Rubbernecker (26 page)

Scott put his head on the table so he could look up at Patrick’s face. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘I heard you.’

‘Nut,’ said Scott. Then he laughed and said, ‘Get it?’

‘No,’ said Patrick, which made Scott laugh even harder.

‘Don’t be an arsehole, Scott,’ said Meg. ‘Just this once.’

‘OK,’ said Scott. ‘Just for you. You want to dance?’

‘All right,’ said Meg, and Patrick watched her leave. For some reason, he wished she hadn’t. Scott went after her, letting in another blast of gut-churning beat before the door swung shut behind him.

Patrick sighed deeply. At least the knives and forks were clean.

The dark-haired woman Meg knew came in and whispered something in Spicer’s ear and he smiled. She stretched her hand out for them both to admire. It glittered with a diamond ring that made Patrick blink. His mother had a diamond ring but it was dull and puny compared to this one. Patrick had taken it off her bedside table once and gone to the greenhouse to see if diamond really could cut glass, and then had left it in the garden. The memory of her fury still sent a little shiver through him.

The woman kissed Spicer’s cheek and he squeezed her waist and she left.

Spicer slid another pizza into the oven, then sat down. ‘You still on about that peanut?’

Patrick nodded.

‘What’s the significance again?’ Spicer opened a bottle of beer with an expert twist.

Patrick told him the significance, and Spicer nodded between slugs.

Dr Clarke got up and opened the oven to check on the pizzas, and Patrick felt the hot air drift across the kitchen to warm his face. He curled his hands around his Coke. He longed to twist it open and take a long bubbling swig. The curved coldness felt curiously close to his skin and he realized it felt strange to be in a room with Dr Clarke and Dr Spicer without his blue gloves on. His hands felt as exposed as theirs looked.

‘These are almost ready,’ said Dr Clarke, peering between his naked hands and through the glass. He had long, bony fingers, and the nails were bitten to the quick.

The smell of hot cheese came to Patrick, and he thought of Number 19’s salivary glands, which made him think again of the gouges and the black blood.

‘So what are you going to do about it now?’ said Spicer, slowly peeling the label off his beer bottle.

‘I don’t know,’ said Patrick. The warmth and the disappointment were making him tired and he couldn’t think too well. ‘Maybe go to the police again.’

‘You went to the
police
?’ said Spicer. ‘To report the theft of a
peanut
?’

Dr Clarke snorted and looked at him.

‘Yes, but there was blood on my hand, so I left before telling them about it.’

Spicer widened his eyes, then laughed. ‘I’m not even going to ask,’ he said, and put his hands up like a baddie in a cowboy film. He had large, fleshy hands – although he was not a big man – and the right forefinger was ringed with short pink scars.

‘What happened to your finger?’ Patrick asked, and Spicer looked at him as if he’d forgotten he was there.

‘My finger?’ he said, then looked at his finger as if he’d forgotten
that
was there, too.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I cut it on the tin-opener. Blood everywhere. I nearly fainted!’

Dr Clarke laughed, but Patrick felt a little electrical spark in his chest.

That was a
lie
!

He’d just seen the tin-opener in the cutlery drawer. It was a cheap, old-fashioned one – the kind his mother had at home – and it was rubbish. It worked more by pressure than sharpness, and would be almost impossible to puncture the skin with, let alone cause the two or three deep scars on Spicer’s finger.

Liar!

The knowledge made him tingle all over.

Spicer was lying. But why?

Patrick stared at his tutor’s hands, while bits of puzzle started a slow new circuit in his head. The scarred finger, the fragment of blue latex, the padlocked door – he wasn’t even sure they were bits of the
same
puzzle. There was so much confusion in Patrick’s life that he couldn’t assume anything. He tried to calm down; tried to think clearly.

Spicer’s hands curled slowly into loose fists and Patrick watched him put them down carefully on the wooden table, and from there to his lap. When he looked up, Spicer was staring at him.

The timer on the oven shrieked and Patrick clamped his hands to his ears. One hand was hard and cold; he was still holding the Coke.

‘Pizza!’ said Dr Clarke.

Patrick stood up, banging the table with his knees. The gleaming cutlery rattled in its tray.

‘Where are you going?’ said Spicer.

‘Home.’

‘Don’t you want pizza?’

‘No.’ Patrick opened the door and felt the harsh music hit him like a wall. He had to get out. He took a deep breath and headed straight for the front door. He looked for Meg; if he saw her, he would say goodbye. But he didn’t and he couldn’t go and find her in the flat that was too hot, too crowded, too loud.

Too much.

He ran down four flights. Outside the damp air was already starting to wrap itself around cars and lampposts. He stood on the pavement and sucked down the cold in grateful draughts. Dr Spicer’s flat was in what used to be Tiger Bay – where all the new buildings seemed to look a little like ships. They had round windows, and roofs that curved like bows or jutted like sails.

He unlocked his bike from the railings. The metal of both was frigid, and his fingers quickly became clumsy, but he felt his brain starting to recover as he swung his leg over the crossbar and headed towards the city centre, which lay between him and the house.

Dumballs Road was long and lined with industrial units. Garages and workshops that had once been on the fringes of the city, but which now found themselves squeezed by the townhouses and flats sailing up from the redeveloped Bay towards even more prestigious moorings.

But for now it was still deserted at night, and dark, with only the occasional car headlights making his shadow swing around him.

Calm.

The further he went from the party, the better Patrick felt. He stood harder on the pedals, and was rewarded with more speed – and more cold. His breath puffed in short visible bursts in the air, and on every inward breath he caught the exhalations of the nearby brewery that gave the city its malt flavour.

The road in front of Patrick grew suddenly bright – and something hit him like a steel tsunami.

His bike was washed from under him and he landed on the windscreen of a car with a glassy crunch. For a split second he was inches away from two white-knuckled hands clutching the wheel.

The car slewed, screeched, then jerked to a stop.

Patrick travelled fast through the silent air. Then something hit him hard in the back and he dropped to the ground and lay still.

The world was a cold black cube for a long, long time before a door cracked open in the ceiling. Or the floor. A bright white light strobed through his slitted eyelids.

‘Patrick?’

It was Spicer.

Patrick didn’t move. He couldn’t. The pain of no air sat on his chest.

Spicer’s shoes met the tarmac with a small grating sound. ‘Are you OK?’

ARE you ok?

Are YOU ok?

Are you OK?

The shoes crunched towards him.

Patrick’s breath came back to him suddenly and made him wheeze and then cough. With oxygen came motion and he rolled from his side on to his stomach and, from there, levered himself on to his knees, and then to his unsteady feet.

‘Patrick! Wait!’

Patrick obeyed, but then he saw his bicycle, blue and twisted, in the road and instead of waiting he started to walk away. His right knee gave out and he stumbled and fell.

Spicer grabbed his hoodie and helped him up. Patrick bent at the waist and wriggled out of it, then started to run.

‘Patrick! Hold on! I have to talk to you!’

But he kept going. Kept going, kept going. He didn’t know why; it made no sense. But he just kept going.

Behind him someone shouted
Fuck!
and Patrick heard the car door slam and the engine roar.

Spicer was coming to get him.

The thought was even more shocking than the crash had been.

Why?
What were the
implications
? Patrick didn’t know. He looked ahead – a hundred yards away were the orange lights at the back of the central station. It was too far. He wasn’t going to reach it. He had to get off the road.

There was a multi-storey car park. Patrick ducked left and ran into it. Spicer’s car over-shot the entrance and nose-dived to a halt, then whined into reverse.

The sound of it coming up the ramp and after him filled the deserted concrete cavern like thunder, and Patrick knew he’d made a mistake. There were no people, just a few late-night cars within layers of grey concrete, bound by low walls. He was a rat in a Guggenheim maze.

Patrick looked for an exit and couldn’t see one. He reached the end of the first level and ran on to the second.

He could hear the car squealing up the ramp behind him. Before it could turn the sharp corner at the top, Patrick dropped and rolled under a Land Rover. He lay there on the cold concrete, looking up at the exhaust system, while Spicer’s silver car sped past him.

Exhaust
, he thought.
Exhausted
.

The wailing of tyres told him Spicer had taken the ramp to the third level, and he began to roll awkwardly from under the car.

Then – somewhere above his head – he heard Spicer’s car stop, turn, and head back down towards him.

Patrick stayed where he was.

The silver car came down the ramp and ground to a ticking halt. Now that it wasn’t mowing him down or chasing him, he had the time to see that it was a Citroën. Patrick heard the door open and watched the suspension lift a little as Spicer got out.

He should have run while he could
.

‘Patrick? It’s not what you think.’ Spicer didn’t shout; he didn’t have to – the half-empty car park was like an echo chamber.

What
did
he think? Patrick wasn’t even sure, so how could Spicer know it
wasn’t
what he thought?

Spicer’s feet stopped at the first car at the other end of the short row, and his legs folded as he crouched to look underneath it.

‘Patrick?’

Spicer’s head appeared and turned his way, and Patrick’s breath froze in his lungs.

Then Spicer straightened up and crept a few cars closer.

He hadn’t seen him!
Patrick felt a huge wave of relief. The shadows had saved him – and the cover of tyres on the ten or so cars between them. But those things wouldn’t save him for long.

Patrick shuffled backwards on his elbows and knees, scraping his back on the chassis and number plate, until he emerged between the headlights of the Land Rover, tight up against yet another slab of dark-grey concrete. He straightened up slowly. Keeping the wheels between himself and Spicer so that the man wouldn’t see his feet, he waited until he saw the top of Spicer’s head bob into view, then quickly lowered himself back down, while Spicer took a few steps to his left. Patrick shuffled carefully to
his
left, between the cars and the wall, then stood up once more as Spicer knelt again.

Spicer rose and moved, Patrick crouched and moved the other way in perfect counterbalance. They pivoted silently past each other. The next time he stood up, Patrick spotted a pedestrian exit. A yellow door with a big 2 on it at the far side of the level, a good hundred yards away across the concrete.

Did he dare make a run for it? The thought of committing to it was terrifying, but if he stayed, Spicer would find him eventually. And what would he do then? Patrick tested his knee and grimaced; it would have to do. He edged between two cars, watching Spicer’s
head
disappear one last time. He was at the Land Rover; the end of the line.

It had to be now.

Patrick lurched from between the cars and ran towards escape.

The noise of his feet was like uneven gunfire.

‘
Shit!
’ Spicer shouted. Patrick didn’t look back. Behind him a door slammed, an engine roared, tyres squealed. He threw a desperate look over his shoulder. The car was coming at him fast. The yellow door was miles away.

I’m not going to make it
. The thought was dull and dreadful. He had made a terrible miscalculation. His legs worked, his arms pumped, his breath burned, and he dawdled before the speeding car.

The headlights threw his long shape on to the low grey wall alongside him. Beyond that – through the uppermost branches of a tree – he could see the station, illuminated, and with people standing on platforms. A woman with a pink suitcase; two girls hugging their knees on a bench.

Unaware.

Patrick turned and ran towards them anyway, as if for help. The car was almost on him. Spicer wasn’t going to stop – he was going to spread him like jam along the wall. All his arms and his legs would be in the wrong places and his eyes would look nowhere.

And he would have all the answers.

Patrick jumped.

Over the wall and into the black night beyond.

46

THE CAR HIT
the wall with a sound like a bomb.

Even as he hung for an infinite beat in the frigid air, Patrick saw the woman with the pink suitcase and the two girls turn their faces towards the explosion, while shards of concrete spat against his back and legs like shrapnel.

He didn’t want the answers!

Too late.

He dropped into the branches of the tree. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to cover his head, and a million firecrackers went off as twigs snapped and popped in his ears. His unprotected arms were pierced and scraped; a branch smashed into his back and he thought of a hammer and chisel and a breakable spine. He hit another and bounced off in a different direction. The next branch he hit, he snapped his arm around. The rough bark slid down his bare skin and tore at his fingers, and he couldn’t hold his weight there for more than a moment, but when he next fell, he only dropped a short distance to the ground and landed almost on his feet.