More Than You Can Say Read Free Page A

hair. Enormous wraparound sunglasses obscured most of his features.
    ‘No thanks.’
    ‘Good party last night, was it?’
    I did not reply, waiting for him to lose interest and drive on.
    ‘Where are you headed?’
    This idiot was beginning to annoy me. I could not hold a conversation with him and continue walking at nearly six miles an hour. If I walked any more slowly I’d lose my bet.
    ‘Are you lost, old man? Don’t know where you’re going? Get in and we’ll give you some breakfast and then set you on your way.’
    I managed to find enough breath to answer him.
    ‘Would you very kindly fuck off?’
    ‘Oh, if you’d like us to fuck off, then of course that’s what we’ll do.’
    The window of the Range Rover wound up again andthen, instead of overtaking, the car pulled into the verge behind me. I resisted the strong temptation to look over my shoulder again and see what the driver was doing. I could hear the motor running. Half a mile ahead of me was a straggly line of houses marking a small village. Suddenly it seemed important to me to get to that village, where there were other people around, and away from the Range Rover. I tried to speed up a little. Behind me I heard the snarl of the engine as the driver gunned it. I thought, thank God, he’s going, whoever he is. There was something about the narrow face of the driver with its enormous aviator sunglasses that had made me feel uneasy.
    Suddenly I felt a huge blow to my right side. I was pitched forward into the ditch at the side of the road and my head struck something hard. I was stunned and winded and in so much pain I thought I was going to black out. Then I heard, through the mist of concussion, two car doors being slammed. The next second two sets of hands were lifting me and I was dragged around to the rear of the car, blinking and semi-conscious. The tailgate was opened and then one pair of hands transferred itself to my ankles. With a grunt the two men lifted me up to the height of the tailgate. They must have been strong because I am not a small man, at thirteen stone and six foot two, but they managed it. I was rolled on to the tailgate and then folded up so that I fitted into the rear compartment of the car. Then the tailgate was slammed shut and I was left in complete darkness, the parcel shelf pressing down on me. The car drove off, and I screamed as we went around a corner and I was flung against the side of the car. I remember thinking that I should have looked over my shoulder after all – then I might have seen them coming.

Two
    I don’t know how long I lay squashed up in the back of the car. Waves of nausea swept over me, accompanied by stabbing pains in my right side. On top of that I started to get violent cramps in my legs because I could not straighten them. Luckily I was not fully conscious; I kept fading in and out. The blow to my head must have given me concussion.
    After what seemed like a long time, I sensed the car was slowing down and then heard the scrunch of wheels on gravel. The car stopped, and a moment later the tailgate opened. Somebody yanked me by the legs and I fell out of the car, winding myself again, as well as getting a nice bit of gravel rash on one side of my face.
    ‘You’re not going to cause any trouble, are you, old man?’ asked Narrow Face.
    Another voice said, ‘Trouble? I don’t think so. Look at him.’
    I couldn’t see the speaker, but I didn’t much care what he was saying because at that point I was sick. I managed to move my head so that I didn’t spatter myself and tried to straighten my legs out. They were still screaming with cramp.
    ‘Who’s going to clear
that
up, I’d like to know?’ said Narrow Face.
    ‘You are,’ said the other man unsympathetically. ‘But first let’s get our guest into the house.’
    Our guest? Had I inadvertently won a dream holiday for one at a country house hotel? The two men picked me up, hooking my arms around their shoulders as they half-carried,