hearing the sound of the bags sliding across the back seat, then accelerated down the tree-lined avenue. It was starting to rain again, and he fumbled around with the switches until he found the wipers and got them working. They reached a T-junction, with a church ahead.
'Do you know where we are?'
'The harbour can't be far,' he said. He drove on, through a maze of quiet residential streets, then suddenly they came out into a narrow, bustling high street, with traffic crawling down it.
'There!' Vic pointed ahead. 'That's the harbour!' At the bottom of the high street, they came to the junction with the main coast road that ran all the way along Brighton and Hove seafront, past Shoreham Harbour and then along the banks of the River Adur. 'Which way's the boat?' 'It's at the Sussex Motor Yacht Club/ she said. 'You have to go left.' There was a bus coming, quickly. He was going to wait to let it pass when a glint of white light in his mirror caught his eye; almost in disbelief, he saw a police motorbike weaving through the jammed traffic behind him. The same damned cop he had just knocked off his machine? He pulled out in front of the bus, tyres screeching. Then, moments later, out of nowhere, a black BMW with a flashing blue light on the dash and more flashing blue lights inside its rear windscreen, hurtled past the bus and his Toyota, cutting in front of him, forcing him to brake sharply. Above its rear bumper the words, in flashing red lights, appeared: 'stop police'. In complete blind panic he swung the car round in a Uturn, accelerating back the other way, weaving through the traffic, which was slowing down ahead at a roundabout. The motorbike was right behind him, siren howling. Putting two wheels on the pavement, jamming his hand on the horn, making pedestrians leap out of the way, Vic squeezed past the line of cars and a van and reached the roundabout.
There were three choices: right seemed to go back into the maze of houses; straight on the traffic was clogged up. Left went over a metal-girdered bridge spanning the river. He turned left, the motorbike glued to his tail as he accelerated as hard at the Toyota would go, the fan grinding, shrieking, the noise getting worse every second. Below, the tide was right out, the river just a slack brown trickle between the mud banks, with moored boats lying on their sides, many of them barely looking as if they were capable of floating when the tide came back in. On the far side of the bridge the road was clear. But within moments the BMW was coming up fast behind him. The motorbike suddenly whipped in front of him and then decelerated, trying to force him to slow.
'Thought I fucking gave you a lesson already,' Vic muttered, accelerating, trying to ram it, but the rider was too quick for him, darting forward as if anticipating this. Vic, trying desperately to think straight, looked at the landscape to either side. On the left was a garage, a parade of shops and what looked like a large residential area. Over to his right he could see the flat expanse of Shoreham Airport, used mostly by private aircraft and a few small Channel Islands airlines. The entrance was coming up. Without signalling he swung right, onto the narrow road. There was a concrete wall on his left, and the open expanse of the airfield to his right, dotted with hangars, with small planes and helicopters parked in front, and the white Art Deco control tower building, in need of a lick of paint. The thought now going through his head was that if he could just shake off the cops for a few minutes, they could hijack a light aircraft, like the twin-engined Beechcraft he could see coming in now - just drive straight over to it, grab the pilot.
As if anticipating exactly that, the BMW pulled alongside, then swung into him, forcing him into the concrete wall. Ashley screamed as the car slammed against it, grating along it with sparks showering past them.
'Vic, for Christ's sake do something!'
He sat, gripping the wheel for dear life, clenched up in concentration, knowing they were hopelessly underpowered against the BMW and the bike. There was a tunnel coming up ahead. He could guess exactly what the BMW had in mind - to go in it ahead of him and then stop. So he stamped on the brakes. Caught by surprise, the BMW shot past, and instantly he swerved behind it, off the road and onto the airfield itself. The bike stayed with him, and moments later, the BMW was behind him as well. He drove across the bumpy grass straight towards the first row of parked aircraft, weaving wildly in between them, trying to shake off the cops behind him, trying to spot someone walking to a plane or getting out of one. Then, as he headed for a gap between a Grumman executive jet and a Piper Aztec, the BMW suddenly rammed him hard, jolting them both forward, Ashley, despite her seatbelt, cracking her head on the windscreen and crying out in pain. He heard the BMW revving. The runway was right in front of him, and he could see the twin-engined plane bearing down, yards away from touching down. He floored the accelerator, lurched across the runway, right through the shadow of the plane. And then, for a brief moment, no bike and no BMW in his mirror!
He kept going, flat out, the car lurching, the grating from the engine getting worse and accompanied by an acrid smell of burning now, straight toward the perimeter fence and the narrow road beyond that.
'We need to get out and hide, Vic. We're not going to outrun them in this thing.'
'I know,' he said grimly, panic gripping him again as he couldn't see a gap anywhere in the fence. 'Where's the fucking exit?'
'Just go through the fence.' T
aking her advice, he continued driving flat out at the fence, slowing just before they struck it, the wire mesh making a dull clanging sound, and ripping like cloth. Then he was on the perimeter road, with the mudflats of the river to his right and the airfield to his left, and the bike and the car were right behind him. A Mercedes sports was coming the other way. Vic kept going. 'Out the fucking way!' At the last moment the Mercedes pulled over onto the verge. They were coming up to a T-junction with a narrow road that was little more than a lane. To the left there was a removals lorry parked outside a cottage, unloading, blocking the road completely. He turned right, flooring the pedal, watching in his mirror. At least this lane was too narrow for the BMW to get past. The bike was getting in position. Any moment it would whip past. Vic swerved out to warn it off. They were doing seventy, seventy-five, eighty, approaching a wooden bridge over the river. Then, just as he reached the bridge, two small boys on bicycles appeared at the far end, right in the middle of the road.
'Shiiiiiiiit, oh shiiit, oh shiiit,' Vic said, stamping on the brakes, thumbing the horn, but there was no time; they were not going to stop, and there was no room to get past them. Ashley was screaming. The car slewed right, left, right. It struck the right-hand barrier of the bridge, veered over and struck the left, pinballed off it, doing a half pirouette, then rolled over onto its roof, bounced in the air, clearing the safety barrier, bursting through the wooden side of the bridge's superstructure, splintering it like matchsticks, and plunging, upside down, the rear doors flying open, and the suitcases hurtling alongside the car towards the mudflats below, which were as soft and treacherous as quicksand. The motorcyclist dismounted and, limping from his leg injury from when he had been knocked off his machine only a few minutes earlier, hobbled over to the hole in the side of the bridge and peered down. All he could see protruding from the mud was the grimy black underbelly of the Toyota. The rest of the car had sunk into it. He stared at the metal floor pan, the exhaust and silencer, the four wheels still spinning. Then, in front of his eyes, the mud bubbled all around the car, like a cauldron brewing, and moments later the underbelly and the wheels slipped beneath the surface and the mud closed over it. There were some deep bubbles which broke the surface, as if the underwater lair of some monster had been disturbed.
Then nothing.
89
