Chasing the Dark (15 page)

‘Get down!' I hissed.

‘It is OK. It is tinted glass.'

Feeling stupid I got up beside her. They'd seen the gaping door of the container and screeched the Jeep and the Lexus to a halt in the open gateway, engines running, doors flung wide. Viktor, Shrek and Bogdan piled out and tore off in different directions, kicking doors, racing round the caravan and smashing packing cases with Oz barking at their heels like it was some kind of game.

I was tempted to laugh till Shrek got out a gun.

Bogdan ran past the limo, looming close enough to see the acne on his cheeks. Suddenly the white glare of floodlights lit up the yard and the whole surrounding slope, like an alien space ship was landing. If we'd made a run for it through the gate they'd have picked us off like ants.

In the glow filtering through the tinted windows Nina looked like a ghost, her face drained grey by the blood spreading across her jeans. I squeezed her wrist, trying to stop the flow.
Make a plan, Joe. Make a plan
. Why hadn't I listened to Mum when she wanted me to join the boy scouts?

The good news was that I couldn't see Yuri. The bad news was that Nina was bleeding to death.

CHAPTER 20

V
iktor, Bogdan and Shrek were tearing through the yard like a pack of starving sharks. Any minute now they'd get to the limo. C
ome on, Joe. Think. Think
.

I'd been petrified Oz was going to give us away but a couple of sharp kicks from Bogdan had sent him flying towards the gate. I could see he was hurt and I felt bad I couldn't help him but he suddenly seemed to perk up and started snuffling round the Lexus, getting more and more excited till he finally jumped inside. If they'd got another takeaway in there I didn't fancy their chances of finding much of it left.

I stared at the cars parked there in the open gateway – lights on, engines running, doors open – and froze, torn between the crazy escape plan storming my brain and the picture of Mum getting smashed up in Lincoln's Renault.
One glance at the blood pumping out of Nina's hand made up my mind.

‘I'm going to steal the Lexus,' I said.

Considering how little we had going for us I thought the plan was pretty inspired. All Nina said was, ‘You can drive?'

‘Yeah . . . kind of.' It wasn't a lie, not really.

She blinked a bit but didn't come up with a better idea. I flicked up the blade of the Swiss army knife.

‘Keep your head down and stay low. Ready?'

Nina nodded. I unlocked the door, dropped to the ground and lifted her down. Pulling her by her good hand, I crept along the side of the limo, peeked round the battered bonnet and saw them circling the far end of the yard.

‘Now,' I hissed. We ran for the Lexus. Shoving her in the passenger seat I sneaked towards the Jeep and managed to plunge the blade into both of its nearside tyres before Viktor found the hole in the wire mesh, let out a bellow like a wounded moose and led a dash for the cars. I dived for the Lexus. It was an automatic. D for Drive, R for reverse – right? I bloody hoped so.

I dropped the hand brake, rammed the selector to R and floored the accelerator. We shot backwards through the gateway. Shrek lumbered into the light and fired off a round in our direction. I swung the car in a circle. It was like riding the sickest roller coaster ever. The ground veered up and the door clipped a tree before I managed to pull it shut. I hit D, revved the engine and made for the top of the slope. Shrek fired again, hitting the bumper. I
peeled off the track on to tarmac, hurtling down the wrong side of the road. A lorry roared towards us blaring its horn …
Je-sus
! I swerved into the other lane struggling to steady the car as the world whizzed past. Locking my eyes on the road, I gripped the wheel as if my fingers were welded to the plastic but a few spins round the estate with the Farm Street joyriders and a life-long addiction to video games were no preparation for hitting the road in a tank-sized Lexus. I yelled at Nina to get the sat nav working. She reached a shaky hand towards the screen.

‘Find where we are. Check the nearest hospital,' I said.

After a bit she said, ‘Essex,' in a weird spacey voice. ‘Nearest hospital . . . five miles. But we cannot stop.'

She had a point. Who knew how quickly Viktor could call up more cars and come looking for us? But if she was going to make it we'd have to risk it. I reached over, hit ‘confirm' on the sat nav and floored the accelerator.

‘Tighten the bandage. Hold your arm up.' I ordered, though I wasn't sure if gravity worked on blood.

Trying to hold the Lexus steady and keep a look-out for Viktor was a nightmare. Every time I checked the mirrors the car swerved, or some random truck roared out of nowhere nearly blinding me. The sat nav sent us left. I pulled hard on the wheel. The car veered violently, bumping and scraping the kerb as we screeched on to a dual carriageway. Nina crumpled down in her seat, her eyes fluttering like she was slipping out of consciousness. I kept yelling at her, clutching her wrist, squeezing it hard,
then dropping it to grab the wheel again, panicking every time I caught headlights in the mirror. The bossy voice of the sat nav was the only thing keeping me going till a sign saying ‘Hospital' loomed out of the night. I skidded into the car park and pulled Nina out. Oz tried to come too but I pushed him back and told him to lie down and keep quiet.

Somehow I managed to half-drag, half-carry Nina into Accident and Emergency. Considering how much I hated hospitals, it was pretty ironic how much time I was spending in them. I pulled her through the doors, steeling myself for the sounds and smells that I knew were going to trigger the dark memories of the night Mum died. But now they were mixed up with pictures of Prof Lincoln hanging between life and death in intensive care and visions of what was going to happen to Nina if she lost any more blood. And it was all because of that evil psycho witch who called herself the Vulture.

I pushed through the crush of people and laid Nina across a row of chairs. She'd gone totally limp and just lay there eyes half closed, covered in blood. I looked round wildly. A couple of nurses came towards us, not running but moving fast.

‘It's her hand,' I gasped. ‘It won't stop bleeding. She sliced it with a saw and she keeps passing out.'

The nurse grimaced as she untied the grimy blood-soaked strip of T-shirt. ‘All right. We'll make her a priority. What's her name?'

Nina groaned and her eyes half-opened, darting me a
warning. I'd forgotten. She was illegal, no right to be here, maybe no right to treatment either.

‘Sadie,' I said quickly. ‘Her name's Sadie Slattery.'

‘Give reception the rest of her details.'

I lied some more to the receptionist, giving her Doreen's address, my date of birth and pretending that Nina's aunty was parking the car and would be aIong any minute to sign the forms.

I sat down, dizzy with relief that Nina was being taken care of, petrified that Viktor's thugs were going to storm in any minute and woozy with hunger. All I'd had in the last eight hours was a bite of chocolate, a slurp of tap water and an overdose of adrenalin. I headed for the vending machines and started stabbing the coin return buttons in the hope of scraping up enough money to buy a packet of crisps. No luck. I lurched back to my seat and as I dropped my head in my hands almost ready to cry, I got that tight itchy feeling in my scalp. Someone was watching me. I looked up warily and caught the probing stare of a burly black guy sitting across the aisle. He had a slash on his cheek and looked like he'd just finished one argument and was up for another. He wasn't Ukrainian, that was for sure, but he was striding towards me, one hand stuffed in his pocket like he'd got a gun or a knife in there. I shrank back. He whipped out his fist. My heart jack-knifed. His fingers opened and a handful of coins bounced into my lap. Mainly coppers but one or two pound coins and a few fifty, ten, and twenty-pence pieces.

‘Looks like you could do with a snack,' he growled.

I stared up at him, shocked and grateful.

‘You'll never know,' I croaked.

‘Been there a few times myself.'

The big guy clenched his fist again and touched mine. As he went back to his seat a nurse called out ‘Ronan Bellfield' and he picked up a battered guitar and disappeared through the swing doors.

I fed the money into the vending machines, wondering how many songs he'd had to sing to buy me that cheese sandwich and that bottle of Coke. I divided the sandwich into three pieces and ate mine hunched in a corner with one eye on the swing doors watching for Nina, and the other on the entrance in case Viktor, Bogdan or Shrek turned up. My nerves were in shreds. What was taking so long?

Finally she came out. She'd got her hand in a sling and she was walking without help but her clothes were still covered in blood and there were deep purple smudges under her eyes that stood out against the pasty white of her face.

I handed her a chunk of sandwich and the rest of the Coke. ‘C'mon. Let's get out of here.'

‘Sadie Slattery!'

Like an idiot I swung round, looking for Mum. A nurse was walking towards us holding up a little white packet. ‘You forgot your pills, Sadie.'

I tried to ward off the pain by telling myself Mum would have been pleased that her name had come in handy.

‘Take two every four hours,' the nurse said. ‘And make
sure you rest that hand and take things easy.'

Take things easy
. Yeah, right.

Sneaking into the half-empty car park we made a dive for the shadows and crouched by the wall, watching headlights criss-cross the tarmac as a straggle of nightshift workers came and went. I pressed the key remote. The Lexus squawked, flashing a response. We counted the seconds, waiting for Bogdan or Shrek to come running. Nothing. I made a move towards the Lexus. Nina grabbed my arm and went rigid.

‘What's up?' I said.

‘It was shock of cutting my hand. I was not thinking.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘Viktor. He has tracking devices in all his cars. If he gets to computer he can follow us wherever we go.'

I scanned the parked cars, searching for one that would be old enough to hot wire. It was a toss-up between a beaten-up, soft-top Mini and a rusty white van. I picked the Mini. But when it came to the actual hot wiring I'd have to rely on my recall of the it's-so-easy-I-can-do-it-one-handed auto theft scenes I'd watched in a million movies and the time the Farm Street joyriders dared me to have a go at Eddy's Fiesta and I nearly got fried.

‘Get Oz and keep a look out,' I said.

Nina scurried over to the Lexus, pulled Oz off the back seat and tried to drag him over to the Mini. He dug in, refusing to budge, and when she tried to pick him up he wriggled free and jumped up at the boot whining and clawing the paintwork.

‘Oz, for God's sake, we haven't got time for this,' I hissed, running back and grabbing his collar.

Nina waved me quiet. ‘Listen, Joe. There is something in there.'

Even with all the noise Oz was making I could hear a muffled thumping coming from the boot.

‘Stand back.' I pressed the key fob. Slowly, the cover rose up like the lid of Dracula's coffin and the interior light clicked on. There was a huge bloke curled up inside, all wrapped in duct tape like a half-finished mummy with a black hood over his head.

‘Je-sus!' I said.

Oz was going crazy so I threw his bit of sandwich on to the back seat, chucked him in after it and shut the door. Then I tugged the hood off the man's head. The first thing I saw was a bloody gash across his forehead. The second was a pair of black bloodshot eyes blinking up at me like I was some kind of angel in a vision.

It was Yuri.

Wrong time, wrong place to start asking all the questions I'd got backing up in my brain. But still . . .

Viktor's boys had done a thorough job of tying him up and without the Swiss army knife I'd never have got the tape off his arms and legs. He was totally out of it and it took me, Nina and a lot of heaving and pushing to get him out of the boot and lean him against the side of the Lexus.

I ran to the Mini, slit the soft top and reached inside for the handle. Groping under the dash I pulled out the tangle of cables, trying to work out which ones were the ignition
and starter wires. It wasn't like this in the movies. I took a risk and flipped on the interior light, just for a second.
Keep calm, Joe, you can do this
. I picked out one red and one black wire, and used the pliers attachment to clip them and strip back the insulation. Bracing myself against the fifty-fifty chance of getting frazzled I twisted them together and gave a
yes
of triumph when the dashboard warning lights flickered on. As I fiddled around, the starter wire made contact and gave off a grudging spark. The ancient engine grunted and turned over. I fumbled with the clutch and crashed the gears. The car hiccoughed, lurched about two yards and stalled.

Hurrying to restart it, I saw Nina, lard white and scarecrow-haired, her clothes still covered in blood, trying to help Yuri towards the Mini. Bits of duct tape flapped from his clothes and he was swaying around, opening and closing his mouth like a landed trout. In the sickly yellow car park lights they looked like a couple of extras from
Night of the Living Dead
.

I pulled up beside them. Yuri was in a bad way and I only just managed to manoeuvre him on to the tiny back seat before he passed out. I ran to fetch Oz. By the time I got back Nina had taken off her sling and was sitting in the driver's seat wrapping the filthy hood we'd taken off Yuri round her own head in a kind of turban. Rather her than me, but it did the job of hiding her silvery hair.

‘Put your sling back on and move over,' I said.

‘I am driving,' she said. ‘I have driven tractors, remember?'

‘What about your stitches?'

She pulled a face. ‘This car has gears. Even with one hand I will drive it better than you.'

‘Thanks.'

But she was right and there was no point beating myself up about it. I got in the passenger seat, pulled Oz in after me and tossed her a pair of thick black-framed glasses I'd spotted on the dashboard.

Headlights swept the tarmac and a silver Volvo screeched to a stop in front of the Lexus. Viktor's tracking system had worked. Two big guys in leather jackets got out and opened the boot. As soon as they saw it was empty one of them got on his phone and started walking up and down, peering between the parked cars, while the other one struck off towards the entrance to A and E. A couple of nurses hurried past and a little Fiat pulled out of a space opposite.

‘Go! Go now!' I hissed. ‘He'll think you're one of the night staff going home.'

I rammed Oz into the footwell. He didn't like it but I crouched over, holding him down. Nina eased the car into first and puttered past the Lexus. I watched in the wing mirror as the bloke with the phone glanced round, looking for three people – an ash-blonde girl, a mixed-race boy and an old man trussed up like a chicken. What he saw was a woman in a dark hat and glasses, driving sedately towards the exit in a beaten-up Mini. What I saw was the stubbly face of the man who'd watched me smash up that over-the-top wreath on Mum's grave.