by Guy Adams
‘Wait,’ said Tae-young, as she slowly regained her senses. ‘A car? I think I can help with that.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE SWITCH
a) Alcester, Warwickshire
The driver’s name was Bellamy, and Toby’s concerns that he was unlikely to believe the truth of his situation turned out to have been misguided. Having underestimated the man’s credulity, he had constructed a fictitious story about being driven off the road by two men in a van who had proceeded to drag him from his car and steal his belongings. Bellamy’s response to this had been unexpected.
‘Probably the additives in the food,’ he said. ‘The stuff these kids are eating these days beggars belief. I’ve seen studies.’
‘Right,’ Toby had said. ‘I think they just wanted the car and my wallet.’
‘But it’s the chemicals that drive them to it. All these conditions they have these days, HD and what have you, the next generation are growing up to be animals and it’s all because we’ve driven them doolally with Tartrazine. You are what you eat, isn’t that what they say? I’m only going as far as Alcester.’
The fact that Bellamy had changed the direction of the conversation so rapidly threw Toby for a moment.
‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘I need to go to somewhere called the Swan Hotel, know it?’
‘You need to get to the police station, more like.’
‘After, I have a friend staying at the Swan.’
‘If you’re sure.’
Toby hoped Bellamy didn’t press the issue, or, even worse, insist on following him inside the hotel. Not knowing that he did, indeed, have a friend there, Toby had visions of an awkward confrontation as he was proven to be a liar.
He needn’t have worried, Bellamy just shrugged.
‘Here,’ he said, as a few drops of rain hit the windscreen, ‘weather’s changing.’
Two words that had Toby looking around in a panic.
‘Weather said it was going to stay dry all week,’ Bellamy continued. ‘Don’t know what they’re doing. ’Course, it’s the Yanks isn’t it? And the Japs. Broken the clouds with their experiments.’
Toby saw a car gaining on them from behind as, slowly, the rain increased.
‘You need to go faster,’ he told Bellamy, ‘for both our sakes.’
‘Not with these brakes, I don’t,’ said Bellamy. ‘They’re a bit overdue. I know what you mean, though, I haven’t felt happy since they invented acid rain.’
On the grass verge ahead, Toby saw the Rain-Soaked Bride emerge from the foliage.
‘It’s not the rain,’ Toby said, twisting in his seat so he could see the car behind them. ‘It’s her.’ He pointed his finger towards the Bride.
‘Friend of yours, is she?’ said Bellamy. ‘If she’ll cross the road, I’ll pick her up for you.’
‘No!’ Toby shouted as Bellamy lifted his foot from the accelerator. ‘We need to get out of here.’ He grabbed Bellamy’s knee and forced his leg down on the accelerator pedal making the car jerk forward with a rush of speed.
‘Oi!’ Bellamy shouted. ‘You’ll be the bloody death of us.’
That was possibly true, Toby thought.
‘The brakes!’ Bellamy said, pumping ineffectually at the brake pedal. ‘I knew they were on the way out but they’re not responding at all.’
‘Bad luck,’ Toby said as they soared past the Bride. He looked at the rear-view mirror and saw the pursuing car was now right behind them. Through the pursuing car’s windscreen he saw Fratfield’s grinning face. In the passenger seat a young man lolled against his seat belt, dead or just unconscious, Toby couldn’t tell.
‘I can’t slow down!’ said Bellamy. ‘The accelerator’s stuck and the roundabout’s just ahead.’ The man was pulling at the accelerator pedal with his foot, trying to lift it up from its depressed position. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with it!’
Toby didn’t think there was much point in explaining that it was all down to his presence.
He looked ahead to where the road split as it approached the roundabout. The sign showed that Alcester was reached from the middle exit, directly across the roundabout. The crossing traffic was heavy, the roundabout acting as a junction with a busier thoroughfare.
‘I’ll drop the gears and hope for the best,’ said Bellamy. ‘I won’t be able to turn at this speed so we’ll just have to hope I can slow us down enough to use the handbrake without flipping the car.’
Toby knew the odds weren’t in their favour. The car would probably turn over at the first opportunity.
‘Leave the gears and hit the horn,’ he told Bellamy, knocking the man’s hand away from the gearstick. He looked ahead at the roundabout. It was fairly flat, just grass with few barriers.
‘That’s not going to do much bloody good, is it?’
‘It’ll give the rest of the traffic warning. Do it.’
‘I’m going too fast.’
‘Do it!’ Toby shouted. ‘I’m trying to save your life.’ And mine for that matter, he thought.
‘But what about the roundabout?’
‘You said yourself,’ Toby replied, ‘there’s no way we can turn at this speed.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Bellamy screamed as the car sailed out of the junction, straight in front of an approaching lorry and on over the roundabout in a shower of turf and a roar of horns. Toby grabbed the steering wheel, avoiding a large sign and aiming the car directly down the road to Alcester. The road veered gradually and he was able to keep control of the car as it sped along it. He slapped at the hazard lights, only fair to give other drivers as much warning as possible. Their best bet was to keep their speed up and try and get ahead of the curse.
He glanced at the rear-view mirror and was relieved not to see Fratfield. Their manoeuvre across the roundabout would have caused obstructions that should delay him. He looked at the window. There was no rain.
‘Try the brake pedal again,’ he said. ‘Pump it.’
Bellamy did so. ‘It’s working,’ he said unnecessarily as Toby was forced to slap his hands on the dashboard in order to stop his face from slamming into it.
‘The accelerator’s lifted,’ Bellamy said. ‘I don’t know what it was playing at.’
He dropped through the gears and pulled the car into the forecourt of a petrol station. ‘What the hell was all that about?’
‘You’ve been targeted by Big Pharma,’ said Toby, undoing his seat belt and getting out.
‘Dave Roberts from Evesham?’ Bellamy asked, having misunderstood. ‘I only told him not to spray his corn so much.’
But Toby was already gone, running away from the petrol station and along the main road.
b) Alcester, Warwickshire
Toby looked from one side of the road to the other, trying to find cover. Fratfield couldn’t be far behind him. Even if the near pile-up he and Bellamy had caused on the roundabout had held the man back for a few minutes it was obvious where Toby had gone and the road to the centre of town was long and straight, with little opportunity for his changing direction.
There was no sign of the rain, his only reliable method of knowing when Fratfield was close, but it could only be a matter of time.
The few minutes in the car had, despite the manner in which the journey had ended, given him an opportunity to get his breath back. Nonetheless, sprinting down the road and trying to figure out a way off it, he soon began to tire.
Finally, he was able to cut right, getting off the main road and into a rabbit warren of residential streets.
He could hear the sound of the nearby fair. Like Shining before him, he thought it seemed an absurd presence in this quaint old town. In normal circumstances he might have been glad of it as it would certainly provide him with cover. His concern now was the risk he might put others under should he suddenly become the focal point for disaster. The curse seemed to have reasonable aim for the most part – the majority of its victims had died alone, not in a great wave of collateral damage – but what had happened in the car went to sh
ow that it wasn’t always precise. Bellamy had nearly joined Rachel Holley as an innocent caught up in its net.
Shining had told him to get himself to the Swan Hotel. If he could get himself there unseen he could hide from Fratfield but could he ever hide from the Bride herself? Once he was within her sphere of influence, she would find him anywhere. He had to figure out a way of putting proper distance between them. Maybe the town had a train station? But then, if he was on the train by the time the curse struck he could take a lot of passengers with him. Perhaps it would be better to just steal a car? If he was caught behind the wheel then at least it was only himself he had to worry about. Unless of course the car crashed into others.
The only way to keep others safe was to go somewhere remote. That opportunity was hardly open to him now – quite the reverse, he realised, as he stepped out of a side street and into the main street running through the centre of town. Crowds of people pushed in all directions as they moved between the rides. Music pounded, the ghost train screamed and Toby was at a loss as to what he should do.
His only option was to get through the crowds as quickly as possible. Maybe, on the other side of town, he would find a car he could steal that might put him some distance away. It would be a risk but the only sure-fire way of protecting innocents was to put a gun to his head and he wasn’t inclined to do that.
As he moved through the fair, constantly zig-zagging from one tight space to another, he suddenly became aware of the air growing colder. If there was the tell-tale sound of thunder, he certainly couldn’t hear it above the row on either side but, still only halfway through the fair, he felt a couple of raindrops land on his head.
He tried to break into a run but, hemmed in on either side, it was all he could do to keep moving. As people began to shout and shove trying to get out of the sudden downpour, he found himself knocked to the ground. Putting his hands up to protect his head, he tried to get to his feet but was knocked again and again as people rushed past him. It was the curse, he knew, more than simple impatience on the part of the crowds. The Bride would be just as happy to have him trampled to death as anything else.
He fell forward, scuffing his hands on the road and someone from behind caught him hard enough to send him face-first to the ground, a pair of heavy black boots zooming into his eye-line.
‘Get up,’ said a voice he recognised and he looked up as a woman’s hands gripped him beneath the arms.
‘Tamar?’
‘August did not tell you I was here?’
‘No.’ And instantly he realised why. He was risking the lives of everyone around him, and now that included the woman he cared for more than anything else. ‘He knew I wouldn’t have come.’
‘You are that happy to see me?’
‘Everywhere I go I bring trouble,’ he explained. ‘I’m cursed. The world’s out to get me.’
She raised her eyebrow. ‘I know that feeling. So we need to get away from crowd?’
He nodded, looking around for sign of Fratfield or the Bride. He found the latter atop the ghost train, squatting down on the brightly coloured ‘T’ of the sign and looking right at him.
‘She’s there,’ Toby said, pointing. ‘We need to get clear – if these people get caught in the crossfire …’
Tamar pulled her gun from under her jacket, pointed it in the air and fired twice. Even over the noise of the fair rides it had an immediate effect.
There was a scream from a woman stood next to them and the mass exodus of the crowds increased its panicked speed. Parents grabbed children and hoisted them onto their shoulders, everyone running to get beyond the rides and off the street.
The ghost train screamed, the large mechanical skeleton that straddled it clicking to and fro like a pendulum. There was a high-pitched whistle from the waltzers as the cars collided and spun. The spinning octopus above them built to a climax, flashing in purple and green light as it tipped one way and then the other. The large speakers crunched out a bass-distorted dance tune.
At the far end of the street, revealed by the parting crowds stood Fratfield.
‘He is our man?’ Tamar asked.
Toby nodded.
Tamar raised her gun but Toby shouted at her to stop. ‘The only way I can get rid of the curse is to pass it on,’ he said. ‘Those are the rules.’
‘And how do you do that?’
But before Toby could answer there was a loud cracking sound and the octopus ride tipped towards them. Toby pushed Tamar to one side, the spinning cars narrowly missing him as they carved through the air. There were screams from the people trapped inside, convinced they were about to be flung into the air.
Toby made a run for it, wanting to put distance between himself, the ride and Tamar.
There was another sound of grinding gears and a waltzer, thankfully empty, left its platform and sailed through the air, clipping Tamar as she tried to run after Toby.
‘Tamar!’ he shouted, running towards her.
She got to her feet, cradling a broken arm. ‘I am all right,’ she insisted. ‘It barely touch me.’
But that was enough for Toby. He ran towards the ghost train, waving at the Bride who still stood on top of it.
‘I’m here!’ he shouted. ‘No need for anyone else to get hurt.’
‘No Toby.’ Tamar ran after him, grabbing at his shoulder with her uninjured arm.
‘Get away!’ Toby begged her. ‘Please. I couldn’t bear it if I ended up … not after everything else.’
‘I am not your responsibility,’ she told him. ‘You do not own me.’
‘It’s not about owning you!’ he told her. ‘It’s about loving you. Now, for God’s sake, keep back, it’s me she wants.’
Tamar pushed in front of him. ‘Then she’ll have to go through me.’
‘Stupid!’ Toby moved to the side, calling up at the Bride. ‘Quickly, please, do it! Just don’t hurt her!’
The skeleton cracked to and fro, the Bride inclined her head.
‘I am not stupid.’ Tamar grabbed him and pulled him back. ‘I am doing what is right.’
‘You don’t owe me anything!’ Toby said. ‘Please understand that. It’s not about debts. It’s not about being owned.’
‘I know,’ she told him. ‘But I am not going to leave you.’
The rain stopped, frozen in mid-air around them.
‘What are you doing?’ Fratfield shouted. He had kept his distance up until now, happy to watch but not wanting to risk being hurt himself. Now, frustrated, he walked between the rides, pulling his own gun out of its holster. ‘Finish the job, damn you, that’s what you’re for!’
Tamar fired first, hitting Fratfield in the shoulder. He spun on the spot, his gun flying out of his hand.
‘Don’t kill him,’ Toby insisted, grabbing the gun.
He looked up again at the Bride. ‘I don’t know how this works,’ he said, ‘but that woman means the world to me. She’s … well, she’s just amazing. I’m no good at explaining that sort of thing. I’m not very … I can’t find the words. She’ll only shout at me if I try. Doesn’t matter. The point is, I won’t stand by and risk her dying too.’ He put the gun to his head. ‘If I pull the trigger are we all square? Are we done?’
‘No, Toby!’ Tamar tried to wrestle the gun from him but he pushed her back.
‘Do it!’ Fratfield shouted. ‘It’s good enough for me!’
‘It’s not about you,’ Toby replied. ‘It’s about her.’ He pointed to the Bride. ‘Are we done?’ he asked again, pressing the barrel of the gun to his head. The Bride inclined her head again. Saying nothing.
Was that an answer? It must be. Surely if he was dead then the curse was satisfied. He closed his eyes and tightened his finger on the trigger.
Above them, there was a sudden roar of rotor blades as a helicopter carved its way through the air above the street. For a moment Toby was distracted, looking up and recognising the helicopter from Lufford Hall.
The downdraft from the rotor blades
sent the frozen rain spiralling around them, Fratfield fighting to keep to his feet as the helicopter hovered just a few feet above them.
In the cabin there were four people: the pilot, Tae-young, Clive King and Shining.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ said King. ‘You can actually see where the rain begins, appearing as if out of thin air.’
‘With all due respect, Mr King,’ said Shining, ‘the rain is the least of my concerns.’ He tapped the pilot on the shoulder who handed him the microphone handset that was connected to a speaker on the underside of the helicopter.
‘Toby,’ said Shining, his voice echoing off the buildings around them, ‘you need to be careful. It’s not just Fratfield. An old friend is involved, too. That enemy agent we discussed before. The higher power. He’s been playing this whole situation to his own advantage. He’s been working with Fratfield. Be aware. He could be anyone at any time. Understand? He could be anyone!’
‘Are you sure we wouldn’t be of more help trying to attack Fratfield?’ asked King. ‘He’s the threat here.’
‘No he isn’t,’ said Tae-young, looking at the Bride who returned her gaze, her wet hair rippling in the wind caused by the rotor blades.
‘Toby will understand,’ said Shining. ‘I trust him. He’ll know what to do.’
Toby’s finger held fast. His eyes stayed closed. Then something popped into his head.
He turned the gun towards the helicopter and fired two shots. One clipping the left-hand landing skid, the other going wide.
‘Take us up!’ Shining demanded. ‘Quickly!’
Toby’s aim followed the helicopter as it sailed skywards but he didn’t take another shot. He sighed and lowered the gun.
‘What are you doing?’ Tamar asked.
He turned to her and, with terrifying speed, slapped her across the face. ‘Do shut up, you whining sow.’
Then he turned and walked towards Fratfield, shaking his head.
‘This is just a mess,’ he said, but the voice did not sound a bit like Toby’s. It was cold and dismissive. It was the voice of the ‘enemy agent’ to which Shining had referred. He didn’t even walk the same, a swagger, an insouciance that belied the young officer’s situation. ‘All you had to do,’ he said to Fratfield, ‘was kill a few people. Now I like a bit of spectacle but this is ridiculous. What’s your problem?’
