Chapter 5
I’ve killed someone.
Just when I thought my day couldn’t descend any further into criminality, I’ve accidentally murdered an innocent camper in a remote Yorkshire car park with a stolen campervan.
The screaming stops, which is somehow worse than when it was happening, and is replaced by a string of words that would make even the angriest sailor blush.
Whoever’s under that tarpaulin is definitely alive, which is a relief, but they’re also clearly in a lot of pain, which is somewhat less of one.
I scramble out the door, but it’s even darker out here than it looked from inside the van. I’ll have to use the light from my pho— Oh, right. Don’t have that. Brilliant forward planning there, Dolly.
‘Oh God, oh God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you!’ I rush around the front of the van to see what I’ve done. ‘Are you hurt? Are you alive? Please tell me you’re alive.’
‘I’m alive.’ A male voice comes from underneath the tangle of tarpaulin.
Alive is good. Alive means I’m not a murderer, I’m just astoundingly bad at parking stolen vehicles in the dark.
‘Just give me a minute to work out which limbs are supposed to be attached to which other limbs.’ Despite the circumstances, the voice sounds remarkably cheerful. ‘I think you might have skewered me with my own tent pole.’
He’s joking, right? Although it seems an odd time for jokes. ‘You couldn’t put the headlights on, could you? Only you’ve crushed my lamp and I could do with a bit of light to pull this out of my leg.’
Headlights! Right! Why didn’t I think of that? I race back to the driver’s side and clamber in to put the headlights on again, and they illuminate half a makeshift tent stuck under my front bumper, and the scattered debris of squashed camping gear.
‘Much obliged,’ the voice says when I go back.
‘Can I help?’ I crouch down and lift a torn flap of tarpaulin, but it’s tangled with a sleeping bag, and the man is the making the agonising noises of someone trying to remove something from their own body.
He gives a sarcastic laugh. ‘Oh, I think you’ve done quite enough. Thanks, though.’
There’s rustling, and finally, the head of a person emerges from what was once a small sort of half-tent that would definitely be below the line of sight from a campervan.
The man who tries to stand up but doesn’t quite manage it is tall and lanky, with hair that looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.
Which, given recent events, is probably not that much of an unfair assumption.
He’s wearing a plain black T-shirt and the most ridiculously bright pair of pyjama trousers I’ve ever seen – neon yellow with cartoon pineapples all over them.
How on earth did I not see someone wearing something this fluorescent?
It’s like driving into a fashion-conscious traffic cone.
‘Bloody hell.’ He looks down at his leg and his face turns a distinct shade of pale. ‘That’s going to smart in the morning.’
I follow his gaze and immediately wish I hadn’t. The wooden pole that was holding his tent up is broken off at a jagged angle, and there’s a dark red substance slowly dripping down it, and one of his yellow trouser legs is slowly turning red with blood from the calf area.
Quite a lot of blood, actually, and maybe not slowly at all.
‘Let me help you up.’ I flap around uselessly while he tries to stand again, wincing as he gets to his feet and stays still for a moment, his face turning from pale to a distinct shade of ‘I don’t feel so good’.
‘Actually…’ He sways unsteadily, looking like standing up was a bad idea. ‘I think I might need to sit down for a minute.’
‘Yes! Sitting! Good plan! Come inside, I have seats! And… and…’ I don’t even know what else is in the van. ‘Lights! Tea! I can make tea! A first aid kit!’ I must have a first aid kit, right? If nothing else, I can drive him to the nearest hospital, can’t I?
‘You had me at seats. It’s more fun to pass out in a seat, I always find.’
Oh God. If I don’t know what to do with an injured camper, I’m certainly not going to know what to do with an injured, unconscious camper.
Despite the fact he’s a stranger, I slip my arm around his waist to steady him as he steps over the tangled remains of his bloodied sleeping bag and limps towards the van.
I throw the side door open without looking and try to push him up the step, but I hadn’t realised that my binbags have migrated towards the door during the journey and he immediately trips over one and crashes down hard.
He catches himself on his hands with a juddering jolt, half in and half out of the van.
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’ I try to lean around him to shift the binbags out of the way as he groans again.
‘It’s fine,’ he grunts and tries again, and this time he makes it up the step and into the van, at which point, he makes the mistake of standing upright and clonks his very tall head on the very low roof with a hollow sound equivalent to dropping a coconut onto concrete.
He lets out another groan and ducks, one hand immediately going to his head.
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry,’ I say for what must be the thirtieth time in the last five minutes.
‘There’s a pop-top, but…’ I don’t finish the sentence.
I wouldn’t have the first clue how to open it, and I’m too far under the trees for it to go up anyway.
I’d never noticed the lack of headroom when I’ve been out with Jared in the van, but this guy is vastly taller than me or Jared.
‘Sit, please.’ I scramble in behind him and point to the bench seat that runs between the bathroom cubicle behind the driver’s seat and the door.
It’s tiny and uncomfortable, but I push him towards it and watch as he folds his lanky body into it with a grateful groan before something else befalls him.
‘Look, there’s a table! You’re supposed to elevate injuries, aren’t you?
You can put your leg up on this.’ I mutter a few choice words of my own as I fight with the folding table that slides out from beside the bench with some sort of locking-lever arrangement that I’m too panicked to figure out properly, but brute force also does the trick.
He does so with another groan, and I can’t help wincing at how much redder his ripped trouser leg has turned.
He lets his head drop back and closes his eyes, taking slow and deliberate breaths that sound like he’s concentrating on each one and trying to avoid passing out.
One hand is still rubbing his head, and the other is on his thigh, and he probably doesn’t realise his fingers are shaking.
Like he can sense me watching him, he says, ‘I’m starting to think you don’t like me. Or you’re some kind of assassin sent to take me out by someone who really doesn’t like me. You’re not working for the locals, are you?’
‘The locals don’t like you?’
He opens blue eyes and blinks in the light of the campervan’s interior until he meets mine. ‘Long story.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say again now I’m looking at him. ‘I thought you were a pile of fly-tipped rubbish. I didn’t mean to…’
I wave a hand towards his lower left leg and realise I’d better find the first aid kit fast. ‘Let me see how bad that is and then I can drive you to a hospital or—’
‘No. No hospitals. It’s just a scratch.’ He lifts his head until he can see his bloodied leg resting on the table, but it looks even worse under the lights than it did in the darkness outside, and his face goes from pale to ghost-like.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask probably the daftest question that’s ever been asked. Of course he’s not okay. I’ve caused him three injuries in as many minutes, and his leg is currently bleeding onto Jared’s foldy table contraption. Even a professional assassin would’ve done a worse job than this.
‘I’m fine, it’s just the shock. Pain. Adrenaline. Sight of a mangled bit of wood sticking out of my own leg. Unexpectedly staring death in the face. You know, the usual.’
I hold back a laugh at his flippant tone and realise the first aid kit isn’t going to find itself.
Jared’s design of the campervan involves folding things and sliding things everywhere, and every door reveals shelves and cupboards and pull-out drawers.
There’s a sink with a worktop that folds down over it for extra counter space, and I go for a door underneath that, thinking it might be the most logical place to put a first aid kit, but apparently, it isn’t.
I know there’s one onboard because I remember Jared rabbiting on about regulations requiring one, and I end up clattering around the van like a demented crab, sidestepping binbags, pulling open drawers and cupboards and sticking my hands into cubby holes.
There are so many nooks and crannies but the first aid kid doesn’t appear to be in any of them.
‘Did you decide to visit Yorkshire and spontaneously buy a campervan on the way?’ my injured guest asks.
I hoped I was playing my frantic hunt for the first aid kit off casually, but my act is clearly not working. ‘Something like that,’ I mutter, trying the sliding door underneath the cabin bed.
‘It’s like you’ve never been in here before, and you’ve certainly never parked the thing before.’
‘That’s not true, I have parked it,’ I protest. I parked it outside the service station, and I stopped outside the old cottage too. I’ve parked it exactly three times and only nearly murdered someone once. It’s not a completely bad ratio.
The noise he makes suggests that he doesn’t believe me. ‘Try that door behind the bed, that’s where people usually keep car stuff.’