussed the frenetic activities of the Taunton company. It was a place that offered a kind of peace.

Along the stream pale grey rocks stood exposed. Charles picked his way between them, sometimes having to clamber up, sometimes jumping from one to the other across the water.

As he drew close to the hut, a sense of dread took hold of him. Down in this hollow the sky seemed darker, the wind colder. A fine rain was now dashing against his face.

He felt he was about to find something.

And he feared it would be his friend’s body.

‘Alex! Alex!’ he cried out, not knowing what reply he expected.

He certainly did not expect the shock of a gunshot, cutting through the sounds of the grass.

Nor the sharp impact of the bullet that shattered into the rock a yard in front of him.

Nor the fierce pain in the shin that took his leg from under him and sent him sprawling to the ground.

Charles felt the blood trickling down his leg into his wet sock and, still keeping low behind a rock, rolled round to look at the wound.

It was a deep graze, but nothing more. He had been hit, not by the bullet, but by a sliver of quartzy rock. He would undoubtedly survive.

He lay there and thought. If Paul Lexington were describing the situation, he would undoubtedly have said that he had some good news and some bad news. The good news was that Charles’s conjecture must have been correct: Alex must be in the hut. The bad news was that Alex had a gun and was shooting at him.

Charles raised his head above the line of the rock and looked down towards the hut. Immediately another shot cracked from the doorway and ricochetted off a rock a couple of yards to his right.

He ducked back.

But after a moment’s thought he popped his head up again. It was immediately answered by another shot, which hit a rock behind him.

He lay back down and squinted round. There weren’t that many rocks. Certainly not enough to afford shelter for him to get nearer the hut.

But he read another significance into their scarcity. Alex had fired three shots at him from about twenty yards. Each one had missed by at least a yard. But each one had actually hit one of the few rocks scattered around.

Surely that wasn’t just bad shooting. A bad shot would have sprayed bullets all over the place, hitting rocks or earth at random. Only someone who was after the maximum deterrent effect would have ensured that each shot hit a rock and caused that terrible screech of ricochet.

In other words, Alex was not shooting to hit him.

Well, it was a theory.

And Charles didn’t have many others. From where he was lying, he could neither go forwards nor backwards without exposing himself as a target. So. unless he planned to lie there until nightfall, which would rule out any possibility of his getting up to town to give his evening’s performance, he had to make a move.

Besides, his whole thesis, the whole reason why he was there was that he didn’t believe Alex Household capable of actually shooting anyone.

He stood up.

A bullet hit a rock three yards in front of him. Confirming his theory.

‘Alex, I’m coming down.’ He stepped forward.

It seemed a long, long walk.

But only one more bullet was fired.

It screamed away from a rock behind him.

When he finally reached the doorway of the hut, he could see Alex Household slumped against it, the arm holding the gun limp at his side.

Had he not known who to expect, he would not have recognised his friend. Through its beard and filth, the face was sunken and ghastly. The eyes flickered feverishly like guttering candles. From the hut came the nauseating stench of human excrement.

‘Alex.’

‘Charles, you shouldn’t have come.’ Alex Household shivered and the words tumbled out unevenly.

‘I’m your friend.’

‘J-j-j-judas was a friend,’ the filthy skeleton managed to say. ‘Why not just let me take my chance? If the police find me, that’s one thing. But for you to make the trip just to turn me in. .’

‘I haven’t come to turn you in.’

‘Of course you have. Don’t pretend. You all think I’m a murderer.’ The old light of paranoia showed in the feverish eyes.

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘I know that you didn’t shoot Michael Banks.’

‘What?’ Alex Household’s body suddenly sagged. He slipped down the door-post to the ground. When Charles knelt to support him, he saw tears in the sick man’s eyes.

‘You’re ill, Alex.’

The shaggy head nodded, and then was shaken by a burst of vomiting.

‘When did you last eat?’

‘I’d left some stuff here. From the summer. Tins and. . With the gun, too. This place was always my last line of defence, when they — when they came to get me. .’ Again the paranoia gleamed. ‘But I finished all the food. . I don’t know, two days ago, three. Of course, I still had water from the stream, and then. . the earth’s plenty. .’ He gestured feebly around at the hillside.

‘You mean grass and. .’

Alex nodded. ‘Yes, but it. .’ He made a noise that might have been a giggle in happier circumstances ‘. . made me ill. Ill.’ He retched again.

‘I must get you to a doctor. Quickly.’

Alex shook his head. ‘No, Charles, please. Just let me die here. It’s easier.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t spend my life in some prison. If I’m alive, I need to be free.’

‘But you will be.’

‘No, Charles. Everyone thinks I killed Micky Banks. Go on, be truthful. They do, don’t they?’

He couldn’t help admitting it. ‘But I know you didn’t, Alex.’