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<h2>7</h2>
<p>It was bitterly cold. Hoar frost made filigree jewels of the
spiders webs stretched on the hedge along the back of the lane, but
she did not see them. The air was chill in her throat and she
huddled down against it, her movements fast and jerky. It was still
dark, midwinter dark, in the dregs of the morning and she was stiff
and sore from her huddled slump against the wall in the corner of
the room.</p>
<p>She had tried to call out, tried to cry when she heard the
movement at the strange house where she'd huddled in the dark, but
it had touched something inside and stifled her. It had made her
move, fast, urgent, digging at her with mental spurs and she had
run, quickly, out of the back, as soon as she had heard the knock
on the door. She had run and it had told her to find sanctuary. It
had reached into her mind and found a place she could take them.
Ginny had scuttled out and along the track, past the fence where
the dogs immediately went frantic and launched themselves, not at
the fence close to her, but on the far side, as if they were trying
to escape in the other direction. Their howling tore at the air.
She had floundered past the ragged bags of refuse behind the
Chinese restaurant, down the far alley and took a side street that
followed the line of the waterway parkland where the canal
meandered through the green belt of trees and narrow, fallow
fields.</p>
<p><em>Movemovemove</em> move! The urgent commands pushed and
jolted. Her lungs ached after a while because she could not pause.
Every turn she took, with the baby huddled in against her, was down
a darkened street, past a shady wall, in the lee of a hedge. She
was instinctively avoiding light. It took three quarters of an hour
and she was almost fainting from exhaustion when she got to Celia's
house. She scrambled up the narrow path, got the keys free and
after several futile attempts, she stabbed it into the lock, turned
hard to the left, pushed the door and was inside.</p>
<p>It was cold, but not freezing. She sagged down on the carpet,
panting like a beaten animal, listening to the rasp of breath in
her own throat. The only illumination was the pallid touch of the
moon out in the evening sky and the green pulsing light on the
coffee table in the corner. It held her eyes while she sat there
clenched and huddled feeling the weight against her breasts.</p>
<p>Some time later, the phone trilled and she started back, hard
enough to bang her shoulder against the wall. She turned, heart
hammering yet again and almost reached for the receiver, but once
more the mental injunction froze her to stillness.</p>
<p>The telephone rang, four, five times, insistent and urgent in
the darkness, but she could do nothing. It clicked. There was a
hollow purring sound then a double crackle of electronic
interference.</p>
<p>..... "Hi, this is Celia Barker." The voice was bright and
lively. A voice free of cares. "I can't come to the phone at the
moment, so leave a message and I'll call you back...." The purr
returned, then a rapid series of blips and a long whine of
noise.</p>
<p>"Hi again Ginny, I called earlier." The lively voice was
different, fresher then before. "Just to say I've arrived and this
place looks marvellous. Blue skies and a warm breeze coming in from
the sea. And the boys. Mmmm. They're all Greek gods. Wide
shoulders, tiny backsides, rippling torsos. We're going to have the
time of our lives. Don't worry, we'll be careful, because we can't
possibly be good. Just a pity you couldn't come along. You'd have a
ball. Several probably. Anyway, thanks for looking after Mork and
Mindy for me. There's plenty of tins in the cupboard. Just make
sure Mork stays out of Mindy's bowl. Don't have any wild parties
and if you do, make sure you tidy up after you. Love and
hugs...."</p>
<p>The voice was gone, a brief bubbling stream of words and
laugher. The machine clicked, whined again, then shut itself off.
The green eye winked steadily and the silence stretched out.</p>
<p>She stayed still, hunkered down against the wall, eyes fixed on
the green light, through her mind was a whirl. She was trying to
hold on to the familiarity of the voice on the phone, her friend's
abundant <em>normality.</em> But it was difficult to think clearly.
It was almost impossible to think at all.</p>
<p>The night had been crazy. It had been filled with strange dreams
and awful visions and when she awoke she recalled what had happened
and the baby was down on her, sucking hard, draining her.</p>
<p>She had tried to resist, tried to haul it off her breast. The
instant wash of repugnance had made her want to grab it and rip its
mouth from her skin and throw it to the ground. She had suddenly
wanted to hurl it to the floor and stamp on it until its sucking
pout stopped.</p>
<p>She had tried and the pain had come.</p>
<p>The pain had come in a corkscrew of hurt right at the back of
her head. It felt as if the inside of her skull was being split
down the bone sutures and the pain had been so immense that for a
moment she had blacked out. The room had swum in wavering double
vision and she had been swimming in a sea of suffering so fine she
could hear it resonating on the inside of her teeth. It was such an
agony, so devastating and overwhelming that she could not even cry
out.</p>
<p><em>No!</em> A wordless command sliced inside the pain.</p>
<p>The motion of her hand froze in mid strike, hovering paralysed
inches from the back of the baby's neck. Everything seemed to
happen in slow motion, the way it had been in the dream, but this
was no dream, she knew now. This was a nightmare maybe, but no
dream. The pain subsided fast and left her gasping with sudden
relief.</p>
<p>Her hand was stayed. She blinked twice and great tears rolled
down from eyes that were raw from the dreamlike sobbing of before.
The baby's head was still pressed against her skin. It's silky hair
was black and shining and there was a line of matte down trailing
on the slender neck and between the pink shoulders. The cold
puckered the skin into shivering goose-flesh. Her hand was freed
from its stasis and she looped the edges of her coat around the
tiny frame.</p>
<p>The baby turned, mouth still fixed on her nipple but no longer
sucking. It opened an eye which again seemed to be red and
protuberant at first and then changed, wavering to blue. It fixed
on hers and the scent came rolling up like a mist to infuse her
senses.</p>
<p><em>Get off me.</em> Her panicked thought came in blaring
capitals and the pain flared instantly. The revulsion and loathing
was squashed underneath the sudden weight and the scent filled her
head and the repugnance fragmented, then coalesced as some other
emotion.</p>
<p><em>Mother me...</em>the command shunted into her senses.
<em>Love me.</em></p>
<p>The pain faded again and was replaced by a sudden warm infusion
of unexpected pleasure. She tried to fight it, tried to keep her
mind clear but it was impossible. She felt as if she was being torn
apart while her emotions wrestled and heaved and her thoughts
jittered and sparked and the fear and the alien sense of need
looped and writhed around each other in a confusing maelstrom.</p>
<p>She drew her hand down and cradled the baby's head against her,
dizzy with the conflicting sensations. Its skin was warm and
dry</p>
<p><em>Yet underneath that perception she sensed something
cold</em></p>
<p>to the touch as it nuzzled gently, tugging the way Tony had done
only the night before behind the steamed windows of his car.</p>
<p>After a while she was able to move. She rose from her slump in
the corner, still hugging the little thing in against her. She knew
she needed to wash, but there were other needs clamouring at her.
All of a sudden she understood she had to move, to get out of the
flat. The urgency swelled in her mind and without hesitation, she
went into Celia's bedroom. The bed was neatly made up, very
feminine, with embroidered pillowcases to match the eiderdown. She
drew it back one handed while the other hand clamped the baby to
her breast. All the time, her mind was reeling and spinning, though
underneath the mental storm, everything was icy cold and clear,</p>
<p>She drew the cover down and then the sheet, folding it corner to
corner then doubling that until it formed a square. Finally she was
able to take the baby away from her. It twisted, letting the nipple
slide out of its mouth with a rubbery little pop. It turned and its
eyes swung up to her. They were wide and clear, big baby eyes that
stared into hers with mute appeal.</p>
<p><em>My baby.</em></p>
<p>The thought came strong. The infant hand moved away, small and
pink, minute fingers clenched into a fist. For a brief instant, a
mere fraction of a second, the she imagined skin began to ripple
and tendons writhe under the surface. A shimmering iridescence, as
if the dim glow of the street lamp were being reflected back from
minute facets, broke the light into fragments. A tickle of pressure
nudged in her brain and the iridescence vanished. The tiny fingers
opened, closed and then slackened again, clean and rosy, each
little nail perfectly formed.</p>
<p>The baby gazed liquidly, needfully at her and she felt her heart
flip over. She was borne high on the surge-tide of mother need. It
was impossible to resist for now.</p>
<p>Ginny bent quickly, her hair sweeping down on either side of her
face with the sudden motion. She laid the child on the blanket and
wrapped it up, tucking the hands in tight. She swaddled the baby
into a bundle then turned round. Beside the telephone, the twin
green eyes of the machine's answering lights blinked mutely.</p>
<p>She found her own bag on the carpet where she had spent the
night, rifled it quickly, taking her credit card out along with the
rest of money she'd taken to buy Christmas presents. It wasn't much
and she needed more. She went back into the bedroom and checked in
the drawers on either side of the bed, but found nothing except
bottles of pills and a substantial package of condoms. Under any
other circumstances she'd have made a comment, probably one of
surprise, but they hardly registered on her mind. The dresser on
the far side yielded two twenties, tucked inside a make-up case.
Back in the living room there was a sideboard where Celia had
stashed her work-a-day handbag. She dragged it out, experiencing a
warm, almost savage glow of triumph. She had known it would be here
somewhere, and inside, she knew she'd find Celia's bank card.</p>
<p>"I'd better leave them here just in case," her friend had said,
practical as ever. "If I lost it abroad with the rest of them, I'd
have no money when I came back." The card was in a small blue
plastic case. She knew the number was simply the day and month of
Celia's birthday.</p>
<p>The door closed with a dull thud, muffled by the swirling mist
that was more frost than fog in the early silence of the morning.
The orange lamps were haloed and somehow eerie. Some distance away,
a truck engine coughed into life, sounding like a large animal.
Further away, miles down the river, a ship's foghorn came wavering
on the still air, a distressed bellow in the far distance.</p>
<p>The cold was intense and she wrapped her coat around the bundle,
cinching the belt tight. The little face was snug against the
warmth of her blouse and the huge eyes were closed. It made no
sound, but she could sense its warm thoughts inside her own. It was
snug and protected, safe in her arms. Her heart flipped over in the
powerful wash of mother love.</p>
<p>And underneath that, struggling desperately, her own sense of
self was thrashing frantically like a drowning creature in a pit of
black tar.</p>
<p>The path behind the houses took her back down towards the alley.
The dogs were either sleeping or they recognised her. They made no
sound from behind the chain link fence. There was no sign of the
tramp She made it out from behind the Chinese restaurant and onto
the road.</p>
<p>There was no-one about at this time in the morning. Her heels
clacked on the concrete and the sound came reverberating back at
her, muffled in the ground mist. She passed the church and made it
to the high street before she saw anyone else. It was an early
morning police patrol car nosing along, two bored officers close to
the end of their shift, looking forward more than anything else to
a cup of hot tea and a warm bed. Both of them, turned to follow her
progress as she hurried along past the shop windows, head down and
shoulders up against the chill of the morning. She was no threat,
no burglar. The car moved on. It turned the corner and she stopped,
turned back and walked forty steps to the bank she'd just passed.
Without any hesitation she slid the card in the slot, punched in
the number and hit the key for a balance inquiry.</p>
<p>There was less than a thousand in the account. Celia, normally a
good saver, must have taken plenty out for her holiday. It would
have to do. She keyed for the maximum, waited until it coughed out
two hundred in clean twenties, folded and wadded the money into her
purse and hurried on.</p>
<p>She experienced no guilt, not on the surface. The baby needed
the money.</p>
<p>And still, underneath the numbness and the strange overwhelming
mother-love, she was screaming in terror and revulsion.</p>
<p>In the dark of the early morning, she made her way back to
Celia's place, taking great care to avoid being seen on the main
streets.</p>
<p>_____</p>
<p>It was after two by the time David Harper looked at the clock,
realised how long he'd been sitting and dragged himself away from
the small pile of papers. He had a long, hot shower and toyed with
the idea of another malt whisky before deciding against it. He went
to bed. It had been a long day and a longer night, but despite the
physical tiredness, his mind was still wide awake, trying to make
sense of what he'd been reading.</p>
<p>Thelma Quigley.</p>
<p>That had been the name on the rent book, but he was convinced
that it was not the name of the woman who had fallen and died
screaming in the Waterside shopping mall. He had spent most of the
night reading the diaries and going over the papers and notes and
the cuttings from old newspapers, yellowing pages, brittle and
fragile with age, worn at the folds.</p>
<p>There had been two diaries, both from the mid sixties, tattered
and loose in their covers. With them there had been a number of
school exercise books, all of them different colours and a pair of
spiral bound notebooks the kind reporters use.</p>
<p>She had been a note-taker, Thelma Quigley, or the woman who
carried her rent book and used her name, had been. A compulsive
recorder of events, though apart from the diaries, there was no way
he would know, unless he passed them along to forensics for paper
typing and dating, to which period the others belonged. Oh, there
were clues, and he supposed if he sat with them a while longer, he
might spot a chronological give-away, but for the moment, all he
had to go on were the battered diaries.</p>
<p><em>March 17, 1967. Thelma wants to go to France this summer.
She's so adventurous. I asked what's wrong with Brighton and she
laughed. She says the French men are much more romantic than the
English, and they don't have all those Mods and Rockers causing
fights and trouble. She'd got a part in the Sound of Music at the
Citizens Theatre and she wants me to audition for the chorus, but I
can't sing as well as she can.</em></p>
<p>More along these lines, a woman in her thirties, a little shy, a
few years older than her best friend who has theatrical ambitions
and who had further horizons than a holiday in Brighton. The diary
of a woman who had been cloistered by nature and by circumstance
and who experienced the world vicariously through Thelma Quigley's
eyes. The name, repeated often enough, began to nudge a distant
memory.</p>
<p><em>May 22, 1967. I haven't been able to write for all this
time</em> (this after more than a week of empty pages and the ink
is smudged where tears have softened the page long ago.) <em>I went
up to her grave, but there isn't a headstone there yet. I can't
believe she is gone. Dead. Just like that. All the life and all the
smiling. She would have been wonderful. The police came round to
ask me more questions, but there was nothing I could tell them.
Thelma had lots of boyfriends, but nobody serious. I wanted to see
her before the funeral but they said best not to. It was a closed
coffin because they said she was marked and I can't believe that
somebody would do it to her. Oh what a terrible thing. If I could
catch him I would stab him myself until he was dead. I miss her and
I wish I'd told her I would go to France.</em></p>
<p><em>July 26, 1967. The headstone is in a polished stone with her
name on it. My flower holder with the white heart in marble is
still there and I put some carnations in it. Her name looks so
lonely there on the stone and I can't still believe that she is
down there and not up and dancing around the way she always did,
laughing and joking with the boys. They haven't caught him yet, the
b*****d (God forgive me but I can't forgive him). Tomorrow, I'll go
up to the bridge where we went with Tom and Geoffrey last year when
Thelma fixed up that double date without telling me and then we
laughed all the way home because she said Geoffrey looked like Adam
Faith except smaller and everybody knew Adam's only five foot
nothing. That was the last real laugh I remember and since then
it's all been grey. Nothing matters any more. I have nobody to talk
to. My mother says just to snap out of it and dad doesn't know what
to say. Nothing matters and I don't have any other friends and I'm
so very lonely. I'm going to go up to the bridge tomorrow, because
wherever Thelma is, she'll be laughing and she'll make me laugh
again.</em></p>
<p>There was a space in the diary for the next fifty pages. Nothing
had been written from July until some time in September. David
could have been forgiven for assuming that whoever had written the
lines in July, a woman clearly grieving and suffering a deep sense
of loss, had done as she said she would do and gone up to the
bridge, wherever that was, and joined her dead friend.</p>
<p>But no.</p>
<p><em>September 22, 1967. He wants fed, poor little thing. He
needs to be fed all the time and when he turns those big eyes on me
I almost melt</em>. <em>I go all squishy inside and I know Thelma
would have just adored him. She always said I'd be a great mother,
and she was right. I take care of Baby Grumpling better than anyone
could and I love him to death. Really I do. I just can't wait for
him to learn to speak and I know just what his first words will
be.</em></p>
<p>The writing was clear and rounded, exactly the same as in the
earlier pages before the blank stretch. They had been written by
the same woman.</p>
<p><em>I'll have to get another pram for him because the wheel on
the other one is buckled and he doesn't like to be jiggled about. I
always know when he's not happy. He soon lets me know. That's just
the way babies are. He sucked me really hard today, and I got a big
bruise, but he can't help it. He must be really hungry all the time
and I don't mind because he needs his food and he won't take
anything else.</em></p>
<p><em>December 20, 1967. I got him a big teddy and a furry
hedgehog that looks really cuddly. He'll start playing with toys
soon but he's too young yet, just a tiny little thing and so
helpless. He needs me so much and I know he loves me. All I want to
do is hold him in my arms. I have to go out to the shops for more
liver. I never liked it before, but I need more all the time. Funny
isn't it. They say you get notions and cravings before you have a
baby. I'm getting them all the time. Liver and eggs and eggshells.
Funny that. I'm so looking forward to Christmas. Just me and the
baby. It'll be like the first ever Christmas and he's so sweet,
just like the baby Jesus. Maybe I'll sing him a carol.</em></p>
<p>The next diary had been more of the same. Not every day had been
filled in, sometimes there were gaps of weeks, but every entry
consisted of nothing else but the rituals of feeding and clothing
<em>Baby Grumpling.</em> As he read on, David sensed the strange
alteration, the obsession the woman had with the baby, but it was
not that realisation that made the hairs on his arms begin to
crawl.</p>
<p>There was something odd, something unnatural about the whole
thing. Sometime during the reading, he'd got up and poured himself
a decent measure of Islay Malt and he'd sipped at it, savouring the
smoky ancient taste of peat damping down the fire of the liquor.
Still, the whisky couldn't take away the strange taste that the
diaries imparted.</p>
<p>There had been something wrong here. He couldn't put his finger
on it although there were glaring omissions. They weren't what gave
him the creepy fingers up and down his spine. It was beyond those
omissions (that he would have to check out in any case) way beyond
them. He sensed something that was just wrong. Not criminal, though
there was a distinct possibility, not criminal, but simply
wrong.</p>
<p>The diaries gave him a puzzle that he would have to solve and
some of that would be easy, just a matter of record. Thelma Quigley
had been murdered. It was clear from the pages of the diary that
she'd been stabbed to death and her body buried in a shallow grave
and that it hadn't been found for some time. This knowledge was
already making the faint memory stronger. Thelma Quigley. He
<em>had</em> heard the name before. Once he ascertained who Thelma
Quigley had been, he would find out the dead woman's identity.</p>
<p>He closed his eyes and tried to get to sleep. Outside the wind
picked up, driving shards of hoar-frost against the pane in a
winter whisper. Out in the dark, a cat screeched and David recalled
the blurred motion when he and Helen Lamont had leaned out of the
window in the dead woman's house.</p>
<p>There had been something wrong with that place, more than just a
foul and musty smell and the collection of children's clothes and
toys that had never been used. His thoughts jumped from the dingy
flat to the black and white video unreeling on the screen in John
Barclay's office. He recalled the woman's shivering body, then the
jerk as she tried to raise herself up. He hadn't heard the words,
but Jenny McGill from Rolling Stock had said she had said something
about a baby and that was also confirmed by the paramedics. The
dead woman had been carrying a Mothercare bag, long gone now, but
the shop specialised in infant care .</p>
<p>It snagged at his mind. Hardingwell's laugh when he'd said she'd
been a virgin, but then his puzzled observation about the woman's
condition. She'd been well into her sixties and leaking milk like a
newly delivered mother.</p>
<p>Finally David drifted off to sleep and in a jumbled series of
dreams he saw the black and white video of the woman's collapse
unreel, though this time it had sound and the camera zoomed in on
her stricken face and she was screaming for her baby, mouth wide to
show stained, discoloured teeth and amazing breasts ballooning out
on grotesque swellings, each of them dribbling a viscid mess that
could have been anything at all. In the blink of an eye he was back
in the unkempt little apartment, surrounded by a dead silence. He
was alone this time, turning from the window, his vision sweeping
past the narrow little door and towards the rumple of bedclothes
that were knotted and twisted into the shape of a nest. He turned
again, listening for a sound he thought he'd heard, aware that he
was no longer alone. A slight, scraping sound came from under the
bed and he tensed, expecting something to come leaping out at him.
In the dream he crouched, still jittery with tension and the sound
changed. It came the way things do in dreams, without reason,
without warning. It changed from the scraping sound of a mouse to
the shivery cry of a newborn baby. David got to his knees and
scanned the darkness under the bed and the sound changed again into
a gurgle of laughter. He turned away from it, suddenly drenched in
fear and as he did so the pile of cuddly toys, now a pyramid in the
corner where two walls met, collapsed down on top of him and he
found himself under an avalanche of soft toys which rained down
until he was completely smothered in him and his breath was backed
up in his throat.</p>
<p>He woke up gasping for breath and slick with sweat. The shivery
aftermath of the dream stayed with him until he got up and made
himself a coffee, drinking it down hot and sweet. Outside it was
still dark and a light snow was blowing in against the window. No
creature stirred out there.</p>
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