A Bargain Struck
Madeleine opened her eyes and the black world spun before her. She rapidly shut her eyelids, scrunching up her face, screwing her eyes tight. She emitted a low wail and opened her eyes once more. The world was still black but it was no longer rotating. She was disoriented.
“Are you alright?”
The voice made her start and she twitched nervously, seeing the stranger in the seat next to her and the world suddenly crashed in upon her. Memory returned and with it, panic, fear and confusion.
She was sitting in her car, her hands reached out and grasped the moulded plastic of the steering wheel, finding the positions at ten and two o’clock where the sheen of the vinyl was worn, fingers and palms feeling the minute indentations caused by the regular application of her hands, the depressions so small as to be unnoticeable most of the time but now the subtle change in the surface of the wheel caught her attention and she focused on it, anchoring herself to the normality of the sensation. She was sitting in her car, gripping the steering wheel, but she did not know how she got there. Her last memory was the cold, wet, hard surface of the road. After that, well, after that, everything was more than a bit murky.
“Maddy?”
Her head snapped around. She looked into the young man’s eyes, seeing nothing but shadows in the night, his eyes black and impenetrable but his voice carried a sense of worried compassion.
“Don’t call me that.” Her sister had called her Maddy when she was younger, she couldn’t get her mouth around Madeleine, but she had grown out of it as she had grown up. No one else had called her that, until she met Doug. He called her it all the time. Told her she had been aptly named, because she drove him mad all the time. Mad with love, mad with lust, sometimes mad with anger and frustration, but usually just mad. He thought about her constantly, she was his obsession, he’d said, and wasn’t obsession madness? If it was, he was happy to be crazy as a loon. Maddy belonged to Doug, whereas Madeleine had a past before she met him. Anna sometimes forgot herself and called her Maddy from time to time, but it was infrequent and she always reprimanded herself silently when she did so, felt it was like opening an old wound when the name slipped out. For a time, it had been that way, now, truth be told, it could sometimes please Madeleine when her sister forgot herself, it reminded her of when she was still a little girl who couldn’t form her words properly.
Hearing her name now, spoken by this strange young man hurt and annoyed her.
“Don’t call me that,” she warned, repeating herself.
Alex did not reply. He stared at the confused, frightened woman, searching her eyes looking for something, help, understanding. “I’m sorry,” he said, and she could tell he meant it. Again she felt the conflicting emotions of curiosity and fear battling within her and the thought wandered across her mind once more: who was he and what did he want from her?
He answered her unspoken thought as if he had read her mind and for a brief instant she thought he had, (I know how Doug died!), but she pushed the idea away.
“I’m lost. I need your help.” Alex spoke into the darkness. Wind rattled the branches overhanging the car where it lay stalled in the ditch, the moaning breeze almost obscuring his words. He looked at her, an appeal in his eyes. “Will you help me?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t believe him.
“I don’t want to hurt you Madeleine, and I’m not going to, I’m just asking for your help, just for a while, that’s all.”
“And if I don’t give it?”
“I’ll understand. I wouldn’t blame you, I wouldn’t help me if I were you. If you say no, I’ll get out of the car, I’d just ask that you don’t say anything about this to anyone.”
She stared at those dark eyes. Now she was confused, she felt the sincerity in his voice, wanted to believe it but couldn’t quite convince herself that what she heard was what he said. She said nothing in response, just stared at him, the silence stretching. She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Give…” Her voice caught and she swallowed again. “Give me the keys,” she managed to say and held out her hand.
Alex placed the jangle of metal and leather in her palm, his fingers brushed against hers as he pulled his hand back and he felt a familiar tingling sensation as their flesh touched, the feeling passed quickly as Madeleine pulled her hand back and the contact was broken, the images dissipated before they could properly form.
Madeleine pushed the key into the ignition, fingers trembling and she missed with the first attempt. She pushed it home and turned, the dashboard lights came on. The car canted to the left, near side wheels in the rutted track of the ditch running along the tarmac. Hedges pressed in on the passenger side. Madeleine turned the key and the car coughed into life, jolted forward and stalled. She sighed inwardly, holding back the urge to cry out. She took a deep breath, dropped the gear stick into neutral and turned the engine over again. This time it caught and held. Her mind was in neutral, too. She released the air held tightly in her lungs, unaware she had been holding her breath, put the car into gear and rolled forward slowly, steering until all four wheels were out of the dirt trap. She turned on headlights and brought the car to a stop once more.
An infinity of time seemed to have passed since she asked for the keys. Hands at ten and two, she tightened her grip on the wheel, felt her fingers scratch at the tiny crescent scabs on her palms. She glanced at him again, forced a hardness into her gaze that she didn’t really feel.
“Get out of the car.” She kept her voice flat, toneless, the nervous rattle of the words around her brain kept at bay, stray thoughts ricocheting around the dark caverns where her thoughts and fears intermingled. This is it! The thought fired like a human cannonball, caught in the safety netting and bounced back at her. He’s going to kill me! He’s going to take his gun and put it to my head and then he’s going to pull the trigger! She braced herself for what was to follow. Petrified by what was going to happen, but unbowed, determined. Her new found wish to live was still there, still strong but she realised that with it came responsibility. Life had been a frightening prospect for the last three years. If she were to carry on living it had to be the right way, for the right reasons. She wasn’t going to be bullied into cowardice anymore, she wanted to live, but not like that.
The bullet did not come. She did not feel the cold circle of metal pressed tightly against her temple, didn’t smell cordite or oil, didn’t sense the wetness of sweat on the grip of the pistol or feel the increase of pressure as his finger squeezed slowly on the trigger. It didn’t happen.
Her eyes had closed involuntarily, muscles contracting, flesh creasing as she waited to die. They opened at the unexpected sound.
The interior light came on as Alex opened the door, the howl of the wind rose sharply and rain spattered randomly into the car as he pushed the door wide. He had one foot on the tarmac when he looked over at her incredulous face and was struck once more by her features, the high cheek bones, pert nose and the paleness of her large eyes, even larger now with the shock of what was happening, pupils dilating in surprise. Her face framed by the long, blonde locks of her hair, tangled and knotted by rain.
He stepped out of the car, leaning down to focus one more time on her face, eyes fixed on hers. He nodded once, made to speak but changed his mind. His lips twitched upwards slightly in simulation of a smile, then he stepped back and pushed the door to. It slammed shut with a solid clunk.
Madeleine was frozen in bewilderment, her limbs and thoughts numbed with astonishment. Then she was galvanised into action. She sat upright and her foot slapped down hard on the accelerator. The engine revved noisily and she lifted her left foot off the clutch. The car bolted forwards and she peeled away from the figure standing in the rain with a screech of rubber on the soaked surface of the road. The roaring pitch of the engine altered as she changed up through the gears and Alex watched as the ruby eyes of the rear lights blurred with rain and distance until they disappeared around a bend in the lane. He stood there unmoving in the rain until the sounds of the engine were lost in the wind and hammering of the storm.
He felt a strange sense of loss now the car was lost to sight and out of range of his hearing. He zipped the green anorak to his chin and pushed himself onwards, keeping to the edge of the road where the knitted branches of the trees kept the rain to a minimum. Alone now, he felt the weariness of the last few hours weigh heavily upon his shoulders, felt the pull of tiredness at his muscles, the nagging prod of nervous exhaustion behind his eyes.
You’re alive, he told himself, and that’s what matters. You’re alive and you’re free and you’re safe, at least for the time being. There are no Technicians out here, no eyes or ears searching you out. There was nothing here. It was cold and dark and wet and lonely. It was paradise! He had no idea where he was and that was fine too.
He had to stay alert, could rely on nothing except the knowledge that The Clinic would never give up, that Shelton would not cease searching for him. What he knew, what he could do, was too important for them to stop. And he knew that what he had to do was something more than just get away from them, something more than just stay alive. It was a thought that had nagged at him, hidden away in the recesses of his mind from the moment he found the files. He’d done his best to not think about it and he’d done a pretty good job of it so far. In fairness, he’d had a lot of other things to think about, primarily in the last twenty hours or so staying alive. He couldn’t avoid the issue forever, but for a little while longer, he was going to try. And so, he walked. Head down against the rain watching his feet eat up the road. He switched his thoughts to the beautiful woman in the car. In his mind now, she was beautiful, not just pretty as he had first thought. Madeleine, who didn’t like to be called Maddy. Young, older than him of course, but still young. Far too young to have been dealt the hand she was playing. Widowed by a freak of nature, the grainy after image of his vision death made him shudder, and now older than her years, aged by circumstances beyond her control. There was a parallel with his own situation, he realised, and suddenly, irrationally, Alex missed her. His reasons for being alone were totally different to hers but there was no denying that they were both alone and fate had made their paths cross.
Would she call the police? She should, she’d been abducted and terrorised, the natural thing would be to call the police, but somehow, he didn’t think she would. In a peculiar way they had struck a bargain, he had kept his word, and she had been able to drive off, safe and alone. She wouldn’t call the police, it was a gut feeling, somehow he knew she wouldn’t do it.
Then he heard a car approaching.
The engine roared in her ears, the rumble of the car blanking out everything else in a joyous squeal of power. She was still stunned by the turn of events. “He got out!” She thought, not aware she was speaking out loud, “He just… got out!” She laughed, a throaty chuckle that was filled with relief and a release of tension. She felt light headed, drunk, almost high on her freedom. The car lurched around bends in the country lane as she drove far too fast for the wet conditions, but she couldn’t seem to slow down, the exhilaration she felt prevented her from doing so. She drove another two miles in the same intoxicated state aware only on a subconscious level that she was extremely lucky not to have met another vehicle coming in the opposite direction, before the high began to wear off.
It began with a trembling in her shoulders. A quaking that reached out through her body, spreading down her torso into her legs, her thighs quivered and the muscles in her calves spasmed. Her arms shook and sweat broke out on her palms, greasing the steering wheel. Her stomach rolled queasily and she felt nauseous. The needle of the speedometer, hovering constantly around the fifty mark dipped rapidly as the nervous reaction spread through her body and she lifted her foot from the accelerator. The car slowed and she brought it to a skidding halt on a short stretch of straight.
“Oh, Jesus!” She moaned and her hand scrabbled at the door handle. She elbowed the door wide and scrambled out of the car, one hand across her mouth. She ran around the front of the car towards the bushes at the side of the road but didn’t make it all the way. The bile rose in her throat and she doubled over, caught in the beams of the headlights and vomited thinly onto the wet road. She retched until there was nothing left in her stomach except acid. Finally, she was able to stand upright again. She spat the last foul tasting muck from her mouth and wiped a hand across her lips. She held her head up and opened her mouth, allowing the falling rain to rinse out the awful after taste of vomit.
She staggered back to the car and sat behind the wheel, pulling the door closed but cranking the window open to let in the cold air. She leant over the steering wheel and rested her head on her hands, closing her eyes for a second as she composed herself.
Behind her lids she saw him, the strange young man who’d called himself Alex. Saw the strange cast in his eyes, wild at first but then… frightened. She relived the last couple of hours, the memories spinning around like a carousel. The way he had thrown himself into her car and the two men chasing him. She saw them now and thought them odd. A man in a suit and the other in scruffy jeans, it was an odd combination when you thought about it, and she realised, she was thinking about it for the first time. If she’d been asked to describe the two men a quarter of an hour ago, or even two hours ago after just leaving them behind in the car park, she wouldn’t have been able. It was only now, afterwards, that she could see them and she knew it was not her mind playing tricks on her, imagining something that was not there to begin with. She could see the two men with crystal clarity, though she had glimpsed them for only a second and she had been in a state of panic.
The cat called curiosity stalked through her mind again, the same sensation that had plagued her throughout the last two hours, the feeling that had fought with her fears, wrestled with her very rational terror as the young man had directed her at gun point across the city and into the open country.
Were those two men police? She’d thought they were. But what if they were not? If they weren’t, who were they? And what did that make Alex?
“Ah, you’re crazy!” She said, staring at the rain caught in the headlights. Maybe she was. The two men must have been the police. She started the car again and pulled away slowly, keeping her speed at a more reasonable level.
Alex, she thought again, then reprimanded herself. Don’t personalise him, don’t think of him like that, he’s a stranger. He was a criminal of some sort, must have escaped from somewhere. He was dangerous, armed and dangerous. Just be thankful you’re still in one piece. She was, but the nagging doubts pulled at her. She was still in one piece. He hadn’t actually hurt her, had he? And he’d had ample opportunity to do so.
And how had he known Doug’s name? The thought hit her like a truck and she braked sharply. She had forgotten that. In her panic, attempting to escape and then passing out. She had blanked it from her mind. She grasped her handbag and dumped the contents onto the passenger seat. There was the photograph, the tired, creased, dog-eared snapshot of Doug. The photo she had stared at countless times, reliving the memory of when it was taken, transporting herself back to the instant she had clicked the button on the camera and caught for all posterity the memory of her husband that she now held in her hand. Only now, she didn’t look at his image. Now she turned it over and stared at the back of the stiff little card. There was no name written on the back of the photo as she knew there wasn’t. She ploughed a hand through the contents of the bag. There was nothing, not a single solitary thing with Doug’s name on it as again, she knew there wouldn’t be.
She sat, stunned for a moment, contemplating the meaning of her discovery, her mind unable to get over the stumbling block of how he could have known her husband’s name. A lucky guess? She didn’t believe in luck.
“Dammit!” She started rolling again. Looking for a place to turn. She had to know. If she didn’t try to find out, it would plague her the rest of her days. Of course, if she was wrong, the rest of her days might not be very long, but she didn’t allow herself to think that.
A T-junction came up ahead, she turned the car around. There was only one way to find out.
The sound of the approaching car cut through the mush of thoughts in Alex’s brain. He was standing at the beginning of a sweeping curve to the left. The engine note was low, the car not travelling fast, but it was very close, right around the bend, it would be in view any second. There was no time to think. He threw himself to the left, diving head first into the sodden foliage of the tall bushes as the rayed beams of the car’s headlights swept round the corner. He struggled through the thick hedge, the fingers of its twigs clawing at his clothing. The car stopped, right where he had entered the hedgerow. He’d been seen. He held his breath and didn’t move.
Madeleine saw Alex, or part of him at least, as she rounded the bend. The headlights picked up a flash of white and her eyes focused on the movement in the hedge. She saw him from the knee down as he dove through the thick vegetation. The flash of white his trainers, she would know them anywhere, being the last things she had seen before passing out. She stopped the car at the point where he had ploughed through the hedge and rolled her window down.
“Alex!” She called out. All movement had stopped, only the wind blowing now rattled the hedge.
He heard her voice and was plunged into confusion. The one thing he did not expect, above anything else, was for Madeleine to return.
“Alex. I know you’re there. Please. I… I want… to help you.”
Madeleine called to him, the words spilling from her lips before she knew what it was she wanted to say, precisely. Did she want to help him? She wasn’t sure. She wanted to know so many things, but helping him depended on the answers. If she got any answers. She could have completely misjudged him. It was insanity to come back here and offer to help him, but she had to know, had to try and find out what was going on. There was a part of her that believed he needed her help as badly as she needed to know how he knew Doug’s name. Unfounded, yes. Irrational, certainly. But she was willing to trust the feeling that was burning away in the pit of her mind, an ember that had begun to glow the moment Alex had opened the door and stepped out into the pouring rain allowing her to go free.
There was still no movement from the other side of the hedge. She called out again.
“I don’t know what sort of trouble you are in. I don’t even know if I want to know, but…” Her voice trailed off, “But, you let me go, and you didn’t have to do that, and I think that means something. I’m not sure what, maybe you can tell me? And… I’ve something I want to ask you, too. About something you said earlier.” Now she did stop. Her voice petering away to nothing. She waited.
In the thick, long grass Alex lay, the damp seeping through to his flesh, and listened as Madeleine spoke. Her words washed over him and warmed him, pushing away the coldness of the earth beneath his prone body. For the first time since discovering the truth about himself, he felt a sense of relief that wasn’t just associated with his narrow escapes of the last few hours.
The sense that he had something in common with the woman in the car, something beyond their mutual sense of loss, grew stronger.
“Alex?”
Madeleine called again, a note of question in her tone. Had she been mistaken? Was Alex really there or had she imagined it? Maybe it was someone else? She shuddered slightly and glanced at the blackness beyond the reach of the headlights. She was suddenly aware of how exposed she was, out here in the middle of nowhere. But no, she had seen his trainers, had had a good close look at them earlier, she knew it was Alex back there, it had to be.
The foliage shook and trembled. Madeleine watched as Alex parted the leaves and twigs and his face peered out at her in the dark. She said nothing, watched him silently as he emerged from the hedge, water running and dripping all around him. He nodded at her.
“Why don’t you get in?” She suggested. He held her gaze for a moment longer, smiled nervous appreciation at her and moved around the car to the passenger side.