Mystery Man (29 page)

'Go on past, slow,' I said.

There was just enough time to see them move towards a doorway; it was the rear entrance to some kind of commercial premises.

We turned the corner and I counted along to where I supposed the front of the building was: a restaurant called Comanche. I instructed the taxi driver to pull up just a little short of it. I now had a perfect view of two tables sitting in the large bay window, to one of which Alison and Max Mayerova were being shown.

Menus were distributed.

Wine was ordered and delivered.

I could see Alison's face, but not Max's. She seemed to be smiling a lot.

The taxi driver said, 'Meter's running.'

'That's fine.'

Big glasses of wine. A toast.

The driver said, 'Do you want to tell me what this is about?'

'No,' I said.

'Only if you're some sort of nutter and you're intent on murder or you're stalking someone, it could rebound on me.'

'I'm not a nutter,' I said.

'And if you don't mind me saying, you look like you've been sleeping outdoors and you're a bit ripe and I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't have a penny to your name.'

'I have money,' I said.

He nodded. He rolled the window down. He lit a cigarette. 'So is it your wife and this slick wanker in a Ferrari?'

'Something like that,' I said.

'Happened to me, except it wasn't a Ferrari, it was a Volvo. She was easily impressed. You just going to watch, or are you going to go after him with a wheel brace?'

'It's more complicated than that.'

'Because I have a wheel brace.'

'No, it's fine, honestly.'

'One whack, he'd be down. But then you'd have to do her as well. Chuck it into the river, they'd never find it, it'd be their word against ours, and they'd be brain-damaged.'

'No, really.'

He looked at me in the mirror again. 'That's good. See, I used to be in law enforcement.' He took a draw of his cigarette. 'Well, to be absolutely accurate, it was just enforcement. Debts and kneecaps, back in the good old bad old days, you know what I mean? Back then the cops never caught anyone, but these days they'd be all over you like a rash. I don't need that. Meter's still running.'

'It's fine,' I said.

An hour passed. Food was served. More wine was drunk. One bottle. Two. My driver grew fidgety. He told me about the last wise guy who'd stiffed him on a fare, and how he wasn't out of hospital yet. In fact, in my rush to leave No Alibis I had neglected to lift my wallet, and my keys, and my mobile, or any form of identification. Growing up, I had been aware of the local tradition of
doing a runner,
but under these circumstances it would have been laughable. My charge up Botanic Avenue had been my equivalent of an Olympic marathon; even someone as round as my taxi driver would appear as nimble as a gazelle up against me. He would squash me like a bug.

'Well, would you fucking look at that?' he snapped suddenly.

'What?' I leaned forward. Worries about my long-term health had shifted my focus away from the restaurant window. I could see Max sipping his wine; but the seat opposite him was empty. '
What . . . ?
Where'd she . . .?'

'Did you not see it? She got up, probably away to the ladies'. Soon as she was gone, he picked up her glass, turned to the window so the other diners couldn't see, put something in her bloody drink.'

'Seriously?'

'Swear to God. Like a powder. Swished it around. The fucking scumbag.'

I nodded enthusiastically. 'The fucking scumbag.'

'What do you want to do? You want me to call the peelers?'

I shook my head.

'You fucking wise?'

'We have to see what happens.'

I was being inclusive. He seemed to thrive on it.

'The fucking, fucking scumbag.' I could see the pulse beating rapidly on the side of his head. He looked back at me. 'I know what you're thinking, she's made her bed, now she can lie in it.'

Alison returned, all smiles. She drank. Dessert was served. She drank some more.

She was giggling an awful lot. Then she was resting her head in her hands, still nodding at him across the table, but definitely affected.

'She's certainly a looker,' the driver said. 'So was my wife. From a distance. Up close, not so hot. Up close, she looked like someone had punched her, though I never did. But fucking drugging someone, that takes the biscuit.'

Alison reached for her glass again, and knocked it over. She was all apologies. She was in tears. He reached across and held her hand.

I seethed.

Wheel brace, wheel brace, wheel brace, wheel brace . . .

'He's one fucking smooth cookie,' said my driver.

Max paid the bill. They got up. Max helped Alison on with her coat. She staggered. They disappeared from the window. My driver, without waiting to be told, reversed the car back to the alley entrance and turned in. He sped along past the parking bay where Max's Ferrari was still sitting, with a black Laguna now alongside. He pulled into an open and empty double garage, expertly turned the car and sped back down the alley, stopping just short of the bay, so that we were idling like any other taxi for hire by the time Max and Alison emerged from the rear exit.

Alison could hardly stand.

She clung on to Max. Then she threw up.

The taxi man looked back at me. 'What are you waiting for? You're not going to actually let him go through with it?'

I shook my head. My hand was on the door handle. I could be upon them in seconds. I loved her. I loved her deeply. But I still didn't quite move. What if Max had a gun? If he was exposed now, in the midst of carrying out his latest murder, and particularly by me, then surely he would take his opportunity to finish us both off? Was there any point in us both dying? I was
defenceless.

The taxi man gave me an exasperated look. 'If you're not going to, I'll bloody—'

'Wait. Look.'

The driver's door of the black Laguna had opened, and a huge man in a too-tight leather jacket and black jeans emerged. I thought that maybe he wanted to help, and that it might be instructive to see how Max reacted to him. They exchanged words while Alison threw up again. But then the new guy suddenly took a firm grip of Alison's arm with one hand and opened the back door of his own car with the other. He quickly bundled her into the vehicle, slamming the door behind her, before nodding across at Max and jumping back into the driver's seat.

'What the fuck?' said my taxi driver.

'What the . . . ?' I said.

The Laguna reversed out of the bay and moved past us. As it did, I ducked down.

'That son of a bitch,' said my driver incredulously, 'that son of a bitch has drugged her and now he's fucking passing her on to someone else. That's fucking trafficking! Can you fucking believe that?'

Ordinarily, no.

In this case, absolutely.

I wasn't sure at what point Alison's captor realised he was being followed. Most likely, it was a gradual thing. It was a fine summer's evening but traffic was light, making it more difficult to keep ourselves hidden, particularly because the driver ahead of us did not seem to be absolutely clear of where he was going. He stopped several times, and appeared to be examining street names, and then particular houses. He would reverse, and peer out, and then circle. After a while, and perhaps noticing us mirroring his every move, he appeared to change his mind and began to drive out of the city.

Out on the open road, though, there was no hiding place for us. The car ahead began to increase in speed, and we kept pace. When we hit a stretch of dual carriageway, Alison's captor overtook quite recklessly. But there was also a curious politeness to it. He indicated when he moved into the fast lane, and then he signalled again to move back. My driver did the same.

We passed through East Belfast, through Sydenham, on to Holywood, then veered off the dual carriageway and up into the Craigantlet Hills. The road became narrow and twisting, ditches and hedges on one side, stone walls and sharp drops on the other. My heart is usually in my mouth whenever I go over speed bumps, and here we were literally taking flight on certain humps, yet I seemed immune.

My driver drove with his window down and his elbow resting half out. The fucking monster isn't even taking her home!' he raged. 'He's taking her out into the country, he's going to kill her, he's going to bloody kill her and dump the fucking body! Well we'll see about that, we'll see about that!'

We were going so fast that the wind was howling in, carrying with it pollen and germs and bees. Yet I did not sneeze once. Even a few days ago I would have been traumatised – a
speeding
car, bugs, open spaces, trees, cows, fleas, ploughs, wheat – but now none of these perils seemed to be impacting on me. Perhaps there was a long-overdue sea change going on in my physiology, a kind of post-pubescent puberty in which long-held intolerances were suddenly vanquished.

Or I was just quietly sliping into a coma and my senses were dulling.

Or adrenaline.

Or love.

I'd never had love. Maybe that was what it did for you. It turned you around and made you less frightened of wasps. Maybe Chris de Burgh had it. Maybe he had also been afeared of trees and bushes and wildebeest until he found love. Or maybe it wasn't the finding of love, but the fear of once having found it, it being taken away that changed you. Taken away, stolen away,
murdered.
The way my Alison was being taken by this monster. The Creature from the Black Laguna. She was lying sick in the back seat, unable to help herself. She had to rely on someone else to save her, her hero, her prince; a flawed prince who had to overcome previously insurmountable obstacles like pollen to rescue her. I had to step up and be counted.

Meanwhile, my driver
rocked
.

Now that the chase was acknowledged, now that it was
official
, he kept on her captor's arse. Bumper to bumper at
speed
. More than once we scraped along a dry-stone wall, several times we narrowly avoided death by coming blind over a rise and almost smacking into a slower-paced truck or tractor.

And then, when we came upon a long, straight, downward stretch, Taxi Driver upped the ante. Another two minutes and we would be off the hills and into built-up Dundonald where our chances of losing him in traffic would immediately multiply.
I
could see it.
He
summed it up more succinctly by crying, 'It's now or fucking never!'

He pressed the pedal to the metal.

He sped up beside the Laguna on the wrong side of the road.

For a hundred yards we raced side by side.

Then my driver suddenly threw his vehicle to one side, knocking into the Laguna on the front right-hand side with just enough force to push it off course and send it crashing through a farm gate and careering across a field of sprouting cauliflowers.

My driver screeched to a halt.

He reversed at speed.

He turned into the field and gunned the motor towards our enemy. Vegetarian shrapnel sprayed up all around us.

The Laguna had come to a halt about a hundred metres in, its front wheel buckled and useless.

'Now we fucking have you!' my driver shouted as we skidded to a stop parallel to the driver's door. He sprang out with surprising agility. 'You get
her
,' he snapped, 'leave him to fucking
me
!'

He hurried around to his boot and yanked it open. He removed the wheel brace. The Laguna's driver's door was just starting to open, but my driver struck first, smashing through the window and braining the creature at the same time.

'You fucking sick fucking fucker!' my driver yelled.

I walked across to the Laguna and pulled the back door open. Alison was lying face down on the seat; she had been sick everywhere. She groaned. I dragged her out and she flopped down into cauliflowers.

'Please . . .' she mumbled, 'just leave me . . . just let me lie . . .'

I pulled her and I prodded her until she managed to get to her knees. She threw up again. I got her under the arms and whispered encouragement in her ear and she told me to
fuck off and leave me alone
, which wasn't the reaction I wanted but was a good indication that she was still Alison, that I wasn't losing her. I grabbed her under the arms and dragged her back to the taxi. All the while I heard a kind of a slapping sound; it sounded like Sylvester Stallone beating a side of frozen beef in
Rocky
. The monster would not look very pretty by the time my driver was finished with him. He might not even be alive.

I preferred not to look.

I faint at the sight of blood.

One advantage of coming down off the Craigantlet Hills was that the Ulster Hospital was literally only a few hundred metres away. It meant we were there in seconds rather than minutes, especially with the way my man drove.

We pulled up in the emergency parking bay. My driver looked back at Alison, and then at me. His face was sprayed with blood. So was his shirt. And his hands. He looked like he'd had a bath in an abattoir. He was smiling. He was clearly insane. Yet he had saved my girl's life.

'That'll be sixty-seven pounds sixty,' he said.

I stared at him.

He stared back.

Alison groaned.

My driver winked. 'Only rakin',' he said. 'You couldn't pay me for
that
! Like a walk down memory lane! Get her in there, get her sorted.'

He put his hand out to me. It was thick with blood, and mud, and cauliflower, and a tooth was sticking out of one of his knuckles. I grasped it nevertheless, and we shook.

I never knew his name.

He never knew mine.

It was the world we moved in.

The taxi drove off. I settled Alison on the kerb because she couldn't walk, and rushed in to the casualty department and returned with a nurse and a wheelchair. I told her that Alison was my girlfriend and that someone had spiked her drink and she rolled her eyes.

'Are you sure?' she asked. 'Because ninety-nine per cent of women who come through here saying their drinks have been spiked are just pissed.'