The Road to Bedlam

by Mike Shevdon

  This time, I used his technique of skipping across the nodes and using their momentum to accelerate out again, making the most of the momentum and maximising the distance. There was no time to consult the codex, but I had a vague idea of direction and I used the node-points to guess my route. Nevertheless, I took a couple of unintentional wild detours, unable to quite control the helter-skelter freefall. I hoped that would only make me harder to follow.

  I ended up in a woodland clearing, the steady drone of cars indicating some main route close by. I moved out of the clearing quickly, using a fallen branch to brush across my footprints, heading towards the road. It was afternoon, but I was counting on the midsummer daylight lasting late into the evening. It would be bright enough to be seen on the road for a while yet.

  I'd hitched rides as a student. Before I'd learned to drive or had the money for a car, I'd stood on motorway junctions with a cardboard sign hoping for lifts. I knew the roads around Kent and the south-east fairly well. Sometimes my patience was rewarded, but often lifts were a short distance only or not quite in the right direction. I had been marooned on deserted junctions in appalling weather, so the sound of the busy road was encouraging. I tramped out of the woods on to a fourlane road with fast-moving cars.

  The traffic was moving too quickly where I emerged, so I walked along the grass verge, keeping the traffic on my right so that I would head vaguely southwards. The cars and trucks rushed past, buffeting me as they passed. I knew that drivers were unlikely to stop unless they could get a good look at you as they went by and there was somewhere safe to stop. If I was lucky, one of them would decide I wasn't a drunk or a weirdo and pick me up.

  After fifteen minutes' walking I came to a large roundabout. I had done better than I thought and had come out on the A5 somewhere south-east of Ashbourne. There was no sign of anyone following me, but I guessed that if Raffmir wanted to follow me without being seen then he could manage that. I stood on the hard shoulder, close enough to be seen by cars coming off the roundabout but not so close that they would be unable to stop without the car behind rear-ending them.

  I took the first lift offered, which may not have been a good idea. The truck driver was Polish and grinned insanely the whole time. His truck cabin looked and smelled as if he lived in it. After twenty minutes of trying to get me to talk about football, which I neither knew nor cared about, he put the stereo on and filled the cab with thrash metal. We stopped at a set of lights just outside Derby and he passed over a pack of tablets. The writing on the foil was obscure, presumably Polish; it certainly wasn't English.

  "You like, yes?" he asked me.

  "I don't think so, no."

  "Is caffeine, with spike for the head." He tapped the side of his temple and nodded knowingly.

  I couldn't decide whether they were pep-pills or drugs. "I think I'll be OK without, thanks." I passed them back to him.

  "Better," he said, "not sleep and drive."

  I agreed that would be bad. He turned up the music to a point where it would have been impossible to sleep even without the pills. When he reached the M69 near Leicester, he was turning off, so I asked him to drop me at the roundabout. Climbing out of the cab, I thanked him for the lift.

  "Good journey, my friend." He offered his hand and I shook it.

  He rumbled away, merging with the moving traffic. I stood on the slipway back on to the M1 and waited for another lift south. I could have made my way to a Waynode and travelled much quicker from there, but this way it would be much harder for Raffmir to follow me. I had carefully not discussed my journey in the cab, so even if he used the rear-view mirror to eavesdrop he would not be able to find where I was or in which direction I was headed. Part of me liked the idea of him cringing to the sound of thrash metal while trying to eavesdrop on our conversation.

  My next lift was a blue BMW and the guy driving it was wearing sunglasses, even though it was overcast. He drove fast, staying in the outside lane and rarely dropping below eighty. He talked incessantly about the car, how much fuel it used, where he bought it from, how much he paid for it, what torque it produced, on and on.

  "I'm gonna have it chipped," he said.

  "Chipped? Is that so they can track it if it gets stolen?"

  "Nah, it's already got that. That was the first thing I had done. You have to with a car like this, don't you? Nah, I'm talking performance chipped."

  "You've lost me." It wasn't the first time, either.

  "You can have the engine management chip upgraded. The standard chip cuts out at six thousand RPM and limits the fuel intake. By upping the chip you can get another thirty brake horse at four K and wind it up to six eight hundred."

  "Won't that damage the engine?" It was fairly powerful as it was. What was he going to do with even more?

  "Not if you're careful."

  He flashed his lights at a car that didn't get out of his way quickly enough, and then roared past when there was barely room to pass.

  "Best be careful, then, eh?" I suggested, gently.

  "Oh, I'm always careful." He grinned as the car accelerated past ninety again.

  I spent the entire trip on the edge of my seat, wondering whether the next close shave would turn into a multi-car pile-up. He dropped me in North London. It was a relief to stand on solid ground. He roared away, ramming the car up through the gears.

  From there it was a half-mile walk through the humid evening air to the bus stop. I felt bad slipping on to the bus unnoticed. It wasn't expensive and I would happily pay, but that would mean explaining where I wanted to go to the driver and I did not want to give any clue about that. Instead I sat alone near the back where I could watch who came and went. It took a rambling route, so that I didn't arrive near my destination until mid-evening. If anything, by then the air was heavier with moisture. That felt right, somehow. The last time I had been here had been for a memorial service.

  I wanted to see for myself where Alex's accident was supposed to have happened. I knew the area had been sealed, pending an investigation, and that I would not be allowed access. At this time of day, though, there would be no one around and I could see what I wanted to see without needing permission.

  The Alice Steadman Comprehensive School was in the middle of a large housing estate in North London. It served all the houses around and was a good enough school to attract children from outside the catchment area. It was difficult to get into, which was one of the reasons that Katherine and I had originally moved here. It was close enough to a Tube line to commute and had the amenities to make a decent area. It had a reputation for looking after its kids, even the difficult ones, and for getting results. It didn't have a reputation for drugs, knives, bullying or gang violence, which was more than you could say for some of the schools in the area.

  The original Victorian buildings had been demolished when we first moved there and replaced with 1980s brick. There had been a protest, but the cost of bringing the old buildings up to standard had settled the matter. The new buildings were spacious with large windows and much improved facilities. The frontage was not imposing but looked efficient and functional, with the administrative offices facing the road to act as a barrier between visitors and the children. The teaching facilities formed a big E behind the admin block so that all classrooms had windows. The playground was behind that, which was where the gymnasium stood visible over the top of the other buildings.

  I knew the school well enough to be aware that a footpath diverted around the edge of the playing field where a high fence protected the play area and sports fields. The access gate would be locked to prevent dog walkers fouling the pitch, but a locked gate wouldn't slow me down.

  To reach the fence I had to walk around the estate, passing houses with upstairs windows open for the evening air and music spilling out over the neighbourhood. It wasn't a dangerous area, but I used my power to turn away curious eyes. I reached the side gate unnoticed by the kids playing football on the green space with piles of jerseys for goalpo
sts, or mothers out wheeling buggies, older children trailing behind.

  My experience with the church door had the padlock on the gate loose in my hand in seconds and allowed me to lock it again behind me. I strode across the field in full view of all the houses around, knowing that no one would see me. The door into the PE block was also locked but that was no harder than opening the gate. I crossed the sprung wooden floor, my footsteps echoing around the empty basketball courts. The door to the changing rooms was at the rear. Beyond was a small corridor leading to changing rooms marked "Boys" and "Girls". On the girls' changing room was a sign in large bold letters saying "Out Of Order", and underneath that, as if to emphasise the point, "DO NOT ENTER". The door to the girls' changing room was not locked. It swung closed behind me with a prolonged screech, making me wonder whether it had always done that.

  I had been expecting some sign of what had happened here: not taped outlines on the floor or a sign saying "This is the Place", but some indication of what had occurred. Instead it looked like a building project.

  The room smelled strongly of disinfectant and there was a power washer parked behind the door. Where the toilets had been there were bare holes in the floor, each stuffed with polythene bags. There were no sinks on the wall, just pipes and screw-holes in the walls where mirrors had been mounted above them. There was a blank screen wall where once showers had been fitted, and space for rows of benches where the children could get changed. All of that had been stripped back to the bare tiles.

  In the centre of the floor near the sinks was a hole. I knelt down to examine it and drew my finger around the edge. The screw-holes were enlarged where the screws had been torn out and the tiles were cracked and jagged-edged. The drain was spotlessly clean and smelled of bleach.

  I stood again and turned slowly around. There were small rectangular windows high along one side wall, high enough to stop the boys peeking in while the girls were changing. I could see the window catches had limiters, allowing the windows to be tilted for ventilation but not opened enough for anyone to escape through.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sense what had happened here. All I could feel was the chill of a room scoured clean and left long empty.

  "Hello? Anyone there?" The voice came from the corridor to the main hall. I moved around behind the wall for the showers. There were footsteps on the tiles outside. I drew concealment around me, feeling the air chill in response.

  The door squealed open. "Hello?" It was a question hoping not to be answered. "Is there someone there?"

  I concentrated on being unseen.

  "I coulda sworn I locked that door."

  There was the scrape of a footstep as he entered the room. "This place gives me the creeps," said the voice. "Shoulda knocked the bloody thing down."

  The door hinges protested and the footsteps receded. I waited until the spring closure pressed the door closed with a final thunk. I heard him entering the boys' changing room, his voice reverberating through the adjoining wall. He moved around for a while and then retreated.

  What light there was in the changing room was fading, so I went back to the door. Trying to open it quietly just made it worse, so I opened it as little as I could and slipped through to the corridor. The owner of the voice had departed, so I could slip out of the fire door on the far side of the gym, shouldering it closed behind me as quietly as I could. I strode back across the field as the light from the overcast clouds faded and the evening deepened into twilight.

  Once through the gate in the fence, I was back in the estate and as unremarkable as anyone else. I let the concealment slip away and made my way along the streets, past smells of cooking and noises of TV: family life in the suburbs.

  Originally, I hadn't intended to go and see Katherine, but my mind was pondering the clean-up after the accident at the school and whether that meant anything. Were the school paying for the refurbishment or had they got funding from somewhere else? Would the source of the money provide any clue to where Alex was? How could I get access to that information? My feet were on automatic and followed the route from Alex's school through the streets, across the park and back to the street where we had made our home.

  I nearly stumbled when I noticed where I was. It brought me suddenly to a halt when I realised that if I saw Katherine she would ask me how I was and what I was doing there. I moved so there was a tree between me and the house. I couldn't just turn up unannounced on her doorstep, could I?

  Lying to her would be extremely difficult and the subject of Alex was bound to come up. Garvin was right about one thing: I could not explain to Katherine that Alex wasn't dead. It wasn't that I wanted to lie to her or that I didn't want her to know, but what could I say to her? I could hardly tell her that Alex was alive but I didn't know where she was. If I accused the authorities of kidnapping her then I was going to look as if I had lost my grip on reality. Grief was one thing, delusion quite another.

  If I managed to convince her, she was likely to turn up on the local MP's doorstep within the hour and demand the return of her daughter, and then she would have to explain how she knew Alex was alive, making it look as if neither of us was sane. Besides, Garvin had said the authorities would be looking for me, in which case wandering into an MP's office or a police station probably wasn't a good idea.

  Maybe it was the thought that people were searching for me that made me peek around the tree to see if anyone had noticed me arrive. That's when I noticed the car. It was parked across the road from the house and would not have been remarkable but for the two men sat inside it. They didn't get out and they didn't drive away.

  Instead, they sat waiting, watching Katherine's house.

  SIXTEEN

  The two men could just be parked, listening to the radio, or waiting for a friend in one of the other houses, but the way they glanced towards the house periodically and talked without looking at each other made me suspicious. Katherine was my ex-wife and one of the people I'd had recent contact with. If the authorities really were trying to find me then this is one of the places I might turn up.

  Using glamour, I could walk right past the car and they would not recognise me, but Garvin had told me they were prepared and that they learned from past encounters. They'd already had the better of me twice, once at the hospital and once at the cottage. That made me cautious.

  I moved back along the pavement and walked away. I wanted to get a closer look at them, but walking straight up to the car was not the way. I had the advantage. I knew where they were and as far as I could tell they didn't know I was here. I also knew the ground. I had lived here for a number of years and I was betting I knew things they didn't.

  Along the road was a concrete drive that went behind the row of houses opposite Katherine's house, leading to a block of garages. I knew this because we'd had problems with vandals breaking into the garages and setting fire to them. The neighbours had called the police and fire service out on more than one occasion.

  I strode between the houses and through into the parking area. A couple of kids were passing a ball between them, kicking it against the side wall of the end garage. They looked a bit young to be out in the late dusk but I ignored them and they did not see me. At the end of the row of garages was a path that crossed between the streets, allowing pedestrians from either side to access the garages. It was used as a cut-through for bikes and an escape route for vandals until the gates had been padlocked and only the garage owners given keys. The gate was almost opposite Katherine's house.

  I peered around the end of the last garage, noting that the gate was shut, and then walked quickly between the houses. There were hedges either side but the gate itself was metal with a chain-link mesh and so I would be able to see through to where the car was parked only yards away.

  I wanted to see them without being seen myself, so I intensified the misdirection around me. The air chilled and, as it did, a persistent beeping started. The car doors opened and the beeping got louder. I pressed myself closer to
the hedge.

  A low voice spoke. "See anything?"

  "Nope."

  "Could be a false alarm?" The voice sounded hopeful, but also excited.

  There was a pause.

  "Could it?"

  "Watch the house. Tell me if there's any movement. Have any lights come on?" The other voice was calm, low and level.

  "No."

  There was another long pause.

  "It's a false alarm, right?"

  "The alarm went off," said the calm voice.

  "Yeah, but that could just be natural, right?"

  "Didn't you feel it get colder?"

  "Sure, but the sun's just gone down."

  "It suddenly gets colder in a car with all the doors and windows shut."