A young couple was approaching. Like the other three DSC members, they were wearing high-tech outdoor clothing—lightweight trousers you can wash and dry in thirty seconds, and lairy-coloured fleeces.
The boy was short and muscular, a look emphasised by the fact he’d turned his coat collar up against the chill, giving him no neck to speak of. He tramped onto the bridge and almost threw his rucksack down with the others.
“What’s the matter, Michael?” Adam said, his voice a lazy taunt. “Get out of bed on the wrong side?”
The newcomer gave him a single vicious look and said nothing.
The girl was shorter and plumper than Diana. Her gaze flicked nervously from one to the other, latching onto the rope already secured round Adam’s legs as if glad of the distraction. “Oh, Adam, you’re never jumping today, are you?” she cried. “I didn’t think you were supposed to—”
“I’m perfectly okay, Izzy darling,” Adam drawled. His eyes shifted meaningfully towards Sam and me, then back again.
Izzy opened her mouth to speak, closing it again with a snap as she caught on. Her pale complexion bloomed into sudden pink across her cheekbones and she bent to fuss with her own rucksack. She drew out a stainless-steel flask and held it up like an offering. “I brought coffee.”
“How very thoughtful of you, Izzy dear,” Diana said, speaking down her well-bred nose at the other girl. “You always were so very accommodating.”
Izzy’s colour deepened. “I’m not sure there’s enough for everybody,” she went on, dogged. She nodded apologetically to us. “No one told me there’d be new people coming. I’m Izzy, by the way.”
“Sam Pickering,” Sam put in, “and this is Charlie Fox.”
Izzy smiled a little shyly, then a sudden thought struck her. “You’re not thinking of joining, are you?” she said in an anxious tone. “Only, it’s not certain we’re going to carry on with the club for much longer.”
“'Course we are,” Michael said brusquely, raising his dark, stubbled chin out of his collar for the first time. “Just because Adam has to give up, no reason for the rest of us to pack it in. We’ll manage without him.”
The others seemed to hold their breath while they checked Adam’s response to this dismissive declaration, but he seemed to have lost interest in the squabbles of lesser mortals. He continued to stand on the parapet, untroubled by the yawning drop below him, staring into the middle distance like an ocean sailor.
“That’s not the only reason we might have to stop,” the tall bony boy, Paul, said. “In fact, here comes another right now.”
He nodded across the far side of the field. We all turned, and I noticed for the first time that a man on a red Honda quad bike was making a beeline for us across the dewy grass.
“Oh shit,” Michael muttered. “Wacko Jacko. That’s all we need.”
“Who is he?” Sam asked, watching the purposeful way the quad was bearing down on us.
“He’s the local farmer,” Paul explained. “He owns all the land round here and he’s dead against us using the viaduct, but it’s a public right of way and legally he can’t stop us. That doesn’t stop the old bugger coming and giving us a hard time every Sunday.”
“Mr. Jackson’s a strict Methodist, you see,” Izzy said quietly as the quad drew nearer. “It’s not trespassing that’s the problem—it’s the fact that when the boys jump, well, they do tend to swear a bit. I think he objects to the blasphemy.”
I eyed the farmer warily as he finally braked to a halt at the edge of the bridge and cut the quad’s engine. The main reason for my caution was the elderly double-barrelled Baikal shotgun he lifted out of the rack on one side and brought with him.
Jackson came stumping along the bridge towards us with the kind of rolling, twitching gait that denotes a pair of totally worn-out knees. He wore a flat cap with tar on the peak and a tatty raincoat tied together with orange bailer twine. As he closed on us he snapped the Baikal shut, and I instinctively edged myself slightly in front of Sam.
“Morning, Mr. Jackson,” Izzy called, the tension sending her voice into a high waver.
The farmer ignored the greeting, his eyes fixed on Adam. It was only when Michael and Paul physically blocked his path that he seemed to notice the rest of us.
“I’ve told you lot before. You’ve no right to do this on my land,” he said gruffly, clutching the shotgun almost nervously, as though suddenly aware he was outnumbered. “You been warned.”
“And you’ve been told that you have no right to stop us, you daft old bugger,” Adam said, the derision clear in his voice.
Jackson’s ruddy face congested. He tried to push closer to Adam, but Paul caught the lapel of his raincoat and shoved him backwards. With a fraction less aggression, the whole thing could have passed off with a few harsh words, but after this there was only one way it was going to go.
The scuffle was brief. Jackson was hard and fit from years of manual labour, but the boys both had thirty years on him. It was the shotgun that worried me the most. Michael had grabbed hold of the barrel and was trying to wrench it from the farmer’s grasp, while he was determined to keep hold of it. The business end of the Baikal swung wildly across the rest of us.
Izzy was shrieking, ducked down with her hands over her ears. I piled Sam backwards, starting to head for the end of the bridge.
The blast of the shotgun discharging stopped my breath. I flinched at the pellets twanging off the brickwork as the shot spread. The echo rolled away up and down the valley like a call to battle.
The silence that followed was quickly broken by Izzy’s whimpering cries. She was still on the ground, staring in horrified disbelief at the blood seeping through a couple of small holes in the leg of her trousers.
Paul crouched near to her, hands fluttering over the wounds without actually wanting to touch them. Sam had turned vaguely green at the first sign of blood, but he unwound the cotton scarf from under the neck of his leathers and handed it over to me without a word. I moved Paul aside quietly and padded the makeshift dressing onto Izzy’s leg.
“It’s only a couple of pellets,” I told her. “It’s not serious. Hold this against it as hard as you can. You’ll be fine.”
Michael had managed to wrestle the Baikal away from Jackson. He turned and took in Izzy’s state, then pointed the shotgun meaningfully back at the shaken farmer, settling his finger onto the second trigger. “You bastard,” he ground out.
“Michael, stop it,” Diana said.
Michael ignored her, his dark eyes fixed menacingly on Jackson. “You’ve just shot my girlfriend.”
“Michael!” Diana tried again, shouting this time. She had quite a voice for one so slender. “Stop it! Don’t you understand? Where’s Adam?”
We all turned then, looked back to the section of parapet where he’d been standing. The lichen-covered wall was peppered with tiny fresh chips, but the parapet itself was empty.
Adam was gone.
I ran to the edge and leaned out over it as far as I dared. A hundred and twenty-three feet below me, a crumpled form lay utterly still on the grassy slope. The blood was a bright halo around his head.
“Adam!” Diana yelled, her voice cracking. “Oh God. Can you hear me?”
I stepped back, caught Sam’s enquiring glance, and shook my head.
Paul was already hurrying towards the end of the bridge to pick his way down beneath the arches. I went after him, snagged his arm as he started his descent.
“I’ll go,” I said. When he looked at me dubiously, I added, “I know first-aid if there’s anything to be done, and if not, well—” I shrugged — “I’ve seen dead bodies before.”