Simon Clark - The Fall

Thank God , she thought gratefully. The elasticated foot had slipped off, dumping him rudely into the dirt.

With an effort, she drew her knees up to her stomach as she hung there so he couldn’t reach her feet. (She knew he wouldn’t just give up and go away. No, would he hell! He seemed to have the temperament of a bull-dog as well as the look of one, with his flattened face and short thick limbs.)

The branch whipped her up and down as she hooked one leg over it before hoisting herself into a seated position.

Safe for the moment, at least now she could regain her breath.

‘Get down here!’ he snarled as he hauled himself to his feet.

She looked down. Bostock’s foreshortened body looked stubbier than ever; his upturned face glistened with sweat; his eyes burned with fury.

‘Get down.’

She shook her head, an emphatic no. She didn’t want her head broken open with a bloody rock.

This time he changed tactics. He couldn’t reach her so he jumped up to grab the trailing ends of a connecting branch. As soon as he had a grip he tugged at it, shaking the whole branch she sat upon, like he was trying to shake apples from a tree.

Quickly, still sitting astride the branch like it was a horse, she worked her way towards the trunk where it was thicker.

Soon it hardly moved at all, no matter how hard he tugged.

For the next five minutes she sat there watching tensely as he tried everything he could to either dislodge her or reach her.

After furiously swinging on every branch he could reach, in the vain hope of dislodging her so she’d fall out of the tree, he began picking rocks out of the long grass and throwing them at her.

But she moved again until the branches formed a shield between herself and him. No rocks even touched her.

Next on his agenda was to try and climb the trunk of the tree to reach her.

Although powerful-looking, Bostock was very short, and not at all agile. It didn’t help that there were no real hand- or footholds on the tree for the first six feet or so of the trunk.

He did manage to grab hold of a branch just below her, which would have made a half-decent handhold.

However, as soon as he’d curled his stumpy fingers around the branch, Nicole climbed down the tree until she could reach them.

Then, taking her weight on her bare left foot, where the gorilla foot had been pulled off, she used the other foot to stamp down on his fingers as hard as she could.

After the seventh or eighth stamp on his knuckles he swore loudly and let go, slithering down, face against the trunk of the tree, the bark scraping his chin and nose.

He swore louder.

‘I’ll get you!’ he yelled.

Nicole was trembling from her bones outwards but she managed to say in such a calm voice it surprised her, ‘No, you won’t.’

‘I will, you bitch.’ He looked suddenly crafty; his eyes gleamed up at her as he stood there, head tilted back, watching her. ‘I’m not leaving here. And you can’t stay in that tree forever, can you!’

She stared down at him, not replying.

He said in an oily voice, ‘Well, I’m prepared to stay here for as long as it takes.’

‘They’ll catch you!’

‘No, they won’t. No-one will find Marion for days yet.’ Smiling, Bostock lay down flat on his back on the grass, his hand pillowing his head, looking for all the world as if he was enjoying a sunny day in his back garden. Now he could watch her comfortably, without tilting his head back.

Nicole crouched down on the branch with her back to the main trunk of the tree and stared right back at him. His eyes were quite insane. She saw that clearly enough. Mad, bad and dangerous were the words that ran through her brain. Mad, bad and dangerous.

She knew she had no other option. There was nothing else she could do. They were both in for a long wait.

Ryan Keith got a lift into town from an Australian couple who’d been at the amphitheatre. Immediately he went into the nearest supermarket. The name of the store, Hillards, was unfamiliar to him. It smelt different from other supermarkets – a strong floral disinfectant, he supposed. Some of the products on the shelves looked unfamiliar, too, but in that state of mind he didn’t stop and look more closely. Gazing at goods on display wasn’t why he was here. Moving like he was on autopilot, not noticing other shoppers grinning at his Oliver Hardy costume, he picked up two bottles of vodka, then headed for the check-out.

The sweetest thing imaginable right now was to get completely out-of-your-skull wrecked.

Once the girl had punched the till buttons he handed her his Visa card. Then he waited as she laboriously pulled a credit-card slip printer from a shelf beneath the till; she slotted the card into it; rested a carbon slip over the top; then struggled for a moment to slide the pressure bar over the top.

It was all taking a very long time. Ryan was conscious of that. The bowler hat made his head itch but he didn’t think to remove it.

He merely waited.

That sweet-looking vodka glinted like holy water in the bottom of his basket.

The temptation to simply open a bottle right now was nearly overpowering. His scalp itched even more: centipedes could have been nesting in there the way it felt, their multitudinous pointy feet digging into his scalp as they scurried through his hair.

‘This card isn’t right,’ the girl said.

Ryan looked at her, frowning in a woolly, distant kind of way as the words sank in. Eventually, he responded, ‘You take Visa, don’t you? It said so on the door.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s valid. It doesn’t expire until the end of April next year.’

The girl gave him a puzzled look, then glanced around her as if half-expecting some camera crew to pop out, complete with a presenter to tell her all this was a riotously funny practical joke. Oliver Hardy presents duff card to checkout girl. Cue studio laughter.

There was no-one there she could see. No hidden camera, no presenter wearing a cheeky Gotcha! grin.

Patiently, but a little louder as if to make sure her voice was picked up by a hidden microphone (she still thought this was some kind of elaborate set-up), the girl said, ‘The card expires April 1999. But it’s the “valid from” date that’s wrong. It’s valid from January 1996. See?’

‘So?’

‘Well, the year is 1978, isn’t it?’

‘This is 1978?’

‘Yes.’

What the man in the Oliver Hardy suit did next took her by surprise.

With an explosive yell, he cried: ‘ Shit! ’

Then he grabbed a bottle of vodka in each hand and ran for the door.

Zita parked the car in the centre of town. The summer day had brought out enough shoppers to thicken the flow along the pavements.

‘Good heavens to Murgatroyd,’ Zita said in something between wonder and disgust. ‘Will you just look at those fashions? Did we ever wear anything as drab as that?’

‘So this is what passes for ’70s chic?’ Sam said, wrinkling his nose. ‘There’s every shade of brown and grey you could possibly think of.’

In the back of the Range Rover, Jud eagerly wound down the window. Sam saw the man’s head was turning left and right so much it was a wonder he didn’t sustain friction burns on his neck from his shirt collar. ‘Heavens above,’ he said again and again in tones of sheer amazement. ‘Look. The Crescent’s still a cinema. What’s it showing? Damn, old-man eyes I’m getting. I can’t see what’s on.’

‘ Jaws .’ Sam said in a low voice. ‘What we might describe as Jaws One , still well away from the cruddy sequels.’