Need You Dead

105 Saturday 30 April

Need to get to the city.

I’ve just got to get there. Got to, got to, GOT TO.

Out here in the countryside, if he ran out of fuel they’d find the car quickly, he knew. Then they’d put up the helicopter with its heat-source night vision and they’d pick him out. He’d be better off in the city, invisible there, plenty of hiding places, and it would make it harder for a dog handler to find him.

He just had to get there.

Ten miles.

There has to be ten miles more in the tank.

He looked in his mirror.

Just darkness.

He was hurtling up towards a three-way junction that he knew well. The Ginger Fox restaurant, where he’d sometimes come with Lena for Sunday lunch, was on the right. A sharp right in front of it would be the fastest way to the city from here. It would take him to the A23. But that’s where they’d be expecting him.

Turning off the main road — more or less straight on into another lane — would take him back out into the countryside. Where he did not want to be.

Had to carry on along the main road. That was his best option. Nothing showed in his mirror, to his relief. They still weren’t in sight.

He drove too fast round the sharp left-hand bend, feeling the car twitching and sliding on the wet, greasy road, then a right-hander was coming up. He braked hard and turned sharp left just on the apex, down a narrow road he’d cycled along many times in the past, Clappers Lane. It would take him on a back route into Brighton that hopefully they wouldn’t be expecting him to go for. Via Shoreham, to the west of the city.

If his fuel lasted.

If they didn’t find him again.

He looked at the fuel gauge. There was always a couple of gallons in the tank when it showed empty. There had to be. He gripped the wheel, looked in the mirror, the road ahead, the mirror, the road ahead.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

Just got to keep going. Keep going. All the time I’m going I’m alive.

When I stop, I’m dead.