Deathwatch

by Nicola Morgan

  The need to scream was welling up inside her – but that knife at her side kept her silent. And a bubble of fear clogged her throat.

  Cat tried not to look at the foul silty water. At a mooring place, sat a houseboat. Cat recognized it: it belonged to the woman who’d given a crisp to Polly. Her brain was slow to understand. Until, suddenly, she did. This was that woman. But why, and what this meant, she could not imagine.

  The woman took Cat’s helmet. “Jump!” she instructed, with the knife still in her hand. Cat obeyed, grasping the rail. The woman then threw the helmets onto a coiled rope on the deck and unhooked a small ramp from the side of the houseboat. Cat should have done something then, jumped into the water, leapt at the woman while her hands were full – anything. But the sight of the knife took away all her courage and strength – her power to think or act.

  She watched dully as the woman wheeled the bike up the ramp, leaving it occupying most of the deck. There was another narrow ramp that the woman must use when she put the bike on the low cabin roof, but she did not do this now. The flowers on the top of the cabin were dead. An old discoloured saucepan sat there, and a plastic petrol container where the motorbike had been. All this, Cat vaguely noticed as she waited, powerless as a frightened rabbit.

  The woman unlocked a small door, opened it and pushed Cat in, so that she fell down two steps into the cabin. A smell of dead cigarette smoke hit her. And flowers, Cat knew the smell: lilies. Her mum was paranoid about the pollen staining things, always insisted on cutting the middle bits out. Stamens. The word came bizarrely to her. There was barely room to stand, and little surrounding space, though more than there had seemed to be from outside. Closed curtains and shutters kept the cabin cave-like. A sallow light from the canal path came through the door but otherwise all was dark.

  The woman had cast off the rope now and scrambled into the cabin, pulling the door behind her, forcing her way past Cat and pushing open another door at the far end, the back of the boat, where she could dimly see a wheel and a few dials. Cat saw her turning something and then there was a jarring rattle as the engine started up and the houseboat began to move. A dim electric light hung by the woman’s head, as she stood controlling the vessel. Cat could make out a little more of her surroundings: a bed further along, and the shadows of items, a box or trunk of some sort. And a vase on the table – lilies, huge, too big for the space. She felt the boat moving sluggishly, then picking up some speed.

  Unreality merged with real, gut-churning fear. Cat struggled to control her thoughts. She should rush the woman. Hit her on the head with something. But no, the woman could see Cat. And she still had the knife. Even if Cat tried to escape through the door they’d come through, the woman could throw the knife. The very thought of it was paralysing. It made her almost sick. She swallowed. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  She shivered, with cold, damp and terror. Her mum … there’d been no sound in the house. What if…?

  There must be something she could do. Her phone. Could she send a text without looking at it? Coat pocket. Slowly, very slowly, she moved her hand towards it.

  The woman shouted through the open door. “Looking for your phone?”

  “No. I haven’t … I don’t…”

  “Liar. Throw it here.”

  Cat hesitated.

  “Do it! Fast! I’m counting. One … two…”

  CHAPTER 37

  CONVERSATION

  CAT did as she was told, sliding the phone along the floor towards the open door. There were two missed calls, she could see.

  “Now sit down and shut up.” The woman left the phone there, only inches from where she stood.

  Cat’s body, colder now, began to shiver. It started with her leg, an uncontrollable shaking of one knee. And then, as she tried to tense her muscles against it, her whole body started to judder. Tears were not far away. She tried to breathe deeply, to tell herself that something would happen to save her. That if the woman wanted to kill her, surely she’d have done it by now. And as long as she didn’t kill her, she could cope with anything. Just don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, she silently prayed. She longed for her own house, her family. As she thought of them, the tears came closer.

  Damp was seeping through her clothes, cold on her skin.

  Time disappeared as the boat chugged along the canal. It could have been half an hour, or less, or more – ten minutes or forty – before she felt the vessel slow down. She looked through the far door, past the woman’s head. It seemed much darker here. Where were they? Why hadn’t she kept concentrating? If she’d been looking out properly she could have worked out where they were.

  She must keep her wits about her, look for any chance to escape. Breathe, control, breathe. Somehow, she would get through this.

  All she could see outside were trees, stretching high above them. There was a judder as the barge gently hit the side of the canal. The woman switched the engine off, rushed past her, out of the door and onto the deck, where she expertly looped the rope into a metal ring set into the wall. Cat could see that they were on the opposite side from the towpath, at a wide and lonely part of the canal.

  Back in the cabin, the woman closed the door behind her, switching a small light on. She picked up Cat’s phone. Her face showed nothing, though her thin hands shook a little. She was tall, slim, reedy, her legs – like a leggy spider’s – folding beneath her as she sat on a chair beside the table.

  “Stay where you are, where I can see you.” And she did look at Cat – stared, in fact.

  “What have you done to my mum?” Cat’s voice sounded loud in the small space.

  “She’s tied up.”

  Not worse then. Someone would find her. Her mum would be fine. Cat held onto that, not knowing if she could trust the woman, but needing to. So needing to.

  A squashed cigarette packet lay on the table beneath the lilies. The woman threw it into a bin and took a packet out of her pocket. The knife lay beside her on the table. With the phone. Out of Cat’s reach. Unless she moved very quickly. But her captor would get there first. The woman lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it.

  “Do you smoke?”

  “No.”

  “No doubt you think it’s a disgusting habit.”

  Cat said nothing.

  “Yes, well, I will smoke if I want to. This is not a public place.”

  Cat still said nothing. She tried to think of every story she’d ever read, every film she’d ever seen, where someone is kidnapped. Does the victim keep quiet? Or engage the captor in conversation? Should she agree with everything? Should she try to argue the woman out of whatever her plan was, or should she just go along with everything and wait for a moment to escape?

  She had no idea. Her mind was frozen. She hunched her shoulders up suddenly, wrapped her arms round herself. The woman’s hand jerked towards the knife. And then relaxed.

  The cold was in Cat’s bones. Her skin was clammy, soaked from the rain and sweat. Icy wet denim stiffened round her thighs. Her coat had given her some protection at first but now it too felt wet. The tiniest movement made the cold feel worse as another part of her body touched sodden garments.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The woman did not answer immediately. Cat looked at her face properly. The scar was worse than she’d thought when she first saw it. Small but white and raised. Dark bags dragged her eyes down. She looked … Cat wasn’t sure. Scared. Sad. Fragile. And yet, she had a knife. It was impossible not to think about that knife. It was sickeningly physical.

  The woman dragged deeply on her cigarette and slowly blew the smoke. Her hand was shaking more now. She reached for something on a low shelf just behind her. A packet of tablets. She pushed two out onto her hand and swallowed them without water. Pressed her fingers hard against her forehead.

  And then she spoke, her voice now soft and flat, watching Cat with eyes that barely moved. “Do you have dreams?” she asked.

&
nbsp; “I … what do you mean?”

  “Dreams. Do you dream about your future?”

  “I … I suppose.”

  “Come on! A girl like you, pretty, talented runner and swimmer – oh yes, I know all about you. I had a comfortable life too. Dreams. When I was ten, I was going to be a dancer. And then, when I was about your age, a rich lawyer. But later what I really dreamed of was…” The woman drew on her cigarette again, her eyes narrowing. “Happiness. I had this picture of myself, married, kids, house, yellow curtains. I’d make bread at a farmhouse table. I’d have lilies, big lilies, and their smell would fill the house. I saw it so clearly I could smell it. The bread and the lilies.” She kneaded the fingers of her left hand together.

  “Sorry, I don’t…”

  “Why would you? But let me tell you this: if you have dreams, prepare to lose them. Dreams are for fools.”

  Cat was silent, though anger was growing inside. That this woman should claim she knew her thoughts and dreams. And be so patronizing.

  The woman never took her eyes off Cat. But Cat held her own eyes steady as the woman continued. “Well, I know what you dream of. You want to be an athlete, don’t you? I read it. In the paper a few weeks ago. You won some competition, broke a record. And it said you were one of Scotland’s great hopes. You were going to do even better than your grandfather, some Olympic medallist I’ve never heard of. Well, don’t assume that your hopes will come true. It’s easy to think that, when you’re young. Then life happens.” And now the woman looked away, at the floor. She twisted her cigarette end into the table.

  “You don’t know!” Cat blurted the words out, stung, angry. “You don’t know what I want and you don’t know what will happen. Just because you…” But what? She knew nothing about this woman.

  “Just because I what?” The woman’s voice now was sharp.

  “I don’t know. You haven’t told me. Are you going to tell me?” She wasn’t sure that she wanted to hear, but keeping the woman talking was all she could do. If she could discover what she planned, maybe she could find a way to change her mind. If her mum was here, she’d know what to say. But she wasn’t here, and nor was her dad. She was on her own. Cold, and very, very frightened. The panic threatened to choke her again. She swallowed, looked at the woman, challenging her with her eyes.

  The woman spoke. “She would have looked like you, I know she would. She’d have had your hair. I’d have made her be just like you, strong and everything. I’d have given her dreams too, better dreams than mine, and I’d have followed them with her.”

  “Who?”

  After the slightest hesitation, the woman answered, “My daughter.” Cat said nothing. Waited. She knew what was coming. She could see it in the woman’s eyes. Something crying out. “She died.”

  CHAPTER 38

  TRUTH

  CAT barely breathed. “How old was she?”

  Now the voice was muslin soft and flat. “No age at all. She never lived. Stillborn, they call it. Unborn, I’d say. I never saw her. Sometimes they let you see them. I didn’t. I couldn’t. But she would have been like you, I know she would. I’ve watched you. I know. I just know.”

  “But why me? There are lots of girls like me.”

  “But not with your father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your father and my husband – ex-husband, pardon me – were in the Gulf, the First Gulf War. My husband was destroyed by it. Our marriage was destroyed by it. Your father destroyed him. Us. Me.”

  “That’s…” Cat wanted to say it was ridiculous.

  “After my husband came back, I had to listen to his nightmares almost every night. I watched him, drunk, ranting about what he’d seen. Once he hurled a bottle of whisky against a wall when I told him to stop drinking. The glass cut my cheek and he wouldn’t take me to hospital. Well, he couldn’t, could he? He was drunk. But he wouldn’t let me phone. I was pregnant.” The woman stroked the scar on her face.

  “But my father…”

  “Was the man he spoke about. Over and over. Your father was the man who did not help while my husband held his dying friend’s shattered head. Your father was the man my husband blamed. And then your father had a daughter. When I lost my baby. The day I lost my baby, your father was supposed to be my doctor. But it was another doctor who looked after me while the ambulance came. Because your father was at the hospital, watching you being born.” The woman gathered herself together. She lit another cigarette.

  “And I did OK, you know. I really did. Friends helped. But my marriage broke down and that was hard too. But I really did deal with it. Until this summer.” She paused. “Danny was pretty upset.”

  Danny! What was this?

  “Danny?”

  “My nephew. Ex, I suppose.”

  And then Cat understood. This was Uncle Walter’s ex-wife.

  “Walter – my ex – told me that Danny was going out with the daughter of Bill McPherson. Wasn’t that amazing, he said? Walter’s writing his memoirs – my idea, for him to try to deal with his ghosts – and in his research he came across an article written by … guess who? Diana McPherson. Any relation, we wondered? Of course it’s a relation! It’s your mother. Your mother who thinks she can pontificate about Gulf War syndrome when she knows nothing. Sod bloody all. And then I saw you. I’d been watching your house. I wanted to see you, only see you, to see what you were like. And there you were. All glowing and healthy and off to some competition or something, and your parents both getting in the car with you, and all of you just looking so damned … happy.”

  The woman sucked on her cigarette, her hands still now, the fingers clenched.

  “But how is this going to help? Kidnapping me and hurting my mum? I’m really sorry about everything that’s happened to you but … I mean, what do you want? What do you want me to do? My parents will do anything. Is it money?”

  The woman laughed. Pulled the cork out of a bottle of red wine and slopped a large amount into a glass. Drank from it, three large mouthfuls.

  “Can I stand up?” asked Cat.

  “No. Stay where you are.” The viciousness had come back into her voice.

  “But I’ve got pins and needles,” lied Cat. “It’s really bad. Please. I won’t do anything, I promise.” She lied again. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she wanted to be ready for whatever it was. Like getting into position for a race.

  “You can go and lie on the bed.”

  Cat began to stand up, careful not to make any sudden movements. The woman stood too, watching her closely.

  And then Cat’s phone rang.

  It sounded shockingly loud. Grabbing the knife, the woman glanced at the phone. The familiar name glowed on the screen.

  “Danny!” she exclaimed, leaving the phone where it was. “Leave it!”

  The woman had drunk the first glass of wine and now poured her second. She leaned on the edge of the table, still standing. Her breathing was fast and she chewed her lip whenever there was no cigarette there. Cat’s eyes were stinging in the smoke. When the woman started playing with the knife, Cat had to speak, to fill the silence and try to calm the woman down. Cat was still standing too, as though about to sit on the bed. The woman seemed not to have noticed.

  “What … what do you do now? To earn a living, I mean?” It was hard to keep her voice steady.

  “Computers. I design websites. Computers are easy to understand. They are predictable. I could hack into any computer network you wanted me to. Got my own wireless connection.” She pointed over to a corner, where Cat now saw a laptop.

  “Phiz!” she exclaimed.

  “Oh yes. Phiz. You shouldn’t give so much of yourself away on your public space, you know. Most people use their pet’s name as a password, combined with some simple system. You’re no different from anyone else. Polly is your dog – it says so on Phiz – and Polly is part of every password you create. Right? I knew about your hobbies from Danny, but even if I hadn’t, it’s all th
ere on the site.”

  Cat didn’t bother to nod. It was shockingly obvious. Not David, after all. Walter had been right.

  She was just about to ask something else, when the boat lurched and the wine glass slid towards her. There was the slow roar of a boat going past and then disappearing.

  Cat did not plan what happened next. Survival instinct took over. She grabbed the curtain behind her and the metal pole came down. She grasped it and held it out, like a sword. It was only about fifty centimetres long and there wasn’t room to move properly, but she had the advantage – the pole was longer than the knife. Not by much, but enough.

  Driven by fear, she lunged at the woman, who leapt back with a furious shout. Then the woman hurled herself forward, slashing wildly with the knife. Cat forgot everything she’d been taught by Mr Boyd and let instinct take over. She parried and lunged, turning slightly all the time until her back was at the door. The woman’s eyes were blurred with tears, her mouth open in desperation. Cat didn’t care, couldn’t care about this woman’s tears.

  She needed to open the door. She had no idea if it was on a latch or if the woman had locked it. She just couldn’t remember. If she pushed it and it didn’t open, she was trapped. And even if it opened, the woman would come through only a second later.

  For many moments, Cat delayed, parrying repeatedly, never taking her eyes from the ugly knife. And then, taking a deep breath, she lunged forward, hurling the pole like a spear at the woman, hitting her in the chest, and then darted to the door, grabbing the handle and slamming it downwards. For a moment it held, and then she was through, almost falling onto the motorbike leaning on the tiny deck. She slammed the door behind her, giving herself an extra two or three seconds.

  Cat could see the far bank and the towpath some metres away. She took a deep breadth. No time to think. No choice. She jumped into the foul water.

  As she jumped, a terrible cry rang out behind her. Not anger but raw desperation.