3 A Reformed Character (3 page)

He wasn’t really watching the others or listening to them, but he had a sense of huddles being formed and voices being lowered as he went about the mundane task of preparing the microwaveable Chinese banquet. Amaryllis could be simply running through Darren’s account of the gathering at the old railway yard, but she might try and use the opportunity to further a more sinister, hitherto unsuspected purpose of her own which just happened to overlap with what Darren and Victoria wanted. He was used to that, and had learned to ignore it, blotting out all probable consequences from his mind. He just hoped she wouldn't end up getting young Victoria involved in her machinations. The Petrelli family might get the wrong end of the stick about what had happened here and they might even blame him for any fallout..

Jock burst in again. For a moment Christopher tensed, fearing some drama such as a police siege, but then he realised it was impossible to come through the door in this weather without seeming to burst in.

‘Is it ready?’ said Jock. He came into the kitchen area and started poking around among the boxes. ‘Why have you done the rice first? What’s this stringy thing? Why aren’t there any prawn crackers?’

If I can get through the next ten minutes without losing my grip, thought Christopher, I won’t be so tempted to kill Jock. He relaxed slightly and breathed in deeply, which was not necessarily a good idea in such a confined space.

In the end Darren and Victoria demolished most of the banquet. It was about as unappetising as it had always sounded, but Victoria confessed that they hadn’t had anything to eat all day – they had been afraid to stop moving for long enough to eat. How could Darren put Victoria through that? Christopher asked himself. As he was clearing up, he heard Amaryllis trying to get the others to agree to an evening stroll. The idea was strongly resisted by Darren, who seemed to feel safe in the caravan, but Amaryllis eventually prevailed, as she usually did. Jock said he would sit and read the paper, since he had already had fresh air during his recent smoking break.

The gale blowing outside was certainly enough to get rid of any cobwebs, but it had stopped raining, and Christopher noticed a pale half moon, its light glinting on the wild sea in a bright riot of pattern. He could hear the waves crashing to the shore somewhere below them. No gulls – who were presumably sound asleep – and no children shrieking. Apart from the fact that they were harbouring a fugitive and would almost certainly be in more serious trouble than ever before when the law caught up with them, it was practically idyllic.

Then above the sound of the waves came another noise – a screeching, wailing in the distance that got louder and louder – and the pale moon was almost eclipsed by the flashing of blue lights.

‘Police! Run!’ said Amaryllis, and Darren and Victoria took off, darting in and out between the rows of caravans, tripping once over a fiddly ornamental fence, bumping into a clothes-line, heading closer to the edge of the cliff all the time.

Christopher couldn’t help himself. He had already started after them by the time they disappeared over the edge. For once he didn’t care what Amaryllis thought, or did, or discerned from his actions. He had to see what was happening, he had to try and help even if it meant putting his life on the line.

Chapter 3 Smile - you're on camera!

Of course if Darren and Victoria had had any sense they would have gone over the edge in a place where the land sloped down towards the centre of the bay in a gentle unthreatening expanse of green, punctuated only by clumps of gorse bushes. But when Christopher arrived at the place where Darren and Victoria had vanished, he groaned aloud. It was a sheer drop.

They had chosen to clamber down the rocky headland on this horrible night when if the wind didn't blow you off the cliff face, you would slip on the wet rocks and crash to a messy death like King Alexander III. He could see two pale shapes down there on the left, moving along at a fair speed. Of course they were younger and perhaps more desperate than he was. But maybe if he demonstrated his bravery by following them on their perilous journey, they would repay him by agreeing to give themselves up to the police. He suspected Amaryllis of suggesting this way of escape to them. She had appeared to consider herself outside the law on several occasions in the past; she was certainly capable of aiding and abetting fugitives, or obstructing the police, or whatever it was called nowadays.

At that moment he thought he heard someone speaking through a megaphone. He risked a glance behind him.

Flashing blue lights surrounded a caravan in the middle distance; as he watched, horrified, he saw its door open and a figure appear with its hands up. Jock McLean? The siege hadn't lasted very long. He hoped Jock would stand his ground and deny everything. It hadn't been his fault, after all - he was just an innocent bystander.

Behind him he heard someone shouting; then a yelp from below galvanised him into action. Had Victoria slipped? Should he rush to her rescue?

Christopher slithered over the edge, feeling the wet grass under him and then wet slippery rock. He had no idea whether there was a foothold or not. He slithered a bit further and to his relief, his foot knocked against something. It might be a ledge or just a knobbly bit of rock. He lowered himself until he was standing on it. It must be a ledge, though by the pale moonlight he couldn't tell how long or how wide it was. He began inching along, back to the rocks, walking sideways and peering into the night for a sign of the others.

The ledge ran out and he still hadn't seen them again. He was worried about the yelp, but he hadn't spotted any ominous bundles of anything down on the beach under the cliffs, so he hoped whatever was wrong it was just a minor thing, a temporarily twisted ankle, a scraped wrist. He had already suffered from both these minor injuries. He imagined he could feel blood trickling down his hand from the wrist scratch. What if he bled to death out here, or got hypothermia? Blood loss would almost certainly make hypothermia more likely. He stood still, afraid to move. He had come to his senses, too late to stop himself from doing this at all and just in time to make himself look stupid in everyone's eyes. Well, all right, in Amaryllis's eyes. The only comfort was that she had already seen him looking stupid on a number of occasions, and they were still friends - just about. And this was all her fault anyway.

Sliding down to sit on the rock shelf - the moon had brightened now and he had established his refuge was big enough to sit on - Christopher thought he saw another ledge a little below and to the left of where he was. Or maybe it was just a dark place in the cliff. But he could try and use it to get closer to the others. It would be silly to get this far and fall short. He rewound his thoughts and erased the word 'fall'.

He reached out with his left foot and thought he felt something solid. Now all he had to do was put his weight on that foot, swing his other -

The ledge he imagined he had seen turned out to be nothing more solid than a clump of grass. His left foot slipped on it, his whole body swung round and suddenly he was facing the rocks of the cliff face, one foot on the first ledge and the other swinging in mid-air, unable to move. He clung to an uneven patch in the rock with one hand, while finding a clump of grass just to the right and grabbing on to it with the other hand.

'Christopher,' said a voice above him.

He cricked back his neck to try and see something, but the rock overhung just enough to prevent him from doing so.

'It's me,' said the voice.

'Amaryllis?' he croaked. His voice sounded so thin and cracked that he could hardly hear it himself, so he wasn't sure if she had been able to make out that one desperate word.

'Yes. Hold on. I'll get you out of there, but just one thing...'

'What?'

'I apologise in advance. There's no excuse for what I'm going to do next. It's too good an opportunity to miss, but you'll probably kill me.'

'I'm not the one who goes around armed to the - aagh!' said Christopher, getting a mouthful of earth and small stones as she dislodged some loose bits and pieces at the top. What was the woman talking about? Was she planning to get him arrested? To leave him there all night? To send Jock down to join him?

He clung on, more apprehensive by the minute.

A commotion above made him tense up and cling on even more tightly. He panicked about entrusting his life to Amaryllis - not that she had ever let him down before, but they had been arguing a lot over Scrabble words. Was she any more reliable than a clump of grass?

'Christopher! Don't do it!' he thought he heard her shout, but in a voice that was almost unrecognisable: high, light, girlish.

'Keep hanging on, sir,' said a deeper, calmer voice up above him. 'No need to do anything silly now.'

'Can't - much longer.' puffed Christopher.

'We can sort things out!' called Amaryllis. 'Just don't do this!'

Yes, fine for her to say that, thought Christopher crossly, when she got me into this mess in the first place - as usual.

He waited. A discussion seemed to be going on up there, but he couldn't make out any of the words. Why didn't they send someone down the way he had come? What was taking so long? He thought he saw the faint echoes of blue flashing lights in the dark sky - was he hallucinating, or would that really happen?

After a while - it seemed like at least an hour but he didn't think it could possibly be that long - it was as if someone switched the lights on. The whole cliff face was lit up. When he turned his head to one side and the direction of his gaze downwards, he could see right down to the sea. It looked closer and more menacing than before. He hastily turned his gaze upwards.

'Don't panic, sir!' shouted someone from above. 'We just need to see what we're doing. Health and safety rules.'

What about my health and safety? fumed Christopher to himself. That seems to come last in everybody's calculations.

At last there was movement from the top of the cliff. Because his head was now turned to the wrong side and he didn't dare move a muscle in case he dislodged himself and fell, Christopher couldn't see what was happening, but a few minutes later someone said, almost into his ear, 'Hold tight while I get this rope round you - you're not going to jump, are you? You'd take me with you if you did, and I've got a young family so you wouldn't want to do that, would you?'

While the low voice rambled on, Christopher realised the rope had been tied round him, and soon he felt himself lifting into mid-air. For another moment he clung to his hand-holds, and then he released them, hoping he hadn't hallucinated the comparative security of the rope.

He was hauled up and over the edge in an undignified manner, and fell in a heap at the top. Amaryllis ran over and flung her arms around him.

'Thank goodness!' she said.

He couldn't quite unravel himself as quickly as he would have liked, in order to stand up, but then he realised someone else was speaking anyway.

'... from the cliff top at Kinghorn, where a swift, efficient rescue operation has just taken place... ‘

‘You’re live on 24 hour news,’ Amaryllis murmured into his ear. She gave him a quick hug which he chose to interpret as a warning, and let him go.

‘Well, this really is an extraordinary sequence of events,’ said the voice he had heard before. ‘The West Fife police have rounded off their evening by rescuing a would-be suicide from the top of the cliffs at Kinghorn. I’m just about to see if I can have a few words with him.’

Christopher stood up at last, swaying a little in the wind. Rain spattered his face, and voices seemed to come and go as words were whisked away and lost for ever in the air.

There was a circle of men in police uniforms around him, and Jock McLean stood in the middle distance, apparently speaking on a mobile phone. He gave Christopher a thumbs-up sign. A young girl who looked about sixteen advanced through the ring of policemen with a big furry microphone in her hand. A young man of about eighteen followed with a large camera. The lights were in Christopher’s eyes.

‘What am I going to do?’ he muttered to Amaryllis, who seemed intent on staying by his side throughout. He hoped this was to protect him, but he knew it could equally be so that she could sell his story to the media.

‘Say as little as possible,’ she advised.

This proved to be quite easy. They only wanted a few words from him, after all, and he knew they would probably distort even those. It must have been a slow day on the 24 hour news channels.

‘How did they get here so quickly?’ he asked Amaryllis an hour or so later, when the reporter and photographer and police had left at last, and they were back in the caravan eating toast. Christopher wasn't sure that the police were entirely convinced the three of them hadn't harboured a fugitive and perverted the course of justice - that was the phrase he had been trying to think of earlier - but apparently they were satisfied for the moment.

Amaryllis smiled. ‘The news team didn’t come here for you. They’re ambulance-chasers.’

‘Ambulance? Has somebody been hurt?’

‘No, in this case they were following the police around, covering the murder case. They arrived about two minutes after the police cars.’

‘Jemima and Dave saw you on the telly,’ said Jock, nodding with satisfaction. ‘I got her to put on News 24 and she was just in time. Said you looked like a ferret in the lights… Or maybe it was a rabbit.’

‘How did the police get here so quickly anyway?’ said Christopher, ignoring Jock and hoping that if he pushed the idea of being on television out of his head, not only would he forget the whole incident but so would everyone he knew. He didn’t want to be walking down Pitkirtly High Street one day and have everyone pointing at him and laughing about what an idiot he had been.

‘They put out an APB,’ said Amaryllis, ‘and the local policeman noticed Darren and Victoria getting off the train at Kinghorn. They don’t get many strangers here at this time of year. He called it in, and they checked with the caravan park and found somebody walking their dog had seen them knocking at our door and told the manager because they thought Darren was up to no good… Dog-walkers! Why do they do it?’

‘What?’ said Jock. ‘Have dogs, or be vigilant about what’s going on around them, as public-spirited people are meant to do?’

Amaryllis gave him a sour look. ‘They’re always getting in the way and seeing things they’re not meant to see… and the dogs aren’t much better.’

‘Did you tell Darren and Victoria to go over the cliffs?’ said Christopher. He had been mulling over this ever since he had been rescued.

She shrugged. ‘It was only an idle suggestion. It was up to them whether they actually did it or not.’

‘They should have given themselves up,’ said Christopher. ‘But I don’t suppose you’ve got any sympathy with that point of view.’

‘It’s a point of view,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I can see why you think that.’

‘Did you find out any more from them about what happened?’ said Christopher. He could have got cross with Amaryllis for organising his rescue in such a melodramatic way. But she had apologised, after all. There was really nothing more to be said about it. They were all still alive. A small nagging voice that wouldn't be silenced kept reminding him of Victoria, out there in the storm, and asking him if he thought Darren would really look after her, but he got used to it after a while and then found he couldn't hear it any more. 'At the murder scene. Or in the railway yard.'