"Michael?" I breathed, watching him step from the shadows and out into the clearing by the well. "What are you doing out here?"
With his dark hair wet and tousled-looking as it swept off his brow in the roaring wind, Michael said, "I'm sorry I lied to you, Sydney, but I just can't go on keeping secrets. It's killing me inside."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, staring at him.
"It was me Molly had come to meet that night," he said, looking at me, then at my father. "We were in love, but because of people like your father standing here, and my own, we had to keep that relationship a secret. I loved her with all of my heart. I wanted nothing more than to be with her. But like your father, I was a coward and feared what people like my father and yours would say about me - think of me - if I was in love with such a girl. So I arranged to meet Molly out here that night. She came and I told her I didn't love her, and that I never wanted to see her again."
"Why didn't you tell me this?" I asked, seeing the pain in his eyes.
"Because of what I saw out here that night," he said, glancing at me, then back at my father. "When I told Molly that I couldn't be with her, she ran crying into the trees and down onto the road. I thought she was heading home. I waited up here in the dark, angry with myself and others. A short time later, I heard someone running back through the trees and towards the well. It was Molly. Her clothes were torn and I had never seen anyone look so scared. I took hold of her and she fought with me, screaming and scratching as if I was going to hurt her in some way. It was like, in her blind panic and in the darkness, she thought I was someone else. She pulled free of me, and in doing so, she toppled back over the wall and into the well. In terror I called out her name, but she made no noise. It was then I heard the sounds of others approaching through the trees. I could see the flashing lights from torches and the sound of radios. I knew it was the police. Fearing that they might suspect me of pushing Molly into the well, and still desperate to hide the fact that we had been lovers, I slunk back into the shadows amongst the trees and hid."
As Michael was talking, I glanced over at my father and could see the drawn and haunted look on his face as he feared what Michael was going to say next.
"I saw a young-looking copper run into the clearing," Michael continued, not taking his eyes off my father. "He raced to the edge of the well, and with his torch, he saw Molly lying at the bottom. He called out for help and he was joined by three other coppers. One of them was you," he said, pointing a finger at my father.
My father said nothing.
"The younger copper wanted to climb down into the well and help Molly, as he hoped that she might still be alive. But the others didn't want to help her. They said she was a thieving whore. To hear him speak about her in such a way, I had to do everything in my power to stay hidden. The younger cop said he hadn't signed up to break the law himself. So he clambered up onto the wall of the well as if getting ready himself to climb down and help Molly. It was then I saw you..." Michael said, his voice turning suddenly angry as he jabbed his finger at my father again. "I saw you run forward and push that young officer into the well. I couldn't believe what I had seen. I had to cover my mouth for fear of crying out and revealing myself. I couldn't comprehend what I had just witnessed. A police officer murder another police officer."
"Why didn't you help him?" I snapped at Michael, feeling sick and confused.
"I was just twenty - a boy," Michael said, looking at me. "I'm not trying to excuse the fact that I have remained silent for all these years, but they were police officers. I heard the three of them get their stories straight as if it was something that they were used to doing. How did I know that they wouldn't say that it was me who had pushed the officer into the well? How did I know they wouldn't give evidence to say I had killed Molly, too? I was just young and scared. So I ran, Sydney. I'm not proud of that. I ran and kept running. Two days later, I left Cliff View and hit the road. I was angry and confused and I hated myself. I started to drink, get into fights to try and release that hatred I had eating me alive from inside out. I began to believe that I had been cursed for my cowardice. Then one night, as I sat and got drunk in that bar, I watched as that guy kept harassing that young girl. In my drunken state, that young woman looked like Molly. I swear to God, Sydney, it was her. She looked at me from across the bar and whispered, 'Help me, Michael.' So I got up. I wouldn't fail her again. I raced across the bar and took hold of that guy. As I had my hand gripped about his throat, it was your father's face I could see as he had pushed that young copper into the well. So I pushed back, not just for Molly, but for that poor police officer, too. I pushed your father down that flight of stairs," Michael explained. With tears streaming from his eyes, he looked at my father and said, "But it wasn't you, was it? It was some drunken punk who thought it would be fun to tease a girl in front of his mates. And when I looked back at the girl, she wasn't Molly. She was just some girl, who wouldn't even meet my stare, although I had come to help her."
I crossed the short gap by the well, and took Michael's cold, damp hands as thunder began to rumble in the distance. Michael looked at me and said, "Every second I spent locked in my cell, I knew I was paying for being a coward that night - for not coming forward and telling the truth. And I know that the ten years I spent in prison would never make up for what I failed to do. I would never be free of that guilt. Tonight, it stops," Michael said, looking back at my father. "Tonight the guilt - the curse - I've been living with since that night ends. I'm not scared of you and your friends anymore."
My father looked at me from beneath his cap, and coldly said, "What is done is done. None of this will bring those people back. This will only destroy more lives, like the lives you destroyed out on the road, Sydney. If you tell on me, I tell on you." I could see a twisted looking smile form just beneath his moustache.
Turning on my father, and a rage burning so deep inside of me for him it was almost overwhelming, I hissed, "I'm not so sure it was me who killed those people."
"Of course it was you," he smiled knowingly back at me. "And Michael knows it, too. I know all about your sordid little affair. I know you were busy fucking the farmer's son that day instead of doing your duty. It's my business to know everything that goes on in this town. Michael knows you were drinking, too, don't you, Michael?"
Michael stared back at him without making a reply.
"Are you going to tell the truth about that, too, Michael?" my father teased. "Are you really going to sit back and watch Sydney go to prison for a very long time for killing five people - one of which was a five-year-old boy - because she was drunk thanks to you?"
"Someone else was out on that road," I shouted at my father over another boom of approaching thunder. "I've been back to take a look. There are brake marks at the scene. I never even touched my brakes."
"Is that it?" my father scoffed. "You killed them, Sydney. Even the old git called you a witch with his dying breath for killing him and his family."
Then, as if Jonathan Smith were standing right behind me, I heard him whisper, witch, on the wind. Gooseflesh ran up my back and I shuddered all over again.
"He called you a witch!" my father mocked me.
That word went over and over in my head, making me feel dizzy and sick. I could see Smith in the road again, the bubble of blood on his lips as he whispered, the word 'witch.'
If I hadn't have been the one who had killed him and his family, perhaps he had been trying to say something else? What if he was trying to say...
Slowly, and with my stomach screwing up into knots, I looked at Michael. "You said that Jonathan Smith spoke kinda funny, right?"
"Right," Michael nodded.
"You said he spoke like that cartoon character, Elmer Fudd," I whispered, a blanket of dread covering me.
"Sure," Michael said.
Turning to face my father, I said, "I'm gonna go and catch me some wabbit."
"What are you talking about?" my father grunted in anger.
"Jonathan Smith couldn't pronounce the letter 'R', instead he used the letter 'W'," I gasped, suddenly realising what it was Smith had been trying to tell me. "He wasn't calling me a witch, he was saying the name Rich." I looked up at my father and said, "Jonathan Smith was trying to tell me the name of the person who had really run him and his family off the road and killed them. He was saying the name Rich...he was trying to say Richard. He was saying your name, dad."
"That's just ridic..." my father started to say.
"Oh, my God," I breathed, feeling as if I were going to drop to my knees again. I looked at my father, eyes wide, and said, "It was you! It was you who drove them off the road and killed them."
"You don't know what you're talk..." he started to bluster again.
I closed my eyes and pictured that scene again, the blood on the dead bodies, my father arriving on scene. "You had blood on your boots," I said, opening my eyes again. "I remember seeing your feet through the window as you rushed towards my upturned patrol car. They had flecks of blood on them."
"Of course they would, there was blood all over the goddamn place," he shouted at me.
"But you came from the opposite direction. There wasn't any blood where you parked your...car," I said, trying to catch my breath. "The police sign across the bonnet of the car. In my semi-consciousness, I thought that word ECILOP looked distorted and crinkled because I was looking at it through a smashed windscreen. It really was crumpled and distorted because the front of your patrol car was all smashed up. Why was it all smashed up, dad?" I asked, looking at him.
My father made no reply. He looked very pale and very ill as the rain dripped from the peak of his police cap and down the front of his coat.
Desperate to try and keep my voice even and calm when all I wanted to do was scream, I whispered, "It was you who drove them off the road. Maybe you didn't mean to kill them, but you wanted to scare them. Jonathan Smith was a pain in your arse, because even after ten years, he wouldn't give up trying to find out what really happened to his daughter that night. He wrote letters, didn't he? He knew there'd been a cover-up. So every year, he would come back with his family and make a nuisance of himself - ruffle your feathers. You were scared that one day he might just prick the conscience of whoever Molly had been secretly in love with. So you saw them out on the road that day, and decided to scare him away - run him out of town. I bet you put on your sirens and lights to scare the horse. But it went wrong and the horse dragged the cart and the Smiths out into the road and in front of your patrol car. It was you who killed them not me," I gasped, looking at him. And then everything hit me at once. "You weren't calling me up on the radio that day because you were searching for me. You've already said you knew I was with Michael, but once you had caused that accident, you needed to get me away from the area; you couldn't risk me coming across it. You wanted it to look like some unexplained accident by whoever came across it later that day. When you heard me call up for urgent assistance, you knew I'd come across that accident - the accident you caused. That's how you knew where to find me so quickly. You called up Mac and Woody. That's why you used your mobile phone and not the radio. You knew they would come out and help cover things up. They weren't covering for me - they were covering for you."
With the realisation of my father's true deceit becoming clear before me, I leapt towards him and started to slap him and beat him with my fists. With tears streaming down my face, I screamed, "How could you let me think I had killed that family? How could you have used me like that? Scare me that I was going to go to prison? You're meant to be my father. I'm your daughter - your little girl. All I ever wanted to do was make you feel proud of me," I sobbed. "How could you let me carry that guilt around..."
My father pushed me away. I fell backwards into the mud. "You have nothing!" he screamed at me, a flash of bright, white lightning appearing in the night sky over his shoulder. "I have your signed statement, remember? The one you signed to say that you were the one who hit those people? Not me."
"I have statements, too," I screamed back at him, clawing myself out of the mud and back to my feet. "I've seen the statements you changed the night Molly died." Then remembering how Vincent had told me that two patrol cars were out of use because they had been damaged, I said, "I know your patrol car is in the garage being fixed up from the damage caused by hitting that cart."
"Who has these statements? Who told you this about my car?" my father shouted.
"Vincent!" I shouted, as I scanned the shadows for any sign of him.
"Vincent?" my father roared. "Who in the hell is Vincent?"
"The new recruit at the station," I barked back at my father, now too angry to feel fearful of him.
"What new recruit?" he snapped.
"The one you relegated to the filing cupboard. The one you gave the push-bike to...because the others think he doesn't fit in."
And as I started to describe Vincent, my father screwed up his face as if eyeing me with suspicion. "Is this some kind of joke, or have you really just lost your fucking mind?"
"What are you talking about?" I snapped back at him.
"The only copper I can ever remember working in the filing room and riding about on a police push-bike was Constable Vincent Lee. And as we already know, he died at the bottom of that well ten years ago," my father said, looking confused.
