Dead Simple

by Peter James

She said nothing as she clipped on her seatbelt, watching the house out of the window for the last time. It was a strange house, perfect for their purposes because of its isolation - the nearest neighbour was a quarter of a mile away - and in fact doubly perfect in the light of events last Tuesday night. You could never in a million years call it a pretty or stylish house. Built on scrubby wasteland - which hadn't changed - in the 1930s, it looked like one truncated half of a pair of semi-detached houses, as if the other side of it had never been built. Originally there had been an integral garage, but some years back that had been converted into what was now the sitting room. He started the car. In an hour they would be at Gatwick Airport. Tomorrow, or later today - she always had a problem with the time zones - they would be back in Australia. Home. Specks of drizzle pattered onto the windscreen. Regardless, she slipped on her new Gucci sunglasses. Vic had cropped her hair - no time to go to a salon - then she had put on this morning a short, dark wig. If there was any search at all at the airport, they would be watching for Ashley Harper. There was just the smallest possibility they might be looking for Alexandra Huron. But as she looked at the passport in her handbag, which still had two years to run, she smiled. Certainly no one would be looking for Anne Hampson.

  Vic put the gear lever into drive, then fumbled around. 'Where's the fucking brake?'

  'It's a handle; you pull it.'

  'Why the fuck do they have a handle? Why didn't you rent a normal car?'

  'How much more normal than a Mercedes can you get?' 'One with a proper parking brake!' 'For Christ's sake!' He slid down his window and shouted out, 'Bye, fuckwit. Have a nice rest of your life!'

  'Vic?'

  'Yeah?'

  He accelerated away fiercely down the potholed road, which the council seemed to have forgotten. 'What's the matter, missing your lover boy's dick already?'

  'You know something? It's bigger than yours!' He lunged out at her, slapping her face, the car swerving onto the overgrown grass verge, then back onto the road, lurching through a pothole.

  'Does that make you feel good, hitting me?'

  'You are just a fucking slapper.'

  They reached a T-junction and turned right by a modern housing development, the trees still saplings.

  'And you're just a bully, Vic. You're a sadist, you know that? Does that make you feel good? Is that how you really get your rocks off, tormenting someone like Michael?'

  'And you get your rocks off by screwing him and knowing that one day you are really going to screw him?' He turned to glare at her, then pulled out onto the main road. It happened so fast, all she saw was what felt, for an instant, like a sudden change in the light. There was a tremendous bang; she felt a fierce jerk; her ears went numb; and the interior of the car filled with what looked like feathers, and reeked of cordite. At the same time the horn began to blare.

  'Oh shit, oh shit, shit, shit!' Vic hammered on the steering wheel with his fists; the driver's air bag hanging like a spent condom from the wheel boss, and another air bag limp beside his head. 'Are you all right?' he asked Ashley.

  She nodded, staring at the bonnet of the car, which was raised jaggedly up in front of her, the Mercedes star that had been on the end now invisible. There was another car, white, stopped at a crazy angle in the middle of the road a few yards away.

  Vic tried to open his door, and seemed to be having difficulty. Then he threw his weight against it and, with a scream from the hinges, it opened.

  Ashley's door opened without a problem. She undipped her belt and stepped out shakily, then pinched her nose and blew hard to clear her ears. She could see a bewildered-looking grey-haired woman behind the wheel of the other car, a Saab, with much of its nose crumpled.

  Vic inspected the damage to the Mercedes. The offside front wheel was crushed and buckled and pushed right into the engine compartment. There was no chance of the car being driveable.

  'You stupid fucking bitch!' Vic yelled, above the blare of the Mercedes horn, at the Saab.

  Ashley could see another car coming up the road, and a van coming from the opposite direction. And she could see a young man running towards them. 'Vic,' she shouted urgently, 'we need to do something, for Christ's sake!'

  'Yeah, right, we need to do something. What do you fucking suggest?'

  346

  Back at the Incident Room, Nick Nicholl suddenly yelled at Grace. 'Roy! Line seven, pick it up, pick it up!'

  Grace stabbed the button and lifted the receiver to his ear. 'Roy Grace,' he said. It was a Detective Sergeant from Brighton police station called Mark Tuckwell. 'Roy,' he said, 'the Mercedes you have an alert out on, blue saloon, Lima-Juliet-Zero-Four-Papa-X-RayIima?'

  'Yes.'

  'Its just been involved in a RTA in Newhaven. The occupants, one male, one female, have hijacked a vehicle.' Grace sat bolt upright, the phone clenched to his ear, adrenaline exploding.

  'Have they taken hostages?'

  'No.'

  'Do we have descriptions of the two people?'

  'Not great ones so far. Man stocky, Caucasian, cropped hair, mid forties; the woman has short dark hair, late twenties, early thirties.' Grabbing a pen, he asked, 'What are the details of the vehicle they've taken?'

  'A Land Rover Freelander, Green, Whisky-Seven-Nine-Six-LimaDeltaYankee.' Scribbling this down, Grace asked, 'Any contact with this car so far?'

  'Not yet.'

  'Exactly how long ago was it taken?'

  'Ten minutes.' Grace thought for a moment. Ten minutes. You could get a long damned way in ten minutes. He thanked the Detective Sergeant and told him he would call him back in a couple of minutes and to keep his line clear. Then Grace quickly briefed his team. Handing the vehicle details to Nick Nicholl he said, 'Nick, circulate the vehicle details to all the surrounding counties - Surrey, Kent, Hampshire - and also the Met. Now!' He thought for a moment. The roads to the east of Newhaven went to Eastbourne and Hastings. To the north were the fast roads to Gatwick Airport and to London. To the west was Brighton. Most likely, if they stayed with the Land Rover, they would head north. Turning to DS Moy he said, 'Bella, get the helicopter up. On the assumption they are heading away from the area, get it positioned to cover the roads ten to fifteen miles north of Newhaven.'

  'Right.'

  'When you've done that, get a watch put on all CCTV at the railway stations in the area, in case they try to ditch the vehicle and get a train.' He drank a swig of water. 'Emma-Jane, call the Road Policing Department and get some vehicles up on the A23 on look-out for this car immediately. When you've done that, alert the police at Newhaven Harbour and Gatwick and Shoreham Airports.' He ran through a mental checklist, stations, seaports, airports, roads. Often, he knew, when people hijacked cars they would only drive them a short distance, ditch them and take a different car.

  'Glenn,' he said, 'get the whole surrounding area of Newhaven flooded - we want to make sure they haven't abandoned the car yet. Also get a couple of our patrol cars here on standby.' 'I'll do it now.' Grace rang through to the Ops Room and informed them he was taking command of the incident. The clerk there told him there was one update that had just come in. A car matching the description had sideswiped several cars at a traffic light as it had cut past them on the pavement to get over the Newhaven swing bridge seconds before it opened. This information was just two minutes old.

  Vic Delaney stabbed the brake pedal hard as they came into a righthander on the winding country road that was much sharper than he had realized. The front wheels locked and for a sickening moment they carried straight on, towards a poplar tree, while he wrestled with the chunky steering wheel. Ashley screamed, 'Viiiic!' The car lurched violently to the right, the front slewing round, the rear wheels breaking way, then he over-corrected and they were heading at another poplar. Then back, the top-heavy car swinging like a weighted sack, their luggage crashing around in the rear. Then they were back under control. 'Slow down, Vic, for God's sake!' There was a massive truck ahead, crawling along, and in a moment they were o
n its tail, with no room to pass. 'Oh, fucking Jesus!' he said, braking, hammering the steering wheel in frustration. It had all gone wrong. The story of my life, he thought. His dad had died of drink when he'd been in his teens. Shortly before his eighteenth birthday he'd beaten up his mother's lover because the guy was a punk and treated her like shite. And his mother had responded by throwing him, Vic, out. He'd drifted into the services in search of adventure, and instantly felt at home in the Marines, except he'd also acquired a taste for money. Lots of money. In particular he liked fancy clothes, cars, gambling and tarts.

  But above all else he liked the feeling he got - all that respect - when he walked into a casino in a sharp suit. And what better massage for a man's pride could there be than to get comped at a casino for a steak dinner, maybe a room, too. A lucky streak in the casinos during his second year in the Marines netted him some big loot, then an unlucky streak wiped him out. He'd then teamed up with a bent Quartermaster called Bruce Jackman, in charge of the ordnance supplies, and found an easy way to make fast money by selling off guns, ammunition and other military supplies via a website. When that was in the process of beir rumbled, he'd garrotted Bruce Jackman, and left him hanging in bi*| bedroom with a suicide note. And had never lost a night's sleep over| it since. Life was a game, survival of the sharpest. In his view humans made the mistake of trying to pretend they were any different to the animal world. All life was the law of the jungle. That didn't mean you couldn't love someone. He'd been deeply, crazily, besottedly in love with Alex from the moment he had first seen her. She had it all: real class, style, stunning beauty, a great body, and she was a dirty cow in bed. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman and way more. And she was the only woman he had met who was more ambitious than himself - and who had a game plan to achieve her simple goals: make a fortune when you are young, then spend the rest of your life enjoying it. Dead simple. Now all they had to do was get to Gatwick Airport and catch a plane. The interior of the Freelander stank of diesel fumes from the exhaust of the massive lorry in front of him, crawling at less than 30 mph.

  He pulled out to see if he could pass, then pulled back in sharply as a truck thundered past in the opposite direction. Increasingly impatient, they followed the truck through a sweeping, dipping, S-bend, past a quarry sign, then up a hill, the truck slowing even more. He slipped his left hand over into Ashley's lap, found her hand, squeezed it. 'We'll be all right, angel.' She squeezed his hand back, by way of a reply. Then a blue sparkle in the mirror caught his eye. And a cold sliver of fear whiplashed through his belly. He watched the mirror carefully. Tarmac, grass and trees unspooled behind them. Then the sparkle of blue again and this time there was no mistaking it. Shit. Any second it would come into sight around the corner. Pulling out again, he suddenly saw to his right a wooden public footpath signpost, and a wide track, and in one swift jerk of the wheel, swung the Freelander right across the path of an oncoming van and onto the bumpy, overgrown track, the car crashing into a deep, water-filled pothole, then out the other side. In his mirror he saw a police car flash past in the opposite direction, much too fast, he hoped, to have seen them.

  'Why have you turned off?'

  'Police.' He accelerated, felt the wheels spinning, gripping, the car lurching forward, sliding up the ruts, then down again. They passed a farmyard, with an empty horsebox outside and a silent tractor, and a corrugated iron structure rilled with empty sheep pens.

  'Where does this go?' Ashley asked.

  'I don't fucking know.' At the end of the track he turned left onto a metalled lane; they drove past several cottages, then reached a very busy main road. Vic, winding down his window and dripping with perspiration, said, 'This is the A27 - it takes us to the A23 - straight up to Gatwick, right?'

  'I know. But we can't go on the main road.' 'I'm thinking - the best way--' Both of them heard the clatter of the helicopter. Vic stuck his head out of the window and looked up. He saw a dark blue helicopter bearing down out of the sky straight towards them. As it arced round, the sound even louder, it was low enough for him to read the stencilled white 'police' beneath the cockpit. 'Bastards.' There was no break in the traffic, so he judged it too risky to go straight over. Instead he made a left turn, accelerating hard out in front of a Jaguar, which proceeded to flash him with its lights and hoot, both of which he ignored, staring fixedly ahead, his brain in panic mode. The traffic was slowing down ahead. Shit, it was coming to a standstill! Pulling out to the right a fraction and peering past the traffic, he could see the reason for the jam, despite part of his view being obscured by a tall caravan. A police car had blocked off the road, and there was a large blue 'POLICE STOP' barrier either side of it.

  'They just rammed through a police barrier at the Beddingham roundabout,' the Ops Clerk, Jim Robinson, informed Grace, 'and are now proceeding west on the A27. Their next turn-off options are the roundabout in one mile, where they have a choice of a right turn towards Lewes or left towards Kingston village.' 'Have we got anyone at the roundabout?'

  'A bike on its way - might just get there in time.'

  'A bike's no use. We need to get them boxed in. At least they're not in a fast car, so we can catch them. We need four cars - where are the nearest four located?' 'We have two heading for the A23 junction, one on its way from Lewes, ETA four minutes, one on its way over from Shoreham, ETA three minutes to the A23/A27 junction, two here at Sussex House ready to go, and one coming in from Haywards Heath, ETA two minutes.' 'The helicopter still has them in sight?' 'Right above them.' Grace closed his eyes a moment, visualizing the road. Right now the villains, whoever they were - and he had the strongest suspicions about who one of them was - had made the error of picking the road on which he drove to and from work every day, and knew better, probably, than any other road on the planet. He knew every turnoff, every opportunity, adding in the fact they were in a vehicle with off road capabilities, and although the ground was fairly soggy from all the recent rainfall, there would be plenty of opportunities to get off the road and across farmland if they wanted.

  'Can we get a couple of police off-roaders into the mix as well?' Grace said. 'Position them as close to the A27/A23 junction as you can.' He looked at his watch. A quarter to two. Tuesday. There would be a fair amount of traffic on the move and one consideration was other road users. The police had had a lot of bad press in recent years over reckless car pursuits and some tragic deaths of innocent people in the process. He needed to keep this pursuit as safe as was possible in the circumstances. Boxing them in would be best: a car in front, a car behind, one either side and slowly bring their speed down. That would be the textbook happy ending. Except he hadn't known too many happy endings since he'd grown too old to enjoy fairy tales.

  Barrelling down a long, curving hill in the fast lane, with the speedometer needle flickering past 125 mph, Vic knew the A23 junction would be coming up in a minute or so, and he was going to have to make a decision. For the past couple of minutes, aware of the constant shadow of the helicopter, his mind had been occupied with one thought: If I was a cop what bases would I be covering right now? Airports were not going to be an option. Nor ferry-ports. But there was one thing that the cops probably had not considered probably because they didn't even know about it. But to get to it they needed to lose the damned chopper. And there was a place, just a few miles ahead, where he could do that. The dual carriageway rose dramatically uphill, with undulating open Downland countryside to his right, and the vast urban sprawl of Brighton and Have to his left. And ahead, some miles yet, the tall chimney landmark of his intended destination, Shoreham Harbour. But that wasn't going to be his first stop.

  'Why've you carried on, Vic?' Ashley asked nervously. 'I thought we were going to Gatwick.'

  Vic did not reply. A little old man was pottering along in the inside lane in a bronze four-door Toyota that looked a good ten years old. Perfect! The tunnel was coming up any moment now. From memory it was about a quarter of a mile long, cutting through the Downs.
They passed the 'No Overtaking' warning sign and entered the dimly lit gloom of the tunnel doing a good 110 mph. Instantly, Vic swerved into the inside lane and stamped on the brakes, slowing the car down to a crawl and putting on his hazard flashers.

  'Vic - what the hell--' But he was ignoring her, staring in the mirror, watching a line of cars flash past. And now the Toyota was approaching. Vic tensed, knowing he had to get his timing absolutely right. The Toyota indicated that it was going to pull out to overtake, and began moving out, but instantly there was a flash of lights and the blare of a horn as a Porsche hurtled past, and the Toyota, braking hard, swerved back into the inside lane. Beaut! Vic jerked on the Land Rover's handbrake as hard as he could, knowing it would stop the car without the brake lights showing. 'Brace yourself!' he shouted, releasing the brake and accelerating. There was a scream of tyres behind, but by the time the Toyota struck them, they already had some forward momentum again. There was a small impact, just a tiny jolt that he barely felt, and the sound of breaking glass.

  'Out!' yelled Vic, hurling open his door, jumping down, running back and surveying the damage. All he was concerned with was the front of the Toyota. It looked fine - the grille was stove in and a headlamp gone, but no oil or water was spewing out.

  'Get the fucking bags!' he yelled at Ashley, who was walking, startled, towards him. 'The fucking bags, woman!' He wrenched open the driver's door of the Toyota. The driver was even more frail than he had looked when he had driven past, well north of eighty, with a liver-spotted face, wispy hair and spectacles with bottle-glass lenses.

  'Hey, what - what do you think - what--?' the old man said. Vic undipped his seatbelt, aware that a car was pulling up behind them, then removed his glasses to disorient him.

  'I'll get you into the ambulance, mate.'

  'I don't need a bloody--' Vic hauled the man out, hefted him over his shoulder and placed him on the rear seat of the Land Rover, then shut the door. A potbellied, middle-aged man who had just climbed out of a Ford people-carrier that had pulled up behind the Toyota came running up to Vic. 'I say, do you need any help?'