Gone in the Night. Mary-Jane Riley
‘Don’t worry.’ The second man turned to her. His dark wool coat was glistening with raindrops and he had an unmistakable air of authority. ‘We’ll get him to hospital.’
‘Which one?’
‘Which what?’ He shut the car door on the injured man as the man in the red Puffa went to the driver’s door.
‘Hospital. Oh never mind, just get him there, will you. And hurry, please.’
‘Don’t worry, we will.’
‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Here.’ She delved into her bag and pulled out a business card. ‘Take this. Give the police my number. They’ll probably want to talk to me. And could you let me know—’
‘Police? Yes, of course. I’ll call them.’ He snatched the card from her hand. ‘We’d better get going.’ He jumped into the car and it drove off, wheels spinning on the tarmac.
Alex watched it go. Something didn’t feel right. But her head was fuzzy and she couldn’t grasp what was wrong.
The orange indicators of the crashed Land Rover continued to flash, and in the strobing light Alex saw a solitary trainer, soaking in a bloody puddle.
He was in a car, he could hear an engine, feel his body jar as it went over bumps.
What had happened to him?
A crash, that was it. Driving too fast. Something on the road. A deer? A deer on the road. Hit his head. Hard. Men came. How many? Two? Was there someone else there as well? Think, for fuck’s sake, think. It was all just out of reach. The men picked him up and tossed him in a car. He was hurting and he wanted to cry out, but he didn’t. Again, instinct kicked in. He played dead. Almost dead. He was in a bad place.
The car stopped. The two men in the front seemed to be arguing. Something about ‘cover it up’ and ‘as if it hadn’t happened’. What was that all about? One of them banged the steering wheel.
He tried to open one eye. Couldn’t. Stuck. Rubbed his hand over his eyes, Christ his hand was sore, then managed to open them, a little bit.
The men were getting out of the car. He strained to listen to their argument. He couldn’t make out any words, but he could smell salt, diesel. A port?
Wait a minute. The estuary again. They were going to take him back. Where to? He didn’t know, couldn’t remember, but he knew suddenly and with absolute certainty that if he went back he would never leave.
He emptied his mind of all extraneous thought and concentrated on moving his limbs. He ignored the pain that shot through his shoulder as he tried to open the car door as quietly as he could, praying they hadn’t put any internal locks on. The two men were still arguing.
He held his breath as the door opened. He rolled off the seat and onto hard concrete, jarring all the bones in his body that were already screaming with pain. He could hear the men’s argument more clearly now.
‘We keep quiet about this, right?’ The first man’s voice was gruff, slightly accented. Local? He wasn’t well enough versed in the Norfolk and Suffolk accents to be sure.
‘They’ll find out, you know that.’ Definitely Essex.
‘Look, we get him back, patch him up and he’ll be back at work in no time.’
Back at work. Flashes of memory. Taken underground. Kept underground. Packing boxes. Trying to talk to others who were doing the same thing. Learning they’d been taken. Taken? What did that mean?
Rick heard one of the men inhale deeply, then he saw a cigarette butt thrown onto the tarmac and ground underfoot.
Hurry, his brain screamed. Hurry.
Through sheer force of will, he made himself get onto his hands and knees – Christ, that hurt – and he started to crawl away. He glanced around, trying to take in his surroundings. There was no light from the moon or stars. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he made out a few cars parked here and there, an unlit streetlamp. He had painfully made his way to one of the other cars. Now what?
He heard footsteps, running. Expletives, not shouted but spoken quietly, angrily. They were looking for him. He saw their shoes coming nearer to the car. They were going to find him. Then:
Laughter. Chatter. A group of people? The laughter died away. ‘Can we help you?’ a voice called. Friendly.
‘No.’ Rude. aggressive.
‘From round here, are you?’ The voice was less friendly.
Rick chanced a look around the back of the car. He saw the two men who had picked him up with their backs to him. They were facing a crowd of, what? Six, seven men? Maybe out of the pub, walking off the booze. The right side of aggression. For now.
‘Look,’ said the first man, the one in the smart coat, ‘we don’t want trouble.’
‘Nor do we,’ said the group’s spokesman. ‘Gisford is a quiet little village where nothing happens because we don’t want anything to happen and we always remember strangers.’
‘Okay, okay. We’re going.’
The men who were trying to take him somewhere he didn’t want to go – wherever that was –got into their car and drove off, fast. Where were they going? And how long before they came back looking for him? He didn’t have much time.
The laughing group wandered away, and Rick slowly came out from behind the car.
He was on some kind of harbour front. Concrete. The sea lapping at the edges. Across the water – the estuary he had swum across? – there were lights. Is that where he had come from? He had a bad feeling in his gut about the island across the water.
Keeping to the shadows, he limped away from the sea as fast as he could and towards a small road. It was dark, apart from the odd twinkle of light here and there from behind an upstairs window of a house. It was late then.
Better keep away from people. Vehicles. They might come back for him.
He set off down the narrow lane, looking for a gate or somewhere he could get off the road and hide. But there was nothing.
Then he heard an engine. A car. Had to be them.
He crouched down, then rolled under – thank fuck – a hedge, hardly daring to breathe.
The car went past him. Slowly.
He was comfortable here. Wanted to sleep. Only for a minute.
He closed his eyes.
Rick thought he remembered French doors opening out onto a stone-flagged patio. A small retaining brick wall. A table and chairs and parasol. Green parasol. Maybe grey. Did it matter?
It did.
His whole body ached.
He kept his eyes tightly closed, shutting out the cold and the dark, the sound of a tap dripping and the dank smell of rotting vegetation, and tried to feel the warmth of the sun on his head and the scent of newly mown grass in his nose.
He thought hard.
There was laughter, he was sure of that. A child’s voice, pure and high. His child? Sister? Brother? His head was so muddled. Had been for years. He shivered but felt the sweat roll down his back.
Wait.
Back to the sunshine.
A woman. Small. Blonde. Smiling at him. His wife. Her name? What was her goddam