The Fell Walker (20 page)

There was a short pause, followed by a whispered conversation, then: ‘I’ll see what I can do Mr Foxley. Apparently we have over 60 volunteer wardens so it might take some time. I’ll put you on hold.’

Now he was listening to ‘Greensleeves’, a tune once revered by nostalgic Englishmen, but now hated by millions as they see their phone bills rising with every note that passes.

Ben sighed, and started his habitual doodling. For no good reason he drew a man’s face with a long pointed nose, and wearing a top hat. Then he wrote the word ‘Greensleeves’. It looked strange. ‘What the heck is a greensleeve?’ He would look it up in his dictionary when he had time...

‘Are you there Mr Foxley? It’s Sarah again....’

‘I guessed it might be you again,’ Ben thought, unkindly.

‘...I’ve checked all the names of the voluntary wardens on our staff data base and there doesn’t appear to be a Mr Summer.’

‘Are you sure?’ Ben found himself using a demanding tone, so irritated was he with the reply. Then, remembering that Professor Metternich was a German, and may have pronounced the word differently. ‘Maybe I’ve got his name slightly wrong,’ he said. ‘Have you got a Mr Sumner, with an ‘n’ or a Mr Semmer with an ‘e’ or even a Mr Zummer with a ‘Z’?’

He leaned forward in his chair, phone hard against his ear, willing her to come back with an affirmative.

A short pause was followed by: ‘I’m sorry Mr Foxley. The only S’s we have are a Mr Simpson and a Mr Sugden, and we have nobody starting with Z.’

‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ Ben said, in his best grovelling tone, ‘but would you mind looking up your staff list of full time Rangers. Maybe Mr Summer was a Ranger. I sometimes get confused between the two.’

In the pause that followed he thought she was going to refuse, but then she said, with a hint of irritation in her voice: ‘Just a moment.’

This time he was on the edge of his seat. ‘Greensleeves’ started up again, but didn’t register. He was too busy willing her to come back with the right answer. There just had to be a Mr Summer or equivalent working for the NPA or it was back to the proverbial drawing board.

‘Hello, Mr Foxley...’

‘Yes!’

‘We don’t appear to have a Mr Summer among our Rangers either I’m afraid....’

‘What about....’

‘The only S is a Mr Spalding and there are no Z’s...sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise, Sarah. You’ve been very helpful. I must have got his name wrong. I was going from memory, and it’s not so good these days. I’ll have to go back through my papers to see if I can find the right name. Sorry to have troubled you.’

He replaced the phone.

‘Damn,’ he swore out loud. ‘Where to now?’

*

An hour later he was in Keswick library, thumbing through a German/English dictionary. After the phone call, and half an hour staring out of the bedroom window, vaguely watching a pair of red squirrels playing tag on his conservatory roof, it had occurred to him that Professor Metternich may have spoken in his own language just before he died. Maybe ‘summer sniffs’ were German words.

Eagerly, his fingers flicked the pages until he reached the S’s. ‘Sum’...‘summ’ ...yes…
yes
...
yes
...there was a ‘summer’. He had finally cracked it. Was he clever or what? His eyes darted to the English meaning. It read: ‘buzzer’. It was not what he was expecting. He let it bounce around his brain for a while, but nothing relevant came forward.

Baffled, but still excited, he flicked back through the S’s to look for ‘sniffs’. It wasn’t there. Nor was there anything that looked like ‘sniffs’.

‘Blast’, Ben bellowed, as he slammed the book shut.

A chorus of shushes flew at him from the other library users, sounding like a steam train starting up.

He raised his left hand in a contrite gesture without taking his eyes off the dictionary. With a sigh of submission he opened it again. Just for the record, he would check whether ‘summer sniffs’ translated into German, had any relevant meaning. As he expected, the translation into ‘sommer schnuffeln’ meant nothing to him.

He left the library in a state of distraction, and walked slowly down the narrow alley that led back to the car park. He wasn’t aware that he was holding up a woman pushing a pram behind him, eager to get her crying baby back to her car where nourishment and, hopefully, peace awaited.

Head down, he concentrated hard on dealing with his disappointment. It had knocked him to his knees, but he must not let it put him on the floor. He had to toughen up; be ready for more set backs ahead. He must stay positive. For the time being he would put ‘summer sniffs’ on the back burner, and concentrate on gathering more background information on the victims, in the hope of finding a connection somewhere. ‘Hope’, he mused, as he reached his car, ‘is all the fuel I have at the moment. I must keep it alight.’

Chapter 28

She shuffled to the edge of the stinking mattress, and took hold of the chain that lay coiled around her left foot. She eased it out of the way while she adjusted the manacle to a more comfortable place on her ankle. Not that there was much comfort. Years of wearing it had taken its toll, leaving her lower leg alternatively swollen, bruised, or covered in sores. It was never completely free of pain.

He had made the manacle from a bracket and bolt taken from a car exhaust system, so there were plenty of rough edges to contend with. He had used the same system to attach the other end of the chain to the steel ring that protruded from the ceiling above her head, well out of reach, even when she stood up and lifted her arms.

She presumed that the steel ceiling ring had been there for many years as there was an identical, unemployed, one a few feet away. She guessed that they were leftovers from an age when carcasses were left to hang, or cooking pots were suspended over fires.

At least, in recent months, he had been occasionally supplying her with a piece of cloth to protect her ankle when the damage became severe. But he was always careful to take it away when it had healed again. He refused to let her keep anything that might be used as a means of killing herself. The strange thing was that he didn’t seem to have noticed that the plastic bucket he provided as a toilet had a steel wire handle. And one day soon, she hoped she would be making use of it to make her escape.

The sound of the door opening made her lie down. She could only hear the sound, above the constant blare of the love duet from Madame Butterfly, because it was a low frequency hiss, as though air had been released from a vacuum. Somehow, she managed to cope with the continuous din. The noise was no worse than the cacophony of Manila’s traffic she had told herself, and slowly the sound’s impact had receded into the background of her awareness.

She lay, tense, making sure her back would be facing him when he came in. He usually left her alone in the morning, when his throbbing hangover left him sullen and silent. But she could never be sure. She heard him place the plastic plate on the floor beside the mattress, and replace the soiled plastic bucket with a clean one. Then she sensed that he was standing over her, looking down. Then she heard him walk away and close the door.

She turned over and pulled the plate towards her. It was breakfast time. This was the only way she knew the time of day, because there were no windows in the blank walls and he left the lights on permanently. Over the years she had tried to keep track of the days, the weeks, the months, but she had eventually given up, and now time had become an irrelevance.

She was also having problems with her eyesight, as they never saw the peace of darkness. Sometimes she wished she would go blind, then she wouldn’t be able to see the hideous photographs hanging on the walls. She knew that she would have to escape soon or risk going blind or mad, or both.

The breakfast plate contained a plastic bottle full of orange juice, two bananas, four slices of cold ham, four slices of buttered brown bread, and a tub of natural yoghurt. This would have to last her until evening, when he brought her dinner.

He did try to feed her well, but it was always with food that didn’t require knives, forks or spoons. She always had to use her fingers, then lick them clean. At night, after dinner, if he hadn’t fallen asleep in a drunken stupor, he would bring her a dish of warm water, soap and towel and stand and watch as she did her best to keep clean.

She ate three quarters of a banana and placed the remaining quarter on the floor beside the plate. Then she ate two slices of ham wrapped in one slice of bread. Finally, she drank some yoghurt from the tub and some orange juice from the plastic bottle. Then she took up a yoga position on the mattress and turned her attention to a corner of the room that was in shadow.

She didn’t have to wait long. The rat appeared on cue. It shuffled towards her, nose twitching, eyes darting, and stopped when it reached the banana. It quickly devoured the banana with fast, purposeful, nibbles, then looked around for more, circling and sniffing the floor. When it came back towards the mattress, attracted by the smell of the food she still had left, she waved it away, and it dutifully scurried back towards the hole and disappeared.

She had been totally unperturbed by the rat. She had seen thousands in Manila; they were part of everyday life. On the contrary, she had been pleased to see it when it first appeared a few days ago. It had indicated to her that the timber-panelled walls of the strangely shaped room were not as solid as they appeared.

By taking up all the slack in the chain and then lying on the floor, she had managed to reach the corner and examine the hole the rat had made. Pushing her small hand through the hole, she had found, to her surprise, what felt like a gap between a wooden door and a stone wall. She surmised that the wall panelling had been placed over an old doorway, and that the rat, attracted by the food smells, had squeezed through the gap and then chewed its way through the wooden panelling that lined the room. Where the rat came in, she was determined to go out.

It was this that had renewed her efforts to dislodge the steel ring from the ceiling. Initially, she had climbed up the chain, and swung around on it, simply for exercise; determined to keep her muscles in good shape. But, a few days ago, as she was climbing and swinging, a few grains of grit fell on to her arm, and as she shinned up the chain for a closer look, a puff of cement dust dropped on to her face.

She grabbed the ring with her right hand, holding on with three fingers, and inspected the ceiling around the ring. Where the steel rod holding the ring disappeared into the concrete, a fine semi-circular crack had appeared. After a few more days of climbing and swinging, the crack had formed a complete circle and widened. It was now obvious to her that the rod had been welded to a circular steel plate, which had been embedded in the concrete during construction.

Recalling her working days in Manila, when she had attended talks and demonstrations given by German and British concrete repair companies, she remembered that unless steel is protected by a coating before being placed in concrete it is open to attack from water vapour; concrete being a porous material. The water then slowly corrodes the steel, causing it to expand, and the expansion then puts pressure on the surrounding concrete, causing it to crack at its weakest point. She had forgotten the technical term for the sequence, but she remembered the media had dubbed it ‘concrete cancer’ when badly constructed tower blocks and bridges started to break up.

She guessed that this might have happened to the steel plate in the ceiling, causing the initial crack, and her constant swinging had been enlarging it. The truth was that she didn’t care what had caused it. She just hoped that she had sufficient energy and time to totally dislodge it before he noticed the ever-increasing crack in the ceiling, or the rat hole in the wooden panelling.

In an attempt to hide them from him, she had been carefully gathering the displaced cement dust and mixing it with bread and spit into a dough, which she trowelled into the crack with her thumb. She had then made the rest of the bread into a dough, without the cement dust, and used that to fill the hole in the panelling; the rat eating his way through it every morning before entering the room. She had also hidden the larger bits of grit and debris inside a hole in the mattress.

*

It had been about half an hour since he brought breakfast, she guessed. She always allowed this length of time before starting to work on the chain, in case he returned before he went to work. She assumed he must be out at work all day since he normally didn’t come to see her again until evening.

Her attack on the chain began in earnest. Alternatively, swinging backwards and forwards, and then in circles, and using her full body weight to pull down on it with sudden jerks, she continued to dislodge small pieces of aggregate and debris from the crack.

She had been working at it for what seemed to be hours, occasionally stopping for a sip of orange juice when, during one of her downward jerks, she felt a slight give in the ring. Breathlessly, she shinned up the chain and found that the plug of concrete containing the ring’s steel support had indeed dropped down, about four millimetres. It meant that the crack was now completely through the full depth of concrete. She dropped to the floor and began a frantic session of pulling and jerking the chain, expecting the concrete plug and its contents to fall to the ground. It slipped another few millimetres, but it didn’t fall.

Desperation and fear took over. Now it was too late to turn back. There was no way she would be able to hide this amount of damage. If she didn’t escape today, then she never would.

She shinned up the chain again, and pressed her tired eyes to the crack. She saw nothing but shadow. She dropped down again, and frantically searched for some-thing reflective. She grabbed the white plastic top off the orange juice bottle, and shinned up again. It worked. It reflected enough light for her to see that, although all the crack was now completely free of small debris, the larger pieces of aggregate, still embedded in both surfaces, were randomly interconnecting with each other as the plug moved out of the hole. Her only hope was to apply a series of twisting actions to the plug in the hope that the aggregates would eventually find a place to pass each other when a pull was applied.

She took hold of the steel ring and tried to turn it clockwise. It didn’t move. She tried anti-clockwise. It moved very slightly, but not enough. She didn’t have the strength or the leverage to turn it. She dropped to the floor, gasping, and wanting to cry.

Then she remembered the bucket. Pulling some padding from a hole in the mattress, she wrapped it around the bucket’s wire handle, and with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, succeeded in pulling the flattened ends of the handle through and free from their locating lugs. Next, she doubled the wire handle over and stamped and pressed it into a single, strong, tool, about 30 centimetres long.

Back up the chain, she passed the tool through the ring and applied leverage. It worked. She was able to twist the plug in both directions. She worked at it for a few minutes, at one point releasing the plug slightly, but then she couldn’t hold on to the chain any longer and fell to the mattress below. Exhausted, she lay still, knowing that she would have to rest and regain her strength for a final effort. Eventually, she leaned over and ate the remaining banana and bread, and drank the rest of the yoghurt and some orange juice. Then she lay back to rest.

She found herself waking up. Panic. Sleep had been the last thing on her mind. How long had she slept? She couldn’t tell; it might have been ten minutes or two hours. She leapt to her feet, cursing her own stupidity. Grabbing the tool, she shinned back up the chain. Her strength had returned. Gritting her teeth she twisted the ring in both directions. With each twist, bits of aggregate broke away, and the plug started to slip. Suddenly, it fell out completely, catching her by surprise, sending her crashing to the mattress, the plug and the attached chain landing in a heap beside her.

Hurriedly, she picked up the concrete plug and the tool, and, gathering the chain into her arms, walked to the corner where the rat hole was. For the first time in years she was free to move. She felt very strange, almost guilty.

Kneeling down, and resting the plug and chain on the ground, she put her hand through the small hole in the panelling, and felt around. The panelling felt quite thin and insubstantial, more decorative than structural. It appeared to be held in place with steel panel pins. She gripped it and pulled. It flexed, but didn’t budge. However, she had felt its weakness, and continued to pull in sudden jerks. She started to feel it ease off the panel pins.

Where it had eased, she inserted the wire tool and levered. Using a ratchetting action, she gradually freed a portion of the panelling big enough to allow her to get a grip with both hands. Now able to apply her full body weight behind the pulls, she soon had the complete panel removed. Only now did she notice that it was backed with thick insulation material, which had fitted neatly into the doorway she had exposed.

Pausing for a sip of orange juice, she surveyed the substantial old door in front of her. Her heart was pounding. She blessed herself with the sign of the cross and whispered: ‘Please God - help me.’

Looking to the left, she couldn’t see any hinges, which thankfully meant that the door opened outwards. Otherwise, she would have had to break out more panelling. On the right, where she expected to find a handle or a keyhole, she found a hole where a handle had been taken out. Looking into it, she saw that it was blanked off at the other side. There seemed to be no way of opening the door other than by brute force.