The Search (11 page)

Walker moved on, replaying the drunk’s few words over and over. The crowds thinned out. He came to the river and gazed across at an area of derelict buildings. The girders and pillars of
burnt-out tower blocks showed stark against the sunset. Something in the nature of skyscrapers suggested that these bare skeletons of metal represented the final flourishing of their vertiginous
aspiration: this is how they had been intended to look.

The river was dappled red by the sun as Walker made his way along the tow-path. Further along the path was barricaded off and he entered the fringes of the Latin Quarter. Lines of washing hung
between cramped balconies, the late silhouettes of birds were hemmed in by the redness of the sky. Preoccupied with the drunk’s startling appearance Walker had been paying little attention to
exactly where he was. He had been told to be careful in certain parts of the Quarter at night and became abruptly anxious. A pair of youths in ripped jeans and biker jackets appeared from around a
corner, nodded as they passed by.

Top-floor windows glowed furnace-red but it was growing dark in the narrow streets. Walker glanced round and in the shadows behind him thought he detected a figure moving. When he looked again
there was nothing. Dogs barked nearby. From behind, car headlights illuminated the street and flung his shadow up the wall of a building to his right. He turned down a one-way street and stepped
into shadows. The car slowed by the
NO ENTRY
sign then continued on its way, perpendicular to the street Walker was now on.

He walked for a few blocks, past a grocery store – closed now – whose name he recognized from earlier on. If he was right, then Canal Street, at the edge of the Quarter, was only
five minutes away – though in which direction he was not sure. A car slowed to let him cross the road. He gestured ‘thanks’ and stepped out from the sidewalk, trying to see the
driver behind the dark windows. The car turned the corner after him. He trotted across the road, walked briskly to the next right. The instant he was out of sight of the car he sprinted thirty
yards, hoping that by the time it turned the corner he would have disappeared around another. When headlights swept the walls and filled the street he resumed walking. Up ahead was another one-way
street. He trotted as soon as he was round the corner and was relieved to see that the car did not follow him. In evading the car, though, he had lost all sense of direction. He didn’t even
know the name of the street he was in, the area was totally deserted: no cars, no shops, no passers-by. He wondered if the driver had been deliberately nudging him in this direction so as to
intercept him a few blocks later. He looked up and down the street and began running back to the crossroads.

He was almost there when the street was again filled with the white lights of a car behind him. He heard the car accelerate. No longer attempting to disguise his urgency, he sprinted to the
crossroads. He ran to another one-way street where a sign said closed – roadwork and this time the car trailed him into it. The street was so narrow that there was no sidewalk, just enough
room for a car. After running thirty yards he could see no side streets between himself and the roadworks.

He was trapped. He stopped running, breathing hard. The car stopped. High up in the gap between buildings was a glinting catwalk of sky. He heard the car revving behind him. Up ahead, flashing
yellow lights and black-and-yellow tape indicated where the road had been dug up. He began running again, knowing he would never make it that far. The car revved harder. There was a screech of
rubber and the street was filled with the roar of the car accelerating, bearing down on him. The roadworks were a hundred yards away. He stopped, turned. Began running straight at the approaching
car, into the white glare of the headlights.

The car was a wall of white lights and noise. He had to wait till the last possible moment, a split second before he was splashed all over the windshield, until –

‘– NOW!’

The word exploded from his throat. He leapt as high as he could, forcing himself higher, tucking his feet under his body, the bonnet rushing beneath him, the windshield – at the height of
his leap now and the roof slipping by beneath him and then just clipping his foot, destroying his balance and sending him tumbling down the sloping back of the car.

He hit the floor hard, jarring his wrists, gouging lumps out of his palms and knees – but he’d made it, he’d made it. Not even winded. He looked up at the brake lights
straining red as the car ricocheted from one wall to the next, trailing sparks and ploughing into the barriers and lights of the roadworks. With flashing hazard lights sprawled all around and one
wheel still spinning in mid-air it looked as if both car and street had been ripped apart by a land-mine.

Walker was trembling uncontrollably, his knee was throbbing and cut, his palms bleeding. He had an impulse to sit down in the street and let someone bandage his cuts. Hauling himself to his feet
took more effort than the jump. His strength had left him. He forced himself to trot to the end of the street and turn left, back the way he had come. It was only after he had put several streets
between himself and the crashed car that he slowed to a walk. He was shaking so much he had to stop and rest for several minutes but, now that his panic had subsided, it proved surprisingly easy to
find his way back to Canal Street. On Canal he hailed a taxi and gave the name of his hotel, clenching himself tight to control his shaking for the duration of the journey.

Seeing his ripped trousers, bloodied hands and ashen face, the hotel desk-clerk asked if he had been in an accident.

‘Not quite,’ he said, leaning on the lift button.

‘You need first-aid box?’

‘Could you bring it up?’

‘Si, si.’

Back in his room he took off his shirt and shoes and filled a bath. His trousers were stuck to his knee, swollen, hurting. He eased himself into the stinging water and lay soaking before
floating them off. There was a knock at the door – the clerk – and Walker called out to just leave the box on the bed, everything was fine, thank you.

Luxuriating in the feel of hot water over his limbs, bruised but still intact, he went over the scene again and again: the car stalking him, the white charge of headlights, the flashing
reflection of the windshield, the roof sliding beneath him, almost clearing it perfectly until he clipped his toe like an athlete hitting a hurdle and falling to the road in the wake of exhaust and
noise. It was amazing that he had got away so lightly: grazes, gravel in his hands, a cut knee – but nothing, nothing really . . .

It had been Carver in the car, he was convinced of that. He reached a hand out of the water and touched the chain Rachel had given to him. Smiling to himself, he thought of Kelly standing in the
midst of devastation, naked except for the stone around his neck and his indestructible shorts. He felt elated, partly by the mere fact of survival, partly by the reappearance of Carver which was
as reassuring as it was threatening. It meant he was still in the race, still on course.

He hauled himself out of the bath and reached for the towel. He climbed into bed, easing his knee gingerly between the sheets.

Tomorrow, first thing, he would head to Despond.

He arrived there at midday, his knee stiff and tender from the cramped confines of the coach. It turned out to be a grim desert town lacking any distinguishing characteristics
– which made it all the more puzzling that not only had Malory come here but he had spent longer here than any of the other places he had been. There was nothing to detain even the most
thorough visitor, but almost everyone Walker asked had some recollection of Malory. Slightly bemused by the suggestion that he might have left town, they said he was sure to be around some place
– as if he had just stepped outside to get a bite to eat and would be back in a few moments. The prospect of being so close to Malory should have excited him but Walker felt oddly deflated,
as if he hardly cared.

Each night he ate at the bus station diner and then went back to his motel room and watched TV. One evening a guy gnawing ribs at the bar suggested he try a rooming house over in the east of the
city – Malory was living there, last he’d heard. Walker resolved to head over there the next morning but when it came to it he could not face the prospect of the long journey across
town, seizing on the dull ache in his knee as an excuse. Later that week, when he did drag himself over, nobody at the boarding house had ever heard of a guy called Malory. He hung around a few
more days and decided it was pointless to spend any more time there: Malory had left, he was certain of that. Tomorrow he would do the same.

The next morning, however, he found he had no urge to leave and once again dawdled the day away. By evening he was furious with himself for having squandered yet another day and made up his mind
to leave town first thing in the morning. The following day he loitered his time away until the evening when – as on each of the nights to follow – he was seized with a feverish
determination to leave. His resolution was always particularly acute after a few drinks; then it seemed inconceivable that so much time had already gone by like this. What was so difficult about
leaving? All he had to do was pack up his stuff and turn up at the bus station. Nothing could have been easier. Tomorrow he would leave. So intense was his desire to be up and on the move that he
had trouble getting to sleep. His thoughts paced the room as he hatched wild schemes to make up for the time he had wasted in Despond. It took hours to get to sleep and by the time he woke the bus
had already left. Every night he was filled with resolution and every morning he was devoid of energy. A couple of times he woke early, looked at his watch and saw that if he got up now he could
catch the bus but, on each occasion, he felt so drowsy, so worn out by his mental exertions of the night before, that he was unable to face the effort of getting out of bed into the greyish cold.
Instead he turned over, loving the fart-warmth of his bed, and slept on until the sun had climbed into the lunchtime sky.

When he did get up it was with a feeling of contentment which turned to disappointment in the afternoon and which, by the evening, had mounted to a frantic urge to leave. The longer this went on
the worse it became: the more urgently he wanted to leave at night the less inclined he felt to do so in the morning.

As time went by even the normal chores of the day came to seem burdensome. The more time he had the less he did with it. During his first few days in town he had done exercises but soon the
thought of a sit-up exhausted him. He began to lose track of time. He no longer changed his sheets, stopped washing his clothes. For food he had relied on fruit and biscuits and all-day breakfasts
at the diner, but now he dropped the fruit and made do with biscuits and breakfasts. Since he gnawed biscuits throughout the day he could see little point in cleaning his teeth. Why bother when he
would be munching biscuits again in five minutes? The same with shaving: what was the point when you’d have to do it again in a day’s time? Some days he lay in bed all morning, thinking
how satisfying it would be to be a junkie, to have that sense of purpose each day, knowing you had to score. In another way he was glad to be spared the effort: even going to the shops was an
exertion he dreaded. Sometimes he sat for upwards of an hour, needing to piss but unable to force himself out of the chair and into the dismal bathroom. He took to sleeping in the afternoons
– far and away, he decided, the best part of the day. He loved waking up and – for a few moments – not knowing where or who he was. Then his head gradually enclosed itself around
his thoughts and, still clinging to the fond memory of sleep, he became slowly aware of the first faint rumblings of what by the evening would be a bearable despair.

Each day the sun came up and the sky blued over and darkened again until sunrise the next day. Walker rarely thought of Malory. The whole idea of trying to find him seemed a waste of time and
energy he didn’t have. Besides, he realized, rummaging through his stuff one afternoon, he had lost the documents Malory was supposed to sign. Not that he cared one way or the other. And
Carver? He’d probably bump into him in a bar somewhere in town. They’d get drunk together, play pool and talk about what a lot of fucking bollocks it had all been.

Occasionally he picked up the dictaphone and listened to the soundings he had taken so that the motel room was filled with the faint noise of other rooms. Several times he turned on the machine,
thinking it might be worth recording his current condition. Unable to think of anything to say, he muttered, ‘Fuck it,’ and clicked it off. He lay where he was and pulled out the photo
of Rachel. He had spent whole days like this in prison, staring at the image of a woman, numb with longing. He looked at her hair, her eyes. Reached for the phone and dialled her number. The
machine did not click on. After eight rings the tone became bleak. In case she was just coming through the door he let it ring another ten times, hoping that when she got back she could tell that
he had called, furniture and walls preserving his message. Then he just let it ring, the phone pressed to his head like a pistol, her picture in his hands.

Eventually even the drunken, nocturnal desire to leave began to evaporate – and this, oddly, was what prompted him to leave: the knowledge that if he stayed any longer he would never
escape. He knew he would have to go tomorrow. It was his last chance. That night he had a troubled sleep, full of images of regret and things he had left behind: women, jobs, homes, things
he’d never had in the first place. He woke early, the sun still struggling to clear his window sill. The bus would arrive in thirty minutes. Everything was as he hoped – except he did
not want to leave. It was not that he had no desire to leave: no, he actually wanted to stay, that was what he wanted. He liked it here, it wasn’t such a bad place.

By mid-afternoon he was wretched with despair and that night he hit the bar early. He sat next to a guy who had been living in Despond for the last fifteen years. He had just been passing
through but, gradually, had taken a kind of liking to the place. There were plenty worse places.