Last Out From Roaring Water Bay Read Online Free Page B

experience with the men from the MDP. There were a number of questions bouncing inside my head.
    I sipped my tea at the kitchen table thinking of what excuse I could concoct if the MDP returned with reinforcements and with a warrant for my arrest. There weren’t many excuses I could think of at that moment other than a straightforward denial. And then again what proof had they? Nothing substantial I was guessing. I’d no need to worry and, strangely, I didn’t think there would be any problems now they had gone. And if they did persist on pestering me over the subject, then I’d have them on a charge of harassment. I should have felt a little better knowing the law would be on my side for a change but I’d a funny feeling that I wasn’t the only person they’d been harassing.
    Late in the afternoon the telephone rang. Before I’d the chance to lift the receiver it had stopped ringing and within seconds my mobile phone rang. My cheery, “hello”, was engulfed by a hype of hysteria that savaged my eardrum.
    “He’s dead, Shacks! He’s dead!”
    At first I struggled to distinguish the owner of the emotional voice before I clicked. “Tim! Is that you?”
    “Who the fuck do you think it is, Shacks?” There was a stifled sob mixed with his anger.
    “Tim, calm down. Take a deep breath and tell me again.”
    His intake of breath sounded as if he was sucking in air between his teeth. “It’s Uncle Tommy!”
    He was referring to Tommy Bickermass, the farmer where the Spitfire was found.
    “What about him?” I asked, feeling a sudden cold shiver bumping down my spine.
    “He-he’s dead.”
    Frigging hell! I thought. I felt my blood drain from me. My legs weakened as I stood there gripping the phone in shock. And then the invisible hand grabbed hold of my heart and ripped it clean from my chest. My voice stiffened. “Tommy…he’s dead? When was this?”
    I heard Tim suck in more breath. “He was found yesterday.”
    “What happened?”
    “His body was pulled from the slurry tank at the farm.”
    I had to think hard about what he had just said, trying to establish a mental picture of the farm. I said, “Let me get this right. Do you mean the large steel tank they fill with cow shit?”
    I assumed it was because Tim rambled on, not confirming my curiosity. “The police think it was a terrible accident. Reckoned he must have been stood on the gantry at the top of the tank; probably lost his footing and fell in. Reckoned for an old man it would have been like trying to swim through porridge; the quicksand effect; the more he struggled the more he sank. Christ Shacks! It’s too awful to think about.”
    “Tommy drowned in cow shit, is that what you’re saying?” I didn’t mean it to sound corny or in anyway disrespectful of the dead.
    “That’s what I’m saying, Shacks.”
    “Who found him?”
    The farm hand, poor sod.”
    “Benny, you mean?”
    “Yes Benny. Said he found Tommy’s cap at the foot of the tank ladder when he arrived early at the farm. He checked the top of the tank but there was no sign of Tommy. But he noticed the usually crusted topped slurry had been broken, like cracked ice, as he described it. Said he saw something half submerged and when he hooked it with a pole to find out what it was,”-I heard a faint sniffle-“well he pulled Uncle Tommy out as quick as he could, but...it was all too late.”
    “Frigging hell, Benny must have been heartbroken.”
    Another sniffle, “He had to be sedated when the paramedics arrived.”
    “I’m not surprised. Tommy was like a father to him.”
    “Benny had told the police that he was baffled as to how Tommy had climbed onto the tank gantry in the first place.”
    “Tommy was scared of heights?”
    “No. He suffered from a frozen knee. He couldn’t have climbed the vertical ladder even if he wanted to…well not without a struggle or help.”
    “Tommy could have climbed regardless…if he had to?”
    “I suppose so. But why should he