Into the Dark by Fiona Cummins

Author:Fiona Cummins [Cummins, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2022-02-09T17:00:00+00:00

24

Monday evening

A few hours before the Holdens disappeared

Gray’s father had been a crook. This knowledge had come upon him gradually as he was growing up, in the same way children realize Father Christmas is not real or their parents are not all-knowing gods, but humans with flaws and imperfections. Anthony Holden had many of these.

But he’d imparted one useful piece of information to his son. On those nights when the teenage version of Gray would come home late after his Saturday shift at the pub, or a gig with his friends, his father would still be up, counting cash into dirty piles.

In those strange, intimate moments, he’d rest his boots on the kitchen table, light a cigarette, inhale and blow out smoke through his nose, and talk about the cons he’d committed. Gray couldn’t remember everything his father told him, but he remembered this: ‘If you ever need to hide a dead body, son, you’d do worse than throw it off a cliff.’

That was how he found himself at the edge of Midtown cliffs on a night when the clouds were running fast in the wind and the moon was obscured.

When it was late and full dark, he’d dragged the body from his office and into the car park at the back of the building, erasing the last twenty-four hours of footage from security cameras he’d installed after a break-in the previous year. Then he disabled them.

Her car was one of the two parked there. An idea came to him – something he’d seen on television – and when he’d retrieved her keys, he hefted her into the passenger side and fitted her seatbelt, the wound in his hand opening up and roaring in protest. Blood matted the side of her head and streaked the front of his shirt, his sleeve and forearm. When she was secured, he tossed in her handbag and slid himself into the driving seat, a hat jammed over his hair.

The drive took less than five minutes. He chose country roads, trying his best to avoid the built-up estates, the street lights and the risk of traffic cameras, keeping his head bent, his face hidden.

A wind was blowing off the sea when he parked up, nosing the cliff edge. The place was deserted, as he’d known it would be. A squall, full of rain, battered the windscreen. He sat for a minute, breathing darkness into his lungs, exhaling common sense.

There was no going back.

He opened the car door and stepped into the night. No artificial light here, just a muted glow from the moon that cowered behind the clouds. Rain touched his face. He didn’t attempt to wipe it away but let it bathe him. For a second time, he scanned the cliffs. Not a soul. Except for the distant lights of Midtown.

He allowed his mind to empty, to disassociate himself from the task at hand. If he thought too much about what he was doing, he wouldn’t be able to go through with it.

He leaned over and unbuckled her seatbelt.

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