Halfway

by B.E. Jones

Genres: Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Three women. One killer. No turning back. A chilling thriller set in isolated Welsh countryside, perfect for fans of In the Woods by Tana French and The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup . The Halfway Inn is closed to customers, side-lined by a bypass and hidden deep in inhospitable countryside. One winter's night, two women end up knocking on the door, seeking refuge as a blizzard takes hold. But why is the landlord less than pleased to see them? And what is his elderly father trying so hard to tell them? At the local police station PC Lissa Lloyd is holding the fort while the rest of her team share in the rare excitement of a brutal murder at an isolated farmhouse. A dangerous fugitive is on the run - but how can Lissa make a name for herself if she's stuck at her desk? When a call comes in saying the local district nurse is missing, she jumps at the chance to investigate her disappearance. The strangers at Halfway wait out the storm, but soon realise they might have been safer on the road. It seems not all the travellers will make it home for Christmas . . . __________________________ What everyone's saying about Halfway : ' I absolutely loved this book which kept me hooked and desperate to read just one more page! ' Reader review, 5 stars ' SO twisty. . . very well written ' Reader review ' Totally hooked! ' Reader review ' A fast-paced, tension-filled, twisty read ' Reader review ' One of the creepiest novels I have ever read. . . hooks you in and puts you on the edge of your seat' Reader review, 5 stars ' A chilling twist. . . a fantastic thriller ' Reader review, 5 stars ' BEST CRIME NOVEL I'VE READ THIS YEAR!!! ' Reader review, 5 stars ' A really gripping read. . . couldn't put it down ' Reader review ' Stunning. . . the only book I can compare Halfway to is Gone Girl ' Reader review, 5 stars ' A twisty, thrilling ride ' Reader review, 5 stars ' Mesmerising, irrestistible and full of suspense ' Reader review, 5 stars ' A gripping, fast-paced thriller. . . I absolutely loved this ' Reader review, 5 stars

Release date: May 28, 2019

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 304

Sample

When she sees the hatchet in his hand she knows it’s going to happen, right here, right now. It’s been coming for hours, longer probably, since before the storm howling and keening around the eaves began its slow creep across the countryside, before the car was abandoned at the side of the snowbound road.

This moment was waiting even before she raised her hand and knocked on the door of this godforsaken place, squatting below its slipping slates and bowing brickwork, beneath the low iron sky, under the weight of winter.

So here they are.

She’s glad now that she’d had the foresight to arm herself, downstairs, when the unpleasant ticking started in her chest, when she’d finally realised the answers to the questions plaguing her since her arrival: Who are these people? And why are they lying?

She’d been sure that something was very wrong for hours. She just hadn’t been able to gather the quiet nudges in the back of her brain into a single, clearly defined thought until now, now it’s punching itself to the fore, bullying her into the realisation she’d have been safer out in the storm.

But it’s too late to leave, now that there are only three of them left alive, assembled under the twinkly Christmas star: a hitchhiker, a nurse, a landlord, everyone, everything, bending itself into this moment, before the weight of what has been and what is to come. How could she have imagined for even one moment that she was the only one with anything to hide?

She knows it’s her own fault for allowing herself to be caught off guard, first back on the road and then over and over again until she stepped into this room. It happened so easily because this is the sort of place that’s supposed to be safe and steady, a quiet, nothing-ever-happens kind of village where people look out for each other, still leave their doors unlocked and never, ever try to kill you.

Trouble is, you should never read only the surface signs and signals of anywhere or anyone, she knows that. There’s a lesson here, never assume you’re the biggest, baddest thing in the woods unless you’re prepared to prove it.

So this is it.

That bloody balding donkey understands, his red and white trimmed Santa hat at a jaunty angle as he gives her that look again, as if he’s thinking what she’s thinking, knows what she knows – not all of them will leave this room alive. He may be happy to wait passively for the outcome but she isn’t, so she readies herself, plants her feet firmly apart on the floorboards, aware of every inch of her body, every twitch of muscle fibre and sinew, careful not to show that her hands are waiting and ready to move.

The ticking in her chest tells her it’s too late to stop the countdown, there’s no way back, the explosion is overdue. There will be noise and fury. There will be damage. There will be casualties.

So here they go!

I don’t mind the cold. It’s a relief today, the clean, cutting feel of it, like cool water on hot skin in the summer heat. I like the quiet too, or as close to quiet as you can get in any place on earth. Here there’s almost no wind to stir the absence of traffic and the snow has white-felted every sharp surface into soundproofed silence. Thank God for silence.

I walk. I breathe in. I exhale.

Sometimes I think I’ve spent my whole life waiting to fully breathe out, to cough up that cluster of something spiky, stuck in the bottom of my chest, held by the last inch of muscle refusing to relax. When that trapped breath is finally freed I hope the next one will be the most wonderful I’ve ever tasted, air coursing through me, clean and sharp like the world’s best non-chemical rush.

Today is not that day, but the bitter sting on my face foretelling another snow flurry; the empty corridor of patient trees alongside the road; the high, heavy sky, all make a nice change from the crush of bodies I endure every day, in close quarters, back to back, toe to toe, hand to mouth – shared space, shared air. I’ve never really got used to it. I just wish I were here under better circumstances.

I’m relieved to see there’s no one waiting at the bus stop on what’s optimistically signposted the ‘village green’. I’m in no mood for small talk, glad to pull up my hood and enter my quiet zone for bit. Almost immediately, though, before I can begin my breathing exercises, the old coach arrives, full of human heat and breath.

As I squeeze up the steps, handing my exact change to the driver so chat can be kept to a minimum, everyone on board is muttering about the weather. It seems the beleaguered passengers were forced to get out of the bus they were originally travelling in, as it struggled on the icy gradient back in the valley, to walk to the top of the slippery hill, joining this replacement bus for the journey down again. Quite an adventure apparently, judging by the driver’s enthusiastic explanation of why the shuttle is so crammed today.

‘We’ll take you as far as we can now, love,’ he says, grinning under his bobble hat. ‘Off we go.’

The passengers applaud as we judder into motion, the mood jovial with the air of a good teatime story in progress. People who live in the country are used to this travel chaos every few winters. They’d almost miss it if no snow fell, bringing with it a welcome injection of drama. What would they talk about otherwise? The weather? The price of sheep feed? The cost of heating? Death, taxes and each other’s affairs?

I find a spare seat, keep my hood up, slide in against the window and settle down for the long haul; it’s yet another opportunity to practise my patience. It’s a living thing inside me these days, my patience, with its own moods and colours, known for tantrums and sulks. It needs constant tending and training. It has hooks and thorns that catch at me unexpectedly. If I’m not careful they can draw blood, especially in moments like this, enclosed in my own personal idea of hell, a hot, oblong box full of other people.

I’ve endured worse, of course, more immediate discomforts than the worrying of old ladies with cigarette-slit mouths, bundled in a fog of wet woollen coats; worse than the over-ripening of sweaty bodies and the tinny drone of earphones burrowing under my skin from the teenagers seated in front of me. This is pleasant by comparison.

A slight holiday feeling pervades as we descend the ribbon lanes. It’s three days to Christmas and the women’s feet and laps are already insulated with bags of supplies, boxes containing presents to be dropped off at friends and neighbours, stocks of mince pies and tins of chocolates for the church collection. At least if we stall again we won’t starve.

One of the teenage girls carries a tinsel wreath on her lap. Another is wearing a bobble hat with a knitted reindeer on it, without any apparent embarrassment. While the oldies are bundled up like tardy Bonfire Night guys, each youngster is scantily dressed for this -2 degree day in the heart of Western Wales. The teen ensemble is cheap trainers all round; two thin hoodies and one leather jacket – a careless uniform, too cool for school, and there’s no school today anyway.

They’re probably just too young to feel the gnawing cold. It’s not until you’ve slept on the stone-hard ground or in a piss-smelling corner of an empty building, dampened and stiff, that you really appreciate creature comforts, like the value of a good coat, preferably with a hood, sturdy boots and woolly socks.

I keep my own coat and gloves on, hood still up, even though the bus is super-heated, the steamed windows melting the darkening morning into a soup of snow and condensation. Behind the glass the country looks as if it’s been frozen under the whim of a wizard’s wish – a single wave of a wand, a fizzle of icy fire granting it stiff immortality, unchanging for eternity. It’s actually a soothing thought but it’s an illusion. Something is happening out there somewhere, something is always happening.

In the gloom the frosted fields show hunkered-down gangs of houses, waiting, perhaps pretending, to sleep, watching the passage of anyone foolish enough to be away from their fireplace on a bleak midwinter day, under-dressed, unarmed. Wisps of smoke from the chimneys speak of huddled locals, guarded against the winter and I find myself humming along to that Christmas song on the bus radio, the one that’s been floating in and out of my head for hours now: ‘earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone’ and ‘snow on snow on snow’.

It had been playing on the kitchen radio last night, while I’d waited for my mind to click into action mode, trying not to think of what is behind me and what might be ahead, fearing a knock on the door, the sound of a siren.

I don’t think people will understand. It wasn’t part of any plan. It just got out of control, not that that’s a legal defence.

The occasional empty chapel slides by as we slow-crawl through the treacherous hollows. In the homes of my fellow travellers tea is probably on the boil, dogs ready to lick a welcome, hugs waiting to be handed out as in all good homecomings, but this is not my homecoming. This is not the Christmas reunion with soaring violin music, a cheerily popping log fire and mistletoe kisses. This is the opposite – the running away, the flight into the darkness, the escape.

The old ladies fuss and cluck as the bus winds onwards, a gaggle of hens well past laying, looking for something to coddle or squawk at.

‘We’ll get stuck for sure. We’ll have to walk all the way back to the depot.’

‘Walk? We can’t walk in this – we’ll be stuck in the bus all day and night.’

‘What if we get stranded and have to eat each other?’ asks a teenage lad with flares of acne on his cheeks and a bumfluff top lip.

‘You’d keep us going for weeks, you fat twat!’ grins his raw-faced chunk of a mate.

Like the pioneer Donner party, I think, famously caught in a wagon train in the Sierra Nevadas in California in the 1840s. Snowbound in the winter white of the high passes they’d eaten their horses first, then each other, to survive, until the thaw came and those left behind passed into infamy because their instinct to survive overrode everything else. Well, survival is brutal.

‘Eat me!’ the mate shoots back, sticking up his middle finger to his friend, making me wince. I hate it when people ‘flip the bird’. I hate it even more when people say, ‘What’s up bro?’ like they’re trying to be American and funny and ‘gangsta’ when they’re just being dicks. I hate a lot of things these days.

‘Jesus, we might not make it home tonight at this rate,’ says the acne kid. ‘My mam will go nuts.’

But what’s the worst that could happen on a bus somewhere south-east of Aberystwyth in twenty-first-century Britain? This isn’t some Middle Eastern warzone or African civil war shithole. It’s not as if hordes of guerrillas are about to leap from the hedges and order everyone off to wait in a sleety line on their knees, AK-47s pointed at the backs of quivering necks.

‘Fuck you, man,’ laughs the skinny friend on the receiving end of the fat twat’s American bird gesture – I try not to hate him as he laughs like a drain, or to think about punching him in the throat to shut him up.

‘It’s not good for your karma, mate,’ says Lilli-Anne’s voice in my ear, ever on my shoulder like a wise and annoying parrot; ‘It’s toxic,’ says Pam in the other. ‘Toxic’ is one of Pam’s favourite words, as is ‘positivity’, which I’m not sure is actually a word. If Lilli’s a parrot, brash and insistent, Pam is a dove, soft, quiet, cooing: ‘Thoughts become things,’ says Pam. ‘You must foster a positive mental attitude.’

I really hate my fucking counsellor when she says things like that. It reminds me of the simple fact that so much of what comes out of people’s mouths is redundant. Dead air. All those wasted words, circling around, make me tired. And when I’m tired I sometimes do things I regret, like yesterday, a perfect example of a classic overreaction.

At times, despite Pam’s advice and endless mantra practice, my patience still extends beyond its limits, has been known to break. A cheese wire, stretched tightly, can slice and slash when it snaps; it’s best to stand well back, but the counselling is mandatory, so I nod in all the right places during our endless forty-five-minute sessions to the ‘Soothing Sounds of the Sea’ CD, making the right noises to avoid saying, Please shut the fuck up!

As we trundle onwards I stick my headphones in and crank up the volume to drown out the teenage inanities. The music was Pam’s idea, to help me not think about the cries that loop around in my head when I get like this, the pleading voices in the past that I just can’t help hearing in stereo over the lines of the base beat.

A face crashes into my memory, one creased with lines, sweat and fear – a voice saying, ‘Please . . . Please . . .’

Please what?

‘Please don’t? Please help me? Please don’t hurt me?’ All of the above?

As we pass a farm in the foot of the valley I’m almost grateful for the different memory it triggers, older, frayed by time. With the tug of a loose thread I’m back in the old hay barn at night, lamplight in the eaves beating back the blackness, the lowing of the best cow, that look on the vet’s face, Dad sweating and stern. But the old woman’s face returns soon enough, it always does, and she’s not alone. The faces are never alone.

It’s started now, the dark rush beyond my control, behind my screwed-up eyes and tight fists. My heart rattles around the cage of my ribs, heat spreading out under my jacket and into my face. The invisible handle turns, my chest crushes and I try to flick the switch the other way, to turn it off.

‘Choose your reaction. Choose to breathe.’ That’s what Pam says, that silly bitch with her bun-hair, bleached teeth and pink sweaters. Sometimes it works; sometimes not. It’s a work in progress. Like life.

So I practise, repeating the prescribed words in my head, willing them to work: My story is my own. I can change it. I am calm, I am not afraid. I can let the thoughts pass. I am a passenger on a train and they slide by, just like the darkening morning slides along the bus windows, separating me from the world beyond.

Not a moment too soon the hell-bus gives a lurch and we come to a halt. When I open my eyes we’re at the single shelter on the next brown grass village green – all change for going south. I remember this place; I used to change buses here all the time. I can’t get off fast enough now, almost falling down the steps under the weight of my rucksack on my suddenly weakened legs. There isn’t enough air in the world to stop the hitching of my lungs. There’s no chance of my speaking a word.

For a moment I can’t comprehend it all, how I’m standing here now when just two days ago I was in another world on the edge of another life. That was before, of course, before the sight of the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, before the phone call, before the words, before the world fell to pieces in paper and ash.

The idea of the blood and newly broken bones is still strong in my mind’s eye. It had all blown up in two atomic seconds, even though I’d said, ‘Flick the switch,’ over and over again. Something inside me had taken control, shouted me down – the old enemy. It said, ‘This is not my story. I cannot change it. I am afraid.’

What’s that Chinese proverb Lilli-Anne always trots out when the unexpected shits on us from a great height? ‘The best laugh you can give the universe is to make plans.’ The best laugh of all being my big idea, of something solid, something safe at last – everything that had dispersed at the sight of a single green metal canister, a pile of papers.

My jaw throbs. I’m grinding my teeth and make an effort to stop as the bus driver gets off and announces, ‘OK, folks, I’m really sorry but there’re no more buses today. They’re closing the B249.’

By the time he’s got to the end of this sentence I’m already striding away into the morning gloom. I’m not sure where to exactly, I just know I can’t sit there another moment in the communal clutch of this village. I can’t go to the community centre across the grass with its ancient paper garlands and artificial flammable tree, the inevitable tea in an urn, camaraderie and complaints and plastic-packed sandwiches. Someone will see me for sure.

First things first, move and don’t think, let a plan come. I know roughly where I am now that I’m walking out of the village, along the road, into the woods. It’s only eight or nine miles to the mainline train station where the bus would have dropped me eventually. There are a good few hours of daylight left, even on the shortest day of the year. I have no reason to fear the dark. Most of the bad things that have happened to me have happened in broad daylight. Terrible things are done then, too. I have done them.

Even if the train isn’t running down to Carmarthen, then on to Swansea and Cardiff tonight, there’ll be a waiting room to kip down in, a vending machine and quiet, wonderful loneliness. For now I need to move, walk, march off the panic. Breathe.

The winter day pulls me into its cold embrace as I set my feet on the whitening road.

Inside he waits, lying in his bed under the silver-foil star, swirling slowly on its string from the beam of the sagging roof. Within the walled space that has become his world he hears the sound of a held breath, somewhere between the constant click of the clock on the wall a hundred miles away. Tick tock, tick tock. Wait. Listen. Watch.

The side of the bed is a cliff face now, unassailable, the sheets snow white, for-show white, cold and clean. Time has stretched and distorted his small attic domain into a vast untravellable landscape. If he could raise his head far enough from the pillow he’d look down across the wooden wastes of the floorboards towards the bedroom door. If he could raise his voice he would call out, but who is listening, just now, at this hour?

If he could waken the dead with a howl he would; he’d call them from the other country of the past where things are done differently if not necessarily better. He will try to soon, when the knock comes on the door to welcome a traveller of miles and years. His voice may be thick and dulled but his hearing is still close enough to knife-edged to torment him – if only he had a knife! He might use a knife. A blade of any kind could mean more than one sort of freedom now.

Without one he strains for the sound of a car on the gravel, for a footfall approaching the front step. Here is the day and almost the hour, halfway through the long drifts of weeks and winter, of the relentless march of lukewarm, gravy-softened ready-meals and the burr of quizzes on the flickering TV screen.

How long has it been since his last journey along the icy landing, down the glacier slope of the stairs to where the letter had shone, white and wondrous beneath the bolted front door? Such an epic effort of conquest and discovery, painful, sweating, shuffling, sliding; all to answer the thump-thump knock and ‘hello’ voice that had moved away too quickly, before he could answer with the words, ‘Please don’t go, help me!’

The letter is tucked in darkness now, well-hidden, but he can still hear it holding its breath. He waits for the hands to climb around the clock face, willing the old ghosts that whisper behind his back in the other rooms to be silent, to not give the game away that a visitor is expected at last.

The room is cold. The electric heater is on full blast but pushes out only a thin orange glow. He can see the occasional puff of his breath, raspy and floury in the air. He hasn’t heard any sounds from below since the front door slammed shut earlier. He’s not sure if it was someone coming in or going out. He thought he’d heard a car engine too, but that could have been the wind. It’s almost time for a hot tea and soft-dunked biscuit.

He’s pretty sure the twitchy oaf is still down there, doing God knows what since he turned up out of the blue, smelling of dog and diesel. Not boiling the bloody kettle, obviously. Seems like a dodgy one that, though he does as he’s told by the looks of it, by her. Not that he’s much better himself, obedient, a helpless prisoner in his own bed and, even worse, trapped deep inside a body that’s under siege, locked down, dug in.

Everyone knows this moment will come to them eventually, but they still like to think they’ll end their days tended by loving children and a plump, soft-handed wife or husband. Look where such optimism has got him. Rose used to laugh at him for that, among other things; she always said, ‘Optimism is the triumph of hope over experience.’ She got that much right, if bugger all else.

How ridiculous they seem now, the dreams he’d had when he was young, the worst kind of naivety, of arrogance. Lying here in this tomb, shackled by the tightly tucked sheets, he hears Rose sometimes, snickering in the other bedrooms along the hall, scorn in the sound of her slippered feet swishing along the landing at night.

Staring at the spider twitching its web into elaborate artwork among the rafters above, it’s hard not to remember how different it had been once, to recall that swallowing rush of love that had surged up in him on the day Brian was born. The reality of something so warm and desperately alive had almost suffocated him. There was an appeal in those outstretched hands, the cry of that tiny, wet-headed bundle, craving acknowledgement, ready to be shaped by and imprinted with love.

He’d been certain he wouldn’t get there in time for the birth, while he’d been haring, breathless, in his fishing sweater and boots, up through the high grass of the lower field to the cottage hospital. The fathers waited in a little curtained-off anteroom then, with hard plastic chairs and a black and white TV. The only other expectant dad there on that sweating, heat-heavy August afternoon, had been that prick, Russell Bradach, expecting his second son, the very picture of an important councilman, well-pleased with himself.

Odd really, considering how his fancy banker and businessman father had fared, how people still whispered about it. He’d looked at him like he was shit on his shoe and he’d known why. He’d known what people had already started to say about him. They’d been saying it under their breath for years.

‘Congratulations.’ Bradach had grinned. ‘I hear you’re a married man now.’

And he’d smiled back until he’d thought his cheeks would crack, until the ward sister appeared, leading him through to Rose in her pink hospital nightie, open at her breast, fat with milk. It was a state of undress he’d barely seen her in since the night of Brian’s conception, or in the weeks afterwards, when she’d feared the worst, waiting with increasing panic for the slightest smudge of blood in her knickers.

He’d wanted to look after her though, Rose and his boy, his boy. They could make it work somehow, even though he’d . . .