Quicksand Read online

  "I know all that, thanks. My name's Fidler, Dr Fidler. I'm a psychiatrist from Chent Hospital."

  The policeman grunted. "Not one of your patients on the loose, is it?"

  "No, of course not. I checked at the hospital to make sure. What are you proposing to do?"

  "Well, we're going to search the area, sir. I've sent for extra men and a dog-handling team." A sidelong glance at Mrs Weddenhall. "As I've been trying to explain to this lady here, though it's kind of her to offer assistance we prefer to rely on our own experts."

  "And where are they?" Mrs Weddenhall rasped. "Anyhow, like it or not you're going to have as much help as you can use. I told my kennel boy to ring around the neighbourhood and turn out everyone he could reach. With guns." She set her chin aggressively.

  -- I'm dreaming. I must be dreaming.

  Paul swayed a little, very conscious of having drunk a lot of beer and whisky without stopping for his evening meal.

  "We can't allow that, and that's definite," the policeman said. "I don't know who you think you are, madam, but this is our business, not yours."

  "For your information, young man, I'm Barbara Weddenhall, JP, and if you ever turn up to give evidence in my court I shall remember your face, I can promise you that!"

  The policeman blanched and recoiled. Abruptly Paul was furious. "Mrs Weddenhall!" he said loudly.

  "Yes?"

  "Have you ever had any experience of rape?"

  " What?" The horrified bellow was all she could utter; following it, her voice gave out and she simpiy stood with eyes bulging.

  "You ever seen a rapist, officer?" Paul continued, turning to the policeman.

  "Well . . . Yes, sir. I helped to arrest one a few months ago.

  "Was he marked at all?"

  "Not half as bad as the poor girl he'd attacked. But yes, that was what clinched the evidence. He was all scratched on the face where she'd tried to drive him away."

  -- Am I doing that poor devil Faberdown an injustice? I hope not.

  "Mrs Weddenhall didn't see the victim of this alleged madwoman. I did. And he had three scratches down his cheek exactly where the nails of a girl's right hand would have put them. See my point?"

  The policeman rounded his mouth and nodded.

  "It's by no means certain the attack was unprovoked. Think it over. There's another condition besides insanity where a woman -- or a man, come to that -- can display extraordinary strength like what you'd need to pick up a grown man and throw him at a tree, as the victim put it. And that state is mindless terror."

  "You think he went for her first, maybe?"

  " Maybe. That's the important word. You're going to look pretty stupid if you go out with dogs and guns and what you finally come up with is some hysterical teenager."

  -- Exactly what an innocent teenager would be doing walking nude around here in February, I won't try and guess, but it ought at least to make Mrs Weddenhall reconsider.

  There was the noise of another car approaching, and the policeman cheered up noticeably.

  "That'll be Inspector Hofford, I expect," he said, and excused himself.

  Hofford proved to be a matter-of-fact countryman In a tweed coat, chewing a briar pipe. He heard the constable's account of events up till now, had a short talk with Mrs Weddenhall which Paul didn't overhear but which climaxed in her ill-tempered return of both dogs to her car, and then addressed Paul.

  "I gather you don't think the victim was entirely truthful!"

  "I'm simply reserving judgment," Paul answered.

  "I'll join you in that. Now let me ask you to look over the scene with me. I'm always glad of assistance from an expert, though there are other kinds not so welcome." He jerked his head meaningly in the direction of the Bently. "Got a torch by any chance?" he added. "It's pretty dark in this wood."

  "I keep one in my car. Just a second."

  He fetched it under the stony gaze of Mrs Weddenhall and rejoined Hofford, who had gone to the gateway beside the copse and was flashing his own torch across the grass beyond.

  "Now as I understand it he pulled up to answer a call of nature. He wouldn't have wanted to climb this gate, would he? It's soaking wet and there's moss on the top bar here. Let's see . . ."

  The beam of light swung to play along the rusty wire fence enclosing the trees, stopping on a broken post which dragged the upper wire low enough for a man to step over.

  "That way, I think," he murmured, and swung his leg across.

  Paul was impressed with the accuracy of the guess. Not more than five yards further on, they found a patch where the undergrowth -- mainly bramble -- had been violently disturbed. His torch showed something round and brown snagged on a thorn, and he bent to pick it up. A tweed cap. He showed it to Hofford.

  "Belongs to the victim, I suppose," the inspector commented. "Thank you." He turned it around in his hand and went on, "No blood or anything on it -- just rain. Well, some professional advice from you, please, Doctor! Would the woman have stayed nearby or taken to her heels?"

  "It's impossible to say. If she was sane and the man did attack her, she'd have run off, but she might not have reached a house before collapsing from shock. It's a pretty exhausting experience, being assaulted by a stranger. Alternatively if she is insane she might be miles away or equally she might be strolling unconcerned across the next field."

  "Damnably complicated, aren't we -- we human beings?" Hofford turned back towards the road. "Well, I'd better start a check at the houses nearby, make sure nobody has had a weeping girl arrive on the doorstep. And after that I'm afraid we'll just have to comb the area. Filthy night she picked to bring us out on!"

  Paul didn't accompany him back to the cars. The running-water noise of the rain on the trees had brought the pressure due to his earlier drinking to an urgent climax, and he seized the chance to slip away out of sight and attend to that minor problem before it began to interfere with his concentration. He picked his way awkwardly to the middle of the copse, brambles tugging at and releasing his legs on every step, and stood shivering a little against a dying tree.

  -- Mirza and his horror film . . . Ought to be here now: The Hound of the Weddenhalls!

  He had snapped off his torch to conserve the battery, and without it the dank misery of the drenched woods overwhelmed him. Silence might have been better, and absolute pitch blackness. The sodden murmur of rain was like a complaint of nature against his intrusion; the faint voices which carried to him were just faded enough to escape comprehension, heightening his sensation of being cut off in a solitary private universe, and though a gap between the trees afforded a line of sight toward the cars, he could not see the people there as whole persons; they were mere shadows, and incomplete at that, their passage back and forth, their gestures, every movement, curtailed as their voices were blurred. An arm and hand melted into the clawing twigs of a tree branch; a head into the black sky.

  -- A prisoner in Plato's cave, watching the shadows of the greater world. In another minute, back on the road: who are you, what are you doing here? Inspector Hofford, I'm Dr Fidler and you were talking to me a moment ago! My name isn't Hofford and your name isn't Fidler and this world is a trick and a lie, a vault of illusion and the time for deceit is over. . . .

  Shuddering, he turned to retrace his path, hurrying a little because that momentary vision seemed so much of a piece with his surroundings.

  " Tiriak-no?"

  The voice struck out of nowhere, uttering that single incomprehensible word on a rising, questioning note. Paul gasped and whirled, his torch beam slashing across tree trunks flick-flick and halting. To be spoken to here, and in an unfamiliar language, was a foretaste that his vision would come true.

  Then he saw her, uncertainly shading her eyes against the light, and brief terror was swept aside by disbelief.

  -- She can't be the one! Damn it, she's so tiny! Like a doll! And yet there couldn't very well be two women walking this wood without clothes.

  *6*

 
; She stood in the beam of the torch, a pallid, somehow pathetic figure. The world paused long enough for Paul to study her and compile an almost clinically thorough description of her in his mind.

  -- Feet and half her calves out of sight in the undergrowth but the rest perfectly proportioned, so . . . Not over five feet at the tallest. Age? Twenties, just possibly eighteen/nineteen but I think older. Take that hand away let me see your face -- ah. Black hair cropped very short. Sharp face: sharp nose, chin. Big eyes. Never seen a facial structure quite comparable. Must be white European, but she has the epicanthic fold. Chinese somewhere, generations back? I've no idea how long it keeps recurring after the initial incrossing. Small breasts, nipples practically unpigmented, navel not re-entrant so no fat on the belly, all muscle, narrow hips, legs scratched all to hell with thorns and a patch of mud on the thigh as if she's been pushed over and sat on wet ground. . . .

  She was still just standing, poised either to flee or to defend herself.

  -- If you're really the girl who beat up Faberdown, you're a wildcat. You can't possibly weigh more than eighty pounds. And I said: must be like Mrs Weddenhall.

  The absurdity of the idea made Paul want to laugh, but memory of the salesman's injuries sobered him. He was by himself with a girl who had probably broken a man's arm with bare hands, and he was going to have to be very tactful indeed. He cast around for something to say and decided on a phrase which promised maximum reassurance.

  "Hullo. I'm a doctor. I've come to look for you."

  She raised both arms, fists clenched, not menacingly but with an expression of dismay. After a pause she responded, but his tense ear could not identify the wards.

  "English!" he said slowly and clearly. "Do you speak English?"

  Her head lifted in a quick gesture he recognised from seeing Cypriot nurses do it at the hospital: a Balkan negative equivalent to a headshake.

  -- Deadlock.

  He realised suddenly he was shivering. And if he was chilled, how about her? He hesitated, weighing the facts: the salesman's arm against the way she had shown herself when he might have walked past without noticing her.

  -- Watch it. Don't let superficial helplessness persuade you because you don't like men in imitation old school ties.

  Nonetheless, if he didn't act quickly Hofford would have filled the wood with noisy men and that lingering terror on her face would spur her to flight. He unbuttoned his coat carefully, one-handed.

  "Here, put this around you," he said, trying to make the tone convey what the words could not.

  -- That headshake. Greek, perhaps? I don't know what Greek sounds like. But what in hell is she doing here?

  Cautiously she accepted the coat. Her eyes never wandered from him; she slipped the garment on purely by touch.

  -- In case I go for her while she's hindered from striking back? What did Faberdown do to her?

  The coat came to her ankles and was impossible to button closely. She tugged the belt as tight as she could, drew a deep breath, and seemed to pluck up the courage to abandon her watchful suspicion. Favouring her right foot, she came up to him with her hand outstretched. He took the small cold fingers in his and led her towards the road.

  "Inspector!" he called. "I've got her!"

  She tensed at the cry but didn't try to hang back. At the low point of the wire Hofford and one of the constables appeared, silhouetted in the light of Wolseley's headlamps. A torch stabbed towards them.

  "That's her?" Hofford exclaimed. "Why, she's only a child!"

  Beyond the two men, Paul noticed with satisfaction, Mrs Weddenhall was venturing to take a closer look.

  -- So much for bloodthirsty maniacs to be hunted with dogs and guns. But I bet you won't learn anything from this.

  Hampered by the coat, she negotiated the fence, accepting aid from Hofford, and Paul saw the reason far her limp: a cut just behind her right little toe, no longer bleeding but obviously tender.

  "More than a child, I think," Paul told Hofford. "But she's definitely a half-pint. Goodness knows who she is or what she's doing here, though. She seems to be a foreigner -- doesn't appear to understand English."

  Hofford blinked. "Are you sure? Couldn't she just be . . . ah . . . 'mute of malice,' as the phrase goes?"

  "That's just it. She's not mute. I'd never have noticed her if she hadn't spoken to me."

  A semicircle of frowning faces focused on the girl. She had detached her hand from Paul's and was peering at the things close to her, especially at the cars. Now she raised her eyes to Paul as though asking silent permission, and went to the nearest, the police Wolseley. The driver, reporting her discovery over his radio, watched her nervously.

  She touched the door of the car as if she had never seen anything like it, walked to the rear and first examined, then touched, the maker's insignia.

  "Don't think she's going to break and run, do you?" Hofford whispered to Paul.

  "I doubt it. But I can't figure out what she's up to!"

  The girl turned from the police car to look at the Bentley. Two eager dogs returned her gaze. One of them barked and clawed at the car's window.

  She covered her face with both hands and began to cry.

  She parted her fingers to find out who it was when Paul comfortingly put his arm around her, recognised him and allowed herself to be led back to where the others were standing. Her weeping consisted in small dry sobs; he felt their pulselike tremor come and go.

  "Well, the question is now," Hofford said, "what's to be done with her? Your hospital strikes me as the best bet, Doctor, because even if you're right and the man she -- " He checked, aware that a phrase like "beat up" sounded absurd applied to a man nearly a foot taller than this slip of a girl and practically twice her weight. "What I mean is, she must be a trifle odd walking around in the altogether!"

  Paul nodded. "Can you take her down in your car? I'll follow in my own. And perhaps you could radio in and ask your headquarters to warn the duty doctor that she's coming."

  "Yes, of course. Okay, come along, my girl!"

  But though she didn't struggle, she flinched away from Hofford's encouraging hand and shrank back closer to Paul.

  "Taken a fancy to you," the inspector commented. "Must be the bedside manner, or whatever you call it in your line of business."

  "I suppose I could take her in my car," Paul suggested doubtfully. "It's only a two-seater, but -- "

  "I'd rather you didn't," Hofford interrupted. "She can obviously be a handful, no matter how harmless she seems at the moment. Constable Edwards over there is a class A driver; suppose he brings your car in and you ride with us?"

  There was a brief disturbance caused by the angry departure of Mrs Weddenhall, the Bentley's engine roaring and both dogs barking frantically. Hofford sighed.

  "That's a relief! You know, for a moment I thought I was going to have to arrest a justice of the peace for obstructing me in the execution of my duty. . . . Right, let's get going."

  Having to urge her on at every step, they persuaded the girl towards Hofford's car.

  "You'd think she'd never seen a car before, wouldn't you?" he muttered to Paul as he opened the rear door. "Get in first, please -- it may reassure her."

  Paul slid across the back seat and extended a hand to the girl. Taking it like a shipwrecked passenger clutching a lifebelt, she crept in beside him.