‘You fucked up,’ I told the Serb, hoping to undermine the fragile confidence of youth with a bit of honest-to-goodness sledging, ‘should have done the tyres in our car first, a schoolboy would have known that. Now my guy is after you and he’s going to kill you.’
‘Shut up!’ he ordered, but I could tell I’d planted some uncertainty. He should have done our car. ‘Keep driving,’ he told me, then looked back behind us through the gap in the seats where he could see Peter swiftly gaining on us.
‘Go faster,’ he ordered and I stepped on the throttle.
‘Where do you think you are taking me?’
‘Edinburgh,’ and the word came out as a mangled eastern European version because he couldn’t pronounce the name of the city his bosses were trying to take over, ‘I am taking you to Dusan Stevic.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ I said, pressing the accelerator down further, ‘I won’t let you take me there to be sliced up by that fucking animal. No way.’
‘Then you will die now,’ he told me confidently.
‘So will you at this speed,’ I informed him, ‘that was your second mistake; letting me drive. You can blow my brains out now if you like but at ninety-five miles an hour I wouldn’t give much for your chances of walking away from the wreckage and, even if you did, my guy will be waiting for you. He’ll make you wish you hadn’t lived.’
‘Shut up and drive,’ he hissed, but I could tell he was seriously rattled now.
‘You should have had a partner,’ I informed him, ‘that’s how you are supposed to do this kind of thing. It’s a two-man job; one to drive and the other to hold the gun on the guy you are lifting. Not done this before, have you? I can tell. Shame it’s not the kind of work where you get to learn from your mistakes.’
‘You just drive,’ he said and all the while he was watching Peter’s progress as the Merc gained ground on our Beemer and was inching closer and closer.
‘Faster!’ he ordered and I did as I was told, edging the car up above a hundred miles an hour. I had to be a bit careful as the road has two lanes and the slow lane attracts late-night casual drivers and lorries.
‘I’ve just realised,’ I told the young Serb, ‘he doesn’t know you’re here does he? Dusan Stevic doesn’t know you’re doing this. He’s not going to agree to a one-man op with an inexperienced guy like you? So that’s means you’re doing this on your own, to make a name for yourself, but there’s an expression over here, son, “don’t walk before you can run”. I’m sure you understand its meaning.’
I’d obviously got to him because I got another smack in the side of the head which knocked me off balance and I couldn’t see for a moment. The car lurched to the left, crossing into the slow lane before I could wrestle it back. I could barely see, but when my vision cleared, I heard the Serb swear and I became aware of something big and black up ahead — the arse-end of a huge lorry. The Serb swore again and I wrenched the wheel to the right. The front end of our car missed the lorry by millimetres. Somehow I managed to straighten the car and continue when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Peter in the Merc. He’d taken advantage of our near miss and managed to accelerate forward till he drew up alongside us in the slow lane. I could see him snarling and mouthing obscenities at the Serb, whose reaction was to wind down the window and produce the gun. Just as he was about to fire at Peter from point-blank range, my bodyguard braked and we shot past him, the bullet harmlessly hitting the bushes.
Peter eased the car back until he was behind us, then moved right up close. The young Serb twisted in his seat and aimed his gun back at him through the rear window. I accelerated some more and jiggled the steering wheel just as he fired. He cursed in his native language as the back window disintegrated in a shower of glass, but the bullets missed their target. Peter was still behind us.
The Serb was ranting now; at Peter, at me, at his inability to hit the target and I knew I wouldn’t get away with another manoeuvre like that last one. I was haring down the road at a hundred and ten miles an hour with Peter in mad pursuit, desperately trying to think of a way out of this and then I had a moment of clarity; a realisation that everything I’d said was true. This guy was a lone gun who was trying to make a reputation and he’d fucked it up. He couldn’t shoot me because he’d die seconds later. There was no way we were going to have a protracted car chase with a shoot-out on an A-road in England, no matter how quiet it was. The police would soon hear what was going on and they’d be after us, but I still couldn’t rely on a good outcome if that happened. All of a sudden I got angry. Who did this little fuck think he was to come after me on his own?
I floored the car, taking it up to a hundred and twenty miles an hour. There were no other vehicles on this stretch of road. I waited until he fired again, sending a round into the Merc which forced Peter to slam the anchors on and pull back. The young Serb was turned around in his seat, holding his gun in both hands and levelling it again for what he must have dearly hoped would be the final shot, when I reached out with my left hand and pressed the red button by the side of his seat. He didn’t hear it over the din of the roaring engine, but he sensed something had changed and he turned to look at me as his seat belt loosened and slid away from him. I slammed on the brakes with all my force and the car juddered like it had suddenly hit a brick wall. The Serb didn’t even have time to let out a cry. Instead he was flung forwards, his back striking the dashboard with great force, but it wasn’t enough to break his forward momentum and he went straight through the windscreen, head first.
Cars aren’t designed to make an emergency stop at a hundred and twenty miles an hour and this one was no exception. It went into a slide, then a spin and turned a whole three-sixty degrees, while I tried to ignore the searing pain across my chest from my seat belt, the whiplash I was already feeling in my neck and back and the shock of the driver’s airbag exploding in my face. All I could do was hold on tight like this was a fairground ride that would eventually stop. Then I crashed hard into the metal barrier of the central reservation.
Peter dragged me out of the wreckage. The car had done its bit by crumpling in all of the right places and I was pulled free, feeling like every piece of me had been punched hard, but I was alive. It was the only thing that mattered; that and the fact that the young Serb was lying motionless in the middle of the road way back behind me, his body twisted unnaturally. I’m certain he was already dead when he bounced off the road but Peter’s car going over him at speed removed any lingering doubt.
As Peter got me out of the car, he retained the presence of mind to wipe the steering wheel, gear stick, handbrake and door handles, to remove any of my prints. He carried me to the car and we drove out of there fast, before anyone could come along and link me to the tragic accident, which saw a poor young man somehow lose control of his vehicle, before crashing through his windscreen and drawing his final breath against the cold tarmac of the A-road.
32
When we got back I called Palmer and he told me there was no deal with the Stevic brothers. We were using pay-as-you-go mobiles so I took a risk and told him about the young Serb’s attempt to lift me and take me to Dusan. He heard me out and agreed it was probably an unsanctioned operation. ‘They don’t need to kill you,’ he said, ‘they’re bedding in, taking over the territory, inch by inch.’
I was in a fair bit of pain from the crash, but pretty sure nothing was broken, and I could arrange to be seen by a friendly doctor in the morning. In the interim, I could dull the pain with booze. I crashed at our hotel again. The next morning I drove home, parked up and took my bruised and battered body inside. Every step was an effort. Sarah and Joanne were sitting in the living room together while Emma played with her toys on the floor. I walked over, picked up my little girl and gave her a kiss. Sarah just looked at me, not mentioning my bruised face, waiting for me to say something.