Читать книгу Hunted - Paul Finch - Страница 8

It took a near-death experience to make Harold Lansing realise that he needed to start enjoying life more. Of course, those who didn’t know him would have been startled to learn that he wasn’t leading a very full and pleasurable existence in the first place.

A 45-year-old multi-millionaire bachelor, he was exceptionally handsome – sun-bronzed, with a shock of crisp, grey hair – always fashionably dressed even in casuals, and the owner of two nifty motors, a Bentley Continental V8 and a Hyundai Veloster sport, so it seemed highly unlikely that he wasn’t already one of the most contented men in Britain. He also owned three sumptuous properties: a villa on the Côte d’Azur, where he spent the odd three-day break, a flash apartment in Swiss Cottage, purpose-bought as a crashpad from which to take in the London scene, and his ‘rural retreat’, as he referred to it, though it was actually his regular residence: a palatial, eight-bedroom former farmhouse in the Surrey countryside called Rosewood Grange. With 300 acres of verdant gardens attached, a private tennis court and croquet lawn, its own indoor swimming pool and the near-obligatory complement of priceless artworks and antiques, you’d have expected Rosewood Grange to be the jewel in a party king’s crown, the epicentre of a lavish, playboy lifestyle, where all the best people, including the most glamorous and connected women, came every weekend to get off their face.

Except that it didn’t serve that purpose, and it never really had.

Looks could be deceptive.

Aside from the occasional round of golf and a few restful hours spent angling on the River Mole, Lansing dedicated more energy towards supporting charitable causes than he did his own leisure. In addition, he was a workaholic. He ran several computer companies from his private office in Reigate, and had made the bulk of his money selling software products in the United States and the Far East. He also owned a chain of country inns and hotels aimed at a wealthy clientele. What was more, he liked to stay hands-on with all these interests – not because he didn’t trust his carefully appointed underlings, but more because he couldn’t conceive of a lifestyle spent, to use one of his own phrases, twiddling his thumbs all day.

However, now maybe – just maybe – thanks to a recent accident and a subsequent two-week sojourn in hospital, several days of which he’d spent hooked to a bank of ‘vital signs’ monitors in Intensive Care, he was beginning to readdress things.

As he threw his briefcase into the back of his Bentley that beautiful July morning, he paused briefly to admire the lush, sun-dappled greenery enclosing his home, and to breathe the seductive scents of the English woodland: rosebud, honeysuckle, fresh mint. Quite an improvement on the starch, bleach, and liberally applied antiseptics of the hospital.

Good Lord, it was great to be alive. But how much of a life was he actually living?

Okay, he’d made a kind of resolution while he was in hospital to take more holidays, to travel more regularly and extensively, maybe even to hook up with Monica again. And yet here he was, the first morning of his officially being ‘fit for work’, and he was already heading for the office at seven sharp. It was as though nothing had happened to disrupt his regular-as-clockwork routine. But it wasn’t like it would be difficult to make changes to this; Lansing was the boss after all – the only pressure he ever felt was the pressure he applied to himself. But he would still only get home after eight p.m., and as usual would dine alone on whatever collation Mrs Beetham, his housekeeper, had set out for him – except that no, Mrs Beetham was currently on holiday with Mr Beetham, Lansing’s gardener, so he would actually dine alone on whatever morsel of fast food, most likely a greasy fish and chip supper, he remembered to pick up on the way. His main viewing that night would be the business news, and his bedtime reading the financial press. This was his normal weekday schedule – and he was used to it and satisfied with it. But it was hardly a life in the true sense of the word.

A solitary individual with few real interests outside work, golf and fishing, Lansing had no yearning to ‘go out and do stuff’ as Monica had once tried to persuade him – not long before they broke up, in fact – but the incident on the river had made him realise that unforeseen disaster could be lurking around any corner, and that there were probably quite a few things he had yet to experience that would undoubtedly enrich his time on Earth. The mere memory of the roiling green water thundering in his ears as he was swept over the weir – the weight of it bearing down on top of him, pummelling his body, slamming him again and again on the slimy brickwork at the bottom of the plunge-pool, pinning him deep in that airless, icy void – was enough to set him quaking. How easy to recall the horrific realisation that this was it; that without expectation, anticipation, or even a hint of warning, it was all suddenly, irreversibly over. Everything. The whole show. There would be no goodbyes, no sorting out of affairs, no time to fix the things that needed fixing. This was simply it. His allotted time had run out. Gone. Zip.

Almost in reflex, Lansing stripped off his blue silk tie.

It wasn’t necessarily a rebellion against the regimented world in which he’d so long been immersed. It didn’t mean that he was suddenly casting his sights further afield – looking out for a good time when he’d normally be assessing the markets. But it was a start, he supposed. Monica would certainly be surprised. He’d try and Skype with her later on, and gauge her reaction – and not just to the missing tie, perhaps to an on-the-hoof dinner invitation for whenever she was next in the UK.

Lansing tossed the tie into the back seat of his Bentley as he climbed behind the wheel. With a few deft strokes, he brought the magnificent machine’s six-litre twin-turbocharged engine purring to life. The dulcet strains of Vivaldi filled its leather interior. He eased it down his white gravel drive, increasingly enthused by his new outlook on life, by his determination to have some fun for a change. At the end of the day, why not? The nearby woods were thick with summer leaf, filled with birdcalls. The sun speared through the overhead canopy. When he looked beyond his desk, this world – which had so very nearly been snatched away from him – really was a glorious and invigorating place.

A short distance from the house, he slowed as he approached the drive entrance. The road beyond was only a B road, but it ran in a more or less direct line between Crawley and Dorking, and passed for long, straight stretches through gentle forest and farmland. As such, it was popular with boy racers, even at this early hour – idiots who’d left it too late to set out for work; idiots who were in danger of missing their flights from Gatwick; idiots who were trying to get home before the day began, so they could try to convince their wives or girlfriends that they hadn’t stayed out all night. But even without such a crowd of jackanapeses on the road, the point where Lansing’s drive connected with it was a bad one; right on a blind bend. To compensate, he’d had a large convex mirror fixed on the twisted oak trunk opposite, giving him excellent vantage in both directions for a considerable distance, and right now the way was clear.

As the ‘Spring’ harpsichord kicked in, he thumbed the volume control on the steering column. Lansing loved classical music, but he particularly loved the pastoral pieces, especially while driving through lush countryside on summer mornings. He checked the mirror opposite one final time – the road was still empty in both directions – and casually cruised out between the tall redbrick obelisks that served as his gateposts.

The sound of his collision with the Porsche Carrera was like a volcanic eruption.

When the sports car struck his front nearside it was doing over seventy miles an hour, and it catapulted over the top of him, flipping end over end through the air, turning into a fireball when it hit the road again some forty yards further on, from which point it continued to crash and roll, setting alight every bush and thicket along the verge, before wrapping itself round a hornbeam, which was almost uprooted by the impact.

In comparison to that, Lansing didn’t come off half badly.

His own vehicle, which was also dragged out and flung on its roof along the scorched tarmac, was of course reduced to mangled scrap, but though he was slammed brutally against his belt and airbag, and his legs twisted torturously as the Bentley’s entire chassis was buckled out of shape, he survived.

For what seemed like ages afterwards, he hung upside down, dazed to a near-stupor. The only thought that worked its way through his head was: The mirror … the road was clear, I saw it. He cursed himself as a damn fool for having played the music in his car at such volume that he’d failed to hear the howl of the approaching engine. But that shouldn’t have mattered, because the road was clear. I saw it with my own eyes.

And then another thought occurred to him: about the smell that was rapidly filling his nostrils, and the warm fluid running down his face – which he’d at first assumed was blood. He touched his wet cheek with his fingertips. When he brought them away again, they were shiny and slippery.

Dear God!

The petrol tank had ruptured. Its contents were already seeping in rivulets through the shattered vehicle’s interior. And outside on the road of course, though Lansing’s vision was fogged by pain and shock, pools of flame were burning, some of them in perilous proximity.

Though nauseated and shivering, head banging with concussion, he fought wildly with his seatbelt clip. When it finally came loose, he still didn’t drop, but was held fast by the legs, the agony of which infused his entire lower body.

‘Bloody broken legs,’ he burbled through a mouth seething with saliva.

He could still get out. He had to.

So he wriggled and he writhed, and he grunted aloud, biting down on shrieks of pain as he finally shifted his contorted lower limbs sufficiently to fall like a stone, landing heavily on his shoulders and upper back, but still managing to lurch around and worm his way out through his side window. Even as he slid onto the glass-strewn tarmac, there was movement in the corner of his eye. He spied glistening fuel winding treacherously away towards the burning vegetation on the verge.

Crawling on his elbows, teeth gritted on blinding pain, Lansing dragged himself further and further away. When the car blew behind him, it didn’t go with a BANG as much as a WUMP. He imagined fire ballooning above it in a miniature atom cloud, engulfing the branches overhead. Searing heat washed over him. But heat didn’t hurt you, flame did. And flame didn’t follow.

Realising he was safe, Lansing slumped face down on his folded arms, tears squeezing from eyes already reddened by smoke and fumes. Somewhere nearby he heard the approach of another car, but this one was slowing down. Tyres crunched on a road surface littered with wreckage; an engine groaned to a halt; a handbrake was applied; doors opened; what sounded like two pairs of booted feet clumped on the tarmac. Though it took him a stupefying effort, Lansing rolled over onto his back.

At first, he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing. When its fuel tank had exploded, the twisted, blazing hulk of his Bentley had righted itself with the force, landing on its wheels again. But more important than this, a heavy vehicle of some sort – green in colour, like a jeep or Land Rover – had parked about ten yards behind it, and two men had climbed out, both dressed in what looked like grey overalls. Instead of coming over to check if Lansing was okay, the first of these two men, the taller one, was standing with hands in pockets, surveying the burning wreck. The other had walked round to the far side of it and, through the flickering orange haze, seemed to be attempting to remove the mirror from the tree trunk.

‘H-hey!’ Lansing stammered. ‘Hey … I’m over here …’

The one with his hands in his pockets casually looked round. Despite the momentous events of that morning, despite the delayed shock that was running through Lansing’s broken body like an icy drug, he was so startled by the face he now beheld, and so horrified at the same time, that he cried out incoherently.

The shorter chap meanwhile was still fiddling with the mirror – not trying to remove it, as Lansing had first thought, but trying to remove something that had been laid over it. Or at least, laid over its glass. Was that a picture? A large, circular picture fitted inside the mirror’s frame?

Good God …

With slow, purposeful steps, the tall one with the face that Lansing couldn’t believe walked across the road towards him.

‘You surely are the luckiest bastard alive, Mr Lansing.’ His voice was muffled, though the words were perfectly clear. ‘But sadly no one’s luck lasts forever.’

‘I’m … I’m hurt,’ Lansing stuttered.

‘I can see that.’

‘Please … get me an ambulance.’

Now the other one came across the road; the one carrying the circular picture he’d torn away from the mirror. His face too brought an astonished croak from Lansing’s throat, but no more so than the picture did – it was a still photograph of this very road, albeit empty, free of oncoming traffic.

‘Look,’ he burbled, ‘this isn’t a game. I’m badly hurt.’

‘Not badly enough, I’m afraid,’ the taller of the two men said. ‘But don’t worry – we can take care of that for you.’

They picked him up, one at either end.

Lansing fought back. Of course he fought back; he knew they weren’t trying to help him. But despite his struggles, they carried him around his vehicle like a sack of meal. At this point he bit one of them; the shorter one, whose latex-covered hand had taken a tight grip on his sweaty, petrol-soaked shirt. He sank his teeth deep, almost through to the knuckle. The assailant yelped and tried to yank his hand free, but Lansing – a dog with a bone, because he knew his life depended on it – wouldn’t let go.

They remained calm, even as they rained blows on his face to try and loosen his clenched teeth. Each impact resounded through Lansing’s skull. His nose went first; then his cheekbones and eye sockets; finally his jaw.

Though his vision was filmed by a sticky crimson caul, he was still aware they were carrying him. The heat of his vehicle washed over him as they halted in front of it.

‘Pleeeaaath,’ he mumbled through his shredded lips. ‘Pleeeaaathe … no …’

‘Think of this as a favour, Mr Lansing,’ the taller one said. ‘You’ve always been a handsome fella. Would you really want to carry on looking the way you do now? Anyway, hypothetical question. A-one, a-two, a-three …’

As they swung him between them his burbled pleas became gurgled wails, which rose to a peak of intensity when they released him and he bounced across the blistered bonnet and clean through the jagged maw of the windscreen into the white-hot furnace beyond.

Even then, it wasn’t over.

Lansing’s clothes burned away in blackened tatters, along with his skin and the thick fatty tissue beneath. Yet he still found sufficient strength to scramble out through an aperture where the driver’s door had once been – to amazed but amused chuckles.

‘This bloke, I’m telling you,’ the taller one said, as they again hefted Lansing by his wrists and ankles, unconcerned at the flambéd flesh coming away in their grasp in slimy layers. As before, they transported his twitching form to the front of the vehicle and launched him across its bonnet, back through its flame-filled windscreen.