Red Mist

by Jan Swick

  Across the Thames by bridge and into the other portion of Richmond, the only London Borough split by the river. The Expert spoke for the first time in two miles, in response to a question from Daz:

  “Bridges are risky. Are we crossing the Thames again?”

  “One more time, yes. But not for a while. Now tighten up, because Richmond has three police stations and each is now aware of the nippy red Suzuki tearing up the streets. Units are converging.”

  “Certainly sounds like an army man,” Daz mouthed at Matt when he looked over. Then he got his radio and put it close to his mouth. Matt covered the headset’s microphone with his fist.

  “All bikes, move to Havering and await.” He saw Matt’s look and said to him, “Of the three boroughs on the eastern border, two are below the river. If we’re crossing again just one more time, then we can only be headed for Havering.”

  So they had narrowed it down. 33 boroughs, over six hundred square miles, and now they knew their target was in a portion no bigger than 43 square miles.

  They were closing in.

  “Right off the B353 in six, five, four…”

  Just past yet another junction, they swung right, cutting between traffic stopped at the lights. This, according to the Expert, was a private estate called Courtlands. The road curved out of sight to the left and Matt gunned it to try to vanish around the bend before the cops joined the road, but the Expert warned him. Drop to twenty.

  “You’re joking!”

  But he did it, and soon the flashing blue lights were in his rear-view again. Up close and personal.

  He was directed to stamp the accelerator and then to flick hard right six seconds later, between two buildings and towards a fence behind them. The Expert said nothing, but Matt could see that a portion of the slat fence had been unhinged from its concrete pillars and rested upright. They hit it hard, fragmenting it, casting it aside with ease. Immediately the world opened up in front of them as the Suzuki bounced onto the worn grass of some sports field.

  “HANDBRAKE!” the Expert yelled. Matt yanked the lever hard and the wheels locked, and the car skidded.

  He was aware of a scraping noise from beneath the car and looked down to see a large wooden board under the vehicle, dragged along the worn grass with them.

  “Boot it.”

  He jammed the car into second and stamped the pedal and the Swift leaped off the board and away. In the rear-view, he saw the first cop car aiming through the gap, but suddenly its front dipped and it stopped with an almighty bang, front wheels vanished as if sunken into the earth. And they were. The board had hidden a rent in the land, exposed when the Swift’s wheels locked and dragged it.

  “Lovely,” Daz yelled, still on his knees so he could watch the rear.

  “Flick left, aim between the dots.”

  Matt spun the wheel and pointed the front at a line of trees along the eastern end of the sports field. He didn’t see any dots and was about to say so when they appeared. On two trees spaced ten feet apart. Big red blobs of paint on the trunks. Apart from a portion left at the front edge for camouflage, the undergrowth between the two trees had been burned away in a clear path to a road beyond.

  “Go right, and then that'll take us southeast for two-and-a-half miles through Richmond Park."

  "He just said us again," Daz said.

  "Enjoy the sights. Then Wandsworth. Seven more Boroughs, a bunch more cop chases. You game or want to back out now?”

  “I’m guessing we couldn’t back out now if we wanted to,” Matt said.

  “I have only the one exit planned, so no, you can’t. Unless you chance it yourself.”

  In Wandsworth they were picked up by the police pretty quickly.

  They were directed around streets in a zig-zag until emerging onto West Hill, and it was here that a police car came at them. Standard Volvo V70 traffic unit.

  It was in the opposite lane, but the siren came on as soon as the car was close enough that the driver could recognise the vehicle he’d been warned about. He swung into Matt’s lane and blocked it.

  “Left here.”

  “This part of the plan?” Daz said.

  “I have contingencies, of course. Never can predict where patrol cars will end up.”

  The car pursued them down a road missing chunks of tarmac, as if there had been an artillery war here.

  Left, then two rights. One street was in the process of renovation and an entire side had every house in a state of disrepair and a small plastic fence blocking the pavement. Craftsmen were drawn from the houses by the siren. A few cheered the Swift onward to freedom, although one guy tossed his water bottle and it bounced off the windscreen.

  “Maybe he lost his entire family to a joyrider racing across a zebra crossing,” Daz said.

  Another cop car, no doubt pulled in by radio, entered from a side street and added its whine to the noise.

  “Chopper en route,” the Expert said. “We lose him in Southwark.”

  "There's that we thing again," Daz moaned.

  “We’ve still got Lambeth to go first?” Matt said. “With a chopper on us? You sure you got this planned properly?”

  “Right in three, two, one, go-“ Matt flipped round the corner “- and yes. The chopper can only direct ground forces. No machine guns. Don’t worry. Did you want a Sunday afternoon cruise?”

  “Jam ahead,” Matt said.

  “Shit,” Daz said.

  “I know,” the Expert said.

  At the end of the street, three cars were waiting to pull out into a wall of traffic on the main road. A hundred metres out, Matt started to slow the Swift, and the Expert warned him not to. Hard left, he was told.

  So Matt gave a slight tug on the wheel and slipped down the left side of the trio of patient drivers, nearside wheels riding the pavement. His foot hovered over the brake, despite the Expert's instructions, but at the last moment he saw it. The reason for the traffic jam. Just left of the corner, the lane had been coned off and a portable traffic light was making the twin lines of vehicles take turns to use the opposite lane. Traffic this side was stopped at red to wait its turn.

  He took the left sharply and quickly and blasted through the cones, into the closed lane, which was clear. Nearly sent the portable traffic lights into orbit. The whacked cones sailed over the opposite lane and were volleyed by the bonnets and windscreens of oncoming vehicles.

  Behind them, the cop cars played Monkey See, Monkey Do.

  There didn’t seem to be any work in progress in the empty lane, and no workforce because it was half-past six at night, starting towards dusk. And no machinery, except for something Matt saw two hundred metres ahead.

  “Tell me that thing’s part of the plan?”

  A backhoe was parked in such a way as to leave just enough road for a car to pass between it and the oncoming traffic. But its boom was extended over the clear chunk, bucket low. Very low. Maybe too low.

  “Is that high enough to get under?” Daz said to Matt. But the Expert answered.

  “Looks to be about fifty-nine point seven inches off the ground to me. Hope the brochure isn’t wrong about the Suzuki Swift’s fifty-nine point four inch height.”

  Matt clutched the wheel, aimed straight, and both men ducked with a grunt as the Swift sailed under the big iron bucket. There was no crunch of metal. No shatter of glass. They didn’t slam to a halt instantly. Then the backhoe was behind them and the way ahead was clear. The Swift cast aside a wall of cones at the other end of the roadworks and they were on a lane that was clear for a couple of hundred metres because of the delayed traffic.

  And behind them, a crunch of metal, shatter of glass. In the rear-view, Matt watched the great metal bucket cut a crease in the Volvo’s roof. The windscreen shattered. The friction slowed the vehicle considerably but it got past, although its chase was over. It swerved and skidded and stalled as the driver panicked. The cop driving the Volvo behind decided he didn't fancy the paperwork and stopped short of the boom.
/>   “Those darned sixty-point-four inch Volvos,” the Expert said.

  “Did you have to cut it so close?” Matt said.

  “If they’d had soft tyres or a fat cop or it had been one of their BMW 5-series, we’d be in trouble,” the Expert replied. “Next stop, Lambeth. We’re halfway.”

  “Stop with the we part!” Daz snorted.

  And then overhead, faint but getting louder, the unmistakable drone of a helicopter closing in.

  A few miles later, Matt noticed something.

  “These cars your doing?” he asked the Expert.

  Daz looked forward and behind and laughed.

  “Keeps the chopper away,” the Expert said.

  It was up there, but far behind, and the reason was the other cars. Two cars ahead of Matt's was another small red vehicle, and another one exactly the same two cars ahead of that. Behind, he saw two more in the same setup. Five small red cars in a line. All Suzuki Swifts. The line stretched a couple of hundred metres, which made sure the chopper pilot had to stay far back from the centre vehicle to keep all five in sight.

  “You sure you’re making a profit from my money?” Daz asked. He meant that this whole thing couldn’t be cheap.

  They could hear a siren behind them, but for the last minute or so it had kept its volume at a constant low level, meaning it wasn’t gaining.

  “Police unit waiting ahead to pounce. Don’t look.”

  Of course they looked. They passed a side street and saw a police car lurking there, but it was in no pouncing state. Another car had its nose attached to the cop car's busted back end. Two officers were in the road, arguing with a man in a suit. Another delay for the cops, courtesy of the Watchdogs.

  Daz got on the radio. Matt put on a coughing fit so he could talk. “Updates. Who’s in Havering yet?”

  “Bike four. No way,” came back a crackly voice. “I ain’t got your kind of help. I’m in Brent.”

  The others were having similar problems. They couldn’t push through traffic the way the Swift could, at least not without alerting the police, which had to be avoided. Bike 4 was north, in Brent. Bike 3 was south, in Merton. Bike1, carrying Lisa, was behind them. Bike 2 was supposed to complete the box position by keeping ahead, further east, but the Swift had overtaken it a mile back. It was behind them also.

  “Shit,” Daz said. “Keep at it.”

  Lambeth next. This borough was narrow and they passed across without much trouble. A tunnel and a few roads under bridges almost lost the chopper, but always it returned like an annoying bee you try to swat away at a picnic. Under a bridge they were directed to stop behind two parked cars. Two red Suzuki Swifts, probably the pair that had been riding along ahead of them. A minute later the two that had trailed them arrived. They blew past and the two in front of Matt's pulled into the traffic and followed.

  Four minutes later Matt was told to set off again, but now the chopper was gone, away in pursuit of the four decoy cars. The chopper had magnetised other pursuit vehicles to its location, but each new siren had promised an appearance that never happened. Five or six police cars had joined the chase, but all had been misdirected or stopped somehow.

  Then the chopper came back and brought five guests to the party. Daz whooped with glee. Winding, maze-like roads eventually proved too much for one car’s steering and it went out with a bang. Two bad-on-purpose drivers at separate junctions put out another two. On a street cast in gloom by twin rows of trees, a forty-foot oak chose an opportune time to keel over and die and block the passage of number four. The shock of that one – "How the hell did you guys do that?" - almost caused Matt to smash into a parked van. The last one blew a tyre, and the Expert claimed that one was blind luck.

  The chopper, though, came on. It followed them like the moon. But not for long. A minute over the border and into Southwark, it got rerouted to some call about a guy zipping round on a moped and wielding a sword – a plastic one, the Expert assured them. Not long after that they used the Rotherhithe tunnel to get to Tower Hamlets. It involved another stop, this time to swap cars. It was another Swift, but this time green. Deep in the tunnel under the Thames, a guy waiting in the green car took their red one and got out of there to risk the cops. The traffic noise in the tunnel was thick enough that Daz got on his radio without fear of being heard. He told his people about the colour change to their vehicle.

  “Sure your guys won’t talk if they get caught?” Daz asked the Expert afterwards.

  “They won’t talk,” was the blunt reply.

  They entered Newham without incident, but there the Expert got them to play another prank and so interest the police again. Ninety miles an hour with three in tow, soon lost when a truck that ran a red light spilled its load and blocked their path. The Swift took a corner into a cul-de-sac and entered a car port attached a house with enough gardens gnomes to cast a black shadow on the owner’s sanity. A guy sitting on his doorstep pulled a string and a bedsheet fell across the port's entrance, obscuring the car.

  “Kill the engine.”

  Matt did. He looked at Daz and Daz looked back, both unsure what to do now. Matt had both hands gripping the wheel and Daz said, "Now you hold the wheel properly?"

  Matt looked at his hands and released the wheel and laughed.

  “Will Gnome-man be bringing us tea?” Daz said to the Expert.

  The Expert told them no. Just wait. Matt got out of the car and the Expert told him to get back inside. He dawdled because Daz was on the radio. With the engine off, it would be impossible to talk to the men on the radio without being overheard. Both men relished the break, because it meant Bike 2 could get ahead again, back into position. Bikes 1, 3 and 4 stopped in order to keep the "box" intact.

  Ten minutes later, the Expert told them the way was clear again.

  Later, they were in Barking & Dagenham and taking a dirt path to avoid a rolling roadblock. Bike 2, ahead once again, had gotten past before it was put in place. They could hear a cacophony of homeward-bound drivers honking their horns at the police as they blocked the road, travelling slowly with their lights flashing. The Swift cut a winding path through quiet zones. They ended up in Becontree, which Daz delighted in knowing the history of.

  “Built between the two world wars.”

  “Spectacular,” Matt said with badly-faked awe.

  “Part of London since sixty-five.”

  "Awesome!"

  "Was once the largest public housing estate in the world."

  “Holy shit!”

  “Shut up, you donkey.”

  The rest of Barking and Dagenham was easy-going, which prompted Daz to accuse the Expert of shooting his load early. “Is the action all done now? You need me to get you a cigarette?”

  They took a series of side streets and paths through rural fragments of London to avoid zones where the police had cars waiting to pounce. Or so the Expert said. “Sure this ain’t pillow talk now you’ve shot your load prematurely?” Daz asked. But it was a joke: they’d heard the odd siren zipping past like buzzing flies they couldn’t see.

  And then they were in Havering. Daz and Matt looked at each other after the Expert said, “Soon we’ll be at Gallows Corner. Take the Southend Arterial Road, the A127, east. Your final chase will be here.”

  That meant they were close.

  As they joined the A127, two police cars fell in behind them. Sirens and flashing lights were starting to get monotonous.

  “Drop to twenty-five,” the Expert said.

  "Comedian!" Daz barked.

  It was a dual carriageway so cars were able to go by as Matt obliged. The cops cars caught up, then one veered to the right to overtake, obviously planning to cut in ahead and slow them. Matt tugged on his wheel and put a stop to that. The other car tried to sneak by the left side, but he swerved again. And then roadworks cut the two lanes down to one. The cop cars got stuck behind. In a comical moment, one slowed to ten and a young cop got out the passenger side and started running. In shorts and track shoes he m
ight have closed the distance, but he was laden with boots and a thick coat and more utilities on his belt than Batman and he had no chance. For a few seconds he kept pace, but then started to drop back and had to get back inside his car.

  “Fifteen,” the Expert said. “Central locking.”

  Matt locked the doors and slowed the car. The traffic built up behind them, and a gap opened ahead. Big. In his rear-view, Matt saw the older driver of one car gesturing at the young cop again. Out he got for another chase on foot. This time he closed the gap, slowly, and drew alongside. Daz covered his face with his eyes, but peeked out between his fingers. The young cop, panting, using one hand to hold his belt of utilities, rapped on the window, as if expecting that his quarry might not have realised the cops had been trying to get them to stop for all this time.

  "We also souped-up this second car and now it’s all gone to waste,” the Expert said with faked despair. Matt got the point. He hit the accelerator. The young cop fell behind with a flick of the hand, as if saying their actions were unfair. The Swift ate the road. The road went down like a hungry man’s hot meal. Bare ahead because all the traffic had pulled away. The roadworks ended. Road buffet. The cops had no chance. Matt got eight seconds at close to a hundred and thirty miles an hour before cars started to fill his windscreen and forced him to slow. Behind, the flashing lights were still there, but far back. Matt smiled as he imagined the young cop still running. Ahead, they saw Bike 2.

  Daz showed Matt his phone. The map showed Junction 29 of the M25 some way ahead. Another roundabout with a green line around its far curve. Eastern border of Greater London this time. The M25 ran north and south along the border. Past the junction the A127 entered Essex. Essex would not be part of the route, surely. So the end had to be right ahead, surely.