Just Another Day (7 page)

‘
Daddy, he’s saying something but I can’t hear him. He’s pointing at the back of our car and winding his hand around. What does he mean by that?’

Fred snapped out of his disbelief and looked across.
He understood the gestures only too well. Even though he understood his intention, he didn’t quite believe it and thought to himself, I was right. This must be a film and he must be a fucking stunt man. Either that, or he’s had enough of life and decided to end it all!

Back in the wagon, Dave’s eyes were transfixed on his driver’s door mirror. He caught just a glimpse of a black gloved hand making some kind of gesture.

Swifty, what are you playing at? Get your arse off that wagon now. That’s a fucking order. Move it.’ Lee Evans in the following response vehicle was about ten vehicles behind the wagon as all the traffic around them began to pick up speed.

‘
Sorry Skip. Too fast for me to jump off now. Wish me luck.’

The electric motor on the rear passenger door kicked in and the window began to lower. Chloe looked at her Dad’s finger on the switch.

‘What are you doing Daddy?’ She looked up and saw her Dad with his serious face on. Both hands were now firmly fixed on the steering wheel in the ten to two position and he was looking directly ahead; concentrating hard. ‘Are you alright dad?’

As he checked his mirrors he said,
‘Listen love, I can’t explain just now. I need you to be very quiet and we’ll talk about it later OK?’

Chloe didn’t understand what on earth her Dad was talking about. She hardly ever knew what the grown ups were talking about. It was a conversation she’d had with her friends lots of times. She and her friend Mary had decided that it was often better not to ask them too many questions because they always got confused and angry, something about their age, and the grown ups usually ended any further discussion with the phrase she’d heard many times before,  ‘because I said so’.

This was definitely one of those because I said so moments but she instinctively knew, something in the tone of his voice told her that now wasn’t the time to ask questions. Plenty of time for questions later she thought as she sat, arms folded, slightly miffed that she seemed to be not included in dads thoughts as he concentrated deeply on. On what? she didn’t know; he hadn’t told her. She thought once more of her friend Mary.

Definitely one of those grown up things.

Dave Watkins looking in his mirror, and Lee Evans watching from the ARV behind, instantly knew what was about to happen and, unknown to each other, shook their heads in disbelief and said,
‘You’ve got to be joking mate.’

‘
What are you going on about?’ Came the voice from the bunk behind and Dave realised he had spoken out loud the words that he’d been thinking. Johnson was leaning forward over Dave’s shoulder and at any second would be able to see the driver’s door mirror. He knew he had to divert his attention away from the mirrors and prevent him from seeing what was going on behind.

‘Look at that tosser’
said Dave, pointing ahead. ‘That idiot trying to squeeze into the gap. Don’t let him in,’ shouted Dave as he banged on the steering wheel and sounded his horn. ‘I fucking hate that, wankers in wagons using the size of their lorries to force their way in. It’s no wonder we have accidents up and down the Motorway every fucking day with drivers like that idiot.’

Johnson looked ahead to see the tanker edging into the nearside lane in anticipation of being diverted off the motorway.
‘What do you expect him to do? He’s got to get off the road, same as us. If you’ve got three lanes of traffic all having to get into one lane you’re bound to get people squeezing in.’ Johnson started to laugh. ‘Looks like I’ll have to bang your head again. Calm down, stop whingeing about the traffic, and just drive the fucking lorry.’

Dave hoped his little rant had done enough to divert the gun mans attention away from the mirror.

The rear window of Chloe’s car was down as far as it would go. It didn’t go all the way down inside the door and there was still about six inches of the glass sticking up. The gap looked impossibly small. Now it was she who was staring in open mouthed silence.
Is he really going to do that, she said to herself?

The thought had barely entered her head when she saw the man in black crouch down, put his hands out in front as if he was standing on the edge of a swimming pool and launch himself off the side of the lorry towards the open rear window.
Chloe’s Dad had tried hard to get close to the wagon and to match its speed.

It looked so easy when you watched these things on the big screen with the all action hero carrying out impossible feats with daring expertise. In the here and now however, it was a different matter.
The gap between the two vehicles was still about five feet and the rear window of Fred’s car slightly behind the fuel tank.

In the wagon, Dave winced.
‘Fuckin hell mate, four out of ten for artistic impression,’ Shit, he hoped he hadn’t said
that
out loud. A few seconds silence, no movement from behind him. No questions from the bunk. He looked in the mirror again. He’d heard the expression many times before. He’d said it himself on numerous occasions. Now, he fully understood the meaning of ‘heart in the mouth’.

‘
Shite,’ he bellowed. He had definitely said that out loud as he felt the gunman begin to move from the bed behind.

Mark Swift might well have been quite an athlete, but he had not tried to dive through the small open window of a family car at twenty five miles an hour before today. It would be fair to say that it did not go exactly as he had envisaged it. In his mind, he had sailed through the air with his torso barely touching the sides and had entered the ‘water’ without barely creating a ripple.
The reality was, his head, shoulders and chest, had made it through the opening and his forehead and face rested on the back seat but his pelvis knees and thighs had hit the side of the door with considerable force and knocked the wind out of him. He was now bent double in a pike position with his upper body sprawled on the seat while his lower body and legs dangled outside.

‘
What now, what now,’ shouted Chloe’s dad in obvious panic.

Swifty was momentarily stunned and struggling to breath. After a few seconds he groaned,
‘Get back. Back behind the wagon.’ Mark knew that he wasn’t just winded with the force of the impact; he must have banged his head on the top edge of the door as he attempted to dive through. He was struggling to think properly. The fuzziness in his brain was not clearing quickly enough. Fred was not in full control of his faculties either. It’s not every day that a man in a black boiler suit wants to dive into your car from another moving vehicle. It was this development that had made Dave shout out.

Mark’s legs still dangled out of the car and as Chloe’s Dad began to slow the car in order to drop behind the wagon, Dave saw Swifty’s legs about to be mangled by the rear wheels of the lorry. The trailer was some forty feet long and Marks body was inching ever closer as Fred eased off the accelerator.

Dave pulled the steering wheel forcefully to the left ignoring the sharp pain in his injured upper arm. He swerved the wagon towards the reinforced metal barrier of the Motorway hard shoulder as the toes on Mark’s boots scraped along the road surface. He felt the massive tyres of the wagon brushing against the back of his legs. He silently prayed that the material of his overalls didn’t get caught up on some protruding piece of metal or body work of the trailer. The slightest snag would surely rip him from the side of the car and drag him under the lorry. As quickly as he was able, he painfully hauled himself fully into the car.

‘
What the fuck are you doing?’ said Johnson as he clambered from the bunk.

‘
What a bloody idiot’ shouted Dave and gestured to the white van in front. ‘Bastard cut me up as he dived in front. I nearly hit him up the arse.’ Dave sounded his horn. White van man had been driving quite normally and he cursed the wagon driver behind him, completely unaware of the unfolding drama. He couldn’t give a toss if he had cut up the wagon behind. It was always a battle on the roads these days anyway. For the most part, it was everyman for himself.

‘
Fuck you,’ he shouted out the window and stuck his middle finger up in the air to the lorry driver in his wake. No words were needed to interpret the gesture!

Johnson jumped down from the bunk and sat in the passenger seat alongside. He was looking up ahead out of the windscreen trying to see the roadside junction numbers.
‘Where are we, when do we get off this fucking road?’

Dave looked in both mirrors. No sign of Chloe’s car. No sign of vehicles swerving across the lanes and no body bouncing along behind. He breathed deeply.

The window slowly wound up and Mark twisted over onto his back. He looked up at the roof lining and then down to his feet. The toecap of his right boot had completely rubbed away and the rubber sole was flapping open. He could clearly see the frayed sock of his big toe peeping through.

‘
Fuck me; that was not very clever’ He said quietly.

Not so quietly that Chloe couldn’t hear as she undid her seatbelt and twisted round to look at the man lying on his back with his foot in the air.

‘Did you hear that Daddy?’ ‘He said the ‘F’ word. You said ‘shit’ before and that was bad but he said the ‘F’ word and that’s really, really bad.’

‘
And all because the lady loves milk tray’, laughed Mark quietly as he stared at the roof inside and gave a little shake of his head as he realised how close he had come to not making it in one piece. ‘Well, the job can get me a new pair at least,’ he said as he surveyed the flapping sole of his boot.

‘
What did you say?’ Said Chloe as she knelt on her seat and pressed her face through the open headrest and looked at the man laying below, cradling his right foot in both hands and staring intently at his toecap.

‘
Oh it’s just a silly expression love; your Dad will know what I’m talking about.’ As he momentarily recalled the television advert of some years before when the hero would deliver a box of chocolates to his sweetheart in the most daring of circumstances whilst dressed all in black. Like the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, the mystery man would climb up the side of the balustrade and leave the chocolates and a note on a table inside the room only for the woman to find them later after he had departed. To complete the scene, she would then run through the open doors onto the balcony and stare wistfully over the edge into the darkness beyond thinking of what might have been.

He pulled himself up from his laying position, looked out of the back window at his colleagues several vehicles behind and gave them the thumbs up.

‘What’s your name mate?’ Said Mark to his ‘chauffeur’.

‘
Fred, Fred Jones. Shit, did that really happen?’

‘
Fred, you probably saved my life. At the very least, you prevented me from being discovered. I think I might have made a bit of a dent in the side of your door. I hit it pretty hard when I jumped off. Not a pretty sight I’m afraid. Haven’t done too much of that before.’ As he rubbed at his knees and thighs and smiled ruefully.

‘
Thank you,’ said Fred. “Don’t worry about the door. I guess we’re both a bit new to this. Not something I do every day myself’ he said as he looked in his rear view mirror at the man in the balaclava. ‘Who are you? I hope I’ve done the right thing and you’re on our side. You’re not some kind of terrorist are you?’ He felt a bit stupid asking the question as in his own mind, he was quite sure that his passenger was not a criminal.

‘
I can’t tell you at the moment what it’s all about. You will probably read about it in the papers. I can say that I am on the right side. I can’t say anymore than that. You can take some comfort in knowing that what you have done today not only saved my life, but you may well have saved the life of another colleague. Now Fred, much as I have enjoyed our conversation, what I need now is to rejoin my colleagues. If you look in your rear view, you will see a black Range Rover five or six cars behind. Can you see it?’

‘
Yep, no problem. Got it in my mirrors.’ Said Fred.

Mark pressed the small button near to the lapel of his overall.
‘Romeo Victor One from Swifty receiving Skip?’

‘
Pass your message Swifty.’ He heard the reply clearly in his covert earpiece. He was thankful that it had remained in place and not bounced out of his ear with the violent impact of a few minutes before.

‘
OK Boss, let the wagon exit at the next junction and we’ll pull up on the hard shoulder and I’ll join you.’

‘
Message received. Good job Mark.’

It would take a few minutes for the wagon to leave the motorway and Mark turned his attention to the little girl in the front seat.
‘And what’s your name young lady?’ said Mark.

By this time, Chloe had folded her arms again and Mark could see by her body language and frown that she was not a happy little lady at this moment. She was still staring at him intently through the open head rest and he would need to use his legendary charm to win her over.
She had been left out of the conversation for far too long; She’d had enough of this adults thing; after all, it had been she who had first seen the man and yet her Dad had taken over the conversation. It was as though she had been forgotten about. It was all about her dad and the stranger. Well, we’ll see about that.

‘
My names Chloe and this is my Dad. He’s in big trouble off my Mum and you’re in big trouble off my mum too. Dad said shit loads of times but you said the ‘F’ word. My mum says that the F word is the worst of all and that means that you are in big trouble.’ She started rummaging in her school bag for her mobile phone. ‘I think I’d better text her now and tell her what you said.’

‘
Mmm, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you Chloe,’ said Mark. ‘And I’m sure your Dad is too.’ He could see the phone emerging from her bag and her fingers starting to hit the keys. ‘Its right that you should tell your mum about bad things that happen but, before you do, just give me a minute to explain something to you.’

The blur of her fingers whipping over the key pad halted and she looked at him as if to say,
‘say what you want mister, but you’re in trouble anyway.’

‘
Sometimes adults say things that they shouldn’t. They don’t mean to upset anybody. You see Chloe, it’s not just children, or even young ladies like you. Mums and Dads, and even people like me who are supposed to be very tough get a bit scared too and speak out before considering what they say. We all get a bit frightened now and then.’

Mark could see her frown softening as she looked at him quizzically. She opened her mouth as though about to speak or to fire another question at him. Her fingers were motionless on the phones keypad.
Before she could say another word or quiz him further, and noticing her left hand holding the side of the headrest, he quickly leaned forward and took it gently into his own hand, softly kissed the back of it and in his most charming and sickly sweet manner said, ‘so, may I say young lady, you have been absolutely fantastic in helping me. If it hadn’t been for you in the first place, your dad might not have seen me. I think you are the most wonderful little girl I have ever known and I wouldn’t upset you for the world.’

Chloe beamed at her new found friend, flicked her hair back in the way that only a young woman of a certain age can do, plonked the phone back in the bag and shrugged,
‘Oh I’m not upset, my big brother says shit and fuck all the time when Mum’s not there.’