Swimming in the Shadows

by Diane Janes

  ‘It’s no good crying, Jenny.’ He was chiding me as one might a recalcitrant child. ‘You’ve brought all this on yourself. If you had just left things as they were I don’t suppose anyone would ever have connected that girl in the ditch to me. We could still have been together, enjoying our little holidays, playing our special bedroom games … You’ve disappointed me, you know. When you first came into my shop I could see you were just the type I liked. I thought about following you home in the rain, pulling up beside you and offering you a lift … but there was something different about you, so I asked you out to dinner instead. You were quite a project for me. I enjoyed dressing you up, pulling the strings and watching my little marionette dance …’

  My whole body was vibrating with encroaching hysteria which clearly annoyed him, for his tone became sharper as he said, ‘Oh, don’t keep snivelling, for goodness’ sake. I can’t bear snivelling. It’s against my rules and I punish snivellers severely. Some of the other girls were punished very severely indeed before I was finished with them, and you – you deserve it more than anyone, running off and bringing all this down on our heads. You’ve ruined everything, do you realize that?’ His voice had risen but it quietened again, his tone becoming efficient, even businesslike. ‘I always thought that if I ever had to do this, I would do it properly. You above all people know that I am a methodical man. I like to stick to my system. Knives are so messy, bloodstains always a nuisance – awkward to explain if you happen to meet anyone, and very difficult to remove from clothing.’ He might have been complaining about the problem of wasps at a picnic. ‘Strangling is neat and quick – over and done with in a matter of seconds, if you know what you’re doing. I have always preferred to make a quick end, once I’ve finished. But that’s too good for you, Jenny. You don’t deserve to go quickly, so I’ve come up with a better idea for you. Something which will last a little longer but still not make a nasty mess of my jacket.’

  Fear is a terrible thing. It takes a stranglehold on your body and your mind, driving out reason. I had sometimes heard people claim that they had been terrified out of their wits, but until then I had never understood what that really meant. I was in such a state that it took me a moment to realize he had stopped talking and was getting out of the car. Then I heard his door slam shut. I fell silent, frozen in my seat. This was it. I steeled myself for the moment when the door would open on my side of the car and he would drag me out, but moments passed and nothing happened.

  It came to me that instead of wondering what was keeping Alan, I ought to be taking advantage of the hiatus. Attempting to free my hands had been impossible while the car was in motion, but now I leaned forward and tried again. As I concentrated on my hands, I was struck by the lack of any sound apart from the rasp of my own breathing against the hood. What was he doing out there? Then a new idea shrieked into my mind – hadn’t he just told me that he had planned an infinitely worse fate for me than death by knife? While continuing to work my wrists against the rope, I strained my ears for the sound of him unscrewing the petrol cap, followed by the striking of a match. Instead, I heard the whole car give the faintest creak, then felt a sideways lurch to the left and a corrective sway to the right. I realized that he was pushing the car and I understood at once. He had left the handbrake off and was pushing my Fiesta until it reached the edge and fell … but the edge of what? A cliff, a quarry, a shaft? Whatever it was, I must get my hands free. If I could free my hands before we reached the edge I might just have time to open the door and throw myself out. That would still leave me at Alan’s mercy, but just then it seemed better to focus on one problem at a time.

  The rope seared painfully into my wrists but I ignored the burning in the certain hope that I was making progress. I had managed to work my bonds down until the plumpest part of my right hand was jammed between my left wrist and the knot. I knew that once I had got that far, given time I could gradually ease the right hand through – but how much time did I have? How many seconds before the car tipped forwards and hurled me into oblivion?

  The angle of the car changed abruptly and I experienced the half second of terror which precedes an unknown death. I was expecting a long drop, but as the car nose-dived there was a simultaneous splash and water began to flood in. It had never occurred to me that Alan was about to dump me in the river. The shock of the water momentarily stopped me dead, while the car itself seemed to give a kind of groan – it was probably just the air rushing out, but it sounded like a dying creature who knows its end is near. I felt the car begin to sink – a sensation akin to travelling in a very slow-moving lift – but the bonnet found the bottom almost immediately and then the vehicle levelled as if it had settled on flat ground.

  It is possible that these sudden movements helped, or else that the horror of my situation gave added impetus to my efforts, for within those first confused seconds of feeling cold water pouring in around my feet, my hands came free. With loops of cord still dangling from one wrist, I automatically reached up and dragged off the hood. The surrounding blackness was unrelieved and, on finding myself no better able to see, the same blind panic took over. Then, in the midst of the blackness, I had a kind of vision. I saw the face of the man I loved walking into his cottage, picking up my note, and knew that I must fight for survival because I had everything to live for. Because I had Rob.

  Though I could see nothing, my other senses told me that the water was gushing in fast. I had always thought of a closed car as a sealed object, imagining that if submerged it would fill very slowly, but instead I could feel icy water rising steadily, actually hear it spurting in somewhere close at hand.

  Come on, I told myself. Your hands are free. You’ve got your chance. In the darkness I found it easier to close my eyes and let instinct take over, my fingers locating and releasing my seat belt as surely as if I had been in a parking space at Sainsbury’s. From somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I dredged up the information that the car door would not open until the vehicle was full of water, when the pressure was equal inside and out. Inevitably then, there was going to come a moment when I would be completely submerged. The car would become a sealed, water-filled tank with me inside it and no air at all. Only then would I be able to open the door. I did not have long to consider the possibility. The water was already up to my chest. I must be ready. I pulled myself up so that I was crouching on the seat. My trussed ankles moved more easily than I had expected, helped perhaps by the rising water. My head was touching the car roof but the water almost immediately regained my chest. I slid my fingers down the window, finding the place where the glass ended and the plastic began, and started feeling for the door handle. I found the recess, then the handle itself, gripping it as the water reached my chin. I tried to choose the optimum second to take a breath, but I mistimed it and had to snap my mouth shut as the water engulfed my face, filling my nose and ears.

  I began trying the door handle. My chest was tightening already, the need to breathe becoming ever more desperate. Then the door gave. It opened a few inches and stopped. I pushed it but it refused to move any further. My hands explored frantically, finding the edge of the door, the side of the car. The door had opened perhaps six inches. I pushed it again with all of my sapping strength, conscious of my chest burning, and the way the roaring in my ears increased.

  Then I understood: something was stopping the door, some other submerged object on the bed of the river. Something strong and heavy and immoveable. All my cleverness, untying my hands, remembering about the door opening only when the pressure was equal – none of it had done any good. I was trapped and I would never see Rob again. In the end I was going to drown alone in the dark, my existence extinguished secretly, just as I had lived in secrecy for so long. A perverted destiny had overtaken me and I was surely going to die. For a split second I saw the face of Susan McCarthy, her suntanned features framed by her long black hair, the mole on her left cheek, round and dark like a beauty spot.

  Then a voice – my su
bconscious, perhaps even the voice of Susan McCarthy herself, said, ‘Use the other door, stupid.’

  I twisted around in the water, navigating my progress by the dashboard and the steering wheel, fighting off the treacherous instinct to inhale, every movement now calling for an act of sheer will from my oxygen-starved body. My hands encountered the smooth glass of the driver’s window, then the ledge of the door, and finally the door handle itself. I hooked the fingers of my right hand around the handle and tugged it, while pushing on the door with my left – my ears singing, waves of giddiness sweeping over me, scarcely hoping, scarcely believing, but the door gave and I felt it swing out in a wide arc, taking my arms and torso with it.

  I dragged the rest of my body clear and, in spite of my trussed ankles, kicked myself to the surface where I breathed in great gulps of air which, far from bringing the expected relief, seared my lungs and made me choke. I found the roof of the car was alongside me and crawled on to it, finding that if I adopted a kneeling position my chest and shoulders were clear of the water. There I balanced myself against the gentle drag of the current, trying to catch my breath while the natural buoyancy of the water helped to keep me upright.

  In spite of my miraculous emergence from the deep, I experienced little sense of relief. The water was bitterly cold, but while desperate to escape from the river, I was so physically spent that for a moment or two I could not bring myself to relinquish the support of the car roof and make for the bank.

  My exhaustion was probably fortuitous, for it gave me time to think. Somewhere not far away was a dangerous man armed with a knife and quite possibly a torch as well. (It would be unlike Alan not to have thought of everything.) He had the advantage of being not only larger and physically stronger than I was, but also unencumbered by wet clothes and shoes – or indeed by having his feet tied together. My only advantage was the element of surprise. Alan thought I was at the bottom of the river. Whatever happened, he must be allowed to continue thinking that. I could not afford to shout for help, or make any sort of sound, because Alan must necessarily still be somewhere close by. I must have made a certain amount of noise when I broke the surface and scrambled on top of the Fiesta – he might even now be watching from the bank, biding his time and deciding what to do next, so I forced myself to ignore the treacherous instinct to get out of the water as fast as possible, tried to breathe silently but deeply, ignoring the penetrating cold and gathering my strength while I scanned the bank for any movement which might betray Alan’s whereabouts. Would he have watched the car slide under the water, shone his torch beam over the surface to satisfy himself that the captain had indeed gone down with the ship, then immediately set off back to Neatishead? Or was he waiting silently on the bank in the dark, listening for any telltale splashes which would indicate that I had escaped from the watery grave he had planned for me? He had not bothered to tie me up very securely, but presumably he had not anticipated that I would manage to find my way out of the submerged vehicle. How long had it taken me to get free? How long would he have waited?

  Another thing to remember was that he had no car. He was on foot, so even if he had turned away from the river the moment the Fiesta sank out of sight, it might be a while before he was completely out of earshot. Yet as minute after minute passed, I began to contemplate the fact that for the first time since getting aboard Alan’s boat, circumstances might just have moved in my favour. Alan thought he had disposed of me. There was no reason for him to suppose that I would get free of the car. The element of surprise was mine, but even so I could not afford to take any risks – I must do nothing to draw attention to my presence. However desperate the cold, however sorry my physical state, I must not squander this opportunity.

  I crouched on the smooth, slippery roof of the car and made myself count to one hundred, trying to retain my balance with the minimum of movement. The cold was well-nigh unbearable. My lower limbs first lost their feeling and were then attacked by the agonizing pain of cramp. I might have sobbed aloud except that I had to keep my teeth clamped together to stop them from chattering. As I counted silently, I stared into the darkness, watching for the slightest indication of a human presence on the bank.

  When I had reached one hundred and still detected no sign of life, I used my arms to swim for dry land, still moving as quietly as I could. I figured that as Alan must be on the side of the river from which he had pushed the car into the water, it made sense to head for the opposite bank, but when I tried to reach it I encountered a seemingly impenetrable bed of reeds, so I turned reluctantly and swam back the way I had come, keeping my tethered feet well away from the reeds, terrified of the rope getting snagged on something in the dark. I have always been a strong swimmer but although it was probably a matter of little more than twenty feet from one side to the other, it felt like half a mile. With my heart pounding, my whole body seeming to vibrate with cold and fear, I found the bank and dragged myself on to it, half expecting to feel the grab of Alan’s hands and the cold steel of his knife, but I was alone.

  I twisted myself into a sitting position and attempted to get my breath back, wondering at the fact that being out of the water felt scarcely any better than being in it. In the darkness, with fingers so cold that they seemed to belong to someone else, I set about trying to free my ankles from the wet rope. I spent several minutes fumbling blindly with the wet knots, but it was absolutely hopeless. I couldn’t even see if the limited movements I had obtained were actually doing harm or good. By now I was becoming desperate. I began to claw hysterically at the ropes, forgetting about the need for silence as I sobbed with frustration, but the frenzy only lasted for a moment before I pulled myself together. This would not do at all.

  Dithering with cold and working by feel, I considered a new strategy, exploring the way the rope was bound around my ankles. Alan had wound it round three times before tying a knot. If I could only wriggle one of those loops down over my feet, the other two would follow without my having to untie them at all. Undoing the laces of my trainers by feel was awkward when they were soaking wet, but still proved much easier than tackling Alan’s knots. After removing my trainers I eased all three loops of rope down as far as they would go, so that I could drag my jeans out from under them, thereby gaining precious millimetres. I peeled off my socks on the same principle, then pulled the two upper loops so tight that they bit into my flesh and threatened to cut the blood supply to my feet. The pain was intense, but I was rewarded by creating enough space to insert a finger between the bottom hank of rope and my ankle bone. Slowly but surely, I slid the rope down, feeling it shave my skin like a blunt razor blade. I manoeuvred the first loop over my heel while the other coils cut further into my ankles, but once I had one foot out the rest was comparatively easy. I kicked myself free from the final length of cord and hurled it to one side. The splash it made as it hit the water startled me – I had not intended to throw it so far or make such a noise. I waited for a moment or two, but when nothing happened I set about forcing my feet back into my wet socks and then into my trainers, which were still heavy with water. I found it surprisingly easy to secure the laces by feel alone.

  I stood up slowly, helping myself off from the ground with both hands, taking time to regain my balance on uncertain feet and legs. It was a clear night with almost half a moon and, once I was standing up, I found that I could see a good deal more than had been visible at ground level. The riverbank was wide and flat, and it looked as if it might be possible to walk along it for some distance, though that was obviously not the way we had arrived in the car. A path beside the river might meander along for miles without bringing me in reach of any help, whereas the track we had driven along must lead to a road.

  Hampered by my waterlogged clothes and shivering violently, I took a few squelching steps away from the water and made out an opening in the trees and bushes which ran parallel to the river. I tentatively picked my way towards it and found that I was indeed on some sort of track, leading away from the
river. I put down an exploratory hand and encountered flattened earth in place of the short, springy grass which grew on the bank.

  It was as I straightened up that I glimpsed the light. For a moment I thought it was my eyes playing tricks, but then I saw it again. A light meant that someone was awake, someone in a nearby house who would be able to help me. Then I realized that the light was moving. It was tiny not because it was a long way off but because it was a small single lamp coming towards me. The shout I had been about to utter died on my lips, for who was moving around at this time of night with only a single lamp to guide him?

  TWENTY-NINE

  Like a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights I stood dazed and frozen, staring at the approaching menace. Then I realized that even before the little circle of light shone directly on me I would probably be visible as a silhouette, standing tall against the open space above the river. Hide – I had to find somewhere to hide.

  I dropped to my knees and began to crawl. Loose gravel dug into my palms and knees, but then one of my hands registered the weedy margin of the hedgerow in the same moment that the other unexpectedly encountered thin air and I lost my balance, half rolling, half falling into a ditch – hardly that really – just a small depression between the track and the hedge, full of last year’s dried-up leaves and iron-hard tree roots on to which I tumbled clumsily, only just managing to stifle an automatic yelp.

  From somewhere not far above my head, my ears identified the distinctive swish of wheels, followed by the sound of a bicycle braking. No wonder the lamp had been moving so fast – appearing out of nowhere and the next moment all but upon me. I found that by leaning up on one elbow I could see out from my hiding place. I knew this must mean that I was dangerously exposed, but I was mesmerized, unable to look away. The cyclist had dismounted and was propping his machine against a bush, only yards from where I lay, at the point where the track opened on to the river bank. It was impossible to see much of the rider but I knew who it must be – and if I could see him then as soon as he turned around he would be able to see me. Even so, I didn’t dare move. He was close enough to be alerted by the slightest rustle.