Pawn, page 2
Somehow he found his phone, which by some miracle was still in his pocket and still intact, and strangest of all, still had power. How could that be? But it didn’t really matter and instead of staring at it like a madman, he rang the emergency services. After that came the inevitable questions from the emergency operator on the other end of the line. Where was he? Was he alright? Was anyone hurt? He answered them all as best he could, even managed to send the woman a couple of pictures of the wreck from the phone, but in truth he was really too numb to give them his full attention. And his knees wouldn’t stop shaking.
So really he just told the woman what she needed to hear and forgot about everything else. Until the sound of a heavy diesel engine roaring angrily in the distance managed to drag his attention away from the conversation. He turned to see a truck barrelling down the road towards him and the remains of his car.
“Oh crap!” That was when his brain started finally kicking back into life. Forgetting the woman on the other end of the line, he got up, never realising he’d sat down, and started waving down the truck frantically. He needed some water and maybe a little bit of first aid as well, but he also didn’t want the driver of the truck to come crashing into his wrecked car and have another accident, especially not near him. Two accidents in one day would be too much.
“Hey!” He waved his arm frantically at the oncoming truck, trying to warn them, even more frantically when he realised that they weren’t slowing down. Actually he decided, if anything they were speeding up. That made no sense. Surely they could see him? The twisted mess of metal behind him? But he still kept waving and walking on shaking legs towards them.
Then the bad became unexpectedly worse as instead of slowing down to help, the passenger leaned out the side of the cabin, a huge black weapon in his hand, and began firing at him.
For the longest time Rufus stared at the oncoming truck growing rapidly larger, at the dark figure pointing a gun at him, and the splashes of light that he knew were bullets hitting the road, wondering if he was dreaming it all. It made no sense. People didn’t drive down English country roads shooting at car crash victims. That just didn’t happen. And then there was the weapon itself.
It was a machine gun of some sort. Rufus knew that much if he knew nothing else. The rapid stream of explosions as it fired and sparks flying off the road all around him, said it could be nothing else. But a gun? A machine gun? Shooting at a car crash victim in the middle of the road? In England? It couldn’t be real. It was even more unreal than a part of his car having converted itself into a roadway scarecrow just a few hundred meters away from where he was standing, or his car simply destroying itself for no apparent reason. Maybe it was a movie.
At last though, as the bullets came closer and closer, the sparks bouncing all around his feet, a primitive part of his brain finally remembered to do something instead of simply standing there waiting to be killed. He had some survival instincts after all. He turned and dashed for the side of the road, before making a desperate leap down the small grassy bank. After that came another series of bruising, spinning, acrobatic rolls as he somehow found himself flying down the bank, completely out of control, smashing through the patches of scrub and bush and finally coming to rest in a creek.
That was a good thing.
The shock of the cold water on his flesh and the fresh pain of his bruises and cuts from being knocked around were what finally woke him up and told him it was real. That someone in a speeding white truck was trying to kill him. Trying to stick holes in him with a machine gun. He was still trying and the bullets were flying around overhead. And with that knowledge came terror. Someone was trying to kill him! And he had nothing to defend himself with.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” The words just came out of his mouth by themselves, as his body remembered to pray even when he didn’t. He didn’t believe in such things. No decent God would ever have permitted him to have suffered so terribly as a child. Even a half way decent one would have struck his family down long ago as he had begged him to night after night. But they had lived happily and he had suffered no matter how hard he prayed, which was when he’d given any thought of such things away. Yet just a few bullets shrieking by, and he was suddenly down in a ditch, praying for a long bearded man in the sky to save him. But there was no one. There was never anyone. And as he lay there in terror, he remembered that. It was always up to him to find the strength to run away. It always would be.
He could have run he supposed, and for the longest seconds of his life he lay there listening to the gunfire and the truck screaming by, thinking about just that. But the chances were that he’d just be making himself a target. Something to shoot at. At least in the creek, buried in water and muck, he was hidden behind the long grass and the bushes. The killer couldn’t see him to shoot. He hoped. But he might know where he was.
Run or hide. It was the most torturous decision he’d ever had to make, and it didn’t come easy. Somehow, he chose hide, for the moment, while the van was still thundering away and the bullets spraying wildly. But if he heard the truck stop or a man walking through the long grass, that might change in a hurry.
Decision made, he simply lay there in the water with his hands over his head, trying to control his breathing, trying to hear the sound of the bullets coming closer to him, and all the time really just waiting for the pain of a bullet tearing through his flesh. Maybe waiting for the end of his life too, but he was just too scared to risk raising his head to look around. Instead he just prayed as he heard the noise of the truck thundering by overhead, and the gun still firing. Fortunately, just as he couldn’t see them, they apparently couldn’t see him, and the bullets wherever they flew, missed him by a wide mark. Better yet, he heard the sound of the engine growing slightly quieter and knew they’d passed him and were heading off.
Then came the sounds he’d actually expected to hear. The ear piercing shriek of tires squealing as the driver hit the breaks, and the confusion of men shouting in panic as the truck careened towards his wrecked car lying in pieces in the road in front of them. There was even the crunching noise of an impact as they hit something, though not from the sounds of things a terrible one. Not when he immediately heard the engine gunning again, the diesel roaring angrily into life, as the driver pushed his foot all the way down and tried to drive clear. That was a good sound. It was a very good sound.
Apparently he managed it, since soon Rufus could hear the roar of the engine becoming fainter, which came as a relief. If they’d actually crashed then the man with the machine gun might still be around. He might have come after him. At least this way, with the truck driving off no matter how broken, he was safe again. The man with the gun was leaving.
The silence when it finally returned was his chance to lift his head up out of the muddy creek and dare to look around. And to stop his whole body from shaking as he tried to calm himself with some deep breathing. It took longer than it should have, but then who was he to know how long it should take?
Eventually, when he’d regained control of his arms and legs, and his heartbeat had returned to something more normal, he began the process of crawling out of the creek and creeping up the bank.
At first it was on all fours as he literally crawled his way up the bank, forcing his way through the bushes, keeping low just in case a homicidal madman with a machine gun was somewhere out there, waiting for him. But then when he reached the road and could finally push aside a few long tufts of grass to peek through and see once more a nice peaceful country scene, he risked standing up. There was no one there despite his fears. After that though, he sat down again in a hurry, utterly exhausted. Then he collapsed the rest of the way to the ground and simply gave in to the panicked demands of his body.
Nothing worked after that. His legs simply didn’t have the strength to hold him upright any more. His lungs couldn’t seem to keep pace with his insatiable need for air. And absolutely nothing would stop trembling. So instead he just lay there, and tried to focus on the fact that he was alive. And he was alive. He shouldn’t be, but he was.
It took a long time. In fact it seemed like hours. But eventually things returned to the way they had been. At least with the world around him. But that was simply the way of things. Even the most terrible events had to end.
The sun was up, the sky was blue and the birds were singing once more. With the noise gone, it was another perfect day in the English countryside, and he knew he should try to enjoy it as he waited for the police. But he couldn’t. All he could do as he lay there on the side of the road, was to hold himself tight to keep the trembling from getting out of control, and try to concentrate on the fact that he was alive.
But occasionally as he sat there shaking and trying to keep from screaming and ripping the last shreds of his vocal chords apart, he did manage to wonder to himself just how all of this could have happened. It was impossible. As was, as he had to keep reminding himself, the fact that he had survived.
No one was going to believe it. Not even him.
Chapter Two.
Normally Rufus liked dealing with the police. Despite the knockers and the endless complaints on telly, they were as a rule professional and polite and usually knew the right questions to ask. Theirs was normally a fairly straight forwards business transaction. But then normally he was simply giving them information about the latest fraud attempt he’d uncovered as he investigated his claims. It had to be done. It was company policy that all attempts to make false claims were reported. And anyway, they were crooks. He hated crooks.
Mostly.
Though he’d never tell his employer, or the police, on a couple of occasions he had foregone that step. Mostly because he could see that there was genuine hardship involved and people in terrible pain. He was a cold fish, everyone said so, but still sometimes even he had enough understanding of the human condition to know that getting someone arrested and charged for what was essentially a cry for help, would only add to the misery. He didn’t like suffering. He didn’t like to see people suffer. He didn’t want to add to it.
So he let them go, told them that their forms weren’t filled out correctly after showing them how easily their deception had been uncovered and explaining what would likely happen if they tried to lodge a claim, and then told them to file a new claim. They never did of course, just took the loss on their chins, but that was better than going to jail and there was only so much he could do. He wasn’t going to let them steal from his employer, but he wasn’t going to cause any more suffering either so he walked a careful middle ground between law and compassion and hoped it was good enough.
The officer though, he would show no such compassion, and he was apparently certain that Rufus was guilty of something. Rufus in turn, being the victim in his own car crash and attempted murder, wasn’t enjoying the experience at all, and the officer seemed to have no idea how much he was already suffering.
His body ached in every joint, he was torn, bruised and scratched from head to foot, and his nerves were completely shot. Yet somehow, instead of being the informant, he had become the suspect in the officer’s eyes. At least that was what the copper seemed to think as he kept asking him the same questions over and over again in lots of different ways, hoping to get him to say something inconsistent. He was out of luck however. Even if it hadn’t all have been true, Rufus was too shaken up to even think of a lie.
“So really Mr. Hennassy what are the odds?” He said it in such a way as to make it seem not only that Rufus was lying, but lying so badly that a child could have spotted it. But unfortunately Rufus knew exactly what the policeman meant. He dealt with odds and statistics all the time, that was his job and he’d been wondering exactly the same thing since it had happened. Even among all the truly extraordinary things he’d heard and seen over the years, this stood out as far-fetched.
A car, a Toyota for goodness sake, the most reliable car on the face of the planet, he’d bought it for that very reason, suddenly shitting itself completely on a piece of straight country road for no apparent reason. Its drive shaft abruptly deciding that it no longer wanted to be attached to itself, snapping like a piece of dry pasta, and then digging right into the road and sending the rest of the car hurtling out of control through the air as an unguided missile. That was near enough to unheard of on its own, and considering that it could have landed in any position, each time it had touched down, it was a miracle that he’d walked away from the wreckage. At the least he should have been badly injured.
But then, while he was standing out in the middle of an empty country road, covered in blood and ripped clothing, a speeding three or four ton light truck had come out of nowhere down the road, and started spraying him with bullets. That took the freakishly improbable to an entirely new level. Especially near Upper Plimmerton, a town where very little ever happened. It was like winning the lottery, twice or three times in a row, only in reverse. Still, as he kept telling himself, over and over again, at least he’d survived somehow, more or less intact. Hell even his pocket tablet had survived, despite going in the creek with him.
Rufus shrugged, unable to answer the officer. To be honest, he wasn’t feeling completely together right then. Conflicting emotions were coursing through him, trying to override his normal absolute self-control. He wanted to laugh hysterically. He wanted to scream like a crazy man. He wanted to just fall down and cry with relief. He wanted to run away and hide. And none of those things could he allow himself to do. Instead he just had to sit there on the stretcher while the paramedics fussed around him, answer the policeman’s questions as best he could, and try to hold everything together. If he could have stopped trembling it would have been so much better, but all he could do was try and control it. Adrenaline the paramedics had called it. Apparently shaking was normal enough when it wore off. But for how long?
“So why were you even on this road?” At last a question that made sense. One that he could actually answer, and Rufus knew a moment of pure joy, until he realised just how bad it was going to sound to the officer. If he was already suspicious it was only going to get worse.
“Tractor explosion.” He mumbled the answer like a naughty schoolboy caught out in a lie by his teacher, and the officer made him repeat it. Then when he heard it, he stared at him as if he’d said he was attending a convention of fire breathing dragons. But again it was the truth. The actual, improbable sounding but more common than you might think, truth.
There had been an explosion. Tractors sometimes caught fire. Hot exhausts, hay and all too often grease and oil all around made for a dangerous combination. And when they did catch fire, often enough they exploded. It wasn’t exactly unheard of, especially out in the country. And though Upper Plimmerton was one of those outlying boroughs of London, only perhaps an hour and bit away from the city and undergoing an urbanisation of its own, there was still plenty of rural land surrounding it. Plenty of tractors.
When they did get destroyed, tractors were insured for a lot of money, often a lot more than a car. So there was always an investigation. This wasn’t the first time he’d been out this way on a similar case. But that was his job. To look for any evidence that a claim, even a tractor explosion wasn’t an accident. To look for the few fraudsters among the vast majority of innocent victims.
Dutifully he gave the disbelieving officer the details, even pointed out the file and the papers with all the relevant details, strewn all around the remains of the car, and let him go back to his car and radio them back to his superiors. They probably wouldn’t believe it any more then him, but it was still the truth.
But at least that gave Rufus a chance to simply sit there while the paramedics continued their work, covering his endless cuts and scrapes with bandages and generally telling him how lucky he was.
They were right of course. The wreckage of the car told him that. He’d investigated enough crashes to recognise the ones that people walked away from and those they didn’t. This one should have killed him several times over save for one near miracle. The only part of the car that hadn’t been completely crushed was where he’d been sitting. Somehow, as it had spun and smashed again and again into the road, each impact had destroyed another part of the car but left him untouched, more or less. How lucky was that? Or how unlucky for it to have crashed at all?
Other people were there too, probably thinking the same thing as they examined the car. More than a few of them kept looking up at him, puzzled by the fact that he wasn’t a blob of red jelly smeared all over the road.
A couple of junior officers had set up tape cordons at both ends of the crash site and were busy directing traffic away. It wasn’t a heavily used road but still they were being kept quite busy. Maybe some of the neighbours had come out for a look. It was a quiet area, they’d probably heard the sounds of the crash and the gunshots for miles around.
The crime scene guys, a whole van load of them, were already busy walking the road looking for bits of evidence, photographing everything, and spraying little spots of paint everywhere. He wondered which of those spots of paint represented places where the car had touched down, and which were bullet impacts. More technical people he suspected, were on the way. Upper Plimmerton was a quiet little place, and major crimes didn’t happen every day. It wasn’t London, and even there gun crimes were mostly people with shotguns and rifles. He assumed people with machine guns trying to murder car crash victims, matched the definition of major crimes.
