THE HITCH-hiker
It had been touch and go whether Carole Phillips would reach the London main-line station in time to catch the last train. She had worked very late last night, preparing a report on the small department she managed in the London office of a textile manufacturer; and, since she would be too late and too tired to cook when she arrived home, had gone go a small restaurant for a salad before looking for a taxi to take her to the station.
The service at the restaurant had been slow and when she left the place a slight drizzle had begun to fall: enough to make taxis irritatingly scarce. Finally, though, she flagged one down and sat on the edge of her seat as it dragged through the traffic towards the station. She made the train with seconds to spare and fell against the buttoned upholstery, recovering slowly from her sprint through the station concourse.
During the seventy-minute trip to the Home Counties town where she lived, she looked up from her book now and then to peer out of the window into the darkness. The rain had quickened. Heavy drops, blown into a spread of wet lace, hung on the glass. Beyond, she could see the black shadows of tress alongside the line stirring in the wind; and behind the trees the indistinct, sodden fields lit along their edges by the lights from the carriages. She reflected that even the tamest countryside can seem intimidating a night: and especially in bad weather .Out there in the blackness, predators were closing in on their prey –ruthlessly, silently. In those apparently empty fields, sudden attacks were taking place; there were tiny, unheard screams of pain; there was blood and violent death, the killer standing above its victim as the little corpse still quivered in its grip. This late at night, the normally tolerable trip could seem endless.
By the time she reached her destination, the weather bad become wild. The rain had thinned, but was carried almost horizontally by a harsh, cold wind that buffeted her as she struggled along the platform. She was the only passenger to alight. Her heeltaps rang on the flagstones, seeming to sing, like asdic, as if they were finding a resonance below the surface. She always felt slightly at risk when coming home on the last train-silly, of course; a hangover from childhood fears of the dark, of the bogeyman, of the imagined figure at the top of the stairs. Even so, she never felt quite safe until she had crossed the car-park and (feeling a bit foolish) locked herself into the car before starting off.
As usual, this late at night, there was no one on duty to take her ticket. A light burned dimly in one of the station rooms, but whoever was in there either hadn’t noticed that a passenger had got off the train, or didn’t care. She pushed her season-ticket back into her pocket and took out her car keys.
She had arrived at the station that morning with only a few minutes to spare: cutting things fine is a characteristic of the practiced commuter. So her car had been parked among the furthest from the entrance, although now it was the only vehicle left there beneath the row of tossing yew trees that bordered the fence.
The car-park was no more than a large, cordoned-off area of bare earth, rutted and strewn with cinders for drainage-unlit and far from the sparse street-lamps lining the country road by the station approach. She crossed the sixty yards or so of rough ground at a fast pace, her coat flapping in the wind. Once she stumbled in a deep rut and almost loosed her hold on the car keys-that would had been a disaster, she thought, since it was too dark to see more than a few feet ahead. She knew exactly where the car was, though, and walked unfalteringly to it. As she put the key in the lock, she heard a quiet voice from out of the blackness directly behind her.
For a second her heart seemed to stop entirely. Then her brain began to function, offering reassurance: it had been a woman’s voice. Even so, she turned to face the voice’s owner with fear curdling in her stomach; but as the person came a little closer, she relaxed. A woman stood there, dressed rather shabbily in a worn top-coat and a felt hat. Her hair was grey, she was clearly in late-middle age, and she seemed to be upset.
“Excuse me, Miss,” she repeated the words that the girl had first heard.
“What’s wrong? “ Clearly something must be wrong. Why else would this old dear be standing in a station car-park at midnight enduring a half-gale?
“Can you help me? It’s so silly. I arranged for a taxi to meet me from my train and it’s not here. I thought your might be it and that the driver would come back, but I’ve been waiting for ages. Are you going towards town?”
“Yes. I’m going into the town.” The girl began to feel distinctly sorry for the old lady. To be stuck out at the station-a four-mile bus or cab ride from the town-waiting for transport that obviously wasn’t going to come almost put her in the category of distressed gentle person. “Where do you live?”
“Well, it’s on that road-almost in the town itself. You could very nearly drop me at my door without going of your way. Would you mind?”
The girl unlocked the car and got in, then lifted the catch on the passenger-door to admit the old lady. When they were both settled, the girl leaned over and opened the glove-compartment on the passenger’s side. She kept a wooden clothes-peg in there: her unscientific but effective method for keeping the erratic choke out long enough to get the car going. She had just retrieved the peg, when she happened to glance down. She froze. The illumination from the glove-compartment revealed that the backs of her passenger’s hands-which were neatly folded in her lap-were covered in a thick growth of dark hairs!
The girl’s mind screamed at her: It’s a man! Oh，my God, it’s a man! Somehow, she managed to remain outwardly calm, fiddling with this or that control while her brain raced, desperately trying to improvise an escape. By some means, she had to get the person out of the car.
Without pegging the choke back, she turned the ignition key, knowing that the car wouldn’t start. Three or four times she made a show of doing this, pretending to get more annoyed. Hoping that her voice wouldn’t quaver, she said, “Oh dear! It does this sometimes. Usually, I have to get a push.” Then she turned the key twice more, to no effect.
“Damn!” She chewed her lip as if searching for solution. “Look, it’s an awful thing to ask, but I don’t see how else we’re going to get the wretched car started. We’re on a bit of a hill here. If you could just give it a tiny push to start if off, it’ll roll down the slope and I can get the engine going. Would you?”
Somewhat to her surprise, her passenger agreed. Maybe the light in the station-impossibly far as a refuge, but close enough to make a potential attacker feel uneasy-closed and the figure went around to the back of the car. Instantly, she snapped down the inside locks, jammed the peg behind the choke-rod, started the car, roared across the car-park, along the station approach and on to the road.
After a mile or so, the mad fluttering of the girl’s heat slowed. The whole incident seemed dream-like. She could hardly believe it had really happened-though if she needed to assure herself that it had, she had the evidence of the handbag that the old lady had left on the floor of the car when she got out. In fact, it may have been the hastily. Had she perhaps just swept out of the car-park leaving behind a thoroughly confused old lady who simply happened to have rather hairy hands? After all, some women were unlucky that way and only the young would bother to do something about the condition. More than that, the light from the glove-compartment might have made the hairiness look worse than it was. What evidence did she have? Almost none. She was aware, though, that her natural nervousness, her slight fear of the dark and the wild weather might have prompted her to act stupidly. If she had made a mistake, then she had driven off with the poor woman’s handbag. But still she remembered those very hairy hands!
By the time she reached town, she was in a terrible quandary about the whole incident. Had she just survived an encounter with a homicidal maniac or had her irrational fear led her to act in a terribly unkind manner? Either way, she decided, her best course of action was to go to the local police station. The person she had just abandoned would need to be either rescued or investigated.
As she told her story to the sergeant on duty, she became increasingly sure in her own mind that she had acted cruelly and stupidly. It had been an old lady; hairy hands were no sign of malice; and she had left her out there at the station with no means of getting home.
She said as much to the sergeant, who agreed that it was probably the case. “I’ll send someone out there,” he told the girl. “In the meantime, we’d better have a look in her handbag to find out who she is in case she’s left the station.”
Together, they went out to the car. The girl produced the bag-a large soft-leather affair with a swivel clasp-and handed it to the sergeant, who snapped open the clasp and held the bag open so that they could both see what it held.
The sergeant’s exclamation was followed by a small shriek from the girl; she staggered slightly and seemed about to faint, so that it would fit into the bag. It was the only thing in there, and the honed cutting edge shone along its beveled length in the white lamp-light.
Asdic:A(nti-)S(ubmarine)D(etection)I(nvestigation)C(ommittee) |