Free One Night by Malla Duncan Page A

keys.’
    We went out, closing the door but
not locking it.
    The road was a desolate moon-gray under
scudding clouds. High above us, cold air was moving. There was the dank scent
of rain in the air. When we reached the spot where we had left Brent, there was
nobody there. The coat belt lay discarded in the sand.
    ‘Damn it!’ I almost shouted. ‘ Shit! He’s gone! He’s got my bloody keys!’
    Galina looked confused. ‘Must we go
back?’
    ‘Yes, there’s something I have to
do.’
    I felt a kind of black madness
descending, as though I couldn’t see properly; a mix of anger, exhaustion and an
all-consuming need for revenge. At that point, it was all that was driving me
to action. I had no idea then that it would drive me to a level of violence
that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
    With Galina in tow, I raced back to
the cottage, slammed in and grabbed a knife from the kitchen rack. Galina’s
mouth opened in shock and she stood back. I went outside. She stood in the
doorway watching me as I methodically slashed my car tires.
    ‘There,’ I said in triumph. ‘If I
can’t use it then he bloody well isn’t going to either!’
    Galina and I walked in silence down the track. I used the torch sparingly.
There were moonlit moments between the moving clouds and at times the road was
bathed in silvery fluorescence. We reached the end of the track and turned
north on the narrow road. Now out of Witch’s Wood, the bowl of the night sky
was visible, hung with plumes of cloud. Stars pricked through clear patches. I
was glad of the cold air, a salve on my bruised skin.
    We kept to the side of the road,
moving steadily, the quiet broken by the pad of our feet. Distantly I could
hear what might be a stream, and the cry of a hunting bird or predator in the
underbrush. But the over-riding quiet of the night landscape would have amplified
sound, and we didn’t talk. In my mind, like a brand, was Mona’s face; her dead
body collapsing on me, over and over, the red weave of wire cutting deeply into
the soft flesh at her neck…
    We must have been moving for a steady twenty minutes when Galina tapped me on
the shoulder. ‘There – ’ she pointed. ‘Light.’
    We found a leaning gate tied with
string. The knots were so tight, we gave up and climbed over. We wound our way
down a rough track into blackness. The lights had disappeared. I switched on
the torch. The track narrowed into darkness.
    As we stood there, a gunshot echoed
through the trees, loud as a lorry backfiring, an explosive sound that ripped
past us like a sudden violent wind.
    ‘A hunter,’ I said, not sure. ‘It’s
just a hunter probably after – after something,’ I finished lamely, not sure
what one would hunt after dark. Rabbits, squirrels, foxes?
    But it meant someone was there,
ahead of us, in the dark.
    We pushed on down the track, rounded a corner and a double-storey house with a
high peaked roof came into view. Tiny leaded windows winked brightly. There was
an old van parked in front of the porch. The yard was in the same chaotic state
as Brent Sedgeworth’s but this looked like engine parts and old tools.
    ‘Like-minded neighbours,’ I
muttered.
    We went up the steps to the front
door and knocked.
    Silence spilled around us. There
was no sound from the house.
    Gently I reached for the door
handle. The door opened at my touch. A messy living room greeted my gaze. It
led through to a dining area where a big, old-fashioned dark ball-and-claw
table was piled with newspapers. A TV winked in the corner of the room but
there was no sound.
    I stepped inside. Galina followed
me.
    A narrow, wooden staircase was
attached to a far wall. In the opposite corner a door opened on what appeared
to be a kitchen while another stood closed beside a wide mantelpiece which
framed an empty fireplace.
    ‘Hello?’ My voice, through puffy
lips, hardly reached above a raspy whisper. ‘Anybody home?’
    My first instinct was to look for a
phone – but apart from