Just as I manage to hook my hand around them, the keys slip from my grasp and come clattering to the floor. I jerk my arm out and duck back down against the wall beside the door. I listen carefully for any movement. There’s nothing. Back on my hands and knees, I push my arm through the gap in the door and grab the car key. Then I stand, pull the door to and make my way back around the side of the house.
When I get back to the fence, I realise there’s no way of me being able to climb up. There’s no handy car bonnet this side. I carefully check both of the windows along the side of the house – the old man’s in neither of the rooms. Thanking my lucky stars, I clench his car key between my teeth, give myself a run-up and launch myself at the fence, my arms flailing upwards as I grasp for purchase on the top of it. I plant my feet against the fence and pull myself upwards, feeling my muscles burning before I hook my right elbow over the top and manage to pull the rest of my body up. Once I’m over the top, I step down onto the car bonnet and then duck down beside the car.
I wait a few seconds, just to make sure I’ve not been seen or heard, and then I press the button on the key fob. The car unlocks immediately, so I pull the handle and open the door as carefully and quietly as I can. With the door still slightly ajar, I quickly familiarise myself with the controls. I know that as soon as I start it up, I’m going to need to disappear very quickly. Once I’m happy that I know where everything is, I pull the door shut, start the engine up immediately and slip the stick into reverse. With a squeal of tyres, the car shoots back into the road. I push the stick into drive, and with another small squeal I’m accelerating off down the street.
61
In a heartbeat, I know exactly where I’m going. I’ve no idea how I’m going to get there, but I know it’s going to take a long time. From my limited but slowly growing knowledge of Bratislava, I know which way is west. I head out of the city, being careful to stick to speed limits but at the same time not holding back where I can get away with it.
Yet again, my life has taken a bizarre twist and I’m driving through Slovakia in an old man’s car, with only the clothes on my back. I’ve got the iPhone Jess gave me in my jacket pocket, having charged it fully last night. If Jess’s body has been found by now, they’ll have found her phone. I don’t know how linked the phones are, but I’m certainly not going to risk using it.
A thought occurs to me. Can they track the phone just through it being on? I’m fairly sure I read somewhere that they can do that using the masts. Would it still be the case in Slovakia? I’m not about to risk it. Holding on to the steering wheel with one hand, I fish the phone out of my jacket pocket and hold down the button to switch it off. After what seems like an absolute age, the screen changes, and Slide to power off appears at the top. I do as it says, and the phone eventually shuts down. I put it back in my pocket – I still want the option of being able to use it if I should somehow get myself into some really deep trouble.
I do a quick mental calculation to work out how much money I’ve got on me. I reckon it’s probably a couple of hundred euros. The fuel tank in the car’s full to the brim, according to the dashboard, and I’m getting about 58mpg by the time I head out of town, which I reckon means I’ll probably have to fill up the tank once more. Maybe twice. My journey’s going to be about eight hundred miles, I estimate. I should be able to do that in eleven or twelve hours, depending on traffic, and I don’t intend to stop for sleep. It’ll be coffee that keeps me going. I have no time to lose.
A mile or so down the road, I pull over into a car park behind a gym. I’m pleased to find there’s no CCTV that I can see, so I park up next to a row of vans. I can’t read the writing on the side, but by my way of thinking they must be delivery vans for a local company as they’re all sign-written identically. I crouch down behind one, and, using the key from the moped, I quickly but carefully unscrew the number plates from one of the vans. I do the same on the old man’s car and swap them over. I figure that the people driving these vans aren’t going to know the registration numbers off by heart – they’re probably pool vehicles. That should give me a bit of breathing space. I get back into the car, complete with its new registration plates, and within three minutes of parking up I’m on the road again.
Before long I’m over the border into Austria, keeping the car on the main road as I carry on heading west. Once I’m past Vienna, I stop at a small service station and buy a couple of road maps. Using a pen, I trace my route. I know roughly the signs I’m looking out for: Linz, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Bonn, Liege, Charleroi and Mons. Then I’ll need to head south.
By the time I reach the outskirts of Frankfurt, the fuel in the car is getting low. I pull over, buy myself a few cans of energy drink and some sandwiches, and refuel the car. I think about doing another swap of registration plates, but I decide not to risk it. The whole journey will take me less than twelve hours in total, and it’s unlikely anyone’s going to realise the plates on the van have been changed within that time, and they’re almost certainly not going to have the police in Germany looking out for the registration. I figure I’m as safe as I can be.
With the car – and myself – refuelled, I’m back on the road and I’m back on the A3, which has been my home for the past few hours and will be for a while yet. As I look in my rear-view mirror at the tarmac disappearing behind me, I know that I’m moving closer and closer towards finally being able to get some justice.
62
By the time I reach the French border it’s past midnight. I’ve driven more or less non-stop, save for a couple of toilet stops and the refuelling outside Frankfurt. I don’t have much fuel left now, but there aren’t many miles to go, either. The lumbar area of my back hurts like hell. Every now and again I straighten up in my seat and push the bottom of my back forward, feeling the creaking and cracking as the vertebrae resettle into their proper positions. My knees are stiff, too, and my right ankle started to hurt about an hour ago. Stopping for a rest has never been an option, though. The only thing I can do is keep going, keep ploughing on.
About twenty minutes or so after I cross the border from Belgium into France, the roads start to look familiar. The memories come back, and it feels as though I’ve spent huge periods of my life here, whereas in reality I was only here for a few hours – most of them asleep.