Belinda Bauer - Rubbernecker

Spicer grabbed his hoodie and helped him up. Patrick bent at the waist and wriggled out of it, then started to run.

‘Patrick! Hold on! I have to talk to you!’

But he kept going. Kept going, kept going. He didn’t know why; it made no sense. But he just kept going.

Behind him someone shouted Fuck! and Patrick heard the car door slam and the engine roar.

Spicer was coming to get him.

The thought was even more shocking than the crash had been.

Why? What were the implications ? Patrick didn’t know. He looked ahead – a hundred yards away were the orange lights at the back of the central station. It was too far. He wasn’t going to reach it. He had to get off the road.

There was a multi-storey car park. Patrick ducked left and ran into it. Spicer’s car over-shot the entrance and nose-dived to a halt, then whined into reverse.

The sound of it coming up the ramp and after him filled the deserted concrete cavern like thunder, and Patrick knew he’d made a mistake. There were no people, just a few late-night cars within layers of grey concrete, bound by low walls. He was a rat in a Guggenheim maze.

Patrick looked for an exit and couldn’t see one. He reached the end of the first level and ran on to the second.

He could hear the car squealing up the ramp behind him. Before it could turn the sharp corner at the top, Patrick dropped and rolled under a Land Rover. He lay there on the cold concrete, looking up at the exhaust system, while Spicer’s silver car sped past him.

Exhaust , he thought. Exhausted .

The wailing of tyres told him Spicer had taken the ramp to the third level, and he began to roll awkwardly from under the car.

Then – somewhere above his head – he heard Spicer’s car stop, turn, and head back down towards him.

Patrick stayed where he was.

The silver car came down the ramp and ground to a ticking halt. Now that it wasn’t mowing him down or chasing him, he had the time to see that it was a Citroën. Patrick heard the door open and watched the suspension lift a little as Spicer got out.

He should have run while he could .

‘Patrick? It’s not what you think.’ Spicer didn’t shout; he didn’t have to – the half-empty car park was like an echo chamber.

What did he think? Patrick wasn’t even sure, so how could Spicer know it wasn’t what he thought?

Spicer’s feet stopped at the first car at the other end of the short row, and his legs folded as he crouched to look underneath it.

‘Patrick?’

Spicer’s head appeared and turned his way, and Patrick’s breath froze in his lungs.

Then Spicer straightened up and crept a few cars closer.

He hadn’t seen him! Patrick felt a huge wave of relief. The shadows had saved him – and the cover of tyres on the ten or so cars between them. But those things wouldn’t save him for long.

Patrick shuffled backwards on his elbows and knees, scraping his back on the chassis and number plate, until he emerged between the headlights of the Land Rover, tight up against yet another slab of dark-grey concrete. He straightened up slowly. Keeping the wheels between himself and Spicer so that the man wouldn’t see his feet, he waited until he saw the top of Spicer’s head bob into view, then quickly lowered himself back down, while Spicer took a few steps to his left. Patrick shuffled carefully to his left, between the cars and the wall, then stood up once more as Spicer knelt again.

Spicer rose and moved, Patrick crouched and moved the other way in perfect counterbalance. They pivoted silently past each other. The next time he stood up, Patrick spotted a pedestrian exit. A yellow door with a big 2 on it at the far side of the level, a good hundred yards away across the concrete.

Did he dare make a run for it? The thought of committing to it was terrifying, but if he stayed, Spicer would find him eventually. And what would he do then? Patrick tested his knee and grimaced; it would have to do. He edged between two cars, watching Spicer’s head disappear one last time. He was at the Land Rover; the end of the line.

It had to be now.

Patrick lurched from between the cars and ran towards escape.

The noise of his feet was like uneven gunfire.

‘ Shit! ’ Spicer shouted. Patrick didn’t look back. Behind him a door slammed, an engine roared, tyres squealed. He threw a desperate look over his shoulder. The car was coming at him fast. The yellow door was miles away.

I’m not going to make it . The thought was dull and dreadful. He had made a terrible miscalculation. His legs worked, his arms pumped, his breath burned, and he dawdled before the speeding car.

The headlights threw his long shape on to the low grey wall alongside him. Beyond that – through the uppermost branches of a tree – he could see the station, illuminated, and with people standing on platforms. A woman with a pink suitcase; two girls hugging their knees on a bench.

Unaware.

Patrick turned and ran towards them anyway, as if for help. The car was almost on him. Spicer wasn’t going to stop – he was going to spread him like jam along the wall. All his arms and his legs would be in the wrong places and his eyes would look nowhere.

And he would have all the answers.

Patrick jumped.

Over the wall and into the black night beyond.

THE CAR HIT the wall with a sound like a bomb.

Even as he hung for an infinite beat in the frigid air, Patrick saw the woman with the pink suitcase and the two girls turn their faces towards the explosion, while shards of concrete spat against his back and legs like shrapnel.

He didn’t want the answers!

Too late.

He dropped into the branches of the tree. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to cover his head, and a million firecrackers went off as twigs snapped and popped in his ears. His unprotected arms were pierced and scraped; a branch smashed into his back and he thought of a hammer and chisel and a breakable spine. He hit another and bounced off in a different direction. The next branch he hit, he snapped his arm around. The rough bark slid down his bare skin and tore at his fingers, and he couldn’t hold his weight there for more than a moment, but when he next fell, he only dropped a short distance to the ground and landed almost on his feet.

He rolled, then stood and looked up.

Spicer looked down at him. They said nothing.

Patrick jogged lopsidedly across the road and to the phone boxes at the back of the station.

He dialled feverishly, not caring even to cover his bloodied fingers. The phone rang and rang and rang and then went to voicemail, so he hung up and dialled again, jabbing the numbers without hesitation.

07734113117. It was a simple and beautiful number, filled with a lyrical rhythm of sums and products and patterns. He had often thought of it since the day he’d first heard it and wished that it were his.

‘Hello?’ Meg answered with the sound of Spicer’s flat behind her. Music and laughter. For a moment Patrick was struck dumb by the sheer strangeness of having been there so recently, when now he was here – light years away. For him the party had ceased to exist so completely that he was stunned that, for others, it could still be going on.

‘What’s your code?’ he said.

‘What code? Who is this?’

‘It’s Patrick. I need your DR code.’

‘Patrick? Why?’

‘I have to get in.’

There was a long silence. Something tickled the side of Patrick’s face and the back of his hand came back bloody.

‘Where are you?’

‘At the station,’ he said. ‘And my money’s running out.’ It was true – the digital readout on the phone was counting down his last sixty seconds. He fumbled in his pocket and came up empty.