Blood Falls (3 page)

She was standing in the road beside an ancient Peugeot hatchback, parked at the opposite kerb, almost parallel to Lindsey Bevan’s home. Probably in her late teens or early twenties, she was short but bulky, wrapped in a pink fluffy cardigan over a tight denim skirt. Spiky blonde hair with dark roots and lots of big, cheap jewellery.

Her back was to Joe as she gazed over the roof of the car at the sports field. There was a phone at her ear, and it struck him that she was listening with an unusual intensity.

Joe reached the boundary of Lindsey’s property. The house looked peaceful enough. Lindsey’s Volvo estate was parked on the drive, next to a brand new Seat which belonged to a German family – some distant cousin of Audrey’s who was staying for two nights.

Before he stepped through the gates Joe took another look at the girl. At the same time she glanced round, saw him and flinched, then turned away, speaking quietly but emphatically into the phone. Joe couldn’t make out the words but the urgency, the tension in her body language, worked like semaphore:
He’s here. The man you’re hunting is here
.

Four

JOE DIDN’T WANT
to believe it, but in his gut he felt certain. They hadn’t just traced him to Bristol. They had found out where he was staying.

If he was right, the girl must be calling them in now, which meant he wouldn’t have time to retrieve his belongings.

He’d become accustomed to travelling light, with no more than a rucksack needed for his clothes and toiletries. He had two fake identities and kept one of them on him at all times, together with a couple of hundred pounds in cash. The other ID and the rest of his savings were inside his lodgings, as were the only personal items that meant anything to him: photographs of his daughters.

As a natural precaution in a house he shared with strangers, Joe had made sure his valuables were well hidden. He’d stashed them in a far corner of the loft, beneath a layer of rock wool, having offered to lay fresh insulation for Lindsey. It should ensure they were safe from discovery, but that didn’t make the prospect of leaving them any easier to bear.

He stayed on the pavement until he was level with the girl, then abruptly cut across the road. Once again she turned, instantly read the determination in his face and took a step backwards, bumping against her car.

‘Give me that.’ Joe grabbed her right hand, squeezing the phone from her grasp.

She cried out and struck at him with her free hand, but he blocked it, keeping his arm raised to ward off further attack. As he brought the phone to his ear he heard Morton’s voice: ‘Stacey? You there? Stace?’

Joe disconnected the call and lobbed the phone over the high chain link fence onto the school field. The girl launched herself at him, clawing at his face and shrieking: ‘You fucking bastard!’

He fought off her blows, not wanting to retaliate but aware that time was running out. Grabbing her shoulders, he spun her round and trapped her against the car. Pinned her arms against her sides and clamped one hand over her mouth. She made a muffled screeching noise in her throat.

‘Be quiet, Stacey, or I’ll have no choice but to hurt you. Nod if you understand.’

She bucked and writhed, trying to open her mouth enough to bite him. He tightened his grip until her resistance subsided. Finally, a nod.

‘I’m also taking your car,’ he said. As he moved his hand away from her mouth, she spat on his palm.

‘It’s my boyfriend’s. He’ll kill me—’

‘Then you shouldn’t have got involved.’ Joe eased her round until she was facing the opposite kerb, then propelled her away from the car. She sprang back to confront him.

‘Danny’s gonna catch you. I hope he fucking rips you to pieces.’

Ignoring her, Joe opened the driver’s door and got in. Fortunately, the key was in the ignition. He started the engine while fumbling for the lever to move the seat back. He caught movement in the wing mirror. The Astra had turned into College Fields and was coming up behind him.

Joe put the Peugeot into first gear and released the handbrake. His foot was on the accelerator, itching to get moving, but then he had a better idea. He stayed where he was.

Stacey was positioned in the middle of the road, gleefully beckoning the Astra and jabbing a finger at Joe:
Here he is
.

In the wing mirror Joe watched the Astra closing in: fifty yards, forty, thirty. Slowing down, but not too much. A situation like this, he guessed the driver wouldn’t hit the brakes till the last minute, pulling up close to box him in.

Stacey grasped that Joe wasn’t going anywhere and darted towards the car, her face contorted with hate.

‘Fucking dead now, you are!’

That was when Joe put his foot down. The Peugeot lurched away from the kerb just as the Astra was about to draw alongside. Stacey was sandwiched between the two cars.

In other circumstances Joe might have been concerned for her well-being. Right now he couldn’t care less. As he moved diagonally into the road she leapt back, straight into the Astra’s path. The driver reacted on pure instinct, swerving right to avoid her. He was already braking hard, and the violence of the turn sent him skidding across the road. The Astra mounted the kerb and struck a stone pillar that marked the entrance to Lindsey Bevan’s driveway.

The impact was like a bomb going off. The Astra’s bonnet crumpled, a burst of steam escaping from the punctured radiator. Both front tyres had deflated, and that was good enough for Joe. It meant the Astra was out of the game.

Reaching the junction with Cecil Road, he looked left and saw the Granada speeding towards him. Danny Morton was back in the passenger seat, howling at the driver as he spotted his quarry.

Joe went right and accelerated as best he could. There were deep grinding noises as he moved through the gears, and the Peugeot’s engine didn’t sound too healthy. He willed it not to give up the ghost on him in the next few minutes.

From a tactical standpoint he knew it made little sense to keep the car. It was no match for the Granada’s speed or power. Right now that advantage was negated by the terrain: short residential streets with
frequent junctions. But if Joe tried to find a route out of the city in the Peugeot he would soon be outrun.

He took the next right, College Road, then left into Guthrie Road. The suspension groaned. He felt the tyres struggling to gain traction. The noise and the speed attracted anxious looks from a group of women pushing buggies along the pavement. He was skirting the grounds of Bristol Zoo, which meant these streets had a much higher concentration of pedestrians: a lot of scope for tragedy should either car lose control.

But he was committed now. There was no option but to keep going.

The Granada missed Joe’s turn. It had to brake and reverse, while Joe raced past the zoo and took another quick right, slamming his own brakes on at the last second when he saw a motor scooter approaching. The back wheel of the scooter had barely cleared his path when Joe sped forward. The Granada was closing in fast.

A left into All Saints Road, and Joe almost rammed a car that was double-parked on the corner. He managed to swerve round it, but in straightening up the Peugeot fishtailed and the offside rear scraped against a skip, making a noise like fingernails on a blackboard. A couple of builders ran into the road and watched, slack-jawed, as he accelerated away. In his rear-view mirror Joe saw the Granada looming up behind them and he winced, bracing himself for a terrible impact.

If Danny Morton had been at the wheel he probably would have ploughed into the builders, but his driver was slightly more merciful, leaning on the horn until the two men jumped out of the way. The Granada slowed, giving Joe a few more precious seconds. Now he had to make that time count.

All Saints Road was another quiet, leafy residential street. It ran straight for a couple of hundred yards, then gently curved to the right. By the time he reached the bend Joe had managed to coax the ailing Peugeot up to sixty miles an hour: an insanely reckless speed.

Thankfully the road was clear. The junction with St John’s Road
was coming up fast. Tall trees and a four-storey building obscured his view before the turn, but he knew he would have to take a calculated risk.

He worked the brake, slowing to fifty, then forty, then he changed down to second gear and went back to the accelerator, the engine screaming as the Peugeot lurched onto the wrong side of the road. St John’s Road was now dead ahead. A car passed from left to right, but there was nothing coming in the other direction.

Praying it stayed that way, Joe steered a wide arc to take the junction without reducing his speed. The Peugeot slithered and squealed its way around the corner. Joe was glad of the noise – the ‘calculated’ part of the risk being that anyone travelling along St John’s Road would hear him coming and take avoiding action.

The only traffic heading north was a cyclist, a young man wearing thick glasses and a lime-green helmet, wobbling to a halt just a few feet short of the junction. Joe raised a hand, not in thanks, but gesturing towards All Saints Road in warning:
There’s another one coming
.

In a concession to the rules of the road, Joe flicked on the right indicator, kept the car in second gear and braked a little more before his next turn: into the car park for Clifton Down railway station. As he turned he checked the mirror and saw the Granada nosing out of All Saints Road, the bewildered cyclist mercifully still intact just beyond it.

The car park was long and narrow, on a steep downward slope, with parking bays on the right-hand side and the entrance to the station at the bottom of the hill. Joe threw the Peugeot into the first vacant space and jumped out, leaving the key in the ignition.

He sprinted down the hill, attracting odd looks from a group of students loitering outside the Roo Bar. Once past the pub he veered left, staying close to the boundary wall. He was now in another car park, this one reserved for the university; more importantly, he was out of sight of anyone in the public car park.

Breathless, he couldn’t help but slow his pace as he ran up the
slope. At the top he glanced back and saw the Granada parked behind the Peugeot. Leather Jacket was standing between the cars, hands on hips. There was no sign of Danny Morton.

Joe emerged into Whiteladies Road, hoping he could lose himself in the lunchtime crowds around the Clifton Down shopping centre. There were lots of people about but they all gave him a wide berth. Catching his reflection in a shop window, he immediately saw why.

He was hot and dishevelled, the grimy T-shirt clinging to his skin, his face flushed and dotted with white paint. At just under six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a muscular physique, he looked like a sweaty, rampaging thug.

Time for Plan B, he thought, as the ideal solution rumbled to a halt on the other side of the road. Joe darted between the traffic, took one more look to make sure Morton hadn’t caught up, then dug in his pocket for some change.

The bus had pulled up at the stop opposite the railway station. Joe didn’t know exactly where it was heading, except that south on Whiteladies Road would carry him towards the city centre. Good enough for now.

The cool, damp weather had caused the windows to steam up. Joe took a seat halfway back, on the driver’s side, cleared a patch of condensation with his index finger and peered through the glass.

Danny was standing at the entrance to the university car park, thumping his leg in frustration as he gazed up and down the street. In Danny Morton’s world, buses were strictly for the poor and the weak. It wouldn’t occur to him that Joe might escape on something so slow and inefficient.

As the bus nosed out into the traffic, Joe’s last glimpse of Danny saw him stalking towards the railway station, one fist rubbing angrily at the scar on his cheek. Joe let out a long sigh and shut his eyes for a moment.
Too close for comfort
.

Then he made a call on his mobile. Ryan answered, his voice subdued: ‘You’re all right, then?’

‘Just about, but they won’t be happy. It occurred to me that they might pay you another visit.’

‘Yeah, same thing crossed my mind. I’ve rescheduled a couple of inside jobs for this week. And I just recruited my cousin Dex to help out.’

‘The bouncer?’

‘Cage fighter, he is now.’ A short laugh. ‘He’s a crap decorator, but he’ll watch my back.’

‘Ryan, I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess.’

‘Not your fault, really. I just hope you manage to find a way out of it. I mean, you can’t live all your life on the run, can you?’

The comment provoked a rueful smile from Joe. ‘Actually, I thought I could. More fool me.’

Five

SHE WOKE TO
a headache like nothing she’d ever experienced. Her first waking breath was a gasp of pain. She longed to be unconscious again, but it seemed like a hopeless ambition.

Her eyes fluttered, and might have opened, but no light came in. She shut them tightly, kept her breathing as shallow as possible, her whole body tensed and utterly still, as if immobility would lessen the pounding in her skull. It made no difference.

Some time passed, and maybe she did drift off. Not sleep, but a kind of disassociation. She stepped away from the pain, moved to a state where she could assess it with some objectivity.

A blow to the head, perhaps. But surely that would be more localised? This was a sensation that seemed to fill her skull to bursting point; it went rolling down her spine, it leaked from her eyes like tears, or blood.

Blood
. She lifted a hand to her face, touching the skin reluctantly, as though it belonged to someone else. It felt hot and puffy, damp in places and slightly sticky. But she didn’t think it was blood; more like sweat and grime.

Beneath her head, then? She couldn’t lift it, not when her skull was filled with molten lead, but she could turn it, she could feel the dry scrunch of her hair as she moved. It felt normal, without
the tight, gloopy sensation that she associated with lying in a pool of blood.