She and David stood in the doorway to see him off and he lifted a hand in farewell as the snow fell like a curtain between them. It also hid the car that slipped out of a side road to fall in behind him as he left Biggar, driving with a treacherous inch of snow on top of ice under his wheels.
On the radio he got boys with falsetto voices singing carols, but no weather report, so he switched it off and noted the flash of the headlights of a car behind him. It disappeared now and then as the road twisted around the bends but it appeared to be keeping at a safe distance. John let his thoughts drift to Clare Aitken. He should have phoned her over the weekend but what he had to discuss would need to be face to face.
He wondered what Tollis would have to say about the men forcing the boot of his car—in the wrong place at the wrong time? Surely it was too much of a coincidence that he should twice be the victim of small-time crooks in a short space of time? Yet logic told him that it was probably the case.
There was very little traffic on the road and he was making good time despite the appalling conditions. The snow was a blizzard now, driving at his windscreen like a swarm of angry bees, but he should make Edinburgh with plenty of time to bathe and change before nipping up to Clare’s flat.
He was blinded suddenly by the flash of full headlights in his mirror and he inched over to let the driver pass him. Idiot, trying to speed in this weather, but the other car didn’t pass. Instead it sat on his tail for a mile and then again indicated that it was overtaking by drawing alongside. John slowed, glancing angrily across at the other vehicle, but to his surprise the passenger seemed to be making motions that he should pull over. It was difficult to be sure because the car’s side window was caked with snow, so he slowed further. The other car matched the manœuvre and edged closer still, almost forcing John on to the verge.
‘What the hell does he think he’s doing?’ John accelerated and got his nose in front. ‘And I’m staying here, mate,’ he muttered. If the other madman fancied meeting a car coming the other way that was his lookout.
The other car fell back but not far and soon John could see it edging up on him again. The passenger was making urgent signals that he should pull over, pointing at the verge and mouthing words that could not be heard. And suddenly John recognized the anger in the expression, which was the same as on the face of the man who had pushed David out of his way earlier that day.
‘Christ,’ he said. Then he was at a side road, almost went past it, but managed to spin the wheel at the last moment. The car lunged from side to side until he got it back under control and then he was heading down a narrow road to God knows where, but the other car was still on the main road and for the moment he had got away from it. Relief was short-lived as he wondered if it would double back and come after him. What the hell had they wanted from him?
He tried to get his breathing under control while keeping an eye on his mirror at the same time. The verges rose steeply on each side of the road and long spikes of vegetation poked through the snow covering. The fence posts that ran along the top had little caps of snow. The roads’s lower level meant it was more sheltered and the blizzard had eased somewhat but even so it was difficult to see where he was heading.
Still no sign of following headlights and he began to think he’d got away from them. He looked for lights or other signs of habitation, but then the road began to bend to the right and the verge on his left gave way to trees with a dark area below them that the snow had not managed to penetrate.
‘It’s got to go somewhere,’ he muttered, looking for a clutch of cottages or a farm. What he really hoped for was a hamlet with a pub, a glass of Scotch and a warm fire, a haven in fact. He admitted to being scared and out of his depth in something that he didn’t understand.
The road was still going around a long bend and his neck felt stiff with the tension of peering forward. Still trees on his left and the high bank on his right, with no sign of life anywhere. He glanced in his mirror and with a lurch of his heartbeat he saw the other car coming up fast without lights. It didn’t slow at all and suddenly he was thrown forward against his seat-belt as it rammed him. His car went into a skid that he managed to control but then the other car was coming again. This time he was tense with the expectation of it and the shock of the collision jolted his neck.
They were no longer asking him to pull over, they were ordering him to stop or else, but the choice was no longer his to make.
The last collision had caught the rear of his car at an angle and it was now swinging slowly out of control towards the dark area under the trees. He hit a tree which stopped the skid with a sickening jolt, but now he was going over a drop backwards and it was like being swallowed as the bonnet came up and the back end fell into space. The sound of crumbling metal was still in his ears when he bounced off another tree and he flung his arms up around his head.
They couldn’t have meant this to happen, John was thinking illogically. They had wanted his wallet, not his death; more muscle than brain, damn them whoever they were. His body was jerked savagely as he bounced off trees and he felt his teeth bite into his lip and tasted blood. The noise was of screeching metal, branches being torn from trees, and the thud of his heartbeat was in his throat and threatening to choke him. Something came loose in the car and struck him on the forehead but he felt no pain. His main concern was how far would he fall? Would he survive?
He lost all sense of direction as the car was buffeted from one direction to another at the whim of the trees in its path. His jaw was clenched tight as were his eyes, and his face ached with the grimace of terror.
There was a pause and the car began to move forward now, angled steeply downwards, and he knew he had to see what lay ahead. He looked through his arms and saw that, incredibly, his headlights were still working. Then he wished he hadn’t looked, because dead ahead was the branch of a tree, coming at the windscreen like a spear.
‘Oh, fuck …’
He was only half conscious when strong arms lifted him into a vehicle up on the road.
‘Watch it, Tim, we don’t know if he’s broken anything.’
‘Can’t help that. He’ll die of cold if we don’t get him back to the pub soon.’
The next John knew, he was lying on a hard sofa that smelled of wet dogs and stale beer and a fat lady was wrapping him in blankets he was aware of other people in the background and the heat coming from a fire but most of all he was glad he was still alive.
‘Thank you,’ he said and then a tall man in a tweed jacket bent over him, smelling of whisky and tobacco.
‘I’m Patrick Robertson. I’m a vet but I could do some stitches in that cut if you like … stitching’s the same for man or beast. Can you move all your bits?’
John flexed his arms and legs and although he ached as if he’d been badly beaten, nothing seemed to be broken.
‘I think my bits are all right,’ he said. There was a general sigh of relief from the spectators standing in the doorway with pints of their hands and they stayed on to watch the surgery.
‘You won’t need a local—you’re still in shock, shouldn’t feel a thing.’
But he did. Not only did he feel every stab of the curved needle but also the skin of his forehead being pulled together as the knots were tied, and all the time the vet gave a commentary about how lucky he’d been.
‘If that tree hadn’t hooked your car as neatly as a salmon on a gaff you’d have gone fifty feet over the drop right into the river. Fellow did that last year. It didn’t kill him outright, but he drowned—isn’t that right, Betty?’ The fat lady made a face behind the vet’s