Taj struggles with the gears. Where’s reverse? There it is. Pedal down. The roller doors have rattled up. A dozen men in black body armor are crouched in firing positions. Taj spins the wheel, sending the van into a slide. It’s facing in the opposite direction, driving the wrong way. Ahead, a row of police cars. Lights flashing. Armed men behind the open doors. Guns drawn.
“Ram them!” says Rafiq.
“They’ve got guns.”
“Go back!” says Syd, wiping the fogged windows, looking for some means of escape.
“We’re fucked!” says Taj.
“We got the guns,” says Syd. “We can shoot our way out.”
“They’re going to kill us.”
“I’m not going to prison,” says Rafiq. “You heard what the Courier said. A week is going to feel like a lifetime.”
Taj has stopped the van a hundred yards away from the police cars.
“You want to run, you run,” says Taj. “I’ve had enough.”
“We made a pact,” says Syd.
“We’re not the three musketeers.”
Taj opens the door. Steps out. Holds his hands above his head. Walks slowly down the middle lane, watching his shadow in the beams of the headlights. Rain pours down his face, into his eyes and mouth. He can’t hear Syd and Rafiq arguing any more.
In the next instant he’s flying. Falling. The explosion blows out the window of the van and covers every surface in a film of pink. Ball bearings punch through the seats and the thinner metal in the roof, letting the rain pour in.
Glass showers across the tarmac, landing in his hair and on the back of his neck. Fragments of metal have torn his coat, but he can’t feel any pain. Lying on the motorway, eyes closed, arms spread like a crucifix, he sucks in the oily water like a breath and feels the residual heat of the day warm against his cheek.
Ruiz’s life doesn’t flash before his eyes in a conventional or chronological sense. Events run backwards like in that movie where Brad Pitt is born as an old man and grows younger every year. All of Ruiz’s accumulated knowledge is disappearing, along with his anger and weariness. Things are being unlearned. Discoveries are being undiscovered. Painful memories are being wiped clean.
Eventually all his grey hairs and fine lines are filled in and he’s a young man again, dancing with Laura at the twilight ball in Hertfordshire. The clock keeps rolling backwards. Soon she’ll be a stranger, who could pass him on the street with no recollection of the life they’re going to share or the children they are going to raise, but for the moment they keep dancing.
These are his final conscious thoughts before the pressure wave of the explosion buckles the door of the container and blows him backwards, slamming his head against the far wall. His eardrums are bleeding. He cannot hear the paramedics shouting for bandages and plasma, or feel the needle sliding into his arm or the mask covering his face.
Someone is getting blankets to keep him warm.
“Any head injuries?”
“That’s negative. Christ, look at his hands!”
“You look after the girl.”
Ruiz can’t feel anything; instead he’s floating on a cloud of opiates, still imagining himself as a young man, spinning Laura across the dance floor, her head beneath his chin, her soft hair against his lips.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“One, two, three.”
“Watch the IV lines. Watch the IV lines.”
“I got it.”
“Bag a couple of times.”
“OK.”
Laura smiles at him. She’s standing near the entrance, waiting for the buses to take guests back to London. She points and summons him with her finger. Ruiz looks over his shoulder to make sure.
“What’s your name?”
“Vincent.”
“I’m Laura. This is my phone number. If you don’t call me within two days, Vincent, you lose your chance. I’m a good girl. I don’t sleep with men on the first date or the second or the third. You have to woo me, but I’m worth the effort.”
Then she kisses him on the cheek and she’s gone.
36
Awake now. Eyelids fluttering. Ruiz turns his head. Orange dials come into focus on a machine near the bed and a green blip of light slides across a liquid crystal window.
A nurse says something to him. She’s mouthing words.
“I need to make a call,” says Ruiz.
She shakes her head.
“If I don’t call Laura she won’t go out with me.”
The nurse mouths a question. “Who’s Laura?”
She presses the button above his head. “We were very worried about you.”
“Sorry?”
“Your hands. They’re going to be fine,” she says, still mouthing words.
Ruiz notices the bandages. They look like white stumps.
He points to his ears. “I can’t hear you. What’s wrong with me?”
“Ruptured eardrums,” she mouths. “You may need surgery.”
“Holly?”
The nurse laughs. “I thought you wanted Laura. Holly is down the way.”
“What?”
“Holly is OK. She’s fine.”
Ruiz tries to get out of bed, but the nurse puts a strong hand on his chest, digging her knuckles into his breastbone.
“They warned me about you. Said you’d be a difficult patient.”
He doesn’t understand.
“Your friends.” She straightens his pillow. “They’ve been waiting outside all night.”
“Luca?”
“Oh, he’s here. They pulled a bullet out of his shoulder, but he’s out of surgery.”
Ruiz shakes his head, not understanding.
The nurse uses a pad on the bedside table and writes:
He’s fine. Bullet removed. Recuperating.
The door opens. Joe O’Loughlin is wearing a cravat and looks even more like a professor than usual. He stands beside the bed and the two men communicate wordlessly in a language that only dogs and men can understand. He takes the notepad from the nurse, who tells them both to behave as she leaves.
Joe writes: You can’t hear. I can’t speak. We’re like two of the wise monkeys.
“You’re a monkey. I’m a gorilla,” says Ruiz, shouting at him. “I want to see Holly.”
Joe writes: Can you walk?
“Yeah.”
