It took all three of them to lift him out of the reeking waterlogged shelter through an opening just big enough for one of them at a time. It was easy to see why the police would have missed it: from outside, it was just a concrete hardstand, perhaps the foundation for an old shed, and the opening ledthrough a shallow pit that was usually jammed with rubbish and covered by a corrugated iron sheet. But at last, panting steam, they had Blagg propped almost upright in the rain.
"Fireman's chair," Maxim said. "Grip your own wrist, then mine, under his arse. " But Dannknew all about that. Tanner was half his age, but Maxim turned instinctively to the trainer for important work. "Dave, you support his back. Don't let his head fall forward. "
They staggered and slithered the hundred yards or miles to the fence, sweating into clothes already soaked, swearing breathlessly. So now Maxim had to bring the car up. It would have been suspiciously obvious parked near nothing but a gap in the fence, so he had left it by the nearest flats. The three of them stayed just inside the fence while he went for it. By now the rain was easing.
There was just a few yards walk to the main road, a careful look around, then across it, instinctively choosing the potential cover of a derelict warehouse on that side rather than the dockyard fence on this. Walk a hundred yards, then turn down a side street. He had almost reached that turn when a police car came around another corner three hundred yards ahead.
They had to have seen him. The road was empty and most of the street lamps still lit, outlining him against the shining pavement. And when they reached him, they would have to stop. A lone man at nearly midnight, wearing a thinjacket in a storm that had been blowing for over an hour… And when they stopped, they would see the mud on him…
He took four strides to the corner, turned it andran. Behind, he thought he heard the car surge forward. It hadn't been a little Panda, either, but a Rover 2600, an 'Area car'. A trouble-hunter.
There was still the warehouse on his left, and a derelict site beyond that, with occupied flats coming up on the right… He could dodge two coppers in a car easily. Probably he could dodge the twenty coppers in ten cars that would be there in five minutes, and get clear away. But he didn't want to get clear away. He had to spend those five minutes here.
His own car was a few yards ahead, and he could be in and started before they turned the corner – but not out of sight.
And once they saw him, they'd have him. Even if the cars were evenly matched, he knew he couldn't out-drive the police.
He unlocked the boot, scrambled in, and slammed the lid on himself.
Inside, it was utterly dark. Rain pattered gently on the unlined metal above, and he hoped it drowned his panting breath. He heard the Rover roar around the corner, accelerate past, then squeal to a stop and whine back in reverse. The motor noise dropped to a rumble and feet clattered around his car. He couldn't see the torch being flashed underneath and through the windows, but he felt the car sway as one of the coppers tugged at the driver's handle and the boot. Then more feet, the slam of a door, the surge of power as the Rover shot away to look at the next corner. He turned on his own torch and started wondering how he was going to get out.
One look at the inside of the lock put him off trying that. The bolt was a hook of thick metal that snapped shut around a U-shaped rod the thickness of a pen. He could never get the leverage to force that open, and there was no inside keyhole, of course. He struggled painfully around into a new foetal position and started work on the back of the back seat.
It wasn't, blast it, one of those back seats that turn into a double bed or a discothequejust by twiddling a few knobs and wrenching your spine out of joint. This was just a back seat and very determined to stay that way. He could get it loose in time, but he didn't have any time. If only he had sometools… Then he realised that all those knobbly things sticking into his kidneys and buttocks were tools. Thirty seconds later, he had the whole U-rod assembly unbolted from the car and stepped back out the way he'd come in.
"What took the time?"Danndemanded, his voice shivery with cold and anxiety.
"Dodging coppers. Get him in the back seat. You go with him. Dave in the front." He left them to it while he roughly bolted the U-rod back on again; driving with a flapping-open boot lid was asking for attention. He pressed it gently shut and it held; loosely and with a slight gap, but it held.
"What were you doing that for?"Dannasked as they pulled cautiously away.
"Long story. What happens if I go left?" Left was away from the place the Mobile had last seen him, away from Neptune Court.
"Sooner or later you hit the Lower Road. Where are we going to take him? He looks pretty bad. "
"I just want to get out of the area and reach a phone."
"You can't take him to my place," Dave Tanner said abruptly.
"I wasn't going to." Maxim's thinking had just begun to catch up with why two armed watchmen – the ones outside his own flat hadn't been armed – had suddenly turned up in the service road of Neptune Court. It would be no place to watch from. They must have been coming to collect Blagg, and very certain they would find him.
"D'you work, Dave?" he asked.
"Course I do. I'm a wood machinist, in't I?"
"And your wife?"
"No, not now. She had this job at the checkout in the Co-op, but… I mean, what's this all about?"
"Nothing."
"I mean if you think Ron and my wife, well, you can bleedin' well -"
"I^vasn't thinking – hold it."
Headlights blazed in his rear-view mirror, topped by a flashing blue light. The Rover closed right up, blatantly harassing him into making one mistake that would give them the excuse to stop him. Maxim began driving like a saint on the way to beatification, but with very sub-saintly feelings in his heart.
It couldn't be the same Rover, because they'd have recognised the car, although he hoped they hadn't stopped long enough to get the number. All he could do now was keep steady despite his growing anger.
"What do we do?" Tanner asked fearfully.
"Keep going. Thosebastards."
Hang on, Major,"Dannsaid from the back. "Weare carrying a deserter who's shot somebody."
"They don't know that! If they stop me now…" He took his own pistol from a pocket andjammed it down between his thighs.
Tanner's voice became a squeal. "Here, you can't start using that thing!"
"You can't, Major,"Dannchimed in. "You can't start any more shooting."
Maxim never knew what he might have done. The Rover abruptly swung out and roared past, the passenger cop giving them a suspicious but mostly supercilious glare. It turned right at the next street.
A few minutes later they came out onto the bright and still busy Lower Road. It was like sailing into Harwich harbour after a winter crossing on the ferry; you just didn't believe how smooth and easy life could be.
Maxim stopped at the first phone box; Tanner was out of the car well before him. "I'll get me own way home, thanks…" And he was gone.
"I know just how he feels,"Dannsaid.
Agnes covered the phone mouthpiece with her hand. "Harry's found him. He's wounded. Can we supply a doctor who knows about bullets an'd keeps his mouth shut?"
George rubbed his eyes. "Do we know such a person?"
She nodded.
"I was afraid we might…"
"George, he.'s got us over a barrel. If we let Blagg go to hospital the cops get him, and he could be up on a murder charge. There's no way he's going to keep his mouth shut throughout that. We just have to go along. " She thought for a moment. "The only realistic alternative is to let the boy die, and I can't see our Harry wearing that."