A Fatal Verdict (32 page)

She hunted around with the torch and found one large stone - two - and a large rotten log that was snagged by brambles and weed so that whichever way she pulled it would not quite come out. Time was moving on. Her breath came short and sweat prickled under her breasts. She gave one final, desperate heave and the log snapped with a loud crack! 

‘What’s going on?’

At the sound of the voice she whirled around and saw David -
NO!
- climbing clumsily out of the passenger door. She snatched up her torch to see better. He had the door open, one foot on the ground, and was leaning around the side of it like with a dazed grin on his face like some lunatic playing hide and seek. In a second he’d be out altogether and then what? She’d have to shove him back in if she could. If the drug hadn’t worn off completely.

‘David, no. It’s all right. I just stopped for a second.’

‘Where are we?’

‘I ... I needed a pee. Get back in the car, David, please.’

‘I wanna piss too.’ He hauled himself to his feet with the door, then started fumbling with the zip of his trousers.

Shit! This isn’t what happens. What do I do now? She stood irresolute in front of him, torch in one hand and the rotten log in the other, while he hauled out his prick and sprayed an endless jet of urine on the concrete between them.  

‘Like watching, do you?’ he leered. ‘Here gimme that, I want to see ....’ Still pissing, he made a sudden grab for the torch which missed, and the momentum took him round in a circle so he ended up with his back to her, pissing into his car. ‘Shit, where’d it go?’

This has to stop now, she thought. She put down the torch, lifted the log and hit him as hard as she could across the base of his skull. Rotten splinters flew everywhere. David slumped forwards, banging his nose on the roof, then fell to his knees. She hit him again and the log broke in two. Then with her hands under his armpits she heaved and strained until he was somehow inside the car. He slumped sideways in the seat, moaning softly. She touched the back of his head which was sticky with blood.

I’ve got to do this now, she thought, it’s getting out of hand. She slammed the door shut, found the torch, and went over to the fence and used the remaining piece of log to press down the wire. Then she got in the car and leaned forward to start the engine. A hand grabbed her arm.

‘I wanna drive.’

‘What? Get off me, you jerk!’

‘No. S’my car and I’m driving.’ Somewhere he had recovered much of his strength. As the engine purred into life he leaned over, wrestling her with both arms so that she was pinned in the seat and couldn’t get out. Then his leg caught the gear stick and with a grinding crunch the car shot backwards into a tree. The impact jolted them both forwards. David’s head smashed into the windscreen while the top of her head caught him under the chin.

‘Bloody hell.’ She pushed her foot down on the clutch and reached around his limp body to take the car out of gear. He lay across her like a sack. The windscreen was starred into fragments by the impact, but it hadn’t burst. Her head hurt but there was no time to think of that, not now. This was her chance, the last chance probably.

Carefully, she heaved him off her so she could reach all the controls. Then she turned on the headlights and eased the car forwards in first gear until it was just on top of the flattened fence, its front wheels a foot from the lip of the tank. Now the hardest part. She put on the handbrake, opened the door and squirmed out from beneath him. He was beginning to moan again and thresh about. Damn! She grabbed him round the waist and heaved his backside into the driver’s seat. A foot flopped on the accelerator and the engine revved loudly. Christ, shut up, no, you’ll wake that dog! She switched off the engine and leaned across him to let off the handbrake.

He grabbed her hair. No get off me bastard let me go! But his strength was returning again even if his mind was switched off. He wound his fingers into her hair and pressed her face down into his crotch. She reached up and tore his fingers loose, one by one. ‘Come on, Shelley,’ he said. ‘One more time.’

At last she was free. Almost free. He snatched her hand just as she was closing the door and there was a further tug of war. Then her hand slipped free and she was out. She slammed the door in his face, ran round the back of the car and leaned all her weight on it. 

It wouldn’t move. Dammit come on what’s the matter with it now? She pushed harder until every muscle in her body trembled with the strain and then slowly, slowly the little car rolled forward. Two inches, four ... she heard the grit crunching under the tyres and then the door opened and David’s arm and head popped out.

‘Shelley? What’s going on?’

I’m not Shelley you bastard heave come on please come on please come on yes! Oh yes yes, that’s it
yes!
The front wheels slipped over the rim, the rear lifted slightly in the air, and with a final crunching heave the entire car tipped over the edge, stood on its nose, and began to sink. For a long terrible moment she thought it would stand there like that, half in and half out of the water like the Titanic on its way down, but the water was so deep that the bonnet and then the passenger compartment and then the entire car slid slowly inexorably out of sight and was gone.

Is David still in or did the bastard get out? Where’s the damn torch I need it now! Her breath rasping in her chest she hunted in the darkness for nearly a minute before she found the torch and shone it down on the dark bubbling water. Great gouts of air and weed and oil rose to the surface, but no car and no man. She picked up the log in her right hand and stood there ready.  How long can he stay down there and live? If he doesn’t come up in a couple of minutes it’ll be too late. It must be two minutes already, what’s the time? She shone the torch on her watch - twenty past twelve. Remember that, twenty past, twenty past, five minutes and he’ll be dead for certain. She stood there playing the torch on the water and muttering to herself, twenty past twenty past, while the breath rasped in her throat and her body shook and the surface of the black water gradually subsided. Four bubbles, two, one big one, none. Twenty five past twelve.

He’s gone.

The sound of the midnight woods came back to her. The dog in the distance, a mile away, barking sporadically. The shriek of a rabbit caught by a stoat. The wind in the trees overhead.  A girl sobbing softly. Shut up, no time for that now, you’ve got to clean up and get out of here.

Moving like an old woman, she hauled the fence posts upright and dropped them into their sockets until the rickety fence looked much as it had done before. She tamped earth around the foot of the posts and covered her efforts with leaves. Then she shone her torch carefully around the gritty concrete, looking for things that might arouse suspicion. She found her handbag - just think, if I’d forgotten that! - and a mark on the tree which the car had hit, but nothing else. She rubbed moss onto the tree to hide the mark, then used a handful of ferns to brush grit across the tyre tracks so that they were less obvious to the naked eye. It might look different in daylight, of course, and none of it would deceive a forensic scientist but that wasn’t the point. The point was to avoid attracting attention to the tank in the first place.

When she had finished this housekeeping she stood still and listened. The dog had stopped barking. The wind still soughed in the trees. Somewhere to her right the fox gave its hoarse, coughing bark. A barn owl screeched.

Why so quiet? She strained her ears but could hear nothing else - just the faint singing of blood in her ears and the scrunch of her shoe on the grit when she moved, loud as thunder in the silence. An uncertain, nervous grin played on her face in the dark. Just the owl’s hoot and the cricket’s cry. There should be loud knocking, a porter opening the gates to a messenger for the king, barking dogs, the wail of police sirens, helicopters clattering overhead with searchlights, loudspeakers and men in black swarming with guns, but

nothing.

There was something wrong with her face, though, it was twisting and giggling and making her want to shout and scream and ...
shut up shut up
, I’ve got to hold this together. It’s not over yet, I’ve got a long way to walk and the danger isn’t police cars or helicopters or anything like that it’s in my own mind. My God I’ve committed a murder.

But he deserved to die ten times over. I did it for you, Shelley, and now he’s in that tank where I would have died long ago if you hadn’t saved me. You understand that. He was scum, he was filth, the world is better without him but not without you, you deserved to live and he killed you. Now I have to hold all this together and leave. It’s a long walk but I’m not afraid of the night and I know where I’m going. Just hold it together in your mind, that’s what matters. Not like Lady Macbeth she cracked up but I won’t I can’t I’ve got a child who needs me unlike her. She did it for greed and power but I did it for revenge and justice that makes the difference - it’s got to. Everything’s changed now, I’m changed too, but I’ve got to look the same. Work that out later.

She stood for a while longer, listening to the wind in the trees, the owl hunting, the bark of the fox. They didn’t care, they killed routinely, every night. The deafening silence in the tank behind her meant nothing to them.

She took one step, the first, away from the scene of her crime.

Four thousand miles to go.

43. Nightwalk

It was a long walk through the night. The moon appeared fitfully, sometimes bathing woods and fields in cold white light, sometimes hiding behind clouds so that all was black. Once Miranda slipped up to her knees in a ditch; as she climbed out a bramble snagged her tight black trousers, tearing them across her thigh. In her mind the walk had seemed easy, but she’d been away in America for years, and the half-remembered landmarks seemed to have moved in her absence.

She took a wide loop around the farm to avoid disturbing the dog, but then, crossing a pasture, a blurry white shape erupted in front of her, and in a moment the field was full of a bleating flock of similar creatures, confronting her in panic and defiance. The distant dog barked furiously, leaping to the end of its chain, and a light came on in the yard. Miranda ran until the breath sobbed in her chest. Had she been seen? She couldn’t tell; too late she realised she’d crossed open fields in moonlight. She stood with her back to an oak tree until the yard light went out, then crept away, hiding her silhouette against the dark line of a hedge.

By the time she reached the road she was muddy, bedraggled and cold. She crouched in a ditch while a car went by, then another, their headlights carving tunnels through the night. She couldn’t risk being seen, not like this, but it was easier to travel along the road. She stepped out cautiously, buttoning her jacket over her white top, looking ahead for a ditch or gate to hide in if a car should appear.

Towards dawn she reached the racecourse near Wetherby. She went through the car park, climbed a fence, and walked along the damp thick grass of the steeplechase course beside the road. The grandstands slumbered on a rise to her left, a hint of lemon yellow behind them in the sky. Ahead, traffic swished north and south along the A1; to her right were the floodlit fences and huts of a juvenile correction centre.

She sat down and rested her back against the brushwood of a jump, waiting for dawn. No one would see her here. She watched the light grow above the roofs of the town, and checked her watch. 4.35. The first bus wouldn’t leave for hours yet, and before she dared enter town she’d have to improve her appearance. She fumbled in the pockets of her coat and found a safety pin to patch the rent in her trousers, along with a hanky of her mother’s which she moistened on the wet grass and used to clean her clothes.

If only it wasn’t so cold! She folded her arms under her armpits and rolled into a ball, like a lost forgotten jockey. The sun will come soon, she told herself. Then the bus with its heater, the comfortable airport and home - central heating as hot as you like it! We’ll have Christmas together as a family, me and Sophie and Bruce, we’ll go skiing and come home to the sauna and no one will ever guess how cold I once was, shivering under a steeplechase fence in England, with icy dew trickling along my hair and black oily water creeping into my lungs until I can’t breathe and I’m clawing my way up to the surface but the car door won’t open and ...

Stop it!
She sat up suddenly, shaking her head violently to prove she was still here and not drowning in nightmare sleep. He’s the one with icy water in his lungs - not me. Look about you, girl, it’s light. Her hand and her jacket had colour now, they weren’t just grey. A car swished by on the road. The prison floodlights across the road cast less glare. She glanced at her watch. Maybe the bus station would open soon.

She dragged a mirror out of her bag, improved her haggard face, hauled herself to her feet and set out for the town.

Kathryn was cooking supper when she decided to ring Miranda. Over the past few days the Valium had spread a thin film of oil over the surface of her mind, smoothing the seething turbulence beneath. Andrew was out, probably with his mistress Carole, and Shelley was in her little urn at the crematorium. This was what life would be like from now on. The home she had created had been violated, destroyed, yet it was still here, all around her. The tiles on the floor, she noticed sadly, were chipped and cracked; the paint on the walls faded. Like a pensioner’s kitchen, she thought, with memories that no longer comfort. I tried here and failed: maybe I should follow Miranda across the Atlantic, sell up, start afresh.

‘Hello.’ A vigorous masculine American voice answered the phone.

‘Hello, Bruce. How are you?’

A brief pause, then recognition. ‘Oh, hi - Miranda’s mom, right? Good to hear you, Kathryn. Hey, I was sorry to hear about the trial, you know. Real bummer.’

‘Yes, it was terrible. Miranda told you about it, did she?’

‘Sure, she rang me a couple of times. Bastard got off scot free, she said. Should have been strung up.’

‘Our courts don’t do that any more, unfortunately. Anyway, how are you, Bruce?’

‘Oh, struggling, you know, with the old child care. It’s amazing the energy it takes.’

The thought of her big son-in-law blundering around the house after a two year old made Kathryn smile. Yet he could be surprisingly gentle too; that was what she liked about him. ‘You’ll be glad to have Miranda back then.’

‘Miranda? No, she’s not back till tomorrow. That’s what we’re doing right now, matter of fact. Me and Sophie together. Tidying the place up to look good for her mom. You want to talk to her? Hey Sophie, come here, it’s granny K on the phone.’

‘But I thought ...’ Kathryn was still puzzling over these words when the voice of her distant granddaughter came lisping down the line.

‘Hi, granny.’

‘Hello, Sophie, is that you?’ She tried to put warmth and love into her voice, but it came out hoarse and croaky. ‘What are you doing now?’

‘Tidying. For mommy come back.’

‘Good. Mummy’s back tomorrow, is she?’ There’s something wrong here, Kathryn thought. Why isn’t she home yet? What’s happened?

‘Yes. Bring presents. Bye, granny.’

‘Is that all?  No more for granny?’ Bruce came back on the line, proud and embarrassed. ‘Okay - she’s shy, Kathryn, hiding her face right now. But she does help with the chores - some of them anyhow. You must visit again soon. She’s growing so fast you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Yes, I’d like that, Bruce.’ Kathryn’s voice was faint. ‘Really I would.’

‘Yes, well do it then. You deserve a break after all you’ve been through this year.’

‘Bruce, you say Miranda rang you. When was that?’

‘Couple of nights ago, I think. She’s stopping over in New York on the way back, doing some shopping. What’s this thing you wanted to tell her about? Can I take a message?’

‘No. No, it’s nothing really, Bruce, I just wanted a chat. I ... I must have got the time wrong, I always forget how far it is. Don’t worry her when she arrives, it’s nothing, really. She’ll need support, you know, when she gets home. It hit her hard, the trial. So if she seems a bit tense and het up ...’

‘Yeah, I understand. Lots of hugs and TLC, eh? Coffee and cuddles.’

‘That’s it, exactly.’ Kathryn felt tears start in her eyes, at the thought of Miranda safe in the arms of this bluff, friendly man. ‘She’s lucky to have you.’

For a few more minutes, Kathryn managed to string the conversation along, asking about Bruce’s job, the improvements they planned to the house, his boat, but all the time she was wondering,
why isn’t she home yet?
Andrew had taken her to the airport three days ago, so where was she? Shopping in New York? Perhaps, but it seemed oddly callous, after what they’d all been through. Miranda wasn’t like Andrew, surely, she couldn’t have a lover in the city? That would be the final betrayal, everything good in the family destroyed.

Kathryn tried Miranda’s mobile but it was switched off. She put the phone down wearily, and bent to check the casserole in the oven.

The plane, to Miranda’s relief, was half empty. There were few women on board: leaving La Guardia just after midnight, it was used largely by weary, crumpled businessmen, students, and people who, from the raw, anxious look of their eyes, were in the throes of some emotional crisis. She had changed into clean clothes when she had retrieved her luggage at Manchester airport, but the eyes she saw in the ladies’ room mirror at La Guardia were red and staring from weariness, her face pale and lined with exhaustion. She had splashed cold water on it and done what she could with some moisturiser and eye-liner she found in her bag, and now, she thought, it looked presentable.

Not the face of a murderer, anyway. She judged that from the looks she got from a few of the businessmen, one of whom had taken the aisle seat beside her and essayed a few jokes which she ignored, staring ostentatiously away into the darkness outside the cabin window. Just night out there, and the lights of cities far below - less and less of that, as they flew further west across the lakes. They would arrive about 3 a.m; she planned to check into the airport hotel, sleep until noon, and then face her husband and daughter.

Life would begin again - real, ordinary, everyday life to do with cooking and cleaning and new shoes for Sophie and visits to K-mart. And Bruce - his big, powerful arms, the deep voice - how she longed to rest her head on his strong hairy chest and let him hold her. She would weep, for certain, but that wouldn’t matter - she’d been through a terrible time, after all. It was just that he had no idea how terrible.

And she mustn’t tell him. Not now, not ever. She had thought about this all the way back, on the flight across the Atlantic - her second in less than a week. Bruce might understand, even sympathise with what she had done. In his world justice was simple - an eye for an eye, a killer deserved all he got - but all the same she had no right to burden him with it. No right and no need.

It was all, already, so very far away. Something that happened in a wood, in the night, on a little island thousands of miles from her home. No one had been there - no one but herself and David, and he was dead. Dead, and sunk among the mud and water snails fifteen feet below the surface. With luck no one would find him for years, perhaps never. After all, who loved him, who cared? Nobody. So why would anyone even look?

So if she kept silent, no one would ever know. She knew about secrets - they were like the box in which Pandora kept the winds. Once tell Bruce, and her secret would spread to the four winds; she would have to rely on his discretion, his self-control, to keep the horror to himself. And Bruce was the bluffest, most honest, most hopeless liar in the world.

If only her hands didn’t tremble so, the tears choke her chest. But that was natural, surely, just reaction after the shock. In an effort to hide from the man in the aisle seat, who kept glancing her way, she tried on the courtesy eye shield. But that led to horror - she was back in the wood, by the Lotus, watching David clamber dopey and drugged from the driver’s seat all over again. She relived the way she had hit him with the log, shoved him inside, heaved at the heavy car as though her lungs would burst. Only this time it all went wrong. As she ran across the midnight fields, dodging the dog and the sheep, David’s face rose from the water behind her, his dank hair full of sticks, fish swimming out of his nose and worms in his eyes, but somehow still alive!

She tore off the mask with a scream, shaking. The man beside her leaned over, concerned. ‘You okay, there, ma’am? Something wrong?’

‘No. No, I’m ... fine, thanks. Just a bad dream.’

‘Try a Scotch - here. Chase them old bogies away.’ He pulled a flask from his pocket.

‘Yes, all right. Thanks. Maybe I will.’ This isn’t going to be so easy at all, she thought, as the warm alcohol flooded through her veins. I’ve done the hard bit, the main thing, but now ... I’m alone with my secret for ever. She stared out at the clouds and lights below, a distant scream that she hoped was exhaustion and not panic whistling like tinnitus in her ears.