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.
35
The roaring in Benny’s ears was growing louder at every step. Quite faint at first, it had started the moment he drove away from the police checkpoint. The policewoman had never got round to examining the contents of his boot. Before he could open it, her assistance had been requested by a colleague in need of back-up, who was having trouble persuading a recalcitrant Mercedes driver to undergo a breath test. Benny’s pulse rate hadn’t dropped since then, and he was sweating as he climbed the stairs to his flat.
‘Know why none of your attempts at suicide has ever succeeded, Benny?’
Valka didn’t call him often. That he’d done so twice today was an ominous sign.
‘No,’ Benny replied truthfully, breathing hard. He didn’t trouble to ponder the point of the question. Valka loved staging set pieces. Whether out to impress a woman, kill an opponent or simply chew the fat, he devoted a lot of prior thought to making the greatest impact possible. His opening gambits were thus of a purely rhetorical nature.
‘Because you’re a wimp, that’s why. I still remember the first time, when that Yoko Ono slut destroyed our band. Laughable, it was.’
Valka never referred to Sandra by her real name and regularly compared her to the woman who had split up the Beatles. It was true that Marc had had no time for rehearsals and gigs once he and she were a couple.
‘The bunch who’d protected you suddenly weren’t there any more. Your best friend, your brother, was busy screwing his new girlfriend while you, you sensitive soul, were all on your lonesome. Christ, I’ve never understood how anyone could be such a mummy’s boy. But you couldn’t even do the job properly. I mean, the few pills you swallowed wouldn’t have put a cat to sleep.’ His laugh was so hearty it sounded as if he was about to slap his thigh.
Benny came to a halt. Although he was only wearing a thin T-shirt under his green bomber jacket and the janitor had turned off all the radiators because of rocketing oil prices, he felt as if he were in the tropics.
‘I know you’ve never really liked me, Benny, but I’ve always been there for you, you’ve got to admit. I looked out for you – I gave you a new life.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Benny muttered, already feeling in his pocket for the key to his flat. Only another two floors to go. The final flight of stairs to the converted roof space was carpeted in burgundy sisal that muffled his footsteps.
‘And today, if I let you leave town, I’ll be giving you another present.’
‘I thought we were quits, Eddy. The job’s done.’
‘I know, my boys just confirmed it. They say that lousy hack’s house looks like a football pitch there are so many green uniforms milling around inside.’
Valka was evidently using a satellite phone. Either that or he assumed his conversations weren’t being monitored.
Or he was simply suffering from delusions of grandeur.
Probably both, thought Benny.
‘Okay, now pin your ears back…’ Valka had abandoned his spuriously jovial tone of voice. It was like a light going out. ‘That shit in your boot – get rid of it.’
Benny nodded, distracted by the realization that the key in his hand was redundant. The door to his flat was ajar, though only just. Gingerly, he shoved it open with his foot. It was dark inside.
‘Where are you now?’ asked Valka, who must have heard the door creak.
‘My place.’
An almost imperceptible, sweetish smell greeted Benny as he entered the little hallway.
‘Good. Then pack up your things, get into your lousy car and take that garbage to Holland tonight.’ He gave Benny an address in Amsterdam and a contact. ‘If Vincent doesn’t call me back by midnight and confirm that the goods have arrived, I’ll come looking for you.’
Benny came to a halt and switched the phone from one ear to the other. ‘Midnight? No dice, I need more time.’ He turned on the overhead light. The smell was becoming stronger.
‘Tell me something, Benny. Do I sound like a hooker?’
‘No.’
‘That’s a relief, I thought you wanted to fuck me. I’m doing you a favour, letting you pay off your debts instead of perforating your balls with a nail gun, and you say you need more time? Who do you think you are?’
‘Look, Eddy, please give me a day to say goodbye to everyone.’
‘Like who, you moron? Your parents are dead, your brother hates you and your pals are in the nuthouse.’ Valka chuckled. ‘Still, I thought you’d say something like that, so I’ve laid on a little surprise for you. One that’ll underline the gravity of the situation.’
Benny shut his eyes. He had grasped the grisly significance of the smell.
36
Survivors of a plane crash, terrorist bomb, road accident or some other life-threatening occurrence are often unanimous in stating that they perceived the instant of the disaster in slow motion. It’s as if the explosion, fireball or collision has torn a hole in time or even brought it to a stop. Marc instantly grasped the reason for this perceptual phenomenon: the moment a lethal threat presents itself, the human brain is incapable of absorbing multiple impressions simultaneously, still less of sorting out the sequence of events.