Becky grabbed me by the collar and shouted, “What the hell is going on, Jimbo?”
“Get me out of here!” I panted. “Just get me out of here!”
“Wait!” she snapped. “I need an explanation.”
She didn’t get one. What she got were two neon-blue hands on her shoulders. One of the Volvo men had come upstairs to find out what the delay was. There were little blue fireworks in his eyes.
“Oi!” yelled Becky, spinning round.
There were two smoking hand-prints on her jacket and a smell of burned leather in the air.
“My jacket!” she shrieked. “Look what you’ve done to my jacket!”
The motorcycle helmet, which had been dangling in her hand, executed a neat curve up over her shoulder and onto the head of the new arrival, who went cross-eyed, tottered a bit, then fell into a heap.
Becky turned to me. “OK, Jimbo, you win,” she said quickly. “You can explain later. Let’s get out of this place.”
“Thanks,” I said, grabbing the second sleeping bag from the hall cupboard.
Becky looked at the bag. “Where are we going? Outer Mongolia?”
“Maybe,” I said.
I looked round and saw the fridge topple over onto the floor with an almighty crash.
“Terry!” shouted Becky. “Are you all right?”
His ugly face appeared round the door. “‘Course I am!” And he dived back into the fray.
Becky picked up Craterface’s helmet, threw it to me and said, “Take this.”
I grabbed his jacket too, for good measure.
All the way down the stairs Becky kept saying, “This is totally insane. This is totally insane.”
“I know,” I said. “I know. Please. Just keep moving.”
We ran across the car park and I began stuffing my supplies into the panniers of the Moto Guzzi. Only when I was locking them did I remember the second man in the very expensive light-grey suit, who was now running towards us.
“Becky!” I shouted. “Watch out!”
She spun round. “God, Jimbo, you have some really charming friends.”
She hopped onto the bike. I hopped onto the bike. Our pursuer realized he was going to need transport too, and he turned and ran back to the red Volvo. We buckled our helmets on.
“Have you ever driven this bike before?” I shouted.
“Of course not. Terry wouldn’t let anyone else near it.”
“Oh my God.”
“There’s always a first time!” she shouted.
The Volvo started up, screeched into reverse, then came at us like a fighter jet, with smoke pouring off its back wheels.
“Hang on!” shouted Becky.
I looked up at the flat and saw a kitchen chair fly out of a window. Then my head was yanked backwards, my bum was yanked forwards and we were off.
Considering she was a learner driver, Becky did very well. Considering she was a learner driver being chased by an angry man in a large red Volvo, she was brilliant.
We lurched and roared and skidded. We mounted a pavement and came very close to hitting an ice-cream van. I turned and saw the Volvo lurching, roaring and skidding on our tail. We ski-jumped over a grassy mound and were airborne for a worryingly long time. We hit the ground, banked round a bus shelter and found ourselves on the main road.
So did the Volvo. As we accelerated down the dual carriageway, past the waterworks and the milk depot, I glanced round once more and saw the car only metres from our number plate.
“Faster, Becky!” I shouted. “He’s catching up.”
I don’t know whether she heard me. I don’t even know whether she meant to do something quite so dangerous. Either way, without warning, I felt the bike swerve to the right, cut across the path of a large articulated lorry coming up behind us, leave the road and plunge through the shrubbery on the central reservation.
I closed my eyes. Branches clattered across the front of my visor and the bike bucked beneath us like a wild horse. I concentrated on keeping my lunch firmly down. I did not want to be sick inside a motorcycle helmet.
Then, suddenly, there was tarmac under the bike again. I opened my eyes and saw that we were travelling down the dual carriageway in the other direction. Twisting in my seat, I caught one brief and final glimpse of the red Volvo in the middle of the central reservation, its bonnet folded neatly round a tree trunk. Sticking out of the smashed windscreen was a sign reading: NO U-TURNS.
I told Becky she could slow down.
Ten minutes later we pulled up outside Tesco. Becky got off the bike, handed me the keys and said, “Wait here. I’ll be five minutes.”
“But, Becky…” I complained.
“Listen, mate,” she said, wagging her finger at me. “If I’m going to Outer Mongolia, I need a toothbrush, I need eyeliner and I need some clean knickers.”
10
The road North
Toothbrush, knickers and eyeliner on board, we roared away into the evening traffic. I directed Becky towards the motorway and after half an hour we pulled into a service station so that we could grab something to eat, fill up with petrol and have a team talk.
We bought ourselves a tray of scrambled eggs and chips and sticky cakes and made our way to a window seat. We squeezed in, Becky speared a chip, I took a sip of my lemonade and she said, “Explanation. Now.”
I started at the beginning. The expulsion wind-up, bugging the staff room, Pearce and Kidd’s mystery language, Charlie saying, “Spudvetch!” to Mr Kidd, the raid on Mrs Pearce’s attic…
Becky’s chip remained suspended on the prongs of her fork, halfway between her plate and her mouth, throughout my entire story.
“Holy bananas,” she said. “And this is all true?”
“Of course it is. You saw those men in the flat. They weren’t pretending, were they?”
She let out a long, slow, whistly breath, then finally ate the chip.
“Look…” I said, reaching deep into a pannier. I took out the wristband and unwrapped the silver foil round it. “Put this round your wrist.”
“So this is the thing?”
“Yeah, this is the thing,” I said. “Now touch it with the fingers of your other hand. But be quick.”
She touched the brass bangle and jumped as the plane came in to land between her ears. “What the flaming…?”
Then the voice started. She whipped round, just like I’d done, thinking someone was standing next to her, talking into her ear.
I snatched the band off her wrist, wrapped it in the silver foil and slipped it back into the pannier.
“OK, OK, OK,” said Becky. “I believe you. God, that totally freaked me out.”
I took another swig of lemonade. “And I think it’s got a kind of tracer on it, so we can’t hang around here too long.”
She started eating her scrambled egg. “Where are we going?”
“Loch Coruisk,” I said, burrowing in the pannier again and bringing out the Ordnance Survey maps.
“Lock what?” asked Becky.
“Loch Coruisk,” I said. “It’s on the Isle of Skye.” I flattened out map number 32 across the table.
“Why there?”
“There was a message in the biscuit tin in Mrs Pearce’s attic. It was in the same language they were using in the staff room. It said ‘Coruisk’. Look…” I pointed to a jagged smear of blue in the centre of the map.
“And there was a map reference.” I dug out the Spudvetch! notebook and read out the numbers: “Four-eight-seven-one-nine-six.” I followed the lines down from the top margin and the lines in from the left-hand margin. “Here.” Where the lines converged there was a tiny square, indicating some kind of building by the mouth of the loch, where it fed into the sea.