I gulped, and Hopper continued:
‘I’m very disappointed. I mean, I understood your suspicions of me, and I was very forgiving of all the trouble you caused me with the police.’
‘But you’ve no proof that I had anything to do with the transmitter.’
‘Proof?’ Hopper asked. ‘What’s proof got to do with this? We’re not in a court of law.’
‘I assure you, this is nothing to do with me.’
‘I’m not sure whether to believe you or not. I really don’t know either way, but I don’t like taking risks. Therefore I have to assume that you helped to plant this.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘You’ll have to leave Paris.’
‘No problem! I’ve a flight booked for tomorrow. I’m going home to England.’
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘Okay, I’ll try to get a flight tonight. I can be packed and out of here in twenty minutes.’
‘I’m afraid that your departure will have to be left in the capable hands of Mr Handley here.’
‘You can’t believe what’s written in that book!’
‘Which book?’ Hopper asked, standing up.
‘The Dark Return of Time.’
‘This has got nothing to do with any book.’
He put out his hand, which I took without thinking.
‘It’s a shame,’’ he said. ‘But you just couldn’t leave things alone.... There’s no need to hurt him, Handley.’
I had been scared before, but now I was petrified. Handley and I simply stood there, waiting for Hopper to leave. I started to shake. It took all my strength to say to Handley, ‘I’d like you to go now.’
He was amused; it was the first time I’d seen him smile. All the skin over his bald head seemed to move.
I said firmly, ‘I’m going to call the police unless you leave right now.’
I seemed to hear Handley saying, as if from a distance, ‘I’ve a friend in the police force who told me where to find the transmitter.’
He advanced towards me, and I backed into the coffee table and fell over it. I put my arms out but when I fell I couldn’t stop myself from hitting my head hard.
I woke up from being jolted around in the dark, not knowing where I was, or, for some moments, who I was. I decided to lie absolutely still until I had some idea of what was going on. I was aware that there had recently been movement, but now everything was quiet. There was a muffled sound of voices, but the direction from which they came was unclear.
My heard hurt abominably. I realised that I was in a very confined space. There were two echoing thumps from close-by, then footsteps. I knew that under any other circumstances I would have been able to identify the sounds, but now I required some kind of reference to make sense of them.
There was a noise in front of me, and then a bright light. I closed my eyes and did my utmost not to move, although inwardly I cringed. Something metallic was removed from beside me and then there was a simultaneous change in pressure and a louder thump. The light had gone again and somebody was walking away over loose ground.
I realised that I was tied up in the back of a parked car.
I would have flailed around in panic, but it was too cramped. My heart raced. I could tell that my wrists and ankles were bound, and there was something over my mouth. I started to breathe too fast and couldn’t get enough air. I was certain that I was about to die, but I was able to get my hands up together to my mouth and tear off the tape that covered it. It hurt, but fear anesthetised me. For a few seconds all I could do was gasp for air, but in that time I could see that, although the boot had been slammed down, there was now an irregular and indirect line of light in front of.
I sensed that my captors were still close by, but carefully pushed at the lid of the boot. Although there was a little movement, it would not open, and so I felt along the edge, hoping I might find a catch. Before I realised what I’d done I’d released it and the lid had opened part way.
I decided that it was too much of a risk to wait and see if they’d noticed. I somehow pushed myself up and rolled over the edge and out. The fall knocked the wind out of me and, as I recognised the grey tape at my wrists and my ankles, panic overcame me again.
If I had been able to, I would certainly have made a run for it, even though we were in some flat, scrubby, sandy area with very little cover. I looked under the car and could see the legs of two men standing just a few yards away. It was a relief to hear that the tone of their conversation was relaxed.
I rolled over and got on to my haunches so that I could reach up and carefully pull the car boot back down.
Looking around, it was a desolate place, with far too much sky, and it would have been a miserable location in which to die. The thought encouraged me to action. There were several sharp stones embedded in the track, and I fell to my knees and used the most prominent of them to rub at the tape around my wrists. It took only three or four passes before it ripped and I was able to pull one hand free of the other. Trying not to think about the men, I rubbed the tape at my ankles against the same stone. This time it was more awkward, and took twice as long.
The moment I was free I again considered running, although I knew I wouldn’t have been able to cover any distance before they noticed me. The sun was large and low in the sky, but it would still be light for some time and I would have no chance of hiding from them.
I checked back under the car and my heart leapt when I saw that the men were walking away. I moved cautiously around to the far side and watched them through the windows as they stopped fifty yards away. Handley was there with a spade, and Franklin was carrying a pickaxe. They spread out a little, staring down at the ground, testing it, and I could hear Franklin boasting to Handley that he wasn’t afraid of manual labour. ‘But,’ he joked loudly, ‘If we can find a ready-made hole, it’ll be better than having to dig a new one.’
Looking through the car to where the men were standing, I knew that if I was going to run, I ought to let them do some digging and tire themselves out first. I had adrenalin and fear on my side, and so long as I made off at right angles to the track, they would have to follow on foot. As I worried about them using the car to pursue me I noticed that the keys were still in the ignition.
I had to act swiftly; again, there was no time to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of action. I got in through the passenger door and, keeping my head down, moved across to the driver’s seat. When I turned the ignition and depressed the accelerator and clutch, I didn’t dare look over to the two thugs. With the car in first gear and the engine roaring I pulled away.
The wheels were spinning on the loose stones and sandy dirt, and when the engine was screaming I changed up to second. It was then that I heard two distinct thumps and the windscreen shattered. I punched a hole in the crazed glass and changed up to third as another thump came from the back of the car. In the rear-view mirror I could see that the back window was smashed and, through it, that the boot lid was moving up and down wildly. Beyond that was a maelstrom of dust.
I was going far too fast and nearly lost control of the car. It rocked on its suspension, and there were some horrible noises from underneath it. I tried to slow down, reasoning that Handley had no way of following me.
I had no idea where I was going; I only hoped that the track wouldn’t come to a dead-end. It was perhaps a half mile before I came to a well-surfaced lane. Now I put on the seat belt, accelerated, and high hedges rushed by on either side. I only slowed down when I came up behind another car, so as to keep a discreet distance behind it and not be noticed. I realised what a mess my car was, and how it would attract attention.
An impressive Château came into view, and then, at a junction with a busier road, I took the time to knock more of the broken glass out of the windscreen and squinted at the name of the town on the sign; Beauficel-en-Lyons. I had no idea where I was, and so just drove on.
The cold wind through the broken windscree
n froze my hands and cheeks and made my eyes water. My attention was taken by the flapping boot lid, and so I took a small road off to the right, and after passing through another village I pulled in at a field gateway and stopped behind a hedge.
The position of the car was far too exposed for me to feel comfortable; there were fields all around, but I wasn’t planning on staying for long. It also seemed too quiet; all I could hear was the ticking of the cooling car engine and the sound of a tractor in the distance. The sun was now molten on the horizon, staining everything a magnificent red gold. I went around to the back of the car and the first thing I noticed were two unmistakable bullet holes in it.
And I could see that something else was bundled up in the boot.
At first I thought that Candy was dead. Through her tangled black hair her face was a mess of blood and bruises and her t-shirt and trousers were blackened with blood and dirt. She was unconscious, but breathing. Shaking did not wake her.
I wasn’t certain that I’d be able to get her out, and I considered closing the boot and driving straight to a hospital. As I wondered what to do, I heard the sound of running water coming from an overflowing drinking trough for animals next to the gate. I needed some kind of material, so I took off my pullover and dropped it into the icy cold water. When I wrung it out over Candy she woke up, tried to thrash around in panic, and then lay still, staring at me, full of fear.
‘You’re safe,’ I assured her. ‘They’re not around. I’ll help you.’
I started to take the tape off her mouth and she squealed, so I ripped it off in one go and she was silent. After a moment she asked, ‘Where are we?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
It took a while to get Candy out of the boot. She was weak and so insubstantial. She protested and whined when I tore the tape at her wrists and ankles, in part because her skin was raw and bloody underneath from having been previously, tightly tied. As she sat on the ground I cleaned her up as best as I could and she submitted to my ministrations. She was wearing no make-up, her skin looked too white and mottled, and she had a horrible red mark over her mouth where I had pulled off the tape. Her eyes were worryingly dark-shadowed, but I felt an inappropriately-timed longing for her. Candy didn’t speak, but when we heard a vehicle approach in the lane she stood up, as though about to run.
The car passed us without pausing. I noticed, however, that the tractor, now only one field over, had stopped, and we decided to leave. As I reversed the car out of the field I could see the farmer in the distance walking over to investigate.
The light of the sunset was draining away and night was gathering in the forest through which we drove. In a very small lay-by we stopped and I cleared the last of the glass from the windscreen. Candy had her eyes closed and was silent, but she was shaking with the cold. When I opened the glove compartment and pulled out a small book of maps she didn’t move.
The signposts were hard to read without my glasses, but I worked out that we were driving towards somewhere called La Neuve-Grange. By the weak interior light of the car, I had difficulty searching for it on the maps. As I finally located the village I saw Candy put her hand into the glove compartment. She pulled out a heavy black handgun.
‘Take me back to Paris,’ she said painfully.
‘Please put that back.’
She shook her head.
‘Put it back while I’m driving, please,’ I said.
She nodded and asked, ‘Where are we, anyway?’
‘North west of Paris, I think. Perhaps 100 km away.’
‘And what are we doing here?’
‘Hopper’s men were looking for a hole to bury us both in.’
‘How did we get away?’
‘Pure fucking luck.’
She grinned, but it pained her, which made her laugh again, and in relief I found myself doing the same. She reached over and held my hand tightly.
When we drove on, Candy tried to speak but I couldn’t hear her properly for the noise of the wind through the open windscreen. Later on I realised she was crying.
I turned off the main road at somewhere called Frileuse because I was worried about being on such a major road. We passed an event at a large house; people were parking and getting out of their cars, but paid us no attention as we drove by.
‘Stop,’ Candy said. ‘We’ll steal a car.’
‘We can’t. I don’t know how, and they’d report it. At least Handley isn’t going to complain to the police that his car’s been stolen.’
I pulled over and turned off the engine.
‘Why have you stopped?’
‘Because we need to decide what we’re doing. If the police see us driving like this they’re bound to pull us over. How do we explain that it isn’t our car? I don’t know what we’d say about the bullet holes, or why you’ve been beaten up, or why we’ve got a gun in the glove compartment.’
‘I need to get to Paris tonight, before Handley gets back. I’m going to take that gun and kill Hopper.’
‘That’s madness.’
‘Is it? The bastard has had me tied up in his cellar for weeks. Handley’s occasionally thrown me food and regularly beaten me. And you know very well he was going to kill me and dump me in a hole.’
‘Perhaps we should go to the police.’
‘Handley made it clear to me that they’re in with the police.’
‘But it might just be bluff, or showing off. If we go into a police station and tell them what’s happened what’s the worst they can do to us?’
‘They can hand us back over to Hopper and Handley.’
‘It’s hardly likely, is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Just take me to Paris. Drop me off outside Hopper’s and do what the hell you like. Go to the police if you want to, but give me time to kill Hopper.’
‘I want nothing to do with that.’
‘But you’ll drive me there?’
‘Handley will’ve called his boss.’
‘He won’t expect me to come straight back to the house where he’s had me locked up all this time. And you’ve got to go somewhere, so why not Paris?’
‘I suppose that if we use the map, and take as many back roads as possible, we could do it. We’d have used the darkness, but it’s so bloody cold with no windscreen. My hands are freezing.’
‘You haven’t had cold water poured all over you.’
‘Why don’t we stop somewhere and try and get a hotel room, just for the night.’
‘And give Handley time to get back to Paris? Anyway, who’d let us into a hotel driving up in this car, looking like we do? Especially looking like I do! No, we have to go back to Hopper’s tonight. It’s the only chance I’ll have.’
It was an appalling journey. What should have been an hour-and-a-half’s driving took more like four. Several times I had to stop and get the feeling back into my hands because they were so cold. Luck, however, was on our side and we didn’t see any police cars at all, even in the very centre of Paris. At several junctions in the city I saw a few pedestrians stare at us, surprised at the lack of windscreen.
It was just past midnight when we finally found ourselves turning the car into rue St Vincent.
‘How are you going to get into the house?’ I asked.
‘With the gun,’ she said, and took it out of the glove compartment.
‘What if he won’t open the door to you?’
She didn’t answer, and when I pulled up outside Hopper’s house she didn’t get out.
‘Perhaps there’s a back door,’ she said.
‘There probably is, but at this time of night it’ll be locked.’
‘Use the intercom. Say you’re Handley.’
‘He won’t fall for that. I don’t sound like him. And Handley would probably have his own key. He might even have got back by now.’
‘Then I don’t know what to do.’
‘We’ll dump the car, and go and find a quiet hotel.’
>
‘No,’ she insisted, and continued to stare ahead, out of the glassless windscreen. In the streetlights I could see tears welling in her eyes and a great tenderness for her came over me. With numb fingers I brushed her hair from her frozen face.
The engine was still running and I would probably have driven away if I had known where to go. We sat there for another twenty seconds, saying nothing, before the front door to the house opened and Hopper himself appeared. He must have heard the car, and assumed that Handley had returned. When he saw us he looked confused for a moment and then Candy had raised the gun. She pointed it at him, past me, uncomfortably close to my face.
I looked back at Hopper, who had realised the danger he was in, but now Candy appeared calm, collected and in earnest. She kept the barrel level and told him to kneel down on the pavement, with his hands on his head, which he did. She manoeuvred herself backwards out of her door and was alongside him in a moment. I thought that she was going to execute him there and then, and he must have had the same fear.
‘Inside the house,’ she insisted.
He got up awkwardly and she pushed him in front of her.
‘Handley and his friends not back yet, I take it?’ she taunted.
‘No,’ he said, taking out his key and unlocking the door. ‘You appear to have their car.’
I just wanted to drive away, but couldn’t do so. I didn’t feel I could call the police, either. Reluctantly I got out of the car and followed them through the wide open front door.
I followed the distant sound of Candy’s voice. She appeared to have taken Hopper down some stairs into a cellar which, when I investigated, was comprised of two large rooms. The first contained cleaning equipment, some furniture, and several racks of wine. Candy and Hopper were in the further room which was almost entirely empty.
Candy half turned when she saw me. ‘Tie him to them,’ she ordered, pointing to a blank wall with climbers’ hooks screwed into it. She was holding the gun to Hopper’s head. ‘Then you can leave. Use those plastic ties—that’s what they used on me.’
There was a plastic bag of them spilling out over a bench.
‘No,’ Hopper said. ‘I’m tired of this game.’
The Dark Return of Time Page 10
