by Mark West
* * *
David was just about to walk around the corner when he heard someone say, "… nothing, stupid."
He stopped, the skin across his shoulders and the back of his neck pulling tight. He'd found them.
"Please," he heard Nat say, her voice making up his mind that he couldn't run.
He peered around the corner, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom and could just make out two shapes, one standing, the other kneeling on the floor. Then, a movement - something was on the floor under the second shape.
David took out his car key and slid the metal shaft between his middle fingers, closing his fist over the body. It wasn't much but if he had to use it, he was sure it'd stop someone in their tracks and - the way he felt right now -he'd happily puncture either of the twats from the car, if it got them away from Nat.
"Are we doing her here?" asked the standing man. It was Mal and David decided to take him first. He didn't delude himself into thinking he had a chance in hell of beating the man, but at least he'd take him away from Nat.
David pushed away from the wall and the grass muffled the sound of his steps. He worked his way towards Mal, crouching slightly, hoping with every stride the man wouldn't hear him.
Mal didn't turn around until the last moment and had no chance to react. David caught him in a rugby tackle just above the waist and Mal barked out his breath, dropping backwards and sliding off David onto the ground. The force of the tackle turned David sideways and he skidded to a halt, struggling to keep to his feet.
Mal landed heavily by Nat's feet and Clarkey turned to see what was going on. David quickly closed the gap between the two men and kicked at Clarkey's right shoulder. He grunted with pain and slid half off Nat. David spun on his heel and grabbed for Clarkey's throat. He missed, catching instead the man's chin and ear and yanked back anyway.
Clarkey yelled in pain as David forced him backwards onto the ground beside Nat's leg. Once he was off her, she wriggled sideways and quickly got to her feet, wiping her face.
"You okay?" David said, looking at Nat. He waited until she nodded, then looked at Mal and Clarkey. Mal looked as if he was down for the count, but Clarkey was already getting to his feet. David licked his lips, his mouth dry.
"Motherfucker," said Clarkey.
"Stay down, mate, seriously, or I'll knock you down."
"Fucking tough guy, taking me from behind."
"Just stay down."
"Let's go," said Nat, grabbing his arm, "let's just get out of here and let the police deal with them."
Mal got to his knees. "You won't make it long enough to call the police."
"Fuck you," said Nat, pointing at him. "David, call the police."
Mal slowly stood up, favouring his right side. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, David."
"Come on," said Nat.
"You won't make it back to your car."
The matter of fact way he said it sent fresh slivers of ice through David's body. He couldn't see Mal's face properly, didn't know if it was idle talk or a serious threat, but the monotone delivery made it sound like a foregone conclusion. David didn't like it, didn't like any of it - the situation, the men, the fact that they were standing in darkness. They had to get out of there.
"Come on," he said, reaching for Nat's hand and pulling her to the pathway.
Keeping the wall close to their right, they backed along the path to the end of the house and David didn't take his eyes off the men, even as the gloom partially swallowed them.
"Are you okay?"
"Been better," Nat said, grimly.
"You won't make it," Mal called, from the darkness.
Clarkey laughed and sniffed and then they were at the front of the house. Nat pulled David close and they sped up their pace, crunching across the gravel.
"Do you think they'll stay there?" Nat hissed.
"No," he said, "I don't think so."
A car door slammed and David looked up. If that was someone else from the house, it could be all the back-up he needed. As it was, this was too easy - neither Mal or Clarkey had made any real attempt to keep them there and they could have done it easily, overpowering both him and Nat.
He could hear the footsteps of someone coming towards them. Please, he thought, please be a neighbour. Or a copper, sent by someone who'd overheard what was going on.
It took David a couple of moments to place the tall, skinny man standing in front of him, with a dark patch on the shoulder of his hoodie.
"Shit," he said.
"What?" asked Nat, suddenly panicked, looking from him to the stranger and back again.
"Get 'em, Jay," called Mal and Nat screamed.
Jay was apparently only half awake, his movements as lax as his expression. He made a grab for Nat's arm but this grip wasn't good enough and David pulled her away easily. The tall man grunted and half turned.
"What's going on?" screamed Nat.
"Come on," David said, firmly and he pulled her towards the car. She wasn't hysterical - not yet, anyway - but he wouldn't blame her if she suddenly descended into the state. He didn't know what she'd endured before he arrived, but he was willing to bet it hadn't been pleasant. "I need you to get to the car, okay?"
"Yes," she said, looking around, her eyes frantic.
Jay was standing still now, looking painfully confused and rubbing his eyes. David glanced around and saw Mal appear from behind the hedge. He folded his arms, smirking.
David pulled the door open and Nat slid into the passenger seat. He shut her door and ran around to his own. Mal didn't take his eyes off him and the smirk didn't slip.
Were they really going to let them get away? This didn't make any sense and that, more than anything else that had happened so far this evening, frightened him. The man who'd attacked Nat, who would stand trial for assault, was standing on the pavement, smirking, as if he didn't have a care in the world.
There had to be something that David couldn't see, a sick game he was an unwitting participant in. He searched for his keys, then remembered he was still gripping them. When he let go, his palm throbbed at the loss of the plastic it'd been pressed hard against.
"Let's go, come on," said Nat, as the engine purred into life.
"I'm going," said David. He checked the road was clear and reversed. Mal said something to Clarkey, who grabbed Jay and pulled him towards the Audi. Mal waited until David braked, before he turned to the car.
David put his foot down and the tyres juddered against the tarmac as they passed the Audi. "Where's the police station?" he said.
Nat was trying to put her seatbelt on, but in her panic, she'd pulled it too tight and it wouldn't move. She looked as if she was going to burst into tears.
"It's okay," he said and checked the rear-view mirror. The Audi started to come after them and he felt his heart rate increase. "Tell me where the cop shop is, we can pull up outside."
"What's happening, David, why are they doing this?"
"I don't know."
"Can't we call the police?"
"Shit." Why hadn't he thought of that? "Of course. Ring them, but tell me how to get there first."
"I don't have my phone."
"What?"
"My phone. It was in my bag and that's back at my place."
"Use mine," he said and reached into his pocket. "Now which way's the police station?"
The seatbelt finally gave and Nat clicked it into its socket and that seemed to calm her slightly. "Yes," she said, "yeah. We have to go around the one-way system."
He handed his phone to Nat. "Blimey," she said, "you can buy newer phones you know."
The comment made him smile and briefly lifted his spirits. "I know, but that one works so why change it?"
"Shall I ring 999?"
David looked in the rear-view mirror. The Audi was keeping a steady distance behind them, its headlights dipped. Almost as if, he thought, Mal suddenly didn't want to attract any attention.
"Yes, I'd think so."
/> Nat pressed the digits on the phone and held it to her ear. After a couple of moments, she said "Yes, police please. In Gaffney. Yes, no, okay." There was a pause. "Hello? Hello?" She held the phone in front of her and looked at the display. "For fucks sake, the battery's died."
"What?"
"Your phone is dead. Now we can't get in touch with anyone. Fuck." David glanced at her and she turned to face him. "For Christs sake, David, why on earth would you carry around a phone when it was about to die?"
Her tone, a strange mix of holier-than-thou and fading hysteria, nipped at him. "Because I didn't know this was going to happen," he said, tension briefly getting the better of him. "The only people who call me are my wife and sister, that's it. I've already spoken to my wife tonight, so I thought I could charge the phone when I got back to my hotel room."
"Well that's not much bloody help to us, is it?"
David took a deep breath and bit his lip. Now wasn't the time to get into an argument. He looked in the rear-view mirror - the Audi was closing the distance between them and, faintly, he could hear the thud of the bass. "No," he said, "I'm sorry."
Nat leaned her head against the rest, took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have got onto you. How would you know this was going to happen?"
He smiled at her. "Neither of us would."
She held his phone up and twisted it in her hand, looking at the back and front casing. "Perhaps we rely on these things too much," she said and put it on the dashboard. He watched her as she did and saw the little snap sideways as she looked in the wing mirror.
"Oh no," she said and turned in her seat. "It's them, isn't it?"
David didn't say anything.
Nat wound down her window and they could both hear the bass clearly. She let out a little cry of frustration and anguish. "Are they following us?"
They were coming to a junction, with three distinctly marked lanes. "Which way do I go?"
"For the cop shop still?"
"Yes."
"The right hand lane. We've really got to go around the houses to get there, but I don't know any other way."
David suspected that they could try and go the wrong way around the system, which would get them to the police station quicker or would, even better, draw attention to them. He had a feeling that the Audi boys wouldn't want to stick around for that. But what if they met someone coming the other way - not that he'd seen anyone else for ages - and caused an accident?
"We'll follow the system," he said. "The Audi could just be a fluke - they tried to assault you, didn't get away with it and now they're off to find someone else."
"They did enough, David," Nat said, her voice tight.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that."
His unintended insult seemed to have distracted her attention from a story even he didn't believe, though saying anything else would just be irresponsible. As far as he could see, the thugs in the Audi were just looking for trouble and, for the time being, he and Nat were the targets. The very thought of that scared him and he didn't know how best to deal with it. He'd never been in any trouble, had never found himself in the middle of a situation that kicked off and didn't know how to react. A wrong decision now, by him or the thugs, could have dire consequences.
He checked the mirror, not wanting to indicate and let them know in advance where he intended to go. They were moving past. David watched the back panel disappear from the mirror and then the Audi was alongside them in the right-hand-turn lane. David gripped the wheel and watched the blood drain out of his knuckles. Nat looked over.
"What are they doing?"
David licked his suddenly dry lips. "I think they're trying to stop us turning right."
Five
David looked over at the Audi. Clarkey smiled and stuck a finger up his nose.
"Do you think he's tweaking?" said Nat.
"What?"
"Back at mine, his pupils were huge and glassy, like he was as high as a kite or something."
"Really? Shit." If they were high, it made sense of everything that had happened before, that he'd tried to rationalise but if they were out of their heads, then surely anything could happen? What if the drugs made them violent - they'd tried to run those women over, tried to assault Nat, where would they stop? What if he'd been lucky, taking them off guard and getting away with it? What if they cornered them now and kicked the shit out of them?
No-one got out of the Audi, but Clarkey continued to smile at him. David scanned the road, but there was no traffic about.
"Don't you have taxi's here?"
"Eh?"
"I haven't seen anything else on the road for ages. Where is everyone?"
Nat looked at her watch. "It's almost two o'clock on a week night. If people aren't working now, they're going to be in bed. Not much business for taxi drivers."
"Then I'm going," he said and pulled forward.
Nat clutched his arm. "What're you doing?"
David gritted his teeth as they crossed the box junction. "Getting a head start," he said.
It worked. The manoeuvre caught the Audi on the hop and by the time they'd managed to react - engine wailing and tyres squealing - David was already into the one-way system. "How far?" he said.
"I don't know, I've never measured it." She craned around in her seat, biting her lip. "They're coming."
"I know."
Like most one-way systems, this was designed so that you could see where you wanted to be, secure in the knowledge a further twenty minutes of driving would actually get you there. The road curved this way and that, through streets with brightly-lit but closed shops. Occasionally, they saw a takeway but there never seemed to be anyone behind the counter or, if there was, they had headphones on and so wouldn't hear the Audi go thudding by.
Around another corner, two roads - one east, one west - ran parallel. At the end of their stretch were traffic lights and plenty of signs - left for the A14, right for the town centre. There were no cars on the other side of the road and the two lanes of tarmac were separated by a paved walkway.
"That's it over there," said Nat, pointing to her right.
David looked over at a complex across the central reservation. There was a one-storey modern building, all glass and chrome, with a big sign in front of it - Gaffney Magistrates Court. Just along from it from a three storey building, much older, built of dark brick. Apart from one on the top floor, every window that David could see was dark, with at least half of them unprotected by blinds. The doorway was well lit, but the whole building reeked of being empty.
"You're joking," he said.
Nat was keeping an eye on their pursuers. "What?"
"It's shut."
"The police station?"
"Yes, the police station, it's fucking shut."
"It can't be."
"Look for yourself."
They drove past the darkened building and David felt the dread in his stomach. If the station was closed, that meant the nearest police presence - apart from a stray patrol car - would be at least the next town over. To get there, they'd have to get out onto the A14 and that left them open to anything.
The Audi got closer, the bass audible now. David gripped the steering wheel tightly enough to colour his fingers.
"David, what are we…?"
"I'll turn around, come back along the road. Maybe somebody is in there, they just have to switch off the lights to save the electric."
"You're joking, right?"
He looked at her. "Not any more."
The Audi dropped back and David pulled to the nearside of the lane. The traffic lights were red.
"Hold on," he said and braked at the last minute, pulling the wheel around hard. The tyres squealed, desperate for grip and then caught. The car followed a tight semi-circle and David straightened the wheels quickly.
The Audi bounced over the central reservation, sparks spraying across the road.
"Shit," David said, gunning the engine
. They drove past the Audi and he mounted the pavement, pointing the car towards the brightly-lit front door. A sign had been attached under the spyglass.
"'This station closes at 8pm each night'," Nat read, "what the fuck does that mean?"
"It means there's nobody home."
The car jerked forward slightly and David looked in the rear view mirror. He couldn't see the lights or radiator grill of the Audi.
Nat carried on reading. "'For emergencies, please call 999 or contact the Haverton branch'."
"So where's Haverton?"
"Off the A14. We turn left at those lights."
The Audi nudged them again. "We can't turn around, they'll be on us. I'm going to go back the way we came in."
"Really?"
"Really." David gunned the engine and pulled away, dropping onto the road and putting his foot down as fast as he dared. Nat grabbed the edges of her seat.
"We're in trouble," she said quietly, "aren't we?"
"I don't know. I'll be honest, Nat, now you've told me about Clarkey, I'm scared. If they're high and cruising around looking for trouble, we're the only people here. We managed to get you away before but they aren't going to let that stop them, are they?
"David, you're scaring me."
He looked in the rear-view mirror. The Audi was coming, the headlights back on full beam. "They're going to chase us, Nat."
"No," she said, panic rising in her voice, "that can't happen."
"It can and it is. They followed us to the police station didn't they, it didn't deter them at all."
"Perhaps they knew it shut down at night."
They were soon out of the one-way system and David put his foot down, pushing the car past the speed limit through the quiet, orange-lit streets. He hoped for a speed camera, a police car or foot patrol, even a CCTV stand but didn't see any. Signs flashed past, often too quick to read but that didn't matter because he had no idea where he was.
"Can we out-run them?"
"I doubt it. Is there another way to get to Haverton?"
