The traffic was moderate, there weren’t many cars about on Marine Drive. On their left the forest opened up, providing a view of a still sea and far-off, pastel-coloured mountain ranges. Hundreds of tree trunks made into rafts rested in the shallow water, evidence that the timber industry was still flourishing in spite of massive deforestation. Loreena closed her eyes and enjoyed the airstream. When she opened her eyes again, she glanced into the wing mirror.
An SUV was driving close behind them, a massive, grey off-road vehicle with darkened windows.
Suddenly she was overcome by a feeling of unease.
She wondered how often she had looked into her wing mirror over the past quarter of an hour. Probably all the time, without being aware of it. Loreena was a super-alert passenger, and her constant shouts of ‘Red!’ and ‘When’s it going to turn green?’ and ‘Watch where you’re driving!’ got on some people’s nerves. Nothing escaped her. Not even who was driving behind them.
Frowning, she turned her head.
The feeling condensed into certainty. Now she was completely sure that the SUV had been tailgating them ever since the airport. The windscreen reflected the sky, so that the two occupants could only be made out very vaguely. She looked thoughtfully ahead again. The road ran evenly through luxuriant green, divided along the middle by a yellowing strip of grass on which bushes and low trees were planted at irregular intervals. Another off-road vehicle was coming towards them, equally dark, a different one.
Was she going mad? Was she developing a peculiar little paranoid fantasy? How many dark SUVs were there in Vancouver? Hundreds, certainly. Thousands. To western Canadians off-road vehicles were something like seashells to hermit crabs.
Stop thinking this stuff, she thought.
On the other hand it couldn’t hurt if she jotted down the number of the car. She took out her mobile phone as the SUV suddenly switched lanes and pulled up level with them so that she couldn’t see the number plate any more. Loreena knitted her brows. Fool, she thought. Couldn’t you wait another few seconds? I was about to give you my—
The SUV came closer.
‘Hey!’ Sid honked his horn and gesticulated towards the other vehicle. ‘Keep your eye on the road, you idiot!’
Still closer.
‘What’s up with him?’ barked Sid. ‘Is he drunk?’
No, thought Loreena, filled with sudden unease, no one’s drunk around here. Someone knows exactly what he’s doing.
Sid accelerated. So did the SUV.
‘What a stupid idiot!’ he raged. ‘That guy ought to—’
‘Careful!’ yelled the intern.
Loreena saw the huge car coming, settled into her seatbelt, tried to put some distance between herself and the door, then the SUV collided with the side of the Thunderbird and forced it into the central reservation. Sid cursed and pulled the wheel round, frantically trying not to end up in the opposite lane. Veering wildly they ploughed through soil, brushed past low bushes, just missed a tree. The engine of the sports car wailed. Sid put his foot down. The SUV drew up and rammed them again, harder this time. Loreena lurched about in her seat. The metal screech of punished metal echoed in her aural passages, and suddenly they were on the opposite lane, they heard furious honking, swerved at the last moment.
‘My car!’ wailed Sid. ‘My lovely car!’
Grim-faced, he steered the Thunderbird back onto the strip of green, but in that section someone had placed greater emphasis on bushes. They plunged noisily into a hedge. Branches flew off in all directions as the sports car crashed through several different varieties of shrub. On the right-hand side the SUV dashed along and blocked their way back onto the carriageway. Sid braked abruptly and tried to get behind the SUV, which thwarted his intention by also decelerating.
At that very moment he hurtled forward again.
This time Sid was quicker. Neatly avoiding a collision, he crossed the two opposite lanes and only just managed to dodge a motorcycle and turn into Old Marine Drive, a narrow, potholed street that led a few kilometres along the woods to the university grounds, where it opened back into the main road. There was no one to be seen for miles around; dense, dark green proliferated on both sides. Loreena registered that her seatbelt had been torn from its moorings, and clutched the edge of the windscreen.
My God, she thought. What do they want from us?
Oddly, it didn’t occur to her that the attack might have anything to do with Palstein, Ruiz and the whole story. She thought instead of juvenile delinquents, carjackers or someone who did that kind of thing just for fun, who must be completely insane. She looked behind her. Potholes, woods, nothing else. For a moment she was surviving on the tender shoot of hope that Sid might have shaken off his pursuer with his manoeuvre, when he appeared behind them and came relentlessly closer.
A scraping noise emerged from the Thunderbird’s engine compartment. The car stuttered.
‘Faster!’ she screamed.
‘I’m driving as fast as I can,’ Sid yelled back. Instead they were losing speed, growing steadily slower.
‘You must be able to go faster!’
‘I don’t know what’s going on.’ Sid let go of the wheel and waved his hands around in the air. ‘Something’s fucked, no idea what.’
‘Hands on the wheel!’
‘Oh God almighty,’ groaned the intern and ducked his head. The massive, dark front of the SUV roared up and crashed into them from behind. The Thunderbird gave a leap. Loreena was slung forward and bumped her head.
‘Come on!’ Sid pleaded with the car. ‘Come on!’
Once again the SUV hammered into their rear. The Thunderbird made unhealthy noises, then their attacker was suddenly beside them, pushing them easily aside. Sid cursed, steered like crazy in the opposite direction, put his foot down, braked—
Lost control.
The moment of lift-off had the entirely curious effect that at the same moment every sound – not only that of the tyres on the gravel of the carriageway, but also the sounds of the engine, of the SUV – seemed to die away, apart from the single, bubbling call of a bird. They turned over and over in peaceful silence, the trees grew momentarily down from the sky towards them, bushy clouds sprinkled an endless blue sea of unfathomable depth, then there was a change of perspective, the wood was at an angle, a roaring and scraping, and everything was back, the whole terrifying cacophony of the crash. Loreena was hurled from her seat. Arms flailing, she sailed through the air, while below her the Thunderbird skidded down the embankment, undercarriage towards her, tyres spinning, an animal devouring bushes and foliage. Still flying, she became aware of the wreck abruptly reaching a standstill and coming to rest, then a piece of meadow came rushing towards her at breakneck speed.
She had no idea what exactly she broke as she landed, but judging by the pain the damage must have been considerable. Her body was slung around several times, onto her back, onto her belly, onto her side. What wasn’t broken broke now. At last, after what seemed like an eternity, she lay there, limbs outstretched, blood in her eyes, blood in her mouth.
Her first thought was that she was still alive.
Her second, that her phone was flashing in the sun not very far away. It sparkled on a flat stone like an exhibition piece, right in the middle, as if lovingly placed there. Further down lay the shattered Thunderbird in the trellis of broken trees, scattered with twigs, bark and leaves, and in the car, in fact more out than in, Sid dangled, his head half torn from his shoulders, staring at her.
Tyres approached across gravel and grass.
‘Loreena?’
The cry reached her, thin and plaintive. She raised her eyes and saw the intern lying in the shadow of a fir tree. He tried to prop himself up, collapsed, tried again. The SUV stopped. Someone came down the embankment with long, not particularly hurried steps. A man, tall, dark trousers, white shirt, sunglasses. He casually held a long-barrelled pistol in his right hand.