Berserk (28 page)

He walked quickly toward the patrol car, carrying the gun at his side and not yet aiming it. Last thing he wanted was some vigilante motorist deciding to nudge him into the ditch at eighty miles per hour, and brandishing a gun at a police car in broad daylight beside the motorway would be just the ticket.

The policemen kept their windows up. He didn’t care. On the passenger side he shot out the front tyre, took a few more steps, shot out the rear tyre, and only then did he tap the pistol against the glass. The policeman’s face was inches from the gun and he looked terrified, pale and sweating, his shirt sticking to his chest and shoulders.

“Open!” Cole shouted. He knew they could hear him. “Open up now!” He turned the gun so that it was aiming straight through the glass. The policeman’s eyes opened wide, as if trying to look far enough into the barrel to see the round that would kill him. “Three seconds!” Cole shouted, and the door clicked open.

Cole stepped back and motioned the man out. The policeman climbed from the car and kept his back against it, never once taking his eyes from the pistol.

“Driver, out this side,” Cole said.

“Where’s the baby?” the driver asked. He climbed across the front seats and stood slowly next to his partner. He looked less shaken and more in control, and Cole knew that this was where his trouble could come from.

“In the car, asleep,” he said. “I didn’t know she was in there when I took the car. Now listen, both of you. This has the potential to go very wrong, but I don’t want it to. There’s a simple rule for both of you to remember over the next couple of minutes, and if you do, everything will go down fine: I have a gun, and you don’t.” The driver glanced down at the weapon briefly. His partner’s eyes never left it. “You!” Cole said. The passenger looked up, eyes still wide. “I want you to take off your radio, and your mate’s, and stomp on them.”

“But—”

“Do as he says,” the driver said. “He knows we’ve already called it in.” The passenger did so, crunching the radio attachments into the tarmac. He stood back against the car again, still hardly able to keep his eyes from the pistol aimed at his guts.

“I’m not in the fucking mood for this!” Cole said. He raised the gun, stepped forward and pressed the barrel of the .45 against the passenger’s forehead, hard enough to leave an impression in the skin. The man pissed himself. It was more than Cole could have hoped for. “Feels warm to start with, doesn’t it?” he said. “Warm and unpleasant. You’ll smell it soon. And there’s nothing like the feel of cold piss around your bollocks.”

“No need for that, son,” the driver said. “This doesn’t need to get ugly.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Cole said. For one crazy moment his finger pressed on the trigger. He imagined Roberts standing there before him instead of this unknown copper. He so wanted to put a bullet through the meddling fuck’s brain, blast out all the bullshit he’d lived through these past twenty-four hours: Natasha invading his mind, the mockery, the two women he had killed, and the ghost of one of them that Natasha had haunted him with.

Then he eased back, lowered the gun slightly, sighed. “You, go to the car and get the kid. Back door on this side, away from the road. You do anything other than open the door and take out the baby, I’ll shoot your boss.”

“I never meant to take the kid,” Cole said. “Tell her father that. Tell him to take better care of her. And tell him . . . I’m looking after her. And him. And you two as well, if only you knew it. Now step aside.” He motioned them away from the police car with the gun, leaned in and put several rounds into the dashboard radio, the steering column and the gearbox. The gunshots woke the baby and she started crying again.

“See how you like that,” Cole said. “It’s okay for the first three seconds, then it really starts to piss you off.” He turned to walk back to the Mondeo.

“Son?”

Cole paused. The driver had advanced a couple of steps in front of his crippled patrol car.

“Son, drop it,” he said. “Wait here with us. You can keep hold of the gun, but don’t go driving off again. You do that, and you know how all this will end. You don’t want to be just another item on the news, do you?”

Cole considered for a moment, thinking of the various strands now drawing together somewhere up ahead. Roberts and the waking berserker girl; Lane and Sophia and their kids, probably even now coming out from their hidey-hole to meet them; Major Higgins and whatever military presence he had been able to muster; the police armed response units streaking this way even now; and him, Cole, a murderer with nothing left to live for other than the obsession that had taken his life.

“No,” he said. “No, I have no idea how all this will end.” He walked to the Mondeo, took a few seconds to restock the pistol’s magazine, then drove away.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Natasha had said he was getting warmer. Cole was trusting everything he was doing now on the word of the lying little berserker bitch, and he hated every aspect of that. It was almost four o’clock, and soon the sun would be setting. He didn’t think he could go another night without sleep.

His head still hurt from where Roberts had knocked him out. Since then he had crashed a car, been attacked by Roberts and run over, and his body was not thanking him at all. He supposed he should have accepted the pain as a small price to pay for the bad things he had done that day, but it inconvenienced him, made it more difficult to drive, so he cursed every ache. His thighs, especially the left, were swelling and stiffening, and the longer he sat still in the car the less easy it would be to move when the time came.

“Where are you, you little bitch?” he asked, hoping that she would answer. Nothing.

He drove quickly. There was no point in trying to avoid being pulled over; the police were after him anyway, and the faster he drove the longer it would take for the armed response unit to catch up. Once they were on him it would be over, no way to avoid them, no way to outrun them, and as he’d already shot up a police car they would be taking no chances.

Damn you, Higgins!
If the Major had kept his word and taken Cole along, perhaps they’d already be on Roberts and the girl. Maybe the Major already was. If he had a helicopter and contact with the police, the final battle may already be taking place.
But I
don’t think so,
Cole thought. And not for the first time he wondered just how much information Natasha could pluck out of his head.

* * *

It took ten minutes for the armed response unit to pick him up.

He passed a motorway exit, drove quickly under the overpass and drew level with the entrance ramp when he saw the car streaking down from above. Though unmarked, its speed gave it away, and when Cole looked over he saw two surprised faces peering out. They were evidently as shocked as him.

Both men turned quickly away, and that confirmed Cole’s fears.

He had only had seconds to act. He pressed down on the gas and shot forward, drawing level with the police car as it came down the ramp toward the inside lane. They obviously planned to pull ahead of him and then slow down, perhaps nudge him from the road if he failed to pull over. Cole could not allow that. He had one chance to move on, only one, and that was to disable the armed unit here and now. If he got embroiled in an extended chase there would be others, called in from the surrounding countryside to head him off at the next junction. Cole was a good driver, but he was also realistic; he knew that there was little chance of escaping a police chase.

And if they managed to stop him, he’d likely be shot.

He had seen this done in movies, and it always looked easy. But he was not kidding himself. Making sure his seatbelt was clicked in properly, he drifted across the motorway into the outside lane, looked left without turning his head, saw the police car move onto the motorway and pick up speed. And then he turned sharply to the left and broadsided them.

The impact was shattering. The steering wheel jumped from his hands and turned to the right, jerking him back across the road. He passed between a lorry and a minibus filled with pensioners, staring at him with grey disapproval. Horns blared, brakes screamed, and Cole only just managed to bring the car under control before it barrelled into the central reservation. It skimmed the metal barrier, throwing out sparks and splinters of metal from its front wing. His door buckled inward and punched his leg, and he screamed out loud as the already wounded limb was subjected to more abuse. He looked left and saw that the police car was still there, its side dented and scraped but otherwise unharmed.

The men were looking across at him again, and this time they did not avert their gaze. Cole smiled and turned hard left again.

They were ready this time, and their driver slammed on his brakes. The police car threw up a cloud of smoke as Cole drifted in front of it, and even before he realised what had happened they accelerated and rammed him from behind. He jerked back in his seat, head bouncing from the headrest, and accelerated away, shifting back into the middle lane as the police car pulled up beside him.

Left again, hard, and he caught them by surprise. Perhaps the police driver thought he’d be too shaken to drive straight into them again. Or maybe he had too much faith in his patrol car’s speed. Either way, Cole connected before they could move past him. He kept a tight hold of the wheel this time and twisted it to the left, arms straight, elbows locked, foot pressed to the floor. The sound of tearing metal screamed above the protesting roar of the engine. Wheels juddered as they were torn the wrong way, and the stench of burning rubber filled the car. Glass smashed, cool air whistled in.

The police car ground over the rumble strip between the inside lane and the hard shoulder and kept going. Cole strained left, forcing them further, and a second before their nearside wheels hit the gravel strip beside the road he swung the Mondeo back out onto the motorway. How he did not collide with any other cars he did not know, but he looked in the mirror in time to see the police vehicle throw up a shower of stones as it started to spin. It completed two complete revolutions before a tyre blew and it flipped onto its side.

Cole looked away, concentrating on the road ahead, hoping the men would be able to walk away from the wreck.

Less than a minute later he heard a heavy from outside. He leaned forward and looked up in time to see two Chinook helicopters pass over the motorway from east to west, fast and low and filled with intent.
wukka wukka

“There you are,” he said. He drove on, heart racing, pain from his legs keeping him alert, silently calling to Natasha.

And eventually she answered.

* * *

We need to turn west.

“Is this nearly it? Is it almost over? I can’t be your daddy forever, not like this. You don’t need me forever.”

I need you now. And even if it is only for days, what you’ve done for me will last a lifetime. Just because we may not be together, that doesn’t mean you won’t still be my daddy. Just like you and Steven. You never stopped believing, did you? You never stopped being there for him?

“I still don’t know if Steven is alive or dead.”

Natasha paused again, that telling silence.
We need to turn west.

Tom glanced across at her body beneath the old blanket. She seemed to have shifted slightly as if making herself comfortable, though it could have been the movement of the car shuffling her corpse down in the seat. He had seen her moving, he had listened to her speaking, yet still he found it difficult to believe. “Is Steven as alive as you?” he asked.

I don’t know,
Natasha replied.

Tom turned off at the next exit. The road curved up and away from the motorway and joined an A-road, aiming west toward where the sun was melting into the horizon. He thought of them driving that far – reaching for the sun – and though the idea was foolish it felt right as well. They were heading toward impossibilities. Natasha was leading him out of the world, and he was following willingly. Because however much she said needed
she
him,
Tom knew it was Natasha doing the leading. It always had been. If he turned the car around now and headed back south, he guessed he would be dead from his bullet wound by sunset.

The road curved through the countryside, passing between low hills and bare fields. Trees and hedgerows caught the sun and burned slowly in its dusky glare, their leaves licking at the air with each breeze. Tom loved autumn. It was a time of death and decay, but also a time of survival. Plants shed their flowers and retreated beneath ground for the winter. Squirrels stored nuts in secret caches to see them through the harsh weather. And though dead leaves spiralled down to rot, their cousins would bloom again in a few short months. Autumn was beauty in death, the future in decay. Tom wondered what Natasha thought of it, this autumn that was her spring.