Swimmer

Table of Contents

Cover

Recent Titles by Graham Masterton available from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

The Sissy Sawyer Series

 

TOUCHY AND FEELY

THE PAINTED MAN

THE RED HOTEL

 

The Jim Rook Series

 

ROOK

THE TERROR

TOOTH AND CLAW

SNOWMAN

SWIMMER

DARKROOM

DEMON'S DOOR

GARDEN OF EVIL

 

Anthologies

 

FACES OF FEAR

FEELINGS OF FEAR

FORTNIGHT OF FEAR

FLIGHTS OF FEAR

FESTIVAL OF FEAR

 

Novels

 

BASILISK

BLIND PANIC

CHAOS THEORY

COMMUNITY

DESCENDANT

DOORKEEPERS

EDGEWISE

FIRE SPIRIT

GENIUS

GHOST MUSIC

HIDDEN WORLD

HOLY TERROR

HOUSE OF BONES

MANITOU BLOOD

THE NINTH NIGHTMARE

PETRIFIED

UNSPEAKABLE

First published in Great Britain and the USA 2001 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9-15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England SM1 1DF

eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2001 by Graham Masterton.

The right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Masterton, Graham author.

The swimmer. -- (Jim Rook series)

1. Rook, Jim (Fictitious character)--Fiction. 2. Physics--

Fiction. 3. Horror tales.

I. Title II. Series

823.9′2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5697-5 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0114-0 (ePub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

For the International Friends of Tibbles
Vince Fahey, T.C., Bruce Thomas and Gary Johnson

‘M
ikey, honey! Don't splash!' she called, as she tilted her wide-brimmed straw hat on to her head and eased herself down on the sun lounger. Mike, as usual, took no notice whatsoever and continued to chase his younger sister around the pool. ‘Mike! If you go on splashing you'll be out of that pool so darn fast!'

‘He's wetting my hair!' Tracey protested. ‘Mom, he's wetting my hair!'

‘All right, young man, out of there!' she said, putting down her John Grisham novel and standing up. But at that moment she heard her mobile phone warbling ‘The Bells of St Mary's' from inside the house. ‘That's your father – you wait until I tell him what you've been doing!'

She hurried across the hot red-brick patio and into the sunroom. Mike was still splashing and Tracey was still screaming. Mike had always been a handful, ever since he was old enough to crawl around the room and pull tablecloths down on to the floor, along with framed photographs, vases of flowers and lamps. Now he was nine he was even worse, and Jennie found him almost impossible to control.

She found her phone under one of the floral cushions in the living-room.

‘Doug, is that you?'

‘Hi, sweetheart. I just wanted to let you know that this financial forecasting meeting is going on a whole lot longer than we expected. I'll probably grab a bite to eat with George and Sandos, and I'll see you later.'

Tracey was screaming even more loudly than ever. ‘Mommy! Mommy! Come quick!
Mommy, come quick!
'

Jennie cupped her hand over the phone and shouted, ‘Mike! You're going to be in such trouble when I get back out there!'

‘What's that?' asked Doug. ‘Mike playing up again?'

‘Well, what do you expect when you're never home, and even when you are you always spoil him so much?'

‘Oh, come on, Jennie, I'm working my fingers to the bone. How do you think we can afford a pool and two automobiles
and
a skiing vacation every winter?'

‘
Mommy! Mommy! You have to come quick! It's Mike!
'

‘I have to go,' said Jennie. ‘The kids are raising three kinds of hell out there.'

‘Listen … before you go, can you make sure you get my tan suit out of the cleaners? And can you call Jeff Adamson down at Ventura Pools and see what's happened to that new filter he was going to fit?'

‘Okay, okay. What time do you think you're going to be back?'

‘I don't know. There's a possibility that I may have to stay over.'

‘Oh yes? What's her name?'

‘What do you mean? Whose name?'

‘The possibility that you have to stay over.'

‘Oh, don't start that again. I may be a workaholic but I'm a
faithful
workaholic.'

‘
Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!
'

‘For goodness' sake!' Jennie snapped. ‘I'm on the phone to Daddy!'

‘Well, it sounds like you'd better go, anyhow,' said Doug. ‘Listen, I'll call you after we've eaten and let you know what's happening, okay?'

Jennie walked out through the sunroom. It was so dazzlingly bright outside that she wasn't sure what she was looking at. The bushes on the left-hand side of the swimming-pool area abruptly shook, as if somebody had walked through them, although there was nobody there. The surface of the pool itself glittered and sparkled, and it was only when she came out of the sunroom that she saw Tracey right up to her neck in the water, her wet hair plastered over her face like a shining brass mask.

‘What's happened?' Jennie screamed at her. ‘Where's Mike?'

Tracey pushed back her hair. She was wide-eyed with panic. ‘Mommy, I couldn't save him, he went right under.'

With a sick jolt of dread, Jennie ran to the edge of the pool. She couldn't see Mike at first, but then she caught sight of a pale shape right at the bottom of the deep end. ‘Tracey!' she screamed. ‘Call 911! Tell them to send an ambulance,
fast
!'

Without hesitating, she took a deep breath and dived into the water, her straw hat flying off her head. She plunged under the surface and swam down toward Mike with such power that she felt her shoulder muscles cracking. She had never been a good underwater swimmer, but now she managed to reach Mike with only four or five strokes, and seize his arm. He turned, in an idle swirling motion, and rolled over so that he was staring at her. His eyes were wide and he had an extraordinary expression on his face, as if he were smirking at her.

Jennie swam up toward the surface, dragging him after her. She came splashing out of the shallow end of the pool holding him in her arms, his legs swinging, his head hanging back. She laid him on the side of the pool, and immediately started to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. God, he couldn't be dead. She hadn't been talking on the phone for more than a couple of minutes. How could he have drowned so quickly?

‘Come on, Mike,' she begged him. ‘Come on, Mike, you have to breathe. Come on, darling, you have to breathe!'

Tracey came out of the house. ‘Is he drowned?' she asked in a high, fearful voice.

‘Did you call the ambulance?' asked Jennie.

‘The lady said they were coming real quick.'

Jennie blew desperately into Mikey's mouth. His lips were so cold, he felt as if he had been dead for hours. As she blew, the tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped on to his face. ‘Breathe, darling, you have to breathe!'

It seemed like for ever before she heard the siren warbling in the street outside. Mikey's eyes were still open and unblinking, and he lolled from side to side as she tried to force the water out of his lungs. It still looked as if he were smirking, and she couldn't believe that he was dead. She almost expected him to jump up and start skipping around the pool, laughing at her.

Two paramedics came hurrying across the yard. One of them, a short Hispanic woman with thick black curly hair, gently helped Jennie on to her feet while the other one knelt down beside Mike and checked his vital signs.

‘He's going to be all right, isn't he?' asked Jennie, knowing that he wasn't, knowing that he was already dead, but praying that two trained paramedics could work a miracle over him. After all, they did it on
ER
, didn't they? And she'd seen so many news reports of kids who'd been drowned and then brought back to life. In Canada, that busload of kids who went through the ice.

‘Why don't you come inside?' the paramedic asked her, taking her arm. ‘Come and sit down.'

‘That's my son,' Jennie protested. ‘That's my only son!'

The other paramedic stood up, and came toward her with the saddest expression she had ever seen. ‘I'm so sorry,' he said. ‘There was nothing more we could do.'

Jennie twisted her arm free and walked toward Mikey's body on legs that seemed to have no more strength than dry sticks. She knelt slowly down beside him and cradled his head in her lap, a southern Californian
pietà
. On the ridge of the house, four or five quail clustered, and for once they were silent, as if they sensed the dreadful tragedy of what had happened.

And Jennie sensed something, too. A coldness, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. It wasn't just shock. It wasn't just grief. It was something more than these – as if something deeply malevolent had passed through the yard. She looked toward the bushes that she had seen shaking as she came out of the house. There was nobody there, and if there had been she would have easily seen them, because the bushes were so sparsely planted. But as she peered toward them she saw that – in the shadow of the orange tree – there were six or seven wet footprints on the bricks. Adult-sized footprints.

The paramedic came out of the house rolling a trolley. He lowered it next to Mike and said, ‘Let's make him more comfortable, shall we?'

Jennie nodded, and lifted Mike on to the sheet. ‘Don't cover his face,' she said. ‘Not yet, anyhow.' She glanced inside the house and saw that the woman paramedic was taking care of Tracey, and that her neighbor Blanche had just come into the living-room, looking tearful and distressed.

She left Mike and walked around the pool until she came to the footprints. There was no question about it: they were grown-up footprints; and in the shaded corner of the patio they were still wet, although the sun had already dried any others that might have been leading up to them.

Blanche came out, her mouth puckered with grief, and put her arms around her. Now, however, Jennie felt strangely calm. She found herself pressing her cheek against Blanche's dry, sun-bleached hair without any emotion, and burying her chin in Blanche's sleeveless seersucker top. She didn't need sympathy. She needed revenge. Somebody had been here. Somebody had entered their yard and killed her son. She wanted to know who it was. She was determined to know who it was.

Lieutenant Harris circled the pool area, frowning at the pool as if he expected another body to come floating to the surface. He was short and broad-shouldered, built like an over-packed flight bag, with a wayward plume of reddish hair and a bright red scar on his chin. If Columbo had been real, he would have looked like Lieutenant Harris. But unlike Columbo, Lieutenant Harris had no intuitive ideas about who might have killed Mike.