Peter Robinson - Sleeping in the Ground

‘Not if you get yourself killed, it doesn’t.’

‘I’ll be careful. Come straight to Swainsford Bridge.’

‘Don’t do anything foolish,’ said Banks. Gerry ended the call. She saw the turning for Swainsford Bridge ahead, to her left, the sandwich-board warning sign knocked on its side, yellow police tape across the road to the bridge broken in the middle and trailing in the rain.

Gerry was about a quarter of a mile away from the bridge itself when she went through the first dip in the road. It was filled with water, which splashed up in broad sheets on either side of the car. She could feel its drag, slowing her down as she ploughed through. Not far now, she told herself. Hang on.

Soon she could see where the river narrowed, a mass of churning foam to her right, and she knew the waterlogged Leas lay not far to her left beyond the bridge. The water that gushed faster and faster down from the mountain streams into the Swain would soon have nowhere left to go. It would back up and swell the river to bursting, fill the bridge’s arch, perhaps even take the bridge with it. It had happened before.

There was a steep bank on the side of the river. Gerry drove to its edge, where her car would be safe from any flooding, and got out, taking her torch from the boot. The bridge stood ahead, about fifty yards further along the road, which was all downhill. She could see from where she was standing that it was blocked by more official boards declaring it unsafe. As far as she could tell, there were no other vehicles in the area. There were no houses for some distance, either. She levelled her torch and made her way slowly down to the riverside in its beam. The water was almost level with the top of the riverbank now, and it was swirling and swelling at an alarming rate as the mountain streams that fed it poured on relentlessly.

Gerry’s progress was difficult because she was trying to walk down at a steep angle on mud and slippery grass in heavy rain and near darkness. She fell on her backside a couple of times and slid, but managed to hang on to everything except her dignity, and this was no time to worry about that. The lashing rain was practically blinding her. At the river’s edge was a narrow footpath, like a towpath by a canal. It was already under half an inch of water. Gerry moved along it towards the bridge on her left carefully, in the light of her torch. The path was muddy, too, and water lapped over her feet. Here and there, the path had disappeared completely into the water, and she had to back up the slope a few paces to get by. If she lost her footing, that would be the end.

She shone her torch around, scanning the banks for anything that might be Maureen Tindall. Finally, the beam picked out a bundle of some sort under the bridge, on the narrow ledge between the inside of the arch and the river. The water was slopping over the bundle but hadn’t covered it yet, or dislodged it at all. As the currents twisted and turned in the gushing stream, glinting dark and light in the moving torch beam, water occasionally splashed over it. Gerry hurried as best she could along the narrow, broken path in the weak light of her torch. She was scared. The noise of the water filled her ears and cut out all other sound. Vincent himself could be lurking somewhere nearby, even aiming a gun at her right now. And if she missed her footing and went into the river, that would be the end of her. Under the bridge, the noise was even louder, and the water hit the stone in such a way that it splashed up the walls and rained on the bundle she was slowly edging her way towards, moving sideways, hands against the stone.

Finally, she got there and saw that the bundle was indeed Maureen Tindall, gagged and tied up in such a way that, if she moved, the rope would tighten around her neck and strangle her. Gerry held her torch in her right hand and fumbled in her pocket for her Swiss army knife, the one her father had given her for her fourteenth birthday and told her to carry with her always. She found it and got it open, then bent and cut Maureen Tindall free, shouting in her ear for her to keep still and not to move an inch. When the ropes were loosened and Maureen could stretch out her legs and move her arms without choking, Gerry yelled to her that the ledge was narrow and fast disappearing under the rising water, and that the only way to get her out was for Gerry to grab her legs and slowly drag her backwards. Maureen had to remain completely still. Even so, it would be dangerous. Gerry knew that she could easily slip on the wet path, and they could both tumble to their deaths in roaring waters, but she bit her lip and concentrated as best she could.

She gave Maureen the torch to hold, but the light in her eyes didn’t help at all as she shuffled slowly backwards, feeling for every step with her foot before advancing. It was slow and painstaking work. Luckily, Maureen had got the message and lay still, let herself be dragged. Finally, they cleared the arch of the bridge, where the path widened a few inches. But the river’s flow seemed to be getting faster and noisier. It had swelled even more since Gerry had gone in, and now there was less of the muddy path to follow.

Gerry glanced back at the bridge and saw the water was now covering the ledge where Maureen had lain. Smashing to and fro against the sides. There was only one way to safety, and that was up the bank. Up there, on the higher ground, they would be safe. She would get Maureen into her car with the heater on, then drive her to the hospital. But the only way to get Maureen up the bank was to drag or carry her, and Gerry wasn’t sure she had the strength left. Maureen was so frozen with fear and her circulation had been cut off by the tight ropes, so she could hardly do anything but whimper.

The fireman’s lift wouldn’t work. Not that Gerry couldn’t bear the weight — Maureen was a slight enough figure — but carrying her like that would unbalance her, and she would surely slip back or sink into the bankside mud and slide down to the water. She couldn’t make it up the slope walking upright. The only way was to get Maureen to cling around her neck without strangling her, and for Gerry to crawl on her stomach and claw her way up the slope with her hands, feel for footholds with her feet. It was slow going, even slower than the journey back from the arch. Once, they slid back and almost went over the bank into the water. But Gerry held on and set off again.

At last, she felt she had got far enough and had sufficiently dug in with her feet to take a breather. The water still roared in her ears. She glanced over her shoulder, past Maureen, and saw that it now almost filled the whole arch of the bridge.

Gerry took a deep breath, gathered all her strength together and grabbed on to whatever she could find in the bankside for the last haul — clumps of grass, a half-buried rock, an exposed tree root. Finally, they made it. She dragged herself and Maureen on to the roadside, unhooked Maureen and rolled over on her back, where she lay gasping for breath. Maureen lay still, a few feet away, also on her back. It was only twenty yards of easy paved path to Gerry’s car now, but she wasn’t sure whether she could make it. Her whole body hurt, every muscle, every joint. She had to struggle just to fill her lungs with air on every breath. The water roared in her ears. She felt her head spinning, the world receding from her. She wanted nothing more than to sleep.

Then she heard what she thought was a slow handclap and turned her head sideways to see a figure dressed all in black standing over her.

‘Well done,’ Mark Vincent said. ‘That was a heroic effort. Pity it all has to come to nothing.’

Banks cursed under his breath and drummed with his hands on the steering wheel. They were stuck in a long line of cars at a set of makeshift lights west of Eastvale, the already narrow country road down to one lane. They were on the north side of the river, as the main dale road was now closed. At the front of the line, beside the temporary red light, a man in a yellow slicker stood holding a lollipop sign that said STOP. Just a few yards beyond the traffic disruption, they would be able to turn left along the lane towards the Riverview Caravan Park and Swainsford Bridge. But the red light seemed to be taking for ever to change. A patrol car had spotted a beat-up old Clio with two people in it heading west towards Swainsford Bridge not long before. Banks guessed that had to be Vincent and Maureen Tindall, and that Gerry was either already there or on her way.