lifted a vehicle, but before I did anything I had to make sure the woman couldn't call for help. My eyes followed the phone lines from the building across the junction. They paralleled the road running from my left to right.
I moved in the Creedmore direction, about twenty meters beyond the junction, and crawled back up to the road, looked and listened. Absolute silence. I got to my feet, nodded at Sarah and we sprinted across. Once back in the trees, I followed the phone lines until I found a pole about five meters short of the junction.
I started taking my belt off, and asked Sarah for hers. This time she didn't question me. She followed the line of my gaze as I studied the top of the pole.
'Are you going up there?'
'I want to cut the line to the gas station.'
'Are we going to rob it?'
Sometimes she had only a nodding relationship with reality. I stopped pulling my belt off and looked at her.
'Are you serious?' I wondered about what had happened to all those expensive years of university training. She had enough brain power to move a glass without even touching it, but sometimes she didn't seem to have even an Eleven Plus in common sense.
'We're just going to get a car and get the fuck out of here,' I said.
'We have guests arriving, remember?' I mimed a dog biting with my hand.
I took her belt and buckled the two together to make one big loop. Hers was the American's heavy biker's belt, with a Harley-Davidson logo that said, 'Live to ride, ride to live.' I dropped the loop at the bottom of the pole, hooked my feet inside either end, gripped the pole with my hands, and started to climb. I'd learned how to do this from a documentary on the South Pacific, when I'd seen blokes use similar devices to climb coconut trees. You slid your feet up as high as you could, keeping the strap taut, then pressed down until it gripped. It was then a matter of reaching up and gripping the pole with both hands, lifting your feet again, and so on. That was the theory; the pole was so wet and slippery, however, that it took me several attempts to master it. At the end of the day, though, I was rather impressed with myself; if ever I was marooned in Polynesia, I wouldn't go hungry.
I heard the hiss of tires and the drone of an engine getting closer. My heart missed a couple of beats while I wondered how I'd explain myself, then both sounds changed direction and died as the car turned and headed toward Durham. It happened twice more. Each time, I stopped and waited until the vehicle had gone. At least the treetops gave me some cover.
I had just another couple of feet to go when I heard a fourth vehicle approaching, but this time from the direction of Durham. It was going slowly and coming close.
I looked down for Sarah, but she was already moving away from the pole and into cover.
The car drew up at what I guessed was the junction and stopped. I heard a door open and the sound of radio traffic. It had to be a police cruiser.
I couldn't reach down for my weapon, because it was taking all my strength and grip just to stop myself sliding back down the pole. I wondered about climbing up the last couple of feet so I could rest on a cross spar, but the way my luck was going I'd probably fuck it up and come hurtling down like Fireman Sam and land on their heads.
I heard a burst of laughter and looked down again. Sarah was nowhere to be seen, but a Smokey Bear hat was, covered in clear plastic, shaped so it kept the felt dry. It moved into the woods, above a dark-brown raincoat that stuck out at the sides. State troopers have zips up the sides of their coats to enable them to draw their pistols easily, but this guy wasn't doing that, he was undoing his front zip. I saw his knees jerk as he released himself, then the sound of piss hitting the tree just a few feet below me. Steam rose in front of the hat. I didn't want to make the slightest sound. I didn't even want to swallow. My fingers were starting to lose their grip on the rain- slicked pole.
I searched frantically for the trooper's mate. I couldn't see him; he must have stayed in the car, as you do when it's raining. I could see raindrops ricocheting off the garage roof, glistening in the light from the Drive Thru sign. The stream of urine against the tree subsided as he finished off, then he let go a resounding fart.
I started sliding. I pressed down hard on the belt with my feet, and gripped the pole like a drowning man. The sounds below had stopped, and I watched him jigging up and down to shake off the drops. He packed himself away, checked his coat, and strode off.
I heard the troopers joking to each other. The car door slammed, and then they drove off. I let out all the air I'd been holding in my lungs, inching myself farther up the pole to increase my range of vision. The cruiser was finally driving into the gas station. Why the fuck didn't he go in there in the first place? Maybe he was trying to chat up the woman and the last thing he wanted was for her to hear him farting away and stinking the place out.
I reached the top and hooked my left arm around the cross spar. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down, then looked for Sarah. She was emerging from the bush she'd been hiding in, and I wondered if she knew how lucky she'd been: it looked a very inviting bush, and she might easily have got drenched by old fartypants.
I followed the telephone line to make sure it was the one to the gas station, reached down and retrieved the Leatherman from my pocket. Where these lines come in to a pole, they get hooked up to take the tension from the line, and then there's a nice little loose bit that carries on through. I leaned out, squeezing hard with the mbber soles of my feet, got the pliers part of the Leatherman over the line, and snipped. Then it was just a case of sliding down the pole nice and slowly so I didn't land up with half a ton of splinters in my arms and legs.
Sarah was straight in at me: 'Give me a gun, Nick. What if he'd seen you?'
It made sense but I felt uneasy. Giving Sarah a weapon seemed to be a lot like giving Popeye spinach. On the other hand, if he'd spotted me she could have done something about it. I still wasn't sure whether she would fuck me over, but decided she still needed me too much. I'd let her have it for now.
I got Lance's semiautomatic, 9mm Eastern-bloc thing out of my jacket and handed it over. She said a sincere 'Thanks' as she pushed back the top slide half an inch and checked to see if there was a round in the chamber.
The cruiser was driving out of the gas station and coming back in our direction. We both got down, and she used the time to put her belt back on. The blue and white passed us heading toward Creedmore; maybe they were helping to man a roadblock or something farther up the road.
I wanted her to stay where she was while I went back to the gas station to hijack a vehicle. She insisted on coming with me.
'Listen,' I said, 'a man and a woman turning up at a gas station, stealing a vehicle don't you think there's a bit of a chance they'd make a connection with the lake?'
'Nick, I'm coming with you. I'm not going to take the chance of us getting split up and this all going wrong. We're going to stay together.'
She was right; without realizing it, she had reminded me what I was here to do. If there was a drama with the police or whoever, and it was obvious I was about to lose control, I would have to kill her before they could get her. Not the ideal option, but at least she'd be dead. Looking at her with my not-happy-about-it face on, I gave in to her demand.
'Fuck it, come on then.'
We finished doing up our belts, moved back up the road for more distance and crossed. We turned right and paralleled to a point where I could get a clear view of the pumps and the shop again.
One car, a white Nissan sedan, was already on the forecourt, but it was four up, with two couples in their mid-twenties. The driver had just started the engine and out he rolled. I heard a distinctive ding-ding as the tires ran over a rubber tube sensor. He got to the road, stopped, turned his wipers and dipped lights on, laughing with the rest of them probably about the woman with the corn dog turned left and off they went. We lay there, waiting in the rain.
During the next ten minutes, two news vans with satellite dishes scuttled past along the road, headlights blazing, windshield wipers working furiously, on their way to get the story.
Another car rolled onto the forecourt. It was a Toyota, full of a family. I was half up, ready to go for it, like a big cat watching the herd. The car was ideal, a normal family sedan. Dad got out and, avoiding the rain, ran straight into the shop. I saw him give Big Hair a few bills, then he came out again and filled up. I decided against. I was looking at the family two kids in the back, window half steamed up, the kids beating each other up, the mother turning around and shouting at them. There were just too many people in the car. It would be a nightmare to drag two screaming kids from the car.
