Ken McClure - Tangled Web

Gordon caught up with Trool in the middle of the bridge. The traffic was heavy but they were the only pedestrians on that side.

‘There’s nowhere to go,’ said Gordon as he confronted the gasping man.

Trool, still with the same wild look in his eye, looked first at the traffic to his right and then over the parapet at the Seine below. He gave a sort of half smile that suggested to Gordon that the reality of his situation was beginning to dawn on him, but the words that he spoke suggested otherwise.

‘No baby... no case, Gordon.’

The horror of what Trool meant had barely got through to Gordon when Trool simply threw Anne-Marie’s unconscious body over the parapet. Gordon was paralysed with horror for only a few seconds but it was long enough for Trool to make a dash for the other side of the bridge through the traffic. He made it three quarters of the way to the accompaniment of squealing brakes and blaring horns but an Iveco truck carrying a full load of Stella Artois beer could not stop in time. It hit Trool with a sickening thud that seemed to transcend the traffic noise. The impact threw Trool briefly up into the air, his body arching backwards to land head first on the tarmac where his skull cracked open like an egg.

Gordon turned away and hung out over the parapet, trying desperately to see any sign of Anne-Marie, but all he saw was dark, slow moving water, punctuated with reflections of the lights on the bridge. The thought that Anne-Marie was down there somewhere was powerful enough to short-circuit all other considerations. He climbed up on to the parapet and, without pausing for further thought, jumped down into the Seine.

The fall seemed to last an eternity before ice-cold water enveloped him and instantly paralysed him with cold. Panic added to his agony, as he seemed to keep on going down into the depths with little or no control over his limbs. The rigid spasticity of his arms and legs made the eventual struggle back to the surface a nightmare and even when he broke the surface with bursting lungs, he found that the cold was such that he couldn’t breathe in properly: his chest muscles refused to work. He floundered about for fully ten seconds before he had enough control of his body again to start swimming downstream to where he thought Anne-Marie might have drifted to by now.

The sheer hopelessness of his situation was beginning to grow on Gordon as he turtle-dived below the surface for the sixth time to search by feel with his arms flailing in all directions. He was now completely numb with cold and close to complete exhaustion — so much so that he knew that his own chances of survival must now be in question. It was only the fear of having to face up to the fact that Anne-Marie was dead that made him go down for the seventh time. This time his left hand touched something but he failed to grasp it at the first attempt and he had to wheel to the left to try again. His hand touched the object again and this time he knew that he had found Anne-Marie: the little bundle was the right size and shape. As to what condition she was in, he put such thoughts out of his head and held her close to him as he reached up desperately with his free arm and kicked out hard with both legs in what he knew must be a final effort to surface. He simply had no energy left.

Gordon broke the surface and took in a huge gulp of night air, then two more before taking in another and holding it inside to give him buoyancy as he rolled over on to his back to float with the baby on his chest. He could see her face in the light spilling down from the bridge but he couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead. He clamped his mouth over hers and blew into her lungs, on the pretext that any such gesture was better than nothing at this point.

The water lapping over their faces and his own state of exhaustion prevented this measure from being either regular or correct in terms of technique but it was all he could manage as he struggled to stay afloat and tried to kick out weakly for the bank.

The slow thump of an engine reached Gordon through the water covering his ears and made him raise his head a little to look around him. Out of the darkness he could see the bows of a riverboat coming straight towards him. It was the final straw as far as he was concerned; he simply had no energy left to swim out of its way; there was nothing he could do except look up at the night sky in desperation and cry out in anguish, ‘For God’s sake! Give me a break!’

The world was suddenly filled with a blinding white light and the sound of shouting voices. Hands tugged at him and he felt Anne-Marie being taken from his grasp. He could do nothing for himself as he was pulled from the water but now he was lying on something other than water and he could breathe freely again as French voices around him said things he couldn’t understand. Suddenly, he felt like sleeping; God! how he felt like sleeping. The cold was no longer a problem and as he was starting to feel comfortable. There was no pain, only a delicious feeling of tiredness. The voices might be becoming more animated, even alarmed but he didn’t care: they were very distant now and he was drifting off into such a comfortable sleep...

When Gordon opened his eyes, he found Mary sitting there. She smiled at him with moist eyes. ‘So you’ve come back to me,’ she said.

He tried to speak but failed.

‘This really is becoming a bad habit,’ said Mary. ‘It’s hypothermia this time.’

‘The baby?’ croaked Gordon.

‘She’s going to be fine. People underestimate how tough babies really are. Trool had been keeping her under with sedatives, pretending to the nurses that she was in an ever-deepening coma, but they’ve worn off now and the bath in the Seine did her less damage than it did you.’

‘I never want to see water again. But how...’

‘Le Clerc’s driver saw you chase after Trool. He followed and saw what happened. He commandeered one of the Bateau Mouche boats moored at the bridge and rescued you and the baby. You were incredibly brave.’

‘How’s Le Clerc?’

‘He’s lost a lot of blood and he’s never going to look as pretty again but he’ll pull through.’

‘It’s over then.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Mary, running her fingertips gently along Gordon’s forehead. ‘It’s finally over.’

‘Isn’t science wonderful,’ murmured Gordon, suddenly feeling very sleepy again.

Within a week, Tom Gordon was proclaimed a hero in the press and greeted with smiles wherever he went in North Wales. One man’s belief in the innocence of a friend had captured the imagination of not only the Welsh newspapers, but also the nationals, many of which requested feature-length interviews. He declined all such requests without giving reasons.

John Palmer was released from prison and reunited with Lucy, who was allowed out of hospital, although more plastic surgery would be required at a later date. Ecstatic to be reunited with their ‘miracle’ baby, they too were under considerable pressure from journalists to give ‘their side of the story’, deemed to be of great ‘human interest’ to their readers — something emphatically underlined with the offer of large sums of money for exclusivity — but, like Tom, they too declined.

Tom elected to tell John and Lucy himself of the facts surrounding Anne- Marie’s true origins, and did so at the Manchester hospital just before Lucy’s release and when John was present. It was not the easiest of tasks and there had been anger and recrimination, followed by tears and finally acceptance of the situation. The fact that Anne-Marie was still alive emerged as the most important factor and, as Tom had predicted, the Palmers’ love of the child they still regarded as their daughter won the day. Nothing was going to change that and they welcomed their baby’s return without reservation.