The Stone Gallows (41 page)

With a squeal of tyres she hooked right and was gone.

I lay there on the cold tarmac, struggling to breathe, counting to ten, watching the world spin around. My balls throbbed, and with a choked sound, I threw up the bagel I had eaten less than forty minutes ago. With a grunt, I lurched to my feet.

I wasn't going to give up that easily.

12.6.

Only when I tried to retrieve my car keys did I realise that the index finger on my right hand seemed to be pointing the opposite way to its companions. The damn thing was turned a full ninety degrees into the palm and unwilling to follow instructions. While the other fingers moved in unison, it just wobbled about, registering protest in the form of sickening waves of pain. Like an idiot, I did what they always seemed to do in an episode of Casualty, seizing it with my left hand and trying to snap it back to its original position. The agony was excruciating. I fell back to my knees, the world drifting in and out of focus like a badly adjusted zoom lens. When I was reasonably sure I wasn't going to pass out, I managed to regain my feet.

Sirens rose in the distance. I wanted to believe it was the cavalry, but it was far more likely they were responding to a complaint from the hotel manager.

In the end, I was forced to use my left hand, digging through the contents of my jeans like an upright game of twister. The keys had managed to retreat to the deepest, darkest crevasse of my pocket, and it was only by removing every single item (handkerchief, packet of chewing gum, lottery ticket) that I was finally able to get a hold of them. I limped back to the Golf just in time to see a police car pull up outside the hotel. A couple of uniformed officers leapt out. The receptionist I had made friends with earlier was standing at the front door, shouting and waving her arms around, clearly trying to send the coppers in my direction. I ducked into the Golf and keyed it, over-revving the engine and squealing out of my space. I flew round the car park, following the same route Sophie had taken. The coppers saw me and dived back into their patrol car, lurching forward in an attempt to block off the exit. Too slow. The Golf – higher than Sophie's Beamer – crashed through the barrier, splintering it into smithereens. I wrenched the wheel to the right, rejoining the one-way system that surrounded the airport, the cop car just a few yards behind. With my left hand, I fumbled with the seat belt, eventually locking it in place.

Quickly, I tried to think which way Sophie would head. Her best chance of escape lay in sticking close to the airport, hiding in the myriad of cross streets. However, she would be frightened, irrational, preferring to make decisions quickly rather than prudently. In a crisis, people equate escape with speed and distance, wanting to go as quickly as possible and place as many miles as possible between them and their pursuer. The fastest, closest road to the airport was the motorway, and the nearest motorway slip road was Westbound.

Towards Glasgow. Through rush hour traffic.

It was a bit of a guess, and I was probably wrong. It didn't matter.

The game was nearly over, and had reached the stage where the only sure fire way to avoid losing everything was to gamble hard and fast.

Also, the police car was gaining rapidly. It was increasingly obvious that I wasn't going to be allowed to play for very much longer.

12.7.

‘Da-ad!'

Sophie glanced to her left. Mark was twisted in his seat, face pressed
to the window. The car hit a pothole and he bumped his nose against the
glass. ‘Ow!'

‘That wasn't your father. It was somebody who looked like him.'

‘It was him! It was Daddy! I saw him! I don't like this game. Daddy!

Daddy! I'm in here, Daddy!'

The boy fixed himself to the door handle, little fingers grasping at the
metal. Sophie reached over and grabbed him by the back of his T-shirt,
dragging him away from the door. ‘Mark! Don't do that! We're going too
fast. You'll fall out.'

‘I WANT MY DADDY!'

‘I promise, I'll take you to him. And your Mummy as well. I promise.'

The little boy was crying now. ‘You keep saying that!'

‘And I will. I promise.'

She swung the car onto the slip-road. A bus was crawling up it at
thirty, a line of traffic strung behind it. She swung the car as far to the
right as she could, the wheels well over the white line, and started to pass
on the outside. The embankment was a flash of green on her right, falling
away as they climbed level with the motorway. Traffic was nose to tail,
wheel to wheel. The speedometer read seventy-three miles an hour, only
three miles above the speed limit but still thirty miles faster than the rest
of the traffic was moving. She spotted a gap and went for it, right at the
same time an articulated lorry on the outside lane made the same
decision. The driver saw her coming and slammed his brakes on, airhorn
blatting. The BMW slid directly in front of the lorry and was lightly 
tagged on the rear right fender. It pitched into the side of a red people
mover that was cruising happily in the middle lane. The impact caused
the blue car to straighten, the tyres suddenly regaining traction. Inside,
Sophie screamed. Mark wet himself. She fought to keep her hands on the
wheel, the lorry filling her rear-view mirror like some kind of beast. Her
foot mashed back down on the accelerator, and the car responded like the
fine piece of German engineering it was, the engine smoothing out at as
control was restored.

At least, for the time being.

12.8.

I tried to work out how many seconds behind them I was. After Sophie had knocked me to the ground it had taken me ten, maybe fifteen seconds to get back up. Then another fifteen seconds playing pocket pool as I tried to recover my keys. Then
another
fifteen seconds to make it to the car and get moving. Maybe forty-five seconds in total. If she made it to the motorway, she could be three quarters of a mile ahead.

The police siren howled behind me. I wondered if the driver had been trained in high speed pursuits. I doubted it; he was hanging too close to my bumper. If I hit my brakes he would slam into me, causing significantly more damage to his vehicle than to mine. For once I was grateful that the British police force aren't as aggressive as the Americans. Our overseas cousins use something called a Pitt Manoeuvre, whereupon the police car taps the rear wing of the escaping car, causing it to spin out of control. Lucky for me, very few people in Britain had been trained in it.

Still, if he was a big fan of Police, Camera, Action, then he might decide to give it a go. I mashed the accelerator against the threadbare carpet, trying to put a little distance between us. The slip road was a mess; traffic was at a standstill. It took me about three seconds to read the situation. Two hundred yards in front of me, an articulated lorry had jack-knifed across two lanes of traffic. Cars trying to join the motorway from the slip road had been forced to come to a halt as the cars that were already on the motorway forced their way through the remaining gap. With nowhere left to go, I jammed the Golf as far to the left as it would go scraping the side off the metal barrier. There was a horrendous screeching rattle, and the Golf vibrated as it was peeled down one side like a tin of sardines. There wasn't enough room, but somehow I made it happen, forcing the shuddering vehicle a further hundred yards up the slip road, the wider police car trapped at the bottom. The closer I got to the top, the closer together were the cars. Soon I was boxed in, barrier on my left, cars on the right. I muscled on anyway, using the Golf like a chisel, simply forcing my way into spaces that didn't exist. Drivers saw me in their rear-view mirror and hauled their way to the right, desperately trying to avoid having me scrape down the left side of their cars. Some of them even succeeded.

Eventually, I was forced to stop. A pick-up truck the size of a small house blocked the way, and it was impossible to squeeze any further.

Screaming my frustration, I stamped on the brakes and brought the Golf to a shuddering halt. I leapt out and started to run. I was almost on the motorway. The lorry-driver was in front of me, a large man with a beefy red face, hands shaking. For the first time I noticed a red people mover mashed against the central reservation, two lanes of the motorway littered with debris. Cars crawled by in the one lane that was still usable. It didn't look like there were any casualties. A couple of people had left their vehicles to try to help. The lorry driver was shaking his head, shouting to make himself heard over the hum of engines and the beep of horns. ‘Crazy bitch just pulled out in front of me. I couldn't do anything. Nearly killed her.'

I dodged a Transit Van and elbowed my way through the growing crowd of onlookers until I was directly in front of him. ‘Let me guess.

Blue BMW. Smacked the people mover but just carried on.'

He nodded, his eyes shocked and far away. ‘How do you know?' he asked vaguely.

But I had already turned away, scanning back down the slip road I had charged up. The two coppers were marching toward me. Behind them were a group of people who no doubt found my driving style a tad aggressive. I half expected them to light up a couple of torches.

My options were running out. Sophie was probably a mile in front of me, an angry mob forming behind me. I was public enemy number one. Nobody except me in this dreadful little scene gave a shit about Mark. I knew I was in trouble, didn't care.

And then I saw it. Twenty yards away was a motorcycle, heeled over on its side stand. I looked around for its owner, spotted him next to the people mover, trying to force one of the doors open.

I jogged a little closer to the bike. The keys were in the ignition.

12.9.

Sophie was glad of the steering wheel beneath her hands; without it,
they would have trembled uncontrollably. She checked her rear-view
mirror again, remembering how she had watched the lorry that had
clipped her lose control and skid to a halt. As a result, traffic had
definitely thinned out behind her.

A pulse beat in her temple. Stone had frightened her. How had he
found her? Maybe he was smarter than she gave him credit for.

Or maybe he had just got lucky.

She glanced to her left. The boy had pulled his knees up to his chin
and was sucking his thumb. Christ knew what she had been thinking.

Her mind was so foggy, filled with a dreadful buzzing noise, with shape-less, shifting images. One minute she was with her son, holding his hand
as he slipped from unconsciousness to death, then she was back in the
moment. She was owed a child. As long as she loved him and was kind,
he would forget about his early life and grow to love her back.

‘Luke?'

He didn't answer. Just kept on sucking his thumb.

‘Luke, I'm sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. I'm just. . .

I'm not feeling very well at the moment.'

At last, the boy looked at her. ‘My name isn't Luke. It's Mark.'

‘It's Luke! Why would you say such a thing to your mother?'

‘You're not my mother!'

She reached out and clipped him round the ear. The boy yelped and
retreated further into himself. She pointed a warning finger. ‘Teach you
to speak to me like that.'

12.10.

The bike was a stunner, a real work of art. Shame I was probably going to wreck it.

It was a red Ducati 748. Low at the front, high at the back, it was sleek and aggressive, like a fighter jet. I'd never ridden one, but I knew it well. Before Mark was born I'd been a keen biker, owning one Yamaha R1 and several hundred pieces of Triumph Bonneville that had taken me nearly ten years to realise were never going to fit together to make one complete motorcycle. Underneath the steel trellis frame of the Duke was a Twin-Cam Desmodronic engine, kicking out about a hundred and ten brake-horse power in a package weighing just over two hundred kilos. Top speed of maybe a hundred and fifty, nought to sixty in about three and a half seconds. It wouldn't keep up with a Honda Fireblade, but was plenty fast enough to beat just about any car on the road.

Including Sophie Sloan's Beamer.

Of course, that was assuming that the damn thing started. It may have been a legend, but it was also fragile, and Italian. Trying to look casual, I sauntered over and swung my leg over the raised tail section, rocking the bike off the side-stand. I thanked God it was my right index finger that was broken; had it been the left there was no way I would have had the strength to work the heavy clutch. I pulled it in and thumbed the starter button, the engine exploding into life beneath me. Like Harleys, Ducatis have their own particular sound, and this one sounded like a badly maintained tractor that had been converted to run on used vegetable oil. I checked over my shoulder; the owner was forty yards back, still poking around the people mover.

Recognising the sound of his bike, his head swung round. Our eyes locked and with a cry of rage, he started to run towards me. With my left foot, I frantically worked the gear shift, trying to find first, finding nothing but dry clicks. Eventually it wouldn't move any further.

Nearly crying, I rolled the throttle as I let the clutch out.

And stalled it. The engine quit with a sickening rattle.

Moaning, I checked over my shoulder again. The owner was closing, his face red and swollen. My thumb stabbed the starter button without success. The engine was well and truly dead. Then I remembered some Ducatis have a built-in fail-safe. The engine was programmed to cut out if the rider attempted to pull away while the side-stand remained down. I shifted my weight, balancing the bike on my right foot while I heeled the stand into place, grabbing at the clutch and stabbing at the starter button. This time, the engine rang out sweetly. The guy was only five yards away, snorting like a bull. I revved the engine and dumped the clutch. The front wheel leapt in the air. I threw my weight forward to push it down. Within a second I was gone, careering through the crash debris on one wheel, my chest flat against the petrol tank. Only when the engine bounced off the rev limiter did the front wheel drop, slamming back to the ground like a concrete block thrown from a great height, the percussive shock causing my wrists to go numb. I could see nothing in the rear-view mirrors, so I risked a glance behind me. The owner stood in the centre of the motorway shaking his fist, yet another person I had managed to upset.