Питер Ловси - On the Edge

‘We’re wasting our time if they’re all like this.’

Rose refused to be beaten. This was her show now. She was no longer passive. She had forced her personality out of its straitjacket and she had a liking for liberty. She pointed the torch behind them, across what had once been the garden. ‘What’s that, then?’

The small circle of light had stopped on a dark, raised mass.

‘Just rubbish.’

Certainly when Rose stepped closer she found a collection of rusting and broken objects that must have been heaped there during the salvage operation. A garden roller without its wooden handle, several dented saucepans, a piece of saturated, threadbare carpet, a wheelbarrow, the frame of a deckchair. She stooped to examine something that gleamed. It was a chromium-plated key-plate.

Antonia came over. ‘What have you found?’

‘Somebody’s front door by the look of it. Help me slide it to one side.’

‘What for? Is there something underneath?’

‘I don’t know. There might be.’ Rose had noticed a patch of concrete and a curved piece of corrugated steel that suggested a possibility.

Together they gripped the edge of the door and tried to move it.

‘There’s too much heavy stuff on top.’

They scrabbled among the rubbish and lifted off a few bricks and a coalbucket filled with china fragments. At the second attempt they succeeded in pulling the door about a yard to one side.

Antonia whistled. ‘Nice work, darling!’

They had uncovered three or four steps leading underground to a cavity blocked by more rubbish, the frame of a pushchair and a dustbin lid.

‘Who would have known it?’ said Antonia.

They had found an Anderson shelter, the fortified hole in the ground that millions of families had installed in their gardens in the first years of the war, consisting of a curved arch of corrugated steel sunk three feet and covered with earth. This one had partially collapsed and was so overgrown as to be barely recognizable.

Together they hauled out the objects that were blocking the entrance. Then they used the torch again. The steel walls had become unclamped at the top and now sagged. The space inside was much reduced.

‘It doesn’t look very safe.’

‘Doesn’t need to be,’ said Rose.

She picked up a stone and tossed it in. They heard it bounce across the concrete floor. Antonia grabbed the torch and crouched to peer inside. Her voice had a promising echo. ‘Darling, it’s ideal. His own tomb. We can cover him with rubble and put back the rubbish and no one will ever find him. When they clear the site they’ll just bulldoze this. Let’s fetch him, shall we? Have you got the keys?’

Rose handed them over as if to a servant. She felt elated at having solved the problem of where to deposit the body. She was entitled to some self-congratulation. She alone had thought of this place and found the shelter. Without her, Antonia wouldn’t have stood a chance of getting away with murder. As it was, Hector’s body was most unlikely to be found. He would just be listed as a missing person, one of thousands. And the credit for that belonged to her.

Mustn’t get over complacent, she thought immediately. The night isn’t over yet. She followed Antonia to the car.

Antonia had already turned the key and lifted the boot lid. They reached into the dark interior and hauled out the body and staggered towards the garden containing the shelter. The distance they had to cover was about seventy yards, and the footing was treacherous. Either of them could easily have turned an ankle. As it was, they managed it without a rest, pausing only when they stood by the steps of the shelter. They set the body down with the head and shoulders resting on the door.

‘Get some breath back first.’ Rose took a seat on the steps.

‘As you wish.’ Antonia took the torch from her pocket and started shining it over the rubbish around them.

‘Looking for something?’

‘Nothing in particular.’

Rose didn’t believe her. She was capable of anything.

Antonia said, ‘Feet first, I reckon.’

‘What?’

‘When we lift him in, his feet should go first.’

Rose didn’t comment. Her eyes were following the beam of the torch. It picked out a set of rusty fire irons lying loose beside the wheelbarrow. Tongs, a shovel and a poker. The beam danced on to something else, coaxing her attention that way. Some instinct made her resist. Instead she turned her gaze back, outside the pool of light, and saw Antonia put her foot against the poker and covertly nudge it closer to the shelter entrance.

‘Are you listening, Rose?’

Suddenly the torch was shining full in her face. She stiffened like a rabbit caught in a headlight’s glare, except that the paralysing terror struck her a moment before the light. She managed to whisper, ‘What?’

‘Ready to start?’

Rose put up her arm protectively. ‘Stop it. It’s dazzling me.’

‘Get up, then.’

The beam moved away and the immediate feeling of helplessness passed. Rose had her hand to her eyes and she looked between the fingers to where the poker was lying. She’d expected Antonia to make a grab for it. Not yet, apparently. But she would at the next opportunity. ‘If you want his legs to go into the shelter first, you can lift them. I’m not going right inside.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Antonia. ‘You’re smaller than I am.’

‘I don’t like small spaces.’

Antonia lowered the torch and held it out to her. ‘Look inside. It’s all right. No rats or anything. Get a grip on yourself, you great sissy.’

‘That’s enough!’ Rose sprang up and pushed a warning finger at Antonia’s face. ‘I could easily walk away and leave you now.’

The tone switched abruptly from scorn to protest. ‘But you’ve refused all along to lift him by the shoulders.’

‘Never mind. I’m ready to do it now.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! Have it your way, ducky, but let’s get on with it.’

Antonia dropped the torch and strutted histrionically past Rose to take a grip on Hector’s legs. But the bluster didn’t succeed as a diversion. Rose kept her eyes on the poker. She watched Antonia locate it with her right foot and glance down and attempt to nudge it out of sight under some thistles. Proof positive that she would launch an attack with it any minute. One or two blows on the skull with that would be death.

Disposing of Hector wasn’t enough. Antonia meant to kill again.

Why?

Rose knew why.

It’s the same plan as before, only this time she’s streamlined it. She means to kill me and take over my identity. She’ll bury me here, with Hector’s corpse. She’s got my handbag at home with my keys, my ration book and my identity card. She can get into my house and find my birth certificate and anything else she needs. She’ll use my name to get married to Vic. And then she’ll go to America with him.

She will not .

Rose forced herself to stand up, step woodenly across the rubble and take up the position she had said she would, facing Antonia, with the length of Hector’s body between them. This was the task that had to be completed, whatever else happened. Neither could manage it alone.

She stooped and slid her hands under the back, between the arms. Then she looked at Antonia, who was dipping to take the weight of the legs. They nodded at each other like two removal men lifting a piece of furniture.

Rose knew that the minute her usefulness was at an end, when Hector’s corpse was safely in the shelter, Antonia would attack. She definitely meant to kill.

And if by some chance the bodies of a man and a woman were discovered here later, the woman with an impacted skull, she would be dressed in clothes that had belonged to Antonia. The cunning that had ordered the events of the past few hours was clear.