Altered Life

by Keith Dixon

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I STAYED UNTIL THEY told me Laura was under sedation and comfortable. She was bruised but otherwise OK. I needn’t have worried about her arm.

  I thought about talking my way into seeing her, but the doctor was stubborn and besides, there was nothing more I could do. After all, I’d done enough.

  I walked outside into the cold air that hit me like a slap. A few years ago the city’s hospital functions had been transferred from the Chester Royal Infirmary to this more modern building. It was well laid-out with excellent access roads and a sensible plan, but was impersonal and soulless. At that point I knew how it felt. Whenever I’m wronged, I feel a cold, precise logic start to organise my thinking. It begins as a point of concentration between my eyebrows, almost as though I’m staring at something I don’t understand. Then the circumstances begin to shuffle themselves in my head like cards being sorted into suits, one after the other. I lose track of what’s happening around me and I’m usually rude to people, because all they are at that moment are bearers of information. If I need the information I take it from them any way I can. And I’ve been told that can be scary.

  So I caught a bus into the town centre, then sat on a late train back to Crewe, completely unaware of the journey. I probably looked like a better-dressed version of one of those angry drunks you come across who are inwardly-focused and talking to themselves—until you catch their eye and suddenly you’re the enemy. I’ve no doubt people stayed out of my way.

  Although I become logical and focused, I stay angry. And when I get angry I get good at my job. I woke the next morning with my head still working through the thoughts of the night before, as though I hadn’t slept at all.

  I rang my insurers and after the usual argument invoked the clause that said I could take delivery of a courtesy car. Under pressure they persuaded the hire firm they subcontracted to drop it off before lunch. I rested on the bonnet to sign the copies that guaranteed the rental firm against any further results of my bad driving, and handed over the just-in-case deposit. ‘Drive carefully,’ the blue-overalled driver muttered as he walked to the van driven by his mate to take them back to their cosy office.

  The hire car was a five year old Corsa with the rental company’s name and logo painted in large letters down either side. No chance of remaining inconspicuous.

  I rang the hospital and was put through to Laura, who was now awake and feeling better. ‘The last thing I remember,’ she said, ‘is getting into the car at my place. Did we talk in the car?’

  ‘We didn’t stop. I know every one of your dark secrets.’

  ‘I have to get home. They’ve put my wrist in plaster because it ached but apart from that I’m fine.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘Should I let you drive me anywhere? After last night?’

  ‘It’s not my driving that’s the problem.’

  ‘Prove it to your insurers.’

  When I arrived at the hospital she was sitting on her bed. Her evening clothes gave her the air of visiting royalty among the dowdy dressing gowns and fluffy slippers of the other patients. She smiled wanly when she saw me and stood up to peck me on the cheek. There was a faint bruise under her eye and her left wrist was bandaged up to her elbow as a precaution. A cool relief washed through me when I realised how close we’d come to something much more nasty.

  ‘They need the bed,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve brought toothpaste and so forth?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got some mints.’

  ‘Hand them over. My need is greater than yours.’

  We walked carefully out to the Corsa, which Laura eyed with some suspicion. ‘I suppose it’s only temporary,’ she said, sliding into the passenger seat. ‘Now you will watch the road this time, won’t you?’

  As I walked to the driver’s side, her eyes followed me around as though I were the one who’d had the more traumatic experience and might collapse any second.

  ‘Do you know what happened last night?’ I said as we drove out of the car park.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. I didn’t know whether she was exhausted or was trying to picture in her mind’s eye what had happened the previous night.

  ‘My body remembers the bang as the other car ran into us,’ she said. ‘I can feel it run up my legs and into my chest. Oh god—’ Her eyes flew open. ‘That’s a horrible thing to remember. I hope I’m not going to be stuck with that. I’ll be too scared to do anything.’

  ‘It’ll fade away in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. So who was in that car? Have the police learned anything? Was it kids who’d stolen it, or a drunk, or what?’

  I realised that Laura hadn’t considered that the crash had been deliberate. She wanted to believe it had been a genuine accident. We were driving out of the hospital now and I could feel her eyes on me, demanding an answer.

  ‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘The car hasn’t been found.’ I decided to be honest. ‘Laura, I think whoever it was did it on purpose. He hit us twice and was trying to run us into the ditch.’

  She looked away uncomfortably and I stared at the road. When I glanced at her moments later there were tears brimming in her eyes. She sensed me looking at her.

  ‘Bastards,’ she said. ‘First Rory, then Tara. Now us. They’re out to get us, aren’t they?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whoever’s in charge out there, doing this to us and the company. I don’t believe in fate, Sam. I don’t believe that things happen by accident in the world. It’s that old historical inevitability, isn’t it? Marx had it right. There are forces out there conspiring against us. Criminals are just doing what they’re supposed to do.’

  This was something I’d thought about many times, though I’d arrived at a different conclusion to Laura. Dealing with conmen, fraudsters and criminals on a daily basis, you soon construct a philosophy. ‘I think crooks are mostly stupid, but cunning,’ I said. ‘And because they can put one over on people from time to time they get an inflated view of their abilities. They become crooks because they think they’re never going to get caught. They think they’re just too smart, too far ahead of the game. I hate that. They usually don’t get caught, as it happens, but that’s down to a thousand reasons, not their own intelligence.’

  ‘The fact that they’re stupid isn’t much consolation.’

  ‘I don’t believe in wickedness and conspiracy. How often does a conspiracy work? They involve plans, and human beings are not cut out for planning. As someone said, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.’

  ‘Does this mean you don’t rate people very highly, or just crooks?’

  I looked at her. ‘There are some people I rate very highly. But villains are stupid and vicious, haven’t got the brains to argue or express themselves, so they’re violent—basically, they don’t care. There’s something missing that prevents them understanding what it’s like to be someone else.’

  She was now clear-headed and was looking at me intently. ‘You’re on a mission,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see it before, with all that stuff about a professional approach and payment terms and so forth. But you’re in this because you want to put things right, aren’t you? You really dislike the bad guys.’

  ‘I don’t understand them. I don’t understand how they can let go of their humanity. They don’t take responsibility for what they do—they always blame others. And I suppose I want to punish them for that.’

  ‘Is it your job to punish them?’

  ‘Someone’s got to do it.’ I paused. ‘Listen, Laura. When I was younger I didn’t take responsibility for what I did. When Tara and I broke up I blamed her for it. But I was as much to blame as she was. Only I couldn’t see it then, because I wouldn’t look at the results of my own actions.’

  She looked at me with soft eyes. ‘Whoever’s doing this to us is really getting under your skin. You see him out there gloating and we don’t even know who he is.’

  ‘Thanks fo
r reminding me.’

  We then drove in silence until I turned into her driveway and into the blazing lights that met us, pouring their intensity into a daylight that swallowed it and rendered it meaningless.