Strangers When We Meet, page 3
“I’m eleven. N-nearly twelve.” The rain was coming down in a steady, persistent drizzle, running down the windshield and obscuring her sight of the road ahead. “I . . .” Mary Ellen broke off. Through the murk, she glimpsed the twin beams of an approaching car’s headlamps and, moving quickly, had the nearside door open before he had guessed her intention. His hand closed hard about her arm, the fingers with their square-cut nails biting into the flesh, so that she cried out in pain. He slammed the door shut. “Quiet!” he bade her harshly. “I’ve not done talking with you yet.”
The child cowered against the closed door as the other car swished past, sending a spatter of wet mud to stain the steamy window. There was a woman driving it, she saw, with a boy of about her own age seated beside her; the roof light of the passing car was on, the boy reading a comic which was spread across his knees. The woman reminded Mary Ellen of the new school doctor, who had come to Granville to take Dr. John’s place, but it wasn’t, of course—the doctor was much younger and prettier. She longed to cry out, to ask the woman and the boy to stop, to help her to escape from her soft-voiced captor, but terror bound her throat and no sound came from between her stiffly parted lips. As if he had read her thoughts, the man said warningly “Don’t try anything, Mary Ellen, and you won’t get hurt. I only want to talk to you, understand?”
But she knew that he was lying, sensed it, as a child will, without understanding, and her terror grew. Her mouth quivered and she tasted the salt bitterness of her own reluctant tears, wrung from her against her will. The man’s hand relaxed its grip on her arm. He stroked it gently and there was a gleam in his eyes as he looked at her.
“Mary Ellen’s a pretty name,” he told her, and drew her nearer to him. “I like it, you know that, honey? And I like you. I guess I like all little girls as pretty as you.”
Again she was conscious of his breath on her cheek, carrying with it a faintly unpleasant odour as he turned his head towards her. “Please, mister,” she whispered, “I want to go home. My mother will be worried about me, she—”
“Ah, yes your mother!” He didn’t move away, but he looked thoughtful, heavy dark brows knit in a frown as he watched her. “You her only child, huh?”
“Yes. We live on Curtis Street, at n-number two-forty-two. It’s n-not far from here . . . you turn right at the traffic lights and then it’s the second intersection, after the bus station. A . . . a house with a glassed-in porch. There’ll be a light on in the porch, Mom leaves it on for me.” Speaking of her home, thinking of the light in the porch waiting to guide her return, seemed to bring both this and her mother nearer. “Please, mister”—she faced him, blinking back the tears— “won’t you take me there? My mother will be grateful, she . . . that is I’ll ask her to invite you in for a cup of coffee and . . .” His laughter silenced her, shattering her new-born hopes.
“Why, you funny kid! You don’t know how funny you are, do you? What would I be wanting with a cup of coffee, for Pete’s sake?”
The child had no answer to give him and did not speak. He sighed, curbing his impatience, and, as if struck by a sudden idea, fumbled in the glove compartment in front of him and took out a paper bag, which he offered her. “Hey, you like candy? Go on, kid—take one, they’re peppermints. I guess you like those, don’t you? Well, go ahead, help yourself. Take as many as you want.”
Some instinct warned Mary Ellen not to refuse. Her hand was trembling and her fingers clumsy as she obeyed him. The candies were wrapped. Awkwardly she unwound the paper, screwed it into a ball in her hand and put the sticky morsel into her mouth. The taste of it was familiar and pleasant. She savoured it for a moment, recalling Dr. John’s warning, which he repeated every time he came to the school, that too many candies were bad for the teeth—as if they could be! She bit on the peppermint, but suddenly it made her retch and she knew she could not eat it. She looked up at her companion beseechingly and he gestured to the ashtray.
“Spit it out in there. For gosh sakes, what’s wrong with it?”
“N-nothing. It’s just that I . . .” she choked, spat out the candy hastily and edged away from him. Through the misty darkness ahead, she saw a brightly lighted vehicle coming closer and recognised it, with a stab of heartfelt regret, as the bus she had been waiting for a long, long time ago. Her cousin Janice had wanted to come with her to the stop, but because of the rain, she had said that Janice shouldn’t bother. She had her mac, the bus wasn’t usually late, and in any case, it hadn’t been dark then . . .
Mary Ellen watched the bus draw level, seeing it through a mist of tears which mingled with the rain. Perhaps if she summoned all her courage and shouted, someone would hear, someone would see the black car parked in the shadow of the dripping trees and would look and see her, sitting there with this stranger, whose hand had once again closed cruelly about her thin wrist. Perhaps someone—the driver, maybe—would wonder what she was doing there and stop the bus. He might recognise her; she travelled on his bus quite often, but it was past now and no one had seen her and she hadn’t cried out.
The man observed approvingly, “That’s a good girl! No tricks and you won’t get hurt, like I said. Just you take it easy.” He peered after the slow-moving bus, watching until it was out of sight. Then he restarted his engine and drove back on to the highway. “Too much traffic,” he said, more to himself than to the frightened child at his side. “We’ll go down here, I reckon, out of the way. I guess the rain’s slacking off some now.” He turned into a side road, nosing his way cautiously as if it were unfamiliar to him. “This is just a dirt road—where does it lead to, anyway?”
Mary Ellen was silent. She knew the road well enough, knew that it passed a farmhouse a mile or so further on. But there was a wood before the farmhouse came in sight, and once again instinct warned her that when he saw the wood he would stop there, since it offered concealment. Moving stealthily, her fingers crept out to the handle of the door, ready to jerk it down as soon as the car began to lose speed. He had locked it, but the door lock operated from inside the car. If she opened the door and jumped at once, without looking to see where she would fall, she might have a chance to escape him, aided by rain and darkness. Her hand tensed about the cold metal and she waited, valiantly trying not to tremble, lest she betray herself to her captor.
He noticed the wood, a dark patch of shadow in the beam of his headlights and, grunting his satisfaction, started to apply the brakes. “This’ll do us nicely, eh, honey? Just the place, if this darned rain would let up. But even if it doesn’t, I guess we needn’t let it worry us. We . . .” Mary Ellen’s leap into the darkness took him by surprise and he broke off, swearing angrily beneath his breath as he leaned across to grab her, the speed of his reaction almost matching hers. Almost but not quite . . . she wrenched free of his questing hand, the plastic mackintosh splitting as he grasped it. She flung herself forward blindly, past caring how or where she fell. Luck was with her; she landed on hands and knees on a grassy bank and the black car skidded past her, momentarily out of control.
Terror lent her strength, gave wings to her feet. She dragged herself up the slippery bank and plunged into the undergrowth on the other side, paying no heed to the brambles which tore at her stockinged legs or the roots which sought to impede her flight. She had stumbled twenty yards before she heard the car door open and the man’s angry bellow as he started off in pursuit of her. Guided as before more by instinct than by reason, Mary Ellen sank to her knees in a little hollow and burrowed down into the underbrush until it covered her with a thorny, protective screen. Like a tiny, trembling animal, she crouched there, the frightened beat of her heart thudding in her ears, lacerated hands upheld to keep the bushes in place above her head. She could hear him thrashing about, searching for her this way and that, and then, when he came nearer to her hiding place, she heard his voice, calling her by name.
“Mary Ellen! Hey, kid, where are you? That was a fool thing to do, jumping out of the car like that. Come on back and I’ll take you home, I swear I will. Right back, no stopping on the way, and your mom can give me all the cups of coffee she wants. You hear me? Quit this nonsense and come on out, so I can take you home.”
Child though she was, Mary Ellen sensed that his promises weren’t to be trusted. She did not know what reason he had for attempting to abduct her, but she knew enough of the world to be aware that no stranger, whose purpose was merely to drive her home in his car would be likely to go to so much trouble to find her again, once she had eluded him. His search, so thorough and so prolonged, must have a sinister purpose or he would have abandoned it long ago, she decided, and then, shivering in the wet darkness as he blundered past her place of concealment, she wondered whether, if he found her, he intended to kill her. Probably, she thought, having to bite hard on her lower lip to still its quivering, probably he did. He would be afraid of what she might say if he let her go, afraid of the accusations she might make when sobbing out her story to her mother when—if—she got home.
She had seen his face, the child reflected, would know again those light, angry eyes, the jutting jaw, the thin, smiling mouth, and above all, she would remember the soft, persuasive voice if she ever heard it again. This must be what he feared, why he was still combing the rainswept wood to find her, instead of driving away, as she had hoped and expected he would, when she didn’t answer his calls. Men who enticed little girls into their cars at night, for whatever reason, were committing some crime for which the police could and did arrest them. She had heard her Uncle Mike talking about it, had been warned, both by her mother and by her class teacher at school, never to speak to strangers and never to accept favours from them. And she would have obeyed this injunction and would never have thought of questioning it, except that her stranger, when he had first approached her, had seemed so kind and friendly, so harmless. It hadn’t been until he had stopped the car for the first time that he had scared her, with his odd behaviour and his threats. Until that moment, she had trusted him completely.
“Now listen here, Mary Ellen . . .” the hateful voice was much nearer and she cowered down, her small body pressed against the sodden earth, her jaws clamped tight to stifle the cry which rose involuntarily from her throat—a panic cry that, had she uttered it, must have betrayed her whereabouts to her pursuer. “If you come back to the car, like a good girl, and don’t give me any more trouble, I’ll drive you home, like I said, and you won’t get hurt. But if I have to come in and get you, I’ll give you a beating you won’t ever forget.” He moved closer, trampling down the brushwood that lay in his path and swearing as thorns tore at his trouser legs, the menace in his voice unconcealed now, as pain and frustration added to his anger. Suddenly he halted and there was silence. When he spoke again, it was with an alarming change of tone. “Okay, Mary Ellen, I know where you are—I can see you. No sense in hiding any more, so let’s quit fooling around, shall we? Out you come!”
Mary Ellen was within an ace of believing him. She half rose and then, glimpsing his tall body in silhouette against the lights of the car, she realised that he wasn’t looking in her direction at all but towards the road. She sank down again, putting her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of his voice, and after a while he moved on, still calling her. She let her hands fall and sat up, listening intently. The car’s engine woke to life a few moments later and, peeping warily through the screen of bushes, the child waited for it to go away. The driver turned with difficulty on the narrow road. Once his headlights shone full on her, so that she was certain he must have seen her, but he did not get out of the car, and at last, sick with relief, she heard the hum of its engine recede into the distance. Her first impulse, once the sound ceased altogether, was to run back to the road, but after some thought, she decided that this might not be wise. He might be waiting by the roadside or at the junction with the highway . . . or he might come back.
Mary Ellen hesitated, racked by uncertainty. The farmhouse could not be very far away and it lay in the opposite direction to the one in which he had gone. If she went there, they would surely help her, telephone her mother—even, perhaps, drive her back to town if she asked them to and said that she was afraid to go alone. Or better still, she would ask them to call her Uncle Mike and he would send a police car for her . . . she got stiffly to her feet, having to rub her chilled limbs before they would support her. She would pick her way through the wood, she thought, until she was almost in sight of the farm, and then, if there was any sign of her pursuer, she would take a short cut across the fields, crouched down in the shelter of a drainage ditch, where he couldn’t see her.
It was hard going in the wood, but she was thankful that she had elected to remain there, when, ten minutes later, the black car came back, coasting to a standstill some fifty or sixty yards behind her, its engine switched off and its headlights extinguished. The man made no noise this time as he repeated his search, but he kept close to the road verge and Mary Ellen guessed, from his actions, that now he expected to find her lying hurt, probably on the far side of the grassy bank on to the top of which her perilous leap from the car had flung her. She had the advantage of being able to keep him in sight, for her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and now that the rain had slackened to a thin drizzle, his white shirt front was an easy mark against the deep shadow of the trees.
She waited, motionless, watching his every move until at last he went away. The car headlights went on, he turned the vehicle with scant regard for its tyres and sped off once more towards the highway, his twin red tail lights vanishing at a bend in the road. Mary Ellen scrambled once more to her feet and, throwing caution to the wind, dragged herself free of the tangled bushes that had given her refuge and made for the open fields. A windbreak of trees hid the farmhouse from her for a while, but, running breathlessly, she struggled on and was finally rewarded by the sound of a dog barking and a gleam of light through the trees. She accomplished the few hundred yards which separated her from her goal just as the rain ceased altogether and, heedless of the watch-dog, snapping at her heels, stumbled to the first door she saw and started to pound on it.
Her summons was answered at once. She presented a pathetically bedraggled little figure standing on the doorstep, with her tear-blotched face and torn clothes, and the farmer’s wife wisely asked few questions but led her into the warm parlour and sat her down in front of the fire, while she called the phone number Mary Ellen had given her. To the stunned and horrified mother, she said only that the girl was safe, but, as an afterthought, added the suggestion that the police ought to be informed.
“I’ll call the doctor for her, Mrs. Scott, if it would save you time, but I guess it’s you she wants, poor mite. You’ll get out here as soon as you can, won’t you?”
Kathleen Scott promised faintly that she would. She replaced her receiver on its cradle with a shaking hand and stood for a moment, her eyes closed, so shocked that she could not move. Mary Ellen was her only child, her last and only tangible memory of Kirk and, as such, doubly precious to her since her husband’s death, six years ago. Her mind, always prone to fear where her daughter’s safety and wellbeing were concerned, filled in the gaps which the brief telephone conversation had left, and conjured up a picture so appalling that waves of nausea swept over her and she had to cling to the table on which the instrument stood, in order to hold herself upright.
“We don’t want men like that at large,” her caller had said, when she had advised sending for the police. Men like that, Kathleen Scott thought dully, men—a man who . . . oh, God no, please God, not Mary Ellen! Spare her that . . . she moved on dragging feet towards the sitting room, a silent prayer in her heart, and reaching the door, had scarcely the strength to turn the handle to open it. “Mike!” she cried. “Mike, please!”
Her brother, hearing her cry above the background music of the TV programme they had been watching, came out into the hallway, to stare at her in some perplexity before taking her arm and leading her back to the chair she had vacated. He switched off the television set and bent over her, big, powerful hands on her shoulders. “Kath, my dear”—he shook her gently— “what in the world’s wrong? Pull yourself together and tell me, will you?”
She told him, too upset to choose her words with any care, and saw his strong, good-looking face darken with controlled anger as he listened.
“We’d better get out there at once, Kath,” he said, “and bring her home. Come on, my car’s outside . . . we can be there in fifteen minutes. Take it easy, lass, it may not be as bad as you imagine. In any case, she’ll need you, so you must put a brave face on it, for her sake.”
Kathleen drew a long, sighing breath. He was right, of course, for Mary Ellen’s sake, she mustn’t break down. Making a great effort to speak calmly, she answered, “I know, Mike, I know, and I—I am trying. But it’s so awful. She only went to Janice’s. I thought she was safe there, she’s often gone after school, hasn’t she? And it’s only on the edge of town, on the town bus route. You wouldn’t imagine anything could happen to her in a—a sleepy little town like this, would you?” Her brother was silent, holding out his hand to her, and she let him help her to her feet, a slightly built, fair-haired woman, with delicate features, whose eyes were haunted by too many unhappy memories.
“You’ll need a coat, Kath,” Mike Hennessy reminded her. “It’s been raining and it’s cold—better bring one for Mary Ellen too.”
“Yes.” But she hesitated, looking up at him anxiously. “The doctor . . . we ought to call Doctor John, he’s always looked after her. And . . . and the police, Mike—that woman said the police should be told. Shouldn’t you get through to Sergeant Kling and ask for help?”
