Swimming in the Shadows

by Diane Janes

  STAR TAXIS

  24 HOURS A DAY

  RADIO CONTROLLED CABS

  A wild plan began to crystallize in my mind. I stood for several minutes with the receiver in my hand. Think it through, think it through.

  I dialled the number of Star Taxis and gave them my location from the slip BT so helpfully puts in all their phone booths. (I had always wondered what kind of callers did not know their whereabouts, and now I knew.)

  ‘We’ll have a car there for you in about ten minutes,’ said the voice on the other end of the line.

  It was like a return to sanity, leaving behind the nightmare world of submerged cars and knife-wielding maniacs and abruptly stepping back into a life where one could calmly order up a taxi and have it there within ten minutes.

  I waited what I judged to be about five minutes and then I rang the police. I gave the operator the number I was calling from, because I guessed that they could trace it in any case. In my best yokel accent, I said, ‘This isn’t a hoax, OK, it’s really important. Alan Reynolds is in Norfolk. He’s got a cruiser tied up at Neatishead staithe. It’s the last boat you come to. I can’t get involved or give my name, sorry.’

  After hanging up I went to stand in the shadows by the corner of the pub, ready to hop back out of sight if a police car came by. I abandoned my garden hoe and Alan’s cycle lamp in the lee of the building and, by way of an afterthought, I returned to the call box, retrieved the Star Taxis card and put it in my pocket. There was no need to make it too easy for anyone who might attempt to trace the identity of the anonymous caller – not that there was any particular reason why they should. It was Alan they wanted – who would care where the tip off came from? Even if they were curious about the source of the information, I reckoned the police would be unlikely to check what other calls had been made from the kiosk that night, probably assuming that the mystery informant had arrived and departed by car, choosing to ring from an isolated phone box rather than making a traceable call from their home.

  I had barely been waiting another couple of minutes when a car did appear round the bend, but it was not a police car. It was a dark saloon with Star Taxis painted on the side. I leapt to the edge of the pavement, waving my arms.

  The car pulled up and when the driver got out I saw that he was a young Asian man. He looked perplexed and when he spoke, I recognized a Brummie accent.

  ‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  I had my story ready. ‘I’ve been in the river,’ I said. ‘It was a practical joke, and now my friends have left me stranded here. Can you take me to The Sunset Motel? I’m not sure of the exact address but it’s just off the main road between Wroxham and Norwich.’

  ‘I know where it is, but are you all right? I mean, you look in a bit of a state, you know?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, wishing he would hurry up and let me get into the car. ‘I just need to get back to where I’m staying. Get out of these things and get dry.’

  He hesitated. ‘Hadn’t ought to let you in the car in that state,’ he said. ‘Got to think about me next fare getting into a wet seat. Don’t worry,’ he went on hurriedly, sensing my panic. ‘I ain’t gonna leave you here. Hang on a minute.’

  He went to the boot of the car and returned with a couple of plastic supermarket carrier bags which he spread out on the front passenger seat.

  ‘I don’t normally take anyone in the front, unless it’s a three or a four,’ he said. ‘You sit on them and we should be all right.’

  Mumbling my gratitude, I positioned myself on the outspread bags and fastened my seat belt. The sudden memory of Alan leaning across and fastening another seat belt in another car made me feel so sick that I thought for a moment I would throw up.

  My driver did not notice; he had already put the car into gear and set off, turning the heater right up, so that I almost sensed steam rising from my clothes.

  ‘Hen night, is it?’

  ‘Sorry – what?’

  ‘Hen night – you know, getting married? Weekend away with the girls?’

  ‘No, not a hen night,’ I said. ‘Just a joke that went too far.’

  ‘People are getting dafter,’ he said. ‘Stag nights is the worst. Too many drinks, bridegroom finishes up starkers in the middle of the road …’

  ‘I liked you better when you were stupid.’ The words echoed around my head. Well, perhaps there was merit in being stupid when it kept you alive.

  ‘… Well, I mean … it ain’t funny, is it?’

  ‘No,’ I agreed, wriggling my toes inside the wet trainers and wishing the heat would penetrate them.

  ‘Staying long, are you – at the motel?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just a couple of nights.’

  ‘Funny place to have a motel, all that way off the main road. Still, there’s a lot of places out in the sticks that do well round here. The Parceval Hotel – right off the beaten track, they are. ’Course they’ve got a spa there and they do all those treatments …’

  I could have given you the full treatment, just like all the others. Was that why I had survived in the end, because he favoured a particular method and simply had not had the time?

  My driver must have seen me shudder because he said, ‘Sorry I can’t get it any warmer for you. I’ve got the heater on full.’

  ‘I know. Thank you.’ I must not start to cry, although his genuine concern and kindly chatter were as distressing in their way as if he had met me with barbed words or outright cruelty. After what I had just been through, the kindness of a stranger was oddly difficult to bear.

  We turned on to the main road, passing a solitary car going in the opposite direction. Again I experienced that welcome sensation of returning to the normal world. My driver must have realized that I didn’t want to talk and drove on without further attempts at conversation; an understanding rather than uncomfortable silence. At the motel I indicated to him where he should pull in, and said, ‘I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait a minute while I go inside to get some money.’

  ‘That’s all right, love.’ He turned to face me and for the first time he grinned. ‘I can see you’re on the level.’

  I retrieved my purse from inside the cabin, adding a generous tip to the fare, which elicited an even wider grin. Then I went inside, shut the cabin door and leaned against it, listening to the taxi’s engine as it sped away down the deserted lane.

  Everything was just as I had left it. My discarded jumper and my suitcase, carried inside at some distant point in another lifetime. I went into the bathroom and ran water over my hands. It took a while but eventually the water came through hot. My watch was sitting alongside the basin, still faithfully marking time as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all, but in the bright light of the bathroom the goosey skin of my arm bore a patch of purplish blue, too tender to touch. I peeled off my clothes, piling them into the washbasin before I got under the shower, where I stood for a long time under the cascade of hot water, absorbing the warmth into my body, shampooing the smell of rotted weeds from my hair.

  I felt strangely light-headed as I watched Susan McCarthy in the mirror while she dried her hair. She looked calm and blessedly ordinary with her short damp hair and a nightshirt with a rabbit on the front. She climbed into the king-size bed, snuggled under the duvet and switched off the bedside light. The room was completely dark except for the digital clock at the bedside which glowed red: 2:47, 2:48, 2:49 …

  Tomorrow I would report my car stolen. I could say that I went to bed and found the car gone when I got up next morning. It was unlikely that Alan would volunteer the information that he had put me in the river when they arrested him.

  2:51, 2:52 …

  Nothing to connect me with Alan.

  2:53, 2:54 …

  I can probably hire a car tomorrow, so that I can get home.

  2:55, 2:56 …

  When they find the car they’ll probably assume it was dumped by joyriders. Even if they find the rope or my sw
eatshirt washed up on the bank they won’t be able to make anything of it …

  2:58, 2:59 …

  Maybe once Alan has been arrested I could go to the police … explain … perhaps the authorities were more lenient if they thought you were on the run from a violent husband …

  3:01, 3:02 …

  With Alan safely locked away, maybe I could go back to being myself again – except that sometimes I wasn’t sure who that really was.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Submerged in sleep, I thought at first that the knocking was part of a dream, but as my stupor began to recede I realized that it was an external noise rather than something within the confines of my head. I half opened my eyes, absorbing the fact that daylight was partially illuminating the room. I also remembered exactly where I was and what had brought me there, but I thrust all that to the back of my mind, because at that moment I wanted nothing more than to be allowed to re-engage with the comfortable oblivion of sleep.

  The knocking came again, louder and more urgent than before, as if the person outside was thumping the door with a fist. Housekeeping, possibly? Had I slept too long, outstayed my allotted time? I checked the bedside clock and found that it was only twenty three minutes past eight. Not housekeeping, then. Alan. It could not be Alan. How could he have …

  ‘Sue – Sue – are you in there?’

  It was a man’s voice – in fact, it sounded incredibly like Rob’s voice, but that was ridiculous. Alan, then? No, it couldn’t be Alan, because Alan would have called me Jenny. Even so, there was no way it could be Rob.

  There was enough light penetrating around the edges of the curtains to tell me that it was bright sunlight outside. When the pummelling of the door recommenced, I staggered reluctantly out of bed. There was a security chain and I engaged it before opening the door a crack. ‘Rob,’ I gasped.

  ‘Susan,’ he said. ‘Thank God. When the car wasn’t here … Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ I was fumble fingered in my haste to take the chain off, although I knew now that I was actually still asleep and in the middle of a dream. There did not seem any point in asking him what on earth he was doing there, because people don’t need a reason for turning up in your dreams, they simply arrive in places where they could not possibly be, often performing some unlikely act before vanishing again as unexpectedly as they came. So instead of asking pointless questions or acting stunned, I stood back to let him into the cabin, noticing as I did that his eyes were bloodshot and he was unshaven.

  The chill of the morning air on my bare legs felt authentic enough and when I absently ran a hand through my hair I could feel the unmistakable frizziness which came from going to bed before it was properly dry. The digital clock had moved on to register eight twenty five. It occurred to me that in order to have arrived at this time in the morning Rob must have driven for a good part of the night – something entirely consistent with his appearance. I noticed too that contrary to his usual practice, he made no attempt to kiss or hug me; instead he walked straight past me and sank down on the end of the bed as if he was deliberately keeping a distance between us.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said again. ‘When I couldn’t see your car I thought you might have done another runner.’

  For a millisecond I almost embarked on a pretence of surprise at the car not being there. The lies came so automatically now, but then I stopped myself. The time for pretence and lying was over.

  ‘How did you find me?’ I asked.

  ‘Your message,’ he said. ‘I read your note and guessed why you’d gone, but not where. Then I listened to the message you left on my machine yesterday afternoon. You were the last caller, so I dialled 1471 and got the number. I called here and a woman tried to put me through, but when you didn’t answer she said your cabin lights were out and your car wasn’t there, so she guessed you’d gone out. I tried again and again but by midnight you still hadn’t called back and I didn’t dare leave a message, in case you ran away again.’

  ‘Ran away? What do you mean?’

  ‘Ran away from me.’

  The answer was so unexpected that it struck me dumb.

  ‘I had to find you and tell you myself,’ he said. ‘They’ve arrested Luke Robinson for Julie Peacock’s murder. Apparently he walked into the police station with his social worker and confessed. If you’d waited one more day you would have heard. It’s all over the local news. I was afraid all along that you thought it was me and then yesterday …’

  I thought of the un-posted manila envelope in my cottage. Now I would never have to send it and nor was there any risk of the Trollop losing her job. I pulled myself back into the moment. ‘Of course I didn’t think it was you. Never ever. Not for a moment.’

  He regarded me doubtfully. ‘You started to act differently after the murder,’ he said. ‘You got kind of … well … self-absorbed. As though you were thinking about something all the time – something that you couldn’t share with me.’

  ‘Never,’ I repeated vehemently.

  ‘But you left the necklace on the table, next to the note, where you knew I would see it.’

  For a minute I couldn’t think what he was talking about, then I said, ‘Oh, that necklace. It fell off the mantelpiece. I must have left it on the table instead of putting it back. It wasn’t deliberate.’

  ‘A necklace with a J,’ he said. ‘J for Julie.’

  ‘Or Jocelyn, or Jocasta, or whatever the girl you confiscated it from was called.’

  For the first time the ghost of a smile flitted across his face. ‘Actually it was Jasmin Ratcliffe, but when I got back and heard about those bodies on the news … I thought you must have thought history was repeating itself. That you’d fled from one murderer only to finish up with another one. I was shocked, of course, when I heard the news about the bodies in the house, but then everything kind of fell into place. I always knew you wouldn’t have arranged to do a vanishing act without having a good reason.’

  I stared at him. ‘You knew? You knew that I was – am – Jennifer Reynolds? How long have you known?’

  ‘For sure? Well, I always thought it was a bit odd that you … sort of had no real past. You never seemed to want to talk about your life before you came to Lasthwaite, but I didn’t want to pressure you. I thought there must be some unhappy memories there. Then I saw a TV programme a few weeks back – you probably never watched it. It was all about missing people and when the pictures of Jennifer Reynolds came on I was pretty convinced that it was you, but I kept on thinking “no – it can’t be”. I was going to talk to you about it the next day, but then Julie Peacock was murdered, and suddenly it seemed like life was going crazy. A girl I know is murdered in the village and maybe the woman I love is living under an assumed name, all in the space of twenty-four hours? I thought I must be losing my mind. I started to doubt what I’d seen on television the night before, but then you mentioned that girl who was murdered – Antonia. That was what eventually clinched it. I’ve got an old mate from university – Ray – who works in the big newspaper library in London. You didn’t give me much to go on, just the girl’s first name, but Ray’s brilliant at stuff like that. I asked him to look it up – I made up a reason for wanting to know. It took him a few days to get back to me, but he said it must be the Antonia Bridgeman case. Antonia Bridgeman was abducted and murdered in Nicholsfield – Jennifer Reynolds’s home town. One coincidence too many.’

  ‘But why didn’t you say something once you knew for sure?’

  ‘I came really close once or twice, but I was afraid of losing you. I was worried that if I tried to raise it with you it would frighten you off. I kept on trying to think of ways to let you know that I was OK with it – that it doesn’t matter because I love you. I want you whether you’re Susan or Jennifer. It’s all the same to me. It’s the person inside who counts.’

  I found myself in his arms, laughing and crying at the same time. He knew. He had known for ages. That barrier between us ever since the programme was sh
own, the sense of things unsaid – we had both been avoiding the same thing, keeping the same secret.

  After a few minutes, I said, ‘I never knew about Alan. I must have been horribly stupid and blind.’

  ‘When I heard about those bodies in the house, I thought you must have found out about him and that was why you ran away. I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t gone to the police, but I thought you must have been too scared or something.’

  ‘The ridiculous thing is that I never suspected him at all – other people but not him.’

  ‘Even though you lived in the same house?’

  ‘He used to go away. Or at least I thought he did. When he was supposed to be travelling around, going to antique fairs and specialist auctions, I always stayed with my parents. That left him with the house to himself. I never liked being in that house by myself. It was a museum – a mausoleum, as it turned out. Alan must have got pretty good at covering up for himself before we got married. I was only ten when the first girl went missing, but Alan would have been eighteen by then. I was horribly stupid – I can see that now. Antonia Bridgeman should have been the key. We’d given her a lift home you see, one afternoon when it was raining. So Alan would have known when her lesson was each week and I suppose because she’d accepted a lift from him before she wouldn’t have thought twice about getting in the car with him again.’

  ‘Poor kid,’ Rob said softly.

  ‘I should have known, I really should, but I never cottoned on. When the police started looking for Alan, I felt responsible because I thought that if it hadn’t been for me running off he wouldn’t be a suspect. I thought I ought to help Alan get out of trouble, so I arranged to meet him …’ Even as I spoke I wondered at Alan’s plausibility, his unaccountable powers of persuasion. What was it that had made Marie Glover and the others climb into the car with him, transformed me into his biddable slave, or for that matter made it seem so impossible for me to leave him?