7

Ianto ran toward the car park of a nearby high class hotel. He had to weave between the cars in the road. He was observing the two men in conversation in front of the entrance to the car park. Something was going on, some disagreement. The driver of the car had gotten out and was holding up a ticket, or some identification, and the car park attendant was shaking his head. Angry words were being exchanged, but Ianto couldn't make out the words themselves, only their hostility.

The car park attendant backed toward his office and the angry customer followed.

"What are we doing?" Ianto asked himself in his mind. "We're taking that car."

The owner had continued his argument inside the office.

The car was an Audi A4. It was silver. It looked brand new. The driver's side door was open, and the engine was running.

Checking that the owner and the car park attendant were still in the office, Ianto slid into the driver's seat and shut the door. The interior of the car was warm. The engine was running but it was so quiet Ianto could hardly hear it. He could feel a vibration through his seat though. The seat itself was too far forward. He had to adjust it to reach the pedals without being a pretzel.

Ianto looked down and saw that the car was an automatic. He moved the gear stick to D. He put my foot on the brake, and released the handbrake.

Ianto put his foot down. The car lurched forward.

A security barrier covered the entrance into the car park. It was a white metal pole on a counterweight, with a spiral of red running down it, like a barber's pole. Once the attendant was sure of your credentials, he would lean on the end of it, levering it up. Then you could drive in.

Ianto was driving in anyway.

The bonnet of the car hit the pole with a loud metallic impact, bending it backward before it snapped back down on to the bonnet and the windscreen, starring two thirds of it, mostly on the passenger side, before it slid off. This all happened in a second, or part of a second.

The interior of the car park was dark. Fluorescent lights tried to permeate the gloom. There were arrows on the floor, directions on the concrete pillars. Rows of parked cars led off to the right and left. A car tried to pull out in front of him but stopped when the driver saw Ianto wasn't going to slow down.

Directly opposite was a barrier that was an exact duplicate of its opposite building side twin.. The attendant on that barrier saw him, saw how fast he was going, deduced that he had no intention of stopping, and sensibly dived out of the way.

The barrier was not so accommodating. As it was a mirrored version of the first barrier Ianto had driven through, the supporting concrete base was on the far side, and provided more support. When Ianto hit it, the barrier was forced to do the only thing it could, under such pressure, between a speeding vehicle and an immovable concrete block: it snapped. At the point where it met the block, the pole sheared off spectacularly, snapping out on to the road like a rubber band, all seven feet of it. Luckily there were no pedestrians nearby. But it did hit a taxi speeding along the inner bus lane, bouncing off the near side and denting body work. The taxi swerved in response. The pole rolled back on to the pavement like a giant discarded straw.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God…"

It took Ianto a moment to realize it was his voice that was speaking.

A descending ramp connected the car park to a small lay-by. He shot down it. There was an unhealthy bang from under the car when he came off the ramp, but it couldn't have been anything serious, as he didn't stop. Didn't care. Not his car right? The lay-by was empty. Ianto turned into it, to the left, so that he could follow it and then try to merge into traffic. But Ianto was going fast enough that the turn moved him into his seat, pushing to the right. The back wheels lost a little traction, and the sound of the skid reached him, a high pitched whine.

"Jesus Christ, you're crazy," Ianto said to himself.

In a moment, Ianto managed to straighten himself out.

Ianto leaned on the horn as the lay-by began to run out of space. Drivers looked over at him. He was trying to convey to them that he wasn't stopping. Some took this personally, but luckily one or two understood, and slowed, allowing him to slot the Audi into the stream of cars without losing too much speed.

He could not see the BMW anymore… had he turned the wrong way?