Splinter

34

Marc locked the front door from the outside although he knew he wouldn’t leave the unseen threat behind. Whatever was pursuing him seemed undeterred by physical barriers. Insanity resembled a mist that was seeping through the cracks of normality into his shattered life. If he wasn’t to lose his bearings still further in its murky depths, flight was his sole recourse.

He emerged into the street convinced that he was alone again, so he was almost startled to see Emma waiting for him in her car. Her old VW Beetle was double-parked, and it took him a moment to realize that the car she was obstructing was his own. It was parked exactly where he’d looked for it only a few hours earlier.

‘Come on,’ she called, looking in her rear-view mirror. The car, which had been puttering away until now, emitted a sort of death rattle as she underlined her impatience by gunning the engine, but Marc was still nonplussed by the reappearance of his car. He made his way round Emma’s Beetle like a man in a trance, staring at the Mini as if he’d never seen one before.

‘What is it?’ The engine gave another death rattle.

‘Just a minute,’ he called without turning round. He patted his pockets in search of his car key, then remembered that he’d removed it from the bunch a long time ago.

Cupping his face in his hands, blinker fashion, he peered through the rain-streaked window. Sure enough, it was his car that had materialized here in the last few minutes. The sports bag he hadn’t used since the accident was lying crumpled up in the footwell behind the driver’s seat, the back seat was littered with old newspapers, an empty McDonald’s carton and numerous returnable bottles, and the tangled charging cable for his mobile was plugged into the cigar lighter.

‘Come on, damn it!’ Emma called angrily, turning off the ignition. Marc heard the door creak open as she got out behind him. He looked around for something to smash the window with.

‘What are you doing? We have to go.’

‘Where to?’

He bent down and tried to dislodge a cobblestone protruding from the pavement, but his fingers kept slipping off the wet edges.

‘Lost something?’

Yes, my mind.

He could see her boots under the car. She was standing beside a puddle in the road, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

‘I’ve just got to get something from my car, then we can go.’

‘So why are you crawling around on the ground?’ she demanded. He heard a click and the car’s interior light came on.

How on earth had she done that so quickly?

He straightened up, blinking in bewilderment, then opened the driver’s door as easily as the one Emma had already opened. He stared at her suspiciously.

‘How did you know-’

‘Look!’ She shrugged and pointed to the ignition lock beside the steering wheel. ‘The key’s in there. You must have forgotten it.’

No way. I haven’t had it on me for days.

He propped one knee on the driver’s seat and reached for the glove compartment. The light hadn’t worked for ages, but he found what he was looking for as soon as he opened the flap and shoved a stack of CDs aside.

Emma gripped his wrist just as he was removing the strip of blister pack.

‘What sort of pills are those?’

‘Mind your own business,’ he said, rather more sharply than he had intended, but his tone of voice had the desired effect. She retreated several steps, pulled the white hood over her head and turned away.

He was bending over the rear seat when he heard her get back into her Beetle and start the engine again. Just as he was reaching under the seat to fish out a bottle of Coke, intending to wash his first pill down with it, he heard the low hum of a diesel engine. His first thought was that Emma had driven off in a huff, and that alarmed him. After all, she’d promised to provide him with proof that his wife was still alive.

But, when he raised his head and looked out at the street, which seemed to be lit by stroboscopic flashes, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Emma had been right: he ought to have got a move on. He was so startled, he dropped the Coke bottle. The pills, too, slipped through his fingers. From the look of it, they really were in the programme.