Swimming in the Shadows

by Diane Janes

  When subsequently applying for permanent posts, I now had an up-to-date reference which I bolstered with a fake, reasoning that only my most recent reference would be followed up. By the time Susan McCarthy reached Lasthwaite, the awkward partner and their life abroad – about which I could never have discoursed very confidently – were long discarded.

  By Lasthwaite, the person of Susan McCarthy had been developed to the point where she had a car, bank and building society accounts – every vestige of a legitimate person. Never mind that Susan’s relatives and friends were only names written in an exercise book in her kitchen dresser. It was as real as it needed to be for other people and, like a favourite novel, it had become almost real for me. I had reached a point where it would be difficult for any mere acquaintance to expose my deception, but I never deluded myself – I was confident that the authorities could uncover the truth about ‘Susan McCarthy’ within days, perhaps even hours.

  When I woke on Friday morning, my panic returned with a vengeance. It was almost impossible to believe that all my colleagues would have missed the transmission of Disappeared!. I was tempted to ring in sick, but I knew that would not do. The way to allay any suspicions was to carry on as normal, though as I got ready for work, I tried to focus on possible contingency plans. It came to me then that I should have thought about this sort of thing before – had some sort of escape route in place – but I had grown overconfident, imagining that each layer of fresh deception had erected another barrier between me and discovery. Each year that passed had made me feel more secure, more committed to my life as Susan McCarthy – less easily uprooted or transformed – so there were no funds stashed in the dresser to be grabbed for a speedy getaway, no scenario concocted for the day when I had to scarper in a hurry. I put my building society and cheque books into my handbag, with some half-formed notion that I might have to go on the run without being able to get back to the cottage, but then I took them out again, because surely the first thing the authorities would do if I was rumbled would be to freeze my assets?

  If there were any suspicions, would I get wind of them in time? Have a chance to slip away? Or would the police just arrive and arrest me? I was still totally preoccupied with these anxieties when I walked into Reception and was confronted by the unexpected sight of a group of female colleagues, all clustered around the main desk. Every head swivelled as I entered and I stopped dead on the threshold. A palpable sense of shock hung in the air. The Tragedy Queen was crying, the Trollop looked wide-eyed and pale, Helen, the duty receptionist, wore a sanctimonious expression of distaste (though this in itself was not unusual), while the Trainspotter looked agitated.

  Oh my God, I thought. They know. They’re standing here, talking about me, wondering what’s going to happen, and I’ve walked straight in on them.

  I took a couple of hesitant steps forward, not even bothering to ask the hackneyed, is-there-anything-the-matter question, because there so obviously was. Instead, I said: ‘What’s wrong?’ The words emerged as a croak.

  ‘It was on the news this morning,’ Helen said. ‘They’ve found the body of a young girl. It’ll be Julie Peacock.’

  The Tragedy Queen burst into noisy sobs and the Trollop put her arm around her sobbing colleague’s shoulder. ‘Maureen knew her,’ she said, presumably by way of offering an explanation for my benefit. (In fact, it later transpired that Maureen did not know Julie Peacock any better than the rest of the staff, but Maureen would not have been Maureen if she had not eked the last drop of drama from the situation.)

  I recognized the name immediately. The Peacock family lived on the outskirts of Dentwhistle, the next hamlet along the valley, and I knew most of them by sight, as one did know families who were regulars at the surgery. Julie’s father had a bad back; her older sister had a fractious baby and a toddler with a permanently runny nose. Julie herself was a plump fifteen-year-old; the sort of girl who sometimes accompanied her sister to the baby clinic, just for something to do.

  News of the girl’s failure to return home from school the previous evening had circulated swiftly through the village, but I was too far off the local radar to have received a phone call or a knock at the door, and sufficiently preoccupied with problems of my own that I had missed the item on the local radio that morning. As I stood in Reception, half-a-dozen voices competed to bring me up to speed. It appeared that the alarm had been raised late the previous afternoon. Even before the police arrived in any numbers, local volunteers had undertaken a search of sorts, and the intention had been to mount a more thorough operation in the morning, but this had been pre-empted when a man cycling to work along a local footpath at first light noticed a woman’s shoe lying half under the bushes. He immediately alerted the police, and an investigation of the nearby undergrowth had revealed a body, concealed not far from where the path joined the main road. The item on the radio had been nothing like so comprehensive, but the local grapevine was buzzing with supplementary information and there seemed no doubt as to the victim’s identity.

  ‘It’s terrible,’ said the Trainspotter. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened in the dale before.’

  It was a sentiment that I would hear repeatedly throughout that day and in the days that followed. Life’s normal allotment of tragedies: death in car accidents, death in faraway wars – these events had visited Lasthwaite as they did elsewhere, but violent, bloody murder was an unwelcome stranger, never before entertained.

  For the staff of a medical practice, death is something of an occupational hazard. When it was an unexpected death, or worse a child, or a stillbirth, the day would be tinged with sadness, particularly if a favourite patient was involved, but Julie Peacock’s death provoked something different. Fear and shock and curiosity blended into a highly charged mix which stalked the building, preying on nerves and emotions like a virus. In this atmosphere, anything unusual in my own demeanour was liable to be ascribed to the general sense of trauma which pervaded the entire community. Shocked as I was by the girl’s murder, it took no more than minutes for me to appreciate a possible knock-on effect, for surely even if anyone in Lasthwaite had watched the programme about three non-local women, who had all gone missing years ago, any interest this might normally have provoked was going to be submerged beneath the news of something happening here and now, much closer to home. I had been unexpectedly reprieved.

  All the same, I was nervous and watchful as I followed my usual routines. I had a bad moment early on, encountering the Trollop in the ladies’ loo. I entered to find her pursing freshly glossed lips in the mirror, but she turned on catching sight of my reflection and said, ‘Susan, I wanted to ask you about last night’s duty book.’ The release of the breath I had held between the words last night’s and duty book was audible, but she was still distracted by her own appearance – now fiddling with an eyelash – and appeared not to notice, continuing without waiting for a reply: ‘It was Doctor Milly’s turn on duty’ (the staff had already adopted an unauthorized abbreviation for the trainee), ‘and he didn’t leave it on the shelf for me to type up – nor the tape neither. When I asked him about it, he said he couldn’t remember where he’d left it, then he rushed off to go on a call with Doctor Woods. I can’t type the out-of-hours visits on to the computer without the book and the tape,’ she added unnecessarily, as if I didn’t know the system.

  ‘Well, don’t worry too much,’ I said. ‘I expect it will turn up before the end of the day.’

  I made a mental note to ask Terry Millington about it myself when I saw him at morning coffee in the doctors’ sitting room, but this came to nothing as he was still out on a maternity case with Dr Woods, and I was forced to resort to leaving a message in his pigeonhole instead. The out-of-hours duty book had occasionally been mislaid before (usually by Dr Woods) so I was not unduly concerned. It was just another snagged nail in the routine of the surgery – one among many that day.

  For afternoon break I joined the staff in the much larger common room as usual, wher
e I found them speculating freely on the fate of Julie Peacock and comparing notes on how they would be getting home.

  ‘I shall be keeping my doors locked,’ declared the Tragedy Queen. ‘I shan’t rest until Frank’s home – luckily he’s usually back just after me.’ She glanced pointedly in my direction.

  Everyone was aware that of them all, I was the only one who lived alone.

  ‘Will you be all right, Susan?’ asked one of the district nurses.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can sleep at nights,’ declared the Tragedy Queen. ‘I couldn’t live up there, all on my own.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s nobody local,’ said Jayne, one of the health visitors. ‘Whoever did it will be miles away by now.’

  ‘Don’t you be so sure.’ It was the Trollop now. ‘The police must think it’s someone local. They’re going to do house-to-house. It said so on the radio at lunchtime.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it is someone local.’

  ‘Well, I bet it is. There’s some very funny people live round here.’

  I intervened to remind everyone of the forthcoming team meeting, thereby pre-empting a general trespass into entirely unprofessional speculations upon the murderer’s identity, based on insider knowledge of confidential psychiatric reports which were sitting in various patients’ files. ‘I want to run through the new protocol on test results again,’ I said. ‘We’re getting it right most of the time but there are still one or two glitches. And we need to have views on the proposal to install a television in Reception,’ I went on. ‘Can I suggest that if anyone feels they are likely to be affected, they have a word with me? Then I can set out the main points so that we have a framework for the discussion when we actually get round to talking about it.’

  More than one face registered disappointment at my attempt to divert us back to the workday norm. The television had been a major topic of conversation up until now, as any little excitement or proposal of change was wont to be, but minor changes in the workplace paled into insignificance with the possibility that the dale might get its moment on Crimewatch.

  The Tragedy Queen, never happier than when worrying needlessly, brought some papers into my office at around four that afternoon. This gave her the opportunity to linger and say, ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Susan? We’re all worried about you, living up there on your own.’

  I took this latter remark to indicate that since the conclusion of afternoon break, my possible fate at the hands of a crazed killer had been the subject of horrified speculations in Medical Records.

  ‘Thank you, Maureen,’ I said as patiently as I could. ‘But I’m used to living on my own. It really doesn’t worry me.’

  ‘I know.’ Maureen looked as if she thought this eccentricity on my part was half the cause of the trouble. ‘The thing is that you mustn’t get too complacent. Keep your doors locked and don’t open them until you’ve seen who’s there.’

  ‘Thank you, Maureen,’ I said, a shade more firmly. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ I opened one of my desk drawers and pretended to be searching for something.

  Maureen evidently wanted to linger, but as I did not look up or say anything further, she could find no excuse for prolonging her visit. It was probably just as well – the more she twittered, the greater the temptation to lay out the facts, to point out that statistically the chances of being murdered in one’s own home were millions to one against. For hundreds of years, I reflected, women living in the country had never locked their doors. Now even in places like Lasthwaite they did. Yet until yesterday, no woman in Lasthwaite had suffered a violent death at the hand of another. It was not reality but fear which made women lock their doors when darkness fell, I told myself.

  I wondered idly what Maureen’s reaction would have been if I had said, ‘I used to be like you. When my husband went away on business, I used to go and stay with my mother, so that I wouldn’t have to spend the night alone in our house. I even used to be scared to go down into the cellar. Yes, really. I was frightened to enter a room, because that’s all a cellar is – just a room in my own home. But I’m not afraid any more. I’ve slept in seedy digs and even in a beach hut. These fears of yours are childish fears, no more substantial than the bogeyman behind the wardrobe and the monsters you used to think were under the bed. Realize it, Maureen. Shrug them off and be free.’

  ELEVEN

  The highly charged atmosphere sapped my energy so that by the end of the day I felt physically and emotionally exhausted, but like a marathon runner breasting the tape, when I finally opened the car door and tossed my handbag on to the passenger seat I experienced a moment of elation. I had made it. No one had seen the programme – or if they had, no one had guessed. There had been no long looks or leading questions. The programme about those long-ago disappearances had not merited a second thought thanks to events much closer to home. My relief was instantly followed by a wave of self-loathing. What kind of odious person had I become that I could find anything to be thankful for in the death of a young girl? I felt an irrational sense of guilt, as though I had somehow contrived Julie Peacock’s murder myself in order to provide a distraction for everyone on the day following Disappeared!.

  I engaged first gear with rather more force than was necessary and pulled out of the staff car park. It occurred to me then that no one had bothered to ask how I was feeling after yesterday’s spurious headache. Even Rob had not rung, which was unlike him – especially as he had seemed so anxious about me the night before.

  As I rounded the bend below Rosecroft I had to brake to avoid Bob Fox, who was standing in the road, flagging me down. He had evidently been lying in wait for me and this in concert with his urgent signals that I should stop coupled alarm to my uncertainty. It was all very well dismissing gossip about the peculiarities of the Fox family, but a local girl had been murdered and somebody must have done it. As I slowed down I could see Bob beckoning urgently in the direction of the house, and sure enough his brother Jim emerged from the yard gate and came hurrying to join him. As the Fiesta came to a halt I wound my window down, holding the car on the clutch, aware that I was gripping the steering wheel with an unnecessary degree of force.

  Both men were dressed in their usual working attire – wellington boots, coats held together with string tied about the waist, and caps shiny with age – which they wore summer and winter alike.

  ‘Have ’e the number?’ Bob enquired of Jim, as Jim began to fumble about, first in his outer and then his inner pockets.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ I asked, feeling that some encouragement toward an explanation was needed.

  ‘Eh, lass, don’t say you ’aven’t ’eard?’ said Bob before turning back to Jim to chivvy him some more.

  ‘’Course she’ll ’ave ’eard,’ retorted Jim gruffly. ‘There’s nobbut deaf Joe as won’t ’ave ’eard.’ He finally located what he was looking for and withdrew from his pocket a crumpled piece of what had once been a brown envelope. With rare directness he handed me the paper and said gravely, ‘Yon’s our number. For t’phone. If you so much as hear owt amiss, you ring yon number and we’ll be up to yours faster than you can say what’s to do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said gravely. ‘Thank you very much.’

  There was something both comical and touching in the thought of Jim and Bob charging up the lane to my rescue.

  ‘’Aven’t to worry if it’s a false alarm,’ Bob said, as if to reassure Jim.

  ‘Aye. We’ll come up for a look and if it’s a false alarm, well, no more need’s be said,’ Jim nodded at Bob. ‘Better to be safe than sorry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said again. ‘I’ll keep your number next to the phone, just in case – though I’m sure I shan’t need to use it.’

  ‘Next t’phone, aye.’ Bob nodded back at Jim.

  ‘It’s a bad business,’ said Jim solemnly. ‘A reet bad business.’

  ‘Lass ‘as nowt to fear,’ said Bob. ‘Anybody prowling round er
e’ll likely finish wi’a backside full o’ lead.’

  ‘Aye, we’ve old gun at ready for ’un.’ This thought seemed to lighten Jim’s mood considerably, for he smiled as he waved me on my way.

  I experienced more than a twinge of shame as I continued up the lane. That’s what this sort of thing does to people, I thought. It brings out the best in people like Jim and Bob, and apparently the worst in horrible, paranoid people like me.

  As I got out of the car I could hear another vehicle approaching up the lane and, glancing back, I saw that it was Rob. Even through the windscreen, I could see that he looked tired and drawn. As he emerged from the car the weight of the day hung on him like a damp greatcoat.

  We embraced briefly.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t ring, Sue. Are you all right?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ I said, disengaging myself long enough to get out my key and open the front door. ‘You don’t look too good.’

  ‘It’s been an awful day,’ he said.

  ‘Drink?’ I suggested.

  ‘Please.’

  I was trying to read his face. Was it the Julie Peacock tragedy that had overwhelmed him, or was it something else? ‘I heard the news as soon as I got into work this morning,’ I said, pouring generous slugs of Vermouth on to ice cubes. I had made quite a dent in the Vermouth the night before and we had only bought it the previous weekend. I shoved the bottle back out of sight as quickly as possible and hoped that he wouldn’t have noticed. ‘I suppose she went to the comp?’ I asked.