No Going Back (23 page)

‘Um . . . I dropped him off at Ryan's yesterday about six o'clock.'

‘And what time did he leave there?'

‘He was only there about half an hour. Julia – Ryan's mum – says she offered him tea, but he said he couldn't stay. So if he set off then, he could easily have got to you last night.'

‘
If
he was coming here.' Daniel sincerely hoped he hadn't while there was any possibility that Macek might be about. The thought made his blood run cold.

‘But he must have done. Where else would he go?' Amanda's voice rose with incipient panic. ‘And why hasn't he rung me?'

‘I don't know.' Daniel started the lorry again, thinking hard. ‘Perhaps he's out of credit. You've tried ringing
him
, I suppose?'

‘Of course I have! It was the first thing I did. He's not answering. All I get is the stupid answerphone message.'

‘OK. Look, try and stay calm. I'm heading for home now. I'll be there in fifteen minutes or so. Have a word with this Ryan – he may well know more than he's telling – and why don't you ring all Drew's other friends and see if they remember him talking about going anywhere or doing anything different.'

‘I've already rung everyone I can think of. He hasn't got all that many close friends.' Amanda drew in a shuddering breath, struggling for control. ‘Please find him, Daniel.'

‘If he's here, I will,' Daniel promised. ‘Try not to panic. There's probably some perfectly innocent explanation. Or he may even be trying to frighten us.'

‘Why? Why would he do that?'

‘Because he doesn't think we're listening to him, perhaps? I don't know. I'll call you as soon as I get to the flat, OK?'

Before he set off, Daniel tried both Drew's mobile and the landline to his own flat with no success, and was aware of a rising sense of foreboding. Was Drew there, perhaps looking at the phone, wondering whether he should answer it? Or had he been there and run into the Romanian? In spite of his soothing words to Amanda, Daniel was deeply worried.

Putting through a call to the office to warn Fred of the unavoidable delay in proceedings, Daniel pulled out round the parked minibus on to a blessedly clear road, accelerating hard to make the last few yards of the climb before beginning the downhill run to the main road.

Driven by anxiety, Daniel let the truck run on down the hill, allowing the engine do its own braking until he neared the first of the bends at the bottom. Here, the road swung first right, then sharply left before rising over a humpbacked bridge and running straight towards the junction with the A-road some 200 yards further on.

After three months of driving for the company, Daniel knew this first stretch of road like the back of his hand. He knew the way the camber tipped the wrong way for a short distance as it neared the first bend, knew the sunken drain that made the suspension drop and the bodywork rattle, knew exactly where he needed to start braking in order to negotiate the S-bend safely.

Worrying about Drew, he was driving on autopilot as he swung round the first bend and barely registered a flicker of movement in the field that bordered the road, but he snapped back to full attention when, with a report like a shotgun discharging, the truck lurched and veered sharply towards the hedge.

‘Shit!'

He had a full load in the trailer, was doing close to 50 miles an hour on a downhill slope just yards from a right-angle bend, and he was pretty sure his near front tyre had blown out. Add to that a road running with rain and it was incredible how it concentrated the mind. In a flash his concern about Drew was totally overridden by the business of self-preservation.

Instinctively, Daniel's foot hit the brake pedal for an instant before he recollected the danger of doing so. There was a scream of tortured rubber as the heavy trailer pushed forward and the remaining good tyres lost traction. With another oath, he lifted his foot again, steering into the skid.

The weight of the full load started to jack-knife the whole vehicle, causing it to snake first one way and then the other. Battling to keep the lorry on the road, Daniel knew there was no way he was going to be able to navigate the second bend and the likely outcome of trying would be to hit the hump of the bridge, become airborne and plough through the low wall into the river below.

Daniel had always had a cool head in a tight spot, and if ever he needed a cool head, he needed it now.

Wrestling with the juddering steering wheel and a trailer that seemed hell-bent on overtaking the cab, he scanned the way ahead for somewhere he could safely run the lorry off the road. Not that he had any illusions that he'd get off scot-free: in the circumstances, it was a case of damage limitation.

He focused on an old wooden farm gate on the outside of the bend. It was a slim chance, but it was probably the only one he had.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taz start to sit up, aware that something was wrong, and shouted, ‘Lie down!' not looking to see if he'd obeyed. The lorry was zigzagging to and fro across the double white lines in the centre of the road and it was taking all his concentration and skill just to keep it on the tarmac.

When the bend was only yards away, he realized that even for a vehicle under full control, the target gateway was at an impossible angle. Worse still, a line of three cars was approaching the bridge from the other direction, completely unconscious of the impending disaster thundering towards them.

Rapidly estimating the speed and distance, Daniel took the only option open to him. There was no way he could make the turn and stay on his side of the road, and the oncoming cars weren't moving fast enough to pass him before he reached the corner, so he gritted his teeth, floored the accelerator and leaned on the horn. Under acceleration some of the weight lifted from the damaged tyre and Daniel was able to hold a fairly straight course that he hoped would take him clear across the opposite carriageway and through the hedge before the first of the cars came over the bridge.

It did, but only just.

There was a resounding bang from the suspension as the truck hit the grassy bank on the outside of the bend and the impact jarred the whole vehicle. All at once the windscreen was filled with a tangle of twigs and branches as the lorry's speed carried it inexorably forward through the bare winter hedge. Instinctively, Daniel closed his eyes as the glass starred and shattered, showering over him in a rush of cold air.

For a split second, it felt as though the whole truck was airborne, tipping crazily in the air before touching down – right wheels first – and bouncing uncomfortably back to square.

Daniel opened his eyes to see not heavy, wheel-dragging plough – as he'd hoped, but a grassy slope leading relentlessly downhill to the river. The bank and hedge had taken the edge off their speed, but it wasn't enough to stop the lorry completely, and the slope fed their momentum.

If it hadn't been for Taz, Daniel would have considered baling out of the runaway vehicle at that point, but instead he stayed put, standing on the brakes and fighting to turn the truck right-handed on to rising ground.

It was a losing battle. The cab turned, but on the soft marshy turf of the river meadow the heavy trailer kept sliding sideways, heading ever closer to the water.

The end came sooner than Daniel expected. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as, with maybe 20 feet to go, the vehicle hit a ridge, tipped on its nearside wheels and then toppled on to its side with a deafening, booming thud.

Held by his seatbelt, Daniel found himself suspended in mid-air, staring worriedly down at Taz, who'd been tipped on to his back and was even now struggling to his feet among the loose debris of the cab, panic in his eyes. Beyond him, reedy grass pressed against the glass of the passenger side window, and by the streamlined direction of its stalks and the horrendous rattling vibrations all around him, Daniel could tell that they were still slowly sliding. The engine had stalled and his ears were full of the groaning, shrieking sound of tortured metal.

His mind was racing. How near was the riverbank, and which way up would the cab be if and when it hit the water? It would sink rapidly, that was for sure, with so much weight in the back.

His fingers fumbled at his waist to release the seatbelt, but then paused. The dog had found his feet and was crouching now, ears flattened and eyes darting every which way in terror.

If Daniel released the belt while Taz remained beneath him, there was every chance he would land on the dog.

‘Taz, go! Get out!' he yelled and, after an initial hesitation, was relieved to see him leap out through the shattered windscreen and away.

Even as the dog made it to safety, Daniel realized the lorry had stopped moving. With a few residual creaks and twangs, it came to rest with dirty water pooling under the glass that Taz had been standing on.

Taking a firm grip on the inner handle of the driver's door with his right hand, Daniel tried to support his bodyweight while he reached down with the other to deploy the release mechanism for the belt. After a short struggle, the clip opened and his weight dropped abruptly, almost jerking his right arm out of its socket.

Moments later, he had followed Taz through the smashed screen and was standing on blessedly solid ground. Taking a few quick steps to distance himself from the overturned vehicle, he was assailed by the dog, leaping around in joy at the return to normality. Daniel could sympathize. It had been a close call in so many ways. Just
how
close he was brought to realize when he walked round the cab and saw the riverbank and the fast-flowing brown water less than 4 feet from the roof of the truck.

Walking back round the lorry, he stood staring at the unfamiliar gritty black underside, now running with dirty water and decorated with lumps of grassy mud.

Daniel gazed thoughtfully at what he could see of the nearside front wheel, now under the cab and pressed into the soft ground. The tyre was a mess, ragged and twisted off the rim. He shook his head in wonderment at his lucky escape. Blow-outs were unusual with the construction of modern tyres, but with lorry tyres under five or six times the pressure of the average car tyre, when they did go, the failure was inevitably catastrophic, a fact to which a number of dead tyre-fitters could have testified, had they been able. In his early days as a police officer, Daniel had once attended a scene at a garage where the unlucky mechanic had been blown clear up to the ceiling when a lorry tyre exploded.

A shout came from the direction of the road and Daniel looked up to see half a dozen people climbing through the newly made gap in the hedge.

Daniel waved both hands and shook his head to indicate that there was no need to come down, but predictably they all kept coming, full of ghoulish curiosity and not about to pass up the chance for a closer look.

‘Stay close,' he told the dog, and with more people appearing at the top of the field, and the vanguard less than 20 yards away, he took his phone from his pocket and called the TFS office once more.

Fred answered almost immediately. ‘Daniel. What's up? Have you heard from Drew?'

‘Er . . . no, not yet. I'm afraid there's been an accident.'

‘A bad one?'

‘Bad enough.' Daniel outlined what had happened and told his boss where he was. ‘Another couple of yards and we'd have been in the river,' he finished.

‘Bloody hell! You don't do things by halves, do you? But you're OK?'

‘Yeah, we're fine.'

‘Right. I'll be there directly. Have you called the police?'

‘Not yet, but I'm sure someone has. I seem to have become the Eighth Wonder of the World.'

He returned the phone to his pocket as the first of the sightseers reached the lorry and his attention was immediately claimed by an aggressive-looking, stocky man of about forty, who was almost running in his determination to have the first say. However, his charge faltered a little as he took in the size of Taz.

Dressed in a suit, the legs of which were now liberally splattered with mud, the man had a shaved head and a neck that bulged a little over a too-tight collar. ‘Fuckin' hell, mate!' he shouted, coming to a halt a few feet away. ‘You nearly fuckin' killed me! What the hell were you playing at?'

Daniel had a feeling that if the dog hadn't been there, the man would have come right up and got physical. Taz obviously thought so too, because he emitted a low, rumbling growl.

Because he knew that shock takes people in different ways, Daniel took a deep breath and replied calmly, ‘I'm sorry. My tyre blew out. There was nothing I could do.'

‘You nearly ran me off the bloody road!' the man persisted, stabbing the air with an angry forefinger, apparently unwilling to relinquish the idea that Daniel was somehow culpable.

Taz growled again, the decibels rising, and the man eyed him nervously.

‘You keep a hold of that fuckin' dog!' he warned, subsiding a little as two or three others gathered round.

‘Are you all right? You were bloody lucky!' one of the newcomers observed, gesturing at the river.

Daniel nodded. ‘I'm fine, thanks.'

‘
He
was lucky? What about me? Nearly fuckin' killed me with that bloody lorry!' the angry man complained. ‘I'm gonna call the police,' he added, taking out his mobile.

Daniel was tired of him. ‘Good idea. Go ahead,' he suggested, but it seemed that at least two other people had already done so.

There were some fifteen or twenty people in the field now, some crowding round Daniel as if he were the star attraction at a freak show, and others exclaiming over the lorry. One or two were taking pictures of it on mobile phones. It would probably be splashed across the Internet before the day was out, Daniel thought resignedly. It was the kind of publicity Fred's company could well do without.

The reaction to his near-miss had left him feeling decidedly shaky and he walked a little way from the gathering, who were by now finding him poor value, and sat down to await the arrival of Bowden. When he saw him hurrying down the slope a couple of minutes later, he stood up and went to meet him.