Being (17 page)

‘How are we going to get another car?’

‘Well, we’re not going to
buy
one, are we?’ She looked
at me, shaking her head at my naivety. ‘We’re going to steal one, OK? And the best place to steal a car is from the car park of a railway station. Lots of cars, not many people.’

‘Right,’ I said.

She looked at me. ‘So?’

‘What?’

She sighed. ‘You’ve got the map. Find me a station.’

I looked at the map and started searching for a railway station, but I knew I was wasting my time. I didn’t know where we were. I knew we were on the A12, somewhere between Stoneham and London, but it was a long stretch of road, and there were lots of railways stations… we could be anywhere. I looked out of the window, trying to work out where we were, but there were no road signs. I looked back at the map again.

I was starting to feel really stupid now, and I didn’t understand why. Why didn’t I just ask Eddi where we were? Why did I feel awkward about it? Why did I feel embarrassed?

‘It’s all right,’ Eddi said, suddenly changing lanes. ‘You can stop looking now.’

I glanced up from the map and saw that we were heading for a turn-off up ahead. A sign at the side of the road said
SHENFIELD
, and next to it was a sign for the railway station.

I closed the map and put it away.

I drank some water.

I looked out of the window.

I knew I had to concentrate now. I had to stop thinking about what I was feeling and start thinking about what I was going to do. At some point soon, Eddi was going to
ask me to explain everything, and I had to decide what to tell her.

Did I tell her the truth?

Could
I tell her the truth?

Or did I have to lie?

That’s what I had to think about now.

Truth or lies.

By the time we’d driven into Shenfield and found the railway station, I still hadn’t made up my mind. I didn’t
want
to lie to her, and I’d been fine with the idea of Kamal telling her the truth, but that was then…

And this was now.

And, for some reason, everything felt different now.

As we entered the station car park, Eddi started looking around at the rows of parked cars.

‘What kind of car are we looking for?’ I asked her.

‘Something old, but not too old. Nothing too flashy. Just a nice easy steal. An old Escort would be good. Or a Hyundai… they’re easy…’

‘How do you know all this stuff?’ I said.

‘I’m a crook,’ she said simply. ‘I steal things. Now shut up and keep looking.’

We eventually found what we were looking for at the far end of the car park. It was a grey Honda Civic, about ten years old. No alarm, no steering lock. Out of sight of the CCTV cameras.

‘Perfect,’ said Eddi.

She parked the Corsa in the nearest free space, then told me to get an overnight parking ticket from the machine.

‘Why?’ I said. ‘What’s the point?’

‘If we leave the Corsa without a ticket, someone’s going to notice it. And we don’t want anyone to notice it – OK?’

I looked around the inside of the car. There was a lot of blood on the seats. Blood, mud… other stuff.

I looked at Eddi. ‘Shouldn’t we try cleaning up before we go?’

‘You can try if you want,’ she said, opening the car door, ‘but don’t expect me to wait for you.’

She got out of the car, shut the door, and I watched her heading over to the Civic. I waited for a moment, not sure what I was waiting for, then I got out of the car and went looking for a ticket machine. It was a big car park, and it took me a while to find a machine. Then I had to get a ticket, take it back to the Corsa, stick it on the windscreen, get my rucksack…

All in all, it must have taken me the best part of five minutes.

But even so, I was still surprised when I walked up to the Civic and saw Eddi sitting in the driver’s seat.

‘That was quick,’ I said. ‘How did you –?’

‘Get in,’ she said without looking at me.

I walked round to the passenger side and got in. Eddi was reaching in under the steering wheel now, pulling out wires from the dashboard. She had a little penknife in her hand. She worked quickly – selecting wires, stripping them, twisting them together – and in less than a minute she had the engine going. She sat up, revved the car a couple of times, took a quick look round, then calmly drove out of the car park.

∗

As we rejoined the A12 and started heading south again, Eddi asked me for her mobile phone. I took it out of my pocket and passed it over. She pressed a button, glanced at the display, then placed the phone on a shelf on the dashboard. She lit a cigarette.

‘So,’ she said to me, ‘do you think we’re safe now?’

‘I don’t know… I suppose so. They don’t know where we are, or where we’re going. They don’t know what car we’re in. They don’t know where Morris is. I suppose we’re as safe as we can be for now.’

‘You’d better start talking, then.’

I looked at her.

‘You promised,’ she said. ‘Remember? You told me you’d explain everything as soon as we were safe.’ She looked at me. ‘What the hell’s going on, Robert? What have you dragged me into?’

I started with the truth. I didn’t know if I was going to end with it or not, but it was the easiest way to begin, because it meant that I didn’t have to think about anything. You don’t
have
to think about anything when you’re telling the truth, all you have to do is tell it.

So that’s what I did.

I told Eddi about my suspected ulcer, my hospital appointment, my endoscopy. I told her about taking the bus to the hospital on my own, about getting to the hospital, showing my appointment card… walking down the endless corridors, following the signs… putting on a hospital gown, sitting in the waiting room… lying on the trolley in the small white room, watching the doctor as he inserted the needle into the back of my hand…

I told her everything I could remember.

She didn’t say anything. She just carried on driving, listening intently, hanging on my every word.

When I got to the bit about waking up in the basement theatre, I had to stop for a moment. I couldn’t speak. I was remembering how it was – waking up on the trolley… paralysed, petrified, not knowing anything. Hearing strange voices. Seeing strange things. Impossible things…

No one would ever believe it.

‘Robert?’ Eddi said.

I looked at her. She was quiet – quiet eyes, quiet face, quiet everything.

‘What happened?’ she asked me. ‘The doctor gave you a shot… then what happened?’

‘I don’t know… the doctor told me it was only a mild anaesthetic and it probably wouldn’t knock me out…’

‘But it did?’

I nodded. ‘As soon as he stuck the needle in my hand, that was it. I was out like a light. I don’t remember anything until…’

‘Until what?’

‘When I woke up…’ I paused, clearing my throat. ‘When I woke up, I wasn’t in the same place any more. I was still lying on a trolley, but I was in a different room. I had a tube down my throat. There were wires taped to my hands and my chest. I was breathing some kind of gas…’ I paused again, remembering the taste in the back of my throat… plastic, chemicals, whiteness. I cleared my throat again and carried on. ‘There were different people in the room too. There was a surgeon, an anaesthetist –’

‘Kamal?’

‘Yeah… and there were others too. People who don’t belong in a hospital.’

‘What kind of people?’

‘People like Morris.’ I looked at Eddi. ‘He was there. I didn’t see him, but I heard the others talking to him. There was a guy called Ryan. A woman called Hayes. And there was a big guy called Cooper guarding the door. Cooper and Ryan had guns.’

Eddi frowned. ‘I don’t get it. Who were they? What were they doing there?’

This was it now – truth or lie? I looked through the windscreen at the long grey road stretching out ahead of us. Did I tell her the truth or did I tell her a lie? Truth or lie? Truth or lie? Truth or –

‘Robert,’ she said impatiently, ‘what were they
doing?’

‘They were looking inside me,’ I heard myself say.

‘What?’

‘The surgeon – Professor Casing – he’d cut me open. Just here…’ I drew my finger down my belly, showing her where Casing had cut me. ‘I was lying there with a big slice in my belly, and Ryan was digging around inside me.’

‘Inside your
body?’
Eddi whispered.

‘Yeah.’

‘Christ.’ She glanced across at my belly. ‘The scar… that’s how you got the scar…’ She looked up and stared at me. ‘They cut you
open?’

I nodded. ‘I thought at first that something had gone wrong with the endoscopy… you know, I thought maybe they’d found something and they’d had to do an emergency operation. But they were talking about all
this secret stuff, about keeping it quiet and not letting anyone know… and then I saw Ryan leaning over me, and I could see the gun in his belt, and the big guy guarding the door.’ I shook my head. ‘I didn’t know what was going on.’

‘God, Robert… it must have been terrible. What did you do?’

I didn’t say anything for a moment. I needed time to gather my thoughts, to calm my lying heart. To remind myself that I wasn’t human. That I had no heart. So what did I care if I lied or not?

I gazed out of the window again. The traffic ahead of us was backing up to get through some roadworks. Cars were switching lanes, trying to find the fastest way through. Eddi didn’t bother with any of that, she just slowed the Civic, moved into the inside lane and stayed there. I wound down the window to get some fresh air, but all I got was a blast of exhaust fumes. I wound it back up again and got back to the truth.

I told Eddi about taking Ryan’s gun and knocking him out… about forcing Casing to stitch me together again. I told her about my escape from the hospital, my time with Kamal, my room at the Paradise Hotel. I told her how I’d gone into that room and lay down on the bed… how I’d doped myself up with vodka and pills… how I’d decided there was only one thing to do.

When I told her how I’d sliced open the wound in my belly, she nearly ran into the car in front of us.

‘Shit!’ she gasped, hitting the brakes and screeching to a halt. The car stalled, but she didn’t try starting it again. She just stared at me. ‘You did
what
?’

‘I cut myself open… I had to. I had to find out why they’d been poking around inside me.’

‘Why didn’t you just
ask
them?’

‘They had guns… I didn’t know who they were. All I wanted to do was get out of there. There wasn’t time to ask anyone anything.’

‘Yeah, but cutting yourself open… I mean, for Christ’s sake, Robert. How could you
do
that? Didn’t it hurt?’

Just then a car horn beeped behind us. Eddi started the car and got moving again. We inched up to the car in front of us, then stopped. Eddi looked at me, waiting for me to say something.

‘I was drunk,’ I told her. ‘I just did it. I could feel something inside me, inside my body. I had to find out what it was.’

‘And did you?’

‘Sort of…’

‘What do you mean?’

I paused again, taking a deep breath, trying to imagine what I could have found inside my body. ‘There was something under my skin,’ I told her. ‘Not just
under
the skin, but deep down inside, buried beneath all the muscles and stuff. I could feel it when I put my hand inside the wound. It felt like a… I don’t know. Like a flat piece of metal, or hard plastic.’

Eddi shivered.

‘I couldn’t get it out at first,’ I told her. ‘It was fixed to something inside me. I had to dig inside and cut it out with a scalpel.’

‘Shit,’ Eddi murmured. ‘What was it?’

The queue of traffic wasn’t moving any more, but I
don’t think Eddi was even aware of it. She was almost spellbound now. Just sitting there, staring at me, like a wide-eyed kid listening to a bedtime story.

‘What
was
it, Robert?’ she asked me again. ‘This thing you cut out of your body… what was it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I told her. ‘I think it was some kind of microprocessor… you know, like a computer chip. I don’t know… it was about the size of a matchbox… but flat. Like a credit card.’

‘A
microprocessor?’

‘I don’t know… I mean, I don’t know anything about computers and stuff, but it was that kind of thing. You know… kind of thin and plasticky and black. Shiny and hard… a bit greenish too.’ I closed my eyes, imagining this imaginary object. ‘It looked like it had loads of stuff inside it, complicated stuff…’

‘What kind of complicated stuff?’

‘Connections… little blocks, dots, lines…’

‘Like a circuit board?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Shit,’ Eddi said, shaking her head. ‘And this was
inside
you?’

I nodded.

‘Fixed
inside you?’

I nodded again. ‘It had some kind of miniature connection sockets all around the edge, little gold things… and there were wires, tiny silver filaments…’ I closed my eyes again, remembering the things I’d seen. Black things, grey things, blurred and formless. Filaments, dulled silver-white, shining dark in the light of the eye. Intricate patterns of dots and lines, circles and waves.
Fine hairs, like slender worms, moving to the flow of something invisible…

‘Where is it?’ Eddi said.

‘Sorry?’

‘This thing… where is it? I want to see it.’

I looked at her. ‘I left it behind.’

‘You what?’

‘I left it at the hotel.’

She stared at me. ‘Why, for Christ’s sake?’

I told her about the newspaper then. ‘I panicked,’ I told her. ‘As soon as I saw the story about me, I realized I had to get out of the hotel before Ryan showed up. I didn’t have time to think. I was desperate. I just grabbed a few clothes and ran. By the time I realized I’d left this thing behind, it was too late. The police were all over the hotel by then - the police, Ryan’s people… they were everywhere. I saw one of them going into my room just after I’d left.’

‘So whatever this thing is – and whoever these people are – they’ll have it back now.’

I nodded.

Eddi glanced at me, then turned back to the road. We were moving again now. We’d got through the roadworks and the traffic was beginning to get back to normal - speeding cars, lorries, vans… everyone in a hurry to get where they were going.