the moon or stars. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he made out a few cars parked here and there, an unlit streetlamp. He had painfully made his way to one of the other cars. Now what?
He heard footsteps, running. Expletives, not shouted but spoken quietly, angrily. They were looking for him. He saw their shoes coming nearer to the car. They were going to find him. Then:
Laughter. Chatter. A group of people? The laughter died away. ‘Can we help you?’ a voice called. Friendly.
‘No.’ Rude. aggressive.
‘From round here, are you?’ The voice was less friendly.
Rick chanced a look around the back of the car. He saw the two men who had picked him up with their backs to him. They were facing a crowd of, what? Six, seven men? Maybe out of the pub, walking off the booze. The right side of aggression. For now.
‘Look,’ said the first man, the one in the smart coat, ‘we don’t want trouble.’
‘Nor do we,’ said the group’s spokesman. ‘Gisford is a quiet little village where nothing happens because we don’t want anything to happen and we always remember strangers.’
‘Okay, okay. We’re going.’
The men who were trying to take him somewhere he didn’t want to go – wherever that was –got into their car and drove off, fast. Where were they going? And how long before they came back looking for him? He didn’t have much time.
The laughing group wandered away, and Rick slowly came out from behind the car.
He was on some kind of harbour front. Concrete. The sea lapping at the edges. Across the water – the estuary he had swum across? – there were lights. Is that where he had come from? He had a bad feeling in his gut about the island across the water.
Keeping to the shadows, he limped away from the sea as fast as he could and towards a small road. It was dark, apart from the odd twinkle of light here and there from behind an upstairs window of a house. It was late then.
Better keep away from people. Vehicles. They might come back for him.
He set off down the narrow lane, looking for a gate or somewhere he could get off the road and hide. But there was nothing.
Then he heard an engine. A car. Had to be them.
He crouched down, then rolled under – thank fuck – a hedge, hardly daring to breathe.
The car went past him. Slowly.
He was comfortable here. Wanted to sleep. Only for a minute.
He closed his eyes.
Rick thought he remembered French doors opening out onto a stone-flagged patio. A small retaining brick wall. A table and chairs and parasol. Green parasol. Maybe grey. Did it matter?
It did.
His whole body ached.
He kept his eyes tightly closed, shutting out the cold and the dark, the sound of a tap dripping and the dank smell of rotting vegetation, and tried to feel the warmth of the sun on his head and the scent of newly mown grass in his nose.
He thought hard.
There was laughter, he was sure of that. A child’s voice, pure and high. His child? Sister? Brother? His head was so muddled. Had been for years. He shivered but felt the sweat roll down his back.
Wait.
Back to the sunshine.
A woman. Small. Blonde. Smiling at him. His wife. Her name? What was her goddam name? He wanted to cry out in frustration, but something told him to keep silent. Helen, that was it. But as soon as he thought of her name the dark began to roll in again. Why? What had he done?
Water. He’d swum across the estuary. Dark. Cold. He’d climbed into a car – hadn’t he? Yes, yes. He’d been on his own, though he’d wanted to take Lindy. But she didn’t make it. Why not? What happened? Was she here?
And who was Lindy?
The blonde woman? No. She was definitely Helen. Don’t think about Helen.
And he’d left something behind, something important.
He shivered. And realized his body was a mass of aches and pains. He ran his tongue around his mouth and felt a couple of loose teeth. Tried to lift his head.
Fuck that hurt.
He gritted his teeth. Lifted his head again. Let it fall back. Too much pain.
Where was he? It wasn’t hot enough to be the desert, not cold enough to be Norway or Russia, so where the hell was he?
He could do this, he’d been trained to withstand all sorts. He’d been trained by the—
What was he thinking? That he’d been trained by the army. Fuck, yes. Heat. Desert. The girl with the almond eyes. Push them away.
Army. That’s who he was.
He opened his eyes. Saw brown spikes and brambles. His face throbbed. The dripping tap was rain falling off tree branches onto the ground beside him. Cold seeped through him from the earth. He was under a hedge? What?
He flexed his fingers, tried to move his legs, his arms. Instinct told him to keep his movements small and quiet. There had to be a reason he was under a hedge.
Hiding?
That had been such a bad idea. Could have been fatal.
He had no idea how long he’d been under the fucking hedge, but he had to gather himself and move. Even more, he needed to feel his body – at the moment he was numb and that was not a good thing.
Trying not to cry aloud with the pain of it, he rolled out from under the hedge and onto the road.
The full force of the rain hit him hard, opening the cuts on his face, and within moments he was soaked through. At least, he thought grimly, it would wash away some of the blood and the dirt and the grime.
He lay still for a moment, then gritted his teeth and tried to stand.
His blood roared around his body and the mild pounding in his head became ever more fierce. His head swam and he thought he might black out or throw up or both. More deep breathing. Tried to throw his mind elsewhere. Back to sunshine, to laughter, to the hazy feeling of happiness he couldn’t quite grasp.
Then, at least, he was standing straight. Only had one trainer on. Not good.
He shook his head, felt the loose teeth rattle. Spat out blood, but no teeth.
His body was stiff and weak. And it was fucking painful, especially his shoulder. He couldn’t move his arm properly. Had he broken it? Dislocated it? He tried to waggle his fingers and winced. Yep, that worked. Not broken then. Blood was running down his arm onto his fingers. He craned his neck to look. A nasty gash running from shoulder to elbow. Not only dislocated but sliced open. And it didn’t look great. Pieces of grit and mud and grass
