Pulse (A novel)
Pulse: Shadowplay ~ Chapter 2 (2nd Draft)
The journey back to the office is completed in silence, Mike’s bottom lip protrudes a little, but mostly he looks angry rather than sulky. Max sits glaring out through the windscreen, still clinging onto the Pepper spray and watching for even a slight movement from her ‘colleague’. Every time his hand moves to the gears, she flinches inside and prepares to react. All the time, her anger babbles in the background.
Take the initiative, Girl. Hurt him and walk away.
No, he’s not worth it. I need this job. This is my ticket out.
Pulling into the car park Mike suddenly drags the wheel hard to the right, as though avoiding a small child and almost slides into the space. He slams the brakes hard and they stop suddenly.
“Brake test!” He uncouples his belt and slides out without any of the sluggishness seen when he climbed in.
“It’s not quite straight.” Offers Max as she steps out onto solid ground, pulling her bag with her. Her legs feel wobbly, but she will not let him see that she is fazed by recent events.
On the clunk of her door closing, the Vectra beeps and the indicators flash twice. She tries the rear door to recover her coat, but the car is now locked. Mike stands grinning as she glares over at him. He turns his back and begins to walk away.
“Mike?” She asks, calmly.
“Hmm?”
“My coat is in your car.”
“I know.” He stops but does not turn.
“Should I come and take the keys from you, or are you going to grow up?”
The car beeps again and Max recovers the coat. She leaves the back door open and walks away.
Advantage Miss Charles.
Mike holds up the remote key and presses. Nothing happens. He turns, pointing it towards the car as she brushes past and enters the building. The realisation hits him.
“Bitch!” reverberates up the corridor towards her before the Fire Door swings closed and she grins her way up into the office.
Max knocks on Bill’s door and pushes in.
“Ah, Max. How did it go?” pointing at the chair opposite him.
“Not so well”, as she slumps into the offered seat.
Bill raises one eyebrow, “Mike give you trouble?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“What then?”
“Adams was up there and he has nothing. He’s not even trying.”
“I can see you have something though, it’s like reading a picture book.”
“Not yet, but if you can spare me for a couple...”
“Go. Just ring me later and let me know you’re okay.”
Max resists the overwhelming urge to climb over the desk and give Bill a hug. Still clutching her bag and coat, she beams at him and turns to go.
“You seem in really good spirits.” He says as she reaches the door.
Her response is a simple Gaelic shrug.
“How’s Mike?”
“I can see him coming over, so I think you’re about to find out.”
“Here” tossing a set of keys towards her. “Take the little Fiesta Van; it’s a bit more reliable than your old jalopy.”
Max catches the keys against her chest, clutching them there with her belongings as she heads for the front entrance, thus avoiding Mike’s path across the office.
Cynthia leaps up in front of her.
“Jesus! Don’t do that Cyn.”
“So, what’s going on?”
“Must dash. I promise I’ll ring you tonight.”
Cynthia glances over Max’s shoulder, “He’s gone straight in to see Bill.”
Max is already on the move again, “I’ll call tonight.”
“You better.”
Max leaves through the public foyer, turns left and left again, into Printers Alley. The Fiesta is sat next but one, to Max’s 1962 Austin Seven Countryman or Miette as she calls it. She pauses for a moment to give ‘her’ a smile and reaffirm her love of her grandmother’s final car.
You are beautiful. You are not a Mini. You are not a clapped out old wreck.
She looks up at the slightly battered Fiesta van with the Paper’s masthead sign-written down the facing side and across the bonnet. She gives the car a helpless shrug and moves towards the van.
That thing will stand out like a sore thumb. Take Miette. At least she will look abandoned in the woods.
Max stops to look at both vehicles. One is bright blue and sign-written and the other is a pale gun-metal grey, faded and rusty. The wooden slats down the Countryman sides are blistered and rotten at the ends. She follows her inner voice.
Miette coughs into life and Max forces first gear to take. The hand-brake clunks off and they crawl away. Max turns up Main Street heading in the direction she and Mike had just come from. This time she turns up Chapel Lane and returns the verger’s wave as she follows the road where it sweeps round the graveyard.
She pulls over a couple of hundred yards short of the Hilltop boundary, driving into a level patch of undergrowth and switches off the engine. She reaches into the passenger foot-well for her blue Docs™ and swaps them for the pumps she normally wears to the office. She climbs out of the car and after removing the notebook and camera, dumps her bag in the back and exchanges it for an old, oil-stained bomber jacket. She locks the rear and driver’s doors and then pulls each handle, in turn, as a final check.
Max has a good look around for anyone or anything unusual and heads up the lane on foot. The autumn leaves, beneath her feet, appear undisturbed and show no signs of vehicle tracks. She rattles the ornately scrolled gates, but they stand firm and the padlock seems to be rusted solid. Max is sure that no-one has passed this way recently, but continues to nervously scan her surroundings.
You can’t even see the house from here.
I know what I’m doing.
Would you like to explain it to me, then?
Snap! A twig breaks or falls nearby and she spins round with her Pepper spray to hand.
“Hello?” Max asks in a stage whisper “Is there someone there?”
Nothing. She stands stock-still, listening hard for any movement amongst the trees. Crack! Max instinctively crouches, holding the spray out in front of her. An accusatory rook screams out of the canopy and flurries away, low and purposefully. Max resists the temptation to scream back at it and squats there, panting to herself.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. It’s just a bird!
Max waits for a moment; listening to her own breathing, the blood pounding across her temples and that damned voice.
Stand up and get on with it.
Shut up! I will move in my own time.
Max stands, turns and begins her skulk along the fence line. She watches her foot placement as carefully as possible, avoiding the obvious twigs half hidden in the fallen leaves. Snaps and cracks emanate from almost every step.
You’re not very good at this, are you?
I’m not listening.
Following the fence as closely as possible, Max stumbles down through the undergrowth into ground that becomes progressively boggier. She can hear Hilltop Beck tumbling from its outflow pipe. As she turns towards the noise her left boot emits a sucking sound. Its ascent from the mud pauses while she pulls and then releases suddenly, tipping Max onto all-fours.
Shit!
No, just mud.
If you have nothing constructive to say, then just shut the f*** up!
The outflow’s got steel bars on it.
With this realisation, Max looks up. Sure enough, the outflow pipe through which she had hoped to gain access to Hilltop was covered with rusted metal bars.
Great plan!
Okay, so it’s twenty years since I last crawled up the pipe; how was I to know they’d have sealed it up?
With some effort, Max pulls herself from the mud and has one last look at the outflow before heading back to the lane. She stops to scrape clumps of thick dark mud, leaves and collected stones from her Docs™, using the gaps in the gates ironwork to remove the worst. Shoulders and face slumped, she walks back towards the car, intending to find a rag to save the leather and then go home for a bath.
Max can see someone sat in Miette’s passenger seat and pulls the Pepper spray and keys out of her jacket. Holding both defensively, with a single key extended through a clenched fist, she cautiously approaches her beloved car. The stranger seems very tall as he’s all scrunched-up with his knees almost touching his chin and the top of his head is not visible where it is buried in the headlining. Despite his size and Miette’s violation the smile shining through, both his eyes and white beard, seem strangely reassuring. Holding his look, she takes a wide berth to see if Miette has been broken as well as entered.
A distant rumble takes her attention and she looks back down the lane towards town. She ducks a moment before a convoy of vehicles, bearing military plates, thunders past. A heavy Invicta troop-carrier leads the line and does not slow for the gates; which fold like very noisy, cast-iron cards. Pheasant and rooks scatter in all directions. The final vehicle in the column pauses to disgorge half a dozen armed soldiers at the opening and then accelerates away to rejoin its troop.
Max creeps up to Miette and peers cautiously over the front wing. The soldiers already appear at ease and whilst being in an obvious ‘guarding’ position they do not seem overly concerned, sharing conversation and lighting cigarettes. Max wonders if she should risk a photo, but decides against it because she’s not sure if she can turn off the flash.
Having completely forgotten the stranger sitting two feet away from her, she turns to look straight up into his face, but the car is empty.
What the f…?
