Scream for Sarah

by Veronica Heley

  I said, ‘We’ve got two single beds in our bedroom, and we have a camp bed we can put up in the living-room. Also there’s a sofa. My flat-mate sometimes stays overnight with her boyfriend, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t ring her before we leave here … from the call-box down the road … she wouldn’t mind, I’m sure, if I suggested she let me have the flat to myself tonight. There’s no porter, or anything like that. No one need see you.’

  ‘And I don’t fancy a night spent sitting upright at the airport,’ said Rose.

  ‘It could be a trap,’ said Toby.

  ‘No trap!’ I assured him. ‘You were going to give me some money so that I could have a good holiday abroad, weren’t you? Well, I’ll do just that. We’ll all go to the airport early tomorrow morning. Hob and I will catch the first plane out—it doesn’t matter where it goes to. You can see us off, and then catch your own plane.’

  ‘Radio links. You could contact the police via the pilot.’

  Rose gave me a bright smile. ‘Or we could always leave them tied up in her flat, Toby … Why not? That was your original plan for her, wasn’t it? Her flat-mate would find her when she got back from work, so she wouldn’t come to any harm.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Toby.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ said Rose, and kissed him. She was all smiles, helping me wash up. I wasn’t. I thought Toby had given in too easily, and feared he’d thought up some plan to counter mine. He couldn’t allow us to live, could he?

  As I put the last of the pans back into place, Mr. Brent’s truck came trundling down the lane. He’d come himself, with one of his men, and two young lads—the sons of his head cow-man—who were on holiday. I went out, with Toby whom I introduced to him. Rose stayed indoors, out of sight. I had to apologise for having allowed the hens to run free, but as I hadn’t fed them that morning, they were comparatively easy to catch. Toby volunteered to help, and stuck so close to me that I had no chance to speak to any of our visitors privately. In fact, I didn’t dare try, for as we went to fetch some grain he muttered in my ear that Sid had orders to strangle Hob if I gave the game away.

  We rounded up most of the hens with ease, but one or two were annoyingly evasive, and we had to hunt them all over the place. At one point I tripped over the rubbish in the middle of the yard, but luckily I fell on something soft—the suit Hob had worn when he arrived. A patched trouser leg lay uppermost. The original tweed suit must have been a good one; a fine dog-tooth pattern of brown and green. The patch was of a different colour, a rust brown. I remembered both tweeds well; I remembered my grandfather wearing that suit, and the patch had been taken from a pleated skirt my grandmother had made for me when I was a child. Hob had stumbled into my life wearing a cast-off suit of my grandfather’s.

  I staggered to my feet, reeling. One of the boys asked me whether I’d hurt myself. I shook my head.

  ‘That the old scarecrow suit?’ he asked. ‘Saw he’d lost it, the other morning. Going to let us have it back, then?’

  I held it out to him, and looked around for Toby. Luckily he was involved with Mr. Brent, discussing the finer points of Range Rovers, or some such mechanical matter. The scarecrow.

  Of course! Grandfather had let Mr. Brent have his old suit for the scarecrow which stood in the lower field, the field which bordered the road along which Hob must have come. Hob had been walking along the road when Toby had come haring along in my Mini, and knocked him down.

  So far so good.

  So what had Hob been wearing when Toby knocked him down?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Toby put his arm round me as I waved good-bye to the Brent truck, and my hens. He had called me ‘darling’ several times while the visitors had been around, and had kept up the pretence of being my boyfriend very well.

  I shook his arm off as our visitors rounded the bend in the lane.

  ‘Naughty!’ said Toby, and laughed.

  ‘If you try to touch me again I’ll tell Rose.’

  His face hardened, but I didn’t follow up my advantage. I wanted time to think before I spoke to him again, and above all, I wanted to find the scrap of paper which Rose had pocketed last night behind Toby’s back. I remembered how she and Sid had kept looking at it, and then at us, comparing … what?

  ‘Coffee!’ he said ‘And then we’ll trot along to the phone box and ring your flat-mate, all right?’ He cupped his hands and yelled to Sid to come down.

  I went inside, and put the kettle on. Sid plodded down the stairs and went outside, where he and Toby began to transfer the money from the van back into the house. Rose was nowhere to be seen—probably upstairs; yes, I could hear bath water running. She had left her handbag on the table, so I waited till Toby and Sid were in the yard before snatching it up and retreating with it to the kitchen. Rose was untidy; lipsticks, eyebrow pencils, used tissues, were all jumbled together in the bottom of her bag, together with stubs of tickets, a greasy film of powder … Ugh! In side pockets she had a lot of papers, including her driving licence, but no newspaper cutting. I slammed the bag down, annoyed. Her powder compact flew open, and there it was, carefully folded into four.

  I smoothed it out, to see a head and shoulders snap of Hob, dressed in collar and tie, with hair and beard neatly trimmed.

  “Brilliant Young Archaeologist Disappears” I read. “The car and clothes of Mr. James Denison, one of our foremost authorities on Roman Britain, were found early yesterday morning in mysterious circumstances. Mr. Denison, a lecturer at South Bank University, had been spending a sailing holiday with friends in Sussex, and was due to arrive in York today to advise on the preservation of some Roman remains recently uncovered on a building site. Instead, his car was discovered by a farm hand on the smooth green bank of a river in the very heart of the English countryside. It seems that Mr. Denison decided to take a midnight swim, and, unaware of the treacherous nature of the local waters, got into difficulties and drowned. His body has not yet been recovered. For obituary notice, see page …”

  Rose yelled down the stairs that she could do with some coffee, too. I suddenly realised that the kettle was boiling, and busied myself with cups and saucers.

  So Hob was Mr. Brent’s suicide! Or rather, the missing body.

  I must stop calling him Hob; his name was James Denison, and he wasn’t a tramp or a teacher, but a ‘Brilliant Young Archaeologist’. I wondered if he really had lost his memory, and how he had come to fall foul of Toby.

  I took coffee out to Toby and Sid, who were cleaning the van of fingerprints. Rose picked up her own cup and came out to join us, smelling of my talcum powder. They stood talking in the sunshine, while I stole back into the house and tore up the stairs.

  He was sitting up, waiting for me.

  I proffered the newspaper cutting. He read it, grinning, and then cleared his throat.

  ‘So where’s my Obituary?’ he asked. ‘I’ve a fancy to read what people think of me now I’m supposed to be dead!’

  *

  He’d picked up a couple of hitch-hikers on his way up from the Coast, and because he was in no particular hurry, he had gone out of his way to put them down at their destination, which was the Festival site. Only then had he realised he was short of petrol. He’d started to look for a petrol station, but couldn’t find one, and had finally run out about half a mile down the road from the turning off to Elm Tree House. Taking his petrol can, he had set out on foot to walk to the nearest garage. It had been dark by then and he was wearing dark clothes; a black sweater over grey slacks. The Mini had come recklessly fast round a bend and hit him, tossing him half over the hedge into the field. He remembered being hurtled through the air, and then, although this was not at all clear, he thinks he half fell and half staggered out of the hedge and pitched over onto his head. He blacked out. When he came to himself, he was shivering; he was stretched out on his back in a field. He sat up and was promptly sick, so he guessed he’d concussed himself in his fall
.

  But he couldn’t understand why he’d been stripped; clothes, watch, wallet … even his shoes had disappeared. A half open gate stood near, leading onto the road, and beyond it he could see the dimmed lights of a parked car. He got to his knees, intending to call for help. Another car swept along the road and in its headlights he saw that a big, fair-haired man was tossing a bundle of clothes into the back of the parked car. His clothes. But not his car. Hob guessed correctly that the fair-headed man had run him down, thought him dead, and was now about to dispose of the body. Hob couldn’t guess what way or why—he wasn’t thinking too clearly—but he could guess that it wouldn’t do him any good to ask for help from the man who had run him down.

  At this point I felt I had to add to Hob’s story. ‘Toby must have lost his nerve. He’d come down here to mastermind a raid, and on his way to telephone the man who was supposed to be driving him to the Festival site, he ran you down. He thought he’d killed you. He couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself either by taking you to hospital, or calling the police, so he decided to stage an accident on the river bank. There are notices about the Angling Associations along that road, which he must have seen earlier, and of course the road follows the course of the river for a couple of miles on the way here. It was a brilliant piece of improvisation, I think!’

  ‘Horrifying,’ agreed Hob. He had a light, but pleasant voice. It had taken a minute or two for Hob to understand why Toby had stripped him, but when he did, he couldn’t think what to do. His first thought was to get to the road and flag down another motorist, but Toby stood between him and the road. Then Toby turned and came back into the field, presumably intending to collect one very dead body. The moment when the two men had come face to face must have been shattering for Toby.

  ‘And for me,’ said Hob, grinning sourly. ‘After the first moment of shock, I could see he was furious with me for being alive. He picked up a biggish stone that was propping the gate open, and came after me with it. A whole fleet of cars was passing by on the road at that moment, but they were less than no help, for they gave him enough light to see me by and remember that by that time I was half naked … I thought I could maybe dodge around and get back to the road somewhere else. I started to run away from the road and the headlights … I couldn’t run very fast, partly because I was still feeling groggy, and partly because I had no shoes on. On the other hand, once I was away from the road, it was very dark, and he couldn’t see as well as I. I came to another hedge, and got through it … I could hear him coming after me … I knew I wouldn’t last long in the open, especially if the moon should … There was a ditch. I rolled into it, and tried to camouflage myself with mud and leaves. It wasn’t deep, but there were one or two places where there was more cover than others. It seemed to me I must be visible for miles but I could hear him blundering about, even shouting for me … He went back to the car once, and I thought he’d gone. The moon was bright at the time … shifting clouds … you know? I daren’t risk moving. The field was a big one, with no cover in it. He came back, trying to move softly, but I heard him. He had a stick with him, and he beat at the hedge with it, frightened the wild life; but he missed me. He passed by on the other side of the hedge. I could hear him cursing. Then he changed his tactics and called out that he meant me no harm, that he wanted to take me to hospital. I remembered how he’d stripped me, and gone for me with a stone, and I stayed where I was. At last I heard him start up his car and drive off. By that time I was in a bad way. In theory I could go back to the road and flag down the next car, but I simply hadn’t the nerve to do so. I couldn’t remember what car my assailant had been driving—I’d only seen it for a flashing second in the headlights of another car—and I was scared I might step out and flag down not a friend, but the very man who had attacked me. It seemed to me only reasonable that he’d anticipate that I would go back to the road. All he would have to do to pick me up would be to patrol that stretch of road until I saw fit to return to it. Then I remembered my car; it wasn’t far off, and if I could find it, there was an old pair of trousers in the boot, and my briefcase in the back … with clothes and some evidence of identification, I could cope. But I couldn’t find my car. I must have gone the wrong way, I suppose, because although I was making my way along the road on the field side of the hedge, and I thought I’d left it only about a hundred yards along …’

  ‘Toby took it. He must have cruised along, as you said he would, until he came to an abandoned car. He’d check your wallet with the identification in the briefcase, realise the car belonged to you, and take it to the river bank, with your clothes, to stage your “suicide”.’

  ‘I ought to have seen his car then, but I didn’t. I think that knock on the head … well, I found the scarecrow at last, and took his things … saw your light and thought I’d get help here. Only when I got here, everything was dark, and the house locked up. I did knock, but nobody heard. I was a bit half-hearted, I suppose. I felt like death. I know I blacked out at least once on the way. I got the door of the garage open a crack, and crawled in. I don’t remember anything else until I heard your voice next morning, and stumbled out to see … him!’

  ‘Did you recognise him straight away?’

  ‘No, but I think I recognised him before he recognised me. We’d not seen each other clearly, you know, and maybe if I hadn’t lost my nerve and run … I heard it in his voice, then. He knew who I was, and he knew that I knew, because I’d run. I thought he’d kill me there and then. When I came round, I despaired. Of all the bad luck, to run and run, and run back to him! When he questioned me, I didn’t bother to reply. Maybe I’d been knocked on the head once too often, but I didn’t seem able to feel fear, or anything. Fatalistically, I waited for him to finish me off. Now you must remember that he’d never heard me speak; I acted dumb out of sullenness and despair, but perhaps because he couldn’t bring himself to kill me in front of you in cold blood, he made himself believe that I really was dumb. He accused me of being mentally deficient, of not being able to remember how I arrived here. I went along with his suggestion. Once started, I couldn’t drop the masquerade without laying myself open to danger. So long as he could persuade himself that I was no threat to him, so long I might live—and no longer.’

  ‘You could have told me.’

  ‘I thought you were in it with him at first. The only time he left us alone together was on that first day when I was chained up and couldn’t have run away even if I had spoken. After that, when I began to understand that you’d been conned, too …’ I went a painful red, but he merely smiled and touched my cheek, ‘… it was too late. If you come to think about it, we haven’t been given any opportunity until now to foregather and talk without their overhearing us.’

  We both glanced over to the window. It was shut, in spite of the warm weather, but we could faintly hear the voices of the three conspirators in the yard.

  ‘Even last night,’ said Hob. ‘I had decided to talk to you, but when every word they spoke next door could be heard by us, it didn’t seem to be a very good idea to break my silence. If we could have got free, and squeezed out of the window, then perhaps it might have been worth a try.’

  ‘This is the smallest window in the house,’ I said absently. ‘Besides, Toby has all the car keys, and we could never make it to the road without transport … at least, I might if I could find a decent pair of shoes, but you never could.’ I told him what I planned, and he approved. He said he’d been racking his brains for an alternate plan, but hadn’t managed to come up with anything fool-proof.

  ‘You’re so calm about it,’ I said. Somehow we were holding hands, which made it easier to talk to him ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

  ‘I’m tired. The shock of that night when he hunted me through the fields seems to have numbed me. Then the horror of watching that candle burning down … refuse to let myself panic again. I’ve had a good life, and done most of the things I wanted to do …’

  ‘Don’t be so apathetic!
’ I cried. ‘Don’t you want to live?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ he repeated. ‘My head aches. I want to rest … there’s nothing I can do.’ I kissed him.

  ‘Don’t!’ he said, but not as if he meant it. ‘Don’t wake me up again, Sarah. I’ve only just reasoned myself into a state of acceptance …’

  ‘Do I call you “James”?’

  ‘Go on calling me “Hob”. I like it, and it would be safer.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘A long time dead. And I’ve been a long time lonely.’

  ‘Am I like her?’

  ‘A little. They say men usually repeat their mistakes, don’t they?’

  ‘It would be a mistake to get involved with me?’

  ‘A figure of speech. We were happy enough until she became ill.’

  ‘I’m very healthy,’ I said, and then was furious with myself for being so gauche.

  He smiled. ‘And you can cook, and keep house, and you’re a terrible scold!’

  ‘I’m not good with men,’ I said, trying to be honest with him.

  ‘You will be,’ he assured me, meaning something else.

  ‘I will? I never thanked you for last night.’

  ‘It is I who should thank you. That was only the beginning, for you. If I could only show you …’

  ‘I thought there was more to it, than that!’

  He started to laugh, and I stifled the sound with my hand over his mouth. He took my hand away from his mouth and reached for me. He didn’t look tired or resigned to his fate now. I thought that I ought to tell him not to, because we were wasting time. But somehow I didn’t.

  *

  Rose was counting money into four piles; one big pile each for Toby, Sid and Rose, and one small pile for me. We watched in silence. Hob had been left upstairs, handcuffed to the bed, smiling sleepily into the sun.

  ‘All right?’ Toby asked. No one replied. ‘Then I’ll take Sarah along the road to make her phone call. No-one is likely to come here in our absence, are they?’