She sat up and moved her leg to its proper position, painfully, gasping as the flare of pain jolted her back to real consciousness. Her tee shirt was ripped open, exposing most of her ample breasts, and her shorts, once a pristine, eye-aching white, were torn and tattered, brown from the earth she had fallen against, green from the shoots of root and grass protruding from the quarry face. Slowly, gingerly, she slid her buttocks down the slope, realising that her hand still held the bramble. She turned to extricate it from the barbs and her other hand, carefully lifting the tiny prickles from the flesh of her palm, felt a different, equally uncomfortable sensation begin as it brushed against the nettles that had lain undisturbed for weeks, months even, waiting, just waiting to protect themselves against unwanted intrusion into their world of privacy and occasional self-defence.
Tears again sprang to her eyes, and for a brief moment she wondered what she must look like.
A giant panda.
Black-ringed eyes.
Hair like a bird's nest.
Clothes shredded.
She cried, noisily, aware that her nose had already run. She reached in her shorts pocket and pulled out an old piece of tissue, wiping the mucus away from beneath her nose and then blowing it as the tears rolled down her cheeks, down past her mouth to drip slowly and softly onto the flesh of her bruised and burnt thigh. At last she managed to disengage her hand from the bramble, but not without having once again to lean into the nettles as she lost her balance. She tumbled forward, her feet unable to make any purchase on the flint pebbles, and she turned three complete somersaults before she landed in the tufted grass and sandy soil at the bottom of the slope.
She lay there, unmoving for a few minutes, crying, assessing the extent of her injuries and wondering how she could limp home without being seen. She knew that people came to the quarry sometimes, mainly kids. On a hot Saturday afternoon it was inevitable that someone would see her. But for the time being, all she wanted to do was rest. She looked up and saw the page from the cookery book still hooked in the bramble, and cursed Steve Wilson under her breath. It was as she started to get up, moving round so that she could raise herself to a kneeling position that she realised there was someone there, a shadowy figure emerging from the trees at the edge of the quarry.
She saw him from the corner of her eye, maybe fifty feet above her, starting down a well-worn path that had been made by kids, with badly-defined but usable steps cut into the face of the clay with pieces of wood or rocks, or maybe both. She was still out of breath as he walked towards her, but a flash of light brown hair in the bright sunlight convinced her she knew him, and she sighed heavily with relief. She even started to call his name as he reached her, and floods of tears rained from her eyes as she held out her hands to him to help her up. But he pushed her hands away, an expression of disgust on his face which she could see, even through the mist of tears and snot and earth.....
His hands closed around her throat and she tumbled forward, her face plunged once more into the dry grass. Her head began to swim, and her senses dulled as his fingers began to dig into the soft flesh of her neck. She was too weak, too exhausted, too pained to put up anything more than a feeble resistance, and within a minute she was dead. The killing had begun.....
Two
At a little after five o'clock that same morning, Alex Hegan switched off the alarm on the bookcase beside his bed and threw back the bedclothes, rubbing the sleep dust from his eyes. Ten minutes later he was drinking orange juice from the carton and eating a bowl of Shredded Wheat. At exactly five thirty he was marking newspapers for delivery, proud of the fact that he had a more responsible job than the delivery boys, even though he knew it was a safe bet he would end up doing two or maybe three delivery rounds. It was, after all, Saturday morning. Kids did not have to get up at weekends, and there were always one or two who did not show up. By eight thirty he was on his way home, cycling along the bypass near to the garden centre. It was already warm. He lived in Sharringford, two miles from the town. Logically, it would have made sense for him to deliver the papers in his own village, but that was Danny Robertson's round, and he had turned up. As he turned into the road to the village, Alex felt the front tyre of his bike deflate suddenly, and cursed with all the satisfaction of an adult, using the 'f' word which he dared not use in front of his mother, and especially not his father.
He knelt to examine the tyre and found, to his dismay, that it was bad. There was a small sliver of jagged metal still embedded in it. His puncture repair kit would not cope with it. He lifted the bike and slung it over his broad shoulder, and started to walk, cutting through the waste disposal site, intending to take the short cut through the quarry to home, another half mile up the road.
At thirteen, Alex was just too old for Cowboys and Indians, or Cops and Robbers, though in earlier years he had played both in the heath and the quarry with friends who were now in the same year at the High School. But he still came to the quarry occasionally, regarding it as one of his favourite places, where he could be alone with his thoughts and his imagination.
Later, he thought, later I'll bring a Mars bar and my books, and I'll sit and read. I've done my homework, the rest of the day is mine. His mother and father would not be up yet. Weekends were for lying in bed until ten, sometimes eleven. He could understand that. His father worked hard at the factory in Holt Road, where they turned out those enormous combine harvester things and agricultural machinery that sometimes had to be loaded on long, low trailers and escorted off to their various destinations by the police. Some evenings he was not home until seven or even eight. Some Saturdays he worked from eight until twelve noon. Today was a day off, he had come home tired the previous evening and he would not be getting up until it was almost lunchtime. And his mother would stay in bed with him. To Alex would be left the task of getting his younger brother, Sam, up. His stepbrother, Mark, whom his father had brought with him from an earlier marriage, was nineteen. He would already have left for work at the Manor House estate, where he was training to be estate manager.
He did not like Mark much, and kept out of his way as often as possible. He was a bully.
Alex scrambled up the face of the quarry easily, quickly. It was then that he saw the girl.
He recognised her faintly from school, and thought that she was maybe a year younger than him, but he could not remember her name. She stood with her back to him, long golden hair blowing in the breeze, distinctively waved, and he thought she might be wearing school uniform, the blue short-sleeved blouse and grey skirt of year 8 or 9. She half turned, and he saw the profile of her young face, pretty, and as he caught sight of her and recognised her as Vanessa Lake, he felt the blood rush to his face with nonsensical embarrassment, for she was still thirty or so feet away from him, and as yet unaware of his presence.
The last time he had noticed her was the day before, Friday afternoon, when he and his year 9 mates had been running from the changing rooms to the canteen. She had dropped a book quite near to the enquiries desk in the hall where students arriving late had to be signed into the latecomers book. He had checked himself in mid-flight and bent to pick up the book, handing it to her without realising that he was staring at her. Then John Newton had grabbed his shirt, already half out of his trousers, and yanked him off to join the canteen queue.
He approached her slowly, cautiously, his hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets. She stood just a couple of feet away from where he had left his bicycle and newspaper satchel. As he bent to lift up the bike she turned, hearing the soft spin of the flywheel and the whisper of the chain.
'You startled me,' she said with a shy half smile.
'Sorry. You weren't here before.....'
'You're in my year aren't you?'
He nodded, remembering the girls she went around with, Sarah Cox, Debbie Palmer, Jayne Carr, who was in his tutor group.
'Alex. You're Vanessa.'
It was her turn to nod. She was wearing school uniform, and he wondered why. His eyes travelled over her candidly, appreciatively. He wondered why he had never noticed her before.
'Do you live round here, then?' she asked.
'Just over there, near the dump.'
'The dump?'
'The rubbish dump. See where the seagulls are?'
She followed the line of his finger and smiled again. In her left hand she held a clipboard.
'I'm doing an assignment. Davis has given us this thing to do about the old railway. I was looking for the old railway line.'
'It's not here,' he said. 'It's further over that way, the other side of the quarry.'
'Oh.' She sounded disappointed.
'I could show you, later today. I have to go home now, to get my little brother up, but I could meet you here this afternoon. I can show you exactly where it is. I walk along it sometimes.'
'That would be good.'
'Bring something to eat and drink, it's quite a long way.'
'I don't need to walk it, all of it!' she protested, and they both laughed.
'No, I didn't mean.....'
'I'll bring something,' she said. 'The only thing is.....'
'What?'
'I have to look after someone. My cousin. She's quite a bit younger. She's not really my cousin.....'
'How much younger?'
'She's four - nearly five.'
'Bring her along.'
'All right. Thanks. See you later? About two?'
'Yes. Is that why you're wearing school uniform? Because of the project?'
She blushed fiercely, and lowered her eyes.
'No, not really. My other clothes are in the wash, they won't be ready until later.'
'Sorry, I didn't mean.....'
'That's all right,' she muttered, but he could tell he had put his foot in it.
'See you later, then.'
For some reason he was reluctant to see her go. She would brighten what was already going to be a fairly boring Saturday - if she turned up, that was. Alex watched her until she was almost out of sight, and found to his amazement that his heart rate had increased considerably while he had been talking to her. She had a nice figure. She had glorious hair, nice eyes, although he had not noticed their colour, only that they were large. Picking up his bag he wandered along the track until he came to the back garden of his house. Nine o'clock. Five hours. How could he wait five hours before he could see her again? He began to wonder where she lived and if he should have volunteered to go and fetch her, but that would have seemed like asking her for a date, and they were only thirteen. Only thirteen and just entering the world of appreciation of their opposites, the world of love and desire, and longing to be with someone from morning through till night and beyond.
As he wheeled the bike into the yard he tried to remember everything he could about Vanessa, any little snippets of information he might have heard in the playground, but there really was very little. All he could think of was that most of his mates thought she was stuck up, as though she might have come from an aristocratic background, but he had never heard anything really detrimental about her.
In the house, Sam was already up.
