The Pool (standard:Suspense, 4781 words)
Author: Anthony R Mackie	Added: Nov 25 2008	Views/Reads: 4755/2505	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A normal 14yr old girl is turned into a killer by a strange set of circumstances.

THE POOL 

A Short Story by Anthony R Mackie (©2008) 

Rachel Vickers was 14 years old and had been swimming ever since she
could remember, it was her life and she was only truly happy when she 
was in the water.  She dreamt of one day swimming for Great Britain at 
the Olympics and had worked her butt off for the last seven years in 
pursuit of this dream.  She was also a very lucky girl, being the only 
offspring of Nathan Vickers, the owner of the NV Bookmakers chain and 
his wife Julie.  The family resided in a huge mansion of a house on the 
outskirts of Epsom overlooking the famous racecourse, and they lived in 
style, the home contained every conceivable luxury, of which Rachel's 
favourite not surprisingly was the 35 metre indoor heated swimming 
pool. 

Rachel was also lucky in the fact that she didn't have to travel
anywhere for her swimming training as her coach travelled to her at 
least 3 times a week, more if she had a competition coming up.  Her 
coach was an amiable man in his early sixties by the name of Bob 
Albion, a swimmer of some note in his day, who had made the Olympic 
team for Mexico City in 1968 but never actually competed due to injury. 
 Bob had come highly recommended by an acquaintance of her Father's 
when Rachel had first shown promise in the pool. 

Rachel and Bobs´ relationship was solid, akin to Grandfather/
Granddaughter, he knew all her moods and little idiosyncrasies and she 
his, and it worked well.  Bob pushed the young girl to the limit as 
only he could and she responded willingly, giving every ounce of effort 
she had.  Bob was convinced of Rachel's talent and believed she could 
go all the way to the top - the London Olympics in 4 years time being 
their joint goal.  This goal was more than achievable as Rachel was 
already ranked in the top 30 or so female swimmers in Britain, and 
growing stronger and faster with every passing month.  She herself was 
convinced that Olympic qualification in 2-3 years time would be a 
breeze; that was until things started to fall apart. 

Bob had recently heard a few whispers and rumours on the grapevine that
everything was not well in the NV Bookmaking empire.  However, he was 
not a man to meddle or gossip and just passed them off as what they 
were at the moment, mere rumours.  Within weeks though rumour had 
turned to fact - Nathan Vickers was in trouble, big financial trouble, 
and major cutbacks would have to be made. 

When Bob had been approached to train Rachel, he had pretty much been
semi-retired other than a few consultancy roles, and he had managed to 
negotiate for himself what he considered to be a very generous salary 
to return to work.  He would probably be among the first of the 
cutbacks he thought, and had decided that should this happen, that was 
him finished as a coach as, if the truth was known, he was getting a 
bit long in the tooth and had only really been spurred on by Rachel's 
brilliance (as well as the tidy financial reward of course). 

One of the first cutbacks Nathan actually made, surprised even Bob
though.  His mobile phone rang late one afternoon and it was Rachel.  
She was hysterical; it turned out that on arriving home from school, 
she had discovered two men emptying and cleaning the indoor pool, in 
her words “on the orders of her prick of a Father” and she wanted to 
know what the hell was going on.  Her Father was refusing to accept her 
calls, so could he try for her?  Bob calmed her down and agreed to call 
Nathan to try and find out the facts.  He assured Rachel that he would 
call her back as and when he had any information. 

Bob made the call and Nathan did actually pick up, but when Bob tried to
relay his earlier conversation with Rachel, he was surprised at how 
curt and dismissive her Father sounded.  “She'll get over it” he said, 
“that bloody pool was costing me a fortune, it had to go and she can go 
train elsewhere”.  “Where” argued Bob “and what about my position 
Nathan”?  “You're okay for now Bob” he replied “and how should I know 
where?  The bloody municipal place or something, you sort it out, I've 
got more important things to deal with at the moment” and with that, 
the line went dead.  Bob did not know what to think and decided to go 
for a stiff drink and try to sort things out in his mind, before he 
could even consider speaking to Rachel. 



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