at her regardless. When she tried to return it, her face fell apart.
“I think I broke my jaw.”
Will crouched next to her and gently cupped her head in his hands. “I don’t think so. You wouldn’t be able to talk.”
“I might be able to walk, if you could help me try to put some weight on my feet?”
“Are you sure?”
“If we take it easy. What happened, by the way?”
As they hobbled around the trees, Will explained about the bombs, pointing out some of the visible craters on the road. Thin streams of smoke continued to rise from them.
“I wasn’t aware of any great terrorist activity going on,” said Eli. “Were you?”
Will shook his head. This was beyond anything he had read about in the newspapers. Terrorist activity in the country’s history was sporadic; it might run to one or two bombs prior to a long period of inactivity. The peppering of one of Britain’s arterial carriageways pointed to some other organisation with a lot of money and a lot of personnel. Will wondered if the planes he had seen last night were part of it. If they were, and if they had been hunting him, then, by extension, the bombs had been meant for him too.
Sadie returned with pies from the village bakery and a newspaper. Apparently, there were few people around at this hour. And it helped that it was a Sunday. “Nobody’s going anywhere because they can’t,” she explained. “There were barricades on all the roads in and out of the village. Soldiers with guns. Everyone’s talking about the explosions.”
Elisabeth and Sadie talked while they ate. Will wolfed his pie and then returned to the vantage point in the trees. Not only must they dodge the surveillance aircraft, if that’s what they were, but now they had troops to deal with.
“Will!” Elisabeth, when he returned, looked even paler than she had directly after the accident.
“What is it?”
She was holding the newspaper open. On page three there was a photograph of Will, the one from his passport. He had had a hangover on the day it was taken. He looked startled, and his eyes seemed somehow too juicy for their sockets, as if someone had bathed them before plugging them back into his face. Next to his photograph was a picture of Cat, from the early days of her pregnancy. They had been holidaying in Greece. She was smiling and her forefinger was pointing to her tummy. The headline read:
Will tore the newspaper from Elisabeth’s hands. As he read the story, his eyes kept returning to his wife’s face. She had been so happy on that day. He remembered that shortly after he took the picture they had made love on the balcony of their hotel room while below a boy carrying a basket of fruit called out: “
Filleted.
“She’s dead then?” Will said. “What... you can’t survive a filleting, can you?
“Will, they’re looking for us. You. They’re looking for you. They’re calling it a manhunt.”
“But I–”
Elisabeth reached for him, pain turning her face grey for a second. “I know you didn’t. But they think you did.”
“She’s–”
“She is dead, Will. She is dead.”
He felt the need to run, to take off across the field, screaming until he coughed up blood. He didn’t care who saw him or how quickly he would be caught. He wanted to die. He wanted the people who were responsible for Cat’s death to die. He wanted to kill them. But he wanted to die first.
Elisabeth saw the tension in him and took his hand before he was able to act upon it. Sadie watched them, wide-eyed, her pie half-eaten and growing cold in her fingers.
“What do we do now?” he asked, weakly. Continuing their journey seemed pointless on the heels of this discovery.
“We go on,” Sadie said.
Elisabeth nodded. “How else are you going to clear your name? You have to go to Sloe Heath. Whatever it has in store for you.”
Will slumped by the foot of the tree. He couldn’t understand how he had dragged Elisabeth so far when it felt as if he no longer owned any bones, any muscles.
“We have to get going soon,” Sadie continued. “People are waking up.”
Will stayed where he was. Cat wasn’t waking up. And he doubted that he would ever wake up again. You had to go to sleep first, in order to wake up. He believed his sleeping days were over for good.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: NEW BLOOD
VERNON PICKED HIM up outside the newspaper shop on Lovely Lane. It was a cold morning. Mist saddled the railway bridge. Blocks of ochre light hung in the air where the hospital should have stood. The Shogun was the only traffic he had seen since leaving his room ten minutes earlier; he hadn’t wanted to reveal his address to Vernon.
It was as hot in the four-by-four as it was chilly in the street. A freshener hung from the rear-view mirror, filling the cab with the cloying smell of apricots. On the back seat lay Vernon’s leather coat. Peeking from beneath it was the polished tip of a baseball bat.
Vernon drove expertly through Bewsey and Dallam, flicking through the gears with fluid familiarity, never taking his eyes off the road. In his seat he leapt in and out of view as they passed beneath the orange sodium lights. Dallam recreation park was wadded with ghosts. The railway track that rose behind it was a wet, trembling line scored through the dawn sky.
“You had breakfast?” Vernon grunted.
“Yeah. Muesli.”
“Muesli. Like it. You don’t bow to convention, do you?”
“I wasn’t aware that a conventional breakfast existed.”
Vernon chuckled. He took the Shogun around the traffic island on the Winwick Road at fifty. Long Lane sucked them towards the dark streets of Orford. “Last guy helped me out was an egg and bacon man. All the time, not just for breakfast. Kev, his name was. He only ever ate egg and bacon and your usual trimmings. Thought cabbage was something you pushed around in a wheelchair.”
“Where are we going?”
“Sad case out in Grasmere Avenue. One of those little rabbit hutches with front doors filled with empty egg cartons. Tasteful, you know. Do you like Level 42?”
It was seven o’clock. Lights were going on in kitchens. Vernon swerved the Jeep around an electric milk float that bumbled into the road.
He continued: “Lynne and Gareth Morgan. They’ve got a son, Greg, who is blind. Severe learning disability, apparently. No shit, wouldn’t you?” He looked at Sean and Sean duly laughed. “Got another son, Billy. Billy the breadwinner. Dealer. Small-time. Bit of blow. Pills.
“Eighteen months ago, Lynne and Gareth had jobs. He was a taxi driver and she cleaned. They bought a car, a dishwasher, and a plasma TV on the never-never. Then they both lost their jobs. They owe fifteen grand. Hence me.”
