Shape-Shifter (19 page)

‘Your feet are tiny,’ he said, as if to apologise.

He left the room and I heard him go into the kitchen. Moments later, he returned. He stood directly in front of me and thrust a big knife under the blanket. It was the Sabatier kitchen knife. He had taken off his gloves.

‘I’ve got a big knife here. Can you see it? Can you see it?’ The voice was fierce and powerful.

‘Yes.’ His trousers were lowered to just below the top of his thighs. He had an erection.

‘You said you wouldn’t do this,’ I said, sulkily.

‘Well, I am,’ he replied, spitefully. ‘Are you going to do what I say? Yes or no?
YES OR NO
?’

‘I suppose so,’ I grumbled.

‘Now then, I want you to suck me off.’ The blade of the knife was a dull grey under the blanket. A perverse feeling of obstinacy came over me.

‘Well, I don’t know how to do that,’ I said. He seemed bewildered by the reply.

‘You just put it in your mouth and suck,’ he explained.

‘Well, I can’t. I don’t know how to.’ I was careful not to insult him sexually.

‘Kneel down by the side of the bed,’ he said in a harsh growl. I knelt down facing the bed. ‘Lie on your stomach on the bed.’ I didn’t move. He began to pull at my legs. I was feeling annoyed. I did not cooperate. Eventually he pulled me on to the bed.

‘Lie flat and put your arms above your head.’

All my instincts told me not to lie prone. I raised myself on my elbows. If he used the knife I had to be ready.

‘Lie flat.’

‘No. I’m all right like this.’ He was kneeling behind me.

‘I’m going to feel you,’ he said. He began to fondle my breasts gently and firmly. It was almost pleasurable – if death had not been on my mind. Murder.

‘Now I’m going to rub myself against you.’ He pushed the blanket and dressing-gown up my back and put his arms underneath my arms. His hands were flat on the bed. For the first time, I was able to see his hands. They were neat, well-proportioned, unremarkable hands, clean with a fine covering of fairish hair. He began to rub his erect penis between the cheeks of my behind. I peeked out from under the blanket to see if I could locate the knife. No sign of it. But I knew that as long as I could see his hands he couldn’t use the weapon.

‘Sit back on the bed.’ I did what he said.

‘Right. Now suck me off.’

Thrust under the blanket, his erect penis floated in the air, flanked by two smooth, round balls. I wondered if they were swollen from when I had grabbed them earlier in the fight. I considered biting the penis or freeing my hands and tearing at the genitals, but I did not know where he had put the knife. One thing I did know. I was not going to suck him off.

‘I can’t. I don’t know how to,’ I repeated.

‘Why won’t you suck me off?’ he asked, plaintively, a little hurt. I got stubborn. The dynamics of childishness entered into the situation. Cussedness took hold of me.

‘Don’t want to,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he complained.

Here was a dilemma. I couldn’t say ‘Because you’re a fucking maniac,’ so I bargained.

‘I might toss you off,’ I said.

‘Go on then.’

I rubbed my hands up and down his penis and touched his balls. Then, as women often do, I got bored and stopped.

‘I can’t do this. It’s too difficult with my hands tied.’

‘Well squeeze it then.’

I squeezed it unenthusiastically for a second or two and stopped. There was a pause.

‘Lie back on the bed. Keep the blanket over your face. I’m going to come over your tits.’

He was forced to do it himself. I lay back and after a while he ejaculated over and between my breasts. It felt warm. He took a cloth which he must have brought with him and wiped me thoroughly. I glimpsed the sleeve of a leather jacket and the slightly worn cuff of a dark nylon sweater. Then he said, quietly:

‘It’s all over.’

What did he mean? Life?

He left the bedroom and returned quickly. I had sat up on the edge of the bed, the blanket still over my head. He knelt down and cut the rope between my ankles. As he did so, he nicked me with the knife.

‘Ouch,’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Where’s your telephone? Where’s your telephone?’ He sounded panicky.

‘It’s in the front room.’

‘Where is it exactly?’

‘If you go into the front room, it’s on the floor over to the left.’

‘I’m going to cut the wires.’ Suddenly, he began to rummage around among some packages that had been left on the bed from the night before.

‘Where’s me food bag? Where’s me food bag? What’s in these bags?’ he asked.

‘Soap and stuff that someone’s taking to my family abroad for me.’

He left the room and I heard his footsteps retreating down the hall. For two seconds I hesitated. Then I quickly freed my hands, keeping them hidden under the blanket lest he returned. I waited for one more second and threw the blanket from my head. I ran across the room to the back window, pushed back the curtain and with one manoeuvre, opened the window. I leapt out into the back garden. The air was chill. I jumped up the four stone steps onto the wet grass. I was exhilarated. Yelling for the people upstairs, I raced across the grass to the fence, scratching myself on the rose bushes. I tried to climb onto the fence but fell back. Then, with one enormous effort, I was on top of the fence with its three foot-high trellis. I was still naked. Naked and free. It was early dawn. Everywhere was quiet and still. I glanced back at the window to see if a figure was climbing out in pursuit of me and I yelled with the power of an opera singer. I was half-caught in the branches of a pear tree, an early morning goddess, calling and hollering. Slowly, neighbours came to various windows:

‘Quick! Get the police.’ My voice was huge and clear. Soon the police arrived. There was no sign of the man.

For the first two days afterwards, the police were consideration itself. A plump, brown-haired policewoman was assigned to my case and spent most of the first day taking down my statement. Then she drove me to a friend’s house where I was to stay the night while my flat was sealed off for forensic examination. I was, naturally, exhausted. Before I fell asleep, words from the twenty-third psalm floated into my head. I remembered something about lying down in green pastures and walking beside still waters. Suddenly, I experienced the sensation of walking through delightful pastures of long green grass dotted with yellow wild flowers until I came and stood by the stillest of waters. At the same time, my own physical boundaries dissolved and I recognised that those green meadows and rivers were inside me. The experience was so full of wonder that I tried to delay going to sleep in order to prolong it, but soon I fell into the most profound and peaceful of slumbers. I dreamed. I dreamed the dream of the leopard. The leopard was sitting at one end of my hallway. He was half-painting and half-real. At the other end of the passage was a mirror. The leopard was out of alignment with the mirror. He had to be moved so that he could see in the mirror. But I knew that when he was face to face with the mirror, something terrible would happen. Then I woke up.

On the third day the police turned nasty.

‘Mrs Atkins, are you sure you didn’t know this intruder? We cannot find a point of entry. Are you sure you didn’t let him in?’

‘I think he must have got in through the front window. I usually keep it locked but I had a friend staying. She might have opened it.’

‘And our forensic people have not been able to find a trace of him. There are no fingerprints and we can’t even pick up a footprint. Where is the knife he used?’

‘He must have taken it with him.’

‘And the cloth he used to wipe you down?’

‘He must have taken that too.’

‘What about the rope he tied you with?’

‘It doesn’t seem to be here.’ (Later, fortunately, I found the rope that had tied my hands, in the garden.)

‘Look. We can see that something happened here. We can see there’s been a fight of some sort, but it’s very unusual for someone to stay this long in a flat and to have been in the bathroom, the kitchen, the hall, both bedrooms and not leave a trace or a clue behind. Where’s the comb he used? We might be able to get one of his hairs from that.’

‘It’s gone.’

‘Did he eat anything?’ Use any cutlery? We might be able to get a saliva trace.’

‘What about the cigarette-stubs?’ I suggested. ‘We both smoked a cigarette and stubbed them out in an empty packet. There should be a saliva trace on there.’

‘That’s already been checked. There was only one stub in the packet and that has your saliva on it.’

‘He must be very clever,’ I said. ‘He’s taken all the evidence with him.’

Over the next few days my imagination ran wild over the grid of facts, along the boundaries of reason and unreason that are stalked by the ancient figure of fear. Could it have been part of myself that escaped and attacked me? Had the spirit of a nineteenth-century murderer and cabaret artist entered a contemporary small-time burglar? Did we all overlap? Some months later a young plain-clothes detective appeared at the front door:

‘Can I come in?’ he said. ‘I think we’ve found your man. Would you mind if I brought a police photographer in with me to take some pictures of the flat?’

He leaned nonchalantly against the kitchen door, drinking a coffee while his colleague took photographs of the other rooms:

‘You’re a performer, I hear. I used to be an actor myself. I was at Hornchurch Repertory Company for nearly a year. Then I gave it up for this.’ His collar-length hair still looked actorish. He continued ‘Anyway, we’re pretty certain it’s him, although it’s going to be difficult to prove in court with so little evidence. He may well get off. We think it’s him that raped another woman near here. We haven’t got a scrap of evidence on that either. He’s cunning. Spent two nights at her house with putty softener, then removed a whole pane of glass. He’s got a history of this sort of thing. Often attacks on Christmas Day. Clever, you see. He’s denying it, mind you. Denying everything. I almost felt sorry for him when I was talking to him. He’s in a horrendous mental state. Says someone is trying to get into him and tell him what to do. Someone called John, he says. Maybe, it’s this John we should be going after. Don’t know him do you?’ he asked, jokingly.

Charlie Peace, I thought. Alias John Ward. Betrayed by a married woman in London.

‘Don’t forget you’ve got the piece of rope I found in the garden,’ I said.

‘We’re not likely to forget that,’ he said. ‘It’s all we have got.’

In court, the man was not in my direct line of vision and he remained turned slightly away from me. Only once did he look at me, as I was demonstrating to the jury how I had held my wrists apart as he tried them. His head swivelled slowly through an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees like an owl, and he stared with great, blank eyes. It was then that I noticed his camel-hair coat and cheap jewellery and a black nylon roll-neck sweater of the type worn by spivs.

IT IS A FACT OF LIFE THAT WHAT YOU RUN FROM
fastest is what you are most likely to encounter or, to put it another way, what you fear most is what you unknowingly rush headlong to meet. The bizarre story of Jane Cole is an illustration of this. To understand it you must first know a little about her background.

Jane Cole lived with her parents and younger brother in the outer suburbs of London between Mottingham and New Eltham. She was a blonde, square-faced child, unexceptional in everyway except for the precocious talent in mathematics which ensured her a place at Eltham Hill Grammar School. There she did well until three days after her fourteenth birthday when she developed a terror of infinity. Quite simply, her mother had asked her to post a letter. The winter evening was clear and cold and she ran up the hill, hair flying, running for no other reason than the excess of energy common in fourteen year olds. She shoved the letter in the slot, flicked back her hair and turned to walk back down the hill. Breathless from running and suffering a slight stitch in her side, she halted and looked up at the sky. There was no time to protect herself from the infinite blackness and the appalling, unintelligible hieroglyphics formed by the stars. Her heart pounded at the awful vastness, the unending, pathless horror of it. She calculated that what she saw stretched without measure and that in relation to it she was the merest speck or atom, destined to be swallowed in this limitless void. Her mouth went dry. Her limbs refused to move and she was rooted to the pavement. Taken unawares, she had caught a glimpse of the meaning of infinity. For a full minute she remained paralysed. Then she lowered her eyes to the pavement and walked back home into the safe, orange cube of light which was the kitchen where her mother was handing out plates of tomatoes on toast. She told no one what had happened.

From then on, Jane Cole took a conscious decision to pursue dullness and mediocrity in all things. The academic spinsters who sat over coffee, discussing their pupils in the staff-room, noted the falling-off in Jane Cole’s performance. The English teacher remarked that her vocabulary was shrinking rather than expanding and cruelly nicknamed her after her favourite phrase – ‘Dunno really’. The maths teacher, disappointed in her prodigy, recalled one violent row in the classroom over whether or not parallel lines met at infinity, in which her star pupil’s former abilities reappeared briefly before she ran out of the class and sat sulking in the cloakroom. The staff had noticed often how girls from the poorer backgrounds arrived at school aged eleven, full of promise and come puberty lost their intellectual drive, began to hitch up their skirts, open the top button of their blouses and loll around the bus-stop waiting for the boys to come out. Generally, it was assumed she had just burnt herself out.

At the first possible opportunity Jane left school and found herself work in a drab little hairdressing salon in north London. The sign outside read ‘
SHAPES IN HAI
’, the
R
having fallen off some years previously. The clientele was elderly. The proprietor, sixty-year-old Mr Denby, wore comforting beige cardigans with brown wooden buttons and crouched at his desk in the window all day doing crosswords or watching the portable television set at his side.