She knew that she wouldn’t be able to stop the shadows bringing back the memories that she had pushed deep into
the recesses of her mind. They were memories that were too
j
powerful and greedy to be buried completely, too vivid to be erased, too deeply etched into her soul to be forgotten. They merely wallowed and writhed in the depths, waiting for the chance to reemerge.
o
As she walked, she turned her head from side to side, watching the dimly seen trees for movement. They were like rows of solid bodies standing threateningly around, surrounding her and
O O J O
closing in. She was alone among a dozen of them, two dozen,
o o ‘
maybe more. Other bodies could be sensed, further back in the darkness, watching, laughing, waiting eagerly for what they knew would happen next. Voices murmured and coughed. ‘It’s a copper,’ the voices said. ‘She’s a copper.’
The memories churned and bubbled. There were movements that crept and rustled closer; there were brief, fragmented glimpses of figures carved into severed segments by the streetlights; the sickly reek of booze and violence. And then she seemed
O ‘ J
to hear that one particular voice — that rough, slurring Brummie voice that slithered out of the darkness. ‘How do you like this, copper?’ The same taunting laughter moving in the shadows. The same dark, menacing shapes all around, whichever way
3S7
she turned. A hand in the small of her back, and a leg outstretched to trip. Then she was falling, flailing forward into the darkness. Hands grabbing her, pinching and pulling and slapping. Her arms trapped by unseen fingers that gripped her tightly, painful and shocking in their violence. Her own voice, unnaturally high-pitched and stained with terror, was trying to cry out, but failing.
J O
Nothing could stop the flood of remembered sensations now. The smell of a sweat-soaked palm over her mouth, her head banging on the ground as she thrashed helplessly from side to side. Her clothes pulled and torn, the shock of feeling parts of her body exposed to the cruel air. ‘How do you like this, copper?’ And then came the groping and the prodding and the squeezing, and the hot, intruding fingers. And, perfectly clear on the night air, the sound of a zip. Another laugh, a mumble, an excited gasp. And finally the penetration. The ripping agony, and the scream that was smothered by the hand over her face, and the desperate fighting to force breath into her lungs. ‘How do you like this, copper? How do you like this, copper?’ Animal noises and more laughter, and a warm wetness spurting and trickling inside her before the final withdrawal. The relief of the lifting of a weight from her body, as one dark shape moved away and she thought it was over.
But then it happened again.
And again.
o
Blindly, she continued walking, insensible to her surroundings, all her efforts directed towards controlling the reactions of her body. She tried to focus her thoughts on Ben Cooper, somewhere ahead in the woods, unaware of the danger he was in. ‘Are you going to let me down?’ he’d said.
Finally, she found herself stepping out into a clearing, immediately feeling the difference in the ground underfoot. She became aware of a sound — a real sound, belonging to here and now, a sound that needed explanation.
Her memory was still forcing unwanted pictures in front of her eyes as she turned to identify the noise, seeking its source among the menacing shadows. She found that a large tree stood
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358
near her shoulder, tall and thirklv shrouded in foliage, its cruv-.ii dimly visible against the pale sky. Its leaves whispered and rustled like a vast colony of small creatures roosting directly above her head. She thought of thousands of tiny bats, scraping their thin, papery wings against their bodies as they prepared to drop in fluttering swarms on to her shoulders. There was nothing worse than something you could only hear, but not see.
There was a sudden loud creaking as the wind caught the weight of a branch, and a louder crackling among the leaves. She
o ‘ o o
caught the unmistakable smell of urine and faeces, drifting closer. And then there was a heavier movement among the branches as something swung towards her, lumbering out of die dark.
O O ‘ O
Three hundred yards away, Ben Cooper had picked up the trail again as one of the old men reappeared on the path. He heard the man coming before he saw him, could sense his breathing
o ‘ o
and hear a barely audible muttering.
J O
After switching to the left-hand fork, the figure walked on for several hundred yards before suddenly striking off the path into the depths of the trees. Cooper found it difficult even to locate the exact spot where he had disappeared. Once in among the trees, he was lost. There was no hope of seeing anyone who might be lurking among the straggling clumps of brambles and the trunks of the old oaks and beeches that grew thickly here. Faintly, on the air, he caught a familiar tang of pipe smoke. But he finally had to admit that he had lost the old man he had been following.
o
