The Grave (4 page)

Samuel swung the car into the car park, he didn’t look for a
space as he didn’t intend staying long.  The girl wasn’t there.  He didn’t know
how that made him feel. 

On the drive from the woods he had acknowledged he didn’t
need a tag along, it would be a huge complication.  On the other hand he
couldn’t be sure what she would do under pressure.  What had happened with Phil
didn’t cause him unease, the scum had been a woman beater, probably a pimp and
all that went with it.  He was just another low life and no loss. 

Maybe at the end of his living, if he had the time to review
the things he had done then this killing would be there, something else to be
included in his accounting.  If so it would need to take a ticket and wait in
line. 

The girl though, she had been badly scared.  She didn’t know
him, didn’t know anything about him, but she could know enough if anyone asked
the right questions.  He glanced at his watch.  He would go, if she had been intending
to come with him she would have been waiting. He leaned to turn the ignition
key and caught a shadow moving in his peripheral vision.

She came out from between parked cars, she was wearing jeans
and a thick jacket trimmed with fake fur.  A pack hung on her back and she
carried a hold all.  It needed both hands to hold it, her arms were rigid with
the strain and it pulled her body sideways, the bulk of it banging against her
legs as she staggered across the wet concrete.

He didn’t jump out but leaned and threw open the passenger
door.  She pushed the bag onto the passenger seat and he hefted it into the
rear space.  She clambered up and shrugged off the back pack, throwing it into
the foot well.  One look at her swollen, reddened eyes told him all he needed
to know. 

He leaned forward, his hands on the top of the steering
wheel his forearms resting against the struts.  He didn’t look at her but just
spoke quietly.

“You didn’t do anything wrong Sylvie, you do know that don’t
you?  He was hurting you and I was the one who killed him.  You don’t have
anything to feel guilty about and you don’t have to leave this place, if you
don’t want to.

“Has anyone asked about him?”

“No, but I didn’t go out, I stayed in the flat, couldn’t
bear to meet anyone.”

She turned now, tears were flowing across her cheeks and
dripping from her chin.  He felt immensely sorry for her and it took him by
surprise.  It had been many years since he had been visited by the gentler
emotions.

“You could just stay here, sit it out.  Chances are they
won’t suspect you had anything to do with it and anyway it could be a long time
before they find his body.  They don’t know yet that anything happened to him. 
People go away all the time, someone like him, I think there’ll be more relief
than regret if he’s gone.”

“No, no it won’t work, Benny knows, he told him I’d gone
with you.”

“Ah.  Still though you could spin some tale, tell them you
only rode with me to the bus station. 

“What did you do with the car?”

“I left it on his street, where he usually parks it.  Was
that alright?  only you never said  I stuffed the key under the carpet, he does
that sometimes, did, I mean.”

“It’s fine, good, it’ll look normal for a day or two.  But
you do know don’t you, you don’t need to leave this place? You didn’t do
anything wrong.”

“I want to come with you Samuel, I want to get away.  I
understand if you don’t want to take me, but I want to come with you.”

He turned now to look at her, her eyes glistened in the dim
light.  She looked like a little girl.

Now the heavy vehicle rumbled across the car park and out
onto the road.  Rain had started falling and tiny starbursts, painted orange by
the street lamps, shimmered on the windscreen.

Sylvie leaned back against the hard seat and for the first
time in this dreadful, desperate day she started to feel safe.

It was quiet, save for the burble of the diesel and the
swish of wet tyres on tarmac.  On the few occasions they were overtaken then
the screen wipers would swish three or four times, clearing the mist of spray. 
He drove calmly, kept within the speed limits.  He was a natural behind the
wheel, at one with the car and the road and his situation. Enclosed within this
dim little metal cocoon they were divorced from the night and the lives they
skirted.  

At first Sylvie slumped in the seat, eyes closed and hands idle
in her lap.  He glanced at her now and again and thought maybe she was asleep. 
It was obvious the girl was exhausted, worn out with shock and fear and emotion
and he let her be.  He preferred the quiet anyway.

After they’d travelled for a while she opened her eyes, like
a tired child she simply stayed quite still, limp against the seat.  Her head
turned slightly to the side as she watched the dark shapes of houses, trees and
bigger industrial buildings flicking into being and then slipping away.  She
had no idea where they were or even which direction they were heading.  He had
told her they would go where he decreed and so she watched as the world slipped
past into the night and tried not to think.

He kept away from the motorways.  On the very slim chance
that all had been discovered, though he doubted it, he steered clear of where
the police gathered, the lights were bright and people milled.  The car was
greedy and after an hour he refuelled at a small filling station, paying in
cash. The pay window open to the night-time customers was set low in the wall
and he was able to hide most of his face simply by standing erect.  There were
cameras yes, but he didn’t think they needed to worry too much.  For most of
them the film was cycled every few days and there was no reason to believe they
were on anyone’s radar yet.

Without speaking Sylvie jumped down and walked into the shop
and to the ladies room in the rear.  When she came back she stopped, childlike
again, and bought sweets and drinks, a carbonated thing for herself and without
asking she bought water for him and filled a small cup of coffee from a
machine. 

When she clambered back up into the car and handed him the
bottle and tiny cardboard cup he smiled at her.  She had guessed right, he
needed caffeine and rehydration.  The gesture and the fact she had known this
much so early in their relationship moved him and he leaned over and kissed her
cheek.

“Thanks.”

She nodded and smiled up shyly.  He liked this girl.  When
he had first met her he had taken her for a hard-bitten whore, street wise and
cynical.  He thought now, perhaps he’d been wrong.

For hour after hour they moved along the quiet roads,
through estates of houses, windows steamy with condensation, evening meals being
prepared, the blue white glow of television screens illuminating small lives. 
They swept on, past the buses and cars and joggers of suburbia.

She wondered now how he was planning the route, he had no
Sat Nav, she hadn’t seen him consult a map and yet he drove on, confident and
calm. 

He was going north, it was all he needed to know; his sense
of direction didn’t often fail him and for now at least, simply north was
enough.  He watched the road signs and knew the country well.  In his mind the
major towns and the rivers and criss crossing motorways were an atlas clear
enough to lead him in the right direction.  Once they got nearer to the coast
then he would need to consult the map, probably, but for now he aimed the car
towards the pole and drove on.

When the thought struck he was thrown for a moment.  He’d
been stupid; he was so unnerved by the oversight that he didn’t want to ask the
question. There was no choice though he would have to ask, and soon, because
the answer was pivotal to his plan. 

“Sylvie, did you bring your passport?”

Her answer was a cold shroud thrown over the warmth of the
little cab.

“Passport, I don’t have a passport.” 

For a moment he didn’t speak, couldn’t.  It wasn’t often
that he was so thrown but now for just a little while his mind spiralled
uncontrolled.  How could she not have a passport, in this day and age, surely
everyone had a passport.  There were day trips, booze cruises, hen parties, so
many things.  Now the population looked beyond the shores of Britain for their
entertainment, slipped in and out of the country with no thought and little
planning. 

How could she not have a passport?

He heard the gulp, knew she was barely breathing.  She had
realised the import of the question and the drama of her response. 

“I’m sorry.  I never had one, never went anywhere.”

“Okay, it’s okay, don’t worry.”

He surprised himself with this need to comfort her, he
should let her go.  He could leave her at the next big town, give her some
money, enough to keep her for a month and then let her find her own way.  He
was sure that now he had moved her away from the down at heel place where she
had been born and raised, she probably wouldn’t go back.  He acknowledged also
though that she was vulnerable, for all her cockiness when they had first met
she wasn’t as street wise as she thought.  If he left her now she would come
unstuck.  She would probably do what they all do, head for London, Manchester,
straight for disaster and a short life of misery and pain. 

“It’s okay, we can sort it.  Don’t worry.” 

The only evidence of his concern, his knuckles white on the
wheel, passed her by.  She had thought he would dump her and the relief because
he didn’t seem to be thinking about it blinded her to his stress.

Eventually he drove into a layby beside a dark, two lane
road, he turned off the engine. 

“I think we should eat something and I need to have a kip.”

Sylvie was relieved, she had been drifting in and out of
sleep for a while, her nodding head whipping forward each time wakening her
with a start and she was hungry. 

Normally she would have whined about the hunger, bemoaned
the endless boring miles and the lack of entertainment but she didn’t know this
man.  Yes, they had enjoyed some sex but more than that, they had seen a man
die, had made a man die.  She knew nothing more about him but that he could be
roused to terrifying physical violence.  Her life had been hard and the choices
she had made had oftentimes been stupid but this situation now went beyond
anything she could have imagined. 

All day she had spent in a haze of indecision and confusion,
when she hadn’t been curled in a ball on her bed crying she had paced round and
round the small living room of the flat.  What should she do?  Phil was dead,
he couldn’t come and hurt her, not anymore and she was honest enough with
herself to admit she was glad of it.  His mates, Benny and the others didn’t
frighten her.  They were just bullies and big mouths.  Without Phil to lead
them they wouldn’t bother her.  She was his girl anyway and until they knew he
was gone they wouldn’t dare approach her.

That was only part of it though, the easy part, the good
part really. She was so very afraid the police would come, that somehow the
body had been found, Samuel in custody and her implicated.  Every car that
slowed outside the window caused her heart to pound and she spent hours peering
from behind the curtains, straining to see one way and then the other, sure
that at any moment there would be a knock on the door and her life would tumble
into the hell she knew prison would be.

Samuel had asked about her parents and she had lied to him
then, through shame and because she had lied about them so much she had lost
touch with the truth.  Her dad had spent most of her childhood in and out of
prison.  She could remember with shocking clarity her mother screaming at the
police cars as they carted him away again and again.  He had been a petty
criminal, a thug and a loser and when he died in a prison riot she had felt
nothing but relief.  Her mum had very quickly taken up with another dead loss
and that had been the parting of the ways. 

Bar work and waitressing, along with what she could draw
from Social Services, paid for the crappy little two room flat and then when
Phil came along he had given her the odd hand out.  Usually it had to be paid
for, carrying packages for him, occasionally having sex with some puffed up old
bloke and of course with Phil himself. 

Thankfully he had liked her enough to keep her mostly to
himself, she had never been sure she would have the strength to fight it if he
had wanted her to go on the streets, like some of the other girls he ran.

Briefly she had wondered about them, her sisters in torment,
who would look out for them now, would they be better or worse off.  Some of
them would be stuck for drugs without Phil’s supply and so would have to get
out and about on their own.  Many would, in the end, be picked up by the police
and that in itself presented a risk to her.  It was the thought of the police
that had made up her mind to pack her stuff and head for the car park and
Samuel.  He had actually been kind to her and though the fury and the violence,
when he had killed Phil, had shaken her beyond belief she didn’t think he would
hurt her.

In truth she liked him and so here she was for the second
time in so many days, in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with this
man she didn’t know.  She shook her head in despair, Oh Sylvie where will it
all end.  A great wave of sadness and hopelessness swept through her and she
found she was just too worn out and too tired to care. 

“I didn’t bring much to eat Samuel. I had some cheese and a
loaf, I put them in here.”

She indicated the pack she had thrown on the floor of the
car.

“There’s some crisps as well.”

“I’ve got a box, there’s a bottle of water and some coffee,
I have a stove.  We’ll be fine.  Do you want some coffee?”

“Oh yeah, please.  But, well do you have tea?.”

He laughed aloud, it sounded odd to his ears, he hadn’t
laughed for such a long time and it took him by surprise.  He bit it back but
it had felt good and he knew there was a smile on his face.

“Yeah, I got tea bags.”

She grinned at him now.

“I hope there’s milk though, I never could take it
without.” 

“There’s milk, it’s long life but it’s okay.  Come on.” 

They walked to the back of the Land Rover and he opened the
rear doors.  A box stowed under the rear seat held a small camping stove, a tin
kettle with a folding handle and an enamel mug.  He rooted around in the bottom
for a while and came up with a plastic cup, he peered inside, poured a drop of
water into it, swilled it round and then wiped it on a piece of paper towel. 

Once the stove was lit, standing on the kerb edge and the
water was hissing and singing he dragged out the cardboard box he had packed
back at the shack. He had pretty much emptied the kitchen cupboard into it. 
They made sandwiches with tinned ham and cheese slices, he brewed tea for her
and coffee for himself and they sat on the back seat of the car so they could
put the food between them. 

For a while they ate in silence, worn down by the travelling
and the things that had brought them here and each lost in thoughts they
couldn’t share and didn’t know what to do with. 

It was peaceful though, it was calm and there was a gentle
companionship between them the like of which Sylvie had never known and Samuel
had thought never to experience again.

She knew that before long it would all need to come out, her
life with Phil, the truth about her mum and dad and then he’d probably dump
her, and she wouldn’t blame him.  For now though it was enough, to sit in the
dark and the quiet, to sip the warm tea and watch the dark shadow of Samuel
outlined against the rain specked window.