He ignored the pain in his thigh and propped himself roughly against the car, waving the crutch and trying to call back the vanished driver. Sober now, he looked with disgust at his injured leg and ragged clothes, angry with himself for having given way to a moment of juvenile hysteria. As well as breaking up his car, the crash seemed to have jolted his brain loose from its moorings. Maitland leaned his right armpit on to the metal crutch. He realized that he was unequipped to carry out any but the simplest physical activities. The grimy and crippled figure whose distorted reflection glimmered in the trunk lid exactly summed up his position on the island, marooned among these concrete causeways with almost no practical skills or resources. Few psychological ones, for that matter, Maitland reflected. These days one needed a full-scale emergency kit built into one’s brain, plus a crash course in disaster survival, real and imagined. ‘Wrench, box spanner, wheel brace…’ Maitland searched methodically through the tool-kit.
