Someone Out There

by Catherine Hunt

  That was how it had been with him. She had come to see a play he was in, had recognized his name in the programme and talked to him afterwards. They’d met years ago, she said, when they were both still at school, had dated a couple of times. It made her laugh that it took him so long to remember. Clearly, the seventeen year old Laura hadn’t made much of an impression on him, she joked.

  It was only when she mentioned that he’d wanted to take some rather too sexy photos of her, that he’d smiled and the penny had dropped. He recalled that she had refused and he’d lost interest in her. He’d had other girlfriends who were more obliging.

  After the meeting at the theatre she had been the one to get in touch, to chase. He was used to that. He was a good looking man and women came easily to him. But this had been special. Never before had he been chased by a high flying, high earning and highly desirable lawyer. He was flattered and pleased and he chased her back.

  Laura worked hard for her success, worked the longest hours, took the cases that no one else wanted … and won them. He’d known her for six months before he realized why. She told him one night when she’d had too much to drink. It was a way of burying her demons, the guilt and self-doubt that had come to her with the knowledge of what her mother had endured while she had been blind to it. The harder she worked on other people’s problems, the less she focused on her own; the higher she climbed up the greasy legal pole, the more chance she’d start believing in herself and her confident shell would morph into her real self. It had been a choice, she said, between work and the vodka bottle.

  After a year or so, he had moved in to the house in central London that Laura owned. Two years after that, when his mother had her stroke, Laura had been keen, more than keen, to leave London and head for Sussex so that Joe could take up his new role with Greene’s. The demons were in retreat and she was ready to move on with her life.

  They married, sold the London house, and bought an old Sussex farmhouse just outside Rooks Green, a few miles from Brighton. Laura loved it – the change of pace, the countryside, and best of all, catching up again with friends she had almost lost touch with in her frenetic London life. He loved it too; it had given him a new start on a more equal footing with his wife.

  Gradually, almost without realizing it, Joe had grown less enamoured of Laura’s success, less willing to bask in her reflected glory, less willing to accompany her to the legal functions she needed to attend. As his own career went nowhere, it became an irritation. But once they were out of London and he had a business to run, it stopped bothering him.

  It was a very different problem now. He had loved Laura, had never meant to cheat on her. He had not wanted to, he told himself, it had just happened and there was absolutely nothing he could have done about it. It wasn’t his fault.

  One thing was sure, it could not go on much longer, this double life. He might be an actor, albeit an unsuccessful one, but it was a part he couldn’t play anymore. It was well past time for the curtain to come down.

  In the last few days Laura’s life had done a rare thing – it had skittered a little bit out of her control. She had been scared, put on the back foot and she’d needed his support. It had made him think hard about what he was doing.

  He stared at himself in the mirror. ‘What am I becoming?’ he muttered. Only a monster would behave the way he was. And he was not a monster. Was he?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Blood bubbled from the holes as Jeff Ingham wielded a pair of pliers and pulled the spikes of barbed wire from Valentine’s flesh. He stitched and dressed the wounds. There was a lot of tissue damage and he was worried about infection.

  All the time that he and the rest of the surgical team worked Laura stayed with them, assisting wherever she could. She didn’t say much, just asked a few details about what they were doing. In her mind, lurking behind her immediate fear and grief for the horse, was suspicion; suspicion that what had happened was not an accident at all, an uneasy, intuitive feeling that would not go away.

  The vet had done the X-rays and she watched him studying the pictures which would show how bad the break was, nervously awaiting his verdict. He ran a hand through his unruly hair, turning the pictures around, frowning in concentration.

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘There’s some good news. No evidence of a major break or a multiple break or a shattered bone. With a bit of luck it might be a fairly simple fracture, maybe even a hairline one. But there’s some serious swelling near the knee where the skin is broken.’

  He guessed any fracture was hidden by the swelling, saying it was often difficult to see the break straight away. After ten days or so, when it started to heal, it would be easier to spot on an X-ray because the new bone forming at the fracture site would show up.

  ‘We should wait then?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Give him a chance.’

  His answer was brutally frank.

  ‘I have to tell you that Valentine is a very sick horse. Because of the number and combination of his injuries there is a high risk of infection in one or both of his legs. Even if he avoids that, there are other major complications that may occur. His road to recovery will be hard and it’s likely to distress him badly.

  ‘He’ll need at least eight weeks of box rest for his cut leg. As for his fractured leg, on the best outcome, it’s likely to be a year before he can walk on it properly again. He’ll be immobile and probably on painkillers for much of that time. It would not be the wrong decision to put him to sleep. You shouldn’t feel guilty about it.’

  ‘Would it be the wrong decision to keep him alive?’ she asked quietly.

  He hesitated. ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. As long as you’re willing to pull the plug if things go badly, if he’s suffering and can’t stand the strain.’

  Laura imagined Valentine going crazy because of her misguided effort to save him, because she was too stubborn and too self-centred to see sense.

  ‘I understand and I will do that,’ she promised.

  She stayed with them another hour. Valentine had had a full anaesthetic and to get him upright again, and keep him upright so that the fracture could be joined, he had to be put in a full body sling. She watched as 560 kilograms of unconscious horse was hoisted into the air and gently manoeuvred into the sling. It was a strange and unnerving sight and it left her full of doubt.

  It seemed to take forever to get it right. His hindquarters must be properly supported so he would not tip backwards out of the sling. His weight must be evenly distributed and the multiple straps adjusted to avoid pressure points on his abdomen. He would be in the sling for some time and there were many dangers: his lungs could get compressed and congested; his digestion could be upset giving him colic; he could develop bad pressure sores. He would have to get used to sleeping in the sling and having his meals fed on a platform.

  When it was finally done Valentine stood immobile, dead to the world, his abdomen and chest supported by the contraption. The team began to unravel the Bob Jones bandage, then they would put a plaster cast on his leg.

  Laura stood up to go. On tiptoe, she kissed the white star on Valentine’s forehead.

  ‘You’ll make it,’ she whispered to the unconscious horse, swallowing hard on the lump rising in her throat, and limped out of the stable.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The clinic’s receptionist, relaxing after the morning surgery, saw Laura coming towards her and smiled. The arrival of Valentine and his battered rider, determined to save him, had been a major excitement. The receptionist was keen to hear full details of the drama straight, so to speak, from the horse’s mouth. She was disappointed. Laura, in pain and obsessed by the suspicion nagging at her mind, just asked if she’d mind calling a minicab then rapidly disappeared into the ladies toilet.

  Her left hip and her back hurt like hell and so did breathing; if she breathed in too deep her ribs shrieked in pain. She took off her riding hat and washed the dirt from her face. Her hair was tangled and sweaty. She found a gash o
n the side of her leg which had bled a lot on her trousers. It looked quite deep but it wasn’t bleeding much anymore, so she cleaned it with some toilet paper and forgot about it. There was something she had to do and none of these injuries was going to stop her.

  She called Joe again, and again he didn’t answer. She texted him and left another message telling him about the accident. That word again. When the vet had said it, out on the hillside, it had hit her like a jet of cold water. Suddenly she had known, without any doubt whatsoever, that it had been no accident. But the certainty had faded and now she couldn’t be so sure. She was left with a feeling of unease and misgiving and an urgent need to know the truth of it.

  She scanned through the photos she’d taken of the scene, wincing as she saw the stricken horse. There was nothing obviously suspicious but she realized there were no detailed photographs of the exact spot where it had happened. Valentine’s momentum had taken him some way further on and her pictures were mostly of the place where he had fallen to the ground. The rest were too general. She needed to go back for another look and she needed to do it now.

  The minicab driver was the chatty type and the bedraggled state of his passenger interested him. He was full of questions and when he heard her answers, told her she should be looking after herself instead of traipsing round the countryside again. It would be better if he took her to hospital for a check-up – she said no – better if he took her home – politely, she refused – where was her husband then? Good question, she thought.

  She asked him to drop her by the side of a narrow road across the top of the Downs from where, she judged, it was a short walk to the scene. He had given up arguing with her. He drove off, rolling his eyes in disapproval.

  Laura looked around. There was no one in sight so she climbed over the fence, gritting her teeth at the pain from her ribs and her hip, and headed across the field towards the clifftop.

  She found the place easily enough. There was no mistaking the dark patch of ground where Valentine’s blood had spilled. It made her a little queasy. She began searching the area, examining the ground methodically, moving slowly back from the dark patch down the track into the woods.

  Nothing. There was nothing to show that the fall was anything but an accident caused by her own stupidity. She knew she had been reckless to ride on private land where any kind of danger could be waiting. There was always a chance that a piece of barbed wire like the one that had brought down Valentine, would be left lying around. It was her own fault and she would have to accept it.

  The afternoon was dark, getting darker all the time, and it would not be long before it was too dark to see. Adrenaline had kept her going but it was wearing off fast and tiredness was setting in. She’d eaten nothing since breakfast and her legs were like jelly. She leaned back against a tree and slid dejectedly down to the earth. Poor old Valentine, was she being crazy to keep him alive?

  It was then that she saw it, half invisible in the growing dark. A piece of black rubber hosing tied around the trunk of a tree near the end of the track about two feet from the ground. Protruding from its end was a length of barbed wire. Across the track, around a tree on the other side, was another piece of black rubber hosing encasing another piece of barbed wire, a longer length this time with its end hanging loose on the ground. Laura’s heart jolted in her chest and she shot to her feet, weariness forgotten.

  Someone had strung the wire tight across the path. Someone had taken the trouble to put the ends in rubber hosing. Valentine had galloped full pelt straight into it and it had broken under his weight. Most had wrapped itself around his leg but the rest remained tied to the trees.

  Fear pulsed through her. Who could have done such a thing and why had they done it? Her heart raced as she felt again that the fall had been no accident. Her intuition was back, telling her, loud and clear, that the barbed wire had been meant for her, had been meant to take her down.

  She struggled to stay objective, took hold of her conclusion and tried to overturn it. What other reason could someone have for putting up that wire? Perhaps to stop motorbikes using the path, to deter poachers or other trespassers like herself. She could think up reasons but none of them satisfied her. It was a callous, thoughtless act and whoever had done it hadn’t cared about the consequences, hadn’t cared if they killed someone. Maybe they had wanted to kill someone. Maybe that someone was her.

  She asked herself how it could possibly have been aimed at her. No-one knew she rode there – for obvious reasons she had never mentioned it at the stables. A creepy feeling came over her, one that made the little hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Could someone have been following her, watching her? She came this way every Saturday after all. She thought about the car chase, the troll on the website, Harry Pelham. He was in hospital but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have put up the wire a couple of days ago or got someone else to do it for him.

  Her cold hands fumbled for her phone in her jacket pocket. She needed photos of the wires on the trees if she was going to prove anything.

  In her jittery state, the angry voice behind her made her jump a mile high. She spun round to find a large, middle-aged man with a stick and an Alsatian, confronting her.

  ‘Oi, this is private land,’ he jabbed a finger at her. ‘Clear off.’

  Laura showed her palms defensively, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not doing any harm, I’m just looking for something.’

  He looked her over and what he saw seemed to make him more annoyed.

  ‘Are you the silly cow who’s caused all the fuss today?’

  ‘Yes, I guess I probably am, I’m really sorry.’

  ‘What are you doing back here again?’ He came a step closer, ‘Don’t you know you’ve got no right to be here?’

  ‘I do and I’m sorry but … ’

  ‘Donoghue told me what happened, told me it was one idiot rider who will be barred from the stables. I told him, and I’m telling you now, if you or anyone else ever comes here again, I’ll prosecute. Do you understand?’

  ‘I almost died this morning and my horse probably will die and I wanted to find out what made us fall,’ Laura was unable keep a tremor from her voice.

  ‘It’s your own stupid fault for riding where you shouldn’t. Now I’ve asked you to leave. I won’t ask politely again.’

  ‘There was barbed wire strung up between these trees,’ she persisted, pointing to one of the wire ends. ‘We galloped into it. Do you know how it got there?’

  He looked at the wire then crossed the track and bent down to examine the other one.

  ‘Damn kids, I suppose,’ he muttered to the dog and she only just caught what he said.

  ‘Does that mean you don’t know anything about it?’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ he said, inspecting the rubber casing.

  Laura took out her mobile, ‘I just need to get some pictures.’

  He moved quickly towards her and knocked the phone from her hand. ‘No photos. Get out, get out now,’ he raised his stick. The dog growled.

  She grabbed the phone off the ground and backed off fast taking a couple of hurried shots as she went.

  He watched her go then turned his attention to the wire. He had no idea how it had got there but he didn’t want to be blamed for it. He removed the wire ends from the tree trunks and pocketed them. He noticed the rubber meant no marks had been left on the trees. Now, if anyone else came snooping, there would be nothing for them to see.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Harry Pelham stood in front of the nurses’ desk demanding to know why the man, ‘that nutter’ as he called him, had been allowed to get into his room. Harry was big and chunky and his heavy black brows were drawn together in a scowl. The nurse was looking at him nervously. He thought she might call security so he stopped barking at her.

  ‘Typical police,’ he said, more quietly and winked at her. ‘Never around when you want them.’

  The police guard had left late on Friday afternoon and Harry made no secr
et of how pleased he was to see the back of them. The consultant had told them Harry was being kept in for observation for a few more days. The doctors originally thought he’d had a mild heart attack, but test results had not confirmed this. Still, they wanted to keep an eye on him for a bit longer. The policemen reported back to Barnes, and a few hours later, Harry was granted bail. There had been conditions though and they’d made him furious. He was not to contact his wife and child, directly or indirectly; he was banned from going anywhere near them; he must live at a specified address and sleep there every night so the police knew where to find him; he was not to access any computers so there was no chance of him re-offending.

  The conditions were vindictive, he thought, and they had Laura Maxwell’s fingerprints all over them. He protested loudly to Ronnie but Ronnie said impatiently there was nothing he could do about any of it, at least not until the computers had been examined. He told Harry the police would want to finish their questioning, probably on Monday if the doctors said he was fit enough. He warned Harry not to leave the hospital in the meantime.

  The nurse didn’t like the wink and she didn’t smile. She didn’t say anything either in case it set him off again. The police wanted to question him about some unexplained offence, rumoured to be something horrible, he’d just finished yelling at the man who’d come to visit him and now, here he was, kicking off at her. He was dangerous and she wasn’t taking any chances.