The Drowning Ground

by James Marrison

  ‘No,’ Lang said sharply. ‘Not to begin with. Not Sarah.’ Lang squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. ‘I thought about the symptoms … the tiredness is a well-known reaction when someone is in close contact with a person like Rebecca. The emotional response is always the same: an overwhelming tiredness and lethargy in the face of a concealed personality disorder.’

  ‘I’m sorry, what do you mean?’ Graves said. ‘We don’t have your background, Lang. You’ll have to try to be a bit clearer.’

  Lang paused, thinking. ‘It’s well documented and I looked it up again after I began to suspect. An American psychiatrist described the psychopathic personality as a mimic, imitating a normally functioning individual. Later came the work by researchers in the field of criminal psychology. They began to develop a checklist of shared traits, but the idea is broadly speaking the same. Simply put, Rebecca was faking her emotions. And criminologists, those who have spent time with known psychopaths, have reported the same reaction – the same tiredness when in their presence.’

  ‘So Rebecca was faking her emotions,’ I said.

  Lang sighed. ‘As I said, I had noticed that her expressions and her way of expressing herself could be slightly off-key – that they could somehow come across as exaggerated and insincere. Or the things she said came too late, like afterthoughts. Or an emotional response didn’t come at all. That was because the emotions weren’t hers.’

  ‘Not hers?’ Graves said.

  ‘She was replicating them because she simply couldn’t feel them. Something was missing. A fundamental aspect of Rebecca’s psychological make-up wasn’t there. Pity. Love. Friendship. Empathy. She knew what they were. She knew how she was supposed to feel. She could recognize and name the terms. And she knew that other people felt these emotions. But she recognized them as a concept only. She could never really know what they meant because she was unable to feel them for herself.’

  Lang sat back and reached for the cup of water. He took a sip and then a large gulp.

  ‘So now that you knew what you were dealing with, it became easier to interpret what she told you?’

  Lang sniffed and put the cup down on the table. ‘Yes. When I talked to her, she was saying what she had learnt was expected of her – and it was the same with everyone else she met. She was copying your feelings even as you spoke to her. That’s why it was so tiring to be with her, because all of her energy was fixed so completely and intently on you.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘So she could survive,’ Lang said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘So we couldn’t see what she really was. She was hiding. And I knew it made her dangerous. Because if she could feel no empathy, she could feel no pity. Like the others afflicted with her condition, for Rebecca there were no boundaries. No moral limitations. She was not restricted by any type of code. And many of her other symptoms pretty much fit as well.’

  Lang counted them off on his fingers. ‘She was manipulative. She had her father wrapped round her little finger. Destructive, prone to lying and didn’t seem to be bothered when caught out in a lie. Almost constantly in trouble. Glib. Superficially charming when she had a mind to be, but found it hard to develop long-term relationships. Impulsive and could act on whims. She was unreliable and as a person quite superficial.’

  Lang looked down at his cup. ‘And now that I had an idea of what she might be, every single event in her life, no matter how trivial, had to be re-examined. And if it were true, I had to look at what she had left in her wake so far.’

  ‘Two dead boys,’ Graves said quietly. ‘The Taylor brothers. And maybe not just them either.’

  Lang nodded. ‘Quite,’ he said.

  ‘And so that’s when you started wondering about Sarah Hurst?’ I said.

  ‘When she had her accident, I didn’t know. Didn’t even suspect.’

  ‘But she drowned. She drowned like the two boys,’ I said. ‘And she had a motive for this one. Rebecca hated her stepmother. Started acting up as soon as Sarah moved in. That’s why she told Hurst about Sarah’s affair with Brad Hooper. She wanted her gone. But Hurst forgave Sarah.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lang said.

  ‘And so what happened then?’ I said. ‘You weren’t treating her any more. But what? You decided to confront her?’

  ‘I had to know. I really needed a lot more time with her, but I knew I wasn’t going to get it.’

  ‘But you couldn’t stop thinking about her, could you?’ I said.

  ‘No. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah and about what had happened to her that day by the swimming pool. Rebecca was supposed to have been at school. But she could easily have got to the house on her bike, or she could have cut class. And it was always water. She seemed to have some kind of obsession with it. Nancy had found her by that pond, just staring at it, and it had taken her and Frank to drag her away from there. The animals – she had drowned them and watched them die. The Taylor boys drowned.’

  Lang stopped for a moment. He reached for his half-empty cup and began to absently pinch the rim with his thumb and forefinger. ‘It just got worse and worse. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.’

  ‘But that wasn’t really what bothered you, was it? It wasn’t Ned and Owen. It was Sarah Hurst you cared about. You needed to know about her. You needed to know what happened to her, didn’t you, Victor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you convinced yourself that it might not have been an accident at all?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was confused. I don’t know what I was expecting. But I needed to see Rebecca one last time. So I phoned the house and asked if I could see her.’

  ‘She answered the phone?’

  ‘Yes. It was as if she’d been expecting me. She said I could come round the next day, early the next morning.’

  ‘To the house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when you arrived she was on her way out?’

  ‘Almost. She let me in and led me up to her room.’

  ‘She was packing,’ I said. ‘She was packing and getting ready to go for good when you came.’

  ‘Yes. She had a big rucksack on her bed. She said she was leaving, and she wanted to be gone early, before Frank came home from the farm. She’d have a whole day’s start on him that way. She was old enough to leave home by then – seventeen or eighteen – and legally there wasn’t anything he could do to stop her, but she wanted to be gone so he wouldn’t make a fuss. And I think she was pleased that I’d called. But deep down nervous too. Of course, I know now that she’d come to the decision even before I’d called.’

  ‘She wanted to show someone what she really was, didn’t she?’ I said.

  Lang closed his eyes briefly and turned away. He looked very tired now. Crumpled and uncertain, he blinked in the light, as if he was not quite sure how he’d arrived in this small dull room. His chest rose and fell beneath his cotton shirt.

  I was watching him very closely. The pace of my own heartbeat had quickened. My hand by my side had formed a tight fist. Slowly, I unclenched it and put both hands in my pockets. The chair squeaked as I leant even farther back in my chair. Come on, I thought. Come on, Lang. Keep talking. Don’t stop now. I looked across at Graves. He was waiting very patiently, or so it appeared, for Lang to go on.

  ‘Of course, we’ll never be sure exactly why,’ Lang said finally. ‘There’s no way of knowing now. But for some reason, she needed someone to see who she was before she left for good. And she’d decided it would be me. For just a moment, she wanted to show her face. Her true face.’

  54

  ‘All right, so let’s get this straight,’ I said. ‘You phoned Rebecca at home. This was when? After you had stopped treating her, right?’

  ‘Yes. Around a year after our last session at her school.’

  ‘And she said that you could see her at her home? She agreed to it? And she took you upstairs to her room? Her room in that big attic? And that’s when she told you? So exact
ly when was this?’

  ‘Fifteenth of August 1999,’ Lang said without any hesitation at all. ‘A hot summer’s day. I parked the car and knocked on the front door. She came down straightaway. She was slightly breathless. As I said, I hadn’t seen her for over a year. She had just been hanging around the house ever since she’d been excluded from school. The last time I had seen her she’d been a pretty girl, but in a year she had turned into a beautiful young woman. In fact, she was stunning. It came as a shock. Frank was out. The housekeeper off somewhere for the day. She looked pleased to see me. She said we could talk while she finished packing.

  ‘So I followed her upstairs to her room. She was very matter-of-fact about it. She said she was leaving. She had to get the bus from Quinton to Moreton-in-Marsh and then the London train straight to Paddington. I asked her what she was planning to do when she got there. She told me that she didn’t really know. She had some money – enough to keep her going for a while. She’d booked herself a cheap room somewhere in Bloomsbury for a few days. After that, who knew?’

  ‘But you thought it could be your last chance? That you might never see her again?’ I said.

  ‘I hadn’t really known what I was going to do until I got there,’ Lang said. ‘But I’d decided that I’d tell her what I had come to believe about her. I began slowly at first.’

  Lang slipped down in his chair a little and placed his glasses on the table. He stared at them for a moment and put them back on. ‘It was strange, because my voice didn’t sound quite like my own. Her room was high up at the top of the house.’ Lang drummed his fingers on the table.

  I looked at him. It was now or never. I felt tempted to push him, and I could feel Graves at my side, tensing, ready. Lang finally focused and became very still. ‘There was a wasp in there,’ he said. ‘The damned thing had got stuck on the window in the roof. And it kept on buzzing against the windowpane. It just got louder and louder. And as I talked I couldn’t look at her, so I stared at the wasp. And I remember thinking, its face. The markings on its face – they looked just like a skull.

  ‘And all the while the buzzing got louder and louder. And the damned silly thing kept on bashing itself against the window. I wondered why it couldn’t find its way out. She seemed not to be listening to me. She kept on packing her things. It was as if what I was saying didn’t matter. As if nothing I’d ever said to her made any difference.’ Again, Lang stopped, a vacant expression on his face.

  ‘And what did you tell her?’ I said.

  ‘I told her what I thought she was. I told her that she had led those two boys on to the ice that day. That it had been her idea, not theirs, to fool around on the ice, because she had known it was dangerous. I said she had chosen a time when she knew everyone else would be asleep, so no one in the village would hear them.’

  ‘And what did she say while you were telling her all this?’ I said.

  ‘Not a word. She just let me talk. Then she suddenly turned around. It looked like she had finished packing. She tied up the cord at the top and left the bag on the bed. She stood silent for a moment beneath the window. The wasp was still trying to find its way out.

  ‘And then she told me. And the more she talked, the more animated she became. There was that same look I had seen back at the school, but now it was worse somehow.’

  ‘And so she admitted it to you?’ I said. ‘She told you all the things she had done?’

  ‘Yes. She said it was true about Ned and Owen. It had been her idea. She had heard about another boy who had drowned on the pond. And she wanted to know. She wanted to know what it looked like to see someone drown. That’s all it was. Curiosity.’ Lang looked up helplessly. ‘She wanted to see what it was like.’

  ‘And so she watched them step out on to the ice?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Ned first and then his younger brother, Owen. She could hardly believe they were doing it. They kept on urging her to do the same thing. They seemed to be having a good time. But she refused. Said she’d be with them in a minute. And then she stamped on the ice. And in seconds they were under. Gone. She climbed into the water from the side of the bank, so she was wet, and then she started to call for help.

  ‘Then she moved on to the girls – the girls who had gone missing. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about to begin with. And of course, when I realized…’ Lang fell silent and the blood seemed to drain away from his cheeks. Again, he ran his hands through his hair but almost frantically this time.

  ‘So you hadn’t suspected,’ I said. ‘You had no idea about the girls until that moment.’

  ‘No, I had no idea. Of course, I’d known about the girls. But I’d only been suspicious about Ned and Owen until then. I think she assumed that I’d guessed about the girls as well.’

  ‘But you hadn’t?’

  ‘No. Not at all. But when I knew … when she actually confirmed that I had been right all along about Ned and Owen, then, yes, of course, it all fit.’

  ‘So you kept your mouth shut and kept listening,’ Graves said. ‘But you’d already got more than you’d bargained for, hadn’t you?’

  Lang blinked and breathed in very deeply. ‘Yes. She was very precise. Very calm. She’d been riding her bike in Chipping Norton, near the outskirts of town. That’s when she saw the first girl. She was playing in the garden. She asked her if she wanted to see a new foal on the farm. And the girl agreed.’

  ‘They went together?’

  ‘Yes. She took her the back way, along the fields, so no one would see them. She led her to an old barn and then … then she drowned her in the water trough.’

  ‘And did she tell you what she had done with the body?’

  ‘No,’ Lang said. ‘Only that no one would ever find it.’

  ‘And the other – the second one. Gail Foster,’ I said. ‘She told you about her too?’

  ‘Yes, she had already made friends with Gail. They went to the same school in Quinton.

  ‘She decided on Gail because she was a nice girl, easy to make friends with. Gail already had lots of friends and she was pleased – pleased that Rebecca, who was a year older, seemed to like her. So when Rebecca knew that Frank was going to be out, she waited for Gail at the end of the lane near her house after school. All of the other children were under orders to go straight home and so no one saw them. She motioned for Gail to follow her.

  ‘Rebecca asked if she wanted to go for a swim in the pool. She said that she had already talked to Gail’s mother, who’d said it was all right. So they went straight across the fields, towards the house. She lent her one of her old bathing costumes, and they got changed downstairs in the living room.’

  ‘So she made sure that they were completely alone?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. She wanted this one to last longer. Gail went in first and Rebecca watched. Watched her swimming, and then she jumped in too. It got cold, and Gail started to complain. Wanted to go home. It made Rebecca angry. Gail was strong for her age and she nearly got away, but Rebecca held her under the water. It was all over very quickly, though. Like the boys. She sounded disappointed.’

  Lang was silent for a moment longer.

  ‘What then?’ I said.

  ‘She had already dug a grave for Gail under the trees. She threw her in. Gail was still in her swimming costume. Then she threw in her school uniform on top of her. But Gail woke up, coughing. So Rebecca buried her. Then she packed the earth tightly and covered it with sticks and leaves.’

  ‘She buried her alive?’ Graves said quietly. I could see Graves trying to mask his horror. I did the same as best I could.

  Lang nodded. ‘She got back late. Dinner had been on the table. Frank asked her where she’d been. She told him she’d been out in the woods, exploring. Then she had her supper.’

  ‘And did she say anything at all about a hairpin? The hairpin that we found later?’

  ‘Yes. She said the police asked if it was hers. She almost said it was. But she knew that if it was ever proved that it was definitel
y Gail’s, it would be obvious that she’d been lying. So she had said she wasn’t sure – it was safer that way.’

  Lang stopped. He seemed for a moment as if he were unable to go on. He looked dazed and a little unsteady. His Adam’s apple rose as he swallowed. He seemed out of breath. Graves pushed the cup of water towards him. Without seeming to see it, Lang reached for it, took a large gulp and held the empty cup to his chest. His chest was rising and falling now. The hand gripping the cup was like a claw.

  ‘And did she tell you about Sarah?’ I said.

  ‘Sarah,’ Lang said. ‘Yes.’

  For a moment I was sure that that was it. That he’d had enough for one night, and that we would never hear the rest of it. But he seemed to rally. He nodded, urging himself to go on.

  ‘She told me how much she had hated her,’ he said. ‘How she and her dad had been perfectly fine until Sarah had come along. So she’d pretended she was sick one day. It was hot and she knew Sarah would be lying by the pool. She watched her from her bedroom window for a while. And then she walked out round the back. Sarah was fast asleep.

  ‘Rebecca found a coping stone that had been wedged beneath the gate. And she hit Sarah with it. Once was enough. Then she pushed her into the swimming pool. She took the rock with her and later cleaned it and threw it away.’

  Lang lapsed into silence. ‘The buzzing of the wasp had got even louder,’ he went on finally. ‘I kept on thinking: why not open the window and let it out? But I couldn’t move. My hands were shaking. And when I looked at her, she seemed unreal somehow. Like something seen from far off. She kept on talking. I couldn’t breathe. I kept on thinking about poor Sarah. About her grave out there in the church.’

  ‘But she didn’t know, did she?’ I said quickly and leaning forward. ‘Rebecca didn’t know about you and Sarah. She didn’t know that you’d been having an affair. That you’d met her while you’d been treating Rebecca. She didn’t know that you were going to run away together and start a new life. No one else knew about it, did they?’