A Heart in the Right Place Read online

  Perhaps it didn’t matter. It didn’t change his course of action. Get dad, get in the car and get the hell out of Dalwhinnie. And put his trousers on at some point.

  “Dad!” Nick yelled.

  Tony drifted unhurriedly towards him. Pickles’ lead in one hand, trowel in the other.

  “Ah, at last,” said Tony. “Where’s your trousers?”

  “Problem, dad!” hissed Nick, out of breath. “The cops! This guy!”

  “Oh,” said Tony, looking past Nick.

  The man with the blue face and unseeing eyes ploughed along the track and launched himself in something like a rugby tackle. Before he landed on Nick he checked, half-falling. He yelped.

  “Oh,” repeated Tony. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  There was blue chemical muck all over Nick’s trousers. The stranger was on his knees, clutching himself in surprise. Tony’s trowel was embedded in his stomach. It had penetrated right up to the handle.

  “Fuck!” said Nick.

  “Language, Nick,” said his father automatically.

  The stranger struggled to produce any sound above a squeaking grunt. “Gnh! Fuck!”

  “Language,” said Nick automatically.

  “This is terrible,” said Tony and bent to help the man.

  “I think he’s a cop,” said Nick.

  The stranger gritted a laugh and pushed Tony away. “Cop? You fucking idiots!” He rolled to his feet, still gripping the trowel handle.

  “You probably ought not to move,” suggested Tony.

  The stranger backed away, blinking hard. His eyes were blue and pink in the worst possible colour clash Nick had ever seen.

  “We didn’t mean any harm,” said Nick.

  “Fuck you both!” shouted the stranger. “You’re dead! Fucking monsters! He’s going to have your heart and you can’t run far enough or fast enough to—!” He coughed and droplets of blood sprayed from his lips. With another strangled groan he staggered off through the trees to the car park.

  “He’s got my trowel,” said Tony in the quiet voice of a man who couldn’t quite believe what he has just witnessed.

  “Come on, dad. We’ve got to go,” said Nick.

  “Do you want to put your trousers on first?”

  “Come on!”

  31

  Finn slipped into the car park at the furthest point from the police car. The two cops had looked inside the BMW and spoken on their radio before going inside the building.

  The police car had blocked in the BMW. The natural solution would have been to take the police car: it was a BMW too. Tit for tat. A very tempting option, but one which would bring a lot of additional attention with it.

  There was a toot of air brakes. A refrigerated truck with Kirkwood Farms emblazoned along the side had pulled into the car park and braked sharply to avoid someone staggering across the tarmac. It was Adam, blue on top, red in the middle; looking like he’d fought a Slushie machine and lost.

  Finn ran over. The truck driver opened his window, leaning out to speak.

  “What happened?” demanded Finn.

  Adam coughed blood. “He stabbed me,” he spat. “He—”

  “Is he all right, love?” called the truck driver.

  “Where are they?” said Finn.

  “Stabbed me!” whined Adam.

  Across the way, the Cadillac reversed out of its parking bay, nudged a bollard, and accelerated towards the exit.

  “Open the door!” Finn told the driver.

  “What? Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?”

  Finn grabbed Adam’s arm and pulled him towards the truck’s cab, forcing his pitiful gargling up an octave or two. The cab was very high. She climbed right up and faced the driver; he looked surprised to see her.

  “We will be your passengers,” she said. “You need to drive us.”

  “An ambulance would be better.”

  She turned and dragged Adam up the same steps. He screamed in pain.

  “But I got pies to deliver!” protested the driver.

  “No, you need to do what I say,” said Finn, pointing at the Cadillac. “Follow that car,”

  “Is this a hostage situation?” asked the driver.

  “If you like.”

  “I think I had training, but I can’t remember what it said.”

  “It said comply with people who threaten you with physical violence,” said Finn. “That’s me.”

  “Yes! Yes it did. Righto, love.” He restarted the engine and swung the massive vehicle round towards the exit.

  “Need to get to the hospital,” gasped Adam, tears falling. “I think I might be dying.”

  Finn looked at his wound. Blood and blue chemicals made interesting purple patterns on his shirt. “Quite probably,” she agreed.

  “There’s St Vincent’s Hospital up in Kingussie,” suggested the driver. “’Bout twenty miles.”

  “You’re following that car.” Finn pointed at the departing Cadillac.

  “Why?”

  “Did they also tell you not to ask questions in hostage situations?”

  “I’ll be honest with you, love. I don’t rightly remember.”

  “Follow that car.”

  Adam slumped against her; he was leaking all over her Muubaa jacket. It had had blood on it before, some of it even hers, and its wipe-clean surface was one of the things she liked about it. Didn’t mean she wanted Adam bleeding all over it today. She pushed him into the corner by the door.

  He made a mewling sound. “Get this out of me,” he mumbled. “I don’t want to die.”

  “I can’t take it out. It’s the only thing holding most of your insides in.”

  “But I’m bleeding.”

  “He is,” agreed the driver. He indicated a compartment above Finn’s head: it contained a first aid kit and other supplies. Finn rootled through the first aid kit and pulled out a reel of micropore tape, deciding it wouldn’t go far enough. First aid was meant for bleeding fingers, not serious stomach wounds. She looked inside the compartment again. There was a toolkit and a reel of greasy duct-tape.

  “Perfect.”

  She found the end and pulled it free. She tore open the front of Adam’s shirt, just above the trowel. “Lean forward.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Lean forward!”

  He sobbed as he pushed himself away from the seat. A slither of intestine, or possibly stomach lining, slipped out of his wound: just an inch or two. Finn poked it back in with her fingers and covered it with tape. She passed the roll around Adam’s abdomen, encircling him several times, above and below the trowel. It was a very neat job she decided, once she’d finished. If people ever started having trowels sticking in them as fashion accessories, they would wear them like this.

  “Fucking bastards,” muttered Adam weakly.

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “Fucking weirdos. Hairs. Hairs everywhere. All in the sink. Pubes!”

  “Is he delirious?” said the driver.

  “Nah,” whispered Adam. “No trousers. Man… Man’s a fucking werewolf. Got the instructions here.” He tried to tap his shirt pocket and missed. His eyes went wide with alarm. “The bag! My bag. S’got special solution. Double-bagging.”

  It was back in the BMW, and they needed it. Finn wondered what else they would need. She felt Adam’s trouser pockets, forcing her fingers inside one to pull out his mobile phone. Next she peeled open the chemical-soaked shirt pocket and extracted a damp sheet of folded paper. She unfolded and scanned it.

  Finn rarely exhibited surprise. Surprise was an emotion for the unprepared. A lesser person would have read the sheet and exclaimed something like, “No fucking way!” or “You’ve got to be bloody kidding me!” But not Finn. The paper said what the paper said. It changed everything, but there was no point getting dramatic about it.

  And at least it explained the silver knife.

  32

  “I think we’ve got a tail,” said Nick, glancing in his mirror. He couldn’t den
y he got a tiny thrill from saying those words, even though he knew they were in trouble.

  “What?” said Tony. He turned round in his seat, pushed Pickles’ big head out of the way, and looked back. “That massive truck?”

  “It’s following us.”

  “Surely a tail is supposed to be discreet? Hey, I think it’s the girl.”

  “What girl?” said Nick.

  “The girl I was talking to.”

  “And by girl you mean woman?”

  “She’s at least half my age. I think I can call her a girl. She took my photo. We got chatting. She’s with some man who flew in from – where was it? – Dublin, she said. The man was the one with the schedules and the plans.”

  “What are you on about?” said Nick, gripping the wheel tighter as the truck closed in on them. “You talk nonsense sometimes.”

  “I’m just saying what she said. She said he had plans and a bag for – you know I think that’s him.”

  “What is?”

  “The man. The man who’s got my trowel.”

  “What? In the truck with her?”

  “There’s three of them. Get down Pickles! I know, I know. You didn’t like her, did you? What on earth is going on, Nick?”

  “He said he was going to have our heart,” said Nick. “Is that a thing?”

  “I’m not at all sure I know.”

  “This is karma, dad. Karma giving me a kicking because I messed with the body.”

  “Get a grip, son,” said Tony. “Karma is not a real thing. It must be something connected with what you did earlier.”

  Nick thought. “He seemed really interested in the letter I took from Oz’s house.”

  “What letter?”

  Nick took the next turning off the main road, hitting the bend at speed. He tapped the brakes, but they felt kind of loose: squishy.

  “Hey, you didn’t indicate!” said Tony.

  “Dad, you do know we’re in a car chase, don’t you? I want to confuse the guy behind; hopefully give him the slip.”

  “No excuse for not following the Highway Code,” said Tony.

  33

  “You need to go faster than this,” said Finn to the driver. He glanced at her and accelerated very slightly. Finn sighed. It would come down to her. It always did. She leaned across and pushed open his door.

  His eyes bulged in alarm. “Listen, love—!”

  She unclicked his seatbelt, shoving him at the same time. He tumbled out of the cab. The seatbelt trailing out the door snapped taut. Finn had her hand on the wheel. She slid across to put her foot on the accelerator.

  She reached for the swinging door. A hand reached up, grasping for the door frame. A voice was calling.

  “If you could just—!”

  She slammed the door shut. Even dangling from his seatbelt, the guy must have been a good six feet off the ground. In the wing mirror she saw him land on his feet, bounce, roll and stumble clown-like to his feet. Then a truck in the opposite lane roared by. When it was out of view, there was nothing but a long red mess on the road.

  “I don’t feel good…” said Adam, in a faint voice. “Is that my phone ringing…?”

  The phone on the seat between them was alight and buzzing. Finn picked it up. The caller ID simply said Col. She hit the speaker.

  “Col.”

  “Who is that?”

  “It’s Finn.”

  “Finn? Where’s Adam? It’s very noisy.”

  Adam waved at the phone. His breathing was harsh.

  “Kind of busy here,” said Finn.

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”

  “Everything’s in hand, Col,” shouted Finn as she steered the rig round a bend, too fast. The back end swung out. It struck a helpfully positioned crash barrier and bounced back into line.

  “What’s happened?”

  “There was an accident. Adam has a small injury to his stomach. I’m about to acquire our target. I’ll make sure he gets sorted out when I’m done.”

  “It really hurts!” hissed Adam.

  “Very good.”

  The car had turned onto a narrow road; more of a track, really. It was a rather obvious ploy to shake them off, assuming the truck couldn’t get down there. Finn smiled and gunned the engine. Branches whacking loudly against the windscreen. If anything, the truck was doing better than the Cadillac, which was definitely not built for the wilderness. It wallowed in the potholes and bounced wildly on suspension meant for smoother roads. Finn urged the truck forward. It nudged the Cadillac’s rear end.

  “Gotta go, Col,” said Finn. She turned her attention back to driving.

  34

  Nick screamed when the truck hit the back of his car.

  “The car’s no good on this road!” he wailed.

  “Keep it together, son, you’re doing great,” said Tony. Pickles barked, although it wasn’t clear if this was a vote of support. The truck nudged them again.

  “What’s he doing?” gasped Nick.

  “You know it’s the girl driving now, right?” said Tony conversationally, as Nick tried to get more speed out of his car.

  “What, like in Terminator Three?” Nick couldn’t suppress a tiny thrill at the thought he was in a real life action adventure. One strongly tempered by his suspicion the brakes weren’t working half as well as they should.

  “What happened to the man driver?”

  “Tell you later,” said Tony. He ran a hand along the chrome knobs and switches on the dashboard. “If you’ve got any buttons which deploy rockets or guns, this would be a good time to try them out.”

  “We could throw the body out,” said Nick.

  “How would that help?”

  “They seem really interested in Oz. Let’s give him to them. If we toss his body out onto the road they might stop.” Nick pushed away the memory of how hard it had been to move Oz’s body into the boot in the first place.

  “We’d need to stop,” said Tony.

  “Not necessarily,” said Nick. “Pickles has made a secret passage, remember?”

  “So, let me get this straight. You want me to crawl through a hole into the boot, grab hold of a dead body, somehow pop the boot open, and throw it out?”

  “You can make any idea sound stupid if you use that tone of voice!”

  Pickles ran back and forth across the back seat, yipping excitedly. Nick steered the car around another bend. They emerged from the trees onto a track hugging a mountainside. Heather and gorse grew out of the hillside on the right hand side, stretching up out of sight. On the left was a terrifying drop. Nick gasped at the sight and tried hard to inject some nonchalance into his voice.

  “Lovely views from here.”

  “What?”

  “I’m just— Oh, hell, dad.”

  Nick looked in the mirror to see the truck closing in on them again. Surely the driver wouldn’t try to manoeuvre along the narrow road? It was barely wide enough for the car, and that was one huge truck. One side of it whacked bushes and rocks loose from the mountainside and the other looked like it was halfway over the precipice.

  The truck rear-ended them again. Nick fought to control the fishtailing car. He checked mirror again. For the first time he saw and recognised the Kirkwood Farms logo over the cab roof.

  “I did a shit job on the adverts but it’s hardly worth killing me for,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “She always enjoys my sausage in cider.” Nick wondered if he was getting delirious.

  “What?!”

  The truck rammed them again. This time it was catastrophic. The front end of the Cadillac slewed over the edge. Nick could feel the absence of ground beneath the nearside wheel. The world tipped. The chassis screamed as the underside of the car rode on the brink of the cliff. The car would have slowed, but the truck was right up behind it, driving forward like a plough.

  “I’m so sorry I brought you to Scotland, dad!” yelled Nick, swinging the wheel randomly and pumping the dead brakes.
r />   “I’m sorry too,” said Tony, gripping the coat hook above the door with one hand and bracing himself against the dashboard with the other. “Trust me on that.”

  35

  “This isn’t going to end well,” said Adam faintly.

  “Let me handle things.” Finn and kept her foot on the accelerator.

  Adam’s face (what was visible beneath the coating of chemical cleaner) was pale, ghostly. “Why can I smell disinfectant?” he said.

  The Cadillac’s nose ploughed deep into the ground. The impact braced it momentarily against the front of the truck. The car snapped up from the ground, see-sawed briefly, slid over the cliff edge and down its steep slope. Without the resistance of the car in front of it, the truck surged forward. Finn tried to counter by stamping on the brakes and spinning the steering wheel. It wasn’t enough.

  The truck and trailer drove off the road and powered down the slope.

  36

  The ground dropped away before the Cadillac at a ridiculous angle. The car shot forward, unchecked.

  “Tree!” yelled Tony.

  Nick swerved.

  “Tree!”

  Nick swerved again.

  “Tree!”

  “It’s all bloody trees!” yelled Nick.

  The world was a rumble of earth and stone: bouncing viciously off the side panels; clattering off the windscreen. Pickles turned frantic circles on the back seat and whined. Above it all was a booming, rending roar behind him.

  Tony looked back.

  “What?” shouted Nick, terrified. “What is it?”

  “Don’t look round!” shouted Tony. “And don’t slow!”

  Less than ten feet from Nick’s door, a tall fir tree slammed into the earth. A large, single tyre bounced off it and flew, wobbling crazily, across the car’s path.

  “What happened to the truck?”

  “Tree!”

  “I can see that, d—!”