Sixty seconds later he was away from the main road, walking on autopilot through the network of streets that formed the route from the Three Barrels back home. The names were familiar: Ashbourne Crescent, Meadow Way, School Close. In the corner of his mind he thought it should be comforting that he was here, and not patrolling some shithole of an Afghan village. Somehow, though, it wasn’t. The street lamps dazzled him and he couldn’t walk in a straight line. He saw two young women cross the road to avoid passing him. One of them wore a T-shirt with ‘Arctic Monkeys’ emblazoned over her breasts, the other was holding a rat-like chihuahua on a lead.
Antrobus Road. Fielding Avenue. Grosvenor Place.
And finally, Lancing Way. No parked vehicles. No pedestrians. The no-parking barriers edging the pavement glowing fluorescent orange in the lamplight. Joe weaved drunkenly across the pavement and clattered noisily into one of them.
He swore, then looked up and saw a car in the road.
It was forty metres away, about ten beyond his own front door. Its headlights were on full beam, but it wasn’t moving. He squinted. It was a 4 x 4 – a Range Rover maybe? He could make out rails on the front…
Joe stopped. He didn’t know why. He found himself estimating how quickly he could get to his house. Ten seconds, at a sprint.
Palpitations. Something was making him nervous. A sixth sense, finely honed after years on the front line.
Only this wasn’t the front line. This was Lancing Way. Home.
This was paranoia. He remembered the doctor’s questions.
‘Fucking bullshit,’ he muttered under his breath. He needed to get back to the house. Sleep off the booze. Start his whole fucking disastrous homecoming all over again.
He looked down the road. The car was moving towards him. Slowly, he thought, though it was difficult to judge speed in the darkness. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and upped his pace. It was with a kind of defiance that he ignored the approaching car. So what if it was moving slowly? Probably just some John kerb-crawling for a hooker. He was in the wrong street…
Or maybe it wasn’t. He could hear the revs of the car’s engine as it increased in speed. Suddenly. Violently.
The car was twenty metres away when, still accelerating, it veered across the road towards Joe. It was ten metres away when it mounted the kerb. There was a massive clattering sound as it ploughed into the barriers, slicing through them with two wheels on the pavement and two on the road.
The headlights blinded him. Everything started to spin again. He dived to the side of the pavement, where his face scraped against a rough brick front-garden wall and his left shoulder thumped down heavily on the pavement. The stench of burning rubber hit his senses, and he was aware that the car had come to a halt just three metres forward of where he had fallen. Joe pushed himself up to his feet as it started reversing away from him, back the way it had come. Still blinded by the headlights, he sprinted towards the car. The distance between them closed to two metres. One.
The car stopped abruptly. Joe was alongside the driver’s door now, and the lights were no longer shining in his eyes. Although he was still dazzled, he managed to feel his way to the door handle and yank it.
Locked.
More revs from the engine. Joe raised one leather-clad elbow and smashed it hard against the driver’s window. The glass splintered, cobweb-like, but didn’t shatter. It needed another blow, but the car was moving forward. His vision was clearing now, and he could see through the rear passenger window.
A face was looking out at him. He recognized it, even though he didn’t notice the yellow tinge of the teeth.
And then the car was back on the road, accelerating away, the engine screaming. Five metres. Ten. Joe sprinted into the middle of the road and squinted after it, trying to make out the plates. But his vision was blurred and he couldn’t read them.
The car turned right into Grosvenor Place, out of sight; the noise of its engine disappeared.
Silence.
Joe felt his left cheek. It was wet with blood. His shoulder throbbed. On the other side of Lancing Way, the door to number 17 opened. A fat man Joe half recognized appeared, wearing a dressing gown and lit up by the hallway light behind him. ‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’ he shouted. ‘It’s half past bloody twelve at night! What you doing standing in the middle of the road? I’m calling the bloody police…’
Joe didn’t answer. He just put his head down and hurried back to the pavement. Thirty seconds later he was walking up to his own front door, inserting the key in the lock and stepping inside.
The house was quiet.
The lights were off.
Joe was dripping sweat, and breathless.
Whatever had happened out there, it had sobered him up. He locked the door behind him and, instead of climbing the stairs to bed, he hurried into the kitchen, where he found the same knife he’d taken earlier on, and which Caitlin had now returned to its usual place. Back in the front room, he pulled open the curtains of the window that looked out on the street.
No movement.
It did nothing to ease his state of mind. He wiped away the patch of condensation made by his breath.
‘Joe?’ Caitlin’s voice was timid. ‘Are you coming to bed, honey?’
‘Get upstairs.’ He threw her a dark look over his shoulder.
‘Oh my God, Joe – what’s happened to your face? What’s going on?’
‘Get Conor. Take him into our room. Lock the door. The windows too.’
Silence.
‘
‘Joe, sweetheart, you’ve been drinking. I can smell it… Joe, you heard what the doctor said…’
He turned on her, his face ablaze, the knife still in his hand. And the look she gave him, lit only by the shard of yellow light that came in from the street lamp outside, was no longer irritated, or anxious. It was scared.
‘Get upstairs,’ he said, his teeth gritted.
She nodded and stepped back slowly, her fingers spread out, pacifying him. Joe turned and looked out of the window again; seconds later he heard Caitlin thundering upstairs, and the kerfuffle as she woke Conor up and took him into their room.
And then silence again.
Just Joe’s heavy breathing, the ticking of the clock and the thumping of his heart.
He stood by the window, motionless, his eyes alert for any sign of movement. The clock chimed: 1 a.m. He felt tired, but he forced himself not to give in to it.
Maybe he
But one thing was sure. For the second time in forty-eight hours, he’d almost died. And a single question that he couldn’t answer was rebounding in his head.
Why?
EIGHT
Joe had thought that things might look better in the morning. He was wrong. As the sky grew lighter and condensation dripped down the inside of the window, people started to appear. A man walking his dog. A Lycra- clad cyclist hunched over her handlebars. The same two girls he’d passed last night, staggering home, the worse for wear. Every movement made him tense. The axe-split of a headache he was suffering wasn’t just the booze. Joe didn’t let go of the knife.
The clock chimed six times. He didn’t move. Seven. There were sounds from upstairs. Floorboards creaked. Footsteps descended. He sensed Caitlin staring at him from the door.
‘Pack a bag,’ he said.
