No Going Back (33 page)

Fixing his eyes on Elena, Daniel wriggled forward inch by inch, commando-style, on his elbows and knees, constantly aware of the fragility of the layer of vegetation beneath him.

The girl was quiet now, only an occasional muted sob shaking her body, and he could see that she'd reached the end of her tether, physically and mentally. Up to her armpits in water that could only be a fraction of a degree above freezing, her eyes were half closed and her pretty face pinched and blue with cold.

‘Elena, hold on! I'm coming,' Daniel called, but there was no response and he guessed that her grip on the vehicle roof was now more due to muscle memory than conscious thought. What if that instinct should fail?

Throwing caution to the wind, Daniel began to move faster. He was just a few feet away from his goal now, but with his increased activity, the surface of the bog began to undulate alarmingly. Ahead, just a few feet of liquid mud stood between him and the girl. Into this the leather line trailed uselessly, offering him no help at all to bridge the gap. He could only hope that he would be able to reach out far enough for the girl to take his hands, and also that Elena would be sufficiently aware for him to make her understand what she had to do.

How close to the edge dare he go?

Six more inches . . . Twelve . . . Eighteen . . . He was crawling through 3 or 4 inches of water now and the sulphurous stench filled his lungs, almost making him gag.

Suddenly, shockingly, the mat of moss and roots gave way beneath his left elbow, tipping him head- and shoulder-first into the suffocatingly thick soup of the bog.

It was a strange sensation – not the splash and instant immersion of a pond or river – but a nightmarish, slow-motion descent into the greedy arms of the foul-smelling slime.

Daniel panicked.

Reason deserted him and he kicked and thrashed wildly with all his limbs to try and regain the surface, but opening his eyes was obviously pointless, and with the heavy pull of the bog counteracting his natural buoyancy, he couldn't tell which way was up.

In his head, quite clearly, he heard Hilary's voice recounting the legends of the mires and bogs. ‘The locals call them “Dartmoor's stables”,' she'd told him, ‘because unwary ponies that wander into them stay there.'

Something wrapped itself sinuously round his leg and the unreasoning part of his mind instantly screamed, ‘Snake!' causing him to struggle even more desperately.

His lungs felt as though they were bursting, blood pounding in his ears and coloured lights exploding like starbursts behind his eyes. Then, just as he knew the urge to exhale would no longer be denied, in spite of the inevitable consequence, the reality of the ‘snake' dropped calmly into his mind as if placed there by some benevolent entity.

Not a snake but the rope.

How stupid had he been? Due to his frenzied kicking, the line was no longer wound round his leg. What if his terrified struggles had carried him away from the very thing that could have saved him? Saved them both, he amended, remembering the girl spread-eagled on the roof of the sinking Nissan. Pushing his arms wide through the sludge, Daniel desperately combed the mud with his fingers, even as he finally yielded to the overwhelming physical pressure and let a bubble of air escape from his nostrils.

It was the start of the rot. The relief, though intense, was fleeting and replaced by a yearning ten times greater to ease the pressure by releasing more air. The desire made it impossible to focus his mind on anything else, and involuntarily he let more air escape from his lungs.

Daniel's resolve weakened, leached away insidiously by exhaustion and the pervading cold. He knew it could now only be moments before his lungs emptied completely and the air was replaced by the thick, noxious fluids of the mire.

Would his body be found and exclaimed over one day, many years in the future, he wondered with a kind of resignation, preserved in wizened, dark-skinned completeness? He had a momentary dreamlike vision of the bog with the bodies of centuries of stricken creatures suspended around him, before a trace of common sense acknowledged that there would be a search for him, and sooner rather than later, his filthy, lifeless body would be pulled from the peaty sludge and zipped tidily into a body bag.

So far had his mind gone down the road to acceptance that when, just moments later, he felt the smooth length of the leather strapping under his fingertips, Daniel didn't immediately react. All at once the struggle to live seemed too hard, the reward not great enough. But then he remembered Drew. He didn't want to leave his son like this – with no chance of explaining, no chance of making up. He owed it to the boy – and to Elena and Katya – to keep trying.

His fingers closed around the leather strap and he pulled on it. For one heart-stopping moment it offered no resistance, but then, as the slack was taken up, Daniel felt it tighten and hold. Moving his left arm to grasp the line higher up, he began to haul himself upwards, hope lending him a strength he had thought lost, and it was only seconds before his hands and then his head broke out into life-giving air.

Daniel's chest heaved, his oxygen-starved lungs working like bellows to restore normality. For several long moments all he could do was wipe the grainy mud from his eyes and cling to the leather rope like some oversized dragonfly nymph waiting to dry out and spread its wings. Before long it was borne upon him that the security lent him by the line was only temporary; under his weight, the leather was slicing through the unstable skin of the bog like a cheese wire through ripe Brie and he was slowly but inevitably sinking once more.

Pulling himself up a further few inches, Daniel twisted to see where he was in relation to the girl. For once, fate seemed to be on his side, as the 4x4 and its precious cargo had tilted towards him in its death throes, leaving Elena almost within reach of his outstretched arm.

‘Elena? Can you hear me? Elena!'

The girl was silent, her eyes closed. The peaty water was up to her chin now, her dark hair spread on the surface of the mire. Aware that each time he adjusted his grip on the leather line he was pulling himself further away from her, Daniel wound it round his forearm and tried to reach back towards the girl.

He'd had bad dreams like this, frantically trying to move but with each frustratingly slow step having the sensation of wading through treacle. There was nothing firm against which he could brace himself and his desperately stretching fingers found only the floating ends of Elena's hair.

He hated to do it but he had no option. Twining as much hair as he could round his fingers he began to pull, and slowly, agonizingly, the girl started to move towards him. A whimper made him wince in sympathy, but conversely filled him with the relief of knowing that Elena was still hanging on.

‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' he said.

As soon as she was close enough, he let go of her hair and dug down into the mire to transfer his grip to her clothing, managing to lift her a little and finally slide his arm under hers and pull her towards him.

Even now, his problems weren't over. Their combined weight pulled downward with greater force, causing the line to carve its way faster through the matted surface of the mire, and with one arm round the child, it was difficult to readjust his grip. Within seconds both of them were up to their chins once more.

Daniel could have wept with frustration. He was so tired and the thought that he'd he strived so hard only to fail at the last hurdle was insupportable.

The fetid water was lapping at his mouth now and he had to tip his head back to breathe. Letting go of the line, he lunged to catch it once more some 10 inches higher. Then, gritting his teeth, he strained to pull the two of them upwards, to gain a few precious inches, a few seconds more.

The effort left him gasping, the energy-sapping effects of the cold, his head injury and the battle with the mire having drained his reserves of strength, and he realized that if he was going to attempt to lift the girl on to the surface of the bog, it would have to be now or never.

One thing was clear: he couldn't do it one-handed. Elena might be slightly built, but she must still weigh the best part of a hundred pounds, even without the dragging pull of the mud.

Daniel took a deep breath and, shutting his mind to the consequences, relinquished his grip on the line, sliding his hand down until he had enough slack to pass round the girl's body. Fumbling in the thick slime, and aware that he was already beginning to sink once more, he managed to knot the leather strap under her armpits, thanking providence that this end of the line consisted of Drummer's reins and not the thicker stirrup leathers.

Taking hold of the line again, he pulled himself up one last time. When he got the girl up on to the surface –
if
he did – the makeshift rope would in all probability be beyond his reach.

Putting his hands round Elena's waist, Daniel heaved upwards with all the strength he could muster and tried at the same time to push her forwards. He managed to get her head, shoulders and upper body out of the mud, but he hadn't got the reach to place her far enough away from the weakened edge. Daniel could do no more than watch despairingly as it broke away under her weight and she slid back into the stinking mire beside him.

Although he wouldn't stop trying, he knew that in the circumstances the task was beyond him, but he had no better ideas. He had reached the end. Dizziness threatened and he closed his eyes. He would rest for a moment, then try again.

A sharp bark revived his drifting consciousness.

Taz.

Daniel turned his head to see the dog at the edge of the bog, close to the stunted hawthorn the line was tied to. He was pawing at the snow, obviously aware of the danger, as the pony had been, but drawn by the presence of his master.

‘No, Taz! Get back!' Daniel tried to raise his voice, filled with fear for the dog. There was nothing he could do by venturing out across the surface and Daniel couldn't bear the thought of him perishing too.

The germ of an idea started to form in Daniel's tired brain. Could he perhaps get the dog to pull on the line? He was strong, but was he that strong? Perhaps he could manage the girl's weight.

Taz was still standing on the very edge of the bog and had set up a continuous barking, much as he had been taught to do when he'd located a suspect or missing person. After a moment, Daniel realized that was exactly what he was doing – telling the world that he'd found them. What a shame there was no one to hear.

Or was there?

Even as the thought crossed Daniel's mind, he could have sworn he heard a man's voice say, ‘Good boy!'

Had he imagined it?

Daniel strained to turn his head further. Up to his chin in putrid water once more, his view was restricted by the scattered tussocks of rough grass that sprouted from the edge of the mire. Grasping the leather rope again, he pulled himself up a scant 6 inches, and from there, miraculously, he could see what looked like a whole crowd of people hurrying down the slope. They all seemed to be calling instructions.

‘Daniel! Hold on!'

‘Daniel, keep as still as you can.'

‘Hold on, all right? We'll get you out.'

Daniel blinked, aware of a sense of unreality, but when he looked again, they were still there – at least half a dozen of them – and behind them a Land Rover that might have been Hilary's bumped and bucketed down the side of the valley, a steel ladder strapped to its roof rack.

Hope, so recently extinguished, rekindled and began to glow warmly. Daniel turned Elena to face him and shook her slightly. Her eyelids flickered and half opened.

‘They're here, sweetheart. It's going to be all right. It really is.'

SIXTEEN

T
here had been a constant stream of visitors to the hospital room all day, or maybe it just seemed that way to Daniel, still suffering with a throbbing headache that medication couldn't entirely shift.

Not that the company hadn't been welcome. For one thing, it helped keep him from dwelling on things he would rather not, such as the continuing lack of word from Drew. After the torment of thinking that he might die without having made up with his son, Daniel had sent him a text message that morning, just a short one to say, ‘Hello. How are you?' but there had been no reply.

Daniel had had no visitors at all until this, the second day after the rescue, because he had slept solidly for the first twenty-four hours after admittance. When he awoke the first time, he had a crashing headache and neither the energy nor the inclination to move. His sluggish brain could make little sense of his unfamiliar surroundings, but he didn't waste energy worrying about it. All that mattered, just then, was the complete and blissful absence of purpose.

Daniel closed his eyes and within moments was in a deep and dreamless sleep. When he finally returned to something approaching normal wakefulness, the first thing he saw was a dark-skinned nurse standing at the foot of his bed, apparently reading his notes. Her face split in a brilliant white smile when she saw that he was awake, and after asking him how he felt and discovering whether he knew his name, she checked his blood pressure and offered him a cup of tea.

Daniel's mouth was dry, gritty and tasted unutterably foul, and he felt as though he'd swallowed a gallon or two of bog water. He thought the rather weak cup of tea that the nurse presently produced was the best thing he had tasted in the whole of his life, but after the first mouthful or two, another matter had taken possession of his mind.

‘What happened to Elena? Is she here? Is she OK?'

The nurse, whose badge named her as Leanne, frowned heavily. ‘Elena? I'm sorry . . . ?'

‘The girl who was brought in with me. Romanian, about twelve, long, dark hair.'

‘I'm sorry. I only just came on shift. I've been off for a couple of days.'

‘Can you find out? Please? It's important.'