Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘He’ll make for the motorway,’ Diamond told the driver. ‘Can you radio ahead?’

On an undulating stretch north of Tormarton, the skyline momentarily glowed in the high beam of headlights. At a rough estimate, Allardyce was a quarter of a mile ahead. There was no chance of catching him before the M4 interchange.

A message came through from headquarters. Diamond could just make out through the static that Julie had radioed in from the farmhouse to say no one was in there, but she had found Rose’s crutches.

‘I don’t like the sound of that. I didn’t see her in the car, did you?’ he asked his driver.

‘No passenger, sir. I had a clear look.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘PC Roberts, sir.’

There was a hairy moment when they raided the wing mirror in passing a stationary car. They were doing eighty along country lanes.

‘Been driving long, Roberts?’

‘Since my seventeenth birthday, sir.’

‘How old are you now?’

‘Eighteen, sir.’

The problem at the approach to the motorway was how to divine which direction Allardyce had taken. At the roundabout, Diamond watched the patrol car ahead speed up the first slipway eastwards. ‘Then we go west,’ he told PC Roberts. They swung with screaming tyres around the long turn and presently joined the Bristol-bound carriageway. At this time of night the traffic would be sparse.

Diamond was trying to hold down the nausea he always felt at high speed. It was compounded by concern over Rose. If she was not at the farmhouse and her crutches were there, what had Allardyce done with her?

‘No sign of him, sir,’ Roberts said. ‘I reckon he took the other route.’

‘Is this thing as fast as the Toyota?’

‘Should be. He should be in sight by now.’

‘Keep going.’

This stretch of motorway had no lighting whatsoever. They had the main beam probing the three lanes. In the next minute Diamond thought he could discern a dark shape ahead.

‘Isn’t that something?’

‘You’re right, sir. He’s switched off his lights, bloody idiot. He’s all over the road.’

As they got nearer, they could make out the outline of a car without lights veering erratically between the lanes.

Roberts said, ‘I think his electrics are buggered. He braked just then and the brake lights didn’t come on.’

‘Flash him. Let him know we’re here.’

‘He knows that, sir. My God, he’s going!’

They watched the car sheer towards the crash-barrier in the centre, hit it in a shower of sparks and skew left across three lanes and the hard shoulder. It thudded into the embankment, reared up like a whale, rolled over and slid upside down with a sickening metallic sound, spinning back across two lanes of the motorway.

In trying to avoid it they got into a skid themselves. Their vehicle did a three-quarter turn before coming to a halt.

Diamond hurled open the door, got out and sprinted towards the up-ended Toyota on legs that didn’t feel like his own, only to discover that the impact had pancaked the superstructure to the level of the seats. The driver and anyone inside must have been mangled.

PC Roberts joined him and warned, ‘You can’t do anything. It could easily catch fire, sir. I’ve radioed for help.’

It was good advice which he ignored, for he had noticed something Roberts had not. The force of the crash had ripped open the Toyota’s luggage compartment. The lid was hanging open under the upturned wreck and a dark form wrapped in a roll of fabric was lying in the angle. Projecting from it was a white tubular object shaped like an angled section of drainpipe, but it was patently not a drainpipe because just visible at the end were five toes.

‘It’s her,’ he said. ‘She’s wrapped in something.’

Steam was rising from the wreck, but it had not yet caught fire. On his knees, Diamond reached into the darkness and got his arm around the body. Roberts was beside him.

‘I’ve got her legs, sir.’

Diamond tried talking to Rose and got no response. The hope was that the limited size of the compartment had restricted her movement as the car somersaulted. She was wrapped in the felt lining.

They prised her out and carried her to a place of relative safety on the grass embankment.

Diamond gently removed part of the felt that was covering her face. She had a bloody nose, but she was breathing. Her eyes opened.

‘You’ll make it, love,’ he told her.

‘Allardyce? The fire service got him out eventually, sir, what there was of him,’ he told the Assistant Chief Constable next morning.

‘Looking at it from a cost-effectiveness standpoint,’ said the ACC, who usually did look at things that way, ‘I suppose it saves the community the expense of a long trial and keeping him in prison for a life term. And the woman?’

‘Do you mean Emma Treadwell? We’re still holding her. We’ll send a report to the CPS, but I can’t see them proceeding on any of the more serious charges.’

‘I meant the woman you rescued.’

‘Christine Gladstone? They kept her overnight in the RUH. She escaped with some ugly bruises. Being in the luggage compartment, where Allardyce put her, she was in the one reasonably secure part of the car.’

‘Secure? I’d say she was damned lucky.’

‘Some people are, sir. You’re right. Considering she caused the crash, she was bloody lucky.’

‘She caused it, you say?’

‘Being in the boot, she grabbed the wiring and ripped it out. His lights went, and the next thing he hit the barrier.’

The ACC cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. ‘Good thing you were close behind. I think it’s in order to congratulate you on your prompt action, Peter.’

‘No need, sir. It was a team effort.’

‘Yes, that’s a fact. You and John Wigfull between you.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Diamond half-smiled, suspecting that this was humour.

But it was not. The ACC was serious. ‘I think of you two as the Castor and Pollux of Bath CID.’

‘The what?’

‘Castor and Pollux. It’s a compliment, Peter. They were the twin sons of Jupiter, a formidable duo.’

‘I see,’ said Diamond. ‘And which is which?’

The ACC frowned. ‘I don’t think it matters.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll take Castor, and Pollox to John Wigfull.’

At home the next evening, he was less buoyant. He ate one of his favourite meals of salmon en croute almost in silence. Stephanie didn’t need telling that he was badly shaken.

She suggested an evening walk.

‘If you like.’

They had not gone far when he said, ‘Julie’s leaving. She asked for a transfer and they’ve found her a job at Bristol. No warning. It’s fixed.’

‘I know,’ Stephanie admitted.

‘You do.’ He stopped.

‘She came to see me, Pete.’

‘To see you? When?’

‘A couple of days ago. She was pretty unhappy. She has a lot of respect for you, but she feels too much of her time is spent smoothing the way.’

‘For me, you mean?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. You know you’re hell to work with. She’s young for an inspector, ambitious. She’s entitled to move on.’

‘We were a bloody good team.’

‘Too good for your own good.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You told me yourself that you’re underworked most of the time, and it’s bad for your health. Julie in her quiet way has been batting for you all the time, making your life easier. I didn’t tell her about the hypertension, of course, though it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s aware of it. But we agreed that a trouble-free life isn’t necessarily what you want.’

‘It’s what I expect from my deputy.’

‘She’s too good at it. Let her go, Pete.’