Alan Glynn: The Dark Fields aka Limitless

The pounding in my head was so intense now that it short-circuited any sense of moral horror I might have felt at what I was watching, or at what I had done . I was also concerned about what was going to happen next.

Gennady took a couple of steps towards me. The look on his face was one of mingled incredulity and fury. I thought I was going to have to move aside to avoid him, but almost immediately he tripped on a torn box and came crashing forward on to a pile of large format art and photography books. The impact of this must have driven the knife in a little deeper – and fatally – because after he had fallen, he remained completely still.

I waited for a few minutes, watching and listening – but he didn’t move or make any sound at all.

Eventually – and very slowly – I went over to where he had come down. I bent over him and felt for a pulse on the side of his neck. There was nothing. Then something occurred to me, and drawing on a final reserve of adrenalin I took him by the arm and rolled him over on to his back. The knife was lodged at a skewed angle in his stomach and his black shirt was now sodden with blood. I took a couple of deep breaths, and tried not to look at his face.

I lifted the right side of his jacket with one hand, raised it, and tentatively put my other hand into his inside breast pocket. I fished around for a moment, thinking I wasn’t going to find anything – but then, folded in a flap of material I felt something hard. I got hold of it with the tips of my fingers and drew it out. I held it still for a moment – my heart thumping against the walls of my chest – and then shook it. The little silver pillbox made a small but very welcome rattling sound.

I got up and went back over to the window. I stood still for a few seconds in a vain attempt to ease the pounding in my head. Then I leant back against the window and slid down into a sitting position. My hands were still shaking, so in order to keep the pillbox steady I placed it on the floor between my legs. Concentrating really hard, I screwed the top off the box, put it aside and then peered down. There were five pills in the box. Again, working very carefully, I managed to get three of them out of it and on to the palm of my hand.

I paused, closed my eyes and involuntarily relived the previous couple of minutes in my mind – kaleidoscopically, luridly, but accurately. When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw – a few feet in front of me, like an old leather football – was Gennady’s shaved head, and then the rest of him, splayed out on the flattened pile of books.

I raised my hand, took the three tablets into my mouth and swallowed them.

I sat there for the next twenty minutes, staring out across the room – during which time, like a cloudy, overcast sky breaking up and clearing to blue, the pain in my head slowly lifted. The shake in my hands faded, too, and I felt a gradual return – at least within the parameters of MDT – to some kind of normality. This was borrowed time, and I knew it. I also knew that Gennady’s entourage was probably downstairs waiting for him, and that if much more time elapsed, they might get curious, or concerned even – and things might then get complicated.

I screwed the top back on to the pillbox and slipped it into the pocket of my trousers. When I stood up, I noticed the stains on my shirt again – as well as a couple of other signs of the general state of degradation I’d fallen into. I went over towards the bathroom, unbuttoning my shirt on the way. I took off the rest of my clothes and had a quick shower. Then I changed into some fresh clothes, jeans and a white shirt – making sure to transfer the pillbox into my jeans pocket. I went over to the telephone on the floor, called information and got the number of a local car-service. I then called the number and ordered a car for as soon as possible – instructing them to have me picked up at the back entrance to the building. After that, I gathered a few things into the holdall, including my laptop computer. I picked up the briefcase full of cash and closed it up. Then I carried both the briefcase and the holdall to the door, and opened it.

I stood there for a moment, looking back into the room. Gennady was almost lost from view in the general mess of things, my things – boxes, books, clothes, saucepans, album covers. But then I saw a small trickle of blood making its way out on to a clear part of the floor. When I saw another one, I was overcome with a feeling of nausea and had to lean against the side of the door to keep my balance. As I was doing this, a sudden squeal sounded from the centre of the room. My heart jumped, but as the high-pitched, slightly muffled tone settled into an electronic rendition of the main theme from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number 1, I realized that it had to be Gennady’s cellphone. The zhuliks downstairs were obviously getting restless, and would doubtless be on their way up soon. With no choice but to keep moving, therefore, I turned around and closed the door behind me.

I took the elevator down to the basement car park and walked the length of this huge interior space, past rows and rows of concrete pillars and parked cars. I made my way up a winding ramp to the concourse at the rear of the building. Fifty yards to the left of where I came out, a couple of trucks were making deliveries at a loading dock – probably to one or other of the Celestial’s several restaurants. I waited around for about five minutes, staying out of view, until a black, unmarked car arrived. I signalled to the driver and he stopped. I got into the back, with the briefcase and the holdall, and paused for a moment. After I’d taken a couple of deep breaths, I told the driver to get on to the Henry Hudson Parkway, going north. He pulled around by the side of the building and then turned left. The traffic lights at the next block were red, and when the car stopped I turned around to look back. There was a Mercedes parked at the kerb of the plaza. A few guys in leather jackets were standing next to it on the sidewalk, smoking. One of them was looking up at the building.

The lights changed, and as we were pulling away – suddenly – three police cars appeared out of nowhere. They pulled up at the kerb of the plaza and within seconds – the last thing I could make out – five or six uniformed cops were running over towards the main entrance to the Celestial.

I turned back around. I didn’t understand it. Since I’d left the apartment, there couldn’t have been enough time for anyone to get up to it, get into it… call the cops and then for the cops to arrive …

It didn’t make sense.

I caught the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror. He held my gaze for a couple of seconds.

Then we both looked away.

WE CONTINUED NORTH.

As soon as we got on to Interstate 87, I felt a little less tense. I sat back in the car and stared out of the window, stared at the miles of highway flitting by and blending, slowly, into a continuous, hypnotic stream – a process which allowed me to smother any thoughts I was having about the last couple of days, the last couple of hours , and especially about what I had just done to Gennady. But after nearly forty minutes of this, I couldn’t help turning my mind to what I had decided to do next, to the immediate future – the only kind of future I seemed to have left.

I told the driver to cut over and drop me off in someplace like Scarsdale or White Plains. He considered this for a couple of minutes, looked around at his options, and eventually took me into the centre of White Plains. I paid him – and in the vague hope that he might keep his mouth shut, I gave him a hundred-dollar tip.