Dutchie was telling Tinker. “… friend of my mother’s side.”
The old drunk was delighted. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “I know it! Nice little place. I blew a bridge there. Up to me balls in water. Lovely little Norman arch it had—”
“One more word from you, Tinker,” I warned him. He shut up. “Tell me if I’m right, Dutchie. Duncan and Michelle hid you at Shooters. You tried to escape, thinking you’d turn yourself in and tell the truth. Elaine supposed they were protecting you against yourself.”
“I tried telling them.”
I said, readjusting the mirror, “Shona discovered my identity because I opened my big mouth about antiques. She claimed then to have deliberately sent a real antique to entice me to Tachnadray. Like a prat I believed her. Here, Tinker, take a glance. Is that motor the one which Dobson and the goons had at Tachnadray?”
“Eh?” He screwed his eyes, peered. “No.”
“It could have overtaken us twice, and hasn’t.” I’d noticed it a mile since. “It has the legs on us.”
Dutchie sounded almost in tears. “There’s no way out, Lovejoy.”
“Optimist.” The trouble with some people is they’re not big-enough cowards. Anyway, they didn’t want Dutchie any more. They wanted me. “There’s nowt they can do until we pass Dingwall. We’re going to double back north for a bit. The A890 to Achnashellach.”
“Funny frigging names round here.” Tinker started a prolonged cough, phlegm and spittle over the side. If his chest would mend we’d be ten miles faster.
The big blue Mercedes stayed on our tail. I took on petrol in Dingwall, as Antioch had told me to do, then left the Inverness road and pretended to try to shake them off by over-desperate demonstration driving.
The day was fading. The road grew thinner and traffic lessened. An occasional car overtook us and a lorry or two passed going east, but that was about it. We left the security of towns as we hurried west. Countryside is rotten old stuff, lonely and ominous. The Government really should do something. I was as worried what was happening up ahead as much as by that bulky saloon dogging me, and kept staring into the middle distance on every rise. The skies abruptly lowered on us, and a drizzle started. The Mawdslay was a tough old thing, booming up each slope with ease, but steering it through the twisting dips was hell. It had a will of its own. Tinker started snoring.
As we ran on and the day ended, there was nothing but hills and woods and lakes to the left. Dutchie started some lunatic suggestion: Drop him off and he would nip down an incline, granite block and all. “I could reach the Strath Bran railway.”
“Ta, Dutchie, but don’t be daft.” He was only trying to help. Bravery’s more stupid than cowardice.
Tinker coughed himself awake and also made a contribution. “Here, Dutchie. How’d you manage to go for a —?”
“The chain was long enough.” Dutchie rattled it as proof.
We were a couple of miles past the chapel near Bran when we saw the man mending a motorbike by a lantern, thank Christ. He didn’t watch us drive past, made no move. I was beginning to worry I’d missed him.
“Hang on, lads,” I said, and cracked on speed. The old giant roared, fast as I could go in the darkening rain.
“Here, Dutchie,” Tinker was rabbiting on. “What percentage d’you give that Dobson… ?”
Here I was sweating, grappling with the controls, and this pair sitting yapping like at a tea party. The road curved, left to right. Down, then uphill. A slow bend, the Mercedes coming fast, its headlights on full beam. It’d be soon. I yelped, cornering too fast, wrestled up straight, cursing.
The tall lorry swept past in the opposite direction. I saw the Mercedes waver as its driver realized. A horn blared. The crash sounded actually in the Mawdslay, and for one crazy instant I thought, hell, it’s us they’ve got in spite of everything, before sense reasserted itself. I was still driving, unimpeded. Something burst. Air rushed along over the Mawdslay, blew on my ears. I slowed. Only the lorry’s taillights in the rearview mirror, nothing moving.
“Gawd Almighty,” Tinker croaked. “See that?”
Head out of the window, I crawled in slow reverse to where the man was standing by his lorry. I disembarked and stood looking over the edge of the camber.
“Ta, Antioch. All right?”
He heaved a sigh, tutting. “No gumption, some people. If he’d braked, he might have got out of it.”
A car was ablaze down below among a haircut of young trees. Even as I watched another bit of it woomphed. The air stank oil, rubber. A big bloke arrived on a motorbike, somehow folded it and lobbed it into Antioch’s lorry’s tailboard with ease. He nodded at the fire on the hillside below, as if acknowledging the inevitable. “Well,” he said in a singy Ulster voice. “They shouldn’t go round killing drivers, should they?”
“Six in it, eh?” I asked Antioch.
“No. Three. They’re using a band radio. They’ve a rover block on the A87.”
“What’s best, Antioch?” Three from six leaves three.
“No smoking, O’Flaherty,” Antioch said absently. The man put away his cigarettes. He had the envious tranquillity of the professional. I’m only glad I’m not that tranquil.
“Look, Lovejoy. I can see you safe partway, say Glasgow?”
“I’ve a better idea, Antioch,” I said. Lovejoy Know-all. “They’ll suspect I won’t touch Edinburgh.” I didn’t give reasons. “Will you put us that way on?”
“Right. I’ve things to do here, so O’Flaherty’ll see you as far as Perth. Then it’s motorway.”
The rain was worsening, but it made no difference to the fire below. A lorry chugged past. O’Flaherty
