Better Left Buried (22 page)

“Shit,” Jack hisses, under his breath.

I glance at him. “What is it?”

He points at a light flashing on the dashboard. A warning light. He spins to peer out the back window and I follow his gaze. Smoke or steam is billowing out behind us.

Jack thumps the steering wheel, mouth clenched tight, then swings over onto the verge. He jumps out the car and opens the bonnet. Another cloud of steam emerges and Jack backs away.

I get out and stand behind him. “What's going on?”

Jack nods. “I think a gasket has gone.”

“Is that bad?”

His grimace passes for an answer. “We're going to have to get it to a garage.”

“How?” I glance up and down the road.

Jack shrugs. “I dunno. We'll need somebody to tow us.”

“Do you have breakdown cover?”

“Er, no…” His laugh is brittle.

“So what are we going to do?”

“I'll have to walk or hitch to the nearest garage.”

I look at him. “I'll come with you.”

“No, Sarah, you stay here,” Jack says, shaking his head. “Someone has to stay with the car.”

I chew the inside of my lip. “How long will you be?”

He shrugs again. “No idea. Depends where the next garage is. And whether they speak English. My Swedish is a little rusty.

“Keep the doors locked,” he adds, grabbing his jacket from the car.

I wait till Jack disappears round the bend in the road before starting to search. I check the front glove compartment first, and all the side pockets. Look under the seats and run my hands round the sides of the upholstery. I get out and open the boot and rummage through his bag – only clothes and underwear and a few toiletries.

I kneel on the tarmac and scan under the chassis. All I can see are pipes and bolts and other stuff I can't identify. Nothing seems out of place. I get back up and stalk round the car, even kicking the tyres, vaguely remembering something about drugs smuggled in their inner tubes.

I don't find anything, but I'm not taking much comfort from that. Trouble is I've no idea what I'm looking for, nor how much. And let's face it, there could be a thousand ways to conceal drugs in a car.

I give up. Climb back into the front seat and lock the door and try my phone again. It flickers into life just long enough for me to see the battery is full, before blinking out again.

Damn. I sit there staring at it, and then it occurs to me. I can't even ring for help.

With this comes a crowd of other panicky thoughts. What if someone from that gang really is following us? I think of that man Jack told me about, the one who heads it up. Tommy Crace. What does he look like? I wonder.

And what if he's watching me now?

Oh god. The moment it crosses my mind the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and I start to sweat, even though it's getting pretty cold with the heating off. I watch each car whizzing past me, half expecting them to suddenly stop and pull over.

What would I do if one did? I'm really frightened now, my pulse beginning to climb. Jesus. I should have asked Jack for his phone.

How long has he been gone? I've lost track of time, and I can't turn on the ignition and see the clock on the dashboard because he's taken the keys.

I sit back in the seat, close my eyes and try to breathe evenly. Remember my singing exercises. Long steady inhale, then breathe out, counting slowly in my head till I get to twenty. Over and over again.

But I keep seeing Mrs Perry's face as I do it, and that makes me feel worse. As if she exists in a world a million miles away from here. A nice, safe, normal world where you don't take off abroad with a convicted drug dealer and find yourself abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

I'm so tired that somehow I doze off, despite my uneasiness. I wake to the sound of a car pulling up. My eyes snap open. A red four-wheel drive has stopped right opposite me, on the other side of the carriageway. My heart starts to race again, as fast as my thoughts.

What should I do? Try to hide? Get out and run? Flag down a car for help?

Jack said to stay in the car. I sink low in my seat, hoping it looks empty. But I catch sight of someone already opening the door to the SUV and getting out.

Oh god.

Seconds later a thump on the window, I look up, terrified.

It's Jack. He turns away, waving at the driver of the red car; it pulls back into the road and disappears.

Jack opens the driver's door and jumps in. “Good news or the bad?” he asks.

“Good,” I say, sitting up straight, trying to make out like I haven't been blindly panicking.

“There's a garage about fifteen miles up the road.”

“Okay. So what's the bad news?”

“They can't come and get us till tomorrow morning. The tow truck's picking up someone a few hours away and won't be back until later tonight. The bloke at the garage says we could get a rescue service to come out from Vad-somewhere-or-other, but it'll cost us.”

“How much?”

“More than I've got, Chicory. I need to save some cash for the repair.”

Another lurch of guilt. I should have thought of this. I should have brought more money with me. It was all such a rush, leaving, I didn't have time to think everything through.

“Can't we put it on a credit card? I'll pay you back.”

Jack raises an eyebrow. “Do I strike you as the kind of person who comes with a good credit rating?”

I think about how much I've got in my bag. Not a lot. Certainly not enough for a motel room.

“So where are we going to sleep?” I ask. The light is already beginning to fade and the air is growing colder by the minute.

“In here,” says Jack, with a grim smile. “You can have the back, if you like.”

I don't get much sleep. It's not only that the back seat is seriously uncomfortable, even if I can lie on my side in a cramped fetal position. Or the fact that it's freezing and I've only my coat to cover me. But more because I spend half the night worrying about whether I'll make it home in time for my audition.

Or even make it home at all.

I run through my options. All two of them. Hitchhike to the nearest station and get the next train south. But I'm not sure I've got enough money for a ticket, and I'd have to ring Mum or Dad to get them to pay for it. And if I do that, I know I'll have to tell them what on earth I'm doing out here.

Or option two. Carry on and pray I don't miss the ferry home.

Somehow this feels the only real choice I've got. I have to sort this out once and for all.

I feel a rush of anger towards Max. The trouble he's inflicted on our family. The danger he's brought to our door. Why did he do it, if it wasn't for the money? Why didn't he consider the consequences of making that bloody stuff?

I think back to how my brother used to tease me, calling me “brainbox” and “Mensa child” whenever we got into an argument. Like I was really dumb.

But what's the point of being clever if you dump everyone in a mess like this? I ask myself. If you can't see when something makes no kind of sense at all?

I feel a good ten years older by the time the tow truck pulls up a couple of hours after it gets light. It takes five minutes to hitch up the car, then Jack and I squeeze into the small cab with the garage man. Aside from a brief nod hello, he doesn't speak the whole way. I'm guessing his English isn't so great.

Not that I'm in the mood for conversation. All I can focus on is finding somewhere to go to the loo and clean my teeth. As soon as we get to the garage, I grab my bag and bolt into the little room with a ladies' sign while Jack disappears into the workshop.

He's waiting by the office when I come out. “It's the head gasket. They have to go into town to get a part, but they reckon they can have it ready by mid-afternoon.”

I do a quick mental calculation. We should be at the summer house by this evening. If I can find what I need and we leave straight away, I might be okay.

Just.

The landscape is changing now, open fields replaced by endless stretches of pine and birch forest, dark and forbidding as you glimpse into their depths. Miles and miles of it, only the odd dead stump sticking high above the saplings like a telegraph pole.

Up ahead somebody has sprayed graffiti on a rocky outcrop by the road. Great big rounded letters, their zany neon colours in bold contrast to the light grey stone.

“Jeez,” mutters Jack.

“What?” I ask, surprised he's even noticed. His eyes rarely waver from the road ahead, or his rear-view mirror.

“Bloody Volvos. I wouldn't be seen dead driving one. Even if they are more reliable than this pile of crap.”

I study the traffic for the next few miles. He's right. Every other car is a Volvo.

I remember the one we had for years, and the times Max and I rode in the back, down to France or Italy, once all the way to Spain. The endless hours bickering and needling and goading each other with surreptitious pinches and slaps, kept just below Mum's radar as she studied the map in the front. No satnav back then.

Inevitably one of us would go too far and Dad would shout, and we'd revert to smirking and pulling faces, allies again.

A wave of sadness washes over me as I realize how happy we were then. Not that we knew it at the time.

When it happens I'm so lost in my thoughts I barely notice. Jack yanks on the steering wheel and we spin into a U-turn, heading back up the road the way we came. I peer into my side mirror. Right behind us a large black car does the same manoeuvre.

My blood goes cold. Oh god…oh shit…
it's true
. They're really after us.

Jack races down the carriageway. I watch the needle of the speedometer steadily climbing…sixty…seventy…eighty…

“Jack…”

“Not now!”

Suddenly we veer off into a side road, accelerating along a narrow lane through the forest, pine trees whizzing by perilously close. Jack turns sharp left and we bounce over a mud track. Things tumble around the car, and I grab the handle above my door to keep my balance.

“Hold on!”

Jack hauls on the steering wheel again and all at once we're in among the trees. The suspension groans as we hit a small rock and he swerves to avoid a stump. We come to a halt in a mass of moss and ferns.

“Stay here!” Jack barks, leaning over and sliding an arm under his seat. He's fiddling with something, like it's stuck.

“Damn!” He twists himself round so he can reach even further. There's a faint ripping sound, and his hand emerges holding a fat brown envelope with duct tape hanging from each side.

What the…?
I don't even get to finish the thought before he rips it open and my breath freezes in my throat as I glimpse cold grey metal.

Not drugs he was hiding. Not drugs at all.

A gun.

Jack has got a gun
.

I yelp in shock. But before I can say anything, do anything, think anything, he's out the car and running through the trees.

I sit there, whimpering, my breathing jagged with fear and dread. I sit there and it's like time is suspended. No time at all and all the time in the world passes before I hear the shot.

And the silence that follows.

I keep perfectly still, too frightened to move or scream or cry, and wait for whatever will happen to happen. Until it feels as if that's all I've ever been doing, just sitting here, waiting for it all to end.

He's lying in the grass by the other car. Slumped face forward, near the wheel, as if he'd tried to make a run for it. Tears spring to my eyes and I clamp my hands over my mouth to suppress a scream.

“No!” My voice comes out as a choking sound. Almost a wail. “Stop!”

But Jack doesn't stop. He reverses past, his face wearing the same mask of grim determination it had when he jumped back in the driving seat and fired the engine to life.

“Jack, stop!” I scream again, as he keeps backing the car in the direction we came, our tyres bumping over rocks and tree roots. I stare at the body on the ground, until we're enveloped by trees and it disappears.

Suddenly I can't breathe. I reach for the door handle and throw it open and the brakes screech as Jack slams his foot down hard. I fall out of the car, running and stumbling back through the trees.

“Sarah, for Christ's sake…”

I ignore him. I'm sprinting now, branches of fir whipping my face as I push my way through. Then a sharp, fierce pain in my chest brings me to a halt. I bend over and throw up into a pile of mossy rocks lying at my feet. I heave until there is nothing left to bring up.

But I still can't get any air into my lungs. My breathing has dwindled to short, faltering gasps, interspersed with sobs.

A hand seizes me by the shoulder. “For god's sake, Sarah…”

I hit him. Swing my right fist round as hard as I can and punch him in the jaw. Pain shoots up through my fingers, a hot flare of agony that makes me cry out.

Jack's head snaps back. He clutches his face and looks at me in shock.

“Christ, Chicory, you pack one hell of a—”

I swing at him again. This time he steps back neatly and grabs my wrist with one hand, the other coming up to grasp my left arm.

“Pack it in,” he hisses. He holds my wrists firm as I struggle. “Get a bloody grip!”

“
You killed him!
” All at once I find my voice. “You
killed
him, Jack!” I glare at him wildly, wondering if this is the first time he's done it. Or the last.

Jesus… Maybe I'm next.

Jack looks at me and twitches his jaw. “No, he's not dead. He's…he's just taking some time out.”

I glare at him.

“Listen to me, Sarah. He's not dead. I promise you.”

“But I heard it.
I heard the shot
…I saw you take the gun…”