Being

by Kevin Brooks

  ‘You can smoke if you want,’ I told Kamal.

  He looked at me, then reached into his pocket and brought out a packet of Marlboro. He lit one, breathed in hungrily, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head. He dropped the cigarette packet on to the dashboard shelf.

  ‘All right?’ I said to him.

  He nodded.

  ‘Take off your tunic,’ I told him.

  He hesitated for a moment, then rested his cigarette in the ashtray, pulled off his tunic and dropped it on the floor behind the seat. I looked at him. He wasn’t an anaesthetist any more, he was just an olive-skinned guy in a thin white T-shirt.

  I gazed through the windscreen. The cold darkness of the hospital grounds stretched out in front of us – lawns, slopes, curves, ribbons of roads cutting through the geometry of buildings… all of it veiled behind a silver-black mist of rain.

  I glanced at Kamal. He was shivering.

  I took the gun out of my pocket and rested it in my lap.

  ‘Start the car,’ I said.

  We pulled out of the car park into an unlit section of twisty little lanes. The lanes led us out on to a broader road that curved around to the front of the main building. As we drove past the entrance, I caught a brief glimpse of myself in the reflective glass doors… and just for a moment I was me again.

  I was Robert Smith.

  A kid with a bad belly.

  I could see myself approaching the entrance that morning – clutching my appointment card, gazing idly at my reflection in the glass doors… a rain-flecked face, pale and lean… dark hair, dark eyes… a tallish kid in a coat.

  I wanted to wind down the window and shout out to the memory of myself – Don’t go in there! Turn round and go home! For God’s sake, don’t go in there!

  But I didn’t.

  And I don’t suppose I would have listened to myself anyway.

  We drove on.

  There were no barriers to negotiate, no gates or anything, just a dark empty driveway winding through the hospital grounds. At the end of the driveway, Kamal slowed the car and pulled up at the hospital exit. The engine idled, the windscreen wipers clacked, the rain pattered comfortably on the roof.

  ‘Where to?’ Kamal asked me.

  I looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was half past six.

  Where to?

  I wanted to go home. There was nothing I wanted more. I wanted to go home to Bridget and Pete. But I knew I couldn’t. Whatever was happening to me, I had to assume it wasn’t a mistake. I had to assume that Ryan and the others were part of something big. Some kind of authority. Big, organizational, powerful, official, resourceful. Some kind of law enforcement. Security services. Government. Police. What else could they be, with their guns and their secrets and their suits? They had to be part of something. And soon they’d be everywhere. Looking for me. They would be looking for me. Not yet, perhaps. But soon. They’d be everywhere. Every place I’d ever been and every place I could possibly go. They’d be watching and waiting.

  I couldn’t go home.

  ‘Do you know where Sainsbury’s is?’ I asked Kamal.

  He gave me a puzzled look. ‘Sainsbury’s?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know where it is. Why do you ask?’

  ‘That’s where we’re going.’

  5

  It was still raining when we got to Sainsbury’s. A lorry had broken down near the entrance, backing up the traffic, and as we crawled our way towards the car park, I gazed around at the rain-blurred faces and figures in the cars all around us. I saw heads and hands, tapping fingers, impatient eyes. I saw men, women, children, sitting in cars, going nowhere in the rain. Going shopping.

  It was all very normal.

  But it didn’t seem to have anything to do with me any more.

  To take my mind off it, I started searching through the pockets of Ryan’s jacket. There wasn’t much in them: two keys, a penknife, a slim leather wallet. The wallet contained two credit cards – American Express and Visa – some cash, an ID card and a handful of business cards. The photograph on the ID card showed a blank-faced Ryan staring at the camera. His eyes were cold and intelligent. He was wearing a white shirt, black tie, black jacket. His hair was slicked back over his high-crowned skull, and the harsh photographic light made his skin look deathly.

  I held the card in my hand and stared at him: a man at one with his demons.

  The only information printed on the card was his name – David Ryan – and a number – 1191212.

  The business cards didn’t tell me much either. Just the name again – David Ryan – and beneath that, in small black print, a telephone number.

  I put the cards back in the wallet and counted the cash. Three twenties and a five.

  ‘Where do you want me to park?’ Kamal said.

  I looked up. We were entering the car park now. ‘Over there,’ I told him, indicating a row of empty spaces next to the recycling bins.

  He pulled in and turned off the engine and we sat there for a while in silence. Kamal lit a cigarette. I wound down the window. The rain-rush of distant traffic rolled quietly in the air. I could smell petrol fumes, fresh bread, recycled waste.

  ‘Who’s Ryan?’ I asked Kamal.

  He didn’t look at me. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Anything. What happened at the hospital?’

  He thought for a moment, resting his hands on the steering wheel. His fingers were long and delicate.

  ‘I know very little,’ he said quietly. ‘I spent the morning in surgery. A coronary artery bypass.’ He drew on his cigarette and breathed out slowly. ‘I received a pager message from Professor Casing’s secretary –’

  ‘Who is Casing? What does he do?’

  ‘He’s a consultant surgeon. Gastroenterologist. The message said that I was to go to his office immediately.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I went.’

  ‘What did Casing want?’

  ‘There was an unusual case, an emergency. That’s all he would say. He needed an anaesthetist.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘I’m a good anaesthetist.’ He shrugged. ‘There was no one else available.’

  ‘What about Ryan and the others? Morris and Hayes, Cooper…? How did they get there? Who called them?’

  ‘I know nothing about them. When Casing took me down to the basement theatre, he told me there were security implications. Nothing else. I don’t know who those people are. They said nothing to me. I don’t know where they came from.’

  ‘What about Casing? Would he know who they were?’

  ‘I would think so, yes.’

  I looked out through the windscreen. A short slight man in a hooded parka was walking his dog along the grass verge in front of us. The dog was black, bouncing in the rain.

  ‘Look at me,’ I said to Kamal.

  He turned and looked me cautiously in the eye. His face was ageless. Innocent and wise, like the face of a boy-king in a leather-bound storybook. I could have been mistaken, of course. I could have been seeing things that weren’t there. But I don’t think so. There was something there, I was sure of it. Something in his eyes. Something that didn’t belong in a white Fiesta in a Sainsbury’s car park on a wet November evening.

  I rubbed my eyes. Dry stuff stuck to my fingertips. I looked at it – yellow, brown. Eye-snot. I held out my hand to Kamal.

  ‘Look,’ I told him.

  He gazed at the crusty yellow smudge on my finger.

  ‘I have bits of crap in my eyes,’ I told him. ‘I’m just the same as anyone else.’ I wiped my finger on the car seat. ‘I’m the same as you, Kamal. I’m not a monster.’

  The clock on the dashboard ticked wearily, like it was too much hard work. Kamal said nothing.

  What could he say?

  ‘I was conscious,’ I told him. ‘When Casing was cutting into me, I was conscious. I could feel it. The pa
in. It hurt. It still hurts.’

  Kamal looked at me. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I gazed out through the side window. A blonde-haired woman was walking past, pushing a well-packed shopping trolley. Two small children were walking behind her, skipping and kicking at puddles. The woman flicked her ponytail from side to side and talked at the children without knowing what she was saying. I watched her as she loaded the shopping into the back of a 4x4. One, two, three, four bags. She got the children into the car, left the trolley where it was and drove off.

  Kamal said, ‘You were anaesthetized.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have woken up. It’s impossible.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You were anaesthetized.’

  ‘I know.’

  What else could I say? He was right. It was impossible.

  ‘I need some money,’ I told him.

  He pulled a wallet from his pocket and handed over a couple of £5 notes. ‘That’s all I have.’

  I folded the money into my pocket. ‘Give me your wallet.’

  He hesitated briefly, then passed me the wallet. I looked inside. Driving licence, credit cards, Switch card, hospital ID. I glanced at the Switch card. His full name was printed as MR KAMAL RAMACHANDRAN.

  ‘What’s the cash card number?’ I asked him.

  He could have lied to me, but I knew he wouldn’t. I had a gun in my hand. I was unpredictable. I was alien and monstrous. He wouldn’t lie to me.

  ‘Four five one four,’ he said.

  ‘Cash limit?’

  ‘£250.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I put the wallet and the gun in my pocket. ‘Get out of the car.’

  As we walked across the car park towards the bright lights of the supermarket, I buttoned my jacket to hide the dark stains on my shirt.

  ‘Don’t do anything and don’t say anything,’ I told Kamal.

  He nodded.

  We entered the supermarket.

  It was a big store: food, clothing, toys, stationery, a pharmacy, all kinds of things. The aisles were wide and not too busy. I didn’t hang around. I just grabbed stuff and threw it in a trolley: trousers, shirts, a jacket, a coat, underwear, shoes, chocolate bars, pies, pre-cooked chicken, paracetamol, Coke, a bottle of water, a bottle of vodka, a cheap rucksack, a road map.

  At the till, Kamal smiled as he handed the checkout girl his card.

  ‘Cash-back?’ she asked him.

  He looked at me. I nodded. He turned back to the checkout girl.

  ‘Fifty, please,’ he said.

  I folded the clothes into a carrier bag and put the cash and the rest of the stuff in the rucksack. On the way out, we stopped at a cashpoint machine and I took out another £250.

  Back in the car, I uncapped the bottle of water and took a long drink. I ate a Mars bar, then another, then four paracetamol washed down with more water. While I was doing this, Kamal sat motionless in the driver’s seat, staring through the windscreen.

  I unwrapped a pork pie and thought about what to do next.

  I had to be alone now.

  I had to hide.

  I had to rest.

  I had to find time to think.

  I had to be alone.

  I told Kamal to start the car.

  We drove in silence for a while – the small silence of a small car on a big wet road – and I looked around at the passing blackness. There wasn’t much to see. A flat, almost barren landscape of endless roads and long curved lines of orange lights receding perfectly into the distance. Kamal drove calmly, his keen eyes flicking constantly between the mirror and the road. Traffic was steady. It was seven thirty, Monday evening.

  ‘What do you think Ryan will be doing now?’ I asked Kamal.

  ‘Looking for you.’

  ‘Looking for us, you mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What would you do if you were me?’

  ‘If I were you?’

  ‘What would you do?’

  As he thought about it, a thick spray of rain from the wheels of a passing lorry doused the side windows of the car, causing us to lurch slightly to the left. Kamal adjusted the steering wheel and let the lorry pass. I peered through the rain at a passing road sign: CHELMSFORD 15, LONDON 40.

  ‘I think you have two choices,’ Kamal said. ‘Either you trust me, or you kill me.’

  It was a good answer, an honest answer.

  Two choices.

  Trust or kill.

  I let the silence hang in the air.

  ‘If I were you,’ Kamal continued, ‘I would trust me.’

  I smiled at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you don’t want to kill me.’

  ‘I don’t want to trust you either.’

  ‘It’s the better option.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You would.’

  ‘I do.’

  I drank some more water and opened the road map in my lap.

  Did I trust him?

  I did and I didn’t.

  I didn’t have much choice.

  ‘Take the next left past the bridge,’ I told him.

  We veered gently off the main road and followed a downward bend towards a dark roundabout surrounded by pine trees. I studied the map.

  ‘Take the second turning at the roundabout,’ I said. ‘It should be the next left after that.’

  The car park at Heystone railway station was a small concrete field dotted with potholes. It was empty when we got there. No cars, no people, nothing much to look at – a broken fence, a ditch full of ditch things, tall trees slanting in the rain.

  My stomach hurt.

  I checked the timetable outside the station – there was a train to London in twenty minutes, a train to Ipswich in twenty-five. I told Kamal to park at the far end of the car park, away from the station lights.

  London, twenty minutes.

  Ipswich, twenty-five.

  London?

  Or Ipswich?

  It didn’t really matter. As long as it was somewhere else.

  I took the pistol from my pocket and told Kamal to give me the car keys. He removed them from the ignition and dropped them into my palm.

  ‘And your phone,’ I told him.

  He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and handed it over. I put it in my pocket.

  ‘Look at me,’ I said to him.

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Look at me, Kamal.’

  He turned his head and looked at me.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘My name’s Robert Smith. I’m sixteen years old. This morning I went into the hospital for an endoscopy. When I woke up, I was lying on my back in a strange room. I was blind and paralysed. Conscious but unconscious. I was surrounded by men with guns. A man in a white coat cut my belly open and there were unhuman things inside me.’

  I paused, trying to remember, trying to forget.

  Kamal just stared at me.

  ‘That’s all I know,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know anything else about it. I don’t know why… I don’t know what it means. I don’t know who those people are. I don’t know… I can’t explain anything. All I know is that I have to get away. I can’t let those people find me again.’

  The clock ticked, the rain tip-tapped.

  My bladder ached.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Kamal said.

  ‘Give me an hour or so. Just sit here and wait.’

  ‘I’ll have to answer their questions. Ryan will want to know everything.’

  ‘Just give me an hour, hour and a half. Then you can tell him whatever you want.’ I pointed at the station entrance. ‘There’s a phone box over there. You can ring the hospital. Tell him… tell him…’

  ‘Tell him what?’

  I shrugged. ‘Tell him what you like. I don’t care, tell him anything.’

  Kamal smiled. ‘I’ll wait here for as long as I can. You have my word.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I put the p
istol back in my pocket and picked up the briefcase from the back seat.

  ‘Where will you go?’ asked Kamal.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I dropped Kamal’s wallet and car keys into the rucksack and zipped it up.

  ‘Well…’ I said.

  Kamal held out his hand. ‘Good luck.’

  I looked him in the eye as we shook hands and I wondered briefly if I’d ever see him again, but somehow I knew that I wouldn’t.

  I stepped out of the car and buttoned my jacket.

  I breathed the air.

  It smelled of wet fields and iron.

  I leaned into the car to say goodbye, but a sudden searing pain knotted my stomach and I closed the door without speaking.

  Goodbye, Kamal Ramachandran.

  Thank you.

  I’m sorry.

  I slung the rucksack over my shoulder and headed towards the station.

  ∗

  I didn’t trust him. I learned a long time ago not to trust anyone. I couldn’t trust him. He’d do whatever he thought was best for him.

  Was he good?

  Was he bad?

  What did he think I was?

  Good or bad?

  It didn’t matter.

  Trust, faith, good, bad… none of it matters. All you ever do is what you have to do. Follow your desires, fulfil your needs, escape from pain. That’s all there is to it. Kamal would do whatever he had to do, and it wasn’t worth thinking about.

  The telephone box was at the bottom of a slope at the station entrance. I went inside, took Ryan’s penknife from my pocket and sliced through the telephone cord.

  Inside the station, the ticket office was closed and the toilets were locked. I walked out on to the platform. A cold wind was blowing, whipping close to the ground, whistling around the empty buildings. The station clock said 20:04:42.

  I sat on a bench and crossed my legs.

  I wondered what I looked like. A reasonable tramp? A drunk in an ill-fitting suit? A scarecrow? An outlaw? It didn’t matter. There was no one there to see me.

  I looked around. The rain was coming down harder now, gleaming white in the stark station lights, making everything look harsh and unreal: the dull silver shine of the tracks, dirtied with wads of waste tissue; the sprawling yellow weeds dripping in the lowlight of arches and walls; red doors, blue doors; the sand and scrap of the station fringe.