Chapter 5 #2
Tufty did the same, and the driver of a plumber’s van had to jam on his brakes to avoid becoming a hood ornament.
The Labrador watched Branston whoosh by – tongue flapping like a soggy windsock – unperturbed by the whole near-death experience.
Looked as if a couple of wee boys on their bikes, slowly rolling across the entrance to Gordon Brae, weren’t going to be so lucky.
Tufty thumped the horn and the siren ponk-honked, but instead of hurrying out of the way, the idiots rolled to a stop and stared at the ice-cream van barrelling towards them.
Jesus, this was going to be a complete blood—
At the last moment, Mr FreezyWhip screeched hard left, almost losing control as the van skewed up onto two wheels . . . then thudded down again – shimmying its way along the heat-rippled tarmac, following the river.
Tufty hauled the police van around the same corner, past grubby grey boxes and monolithic tower blocks on one side; trees, scrubland, and the ever-steepening slope down to the swollen River Don on the other.
Logan checked the rear-view mirror.
The kids just shrugged and cycled on, as if they hadn’t been moments away from knowing what steak tartare felt like.
Now that they were on the straight, the police van’s bigger engine was closing the gap.
Steel thumbed the Airwave’s button again. ‘Still on Gordon’s Mills Road. Heading west now. Repeat: west!’
Down to the right, sunlight flared off the river, strobing through gaps between the trees and bushes. A slab of Communist-grey flats on the left.
Getting closer.
And closer.
Mr WhippyFreeze swung out, clipping the edge of a speed lump, sending up a shower of sparks from whatever part of its undercarriage clipped the raised patch on the way down again.
Tyres shrieking as MacGarioch went hard left, leaving a scorched-rubber graffiti tag behind, into a quiet residential street – nice little semi-detached bungalows, with steeply pitched roofs and dormer windows. Neat wee gardens. Hatchback country.
Tufty barely made the turn, coming within a pube’s width of ending the chase buried axle-deep in a VW Polo.
Steel grabbed the seatback, steadying herself as they raced after the ice-cream van. ‘South on Donbank Terrace!’
A groan from Barrett. ‘We’re all going to die, aren’t we.’
As the road climbed the hill, it narrowed, parked cars crowding in on both sides. Because, shockingly enough, it hadn’t been designed with high-speed pursuits in mind.
Steel poked Logan’s shoulder. ‘Who’re the useless tits in the bunnets?’
A Volvo’s wing mirror burst in a shower of glass-and-plastic shrapnel as Mr FreezyWhip clipped it.
Logan flinched as the debris clattered against the police van’s windscreen. ‘Don’t know – they’re DS Marshall’s.’
Up ahead, the ice-cream van performed a perfect drift around onto Don Street.
‘Well, why aren’t they . . .’ Her eyes went wide.
And so did everyone else’s.
Then screams rang out as Tufty rammed on the brakes to avoid whanging straight into an delivery truck. The police van shuddered and skidded, nose dipping.
Barrett was right: they were all going to die.
Logan grabbed Branston in a double-armed hug, cos the silly hairy sod wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and this was going to be sudden, violent, and messy . . .
He closed his eyes, bracing for impact, only to be hurled against the passenger door as Tufty spun the wheel and accelerated after Mr FreezyWhip again.
How the hell did he pull that one off?
Logan peeled one eye open, and there was Branston, looking a little confused at the sudden bout of physical attention, but happy enough to go along with it.
Granite bungalows lined the right side of the road, but the ground disappeared on the left – down a steep embankment to the railway line, with more grey-and-beige houses beyond.
A blue-and-yellow Scotrail train clattered along the track in a smoky diesel drone, heading for the city centre.
The passengers staring out the windows as the police van rocketed past. Some even waved.
Steel swallowed, no doubt glad to still be alive, given she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt either.
‘North on Don Street.’ She gave herself a little shake and poked a badge number into her Airwave’s keypad, snarling into the microphone.
‘Biohazard, you useless glob of titspunk! If I don’t see your uniforms in their patrol cars right now, I’m jamming my boot so far up your arse I can use your nostrils for lace holes! ’
Barrett sniffed. ‘That’s another—’
‘I don’t care!’
The road veered right, and so did Tufty, nearly clipping a green Clio. More bungalow semis on the right, terraced wee one-up-one-downs on the left, both reaching off down the hill, back towards the river.
Mr FreezyWhip had grown his lead again, while they were dicking about, almost dying in the fiery wreckage of a side-on collision with the van, and now MacGarioch was whizzing downhill, towards what looked suspiciously like a dead end and trees.
The default ringtone blared out of Logan’s phone – Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 9’ – and he let go of Branston long enough to check the caller display: ‘CHIEF SUPT. PINE’.
Yeah. Maybe not.
The ‘Ode To Joy’ went on and on and on and on . . . Clashing with the siren.
Up ahead, Mr FreezyWhip’s brake lights glowed, tyres leaving snaking lines of black behind as the ice-cream van slid sideways into a messy four-way junction, causing a taxi to swerve bang into a lamp-post.
It probably would’ve been easier going right, onto Gordon’s Mills Road again and back the way they’d come, or first left and up onto Don Terrace, but instead Charles MacGarioch took the second left, roaring away down into the darkness between the trees.
‘Ha!’ Steel banged the back of Logan’s seat. ‘Got the bastard now! We—’
Screaming belted out from the back of the van, yells of terror from the front, as Tufty tried to make the same turn – passenger-side wheels bouncing over the weird sticky-out chunk of pavement that protruded beyond the end of Don Street.
The whole van parted company with the ground: going airborne, an Unintended Flying Object heading straight for a flimsy set of bright-orange, temporary, plastic barriers and a fifty/sixty-foot plummet into the river beyond.