Part 15 (1/2)

Sampson moved towards the gun, and Paul shouted, 'Run!'

They sprinted towards the tennis club, Paul ahead again, looking back over his shoulder to make sure Kate was with him, reaching back so she could grab his hand. He could see that Sampson was on his belly, trying to extract his gun from under the parked car. Paul yanked open the door of his own car thank G.o.d they hadn't locked it and leaned over and shoved open the pa.s.senger door. A second later he started the car and they skidded out of the car park.

There was Sampson, on his feet now, gun in hand. Paul drove straight at him. Sampson fired but the bullet bounced off the bodywork, and then he had to jump backwards onto the pavement to stop Paul from knocking him over. Paul swerved around Mrs Bainbridge's body and watched the mirror anxiously, as Sampson ran towards his Audi and climbed in, giving Paul and Kate just a few seconds' lead before he managed to gun the engine.

'f.u.c.k, he's coming. Which way shall I go?' There was no response. 'Kate?'

She turned to him, her eyes wide with shock. 'He killed Mrs Bainbridge.'

Paul reached and touched Kate's arm. She was trembling. Or was that him? 'Who the h.e.l.l is this guy?'

'He was at the CRU.'

Very quickly, they left the town behind, the streets of Hednesford giving way to countryside. They pa.s.sed a nature reserve sign and Paul wondered if they were doing the right thing, leaving the safety-in-numbers of civilisation behind. It was too late to turn back now though. He swung the car left. The road was clear, but that would help Sampson catch them as much as it would help them get away. Paul knew that Sampson's Audi would be much faster than his own seen-better-days Peugeot 205. He would need to out-manoeuvre him. But he didn't know these roads, had no advantage. His hands, sweaty with stress, slipped on the wheel as he spun it and turned right onto another quiet country road, putting his foot down and watching the speedometer rise until they were doing eighty.

The Audi pulled onto the road behind them and began to close.

'Have you got your seatbelt on?'

'Yes, of course. Paul, we have to...'

'Hold on tight.'

Kate looked up and saw what Paul had spotted a moment before: an enormous, bright green four-wheel-drive tractor trundling around the bend ahead. Paul floored the accelerator, moved to the wrong side of the road the right and headed straight towards it. Kate gasped and closed her eyes.

It all happened in a couple of seconds. Paul drove straight at the tractor, waving his arms at the driver, motioning for him to change lanes. Behind him, Sampson was still on the left, a second behind Paul, obscured behind the tinted gla.s.s of his car windscreen.

Paul pushed himself back in his seat and whispered a rapid prayer.

The tractor driver pulled on the wheel of his huge, unwieldy vehicle, heaving it onto the left side of the road. Paul spun his own wheel again, tyres squealing, swinging to the right and shooting past the tractor which was now directly in Sampson's path. As they cleared the tractor, they both heard another screech of brakes, the angry stabbing of a car horn.

'We're still alive,' Kate said quietly.

Paul twisted his head and took a glance backwards. No sign of the black Audi and its homicidal driver. Not yet. He knew Sampson wouldn't be held up for long by the tractor. He guided his own car around the next bend, moving upwards until they came over the crest of a hill. Farmland stretched to either side of them, sheep grazing in silence behind low stone walls. Some poor creature lay in the road, its fur matted with blood: roadkill.

'Do you have any idea where we are?' Paul asked as they continued at high speed along the empty road. 'Apart from the middle of nowhere.'

Kate snapped out of her trance. 'I think this is Cannock Chase.'

'How far till the next town?'

'I don't know. I think if we keep heading north we'll reach Stafford. My parents brought me here once when I was a little girl, to see the deer.'

She looked out the back window and saw the black Audi appear over the crest of a shallow hill and start closing on them.

'He's catching us. Paul, he's catching...'

'I know, I know. I'm going as fast as I can. The road atlas should be on the back seat. Can you try to find out how far it is till Stafford?'

Kate retrieved it and started flicking blindly through the pages trying to find the road they were on. She couldn't even find the right page. Why the h.e.l.l didn't Paul have Sat Nav in this cruddy old banger?

Calm down, she told herself. She used a technique that she had learned when Jack was a baby, screaming in the night, when nothing would make him stop crying and she felt as if she would explode from the stress. She started to recite the periodic table under her breath: H hydrogen; Li lithium; Be beryllium... She knew people would think this technique weird, but it worked for her immediately, she felt soothed by the effort of concentrating, her brain working again in the way it should, and she was able to check the map at the front and quickly turn to the correct page in the atlas.

Kate found Hednesford, where they'd seen Mrs Bainbridge die, and traced their route with her finger.

'I should have bought a decent car, one with GPS,' Paul muttered. Kate bit her tongue to prevent herself from saying anything, then pointed at the wiggling line indicating the road they were travelling along. 'We're heading into the forest. I reckon Stafford is about fifteen minutes away.'

As she spoke, a wall of trees appeared ahead of them. Moments later they were speeding through the forest, pine and lark and birch trees lining the narrow road.

'Oh s.h.i.+t,' said Paul.

'What?'

He nodded at the rear-view mirror. Sampson's black Audi was behind them again, its reflection growing larger by the second.

'If Stafford is still fifteen minutes away, we can't outrun him. He's much faster than us. Maybe we should stop, confront him?'

'No. He'll kill us.'

At that moment, just as Sampson was gaining on them, a stag appeared from between the trees and ran into the road. Paul swerved, Kate yelled out, and for a moment they left the smooth surface of the road, the car vibrating violently as Paul wrestled with the steering wheel. Somehow, they didn't hit a tree and made it back onto the road, Paul panting with the effort of saving their lives.

Behind them, Sampson was less lucky: he too spun the wheel to avoid the stag, and found himself completely off the road, his car lurching to a halt an inch away from a pine tree. As the stag trotted away into the trees, oblivious to Sampson's murderous glare, Sampson reversed back onto the road, giving Kate and Paul more precious seconds with which to gain a lead over their pursuer.

Paul laughed wildly. 'A tractor and a f.u.c.king stag. If I was religious I'd think someone was looking after us. What next?'

They headed deeper into the forest and Paul to continued to drive as fast as he could on this b.u.mpy road,. They'd just have to take their chances with any other wildlife that might choose to appear.

The forest began to thin and just as it did, the black Audi reappeared in the rear-view mirror.

Kate grabbed his arm. 'What are we going to do?'

'Hold tight again.'

As they emerged from the forest, Paul spotted a turning to the right, a crooked wooden signpost pointing towards Slitting Mill. It was probably a tiny hamlet with more deer than people, but they had no choice. They had to try to find help.

They swung into the lane and found themselves driving down a curving, narrow lane, overhung with trees. They crossed a bridge over a gurgling stream, the suspension shaking as they hit a b.u.mp in the road. Paul had had dreams like this nightmares in which he was being chased, and his pursuer was close behind, gaining by the second, the panic growing ever more intense. In those dreams he was always saved when he woke up.

Kate fished her mobile phone out of her bag.

'What are you doing?'

'Calling 911 I mean, 999.'

He reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone from her.

'What are you doing?'