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tapped the grille with the crutch. He accepted without comment that he would not be able to unbolt the heavy metal structure. He stared down at the bars, for some reason wondering if they were wide enough apart for him to slip his hands between them. He turned and hobbled away through the refuse, stirring the cigarette packs with the crutch.
    As he plodded along, head down, he broke into a flat and unemotional rage, ranting to himself at the unseen vehicles overhead.
    â€˜Stop…! For God’s sake, I’ve had enough…!’
    When there was no reply he calmly continued on his way. The light air swirled the candy wrappers around his injured leg. As he crossed the island the grass weaved and turned behind him, moving in endless waves. Its corridors opened and closed as if admitting a large and watchful creature to its green preserve.

6 The rain-storm
    D URING the warm noon, Maitland slept inside his car. On the rear seat beside him were the water canister and a fresh bottle of Burgundy. He woke at two o’clock, as the driver of a dumper truck crossing the overpass switched his air-brakes on and off in a series of sharp detonations. Although the exertion of crossing the island had re-inflamed his injured leg, Maitland’s head felt clear. The sharp hunger pangs reached up from his abdomen into his throat like a steel hand, but he sat quietly in the rear seat. Resting through the early afternoon, he took stock of himself.
    He realized, above all, that the assumption he had made repeatedly since his arrival on the island – that sooner or later his crashed car would be noticed by a passing driver or policeman, and that rescue would come as inevitably as if he had crashed into the central reservation of a suburban dual carriageway – was completely false, part of that whole system of comfortable expectations he had carried with him. Given the peculiar topography of the island, its mantle of deep grass and coarse shrubbery, and the collection of ruined vehicles, there was no certainty that he would ever be noticed at all. Given, too, the circumstances of his private and professional life, that once-so-convenient division between his wife and Dr Helen Fairfax, it might be at least a week before anyone was sufficiently suspicious to call the police. Yet even the most astute detective retracing Maitland’s route from his office would be hard put to spot his car shielded by this sea of grass.
    Maitland loosed his trousers and inspected his injured thigh. The joint had stiffened, and the heavy bruising and broken blood vessels gleamed through the overlay of oil and dirt.
    Nursing his injured mouth, he drank the last of the tacky water in the windshield reservoir. He scanned the office blocks visible through the haze over central London. A conference he had been due to attend would now be re-assembling after lunch – did any of the delegates have any idea what had happened to him? Even if he were rescued now, it would be several days at least, and possibly weeks, before he returned to work. He thought of the chain of appointments missed, cancelled client meetings, a committee on which he sat. Like a tocsin warning him reprovingly of all this, Maitland’s leg began to throb.
    â€˜Right – let’s see what we’ve got…’ Maitland roused himself, mastering the mounting urge to sleep all the time. He swung himself round to the rear of the car. He could hear the traffic moving along the motorway, but he ignored the vehicles, knowing that he would only tire himself by trying to wave them down.
    He lifted the lid of the trunk and opened his overnight case. The vivid scent of his after-shave filled the air. He took out his patent dress-shoes and dinner-jacket. The overnight case was almost literally a time capsule – he could easily reconstitute a past world from these scents and surface textures.
    He unclipped the blade from his razor, and cut his blue towel into strips. He