Mr. Cold (Part One)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

It had been a hot day for the end of May, and Mike Newland was shattered. The weather had been fine for a solid month and there had been barely a cloud in the sky all week, but a huge thunder-head started to roll in just as he was finishing work. As he walked along the drive of the farm at the beginning of the long trek home he heard the distant rumble of thunder. “Shit,” he said to Paul, his workmate, who lived just down the road, “knowing my luck I'm in for a bloody good soaking.” 'That's Sod's law, kid,' his missus would have said, but the static charged air was interfering with the signal, so he couldn't use his mobile to call his nearest and dearest to ask for a lift.

He had walked just a fraction of the way home when the heavens opened. The rain lashed down so hard that rivulets of icy water sneaked under the hood of his thin, supposedly waterproof coat and trickled down his neck. His jeans were soaked through after the first couple of minutes of the downpour, the wet denim chafing his inner thighs as he walked and his sodden boots made a farting noise that he didn't find particularly amusing.

Mike had been late for work that morning because his bicycle had a puncture and he had to travel the seven long miles by Shank's pony. The buses between Livingstone and Sutton Ashton didn't start until nine, and then they only ran every hour until six in the evening. He and his workmate had put in four hours overtime because Dave Hancock, their boss, was in bed with the flu and there was an awful lot to do. Working on a poultry farm wasn't like any of the jobs that Mike had done in the past; livestock needed regular feeding and cleaning out, and there was no leaving those tasks until tomorrow. On occasion he had to work much later than he wanted to, but like most folk he didn't live in an ideal world and the extra money always came in handy.

Mike had lived in Shropshire for just over a year, he had moved from the Midlands with his family because the stress of working in a large advertising agency was becoming too much for him. “You're digging your own grave, buddy,” his boss told him. “There aren't many jobs in the city, so how do you think you're going to find work in the middle of bloody nowhere?”

Annabelle, Mike's wife, was a primary school teacher, and just before they moved she found a job at a little school just a couple of miles from their new house, which saved her the long trek to and from Birmingham every day. Mike found work just a month after moving, purely by asking around - he was one of the lucky ones, he guessed. Old man Hancock had lost three good men in as many years because they moved to urban areas in search of a better standard of living, but Mike wasn't going anywhere. He loved the simplicity of his new job, and he loved the peace and quiet of the countryside even more. Except, of course, when it was pissing it down with rain and he had no transport.

As he approached the crossroad on the almost deserted country road he had an important choice to make. Should he carry on following the winding main drag, or walk down Munnery Lane and take a short cut through Pouke wood, which would cut the best part of an hour off his journey? He ummed and ahhed as a brand new Range Rover passed and ignored his raised thumb. It was at least the twentieth vehicle that had whizzed past without stopping during the last forty minutes, and one clown in a fancy Audi had wound down his window and laughed hysterically at the drenched man's plight. Of course Mike knew that you aren't supposed to shelter under trees during a thunderstorm, but surely passing through the wood wouldn't be much more dangerous than walking along a road lined with trees. A flash of lightning followed by a deafening clap of thunder made his mind up for him, and he hurried down Mummery Lane.

The rain was heavier than ever as he made his way down the muddy track towards the wood. The previous evening he had watched the news and smiled to himself as the newsreader said that a hosepipe ban was almost certainly on the way because of an unusually dry Winter. “This is bloody England, mate,” he muttered. “We've had a few weeks of unseasonal sunshine, which is more than we usually get, and if it doesn't rain in the next three or four weeks I'll eat my hat.” Just before he entered the trees he noticed the colour of the angry storm-clouds, they were the dull orange of burnished copper like inner city rain-clouds reflecting the glow of sodium street-lights, though the nearest sizeable urban area was thirty miles away.

Mike had barely entered the wood when he heard the siren of a police car, which was unusual in the area at the best of times. The siren sounded odd, it sounded slower and a few octaves lower than usual, but he guessed it was distorted by the wind. There must have been an accident, he thought, or else the local coppers were late for their evening meal.

He plodded on with his eyes down along the track, which was an old railway line, the blanket of wet undergrowth on both sides cast in an eerie orange glow from the oddly coloured clouds. Quite abruptly the rain stopped, though the storm was still in full swing and water dripped from the overhanging foliage, and he guessed he couldn't get any wetter. Mike was perhaps three hundred yards into Pouke wood when he had the feeling that somebody was watching him. The siren was getting closer, it sounded like it was directly ahead, and then all of a sudden it stopped. “A police car?” he mumbled. “Out here on a dirt track in the middle of nowhere at the height of a thunder-storm?”

“'Ello 'ello 'ello, what's all this, then?” a voice said from the cover of the trees to his right, the unexpected intrusion stopping him in his tracks. An unusually prolonged flicker of sheet lightening lit up the woods, and he could see from the policeman's headgear that he was a beat constable rather than a squad car officer. The man was standing perfectly still with his hands by his sides some twenty yards away in a waterlogged depression, water pouring off his pale, rugged features, and he didn't make another sound.

Mike felt butterflies in his stomach. 'This isn't right,' a little voice told him. “Hello?” he said tentatively, expecting the tremulous thunderclap that inevitably followed lightning. Curiously it didn't arrive, but the lightning flickered on and off almost constantly. 'Like a cracked record playing the same snippet of ethereal music over and over again,' he thought. He paused, giving the man a chance to reply, but he didn't. “Is there a problem, officer?”

“A problem,” the man said after an uncomfortably long, pause, and it was more of a statement than a question. “Is there a problem? Yes..... yes, as a matter of fact there is.”

“What's the matter?”

“What's the matter?” the policeman repeated after another pause. He was beginning to sound like a parrot, Mike thought, and then he started to walk slowly towards him.

“Look,” Mike said, “I've had a long, hard day, I'm tired, soaked to the skin and ravenously hungry, and I still have a bloody long way to walk. Can I go now, officer, or is there something I can help you with? Hang on, I heard a siren a moment ago. Is there any chance of a lift – are you going towards Clun?”

“Go?” the policeman said as he came to a stop a few feet away from Mike and stretched out his deathly white hands like a child reaching for its mother. “You can't go, Sir. I'm lost, and I need your assistance. I'm lost and confused, and I have no idea what I'm doing here in this wet, frightening, thoroughly alien place. Help me.....”

A flurry of lightning threw fresh light on the situation, and Mike realised that the constable's uniform didn't look right. He wasn't wearing regulation body armour for a start, he carried no radio or truncheon or any of the other familiar accoutrements than police officers carry. His uniform looked cheap and shoddy, it was incomplete like a fancy dress costume, just a facsimile of the real McCoy. And his helmet, which had an odd zigzag lightning bolt on the badge, was somewhat more pointed than a regular policeman's head-wear. Strangely Mike didn't feel threatened, probably because he sensed something deeply sad about the man. He guessed that he had been accosted by someone with mental problems who had somehow been separated from his carer, or maybe the counterfeit policeman was a random fruitcake wandering around in the storm just for the hell of it. 'No,' the voice of his intuition told him. 'He isn't a crazy, he's just..... misplaced, I guess. He's like a little boy lost.'

“Who are you?” Mike said. “Are you ill? You look terribly pale. Christ, I've never seen anyone so bloody pale.”

“Who am I? I don't know, Sir, I honestly don't know. Maybe I'm Mr. Whippy, the ice-cream man. Maybe I'm a double-glazing salesman. Maybe I'm PC Plod on a mission to arrest you for a string of serious traffic offences. Or burglaries. Or bank robberies and murders, even..... I don't know.”

“What's your name?”

“I..... I really can't remember.”