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
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
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.
So what do I do with it?
The loft is close and humid, too airless for me to think. I go to the open window. Beyond the grapevines and woods, I can just make out the lake, silver against the darkness. Seeing it gives me a sudden sense of purpose. Mathilde won’t be here for a while yet, and I promised myself I’d swim in it once the stitches came out.
This is my last chance.
I don’t bother with the lamp as I descend from the loft, trusting to familiarity to negotiate the wooden steps. Moonlight floods through the open barn doors, illuminating the crumbling concrete I became so paranoid about. I barely give it a thought as I pass by on my way outside.
