Scimitar

by Terry Wheeler

  ‘He’s just in there,’ the young man said, pointing further in.

  ‘Wait here,’ Kerry told her daughter, peering into the undergrowth. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she said, turning to the man, ‘why isn’t he whining? Are you sure he’s still in there?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s unconscious. He’s caught fast, he can’t get out. We have to help him.’

  The man was clearly becoming more and more agitated and waited for Kerry to pass through the gap between the rhododendron trunks, more like trees than bushes. She looked into the undergrowth but still could neither see nor hear the dog. She straightened up and was about to turn when she felt something press against the skin between her shoulder blades.

  ‘It’s a knife,’ the man said quietly. ‘Just keep walking and I won’t hurt you.’

  She felt his hand on her shoulder and she was unable to repress a shudder.

  ‘Don’t cry out. You don’t want to alarm your daughter do you?’

  The icy control of the man’s voice, the cold touch of the tip of the blade pressing into her back and his hand on her shoulder coupled with fear for her daughter robbed Kerry of the power to resist. She stumbled forward into the darkness beneath the trees.

  Holding the knife against her back, he pushed her to the ground and then twisted her on to her back. Moving the knife to her throat, he ripped her clothing apart. Kerry was too frightened for her child to resist. From being somewhat shy and helpless, the young man had suddenly become like a wild beast. The knife had a vicious, curved blade. For one brief moment Kerry wondered where he had concealed it because she had not been aware that he was carrying a knife when he first spoke to her. Indeed, she remembered that he had been wringing his hands in despair.

  Without any regard for her feelings, he thrust himself into her. She cried out in pain but as he pressed the knife against her throat she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. Her body was polarised; the two areas of pain seemed to belong to different people and she was lost somewhere between them.

  He shuddered and stopped. She tried to breathe, tried to sublimate the pain, but he hadn’t finished with her. He was cutting her clothes away now with one hand over her mouth. She tried to cover her nakedness with her hands. He laughed and flipped her over.

  The whole process began again and she felt shame as he violated her. She prayed that her daughter was not watching. It was nearly the last thing she did. Once more he reached a shuddering climax and once more there was a moment of repose. She felt him lift up from her and she took a deep breath. Her last. Then the knife swept across her throat.

  They found her daughter crying, sitting on the edge of the path. One of the other mothers who recognised her from earlier that afternoon stayed with her, trying to comfort her while another one rushed off to telephone the police.

  The little girl refused to speak to anyone, least of all to the policewoman who was sent to look after her. Kerry’s body was found but there was no trace of her murderer.

  The deed done, the young man put everything out of his mind and concentrated on his escape. Back at his house, as soon as he closed the door, he started to shake as the full horror of what he had done began to register in his mind. Nothing had been planned, it had just happened. What had come over him? The raw energy of sex had never overtaken him like that before. He could still feel her. The warmth of her body and her modesty, resisting him and yet accepting him at the same time had come as a surprise to him. Why had she given in so easily?

  The blade, of course. It had given him power that he’d never experienced before. And safe, cloaked with that power, he’d lost control. It had unlocked his dreams; his fantasies had escaped and taken over.

  He hadn’t meant to kill her. It was a careless mistake. A moment’s thoughtlessness. He should have been more careful. He remembered thinking that he needed to get away fast before she had time to do anything. He was going to warn her not to move as he slid the knife out from beneath her neck but he hadn’t taken into account the vicious blade. Its edge had been against her throat, stopping her from calling out. Well, she wouldn’t call out now.

  The minutes ticked by and his nerves began to calm. Why would anyone connect him with the incident? He washed the knife, meticulously cleaning every part of it, bleaching the blade and then oiling it until it shone again with no trace of its deadly secret. The blade seemed to have a life of its own and he treated it with a new respect.

  He had wilfully violated an innocent woman and, in taking her life, he had deprived a child of her mother. How could he be forgiven for that? It was no good pleading self defence; he had deliberately gone out and perpetrated an act of violence that appalled him. But it was the knife that had done it. He was not responsible. The knife had him in its control and it had led him to the deed.

  Kerry’s husband was devastated, distraught with grief. To have his wife die was one thing but to have her assaulted and then brutally murdered was something altogether different, something that was impossible to accept. He struggled to understand what had happened. Kerry was a good woman, a loving wife and mother; she didn’t deserve to die like that. How could such a depraved act of violence have taken place? In full daylight and in a public place. Why did no one see or hear anything?

  It took Robert Fielder a long time to accept what had happened. At first he almost expected Kerry to come home and then, as the reality of the situation fully sank in, he nearly gave up. Caring for his daughter was the only thing that kept him going through those dark days of deep despair. His parents and Kerry’s parents were devastated. They did their best to help looking after the little girl but they, too, found it hard. Just looking at the little girl brought her mother to life again and they were swamped by the loss.

  The case made the newspaper headlines; it was in the local papers and then it made the nationals. For a while it was on everyone’s tongue and the police gave regular progress reports on the investigation. There were clues, and leads were followed up. A man had been seen hanging about the play area but the women couldn’t describe him. A policeman was put on duty at the swings but nothing unusual happened. Countless police hours were consumed by door to door enquiries but they led nowhere.

  The murderer had vanished without trace. The case remained open, unsolved, and life slowly resumed its normal pattern. After all, people said, murder was nothing new. But life was not the same, could never be the same, for Robert or his daughter.

  Robert continued to devote his time to caring for his young daughter who had become withdrawn and silent. The absence of her happy laughter about the house deepened his loss which was heightened by the silent nights without Kerry. They received help. Long counselling sessions with a specialist child psychiatrist slowly brought his daughter out of her shell.

  Eventually she seemed to be leaving the trauma behind her but there were things she never told anyone. On that fateful afternoon she had followed her mother and the man and, hiding behind a bush, she had watched the whole scene as it had unfolded in front of her.

  At first she thought it was a game. Then she had realised that her mother was not laughing and, in the way that children can, she had identified with her mother. As the knife cut her mother’s clothing away she had felt its cold steel on her own body, as her mother had laid face down on the ground she had tasted the earth in her mouth. But there it stopped. The flash of the knife, the spill of blood — those were things that she could not deal with. They were images and feelings that she buried deep inside herself; those images and feelings belonged to her and she was not going to share them with anyone. Not even when she woke screaming in the night.

  Her father never asked her why she cried; he was too afraid of what she might tell him. He, too, had deep, hidden fears that he could not, would not, articulate.

  Chapter 12

  ‘What have I done?’ Arthur asked himself as guilt flooded through him. ‘How could I have done such a thing?’

  What he’d done went against everything that he held
to be good and true. He looked at his hand expecting to see the evidence of his foul deed. It was shaking, he noticed. That’s proof of how bad it was, he thought. Are there no depths to my depravity? It had not been the act of a good man, an honest man, of a man who had clung to high principles through the bad times of the past years.

  ‘Why now?’ he asked himself. ‘And after everything I’ve been through. Is it because I need a change, something new to challenge me??’

  It seemed a poor reason; the sort excuse that came to mind too easily. He would tear into any pupil who offered him such a feeble defence for something as trivial as not completing their homework so how could it explain what he’d just done? He broke out in a cold sweat as he contemplated the enormity of his action. What would his father have said if he had been alive?

  Arthur told himself that he’d had no other choice at the time and that he had simply done what he needed to do. In different circumstances and at another time he would have not done it. He couldn’t sleep and woke up in the darkness, sweating and with his heart racing. How could he have done such a thing? Even in the darkness he could see his hand perpetrating the deed and he followed the movement of his fingers as they went about their grisly task.

  Days passed. His world didn’t fall apart and, having had time to think it over, he reached the conclusion that although what he had done was wrong, it was too late to change anything now and so he had to learn to live with it.

  The consequences would be far reaching, not only for him but for others as well. Looking round the staffroom at break time he idly wondered if anyone could guess what he had done. He almost felt safe. It was too far beyond his character for anyone to believe that he was capable of doing such a thing.

  All the time he had been trying to look after his parents he had felt needed and it had motivated him to succeed. In his mind he’d assumed responsibility for them but now, with the death of his father, he felt shiftless. Why should he keep working at a job he disliked? Why live in a pokey flat in a run down area? Before he could move on he had to be sure that his mother living with Olive and her family would work out. He waited for two months before he visited them.

  Olive and her husband had done a good job in converting their front room for her mother. There was a new bed which doubled as a sofa during the day, a new colour television with a comfortable chair and even a little corner with a kettle and a few things to make hot drinks.

  ‘I’m very comfortable here,’ his mother said as Arthur looked round the room. ‘It’s not too small and I can go round the house during the day. And it’s quiet here.’

  ‘But are you happy?’

  ‘I babysit the kids so Olive and Reg can go out in the evenings. The shops are close and there’s a club I can go to — yes, I think I will be happy here. No, I am happy here.’

  ‘So you think it’ll be all right?’

  ‘I’m sure it will be. They keep themselves to themselves when I shut my door so it’s just like being back at South Street but it don’t smell like Sligh Hill.’

  Before he left they shared a meal and Arthur was entranced by Olive’s children. Her eldest, Mark, was nearly eight and was a bright boy. Mary was a blonde five year old and Stuart, two, was just beginning to become independent. As he looked at them he felt that he was missing out on life. Perhaps it was time for him to move on.

  There were too many hard memories where he lived and he wanted to branch out and to try living in a new area. He thought about his old university town but that, too, held memories. No, he decided, he needed to move right away and begin a new life. It was time to leave behind the bad things and look forward to better times.

  The Times Educational Supplement became essential reading for him and each week he noted down the jobs that were available. He discussed his projected move with his head teacher.

  ‘You’ve done a good job here and there haven’t been many rewards for you. It goes without saying that I’ll be sorry to see you go but I’ll give you a good reference.’

  Arthur felt buoyed up and made short lists of likely jobs. He started filling in application forms, almost sinking under the burden of all the paperwork it seemed to involve. His expectations were low and he was surprised to find that he received three offers of interviews.

  ‘You lack the experience of A level teaching,’ one head told him, ‘although with a first class degree you should find it easy. Unfortunately to be a Head of Department, you need that experience.’

  Another commented on his lack of experience in administration.

  ‘There’s an increasing amount of paperwork to be done these days,’ he said, ‘and you will have to monitor new teachers as well.’

  Arthur approached his third interview with trepidation. He was only too aware of his shortcomings.

  After his next interview he was called back to the Governing panel.

  ‘Clearly you lack experience,’ the Chair of the Governors began and Arthur’s heart sank, he’d heard it all before, ‘but we like your honest approach and we think that you might just be the breath of fresh air the school needs. We’re in danger of becoming complacent and it’s time to move in new directions. Do you think that you can begin to do this for us?’

  Arthur considered his reply carefully.

  ‘I’m not from these parts,’ he said cautiously. ‘I’m a northerner and people might take offence if I start to change things. In the end, all I want is for all our students to develop the joy of discovery and learning and to see how it can alter their lives. If you’re prepared to take a risk on me, I’ll do my best. My Dad was a miner but he knew that learning was the key to a better life. I learnt that early.’

  ‘Congratulations Mr Campbell, we would like to appoint you as our next head of department.’

  Arthur moved over the summer holidays, using the money he’d already saved to put down a deposit on a new house. He was sad to leave his familiar stamping ground but he knew that it was the right time for him to move on, to make a new start and to leave the past behind him.

  Life moved into the fast track for Arthur in his new school. The pupils had a completely different outlook on life and their expectations were higher. Their parents were in employment and the children were better off than the pupils at his last school; they were keen to progress. At the end of his first year he changed the syllabus and took on more examination teaching. He went on courses and began to take an interest in school administration. As a head of department he became more closely involved with the running of the school and had a voice when decisions were taken at planning meetings.

  With his keen intellect and his growing ambition he hungered for more responsibility. He saw that the only way to progress in teaching was to move up the hierarchy and and he began to go on management courses. On one of these he formed a friendship with a teacher from another school. They arranged to meet after the course and over the following months their relationship blossomed. For the first time in his life, Arthur was looking forward to the future.

  The world had become a better place until he discovered that Mary was applying for deputy head posts although, so far, she hadn’t had any success.

  ‘Why don’t you apply?’ she suggested. ‘If we both try, one of us might succeed.’

  ‘But we’ve only just met,’ he protested. ‘I don’t want to have to leave you.’

  ‘I could give up my job and come with you. After all, you’d be earning a lot more and we could start a family.’

  ‘That sounds suspiciously like a proposal to me,’ Arthur said, grinning.

  ‘It’s your job to make the proposal and it’s my job to accept,’ Mary said. ‘Just don’t take too long about it or I might change my mind.’

  They were married at the start of the summer holidays and moved house in time for Arthur to start his new job as a deputy head. A new life and a new job, he thought on the last day of his holiday. At last he was moving on, definitively leaving the past behind him and looking forward to new horizons.

&nb
sp; He worked hard and the hours were long. Meetings after school, courses and new initiatives took up most of his time but when their first child was born he still managed to spend time with Mary and Jacob.

  ‘Life is about family as much as it is about work,’ he told Mary, ‘and if I have to choose between them, my family comes first.’

  A second child followed and with his family established, Arthur began to look for a head teacher’s post. He was young and had gained a great deal of experience over the last few years. Apart from his family he had few ties and was ready for a new challenge; after all, the whole point of a deputy head’s job was to prepare him for his first headship. Mary encouraged him and together, they started looking for a headship for him.

  Chapter 13

  Robert’s daughter knew that she was different from the other girls in her class at school. When she started school it was a new experience and that proved to be difficult for her because the staff seemed to want to make up for the loss of her mother and that kept her apart from the rest of the class. The other girls were friendly but that’s as far as it went; they already had their friends and they weren’t about to change just for her. She felt them looking at her, weighing her up and trying to decide if they wanted to make a space for her in their group. And the boys were no better; they looked at her as if she was an alien from outer space.

  She had grown up protected by her father, often staying with her grandparents for long periods of time. She had a few friends but they were more by accident than choice since they were the children of her father’s friends who looked after her while he was at work.

  She was a quiet, nervous child who seldom joined in the other children’s games. They didn’t know, of course, that she was haunted by memories of the past, of her mother’s death, and that she was terrified that the man would find her. The extra care with which the teachers treated her at school meant that she did well with her work and her reading skills were well in advance of most of the rest of the reception class.