No Escape (10 page)

Sheila Burgess had left the West Kensington that morning with very mixed feelings. She was thankful to escape from the pressures of kindness and medical interest that were beginning to wear down her resistance. She had consented to take a short note from Sister to her parents, explaining why the hospital authorities had agreed to her own desperate insistence upon secrecy. Enclosed with the note was a duplicate of the official form, signed by herself, stating that she took her discharge against the wish of her medical advisers. This envelope had been pinned to the lining of her jacket as it might easily fall out of her topcoat pocket if she took the latter off during the train journey. Sheila had left the envelope where Sister had pinned it. She thought it might help her to explain her arrival, unannounced, to her parents.

For the letter she had given Jane to post had held no such intention, though she had pretended it did. She had headed it with her old address in Shepherd's Crescent and had said quite simply that she might be able to get home for a short holiday in the near future and that she would write again. Nothing about her rescue from the river, about her renewed acquaintance with Jane Wheelan, about her firm intention to leave London for good.

In the taxi Sheila kept her head down, not daring to look out of the windows in case some dreaded eyes should meet her own from a car alongside, or some recognised face turn to her from the pavement.

She got out at Paddington, feeling weak and shaky, as well she might, for she had done nothing to restore her muscles' tone by walking in the ward during the last few days. She signalled to a porter, feeling too weak to carry both her suitcases to the platform. She paid the taxi and added a small tip, which the driver accepted with frank contempt but no argument.

Having bought her ticket, Sheila found her porter waiting for her and followed him meekly to the platform. She was thankful to find he was prepared to take the large suitcase to the carriage instead of dumping it at the barrier and leaving her to do the rest. He even went so far as to climb with it into the train, move along the corridor until he found an empty carraige and heaving the case on to the rack say, with satisfaction, “Nice quiet window seat to yourself, miss.”

“Thank you,” Sheila said, timidly. “Thank you very much indeed.”

She gave him a large tip at which he took her other case and threw it up beside the first. Then, saying, “Ta, dear, Cheeribye,” he swung out of the carriage door, pulling it across behind him and disappeared.

Sheila sank down in the corner seat facing the engine and began to feel safe at last. It was dark in the train. The corridor was on the platform side; she was as far away from it as she could get. If only the train could start now, she thought. Reading was the first stop. No one else could get in after they started.

She fiddled with the long string of white poppet beads she was wearing, passing them through her fingers, breaking off a bead and after a moment, pressing it back into the chain. At last, with a sigh, she pushed the whole string down the inside of her woollen jumper, out of sight.

A gentle hand pushed the door open. How silly, Sheila thought. Of course other people are travelling. And in any case in a corridor train they could move about as much as they liked.

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—