Another unsuccessful competition entry this week, the challenge being to write a murder / mystery story set in my local area, in under 2500 words. Just squeaked it.
Icebreaker
It’s the middle of November and winter’s drawing in. I’m walking up the lane through the woods at the back of Cragside Farm and there’s ice in the tractor track puddles for the first time this season. I take this route because no one else ever does. The old man rarely leaves the house these days, and any visitors come up the tarmacked drive, through the gates with the CCTV. His son had those cameras fitted; I was here the morning he arrived to supervise. Bossy type, rude even, the way he spoke to that bloke from the security company. I knew not to use the drive again after that. Before then, I might have snuck up that way if it was late and dark and I’d had an especially long day on my feet. It adds another half mile to the journey, taking the back way, but what’s half a mile when you walk as far as I do?
Cragside Farm has been my home for 3 years now. No one knows I live here, but no one particularly cares. If you look at me at all, you probably think I don’t live anywhere. By the true definition of the word, I am homeless. I neither own nor pay rent on my own accommodation. No census or electoral register records my residence. I pay no taxes, utilities, nor anything towards the upkeep of this property. I haven’t even set foot inside the farmhouse itself. I sleep in the barn, the hayloft that’s still stacked with bales even though the old man sold off the last of his cattle in the summer. I worried he might sell the hay too, but nobody wants these old, square bales anymore. Nowadays they want huge, round, wrapped in plastic bales that’ll feed a herd for a couple of days and don’t have to be lifted by hand, the twine cutting into your palms, the dust coating your throat as you break them and shake them in the hay racks. I know all about that. I grew up on a farm just over the Pennines. How I got from there to here, that’s a story I prefer not to think about anymore. Thinking won’t fix it.
Even with the shelter of the trees, the wind cuts through me. There’s nothing beyond Cragside Farm but the moors of Marsden and Saddleworth. The rocky summit of West Nab standing vigil over Meltham and Huddersfield, staring out across to Bradford in the north and Leeds in the east. I couldn’t live in a city. I only ever walk as far as Huddersfield, find a busy corner to lay my cap down, hope I make enough to feed myself on the walk home.
It’s dark by the time I reach the barn. Across in the house, the old man’s already hunkered down in front of his TV. I’ll join him soon. First I climb into the loft and set out my evening meal. A stale sausage roll and half a Cornish pasty I salvaged from the bins round the back of Greggs; part of a ham sandwich someone left on the wall by the canal (for the ducks?); a bruised apple and a brown banana from the fruit stall on the indoor market. I usually eat better than this but I’m saving my money for when it’s too cold to sit around on street corners. I made almost five pounds today, spent just twenty pence. The rest goes in my stash for a rainy day, or a snowy day, or a day even icier than this one. They’re coming.
After tea, I retrieve my blanket from its hiding place under the loose hay and head back outside. My watch stopped working last year but I have a pretty good sense of time. NCIS will be starting any minute. It’s LA tonight. We like the acronym shows, me and the old man. CSI, SVU, even the old NYPD Blue repeats, we watch them all. Him from his armchair by the fire, me from the holly bush in his overgrown back garden. It’s one of those bushes you can climb right inside (if you don’t mind a few scratches) and there’s a big hollow space waiting to welcome you. When I was a kid, I’d have made a den here. Did I ever grow up? There’s a good view of the TV, anyway, and I can just make out the subtitles. The old man’s half deaf; he always turns on the subtitles.
So we watch our shows, NCIS followed by a CSI double bill. He doesn’t move from his chair, I don’t move from the bush. The wind carries the drone of cars climbing the hill towards West Nab. They sound so much closer than usual. Occasionally I even think I hear one approaching, but I see no lights through the trees and I know it’s just my imagination. I return to Miami. Horatio cracks the case, makes a subtitled quip, puts his sunglasses on and heads off down the boardwalk. There’s lots to be said for watching shows set in the sunshine state when it’s too cold to feel your fingertips. Even the fire in the living room has died down to embers, and finally the old man gets up from his chair, switches off the TV, and heads upstairs. I wish him goodnight and retire to the barn. Still wrapped in my blanket, I crawl deep into the stack of loose hay till all but my face is covered and fall asleep in seconds. It’s been a long day.
* * *
I wake to the crackle of a police radio. I’ve been moved on enough to recognise that noise as a threat. I go quickly to the boarded up window. There’s a gap in the boards when I can see out into the yard. Two police cars, an ambulance, and a muddy Range Rover I recognise as belonging to the old man’s son. Another car, an Audi, is just pulling up. Probably CID. I should be relieved: they wouldn’t come in such force just to move me on. I should make myself scarce, but morbid curiosity gets the best of me.
I climb down the ladder and cross to the front of the barn. There’s another window here, also boarded, except for the very bottom pane which still has its glass. Frosted outside, cobwebbed inside, but I can just make out two figures in the yard beyond. The younger is male, uniformed, probably the source of the radio crackle that awoke me. The other is a woman, late thirties, red hair and rectangular spectacles. I’d call her attractive if I allowed myself to think that way anymore.
“Bit of a wasted journey for you, Inspector. Pretty certain it was an accident.”
“What was he doing up there?” The woman’s looking up at the roof of the farmhouse, then her face drops slowly to the yard.
“Problems with his TV aerial. We spoke with his son – it was him what found him, first thing. Terrible that, finding your dad sprawled out in the yard, stiff as a board – I mean, frozen, like, not just the rigor…”
“Why was he here? The son? Does he often visit so early in the morning?”
“On his way to work, like. Apparently the old fella rang him last night complaining about the reception – couldn’t get any of his programmes. On about going up on the roof and fixing the aerial himself, but Mr. Armitage - the son, I mean - he thought he’d persuaded his dad to wait till morning. Guess he just didn’t want to miss the snooker.”
I go cold inside, colder than I felt in the holly bush last night while I watched three crime scene dramas back-to-back with a man whose TV was apparently on the blink. A man who never once got up to make a phone call (it’s out in the hall, I’ve never seen him use a mobile or cordless). I’ve watched enough detective shows to know something’s not right… but what can I do about it?
“Higgins versus Murphy, ma’am. Blinder, down to the very last frame. Don’t suppose you…?”
A third voice interrupts the post-snooker commentary, shouting “officer!” from across the yard. The inspector turns and I follow her gaze. I recognise my suspect immediately.
“This is Mr. Armitage now, ma’am. Mr. Armitage, this is Detective Inspector Silver—“
The inspector tells the son she’s sorry for his loss and Armitage’s face flashes a brief, humourless smile. Whatever he says now will be a lie. I know it, but how could I ever prove it?
“I’ve been going over the CCTV. I know what it looks like, but I just wanted to be sure…” He pauses and stares straight through the dirty, frosted window. I step back, suddenly afraid. Can he see me? Does he know I’m here? That I stay here every night? What if those cameras on the gate weren’t the only ones he had installed? What if he has me on film, coming and going from the barn, climbing into the holly bush, watching…
Watching…
Just like three years ago last summer. I spent my evenings on the rec’, watching the birds. There were always kids around, mucking about. Playing football, riding their bikes, smoking and swearing. I didn’t think anything of it. This was Delph, a little village just over the hills. I’d lived there most of my life. As a kid, on my dad’s farm, and then, when I was older and my brothers proved more agriculturally-minded than me, in a poky terrace in the village. I designed websites, kept myself to myself, never had a girlfriend or went out drinking, but I liked to walk down on the rec’, on a summer night, to sit and watch the swallows darting low to catch flies, or the blackbirds bobbing around on the ground, digging for worms. Sparrows, blue tits, magpies, the occasional chaffinch or peewit… until one night I found the little girl.
“Wanted to be certain,” the son continues, his eyes returning to the inspector, “that no one else… I mean, you tell yourself it was just an accident, that the silly old fool just couldn’t wait till morning… but I always worried about him, out here on his own. That’s why I had them cameras fitted in the first place. You hear such horrible things…”
“We’ll need to examine that footage ourselves,” says the inspector, and Armitage nods, his mouth a thin, tight line.
“Of course, of course… but there’s nothing… He was alone all night. No one else comes up the drive till my own Range Rover, first thing. I had to be sure, you understand. That there wasn’t any kind of… foul play. Bad enough knowing he might still be alive if I’d come round last night… but I was so tired, I’d had such a long day…”
The inspector tells him not to blame himself, but I’m thinking about the phone call. The one the old man supposedly made to report his faulty TV. The phone records, I think, the police can trace any calls made to and from this house last night, I’ve seen it done a thousand times on TV. They can prove no such call was ever made… but then I think of the CCTV, and I realise how long the son’s been planning this…
He must have been here, I realise, long before his father retired for the night. Early enough to place that call himself, from out in the hall where he knew his father wouldn’t ever hear. Some accomplice – his wife, perhaps, or a friend he’s cut in for a profit once he sells the farm –lice – his wife, perhaps, or a friend he’s cut in for a profit once he sells the farm – was waiting at home to answer. Or maybe he just had an answerphone set up. It wouldn’t matter, as long as the records showed a call from here to there last night, long enough to complain about bad TV reception. But I know he’s lying. I know the old man didn’t leave his armchair from the start of NCIS to the end of CSI. I’m a witness – if not to the actual crime, then at least to the fabrication of Armitage’s alibi. But he’s a grieving son who’s just lost his father… and I’m a homeless beggar hiding out in the barn. A homeless beggar who the police already have on record…
I found her body in a scrappy patch of dock leaves at the corner of the playing fields. I thought she might be still alive, despite all the blood. I picked her up and carried her to the nearest house. I should have just left her. The police came, and her blood was on me. Nobody knew what had happened. She’d been missing all afternoon. Her parents were frantic. They took me in for questioning. I tried to tell them, I’d just been watching the birds. They broke into my house, found the porn on my computer. I was a twenty-eight year old man without a girlfriend. It was nothing sick or perverted, not kids or S&M or... I shouldn’t have had to defend myself. I shouldn’t have felt so ashamed. They made me feel that way. They wanted me to confess.
The case fell apart. Someone had seen me at home when the girl went missing. The DNA evidence didn’t tally. The police lost interest and let me go. It didn’t matter. The damage was done. The stares, the whispers, the mothers pulling their children hastily away as I walked down the street. Even my own family… I left Delph three weeks later. Walked away from it all: my home, my job, my life. Been walking ever since.
I’m walking again now. I sneaked out the barn and up through the winter-dead brambles to the track I came in on. There was no point staying. I’ve watched enough of those shows to know that without actual, physical evidence, it’s going to be my word against Armitage’s. There’s nothing I can do for the old man now, and there’s no home here for me anymore. I’m carrying the few belongings I kept stashed in his barn. My blanket, my flashlight, my meagre savings in an old tobacco tin…
When I stumble, the tin goes flying. I stoop to pick it up from amid the smashed ice. The ice that’s been smashed by tyre tracks. Big, heavy tyre tracks that weren’t here last night… when the ice was fresh. Not tractor tracks though…
Suddenly I remember the sound of the approaching engine while Horatio did his thing and the muddy wheel arches on the son’s Range Rover, which he went out of his way to prove never came here last night… and then I know. I have to go back.
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