Читать книгу The Principle of Evil: A Fast-Paced Serial Killer Thriller - T.M.E. Walsh - Страница 17

CHAPTER 3

The group of teenage boys continued to shove each other, shouting and laughing, goading each other towards the lake’s frozen edge. One of them, Sean, who was much fatter than the rest, shoved his shoulder into his friend, Harry, with such brute force that the boy spilt his drink.

‘You fat fucker,’ Harry said, wiping the beer from his jeans.

‘Such a hard man,’ Sean jeered, the rest of the pack laughing and jumping around in a drunken mess. ‘Too scared to go on the ice.’

‘Don’t see you on it, you fat twat,’ Harry said, shoving his fist hard into an ample shoulder. Standing a good head taller than Harry, who was thin and wiry, Sean squared his large frame up to his opponent.

‘Twenty quid says you’re a fucking wimp.’ His voice was low and the alcohol seemed to roll off his tongue in an invisible boozy haze. Harry looked over Sean’s shoulder at their peers.

One boy was trying to chat to a group of young girls, who clearly weren’t interested. The rest were lighting up, drinking or pushing each other closer to the lake’s edge, laughing like a pack of hyenas.

Looking back into Sean’s eyes, Harry raised his chin. ‘Make it thirty. You’d better have the money.’

*

‘You see that?’ he said.

Claire followed Stefan’s gaze and sighed.

A boy, aged around thirteen, was walking on the ice, about twenty feet from the embankment. Even from this distance, they could see that the ice grew thin towards the middle of the lake.

Claire shook her head. ‘Why are kids so bloody stupid?’

Stefan sighed and dusted his hands free of crumbs. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’d better break this up.’

*

Harry, the boy on the ice, barely registered any fear, even when the ice underneath his feet started to crack. He looked back to his friends on the bank and laughed.

Trying to play the hard man, he took another step towards the middle of the lake and slipped, crashing down on the ice with brute force.

He felt the cold seep through his clothes almost immediately. He looked towards the embankment and heard his friends shouting.

A sea of faces now watched him in horror, just as he heard a cracking sound underneath him.

Before he could think, the ice gave way and he sank into the freezing cold water.

His head disappeared under the ice.

He gasped involuntarily with shock, his mouth filling with water. He kicked his legs until his head broke the surface, spitting the water from his mouth, before he went under again.

On the embankment, Stefan had slowly begun to edge himself out onto the ice, trying to distribute his weight evenly, while Claire called for an ambulance.

Harry was growing tired, his body shutting down, but he still managed to grab hold of the edge of the ice, trying to haul his body from the water.

Stefan heard the ice creaking under his own weight. He paused, dropped slowly to his knees and straightened his body out along the ice and shuffled closer on his belly.

Harry’s head went under water again, and Stefan moved faster, putting the sound of the creaking ice to the back of his mind.

Underneath the water, Harry was losing the fight.

His body ached to shut down, as the cold tore through his flesh. He was holding his breath, lungs aching for air.

Then he felt something against his foot catch and drag him. He kicked out, his foot colliding against something solid.

He risked opening his eyes and peered down. The light from the fireworks overhead sent down little chinks of light that fractured in the water.

He saw a face, pale and ghost-like.

Instinct caught him.

He opened his mouth to scream, water flooding into his airways, as he stared down into dark dead eyes.

Scared, and knowing this would be his last effort, he mustered his last ounce of strength and kicked his legs hard.

On the surface, Stefan was shivering, his breath coming in short sharp bursts as he edged as close as he dared to the hole in the ice.

Harry’s head then broke the surface, his body propelling forward, landing with his arms outstretched, flailing for something to grasp on the slippery surface. He began to slip back down again, but Stefan grasped his wrist.

‘Kick with your legs!’ he shouted, reaching out his other hand to grip the boy’s right arm. Harry kicked again and again, and even when his body was out on the ice, clear of the water, he didn’t stop.

Stefan pulled him to the embankment.

‘I need blankets,’ Claire shouted out to the gathered crowd. ‘Coats, anything.’

A few men took theirs off and started to wrap them around Harry. He’d been in the water less than ninety seconds, but to Harry it had felt like hours of having needles pushed underneath his skin.

He coughed up some water when Claire sat him forward, and before she could speak, she heard his rasping voice from behind his chattering teeth.

‘B… b… body.’

Stefan looked confused and lowered his face to the boy’s eye level. ‘What did you say?’

Harry grabbed Claire’s hand and looked deep into her eyes.

‘Body… in the water… Dead. Body.’

Claire saw the fear in his eyes, just before they closed and he fell unconscious in her arms.