Stephen Gallagher - The Boat House

After a while, he didn't have to worry about it. Because the track dead ended at a gate which had been secured with a rusty lock and chain, and the ground beyond it was fit for nothing less rugged than a farm vehicle.

"It looked great on the map," Diane said hollowly. And Pete thought of Aldridge, tasting blood and driving hard to get there first.

"Watch the back while I reverse," he said to Diane, "and cross your fingers."

She had to climb around on her seat to see well enough to direct him as they went. Pete let off the brake and they started to freewheel backward, gathering speed and jolting hard.

Too hard. He returned some pressure to the brake, but it was too late. They were sliding too fast and out of control, and as the wheels locked Pete found that the grass underneath gave his tyres almost no traction at all. They hit one bump, and then another which almost threw Diane up against the roof; and it was at this point that Pete felt a queasy slackness in the wheel which told him immediately that the Zodiac's steering rack had gone. The brakes weren't holding, the wheel was a useless ornament.

They left the track, and ploughed into the undergrowth at its side. Diane took a dive over the seat and disappeared completely; for one awful moment Pete thought that she'd gone through the rear screen, but he turned and saw that she was safe in the back.

The Zodiac plunged on backward, well out of control.

There wasn't much that he could do until a fifteen yard depth of bushes slowed and stopped them, and the engine stalled. There was silence. Pete levered himself upright. Greenery pressed up against the windows on three sides of the car. Diane was trying to sort herself out in the rear seat.

"You okay?" he said.

"No," she said. "I caught my leg between the seats as I went over. I think it's my ankle."

He opened one of the doors and forced the brush far enough back for them to squeeze through, and then he helped her out. She tried to stand on her own. She couldn't.

"Damn," she said, wincing. "How's the car?"

"Shot. We're on foot from here. I'll check with Ross."

She kept her balance with one hand against the car as he reached in and passed the gun out to her, and then reached for their radio. Diane upended the stock, and leaned on the shotgun for support.

She said, "Will we be safe if we're not in the car?"

"I don't know," Pete said. "If she's up there and we're down here, we ought to be okay for a while. I'll see if I can get Ross to pick us up."

Awkwardly, Diane tested her ankle as Pete tried to raise Aldridge. It didn't seem promising. The slightest weight, and Pete could see how her face screwed up in pain. As for Pete himself, he was getting a response on the radio but it was made indistinct by a lot of howling and noise. Holding the receiver close and speaking as clearly as he could, he explained the situation and hoped that Aldridge would be able to hear.

There was something from Aldridge that might have been Okay.

Pete said, "Come down for us before you do anything else, all right? Don't try to go it alone."

Another reply, this one completely unintelligible.

Diane said, "You think he got that?"

"Yeah," Pete said, knowing that he didn't sound entirely convinced, and then he looked all around. "Come on, he'll have no chance of finding us up here. I'll have to get you back down to the road."

And with one last affectionate slap on the Zodiac's roof — scrap value only after a bang like this — he put his arm around Diane to support her, and they started to make slow progress downhill toward the lakeside track.

Pete was wrong in at least one detail.

Aldridge wasn't heading down to collect them, nor was he tearing through the woodland to get to Alina. Instead he'd stopped the Toyota up on the edge of the olive green moor, and he was holding his radio out of the open window to get a fix on the signal that was messing up the frequency. Ivie's radio was still transmitting. That Ivie himself was dead, or at least close to it, was a matter on which Aldridge had little doubt.

It was a rough method, but at least it gave him a direction. When he turned the volume all the way up as far as it would go, he thought that he could hear somebody breathing. It was impossible to be sure.

He raised his window before he set off again. He'd been out of her reach in the generator cage and now he was out of her reach in the cab, and as far as Aldridge was concerned this was the best way to be. In an ideal world he'd be able to take her alive, but if he couldn't then he was fully prepared to run her down. He had four-wheel-drive, he had no witnesses. She might be full of surprises, but she surely couldn't argue with an oncoming truck.

He followed the signal.

Ten minutes later, he was at the scene.

He came in slowly, watching all around. He could see the battered limousine, and the silent Rover with its far door open. He drove the Toyota all the way around almost in a complete circle, but there were no signs of life at all.

He stopped level with the Rover. He could see inside from here. No bodies, just a tartan blanket half in the cab and half on the ground. It was a weird, deserted scene, looking like some aftermath of germ warfare — property abandoned, actions uncompleted — and the appeal of opening his door and stepping out would rank about the same in both cases.

Something thumped on the Toyota behind him.

He glimpsed a movement in his mirror, then it was gone. But then he turned in his seat, and he could see her; she was throwing back the snap cover and climbing into the pickup's load area, and it was too late for him to do anything about it. She was hauling herself up already, and she had what looked like a firm grip on one of the four diagonal bars protecting the cab's rear windshield.

She gave him an evil-looking, sharp toothed grin.

"I said I'd come back for you," she said through the glass.

"You won't get me this time, either," Aldridge said, wondering how he could best throw her off and run her down with minimal risk. "I'm all locked in."

"You're forgetting the obvious," she said, and Aldridge found himself looking out into the dark O of Bob Ivie's shotgun. That would have been the thump that he'd heard, the sound of the gun being slung in ahead of her; and he could only sit and gape at his own lack of foresight as he contemplated the more prominent one on the Winchester.

Alina squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The safety was on; Aldridge realised it with a heartsurge of glee. Alina was turning the gun in puzzlement, unsure of what to do next.

He had a chance.

He hit the accelerator and let out the clutch, and as the Toyota spurted forward he turned the wheel hard in an attempt to catch her off balance and pitch her out. But then he glanced in the mirror and saw her hand, again grabbing the strut as the pickup spun around. He gunned the engine again, wrenched the wheel over the other way…

And, watching his mirror more than the ground ahead, slammed sideways into the Land Rover. The Rover shook, but it barely moved.

Aldridge was thrown sideways across the passenger seat. His head bounced on the door padding. The pickup was out of gear with its engine still running, and Aldridge was almost on the floor; he scrambled up again, and looked into the back. He couldn't see her… and he thought, Have I done it? Was that enough, the woman dead and not even a shot fired?

A hand came up, and its fingers curled around one of the bars. She hauled herself up after, inches away on the other side of the laminated glass. She was still grinning.

Aldridge slammed the pickup into gear again.

The engine raced, but the pickup didn't move.

He'd killed the rear transmission. He was going nowhere.