A Cast of Vultures Read online

  ‘Stupid bitch,’ he repeated. If we’re discussing stupidity, I thought, can we begin with yours? All this, to steal a handbag with only twenty quid in it? He didn’t have to knock me out. I would have given it to him. I carry a lot of stuff in my bag – a phone, an iPad, a book, as well as wallet, credit cards, make-up and odds and ends that sift down to the bottom and get forgotten. Even good electronics and an almost new lipstick, which I rarely remembered to wear but which I loved because the colour was called ‘Venom’, couldn’t make my bag a worthwhile haul. Besides, he didn’t look like a Venom type of guy. Then again, he hadn’t asked my views.

  I heard a thump, and allowed my eyes to slit open. I could see him through the railings. He was standing, back to me, going through my bag. He dropped my phone and my iPad onto the walkway and casually stamped on them. Then he bent, shovelling the pieces of electronics back into the bag, before leaning out and tossing the whole thing over the railing. He never looked in my wallet, didn’t check anything else. Not a mugging. I thought back to the footsteps I’d heard on the pagoda viewing platform, and they took on a more ominous cast.

  He sank down against the railing. He checked his watch, then put his head back and just sat. And sat. He was waiting. For someone, or to make sure everyone had left the grounds? Neither felt like it was going to have a happy ending for me. I stared at him, trying to memorise everything I could, but there wasn’t much to remember. He looked like any twenty-something you’d see in the pub or on the Tube.

  I looked around as far as I could without making a sound by moving my body. He was too close for that. The layout said we were in one of the nodules off the walkway, while the wall I was propped up against told me it wasn’t a viewing platform. Maybe it was the staircase, although I didn’t remember them having solid walls. We’d been heading to the lifts. They might have a similar layout: a circular nodule with lifts in the centre instead of stairs.

  I slid a glance over to Sprained Ankle again. His head was leaning against the railing, and if he wasn’t asleep, he also wasn’t paying attention to me. I risked lifting my head a few inches. I could see a viewing platform a few metres away. It was held up by a single support that rose from the ground and then, under the platform, split into three struts designed to look like tree branches that arced out around the railings. Apart from the platform’s single entrance onto the walkway, there was no way down. If I was right, and I was wedged in beside the lift shaft, my platform had another exit, but I didn’t imagine that Sprained Ankle would hang about peacefully while I pressed the call button and waited for a lift to come. If, of course, it even ran after visitor hours.

  I turned my wrist and looked down. Just after six o’clock. I wasn’t sure what time it had been when I’d heard the announcement that the walkway would close in ten minutes. Kew itself closed at six, so it had probably been about five-thirtyish. Which would mean I’d been unconscious for fifteen minutes or so. I tried to work out how knowing this helped me. I couldn’t see that it did.

  I attempted to flex my legs. I was in two minds. I could get up and run and scream. If I was going to do that, I needed to do it now. The later it got, the less likely there would be anyone in the grounds to hear me. Or I could keep playing possum, and hope that whenever whatever it was that was going to happen, happened, I could come up with something other than screaming and shouting.

  The strangest thing was how calm I was. I’d been attacked, and my attacker was waiting, either for someone to help him do something nasty to me, or for dark, when he would do something nasty to me. Neither was going to be good. And yet I was lying there with no sense of panic. Maybe I needed to be hit over the head more often.

  I do have some advice now for would-be attackers. If you are waiting for reinforcements who will arrive in a lift, don’t prop your attackee up against said lift-shaft wall. If you do, she will know before you do that they are on their way. This important life lesson was borne home when I felt the wall behind me vibrate. The lift was on the move.

  The first, and most hopeful, possibility was that it was someone who worked for Kew, coming to check that all the visitors had left. Then I remembered the voices I’d heard when Sprained Ankle had been standing beside me, and I realised that that check had already been made, and Sprained Ankle had been hiding from the staff. It was therefore more likely that the lift was transporting Sprained Ankle’s friends. The stairs and the lift were now both blocked by people who were not happy with me, one of whom had already demonstrated his unhappiness by hitting me on the head.

  Before I had reached the end of this thought, I was on the move. I would like to be able to say that I had a plan, that I’d gone over my situation, and was responding to the circumstances in a logical and premeditated fashion. Perhaps sometime soon that is the way I’ll tell this story. In reality, however, everything that followed was driven by adrenaline and instinct, and more than a drop or two of panic.

  Sprained Ankle had heard the lift and was getting up, his head bent over his phone, texting as he did. Before he was fully upright, I was on my feet. One of my legs slid out from under me. It was dead from having been bent for so long. It didn’t matter, though, because I wasn’t running. There was nowhere to run to. I went in the only direction I could. Over the railing.

  It took me longer than it should have – the railing was designed specifically to prevent people doing what I was doing – and Sprained Ankle’s hand was on my own ankle as I finally slid over. But he was that fraction of a second too late. I grabbed at the supporting strut below that mirrored the one I had seen on the next viewing platform, and let my body fall.

  I’m female, and not a very athletic female at that. I have no upper-body strength. I make Jake lift anything that weighs more than a teacup. So I didn’t have much hope that I’d be able to hang on, much less be able to move and hide. But I didn’t have any hope at all if I’d stayed where I was.

  The fall was – terrifying is the only word. I wrapped both my arms around the metal strut and kicked at Sprained Ankle’s hand even as my brain was screaming that if I kicked him away, I would fall to my death. But my mind and my body paid no more attention to each other than they usually did. I kicked and kicked, and momentum, and my body weight, carried me away from him, and from the railing. It took a second, two at the most, but as I arced out into the air, it felt like it lasted a year.

  And then I hung, that same body weight that had taken me away from the immediate threat now pulling me down into a void. I’d wrapped both arms around the strut as I dived over the railing, but I had a minute or so at most. I wouldn’t be able to hold on for longer. Every second increased the chances that my arms would weaken, slip. I was going to have to use my non-existent stomach muscles to pull myself up and get my legs on the strut too. I pressed my face closer to my hands and lifted my body. My legs came nowhere near the strut. I tried again. And again. This time, when my body fell back, my grip loosened. I tensed up, pulling my face in closer to the strut, scraping it along the metal. I welcomed the abrasion against my skin. It meant I was still hanging on.

  The adrenaline surged with the slip. I rocked my body, and this time my left leg hooked briefly over the strut. Not enough, and I fell back. Again. I was getting weaker. Again. And I was there. One leg hooked over the support was enough to give me the purchase I needed, at least until I could catch my breath. Then I could try and get the other leg around too. I gave a count of five, and there I was, wrapped around the strut, arms and legs grasping tight like a baby koala around a eucalyptus.

  I risked a quick look around. The viewing platform I had seen from above had three struts branching off from the upright support. This one had only two, because of the lift shaft in the centre, beside the upright. If I slid down to the point where the two struts met the support, I’d be able to lean against the wall of the lift too. First I would have to turn over and get on top of the strut I was hanging onto from underneath. Inch by inch I manoeuvred, until finally I lay on top, panting. I don�
�t know how long I stayed like that, trying to quell the hysteria that was bubbling up now that I was thinking rather than reacting.

  I hadn’t panicked in those first minutes. I hadn’t had time. Now black spots appeared in front of my eyes, and one hand slipped, slick with sweat. That brought me back. I counted breaths, in and out, in and out. The spots receded, and the rushing noise in my ears quietened.

  In that quiet, I could hear the two men. I’d almost forgotten about them. I’d been so focused on keeping my grip, on not falling to my death, that the reason I was there, the reason I was acting like a female Indiana Jones – if Indiana Jones had ever had an adventure in a botanical garden – had been pushed to the back of my mind.

  Their voices brought it back to the forefront. My dive over the side had taken seconds, not the years it had felt like. The two men were almost directly above me. I could see their shadows on the ground, two heads bobbing above the railing. I risked a look up. The wooden floorboards showed me nothing. I couldn’t see them, or what they were doing. With luck, that meant they couldn’t see me either.

  Then I heard the lift. One, or both, was going down. I had planned to move down to the top of the main support pole carefully, but like my header over the rails, I moved instead on instinct, sliding down in seconds until my feet reached the place where the two struts met the lift. I withdrew into the shadows of the wall as the light spilt out below when the lift door opened. A man emerged.

  He was bald, or had a shaven head, and was heavier, stockier, than Sprained Ankle. I only saw him for a moment before he moved away from the light of the lift, and into the shadow cast by the walkway, and then he was an outline. He could see better: he had a torch, which he began to use. He was searching the ground, looking for me down there, quartering the area under the platform systematically.

  My stomach churned. He was right. That was where logic said I should have been, under the platform, mangled, probably dead. When he didn’t find me, he was going to look up. Directly under the walkway, in this densely wooded part of the gardens, it was dark. But the sun hadn’t set, it would be light for hours still, and even without a torch it wouldn’t be that difficult to spot me. With the torch I might as well have a sparkler lit on top of my head, topped by a flashing neon arrow: Here she is!

  I looked around. The strut I’d slid down led up to the viewing platform, and nowhere else. The second strut also led up to the viewing platform, and nowhere else. Even if I crawled back to where I’d been, I wouldn’t be able to return to the viewing platform. Momentum and gravity had taken me down; it would need far more strength than I possessed to take me back in the opposite direction, even if my attackers were to give me the time, and it seemed like a good idea. I was sure they wouldn’t, and it didn’t.

  The torch beam broke into this entirely futile train of thought. Baldy had given up on the ground and was waving it in the air to get Sprained Ankle’s attention.

  ‘She’s not here.’ He wasn’t whispering, but he pitched his voice low.

  ‘If she fell, she wouldn’t have been able to run. Try the railings,’ came the reply I didn’t want to hear.

  The light began to play along the underside of the walkway. It wouldn’t take long. It didn’t. The beam of light found me. Pinned me.

  ‘She’s there. No way up for her. No way down.’ No shit.

  I heard Sprained Ankle move above me, and then his shadow on the grass returned as he leant out to look down. The lift-door light flashed out and Baldy got back in. I felt the vibration behind me as he returned to the top, and then the two voices arguing. If I could get over the railings and onto the support pole, so could Sprained Ankle, said Baldy. He was in charge, but Sprained Ankle was putting up a good fight. He might fall and break his neck, was his main complaint. A girl can always dream, but I had to agree with Baldy. If I could do it, so could someone else, and Sprained Ankle was in much better shape than me.

  I looked up at the struts again. The second one, the one I hadn’t been on, was hidden at its far end by branches from the surrounding trees. Branches wouldn’t keep me hidden for long, but even that amount of cover might make me feel less like a sitting duck. If Sprained Ankle came down the strut I’d been on, he’d be able to kick at me from above. If I was at the far end of the second strut, I’d be somewhat hidden, and above him I could be the kicker rather than the kicked. On the other hand, if I crawled up there, I would lose the support of the lift-shaft wall. I’d be back to koala-clinging mode, which was not one I had planned to repeat.

  Not planned to repeat until I heard Sprained Ankle say, ‘Fuck it, just go down and shoot the bitch.’

  Plans change.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AS WITH MY abrupt descent down the first strut, my ascent up its neighbour was done without conscious thought or volition. In case this ever comes in handy, I can tell you that ‘Shoot the bitch’ is a phrase that makes hazardous physical activity seem like a catnap in the sun. I’d shinned my way up and was pulling the branches around me before I was even aware I was on the move.

  And also before I heard Baldy’s reply, which, once I was in place, my brain processed for me: ‘It’s supposed to look like an accident, you fuckwit.’

  ‘So shoot around her. Scare her into falling.’

  I scrabbled with my feet, pushing myself higher up the strut, further into the branches of the tree. I wasn’t sure if that was smart or not – if they couldn’t see me, they might shoot me even if they weren’t aiming at me – but just as closing your eyes when something frightening happens is a natural response, so, I found, is hiding in trees when men argue the merits of shooting you, or shooting at you.

  I pressed my mouth closed, determined not to make a sound. And then, if I’d had a hand that wasn’t clinging onto metal and branches for dear life, I would have slapped it against my forehead. Not make a sound? That had been the right thing to do when they didn’t know where I was, but there was no advantage to it now. Now I needed someone to hear me. So I screamed. And screamed. And then, for a change of pace, I screamed some more.

  Two things happened. Screaming released my tamped-down fear, and I became hysterical. And it gave me a sore throat. Nothing else. No one appeared astride a white charger, looking for a stray damsel in distress to fill their monthly rescue quota. Even so, I went on screaming long after it became clear that it wasn’t going to help, just because I couldn’t stop.

  And then, suddenly, I did. I stopped, and listened, and heard – nothing. If the two men were still there, they were being entirely silent. I waited. Still nothing. It had become dark enough that, in the shade of the tree, I could no longer see my watch, so I counted off what I thought was about five minutes in my head. I did it again. Still nothing.

  I tried shouting some more, telling myself that this was shouting now, not screaming, that this wasn’t panic, that it was part of my plan. My plan was – I scrabbled around – my plan was to shout intermittently for a while, and listen out for the men for the rest of the time. It wasn’t the best plan I’d ever heard of. It didn’t seem to have much purpose, but it was the only one that I could come up with. After a while, I decided to try and count out an hour. If the men were waiting at the base of the pole, I’d hear them sooner or later: they didn’t strike me as being very good at their jobs, more like they’d been rented from the Thugs ‘R’ Us bargain basement. I didn’t believe that they could wait in silence for an hour.

  I had barely counted out a minute before I heard them, first back on the walkway, then on the ground. My shouting had had the single result of letting them know that no one was in earshot. Their voices raised, they continued their argument about getting onto the strut from above. Baldy finally conceded that it was only possible for those in a state of blind panic, or possibly just those who were totally nuts. The need to have my death – they discussed my death as if it had no more importance than getting caught in rush-hour traffic – the need to have it look accidental was apparently paramount, and now they could no
longer see me, Sprained Ankle agreed that they couldn’t risk shooting around me, for fear of hitting me. Instead, they tried climbing the pole (a failure), and then the tree among whose branches I was hiding (also a failure, although a longer, slower, less absolute, and therefore on my part a more nerve-racking failure). They debated the location of ladders, and vanished, presumably to search for one.

  I kept watch for the torch that would mark their return. Because they might come from a direction behind the tree, where I wouldn’t be able to see the light, I kept a hand on the largest branch, hoping that I would feel the vibrations as they set a ladder against the trunk, or started to climb. I didn’t know what I would do if that happened, but I wanted to have a head start on whatever it was going to be.

  I pushed myself more firmly into the crook of the strut, jamming my feet against the metal. I thanked the good lord that I hadn’t been a better person, and had been too lazy to change my clothes and put on a dress to meet Jake’s friends. If I’d been wearing a dress, I’d have been wearing shoes with a heel, instead of the rubber-soled flats I had on. Next time Helena bemoaned my lack of interest in fashion, I’d explain that I was keeping things pared down to maximise emergency tree-and-strut-climbing needs.

  I had time to think that through. Hell, I had time to recite the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, had it still existed in this age of Wikipedia. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Had they given up and left? Were they going elsewhere for a ladder, and they’d be back? If I knew that an hour had passed, or two, or three, then I could have made guesses. But I couldn’t see my watch, and I’d long lost count in my attempt to measure out an hour. Perhaps it just felt like an hour, and they had been gone less than a quarter of an hour? It was possible. The whole episode, from the moment I’d bumped into Sprained Ankle, seemed to have flashed by in seconds, and yet also to have taken hours to unfold.