I opened the envelope, removed the letter, and with the ink now flowing more reliably, I immediately scanned to the bottom to identify the signature.  After initially struggling to decipher the scrawled lettering, I had the sudden sinking, realisation: “Mousey”, Musgrove’s nickname from school.  I felt a tightening in my chest, and my hands began to tremble as I read the letter.

Dear my old mate Julian,

It was great for us to have that nice little chat in the boozer last night.  It’s a real shame that you couldn’t stay any longer because there was so much to talk about. Anyway, Bozzy gave me your address and now I know where you live I can pop over all the time. 

 

Like I said last night I’m a bit strapped for cash with me being out of work and everything and I know you’ll want to help me out.  I’m sure you remember the original deal was for £5,000 to take care of you pretty wife. I didn’t mean to hurt your kids but you should be grateful, now you’ve got nothing to hold you back and you can do whatever you like with all that inheritance money.  I’m an honest man I’ve already had £300 from your account, if my maths is right that just leaves £4,700.  If that’s a problem I can always have a little chat with our friendly detective DI Patel. 

 

Anyway I’ll give you a couple of days to get the money and I’ll come by on Thursday afternoon to pick-up it up.

 

Best wishes,

 

Your friend, Mousey

I reread the letter.  I felt sick with fear and rage in equal measure, and ripped it into tiny fragments, as if trying to obtain some therapy by the act.  I struggled to grasp that the creature that had killed my family was now trying to blackmail me; it was the final horrific insult.  I’d hoped, perhaps fancifully, that his words from the previous night were merely the beer talking, but to see his threat in black and white felt far more real and threatening.

For the next few hours I sat at the kitchen table contemplating my next move.  Numerous questions occupied my thoughts: Should I ignore him? Would he really go to the police knowing that he’d also face certain jail time? If I gave into his demands would it just be the start of the blackmail?  I wasn’t bothered about the money.  £4,700 – it was nothing to me and if anything it made me angry that he thought they were worth so little, but where would it end?  The more I deliberated, the more confusing the picture seemed.  Musgrove was an unpredictable junkie, how could I possibly anticipate his next move?  Should I pre-empt his actions, go to the police and explain that he’d twisted my words? It would be my word against his.  Would the police, or a judge and jury for that matter, believe a mindless junkie over me?  I doubted they would, but did I really want to put myself through the uncertainties of such an ordeal?  My head began to spin just thinking through the permutations.

I got to my feet with my back aching and stiff from sitting on the hard-backed chair for so long.  I filled the kettle to make tea and then finally got round to taking my shoes and jacket off.  As I waited for the water to boil I moved through to the living room, my thoughts still fixed on Musgrove.  Amidst all the uncertainties I knew one thing for sure: although I’d lost my family and much of my life was in disarray, I still had far, far more to lose than him.  There was no way I was going to prison and have my life further torn apart by the actions of a mindless junkie.  The more I pictured Musgrove’s disgusting features, the greater the anger and frustration that built inside me, and I had the sudden realisation that I was no longer simply interested in self-preservation and avoiding a prison sentence.  I wanted more. I wanted revenge. To wipe the smug grin from his face, permanently.  Musgrove had taken everything from me and now I was going to make him pay.

----

 

 

On the edge of Kinder Scout, the thick, all-encompassing fog has started to lift by the time I’ve finished my story.  Other than the faint sounds of the far-off crying birds, all is quiet as Stead takes everything in.  Eventually, desperate for some sort of response, I break the silence. “What are you going to do now? … Are you going to go to the police?”

“I don’t know ... I don’t know.  I just want to go home,” he responds.  He slowly gets to his feet, turns his back on me, and begins the walk back towards Crookstone Hill.  I shout after him, urging him, almost pleading with him for an answer: “Are you going to go to the police?”

He doesn’t respond.

Within five minutes I’m back in the bolt-hole, and safely ensconced in the thick stone walls I’m hit by the enormity of what’s happened.  My earlier control dissipates and my body begins to shake.  I crawl into the sleeping bag, and for the next few hours I lie curled in a ball trying to work out what to do.  All the time I wait for some sign of imminent discovery: the faint hum of a helicopter, or the sound of a police tracker dog sniffing at the rocks at the entrance of the bolt-hole.  But all remains quiet.

Early evening I get out of the sleeping bag and switch on the radio for the first time in several weeks.  I scan through the regional stations until I find a news broadcast and listen intently, but there is no mention of any sighting of the fugitive, and I return to the warm sleeping bag.

As the minutes pass into the late evening and then through the night, I begin to feel a sense of reassurance.  Of course I can’t be sure what Stead will do, given that he’s an ex-copper and presumably spent his career upholding the law.  But towards the end of our exchange I began to feel that we’d established a glimmer of a connection, an unspoken understanding that, I can only hope, will be enough to save me.

Chapter 16

 

Early spring on Kinder Scout and now just a month before it is time for me to move on.  After the trauma of the David Stead incident, my life has settled onto more of an even keel.  For days I rarely left the Kinder Scout bolt-hole as I awaited discovery, but slowly my confidence returned and now, six weeks on, I’ve re-established my routine of the two ventures to the outside world, the first at 6:00 a.m. and then late afternoon when the walkers have disappeared and I have the moors to myself again.  Life follows the predictable pattern of sleep, food, and these two, all too brief, escapes to the outside world.  Perhaps some would struggle with the monotony of the regime, but for me, after all the emotional upheaval, it comes as a welcome relief.

Even the bolt-hole is becoming a home of sorts.  In the darkness of my hideaway I switch on the torch and view the imposing walls of my home of the last few months.  After spending much of my time counting down the days and willing the time to pass, now for the first time I begin to suspect that I might actually miss the place.  It has provided me with the time and, ironically, the space to rebuild my life.  I can also reflect on the fact that perhaps I’ve redressed some sort of karmic balance.  Yes, I deliberately took a life, Musgrove’s life.  But I’ve also saved a life, David Stead’s life, when in many ways it would have been so much easier to let him fall to his death.  For so long I’ve been plagued with guilt over the deaths of Helen and the boys, and even that of Musgrove, knowing that nobody has the right to take away another’s life.  But now increasingly I know that I’m not a monster, and it’s almost as if, with this realisation, my memories of the plan to kill Musgrove have been unlocked from my deep consciousness and I can assess them in an objective way when my thoughts return to a few months earlier.

For some long-forgotten reason, I always used green ink when writing drafts of research papers or grant proposals, and it seemed appropriate to do the same as I began to jot down the elements of my plan for Musgrove’s timely demise.  I spent most of the morning working on an outline, and by lunch time much of the first page was covered in green ink, with various key words linked together by arrows.  After only a couple of hours, I could feel the fog that had surrounded my thinking beginning to lift.  After weeks of uncertainty and drifting, I finally had a focus and the extremely satisfying sense that the hunter, Musgrove, was becoming the hunted.