'Why've you carried on, Vic?' Ashley asked nervously. 'I thought we were going to Gatwick.'
Vic did not reply. A little old man was pottering along in the inside lane in a bronze four-door Toyota that looked a good ten years old. Perfect! The tunnel was coming up any moment now. From memory it was about a quarter of a mile long, cutting through the Downs. They passed the 'No Overtaking' warning sign and entered the dimly lit gloom of the tunnel doing a good 110 mph. Instantly, Vic swerved into the inside lane and stamped on the brakes, slowing the car down to a crawl and putting on his hazard flashers.
'Vic - what the hell--' But he was ignoring her, staring in the mirror, watching a line of cars flash past. And now the Toyota was approaching. Vic tensed, knowing he had to get his timing absolutely right. The Toyota indicated that it was going to pull out to overtake, and began moving out, but instantly there was a flash of lights and the blare of a horn as a Porsche hurtled past, and the Toyota, braking hard, swerved back into the inside lane. Beaut! Vic jerked on the Land Rover's handbrake as hard as he could, knowing it would stop the car without the brake lights showing. 'Brace yourself!' he shouted, releasing the brake and accelerating. There was a scream of tyres behind, but by the time the Toyota struck them, they already had some forward momentum again. There was a small impact, just a tiny jolt that he barely felt, and the sound of breaking glass.
'Out!' yelled Vic, hurling open his door, jumping down, running back and surveying the damage. All he was concerned with was the front of the Toyota. It looked fine - the grille was stove in and a headlamp gone, but no oil or water was spewing out.
'Get the fucking bags!' he yelled at Ashley, who was walking, startled, towards him. 'The fucking bags, woman!' He wrenched open the driver's door of the Toyota. The driver was even more frail than he had looked when he had driven past, well north of eighty, with a liver-spotted face, wispy hair and spectacles with bottle-glass lenses.
'Hey, what - what do you think - what--?' the old man said. Vic undipped his seatbelt, aware that a car was pulling up behind them, then removed his glasses to disorient him.
'I'll get you into the ambulance, mate.'
'I don't need a bloody--' Vic hauled the man out, hefted him over his shoulder and placed him on the rear seat of the Land Rover, then shut the door. A potbellied, middle-aged man who had just climbed out of a Ford people-carrier that had pulled up behind the Toyota came running up to Vic. 'I say, do you need any help?'
'Yes, poor bloke, I think he's had a stroke - was swerving all over the place.' A lorry thundered past, then two motorbikes.
Ashley shouted out, 'For God's sake help me, Vic, I can't manage these bloody cases on my own!'
'Leave the fucking things!'
'One has all my papers in it--'
Vic saw the pot-bellied man looking at Ashley oddly and decided the fastest solution was to deck him. He knocked him out cold with one punch, and propped him up against the front of his Ford. Then they hastily loaded Vic's holdall and two of Ashley's cases into the Toyota and jumped in. Vic found reverse, then, with a grinding noise coming from what he presumed was the fan belt, he eased the car back several feet, then he found drive, and the car juddered. He checked his mirror, then accelerated, pulling out past the Land Rover, and accelerated as fast as the distinctly clapped-out old Toyota would go towards the rapidly widening light at the far end of the tunnel.
Ashley was staring at him in shock. 'That was clever,' she said.
'Can you see the fucking chopper?' he asked, squinting as they came back out into bright light. She squirmed around in her seat, craning her neck upwards through first the front windscreen, then the rear.
'It's not following!' she exclaimed. 'It's hovering over the front of the tunnel - wait - great - now it's going back to the rear!'
'Fucking A!' Vic took the first exit off the dual carriageway, which came up a mile on. It took them down into the mixed urban and industrial sprawl of Southwick, the suburb separating the city of Brighton and Have from Shoreham. They had a few minutes' head start before the police got an ident on this car, and maybe with a bit of luck the old git who owned it couldn't remember the licence number, Vic hoped.
'OK, so where the hell are we going, Vic?'
'To the one place the police aren't looking at.'
'Which is?'
'Michael and Mark have a boat, right, a proper yacht. You've been on it?'
'Yes, I've told you - I've been out on it a few times.'
'It's big enough to cross the Channel, right?'
'The guy they bought it from sailed it across the Atlantic'
'That's fine. You and I know how to sail.'
'Yes.' Ashley remembered several sailing holidays they'd had in Australia and in Canada, chartering a yacht, going off on their own. Some of the few happy and peaceful moments of her life.
'So now you know where we're going. Unless you have a better idea?'
'Take their boat?'
'We'll sail after dark.'
They were now on a busy main road, with semi-detached houses on each side, set well back. He slowed down as they approached a red light and could see a shopping parade ahead on both sides of the road. Then, as he halted, his face fell. Brilliant white light filled the rear-view mirror. He heard the sharp blast of a two-tone siren. Saw a blue flashing light, heard the blip of a loud throttle; then a police motorcyclist pulled alongside his window, signalling for him to get out. Instead, he floored the accelerator and shot straight over the lights, right across the path of a heavy truck. 'Oh shit,' Ashley said. Moments later, siren on, the motorcycle was alongside again, the cop signalling sternly for him to pull over. Instead, Vic turned the wheel sharply to the right, deliberately striking the bike, sending it hurtling over on its side; in his mirror he caught a fleeting glimpse of the cop, unseated, rolling across the road. Panicking, Vic saw a pillar box ahead, and a quiet-looking side street. He turned sharply into it,
