Tangled Web (39 page)

‘Help Le Clerc, he’s in a bad way!’ said Gordon as he began crashing his shoulder against the door in an attempt to break it open. After a third try with no sign of success he conceded that he more likely to break his collarbone than the door lock. He grabbed the phone and called reception, declaring an emergency and asking to be released immediately. As he replaced the receiver, he was not at all sure that reception had understood his French that had been made worse by his state of high anxiety. Looking about him, he spotted the oxygen cylinder standing in the corner of the room. He snatched it up to start using it as a battering ram against the door. This was a much more successful ploy and he had broken through the panel above the lock before there was any sign of help arriving from downstairs.

Gordon released himself and ran along the corridor to the fire escape to start hurtling downstairs, two, three and even eight at a time when he lost rhythm on the last flight and had to launch himself through the air to the bottom landing. He was lucky and landed well enough to recover and race on to the emergency exit that he opened by crashing his foot against the horizontal bar.

He found himself in the clinic’s car park, looking almost directly at James Trool, some twenty metres away, still with Anne-Marie’s limp body under one arm while he searched feverishly through his pockets in what was clearly a vein attempt to find his car keys. Trool saw Gordon and froze for a moment before abandoning the search and turning to start running towards a narrow exit giving pedestrian access to the street. Gordon started off in pursuit but caught his trailing foot on a low rail when, in going for a short cut, he vaulted over a dividing wall in the car park. He went all his length and crashed into the grille of a parked Volvo.

The fall winded him but he was on his feet after a few seconds and back in pursuit. He just made it to the street in time to see Trool dodging through traffic at the head of the intersection as he ran towards Pont Neuf.

Gordon caught up with Trool in the middle of the bridge. The traffic was heavy but they were the only pedestrians on that side.

‘There’s nowhere to go,’ said Gordon as he confronted the gasping man.

Trool, still with the same wild look in his eye, looked first at the traffic to his right and then over the parapet at the Seine below. He gave a sort of half smile that suggested to Gordon that the reality of his situation was beginning to dawn on him, but the words that he spoke suggested otherwise.

‘No baby … no case, Gordon.’

The horror of what Trool meant had barely got through to Gordon when Trool simply threw Anne-Marie’s unconscious body over the parapet. Gordon was paralysed with horror for only a few seconds but it was long enough for Trool to make a dash for the other side of the bridge through the traffic. He made it three quarters of the way to the accompaniment of squealing brakes and blaring horns but an Iveco truck carrying a full load of Stella Artois beer could not stop in time. It hit Trool with a sickening thud that seemed to transcend the traffic noise. The impact threw Trool briefly up into the air, his body arching backwards to land head first on the tarmac where his skull cracked open like an egg.

Gordon turned away and hung out over the parapet, trying desperately to see any sign of Anne-Marie, but all he saw was dark, slow moving water, punctuated with reflections of the lights on the bridge. The thought that Anne-Marie was down there somewhere was powerful enough to short-circuit all other considerations. He climbed up on to the parapet and, without pausing for further thought, jumped down into the Seine.

The fall seemed to last an eternity before ice-cold water enveloped him and instantly paralysed him with cold. Panic added to his agony, as he seemed to keep on going down into the depths with little or no control over his limbs. The rigid spasticity of his arms and legs made the eventual struggle back to the surface a nightmare and even when he broke the surface with bursting lungs, he found that the cold was such that he couldn’t breathe in properly: his chest muscles refused to work. He floundered about for fully ten seconds before he had enough control of his body again to start swimming downstream to where he thought Anne-Marie might have drifted to by now.

The sheer hopelessness of his situation was beginning to grow on Gordon as he turtle-dived below the surface for the sixth time to search by feel with his arms flailing in all directions. He was now completely numb with cold and close to complete exhaustion – so much so that he knew that his own chances of survival must now be in question. It was only the fear of having to face up to the fact that Anne-Marie was dead that made him go down for the seventh time. This time his left hand touched something but he failed to grasp it at the first attempt and he had to wheel to the left to try again. His hand touched the object again and this time he knew that he had found Anne-Marie: the little bundle was the right size and shape. As to what condition she was in, he put such thoughts out of his head and held her close to him as he reached up desperately with his free arm and kicked out hard with both legs in what he knew must be a final effort to surface. He simply had no energy left.

Gordon broke the surface and took in a huge gulp of night air, then two more before taking in another and holding it inside to give him buoyancy as he rolled over on to his back to float with the baby on his chest. He could see her face in the light spilling down from the bridge but he couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead. He clamped his mouth over hers and blew into her lungs, on the pretext that any such gesture was better than nothing at this point.

The water lapping over their faces and his own state of exhaustion prevented this measure from being either regular or correct in terms of technique but it was all he could manage as he struggled to stay afloat and tried to kick out weakly for the bank.

The slow thump of an engine reached Gordon through the water covering his ears and made him raise his head a little to look around him. Out of the darkness he could see the bows of a riverboat coming straight towards him. It was the final straw as far as he was concerned; he simply had no energy left to swim out of its way; there was nothing he could do except look up at the night sky in desperation and cry out in anguish, ‘For God’s sake! Give me a break!’

The world was suddenly filled with a blinding white light and the sound of shouting voices. Hands tugged at him and he felt Anne-Marie being taken from his grasp. He could do nothing for himself as he was pulled from the water but now he was lying on something other than water and he could breathe freely again as French voices around him said things he couldn’t understand. Suddenly, he felt like sleeping; God! how he felt like sleeping. The cold was no longer a problem and as he was starting to feel comfortable. There was no pain, only a delicious feeling of tiredness. The voices might be becoming more animated, even alarmed but he didn’t care: they were very distant now and he was drifting off into such a comfortable sleep …

When Gordon opened his eyes, he found Mary sitting there. She smiled at him with moist eyes. ‘So you’ve come back to me,’ she said.

He tried to speak but failed.

‘This really is becoming a bad habit,’ said Mary. ‘It’s hypothermia this time.’

‘The baby?’ croaked Gordon.

‘She’s going to be fine. People underestimate how tough babies really are. Trool had been keeping her under with sedatives, pretending to the nurses that she was in an ever-deepening coma, but they’ve worn off now and the bath in the Seine did her less damage than it did you.’

‘I never want to see water again. But how …’

‘Le Clerc’s driver saw you chase after Trool. He followed and saw what happened. He commandeered one of the Bateau Mouche boats moored at the bridge and rescued you and the baby. You were incredibly brave.’

‘How’s Le Clerc?’

‘He’s lost a lot of blood and he’s never going to look as pretty again but he’ll pull through.’

‘It’s over then.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Mary, running her fingertips gently along Gordon’s forehead. ‘It’s finally over.’

‘Isn’t science wonderful,’ murmured Gordon, suddenly feeling very sleepy again.

Epilogue

Within a week, Tom Gordon was proclaimed a hero
in the press and greeted with smiles wherever he
went in North Wales. One man’s belief in the innocence
of a friend had captured the imagination of not only the
Welsh newspapers, but also the nationals, many of which
requested feature-length interviews. He declined all such
requests without giving reasons.

John Palmer was released from prison and reunited with
Lucy, who was allowed out of hospital, although more plastic surgery would be required at a later date. Ecstatic
to be reunited with their ‘miracle’ baby, they too were
under considerable pressure from journalists to give ‘their
side of the story’, deemed to be of great ‘human interest’
to their readers — something emphatically underlined with
the offer of large sums of money for exclusivity — but, like
Tom, they too declined.

Tom elected to tell John and Lucy himself of the facts
surrounding Anne- Marie’s true origins, and did so at the
Manchester hospital just before Lucy’s release and when John was present. It was not the easiest of tasks and there
had been anger and recrimination, followed by tears and
finally acceptance of the situation. The fact that Anne-Marie
was still alive emerged as the most important factor and, as Tom had predicted, the Palmers’ love of the child they
still regarded as their daughter won the day. Nothing was
going to change that and they welcomed their baby’s return
without reservation.

The people for whom they might have harboured hatred,
and suffered the ill effects of such a cancer growing within
them, were mercifully dead with the exception of Sonia
Trool. She was now a virtual prisoner in her own home while the powers-that-be decided what to charge her with. Davies had warned them that proving anything would be
difficult.

The refusal of any of them to talk to the media had
not dimmed the media’s interest however, and the Palmers’
return to Felinbach with their daughter attracted wide
attention. The people of Felinbach responded to the media
invasion with smiles and decorations and expressions of
welcome. Special mail deliveries were needed to cope with
presents for Anne-Marie that flooded in from well-wishers,
and it seemed as if the whole world wanted to be the
friend of the tragically wronged couple and the heroic
village doctor who had believed in their innocence.

With media collusion, the Palmers’ neighbours threw a
party to welcome them back and it was publicly announced
at it that a nationwide appeal for funds to help secure Anne-Marie’s future had topped £100,000 with more to
come. Tom attended the party with Mary, watching the
smiles and returning the handshakes but with an inner
numbness. At some stage, he found himself speaking to
Julie Rees.

‘So you were right and I was wrong,’ she said.

‘No hard feelings, it was never obvious,’ replied Tom.
‘How are things at the surgery?’

‘We’re managing, but people keep asking about you. They’re wondering when you’re coming back.’

Tom smiled and said, ‘We’ll talk.’ He hadn’t made up
his mind about that. After a little more chat about Julie’s
husband and children, he moved off to where he saw Lucy
detach herself from a group of friendly neighbours. He had
been watching her for some time. Her mouth had been
smiling but her eyes had remained cold throughout and
he suspected that she was feeling the same way he was.
‘All right?’ he asked.

Lucy’s eyes softened for the first time. ‘Fine,’ she said.

‘Good to be back?’

Lucy looked down at the floor for a moment. ‘John and
I talked last night,’ she said. ‘We’ve decided to leave the
village: it can never be the same for us here, now that
I know.’

‘Know?’

Lucy looked at all the happy faces around them and
said, ‘I’ve seen the other side of these people, remember.
The insults, the graffiti, the malicious whispers, the crowds
outside the court.’

‘People are people wherever you go. You shouldn’t expect
too much.’

‘I realise that,’ said Lucy. ‘But I’d like to go somewhere
where I didn’t know for sure, if you know what I mean?’

‘Yes I do. I think I feel the same but I’m going to give
it a little time.’

They both looked over to where John was chatting to
a group of local people, his eyes bright and trusting as
if nothing had ever happened. ‘It’s incredible. He doesn’t
know the meaning of the word bitterness,’ said Tom.
‘Maybe we could both learn something from him.’

‘He
is
rather special,’ said Lucy with an affectionate
smile. ‘But then so are you, my brave Tom, and we’ll never
forget you.’

‘I should hope not,’ he joked. ‘I’ll want to hear how you’re
all getting on, wherever you go.’

‘Let’s mingle,’ said Lucy, turning her social smile back on.

As she moved off, Mary came over and took Tom’s arm.
‘Good heavens, you’ve managed to remain upright and
perfectly conscious all evening,’ she said cheekily. ‘Can
this be a day when Tom Gordon is in no need of medical
attention at all?’

‘Depends what kind of medical attention is on offer …’
he responded.

Mary looked at him out of the corner of her eye and
asked, ‘Was there anything specific you had in mind?’

‘I do feel a sudden strong desire to go back to bed,’
murmured Tom. ‘What d’you reckon?’

‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ she whispered back,
and giggled.

Hand in hand, they left the party.

THE END

Other Titles by Ken McClure

The Steven Dunbar Series

LOST CAUSES

DUST TO DUST

WHITE DEATH