Dirty White Trainers
Madeleine turned the wheel to the left, foot rising from the pedal only fractionally and the car screeched out of the car park into the main road. Alex was thrown into her as the car lurched heavily on its offside wheels, the back end skewing out, Madeleine barely keeping control of the car. The wheel turned in her hands again and she felt the weight of Alex’s body lift. Behind them, a dark blue van screeched to a halt, smoke pouring from its wheel arches as the driver executed an emergency stop. The van was shunted from behind, the second car not stopping so smartly, and the van came to rest, blocking the exit of the car park.
In front of the saloon, the one approaching car swerved, mounting the pavement in an attempt to avoid colliding with Madeleine, its near side mirror shearing off as the car scraped a lamppost.
“Oh my God!” Madeleine screamed out, eyes closing involuntarily as she saw the car heading towards them before the car responded to her frantic shuffling of the steering wheel and they were once more on their own side of the road. She was aware of the other car swerving and glanced instinctively in her door mirror in time to see the car scrape the lamppost. “Oh my God!” She cried again and then repeated it over and over to herself like a mantra. “Oh my God! Oh my God! OhmiGod! OhmiGod!” She slowed down, foot finding the brake pedal.
“No!” Alex shouted. “Keep going!” His voice was ragged with the effort of avoiding the two killers on his trail and the expended energy made his voice hoarse.
Scared out of her wits, Madeleine did as she was told. She spared Alex a glance, saw the wild look in his eyes and accelerated away from the accident she had caused.
The rain was sheeting down, torrents of water blew against the car, making vision almost impossible. Madeleine flicked the wipers onto fast speed, the rubber batting back and forth, hardly helping. Her heart hammered in her chest, making the speed of the wipers seem slow in comparison. She wanted to stop the car, get out and run, but she could feel the point of the gun at her side. Every time she slowed down, the point jabbed her again, insistent. She wanted to scream, but there were no words just an insane babble scrabbling at the back of her throat. She bit down hard on her tongue to stop her self from succumbing to the temptation. If she screamed now, she would lose what little control she had over the car and they would crash. How they hadn’t already amazed her beyond belief. The roads were remarkably empty but visibility was so bad and the tyres had almost no grip. The pain of her teeth clamped on her tongue made her eyes water but the scream was kept at bay.
A junction was approaching, the lights red. Two cars waited to cross. She lifted her foot. Alex, his attention focused behind them automatically prodded her ribs with his finger.
“I have to, there’s a junction!” He heard the words, dragged his eyes from the rear screen. The blue van was preventing the two Technicians from following them. He saw the red light approaching through the curtain of water rippling across the windscreen. Watched for traffic passing through the lights, saw none and said, “Keep going.”
“What? Are you crazy? The lights are red!” She changed down a gear, applied the brake more heavily. “You’ll get us both killed.”
“There’s nothing coming.”
“You can’t know that!”
“Keep driving.” Alex leaned forward, she felt his breath on her cheek, hot.
“I don’t want to die!” The sentence leapt out of her mouth unbidden, five words that had meant little to her for so long, but which now erupted from her with venom. The stubborn streak of survival which lay at the heart of her being, the light that had almost blown out when Doug died but which had refused to be snuffed out, had flickered and guttered at the edge of existence, now glowed brightly. She tramped hard on the brake, the second of the waiting cars looming up in front of them.
“Neither do I!” Alex grabbed the wheel and shoved hard to the right. The car responded, skidding out into the right lane. Madeleine’s foot slipped off the brake pedal and the car juddered around the stalled vehicle in front of them. Madeleine was thrown against the driver’s door, banging her head on the glass. The breath exploded from her lungs at the sudden sharp pain as Alex tugged back on the wheel straightening the car’s trajectory. “Go!” He screamed in her ear and she pushed her foot down hard on the accelerator, hands grabbing at the wheel as Alex released it. The back end swung out again and the rear wheel hit the kerb. Madeleine righted the car and they were suddenly out in the middle of the junction, car bucking like a bronco. She moved up through the gears as the horrifying sound of a truck’s horn blared loudly through the car, drowning out her shout of terror. Her eyes closed once more in anticipation of the impact, her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel, nails digging into her palms, leaving crescent shaped incisions in her flesh. And then they were through, the twenty-tonner’s horn blaring out again in anger as it raced through the crossroads behind them.
Madeleine opened her eyes, shoulders still hunched in expectance of a bone breaking, organ popping crash to find she was still alive. She blinked rapidly, still not daring to breathe, clearing her vision of the image of death to see the road ahead still awash with rain but clear of traffic. Her foot was still heavy on the accelerator and she slowed, not much, just enough. In the seat next to her, Alex said nothing, just breathed a heavy sigh of relief. That was when Madeleine began to tremble.
The man in the grey suit slapped the steering wheel in frustration. He got out of the car and began shouting at the van’s driver. The man stared at the damage to the rear of his van made by the car behind. The driver of the other vehicle was also out of the car and they stood in the pouring rain examining the extent of the damage.
The back packer called to the man in the grey suit, pointed across the car park towards another exit. The man nodded, rain dripping off his nose and returned to his car, he unhooked the radio from its rest and flicked a switch. His call was answered and he gave a terse report of the incident.
The shakes seemed to have taken hold of Madeleine, the trembling spreading from her hands, still gripped fiercely onto the steering wheel, transmitting up her arms, her shoulders shuddering. Her teeth chattered as her nerves responded to the aftermath of the adrenalin rush and the dawning of how close she had come to having her life ended sank into her. She could feel the eyes of the stranger on her face, wanted to tell him to stop looking at her. She wanted to stop the car, make him get out and then she wanted to drive away, fast. But she was a realist, had been ever since Doug died and she knew that was not going to happen. Visions of death flickered behind her eyes, a silent cinema show of horror that was halted by the stranger’s voice.
“I think you can slow down now.” He had watched the rear view mirror, seeing nothing but the weather for the last two minutes. Not a single car had come into view. He saw also, the white knuckles of the woman’s hands, the tenseness of her muscles, the almost blank look in her eyes. He knew she could not drive for much longer without having an accident. He’d survived this long, against the elements and now against two Technicians, how he’d avoided capture in the terminal, his struggle with the back packer, was no more than a blur right now, but somehow he had managed it. It wouldn’t be right for it to end now, in a car accident. They had to slow down. He spoke again, repeated his sentence.
Madeleine didn’t register the words the first time Alex spoke. A noise filtered through to her brain, a jumble of sounds that meant nothing to her. He spoke again and this time the medley of confused babble untangled itself in her head. Her foot lifted from the accelerator and the mists in her brain cleared somewhat. She stared through the windscreen, smeared with its own mist and realised she had no recollection of the drive since the traffic lights. She reached out, un-hooking one hand from the steering wheel, a short flash of cramp through the muscles, and turned on the fan, the low whirr of the motor rumbled beneath the sound of the rain drumming on the car. The mist began to clear.
“Turn off the main road,” Alex instructed.
Madeleine looked at him. “Where?” Again, a strange feeling was overtaking her. The sound of the young man’s voice instilling in her not the bone shaking fear she expected, but a quality that she did not recognise in herself, curiosity. She had been curious about nothing in the last three years. She looked into his eyes, dark and penetrating and saw no malice in them. She was more than a little confused.
“Next left,”
Twilight was creeping over the grey, wet sky and Madeleine switched on headlights, their beams turning the rain into silvery threads. She took the next left hand turn and they were off the main road.
“Turn again, next right.”
Again Madeleine did as instructed. Where was he taking her? She thought. A little of the old fear returning. The rational part of her mind still telling her this was all going to end unpleasantly. She followed his instructions for the next quarter of an hour, becoming quite lost in the process.
In the passenger seat, Alex delivered directions without thought. He did not know where he was, just knew he had to find a safe haven where no one from The Clinic could find him. He figured that if he did not know where he was going, there was no way anyone else could either, and so, he barked out instructions, left, right, left again.
They had left the city behind them, heading into a suburban wilderness. Darkness encroached upon the windows of the car, hiding the day behind tinted shadows. He felt himself relax fractionally. His muscles ached still, but he was only now aware of the pangs in his legs and arms and shoulders. The adrenaline that had coursed through him along with the tension and panic and fear, had left him drained.
He looked at the woman driving the car. Shadows cast a blanket over her profile but he could see enough in the reflected light from the dashboard instruments to know that she was pretty, perhaps even beautiful. He could see also, the strain in her features, the tenseness with which she held herself rigid in the seat, arms stiff, hands gripping the wheel too tightly. She was frightened. Of him. He wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t funny. If only she knew. He suddenly wanted to tell her, tell this pretty woman everything. But how could he? He didn’t know everything and what he did know was unbelievable, unless you knew it to be true. And how could he expect her to believe him, to understand, even if his story was not so fantastic. He saw himself then as he must look to her, tired and aching in the passenger seat. Dirty and wet, mud streaked and splattered. Unshaven, he rubbed a hand self consciously over his chin then over his face and through his hair. His fingers touched the small cut over his eye, felt the bruising there, caused by the branch of the tree a million years ago. Hair dishevelled and awry. Eyes wild with panic, perhaps not now, but certainly before. He sighed inaudibly. It was no wonder the woman was petrified. Who wouldn’t be? And didn’t he have a gun? His hand was still in his pocket, still pointing at her ribs. She felt the same way he did, he realised, that she was going to die. A day that had started off pretty ordinarily for her, he imagined, had taken a sudden wrong turn down the lane of chaos and terror. And he was the cause of it all. He felt sick inside. Sick that he could so easily and suddenly change, become what it was that he was running away from. He was being hard on himself, he had been forced into the action he had taken, kidnapping… he stopped the thought in its tracks, the word giving him pause. He mulled it over in his mind, searched for alternatives, came up with abducting, which he found even more disturbing, before carrying on. He had kidnapped the woman and was terrorising her, albeit unintentionally. He felt physically ill. He had to show that he meant her no harm, tell her.
“What’s your name?” He tried to keep his voice light and unthreatening.
Madeleine took her eyes off the road for an instant, looked at Alex and then stared back at the darkness ahead. At first he thought she was not going to answer and then her lips moved and she mumbled a word. Alex did not hear what she said.
“What?”
“Madeleine.” She refused to look at him, spoke to the glass of the windscreen.
“It’s a nice name,” he said, trying to put her at her ease.
In the driver’s seat, Madeleine stiffened.
Alex felt awkward, said nothing else for a second or two, felt the awkwardness reach across the gap between them, felt it change, become something different, more tangible as the feeling reached Madeleine, metamorphose into a fear that he was trying to avoid.
“Madeleine what?” He asked. This time she did look at him, eyes staring at him in the darkness of the car’s interior, piercing him with a glare of indignation. She did not answer, only stared at him for an uncomfortably long instant before giving her attention back to the unfamiliar road.
Alex felt himself blushing in the dark, wanted to turn his eyes away from her but he could not and suffered her withering glare. There was a handbag on the back seat. He leant back over the seat and grasped the strap of the bag. He took his hand out of his pocket, forgetting that he was supposed to be holding a gun. He pulled the bag over the seat, dropping it into his lap.
From the corner of her eye, Madeleine saw him pry open the clasp of her handbag. She too, her head spinning with myriad thoughts, failed to realise that Alex no longer had his hand on his gun, but then she had no reason to doubt that he had indeed got a gun or would fail to use it if she suddenly tried anything foolish. An anger bubbled up within her, rich and thick, encompassing everything that had occurred in the last hour. She watched as Alex opened the handbag and began shuffling through its contents. She felt violated. More so than by anything else the stranger had done since throwing himself into her car. That bag was her personal domain. It contained nothing of consequence and everything that was important about her. It was like being raped, seeing his fingers searching through the debris the bag contained. The cheque book and credit cards, a make-up compact, brush, tissues, an old, dog-eared photograph of Doug. Everything and nothing, nothing and everything. The anger bubbled over.
“Whyte!” She spat. “My name is Whyte!”
The venom in her delivery was wasted on Alex. He had felt nothing when he picked up the handbag, nothing when he opened its clasp. And it all felt wrong. He was expecting to feel something, see something, had unconsciously prepared himself for the familiar creeping sensation that preceded his insights into the person he was reading, experiencing. The initial blankness threw him for a moment, his world was knocked out of kilter. He had been prepared for anything, except nothing. He picked up the cheque book, creased in the middle from being folded to fit into the bag, let his fingers stray over its cover, along the crease. He opened the cheque book, lifted it up closer to his face so that he could see the name printed on the first unused cheque in the meagre light inside the car. Mrs. M V Whyte. He glanced over at Madeleine, looked at her hands on the steering wheel, saw the slim band of gold on her left hand.
“I’m Alex, Madeleine. I’m pleased to meet you.” The absurdity of the moment was lost on Alex. He meant what he said. If Madeleine had not been in the car park, had not been opening her car door when she was, he would be dead now, or captured at least and that was the same thing as far as he was concerned.
“I don’t care who you are!” She answered, the resolve of her anger was giving way once more to fear. A thought flashed through her mind. Now she knew his name, she’d read books, seen films, watched the news and read the papers. She felt more afraid than before. If she knew his name, didn’t she know too much? A cold ball of dread formed in her stomach. Her newfound will to live rebelled at the thought. She could not even kid herself that if she were to die she would be re-united with Doug, she had stopped believing in God three years ago. Dead meant the end. Dead was worm meat, plant food. Dead was gone, forever. But right now, at this instant, she was still alive, and as much as she hated herself for being like she was, alive was better than being compost.
“What do you want from me?” She forced the question out of her mouth through gritted teeth.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, “I mean you no harm, really!” He could tell she didn’t believe him, and he didn’t blame her. He needed a foot in the door, needed to win her confidence, it was important to him. After the way he felt, knowing what he was doing to her, he had to reassure himself it was unavoidable and that his hijacking of her and her car was a last resort borne of desperation and not something that was an intrinsic part of his nature. He had to convince her he was not what she must think and in so doing, convince himself.
“I know you don’t believe that, believe me. I understand. I wouldn’t either. But it’s true, I really don’t mean you any harm. I just need your help, just for a little while, and then I’ll be gone, you’ll never see me again and…” He faltered, the words drying in his throat. It wasn’t what he was trying to say, he couldn’t articulate what he was feeling inside, couldn’t explain it well enough. “. . . And you can forget about me and get on with your life.” He shut up, saying no more, waiting for her reaction.
Madeleine listened to him speak, he suddenly sounded frightened and lost, not at all like a rapist or killer or whatever he was. And what was he? Who were the two men chasing him? Police? Probably. And if they were, he must be a criminal of some kind. It was dangerous to think like she just had. She mustn’t think of him as lost or frightened, vulnerable. He might be psychotic. Maybe even schizophrenic. She was not helping herself, thinking thoughts like that.
“Where are you taking me?” She struggled to keep her tone neutral, no inflection at all, nothing to give away her inner turmoil.
Alex didn’t answer her. He didn’t know. He changed the subject.
“Where’s your husband?”
Madeleine dug her fingers into her palms again, reopening the small wounds there. Alex saw the muscles twitch in her cheek, sensed the raw nerve he had hit with his question.
“Dead.” Madeleine said finally. The lack of emotion conveyed in those four letters was in direct contrast to the struggle evident in her features, in the tenseness of her muscles.
“I’m sorry,” Alex muttered, suddenly embarrassed.
“Screw you!” Madeleine shouted violently, eyes blazing with hatred at Alex. “You didn’t know him, never met him! How can you be sorry? You know nothing about sorrow.”
Alex recoiled in his seat, her sudden verbal explosion like a physical slap in his face. Madeleine recovered herself, her insides a mixed bag of jumbled emotions, anger, hate, fear, pain. Her foot pressed down sharply on the accelerator as if she could leave behind all the torment and break free from its chains that bound her. They were on a winding road, heading into the countryside, houses and habitation being left behind along with the shackles of memory. The tyres skidded on wet tarmac as Madeleine accelerated into a bend and she struggled with the steering wheel as they crossed the broken white line into the other lane, branches hanging heavily with rainwater drooped over the lane and scraped against the roof of the saloon as they emerged from the turn and she righted the car.
The handbag had fallen off Alex’s lap, contents spilling out. He reached down to pick up the bag as Madeleine slowed the car again, the rush of blood in her ears receding as the relative calm of her rationality exerted its pressure over her anger and fear.
Alex scooped up a handful of detritus from the floor. His hand closed over the faded old photo of Doug and he was transported in an instant to that other place in his mind. The feeling that had eluded him when he first opened the handbag returned with a vengeance. He was no longer sitting in the car next to Madeleine. He was with Doug. The darkness of the early evening greyed out, became the polarised light of photographic negatives.
He was strapped into a seat, instrument panels flashing at him, rain thundering down, wind whipping viciously tossing the aircraft about the black sky like dice in a shaker. He was thrown forward, the straps of the safety harness biting into his shoulders, pulling tight across his chest, forcing him back into the seat. His hands struggled with the wheel and he felt the nose of the ‘plane dip as a pocket of air seemed to deflate as the propeller cut through it. His muscles strained to lift the ‘plane out of its dive, the whine of the engine increasing, blocking out the noise of the storm. On the panel, the altimeter spun at a rate of knots. He could feel the veins standing out on his forehead in the effort of controlling the descent. There was a blinding flash as lightning skittered across the sky and all the instruments went dead. The ‘plane nose-dived instantly. The bulk of the hillside rushed up to meet the tumbling craft and he shouted out in the instant before the impact, “Maddy!”
In the car, Alex’s fingers opened involuntarily and the jumble of credit cards and tissues and the photograph slipped from his hand. The rainy night remained, black again now, the raw umber of his vision replaced by the sweeping darkness crossed by wiper blades. The shout echoed around the car and Madeleine started with a yelp of shocked panic. Her foot automatically slapped the brake pedal and the car skidded on the wet surface of the road, fishtailed nauseatingly as she fought desperately with the steering wheel. The car veered over towards the high hedge bordering the lane and the near side wheels slipped off the tarmac into the channel of sodden dirt running along the side of the road. They shuddered to a halt as the engine stalled and she lunged forward, carried by her own inertia. Her arms straightened and pushed her back against the seat with a huge sigh of relief.
Alex too, was thrown forward and he cracked his forearm against the dashboard.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She gasped through heavy breaths, staring at Alex in the passenger seat. He stared at her numbly for a second. She felt the paralysis of his shock and before she knew what she was doing she had opened the car door and was dragging herself out of her seat. This was her chance to escape. She didn’t know where she was, or if she could evade him for long, but she had to try. Her heel scraped tarmac as she pushed herself out into the night. The rain hit her with refreshing force and the cool wind of the December weather cut through the thinness of her clothes but she did not have time to notice any of it. She slammed the door of the car, using the leverage it had given her to jump start her run.
She had raced no more than four or five paces when she heard the passenger door open behind her.
“Wait, Madeleine, please!” Alex called out to her, his voice still thick with the memory of his vision. She paid no heed to his cry. If he was going to kill her, so be it. But she wasn’t going to take it lying down. He had a gun, but that didn’t matter anymore. She was running for her freedom. If he shot her, it would have to be in the back. She braced herself for the impact of a bullet. She did not know what to expect. Would it be painful? Would she even feel it? Or would she be dead before the pain could reach her brain?
Alex saw her run. He shook himself from his lethargy, called out to her, but she ignored him. He shouted again, the words spewing from his mouth without thought.
“I know how Doug died!”
The effect was immediate. She was cut down as if from a blow with an axe. She stumbled and fell to the slick, black road, hands out in front of her to break her fall, mind freezing at the sudden mention of Doug’s name. The wind went out of her, air expelled from her lungs in a convulsive sigh, one thought repeating itself over and over in her mind. How could he know Doug’s name?
She heard the slap of his feet on the road, felt the splash of rain on her face. She tried to turn her head, see him, look in his eyes, but her head was heavy and her eyelids wanted to close. She struggled against the wave of darkness. But it was to no avail. She saw his feet, dirty white trainers. They stopped beside her head, her eyes read the maker’s name and then she saw nothing at all, relaxed back into the folded arms of darkness and passed out.