No Escape Page 8

  At the thought her terror rose again. Anyone could board the train and move along it to her after it was under way.

  “Did I startle you?” asked the stranger, apologetically. She was a middle-aged woman, quietly dressed, with a small zipper bag.

  “No, of course not,” Sheila managed to say.

  The woman sat down opposite Sheila.

  “They ought to put the lights on in the station,” she said, opening a magazine and shutting it again when she found she could not see to read.

  “We’re very early,” Sheila answered. “Nearly half an hour to go yet.”

  The woman nodded, got up, leaving her bag on the seat, and going into the corridor, stood at the open window of the outer door, turning her head from side to side to watch what was going on on the platform.

  Sheila began to feel drowsy. This peace, this loneliness, had come too quickly. She longed to forget everything, her time in hospital, her battle with herself and her would-be friends, the memory of her watery nightmare and those other terrible memories of the last year. With a great effort of will she would suppress it all, drive it all away from consciousness, forget it so completely that no one could ever make her betray herself. To this end she stared at the wall of the carriage before her, while gradually her mind emptied, her eyes closed and she began to swim towards sleep.

  She woke suddenly and completely as the carriage door slid open again. This time a man and a woman, both elderly, got in with a cascade of small luggage about them.

  “There’s plenty of room,” the woman said, as if continuing an argument. “It’s quite empty. I beg your pardon.”

  This to Sheila, who said, weakly, “The seat opposite me is taken.”

  “We’ll have the other two corners, then,” the man said. He began to heave the small suitcases to the rack, panting loudly, his white hair falling forward on his forehead.

  “Why bother with all that?” his wife said. “We may not get anyone else in the carriage.”

  She was seated herself and leaning forward to pull the door across when a big hand checked her and a harsh voice said, “’Alf a mo, lady. Room for little me, I ’ope.”

  The man who entered was bulky, red-faced and badly shaved. He wore a dirty raincoat and a cloth cap. A sodden cigarette, little more than a stub, hung from one corner of his mouth. As he pushed past the couple he removed this fragment, pinched it with his large squat fingers and said, cheerfully, “No smoking, is it? I’ll ’ ave to be a good boy, won’t I?”

  He lowered himself into the seat opposite Sheila, looking at her so directly as he asked this question that she was stung into making an answer.

  “I expect there are empty seats in carriages where you can smoke. Actually that seat is taken.”

  The woman who had been leaning out of the window now came in. She demanded her seat quietly. To Sheila’s surprise the big man moved to let her take it, disclosing her zip bag squashed into the corner. At this she exclaimed and the man apologised.

  “I did mark the seat with it,” the woman said, half apologising in her turn.

  “That’s O.K. I’m orl right,” he answered, moving still further to give her more room. He pulled a dirty folded newspaper from an inside pocket and shaking it open, held it up to form a barrier between himself and Sheila. She wished she had had enough courage to buy a magazine before getting into the train. With a porter beside her she would surely have been safe?

  The time passed slowly. Two more couples came to fill the carriage, a pair of middle-aged women, more smartly dressed than the one opposite Sheila and a young couple, perhaps on honeymoon, she thought; at any rate going off together for a holiday. They reminded her a little of the sort of people she had met with Ron and Giles at the parties they took her to.

  Those parties. How lovely they had been at first, exciting drinks, gay people, silly talk to make you laugh, beatniks to make you wonder, Toni, the perfect hostess, Tom—

  She sighed at her memories, checking them as her thoughts moved forward to the last six months and their growing horror and fear and shame.

  A whistle blew on the platform. She started at the sound, looking nervously towards the door. Reading first stop, corridor train. Why had she left the West Kensington? Time to go back? No. The carriage jerked, moved, slid past the wall beside her, past the covered platform, rattled over points, gathered speed continuously. She caught a look exchanged by the couple near the door. They were pleased to be on their way. Well, so was she. The young couple were giggling over some private joke and did not seem to have noticed. The woman opposite her was reading a letter she had taken from her bag. The couple beside her were discussing a knitting pattern. The big man, hidden behind his paper, did not move. Probably he was so used to travel of this kind he hardly noticed if he were moving or not.

  Sheila wondered idly what he did for a living. He had not spoken like a commercial traveller but she noticed a small brief-case on his knee that she had not seen before. Surely he’d had nothing in his hands when he entered the carriage? Then how?—

  She tried to remember if one of the other passengers had arrived carrying this particular piece of luggage. But it was no use. She had been all intent not to engage the interest of any one of them. She had kept her eyes away from them, her head turned towards her own window. Anyway, what was a brief case? They were common enough, at that.

  It was when the train, still gathering speed, had left the suburbs and was running through the first empty fields of the lost lands between town and farm that the people in the carriage began to leave it. Not all at once, but silently, without explanation. The woman opposite Sheila went first; a natural visit down the corridor, the girl thought idly. The old couple went next after another of their silent communicating looks, the signals of eyes and eyebrows. The boy rose next, laughed. “On your toes, ducks,” and pulled his girl to her feet. The middle-aged women rose as one and followed them.

  Sheila was suddenly aware that their order of going was exactly the same as their order of coming. Except for the big man, who had not moved, who sat perfectly still with his newspaper held up, hiding his face.

  Hiding me, too, thought Sheila. She began to edge silently towards the door, but had not gone halfway along the seat when the newspaper came down on his knee with a bang and his red face was thrust towards her, hard eyes glaring into hers.

  With an effort prompted by sheer panic Sheila sprang towards the door, but the man was there before her, moving with extraordinary speed for such a cumbersome body. He clapped his hand over the door handle and said, “No!” not loudly, but with a savage intensity that paralysed the girl’s limbs and made her reel back.

  “I—You can’t stop me? I want to go to the toilet!”

  “Oh no, you don’t!”

  He was standing between her and the door now. Quite deliberately and slowly he turned, looked out into the corridor, waited for a man to pass along it and then pulled down the blinds one after another.

  Sheila was trembling; she felt very sick, quite hopeless, numb with terror. When the man turned and began to move forward she retreated before him until her back was against the far door of the carriage, pressed up against it, her hands clutching behind her at the window strap.

  “Why don’t you sit back in yer place?” the man asked. “I don’t slosh skirts—not as a ’abit, that is.”

  “What d’you want? Who are you?”

  She had just remembered the emergency cord. Why hadn’t she pulled it when he had his back turned? Too dumb. Too frightened—as usual. Her eyes slid up. Could she pull it even now if she made a spring?

  “No dice,” the man said, grinning faintly at her. “It’s bin attended to.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The emergency. It won’t work. Bin seen to.”

  “But how—? I might have gone into any carriage in the train.”

  He shook his head.

  “Bit slow, girlie, ain’t yer?”

  “Not the porter! He
was so kind. He helped—”

  “Proper old granddad to yer. That’s ’ow ’e gets ’is living when ’e’s out of the nick. Which isn’t often.”

  The sickness grew on her and the shaking.

  “I shall scream. And go on screaming.”

  His manner changed. The hard eyes grew colder, narrowed. She was looking at a killer and she knew it.

  “Where is it?” he demanded. “Keep me waiting and yer best friend won’t reconnise yer.”

  He had thrust a hand into the brief-case and pulled it out now, the blade clicking open as he did so. With the other hand he reached up and tumbled her suitcases to the seat, one after the other.

  “Open up and get it out,” he ordered. “Move!”

  He kicked out at her, catching her left shin so that she fell forward on to the cases.

  “Want another? Move then!”

  She fumbled at the smaller case to gain time. Her jewel box was there and the film had been in it. But when she had looked for her beads that morning, the long string, it had not been there. Why, oh why, had she not stopped then, cancelled her discharge from the hospital, at least until she had seen Jane? Why had she been so stupid, so utterly reckless in her desire to leave?

  She took up the jewel box, handed it to the man. He shook his head.

  “Open up.”

  If she had hoped he would put down the murderous knife to examine the box, she was disappointed. She unclasped its feeble catch and put back the lid. The film was not there.

  “It’s gone!” she cried, trying to put surprise into her voice.

  “Quit stalling.”

  “I’m not. I had it in here. It—it must have fallen out. The box doesn’t lock—”

  “Find it.”

  She pulled everything out. It was nowhere to be found. Desperately she turned to the other suitcase. Only her clothes there. Why had she thought the film would be with them? Jane had packed the oddments, all of them, in the smaller case, as she had asked her to do. But the film was in neither.

  “It isn’t here. I haven’t got it. You can see for yourself.”

  The man swore but his orders had been very clear. To get the film at all costs, regardless of how he did it. He snatched up the cases one after the other, feeling the linings, looking for false bottoms. All to no purpose. The girl spoke the truth.

  “Then it’s on you,” he said, pushing the cases away on the seat amongst the scattered clothes. “Give.”

  Sheila had shrunk back against the carriage door, foreseeing what he would think and do. She was desperate. She had not got the film. It had been in her jewel box, but it was no longer there. This brute could search her, he would search her, rip off her clothes, use her shamefully. He would find nothing. Then he would kill her, horribly, and leave her to be found—

  Fumbling behind her back as he came towards her she cried out, “I haven’t got it! I swear I haven’t! Jane may have it or Gerry. Gerry more likely. I don’t know—”

  He hit her across the mouth with the back of his hand so that her head struck the carriage window. But her fumbling hand had met the groove of the door handle and her resolve, helped by his blow, which flung her off balance, brought the door open with a jerk. She swung with it and was gone. The door struck the outside of the carriage, rebounded, helped by the wind and crashed back into place.

  The man was stunned for a few seconds. His slow brain had not foreseen this possibility, which was doubly disastrous. If she was dead—could she be otherwise at the speed the train was travelling, then there would be inquiries. If she had not died there would still be inquiries and she would grass this time, the lousy bitch. In any case they would find the film. He had been sent to get it, no holds barred. He had failed. It didn’t do to fail the boss. Just keep his mouth shut and fade.

  Working very quickly, sweating now in his fear and haste, he re-packed the suitcases, folding the clothes, making a reasonably tidy job of it. When he had finished he fastened them—they were not locked, since Sheila had not replaced her lost keys—threw them up to the rack and going to the door on the corridor side, shot up the blinds. After that he took Sheila’s vacant seat, pulled out his newspaper again and began once more to read.

  The others trooped back and took their places. The woman opposite Sheila’s former place leaned forward and said in an anxious voice, “The girl?”

  “She left,” he said, not lowering his paper. “Left of ’er own accord.”

  “But I didn’t see—”

  “Be quiet.” said the old man near the other door.

  “Spread out to fill the carriage. The guard is on his way for the tickets.”

  They moved to obey him. Four a side, quiet, respectable, though the young couple were rather pale, they presented a very commonplace appearance to the guard who inspected their tickets. After he left the carriage nobody spoke. Ten minutes later the train drew in to Reading.

  They all left the carriage. The young couple moved into the dining car to continue their journey west, the others left the train and the station. Later that day they would return, to travel back to London on new single tickets, at different times during the afternoon and evening.

  But the man who had failed left the station yard, watched the others go into the town and then, entering the Southern Railway part of the station, travelled by slow train to Guildford, where he picked up a fast train to Waterloo, went by tube to Euston, by train to Holyhead and by boat to Ireland. Having been born in that country, though he had lived for ten years in England, he had no difficulty with his powerful frame and recognised accent in finding a job in Dublin. He was not proud of his failure nor pleased at leaving his few possessions in England. He was even more cast down when he remembered that in his surprise, call it shock if you like, at Sheila’s sudden exit, he had not taken the trouble to rub his prints off the suitcases. But thinking it over, he decided that he was less afraid of the Law in England than he was of his former employer.

  As the days passed and his work began to bore him with its regularity of effort, he lost his fear of both and began to plan other activities.

  Chapter Nine

  When Jane’s passion of tears had passed, she lifted her head, dried her eyes, poured herself some tea and read again the paragraph in her evening paper that had caused her sudden storm of grief.

  Sheila was dead. Her body had been found beside the down line, where it had been observed about noon by the stoker of a goods train proceeding slowly west. She had been taken to Reading, since her ticket showed it was her destination. Her parents were traced in that city; they identified her; they had expected to see her soon, though not on that particular day.

  The girl’s identity had been quickly proved, the report continued, from papers found on her person, notably a letter addressed vaguely to ‘Doctor in Charge’, written by a medical registrar at the West Kensington Hospital, London, and a copy of a form stating that she had taken her own discharge from the hospital. An accident was possible, the paragraph finished, discreetly.

  Mary thought otherwise.

  “Obvious nut case, poor thing,” she said, comforting her friend. “You couldn’t have helped her more than you did. No one can these days, can they? I mean, the doctors won’t certify them on principle. So they all go about killing themselves or other people.’

  “It isn’t quite as bad as that. More cases are improved than used to be, when they were all shut up indefinitely.”

  “But the danger remains. What about your registrar? He might have been drowned. People do drown trying to save suicides. I think it’s crazy. If they want to be dead, why shouldn’t they?”

  “Aren’t you contradicting yourself?” Jane answered and with tears gathering in her eyes again, went on, “Anyway, I don’t think she did. She was frightened of something and she wouldn’t tell us. If only she had. She must have been pretty desperate to jump out of a moving train.”

  Mary said no more. She really knew nothing about the case, which seemed to her to be both
pathetic and sordid, but not to concern her friend too closely. So she left Jane to recover by herself and set about cooking something really attractive for supper. When she had this well in hand she poured herself some sherry and a good stiff gin for Jane, which soon persuaded the latter to take a less apocalyptic view of the world.

  The hospital, the next morning, was humming with the news and with very varied assessments of it. There were those who shrugged it off as typical suicidal behaviour about which nothing could ever be done. Others were indignant, because they believed it could have been prevented by more effort on the part of those in charge. Even Miss Gleaning, Jane found, was worried at the failure of the psychiatrist, who had seen the girl.

  “If he wasn’t sure about her, couldn’t he have sent her for observation to a mental bed somewhere?”

  “He said he was sure,” Jane told her, miserably conscious of her own shortcomings. “He didn’t think she was a real suicide at all. He thought it was hysteria.”

  “Then she ought to have been made to give her proper home address and her parents should have been brought here to take her away. We aren’t a home for nervous debility or for bad girls either, nor are we a social settlement. We’re a hospital.”

  Sister in Alexandra ward agreed with this and was inclined to blame Jane for not disclosing the Burgesses’ address in Reading.

  “I know,” Jane answered. “I’ve been kicking myself ever since I posted her letter. But I thought they’d be sure to come. I didn’t know she hadn’t told them where she was or what had happened or anything. And she only gave me the letter on condition I didn’t show it to anyone. So I only glanced at the address and didn’t make a note of it, mental or otherwise. I can’t forgive myself.”

  Her distress was so evident that Sister began to relent.

  “Well, it looks as if our Dr Foley was wrong this time,” she said. “So you mustn’t blame yourself too much. People are entitled to use their free will, even against themselves. You can’t manage everyone’s life, though the politicians seem to think they have a right to try.”