With that objective in mind, he pulled onto the wrong side of the road, zigzagging around a half dozen cars, trucks and buses before returning to the correct lane. Luckily, there wasn’t much traffic coming the other way. But that would change soon enough. There was a main arterial road up ahead. He looked in the mirror and saw tiny blue lights appear in the distance. For a second, he thought that they had turned right instead of left, that they had gone the wrong way.
But he was mistaken.
They were coming after him, speeding along the road outside the line of vehicles in which he was now stuck.
Damn!
The Disciple floored the accelerator again and the engine roared. There was no point in subtlety now; they would catch him up in seconds unless he acted quickly and decisively. He pulled onto the wrong side of the road again, forcing an oncoming motorcyclist up onto the pavement. Red traffic lights loomed ahead but he didn’t ease off the gas pedal. The carrier was still a fair way behind him, but it was much nearer than it had been the last time he looked.
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“There he is!” Reeve pointed as the Sherpa suddenly pulled out of the line of traffic way up ahead.
“I told you he’d gone left, didn’t I?” Stedman roared triumphantly. In all the confusion of turning their bus around, they had suffered a temporary loss of vision just as the van had reached the junction with Commercial Street. Vital seconds were lost while they argued amongst themselves whether to turn left or right. In the end, Stedman had ignored them all and gone with his gut instinct. As they sailed past the sluggish line of vehicles heading for Aldgate, he allowed himself a grim smile. His decision had been vindicated and they were back in the game. “Come on, baby, don’t let me down now,” he coaxed, stamping his foot to the floor. The carrier was diesel powered, and although it wasn’t too bad once you got the speed up, it was hard work trying to get it there in the first place.
“You can get on the Main-Set now, PC Reeve,” Beach shouted from behind.
CHAPTER 38
Kelly Flowers was heading back towards the office after a gruelling two-hour long Family Liaison meeting with Geraldine Rye’s elderly parents, who had flown in from Murcia a few days ago to identify the body and make funeral arrangements. She sometimes wondered why she had ever volunteered to become a FLO because each deployment seemed to drain so much out of her. Maybe she should…
The sudden transmission on the Main-Set startled her.
“MP, MP, active message, Uniform 366. We’re chasing a dark green Sherpa van, Commercial Street towards the Aldgate one-way system…vehicle possibly concerned in the abduction of a prostitute…”
“Shit!” She said, pulling over. That wasn’t far away, and they were heading straight towards her current location. The pursuing vehicle’s operator had clearly said that the bandit vehicle was a Sherpa van, like the one their suspect was using. But the Ripper’s van was white, not green. Could he have started using a different vehicle?
“I wonder…?” she said, reaching for her mobile phone.
◆◆◆
The Sherpa, skidding along the wet tarmac, was locked on a collision course with an island that separated the two busy streams of traffic where the main road narrowed before joining the Aldgate one-way system. A deadly looking lamppost protruded from the island’s centre, where it waited patiently to cleave the van in two. The impact would prove fatal; of that he was sure, but a wonderful calmness had descended over Pritchard and, somehow, he knew it would all be okay.
All four tyres screeched, and the rear of the van fishtailed crazily, as he stood on the brakes. At the very last moment, he came off them and gunned the accelerator, spinning the steering wheel hard to the right at the same time, just like he’d seen Stig Blomqvist do in one of those rally driving videos that he so enjoyed watching. The van might not be on a par with Stig’s rally spec Audi Quatro, but all four wheels remained grounded as he dragged it clear of the island and into the one-way system, and that was good enough for him.
Entering the one-way system against the flow of traffic, there was no time for conscious thought. The Disciple simply buried the accelerator into the floor and drove straight at oncoming vehicles, trusting that the dark deity he worshiped would part them so that he could escape his pursuers, just as the Hebrew God had parted the waters of the Red Sea for Moses as he fled the Egyptian army.
Horns were sounding all around him; loud, angry, sustained blasts that he regarded with complete impunity. Fear was imprinted on the faces of the oncoming drivers who swerved to avoid him, but he remained calm, secure in the knowledge that celestial forces were watching over him.
The police carrier was still following, but more cautiously now. It was beginning to drop back again.
YES!
He could do this. He could lose them and still kill the third bitch responsible for ruining his life exactly as scheduled. He would have to get rid of the van, of course, but he had a contingency plan for that. After months of preparation, he prided himself on having a strategy to deal with every possible eventuality. “Don’t you worry, my Queen of Whores,” he shouted into the back. “We’ll play our little game, yet.”
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“The TSG are doing
