Pooh Bridge: conscience stricken Read online

  After hesitating, I decided on impulse to approach him. I was aware that if I continued along the track he would see me disappear into the woods and he might be inquisitive enough to follow me.

  He didn’t change his stance as I walked up to him, but he did take the bit of grass from his mouth in anticipation of the need, perhaps, to speak.

  “Good evening,” I said, stopping a few feet from him.

  “’Ullo there,” he replied. He was wearing an old hacking-jacket under which there was a scruffy brown shirt, his trousers were baggy and fawn, and he had what appeared to be old hobnailed-boots on his feet. It looked as though I had guessed his age correctly.

  “Nice evening,” I offered.

  “’Tis that,” he agreed.

  “Ideal for walking.”

  “’Tis that,” he said again. He was watching me intently.

  I put my hand on the gate as though I intended going through it and he stood to one side. “Thanks. Do you live locally?” I asked, swinging the gate open.

  “Yep, do that.”

  “Is that a hotel over there?”

  He looked in the direction I was pointing. “Yep, ‘tis that.”

  “Good, maybe I’ll be able to get a room, then.”

  “Possible.” He was a man of few words but as I started to walk past him he added, “Saw you pick up the bag.”

  I stopped and turned to face him. He had narrowed his eyes in concentration. “I’m sorry?”

  “Saw you pick up the bag,” he repeated, indicating Ingrid’s rucksack.

  “Oh, right.”

  “Saw the man who put it there too,” he added.

  He had suddenly gained my interest. When I passed through the car park earlier, I was sure there was nobody there and I assumed, after Ingrid told me what had happened, that whoever her prospective attacker had been was long gone.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  “What I said. Man in a car pulled in well o’er an hour back, waited a short while, dumped the bag and then drove arf. Was going to ‘vestigate meself when I saw you comin’ darn the track the first time.” He stopped and waited for me to respond.

  “The first time?” I said.

  “Yep, afore you went into them woods,” he said.

  There was I thinking nobody was about. I wasn’t sure what I should say. I held up the rucksack. “It belongs to a friend,” I offered as an explanation.

  His expression told me that he wasn’t convinced, which was understandable because it was an inadequate explanation especially after he’d said he saw who dumped the rucksack.

  “What sort of car was it?” I asked.

  “Black, V Reg, big bugger.”

  “And the man?”

  “Car was between ‘im an’ me. Couldn’ really see.” He shrugged. “Maybe thirty-odd, dark ‘air, tall, probably a foreigner.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Weren’t local, looked foreign. Asian maybe.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I see. Look, this probably seems a bit suspicious to you. Let me prove this rucksack does belong to a friend of mine.” Lifting the rucksack off my back, I started to undo the straps.

  “Na, no need,” he said, shrugging again. “No business o’ mine. You says it’s a friend’s, it’s a friend’s.”

  I frowned. “That’s reasonable of you.”

  “Na,” he said again, smiling for the first time. “You wouldn’t believe what I sees in these parts – none so funny as folk.”

  “I bet,” I said, returning his smile.

  “Must be goin’, wife’ll have me tea ready, late as it is.”

  With that he turned, and without saying goodbye, started off down the road with a slow but determined stride, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  I watched him until he disappeared round a corner. He didn’t look back once. Another lonely man, I thought, but to him the rucksack incident was a mere drop in the ocean, which suggested there was a lot more to his world than he wished to communicate. What I didn’t know then was that Ingrid’s rucksack, although it may have been of only passing interest to him, was the precursor to changes in my life and the lives of others; changes that were going to have long term and serious consequences.

  Chapter Three

  The area around the tent was in total darkness.

  I approached cautiously keeping the beam of my small torch pointing straight at the ground. The embers of the fire were smouldering and the saucepan was to one side, the top covered by a metal plate. I felt the saucepan and it was still warm. Standing up I looked around but I couldn’t detect a sound that was out of the ordinary. I put Ingrid’s rucksack next to my backpack inside the tent, and then stood still to discover if I could hear anything – there was nothing.

  Where was she? Maybe she had gone somewhere to have a pee … then again she may have decided I wasn’t trustworthy after all. Her passport was in her rucksack or so she’d said. She wouldn’t leave without that.

  I didn’t feel hungry but I did feel very worried. After crawling into the tent and I waited. If she approached, I would hear twigs breaking underfoot or the brush of her jacket against the undergrowth.

  At some stage, I must have dozed off.

  Throughout the night, I remember waking up every half hour or so because my concern as to Ingrid’s whereabouts hit me straightaway. If I had not found her rucksack and the food had remained uncooked, I might have decided that the whole event was a dream but of course, it wasn’t.

  During one of my brief waking moments I realised Ingrid didn’t know I’d found her rucksack – the man who left it must have been her assailant and was getting rid of evidence – which meant she didn’t know I had her passport and other belongings. Maybe she had gone to look for the rucksack herself … but where?

  At something like six o’clock in the morning, I was suddenly fully awake. Ingrid had not returned. Light was beginning to filter through the trees. After crawling out of the tent I was tempted to look in her rucksack for any clues, but although I did reach for it, I decided that I would wait until it was properly light.

  I threw away the congealed remnants of the meal Ingrid had half-prepared and then made a cup of tea. Why had she bothered to cook anything? If she had changed her mind about me, why didn’t she leave as soon as I went off to look for her rucksack?

  I wasn’t a threat but I suppose she wasn’t to know that. All I was to her was the bloke who had found her, bathed and bandaged her wound and then offered to try to find her rucksack. She knew nothing about me, only my name.

  Ingrid Mesterom: was that her real name? She had sounded German, but if a German wanted to use a false name then she would use another German name – it wouldn’t make any difference. I didn’t even get a good look at her. You tend not to take too much notice of somebody’s looks when you think they are dead, and then by the time she regained consciousness it was too dark. The closest I got to her was when I carried her from the ditch to the tent, but that told me nothing other than she wasn’t overweight. I remembered a slight whiff of perfume that didn’t blend to well with the aroma of the decaying leaves in the ditch where I had found her.

  Discovering Ingrid was the first event - if that’s what it can be called - that had happened to me since I started my quest for isolation. I had gone by train to Manchester and then caught the ‘trundler’ to Buxton, which I left on foot, heading east. I took four days to cover the ten miles to Bakewell, sticking as close to the River Wye as conditions allowed. I ambled, backtracked, stayed in one place for hours, took diversions and probably to cover ten miles I walked nearer sixty or seventy. I hadn’t done a lot of walking before and had sought the guidance of a helpful shop assistant in Northampton, who seemed to know what he was talking about. In fact, the shop assistant was so good that he eventually talked me into parting with nearly five hundred pounds, but everything felt comfortable and he assured me that none of it would need any running in.

  I had constantly question
ed my motives for wanting the isolation in the first place. David and Isabelle had said they understood but I didn’t share their understanding. During our travels, when Belinda was still alive, I often looked at the wooded areas we passed and wondered what it would be like to live off the land and not have access to modern conveniences and utilities. I had tried to analyse my thoughts but dismissed them as daydreaming when my analysis got me nowhere. However, now that I was actually putting the abstractions into practice, some of the answers were beginning to become apparent.

  I hadn’t done everything I’d previously imagined.

  I still relied on supermarkets for sustenance. I might have been able to trap the odd furry creature but I would have then buried it with full military honours, thereby completely defeating the objective. Potatoes and other vegetables I saw growing in the fields were always a temptation but as far as wild mushrooms and other fungi were concerned, I would have poisoned myself before gaining any nourishment.

  If close by, I bathed in the main river or one of its tributaries either after dark or very early in the morning in the most secluded spot I could find. The experience was always invigorating. I ought to have - but I hadn’t - read up on the laws affecting living rough and guides to camping. I wanted isolation and the thought of joining others sitting round a campfire singing Ging-Gang-Goolie filled me with dismay!

  Belinda, of course, was constantly on my mind. She was after all the reason why I was here. I had talked to her and asked her if she understood. I then smiled when I imagined her giving me one of her funny looks. She was happy, I told myself, and living on one of the clouds I watched floating across the blue sky as I took a rest in some sheltered spot. I had seen other ramblers but if I spotted them early enough, I would make a detour thereby avoiding contact. When that was impossible, they either got a cursory nod or, if they were lucky, I passed the time of day.

  Finding that as the days went by, I was becoming more and more content with my own company, was quite heartening. I adopted a simple routine: went where I wanted, stopped when I wanted to, ate when I needed to and with the obvious restrictions, camped where I perhaps shouldn’t have.

  When pitching my tent I assumed that I was breaking some bylaw or other but I had never come across any marauding gamekeepers with twelve-bore shotguns, as a result I remained in one piece. The tent was small and I concealed its location as best I could.

  However, two days before finding Ingrid, I did make one significant decision. I accepted that the weather had been kind and might have influenced my judgement. After returning to the real world, I may also question my motives, but I needed to either leave behind the world that Belinda and I had enjoyed, or learn to share it and our experiences with others. In other words, I had to move on and take my memories with me.

  Once I started going abroad with my job, I had spent so little time with her I felt the need to make up for my selfishness now that she was gone.

  Money, fortunately, wasn’t a problem.

  Although not yet forty, there was enough capital in the bank for me to live comfortably without the need to continue my globetrotting. I would have to get some sort of part-time job to keep me active – such a statement made me feel a good deal older than I was – but I didn’t want anything that would generate the stresses that I had become accustomed to.

  I could afford to see David and Isabelle through school and then on to university, should they do well enough and decide to go, but that was four years away. I seemed to gain momentous satisfaction from my decision, and after checking with Belinda’s cloud that she agreed, I promised myself that regardless of others who would try to persuade me not to go, I wouldn’t change my mind. I would be in charge of my life rather than my life being in charge of me. I was less than a year away from being forty years old and I was proud of the decision I had made.

  Perhaps my need for isolation had paid off. Coming to a decision like that after only a week was certainly a step in the right direction.

  Then some silly girl who had knocked herself out while trying to escape from a prospective rapist interrupted my relaxed new world.

  I had done the honourable thing and helped her and, in return, she had half-cooked me a meal before disappearing into the night without even a thank you.

  So why was I sipping my tea, thinking and worrying about her? I didn’t know her or if her hurried explanation as to how she finished up lying in a ditch were true … or anything else about her if it came to that.

  However, her rucksack was inside the tent and maybe … just maybe, it would reveal a little more about her.

  Chapter Four

  With more light slowly finding its way into the woods, I fumbled my way down to the river. The rising sun had managed to penetrate the canopy and at one point the temperature seemed degrees warmer as its rays hit the water.

  I conducted my morning ablutions in the clear but cold water, feeling slightly guilty for disturbing the tranquillity as my feet sank into the muddy bottom and stirred up the sediment. Moving further out into the river I slid slowly beneath the surface, feeling the current trying to drag me downstream.

  The sensation was invigorating.

  Over another mug of tea and a marmalade sandwich, I reconsidered my intention of looking in Ingrid’s rucksack. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to hand it in to the nearest police station? She had already been the cause of my worst night’s sleep since starting my isolation.

  Why did I want to know more about her?

  Leaving well alone was probably the right option.

  But temptation got the better of me. After making another mug of tea I reached for the rucksack. The side-pockets revealed very little – underwear, socks, a map of the area, some string, a small penknife and torch, and the camera and mobile phone Ingrid had mentioned. Another pocket contained a half-eaten bag of crisps, some fruit juice and empty chocolate wrappings.

  The contents of the main part of the rucksack were equally normal until I took out a spare pair of jeans. Underneath the jeans, I found Ingrid’s passport and some letters. The address on the envelopes was to a place called Cochem in Germany, which I couldn’t place but I thought I’d heard of it somewhere before, or maybe read about it for some reason.

  Putting the rucksack to one side, I noticed the corner of what looked like a plastic bag sticking out from the rigid bottom. After fiddling with a zip, I found two plastic pouches: one contained a white powder and the other what looked like unrubbed pipe tobacco.

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what I was looking at – the white powder was almost certainly cocaine and the look-a-like tobacco, cannabis.

  Moreover, there were significant amounts of each.

  Like many others of her generation, little Ingrid had resorted to drugs for her kicks. I had glanced at, but hadn’t been really interested in newspaper articles arguing the pros and cons for the legalisation of cannabis usage. It never even entered my head that the twins’ school had a drugs problem among the more senior pupils. Why did I restrict my apathy to the senior pupils or even the pupils at all?

  I picked up the pouch containing what I thought to be cocaine. Again, I didn’t know much about it but its weight, maybe half a pound, seemed a lot for one person’s personal use, but I didn’t really know. The cannabis was in a solid block measuring about three inches by two inches and an inch thick, once more rather a lot more than, in my ignorance, would be needed by one person.

  Putting the pouches back in the rucksack, I reached for the passport. It was issued in Germany six months earlier, and because of the lack of immigration stamps, it had either been used little or only within the European Union. Flicking to the back page, Ingrid’s image stared at me. Her Asian features were more obvious in the photograph. Unlike most passport photographs, it was quite flattering, but having only seen her face in the dark or by torchlight, I had no idea how accurate the photograph might be. Her hair looked shorter. Her date of birth was given as 14th April 1978, which meant she had t
urned twenty-two only a month earlier, and her height was 1.66 metres or because I thought pre-metric, about five feet four inches.

  Except for the passport and letters, I put everything back in the rucksack. I did however check the labels on her spare clothes and all were bought somewhere in Europe, except for her underwear and socks which looked brand new and, from the labels, pretty expensive – I knew this to be the case because, by coincidence, Belinda had bought her underwear from the same chain.

  The next decision I had to make was what should I do with what I had found, and what it told me about Ingrid? If anything, the contents of her rucksack gave me some idea as to why she might have decided my involvement was not to her advantage,

  I had intended to spend that day wending my way slowly northwards, back towards Buxton. Arriving on Tuesday of the following week by public transport, I then proposed testing my newfound hiking skills on the Lake District.

  Why should my recent experiences make any difference?

  All I had to do was drop the rucksack off at the nearest police station, provide them with an explanation and my personal details should they wish to contact me again, and then resume what I had planned. On the other hand, I could leave the rucksack in the woods and move off as though nothing had happened.

  But something had happened.

  If Ingrid’s explanation as to why she had been there was credible, there was a man in the area who regarded lone females as fair game. The police should know about that. They should also know about the drugs I had found.

  Could any of it wait?