White Light (14 page)

I flung myself down the street, hurdled a garden wall and crouched again, breath gasping. I didn't dare look up, but I could hear them talking in low voices as they tried to see where I'd gone but without attracting too much attention from the neighbours. After a few minutes they moved away and I heard the door to number 3 close with a click.

My cowardly animal brain screamed at me to run back to the bike and get the hell out of here, but as I got to my feet I knew that inside that house was a child, and I had to do something. It was surreal: the quiet street was the picture of respectable, residential Oxford, whilst inside that house – I vaulted the wall and walked quickly up to a skip sitting in the neighbour's garden, dialling 999 with one hand.

Resting on the top of the builder's rubble was a short piece of scaffolding pole – that would do nicely.

'999, which service do you require?'

'Police.' There was a second's dead silence. I hefted the scaf pole in my hand, crossed the road and went up to Naismith's Audi, which I recognised from the golf club.

'Police. What is your emergency?'

'There is a child being sexually abused at number 3 Beechcroft Road, Headington.'

The operator paused. 'What is your name, sir?'

'Fuck that,' I said, 'just get someone down here. The abuse is happening RIGHT NOW!'

'Sir –' said the voice as I hung up, and then I brought the metal pipe crashing down on the Audi's windscreen. It shattered with a crunch, and the car alarm shrieked on. Turning, I moved to the next car, another nice, respectable, pillar-of-the-community car, and smashed its screen and batted off its wing mirror for good measure. A second alarm joined the first. The third was a people carrier, with a child seat in the back. I hoped it didn't belong to one of Number 3's guests, and turned my rage into a savage attack on all of its windows. On and on I went down the street, bashing windows and crunching side panels until curtains started to twitch and I could barely hear myself think from all the alarms. Then, finally, the door to number 3 was flung open and Tony and Hasan ran out to see what was going on.

Hoping I'd done enough to get the neighbourhood to wake the fuck up and start calling the police on their own account, I turned and sprinted away up the street. Hasan and Tony, taking one look at their ruined cars, pounded after me.

Operating purely on flight instinct I pounded down the street, the sounds of the two men's' heavy footfalls crowding behind me. People in dressing gowns and gardening clothes had started to seep out onto the pavements to see what all the noise was about, and I wove desperately through them, conscious that once Tony and Hasan's hands closed on me I would not get away again. I looked back, and there they were – the man called Tony young and fit looking, Hasan older and softer round the middle – but both zeroed in on my retreating form. On my back the timekit joggled in the backpack – I just needed to have a second to dig it out and use it but I couldn't get any distance from the two men.

Without thinking I'd run in the opposite direction to the main road, so as soon a I was clear of the crowd I put my head down and pounded down the first side street I came to. I risked a look back of my shoulder as I swerved across the road, and my heart gave a lurch as I saw Tony's red and angry face right behind me. He grabbed, but I ducked and desperation helped me put on a burst of speed that temporarily out-paced him, as I ran towards a corner of green space that I could see up ahead. A stitch was burning in my side but around the edges of the pain and my atavistic terror I vaguely felt this street and this corner to be familiar – I saw the green open up and become a recreation ground and I realised with a jolt that this was the place where Sarah had crashed. She must have been coming back from...

A huge weight slammed into the back of my knees and my upper body and head hit the ground with a tremendous smash. Luckily for me I'd landed on the verge, rather than the pavement, but Tony's weight crushed me so I could hardly breathe. His momentum carried him slightly too far, though, and he slipped off my back, his hand grabbing at the rucksack, but I was already wriggling out of the straps and rolling to one side. He grabbed at me again, but I was ready this time and kicked him square in the face. His head snapped back and he toppled over on the grass, eyes rolling slowly upwards. Round the corner, panting, lurched Hasan, who raised a feeble 'Stop!' as I grabbed the backpack and turned and staggered onto the field.

I could only take a few steps, my head was ringing from the rugby tackle, and my heart was beating so hard I couldn't catch my breath. I tottered on a couple of paces, away from the park entrance and behind the high hedge that ran round the edge. Far away on the other side of the space some people were playing a game of football, but by chance there was no-one near to me. I sank to my knees, swinging the rucksack round in front of me and reaching inside. I could hear sirens in the distance, and nearby Hasan wheezing and his friend's groans as he came round. I gave a silent prayer that Tony hadn't crushed the apparatus, and flipped the switch. Everything was absorbed in the bright white.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Friday, 27 February 2015. 21:21

I opened my eyes and there was just blackness, and cold, and I shuddered as a wave of wetness splashed down over me. For a second I was absolutely terrified: the time kit must have gone wrong, where the hell was I? And then I blinked and blinked again and realised that although it was dark, I could see the sour yellow of the sodium streetlights and the shocking hit of water was just February rain. I sank back onto my heels and scrunched my hands into the dirty wet turf with unspeakable relief.

Headlights dazzled me as they swept past on the road, only a few feet away, and I heard the noise. It was a huge crunching, splintering, booming, shattering noise and I knew without any uncertainty at all that it was the sound of Sarah's car crashing. Just in front of me, the chestnut tree shuddered with the impact, which travelled through the ground and shook me off my feet and onto my arse. The sound faded, and all that was left was an angry hissing like steam, and a scattered tinkle of falling glass, and I scrambled to my feet and ran round the hedge and into the road.

For a second my brain couldn't process the image in front of me: I'd been expecting a car but this crumpled heap of metal and plastic wasn't a car, was it? It seemed much too small to be Sarah's Renault, and the shapes and angles were all wrong – for a microsecond my heart leapt as I thought perhaps this wasn't her after all, perhaps I'd made a mistake... I stepped up to the front end, it's bonnet creased and lifted and half-embedded in the tree, and stooped to look into the space left by a fallen window, and then I saw her. Her head was down on the steering wheel, blood was in her hair and everywhere, but I knew it was her.

Around me, I was dimly aware of the sound of people coming out of their houses, and of voices, and even someone taking me gently by the shoulders to lead me away, but it was all distant, all happening to somebody else. The restraining hands felt as light as dust and I shook them off and walked round to the drivers' side and reached into the car. Sarah's hands were still gripping the wheel, and I touched one – my first touch of her hand in thirty nine days. It was still warm but I knew instinctively that she was already dead.

The rain fell down on me, and trickled down my face and inside my jacket, and I couldn't move. A man came and spoke to me kindly but I didn't understand what he was saying. In the distance the wail of a siren pierced the silence roaring in my head and gave me a jolt, and a car's headlights on full beam shone directly into my eyes. I threw up a hand to shade my face and saw a large silver car reversing urgently down the narrow street until it reached the corner, then swerving quickly away. I knew that car: it was Naismith's Audi.

The blue and red lights of a police car and ambulance were approaching now from the main road, and I realised the urgency behind Naismith's departure – he'd just had time to get his car onto Beechcroft Road, running parallel, before the authorities arrived to ask him difficult questions about the scrape in the paintwork which I had no doubt currently marred his Audi's perfect bodywork. I turned away too, walking quickly and purposefully away from the circle of people and lights – away from Sarah – following Naismith into the relative darkness of Elm Drive and then into the quiet of Beechcroft Road.

The rain was heavier now, stinging as it hit my face, and I realised that I was crying, my face crumpled up like a child's, and then a second later a crushing weight of grief hit me and I had to stop, buckled over, my hands clutching my chest. I'd done all this, and she was still dead. It wasn't enough. I wiped my face with my sleeve and reached into the rucksack. I'd set the date and time for just before the crash, and now I set it another 10 minutes back. I clicked the switch to the battery, and waited for
the flash.

Friday, 27 February 2015. 21:11

It was dark, and cold and wet, and I slipped and sprawled on the soaking turf of the recreation ground. An old man in a rain coat, walking a sodden little dog, looked at me warily as he passed through the gap in the hedge and away off home – just another drunk, he probably thought. I struggled up onto my knees, the grass soaking them through, then straightened myself up and followed the dog walker onto the street, which lay strangely quiet and dark. I could feel my brain struggling with the memory of the crash, its lights and noises, overlaying it confusingly on this peaceful gloom, where the only noise was the sound of hard raindrops hitting the tarmac. A wave of nausea swept through me, and I closed my eyes for a second and took some deep breaths, and it diminished, content to lurk in the background of my senses for now.

I began to walk slowly up the street to the corner with Beechcroft Road, struggling to remember which way the two cars had come – was it straight down Lime Tree Road or round from Beechcroft? The sound of the rain was getting louder, joining a hiss of static in my mind into a deafening white noise. I couldn't think straight, and stopped again, my hand at my head.

And then suddenly there were the lights! It hadn't been ten minutes, I knew it hadn't, but here was the familiar lopsided beam from Sarah's Megane and behind it the intense glare of the Audi. I could hear their engines racing, and then they were past me and I turned to see the front car plough straight into the chestnut tree, the whole tree shuddering with the impact and the car itself compressing and crumpling into a hideous mess of metal, and glass, and blood. Behind it, the Audi stamped on the brakes and its lights lit the whole street with red as it powered to a stop.

There was an instant of silence, I could hear myself breathing, and then Naismith's door started to open as if he was going to step out and take a look but a rectangle of yellow light was flung onto the road from the house opposite and people began running onto the street. The car door closed, and in a few seconds he began slowly reversing away, but I was distracted by a soaked figure in a leather jacket who'd stepped out from behind the hedge and was now approaching the destroyed Renault. Horror was on his face, and I recognised myself.

I turned and walked away up Lime Tree Road, my heart pounding. I hadn't stopped it,
again
. Ten minutes wasn't enough, I'd need to go back to earlier this evening, maybe to this afternoon – surprise Sarah at work, say I'd come back from the conference early, take her out and away and to America or fucking anywhere... I wrenched open the rucksack and had begun to dial back the timer when I noticed the little LED I'd wired in was showing red, not green. Not enough charge. No fucking charge!

As I turned onto the main road a huge rage boiled up out of my guts and into my chest and then up my throat and out of my mouth in an animal roar of pain and frustration. I dropped the bag at my feet and clenched my fists into my eyes and screamed until I was empty, bowing down under the pain until I was crouched on the wet pavement. She was dead,
she was dead again
and I hadn't saved her. All this and I hadn't saved her.

The rain poured down the back of my jacket and ran inside my shirt, and the whole street became nothing more than a blur of orange lights and darkness.

Once everything had swept through me I sat back onto my heels and tried to breathe. The few stragglers out in the rain swerved warily past me, just another homeless nutter, they probably thought. Well, maybe they were right. I didn't belong here. I stood up and started to walk off towards the shops, whose lights shone out onto the road a few hundred yards ahead. I'd forgotten it was February, and an icy wind snatched at my soaking clothes and I shivered. Whatever I was going to do I needed to do it fast before I froze to death.

I needed to think. I needed to analyse the problem and come up with a solution. The action of walking calmed me down, and I felt my tired brain flicker into life. Power: that was the crux of it. I needed to charge up the time kit, and then I could jump back to earlier today and stop Sarah getting anywhere near that car. I felt marginally warmer as I stamped along, and this helped me to swiftly review the most obvious possibilities: either I could get back to my own house – which would take time and I'd need to find some transport - or I could find somewhere to stay overnight, wait till morning and just buy another battery. I reached into my pocket to dig out my wallet to see how much cash I had on me – my hand pushed right through. Twisting, I saw that my back pocket was just a flap of denim, hanging down from one remaining seam, and empty. I stopped, making a pair of drunk students almost bump into me, and I thought back to Tony rugby tackling me to the ground – this morning? – and realised that my wallet and my keys must have fallen out and was probably lying on the road two months from now. In a panic, I got the rucksack and pulled the bag open to its widest, and searched. I knew I hadn't put the wallet in there but I looked anyway. It wasn't there. Apart from the unwieldy shape of my time machine and the dead weight of the Luger, the rucksack was empty.

Shit, fucking shit. My motorbike was, at this moment, leaning up against the curb outside a grotty student house in late April. Dave, the only person likely to open the door to me without question, was with me in the Netherlands and wouldn't be back until tomorrow. I couldn't even get into the lab overnight without my key fob. I was on my own, and I realised that I had never felt really alone before. I had always felt, no matter how faintly, that there was a connection with people or places around me, anchoring me. Now there was nothing. Sarah had been everything to me, and I had nobody else to fall back on now. Cold inched into my belly, freezing my panic, and although I tried to calm down and think I just kept coming back to this empty Sunday night street with nowhere to go.

I walked slowly down the road. I should have checked my pockets sooner, but that creep Tony had knocked the wind out of me and I hadn't been thinking straight. Automatically my hand reached up to rub the bruise on my forehead that was now – about an hour later, as far as it was concerned – starting to make its presence felt. It burned, and the burning cut through the cold and the panic and ignited a tiny flicker of something else in my mind. What had Hasan and Tony intended to do if they'd caught me this morning? Beat me? Kill me? Naismith had killed Sarah, I knew that with a certainty: he'd chased her down that road, pushing her with his fuck-off car, and making her crash. In my mind's eye I saw the tree shuddering and the street flooding red from the brake lights of the big Audi. I closed my eyes, and here it came: a huge rush of rage, and I welcomed it like never before. It dissolved all my fear and my doubts, it curled itself around me like a friend, and I realised that I wasn't alone after all, I wasn't just another washed up loser with nowhere to go: I had a purpose. There was one other place where I could pitch up at eleven o'clock on a wet Sunday night: my parents-in-law.

The darkened street was empty now, with only the gleaming, steamy windows of pubs and take-aways showing signs of life. I swung the rucksack onto my back and walked with determination down the pavement – it was a good couple of miles to Summertown from here but I had the time. I'd get there in the small hours of the morning, and I smiled at the thought of the wake up I was planning to give my in-laws. Hardly any cars were passing now, and so I jumped when a beaten up Corsa swerved past me and parked haphazardly next to the curb outside a pizza place. A wave of powerful gansta rap boomed out into the quiet street as the skinny white kid driving swung open the door, and leaving the engine running, trotted through the rain into the take-away – an empty insulated bag hanging from his hand.

I stopped, and watched him through the foggy glass, fist-bumping the guy behind the counter and chatting as more pizza boxes, greasy and heavy, were slid into the bag ready for his next delivery. The car, pounding out its repetitive beat, idled, unattended.

Without really thinking about it I swung myself into the driver's seat, chucked the rucksack into the passenger foot well, and slammed the door. The delivery boy must have heard the sound because he shot out of the take-away and ran round up to the car, banging on the back as I wrenched the hand brake and moved off. On impulse, I slammed on the brakes again and threw the gear stick into reverse – I could see his face lit suddenly by the white lights, and he scrambled a few steps backwards as I revved the engine, glaring at his fearful expression in the rear view mirror. He put his hands up and backed onto the pavement and I put the car into gear again and stamped on the accelerator.

Good call, you fucking idiot, I thought, shooting down the empty street at forty, and then I was round the corner and gunning it past the new University and on down Headington Hill. I slowed to the speed limit and took a look around my prize – a piece of shit car if ever there was one. Duck tape seemed to be holding most of it together, and the stereo seemed to be the only bit that was really working. I switched off the rap and revelled in the silence for a minute. My rage, my new friend, applauded me for this coup, this two-fingers at my situation. I smiled.

I pulled through the traffic lights at St Clements and then onto the High Street opposite the darkened windows of Magdelen College. There was a pizza box on the passenger seat and I flipped it open to reveal a half-eaten pepperoni, still faintly warm. Delivery man's perks, I presumed, taking a piece and shoving it into my mouth. I hadn't realised how hungry I was – but I had completely lost track of how long it had been since I'd eaten or slept. The food and the warmth from the battered air vents perked me up and I felt energised. My mind cleared and the pain of the day fell away, leaving only a hardened core of intent, a concentration of rage, nestling in my soul like a blood diamond.

Without any of the usual traffic it took no time at all to swing round Long Wall Street and past the University Park onto the Banbury Road. The lab building loomed huge and dark, no lights showing. It didn't feel part of me anymore. Summertown was all but empty, and in minutes I'd drawn to a stop in the little car park behind the shops. It meant a few minutes' walk to the Hollands' house, but it was easier to park here than try and find a space amongst the Range Rovers and Saabs on the North Oxford streets. I grabbed my bag up from the foot well, and a tattered baseball cap with NYC embroidered on the front came up too. It was pretty grimy, but it would keep the rain off, so I shoved it on my head and got out of the car – putting the keys into my pocket,
just in case.

I walked away from the shops and turned past the church into the quiet of Lonsdale Road. The large, expensive houses were darkened, only the twinkle of alarm boxes mounted high on the eaves showing signs of life. Richard and Maggie lived at 66, at the far end, and as I walked I played over in my mind what I was going to say, how I was going to persuade them to let me in. Once I was in the house...

I crossed the road, and covered the last few metres to the gate and stopped dead. The jag wasn't there. I couldn't understand it, at this time of night they would be in – the realisation impacted: they would be at the hospital, waiting to be told that Sarah hadn't survived the crash. I pictured them in the tatty NHS relatives' room, the kindly doctor breaking the bad news, their dignified acceptance – how soon after the accident had Naismith called them, I wondered? Long enough to get their game faces on, the practised hypocrisy of perverts. I clenched my teeth to stifle a scream of frustration and rage. A light flicked on in a house opposite and I automatically jogged up the drive and into the blackness of the garden, waiting for the window to go blank once again before I moved. In the dark I felt lost again, disconnected. I couldn't see myself and I began to wonder if I was actually here. Tiredness warped the edges of my vision, flickering lights in the gloom, and I felt weightless, a balloon of consciousness, not a real person at all. I bit my lip, hard, using the sharp pain to anchor me down until I felt real again. I was still stuck, though, with no juice to recharge my time kit and no money or ID to reclaim myself as a normal citizen.

I moved slowly up the crackling gravel path and peered through the glazed front door at a slice of hall: a narrow table with letters on it, coats on hooks, an umbrella propped up by the stairs. Everything looked so familiar, so normal, I'd been here a million times and had never realised how false it all was. An urge to smash and destroy and make everything as ugly as it was underneath took hold of me and I snatched up the cast iron boot beetle from the step and lifted it overhead. But then I noticed the glint of green on the alarm panel, set just inside the door. I dropped the heavy iron shape onto the ground; in this area, the police would be on me in minutes.

Exhaustion knocked me off my feet, and I sat down on the damp ground against the door step. Flashes of Sarah in her car, head down on the steering wheel, dead, rushed into my mind and filled my eyes, whether they were open or closed. She felt as far away as she had ever been, closed off, unreachable. Every time I thought I'd be able to reach out and save her, but every time it was snatched away, walled off, made impossible. I'd come back to find her, but I seemed to have lost me, snapped the invisible cord linking me to myself, leaving me just an angry ghost, bodiless, impotent.

For a long time I sat in the wet, and I think I must have dropped into a blank sleep. A door slammed somewhere, and my head shot up thinking it was Richard and Maggie coming back, but there was still no car on the drive. I glanced instinctively at the next door house, but it was invisible – blocked by the dark shape of the garage. I straightened up, the electricity of an idea shooting through me.