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?"
"I don"t want you to call the police."
"Why the h.e.l.l not? We"re being chased by a guy who just murdered someone. If I call the police they might be able to get someone out here. Someone to stop Sampson."
He took the next bend at high speed. They swayed in their seats. "No. I"m sorry I"ll explain later."
"No." She tried to grab the phone and he s.n.a.t.c.hed it away , throwing it out of the window.
She gawped at him. "What the h.e.l.l did you do that for?"
"I"ll tell you later."
She shrank away from him. "Who are you?"
"What? You know who I am."
Kate pressed herself against the door. "I don"t understand why you just..."
Bang.
Kate jumped in her seat. "What was that? Did we hit something?"
"f.u.c.k"s sake. He"s shooting at us."
Another bang.
"And you wouldn"t let me call the police?" Kate started to cry. "He"s going to kill us. Oh, Jack...I"ll never see Jack again."
Paul grasped her hand. She tried to pull it away but he held firm, steering the car with one hand. "Kate, listen. You have to stay calm. I"m going to get us out of this. And then I"ll explain about the police. I promise. Just trust me. Okay?"
She blinked. "Okay."
"Good. Now, see that house in the distance? The big white one? That"s where we"re going."
It looked like the kind of house the lord of the manor would live in. Huge, picturesque and surrounded by rolling fields. A hill rose up behind it, with a few other small stone buildings dotted around. The narrow lane they were driving down widened out as they reached the hamlet of Little Marrow, and another thin road led towards the large house. Paul turned into it and carried on at top speed. A pair of horses watched them over a fence. A second later, the Audi turned onto the road behind them. This was what it felt like to be hunted.
"Keep your head down," Paul instructed.
They swerved left onto a road marked "Private Keep Out" and found themselves at the end of a long driveway, the start of which was marked by a gate that stood open. They drove up it, and the house loomed into view.
Gravel crunched beneath their tyres as they approached the house more of a mansion and saw a group of five men and a woman, dressed in Barbour jackets and wellies.
All the men were carrying shotguns. It was a shooting party, heading into the countryside to shoot pheasants or rabbits. A couple of English pointers ran around their heels. All of them, people and dogs, stared at the Peugeot as it came to a halt, and Kate and Paul jumped out of the car.
The dogs came barrelling towards them. Paul held his breath, but the dogs just sniffed him, then Kate. The woman in the Barbour squinted at them.
"Can I help you?" Her voice was so upper crust it was almost royal. Then, to the dogs: "Plum, Pudding, get back here."
One of the shotgun-wielding men stepped forward. Kate had lived in America, supposedly a country populated by NRA-approved trigger-happy killers, if you believed the English media, and had never seen a gun, not once. Now, in England, she had seen enough in one day to last a lifetime.
"What"s going on?" the man asked in a voice that matched the woman"s.
Paul said, "I"m really sorry to intrude on you but we need your help. We"ve...run out of petrol."
The man looked over Paul"s shoulder. "And what about him? Has he run out too?"
They looked back. Sampson"s black Audi idled menacingly at the end of the drive.
CHAPTER 27.
The man who had spoken to Paul, clearly the lord of this manor, took a few steps towards Sampson"s car.
Sampson weighed up his odds. Five men with shotguns, and they looked like they knew how to use them. They"d probably been killing things since they were at boarding school. He put his foot on the accelerator and drove on. Kate and Wilson had got away, for now. It was time to put some more distance between him and the scene of the widow"s death, anyway. Stupid old b.i.t.c.h. Still, she"d be with her husband soon. Not in heaven or h.e.l.l Sampson didn"t believe in all that s.h.i.t just mouldering in the grave.
He headed back towards the forest. There was something he needed to pick up before he left the scene completely.
As the sound of the Audi"s engine faded into the distance, Kate and Paul exchanged a look of relief, and Kate put her hand on her chest. It felt as if her heart was about to burst out. She turned, as the woman in the Barbour said, "Who was that?"
Kate didn"t reply immediately.
"A friend of yours?" pressed the woman, licking her lips as if the taste of intrigue was a rare treat.
The first man turned to his four friends. "Why don"t you chaps get on and I"ll catch you up in a little while?"
The men nodded and strolled off with their shotguns, one of the dogs scampering behind them. As she and Paul followed the woman and her husband into the house, Kate silently hoped that they would have a fruitless day"s hunting. Then she thought again about Jean Bainbridge lying in the road, gunned down. . She took a deep breath, fighting the urge to throw up. "You look like you could do with a cup of tea. I"ll put the kettle on," said the husband.
The kindness of strangers, thought Kate. They were led into a vast sitting room, where they sat down on plump sofas with a view of the garden. The remaining dog sat down by the French windows, looking longingly towards the hunters walking away towards the woods. Kate could hardly speak; not until the tea had been placed in front of her. She could have expected a bone china cup in a saucer, but it came in a mug with a chip in the rim.
"Thank you." Kate sipped the tea. Sometimes, in Boston, she felt like she was turning into an American, but the reinvigorating effect of the tea persuaded her that she was still English through and through. "Mrs..."
"Mrs Braxton. But call me Penny. This is Andrew." She nodded towards her husband, who smiled at Kate. He had a pleasantly craggy face and exuded an air of old money. But he was pa.s.sive, cast into shadow by the fierce brightness of his wife"s personality. Penny clearly wore the jodhpurs in this relationship. Kate suspected that Andrew probably ranked somewhere below the dog in the domestic pecking order.
"I"m Kate, and this is Paul."
Introductions over, Penny put her tea on a coaster on a small occasional table. "So why was that chap in the black car chasing you?"
Paul said, "We don"t know. Just some random nut."
Kate stared at him but he ignored her and continued, "We made the mistake of overtaking him up on the main road next thing, he was right on our tail, horn blaring, trying to barge into our car. We couldn"t shake him off. If I"d been on my own I might have pulled over, had it out man to man, but I had to think about Kate here."
"I see," said Penny, looking over at Kate, who was trying to rearrange her face from a look of incredulity. What the h.e.l.l was Paul playing at? Why was he lying? She still couldn"t believe that he hadn"t let her call the police. And that he"d thrown her mobile out of the window.
"There are a lot of lunatics about on the roads these days," Andrew said. "Only the other day..."
"Yes darling," Penny dismissed him and turned back to Paul. "Do you want to call the police?"