The Boat House

FORTY-FIVE

Pete was wrong in at least one detail.

Aldridge wasn't heading down to collect them, nor was he tearing through the woodland to get to Alina. Instead he'd stopped the Toyota up on the edge of the olive green moor, and he was holding his radio out of the open window to get a fix on the signal that was messing up the frequency. Ivie's radio was still transmitting. That Ivie himself was dead, or at least close to it, was a matter on which Aldridge had little doubt.

It was a rough method, but at least it gave him a direction. When he turned the volume all the way up as far as it would go, he thought that he could hear somebody breathing. It was impossible to be sure.

He raised his window before he set off again. He'd been out of her reach in the generator cage and now he was out of her reach in the cab, and as far as Aldridge was concerned this was the best way to be. In an ideal world he'd be able to take her alive, but if he couldn't then he was fully prepared to run her down. He had four-wheel-drive, he had no witnesses. She might be full of surprises, but she surely couldn't argue with an oncoming truck.

He followed the signal.

Ten minutes later, he was at the scene.

He came in slowly, watching all around. He could see the battered limousine, and the silent Rover with its far door open. He drove the Toyota all the way around almost in a complete circle, but there were no signs of life at all.

He stopped level with the Rover. He could see inside from here. No bodies, just a tartan blanket half in the cab and half on the ground. It was a weird, deserted scene, looking like some aftermath of germ warfare — property abandoned, actions uncompleted — and the appeal of opening his door and stepping out would rank about the same in both cases.

Something thumped on the Toyota behind him.

He glimpsed a movement in his mirror, then it was gone. But then he turned in his seat, and he could see her; she was throwing back the snap cover and climbing into the pickup's load area, and it was too late for him to do anything about it. She was hauling herself up already, and she had what looked like a firm grip on one of the four diagonal bars protecting the cab's rear windshield.

She gave him an evil-looking, sharp toothed grin.

"I said I'd come back for you," she said through the glass.

"You won't get me this time, either," Aldridge said, wondering how he could best throw her off and run her down with minimal risk. "I'm all locked in."

"You're forgetting the obvious," she said, and Aldridge found himself looking out into the dark O of Bob Ivie's shotgun. That would have been the thump that he'd heard, the sound of the gun being slung in ahead of her; and he could only sit and gape at his own lack of foresight as he contemplated the more prominent one on the Winchester.

Alina squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The safety was on; Aldridge realised it with a heartsurge of glee. Alina was turning the gun in puzzlement, unsure of what to do next.

He had a chance.

He hit the accelerator and let out the clutch, and as the Toyota spurted forward he turned the wheel hard in an attempt to catch her off balance and pitch her out. But then he glanced in the mirror and saw her hand, again grabbing the strut as the pickup spun around. He gunned the engine again, wrenched the wheel over the other way…

And, watching his mirror more than the ground ahead, slammed sideways into the Land Rover. The Rover shook, but it barely moved.

Aldridge was thrown sideways across the passenger seat. His head bounced on the door padding. The pickup was out of gear with its engine still running, and Aldridge was almost on the floor; he scrambled up again, and looked into the back. He couldn't see her… and he thought, Have I done it? Was that enough, the woman dead and not even a shot fired?

A hand came up, and its fingers curled around one of the bars. She hauled herself up after, inches away on the other side of the laminated glass. She was still grinning.

Aldridge slammed the pickup into gear again.

The engine raced, but the pickup didn't move.

He'd killed the rear transmission. He was going nowhere.

He wondered if there wasn't some way; there was always a way, wasn't there? Could he perhaps switch the drive to the two front wheels and drag himself out of there like an injured dog? But even as he glanced again in the mirror he knew that his time had run out, saw that the shotgun was being levelled again, understood that nothing he could do was going to alter anything now.

He saw the windshield craze before he heard the blast.

Rachel, he thought miserably.

But then he never got to hear the blast at all.