Jack Slater - No Way Home

Qadir laughed as one overloud pop song gave way to another, the smell of diesel fumes wafting between the brightly lit stalls to briefly overlay the sweetness of candyfloss, the salt of the ocean and the sourness of cooked onions. ‘Killjoy was here, eh? Down on Plymouth Hoe.’

‘I’ve got nothing against people having fun. I just don’t see it in these places. They’re nothing but a legalised excuse for petty crime.’

‘Who tipped your pram over tonight?’ He glanced across at her as they approached a particularly dense knot of people between a hot-dog stand and a confectionary trailer.

Karen shot him a sour look, her dark eyes fiery in the flickering light of the densely packed seafront fair. ‘Nobody. I just don’t happen to agree with you. It happens sometimes. Get over it.’

They eased through the densely packed throng and suddenly were in the open. He nodded to the dodgems stand to her left. ‘You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy them, at least.’

She turned. ‘OK. There’s an exception to every rule.’

‘Says the woman who’s here to enforce them.’

‘What – you’re a Muslim in a navy town and you don’t appreciate irony?’

Something in her voice as she ended the comment made him glance at her. She was frowning, staring at the expansive ride. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘The kid on the back of that yellow car over at the far side. There’s something…’

He saw the youth she was talking about. He might have been in his early teens. As he watched, the kid jumped off the back of the yellow car, ran a few steps and hopped onto the back of another, one hand to the upright pole that drew power from the overhead grid to drive the little vehicle. Two girls were in the seat, long hair flying as they laughed, one steering while the other glanced up at their new rider. The kid grinned down at her then dropped into a crouch.

Qadir shook his head. ‘He doesn’t look familiar.’

‘I’m sure I’ve… Got it. He’s on the mispers list. Comes from Exeter, I think.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘There was something about his background.’

‘He’s coming around.’

The young girl was steering the car around the sheet-rubber arena, going with the flow of the multicoloured mass of cars with their laughing and shrieking occupants. They rounded the last corner, heading towards the two uniformed patrol officers. Qadir raised a hand to wave.

‘Hey, kid.’

The youth spotted them. His expression changed. He reached through between the girls, grabbed the steering wheel and shoved it over to the side. The car suddenly angled across the centre of the arena, away from Qadir and Karen.

‘Shit,’ Karen shouted. ‘Go that way.’ She pointed to the right and set off to the left, jumping up onto the wide metal edge of the ride and running along it as Qadir headed the other way. A family group was standing right in his way. He swung around them, started to run, but the crowd was too tightly packed. He pushed through to the edge of the ride, jumped up and started around it in the opposite direction to his partner. Glancing across, he saw the kid jump free of the car an instant before it hit another one at an acute angle. The girls screamed as the kid jumped over the nose of an oncoming red dodgem car, stepped between two others as they passed and reached the far side. Qadir swung around a group of young guys who were standing in his way and ran on. He made the corner, glanced across again, but the kid had gone from sight.

‘Crap,’ he muttered. What chance did they stand now, in this crowd?

But the kid had seen them and run. There had to be a reason for that. He couldn’t give up now.

The crowd on this side of the ride was a lot thinner. A few long strides and he reached the far corner. He stopped, one hand to the brightly painted corner post as he stared out into the crowded and noisy night, searching for movement amid the milling sea of constantly shifting figures. Something caught his attention at the edge of his vision. His head snapped towards it. A small figure darted into sight and then was gone again, several yards away to his right. He waited. There, dodging through the crowd. He lifted a hand to his radio.

*

Emma Radcliffe stepped out into the warm April night to the gentle sound of the river at the far side of the pub car park. Minutes ago, that sound would have been torture, but now it was soothing. Restful.

She checked her watch.

Still only twelve minutes since she’d left her broken-down car on the side of the road. She’d wondered if she was going to make it back out of the big pub in time. When she’d got here, she had barely been able to walk without wetting herself. Then, when she sat down and let the flow commence, she’d wondered if it would ever stop. But it had, with three minutes to spare. She shook her sleeve back down over her watch and glanced down the road.

And here it was.

A good thing she was early, she thought, as she stepped forward to the kerb and raised her hand. She had called the cab company as she was stepping away from the bloody useless car, which had just lost power and died on her, out of the blue, and refused to start again. When she said she’d be here, at the Old Mill Carvery, the woman had said fifteen minutes.

The cab drew up beside her, light shining orange on its roof. The passenger window buzzed down as she leaned down to it.

‘Pennsylvania?’ she asked.

‘Hop in.’

Of course, she should have expected him to be Indian. Ninety-five per cent of the taxi drivers in the city were. She opened the back door of the cab and climbed in.

‘Buckle up, please.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’ She’d forgotten the need for that in the back seat, these days. She drew the seatbelt across and clipped it in.

‘Right-o.’ He slipped the handbrake and eased the car into motion up the long hill out of the city. ‘Did you have a good evening?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was working late, then my bloody car broke down.’

They passed the little Nissan on the side of the road where she’d left it, but she decided not to comment.

‘Sorry. I thought, seeing where I picked you up…’

She let the comment go without reply. Silence settled in the car until he flicked on the indicator and it began its rhythmic click. He turned off the main road, heading up the tree-lined lane she’d been dreading.

Emma saw his eyes on her in the driving mirror. In his mid-forties, she guessed, he was stocky and round-faced with lush, wavy hair and designer stubble. He was wearing a denim shirt, but she imagined him in a suit and tie as a bouncer on a night-club door. And his eyes… There was something in the way they shone that sent a shiver down her spine. Instinctively, her knees clamped together, her legs turning slightly away from him.

‘So, what do you do, to be working so late?’ She detected just a slight hint of Devon in his accent and felt somehow reassured by it.

‘I was finishing the preparations for a big court case that starts tomorrow.’

‘You look too young to be a lawyer.’

She caught his gaze in the mirror again, saw the twinkle in his dark eyes. ‘I’m not. I just work for one.’

‘Oh, I see.’

The car slowed as they approached a tight right-hand bend with the entrance to a picnic area on the left, the trees growing more densely than ever, branches twining together overhead to give the impression of a tunnel.

‘Nice along here, isn’t it,’ the driver said. ‘Quiet. You wouldn’t know you were anywhere near the city.’ There was something in his tone that didn’t sound right.

Oh, God. Had this been a mistake? Which way was he going to turn? Along the road or…?

The car eased around to the right.

‘Of course, in the dark like this, you don’t see it at its best. Looks like something out of a cheap horror film, eh?’ He chuckled.