had to get help – he was in a bad way.
She crumpled the piece of paper in her hand while trying to tuck her coat around him, oblivious to the fact that she was becoming soaked through. His skin was clammy. His breathing was becoming laboured. She could hardly bear to look at his poor, bloody face, but she made herself, and there was a flicker of recognition in her brain. He was wearing a gold chain. That, like his face, was familiar. She’d seen this man somewhere before, she was sure of it.
Before she could process the thought, she heard the sound of a car coming fast along the road. Thank God, thank God. ‘Help is coming,’ she whispered to the man.
His eyes opened. They were dark pools among the blood and torn skin.
‘It’s going to be okay, I promise.’
‘No,’ he said. His eyes closed. ‘It’s not.’
Alex leapt up as she saw headlights careering towards her and waved frantically. ‘Stop. Please stop.’
Two men jumped out of the car and hurried over to her.
‘You have to call the police. And an ambulance. There’s a man who’s been seriously hurt—’ Alex could hardly get the words out in her haste.
‘It’s all right,’ one of them said, turning the collar of the red Puffa jacket that strained against his body up against the rain and walking over to the injured man. ‘We’ve got this. We’ll take him to hospital.’
‘We shouldn’t move him.’ Alex was agitated. She wanted proper help. People in green with stethoscopes. The reassuring lights and sound of an ambulance. Her head throbbed.
The man shook his head. ‘Can’t call an ambulance. No signal.’
‘But—’ She was going to say she had been on the phone to her sister not long before, though she did know there could be a decent signal one moment and none the next in this part of the world.
‘If we don’t take him to hospital he might die anyway.’ The man in the too-tight jacket whipped her coat off the injured man. ‘This yours?’
Alex took it back and put it on over her wet clothes, then realized she was still clutching the bit of paper the injured man had given her. She shoved it into her pocket.
The two men heaved the injured man into the car, almost stuffing him onto the back seat. He groaned in pain.
No, this wasn’t right.
Alex had a half-memory from a First Aid course she had done years before that told her a casualty shouldn’t be moved if at all possible. But then, even if there was a phone signal, how long would it be before an ambulance came to this rural road? Perhaps the only answer was to let these two men take him to hospital.
‘Be careful, you’ll hurt him even more.’
‘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
