Alien In The Car Read online



  A L I E N

  I N T H E C A R

  P E T E H O W E L L S

 

  Also Available By Pete Howells

  PERSPECTIVE (eBook)

  DISENTANGLED (eBook)

  DISENTANGLED (paperback)

  TEN TO ONE (eBook)

  POETRY

  TSUMEGO DAYS (eBook)

  TEEN FICTION

  THE HORRIFIC TALE OF GREAT UNCLE STILTON (eBook)

  Available via pensup.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it

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  Copyright © Pete Howells 2012

  All rights reserved

  Published by PenSup.co.uk

  www.pensup.co.uk

  ISBN 978-0-9569792-0-8

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form other than in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A L I E N I N T H E C A R

  We didn’t know how long he’d been there. That in itself was more disconcerting than the fact that he had been there at all. What was really worrying to me though was that he kept re-appearing. If I hadn’t been with my wife I might have even thought it was all down to me; that I was going mad or something. But she saw him as well. And the weird thing about it was that neither of us could have described him to the police. Not that we were asked to. We didn’t go to the police. He hadn’t exactly committed a crime; not on that night anyway.

  Not as far as we know

  Sara had rung me from work. She often did, especially if she’d had a tough day or had a load of folders to bring home. I met her at the usual pub - The Trafalgar Arms - and we had our usual drinks. I’d finished a pint of Harvey’s and she was lingering, unusually, with her dry white wine. When I went to the bar for a quick half I bumped into an old saxophone-playing friend and we exchanged a few pleasantries. I explained that I wasn’t playing myself so much these days and he told me that he had been recording with an exciting new improv band. Not tunes you could necessarily whistle on the way home then. By the time I had returned to the table Sara had finished her wine and was squeezing a tightly folded newspaper into her bag.

  A fine drizzle had set in so I was glad that I’d managed to find a parking space directly opposite the pub. We dashed across the road and got straight into the car.

  Like many relationships our marriage had reached a point where so many things did not need to be said. We knew for instance that we were both ready to leave the pub. Sara knew that I wouldn’t drink more than a pint of weak ale if I was driving. I knew that she was tired and would be ready for home, food and an hour or so of T.V. She knew that I would prefer to drive. I knew that she would prefer to be driven. Our past had informed our present. The immediate future however would fail to define itself. For me at any rate.

  We chatted about this and that on the short drive home. Her day had started off well but had ended dismally. Her boss Stephanie had produced a whole gamut of extra duties that all the lecturers were now expected to fulfil. I told her about the plastic putty I had managed to buy and how I had almost finished repairing the French windows. She suggested using up the spaghetti bolognaise that was in the freezer. I offered to make some garlic bread and knock a salad together with a balsamic dressing. I told her that, on top of all the other things that had been going wrong recently, I had just received a call from my mother to say that she had been given a date for her operation; I would probably have to drive the four hundred miles up north next Friday in order to be there for her. Some idiot on a skateboard shot out in front of the car as I pulled away from the roundabout at Five Dials. I swore; partly at him, partly for my own immediate stress-relief and, to some extent I suppose, out of habit. Sara laughed but castigated me all the same for my use of profanity. And then we drew up and I reversed into a parking slot directly opposite our house.

  I saw that Sara didn’t need any help with her bags and I think we both opened our respective doors at the same time. As I moved away from the car I hesitated. Perhaps there was something about the weight of the nimbus clouds overhead, the pervading sense of dampness in the air that made me think of it. Should I get my jacket from the back seat in case I needed it tomorrow? No, I thought, it’ll be there waiting for me in the morning. I walked again towards the back of the car in order to cross the road when that indecisiveness, borne so often of fatigue, caused me to re-think. If it is raining really heavily in the morning I will be glad of the jacket, even for the short distance of crossing the road. Sara was still talking about something else Stephanie had told her and was already half way towards the house. No, I finally decided, I will get my jacket.

  I pressed the remote to unlock the car, pulled open the back door, leaned in to retrieve my jacket and that’s when I saw him. My head was less than six inches away from his face.

  “Are you alright?” I asked him. My eyes must have shown all the potential of fight or flight that the adrenalin was now pumping round my body.

  He was crouched, almost in the foetal position in the rear seat immediately behind where Sara had been sat. Fortunately he looked more frightened than I was.

  “I think I’ve got in the wrong car,” he said as he fumbled to open the door next to him.

  “I think you have.” I confirmed.

  He got out as I walked briskly to the other side of the car. Sara, meanwhile, was stood in the middle of the road with her bag and a few extraneous items in her hand looking more than a little bemused. It suddenly struck me that we had probably brought him from the Trafalgar; either that or he had hopped in just as we were getting out.

  “Do you know where you are?” I asked him as he wandered towards our side of the road.

  “Oh yeh,” he replied, “I know where I am.”

  He wandered off, back in the direction we had just come. I say wandered because he didn’t seem too sure of his footing. Perhaps he was drunk, out of his head on some drug or other; perhaps he was deficient in some way.

  I grabbed Sara and asked her to walk down the road with me.

  “Where are we going?” She asked.

  “Anywhere,” I hissed. “I don’t want him to associate us, the car and the house. Don’t turn round just keep walking.”

  Sara turned round immediately. “He’s following us.” She said.

  I took out my mobile phone and made out I was phoning a friend.

  “Hello mate,” I pretended, “sorry we’re a bit late. I’ve just parked right round the corner from you. Are all the lads there yet? What all of them? Even big Harry?”

  We turned the corner and continued walking. After a while I looked back and there was no sign of our curious travelling companion so we retraced or steps and went home.

  I hadn’t been particularly shocked, worried or disturbed by the incident. Not at the time. But after an hour or two had gone by I realised that I was still troubled by what had happened. He could have had a knife. He could have threatened Sara and made me drive to London, Cornwall, even Barnsley.

  The thing that made me most uneasy was one burgeoning question: When did he get into our car? Why he got in, although related to the main line of inquiry, was another question altogether. Had I forgotten to lock the car door when I first arrived at the Trafalgar Arms? Had he climbed in to hide from someone, or was it because he was tired, out of his head perhaps, and needed to sit down? I rarely, if ever, left the car unlocked but I couldn’t be totally sure. Had he climbed in when we got in - sneakily using the sound of our doors opening and closing to camouflage his own actions? Can you even
camouflage an action?

  We both confessed that if we had been asked for a description we would have been baffled. Quite an admission for two art teachers, two self-confessed members of the ‘look, study, observe, dissect,’ brigade. He was aged between twenty-five and forty-five. He was wearing dark clothing; probably. He had dark straggly hair and might have had a beard. That was all we could be reasonably sure of.

  We decided that he had probably seen our car drawing up in Alciston Road, assumed, in his befuddled state, that it was a taxi, and had innocently got in. That was the most likely explanation. We were happy with that. The extraordinary requires an element of normalisation in order to frame it.

  I can’t say, in all truth that I dined out on our story; they didn’t do dinner at the Trafalgar then. But I did enjoy a pint or two during the following weeks as I told, polished, and retold my tale.

  It must have been at least a month later that I was strolling down the hill in the early evening sunlight, heading, once again, for the Trafalgar. I must admit I was thinking about our dark travelling companion of indeterminate age when I saw a large black plastic sack in the middle of the road. It looked full; it certainly wasn’t blowing around as passing cars swerved to avoid it. I half thought of stepping into the road and moving it myself, a gesture of goodwill toward my fellow men, but the traffic was rather heavy and I didn’t want to risk being knocked over simply through philanthropy. I continued on my way, much as the good Pharisee or the good Scribe might have done and had a couple of pints with Sam, a general builder I known for years.

  Less than two days later my attention was drawn to an article in the local rag: ‘Body Found in Bags’ it read. It was not so much the headline but the rather poor quality photograph that accompanied it that grabbed me. I bought the paper and rushed home to Sara. She was busy cooking when I ran in.

  “Look at this.” I said.

  “I know, isn’t it awful,” she replied.

  “But look who it is,” I said pushing the paper between her and the pan she was stirring.

  She scrutinised the image. “I don’t know,” she replied at length.

  “It’s him.” I said. “The man in the car.”

  She looked again whilst idly stirring the mixture in the pan.

  “I don’t think so.” She said. “It might be him. It’s terribly sad whoever it is.”

  I spent the remainder of the evening and some of the following morning wondering if we should have reported him. Perhaps if we had he would not be dead now. Maybe his life wasn’t worth living anyway. What sort of person would have killed him, cut his body up, and then dumped the four sections of it around the Five Dials area? In plastic bin liners?

  Three or four days later I was back in the Trafalgar, swallowing the first gulp of my pint, reminding one of the regulars of the story of the man in the car and then telling him about the poor bloke’s body being found, carved up in four bags.

  “Carved up and left in four black bin liners” I repeated. For emphasis.

  “Oh yeh, I heard about that. Sad case that one. Did you ever hear of the body that was found in a suitcase down at the station? Very famous case that one.”

  And I listened whilst the gory tales of fifty or sixty years ago were related.

  Sara joined us, had her customary dry white wine and then we left.

  We said little on the drive home to be honest. Both of us were obviously tired, the traffic was as heavy as the rain as we approached the roundabout at the Dials. The streetlights had responded to the darkening sky and we were both ready to make a dash for the front door in order to stop getting soaked.

  Why I didn’t simply lock the car using the remote control as I ran in I don’t know. Perhaps I’d stopped doing that ever since we’d had the dark stranger in the back. Whatever it was is inconsequential. I didn’t simply lock it. I glanced in to that back seat. The one immediately behind Sara. And there he was.

  The only movement on the street for about five seconds was the constant falling of the rain. Then I opened the rear door. Slowly. Deliberately.

  He got out as if I had been his taxi driver.

  “I just wanted you to know,” he said, “that it wasn’t me.”

  He turned and walked off – disappearing into the veil of rain and the orange misty arc of the streetlights.

  I have never spoken about him since.

  THE FOLLOWING PAGES CONTAIN AN EXTRACT FROM BEST SELLING NOVEL

  PERSPECTIVE

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR