“Could have taken a train,” he complained in a sulky voice, the one he used when he couldn’t get his own way. “It’ll be motorway all the way up.”
Mai Bell giggled. “It won’t work,” she said. “And you can forget the little boy lost voice, we’re driving. It leaves less paperwork for anyone to follow up on. You know that. Tickets can be traced.”
“Not if we’d paid cash.”
“Even then.”
“Suppose so.”
“Anyway, I’m taking a detour once we get as far as the Scottish Border. I thought we’d go up the west coast and cut across by Loch Ness. We haven’t had a decent holiday for years and I hear the scenery there is quite dramatic.”
Cole Bell groaned. “Thought we’d got enough drama as it was,” he said.
“Will you stop bitching?”
Cole Bell didn’t answer. He knew when he was beaten. Pulling out a Kindle reader, he switched it on, settling back in his seat.
“Wake me up if I fall asleep,” he said, still using his sulky voice.
Mai Cole just smiled and concentrated on her driving.
*
Karla was feeling guilty - really guilty. She’d not answered any of Frank’s calls.
It had been three days since he’d returned from London and he hadn’t put in an appearance. But isn’t that what she’d wanted? Why she’d left that message on his phone? She preferred not to follow up on that thought. Feeling that the drinking was her fault.
Putting thoughts of Frank aside when the microwave gave a soft ping, she got on with her job. Using a pair of stainless steel tongs, she took a baked potato from the oven and scored it with a cross. “Butter?” she called.
When the man sitting at a nearby table shook his head, Karla dolloped a generous portion of tuna, sweetcorn and mayonnaise mix on it, arranged some salad around the plate, and carried it over to the table.
“Your toastie won’t be a moment,” Karla said, setting down the plate and smiling at the man’s companion.
“Thank you.” The woman’s voice carried a hint of the orient and as she hurried back behind the counter to plate up the toasted sandwich, Karla day-dreamed about which country the woman might be from.
China? Thailand? Perhaps one of the islands off Japan? It was a game she often played when strangers showed up in her café.
The lunch time rush passed and Karla went through into the kitchen. “Not many customers left now,” she told Jenny McDonald, her chief cook and bottle-washer. “Do you think you’d be able to handle the rest of your shift on your own?”
“Of course. Something wrong?”
Karla shook her head. “No, just something I have to check up on.”
*
Jenny McDonald watched her employer shrug her coat on and walk to the door. It was raining outside - a typical summer drizzle that seemed to soak you to the skin.
As Karla left the café, she glanced back and wiggled her fingers. “Later,” she called.
Jenny waved back and smiled. She’d been working for Karla for three years now, since leaving school in fact. She still couldn’t believe how her boss could be such an idiot. The whole village was awash with rumours about her relationship with Frank Collins and how badly he treated her.
If she had a boyfriend like that, Jenny would have kicked him out ages ago. Only last night, Mandy Brownlow had sidled into the kitchen with the latest news on how Frank Collins had been on a three day bender, only leaving his cottage to buy more alcohol.
“Stunk to high heaven of drink and sweat,” Andy Campbell, the proprietor of Clinks - the local off-licence - had reported to anyone who’d listen.
But of course, nobody had told Karla this news. People living in a close-knit village, such as theirs, might know each others business, but that didn’t mean to say that they’d pass it on to those concerned.
*
Karla wrinkled her nose as she closed the cottage door behind her. The whole place stank of stale alcohol. Crossing to the lounge window, she open it and took a deep breath. It was obvious that Frank had been binge-drinking again.
“Oh Frank,” she muttered, collecting the bottles scattered about the room, “this has to stop. This really has to stop.”
After tidying the lounge, Karla made her way into the kitchen, which looked like a party had taken place in it. Empty beer bottles lay on the work tops, along with the remains of what looked to her like poached egg on toast.
“Well at least you managed to get some breakfast down you,” she muttered, loading up the dishwasher with the dirty dishes she found in the sink.
Finished in the kitchen, Karla went upstairs to the tiny bedroom. The bedclothes were hanging off the bed and the pillows were screwed into big lumps. Pulling the bedding free, she headed down to the utility room and pushed them into the washing machine, setting it for a hot wash.
Then, resting her butt against the dryer, she listened to the washing machine clicking its way through the programme, suddenly wondering what the hell she was doing.
Chapter 37
It was getting late, the sun low, spreading a pink wash along the horizon, but at least it had stopped raining.
Frank was tempted to take a break and enjoy the scene, but he still had one more pick-up to make. His damaged finger had begun to throb, so it was just as well he was nearly finished. He didn’t think he’d be able to keep riding the big bike for much longer.
Pulling into the roadside, he eased off his glove and inspected his hand. The bandaged he’d wound around the top of his nail-less finger was speckled with blood. Little fires of pain ran from the tip up his arm when he touched it. He’d have to go see the doctor when he’d finished work. Sticking the gloves in the pannier, he set off again, finding it less painful to ride gloveless.
The road had narrowed down to single track now and Frank was keeping an eye out for the turning he needed - an unmade road somewhere on the left. Hearing a car coming up behind, he pulled over as far as the tall hedges would allow, waving the car past . . . but the next thing he knew, the car had slammed into his rear wheel and he was thrown backwards out of his seat .
Managing to keep the bike upright as it was pushed away to the right, and biting his lower lip against the pain in his finger, Frank clung on tightly, accelerating the bike straight. But he over-steered and had to pull it back the other way, easing off the throttle before he finally managed to get the machine back under control.
With the adrenaline rush came the anger and he pulled into the roadside to tell the driver just what he thought of his driving, when he heard the car accelerating again. A quick glance in the mirror showed it coming straight for him.
There was no mistaking the driver’s intention this time.
“What the fuck—!”
The words were hardly formed, when Frank sprang into action, twisting the throttle wide open as he fought the spinning back wheel. Knowing what was about to happen, he accelerated away as fast as he could, trying to keep the big bike under control on the wet surface, burning rubber spewing white smoke from under the rear tyre.
The car kept pace with him, in fact it slowly gained ground. It was obviously being driven by an expert, or a complete idiot. It didn’t make any difference to Frank which it was, all he knew was that someone was trying to drive him off the road.
Leaning into the turns, Frank managed to put a little distance between himself and the car, his mind working overtime as he tried to figure out what was going on.
The back wheel slid when he strayed too close to the side of the road, hitting a patch of wet leaves. It bucked under him again and he moved his body completely off the saddle to the right, pulling the bike back to the centre of the road. His heart was thumping so hard that he could feel the arteries pounding in his neck.
Rounding another tight bend, he saw that the road straightened out for a long distance and throttled the bike up, grinning as the surge of power whipped the wind around his body.
Let’s see the bastard catc
h me now!
But taking another quick check in the mirror, Frank’s eyes widened. The car was still close behind, in fact closing fast. Looking back over his shoulder to get a better view, he spotted two people in the front seats.
The driver, barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel, was a woman. But what alarmed Frank the most, what snapped his gaze back to the front and the road rushing past under his wheels, what made him open the throttle wider in fear - was the sight of her companion leaning from the passenger window, pointing a gun at him.
Crouching low on the bike, decelerating hard as he reached the end of the straight, Frank hit the bend. The bike backfired at his mistreatment and he only just managed to hold it on the road.
Frank was physically shaking now, fighting hard to concentrate, hands cold and sweaty.
Tyres squealed behind him as the car took the corner in a four wheel drift, its bodywork brushing along the hedge. The driver corrected the overshot rear-end with a blip on the throttle.
Frank’s mind was a blank, he was operating on blind instinct and terror, laying into the corners much too fast, but knowing he had no option if he wanted to stay alive.
Maybe, if he could just gain a few hundred metres or so on the car, he’d be able to cut out across one of the fields. His pursuers would have no chance of following him in the car if he managed that.
Then Frank suddenly recognised where he was. This lane ran alongside Hugo’s field . . . and there was a big gate coming up on the left any minute now. He’d have to chance taking it at speed, he couldn’t slow down. It was a slim chance, but his only one.
The gate was just around the next corner.
Feeling his heart beat building, Frank took a deep breath, squinted his eyes to see better, and lay the bike over to take the bend.
It was then that he heard the gunshot—
*
Hugo Miller was annoyed. The rain had left everything dripping wet, and even though it had stopped now, it had made him late with the days chores. The sun was setting and he’d only just finished pairing up the big round bails of straw for collection in the morning.
It had been a bad summer for crops and his mind was on the phone call that he’d had from a consortium in England. They were looking for some land in Scotland and had led him to expect a call sometime today with an offer. But it was already past six and no call. Just his luck if they’d backed out. He wouldn’t blame them though, the way things were with the economy at the moment.
Switching on the big tractor’s headlights, he slipped it into gear and drove across the field, stopping at the big field gate. Groaning his way out of the tractor, he climbed down to the ground, his battered Wellington boots slurping and plopping as he slogged his way across the boggy soil. The ground needed digging up here and a new field-drain putting in. It was always sopping wet. Maybe next year, if the funds stretched to it.
Having opened the gate, Hugo grunted his way back up into the high cab and drove the tractor out on to the lane, checking that the gate had swung closed behind him. He was about to set the long pronged, loading arm into the raised road-driving position when his mobile rang.
“About time.”
Leaning over, he fumbled the mobile from his back pocket. “Yeah?” he said.
“Anything yet?”
It was his wife, Janet. “Nah. Reckon it’s too late for them to phone now. Perhaps they’ll call in the morning.”
“Oh, okay. Will you be long, I’ve got a pie in the oven?”
He could hear the disappointment in her voice. “Long as it ain’t a bun,” he joked, trying to lighten her mood. “Just on my way back babes. I’ll—”
But Hugo never finished the sentence. His world unexpectedly exploded into a frenzy of tearing, screaming metal, and as the tractor shunted backwards, he was slung forwards, banging his head off the metal upright supporting the windscreen.
The phone dropped from his hand and, knocked cold, he didn’t hear his wife’s voice frantically calling his name from the floor - or the soft ticking of a cooling engine - or the loud groans of somebody dying in pain.
Chapter 38
Cole Bell stared from the window of the BMW they had stolen and wrinkled his nose. The sun was going down. It would be dark in perhaps an hour. The sky was turning red and Mai Bell had just commented on how fabulous it all looked. He hadn’t answered. He hated the countryside. Countryside was for smelly animals and thick yokels. Cities were where the action was.
“Okay, let’s get this done,” Mai Bell said, sitting straighter behind the steering wheel.
Cole Bell smiled at his wife’s attempt to be taller. Her chin only just cleared the top of the steering wheel, but even so, he knew she was a far better driver than he was. She’d spent five years in some Government agency before he’d met her. She was still very closed mouthed about it all, but had told him some of the things she had learnt there - one of which she called combatitive driving.
They’d been following their package for perhaps ten minutes, having picked him up back at the turn-off a couple of miles back. A quick phone call this morning had added them to his collection list. Cole Bell had apologised and stipulated that the collection wouldn’t be ready until six o’clock that night but, he’d pay extra if the courier could pick it up that late. The package had agreed and all they’d had to do was put in an appearance and wait for him.
Mai Bell had decided to run him off the road, making it look like a hit and run accident. Afterwards they’d dump the BMW and pick up the stolen van they’d left hidden behind a hedge. If they left the van in Inverness Multi-story Car Park it wouldn’t be found for a long time. They’d grab a quick cab ride out to the airport and, hey presto - another package taken care off. Cole Bell really loved his job.
“Look, he’s slowing down,” Mai Bell said, easing the car to a stop. “What’s he up to?”
“Looks like he’s taking off his gloves. Oh there he goes, off again.”
“Okay let’s take him here. The road seems clear.”
“Haven’t seen any traffic in ages. A guy could die out here and not get found for weeks.”
Mai Bell gunned the car, speeding up behind the bike. The rider pulled over, waving them past, but she cut across the road and slammed into the back of the bike. The rider nearly came off, his body actually leaving the seat like something from a cartoon film. His bike slewed sideways but by some miracle, he got it back under control again.
“Damn!”
Cole Bell knew his wife hated swearing, and that meant she must be really angry with herself for not taking the package out at the first attempt.
“Quick, before he gets away,” he shouted.
Stamping on the throttle, Mai Cole span the tyres on the wet road. They suddenly caught, pushing them both back into their seats.
At the same moment the bike took off down the road with smoke pouring from under the rear wheel.
After a few minutes it became obvious that they were not going to catch the bike. Mai Bell’s driving was skilful, but even she was finding it difficult to keep up on such a twisting, narrow road.
Cole Bell realised that they were going to have to try something else. But just as that thought entered his mind, his wife slewed the car around the next bend, and there in front of them was a long straight stretch of road.
“Got you know you bastard,” Cole Bell muttered.
“Cole!”
“Sorry Mai. Just excited. Go get him, girl.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to catch him before the next bend,” Mai Bell said after a few minutes of hard driving. “Get ready to shoot him if I don’t.”
It took the full stretch of road for Mai Bell to get them close enough for her husband to get a decent shot, and they were only a couple of metres from the bend when he leant from the car and fired his gun.
“That’s my Cole!” Mai Bell squealed in excitement when a spurt of blood and leather flew from the rider’s shoulder.
Pulling the steer
ing wheel hard left, she slid the car around the corner in another four wheel drift. “We’ve got him now.”
*
As Frank rounded the corner, two things happened in quick succession: a sudden red hot pain exploded in his left shoulder, and he was blinded by a bright light.
A vehicle was sitting in the middle of the damned road!
Wrenching the bike hard to his left, Frank leant way over, feeling the big machine skidding away from under him. Completely loosing control, the bike was flipped from his grasp and he was catapulted high into the air. Smashing through the hedgerow, he hit a large bail of straw sitting in the field, bounced off and finally landed on the ground in an expanse of soft mud.
*
The first thing Frank was conscious of, was a rooster crowing on a nearby farm . . . then somebody groaning . . . then the smell of petrol . . . then a pain that seemed to envelope his whole body.
Opening his eyes, he tried to sit up, but his left arm wouldn’t work. He managed to turn himself over and get to his knees, his head swimming with dizziness.
His leather jacket and trousers had been torn to shreds, and in places, the skin beneath looked as though it had been flayed. His helmet was still on his head.
He wanted it off but didn’t have the strength to remove it.
Finally easing himself on to his feet, Frank swayed for a few moments, then slowly turned to face the road.
His bike had demolished the field-gate and now lay on its side a few metres away. The front wheel was badly buckled, but apart from that, surprisingly little damage had been done. The petrol pipe must have fractured because the smell of petrol was strong. He prayed that it wasn’t about to explode.
Something was wrong with his left shoulder. Easing the pain by cradling his elbow, he negotiated what was left of the gate and staggered out on to the road, momentarily closing his eyes to the horror he saw.