His face was grave for a moment, then he nodded. “What can we do?”
“Get an ambulance—Izzy probably needs one even if Adam doesn’t—and call the police.” He nodded again and had already started back up the slope when I added, “Oh, and try not to let Michael shoot that bloody farmer.”
“Why not?” Paul demanded bitterly. “He deserves it.” And then he was gone.
It was a relatively easy path down to where Adam’s body lay. Close to, it wasn’t particularly pretty. I hardly needed to search for a pulse at his outflung wrist to know the boy was dead. Still, the relatively soft surface had kept him largely intact, enough for me to tell that it wasn’t any shotgun blast that had killed him. Gravity had done that all by itself.
I took off my jacket and gently laid it over the top half of the body, covering his head. It was the only thing I could do for him, and even that was more to protect the sensibilities of the living.
When I looked up, I could see half of the rope dangling from the opposite side of the bridge high above my head, its loose end swaying gently. The other end was still tied around Adam’s ankles. It had snapped during his fall, but why?
Had Jackson’s shot severed the rope at the moment when Adam had either lost his balance and fallen, or as he’d chosen to jump?
I got to my feet and followed the rope along the ground to where the severed end lay coiled in the grass. I used a twig to carefully lift it up enough to examine it.
And then I knew.
The embankment seemed a hell of a lot steeper on the way up than it had on the way down. I ran all the way and was totally out of breath by the time I regained the bridge. But I was just in time.
Diana was crouched next to Izzy, holding her hand. Paul and Sam were standing a few feet behind Michael, eyeing him with varying amounts of fear and mistrust. The thickset youth had the shotgun wedged up under Jackson’s chin, using it to force his upper body backwards over the top of the parapet. Michael’s face was blenched with anger, teetering on the edge of control.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” He didn’t take his eyes off the farmer as I approached.
“Yes,” I said carefully, “but Jackson didn’t kill him, Michael.”
“But he must have done.” It was Paul who spoke. “We all saw—”
“You saw nothing,” I cut in. “The gun went off and Adam either jumped or fell, but he wasn’t shot. The rope gave out. That’s why he’s dead.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Diana said, haughty rather than anguished. “The breaking strain on the ropes we use is enormous. No way could it have simply broken. The shot must have hit it.”
“It didn’t,” I said. “It was cut halfway through. With a knife.”
Even Michael reacted to that one, taking the shotgun away from Jackson’s neck as he swivelled round to face me. I could see the indentations the barrels had left in the scrawny skin of the old man’s throat.
Chances like that don’t come very often. I took a quick step closer, looped my arm over the one of Michael’s that held the gun, and brought my elbow back sharply into the fleshy vee between his ribs.
He doubled over, gasping, letting go of the weapon. I picked it out of his hands and stepped back again. It was all over in a moment.
The others watched in silence as I broke the Baikal and picked out the remaining live cartridge. Once it was unloaded I put the gun down propped against the brickwork and dropped the cartridge into my pocket. Michael had caught his breath enough to think about coming at me, but it was Sam who intervened.
“I wouldn’t if you know what’s good for you,” he said, his voice kindly. “Charlie’s a bit of an expert at this type of thing. She’d eat you for breakfast.”
Michael favoured me with a hard stare. I returned it flat and level. I don’t know what he thought he saw, but he backed off, sullen, rubbing his stomach.
“So,” I said, “the question is, who cut Adam’s rope?”
For a moment there was total silence. “Look, we either have this out now, or you get the third degree when the police arrive,” I said, shrugging. “I assume you did call them?” I added in Paul’s direction.
“No, but I did,” Sam said, brandishing his mobile phone. “They’re on their way. I’ve said I’ll wait for them up on the road. Show them the way. Will you be okay down here?”
I nodded. “I’ll cope,” I said. “Oh and, Sam—when they arrive, tell them it looks like murder.”
Nobody spoke as Sam started out across the field. He eyed the quad bike with some envy as he passed, but went on foot.
“I still say the old bastard deserves shooting,” Michael muttered.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Jackson blurted out suddenly. Relieved of the immediate threat to his life, he stood looking dazed with his shoulders slumped. “I never would have fired. It was him who grabbed my hand! He’s the one who forced my finger down on the trigger!”
He waved towards Michael, who flushed angrily at the charge. I replayed the scene again and recalled the way the stocky boy had been struggling with Jackson for control of the gun. It had looked for all the world like a genuine skirmish, but it could just as easily have been a convenient setup.
When no one immediately spoke up in his defence, Michael rounded on us. “How can you believe anything so stupid?” he bit out. “Adam was a good mate. I would have given him my last cent.”
“Didn’t like sharing your girlfriend with him, though, did you?” Paul said quietly.
Izzy, still lying on the ground, gave an audible gasp. I checked to see how Diana was taking the news of her dead boyfriend’s apparent infidelity, but there was little to be gleaned from her cool and colourless expression.
A brief spasm of what might have been fear passed across Michael’s face. “You can’t believe I’d want to kill him for that?” he said and gave a harsh laugh. “Defending Izzy’s honour? Come on! I knew right from the start that she’s not exactly choosy.”
Izzy had begun to cry. “He loved me,” she managed between sobs, and it wasn’t immediately clear if she was referring to Michael or Adam. “He told me he loved me.”
Diana sat back, still looking at Izzy, but without really seeing her. “That’s what he tells—told—all of them,” she said, almost to herself. “Wanted to hear them say it back to him, I suppose.” She smiled then, a little sadly. “Adam always did need to be adored. The centre of attention.”
“You’re just saying that, but it isn’t true,” Izzy cried. “He loved me. He was going to give you up but he wanted to let you down gently, not to hurt your feelings. He was just waiting for the right time.”
“Oh, Izzy, of course he wasn’t going to give me up,” Diana said, her tone one of great patience, as though talking to the very young, or the very slow. “He used to come straight from your bed back to mine and tell me all about it.” She laughed, a high brittle peal. “How desperately keen you were. How eager to please.”
“And you didn’t mind?” I asked, fighting to keep the disbelief and the distaste buried.
“Of course not,” Diana said, sounding vaguely surprised that I should feel the need to ask. She sighed. “Adam had some—interesting—tastes. There were some things that I simply drew the line at, but Izzy—” her eyes slipped away from mine to skim dispassionately over the girl lying cringing in front of her — “well, she would do just about anything he asked. Pathetic, really.”
“Are you really trying to tell me that you knew your boyfriend was sleeping around and you didn’t care at all?”
Diana stood, looked down her nose again in that way she had. The way that indicated I was being too bourgeois for words. “Naturally,” she said. “I understood Adam perfectly and I understood that this was his last fling at life while he still had the chance.”