Brewer stepped on the gas. They raced to close the gap on Deeming. He was trapped, he was slowing down. The men were running round to grab him. Brewer’s lips were bundled tight, he was set to ram if necessary. But Deeming kept riding straight, didn’t offer to break and double back.
Then his engine roared, he slanted right, dived headlong into the trees: slalomed crazily among the trunks of the tall, close-set pines. His rear wheel showered up dead pine needles, he was belting at full throttle. He jerked and twisted like a maddened animal, crashed through brushwood, reared back on the track. And then he was away, beyond the roadblock, shaking off a couple of pursuers. He cut his throttle, looked over his shoulder, made a mocking salute with five fingers.
The Wolseley skidded to a stop.
‘Get these cars out of the way!’ Gently shouted.
There was a rush for them and some awkward man?uvring before the block could be disentangled. There was no room to pass: Gently switched cars, taking Brewer and Setters with him. Up the track Deeming sat on his bike, lit a cigarette, and grinningly waited.
They got away. So did Deeming: he performed a little victory roll. Brewer was pale and chewed his lip, made a hash of coming up through his gears.
‘Oughtn’t I to go after him?’ he muttered to Gently.
Gently shook his head. ‘It’s a waste of time. Hold your speed in reserve. You’ll never catch him in a straight run.’
Now only the support patrol waited ahead to try its luck with Deeming. If that failed, and he gained the road, they’d have to start planning afresh. Which way would he point if he reached the road? Away from Latchford, almost certainly. He would need to make for a town like Castlebridge, where he could lose himself in a maze of streets. Gently called control again.
‘Deeming’s got through the block,’ he told them. ‘We’re observing him, but we can’t catch him. I think he’ll make towards Castlebridge.’
‘Any instructions?’ control came back.
‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘We’ll have to try another block. There’s a country house with park walls just this side of Oldmarket and I want the block at the Oldmarket end of the walls. From wall to wall, you understand? Don’t leave the ditches uncovered. We’ll have three or four cars behind him and should be able to stop him doubling.’
‘Willco,’ control said. ‘We’ll put Oldmarket on this one.’
From the back Setters rasped: ‘You think that’s going to get him?’
Gently grunted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you have to go through the motions.’
The junction showed ahead, and there a fresh comedy was played. The support patrol saw Deeming, took off, drove steadily towards him. Brewer dutifully launched the Wolseley and the two cars rapidly converged on Deeming. Deeming feinted, sent the support car left, slid through right without raising his speed. Once more the track was blocked. For everyone except Deeming.
‘All right!’ Gently bellowed. ‘Don’t talk, just back out.’
The flustered driver of the support car lost his head, stalled his engine. He had to back a hundred yards to unbottle the other cars. It was ludicrous. Deeming might have been several miles on his way. Instead he sat jauntily watching from a position across the main road. If it was any comfort, he was pointed to Castlebridge. It didn’t seem much comfort.
‘Like you’ve got a good driver?’ he shouted to Gently. ‘You reckon he’ll stay with me up here? You better climb on the pillion, screw, you better waltz with Matilda!’
‘Give yourself up!’ Gently shouted.
‘Like I’m too valuable,’ Deeming replied. ‘But I’m sorry you can’t be here behind me. Do your best, screw. Keep close.’
He pushed off, smoothed his throttle, began to sail away fast. Brewer didn’t need telling. He was itching to let the Wolseley go. Gently sat deep in his seat, his eyes narrow, gone blank. Setters was leaning forward between them. He was breathing like a bloodhound. Still Deeming was going away from them.
‘It’s no good, sir,’ Brewer clipped. ‘He must have twenty miles an hour on us.’
‘Keep at him,’ Gently snapped.
The speedometer needle was pushing three figures.
There was traffic on the road. Deeming didn’t care about traffic. He arrowed through it with little sways, kept near the centre of the road. Brewer had to notice the traffic. It pulled him down several times. Deeming got smaller and smaller ahead, a black atom of ferocious energy.
‘Christ, to lose him like this!’ Setters swore, dragging down on the seat backs. ‘Playing with us all that time, then getting away like this. I could kick myself for it, I could bash my head on the wall.’
‘Yes,’ Gently muttered. ‘We’ve lost him. He’s beaten us.’
‘He’ll turn off,’ Setters groaned. ‘There’s side-turns, plenty of them.’
‘He won’t turn off,’ Gently said. ‘He isn’t going as far as a side-turn.’
Setters chewed on it for a moment. They were hitting the slight incline to the ridge. Brewer was hanging on to three figures though his engine laboured and shook.
‘Come again with that?’ Setters said.
‘He’s going to hit the tree,’ Gently said. ‘That’s why he hasn’t bothered to ditch us. We’re going to be there to see it.’
‘Hell,’ Setters said. He stopped dragging, sank back on his seat. Brewer had heard what Gently said, his mouth thinned to a tight seam.
Setters came back, angling his face.
‘You’re serious about that?’ he said.
Gently nodded. ‘He’s going to do it. He’s had it in mind from the start.’
‘But crying hell!’ Setters said.
Gently said: ‘I had the preview. He showed me just what he was going to do. He wanted to make sure I understood it.’
‘Hell,’ Setters said a third time.
‘And we can’t stop him,’ Gently said. ‘There he goes. A free man. He’s beaten us all along the line.’
He was a long way off now, just a speck high up the road, weaving slightly and disappearing behind crawling, flashing cars. But the Gallows Tree was growing higher, was spreading its bare raven branches. The sky showed silver-white behind it, left it stark, hard, etched.
‘He doesn’t have to do it,’ Setters said hoarsely. ‘He’s clear away. He could dodge us.’
Gently didn’t say anything. Brewer kept murdering the engine.
‘Maybe there’s a case,’ Setters said. ‘He isn’t normal. You can’t call him normal.’
The tree stretched out massively, a dark, upward-rising torch.
It wasn’t sensational. It was as though someone had thrown a bag of sweets at the tree. The sweets scattered, a few large ones, but most of them small. Only there’d been a firework in the bag and it shot up a yellowish pillar of flame, and off the top of the pillar lifted black smoke, going up straight in the still air.
He’d been half a minute ahead of them, enough to collect a jam of traffic. Brewer drove in hooting frenziedly, squealed the Wolseley to a stop. They jumped out, ran across. A white-faced man was using an extinguisher. Another was lugging at a riding-boot. It came away. He collapsed in a faint. The body was tangled with the frame of the bike, it was being burned. The tree was burning.
‘Get away, all of you!’ Gently ordered. ‘You can’t do any good here. Leave the rest of this to us — on your way, on your way!’
‘He was laughing,’ said the man with the extinguisher. ‘That’s my car… I saw him do it. I could see his teeth. He was laughing. You won’t believe me. But he was laughing.’
‘Drive on a bit,’ Gently said. ‘We’ll talk to you later, drive on a bit.’
‘I saw him laughing,’ the man said. ‘I know that nobody’s going to believe me.’
The tree was catching all the way up, it was useless attacking it with extinguishers. Brewer was back with the R.T. summoning an ambulance and a fire engine. There was no dispersing the gapers. Even the smell wasn’t shifting them. The smoke had puffed up to a great height, it must have been visible for many miles.
‘What a way to do it,’ Setters was babbling. ‘Oh, my God, what a way to do it.’