Christopher Brookmyre (21 page)

'Hello?'

'Hell . . . ' he started, a little surprised perhaps to have got an answer. 'Now listen here. This is the person whose car you've just stolen. I don't know who the fuck you are, and I know you think you'll get away with this, but I'm tellin'

you, I'm gaunny fuckin' find you, and when I do--'

'Excuse me, sir,' she interrupted. 'I don't believe there's any need for that language, and I don't think your threatening tone is very constructive either.'

'Very cons-- Who the fuck are you?'

'I work for Safeway car-parks' management. Your car hasn't been stolen, it's been towed. We've removed the phone to my office here for security reasons.'

'Towed? But I was only in the bloody shop two seconds.'

'We're having a crackdown on people parking in highly inappropriate and inconsiderate places. We're hoping that if you have to walk a few miles to retrieve your vehicle, you'll consider it a shorter walk in future if you just park in one of the many clearly marked spaces we provide.'

There was an enormously satisfying silence.

'Sir?'

'So where do I go to get my car back?'

'All towed vehicles are impounded at our main depot in Bellshill.'

'Bellshill? How am I supposed to . . .

Okay. Right. Jesus. What's the

address?'

'I'm sorry, sir, you're breaking up. I think the power's running out on your

. . . '

With which she hung up, giggling. That felt good. Damn, that felt good. At the back of her mind - well, actually a lot nearer the front than that - there remained the hollow, cold knowledge of why she was doing this, but its sheer imperative compulsion was liberating her from all of her normal concerns and compunctions. Right now, for once in her life, everybody else could . . . God, it had been so long since she'd said that word . . . Everybody else could

. . . parenthood and grandparenthood had disciplined her out of using it, and she'd even started
thinking
in the more guarded and polite terms that she could tolerate the weans repeating. Everybody else could . . . she'd said it all the time, and worse, when she was younger, before she became Jane Fleming. But today, she wasn't Jane Fleming, not any more. She was Jane Bell again. Blue Bell. And everybody else could fuck off.

She dumped the X5 in the short-stay car park nearest the terminal. It had been tempting to slew it in front of Departures and just walk away, thus ensuring that it really did get towed and impounded, but she knew from her taxi experience that there would be plenty of polis patrolling up and down, and didn't want to run the risk of being stopped on her way into the building. Nor would it be wise for the registration to be noted for any reason, given that the owner would by now have ascertained from Safeway that they had nothing to do with his vehicle's disappearance.

The first plane to London was to Heathrow. She had it in her head that Gatwick would be closer for getting to the coast, but it certainly wasn't ninety minutes closer, which was how much longer she'd have to wait for a flight there.

It was the first time she'd ever just walked up to the counter and bought a ticket, most of her previous flights being package charters booked months in advance by Tom.

'Return?' the girl had asked, with unknowing poignancy.

'No,' Jane stated firmly. 'One way.'

She paid with her credit card. It went through her mind that the transaction was traceable, but it was only a ticket to London, and besides, the guy hadn't asked her to disappear, only to get there. She was starting to think like a fugitive, perhaps even a criminal, and was surprised to consider this was no bad thing.

She had about forty minutes before boarding, which she put to use planning the next leg of the journey. Ten minutes or so on a walk-up interne terminal outlined her options for crossing into France by train, either on foot at Ashford via Eurostar or by car at Folkestone via Eurotunnel. The good news was the services ran late enough that she should be able to make the trip that night. The bad news was both websites' boasts about passenger screening and security. Neither option was going to be simple without a passport, which was the issue she addressed during the remainder of her wait.

She went to an autoteller and lifted the maximum two hundred pounds in cash, figuring the next fare she paid might present a discrepancy between the card-bearer's name and that of the passenger, especially given that she didn't know what that passenger's name was yet. Then she went back downstairs to the check-in area and looked at the screen listing international departures. She took position by a pillar and watched the queue for a Tenerife charter, carefully observing each party as they approached the desk. Looks and age wouldn't matter, as nothing she could effect was going to withstand close scrutiny. It was all about opportunity, and she'd know it when she saw it. It came in the form of four pensioners, all women, who took an unfeasible time to accomplish the relatively simple process of depositing their luggage and handing over their documents. Jane checked her watch. She'd have ten minutes at the most, and at this rate the group she was watching would still be arguing over who would sit where well after that had expired. Nonetheless, patiently but anxiously she waited, because they represented the best chance. It was nothing to do with their disorganisation or any prejudiced notion that their age would make them a more distractible target for pocketpicking. It was quite simply their hand-luggage: three of them were carrying open-topped, twin-handled bags, presumably all the better to tote more dutyfree, into which they had popped their tickets, boarding cards and passports. Jane watched them bumble their way up the escalator and then followed at a distance of a few yards. They made their way predictably to the shopping mall on the upper level, where one of them broke away in stated search of the toilets, leaving the others, as Jane had hoped, to browse in John Menzies. The three of them tarried around the women's magazines, all but blocking the lane, which provided plausible cover for Jane to edge past, close-up against each of them, looking down for the most attainable glimpse of burgundy vinyl. The unlucky candidate had her hag slung over her shoulder by one strap, rather than held at arm's length, which put it at a convenient height for Jane to reach inside as the woman stretched for a copy of the
People's Friend
. She walked unhurriedly out towards the domestic departure gate, unable to stop herself thinking of the fact that her actions had just denied some poor old wifey her holiday. There had been a horrible couple ahead of them in the queue, a wee nyaff in unacceptable grey slacks and an absurd beige canvas jacket, haranguing the check-in girl with affected incredulity about there not being a smoking section on the plane, while his wife stood with her arms folded, nodding her 'aye, aye, that's right's in torn-faced agreement. Jane would have been happy to torpedo
their
holiday, but the wee nyaff had taken both their passports and zipped them into one of at least a dozen pockets on his appalling outerwear. It was a pity, but pity was one more thing she was going to have to get over. Before this thing was through, she feared she'd have to be a lot more ruthless than this.

Jane stole her second car within forty minutes of touching down at Heathrow. It would have been half that time, but she had an important bit of business with a photo booth she'd needed to conclude before moving on. She acquired herself a rather tasty green new-model Volkswagen Beetle on the first floor of the Terminal One short-stay car park. A quick recce having established that it was a pay-on-foot arrangement, she was not surprised to observe that, in keeping with practices in Lanarkshire, most drivers who had forgotten to pay opted not to re-park and walk to a machine. Instead, they generally drove to the nearest pay-station and left their cars on the yellow chevrons in front while they nipped behind the glass partition - engines running to emphasise the intended brevity of their stop. Jane had waited less than five minutes for her chance, bearing her own ticket that she'd gone downstairs to the entrance barrier to procure before nipping up a level and paying, as the signs instructed, on foot. On this occasion she'd seen the owner re-appear in the rear-view mirror, running hopelessly after her stolen pride and joy, before disappearing from view as Jane accelerated down the curving ramp.

'Hey.'

'Hey.'

'Where you at, fly girl?'

'Somewhere close to the sea, either Norfolk or Essex, not sure precisely. I followed the coast, kept me away from the busiest ATC flight paths. Right now I'm in a field, so there ain't much to see.'

'What are you doing in a field?'

'Waiting. Air Bett doesn't fly as fast as a BA 757, but nor does it require one-hour check-ins and it doesn't need to circle in the stack above LHR.'

'Tell me about it.'

'How's our girl?'

'Oh, so far so good. She's now standing at two counts of GTA, plus one of larceny. Given it was a passport, that probably comes into a higher category than petty theft. Pretty clumsy lift, to be honest, but she got away with it. Need to hope they don't go checking the CCTV tapes from the store where she made her move, but that's not likely. The old lady she swiped it from probably thinks she dropped it someplace.'

'She's robbing old ladies now, huh?'

'Yeah. What
have
we created here? She's a one-woman crime spree. And to her running total I think we can probably add forgery. She stopped at a twenty-four-hour supermarket a ways back. I didn't follow her in, but she was pretty busy in the car for a while before hitting the freeway again.'

'I think they call them motorways here.'

'Well hark at you, Lady Rebekah. One day in England and you're an expert.'

'Where is she now?'

'Folkestone. Channel Tunnel rail terminus.'

'You called that right, then.'

'Easy enough. I logged on to the web terminal she'd used at the airport and checked what she'd been looking at.'

'Can you do that?'

'
I
can do that.'

'Figures. Easy for some, huh?'

'Tricky part was Heathrow. I booked a hire car online before boarding the flight, but I couldn't collect until I knew what she was driving. Had to stand right by and watch while a vehicle was stolen in front of my eyes. The scandal. Good job she helped herself to something distinctive. I caught her up after about forty minutes. She was sticking to the limit to avoid the cops. But so far so good, and now we're going underground.'

'Only if her forgery skills pass muster.'

'A condition that couldn't be more prominent in my mind right now, Reb. Or hers. Looks like they examine your dots at a drive-through checkpoint. She's two cars away from finding out. Correction, one car now.'

'You got a contingency if this goes belly-up?'

'Yeah. I'm gonna step in as a Scottish cop and say she's already wanted north of the border.'

'They got a lot of Canadian cops over here, then?'

'I'll fake the accent.'

'Sounds like her forgery skills really are our best hope.'

'Thanks for the vote of confidence. Oh, hang on. Here we go. Her turn.'

'Fingers crossed.'

'Come on, come on, come on. Drive forward, girl, drive forward. Go on, man, wave her through. Wave her . . . oh shit. Oh fuck, this don't look good. She's getting out of the car. He's coming out of the booth. Reb, I gotta go.'

Jane had done a lot of scary things already that day, but none of them had made her feel as anxious as this, because none of them had made her feel so literally hemmed in. At all other junctures and dilemmas, there had been options, the safety net of alternatives. That, in fact, was really why she'd driven past the Ashford off-ramp and carried on to Folkestone. Ashford was for walking passengers only, and the literature promised airport-style security measures. Passport control was these days the least stringent aspect of such regimes, but it would most likely still be enough to rumble her
Blue Peter
effort, and the means of distraction she had in mind could only be pulled off if she had space and privacy to work. Folkestone and its drive-on channels offered that, but the moment she entered one of them, it felt very much like a last resort.

There'd been one final alternative before this, which she'd also had in mind as she ignored the Ashford exit on the M20, one that might eschew the need for a passport at all. With it being a popular alternative to the 'booze cruise'

(the Chunnel funnel?) she reckoned there would be a few transit vans with empty storage compartments on their way to the Calais hypermarkets. Stow away in the back of one of those, then get driven on to the train and she wouldn't even have to spring for the fare. On the other hand, she didn't know whether the first thing the officials did was throw open the doors and check there weren't six fare-dodgers inside. In the event, the opportunity hadn't arisen. She'd only encountered a single such van that was parked, and didn't think she could sneak aboard one waiting in the queue without the driver hearing noises from the back. The stationary one was outside the terminal complex, and she had given the doors a try as she passed on her way to buy a ticket, but they were locked. It was unsurprising. People were bound to be extra vigilant these days, everyone terrified of returning to HM Customs and finding half-a-dozen Somalians lying in the back, pished out of their faces on your Euro-bevvy.

So that had left her exercising her final option, here at the terminus, the end of the line. She knew it was all or nothing when she guided the Beetle into the approach lane, but the real ice-in-the-gut sensation had come when a car pulled up behind her, meaning there was no way out but forward. She waited until there were only three cars to go before opening her bag and removing some of her recent purchases. There had been an all-night Tesco just off the motorway, where, in addition to some clean knickers and a toothbrush, she picked up some scissors, a transparent plastic wallet and some Prittstick, as well as clearing their entire shelf-stock of red food colouring. The photo page on the passport wouldn't bear any kind of close inspection, though she hadn't done too bad a job of switching the pics. The first thing they were there to establish was that you were carrying a passport at all. After that, the degree of vigilance could be reduced under the right circumstances, or at least that's what she was relying upon.