What he wasn’t too pleased with, though, was Audrey. She was becoming a pain in the arse. He had plenty of girlfriends who enjoyed his little detours off the beaten track but Audrey was always twittering on about romance, saving yourself for the right person, the seriousness and true meaning of making love – all that bollocks! Well, tonight was her last chance; if she didn’t come across, she could just piss off. He had it too good to worry about a scrag-end like her. Good legs, though.
Audrey looked across at him and tried to discern his features in the darkness. She knew he loved her, she could tell. It was that chemical reaction all true lovers felt, the thumping of the heart, the spreading glow that ran through their bodies each time they met. True, he was a bit gruff at times, but that was just his way and it didn’t mean anything. She’d kept him at bay for a long time now, and there were times she thought she’d lost him, but he’d come through the test! He really loved her, otherwise he’d never have stayed around. Now she was sure, perhaps it was time to give him some reward. Just a little. Enough to keep him interested. Enough to keep him attentive! She leant across to his seat and aimed a small kiss at his cheek. It missed because he was advancing towards her at the same time, one hand stretched forward so that it would rest casually on her thigh. He stopped to rub his damp eye.
‘Sorry,’ she said solemnly.
He muttered something inaudible and stretched forward again. This time their lips beamed in on one another’s and they kissed, she rapturously, he using the contact as a show of strength.
After a few crushing seconds, she pulled away. ‘You’re hurting me, Ken,’ she complained.
‘Sorry, darlin’,’ he said, ‘but you know how I feel about you.’ Horny, he thought.
‘Yes, I know, Ken. You really love me, don’t you?’
That’s right, he thought, kid yourself ‘’Course I do, babe,’ he said. ‘I think I always have, ever since I’ve known you.’
She sighed, and snuggled down to his shoulder. Give her a few minutes, he thought, don’t overplay your hand.
‘I’m cold, Ken,’ she said. He pulled his left arm free and draped it over the back of her seat and around her shoulders.
‘I’ll warm you up in a minute,’ he said, slyly tentative. He heard her giggle. Christ, it’s getting hopeful!
He suddenly felt her stiffen. Oh, no, here we go! He began to relax his grip on her.
‘Where are we, Ken?’ she asked him, sitting up straight, and rubbing at the windscreen that was becoming misty.
‘Eh?’
‘Where are we?’ she repeated.
‘We’re in my car.’
‘No, I don’t mean that. We’re near South Field, aren’t we?’
‘Yeah, at the back of it. What about it?’
‘Ooh, how could you bring us where that plane crashed?’
‘Oh, Christ! That was weeks ago! Anyway, we’re nowhere near where it came down.’
‘All the same, it’s a bit creepy. I think we ought to go. It’s morbid.’
‘Don’t be daft, darlin’. I can’t go drivin’ about anyway; I ’aven’t got much petrol in the car.’ And I’m not tearing about the countryside looking for a quiet place just for a piece of your arse, he added to himself.
‘Well, I’m cold. We’re too near the river.’
‘Well, I told you I could warm you up,’ he said, pulling her towards him.
Her rigidity left her, and she pressed close to him. ‘I do love you, Ken. It is different with us, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Aud,’ he assured her, and began to kiss the top of her head. She turned her face upwards towards his.
‘You’d never leave me, would you, Ken?’
He could just see her wide searching eyes in the dark. ‘Never,’ he told her, and shifted his angle in his seat so he could reach her mouth more easily. He began to kiss her forehead, her nose, and then her lips. The passion had already risen in him, but now he could feel it come surging through her. Here came the test. His right hand, which was closed around her arm, began to move slowly and cautiously towards her breast. He’d reached this point so many times with her only to be thrust forcefully and tearfully away. But tonight, he felt it was different – she’d finally got wised up to the permissive society! His fingers were trembling excitedly as they found her breast, soft and pliant beneath the woolly jumper.
‘Ooh, darling,’ he heard her moan softly, and her fingers dug into his shoulder. ‘Say you love me.’
‘I love you.’ It was easy to say.
‘You won’t leave me.’
‘I won’t leave you.’ At the heat of the moment, he almost meant it.
‘Yes, darling,’ she murmured, as his hand began to pull at the bottom of her jumper. Just the word ‘yes’ sent his blood rushing frenziedly, and the contact of his cold fingers on the bare flesh of her stomach caused Audrey to squeeze her thighs together in exquisite excitement. His groping hand reached her bra and quickly passed over it to loosen the strap at her shoulder. It slid down her arm easily and his hand raced back to what was now his possession. He cupped her breast and enjoyed for a few moments the sensation of its fleshy softness and hard little centre, but his greedy mind was already racing ahead to other regions.
And it was at that moment that her body went rigid again.
‘What was that?’ he heard her gasp.
He froze, wondering whether to kill her or just dump her into the hedge and drive away. Instead he said woodenly, his hand still grasping its prize: ‘What?’
‘There’s someone outside. I heard something,’ she said in a hushed voice.
His hand reluctantly retreated and he turned away to look through the steamed-up windows.
‘Well, they can’t bloody see anything, can they, with the windows like this?’
‘Listen, Ken, listen!’ she pleaded.
He sat there, staring at the blank windscreen, and tried to listen, but the torment of his disappointed passion slowing down overruled his other senses.
‘There’s nothing there,’ he said wearily, but at the same time trying to remember whether he’d locked the doors or not. He began to wipe the mist from the windscreen with his coatsleeve until he had cleared an area big enough to look through. He bent forward, his nose only inches away from the glass.
‘No,’ he said huffily. ‘Can’t see a bloody thing.’
‘Let’s go, Ken. It’s so cold, can’t you feel it?’
He could. It wasn’t just the coldness of autumn. This was a chill that seemed to reach deep down inside him. And then he heard something.
It was like a whisper, similar to the stirring of the leafless branches in the hedge, but somehow he felt it couldn’t be a natural sound. It had a human quality; and yet it didn’t sound human. They heard it again, a low, breathless whisper.
Audrey clutched at his arm, her eyes not leaving the windscreen. ‘Let’s go, Ken. Let’s go now!’ Her voice was unsteady and her body shook slightly.
‘It’s probably someone messing about,’ he told her uncon-vincingly, but he reached for the ignition anyway. His heart sank as he heard the engine rattle, then whine to a stop. He felt Audrey turn towards him in alarm, but he refrained from looking at her in case his eyes gave away his own trepidation. He turned the ignition again. This time, it seemed that the engine would catch, but once more it coughed, then faded into a pitiful whine. After the third attempt, he knew he would have to give the weary battery a brief rest before he tried again. They sat there in the still, black silence, straining their ears for the slightest sound, and inwardly praying it wouldn’t come. But it did. A low, murmuring whisper. Close. Close, and it seemed to be from the girl’s side.
Ken stared past her at the blank side window; the steam from their bodies had created a dark grey opaqueness. But he thought he saw a lighter shape just beyond the window, getting slowly bigger, like warm breath on glass, its edges undefined, an approaching oval of greyness. His mouth opened, but he couldn’t speak. The top of his spine and shoulde
rs became locked rigid. The hair on his scalp and down his back bristled. The shape stopped growing, and the boy knew it was just outside the window, inches away from Audrey’s turned head. The girl suddenly realized he was staring past her left shoulder and her heart lurched at the expression of terror on his face.
Slowly, as though her head were moving mechanically, she moved her eyes away from his face and turned fearfully towards the side window. As a sheer reflex, she raised a hand and wiped it in one stroke across the glass to clear the steam. She screamed immediately, a cry that rose from her innermost being, a screech that filled the small car in the same way it filled the boy’s head.
Two large, dark eyes were staring at her through the glass. So intense was their gaze that she could not wrench her own eyes from them; they seemed to bore through her, as though searching her mind, reaching for her soul. And in her horror she knew – her senses screamed it – the thing that was out there was not human, it wasn’t a living thing. Even in her panic, she realized what it was. The large, staring eyes, the small, white face, the tiny smiling lips, the strange blemish on the cheek – it was the face of a doll! But the eyes were alive, burning into her. She heard the whisper again, now echoing through her mind, but she didn’t understand the words, they had no meaning.
It was her scream that broke the paralysing spell Ken was under. In complete panic, he lunged for the ignition key and turned it, his foot hard down on the accelerator pedal. The car began to rock, gently at first, and then harder, more violently. His foot slipped from the pedal and the engine whined to a stop just as it was about to roar into life. He was tossed towards the middle as his side of the car was completely raised off the muddy path it stood on. Audrey felt herself slam against the window, and the terrible dark eyes were only separated from her own by the thickness of the glass. But in that moment she saw the misery, the utmost despair that shone from them. And she saw the malice.
She was thrown to the other side of the car as it rose up on her side, and this time she clung to Ken, crying hysterically. The rocking reached a new intensity and then the car began to vibrate, to shake and quiver with a rage of its own.
‘What’s happening, what’s happening?’ the girl screamed, but the boy would have had no answer even if the words had penetrated his terror-struck brain. Abruptly, the car fell to the ground with a crash that threatened to shake it apart, and then there was silence except for the sobbing moans of the distraught girl. Moving instinctively, Ken tore himself away from her and reached for the door handle. He pulled it and jerked the door open with his shoulder, then stumbled out into the cruel branches of the leafless hedge. The sharp wood tore into his flesh but he ignored the pain as he beat through the narrow path between vehicle and hedge. He felt the branches tugging at his clothing and, in his fright, imagined they were hands trying to hold him back. He cried out and his struggling became wilder, frantic, until he had scrambled free from the narrow space.
Without looking round – he didn’t want to see anything – he ran down the dark lane, oblivious to anything but his own blind terror. Only in the deep recesses of his consciousness did the pitiful screams of the girl register, the screams that pleaded for him to come back for her, not to leave her there alone.
He ran on, stumbling and falling in the dark, away from the little car. Away from the malevolence he knew was back there.
3
Keller inhaled, drawing the smoke from the cigarette deep into his lungs, and then allowed it to escape again in a long, steady stream. He sat in the dark, his body slumped into his only armchair, his eyes gazing sightlessly at the ceiling.
He had returned to his London flat earlier that evening, his mind buzzing with the information Tewson had given him. He had thrown off his coat, loosened his tie, then poured himself a stiff Glenfiddich. He rarely drank heavily – flying and drinking were not a good blend – but over the past few weeks he had come to appreciate the nerve-dulling effects of alcohol. He had sunk into the armchair, placing the bottle on the armrest whilst he unbuttoned his shirtcuffs and rolled them up to his elbows, then lit a cigarette. And there he had remained for over two hours, lost in confused and uneasy thought.
A bomb! Could it be possible? The rules were so stringent nowadays; luggage and hand baggage were thoroughly screened, and each passenger was quickly but expertly searched before boarding the aircraft. And yet it still happened; bombs were still found on board, men still produced guns from somewhere once in flight. Security could never be a hundred per cent perfect.
But why should anyone wish to blow up this particular aeroplane anyway? The passenger list, as far as he remembered, had given no indication of any political personages being on board, British or foreign, nor had there been any religious groups. The list had comprised mainly British and American businessmen and tourists of various nationalities. Could it have just been the indiscriminate work of a madman? Even so, there was usually a reason, no matter how vague or self-inspired, for an outrage of this kind yet, as far as he knew, the police had uncovered no evidence pointing to this.
He had argued the point with Tewson who had argued back that with almost three hundred and fifty people on board there were bound to be a few with grievances held against them. But then how could the bomb have been smuggled on board? The 747 had been thoroughly searched beforehand, as were all aircraft prior to takeoff, and how could a passenger have slipped through the massive security screen imposed particularly on major flights such as this? Tewson was sticking his neck out by even suggesting a bomb and had sworn Keller to secrecy again before leaving him, already regretting his over-enthusiasm for his own cleverness. Even so, there was something more that diverted Keller’s attention away from thoughts of explosives.
It was the sudden flashback in memory; the frozen picture which had abruptly focused in his mind. The skipper’s face, his mouth open as though shouting something in alarm – or was it anger? The thought jolted him into an upright position. Perhaps it hadn’t been fear he’d remembered on Captain Rogan’s face; perhaps he’d been shouting in anger – at him! They’d argued – fragments were coming back to him now – they’d argued before the flight. Had it been that day, or had it been the night before? No, it had been the day before. The pieces were falling into place now; they began to form a picture. The argument had been violent, not physically, he was sure, but verbally. He could see the skipper’s face before him now, white, tight-lipped with suppressed fury, his fists clenched, held stiff at his sides as though the effort to keep them from Keller’s throat was overwhelming. And his own anger. He remembered he had not stood silent against the captain’s tirade; he had struck back, again with words only, but they were just as damaging as physical blows. Maybe more so.
Could that have played any part in the destruction of the 747? Could the feud have carried on once inside the aircraft? Could it have caused an error in pilot judgement? No, he was sure they had both been too professional for that. And yet, the look on Captain Rogan’s face just before they’d crashed . . . And now, another fragment had fallen into place.
The flashback was of a moment in time just before they’d gone into the dive. He remembered the atmosphere in the cockpit: the glowing instrument panels, the dark night outside and the tiny clusters of light that were towns far below, the skipper’s white face, looking up at him, as though he, Keller, were rising from his seat. What were the words, the words coming from Rogan’s lips, directed at him? Shouted words. Fear or anger. Which? He could see the picture now so clearly. If only the words would come through.
The picture began to fade, and he knew he had lost it. He felt the warm glow from his cigarette and stubbed it out before his fingers were burnt. He sipped at the Scotch and looked towards the sideboard where the picture of Cathy lay face down. He heaved himself from the armchair and walked over to it, pausing before he picked it up. The photograph had lain like that since the crash. It had been the first thing he’d done when they’d allowed him to return home; he’d gone straight
to the picture and turned it flat against the sideboard, not wanting to look at her face. Now he picked it up and looked at the smiling image, feeling no tears, for his crying was done, leaving him with only empty sadness – a strange, calm sadness. He stood the picture up and thought of Cathy, the photograph only a superficial replica of someone who had once existed, giving only a hint of what lay beyond those smiling eyes.
She had moved in with him only three months before the fatal day, but their courtship had begun a year before, casual at first – casual on both sides – but gradually and unavoidably growing into something else; more binding and more enduring than either had thought possible. Their attachment had fanned when she, on her test flight as head flight attendant, had had to deal with a sudden cardiac arrest. He had gone back to help and, between them, they’d managed to keep the elderly passenger alive until they’d reached their destination. He’d met her a couple of times before that particular flight, and had certainly found her attractive, but because of other romantic commitments had not gone out of his way to form a better acquaintanceship. But the mutual involvement, created through the saving of a human life, cut through any other considerations.
They had soon developed an affectionate, undemanding relationship which slowly, as they became more aware of each other’s sensitivities and individuality, grew into a deep and unquestioning love. They had kept their affair fairly well to themselves, knowing that their particular airline, although not actually frowning upon romances between members of air crews, did their best to keep such lovers on different flights; emotions of that sort had no place at 33,000 feet above sea level – too many things could go wrong that would need concentration and undivided attention. So they had kept it quiet, not wanting to miss the chance of visiting together so many exciting places on their stopovers. Of course, it was impossible to hide it from their closer working colleagues, especially for Keller, whose sudden lack of interest in other girls was noticeable in itself; but air crews are adept at keeping such matters within their own circles.
The Survivor Page 3