Tim Vicary - A Game of Proof

Before he could answer, the doorbell rang and Emily came clattering down the stairs. They heard voices in the hall and then Emily came in with Larry, beaming happily. Emily looked pretty and flushed with excitement. Larry, in jeans, a black leather jacket and bootlace tie, had clearly made some attempt to improve his appearance. Sarah forced a smile.

‘Hello, you two. Where are you going?’

‘Out. To a meal at a place Larry knows.’

‘In Larry’s car?’ Sarah looked dubiously out at a small rusty hatchback in the drive.

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Newby, I don’t drink and drive,’ Larry said. ‘And she won’t be back late either — I do know she’s got exams this week.’

‘But not tomorrow, so I’ve got all day to revise,’ Emily said. She kissed Sarah on the cheek. ‘Don’t look so worried, Mum, I’m all right.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you are. And you can trust Larry, I hope.’ She glanced anxiously at Bob. ‘Actually, I’m going out for a while, too. So I’ll follow you down the road to check your driving, young man!’ She went out into the porch for her leathers and helmet.

‘Oh Mum!’ Emily protested at this humiliation. Then a more serious thought struck her. ‘You are coming back tonight, aren’t you?’

‘Just like you, young lady, yes .’ She met Bob’s eyes. ‘I’ll stay so long as we all trust each other. Okay?’

Emily looked puzzled, not sure what her mother was talking about. ‘If we have to trust each other why are you going to follow Larry down the road?’

‘It was a joke,’ Sarah said. ‘I won’t.’ She smiled at them all — a tense, rather frightening smile — and stepped out into the night, alone.

It was dark by the time she got to Bramham Street. The sound of the motorbike echoed loudly from the terraced houses on either side. Sarah hadn’t noticed it before; perhaps guilt focused her attention on it now. When she cut the engine it was quiet — the sound of television through windows, curtains drawn, no one on the street. She glanced around but there was no one watching from a window that she could see.

Anyway I have a right to be here, she told herself. It’s my house, I have a key. I’ll come whenever I choose. But for all her brave words she felt like a burglar.

She wheeled the bike through the alleyway into Simon’s back yard. It was dark, but the streetlights lit different angles of the passage, so that Sarah walked through a kaleidoscope of shadows. She settled the bike on its stand, stripped off her gauntlets and helmet, and fumbled in the pannier for the plastic bag. Then she pushed open the door of the shed and stepped inside.

As she did so something seized her arm and she stumbled forwards on her face. To her amazement she was on her hands and knees on the shed floor. She tried to get up but something hit her on the rump and she fell forwards again, face down. Her right hand slipped inside the bag and got tangled up in the balaclava hood. She gasped, struggled to her knees, looked behind her, and saw -

a man blocking the doorway.

She could only see him dimly in the orange glow of the streetlight but he was a large, well built man with thick arms and massive shoulders. She almost fell over a broken chair, recovered, and staggered to her feet. The intruder grabbed her arm, and slammed her against the wall. She pushed the balaclava hood into his face, blinding him for a second, her nails clawing at his cheeks. But a huge hand closed over hers, dragging the hood away from the side of his head and flinging it to the floor.

‘Right then, what’s this?’

The big, cruel face grinned into hers from a few inches away. As her eyes adapted to the faint orange light from the street the features became clearer and the confidence in the man’s face leaked away. They stared at each other, bewildered.

‘Fancy knickers Newby!’

‘Gary Harker! Get off me!’ She tried to free herself but as she wriggled his grip tightened slightly. He must be twice her weight, with the strength of a gorilla. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What am I doing?’ He still held her but less cruelly, more as though he had forgotten what his huge hands were gripping than anything else. ‘Minding me own business, until you turned up. What you poking your nose in here for?’

He looked more annoyed than vicious, so far as she could tell in the gloom. But it was not a situation she intended to prolong. Was this how things had begun with Sharon? She had to get out of here, quickly.

‘Let me go, you great oaf!’

‘Let you go?’ The hands still held her, a jeering smile twitching his lips. ‘Why should I? Looking for me were you, miss fancy knickers? Dressed up in all this kinky gear, too!’ His right hand squeezed her breast, then slid down her waist to her hips. ‘Fancied me all along, I’ll bet. Well, now.’

A snake of fear slithered up her spine. She felt sure that if she struggled again she would provoke him more. She listened intently, hoping for some voice from the yard outside, but there was only the TV laughter far away, fainter than the soft hiss of his breath.

Very quietly she said: ‘Gary, I know exactly who you are. You’re not wearing a hood now. So if you touch me you’ll have to kill me. Otherwise I’ll see that you get sent down for rape with the longest sentence that’s ever been passed. You’ll be an old man before you come out again, your prick will dry up and shrivel off. Is that what you want? Twenty years inside?’

His hand moved thoughtfully across her buttock. ‘Twenty years inside you, you mean?’

Dear God in heaven , she thought, what have I done coming in here all alone? She panicked, wriggling like an eel to slip from his grasp, but that was a mistake; his grip tightened and he slammed her against the wall, knocking the breath out of her. His breath was on her face, his huge hands pinning her arms to her sides, immobile like a vice.

‘For God’s sake, Gary, you’re mad, I’m too old for you!’

She watched his face in the dim orange light as his mind lumbered to a decision. Her pulse was racing, she wanted to sprint away like a gazelle but she couldn’t move. This is how I die, she thought, in a squalid scuffle in a shed. Then, to her surprise, his grip slackened.

‘Old cow. Go on then, get out of it. I’m not that desperate, ta very much.’

Warily, she slipped past him, and stepped outside. An enormous urge to run surged through her but she took just three steps before turning round to face him. Three yards of pitch black shadows and orange glow between them. ‘Right. Now do you mind telling me what you’re doing here, in the first place?’

‘What’s it to you? You don’t belong here.’

‘I do, you know. This is my son’s house. I own it, in a way.’ It was amazing, she thought, how hard and insistent her voice could still sound, when her whole body was trembling like a jelly inside. Perhaps that’s part of being old.

‘Who — Simon? Your son? You’re crackers.’

‘No, I’m not. So you see that gives me every right to be here, unlike you. What exactly are you doing in my son’s shed, Gary? Thieving? You won’t find much there.’

‘That’s what you think, fancy knickers. Shows how much you know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your son — he’s been nicked, hasn’t he? For murder, I heard.’

Sarah’s brain began racing along a new track. What did this mean?

‘It’s a mistake. The police do make mistakes, Gary, you ought to know that.’

‘Oh right.’ She could hear the mocking grin in his voice. ‘So what did happen then?’

‘I don’t know, yet. My son isn’t a murderer, Gary. If you’ve met him you’d know that.’