Ian Rankin: Let It Bleed

In the car in front were two young, keen uniforms, with a DS and a DC in the car behind. Rebus looked into the wing mirror and saw headlights. He looked out of the passenger-side window and saw nothing. Christ, it was dark out there.

Rebus thought: I don’t want to die in the dark.

A telephone conversation the previous day.

‘Ten grand and we let your daughter go.’

The father licked his lips. ‘Ten? That’s a lot of money.’

‘Not to you.’

‘Wait, let me think.’ The father looked at the pad, where John Rebus had just scribbled something. ‘It’s short notice,’ he told the caller. Rebus was listening on an earpiece, staring at the tape recorder’s silently turning spools.

‘That attitude could get her hurt.’

‘No … please.’

‘Then you’d better get the money.’

‘You’ll bring her with you?’

‘We’re not cheats, mister. She’ll be there if the money is.’

‘Where?’

‘We’ll phone tonight with details. One last thing, no police, understand? Any sign, even a distant siren, and next time you see her’ll be the Co-op funeral parlour.’

‘We’ll get them!’ Lauderdale shouted.

Rebus felt his jaw unlock. ‘All right, we’ll get them. So why not ease off?’

Lauderdale glanced at him and grinned. ‘Lost your bottle, John?’ Then he jerked the wheel and pulled out to overtake a transit van.

The phone caller had sounded young, working-class. In his mouth, ‘understand’ had become unnerstaun. He’d spoken of the Co-op. He’d used the word ‘mister’. Young working class, maybe a bit naive. Rebus just wasn’t sure.

‘Fife Police are waiting the other side of the bridge, right?’ he persisted, shouting above the engine whine. Lauderdale had the poor gearbox pounding away in third.

‘Right,’ Lauderdale agreed.

‘Then what’s our hurry?’

‘Don’t be soft, John. They’re ours.’

Rebus knew what his superior meant. If the front car made it over the Forth Road Bridge, then it was in Fife, and Fife Constabulary were waiting, a roadblock erected. It would be a Fife collar.

Lauderdale was on the radio, talking to the car ahead. His one-handed driving was only a little worse than his two-handed, shaking Rebus from side to side. Lauderdale put the radio down again.

‘What do you reckon?’ he said. ‘Will they come off at Queensferry?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rebus said.

‘Well, those two L-plates in front think we’ll catch them at the toll booths if they decide to go all the way.’

They probably would go all the way, too, driven by fear and adrenaline. The combination tended to put blinkers on your survival mechanism. You ran straight ahead, without thought or deviation. All you knew was flight.

‘You could at least put on your seatbelt,’ Rebus said.

‘I could,’ said Lauderdale. But he didn’t. Boy racers didn’t wear seatbelts.

The final slip-road was coming up. The front car sped past it. There was nowhere to go now but the bridge. The roadlighting high overhead grew thick again as they neared the toll booths. Rebus had a crazy notion of the fugitives stopping to pay their toll, just like everyone else. Winding down the window, fumbling for the coins …

‘They’re slowing.’

The road was spreading out, suddenly half a dozen lanes wide. Ahead of them stood the row of toll booths, and beyond that the bridge itself, curving up towards its midpoint as the steel coils held its carriageway in suspension, so that even on a clear, bright day you couldn’t see the far end when you drove on to it.

‘They’re definitely slowing.’

Only yards separated the four cars now, and Rebus could see, for the first time in a while, the back of the car they were chasing. It was a Y-registration Ford Cortina. The overhead lighting allowed him to make out two heads, driver and passenger, both male.

‘Maybe she’s in the boot,’ he said dubiously.

‘Maybe,’ Lauderdale agreed.

‘If she’s not in the car with them, they can’t harm her.’

Lauderdale nodded, not really listening, then reached for the radio again. There was a lot of interference. ‘If they go on to the bridge,’ he said, ‘that’s it, dead end. There’s no way off for them, unless the Fifers fuck up.’

‘So we stay here?’ Rebus suggested. Lauderdale just laughed. ‘Thought not,’ said Rebus.

But now something was happening. The suspects’ car … red tail-lights. Were they braking? No, reversing, and at speed. They hit the front police car with force, sending it shunting into Lauderdale’s.

‘Bastards!’

Then the front car was off again, veering crazily. It headed for one of the closed booths, hitting the barrier, not snapping it off but bending it enough to squeeze through. The sound of metal sparking against metal, and then they were gone. Rebus couldn’t believe it.

‘They’re on the wrong carriageway!’

And so they were, whether by accident or design. Picking up speed, the car was racing north along the southbound lanes, its headlights switched to full beam. The front police car hesitated, then followed. Lauderdale looked ready to do the same thing, but Rebus reached out a hand and tugged with all his might on the steering-wheel, bringing them back into the northbound lane.

‘Stupid bastard!’ Lauderdale spat, slamming the accelerator hard.

It was late night, not much traffic about. Even so, the driver of the front car was taking some risk.

‘They’ll only have this carriageway blocked, won’t they?’ Rebus pointed out. ‘If those lunatics make it to the other side, they could get away.’

Lauderdale didn’t say anything. He was looking across the central reservation, keeping the other two cars in sight. When he reached out for the radio, he all but lost control. The car jolted right, then harder to the left, slamming the metal side-rails. Rebus didn’t want to think about the Firth of Forth, hundreds of feet below. But he thought of it anyway. He’d walked across the bridge a couple of times, using the footpaths either side of the roadways. That had been scary enough, the ever-present wind threatening to gust you over the side. He felt a charge in his toes: a fear of heights.

On the other carriageway, the inevitable was happening, the incredible just about to begin. An articulated lorry, up to speed after a crawl to the top of the rise, saw headlights ahead of it where no headlights should be. The suspects’ car had already squeezed past two oncoming cars, and would have slipped into the outside lane to pass the artic, but the artic’s driver panicked. He pulled into the outside lane and his hands froze, foot still hard on the accelerator. The truck hit metal and started to rise. It went up into the air, hanging over the central reservation, which was itself a network of steel lines. The trailer snagged and the cab snapped forward, breaking free of its container and sailing into the northbound lanes, sliding on sparks and a spray of water, directly into the path of the car in which Lauderdale and Rebus were travelling.

Lauderdale did his best to hit the brakes, but there was nowhere to go. The cab was sliding diagonally, taking up both lanes. Nowhere to go. Rebus had a couple of seconds to take it in. He felt his whole being contract, everything trying to be where his scrotum was. He pulled his knees up, feet and hands against the dashboard, tucking his head against his legs …

Whump.

With his eyes screwed shut, all Rebus had to go on were noises and feeling. Something punched him in the cheekbone, then was gone. There was a shattering of glass, like ice cracking, and the sound of metal being tortured. His gut told him the car was travelling backwards. There were other sounds too, further away. More metal, more glass.