Present Tense

by Gil Hogg

  “You said you were going back…” I began gruffly.

  “I said – you said – we say all sorts of foolish things, sweetie,” Donna said, following me into the kitchen. “I see you like the older man.”

  “It’s not like that, Donna. Mr Rovnik works for the County in this area…”

  “I’ll betcha he does! It makes the local taxes a little more bearable!” Donna came out with her grating laugh, as she poured her own bourbon, and submerged it in orange juice.

  I took her through to the living room. I sensed that Donna would play up to him, so I said, “Mr Rovnik’s taking me into Clayburg immediately. He’s the County rat-catcher. We’re going right now.”

  “Something wrong with your car, honey? I’ll take you.”

  “Mr Rovnik’s taking me, now.”

  “Uh-huh. Just you and Mr Rovnik.”

  “Just finishin’ my drink,” Rovnik said. “Call me Earl.”

  “Why don’t you slip into something loose, sweetie. You look as though you just finished the laundry,” Donna said, as I went out of the door.

  Rovnik and Donna bellowed with amusement.

  I feared that Chadwin would escape at any moment, and that everything would unravel in front of Donna and Rovnik. I remembered the garage doors. I went to the electricity panel in the hall to find the isolation switch for them. That would mean they couldn’t be opened; they were too stout to force. Chadwin would have to break through at the top of the stairs, or get out on the lakeside. I was confronted by a board with a mass of fuses and switches, mostly unmarked. In the few seconds I had, I couldn’t work out which related to the garage doors. I slammed the panel shut without result, and ran back to the kitchen. I stood listening. Nothing from downstairs. Maybe Chadwin was having difficulty with my knots.

  I halted outside the lounge door. Donna had switched on the hi fi. She had Rovnik on his feet, dancing. The pair swayed to the sugary big band music from one of our old CDs. Rovnik must have thought he was on the winner of all time with two randy women. He had his leather jacket off. He was a hard, tanned, muscular man despite his age. Donna had slipped off her anorak, and was pressing herself against Rovnik’s chest. I didn’t know how to break this up, but I knew that every moment which elapsed before I reported what had happened to the police, was a mark against me. And Chadwin could appear on the scene at any second.

  A movement on the floor in the hall caught my eye, a slithering shadow. I moved to the kitchen door to get a better look. A rat was sitting preening itself in front of the clutter I had piled up against the workshop door. The creature had a scabby tail, and a white-haired snout with sores. I screamed.

  Rovnik came blundering out of the living room, the dance music syruping on behind him.

  “Whassa matter?” he asked, hitching his trousers and doing up his shirt buttons.

  “It’s a rat! Kill it, for God’s sake.”

  “Where?” Rovnik asked, searching the bare boards of the hall.

  “It was here a second ago. It must have got up here from the workshop.”

  “You sure?” Rovnik said, looking at me as though I was seeing things.

  Donna came out of the living room, flushed and annoyed, smoothing her sweater and skirt.

  “What’s all the noise, honey? You jealous or something?”

  “There’s a horrible rat in the house!”

  “Oh, darling. You are in a bad way. What you need is a couple more drinks, and a dance with Earl. There’s plenty of him to go round,” Donna said, her face smeared with lipstick and eye-shadow.

  Rovnik was rolling his eyes at Donna, sending the silent message was that I was loopy. I lost myself momentarily.

  “I must go now, please, please please! I said, my voice trembling and breaking.

  I retreated to the kitchen, slamming the door closed. I was sobbing on the edge of hysteria. What I had to do, was to demand categorically that Rovnik take me to the police now. I hadn’t mentioned the police to Donna. How could I get this log of a man moving? Suppose I switched to Donna? Got her to take me. She had offered. No, that course was impossible.

  My confused thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an engine outside the window. I looked out. Rovnik was at the wheel of the yellow van, and moving slowly away. And a few seconds later, Donna’s car pulled onto the road, tight behind the van. The two vehicles disappeared down the pine fringed road. Donna and Rovnik were going places together! I couldn’t believe that they had left me without a word. I was alone with Chadwin again.

  12

  I had only two options now to avoid Chadwin. I could run down the road – it was at least three or four miles to the nearest cabin, which would probably be unoccupied; or try to extricate the Jeep from the garage. I had locked the workshop doors and it would take time for Chadwin to get through them. He would have plenty of implements to help him, but there was no noise which suggested a door being forced. I decided to take the chance that Chadwin had not yet forced his way out of the workshop.

  I took the keys, let myself quietly out of the front door, and went down to the garage. The garage doors were closed. Inside the garage was quiet. I could not retreat now. I touched the remote to make room for the Jeep to be backed out. I slid into the driving seat, fumbling in the shadows, trying to get the key in the ignition. Then the key slid in, and at the first twist, the engine fired, and started with a roar like an aircraft. I shot the car backwards so violently, that I had to stamp on the brake to avoid running off the concrete forecourt, and into the ditch. The engine stalled. I was confronted by a dashboard of red lights. I twisted the ignition key frantically. Each time the engine fired, and died, fired, and died.

  I leaped out of the vehicle and ran back toward the front door. As I mounted the steps, a moan of rage echoed down the hall. Chadwin burst through the barrier at the top of the workshop stairs. He appeared in his bloody shirt and underpants, his feet bare. He saw me. I backed down the front steps and ran around the corner of the house. I could hear Chadwin mouthing wild threats behind me. I wasn’t thinking clearly of a route for myself. I didn’t want to get into a chase along the road, or through the pines – which I would inevitably lose. I ran along the strip of lawn beside the house, and clambered over the trellis at the end. I was now on the lake side of the house.

  The way along the front of the house, with the lounge patio above, was narrow and stony. The rock outcrop, on which the property was built, fell steeply to the water. The lakeside itself deepened suddenly, and was boulder-strewn. I started across the uneven ground, trying to pick my way as fast as I could. My knees and shins were painfully bruised. My legs moved with electric shocks of pain, as I gashed them on the stones, but there was no question of stopping.

  I looked round to see Chadwin, raw and half-naked, calling inarticulately in the wind, struggling over the trellis behind me. On one side, I had the wall of the house. On the other, a boulder strewn drop to deep water. Ahead, I had an impossibly uneven path which could break my ankles. The only clear track was to the jetty.

  The jetty extended thirty yards out onto the lake. After about thirty-five feet of thick wooden piles, it was a floating structure which tossed, and snaked on its pontoons in the rough water. Chadwin would catch me either on the rocks, or on the jetty. The end of the jetty was a treacherous place, where the water was fifteen feet deep. The movement of the lake to a nearby river outfall caused a rip current. Nobody ever swam from the jetty, even in high summer with clear water.

  I feared Lake Chateaugay as well as loved it. At times, ‘Pine Hill’ seemed to me to be perched presumptuously near a dangerous beast. The lake claimed lives, summer after summer. It was moody, constantly changing its face in concert with the sky, the wind, and the forest. Serene translucence could turn to vicious cross currents in minutes. I had made this final mistake, instead of taking my chance on the road or in the forest. The jetty gave no hope; it gave only a short path to oblivion. I was committing myself to a force far more powerful than the one which
was pressing me.

  I stepped onto the moving boards, not sure that I could feel enough in my legs to keep balance. I passed the weathered sign that said, Dangerous, Do Not Swim. I went to the end, heaving up and down. I turned to face Chadwin, my hair flapping away from my head like a flag. My tracksuit was soaked by spray. I braced myself, legs apart. I had a last moment hope that Chadwin would see that however much he wanted to hurt me, the end of the jetty was not merely dangerous for both of us, but near suicidal. He was a predator with a vile and childish temper, but not, I still believed, a killer, or a suicide.

  Chadwin advanced toward me along the boards. His thick shoulders swayed as he balanced. He crouched like a Sumo wrestler, his bull neck bent forward. His breath tore from his throat in cries. He had his arms out to grab me. He would thrash me, and drag me to the shore and rape me. He was demented, and oblivious of the danger. To him, the lake might have appeared as a piece of choppy water which held no fears for a capable swimmer. To me it was a cunning and deceptive wild animal.

  We grappled. He took my feeble blows on his face and shoulders without effect, and dug his fingers deep into my upper arms, pinioning them. We fell on the soaking deck, which heaved itself up in a sudden wave, bigger than the rest. The deck dropped heavily after the swell, lurching sideways. We were tipped over the edge of the pontoon, down into the dark turbulence, clasped together.

  Chadwin did not mean to let go of me! I choked and struggled, gulped the brackish water. Only when a more ruthless arm, the current, dragged us down, did he release me to save himself. The tide was peaty brown, clouded with silt from mountain streams. It was brutally cold. I kicked off my slippers, and flailed upward with all the remaining strength in my arms and legs. I could see the surface far above, like a sepia pane of rough glass. At the same time, I fought in the direction of the shallows near the shore. The cold had taken such possession of me, that I hardly felt my frozen skin, or any hurt from my bursting lungs.

  13

  Half conscious, I dragged myself into a shallow space between the rocks, under the shadow of our patio, and rested against a slab of granite.

  As soon as I had the strength to walk, I waded out of the water, and on to the foot of the jetty. I looked along the lakeshore on either side to see a sign of Chadwin. A couple of times I started, mistaking a partly submerged log for a body, but that was all.

  The climb to the house was like a mountainside, and I managed it very slowly. I got a pair of shoes, and a blanket which I wrapped around my wet clothes. I tried to start the Jeep. I churned the engine until the battery was flat. I couldn’t remember where I had put the keys of Chadwin’s car, and I didn’t want to dally at the house. I walked along the road. Chadwin was either recovering, waiting to come after me, or drowned. Either way I needed urgent help.

  It seemed to take hours to walk to the nearest cabin, but it was locked and deserted. I had walked perhaps another mile, when a car towing a boat stopped for me. The driver was friendly. With his help, I got to a phone, called the police who said they would alert the rescue services. And I managed to get Greg in Baltimore. He offered to get a flight to Rochester immediately. He was upset that he was too far away to be able to help, but I reassured him that the worst was over, and I could manage. My rescuer kindly turned his car around, and took me the ten or so miles back to ‘Pine Hill’, to wait for the police and emergency rescue services. I asked him to wait with me, and he did, for the best part of an hour, and then feeling safer, I urged him to go.

  I stood for a time on the patio, peering into the tossing waters, until my head ached from the shafts of reflected light. Chateaugay was revelling in its strength. I have to admit that I was secretly, in my innermost heart, numb about Chadwin’s death – if he was dead. The situation between us had become so monstrous that there didn’t seem to be room for us both in life. But at the same time, gnawing at me, was the real possibility that a fit man like Chadwin might well have shrugged off his head injuries, and been swept along by the tide, but still managed to drag himself into the shallows hundreds of yards along the shore. He could be out there now, recovering from the ordeal.

  More at ease now that the police were on their way, I swept and washed the spare bedroom floor again, folded the bloodstained sheets on the bed, and sprayed the room with air-freshener to reduce the odour of alchohol – there was no getting rid of it. The sheets stank. Then I washed all the glasses, poured out the remains of the bourbon left from the Kutash invasion, and put the bottles in the trash.

  The County Lake Rescue Service were the first to arrive, in a truck, towing a rubber outboard boat, with four men, lines, nets, submersible torches, and frogman suits with scuba gear. I told the chief that a man went into the water from the end of the jetty over an hour ago.

  “He fall in, lady?”

  “Yes.”

  “Swimmer?”

  “I don’t know. I expect so.”

  “You look as though you’ve been in.”

  “I have.”

  “To save him?”

  “He dragged me in. He attacked me on the jetty and it was so rough, we both fell in. I’ll be making a full statement to the police. I’ve called them.”

  The chief looked piercingly at me as though what I said was contestable. “Sure is a dangerous place.”

  He asked if I was sure about the time it happened, thinking I suppose that a careful look along the shore or shallows might be more productive. But the team began their work in the deep, at the end of the jetty, with safety ropes, while I watched from the lounge room windows, my mind blocked.

  The police arrived in a black car half an hour later, and I went down to it.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Gary Beckman, and this is Lieutenant Cavallo,” the driver said.

  “Thank goodness you’ve come,” I said, actually feeling fearful and intimidated.

  Cavallo had a pale face, with oily slicked back hair. He was thin and intense, and he looked tired. He and Beckman followed me upstairs. After watching the rescue services team out of the dining room window for a few moments, Cavallo turned to me.

  “What happened, Mrs Stamford?”

  “Like I said when I called, a man went into the lake, but that’s…”

  “What does went in mean Mrs Stamford?”

  “We were struggling, the jetty was pitching, and we fell off.”

  “You look as though you’ve had a rough time.”

  “I have, I got all this,” I said as I pulled my old sweater up to show him the bruising on my chest and side. “I’ve been assaulted, and subjected to…”

  “We’ll get you examined,” Cavallo said carefully, seeming to anticipate criminal activity in the shadows around the few facts that were known to him. “Do you want to change your clothes?”

  “No. I want to go home.”

  “We need to examine your clothes.”

  I tried to prepare myself for the awful questioning. I sat with the blanket around my shoulders, and my head pounding. Cavallo sent Beckman outside to talk to the Rescue Service, took a chair, and pointed to one for me. He put a small tape-recorder on the coffee table. He also slipped a shorthand notebook out of the side pocket of his creased grey suit, and flicked over the pages to find a space. A pen appeared in his hand, and he moved in the chair to accommodate his awkward left-handed style. “Tell me…”

  I explained that I had arrived at the house that morning to clean up, and organise a sale. Dwight Chadwin arrived uninvited. He threatened me with rape. Forced me to the bedroom. We fought on the bed. I broke free, and knocked him unconscious with a baseball bat. I tied him up to safeguard myself, intending to call the police, but before I could, he got free. He chased me onto the jetty, we fought, and both fell into the water. I managed to save myself.

  “Remarkable story, Mrs Stamford,” Cavallo said, with a cynicism which I hoped he tagged to every statement he heard, rather than reserved for mine.

  “It’s true.”

  “Why did you run onto the
jetty if you were afraid of being raped?”

  “Because there was nowhere else to run!”

  “Do you know Chadwin?”

  “I met him at my club, and he came on to me.”

  “You didn’t encourage him?”

  “I’m a happily married woman.”

  “So he just appeared here, like that?”

  “Yes. He must have followed me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cavallo said, pausing and staring at me with his button-bead eyes.

  “Is this going to take long?” I asked. “We can’t go home because it’s getting late, Mrs Stamford. We have to complete the first stage of our enquiry here, tonight. We need photos, measurements, statements.”

  Cavallo and Beckman moved cautiously around the house, inspecting. I sat mute in a corner of the lounge room. A carload of forensic technicians appeared, and after a short conference with Cavallo, changed into white overalls, and swarmed through the rooms with their brushes and plastic bags. The remains of the barrier was still partly blocking the workshop stairs. They removed this and went down, and through to the garage. Cavallo asked me to hand over my clothes. A woman technician came with me into the bedroom. She took everything I was wearing and dropped them into a plastic bag.

  “Your chest must be painful,” she said, sympathetically. “And when you’re examined, don’t forget to show this.”

  She pointed to bruises from Chadwin’s fingers around my groin.

  I went back to the lounge in another old tracksuit. I couldn’t settle to take a shower. Cavallo soon came back to where I was sitting. “Those cars…”

  After I had explained that the Jaguar was Chadwin’s, Cavallo said, “It’s parked in the garage, Mrs Stamford. Would a stalker park his car in your garage?”

  “I’m pretty sure I left the doors open, and he must have driven in.”

  “The doors behind the Jaguar are closed, would a stalker do that?”

  “He did.”

  “Quite a nerve. Sure of himself,” Cavallo said, sceptically. “Another small point. How come the whiskey in the bedroom? Rapists don’t generally settle down with a bottle of whiskey, and their victim.”