Peter May - Runaway

The next services turned out to be the last on the M1, just thirteen miles from London. Previously Scratchwood, now London Gateway, it had provided a viewpoint eighteen years before when Princess Diana’s hearse had followed a route up the M1 to her childhood home at Althorp, where she was buried. Jack remembered watching it on TV. Not normally a sentimental man, he had surprised himself by crying.

Ricky pulled the Volvo into a parking space and turned off the engine. He sat back in the driver’s seat and breathed deeply. There was a fine mask of perspiration covering the contours of his face.

Jack said, ‘See? Not so hard, was it?’

The look of barely contained fury that Ricky turned on his grandfather was more than even Jack could deal with, and he averted his eyes to escape the accusation in it.

The moment was broken by Dave opening the back door. ‘I’m off for a pee. Back in a tick.’

‘You’ve just been,’ Maurie said.

Dave grinned. ‘Och, that was half an hour ago. You know how it is at oor age.’ He slipped out and hurried away across the tarmac to the shops with a strange, crouching gait.

Jack was distracted by a mobile phone lying in an empty cup holder between the two front seats, and he picked it up. ‘Look,’ he said to Ricky. ‘We can just call him and tell him where his car is.’

Ricky made a face. ‘How can we call him when we’ve got his phone?’

‘Ah. Good point. That’s why you’re the one with the high IQ, then.’ He thought about it, then switched on the phone and opened its address book to scroll through the names. He stopped at the end of the ‘B’s. ‘This is him here. Adam Burley.’

‘How d’you know that?’ Maurie asked.

Jack grinned back at him. ‘Cos it says “Me” next to the name.’ He scrolled down. ‘And here’s Jessica Burley. Bet that’s his wife. Or his mother, or his sister. Any of the above will do.’ He tapped to dial and handed the phone to Ricky. ‘Here.’

Ricky almost dropped it, juggling it in his hands as if it were red hot. ‘What?’

‘Just tell her where the car is.’

‘Me?’

They heard a voice answering, and Jack nodded encouragement to his grandson.

Ricky bared his teeth and raised the phone to his ear. ‘Mrs Burley? I... I don’t know if you’ve heard from Adam. But his car was stolen. Well, not stolen. Taken.’ Then he corrected himself again. ‘Borrowed.’ He winced at the voice in his ear. ‘Doesn’t matter who I am. The thing is, his car’s safe and sound, and it’s in the car park at London Gateway Services on the M1. We’ll leave the keys for him under the driver’s mat.’ And he hung up quickly, before she could respond.

The look he gave his grandfather would have curdled milk. But he couldn’t come up with words adequate to express his feelings. Instead he leaned over to drop the phone into the glove compartment and got out of the car.

‘Out!’ he said. ‘The sooner we get away from this damned car the better.’

He and Jack helped Maurie out of the back seat, then Ricky hid the keys, and they hobbled across the car park to the huddle of box-like buildings that housed the facilities, the metal tip of Jack’s walking stick clicking erratically on the asphalt.

Inside, they stood in the middle of the crowded concourse, looking around, feeling more than a little lost. They were so, so near to their goal. But without wheels, they might just as well still have been in Glasgow. People milled around them as if they weren’t there, and Jack had that sense of invisibility again. This was no longer his world. At some point, without his even being aware of it, the baton had been passed from one generation to the next. The past and present co-existing in the same space, but barely touching. The world he had known, populated now by others. Ricky’s generation, he supposed, and their parents. Although Ricky was as alien here as his grandfather. Too clever, too fat, his knowledge of reality scarcely extending beyond his bedroom and the virtual world of his violent computer games.

The names of all the commercial outlets around them were known to Jack, of course, but familiar only in name. Starbucks. Waitrose. Costa Express. A bewildering array of food and drink, newspapers, magazines, people, children, more people.

‘So what now?’ Ricky’s voice forced him out of his cloud of uncertainty, and he tried to clear his mind. But nothing came to him.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Well, we’re not stealing another car.’

‘No.’

Maurie’s voice, thin and reedy, cut above the hubbub. Once such a beautiful voice, Jack thought.

‘Where’s Dave?’

They looked all around, but there was no sign of him. He had been gone for ten minutes or more.

Jack said, ‘Better check the toilets.’

There was a constant stream of men coming and going at the urinals. But Dave wasn’t among them. Three of the cubicles were occupied. Jack raised his voice. ‘Dave, are you in there?’

No reply.

Ricky went off to search the shops and restaurants, while Jack and Maurie stayed in the toilets in case Dave showed up. Maurie leaned back against the wall by the dryer and closed his eyes.

‘Are you going to be okay, Maurie?’

Maurie slowly opened his eyes to look at Jack, and nodded. ‘As long as I make it through the day tomorrow. There’s somewhere we’ve got to be by tomorrow night.’

‘Where?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Maurie, we’re taking an awful lot on trust here.’

Maurie stared at him through his misery. ‘It’s all I ever asked of you, Jack. That you trust me. Will you do that? Will you?’ He paused, then, ‘I’m sorry I hit you. I really am. It’s been on my mind.’

Jack’s smile was wry and touched by sadness. ‘Aye, for fifty years.’ Then, ‘I trust you, Maurie.’

Ricky returned after about ten minutes. He shook his head. ‘No sign of him.’

Jack sighed deeply. ‘Damn him!’ Then a worm of suspicion wriggled its way to the head of his queue of thoughts. ‘Wait a minute.’ He strode across the floor of the toilets. ‘That end cubicle’s been occupied the whole time we’ve been here.’ He rapped on the door with the head of his stick. ‘Dave! Dave, are you in there?’

There was a brief hiatus before Dave’s muffled voice returned to them. ‘Can a man no’ get five minutes tae himsel’?’

‘What are you doing in there?’

‘Whit dae ye think?’

‘Are you drinking?’

The silence that followed was laden with guilt before the denial. ‘Course not!’

Ricky looked at his grandfather, appalled. ‘Where would he get drink?’

Jack banged on the door again with the brass owl’s head. ‘Open up, Dave. Come on, open the door!’

Another hiatus, then they heard the bolt being pulled back and the door swung in to reveal Dave sitting on the toilet, three cans of beer in plastic wrap cradled in his lap, two empties on the floor and a third in his hand. ‘You’re just spoilsports, the lot of ye.’

Jack stared at him in astonishment. ‘Where did you get those?’

‘They were on the floor by my feet in the back of the car. Wasnae gonnae tell you. You’d just have chucked them oot the windae.’

Jack reached in to try to grab the remaining cans, but Dave wrapped his arms around them.

‘I’ve been good for long enough. We’re on a wild fuckin’ goose chase here, and nae bloody idea why.’ He glared across at Maurie, who hadn’t moved from his place beside the hand dryer. Then a sly smile crossed his face. ‘Anyway, I’ve earned them.’

‘How’s that?’ Jack wasn’t in the mood for forgiveness. Dave had promised to stay sober.

‘Oh, just caught sight of a wee notice oot there. Didn’t know this was a coach stop, did you? On the road tae London. Another one due in...’ he glanced at his watch, ‘aboot twenty minutes.’