The Vacant Casualty (15 page)

‘That sounds like the best of both worlds. Why would she leave me, exactly?’

‘Because you’d be an alcoholic.’

With apparent insouciance, as though it had nothing to do with what Sam had just said and without finishing his mouthful of food, Bradley took an unfeasibly large gulp from his nearest pint and
spilt splashes of it down either side of his chin. Then he coughed and had to hold a hand over his mouth to prevent himself from throwing up.

Watching him, Sam felt queasy to realize he had the insider knowledge that a true alcoholic would not be so reckless as to spill any of his drink. He swiftly downed a whisky to quell the
thought.

‘You could be a drug addict too,’ he went on, ‘but alcoholic will probably cover it. Along with the booze and the stress, you’d eventually get depression as well.
Sorry.’

Bradley didn’t seem to be completely won over by this suggestion, but manfully continued to plough through his several remaining drinks.

‘There’s a good chance you’ll also get shot in the line of duty,’ said Sam. ‘But on the bright side, you’ll almost certainly survive, and what’s more
have a rather sexy scar or limp to go with the story.’

‘I’m still not completely convinced,’ said Bradley, giving the younger man a sceptical look. ‘I think a lot of what you’re saying might be hyperbollocks.’

‘No, you haven’t – you don’t understand that word . . .’

‘I mean, you wonder why anyone wants to be a detective at all, don’t you?’

‘Less of that. You’re earthy, but soulful,’ said Sam. ‘If you are prone to introspection of any kind, it would be expressed with inarticulate rage.’

Bradley chewed his food and looked depressed.

‘There you go,’ said Sam. ‘You’re getting it just right. There’s one final thing, but it’s the most important of all.’

‘Okay,’ said the detective, putting down his knife and fork, and listening as intently and hopelessly as a student at his first lesson in a foreign language.

‘Above all, you
always
go with your hunch, understand? You have an intuition that’s often not supported by the evidence and you’re going to follow it no matter what,
even if it means going against all suggestions from other people. That is what makes a great fictional detective.’

‘Maybe that’s enough for me to remember just now,’ said Bradley, finishing yet another pint and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. His eyes were starting to swim.
‘Let’s talk about it later.’

‘Would you like to see the dessert menu, gentlemen?’ asked a barmaid.

‘God damn it, I’m not taking no for an answer!’ hollered Bradley, pointing at her.

‘I think we should leave,’ said Sam.

‘W
HERE THE FUCK
’
S
my car?’ said Bradley as they came back out into the car park.

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Sam. ‘You’re not driving anywhere.’

‘I can drive. I can drive anywhere,’ slurred Bradley.

‘Of course you can’t. You can’t even stand up straight.’

‘Fuck
you
!’

‘That’s my boy. Come on, I’ll call a cab. I need to get back to Fraxbridge soon if I’m going to find anywhere to stay.’

The taxi arrived fifteen minutes later and they got in, Sam extracting directions from Bradley after only a few exasperatingly long minutes’ interrogation, which he seemed to take as a
further part of the test for being a real detective.

The taxi wound through the dark lanes, lulling Bradley towards sleep.

‘Hey, Detective, don’t nod off! I need instructions from you,’ said Sam, but he gave up, deciding he’d wake Bradley when the lights of the town came into sight. He let
his thoughts drift for a while, trying to think of other detective movie clichés he could use to confuse Bradley even further, before he realized they were driving uphill. Surely Fraxbridge
was downhill, he thought, in the other direction . . .

As his suspicions began to grow he looked at the back of the taxi driver’s head. They had not exchanged two words since they’d got in, Bradley eventually having stated their
destination before slumping onto Sam’s shoulder. Shaking off his own slight drunkenness, Sam saw that it was not the middle-aged man he would have expected, but in profile the driver was both
female and definitely not young. He smelt the cigar smoke and saw the glowing tip as she puffed on her cheroot. He had just alarmingly concluded that they were being driven by a denizen of the
granny mafia and was beginning to wonder where they might be going when they pulled into a car park near the top of the Hill.

Situated all round the edge of the car park, chillingly, were all the Austin Allegros, Citroën 2CVs and other granny cars that he had seen in the pub car park, except they were now many
more in number. All their lights were ablaze, giving the surrounding night a deeper blackness and the tarmac surface the appearance of a floodlit sports pitch.

He urgently shook Bradley awake, who came to consciousness, slurring, ‘Stick it on account, would you, taxpayer can pick this up . . .’ and frowned bad-temperedly at Sam’s
efforts to keep him quiet.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘Your destination, gentlemen,’ said their elderly driver, releasing the doors, which Sam hadn’t realized had been auto-locked. He got out and pulled Bradley after him.

‘No charge,’ said their driver, puffing on her cigar and pulling away just fast enough so that the door shut itself, before reversing into the only space on the other side of the car
park and completing a wall of motors facing them down.

‘There’s my car,’ said Bradley, starting forward. ‘Nice one!’ But Sam grabbed his hand and held him back.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you seen them?’ He pointed at the bright lights, and slowly Bradley noticed the sound of revving motors. They were clearly standing at
what had been designated a natural beauty spot, in a car park laid out so that tourists could look down over the valley from this high point. Bradley’s car had been left by the fence right at
the edge, above a sharp drop. He tried to shake off Sam’s grip, but Sam held him even tighter, and now one of the cars came forward, turned until it was directly behind Bradley’s
vehicle and revved its engine harder than ever.

It burst forward with startling speed, raced up to the detective’s Prius and smashed into the back of it, pushing it forward a yard or so, up against the fence.

‘What the FUCK?! What are you doing, you old bitches?’

A second car now rammed the back of the Prius, making it press against the bulging fence until its bumper was over the precipice. Bradley had some thoughts of reaching it and driving it to
safety, but before he could get to within twenty feet, a third struck it and then a fourth. The fence partially splintered and snapped, and as it came forward the nose of the car dipped down and
slid underneath the twanging wires still dangling on the edge.

‘Bitches!’ yelled Bradley. ‘My golf clubs were in there. I’ll kick your hairy old arses!’

‘Do you think maybe we should run away?’ asked Sam, as a fifth car smashed into the back of the Prius. Its rear was now crumpled beyond recognition, and only remained visible for
another second or so before the car wobbled violently and then slipped out of sight.

Bradley ran towards the fence, with Sam close behind. They couldn’t see anything beneath the beams of the harsh lights behind them, but heard a heavy regular bouncing, crunching noise from
the field below, mixed in with smashing glass as the car flipped over and over.

‘They think they’re going to get away with this?’ asked Bradley, turning back to face the granny-motors. Several thoughts then occurred to both of them at once.

First, perhaps these old ladies weren’t intending to leave any witnesses.

Second, if Sam and Bradley were found crushed near the remains of the car with a lot of alcohol in their bloodstreams, perhaps no more explanation would be sought than the obvious one.

And third, even if foul play was suspected, no one would think to ask the harmless-seeming little old ladies of the village to show their garaged cars and prove their innocence.

These thoughts came in a lightning flash to both, encouraged by the sight that met them as they turned round: their former taxi driver was coming straight towards them, cigar clenched between
her teeth that were showing through a wide grin, and at the end of her arm that was hanging out of the car window, a baseball bat going round in a sequence of threatening practice swings.

‘This is it,’ said Bradley. ‘No more bullshit from the gimmers. It’s action time!’

It was a nice sentiment, and Sam had about a second and a half to notice that it fitted perfectly with the grimly determined persona he had been trying to encourage Bradley to take on. However,
it didn’t make any difference to the fact that the old woman in question was doing forty miles an hour only a few dozen yards away when she pulled the handbrake, spun the wheel and, leaning
out of the window, smacked the baseball bat across Sam’s back with a two- handed swing that hit him so hard it picked him bodily up and neatly posted him over the fence into the darkness
below.

‘Sam!’ shrieked Bradley, rushing to the edge. He could see nothing down there, and had no idea how far the drop was. What would he do without this new partner to tell him how to act?
Just when he was starting to get into the role of a detective. He thought he heard a shout of some sort, but couldn’t be sure.

Behind him the taxi driver laughed throatily as she gunned the motor and then drove away, leaving the space clear for whoever was next in line. Bradley saw another driver coming towards him,
this time a meat cleaver in hand, and realized he had no choice. The engine behind him roared faster as it neared, and so without time to think he shut his eyes and leapt into the dark.

Heavy, life-long seconds seemed to pass in slow motion as he hung in the air and the freezing wind whistled past him. Then the ground smashed up into him, he tumbled, and when he came to a halt,
he found himself to be on wet grass.

‘Sam?’ he shouted, looking around, waiting for the noise and the brightness to subside and let him get his bearings.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ came a voice from nearby. ‘You decided to join me. I thought I was going to be stuck down here on my own. You haven’t seen my left eyeball
anywhere, by any chance?’

‘Thank God, you’re okay,’ said the detective.

‘I’m alive, but certainly
not
okay,’ protested Sam. ‘I’ve definitely broken at least five things. I don’t know what exactly, but there are at least
five of them.’

‘What the fuck is going on?’ wondered Bradley aloud as he looked back up to the car park, where the headlights were still shining out into the night above them. He put a hand to his
head and stumbled in the direction of the voice. ‘My wife’s going to kill me,’ he said.

‘That would make a refreshing change, I must say. You know what, those drugs have finally worn off.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Bradley, ‘I’m sure we can pick up some aspirin in town.’

‘I wasn’t talking about aspirin. I’ve
got
some aspirin on me, somewhere. Why is my first reaction at moments like this that I’d like to go to the pub?’

‘Because you’re an alcoholic.’

‘Is that your foot, or am I being assaulted by a cow?’

‘No, it’s me. Here, get up. If we go downhill we should find the wreck of the car and then we can get my golf clubs to use in self-defence, if need be.’

It didn’t take them long to locate the crumpled metal frame, which made quite a visible dark shape in the middle of the field, once their eyes had adjusted. The boot had popped open but
had already been crushed in such a way that the clubs were trapped inside, mangled into strange and nasty-looking shapes.

‘Driver,’ said Bradley, handing it over.

‘I don’t want a driver, you have the driver. I’ll go for a sand wedge – I reckon you could do some proper gouging with that.’ Sam took the proffered club and lit
the roll-up he had been making before sniffing suspiciously.

‘Whatever you like,’ said Bradley. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘I was just wondering. Is it some sort of weed killer or crop spray or something?’

‘It’s
petrol
. Put that out!’

‘Oh shit—’ Sam threw the cigarette away from himself and both began to run as fast as they could, which was very slowly indeed, as running hurt them a great deal, and they
hobbled and tripped on the little hummocks of the field. There was first a yellow light behind them, then a big whoosh and they felt the heat on their backs. They tried to put a few last yards
behind them, then it came – a rippling boom that knocked Sam off his feet. Bradley turned round to face the blast of heat and saw the incongruously beautiful black-yellow-orange flames
soaring up, and turning in on themselves, forming for one brief second a miniature mushroom cloud, then dissipating in the night air.

‘That should satisfy them that the job’s done, at least,’ said Bradley, but the wry wisdom of the remark was some- what undercut by the sunroof landing flat on his head and
knocking him over.

‘You’re right,’ said Sam. ‘Look, the lights are going.’

A line of little old-lady shadows had been standing along the edge of the precipice looking down, silhouetted by the car lights, but one by one they started to melt away, and the lights to turn
and drift down the side of the valley.

‘How are we going to find our way back?’

‘Piece of cake,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t you have iPhones out here in the country?’ He pulled the phone from his pocket, relieved to see it had survived the fall
unscathed. Then they looked at each other, and Sam guiltily handed it over.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. She must have knocked the sense out of me.’

Bradley dialled, hung up and dialled again, but could not get through. He handed it back.

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to walk further until we get some coverage.’

‘Map’s not working either,’ admitted Sam. ‘But I don’t think the town can be more than a mile down the hill. We just have to get to the other side of these woods
and we should be able to see some sort of lights.’