ensured he saw nothing. It had only been removed an hour or so earlier. Then they had pushed the shovel at him and told him to dig.
One of the men wandered to the edge of the hole and peered down into the
depths. His companion glanced in too. They murmured something about it being deep enough. Three or four feet would do.
One snatched the spade from him. The other told him to stand still.
The man in the grave looked up but couldn’t make out their features in the blackness.
Not that it mattered any more.
He heard the slide on the automatic being worked. A metallic click in the freezing silence. He knew a round had been chambered.
The shot came seconds later. It caught him in the back of the head.
So did the second. And the third. The fourth was hardly necessary. Or the fifth.
The muzzle flashes erupted vividly in the blackness. The boom of the discharges were deafening in the stillness.
They waited until the sound had died on the wind then one reached for the shovel and the other began kicking clods into the freshly dug grave.
It would take a lot less time to fill it in, and for that they were thankful.
It was so cold.
One of them hawked and spat on the body then they continued covering it with earth.The other flicked a spent cigarette butt into the crude resting place.
Three or four feet was enough to hide the smell from carrion creatures. Foxes wouldn’t dig down that deep. And even if one did, who cared?
At least the job of filling in the grave warmed them up a little.
One of them looked at his watch.
Soon be done.
It was a start.
He glanced at the plastic carriage clock, then at his watch. He switched off the power and sat gazing at his own reflection in the blank monitor for a second.
Three pages. Better than nothing.
He got to his feet and headed for the stairs.
ESCAPE
Christopher Ward had found that one of the prerequisites for being a writer was a liking for solitude. He’d never been a very sociable person anyway, preferring his own company to that of others from an early age. Even so, when he wanted he could be as gregarious as the next person and actually appear to be enjoying it. But, deep down, Ward needed time on his own.
Even when he wasn’t working days would pass without him speaking more than ten words. These days a few muttered syllables on the phone was the full extent of his social interaction. And, of course, his visits to the cinema.
He had loved the cinema for as long as he could remember. Ever since his mother first took him to their local fleapit, somewhat inappropriately named The Palace, to see Planet of the Apes.
Like everything else, his cinema-going had changed over the years too. Now his local was one of the sixteen-screen multiplexes that had sprung up in most large towns.
Ward spent a large amount of time in the one that was just ten minutes’ drive from his house. So much
time in fact that many of the staff spoke to him as if he were a friend.
He watched everything. He had endured films like Pearl Harbor, he had tolerated pictures like Shakespeare in Love, and he had marvelled at masterpieces such as Gladiator. They offered an escape for him. A chance to sit in darkness for two or three hours and concentrate on the images before him.
Anything to forget his present predicament.
This particular day was cheap day. It was also pension day and most of the auditoria were populated by pensioners, usually complaining about how loud the sound was or muttering damning comments about the films shown in the trailers.
Ward parked his car in the large car park outside the building and walked in, glad to feel the air-conditioning after the heat of the sunshine. He took the escalator to the first floor where the cinemas were housed.
There were a number of restaurants and coffee bars on the same floor and he glanced over at them as he strode towards the box office.
He saw couples sitting talking. Laughing. Everyone, it seemed, had someone.
Except him.
He ambled into the short queue behind two pensioners and a couple of students and waited, scanning the electronic board behind the cashiers that displayed show times.
The pensioners were having trouble choosing between Captain Corelli’s Mandolin or Hannibal. Both based on bestselling books, Ward noted with annoyance.
They were still deciding when the students slipped past them and bought tickets for The Mummy Returns.
He felt like giving the old sods a prod in the back, telling them that they wouldn’t enjoy Hannibal and that Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was bullshit.
Instead, he too slipped past them and shoved a five-pound note through the small slot beneath the glass of the cashier’s position. He collected his change and headed off to the theatre showing X-Men 2.
The girl who tore his ticket smiled at him. She was pretty. Early twenties. He glanced at her gold name badge. Sheree.
He hurried to find a seat. The lights were dimming as he sat down. He was free for another two hours.
COME THE NIGHT
Ward hated the night. It gave him time to think. Thoughts crowded in like unwanted spectres.
He sat in front of the television, the images before him barely registering.
But after half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, very little of anything was registering.
Alcoholic anaesthetic.
Apparently every drink killed a thousand brain cells. The first to go were memory cells.
Ward poured himself another drink and murdered a few more recollections.
By the time he’d finished the bottle, the clock on top of his TV showed 1.03
a.m. He struggled to his feet and switched off the late-night film, some Jean-Claude Van Damme shite. It could have been anything.
He slammed the living-room door behind him, set the burglar alarm and wandered upstairs.
It was a humid night and Ward wasn’t surprised to hear the first rumblings of thunder in the distance. He undressed in the darkness and stood gazing out over his considerable back garden and up at the cloud-filled sky.
Far away there was a silent fork of lightning. It cut through the clouds like a silver spear and was followed, seconds later, by a loud clap of thunder.
He watched the sky, watched the darkness. Felt his head spinning.
He glanced in the direction of his office, clearly visible from his bedroom window. There was a dull grey glow coming from inside.
Ward blinked hard and sighed. Had he forgotten to turn the monitor off again?
There was another flash of lightning, the silver gleam glinting on the velux windows of the office.
Ward sat on the edge of the bed for a moment then lay down.
The storm grew louder.
It was a long time before he slept.
RESUMING HOSTILITIES
Blank screen. Headache.
Christopher Ward massaged the back of his neck with one hand and exhaled deeply.
It wasn’t a hangover. He’d had enough of those over the years to know the difference.
