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And this one for Sarah

He was drowning in a dark pool. The hands of the damned were pulling him down, but he kicked and struggled and fought his way to the surface. There was an agonizing pain in his head. He tried to scream, but when he opened his mouth, water rushed in. And then a faint light appeared. It grew brighter and brighter until suddenly, he broke through to the surface and breathed again.

He was lying on his back in a pool of water beside several overflowing dustbins. The water was filthy and greasy and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again he saw that he was in a narrow alley with walls of slimy brick on either side, faintly illuminated by the diffused light of a street lamp that stood in the main road a few feet away.

It was raining heavily and the rain felt cool and clean on his face and yet the drops stung him and he couldn’t think why. He couldn’t remember who he was or how he came to be lying on his back in an alley or why his face hurt when the raindrops splashed against it.

When he tried to sit up he found that his wrists were handcuffed together and there were no shoes on his feet. For some curious reason this didn’t bother him. He wasn’t alarmed – just slightly puzzled.

He shifted his shoulders and felt the water seeping through his jacket, cold, sharp and bitter as death. He rolled over and tried to get to his feet, but he hadn’t the strength and his whole body shrieked its agony through a thousand tortured nerves.

He reached clumsily with both hands for the edge of one of the bins and heaved himself upright. For a moment he stood there swaying and then he was conscious of a terrible pain in his stomach and he leaned against the wall and was violently sick.

As he turned away from the wall, he lurched into another dustbin. There was a shriek as from a lost soul in hell and a cat sprang from amongst the refuse and disappeared into the gloom. In its flight, it dislodged the dustbin lid, which hit the cobbles with a clatter, rocking backwards and forwards.

The sound resounded from the walls of the narrow alley, mingling with the echoes of the cat’s awful cry – and then he was afraid. He remembered who he was and how he had come to be lying, handcuffed and unconscious in an alley and he remembered the most important fact of all. Someone had been murdered and the way things looked, he was the killer.