Deathwatch (22 page)

A few seconds later, Cat slipped up the slope away from the canal path, her feet hurting. There was the open park, mostly playing fields, unlit, empty. And if she could cross it, she’d be at the road and could find her way home through the streets. She would be safe – or safer than by the canal.

She didn’t know how long she’d have before the woman came back. But she slid into the darkness of the park, her heart thumping. The quickest way would be to go straight across the middle, but the edges looked safer.

She set off along one side, straining her ears to hear any sounds above the storm.

And now the sound of the motorbike came again in the distance.

She ran over the slippery ground. Along the edge of the trees. Gasping, breathing through rain. Fuelled by fear. Nothing mattered now. Not the cold, the rain, the pain in her feet, nothing except getting away from this maniac. She ran faster, new strength coming from somewhere.

A light swept the darkness behind her. The headlight of the motorbike. Surely someone would see now, or hear? There were buildings on the far side of the park, maybe three hundred metres away – flats where
surely
someone would be looking out. Or someone would be walking home from a takeaway or a late shift or something. Anyone.

But why
would
anyone be there, in pitch-dark, in the middle of playing fields and waste ground, on such a night? And even if someone looked, they would not see her against the trees and bushes. But the woman would see her. Because she knew what she was looking for, and had the lights of her motorbike.

The light came nearer, playing backwards and forward across the open space, searching for her.

Now the ground all around was flooded with sudden brightness as the bike came straight towards her. She had been seen. Cat stopped running, twisted round, trying to see which way the bike would hit her, which way she should jump.

The light was blinding, everywhere, enormous. She was paralysed.

With a shocking, violent roar, the bike sliced past. It went a few metres beyond her and then stopped, swung round with a spray of mud and a screech of brakes. Someone jumped from it, shouting at her through the rain and wind, words she couldn’t hear over the noise of the engine, the ringing in her ears, the wind. She turned and ran. She knew she couldn’t escape but all she could do was run. Sliding in the mud and the wetness, she sped away again. Running for her life.

“CAT!
Stop!”

She stopped and turned. It was Danny, running towards her through the mud, the motorbike coming along behind him, ridden by someone who was obviously not the woman.

“Where is she?” he shouted.

“Phone for help, Danny! There’s a woman chasing me on a motorbike! She…”

“I know! Your dad called the police. David and I didn’t wait.”

Over his shoulder, she could dimly see the figure on the motorbike, dressed in black, helmeted. David.

“Get on the bike, Cat. David will take you home. Hurry!”––

“What about you?”

The sound of another motorbike. From the canal. Cat peered through the night – there was the light far away, growing. In another distance she could hear a siren – police or ambulance, she never had learned to tell.

Danny shouted, “She’s not interested in me. The police’ll be here soon. Just hurry!”

But it was too late. The motorbike was roaring towards them and Cat had no time to jump onto the bike behind David.

Suddenly David shouted above the screaming of the engines, “Both of you, stand clear! Get away!” He gunned his engine into fury and the bike surged forward, back wheel spinning in the mud.

Danny grabbed Cat and pulled her into the trees.

“Is my mum OK? God, I’ve been so scared!” And her teeth, her whole jaw, started to shake so that she could barely speak.

“She’ll be OK. She was tied up but she’s fine. Shit, what’s he doing?”

David was heading straight towards the other motorbike. The two lights converged, twisting this way and that like lasers as each rider tried to work out the direction of the other. One thing was clear: David was trying to drive the woman away from Danny and Cat. The two bikes came dangerously close, sliding in the mud, roaring their engines. The woman’s hair was loose behind her. She looked small on the huge bike, overpowered by the black night sky.

Her bike swerved and came hurtling towards Danny and Cat. They shrank further into the trees and Cat found herself gripping Danny’s arm as they tried to make themselves as small as possible behind a tree trunk.

At the last moment, just before it would have crashed into the trees, the bike curled away, and they watched the woman speed towards one of the entrances to the canal path. There she slithered to a halt. David had stopped his bike some distance away. He turned off his headlight and suddenly they couldn’t see him.

The woman turned her light off.

Cat could hear her own breathing now, feel her heart racing.

The silence was short-lived. Sirens now, very close, and the park was flooded with searchlights from a police car and two – no, three – motorbikes heading towards them.

Cat felt her legs go numb and she began to fall. Danny held her upright and she quickly pulled herself together, though her feet did not seem to want to move. She must not collapse now. In the confusion of noise and lights she could not see what was happening but her brain was shutting down – she did not need to know. She was safe. She didn’t
feel
safe, but she must tell herself that she was. With the danger over, she felt, if anything, more horrified. At what had so nearly happened. Still fear chilled her, still the smell of the canal choked her, still the cries of the woman as she jumped from the barge haunted her. But she must be safe now. Holding onto that thought, she fought her fear away. It was as if she was curling into herself, making a shield so that terror could not get her.

She heard someone talking to her. A policeman was there, holding out a silvery blanket. She let herself be wrapped up and led to a car that had appeared over the grass. She couldn’t count the lights and people.

She was aware of David talking to a police motorcyclist, pointing. And then two motorbikes roared towards the canal. Another went in a different direction.

Cat refused to care. She refused, pushing the thoughts away, barring the doors of her mind against the cries of the woman as Cat had jumped from the boat.

Now the cold hit her, seeping into her bones. No strength was left in her. She was sitting inside the police car – how had she got there? She didn’t remember sitting down.

The car pulled off and someone fastened her seat belt.

A voice was saying reassuring things. Someone was talking about how they’d seen her running, and how fast she was. No one was asking her any questions. They didn’t seem to need to know anything. She didn’t know anything anyway.

Someone told her she’d been very brave. How did they know? She hadn’t done anything. She’d just run, and swam. And fenced! A smile twitched her lips Hysteria welled up in her and she began to laugh. If Boyd could have seen her! Or her coach!

Danny was next to her in the car. Probably thought she was mad. Mad! He could talk! Insects, schizophrenic brother, crazy uncle…

But Danny and his schizo brother had saved her. And her hysteria shrank away into a tight dark knot of fear again.

And what if the police didn’t catch the woman? What then?

THE
next hour tangled in Cat’s mind. Strangers in her house: police, in uniform and plain clothes, she didn’t know how many. Angus’s frightened face, his saxophone and music case lying on the stairs. Polly being shouted at to go to her bed. The phone ringing twice. Or more. A discussion about whether she had to go to hospital to be checked over, and her dad saying she’d be better at home.

Having to give her clothes to a policewoman, for some reason she didn’t understand but which was “procedure”. That must have been after her bath. Or before, she didn’t know. The policewoman told her to call her Abbie, but Cat didn’t call her anything. Later, her feet stinging and bleeding, before being dried and bandaged by her dad. Warm air around her and yet the bitter cold inside her, waves of shivering that overwhelmed her.

Sometimes she could not take in a full breath and she felt she would suffocate if she did not. Every now and then her heart leapt and raced on a journey of its own, and she would gasp in sudden fear.

Metal mud taste and the smell of canal.

When she closed her eyes, she saw the woman’s face, her shaking hands, tasted the cigarette smoke drifting around her. She saw tears in the woman’s eyes. But had there really been tears? She didn’t know for sure, only that she saw them now, in her mind where truth was blurred.

People asked her questions but, when she tried to answer, the words stuck. She didn’t want to think about it. Like a cut, it needed some time to heal before it could be touched without pain.

At some point the doorbell rang and perhaps more police came and people were whispering things she had no desire to hear. The one called Abbie was talking quietly to her parents and making notes but Cat wasn’t interested in trying to listen. In her mind she focused on three things only: getting warm, washing the canal filth off her, and curling up in bed with the duvet over her head.

There was the steamy warmth of the bathroom. Her own face staring like a ghost from the misted mirror. Her mum had told her to shower before she bathed, to get the worst of the dirt off, and she did. As she stood under the power jets, washing the stinking mud from her skin and hair, watching the steam curl into the air, and the brown and bloodied water swirling around her feet, she cried. At one point she almost began to sink into a crouching position in the shower, but at the last moment she caught a glimpse of herself in the shiny chrome of the shower unit, and was shocked at her own face and its look of sadness. She pulled herself together and stood up straight again, letting the hot water do its work.

Afterwards, clean at last, she climbed into the bath and let the soapy waters cocoon her. Her skin tingled painfully but bit by bit her body relaxed and drifted into warmth. The stinging on the soles of her feet softened quickly as whatever her mum had put in the water took over. Besides, it was a pain that was bearable.

The noises of the house, family and strangers, jangled outside the bathroom. In here, all was warm and misty and soft. She closed her eyes. But when she did, she saw the woman’s face. Cat still did not know her name, she realized. What would happen to her? She opened her eyes.

Why should she care? But she did. A thought struggled to be voiced. In the secrecy of the bathroom, clouded, safe, selfish, honest, Cat whispered her thought aloud: “I hope she dies. Because I need to feel safe. I hope she falls off her bike into the canal and drowns.”

But Cat also hated the thought of the woman dying. She remembered the sound of her cries. As if she was being deserted. The woman’s dreams had ended the moment Cat jumped into the canal.

But no – her dreams had ended years ago.

At some point Cat got out of the water and wrapped herself in a towel, sitting for a few moments on the edge of the bath and watching the bubbles softly pop and fizz and burst. After a while, she left the warmth and safety of the bathroom.

Out there her mother was waiting, just sitting on the stairs. Her eyes were red, and she looked at Cat with a broken smile as she stood up.

“I’ve made your room warm,” she said. “And you don’t have to give a statement to the police till tomorrow. The nice one called Abbie will come back with detective somebody.”

Cat didn’t remember walking up the stairs to her room but she must have done. There was her dad, with bandages and cream to deal with her scraped feet. Her mum had brought a mug of tea for her and Cat drank its strange sweetness as she sat slumped on the bed and let herself be looked after. Soon her dad went downstairs to talk to the police some more and Cat was where she wanted to be: curled up in bed, one hot water bottle clutched between her feet and one against her stomach.

She wanted to talk to her mum, but first a doctor came and checked her over and gave her an injection for something. She didn’t know if he was from the police or not, but she didn’t care. He was a cold, thin man, grey-haired and greasy. She was glad when he went.

Only then could she ask what she had to ask. “Are you OK, Mum? What did she do to you?”

“Nothing. She just tied a piece of string from one finger of my bad arm to the end of the bed. That was all she needed to do. If I moved the pain was terrible. My other hand was tied to something else. And I was gagged.”

“I was so scared,” whispered Cat, squeezing her eyes shut. Her mother stroked her hair.

“So was I, Catty. When I heard our door slam shut and I knew that she had got you, I … I can’t tell you. I wanted to scream but I…”

Cat interrupted. “So what happened? With Danny and his brother? How come they found me?”

“Danny was brilliant. Are you back together with him, by the way?”

“No way! He’s just a friend.”

“Well, he’s a good friend. And his brother.” She hesitated.

“I know David is a patient of yours, Mum.”

“Well, maybe, but you know I can’t talk about that. Anyway, Danny hasn’t had time to tell us everything but it’s something to do with his uncle? You’d been with Danny at his uncle’s or something – oh and by the way, I don’t call that being “at a friend’s house”, which is what you’d told us… Anyway, Danny went back to get his phone, he said. Well, after that he came past here and thought it was weird that the house was all dark when he knew you were in. He rang the bell, and he tried phoning you but there was no reply. Ran back to his uncle or phoned or something and then… Anyway, you heard the rest downstairs.”

“What?”

Her mum looked at her. “The police told us. You were there. Oh, Catty, maybe you were too shocked to take it in. Well, Danny must have told the police a lot of stuff in the car, and the police also talked to his uncle. But Danny and David had gone to the canal even before the police got here. And I gather you know now – who she was? I still can’t completely believe why we ended up at the centre of this, why you, but I think I’m beginning to. Bit extreme, I must say. The sort of thing you read about, something from a film. But the uncle seems decent – he’s really cut up about it.”