“Maybe. But I just wish I knew who it was. I wish I could find him myself.”
Sarah stared at her and narrowed her eyes. “And what would you do?”
Kirsten paused and drew a circle on the wet table with her finger. “I think I’d kill him.”
“Vigilante justice?”
“Why not?”
“Have you ever thought that it might turn out the other way round, that he’d be the one killing you?”
“Yes,” Kirsten said quietly. “I’ve thought of that.”
“Don’t tell me you’re feeling suicidal?”
“No, that’s gone. Dr. Henderson, Laura, helped a lot. They all say I’m making wonderful progress, and I suppose I am really, but…”
“But what?”
Kirsten fumbled for a cigarette. Sarah raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. The couple beside them left and two young men took their place. Someone put a U2 song on the jukebox and Kirsten had to speak louder to make herself heard. “They don’t know what it feels like to be me, do they? Living half a life, in limbo. I don’t feel that I’ll get out of it until I’ve met him again and I know he’s dead.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Sarah. “Besides, you wouldn’t know where to look for him any more than the police do.”
“No, I wouldn’t. Not yet, anyway.” She took a long deep drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. “Shall we have another drink? Then you can tell me all about the others and how Harridan’s doing.”
Sarah nodded and Kirsten made her way to the bar. She didn’t have to wait long to get served. The crowd had thinned out a bit now, as many of the after-work drinkers had gone home and the evening regulars hadn’t arrived yet. The two lads at the next table were still there, though, talking enthusiastically about girls. Kirsten ignored the way they looked at her as she walked back, and sat down again.
“What about Galen?” Sarah asked.
“I got a Christmas card from him. He seems to be doing all right.”
“Are you two…?”
Kirsten shook her head. “It’s not his fault, really. He tried—god, how he tried—but I put him off. I don’t think I could handle a relationship with a man right now.” She remembered that she had never told Sarah the full extent of her injuries and wondered whether she should do so. Not now, she decided, but perhaps sometime over the next few days. Sarah had stuck by her; she deserved to know. Kirsten also remembered the small pile of unopened letters, most of them from Galen, that she had put away in her drawer.
As they chatted about old friends, the bookshop and the bedsit, Kirsten noticed the two lads looking at her again and talking to one another. During a lull in the conversation, the old Kinks song on the jukebox ended and she overheard them.
One said something about her looking stuck-up and needing a really good fuck. The other laughed and said something she could only catch the end of: “…enough cock to pave the road from here to Land’s End—ends up!” And they burst into laughter.
Kirsten whirled round and flung the rest of her lager at them. As they recoiled in shock, their knees knocked the table and their glasses tipped over, rolled onto the stone floor and smashed. Beer spilled all over the place. In a flash, the landlord rushed over. “Hey! I don’t want no trouble.” Before they knew what had happened, Kirsten and Sarah found themselves back out in Cheap Street. They had no idea where the two boys had got to.
Kirsten leaned against a lamppost to catch her breath, and Sarah stood beside her, laughing. “Well, you really showed them, didn’t you? And I thought getting chucked out of pubs was my speciality.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“Yeah, some of it. Come on, love, let’s walk a bit. Their kind’s not worth bothering about. Besides, it’s not as far from here to Land’s End as it is from up north.”
“I suppose that does water down the insult a bit,” Kirsten said. “Lancashire, I’d say, from the way they talked. Probably Manchester.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows. “I’m impressed. I’ve already forgotten most of what I learned last year, but you still remember that linguistics stuff.”
Kirsten managed a smile. “I suppose it’s like riding a bike. You never forget. Anyway, we should be going home soon. I said we wouldn’t be late.”
The snow was still falling. Now the flakes were bigger and fatter, and an inch or two had settled on the roads and pavements, where it was soon churned up into gray slush by cars and pedestrians. They walked past the floodlit Abbey and turned right onto Pierrepont Street. Beyond Parade Gardens, the river reflected the strings of red-and-green Christmas lights, and snowflakes drifted down to melt on the water’s surface. There were still plenty of shoppers about with huge carrier bags full of presents.
“Nice,” said Sarah, when she saw the Audi.
Kirsten took a scraper from the boot and wiped the snow from the windscreen, then she negotiated the one-way system onto Wells Road. Soon they had left the city behind and turned off the main road onto the narrow country lanes. Here the snow lay undisturbed before the car’s wheels, a pristine white carpet glittering in the headlights. Thick flakes fell and stuck to the window, melting before the wipers could brush them away.
Almost without realizing it, Kirsten found herself pressing her foot down on the accelerator. She knew these winding roads like the back of her hand. They were all so narrow that drivers had to pull into the frequent passing places if they met someone coming in the opposite direction, and the hedgerows were so tall that no one could see what was around the next corner. Kirsten felt the car going faster and faster, the snow rushing at the windscreen like a blizzard. She started to slip a little on the corners. The needle edged higher and adrenaline surged in her veins. She couldn’t stop herself even if she wanted to.
After a while, she became aware of a distant voice and felt a hand shaking her. It was Sarah yelling for her to slow down. She looked terrified. All of a sudden, Kirsten felt herself snap back, and eased her foot off the accelerator. She felt drained. Sarah was still ranting on about getting them killed and asking her if she was crazy. Finally, Kirsten just had to stop. She pulled into the first passing place she came across, put on the brakes and turned off the engine. Her hands were shaking on the wheel.
“Are you trying to get us both killed?” Sarah yelled.
Kirsten couldn’t speak.
“Well, it’s all right with me if you want to kill yourself,” Sarah went on angrily, “but just leave me out of it, all right? I’d rather bloody well walk, even though I don’t know where the hell I am.” And she reached for the door handle.
Kirsten leaned over to stop her. “Don’t,” she said urgently. “I’m sorry, Sarah, I…I don’t know…”
Sarah paused and turned back, concern showing in her fine, pale features. “You all right?”
Kirsten’s hands still gripped the wheel so tightly that her knuckles shone as white as the snow. She shook her head. She could feel the intense silence and darkness outside the car. Without lights, the snow only showed up as a faint pearly sheen on the road and hedges. The Mendip Hills were lost somewhere in the night. Inside, their breath misted the windows.
“Kirstie?” Sarah asked again. “Are you all right, love?”
Kirsten let go of the wheel and threw herself toward Sarah with a strength and desperation that almost sent them both flying out of the door.
“No,” she cried. “No, I’m not all right at all.”
She hung on tight and felt Sarah’s arms close around her, holding her and muttering soft words. For the first time since it happened, she began to really cry. The warm salt tears didn’t just trickle down her cheeks, they welled up in her eyes and poured over onto Sarah’s shoulder as Kirsten clung on and sobbed.
37
Susan
After two days without success, Sue almost gave up. There seemed to be too many obstacles in her way, and she was making too many mistakes. For a start, the conversation with the woman in Rose’s Café worrie
d her, then she overheard two workers talking and learned that the factory operated on a shift system. Only the office workers came teeming out of the mesh gates at five o’clock. Most of the people on the shop floor worked one of the shifts: noon to eight, eight to four and four to noon. Finding him now seemed like an impossible task. She could hardly turn up there at four in the morning and stand gawking as the workers filed out.
Even the weather continued to work against her. It rained on and off, and the temperature dropped low enough that she had to wear her cardigan under the raincoat. She was quite prepared to spend some of her fast-dwindling money on binoculars and go up to the woods, even though the ground would be wet, but luckily it didn’t come to that. A couple of pieces of good luck kept her going.
The first evening at five, she approached the gates again, and when she passed the café she noticed a different woman behind the counter. This one was younger, with long, stringy blond hair. There were a few people sitting in the place already, so Sue entered, head bowed like someone just seeking refuge from the rain, bought a cup of tea without having to answer any questions, and took the window seat. Perhaps the woman she had met there before only worked lunchtimes? She wouldn’t need to spend so much of her money on binoculars and end up catching pneumonia in the damp woods after all.
The problem of the shifts remained, and Sue didn’t know how to get around that one. She certainly couldn’t afford binoculars with infrared lenses, so the four a.m. changeover was beyond her. That left noon and eight at night, both of which she could cover from the Brown Cow.
Cheered by the turn in her fortunes, Sue left Rose’s Café just after five thirty on the first day, treated herself to cannelloni and salad in a rather expensive restaurant on New Quay Road near the station—a place that didn’t specialize in fish and chips—and then went back over the Esk at a quarter to eight to find the Brown Cow. Instead of turning right at the cul-de-sac that led to the factory, she continued up the lane past the edge of the council estate and found the pub about a hundred yards further on. It was an undistinguished modern redbrick place with a Tetley’s sign hanging outside.
The doors opened into a large lounge, completely lacking in character: dull beige wallpaper and a stained brown carpet, sticky and worn in patches. The tables were made of some kind of tough black plastic, and the molded seats were uncomfortable. It was a functional place. Clearly the only people who went there were those who lived on the nearby estate. Factory workers might drop by at lunchtime, Sue thought glumly, but they weren’t likely to make an evening of it there when the shift ended at eight o’clock.
However depressing the Brown Cow seemed to Sue, though, it was certainly busy enough. Well over three-quarters of the tables were occupied, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. The obligatory jukebox had a tendency toward ancient Engelbert Humperdinck and Tom Jones songs, and the row of one-armed bandits and video games winked seductively by the far wall like a line of tarts in a brothel. Plump women smoked and gossiped while plump men smoked and shoved coins into the machines.
In her raincoat and hood, Sue thought she looked drab and anonymous enough not to attract too much attention in her dim corner. As it turned out, though, she didn’t have to stay long. When no crowd of workers had turned up by twenty-five past eight, she felt her suspicions confirmed and left. Like most seaside cafés, Rose’s had closed at six o’clock, just about the time when people were ready for dinner, so there was nowhere else to watch from.
Lunchtime on the second day seemed more promising. Not only did several of the office workers call in at the Brown Cow, but quite a few of the factory men came in for a pie and a pint at the end of their shift. Sue still didn’t see the man she wanted, and she began to wonder how much longer she could go on. Though Keith’s body hadn’t been found yet and nothing new had appeared in the papers, she was beginning to worry that the police might be getting close. Her money wouldn’t last forever, either, and she hardly dared contemplate the consequences if she was wrong about her quarry’s origins. She had put so much energy into the search, gambled so much of herself on the outcome, that failure didn’t bear thinking about. Especially now that two innocent people lay dead because of her.
She went to Rose’s Café again that evening around five and turned up at the Brown Cow at eight. Still nothing. By the third day she was thoroughly discouraged and depressed by the endless shuttling between two such awful environments. The world she now seemed to inhabit, though no more than a mile or so from the beach, the whale’s jawbone, Captain Cook’s statue, St. Mary’s and the twee shops of Church Street, was so drab and anonymous that it could have been almost anywhere in any English city.
It was also a world of shadows. She was getting jumpy, thinking people were following her and watching her. It was silly, she told herself. She was the one doing the watching. But she couldn’t get the feeling out of her mind. She hardly slept at night now, and not only because of the gulls. She started to think that her days in the sun on West Cliff had been a dream; now she had passed through the whale’s jawbone into its dark, dank, dripping belly and there was no way out. Then, on the third day, she saw him.
38
Kirsten
The green fronds began to sway and Kirsten felt the weight of the ocean on her eyelids. Laura’s voice murmured in the distance, urging her deeper, pressing her on, and then she heard the buzzing in her ears and she was walking out into the street one muggy June night eons ago…
She could feel the tarmac path, softened by the day’s heat, yield like a pile carpet under her feet and hear the swishing of her jeans as she walked. A car droned in the distance. A dog barked. Kirsten looked up. The stars were fat and blurred, almost butter-colored in the haze, but she couldn’t find the moon. It must be behind those high trees, she thought as she hurried on.
She stood at the center of the park, where she could see the glow of the haloed streetlights beyond the trees, and felt an urge to sit on the lion. She walked across the narrow patch of grass and mounted it. Images of cockatoos, monkeys, insects and snakes ran through her mind. She laughed and tossed her head back to look for the moon again behind the trees, then she felt the rough hand over her mouth and nose.
Her chest was tight and she knew she was kicking and struggling for air as someone maneuvered her off the lion onto her back. Long grass tickled the nape of her neck.
And suddenly there was a moon. It was shining through a gap between the trees on the spot where she had been dragged. And it lit up his face. It was dim and ghostly in the pale light, but a face nonetheless: deeply lined, with a short, black fringe low on the broad forehead and dark eyebrows that met in the middle. And his eyes. Even in the poor light she could see how they glittered and how they were far beyond reason.
For a moment, the image seemed to freeze and two time frames superimposed. She lay pinned to the ground, looking up into his face, but at the same time she seemed to be facing him directly through a haze. The vision disappeared almost as soon as it had formed. Again she lay on the ground fighting for breath as he shoved a coarse oily rag in her mouth. She was gagging, suffocating, she couldn’t go on…The next thing she heard was Laura’s voice slowly drawing her up from the depths.
Kirsten opened her eyes and took several deep breaths. Laura poured her a cup of coffee. As usual after the hypnotherapy sessions, Kirsten was grateful for the big window and its view of the city. She felt she had been lost in a deep airless vault and needed some air in her lungs, to see horizons again. Laura always waited a while before speaking, but this time Kirsten broke the silence.
“Did you get it all down?”
Laura nodded. She looked pale. “You went further than you’ve ever been before.”
“I know. This time it was different. I couldn’t stop myself going on even if I wanted. Until he put that awful smelly rag…I couldn’t breathe. I was choking.” She put her hand to her throat as if she still felt the pain.
“Your voice wasn’t always easy to ca
tch,” Laura said. “You spoke very quickly, and sometimes you mumbled. Could we go over some of the details?”
Kirsten nodded, and Laura took notes as they analyzed the session. When it was over, Kirsten wandered out into the gray day and stood watching the Avon churn down by the city weir. She felt curiously detached from the bustling city life around her. She knew that she could have gone on reliving the experience if it hadn’t been for the choking sensation. That had felt too real to suffer through. But she did remember something else now, something she hadn’t been quite able to grasp at the time. Hands in pockets, she sauntered toward High Street to meet Sarah for lunch.
The pub was warm and noisy. Conversations swirled around Kirsten like the buzzing of insects. She felt as if she were floating. It was a pleasant sensation, though; it had been a long time since she had felt grateful for the atmosphere of a crowded pub. Sarah was sitting close to the side door, a half of lager in front of her and a paperback in her hand. Kirsten waved to her, stopped at the bar for drinks and went over. Sarah shifted some parcels from the chair next to her and put them on the floor. Kirsten sat down.
“Christmas presents,” Sarah said.
Kirsten sipped her double Scotch and reached for her cigarettes.
“Are you all right?” Sarah asked. “You look a bit pale.”
“I’m fine,” Kirsten said. “I just had a bit of a shock, that’s all. I feel dazed.”
“What was it? The hypnosis?”
Kirsten nodded. “I remembered, Sarah. I remembered what he looked like.” Her voice sounded shaky and far away to her.
Sarah put her hand on Kirsten’s arm. “You don’t have to talk about it—”
“No, it’s all right. I don’t mind. At least not with you anyway…a friend. Laura’s a doctor. She’s being paid to help me, however nice she is. I mean, I like her and I’m very grateful to her, but…”
“It doesn’t go any deeper?”
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