We exchanged glances and set off after her.
She took us into Bridge Street, then cut up into Templar Place, before we found ourselves back in Lady Lane and immediately got our bearings. Edward Street was less than fifty yards away.
The van seemed like a haven of safety, and it was an enormous relief to reach it. For once, I got the passenger seat, with Rachel perched up on the engine cowling. The others all squeezed on to the settee in the back. Jeff started the motor and the headlights picked out reflections on the wet cobbles as we turned into Lady Lane and headed down towards the Eastgate roundabout.
We were almost there, cruising cautiously and keeping a wary eye on the streets around us, when Andy and three others came running out of Bridge Street and into the middle of Lady Lane. Pale faces were caught full in our headlights.
‘Jobbies,’ Jeff muttered. He dropped a gear and accelerated straight at them.
Rachel screamed and braced her feet on the metal dash, but at the last moment the drug dealer and his friends leapt out of the way. I could hear their raised voices swearing at us in the dark, and someone thumped the side of the van as we passed.
Jeff swung left on the roundabout, following the curve of Oastler House north, before turning right into New York Road and accelerating past the length of Moynihan, from where we had just escaped. No one spoke as we watched the serried ranks of balconies pass by on our right, misted windows rising up seven and eight storeys to cast diffuse yellow light into a thickening fog.
From there, York Road ran almost straight through the city, heading east. The rain got worse, and Jeff eased back on the speed, headlights raking the misted night as we cruised through what felt now like a ghost town. We passed only occasional vehicles, and there was nobody about on foot.
I checked the time. What had seemed like an eternity had, in fact, been little more than an hour. It was twenty minutes to midnight.
III
I juggled the AA book of maps on my knees by the intermittent light of passing street lamps, trying to get our bearings.
‘We’re on the A64,’ I said, ‘heading sort of north-east.’ I looked at Rachel. ‘You got any idea where that’s going to take us?’
She shrugged. ‘Not a clue. I’ve hardly been over the door since I’ve been here.’
Suddenly Jeff said, ‘I think we’re being followed.’
I craned my neck to try to catch a glimpse in the wing mirror of the car that was on our tail. But all I saw were headlights. Luke clambered over the settee and the piles of gear to look through the back windows.
‘It’s a Cortina,’ he said. ‘White. Pretty bashed-up-looking.’
‘Oh shit.’ Rachel was even paler than when I’d first seen her. ‘That’s Andy’s car.’
‘How in God’s name did he manage tae find us?’ Dave said.
‘His car wouldn’t have been parked far away,’ Rachel said. ‘They must have gambled on which way we went.’
‘Lucky bloody gamble.’ Maurie’s muttered oath was almost inaudible but summed up our collective sense that the only luck we‘d had since leaving home was the bad kind.
‘I don’t think they’ll try anything in the middle of a main road,’ I said with a great deal more confidence than I felt. There was, after all, virtually no other traffic on it. ‘We’re never going to outrun him, that’s for sure. Just don’t let him get past us.’
‘How am I supposed to do that?’ I could hear the panic in Jeff’s voice.
Then Luke called from the back, ‘He doesn’t seem to be trying to catch up or overtake us. He’s just kind of hanging back there.’
‘Hanging back for what?’ Jeff could hardly keep his eyes on the road for looking in the mirror.
‘Waiting for something. I don’t know. The right moment to get past us, maybe.’
I looked again at the map and said, ‘Just follow the signs for Tadcaster, and that’ll keep us on the main road.’
Jeff began banging his palms up and down on the wheel. ‘Jobbies, jobbies, jobbies. You shouldn’t have poured that stuff down the toilet, Luke.’
But Rachel said quietly, ‘It’s not about the H, or the money. It’s about me. I told you. He thinks of me as his property. And if he can’t have me back, then he’ll kill me.’
‘We’re not going to let him do that,’ Maurie said.
‘Oh, aye?’ Dave’s voice was loaded with scepticism. ‘Who’s this we, kemo sabe?’
For ten, maybe fifteen minutes, the Cortina followed at a discreet distance. We were out in suburbia now, residential streets branching off left and right. We took a left at a roundabout and followed the ring road for half a mile, before turning right at the next, sticking to the A64 and the signposts for Tadcaster.
The housing around us became more sparse, and up ahead I saw that the street lamps came to an abrupt end, leaving only darkness beyond them. Fear sat among us like another passenger. It could only be a matter of time before Andy made his move.
To make things worse, the rain began falling harder. Jeff was hunched over the wheel, staring through the wipers, trying to focus on the road ahead.
‘Here he comes!’ Luke shouted from the back.
I could see the approaching headlights in the wing mirror. I saw Jeff tensing, and at the last moment he swung the wheel hard right and crossed the centre line into the other lane. The Cortina swerved to avoid us, and I saw its lights veer left and right across empty spring fields, as the driver tried to keep it on the road.
We were on the wrong side of the road now, and the Cortina tried to accelerate through on our inside. Jeff swung left, and there was a deafening bang as the side of the van made contact with the front wing of the car. The Cortina braked, and fell back, lurching violently.
Jeff hung on to the wheel, grimly trying to bring the Thames back under control without braking. But we all knew that he couldn’t keep this up. The Cortina came screaming up again on our outside.
And I shouted, ‘Left, Jeff! Go left here.’
There was a narrow country road, cutting off at an angle just ahead. A signpost to a place called Thorner. Jeff braked fiercely, then pulled hard to the left, and we slid more than turned off, the back of the van snaking behind us, before Jeff regained control.
The Cortina overshot the turn, and I saw its brake lights as we turned. Its wheels had lost their grip on the wet surface and the car was sliding sideways down the middle of the road. Then I lost sight of it behind the hedgerows.
We were now on Thorner Lane. But there was no sign of Thorner itself. Just a long, straight road that disappeared beyond the reach of our headlights. Jeff accelerated to a dangerous speed.
And Luke’s voice came from behind us. ‘They’re back again.’
I could see the lights of the Cortina in the mirror. It was still a long way behind us, but there was never any doubt that it would catch us up. This, though, was a much narrower road, and if Jeff stuck to the middle of it, then there was no way for the Cortina to overtake.
Which is when I saw the lights of a car coming in the opposite direction.
I glanced at Jeff. His teeth were clenched, his jaw set and his focus dead ahead. He made no attempt to slow down.
‘Jeff,’ I almost shouted at him. ‘You’ll never get past him at this speed.’
His face was lit up by the lights of the oncoming car. Rachel put her feet up on the dash again to brace herself, and the driver of the approaching vehicle flashed his lights several times
‘Jeff!’ I almost screamed at him, but it still made no impression. Now I could see the faces of the driver and his passenger ahead of us. ‘Jesus! They’re cops!’