Neal was trying to do just the opposite, but that was the problem. Lacking any facility for thinking in reverse, he made the precise opposite happen of what he intended. Each time he tried to steer away from the madly fleeing Colin, he headed right for him. It was all pretty confusing, especially at that speed.
Colin‘s scream woke up Vanessa, who had been dozing in the phone box. She made a quick assessment of the scene and acted with dispatch.
“Stop!” she yelled as she chased the car down the street. “Stop! You’re going to kill him! Stop!”
Neal stopped. His scrambling feet and hands finally found the right combination, and the high-performance vehicle screeched to a sudden halt, slamming Neal and Allie into the dashboard and then flinging them back into their seats as it lunged forward.
Which surprised vanessa, who never really thought you could get anybody to actually stop just by yelling “Stop.” She was quite pleased with herself until she realized the little auto was now heading toward her, and she was about to turn and run when a shout from the window distracted her.
“He broke my nose, Vanessa!” Crisp bellowed as he hung out the window. “He broke my fucking nose!”
There were two things about Vanessa that became important at this crucial point. The first was that, of all the players in the game, she was the freshest. That is to say; she wasn’t stoned into the Enchanted Forest and she hadn’t been wrestling with a demonic triumph of automotive engineering. Nor had she smashed her head on the floor, had rough sex with a mop handle, or had her face smashed by a pan full of ice. The second factor was that Vanessa was relatively unattractive. She had never had a horde of suitors fighting over her, and she was bound and determined to hold on to the one she had, a man who found her witty, sexy, and desirable. A man who now stood in the window, bleeding and disfigured, crying for justice.
So as the car bore down on her, Vanessa stood her ground. Neal saw her standing in the middle of the street, Katie-Bar-the-Door. He was on the verge of gaining a semblance of control over this vehicular virago and even managed to slow down as he steered around her. Mistake.
You’ve heard all those stories about mothers lifting Mack trucks off their children. Something about a chemical combination of maternal instincts and adrenaline? Vanessa had plenty of both going for her as she grabbed the driver’s door handle and jumped onto the narrow running board. “You hurt my baby!” she screamed as she landed a nifty right hand through the open window onto Neal’s jaw. He hit the brake, forgetting that damn thing about the clutch, and the car shuddered to a stop. As Neal struggled to find the ignition key, Vanessa smacked him again in the side of the head.
“You hurt my baby!”
Neal tried to push her off with his left hand, but she had a death grip on the inside of the window. Neal glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Colin hobbling toward him, a stick in his hand and blood in his eye.
Crisp felt ashamed as he looked out the window. Here was the love of his life and his best friend doing desperate battle in the street. And here he was, two stories above the fray, snug and safe. “I’ll save you, Vanessa!” he yelled, and went looking for a way to make that good.
“Nessa, offa car,” Allie said sweelly but thinly from her less than commanding position in Neal’s lap. “Jes’ goin’ for a ride.”
Vanessa was trying her best to pull the driver’s door open and vent her full fury on her love’s attacker, but Neal was at the same time holding the door shut and trying to start the car and was doing a pretty remarkable job of it, considering the bashing he was taking. But it wasn’t working. So Neal let go of the gearshift to get leverage, leaned back, and popped Vanessa square in the chops with an overhand right. This girl can really take a punch, he thought. He had to give her that.
Colin reached for the passenger door to get his hands on that bitch Alice before he beat her new boyfriend into bread pudding. He had the door half open…
“Okay, nessa, have it your way,” Allie said, her patience exhausted. She wanted to go for a ride. Squeezing herself onto Neal’s lap, she shoved her left foot down on the clutch, yanked the shift into first gear, and stepped down hard on the accelerator. This Keble did just what Daddy’s Keble always did. It took off like a rabbit on Dexedrine.
Neal was surprised when Vanessa suddenly dropped from sight as glass shattered all over the roof of the car. He didn’t have time to think about it, though. He just had time to grab the wheel as the Keble suddenly surged forward.
Which action presented colin with a clear choice: let go, or lose his arm. He took the former course, and only rolled fifteen or sixteen times before coming to rest in the street.
“Sorry, vanessa!” shouted Crisp, whose aim with the gin bottle had been off by that much. He threw another one at the fleeing car.
The keble zoomed off into the night with its two fugitives. Neal gripped the wheel and played with the gearshift. Allie slept soundly against the door.
Then the damnedest thing happened. It started to rain.
The sky had been saving up all summer for this one and now it really let go. It didn’t take Neal more than four or five minutes of frantic fumbling to figure out the windshield wipers and another minute or so to roll up the windows, by which time he was soaked down to his shoulders. He pulled the car over to the side of Camden High Street to check the map. The route had seemed simple when he’d memorized it earlier, but everything looked different on the ground, especially when you had a split lip, a blossoming shiner, and couldn’t see a thing through sheets of rain in the dark.
He decided to take the Seven Sisters Road to the A406 and the A406 to the M-11, the major thoroughfare north.
He didn’t even notice that he didn’t have any trouble slipping into first gear and easing out onto the street.
Colin hissed with pain as he straddled his motorbike. Rain? he thought. Bloody rain? It hasn’t rained in three months and now it has to come down in great awful buckets? There is a God, he thought, and he’s a ball-stomper. Well, there was nothing to do but head off after them and see whether his luck was changing. He turned up the throttle.
The kid at the gas station was thrilled to death to see Neal pull up.
“I need gas. Fill it up,” Neal said.
The kid spit a mouthful of water out and answered, “if it’s gas you want, go to the States. We have petrol here.”
“Whatever it is that makes this car run.”
“Cars are on a train, mate. Over here we call it an auto.”
“You want to stand there getting soaked or you want to hold a comparative linguistics seminar?”
“Money first. Then the petrol for your auto.”
Neal handed him a ten-pound note.
“How do I get on the A406?” he asked when the attendant had finished pumping.
“Roundabout straight on. Second right.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
The kid was even more thrilled when some moron on a motorbike roared in.
“Little sports car pass by?” the biker shouted above the din of the rain.
“Didn’t pass by. Stopped for petrol.”
“Where was he going?”
“I don’t know where he was going, but he was using the A406 to get there.”
“How-”
“Roundabout straight on. Second right.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Neal took it nice and slow in the rain. Allie was peacefully sleeping and he was in no particular hurry-until he saw a single headlight in the rearview mirror, coming on fast.
Neal slowed down. If it was Colin, he might as well find out now instead of letting him follow them and blow another safe house.