Playing Dirty by Dan Latus

Author:Dan Latus [LATUS, DAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-11T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Forty-Three

I gently leaned Jason against what I took to be a timber wall. Then I pulled the tiny emergency torch that I always carry out of a sodden pocket in my jacket. Switching it on, I used the little beam to hunt for a door. It was good enough for that, even though it wouldn’t have been any use to us coming across the moor. Needless to say, I had to go round three barren sides of the hut before I found a door. Nothing was easy that night.

Then I sought and found a door handle. I turned it. The door stayed closed. I searched further and found two bolts, one high up and the other low down. With some difficulty, I managed to ease them aside with fingers that had very little feeling left in them. After that — at last! — I could open the door.

I went back for Jason, dragged him round the fourth side of the hut in the teeth of the wind and pushed him inside. We tumbled over the threshold. Jason tripped and sprawled across the floor, and I tripped over him. But I got back up fast, the wind screaming in my face, found the door and put all my weight behind it to slam it shut.

Then I slumped against a wall I couldn’t see, having pocketed my torch for safekeeping. I slid down until I was sitting on the floor. For a few moments I just sat and listened to the wind trying to get inside the hut after us, hearing it shriek in frustration as it realized it couldn’t. Rain like nails clattered on what seemed to be a metal roof.

‘Christ!’ Jason muttered in the darkness.

I said nothing. I was still catching my breath, and just so relieved and thankful to be out of the wind and the rain. Nothing else mattered just then.

‘You OK, Frank?’ Jason asked, after a little while.

It irked a bit that he seemed to be recovering faster than me. ‘Almost,’ I said grudgingly. ‘You?’

‘Fine. Never better.’

‘That’s good,’ I said with a reluctant smile, remembering how he couldn’t stand up by himself not that long ago.

Then I stirred and dug the little torch back out of my jacket pocket. Switching it on, I swept the slender beam around the hut, seeing in the dim light a big table and a couple of wooden bench seats nearby. Most of all, and best of all, I saw a big, empty space that looked completely dry. Lastly, the beam caught Jason, who was sitting up and shielding his eyes from the feeble light.

‘There’s a lamp on the table,’ he said. ‘A big one. Either there or hanging on the wall.’

‘I take it you’re not planning on getting up to look for it?’

‘Not just now, Frank, if it’s all the same to you. I’m all right here for the moment. I’m knackered!’

‘Good to know. Me, an’ all,’ I assured him.

I stirred myself and struggled back up on to my feet. One of us had to do it.

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