Quicksand (6 page)

 

 

She covered her face with both hands and began to cry.

 

 

 

 

She parted her fingers to find out who it was when Paul comfortingly put
his arm around her, recognised him and allowed herself to be led back to
where the others were standing. Her weeping consisted in small dry sobs;
he felt their pulselike tremor come and go.

 

 

"Well, the question is now," Hofford said, "what's to be done with her?
Your hospital strikes me as the best bet, Doctor, because even if you're
right and the man she -- " He checked, aware that a phrase like "beat up"
sounded absurd applied to a man nearly a foot taller than this slip of
a girl and practically twice her weight. "What I mean is, she must be
a trifle odd walking around in the altogether!"

 

 

Paul nodded. "Can you take her down in your car? I'll follow in my own.
And perhaps you could radio in and ask your headquarters to warn the
duty doctor that she's coming."

 

 

"Yes, of course. Okay, come along, my girl!"

 

 

But though she didn't struggle, she flinched away from Hofford's
encouraging hand and shrank back closer to Paul.

 

 

"Taken a fancy to you," the inspector commented. "Must be the bedside
manner, or whatever you call it in your line of business."

 

 

"I suppose I could take her in my car," Paul suggested doubtfully. "It's
only a two-seater, but -- "

 

 

"I'd rather you didn't," Hofford interrupted. "She can obviously be
a handful, no matter how harmless she seems at the moment. Constable
Edwards over there is a class A driver; suppose he brings your car in
and you ride with us?"

 

 

There was a brief disturbance caused by the angry departure of
Mrs Weddenhall, the Bentley's engine roaring and both dogs barking
frantically. Hofford sighed.

 

 

"That's a relief! You know, for a moment I thought I was going to have
to arrest a justice of the peace for obstructing me in the execution of
my duty. . . . Right, let's get going."

 

 

Having to urge her on at every step, they persuaded the girl towards
Hofford's car.

 

 

"You'd think she'd never seen a car before, wouldn't you?" he muttered
to Paul as he opened the rear door. "Get in first, please -- it may
reassure her."

 

 

Paul slid across the back seat and extended a hand to the girl. Taking it
like a shipwrecked passenger clutching a lifebelt, she crept in beside him.

 

 

-- Like a wild animal being lured into a cage, terrified beyond reason
but equally afraid to fight back against enemies it doesn't understand.
I hope it's not a symptom of claustrophobia; she's bound to have to go
into a security cell until she's been properly examined.

 

 

She gasped wben the engine started. Then, paradoxically, she craned
forward to watch the driver's movements at the controls as be engaged
reverse and swung the car to face the other way. She followed every
action, fascinated.

 

 

Paul glanced at Hofford and read on the inspector's face puzzlement as
great as his own.

 

 

-- What's the good of guessing? We'll find out soon enough. People
don't just drop out of nowhere into a strange country, without clothes,
without a word of the language. A girl like this, tiny and lovely:
someone's bound to have noticed her and will remember.

 

 

Facile jargon seeped up in his mind.

 

 

-- Hysteria, perhaps. The effect of attempted rape on sensitive
personalities is . . . But there were no clothes to be seen bar that
tweed cap, and with his arm broken Faberdown couldn't have got rid of
them. . . . Oh, stop it. As Hofford said, people are damnably complicated
and it's ridiculous to expect solutions with a snap of the fingers.

 

 

At least she seemed to have relaxed a bit. She was gazing first out of
one window, then another, as though desperate not to miss anything the
car went past. He caught her attention and tapped his chest with his
free hand.

 

 

"Paul!" he said.

 

 

"Pol," she echoed docilely. The vowel was wrong, but then the sounds she
had uttered earlier had been wholly alien to English. He turned his hand
and pointed at her.

 

 

"Arrzheen," she said.

 

 

"Did she say 'urchin?'" Hofford chuckled. 'That's appropriate enough.
I thought 'gamin' myself when I first saw her."

 

 

-- All right. "Urchin." It does fit.

 

 

Paul smiled, and after a short pause she tried to smile back, but the
expression wouldn't come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*7*

 

 

"Evening, Doc! What have you got for us?"

 

 

The speaker emerged from the porter's office: deputy charge nurse Oliphant
wearing his forehead scar like a campaign medal, relic of a pub fight in
which a drunk broke a bottle on his head. He was given to letting people
assume that one of the patients had done it. Paul disliked him for that.

 

 

-- But it's my own sin: "letting people assume." Maybe that accounts
for my strong reaction against it in others.

 

 

"An emergency admission, I suppose," he answered wearily. "Where's Dr Rudge?"

 

 

"Coming, Paul!" Natalie hurried down the last few steps of the staircase
leading to the staff quarters. "Just went to see if Phil had come back,
but you'll do just as well."

 

 

She saw the girl for the first time, and stopped dead.

 

 

"Her?"

 

 

"Apparently. Oh -- this is Inspector Hofford. Dr Rudge, Inspector . . .
Where do you want her put, Natalie?"

 

 

"I told Nurse Kirk to get a cell ready in Disturbed Three because I was
expecting some hefty Amazon running amok." Natalie hesitated. "Well, let's
examine her in the duty office and make up our minds after that. Oliphant,
ring Nurse Kirk, will you, and ask her to join us right away?"

 

 

Constable Edwards appeared in the doorway, jingling the keys of Paul's car.
He took them with a word of thanks, his full attention on the girl's
reaction to her surroundings. As she had done in the car, she was studying
everything with an expression that mingled fascination with horror.

 

 

-- Why should she find ordinary things so peculiar? Is she high on a
psychedelic, maybe? Oh, stop trying to guess!

 

 

"Come along, dear," Natalie said. The girl gave a blank stare.

 

 

"I should have told you," Paul said. "She doesn't seem to understand
English."

 

 

"Hysterical aphasia?"

 

 

"No, she spoke to me. But it was in a foreign language."

 

 

"Hasn't she even told you her name?"

 

 

"It's Arrzheen," Paul said, framing the unfamiliar sounds with care.
The girl responded instantly.

 

 

"Urchin," Hofford muttered in the background, still pleased with his own
joke.

 

 

"Well, she's taken to you okay," Natalie said tartly. "You'd better come
along and keep her quiet. Do you mind, or do you want to dash off?"

 

 

"No. . . . No, I've nothing else to do. Inspector, do you want to hang
around, or would you like me to phone you and tell you if we've learned
any more about her?"

 

 

"Yes, ring me up, please," Hofford said. "I might have something to tell
you, too; I sent a man to Blickham General to interview the salesman,
and he should be reporting in pretty soon -- What on earth is that on
your hand, Doctor?"

 

 

Paul turned his palm up numbly. Where the girl had been grasping his hand
so tightly in the car, a smear of almost dry blood. He took hers and
examined it. Yes: under three of the nails, traces of more.

 

 

"That clinches it," Hofford said with satisfaction. "Thank you, Doctor
. . . Dr Rudge . . . good night!"

 

 

 

 

"How do you spell this name of hers?" Nurse Kirk demanded, looking up
from the table at which she was completing the admission record. She was
a wiry Scotswoman of definite lesbian tendencies and extreme Calvinist
morality; Paul had sometimes wondered why she didn't shatter to bits
like an overwound clock-spring. And she added, seeing the girl laid out
naked on the examination couch, "Scrawny little thing, isn't she?"

 

 

-- No, actually she's built perfectly for her height.

 

 

But that response rather shocked Paul. Mirza would no doubt already
have made half a dozen obscene cracks and reduced old Kirk to a state
of hysteria herself, but Mirza lacked the English reluctance to admit
the existence of sex.

 

 

"Put down a case name," he said tiredly. "No, I have a better idea.
Put down 'Urchin.' The police inspector suggested it."

 

 

Nurse Kirk frowned at the levity of it all, but did as she was told.
Natalie, engaged in reading the thermometer which she had eventually
persuaded the girl to keep under her tongue, glanced up and grimaced at
Paul. He relaxed a little.

 

 

-- There are human beings in this world, not an endless string of Mrs
Weddenhalls.

 

 

"Temperature barely subnormal," Natalie said. "She's not significantly
shocked, is she? You noticed, I'm sure."

 

 

"Of course, or I wouldn't have let her ride here in the car."
Paul hesitated. "I mean, she's not shocked in the ordinary sense --
circulation's normal at the extremities as far as I can judge, and I
managed to count her pulse while she was holding my hand in the car,
and that seemed okay too. But she's not a well person, is she? Have you
done the blood-pressure yet, by the way?"

 

 

"Next on the list." Natalie shook down the thermometer. "Why don't you
attend to it while I get on with the rest? She'll probably take the . . .
ah . . . intimate details better from me than from a man."

 

 

Paul complied listlessly, unfolding the bandage of the sphygmomanometer
while Natalie drew on a rubber glove and proceeded to palpate the
girl's abdomen.

 

 

"I'm damned," she said after a few moments. "She doesn't like it at all.
Look at her, squirming away from my hand. You try!" She stripped her
glove off with a snapping sound.

 

 

Unwillingly Paul proceeded with what was necessary, and the girl objected
less to his attentions than she had done to Natalie's, lying still with
her almond eyes fixed on his profile.

 

 

-- Nothing about this makes sense. If Faberdown did assault her, and it
was traumatic, you wouldn't expect her to prefer a man poking about like
this. . . .

 

 

"Any traces?" Natalie inquired.

 

 

"Mm? Oh -- no, he didn't get at her. Nothing worse than this mud on her
bottom. No bruising, either. Soft ground. Did you -- ? Oh yes. I didn't
notice you dressing her foot."

 

 

"You're only half here, Paul," Natalie said. "It's unfair to dump this
on you after last night."

 

 

"I don't mind. If I went home I'd only lie awake puzzling about her."

 

 

"As you like. Oh --
intacta
, by the way?"

 

 

"No. But for a long time, and quite normal."

 

 

"What Mirza would call well reamed," Natalie commented caustically,
and Nurse Kirk scowled.

 

 

So to completion: reflexes checked, eyes and ears inspected, scratches
washed, mud rinsed away. . . . Finish. They sat her up and clad her in a
cotton nightgown, heirloom of who could guess how many previous wearers,
and a towelling robe with CHENT HOSPITAL stitched around the hem, which
was at least snug. They put a chair beside the couch and she moved to
it apathetically.

 

 

"A cup of tea," Natalie said briskly. "And . . . Nurse!"

 

 

"Yes?"

 

 

"Bring the sugar and the milk separately."

 

 

-- Neat. I should have thought of it.

 

 

"Are you any the wiser after all this?" Paul said aloud.

 

 

"Not a sausage." Natalie took out a packet of cigarettes and gave him one.
Watching as they lit up, the girl suddenly giggled.

 

 

-- Breakthrough! But it only makes the mystery murkier. There
is
something
comic about people sucking smoke from a white stick. Only . . . Like the
cars, isn't it?

 

 

"Did you turn up anything on the physical?" he asked.

 

 

"If she were up for a life assurance policy I'd offer her optimum terms.
She's downright bloody fit. Feel that biceps muscle? I did, when I was
putting the sphyg on. Hard as a boxer's. Whatever's fouled her up mentally,
it hasn't affected her physique."

 

 

"I suppose she is fouled up." Paul hadn't meant to speak the thought,
but it leaked out past defences lowered by exhaustion.

 

 

"You're joking, of course. Granted, her lack of goosebumps indicates she
doesn't mind walking around starkers in winter. But most people simply
don't behave that way." Natalie cocked her head, listening to footsteps
outside. "Ah, here comes our tea."

 

 

The girl accepted her cup and saucer -- from sheer professional obstinacy,
Nurse Kirk had brought one cup without a saucer "for the patient,"
but Paul left it on the tray -- but seemed at a loss what to do with
it. She waited for the others to set an example.