Hard Light (23 page)

The driver looked at Krishna, then Adrian. “Hospital?”

“No, no.” Adrian shook his head and recited an address before leaning back, eyes closed. “God, I haven't spent this much time in cabs in my entire life.”

Krishna put her head in my lap. Her drug-fueled rage toward Adrian appeared to have run its course: She stared at him, glassy-eyed, before her lids fluttered and she zoned out. I turned to Adrian.

“Now what? Back to your squat?”

“No. I need to get out of London. Krish, too.”

“Fine. Just drop me off wherever. Someplace I can find a hotel.”

He took a breath, then said, “Look, I know it's a huge favor to ask, but I'd appreciate if you came with me and Krish.”

“Go with you?”

He nodded. My mental portfolio of bad scenarios expanded to include my own corpse, and maybe Krishna's, laid out on the floor of an abandoned building, or floating in the Thames. Krishna might not have been the best judge of character—her dalliances with me and Lance proved that. But her sudden animus toward Adrian unnerved me slightly.

“Forget it.” I tapped at the plexiglass window that separated us from the driver. “Hey, stop here. I'm getting out.”

The driver ignored me.

“I'm not a murderer,” Adrian insisted. “I don't have the discipline. Or the imagination.”

“Doesn't take much imagination to push someone down an elevator shaft or put a roofie in their drink.”

“I was home—Mariah and several others can testify to that. And I detest red wine—it gives me migraines. Listen—

“This is not a good place for you to be right now, Cass.” His tone became more urgent. “Poppy's death might have gone unnoticed, but that's over. People will connect the dots between her and Morven and Mallo. If there's any CCTV footage, you and I will show up. We're neither of us easy to miss. But I have an alibi. You don't.”

“So why help me out? Why not just leave me here for the wolves? It's what Mallo would do.”

“If Mallo was going to throw you to the wolves, he'd have done it when he caught you fondling the medicine cabinet. I have my own reasons for not wanting a conversation with the local constabulary. And I'm not particularly fond of wolves. Nasty hairy things.”

I remained silent and refused to meet his gaze. After a few minutes, the cab pulled over. Adrian thrust several five-pound notes through a slot for the fare, opened his door, and hoisted Krishna to a sitting position.

“Could you please offer some assistance?” he asked with a glare.

I swore and I grabbed my bag, took Krishna's other arm, and helped him maneuver her onto the sidewalk. She might have weighed only only a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she was well on her way to
being
soaking wet, by the time Adrian and I managed to get her down a snow-covered alley that ended in a cul-de-sac.

“Hold on to her,” commanded Adrian, and slogged toward the door of a garage bay.

With Krishna propped alongside me, I watched Adrian fiddle with his keys until he found one that worked. He opened the garage door and I hurried over, half carrying, half dragging Krishna. Adrian flipped a switch, and a fluorescent light flickered on.

In the middle of the garage stood a small vintage Land Rover, pale green and remarkably free of rust. One back window was cracked. Peeling decals formed an intaglio on the other, along with a membership chevron for a single-marque car club. I looked at Adrian.

“What the fuck is this?”

He withdrew his alligator cigarette case, removed an e-cigarette, tapped it against the case, and looked at me with eyebrows raised.

“Fancy a road trip?” he asked.

 

PART TWO

KETHELWITE FARM

Carry on in this systematic manner until half of your film is gone. At this point change your approach: abandon system, abandon logic, abandon sanity. Keep moving …

—William Mortensen,
Pictorial Lighting

 

28

I ran through my options. I could foray solo through London, in hopes of finding Quinn and avoiding arrest. Or I could turn myself over to the Metropolitan Police and the mercy of the British legal system. The best outcome there might be deportation back to the U.S., where I'd face questioning about a suspicious death in Maine, and also about several murders in Iceland.

Of the people I knew in London, three were dead. One was MIA. One was tending bar and could ID me in a police lineup, cropped black hair or not. One was unconscious.

And one was now offering me a way out of town.

I let Krishna slide to the floor. The cold might counter the effects of whatever she was stoned on, as long as she didn't develop hypothermia. I walked over to the Rover. Adrian sat on the driver's side, the door open beside him, and stared intently at the dashboard. I watched as he turned the key then pressed an ignition button.

There was a click but nothing else. He repeated this process a few times before he opened the glove box and pulled out a wrench. He hopped from the cab and opened the hood, peering at the battery.

“Now for brute strength.” He glanced at me. “Will you please get in the driver's seat?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“When I tell you, press the ignition button.”

He smacked something under the hood, and at his command I hit the ignition. With a wheeze the engine turned over, releasing a plume of diesel exhaust. Adrian gave me a thumbs up and hurried to Krishna on the floor.

“Now give me a hand with her,” he yelled.

Two jump seats faced each other in the back of the vehicle. We manhandled Krishna into one of these. She cursed and thrashed around, but it wasn't much of a fight against two of us. Adrian buckled her in, retrieved his backpack, and hopped back behind the wheel. I got my camera bag and slid onto the bench seat, then took the wrench from him before he could replace it in the glove box.

“I'm keeping this. Last time I got in a car with a strange guy he cold-cocked me.”

Adrian scowled, but his face relaxed as he gazed at the gash on my cheek and the starburst scar beside my eye.

“Okay, I get it,” he said. “No sudden moves. However, I thought we established that I am unlikely to kill you, seeing as I've had several opportunities to date. You said you can drive a standard?”

“Yeah, of course. Can you?”

“Being a flâneur doesn't preclude a driver's license. What about snow?”

“I grew up in New York State.”

“Excellent. This was my father's car; I haven't driven it in a while. It's got four-wheel drive—go straight up a cliff if it needs to—but the drum brakes were shite even when this was new. So use the hand brake if you have to. I'll do the first leg.”

As the engine warmed up, Adrian glanced at his mobile.

“Parts of the M4 are shut down,” he said. “Jackknifed lorry—there's a twenty-mile backup. After Exeter we might do better.”

He put the Land Rover into gear and eased it from the garage bay, let it idle as he jumped out to close and lock the door, then slid back behind the wheel.

He began to drive. The wipers scraped noisily at layers of grime and cobwebs. After a few minutes, snow was added to the mix. There was little traffic, which was a good thing. I couldn't believe Adrian had ever driven a car before, let alone an ancient four-wheel-drive Land Rover.

“Stop riding the goddamned clutch!”

Adrian ignored me and stared grimly out the window. The shocks were shot, and the bench seat had as much padding as a box spring. “It'll be better on the A303,” Adrian assured me.

“I doubt it. Where we going?”

“Cornwall.”

“Cornwall's west?”

“Southwest. If Britain's a shoe, Cornwall's the tip. If you want a vision of the past, imagine a winklepicker kicking into Mount's Bay, forever.”

“How far?”

“Three hundred miles. Five hours under optimal conditions. Which these are not. We're going to my father's house.”

“Your father? I thought he was in Tangiers.”

“Well, he didn't take the bloody house with him. Home is where you hang your head, right? Or where they hang you. I don't have much of a choice, do I? And you…”

He shrugged. “You don't really have any fucking choice whatsoever.”

I turned to stare out at a bleak sprawl of buildings: coal black, gray, rust colored, all streaked white with snow. New construction gave way to older residential towers and blocks of council flats. Ice-sheathed chain-link fences were topped by coils of razorwire and metal spikes. A group of hooded figures loped silently along the sidewalk, faces glowing blue in the darkness, and veered suddenly down an alley like a shoal of luminous fish.

A police car raced past us, sirens wailing. Adrian steered the Rover onto a side street. A short while later, we merged onto the ramp for an elevated highway, where a seemingly endless line of vehicles crept between emergency flares ablaze like roman candles. I looked back and saw a burst of marigold light bloom and immediately fade above the skyline.

Adrian glanced into the rearview mirror. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Everything.”

I got the mini of Polish vodka from my bag and gulped down a mouthful. Adrian held out his hand and I passed the bottle to him, then rolled down the window to let the snow pelt my face. The thought of Quinn coiled inside me, an adder poised to strike. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the cool glass.

“Here.” I jumped as Adrian prodded me with the bottle. “Any more?”

I shook my head and got a Focalin from my bag, chasing it with the last mouthful of vodka.

“Is that to keep you asleep or awake?” asked Adrian.

“Awake.” He held out his hand and I gave him a capsule.

It was more than an hour before the city loosened its grasp. The snow never did. Red and blue lights strobed in the corner of my eyes. Once we were stopped at a roadblock. Adrian rolled down his window, and a policewoman swept a flashlight's beam inside the car. She was heavily padded in cold-weather gear, her cheeks and nose bright red and eyelashes dusted with snow.

“Where are you headed?”

“Staines.”

The cop peered at us, then at Krishna in the back.

“Sleeping it off.” Adrian flashed the cop a grin. He stuck out a hand and watched snowflakes melt into his palm. “D'you think it's ever going to stop?”

The cop shook her head. “By morning, they say.” She drew a gloved hand across her eyes and stepped back to take in the Land Rover. “Well, you've got the right vehicle for it. Drive carefully.”

The snow changed to rain, then sleet, then snow again. The motorway looked like the aftermath of a disaster movie, cars and eighteen-wheelers everywhere on the shoulder, some with passengers huddled inside, others abandoned. I saw as many emergency vehicles spun off the road as on it. Every other exit was closed or marked
DIVERGENCE
. Adrian appeared to handle the Land Rover by force of will alone, yanking then releasing the hand brake, his hands so tight on the wheel I wondered if I'd have to cut them off if he ever stopped.

After two hours we pulled onto the A303. It continued to snow steadily, fine flakes like sand, but there was much less traffic, and I could see Adrian's shoulders relax.

“Hand me one of those fake fags, will you?” he asked. I got one from his backpack and he sucked at it greedily, then sighed. “Not really the same, is it? But then nothing is.”

He glanced into the back seat at Krishna, still out like a light, and asked me quietly, “What did you talk about? You and Poppy?”

“Not much.” I tried to gauge if he was suspicious or just wanted to assuage his grief. The latter, I thought. I could see how Poppy would cast a spell on you for life, especially if you were just a kid at the time. “Like I said, she told me she had cancer. I don't know why.”

“She's always more inclined to talk to strangers than whoever she should have been sucking up to, Nick Kent or Paul Rambali. She hates music critics.”

“Everyone hates music critics.”

Adrian fell silent. His face was haggard, his louche good looks replaced by exhaustion and heartache. His hands clutched the wheel as though it were a life preserver.

After a minute, I said, “It can fuck you up, if you meet the most important person in your life when you're sixteen, seventeen. You imprint on them, and you never escape from it. That's what happened to me.”

“Quinn?”

I nodded. Adrian winced. “Can't picture Quinn as a kid. All those tattoos and scars.”

“Those were years away.” I stared out the window at the blowing snow. “He was beautiful. Just the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.”

“Her, too,” Adrian said softly, and began to weep.

 

29

Sometime in the middle of the night we stopped at a service area. The parking lot was crowded, with the usual cadre of smokers huddled by the entrance. Adrian filled the tank while I went inside to get us some coffee and food, along with a couple of bottles of cheap red wine and a can of Foster's. When I returned, Krishna was still snoring softly.

“Christ.” I shook my head and handed Adrian a bacon sandwich wrapped in cellophane. “I want whatever she had.”

“I was thinking of waking her.”

“That's a terrible idea.”

Adrian mused on this, then nodded. “I suspect you're right.”

He cranked the Rover's heater, pulled away from the gas pump, and found a parking spot near the motorway ramp. “Do you think you could drive in a bit? I need to rest, or I'll drive into a truck myself.”

“Yeah, sure. Want to switch now?”

Adrian took a bite of his sandwich, grimacing. “I'll get us past the next few miles, where it's narrow. We can switch after that. It's a fairly easy stretch after that for a short while. Just remember to wake me before Exeter.”