Time of Death Read online

  Jez Fernandez

  TIME OF DEATH

  “What do you think he’s doing?” Danny asked, as he and Brad gazed intently at the man on the bridge. The two boys sat on the grass verge up from the railway tracks, clutching their bare knees and squinting into the evening sun.

  “Not much,” said Brad. “Just standing there, staring.”

  The dark figure stood about a quarter of a mile in the distance, up on the old Levitt Heights river crossing. It was a steel truss bridge, sixty feet in length with a low wooden railing that served as a safety barrier. The man was wearing a long dark trench coat and resting his elbows on the railing. He stared down into the water below and Danny’s first thought was that he had dropped something. To the right of him was a long black saloon car, like something out of one of those old crime movies, where car chases would take place over the rolling hills of San Francisco. From this distance, it was impossible to make out much detail.

  “Hey, do you think he’s going to jump?” said Brad.

  Danny stood up, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hands.

  “Doubtful,” said Danny. “Hey, d’you see his car?”

  Brad nodded. “Haven’t seen one of those before. It looks old.”

  “Looks American. You think he’s a Yank?”

  Brad shrugged but didn’t answer.

  The man suddenly straightened up and stepped back from the edge. His movements were slow, almost hesitant. For a moment, Danny wondered if he would take a good step back, then leap forward over the railing and into the water below. Instead, he walked over to the car and popped open the boot. He rested his hands on the rim and stared for a moment inside. He seemed to be looking at rather than for something and paused for a while, just as he had at the railings. Then he reached inside with both arms and began to manoeuvre something large and awkward. There was some shifting this way and that, then the rolled up end of a dark rug emerged from the boot.

  “Huh,” said Brad. “Looks like he’s fly-tipping.”

  “Fly what?” asked Danny.

  “Tipping. It’s when you dump stuff out in the open rather than take it to the tip. It’s illegal, I think. That’s what my dad says.”

  They watched as the man wrestled with the rug, jerking it up and over the rim of the boot an inch at a time. When it was about halfway out, he crouched down and positioned himself underneath it. Then he stood, with some effort, and hoisted the rug up onto his right shoulder. It swung neatly out of the boot as the man stepped back towards the bridge.

  “Hey, you think there’s a body inside?” said Danny.

  Brad laughed. “Don’t be daft.”

  “Why not? It’s big enough. Plus, you can tell that’s more than a rug he’s carrying; you can almost feel the weight on his shoulder.”

  “Maybe he’s just old.”

  “No way,” Danny retorted. “Well okay, maybe he’s old but I’ll bet you there’s a body wrapped up in there.”

  The man was now at the railing, the heavy rug balanced on his broad shoulder. He leaned forward and then very gently eased the load forward and let it slide over the edge. The boys watched in awe as the rug fell slowly, somersaulting a few times before it hit the water with a dull splash.

  The man stared down at the discarded mass bobbing up and down in the light current. Then he turned back to the car, gently closed the boot and walked to the driver’s side door. He slid inside and there was a low murmur as the engine started up. Then the car rolled slowly forward towards Levitt Farm.

  The boys looked down at the dark rug in the water, hoping to see if it would unravel and reveal the contents. It was tightly wrapped in the middle with a length of white rope and showed no signs of coming undone. They looked back up at the bridge but the black car had vanished.

  “Come on,” said Danny, quickly scrambling up the verge. When he reached the top, he grabbed his bike, lying in the grass by the roadside.

  “Where are we going?” asked Brad, following.

  “Let’s go get that rug.”

  Brad stopped abruptly. “What?”

  “Come on! Imagine it! We’d be famous – witnessing a murder and finding the body!”

  “What murder?”

  “Well why else would you wrap a body in a rug and chuck it in the river?”

  Brad’s face darkened. “Well, if it is a dead body, I don’t want to see it. What if it’s all…you know…”

  Danny shook his head and rolled his eyes. ”Fine, you stay on the side. I’ll fish it out and do all the looking.”

  Brad seemed unconvinced, but he hopped on his bike nonetheless. The two sped off down the narrow track, their bikes juddering violently over the rough surface that ran between the railway tracks and the river. The current flowed north from Levitt Heights and the rug was coming towards them, bobbing gently as it sailed along.

  “What’s the plan then, Einstein?” asked Brad as they pedalled steadily side by side.

  At this point, Danny had no idea how to retrieve the bundle from the middle of the river. He had no rope, no fishing line, nothing. His mind raced through ideas as they rode; the river was wide here and the current slow, so it was easy enough to keep a steady pace. A thought suddenly occurred.

  “The Pylon,” he called across to Brad. Two miles downriver was the Trent Road Overpass, a wide two-lane bridge that carried traffic over the river into town. It was supported in the middle by a thick concrete pillar with a wide flat base – the Trent Pylon. In the heat of summer, kids would swim out to the Pylon and use it as diving board and general hang out.

  “Are you crazy?” Brad cried, squeezing his brakes tightly and skidding to a halt. Danny stopped too and performed a dramatic one-eighty spin in the process, dust pluming behind his back wheel.

  “It’s the only way to get to the middle of the river,” he said. “We swim to the Pylon, then fish the rug out.”

  “That’s a very bad idea.”

  “Do you have a better one?”

  “Yes,” said Brad. “We leave it. It’s just an old rug that’s now very wet.”

  Danny shook his head. “No way. I’m telling you, there’s a body in there and I’m going to get it. You coming or not?”

  Brad sighed heavily, then slowly began to pedal. “All right, but I’ve got a horrible feeling this won’t end well.”

  It took them just under fifteen minutes to reach the Overpass and the sun was still warm in the sky. It was just after six-thirty and the evening traffic rolled loudly over the bridge above. The dirt track ran in a straight line beside the river; to their right, trees formed a natural fence alongside the railway line. As they approached the Overpass, Danny began pointing excitedly up ahead. He bought his bike to a halt and Brad stopped beside him.

  “Check it out!” said Danny, grinning widely. “Looks like we won’t be swimming after all!”

  To their right, a number of trees had been trimmed back that day and long thick branches lay neatly on the verge. The woodcutters were nowhere to be seen.

  “Got ourselves a fishing pole!” said Danny, still grinning. He threw his bike down on the grass verge by the tree line and raced over to the timber pile. Brad too dumped his bike and the two boys began hurriedly searching for the best length of wood.

  “Hey!” said Brad after a minute or two. “Check this out!”

  There, folded neatly by the timber stacks, was a length of orange nylon strapping with buckles. Brad picked it up and saw it was some kind of safety harness for climbing the trees.

  “Awesome!” Danny exclaimed. “Even better!” He grabbed the harness and slipped into the leg holes. Then he began to fasten the buckles around his waist.

  “What are you doing?” Brad asked slowly.


  “What do you think? I’m going in.”

  “Are you nuts?” cried Brad. “I thought we were going to hook the rug with it?”

  “No way, too difficult. We’ve got one chance to grab it, then we’ve lost. There’s not another bridge for fifteen miles at least after this.”

  Danny looked downriver. There was the rug, bobbing up and down and twisting slightly in the current. It would reach them in about three or four minutes. He continued adjusting the harness, then handed the other end to his friend.

  “You really think it’s a body?” said Brad, taking the strap.

  Danny shrugged. “Could be.”

  “So what’ll we do when we get it out? Call the police?”

  “We have to see it first. Can’t call the police until we see the body.”

  “What do you think will happen after that?”

  Danny stared down river at the tumbling rug. “Well, it’ll shut my parents up about school for a start. I reckon I could become a detective, you know. Maybe quit school.”

  Brad laughed. “You what?”

  “I could!” Danny protested. “Solved this, didn’t I?”

  Brad shook his head and laughed some more.

  “You’ll see,” Danny muttered. “School’s for losers with no talent. I’ll probably do a few YouTube videos and this’ll go viral. I’ll be famous in a week. Who needs school when you’re famous?”

  Brad chuckled but didn’t respond. They sat in silence for a while, watching the red roll of carpet bob along. As it drew nearer, it seemed to veer naturally to the right of the Pylon where the current was stronger. The river width between the concrete base and the river bank was about thirty feet; still wide but manageable.

  Danny stood up and walked to the water’s edge.

  “All right,” he said. “This is it – one shot deal. Grab on and hold tight.”

  Brad wrapped the strapping around his right forearm several times, then clasped his right hand with his left. Danny braced himself on the bank, knees bent and arms out in front. The rug bobbed and rolled towards them, twisting as it entered the narrowing passage between bank and Pylon.

  “You ready?” said Danny. “Don’t let go.”

  Brad squeezed his hands together tightly and briefly closed his eyes. As the rug edged by, Danny stepped back a few paces, hunkered down a little and sprang forward off the bank. As he flew through the air, his legs pedalled wildly as if to give him one last boost. Then he plummeted down and landed astride the rug. Both he and the red roll dipped sharply beneath the water, then bobbed up a second later. Danny wrapped his arms tightly around the rug and yelled to his friend on the bank.

  “Pull me in!” he spluttered, green water spraying from his mouth. “Pull me in!”

  Brad stood dumbly for a second, then quickly pulled on the strap, digging his heels into the dirt track and heaving with all his might. Slowly, the rug and its rider began to ease in towards the bank. When it was close enough to the edge, Danny leaned over and flopped on to the grass verge, his legs still clutching the rug. Together, he and Brad grabbed hold of the ends and tried to haul the long roll up out of the water. It was incredibly heavy, especially now that it was waterlogged, but they tugged and pulled and eventually managed to roll it onto the bank. Exhausted, the boys fell on their backs and lay there gasping for a minute. Water spilled out around Danny and snaked out through the dusty surface of the track.

  “All right,” Danny wheezed eventually. “Let’s do this.”

  Still on his back, he reached in and jostled his penknife out from a wet front pocket of his shorts. He sat up, took hold of the thin rope which bound up the rug and began to cut through. Brad rose up on his elbows and watched his friend from a distance. He winced in anticipation as the rope began to fray. Finally, the binding snapped apart and one side of the roll flopped open.

  Danny began to unravel the rug, pushing away from where his friend anxiously sat. When he finally got to the centre and the contents were revealed, he dropped his knife sharply to the ground and scrambled backwards in horror. Brad shot to his feet and instinctively drew back a few paces too.

  “What?” he cried in alarm. “What is it?”

  Danny couldn’t speak. He just sat there, taking deep gulps of air and shaking his head in disbelief.

  “No…” he said. “It can’t be…no, no, no.”

  “Danny!” Brad cried again, his voice much higher now. “Please, you’re scaring me. What is it?”

  Danny looked up slowly and faced his friend. “It’s my dad.”

  There was silence for a while. The rug lay open like a hideous picnic blanket, its red hue somehow darker from the river’s saturation.

  “How…?” said Brad. “How can it be your dad?”

  Danny shook his head. He looked like he was in a trance.

  “Are you sure it’s him?”

  Danny snapped his head up and glared at the other. “I know my own father, idiot!”

  Brad gingerly stepped forward and approached the rug. There was indeed a body, a tall man in scruffy jeans and a ripped flannel shirt. Brad nearly vomited when he saw a bloody bullet hole in the centre of the man’s pale forehead. He paused a moment to steady himself, then proceeded closer. The man looked late thirties, early forties, with dark brown hair and a thick rash of stubble on his face. Brad knelt down beside the body and stared at it for a moment. True enough, it looked a lot like Mr Spellman. He cocked his head this way and that, then furrowed his brow. He stretched out his right hand towards the torso, withdrew it for a second or two, then began to pat down the front pockets of the jeans.

  “What are you doing?” Danny cried, leaping to his feet. “Leave him alone!”

  “It’s not him. It’s not your dad. There must be a wallet or something…” Brad searched the pockets but found nothing.

  “It’s him, you idiot. I know my own dad.”

  Suddenly, they were startled by a low voice from up the track. “Sorry you had to find him, kid.”

  It was the man in the trench coat. He had a strange accent – not American, but something else. The boys froze as the man emerged from the darkness of the underpass.

  “You!” Danny yelled. “We know what you did! We saw you.”

  For a moment, Brad thought his friend would charge the man and start to pummel him, but Danny remained where he was.

  The man approached slowly, but said nothing.

  “You killed my dad and dumped his body!”

  Trenchcoat drew nearer and nodded his head slightly. “Well, you’re about a third right. I did dispose of the body, but I didn’t kill him and he’s not your father.”

  “Liar!” Danny cried. “You’re a lying murderer and I’m calling the police.”

  Trenchcoat shrugged nonchalantly. “Suit yourself. Six minutes from now, I’ll be gone and you’ll be left to explain how you fished your own dead body out of the river.”

  Danny’s mouth fell open. “What?” he said.

  Trenchcoat checked his watch. “Look, I’ll make this quick - time’s a-wastin’.” He pulled a piece of paper from the inside of his coat, folded neatly in three. “You were executed on June 2nd, 2039. Here’s the order. My job was to dispose of your body; if I had more than four and a half minutes to spare, I’d explain why we dump the corpses in your time.”

  “Executed?” Danny cried, his voice cracking. “For what?”

  “A wasted life,” said Trenchcoat, pursing his lips gravely. “That’s a capital crime twenty years from now.”

  He handed the paper to Danny. “Here’s the charge sheet and execution order. What you do between now and then is up to you. Right now, I suggest you get that body back in the water.” Then he turned and walked briskly back to the dark underpass. He paused just before he reached the bridge and turned around.

  “Your past is done, but your future ain’t,” he said, then disappeared into the darkness.

  Danny stared down at the piece of paper
he’d been given. It was all there; dates, times, details. Daniel Arthur Spellman, born September 4th, 2002 to Mr Eugene Victor Spellman and Mrs Kristin Eloise Spellman. Execution order for the crime of “Lifespan Squander”.

  Up on the Overpass, the cars rolled on as the evening traffic thunderously juxtaposed the silence below. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of approaching sirens could be heard.

  Brad spoke eventually. “Danny…what do we do?”

  Danny turned slowly and stared at the body on the rug. “It won’t be me,” he said quietly. “That won’t be me.”

  For the next few minutes, they carefully wrapped up the body and secured the rug with the orange nylon strapping. Then together, they eased it back into the water. They stood on the river bank, Danny’s hands trembling with cold and fear. He clasped them shut in a tight fist and watched as his own body sailed up the river to who knew where.

  Twenty-three years, he thought. That’s time enough.

  Up on the Overpass, the man in the trench coat looked down and smiled. “Hope we never cross paths again, kid.” And then he was gone in a flash of blue lightning.

  Only time would tell.

 

 

  Jez Fernandez, Time of Death

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