Desmond Bagley - The Tightrope Men

So Denison reluctantly eased his foot on the accelerator and risked a glance in his mirror. The driver of the car behind was more foolhardy than he and was not worrying about up-traffic. He was barrelling down the centre line and catching up fast. Denison fed more fuel to the engine, twisted the wheel and wondered if he could sustain a sideways drift a mile long.

The walls of the tunnel were a blur and the lights flicked by and he caught sight of an illuminated number 5. Four more circuits to go before the bottom. The car jolted and pitched suddenly and he fought the wheel which had taken on a life of its own. It did it again and he heard a nasty sound from the rear. He was being rammed. There was another sound as sheet metal ripped and the car slewed across the whole width of the tunnel.

He heard — and felt — the crunch as the rear off-side of the car slammed into the opposite wall, but Denison was not particularly worried about the property of the Hertz Company at that moment because he saw the dipped headlights of a vehicle coming up the Spiralen towards him. He juggled madly with wheel, clutch and accelerator and shot off to the other side of the tunnel again, scraping across the front of the tour bus that was coming up. There was a brief vignette of the driver of the bus, his mouth open and his eyes staring, and then he was gone.

The front fender scraped along the nearside tunnel wall in a shower of sparks and Denison wrenched the wheel over and nearly clipped the rear of the bus as it went by. He wobbled crazily from side to side of the tunnel for about a hundred and fifty yards before he had proper control, and it was only by the grace of God that the bus had not been the first in a procession of vehicles.

Level 2 passed in a flash and a flicker of light in Denison’s eyes, reflected from the rear-view mirror, told him that the car behind had also avoided the bus and was catching up again. He increased speed again and the tyres protested noisily with a rending squeal; the whole of the Spiralen would be filled with the stench of burning rubber.

Level 1. A brightness ahead warned of the approach of another vehicle and Denison tensed his muscles, but the tunnel straightened and he saw it was the daylight of the exit. He rammed down his foot and the car surged forward and came out of the tunnel like a shell from a gun. The feecollector threw up his arms and jumped aside as the car shot past him. Denison screwed up his eyes against the sudden bright glare of sunlight and hurtled down the hill towards the main street of Drammen at top speed.

At the bottom of the hill he jammed on his brakes and wrenched the wheel sideways. The car heeled violently as it turned the corner and the tyres screamed again, leaving black rubber on the road. Then he literally stood on the brake pedal, rising in his seat, to avoid ploughing into a file of the good people of Drammen crossing the street at a traffic light. The car’s nose sank and the rear came up as it juddered to a halt, just grazing the thigh of a policeman who stood in the middle of the road with his back to Denison.

The policeman turned, his face expressionless. Denison sagged back into his seat and twisted his head to look back along the road. He saw the pursuing car break the other way and head down the road at high speed out of Drammen.

The policeman knocked on the car window and Denison wound it down to be met by a blast of hot Norwegian. He shook his head, and said loudly, ‘I have no Norwegian. Do you speak English?’

The policeman halted in mid-spate with his mouth open. He shut it firmly, took a deep breath, and said, ‘What you think you do?’

Denison pointed back. ‘It was those damn fools. I might have been killed.’

The policeman stood back and did a slow circumnavigation of the car, inspecting it carefully. Then he tapped on the window of the passenger side and Denison opened the door. The policeman got in. ‘Drive!’ he said.

When Denison pulled up outside the building marked POLISI and switched off the engine the policeman firmly took the car key from him and waved towards the door of the building. ‘Inside!’

It was a long wait for Denison. He sat in a bare room under the cool eye of a Norwegian policeman, junior grade, and meditated on his story. If he told the truth then the question would arise: Who would want to attack an Englishman called Meyrick? That would naturally lead to: Who is this Meyrick? Denison did not think he could survive long under questions like that. It would all come out and the consensus of opinion would be that they had a right nut-case on their hands, and probably homicidal at that. They would have to be told something other than the strict truth.

He waited an hour and then the telephone rang. The young policeman answered briefly, put down the telephone, and said to Denison, ‘Come!’

He was taken to an office where a senior policeman sat behind a desk. He picked up a pen and levelled it at a chair. ‘Sit!’

Denison sat, wondering if the English conversation of the Norwegian police was limited to one word at a time. The officer poised his pen above a printed form. ‘Name?’

‘Meyrick,’ said Denison. ‘Harold Feltham Meyrick.’

‘Nationality?’

‘British.’

The officer extended his hand, palm upwards. ‘Passport.’ It was not a question.

Denison took out his passport and put it on the outstretched palm. The officer flicked through the pages, then put it down and stared at Denison with eyes like chips of granite. ‘You drove through the streets of Drammen at an estimated speed of 140 kilometres an hour. I don’t have to tell you that is in excess of the speed limit. You drove through the Spiralen at an unknown speed — certainly less than 140 kilometres otherwise we would have the distasteful task of scraping you off the walls. What is your explanation?’

Denison now knew what a Norwegian policeman sounded like in an extended speech in the English language, and he did not particularly relish it. The man’s tone was scathing. He said, ‘There was a car behind me. The driver was playing silly buggers.’ The officer raised his eyebrows, and Denison said, ‘I think they were teenage hooligans out to throw a scare into someone — you know how they are. They succeeded with me. They rammed me a couple of times and I had to go faster. It all led on from that.’

He stopped and the officer stared at him with hard, grey eyes but said nothing. Denison let the silence lengthen, then said slowly and clearly, ‘I would like to get in touch with the British Embassy immediately.’

The officer lowered his eyes and consulted a typewritten form. ‘The condition of the rear of your car is consistent with your story. There was another car. It has been found abandoned. The condition of the front of that car is also consistent with your story. The car we found had been stolen last night in Oslo.’ He looked up. ‘Do you want to make any changes in your statement?’

‘No,’ said Denison.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

The officer stood up, the passport in his hand. ‘Wait here.’ He walked out.

Denison waited another hour before the officer came back. He said, ‘An official from your Embassy is coming to be present while you prepare your written statement.’

‘I see,’ said Denison. ‘What about my passport?’

‘That will be handed to the Embassy official. Your car we will keep here for spectrographic tests of the paintwork. If there has been transfer of paint from one car to another it will tend to support your statement. In any event, the car cannot be driven in its present condition; both indicator lights are smashed — you would be breaking the law.’

Denison nodded. ‘How long before the Embassy man gets here?’