Surrogate – a psychological thriller (26 page)

I rested my head against the pew in front of me and thought about all the bad things I had done in my life. Lust. Pride. I tried remembering what the other seven deadly sins were but was at a loss after gluttony and sloth. The varnish felt sticky from other people's fingers, and I lifted my head to look around. Only a few people had come to Alice's funeral. I was sitting well at the back of the mostly empty church and recognised Alice's sister from the back of her head. Our surrogate's coffin rested in the middle of the pew facing the altar. I thought about the argument I had got into with Alice that day she attacked me, coming home to find the creepy supper she had prepared, bumping into her in the fertility centre, and the night we had ended up in bed together. Oh, they had it all planned. Right from the start they had played me all. Yet something had gone wrong: perhaps Alice had wanted to keep our child and what, give her share of the money back? But that was not how Forget had planned things. Yes, you can get what you want, I reflected, only it never turns out the way you expect: the gynaecologist had gotten his money, only to end up dead in a swimming pool; Mole had gotten the child she said she wanted, only for the police to be hunting her down; and look where Alice was now – in a pine coffin about to roll into the flames. Really, Mole was just as guilty as Forget for what had happened to our surrogate: she had kept her mouth shut after her lover had bludgeoned Alice to death. Once again, I looked around for Mole, but she was not sitting in one of the rear pews. Even she could not be that much of a hypocrite.

The priest, who was in his mid-twenties, gave the homily, talking about lost sheep who had strayed and "Let he who be without sin cast the first stone." If Mole wasn't coming to the funeral, then why had she wanted to meet in Morecambe? That's what I couldn't figure out. Tinny, reverent organ music played while the vicar summarised Alice's childhood, glossing over her troubles with the police. Still, what could he say? Family members must have given him a half-hour of memories, and he was expected to make a life out of that?

The vicar stopped speaking and asked us to stand for the next hymn. We rose, and our thin voices fought against the organ. This would be a good time to get out of here, I thought, putting my order of service down. I did not want the family to see me, the man whose baby their daughter had given birth to, the man who they still thought of as the prime suspect in her murder.

Emerging into the daylight, I realised how foggy it had become. The red sun glowered in the thickness, turning everything the colour of nicotine-stained fingers. Even the buildings had become cloudy and indistinct as people disappeared into the fog. My footsteps clopped along the path to the church gate, where DI Syal and a local detective were waiting in an unmarked car. I shook my head, anxious to get to our rendezvous. My body ached for my little girl. Syal's electric window slid down and I leaned in to her.

"No joy," I said. "She probably guessed you'd be watching the service."

"Now we'll have to go to the beach."

I told her I didn't see what was so wrong with that, as it had always been the plan.

The policeman, who had grown up around here, leaned across from the passenger seat. "It's nine miles from end to end. A hundred and twenty-six square miles at low tide. You can't keep all that under surveillance."

"I've got officers fanned round the entire bay," said Syal. "The moment you make contact, we'll start walking and trap her that way."

"Like a draw-string bag," I said, stepping back while she turned the key in the ignition.

"Follow us in your car, and we'll meet you in the station car park," she said.

I drove behind the Vauxhall around the bay, occasionally glancing at the coastline. Thick fog hid everything. A few brave souls were walking along the promenade, their outlines dissolved in the wet. Emily could not have planned this better if she’d tried; it was perfect weather for her to vanish into. Our cars rolled through a brief bit of countryside and then we were into the next village, a line of bungalows facing the sea. In summer this must be an ice-cream-and-bucket-and-spade sort of place, but this choking fog made everything seem funereal. The Vauxhall up ahead indicated left, and we bumped over a railway crossing, parking on some scrubby land facing what I supposed was the beach.

"We're ten minutes early," said Syal, getting out of the car. "Do you want anything to drink?"

My mouth had gone dry with apprehension. "No. I'll just start walking. Emily told me to phone her once I got here. She'll bring the baby out to me in the middle of the beach. She probably wanted to check I was alone."

"Binoculars will be useless in this weather. You'll have to phone, and we'll come and get you," said Syal, her breath smoking.

The local CID officer shook his head. "Not in that car, you won't. It's too dangerous. We've had to pull tourists' cars out. It's either on foot or on a quad bike."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He turned to face the sea. "Out there, it's quicksand. It's where them Chinese cockle pickers died." I looked nonplussed, and he took that as encouragement to go on. "Chinese illegal immigrants were employed to pick cockles. Their gangmasters got the time wrong, and they got stranded. You're all right if you keep walking; you just don't want to get stuck. Every year we get two or three people who get caught out. The thing is, you can't take cars onto it. You can't even use a helicopter. If you get stuck, the winch'll tear you in 'alf. We have to dig you out." He paused, remembering something. "Last year a walker went missing, and I was the one who found his body."

"Thanks for the reassurance," I said. "So what happens once I've got my daughter back?"

Syal lit one of her thin cigarettes. There was something incongruous about this mumsy-looking Asian woman standing wrapped up against the cold on this beach. I suppose the three of us looked strange standing around on this godforsaken spot. I remembered that it was April Fool's Day, and I wondered if Mole was going to turn up, or whether this whole thing had been an elaborate April Fool's joke.

"We'll just have to watch for her coming out," Syal said. "Good luck."

I climbed over a hillock and then dropped down onto the sand. Despite the fog, I could make out how bleakly beautiful it was. I started trudging across the corrugated moon landscape and dug my phone out of my waterproof.

Mole answered after the third ring. "It's me," I said. "I'm here. How will you find me?"

"Don't you worry about that," she replied. "Just keep walking. Are you sure you weren't followed?"

"Yes," I lied. "I'm alone."

She ended the call, and I turned to face the way I had come. Blankness had already swallowed up the railway station and car park, and you could barely see your hand in front of your face. I kept on walking just as Mole had instructed me to. It had become eerily quiet. The only sounds were the suck of each footfall and the occasional plangent bark of a seagull high above my head. That and the sound of my breathing. I pictured us as figures in a painting Mole had shown me once, a flat Dutch landscape with two tiny people walking towards each other.

She emerged out of the fog as if somebody had breathed on glass. She was pushing our baby daughter in a buggy and was weighed down with a holdall she was carrying. My first instinct was to check whether Nancy was all right. Our darling baby was buttoned up against the cold, snuggled up in some kind of sleeping bag.

Mole, too, was zipped up, wearing a parka, and my heart thickened in surprise as she removed her fur-trimmed hood.

She had shaved all her hair off.

My wife was completely bald, and she was crying.

"My God, what have you done?"

"I wanted to show you how sorry I was. I never meant for any of this to happen. I hate this."

"But it did happen, though, didn't it?"

"Things went wrong. We had no choice."

A flash of the skylight rushing towards us as Forget and I toppled off the balcony came back to me, and then his car slamming into the back of the taxi, and Martin Wynn’s hand reaching for mine as he whimpered on the way to hospital.

"Fuck you," I said.

Her voice hardened, and I remembered why I wanted to get away from here as quickly as possible."Everything’s been given to you. Everything. You’re just an entitled brat. Who the fuck are you to judge me? You’re weak, Hugo. I got what I wanted. In the end, I won."

"Did you really get what you wanted? Alice and your lover both dead, so many people hurt. Was it all really worth it? For what, money?"

"My dad killed himself because of you. You and your father both have blood on your hands. You destroy people's lives. But do you get hurt? Noooo. You people just put on your life-jacket and float away on a sea of other people's money. Well, not this time. This time you got what you deserved."

Nancy was becoming restive in her buggy, but there was one more thing I needed to ask. "When you had your miscarriage, was that real?"

She shook her head. "No, that was pig's blood. I bought it from the butcher."

My God, the coldness. So calculating. "And how did Alice get pregnant so quickly? Sometimes surrogacy can take months, years."

"Don't flatter yourself. Jean-Marc was injecting her with IVF fertility drugs. You only had to look at Alice for her to get pregnant."

We both stood there in silence for a moment. Finally I said, "I can't believe you never loved me."

"At first, every time you touched me, I wanted to scream, but Jean-Marc told me to keep my nerve."

"And that’s it? This is what it was all about? You know what? I feel sorry for you. You're like one of those Russian dolls. You take off one doll and reveal another, and then another until finally there's nothing left. Just emptiness. You poison everything you come in contact with."

I could tell how much my words stung her. "You won’t hear from me again," she said, eyes glistening.

"I really loved you, you know," I said. "Even now, despite everything, I still dream about you. It's funny. I suspect I'll carry on dreaming about you for the rest of my life."

Mole gave me a little smile and put her hands in her parka before turning around, swallowed up by blankness.

"Wait," I called after her. "There's something else you should know. There was never any need to call on investors. Your father died for nothing. Dad stole all the money. He'd been draining the company for years. It was fraud."

"So, what are you going to do about it?" her voice called out.

I had no answer for that. I looked down, and I knew it was time to go home. Fuck it, let the police deal with her. I waited until I reckoned Mole was out of earshot before making the call. Getting my phone out, I noticed it already had sand in it. The stuff got everywhere. Looking down at my mobile phone signal, I saw that it was fluctuating between one bar and nothing. Shit. I must be too far out from the shore. We really were in the middle of nowhere.

Pushing Nancy back in the direction we had come from, the wheels of her buggy skidding on the beach, I noticed something odd. The sand was becoming like glue beneath my feet, and there was slight resistance every time I took a step.

Quicksand.

Walking faster, I remembered what the policeman had said about keeping my steps light, except suddenly I had fallen through and now I was ankle deep in the stuff. I tried lifting one foot out but couldn't. Both feet were stuck. It was now like thick glue. April fool. Panicking, I began jumping up and down, but that only seemed to make things worse. And the suction was getting stronger. Now the glop was up to my calves, and it was setting hard like cement.

Feeling faintly ridiculous, I called out for Mole. "Emily, help. We're stuck. I need your help." Nothing. I called out again, fighting the rising panic in my throat. "Emily, I need your help. Help. HELP."

After what seemed an age, Mole finally emerged out of the fog.

"Mole, thank God. This bay. It's full of quicksand. Give me your hand and get me out." I shoved the buggy away from me to get Nancy to safety, and the jolt made her cry. She started bawling. "Mole, please," I said, reaching out and waggling my fingers. "I really am stuck."

"Give me your car keys," she said. "Give me your car keys and I'll get you out of there."

"You never stop, do you?" I muttered, throwing my keys towards her, where they landed with a jangle. She picked them up. "I'm sorry, Hugo, but this really is goodbye."

"You can't just leave me here." She was about to go. "For God's sake, at least take Nancy with you. Get her to safety."

Mole thought for a moment and then started pushing Nancy away. The solid wall of fog swallowed them up, Nancy's crying faded and now I really was alone.

Still no signal. The more I struggled, the deeper I seemed to be getting, and the deeper I went, the stronger the suction became. I felt so helpless.

Wait.

There was something else.

A booming, rushing sound like white noise was getting nearer. Water. The high tide was coming in, and I was directly in its path. I tried moving my feet one last time, but they were truly stuck. "Emily," I shouted, but my voice was lost in the spuming, cannoning implacable wall of water bearing down on me. The water exploded around me, reaching my thighs and rising. It was also heart-stoppingly cold. Even worse was the realisation that I could not do anything to save myself. Stuck fast. The rising water was remorseless.

The water was up to my waist now.

And something else had come to me, something I hadn’t thought of before.

It wasn't the quicksand that had killed the cockle pickers. They had drowned.

The pounding, rushing water was rising up to my chest. The first taste of seawater splashed into my mouth, making me want to gag. I tried moving my left foot with everything I had, but it was no good. It was so cold I could barely think, cold enough to give you a heart attack. Finally, I felt one foot give a little – the water must be loosening the quicksand. If I could only move the other, I might get free. Still, the rising tide was inexorable, and I kept swallowing mouthfuls of saltwater, which made me want to retch. I thought longingly of my little girl. Where would Mole be taking her now? The thought of never seeing her again clutched at my heart.
Just hang on, Daddy will save you.
It was no good, my legs were stuck fast. The churning, spuming water was up to my neck now. Any moment I would be under water. Coughing, I managed to shout and yell for help in the seconds left before the water closed over my head. Anybody. For God's sake, help me.

It was no good, I was completely on my own. Then the absurdity of it hit me. Somewhere at the back of my mind rose the tiniest bubble of laughter. Somehow I had never expected to die like this, drowning on a beach in the north of England, me, the Renaissance prince who expected everything to be brought to him on a tasselled cushion.

Suddenly the most unearthly roar came out of nowhere. The noise was deafening.

Two yellow dragon's eyes loomed out of the orange fog and it took me a moment to realise what it was. A hovercraft. The unearthly noise got louder as a man in orange overalls jumped overboard and doggy-paddled towards me. "Get your head underwater and kick," he shouted. The rising water was up to my neck now, and I didn’t need any encouragement. I plunged my head under water, and for a moment the cold felt almost warm. I kicked both legs sideways with one final effort, and this time my feet came away from the seabed. I felt the coastguard pulling me towards the boat.

I was shouting as my head broke the surface. Meanwhile, other hands had taken hold and were hauling me up the side of the boat. The roar was incredible. I dragged myself over the top and flopped onto the deck, coughing and retching seawater. I had nothing left to give. My muscles trembled with exhaustion as I tried to stand upright. I knew I had to get out of these wet clothes right away or I would die of hypothermia. The lifeboat man handed me a blanket and, grasping it, I nearly lost my balance on the slippery deck. The engines revved up, and the second coastguard swung the hovercraft back to where it had come from. "The police thought they'd lost you," my rescuer shouted as I huddled against the biting cold.

Every trough the boat hit was like somebody smacking a palm on something hard.

Within minutes there was a bump as the hovercraft pulled up onto what was left of the beach. DI Syal and a gaggle of local police were waiting for us.

"Did you see my wife?" I called, jumping onto the sand. My clothes were dragging me down like a lead weight.

"I thought she was with you," Syal shouted over the dying engine. The hovercraft skirt was deflating, settling onto the sand.

"She took my car. She must have gone behind you."

Syal and the others came towards me as I climbed back over the hillock. "You need to go to hospital. It'll be quicker if we take you there," said the CID officer.

"What was your car registration?" asked Syal. "We can track her on the motorway."

"Jay-ess-double-you eighty-five, pee-ell-why."

"Got that?" Syal called to the others. "Set up a hard stop if you have to."

"She'll be on the M6 by now," said the detective who had warned me about the quicksand. "She can't have got far. There's only one main road out of Morecambe."

A policewoman put a fresh blanket over me as we got into the car. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably, and my legs were hammering beneath the blanket. I had never felt so cold. "We'll be there in a few minutes," the constable said, sliding in beside me.

The car started up, and we were back on the coastal road heading towards Morecambe. Not that you could see anything in this gloom. If anything, the fog was getting worse, pressing against the windows. Cars bore down on us out of the darkness, and I glanced at the speedometer. Fifty. Sixty. We were going too fast, and I began to feel uncomfortable. Our siren wailed as we listened to police chatter on the radio.

"Alpha Foxtrot One-Niner, target has been spotted and we are in pursuit. Over," said one voice.

"Copy that Alpha Foxtrot One-Niner," said the dispatcher.

"What's happening?" I asked, leaning forward.

"It means she's been seen, and they'll bring her in for a hard stop," said the driver, the dashboard lighting up his face. "All three lanes of motorway will be blocked, and they'll box her in from the back."

"Probably shoot her tyres out," muttered the copper in the passenger seat.

"Don't worry, Mr Cox, we'll soon have your wife under arrest."

"Control, Control, target has hit another vehicle," the radio interrupted. "Repeat, target has collided with another vehicle. All units converge on exit thirty-five. Please send ambulance."

"Copy that."

"Roger Delta Foxtrot, emergency services are on their way," repeated the dispatcher.

I knew something dreadful had just happened, I just didn't know what. My baby girl would be trapped in the back seat. "Please take me there," I said, tapping the driver on the shoulder. Emily must have hit another car.

"It's ten minutes in the other direction. We need to get you to hospital."

"She's my wife."

We continued our journey in silence, listening to the back and forth of the radio. It was clear something very bad had happened.

Blue lights. A Doppler shift of sound. Police cars undertaking us on the hard shoulder as we barrelled through the cloud tunnel.

It was less than ten minutes to the scene of the accident. The police had coned off a section of road, and motorists were slowing down to gawp. A traffic officer was waving at us to pull over, and everything seemed to be in a dream. I could see a scaffolding truck parked up ahead on the hard shoulder, the driver talking to police officers. What was left of my 4x4 was still in the middle of the road, its front end crumpled and a big hole in the smashed windscreen. You sensed that something violent had just happened and that everything had now come to rest. "Wait here," the driver ordered as we pulled over and he got out of the car. I ignored him. "Where's my daughter?" I shouted. "What have you done with my daughter?" Somebody called out my name, but it sounded as if he was underwater. A police officer speaking through the window straightened up when he saw me. He tried blocking me with his hand.

"I'm sorry sir, you can't–"

"She's my wife, for God's sake."

"I'm sorry, but I must insist–"

Emily was still sitting behind the wheel, but her chest was dark with blood. "Please, I can't breathe," she said.

"Get a fucking ambulance," I shouted. "What's wrong with you all?"

A hand on my shoulder. "Your daughter's safe, sir. We got her out of the car. If you’ll come this way."

Instead, I reached through the window. The dark stain was spreading, and she began gasping. You had the sense that death was very close and I realised I was shuddering, as if suddenly very cold. "Mole, listen to me. Hang on. An ambulance is nearly here."

The scaffolding truck must have appeared out of nowhere, its baleful warning light coming straight for her.

The steel pole jutting out from the back was the last thing my wife had expected.

With that, I threw up what was left in my stomach.