Page 57 of The Cut

He’s on top of her now. Her body pinned down to the wheel.

‘Please stop. Let me go.’ Annie desperately grips hold of the wooden slats as the rain pelts harder and heavier.

He can’t let her go, she’s the only thing he has left.

She’s everything to him, his solace, his first love, the only person who cares.

No … he’ll never let her go. Ben leans in close to her face, then suddenly buries his head into her neck, clinging on to her.

He is sobbing hard now. Squeezing her so tight, pressing his body into hers so hard, as if he wants to climb inside her.

Annie tries to cry out, but he is wringing the life out of her.

‘I’ll never let you go.’ Ben’s voice is muffled as his lips brush her shoulder. He squeezes her even tighter.

‘Ben?’ Patel is lying on the ground, holding his head as blood pours down his face.

Ben tries to lift his head, but the rubber mask rips away from his cheek.

He’s stuck fast to Annie’s neck. He tries to separate himself, but they seem to be glued together.

As Ben tears himself away, that’s when the blood begins to flow.

One of the rusty nails from his Pinhead mask is sticking out of her neck, buried deep.

Her mouth is open, and her eyes fixed in the distance.

Her breath is short; a gurgle sounds in her throat.

Ben pulls the nail slowly out of her neck.

Annie’s body flinches with pain. ‘I’m sorry … I’m so sorry.’

As the blood begins to spurt from her neck, Ben’s hands shoot out, grabbing at the puncture wound to try and stop the flow. He squeezes tighter. 318

‘Ben, you’re strangling her.’ Patel is on his feet now.

His head snaps around to Patel’s pitiful voice, the torn mask flapping in the wind. He can’t see what’s happening. Then another voice calls out in the distance.

‘HEY … STOP!’

Ben’s frantic eyes scan the wall, but there’s nobody there.

‘LEAVE HER ALONE!’ Ben’s head shoots up to the voice directly above him at the top of the tower and he stares into the lens of the camera that is pointing down in his direction, filming every second of this moment.

‘Help me.’ Ben’s hands are wet with blood.

It’s everywhere now, pumping hard from her neck through his fingers.

He stares down into her face. ‘Help. Please.’ Ben tears at the chiffon of her train, wrapping a strip around her neck, and pulls it tight, trying to stop the bleeding.

The wheel creaks, slowly turning. Trying to keep the pressure on her neck, he shifts his weight to counter hers.

On the edge of the moving wheel, they balance precariously over the drop, about ten feet from the surface of the water.

Ben returns his focus up towards the boy with the camera in the Crow’s Nest, but he’s gone.

Then everything happens at once. Ben takes his hands from her throat and makes a break for it, leaping from the wheel back on to the stone ledge.

With a rasp of metal, the scaffold slowly dislodges itself from the wall.

The sheer volume of water surging out through the tail race drives the wheel faster in a cascade of turbulence.

Patel’s dirt bike, still hissing and steaming on the surface of the water, is sucked under.

The water wheel suddenly jerks, and Annie’s limp, swaddled form teeters on the edge, then slowly tips over the side.

Already soaked to the skin, she plummets down towards the deep water below, but the cape of her gown catches on the fulcrum of the wheel.

Her body is flung sideways and she is wrenched to a sudden stop, hung 319 from the neck.

The wheel judders to a halt as Patel’s bike becomes lodged underneath and the spindle holding Annie by the throat snaps.

She plunges feet first into the deep reservoir and Patel launches himself into the water after her.

*

Ben’s fingers dug into the veins of Max’s neck, and he squeezed hard.

‘It was an accident.’

Max’s eyes bulged but his hand on the camera lens maintained the shot. He needed this moment, whatever the price.

The cables connected to the body of the camera strained as the wheel began to move. ‘Max, you’re gonna break the connection.’ Karine tried to give him some slack.

Max moved fast, Ben’s hand clawing at the fabric of his coat, fingers gripping metal. The scaffold bar sliced through the air and slammed into the side of Ben Knot’s skull. Ben released his grip as he fell sideways.

Max was on his feet now, steadying himself on the wooden frame, towering over Ben.

‘I always knew how violent you were. You inflicted your cruelty on me, day after day for all those years.’ The scaffold bar came down again with force, hitting the wheel, missing Ben’s face by an inch.

‘But I could take it, all the punches and the bruises and the nose bleeds. But Annie didn’t deserve it …

she loved you.’ Max wielded the iron bar, ready to strike for the third time.

‘TELL ME THE TRUTH.’ With one hand, he raised the iron bar again, and with the other he thrust the camera in Ben’s face.

Ben flinched. ‘I was trying to stop the bleeding … she wasn’t breathing …

she fell over the side.’ Ben staggered to his feet, unsteady, his hand held out to stop Max from striking him again.

320 Blood poured from his temple as he swayed dizzily towards the water.

Max stepped very carefully towards him, framing him against the water.

The cables tensed. He could go no further.

Ben stared over the edge into the water.

It was as if he could see her billowing white dress sinking into the dark, her hands reaching out.

‘She fell in …’ Ben took a step forward. ‘There was so much blood.’ His fingers stretched out towards the vision just below the surface. It was as if he was trying to claw her back. Reaching thirty years into the past. ‘She was already dead.’

Max turned to Karine. They had it. They had him, he was unravelling before their very eyes.

Max grabbed him. ‘You let Dave Patel go to prison. You held on to the one piece of evidence that could have cleared him … didn’t you?’

Ben faced the camera, his fingers clutching and clawing at his chest in agony.

‘You could have got help, but instead you ran off and left her for dead and let Patel take the blame. Didn’t you?’

‘She bled to death because I wanted her so badly. I couldn’t stop it.’

Very slowly, as if in a trance, Ben turned back to face her watery grave, the place where she fell.

Karine tried to find a footing on the rotten wheel as the creak of wood and metal suddenly jolted, causing them all to cling on.

Then, almost in slow motion, Ben’s body fell forward as he tipped himself headfirst into the water.

‘NO!’ As Max leapt forward to grab him, a huge section of scaffold dislodged from the wall, ripping bolts from the stonework as the entire structure of the Blackstone Mill water wheel collapsed sideways, hitting the surface with an almighty crash. Max went down with it. 321

The camera lens was yanked from his hands and dangled precariously, swinging against the wall. Karine reached forward to try and stop it from smashing against the stone.

Ben was now face down in the water as the weight of the structure bore down upon him.

Karine scrambled back on to the ledge of the window, reassembling the camera and hanging on to save herself from being pulled over.

The structure of the wheel began to sink.

Max hit the surface of the water hard, winding himself on impact.

He fought to catch his breath as the suction dragged him down.

The turbulence of the fast-flowing torrent pulled them both under the wheel, fighting and flailing.

On the other side of the tail race, Ben broke the surface first, exploding out of the reservoir, his body slamming into the sluice wall, gasping for air, hands clutching his chest. The force of the current dragged him under, again and again.

His head surfaced as he fought for air, but as he struggled hard against the pressure, he began to lose strength.

*

As Annie’s limp body sinks into the deep water, her eyes suddenly open, and her arms strike out, breaking for the surface.

She’s weak and losing strength as the foaming water, red with her blood, sucks her under.

Again and again she surfaces, gasping for air, but fluid fills her lungs as she’s dragged deeper into the murky blackness.

Her feet hit metal on the bottom of the reservoir.

Something is wrapped around her leg; the shredded gown has entwined itself around Patel’s motorbike.

Annie struggles to free herself, but she is held fast. She looks down and tugs at the cloth of her dress.

Her hands reach out, lungs about to burst. Then her fingertips soften, and her arms go limp, her grip loosens, and she begins to sink. 322

*

Max broke the surface, his body arching backwards like a dolphin. His eyes black from the silt and his lungs burning as he panted for breath.

His hands clawed at the sluice wall. ‘Help me.’ As his arms reached upwards, a hand clamped tightly around his wrist and began to haul him out. He was dragged towards the wall of the sluice, fingers gripping the side, against the fast-moving current.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt her.’ Ben stared down at Mark Cherry. ‘It was an accident.’

‘She was stabbed in the neck … you fucking animal.’ Max’s voice rasped as he gulped for air.

There was never going to be a way to convince him. One of the nails from the mask had opened an artery, and the cut was too deep. But the truth was that he had fled the scene, he had left her there to die.

‘YOU’RE A COWARD!’ Max exploded at him as he struggled to cling on to the wall, the current tugging at his body.

Very slowly, a darkness descended over Ben’s eyes.

Max had all the answers now, all the evidence he needed.

He would never let this go, there was too much resentment there.

Something inside him snapped. They stared at each other, a whole lifetime of damage passing between them; then Max held out his hand to be pulled out, but instead Ben gently placed his palm on Max’s forehead, like a priest giving a blessing and the last rites.

Then, slowly and deliberately, he forced Max’s head under the water.

Holding him there, drowning the evidence.

*

323 Annie can feel another body in the water next to her as a pair of arms slide under hers, trying to pull her out, but she doesn’t want to go.

It’s calmer down here, peaceful and serene.

Maybe she can just stay where she is. Her hands reach up to wrap around the neck of her saviour.

She turns and opens her eyes. Through the darkness of the water, she sees a face straining in agony, but she is still trapped, tied down by her dress, unable to free herself.

Then he floats upwards, fading away. The water begins to feel warmer now.

The darkness lifts and all around her is light.

The bottom of the weir seems to go on forever, deep and crystal clear.

Her dress, like angel wings, spreads wide, fanning out in the water.

Annie Maddock lies back, looking towards the surface as the face of Dave Patel stares back at her.

*

A sudden surge of strength coursed through Max’s body and his hand thrust upwards, breaking the surface.

He seized Ben’s wrist and pulled hard, toppling him forward, plunging him in headfirst. Without a second to snatch a breath, his lungs filled with water, thick mud choking him, clogging his airway.

Blood from the wound on his head turned the water deep red around him.

He was losing consciousness. Ben opened his eyes and stared down into the murky grime.

There was something white down there, floating at the bottom; a shred of torn cloth, trapped in the rusty wheel of a motorbike.

Ben’s eyes suddenly bulged out of their sockets as a stab of pain in his chest paralysed him.

Under the water, his body thrashed and writhed in agony as the cardiac arrest finally came.

A pair of arms grabbed Ben around the chest and hauled him upwards.

Crawling on his hands and knees in the reeds of the riverbank, dragging himself on to the towpath towards the daylight, Mark hauled Ben out of the flood through 324 the black silt.

He tipped Ben’s head back, forced his fingers down his throat to clear his airway and began chest compressions.

Karine had found her way in through the window of the mill and down the ladder that led to the main hall.

She had sprinted around the building towards the road and the footbridge.

As she arrived, she scanned the water for signs of life and, pulling her phone from her pocket, she called for an ambulance.

Then she slowly picked her way down through the slippery rocks and weeds, keeping her camera high on her shoulder out of the water, until she was knee-deep on the opposite side of the river.

She squatted on the side of the bank and did what she knew best … continued filming.

Mark pressed his mouth to Ben’s, filled his lungs with air, and continued to pump on his sternum.

You see, somewhere very deep inside, his fear of Ben Knot was born of a kind of obsession, a twisted love story, a battle with a bully who’d had a grip on his heart since his very first day at school.

After all the abuse he suffered, Mark could easily have turned to violence himself, but when all was said and done …

he was the one with the instinct to save a man’s life.

The Cut was going to be the swansong of Max’s career. Then he would put it all behind him, all the trauma and the pain and the nightmares. He’d lock it in a box and throw away the key.

Ben was lifted from the ground on to a gurney as the two paramedics took over.

Dani’s car pulled up by the bridge with Nate and Lily in the back seat, and Max watched as Ben’s two children, their faces white and tear-stained, followed their father as he was taken on the stretcher into the ambulance.

The shock of what had happened would take a while to settle in.

There was never going to be a happy ending.

Max collapsed back into the grass, the water buffeting his body, rocking him gently as he listened to the siren disappearing into the distance.