Surrogate – a psychological thriller

by Tim Adler

  Was this the car that had been parked outside Alice's cottage, the one police suspected of belonging to her murderer?

  If so, he had me in his sights.

  The hunter had become the hunted.

  Move, now.

  I made a run for it, slipping through the gate as it was closing. "Hey, come back," one of the ferry hands shouted. The hydraulic platform was rising, separating from the car deck. If I took a running jump, I might just be able to make it. Instead, I mistimed my step and only just managed to grab the greasy metal lip. The ramp was rising too quickly, and I hung on for dear life. I was dangling, trying to haul myself up. My legs flailed uselessly as I tried lifting myself onto the ramp, glimpsing oily black water below. Ten feet. Fifteen feet. My muscles screamed as I clung on, hanging over open water, but my weight was becoming too much and I could feel myself slipping. Desperately I tried to get a hold, but my fingers were sliding off the corrugated metal. I could not hang on. Why wasn't anybody helping me? Terrified, I glimpsed drivers watching me from the disappearing ferry. My fingers slid a little more. I closed my eyes and prepared to let go. This it is, I thought, the moment of my death.

  Chapter Thirty

  Lapping oily water beckoned twenty feet below. If I let go, I might brain myself on one of the concrete stanchions or impale myself on rusting metal lurking beneath the water. Gulls barked above me, and my muscles were screaming. Why wasn't anybody helping? Couldn't they see the situation I was in? For a moment, I pictured what I must look like from the ferry, a man dangling from a rising hydraulic platform suspended over the Thames. My mind begged, just hang on. But I felt my fingers slipping, sliding inexorably towards the lip. I shut my eyes, knowing that this was the end.

  Strong hands grasped my wrists, hauling me up.

  My legs flailed in mid-air, trying to gain momentum as ferry workers hauled me onto the ramp. I lay like a fish gasping for air, feeling diamond-pattern metal corrugate my cheek. "Are you fucking insane?" a voice shouted. I was too winded to say anything. Rolling onto my side, I saw the ferry sliding away from the dock with my car still on it. I felt the sun and wind on my face, and I had never been so grateful to be alive. I began to laugh, and that turned into a hacking cough. My sixty-thousand-pound car was sailing away into the distance, and still nobody had gotten out of the Range Rover. What if I had been completely wrong about it? Whoever murdered Alice Adams was not in that car. I struggled up, waving away offers of assistance. "The police are on their way," one of the ferrymen said, touching my arm. I shook him off and started limping towards the street. With my car gone, I would have to find some other way to get up to the Lake District. I was going to solve this mystery and clear my name, so help me God. "Hey, you can't just leave," the man called out. Just watch me, I thought.

  Ten minutes later I was on the Tube platform. Winded from all that running, I bent over with my palms on my knees, trying to get my breath back. Two policemen, arms in stab vests, strolled through the concourse. You're running out of time. Move, for God's sake. Watching them out of the corner of my eye, I bought a ticket and, keeping my head down, clanged through the entry gates. Of course, all of this would be caught on TV, jerky time-lapse photography of me walking through the ticket barrier. Thousands of closed-circuit television cameras monitored everybody in this city. By now police would be searching for me, Hugo Cox, thirty-three-year-old City tycoon (as the papers called me) and the only suspect in a murder, who had mysteriously abandoned his car. The police would want to question me about that as well.

  Hurrying past the war memorial outside Euston Station, four soldiers with heads bowed, I walked briskly onto the station concourse.

  The ticket machine spat out return tickets to Windermere, and I was walking along the bleak, dirty platform when the guard blew his whistle. Doors slammed irregularly as passengers hurried on. I found one of the few unreserved seats, and moments later we were sliding out of the station. I was starting to feel terrible now that the adrenaline was wearing off. Voices went back and forth in my head. You could have died. No, but you didn’t. Yes, but I could have died. I kept seeing myself plunging from the hydraulic platform, impaled on a metal spike waiting beneath the waterline.

  Nobody seemed to notice a dishevelled businessman sitting alone on the train. I stared out of the window, barely aware of the picturesque English countryside, figuring out how the hell I had gotten into this mess. What did I know? That my wife and our surrogate might have known each other since school, and that, if they did know each other, then they were in league over the whole ransom. Why would Emily want to rob herself, that's what I couldn't understand, and what did it have to do with Alice's death? Or had my wife framed me from the start for a murder I didn’t commit?

  With about ten minutes to go before the train arrived, I thought I had better make myself look presentable. I locked myself in the toilet. As I pumped away at the bulb on the floor, a trickle of cold water came from the tap, and I did what I could with a comb and paper towels. My shirt had a grease stain on it from the ferry and my jacket was torn. God, I looked dreadful. Still, it would have to do.

  Ashurst College looked like a red-brick version of one of mad King Ludwig's castles dumped down in the Lake District. My taxi crunched up the driveway and parked outside the entrance. "I'm only going to be half an hour or so," I said. "Do you have a card for when I need to go back?" The taxi driver, who had already told me his name was Chief, said it was hardly worth doing another job that day and that he would wait at the foot of the drive. Shutting the taxi door and looking around, I thought that the school really did resemble a witch's house, with one corner turret wearing a conical hat. A woman I took to be the headmaster's wife came out of the house, extending her hand. The headmaster stood in the doorway.

  "Mr Cox?" she said briskly. "We were expecting you earlier. I'm afraid most of our staff have gone home."

  "Sorry I'm late. I had some difficulty getting out of London." You don't know the half of it, I thought.

  "Not to worry. This is my husband, Michael Rees."

  The headmaster had a round, rather self-satisfied face and wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. He repeated his name, shook my hand and led me inside. Despite his fogey-ish headmasterly tweed jacket, I was immediately struck by his vitality.

  "I thought we would have some tea first and then show you around the school," said his wife.

  "Sounds a good idea," I said, looking round the headmaster's study. One wall was taken up with books, and I noticed a prominent biography of Margaret Thatcher.

  "So, tell me about your daughter? How old is she?" said the headmaster, making a steeple with his fingers.

  "Oh, she's young. She hasn't started nursery school yet," I improvised. I had not expected to be grilled about my month-old daughter's secondary education. I realised how barmy this must sound. Why hadn't I prepared a proper story? I had been so preoccupied with Mole’s betrayal that I hadn't given much thought to what I would say when I arrived. The headmaster frowned, and you could see him thinking, something's not quite right here.

  "Many of our parents register their children at birth," Mrs Rees interjected smoothly, handing me a cup of tea.

  "Yes, that's it," I said, sipping the delicious smoky-dark Assam. "Actually, my wife suggested I come to see you. She was a pupil here. Emily Givings?"

  The headmaster frowned as if I had just mentioned something I shouldn’t have. "Ah yes, I remember her well. Keen sports player – hockey, netball – she was captain of the school team, I think. Emily, she's not here with you today?"

  "No, I'm sorry. Work pressure." I shrugged. The more I lied, the easier it became. "She was very keen to send our daughter here, though. That's why she wanted me to come."

  "Yet you live in London?" the headmaster's wife said.

  "Well, you know, boarding ..." my voice trailed off. The woman came across as cold and brittle, like a poor copy of the Duchess of Windsor.

  The headmaster went on, telling me about the school's high le
vel of university acceptances, its new science block and the excellent sports facilities. He was giving me his prospective parents’ speech almost by rote, and it felt like a needle dropped onto a favourite record. I wanted to jog the needle on.

  "Speaking of sport," I interrupted, "would it be possible to see a picture of Emily when she was here? She has so few childhood photographs."

  "I don't know," the headmaster said. "Perhaps we could browse through old school magazines–"

  "I know exactly where to find one," said Mrs Rees.

  We set off down the corridor following the click of her heels. Without children, the narrow school passages seemed forlorn and empty. Finally we came to a row of photographs at head height along one wall – black-and-white school-team photos. "There," said the headmaster's wife triumphantly. "I knew I remembered her." A chunky teenage Mole, who had not quite lost her puppy fat, sat in the centre of a row of girls holding a sports trophy. And there, in the back row, was unmistakably Alice Adams. I felt my throat tighten as the level of deceit sank in. So they had known each other all along. How they had betrayed me was unconscionable.

  "May I speak to you frankly?" I said. "I haven't been entirely honest with you."

  "Go on," said the headmaster. I was right, he must be thinking.

  "Emily, my wife, disappeared four days ago with our baby. For some reason I don't understand, she told me her parents were dead. Then there's this," I said, touching Alice on the photograph. "We were having trouble conceiving, and we decided to go down the surrogacy route. Emily chose her schoolfriend to carry our surrogate baby, but she never told me they knew each other. Three months before she was due to give birth, Alice, I mean Helen, disappeared and demanded a ransom. She was found murdered one week ago."

  The headmaster's wife gasped and put her hand to her mouth. The headmaster stepped between us, as if to say, now look what you've done.

  "It was you," Mrs Rees said. "In the paper. I knew I recognised your name. I read about you in the Telegraph, that you'd been questioned about her murder. I was sure it was Emily from the photograph. Don't you remember, Michael? I said to you, I'm sure that's Emily?"

  "I really don't see what this has to do with us or Ashurst College," the headmaster said.

  "That's just it. Emily disappeared with our daughter four days ago. Since then I've had no word from her. I wondered if you had an address for Emily's parents. Surely she must have been in contact with them."

  "Have you been to the police?" the headmaster said.

  "Not yet, no. You see, we had a row just before she left. The police will just think it's a marital dispute, but it's deeper than that. Something is wrong. I just want to make sure my wife and daughter are safe. Even if Emily doesn't want to contact me, at least her parents could tell me that they're both okay."

  The headmaster pursed his lips, making what my mum would have called a hen's arse with his mouth. "You've put me in a very difficult position. There are data protection rules about this kind of thing."

  "Please. All I'm asking for is a telephone number. They’ve vanished, and I have absolutely no idea why."

  "I really must ask you to leave," the headmaster said, making up his mind. "You inveigled your way in here under false pretences. Please go. If I had known you had come here solely to scrounge information, I never would have let you in the front door."

  "I'm not scrounging anything. I merely asked for your help. Please. As one human being to another."

  "I want you to leave. Before I call the police. Now."

  His wife came between us, sensing the situation was about to get out of control. She placed her hand lightly on her husband's chest. "Michael, I'll see Mr Cox out and call a cab for him. There's no need for any unpleasantness."

  "Yes, why don't you do that," he said coldly. "Good day."

  By the time I was standing back in the tessellated entrance hall, my breathing was back under control. I wanted to vomit. The headmaster's wife told me to wait there while she fetched something from the study. Moments later, she pressed a scrap of paper into my hand, glancing furtively down the corridor.

  "My husband," she said. "He can be a bit pompous sometimes. Here. It's the address we last had for Emily's parents. Nice people. I hope you find your wife and daughter, Mr Cox. I was always very fond of Emily."

  "Thank you," I said, taken aback by this unexpected kindness. With her cashmere twin-set and sensible plaid skirt, I had read her wrongly. Well, you just never know.

  "Helen Noades was a bad influence on the other girls. We had to ask her to leave, you know."

  "Bad influence in what way?"

  The headmaster called out from the hall, "Darling, can you give me a hand?"

  Mrs Rees grimaced. "She was ... corrupt. Other parents complained, saying they wanted to take their daughters away." Corrupt? What did corrupt mean? Lascivious images came to mind of my wife and Alice fiddling with each other under school desks. "You know that she went to prison for fraud," I said.

  "Yes, I read about that too. We wanted to help girls from less privileged backgrounds. It was an experiment that ... failed." Her husband called out again. "I'm sorry," she said, "you really must leave now."

  I scrunched the paper in my fist and said goodbye, setting off down the gravel. Unrolling the paper as I walked towards the taxi, I saw that it was an address: Caroline and Charles Givings, St Anthony's Cottage, Church Square, Skellwater. Chief asked if I wanted to go back to the station. No, I said, giving him the name of the village. The taxi driver harrumphed, putting the car in gear, and I noticed with some annoyance that he had left the meter running.

  If nothing else, I was about to meet my parents-in-law for the first time, and possibly solve the mystery of my wife's disappearance.

  And why she was framing me for murder.

  Chapter Thirty One

  There were glimpses of mountains in between trees as the taxi wended its way to Skellwater, and I realised how truly beautiful the Lake District was. There were moments when the bleak grandeur felt more like the moon than the biddable Home Counties countryside I was used to. The scale of it was humbling, and for a while I forgot my troubles and just drank in the beauty beyond the taxi window. The traffic thickened up on the outskirts of a market town, however, and we soon came to a halt in a queue.

  "So how long have you been driving?" I asked, partly for something to say.

  "'Bout thirty years off and on. Took a break from it. Started again fifteen years ago," said Chief. He was a big unkempt man in his fifties who had the large red nose of a boozer.

  "So I expect you've seen the place change."

  "Oh, aye. More traffic, more tourists."

  The lights changed from red to orange, and still cars were coming through from the other side. Chief gunned the engine a little, ready to move off, when a Toyota passed by hooting, with its lights flashing. A middle-aged woman shouted something and flicked a V-sign from behind the wheel.

  "Who was that?" I asked, craning my head round to watch her disappear up the road.

  Chief chuckled, "My ex-wife. Says I owe her money."

  "She doesn't seem very happy with you."

  "She can fookin' whistle, two-timing little bitch. You a married man yourself?" he asked, turning right into the market square where a blackened statue of Sir Josiah something-or-other gazed sightlessly down.

  "Yes, I am, actually," I said reluctantly. This conversation was edging uncomfortably close to the reason I was here, to hunt down my missing wife.

  "Trouble is, you never know what's going on in somebody else's head," Chief continued. "My marriage, when it went wrong, it were like the Twin Towers or something. One moment I was married, and the next everything had disappeared, gone."

  "Go on, then, so what happened?" You got the sense this was a well-practised story that Chief was only too eager to play to the gallery with. I settled back in my seat.

  "I used to drive a cab in Manchester, and my wife stayed at home bringing up our little one. She used
to watch those home renovation shows on telly. One day she got it into her head that she wanted to move out here. The schools were better, she said. I wish I'd never listened." He broke off, remembering. "And so we sold our council house and started renovating this barn. You know, like they do on TV. Anyway, my wife finds this builder bloke. I knew something were up right from the start. My wife were having it off with him every afternoon. She'd even take our toddler to the local child-minder so they could be alone. I were so naive."

  "And you had no idea something was wrong? With your marriage, I mean?"

  "Oh, she admitted everything," he said. "Told me that I couldn't stand in the way of their true love and all that rubbish. He panicked when he realised she was planning to leave me. Pulling her knickers down for the builder was one thing ..."

  "Once she showed contrition," I said, "surely you could start again." I guess I was really talking about myself.

  The big taxi driver shook his head. "One night I came home and she taunted me that she had seen her lover again, and I just fookin' lost it. You read about these cases in the paper where a husband comes home and kills his family. Well, it doesn't just happen like that. It's like a pressure cooker building inside your head. I remember, there was a rack of kitchen knives and I was about to pick one up and plunge it through her heart–"

  Right then my BlackBerry rang, interrupting him. Chief stopped speaking and adjusted his rear-view mirror. I looked down at the caller ID and saw that it was Detective Inspector Syal. This was the call I had been dreading. It would only be a matter of time before the police charged me with Alice's murder, I was sure of it. And once I was under arrest, I would have no chance of finding my wife or my daughter. So I decided to ignore it; I mean, there was no law that I had to answer my phone.