“Just my bastard leg,” Sam said, gasping as he tried to shift his position. “Don’t you think that’s enough?”
I hid my dismay behind a reassuring grin. “If you couldn’t keep up you should have given me a shout,” I chided. “This is one hell of a way to get my attention.”
He tried to laugh and ended up coughing. He was moving his head and neck without problem and there were no marks on the gelcoat of his helmet. I took an instant decision and started to unbuckle the chinstrap.
“Hey, you aren’t supposed to do that,” objected the man from the car. “What if he’s got spinal injuries?”
I finished undoing the strap and eased the helmet off. “Sam, is your neck broken?”
He managed a weak grin. “No,” he said.
“Good,” I muttered. “Because when you’ve recovered
“Sorry,” he said on the ragged edge of a laugh. His teeth had begun to chatter now, despite the warmth of the evening. Above his beard his face was a deathly white, making those seal-pup eyes enormous.
The woman from the car walked back, carrying a picnic blanket which she handed over to me despite her husband’s horrified look. I laid it across Sam’s chest and tucked it in behind his shoulders with a grateful nod in her direction.
“Where the hell’s that ambulance?” I wondered under my breath. I loosened the makeshift tourniquet a little so as not to completely cut the blood supply to what was left of Sam’s lower leg. A fresh welter of blood flooded out of the wound. He turned his head away so he didn’t have to watch himself leaking.
“I had him, Charlie,” he said, sounding unbearably tired. “Another mile or so and he would have been sucking on both our exhausts, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I tightened the scarf up again and hesitated before asking: “What happened?”
“That van. Just came round the corner and wham! I was toast. Matey-boy with the ‘Blade was trying to muscle his way past on the outside of me and I’d nowhere to go. Nearly got out of the way but the fucker caught my leg. Funny thing is,” he went on, voice blurring now as the pain began to kick in, “I coulda sworn he turned the wrong way.”
His eyelids were drooping. Desperate to keep him conscious, I said urgently, “What do you mean, Sam? Who turned the wrong way?”
“Hmm?” He jerked his eyes open again. “The van driver, ‘course,” he said. “I coulda sworn he turned into us, not away, like he was aiming right for us . . .”
Sixteen
They carted Sam away by air ambulance, a bulbous Aerospatiale Squirrel that the pilot put down on a pocket handkerchief-sized flat spot of grass a quarter of a mile up the road, entirely without drama. I suppose, for him, this was just another day at the office.
The paramedics already on scene loaded Sam up with practised ease. I stood with the others, shading my eyes against the dust washed up by the rotor blades, and watched the lurid yellow helicopter lift off and wheel away against a bright sky.
The medics wouldn’t be drawn into giving any predictions about whether they thought Sam would make it or not. I had to comfort myself with negatives. Surely they would have told me if he had no chance at all?
“Sorry about your mate,” William said quietly, alongside me.
“Yeah,” I said. “We seem to be saying that to each other a lot lately.”
Now the responsibility for Sam’s immediate survival had been lifted from my shoulders, I was aware of a grinding fatigue, manifesting itself as aching legs and a bad temper that I could feel swelling up behind my eyes.
The rest of the Devil’s Bridge Club had turned up about twenty minutes after Mark had gone for help. He didn’t return with them. They said he was pretty shaken up, but if the van had been as determined to run the pair of them down, as Sam had claimed, I suppose I wasn’t surprised.
I leaned forwards slightly to look at Daz, who was standing on the other side of William. He caught the movement and met my gaze. Just for a moment I thought I saw something haunted there.
“Another van, Daz?” I said softly. “What is it with you lot? Did you rob a cursed tomb or something?”
“You’ve had a connection to everything that’s happened, just as much as we have,” Paxo shot back, jumping to Daz’s defence before he could answer. “How do we know this isn’t down to you?”
“Well now, let me see – could I be lying to myself?” I murmured. “Hang on a minute, let me check . . . well, well, it seems not.”
“Heads up, guys,” William muttered under his breath. “Cop’s on his way over.”
“Crunch time, Daz,” I warned, my voice low as we watched a young copper approaching across the rough ground. “Either you tell me what’s going on or I give PC Plod over there enough ammunition to get him his sergeant’s stripes.”
I was bluffing. I couldn’t tell the police half of what was going on without dropping both Clare and Jacob well in it, but I was gambling on Daz not wanting to risk that. Whatever they were up to, it wasn’t legal, that was for sure. And it was high stakes enough for someone to kill for it – or try to – more than once.
The policeman closed another few strides. I heard Paxo suck in his breath but I didn’t take my eyes off Daz. He was the one I had to convince. Where he led, the others would follow.
He made me wait for it right up to the last possible moment. The uniform had moved close enough to touch now, pausing in front of me. One second stretched, deformed, and began to peel into the next. Still Daz kept his
