She spun around.
There — standing on the corner, twenty feet away, where the road played host to another row of crumbling warehouses. It was the man in the corduroy jacket. The one who’d been outside the cottage this morning. The one who’d got away.
Not this time.
7
There was no way the scumbag didn’t know she’d seen him. And even though he had to be at least a decade older than she was, they both knew he was faster.
On foot, anyway.
Lucy yanked open her car door and jumped in behind the wheel. She cranked the engine into life and floored it. No time to waste fastening her seatbelt. Working up through the gears. Unleashing the mighty Kia’s sixty-one brake horsepower as the engine roared like an angry chihuahua and the seatbelt-warning chimes rang out.
The man in the corduroy jacket ran for it, but not away from Lucy, towards her.
She slammed on the brakes, bracing herself against the wheel when momentum tried to evict her through the windscreen. But by the time the Kia had slithered to a halt, he was past. In the wing mirror, his reflection sprinted around the corner out of sight.
‘BASTARD!’
She hauled the steering wheel around and slammed the car into reverse, setting the nose dipping as the tyres screeched on setts. Rising out of her seat. Swinging the whole thing around, then slapping it into first and putting her foot down again. Acceleration shoving her into the upholstery.
Maybe a seatbelt wasn’t a bad idea after all?
She wrestled with it, one-handed — giving up when she hit the corner. Yanking the Kia around to the left, back end kicking out. More squealing tyres.
He was already a third of the way down the street and still going strong.
Jesus, that guy could run.
She hauled the steering wheel over, correcting the slide, then shoved the accelerator down hard, making the whole car thrrrrrrrrrrrummm across the uneven setts. OK, she definitely had him now.
Lucy pulled her phone out, holding it up at eye level. Well, she was already breaking the speed limit and not wearing a seatbelt, so what was one more road-traffic offence? Jabbing her thumb at the screen, unlocking it and—
‘SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!’
A forklift truck wheeched backwards out of an open garage, front loaded down with a large black plastic crate, nearly as big as her whole car.
The Kia’s tyres wailed again as she hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel to one side, her phone hand banging down on the horn and getting an apologetic whreeeeeep for its troubles.
Whoever was driving the forklift brought it to a juddering halt, swinging a fist in her direction as she roared by. It had the middle finger extended.
Couldn’t return the favour, not without dropping her phone, so a heartfelt ‘AND YOU!’ would just have to do.
Up ahead, the guy in corduroy took a sharp left, ducking into a narrow ginnel between a dodgy-looking workshop and a dodgier-looking printer’s. And there was no way even something as small as her Kia would get down it.
‘ARRRRRRRRRRGH!’ Lucy slammed the brake pedal to the carpet and the car skidded to a stop. She scrambled out, legging it across the pavement and into the gloomy narrow alley.
Cold wrapped its pale-blue tentacles around her.
She sped up into a proper full-on sprint, ginnel walls flashing by dark and damp on either side, speckled with green — doubt the sun ever made it this far — her Cuban heels clattering along, echoing back from those slimy bricks.
Where the hell was he?
A bunch of rusty leaflet-display stands sagged against one wall, abandoned and empty. Probably dumped there by whatever lazy scumbag ran the printer’s.
A much narrower alley branched off to the right, behind the small forest of discarded stands, not much wider than her shoulders. That had to be the way he’d gone.
She barely slowed for the turn, heels skittering as she grabbed the corner to swing herself into the constricted space. Sped up again.
There he was — right ahead of her, disappearing through a grimy black door marked ‘WIŚNIEWSKI DOBRE MIĘSO ~ TYLKO PRACOWNICY!’
Lucy surged forwards and barged through the same door, exploding into a large room, about the size of a tennis court, lined with stainless-steel panels. The tables and workbenches were stainless steel too — laden down with huge chunks of meat. Carcases hung from the ceiling on some weird track system. Brown tiles on the floor. And a lot of large burly men and women staring at her. All dressed in white from the hairnets and hats on their heads to the wellies on their feet. Blood-smeared aprons and butchers’ jackets. And every single one of them wielded a massive knife, cleaver, or saw.
The whole place reeked of iron and fat and sweat.
The nearest woman slammed what looked like half a lamb down on the tabletop in front of her, setting it ringing like Satan’s dinner gong. ‘Hej! Tutaj nie można wchodzić!’
Someone else joined in. ‘Tylko pracownicy, ty głupia suko!’
A fat man, slicing his way through a knee joint, jabbed his knife at her. ‘Wynoś się stąd! To nie higieniczne!’
No sign of the guy in the corduroy jacket.
Lucy hauled out her warrant card. ‘POLICE! What is it... POLICJA! There was a man came through here — where is he?’
Almost as one, they dropped eye contact, shuffled their wellies, and went back to butchering meat.
‘Come on: he was right in front of me! Where did he go?’
No reply.
‘WHERE DID HE BLOODY GO?’
A door at the side of the stainless-steel room battered open, and in shuffled another man, all dressed in white, hat clenched in his stained hands, bald head shining in the strip lights. Eyes lowered. Voice heavily accented and dripping with deference. ‘Proszę... please, we do not want to have trouble, here. I have papers for everyone. Good papers. Proper papers. No one is being illegal.’
‘Oh, for GOD’S SAKE!’ Lucy kicked the nearest table leg and a muffled clang reverberated through the room, making everyone flinch.
He must’ve gone somewhere.
A walk-in fridge or freezer was built into the wall opposite the office. But when Lucy clacked over there and hauled it open, there was nothing inside but pork, lamb, and beef. Carcases suspended from hooks, boxes of meat on shelves. No man in a corduroy jacket.
There had to be another door — one the meat got delivered through. That manky ginnel round the back couldn’t be the only way in and out. Fire regulations would never allow it.
‘You.’ She pointed at the man from the office, now working his cap around and around in his podgy fingers. ‘Where’s the main entrance?’
He let go with one hand and pointed at the far corner, where an opening was covered with wide plastic strips.
‘Thank you. You’ve been so helpful.’
The man actually smiled at that, as if she’d been serious. ‘Cała przyjemność po mojej stronie.’
She shoved her way through the plastic strips — thick and clammy against her skin — into a small loading bay, with steps leading down to Plouviez Road.
Lucy stepped out onto the narrow pavement, glasses fogging up as they hit the warmer outside air.
By the time she’d wiped them on her stripy top there was no sign of the guy she’d been chasing. Not up the street, nor down it. He’d gone.
Let’s face it, he’d had plenty of time while she’d been dicking about trying to get someone in the meat plant to help her. Could be in Dundee by now.