by Kevin Brooks
‘Jesus…’ she whispered. ‘Shit.’
Her voice was shaking.
I leaned forward and touched her arm, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘Eddi,’ I said quietly.
She carried on staring at Morris.
‘It’s all right, Eddi,’ I said, gently squeezing her arm. ‘It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. It’s all right…’
She suddenly went even paler. Her eyes closed, her throat gulped, then she leaned out of the car and threw up.
It took us a while to get Morris’s body into the barn. Neither of us was thinking straight, so instead of just driving the Corsa over to the barn, we wasted ten minutes getting the body out of the car, then another fifteen minutes dragging it across the mud-soaked yard. By the time we’d finished, we were both exhausted and covered in all kinds of crap – blood, mud, cow shit, rain…
But at least Eddi wasn’t in a trance any more. She was pale and breathless, and her hands were shaking, but she wasn’t in a trance.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked her as we walked back to the car.
‘All right?’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I just killed someone, for Christ’s sake.’
‘It was an accident –’
‘Yeah, right. I accidentally shot his head off, and now we’ve just accidentally dumped his body in the barn.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She sighed. ‘Yeah, I know…’
‘If you hadn’t shot him…’
She looked at me. ‘What? What would have happened if I hadn’t shot him, Robert? What was he going to do?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘And what were you going to do with him? Why did you make me go in the barn?’ She stopped beside the car. ‘Who was he anyway? What was he doing at the hospital?’
I stopped beside her. ‘There isn’t time to explain now, we have to get going –’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is all about.’ She stared at me. ‘I just killed a man for you. The least you can do is tell me who he was.’
I looked back at her. Her face was streaked with blood and rain. Her hair was soaking wet. She was angry. Afraid. Confused. She was inappropriately beautiful.
‘We have to go,’ I said calmly. ‘If we stay here any longer, someone’s going to see us. We need to get in the car and leave here right now.’ I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘As soon as we’re safe, I’ll explain everything. I promise.’
She carried on staring at me in silence for a while, the rain dripping pink on her face, then eventually she took a deep breath, slowly let it out, and nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But you’d better tell me –’
‘I will.’
‘Everything?’
‘Everything.’
She took a final drag on her cigarette, dropped it in the mud, then opened the car door and got in the driver’s seat. I didn’t move for a second. I just stood there, gazing down at the still-smoking cigarette, wondering why I wasn’t picking it up. It was evidence. DNA. Evidence that Eddi had been here.
‘Are you coming or what?’ Eddi called out to me.
I looked at her, smiled, then walked round and got in the passenger seat.
15
We just drove for a while, neither of us knowing or caring where we were going, just as long as it was away from the barn. The barn was north, so we headed south.
‘It’s probably best if we get off these country lanes,’ I suggested.
‘I know. That’s what I’m doing.’
I shut up then and let Eddi get on with it. As she drove, I searched through the glove compartment. Most of the contents were useless – a bag of boiled sweets, a tube of lipstick, some kind of nasal spray – but I managed to find a road map and a box of tissues. There was a bottle of water in the side compartment of the door. I uncapped the bottle and passed it to Eddi. She took a long drink, then gave it back. I wet some of the tissues and passed them over.
‘What am I supposed to do with these?’ she said.
‘We need to clean ourselves up.’
She pulled down the sun visor and studied her bloodstained face in the mirror. ‘Oh, God… why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I just did.’
We spent the next five minutes wiping our faces and scrubbing at our clothes, trying to clean off the worst of the mess. It wasn’t easy, and for Eddi it was doubly difficult because she had to concentrate on driving at the same time. I thought about offering to help her, but I didn’t think she’d want me to. It wasn’t a very pleasant task, and neither of us wanted to talk about it, so we worked in silence – scrubbing, rubbing, scouring Morris’s blood from our skin.
It felt like madness.
Obsession, compulsion.
Denial.
It was as if we both thought that by cleansing ourselves of Morris’s blood we were cleansing ourselves of his death. No blood, no death, no memories, no guilt. But it didn’t work. You can’t wipe away death with a box of damp tissues.
After a while I realized we were back on the A12 again, heading towards London. I didn’t know if Eddi knew where she was going, or if she was still just driving, putting as much distance between us and Stoneham as possible. I glanced across at her, trying to decide if I should ask her or not.
‘Where’s the nearest railway station?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The nearest railway station… look on the map.’
‘Why?’
‘We need to get rid of this car. The police will be looking for it. We need to ditch it and get another one.’
‘How are we going to get another car?’
‘Well, we’re not going to buy one, are we?’ She looked at me, shaking her head at my naivety. ‘We’re going to steal one, OK? And the best place to steal a car is from the car park of a railway station. Lots of cars, not many people.’
‘Right,’ I said.
She looked at me. ‘So?’
‘What?’
She sighed. ‘You’ve got the map. Find me a station.’
I looked at the map and started searching for a railway station, but I knew I was wasting my time. I didn’t know where we were. I knew we were on the A12, somewhere between Stoneham and London, but it was a long stretch of road, and there were lots of railways stations… we could be anywhere. I looked out of the window, trying to work out where we were, but there were no road signs. I looked back at the map again.
I was starting to feel really stupid now, and I didn’t understand why. Why didn’t I just ask Eddi where we were? Why did I feel awkward about it? Why did I feel embarrassed?
‘It’s all right,’ Eddi said, suddenly changing lanes. ‘You can stop looking now.’
I glanced up from the map and saw that we were heading for a turn-off up ahead. A sign at the side of the road said SHENFIELD, and next to it was a sign for the railway station.
I closed the map and put it away.
I drank some water.
I looked out of the window.
I knew I had to concentrate now. I had to stop thinking about what I was feeling and start thinking about what I was going to do. At some point soon, Eddi was going to ask me to explain everything, and I had to decide what to tell her.
Did I tell her the truth?
Could I tell her the truth?
Or did I have to lie?
That’s what I had to think about now.
Truth or lies.
By the time we’d driven into Shenfield and found the railway station, I still hadn’t made up my mind. I didn’t want to lie to her, and I’d been fine with the idea of Kamal telling her the truth, but that was then…
And this was now.
And, for some reason, everything felt different now.
As we entered the station car park, Eddi started looking around at the rows of parked cars.
‘What kind of car are we looking for?’ I asked her.
‘Something old, bu
t not too old. Nothing too flashy. Just a nice easy steal. An old Escort would be good. Or a Hyundai… they’re easy…’
‘How do you know all this stuff?’ I said.
‘I’m a crook,’ she said simply. ‘I steal things. Now shut up and keep looking.’
We eventually found what we were looking for at the far end of the car park. It was a grey Honda Civic, about ten years old. No alarm, no steering lock. Out of sight of the CCTV cameras.
‘Perfect,’ said Eddi.
She parked the Corsa in the nearest free space, then told me to get an overnight parking ticket from the machine.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘What’s the point?’
‘If we leave the Corsa without a ticket, someone’s going to notice it. And we don’t want anyone to notice it – OK?’
I looked around the inside of the car. There was a lot of blood on the seats. Blood, mud… other stuff.
I looked at Eddi. ‘Shouldn’t we try cleaning up before we go?’
‘You can try if you want,’ she said, opening the car door, ‘but don’t expect me to wait for you.’
She got out of the car, shut the door, and I watched her heading over to the Civic. I waited for a moment, not sure what I was waiting for, then I got out of the car and went looking for a ticket machine. It was a big car park, and it took me a while to find a machine. Then I had to get a ticket, take it back to the Corsa, stick it on the windscreen, get my rucksack…
All in all, it must have taken me the best part of five minutes.
But even so, I was still surprised when I walked up to the Civic and saw Eddi sitting in the driver’s seat.
‘That was quick,’ I said. ‘How did you –?’
‘Get in,’ she said without looking at me.
I walked round to the passenger side and got in. Eddi was reaching in under the steering wheel now, pulling out wires from the dashboard. She had a little penknife in her hand. She worked quickly – selecting wires, stripping them, twisting them together – and in less than a minute she had the engine going. She sat up, revved the car a couple of times, took a quick look round, then calmly drove out of the car park.
∗
As we rejoined the A12 and started heading south again, Eddi asked me for her mobile phone. I took it out of my pocket and passed it over. She pressed a button, glanced at the display, then placed the phone on a shelf on the dashboard. She lit a cigarette.
‘So,’ she said to me, ‘do you think we’re safe now?’
‘I don’t know… I suppose so. They don’t know where we are, or where we’re going. They don’t know what car we’re in. They don’t know where Morris is. I suppose we’re as safe as we can be for now.’
‘You’d better start talking, then.’
I looked at her.
‘You promised,’ she said. ‘Remember? You told me you’d explain everything as soon as we were safe.’ She looked at me. ‘What the hell’s going on, Robert? What have you dragged me into?’
I started with the truth. I didn’t know if I was going to end with it or not, but it was the easiest way to begin, because it meant that I didn’t have to think about anything. You don’t have to think about anything when you’re telling the truth, all you have to do is tell it.
So that’s what I did.
I told Eddi about my suspected ulcer, my hospital appointment, my endoscopy. I told her about taking the bus to the hospital on my own, about getting to the hospital, showing my appointment card… walking down the endless corridors, following the signs… putting on a hospital gown, sitting in the waiting room… lying on the trolley in the small white room, watching the doctor as he inserted the needle into the back of my hand…
I told her everything I could remember.
She didn’t say anything. She just carried on driving, listening intently, hanging on my every word.
When I got to the bit about waking up in the basement theatre, I had to stop for a moment. I couldn’t speak. I was remembering how it was – waking up on the trolley… paralysed, petrified, not knowing anything. Hearing strange voices. Seeing strange things. Impossible things…
No one would ever believe it.
‘Robert?’ Eddi said.
I looked at her. She was quiet – quiet eyes, quiet face, quiet everything.
‘What happened?’ she asked me. ‘The doctor gave you a shot… then what happened?’
‘I don’t know… the doctor told me it was only a mild anaesthetic and it probably wouldn’t knock me out…’
‘But it did?’
I nodded. ‘As soon as he stuck the needle in my hand, that was it. I was out like a light. I don’t remember anything until…’
‘Until what?’
‘When I woke up…’ I paused, clearing my throat. ‘When I woke up, I wasn’t in the same place any more. I was still lying on a trolley, but I was in a different room. I had a tube down my throat. There were wires taped to my hands and my chest. I was breathing some kind of gas…’ I paused again, remembering the taste in the back of my throat… plastic, chemicals, whiteness. I cleared my throat again and carried on. ‘There were different people in the room too. There was a surgeon, an anaesthetist –’
‘Kamal?’
‘Yeah… and there were others too. People who don’t belong in a hospital.’
‘What kind of people?’
‘People like Morris.’ I looked at Eddi. ‘He was there. I didn’t see him, but I heard the others talking to him. There was a guy called Ryan. A woman called Hayes. And there was a big guy called Cooper guarding the door. Cooper and Ryan had guns.’
Eddi frowned. ‘I don’t get it. Who were they? What were they doing there?’
This was it now – truth or lie? I looked through the windscreen at the long grey road stretching out ahead of us. Did I tell her the truth or did I tell her a lie? Truth or lie? Truth or lie? Truth or –
‘Robert,’ she said impatiently, ‘what were they doing?’
‘They were looking inside me,’ I heard myself say.
‘What?’
‘The surgeon – Professor Casing – he’d cut me open. Just here…’ I drew my finger down my belly, showing her where Casing had cut me. ‘I was lying there with a big slice in my belly, and Ryan was digging around inside me.’
‘Inside your body?’ Eddi whispered.
‘Yeah.’
‘Christ.’ She glanced across at my belly. ‘The scar… that’s how you got the scar…’ She looked up and stared at me. ‘They cut you open?’
I nodded. ‘I thought at first that something had gone wrong with the endoscopy… you know, I thought maybe they’d found something and they’d had to do an emergency operation. But they were talking about all this secret stuff, about keeping it quiet and not letting anyone know… and then I saw Ryan leaning over me, and I could see the gun in his belt, and the big guy guarding the door.’ I shook my head. ‘I didn’t know what was going on.’
‘God, Robert… it must have been terrible. What did you do?’
I didn’t say anything for a moment. I needed time to gather my thoughts, to calm my lying heart. To remind myself that I wasn’t human. That I had no heart. So what did I care if I lied or not?
I gazed out of the window again. The traffic ahead of us was backing up to get through some roadworks. Cars were switching lanes, trying to find the fastest way through. Eddi didn’t bother with any of that, she just slowed the Civic, moved into the inside lane and stayed there. I wound down the window to get some fresh air, but all I got was a blast of exhaust fumes. I wound it back up again and got back to the truth.
I told Eddi about taking Ryan’s gun and knocking him out… about forcing Casing to stitch me together again. I told her about my escape from the hospital, my time with Kamal, my room at the Paradise Hotel. I told her how I’d gone into that room and lay down on the bed… how I’d doped myself up with vodka and pills… how I’d decided there was only one thing to do.
When I told her how I’d sliced open the
wound in my belly, she nearly ran into the car in front of us.
‘Shit!’ she gasped, hitting the brakes and screeching to a halt. The car stalled, but she didn’t try starting it again. She just stared at me. ‘You did what?’
‘I cut myself open… I had to. I had to find out why they’d been poking around inside me.’
‘Why didn’t you just ask them?’
‘They had guns… I didn’t know who they were. All I wanted to do was get out of there. There wasn’t time to ask anyone anything.’
‘Yeah, but cutting yourself open… I mean, for Christ’s sake, Robert. How could you do that? Didn’t it hurt?’
Just then a car horn beeped behind us. Eddi started the car and got moving again. We inched up to the car in front of us, then stopped. Eddi looked at me, waiting for me to say something.
‘I was drunk,’ I told her. ‘I just did it. I could feel something inside me, inside my body. I had to find out what it was.’
‘And did you?’
‘Sort of…’
‘What do you mean?’
I paused again, taking a deep breath, trying to imagine what I could have found inside my body. ‘There was something under my skin,’ I told her. ‘Not just under the skin, but deep down inside, buried beneath all the muscles and stuff. I could feel it when I put my hand inside the wound. It felt like a… I don’t know. Like a flat piece of metal, or hard plastic.’
Eddi shivered.
‘I couldn’t get it out at first,’ I told her. ‘It was fixed to something inside me. I had to dig inside and cut it out with a scalpel.’
‘Shit,’ Eddi murmured. ‘What was it?’
The queue of traffic wasn’t moving any more, but I don’t think Eddi was even aware of it. She was almost spellbound now. Just sitting there, staring at me, like a wide-eyed kid listening to a bedtime story.
‘What was it, Robert?’ she asked me again. ‘This thing you cut out of your body… what was it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I told her. ‘I think it was some kind of microprocessor… you know, like a computer chip. I don’t know… it was about the size of a matchbox… but flat. Like a credit card.’
