Simon Beckett - Stone Bruises

There’s a beautiful clunk as I hit the central-locking button and the bolts shoot home. Then the car shudders as Jules hurls himself against it.

‘Open the fucking door!’ he shouts, banging on the glass. ‘You’re dead, you hear me? Fucking dead!’

I’m sprawled across the front seats, gasping for breath. Pushing myself upright, I see why Jules hasn’t used his key to unlock the car.

It’s still in the ignition.

I scramble over to the driver’s seat as he pounds on the passenger window. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’

My hand shakes as I turn the key and jam my foot down. The car jerks forward and stalls. I flinch at a sudden bang on the door next to me as Lenny rams an elbow against the window. The car rocks as Jules wrenches at the door, yelling as I turn the key again.

‘ No, wait! Don’t—! ’

The engine drowns out his voice. Lenny has picked up the baseball bat but I’m already accelerating away. He jumps back but Jules runs alongside, still hammering on the glass. He’s screaming at me now, but I stamp on the pedal and he abruptly disappears. There’s time for a moment’s relief, then the steering wheel is almost torn from my hands as the car bucks and judders. A clattering comes from the passenger side, as though something’s snagged underneath. The juddering stops as I brake, jerking forward as the car screeches to a halt. I twist round, but there’s no one nearby. In the rear-view mirror I can see Lenny standing motionless in the road behind me.

There’s no sign of Jules.

The engine chugs softly. I look over at the passenger side. The seatbelt is trapped in the door, unspooled and twisted like a miniature noose. When I reach over and open it, the belt snakes sluggishly back inside as it tries to rewind. But the mechanism’s damaged and it soon stops. I stare at the frayed fabric, thinking about Jules groping for me across the seat. How he banged on the window as I sped off.

Leaving the engine running, I climb out of the car.

Lenny is staring down at something lying in the gutter. It isn’t moving, and in the glow from a streetlight I can see the back-to-front wrongness of its limbs. Something black and viscous pools around it, glistening like oil. Any doubts I might have are snuffed by Lenny’s lack of urgency. I automatically take a step forward but stop when he raises his head and looks at me. He’s still holding the baseball bat, and I back away as he starts walking towards me with a deliberation that’s chilling. The driver’s door bumps against my legs, then I’m scrambling into the car and grinding through the gears.

As I roar away, I glance in the rear-view mirror. Lenny has stopped in the middle of the road. My last view is of him staring after me, the baseball bat still gripped in one hand.

I drive until I feel I’ve gone far enough to be safe. Pulling over, I manage to open the door in time to throw up, hanging onto the door as I heave scalding bile into the road. When the spasm’s passed I grope for my phone to call for an ambulance. It won’t do Jules any good but I’m functioning automatically now, obeying the Pavlovian response of a good citizen. Besides, I can’t think of anything else to do.

But my phone’s broken. Its screen is cracked and the casing threatens to come apart in my hand. I don’t know when it happened, but it’s useless. I start driving again, intending to stop at the first public phone I come to. Except I don’t see one. I turn on the windscreen wipers as a sudden downpour smears the glass, turning the world outside into an Impressionist blur. I feel like I’m trapped in a nightmare, but gradually my mind starts to work again. Soon I’m able to think clearly. At least, that’s how it seems at the time.

It’s still raining, but the first flush of a summer dawn is lightening the sky when I pull up outside my flat. Almost feverish with the need to hurry, I let myself in. I’m shaking, hurting all over, but I can’t stay here. Lenny knows who I am, and it’s only a matter of time before he or his business associates find me. I can’t even hand myself in to the police, because I doubt I’d be any safer in prison. There’s only one thing I can think of to do.

I cram clothes and what cash I have lying around into my rucksack, only remembering my passport at the last minute. I take a last look around the small flat, with its shelves of old DVDs and framed film posters. There’s a rare reproduction from Rififi , and a print of Vadim’s Et Dieu… créa la femme with a luridly breathy Bardot that nearly bankrupted me. None of it seems important now.

I close the door and hurry back out to where I’ve parked Jules’s car. It’s an Audi, sleek and expensive. I don’t look like the sort of person to own an expensive car, but the urge to get away overwhelms everything else.

There’s never any question of where I’m going to go.

I throw my rucksack into the boot and go to open the driver’s door before I stop. I don’t want to see what might be on the passenger side, but I can’t leave without making sure. Checking that the street is still empty, I make myself go around the car. The black paintwork on the rear wheel arch is scraped and dented. But not so much that it will attract any attention, and the rain has washed off whatever blood was there.

There’s nothing to show what I’ve done.

It’s too early for much traffic, and I make good time to the Dover ferry terminal. By now reaction is setting in. I’m hungover and exhausted, aching from the fight earlier. Nothing seems real, and it’s only as I’m buying a ticket that it occurs to me that the car registration number might flag an alert. I’m stunned at my own stupidity for not having abandoned it and boarded as a foot passenger.

But there are no sirens, no alarms. I drive the dead man’s car into the boat’s cavernous metal belly, then go up on deck and watch the white cliffs slowly recede.

A few hours later I’m hitching on a dusty French road under a white sun.

IT DOESN’T TAKE long to pack. My few clothes and belongings are soon tucked away in the rucksack. I could have left it until morning, but it feels more like a statement of intent to do it now. I’m not going to change my mind this time.

If anything, that makes me even more nervous about Mathilde’s visit.

After that, there’s nothing to do but wait. It’s fully dark outside, though it’s not yet nine o’clock. Another sign that summer’s almost over. Three hours till Mathilde comes. Her copy of Madame Bovary lies beside the mattress. Something else I’ll be leaving unfinished. In the glow from the lamp, I look around the shadowed loft. Even with all its junk and cobwebs, it’s come to feel like home. I’ll be sorry to leave it.

I lie on the bed and light another of my last cigarettes. I flick off the flame from the lighter, remembering the photograph from Brighton curling to ash. I wish Gretchen hadn’t burned it, but then I wish a lot of things. Maybe I couldn’t have altered what happened to Chloe, but I’ll always wonder. And even if I could somehow absolve myself of failing her, no one made me go to Docklands that night. Because I did a man is dead. Never mind that it was accidental, or that I was only trying to get away. I killed someone.

There’s no escaping that.

I blow smoke at the ceiling. I have to go back, I know that now. The thought of what will happen is still terrifying, but for my own peace of mind I’ve got to take responsibility for what I’ve done. Yet whenever I think about Mathilde, and what she might want, I feel my resolve wavering.

Then there’s another complication. The plastic package from Jules’s car is still where I hid it after the gendarmes’ visit. I can’t leave it there, but I can hardly take a kilo of cocaine back into the UK with me.