Being Read Online Free PDF Page B

and an area of open ground in front. Soft white lights glowed in the distance.
    As we moved out into the rainy night and headed across the courtyard, a pigeon flapped in the dark, then settled again.
    I followed Kamal down a path that ran alongside the rain-snaked windows of empty offices. Through the windows I could see desks and computers waiting for the next day to begin.
    It was Monday evening.
    The next day was a long way away.
    Nothing happened as I followed Kamal into the car park. The rain fell silently, the sky was black, the air smelled faintly of smoke. It was hard to believe that anything was wrong.
    I took the gun from my pocket and held it down at my side.
    ‘Which is yours?’ I asked Kamal, scanning the cars.
    ‘The white Fiesta,’ he said, reaching into his pocket for his keys.
    We walked across to the car and stopped beside it.
    ‘Open the passenger door first,’ I told him.
    He opened the door, then walked round to the driver’s side.
    ‘Open it and get in,’ I told him.
    As he opened the door, I leaned inside the car and placed the briefcase on the back seat. I took off the white coat and stuffed it behind the passenger seat, put the gun in my jacket pocket, then got into the car. A blunt pain gripped me again for a second and I could feel something cold dripping beneath my shirt. The pain eased as I slumped into the seat.
    The car was a mess: books, CDs, newspapers, empty Coke cans, sweet wrappers, all kinds of rubbish all over the place. The floor was littered with empty cigarette packets and the dashboard ashtray was heaped with cigarette ends.
    ‘You can smoke if you want,’ I told Kamal.
    He looked at me, then reached into his pocket and brought out a packet of Marlboro. He lit one, breathed in hungrily, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head. He dropped the cigarette packet on to the dashboard shelf.
    ‘All right?’ I said to him.
    He nodded.
    ‘Take off your tunic,’ I told him.
    He hesitated for a moment, then rested his cigarette in the ashtray, pulled off his tunic and dropped it on the floor behind the seat. I looked at him. He wasn’t an anaesthetist any more, he was just an olive-skinned guy in a thin white T-shirt.
    I gazed through the windscreen. The cold darkness of the hospital grounds stretched out in front of us – lawns,slopes, curves, ribbons of roads cutting through the geometry of buildings… all of it veiled behind a silver-black mist of rain.
    I glanced at Kamal. He was shivering.
    I took the gun out of my pocket and rested it in my lap.
    ‘Start the car,’ I said.
    We pulled out of the car park into an unlit section of twisty little lanes. The lanes led us out on to a broader road that curved around to the front of the main building. As we drove past the entrance, I caught a brief glimpse of myself in the reflective glass doors… and just for a moment I was me again.
    I was Robert Smith.
    A kid with a bad belly.
    I could see myself approaching the entrance that morning – clutching my appointment card, gazing idly at my reflection in the glass doors… a rain-flecked face, pale and lean… dark hair, dark eyes… a tallish kid in a coat.
    I wanted to wind down the window and shout out to the memory of myself – Don’t go in there! Turn round and go home! For God’s sake, don’t go in there!
    But I didn’t.
    And I don’t suppose I would have listened to myself anyway.
    We drove on.
    There were no barriers to negotiate, no gates or anything, just a dark empty driveway winding through the hospital grounds. At the end of the driveway, Kamal slowed the car and pulled up at the hospital exit. The engine idled,the windscreen wipers clacked, the rain pattered comfortably on the roof.
    ‘Where to?’ Kamal asked me.
    I looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was half past six.
    Where to?
    I wanted to go home. There was nothing I wanted more. I wanted to go home to Bridget and Pete. But I knew I couldn’t. Whatever was happening to me, I had to assume it