Crossfire

Surely someone had to come soon.

But they didn't, and the light from the window went away as day turned into my second night in the stable.

I passed some of the time counting seconds.

Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three, and so on… and on… and on. Mississippi sixty to one minute, Mississippi sixty times sixty to one hour. Anything to keep my mind off the pain in my leg.

Eventually, sometime that I reckoned, from my counting, must be after midnight, it dawned on me that my kidnapper simply wasn't going to arrive with food and water for his hostage. If he had been going to, he'd have come during the daylight hours or in the early evening.

I faced the shocking reality that I wasn't here to be ransomed, I was here to die.

In spite of the pain in my leg, I went to sleep standing up. i I only realized when I lost my balance and was woken by the jerk of the chain attached to my wrists. I twisted around so I was facing the wall and stood up again.

I was cold.

I could tell that I was only in my shirtsleeves. I'd been wearing an overcoat when I walked back to the car from the Coroner's Court, but it had obviously been removed.

I shivered, but the cold was the least of my worries.

I was desperately thirsty, and I knew that my body must be getting dehydrated. My kidneys had gone on making urine, and I had peed three times during the day, losing liquid down my leg that I could ill afford. I knew from my training that in these cool conditions, human beings could live for several weeks without food but only a matter of a few days without water.

The knowledge was not hugely comforting.

I thought back to the survival-skills instructor at Sandhurst who had told me that. The whole platoon had sat up and taken special notice of the attractive female captain from the Royal Army Medical Corps who had taught us about the physiological effects of the various situations in which we might find ourselves.

Sadly, there hadn't been a lecture on how to stand forever on one leg.

But the captain had turned out to be more than just an army medico who knew the theory, she was a get-up-and-go girl who had put it into practice. She was the female equivalent of Bear Grylls, spending all her army leave on expeditions to remote parts, and she could count both poles as well as the top of Everest in her resume.

"If you're in a bit of a spot," she had said, grossly understating some of the "spots" she had described from her own experiences, "never just sit and wait to be rescued. Your best bet for survival is always to evacuate under your own steam if that is humanly possible. There are well-documented occasions when people with broken legs, or worse, left for dead high up on Everest, have subsequently turned up alive at Base Camp. They crawled off the mountain. No one else was going to save them, so they saved themselves."

I was definitely in a bit of a spot.

Time, I thought, to save myself.

First things first. I had to get myself disconnected from the ring in the wall. It sounded deceptively easy.

I reached up with my hands to where the chain was attached by the padlock. The ring stuck straight out from the wall as if it had been screwed in as a single piece. I grabbed hold of it with my right hand and tried to twist it anticlockwise. It didn't budge an iota.

I went on trying for a long time. I wrapped the chain around the ring and put all my weight on it. I then tried to twist the chain, rotating my body around and around, back and forth, hoping that I would find a weak link to snap. Nothing.

Next, I tried turning the ring clockwise in case it had a left-hand screw thread. Still nothing, other than sore fingers.

I jerked it with the chain, on one occasion throwing myself off balance and back into the hanging-by-shoulders position. But still the damn ring didn't shift. If I couldn't detach myself from the ring, then I would simply hang here until I died of dehydration, and the exertions of trying to escape would reduce the time that would take.

"Always to evacuate under your own steam if that is humanly possible." That's what the lady captain had said. Maybe freeing myself from the ring wasn't humanly possible.

I felt like crying, but I knew that would be another loss of precious fluid.

And I desperately needed an evacuation of a different kind.

How degrading bodily functions could be when they occurred in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least in the hospital, when I'd been bedridden and incapable, there had been bedpans and nurses close by to assist. Here I was, standing on my one very sore leg, imprisoned in a stable, unable even to remove my trousers, let alone to squat or sit on a toilet.

Who was the bastard who would force me to shit in my pants?

I was angry. Bloody angry.

I tried to channel my anger into a resurgence of energy and strength as I once more gripped the ring and tried to turn it. Again it resisted.

"Come on, you bugger, move!" I shouted at the ring. But it didn't.

I rested my head in frustration on the ledge at the top of the wooden paneling. So fed up was I that I bit through the cloth of the hood into the wood.

It moved.

I thought I must be imagining it, so I bit the wood again. It definitely moved.

I felt around with my face. The ledge on the top of the paneling was about an inch and a half wide, with its front edge curved, and it was the curved edge that had moved. It was obviously a facing strip that had been glued or nailed to the front of the ledge.

I bit into the wood again. Even through the hood, I found I could get my front teeth behind the curved beading. I bit hard and pulled backwards, using my arms to press on the wall. The curved beading strip came away from the ledge far enough for me to get my mouth around it properly. I pulled back again and it came away some more.

I was pulling so hard with my mouth that when one end of the strip came completely free, I again lost my balance and ended up hanging from the chain.

But I didn't care.

I pulled my knee back under me and stood up. The beading was flapping, with one end free and the other not. There had obviously been a join in the wood just a little way to my left.

I held the wood in my mouth and twisted my neck to the right, making the free end bend upwards. I could feel the free end on my arms, and finally, after nearly twisting myself again off my foot, I was able to grasp the strip in my hands.

I now bent myself to the right, folding the strip back on itself.

It snapped with a splintering crack, leaving me holding a free length of the beading. I couldn't see how long it was, but I carefully fed it through my fingers until I reached the end. This I put through the ring, and then I used it like a crowbar.

Still the ring resisted, and I again lost my balance and ended hanging by the chain as the end of the wood broke off. But I didn't let go of the rest of it.

I stood up once more and passed the broken end back through the ring.

This time I turned the wood through ninety degrees so that it was edge on, and hoped it would be more difficult to break. Then I leaned on it with as much weight as I dared.

The ring moved. I felt it. I leaned again. It moved some more.

I was so excited that I was laughing.

The ring had almost moved half a revolution. I put the wooden strip into my mouth to hold it, almost gagging on the vomit-tasting cloth. I then reached up and tried to turn the ring with my fingers. It was stiff, but it turned, slowly at first, then over and over until I could feel it part company with the wall.

I could lower my arms. I was free of my shackle. What bliss!

I quickly hauled down my pants and underwear, and then crouched against the wall to defecate. I could remember from my boyhood that my father had often described his morning constitutional on the lavatory as his golden moment of the day. Now, at long last, I knew what he meant. The relief was incredible. So much so that I hardly cared that disengaging myself from the wall was only the first step in my escape.