Mark Pearson - The Killing Season

David Webb was a dead man walking — or, rather, stumbling. He was blindfolded, and his wrists were bound tightly behind his back. He could feel the cold, damp wind on his face and he shivered. Dark blood was matting his hair, blood that had left a creeping stain running from the collar on his once-crisp white shirt down to his rumpled trousers that had had military-sharp creases in them just hours before.

‘A dead man walking,’ he muttered to himself under his breath. He knew that much at least, despite what they had said. Perhaps it was all his own fault, retribution for the flouting of man-made laws in which he himself saw no relevance? But he was the architect of his own misfortune and had not been able to stop himself, much as he had initially fought against his desires. Is it not often said that the way of the transgressor is hard? Had he deserved the happiness he had found in the unlikeliest of places? He hadn’t planned to fall in love. These things are out of one’s hands, after all — he of all people grasped that reality. But perhaps this was God’s punishment for it. Yet the memory of her cornflower-blue eyes, her long dark curly tresses, the way she quirked a smile when he made her laugh, and the sweet musicality of that laugh. He knew he had no defences against that. He knew that if he were to live his life over a thousand times he would always be smitten by her purity and innocence and beauty. He had been charmed by her in every sense of the word.

The men who had struck him and held him while others bound him had lied, of course. They had told him that they were taking him somewhere safe so that he couldn’t disclose what he had discovered — they would keep him there till the deed was done, as it were. But he knew each and every one of them. And when he had looked into their eyes he saw neither pity nor regret — just determination.

For his part David Webb wished he hadn’t known what he did. But if his death prevented what was being planned he would gladly give his life. Give it in a heartbeat. Even now. Keeping her safe was his all consuming urge. He knew what these men planned to do and the thought of it spiked his heart. It was a forlorn hope but his mind dwelled obsessively on the possibilities of escape. If they left him alone for a while there was a chance. He was a strong man, a very strong man. Not strong enough to prevail against so many, but he hadn’t gone down easy. There were a lot of them who would bear the mark of his fist for a long time.

If he couldn’t break free he knew exactly what was going to happen, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. If he hadn’t been gagged so tightly he would have been screaming in fury. But as it was his life was going to be taken and he was powerless to do anything to stop that.

He felt the force of the wind, which had been swirling around him like a tattered cloak, fall away and the sound of it die down gradually behind him as he was pushed forward. The noise in the air was muffled now and the air itself deader. The texture of the ground beneath his feet changed. The harsh crunch of shingle was replaced with softer mud and his feet sank into it. But the winter chill was still bitingly cold and he shivered again as he stumbled and was hauled up roughly. He could smell the salt in the moist atmosphere, could taste it. He had heard that a man’s life flashed before him as he neared death. People saved from drowning told such tales. But for David Webb only one thought stayed in his mind. The warmth of his girl’s body, the incredible beauty of her smile, the soft arch of her back and the tumble of her soft dark hair. The music in her laugh and the life in her eyes. For her sake he had kept quiet, determined to take his secret to the grave with him. Taking her secret, too. Protecting her in the only way he had left now. Although, given what he knew, maybe it was a futile gesture. A few months’ respite, perhaps. But then, he hadn’t really been given a choice.

He was brought to a halt, and he put his right hand on a wall slick with moisture to steady himself. He could hear whispered voices behind him, then he sensed someone step in front of him, felt the blindfold being removed from around his head. He blinked his eyes, as much to clear them as to adjust to the dim light. He could just about make out the features of the man who stood in front of him. A childhood best friend. A fellow investor. He could see the steadiness in the man’s eyes, the pitiless resolution.

‘You left us no choice, David. You do understand that?’ the man said.

‘There are always choices,’ he replied. ‘It’s having choices that define who we are. As a person. As a nation.’

‘I guess you made the wrong choice, then.’

David nodded sadly. ‘Just get it over with.’

The man stepped forward and David Webb gasped as he felt cold steel punch in and through his body. He stood straight for a second and then, as his childhood friend pulled the weapon clear of his body, he sagged to his knees. David looked up at his executioner and a smile played on his lips even as a small trickle of blood dribbled over them. ‘You haven’t won,’ he said. Then he collapsed to the floor. The other man watched him for a moment or two, some emotion flickering in his eyes, but it wasn’t pity or regret. He nodded to the men who stood behind the fallen body of the schoolteacher.

‘Let’s finish this,’ he said.

David Webb convulsed where he lay, gasping out her name with his last breath. A prayer.

A sea fret crept in and slowly shrouded the coast from Overstrand to Blakeney. It climbed over the cliffs of Sheringham, draping the golf course that lay eighty feet above the beach in a wet shroud of white mist and creeping up into the pine forest that stretched out on the top of the rise a hundred feet or so above. The cold, if not the fog, crept in through the open doorway of All Saints Church in the parish of Beeston Regis. It was a medieval church with a stone floor and walls. But it wasn’t the chill that made Ruth Bryson shiver as she knelt in front of the altar.

Her long dark curly hair was brushed neatly. Her face was devoid of make-up now, and the tears on her cheek glistened in the freezing air. She made a sign of the cross and whispered a prayer. Then her large blue eyes sprang open as she felt a heavy masculine hand on her shoulder. Her heart hammered in fear as she fought to control her bladder.

She looked up at the darkness that lay behind the stained-glass windows.

What had she done? What in Christ’s sacred name had she done? She ran her hand over the necklace he had given her. Though she could not understand the words on the inscription, he had explained them to her and she knew that the meaning of them was stronger and older than language itself.

Ruth stiffened as the grasp on her shoulder tightened and pulled her to her feet, the tears running free down both of her cheeks now.

‘It’s time,’ said a man’s voice that was every bit as cold as the touch of the sea fret on her bare shoulder.

Deep in the throat of winter.

Apparently, as I was to discover shortly, we are still technically living in an ice age. The Pleistocene-Holocene to be precise. The one that began about ten thousand years ago. Eight thousand years before Christ’s feet walked on lands that, in the big scheme of things, were probably not the green and pleasant hills of England.

What do ice ages do? They stir things up, bring things to the surface. I do pretty much the same thing. My name is Jack Delaney and I am a private investigator. But whereas I uncover things by interfering in the lives of people — people who usually wish that I hadn’t — ice ages do the same to land masses. Giant glaciers, as they move, rip up the ground below, millions of tons of ice destroying the earlier landscape in a way that industrialists could only dream of. But whereas those men would build more satanic mills, however sanitised, the glaciers created beauty. Albeit beauty of a different sort. Creating mountains and valleys and glacial lakes. Shaping the wild ruggedness of the North Norfolk coast. A harsh and cruel beauty.