Just when I was expecting to be turned into pavement pizza, the driver stood on the brake pedal hard enough to trip the ABS. As it kicked in, the anti-lock system let out a terrible graunching noise, like a wounded cow, but slewed the vehicle to an effective standstill. I covered my face against the shrapnel burst of small stones scattered in its path.
Garton-Jones’s men didn’t hang around to see if the boy and I were going to be squashed flat. They legged it as soon as the four-by-four started its run. Sprinting away down the alley, vaulting over a rotting fence at the bottom.
They needn’t have worried about being run down. The jeep stopped within a dozen feet of me, but I found I didn’t have the energy to get up. My head was splitting and my back burned. I swallowed, and found the inky tang of blood in my mouth.
The fog swirled like dust in the beam of the lights, blocking my vision of anything much past the big slatted grille. Where the moisture hit the hot radiator, it raised breaths of steam. I vaguely saw both doors opening. Two pairs of booted feet jumped down onto the concrete, moving quickly. One set went straight past me, heading for the boy.
I lifted my head and saw a big dark-coated figure bending next to him. He pulled off his gloves and searched for a pulse under the boy’s jawline. There was something familiar about him, the size, the shape, but placing it defeated me.
I couldn’t see the man’s face, but I read anger in the sudden tensing of his body. Very gently, he worked his arms under the boy’s shoulders and legs, and lifted him clear off the ground easily, as though he were a child. The boy cried out as he was picked up, and the man muttered darkly under his breath.
The second figure approached me, rolling me gingerly onto my back and peering into my face. I was surprised to see a very attractive girl, with long dark hair. She looked startled.
The man stepped round me, intent on getting his burden into the vehicle. The girl jumped up, laying a hand on his arm.
“Wait!” she said sharply. “What about her?”
“Her?” The man hardly paused, dipping his head to flick a single, indifferent glance at my crumpled form. “We don’t have time for complications,” he snapped. “Leave her,” and his voice was cold.
“We can’t just leave her,” the girl argued quietly. “By the looks of it she’s taken a hammering as well. If they come back and find her, you know what they’ll do.”
The man let out his breath in a controlled hiss. “OK, Madeleine, get her in, but hurry up. This place will be crawling any minute.”
Madeleine, bless her, didn’t need telling twice. She hauled me to my feet, draping my arm across her slender shoulders to half-drag me to the jeep and bundle me into the back seat. She slammed the door behind me, and hopped nimbly into the front.
The man loaded the boy in from the other side, lying him sideways across the plush leather bench seat. I ended up with his battered head on my lap.
“Hold tight,” he ordered briefly over his shoulder as he regained the driver’s seat. It threw me for a moment until I realised that the Cherokee was left-hand drive.
He thrust the gear lever into reverse and the four-by-four did its best to pebbledash anything within ten feet of the front end as the tyres bit, firing us backwards. I clutched at the boy to stop him going crashing into the footwell.
The man rocketed through the estate, shooting junctions with a blatant disregard for possible other traffic. A couple of times I saw running figures as Garton-Jones’s men tried once more, in vain, to close off our escape route.
Finally, wrestling with the wheel, he broadsided out onto the main road, causing an oncoming BMW driver to dive for the brakes and the horn. Then we were barrelling along in the direction of Morecambe.
I glanced down at the boy’s face. His eyes were closed, one of them forced shut by the swelling and the other not far behind. The bruising was already starting to show, great blotches of discoloration. His nose was bleeding, but probably not broken. I reckoned the cuts and grazes that covered the left side of his face would mostly heal without scarring.
It was only then, as I studied him in the intermittent waves of illumination from the streetlights, that I recognised the boy as Roger.
It was odd, the emotion that filled me at that moment. Mrs Gadatra had been so emphatic when she’d said he deserved a beating. I wondered if she’d still be so vehement if she could see him now. The idea was one thing, the reality quite another.
I looked up at my rescuers sharply. Who the hell were these two? I remembered O’Bryan saying Roger was one of three, with a brother and a sister. The brother, he’d remarked, was known to be a bit of a hard-case. Hell, I could believe that of this guy.
I wasn’t so sure about his appraisal of the sister, though. The girl in the front seat had that ex-private school look about her. All long bones and good breeding. She didn’t act like a trainee hooker, however you squared it.
“So, where are we going?” It was Madeleine who asked, but if she hadn’t, I probably would have done.
“We need to get him home, get him cleaned up,” the man said, not taking his eyes off the road.
“You want your mum to see him in this state?” she demanded, blowing my sister theory right out of the water. “He needs a doctor.”
“Don’t worry about Mum. Between me and my dear departed Dad, she’s seen plenty of trouble in her time. We’ll get him home, check him out,” he insisted. “The first sign that he’s got internal, I’ll take him straight to the hospital, OK?” He risked a glance across at her then, and for the first time I saw his profile clearly against the lights.
It stopped my breath.
When O’Bryan had told me Roger’s surname, I thought he’d said Mayor, but I’d been wrong. It was Meyer. And he had an older brother, all right, who’d fallen in with a rough crowd, and had moved away.
He’d joined the army, for which he’d been perfectly psychologically and physically suited. He’d excelled as a soldier, quickly making sergeant. Eventually he’d become a training instructor on one of the toughest courses devised by the military.
I know, because I was there.
I’d loved him, and he’d betrayed me. Dropped me to the wolves and left me to be ripped to pieces by them alone. Once the news of our affair had broken, and the press had turned on me, that love had withered, died, and rotted into hatred.
Sean Meyer was a name from my past that I’d hoped never to hear again in this lifetime, let alone come face-to-face with its owner . . .
Had he recognised me? He’d certainly been watching the estate, keeping tabs on his younger brother. I thought he’d been aiming for Garton-Jones that night when he’d nearly run us down, but it could just as easily have been me.
Leave her. With a shudder I remembered his words back there in the alleyway. If it wasn’t for Madeleine, whoever she was, I’d still be there, with the hard-liners from Streetwise Securities using me as a surrogate punchbag. Venting their frustration that their real victim had got away.
Still, Sean was damned good at abandoning people when they needed him.
Now, he veered the Cherokee off the main road, ducking through half a dozen dark and empty back streets, veiled by the fog. I watched his eyes keep flicking to the rear-view mirror, constantly checking for any sign of pursuit. I suppose it was inevitable that eventually he’d have the chance to take a proper look at me.
And as soon as he did, he knew.
How could he not?
I saw the eyes widen. He jumped like he’d been shot, and stamped on the brakes, twisting round in his seat to stare at me directly, as though the mirror might have lied. Madeleine gasped as she was thrown forwards and the inertia jammed her seatbelt. I nearly lost hold of Roger’s still-unconscious body.