The Fall

17

Nicole Wagner had stood and watched the man murder his wife with the stone.

The shock of witnessing such an act of violence had stunned her. As though someone had tent-pegged her feet to the ground she stood there, just holding the rope that she’d thrown over the branch as a prelude to hanging herself.

Now the man stared back at her, his own eyes wide with shock.

She saw he was panting with the exertion of beating the woman’s head until it resembled raw liver.

Grey sweat-stains formed half-moons beneath his armpits on the cream polo shirt.

The pair were man and wife. Yes, she remembered them from her bus. They were always arguing.

The man coughed, then looked round at the deserted wood. His eyes suddenly became crafty.

Nicole let go of the orange rope and backed away slowly, one step at a time, the big gorilla feet making a swishing sound across the dry earth.

The man held up his hand (the one without the pebble, she saw). He smiled; it was an absurdly warm smile at that. ‘Wait a moment,’ he said in a friendly voice. ‘I want to have a word with you. I need you to tell them I – Wait!’

But she wasn’t waiting.

At that moment her mind snapped into focus. The grinning lunatic clown in the back of her mind evaporated.

Now she realised she didn’t want to kill herself. She didn’t want to die, full stop.

She turned and ran through the wood. She ran as hard as the ridiculous gorilla suit would allow.

‘Come back… I just need to talk to you. Only for a moment… a few seconds… please.’ The cajoling voice gave way to a desperate shout. He ran after her, blundering through the undergrowth. It sounded like a ferocious bull chasing her.

She ran hard, her arms windmilling, the gorilla costume snagging on twigs and leaving clumps of long nylon hair behind.

‘Wait!’ The man yelled. ‘Wait!’ The crashing became louder.

He’s catching up, Nicole thought, panicking. He won’t let me tell the others. He’ll use that pebble on me.

The thought of that heavy pebble cracking agonisingly against her own skull pushed her faster.

Tree trunks seemed to leap out to stand in front of her. She zigged and zagged to avoid them, her legs growing weaker and more watery by the second.

Then, with horrifying abruptness, the ground suddenly ended in front of her.

Dizzy with shock, she stopped and stared. Just two paces from her own feet the ground had been cut away.

Below her was a good 30-foot drop into an ancient quarry that was dotted here and there with half a dozen trees. There were no people she could see. On the quarry bottom rabbits scampered for cover, startled by the sounds of the chase from above. And that quarry-bottom, scattered with boulders and clumps of nettles, seemed a long, long way below.

It certainly wasn’t the kind of distance you leap and live to tell your grandkids about.

The man blundered through the bushes behind her, coughing and gagging as he fought to breathe. The sun blazed; his face had become a blotchy red, yet his nose was oddly white, as if it was made from plaster of Paris.

Nicole turned to her right and ran up the steep incline.

Immediately she thought: What a stupid thing to do. I can’t run uphill in this ridiculous suit. It’s heavy; it’s like running wrapped in a fireside rug. He’ll catch me now. Then he’ll break open my head like an egg.

He’s crazy enough to do it.

And he was. There was no doubt about it. He made barking sounds now; his eyes were wild. He gripped the pebble hard, because the pebble was slippery with Marion Bostock’s blood. And he’d need a good, tight grip on the pebble when he used it on her.

He was ten paces from her and closing fast.

Growing close to the sheer rock face of the quarry from the ground below was a horse chestnut tee. Perhaps 30 feet high, it was soft and green and billowing as a cloud. The uppermost branches, she saw, were level with her feet.

The man clumped towards her, swearing; raising the pebble.

Nicole judged the distance.

It was a crazy leap.

But she had no choice.

Cutting to her left, she ran as hard as she could towards the edge of the cliff. Then she leapt.

Her body followed a downward curve. Arms held out as if she was some great hairy bird, she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.

Behind her the man snarled in fury. ‘Stupid-stupid-stupid…’

Then she heard the God-Almighty crashing and snapping of twigs and branches as she landed on top of the horse chestnut tree. Her momentum carried her down into the green heart of the tree, a dizzying breathless dive, cracking twigs, ripping away leaves in a spray of green, then bumping against the thicker branches before coming to a sudden – and bonejolting – stop.