24

I suppose if one had to be involved in an impromptu stock-car race along the highways and byways of Warwickshire, an old Volvo 940 2.3-liter turbocharged station wagon might actually be one’s car of choice. In their prime, they hadn’t been nicknamed the “Volvo Tank” for nothing.

At the A46 junction, I debated with myself which way to go. Kipper, in his silver hatchback, was right up against my tailgate, and I could feel the Volvo lurch every time he hit me. If I went down towards the M40, I would have to deal with the traffic lights at the motorway junction. Equally, if I went straight on the A425, towards Birmingham, there were traffic lights within a few hundred yards. So I decided to turn right onto the A46, back towards Kenilworth and Coventry.

I swept onto the roundabout so fast that my mobile phone slid off the passenger seat and down the gap between it and the door. Sod it, I thought. I’d wanted to call the police, but I would have had to stop the car to retrieve the phone from down there. And, at the moment, stopping was completely out of the question.

Kipper kept darting back and forth around the rear of the Volvo like an annoying insect. Twice he gave me such a big nudge that I feared I would lose control completely, and my car was still fishtailing badly as it sped down the on-ramp and onto the A46 divided highway.

In spite of being thrown around by the constant lurching of the car, Sophie had managed to get herself into a fairly upright position on the backseat. I smiled at her in the rearview mirror. She looked back at me with wide, frightened eyes.

“Can you untie me?” she asked.

“Not just at the moment, my darling. I need both hands to drive.”

The car lurched as it was struck again by the hatchback. Sophie lay back down on the seat.

Fortunately, the A46 was quite empty at that time of the evening, and I was able to put my foot down on the gas. The Volvo’s speedometer climbed to well over ninety miles per hour, but still I couldn’t get away from Kipper’s car, which seemed to be stuck to me like a limpet. Twice he tried to get alongside, but both times I swerved to cut him off, forcing him back. The road was only two lanes wide each way at this point, but I knew that it went to three after the next junction. Keeping him back, then, would not be so easy.

What I needed was a police car, but, of course, there wasn’t one to be seen.

Our two cars raced along the road together towards the junction. At the very last moment, I jerked the steering wheel to the left and went across the white-painted hatching on the road and up the off-ramp, hoping that Kipper wouldn’t be able to make the turn. Sadly, he was able to follow, slowing only momentarily to cross the grass verge, which sent up a shower of earth and stones.

I shot up the ramp to the roundabout at the top of the rise. I hoped that nothing was coming around it, for I wasn’t about to slow down. My tires squealed in objection as I took the first exit along the country road towards the village of Leek Wooton. It was a two-lane road, so I now had to cope with the oncoming traffic as well as trying to keep Kipper behind me.

I thought the best plan was to drive to the nearest police station and park right outside the door. Surely, even shifty-eyed Kipper wouldn’t be crazy enough to try anything there. The only police station that I knew well was in Kenilworth because I’d had to go there a couple of times to show them my driving documents. But I also knew it was a very small office and that it didn’t operate around the clock. Would it still be open at this time of the evening? I assumed there also must be a police station in Warwick, and I was aware there was a large one in Leamington Spa, but I didn’t know exactly where, and I wasn’t about to ask a bystander for directions.

Kenilworth would have to do, I thought. Even if the police station was shut, it might still be enough to put Kipper off.

I tore down the road towards Leek Wooton with the silver hatchback seemingly glued to the back of my Volvo. At one point, he tried to overtake me, so I pulled right into the middle of the road, swerving back to my side only at the last second to avoid an oncoming truck whose driver was leaning heavily on his horn.

At the new roundabout outside the entrance to the Warwickshire Golf Club, I had to slow down slightly in order to make it around. Kipper in the hatchback, however, went the wrong way around the circle to try to get an advantage, and he almost made it as we emerged side by side. But he was now on the wrong side of the road. I squeezed him over yet farther until his wheels were almost on the grass, but still he wouldn’t give up. I looked across at him and I swear he was laughing at me. Finally, an oncoming car forced him to brake and fall in once more behind me.

I ignored the thirty-miles-per-hour signs at the entrance to the village, hoping desperately that a child didn’t step out into my path. At more than double the speed limit, I would have had no chance to stop in time.

I realized that I didn’t even have my seat belt on, so I reached up behind me for it and clicked its buckle into the lock at my side. But Sophie had no chance of doing the same.

“Darling, please lie down on the floor behind the seats,” I said firmly. “Get as low as you can and brace yourself with your feet. Just in case we have an accident.” I glanced over to her and tried to give her a reassuring smile.

“When will all this stop?” she cried.

“We’re on our way to the police station right now,” I said. “It will stop there.”

But it didn’t. Because we never reached the police station.

Beyond the village of Leek Wooton, the road to Kenilworth is straight, flat and narrow, but only about a mile in length before it reaches the outskirts of town.

I worried briefly about how I would deal with the many road junctions ahead, but, for now, it was as much as I could do to keep my car straight and on the tarmac surface as the silver hatchback continually thumped into the back. Why couldn’t he lose control or terminally damage his car?

So far, we had not encountered much other traffic, but our luck ran out as we left the village. A line of four cars was following a slow-moving builder’s flat-bed truck that was piled high with sand. I could see a van coming the opposite way, but it was still some distance off. I swung out and overtook all four cars and the truck as if they were going backwards, with my hand firmly on the horn to stop anyone else pulling out. Kipper tried to come through behind me, but he ran out of room and had to brake hard and dive in behind the truck in order to miss the oncoming van.

Suddenly, I was away from him. But not for long, and not by much, and I watched in the mirror as he quickly swept past the truck and set off in pursuit.

I looked ahead in absolute horror. In the distance, there was some roadwork, with temporary traffic lights, and I could see a line of waiting vehicles.

I was doing about eighty miles an hour, and the roadwork was looming large. I glanced in the mirror, and even at this speed the silver hatchback was gaining on me fast. Again I looked ahead. Traffic was coming towards us, headed by a huge eighteen-wheeled semi, and there were rows of trees lining both sides of the road.

I made a quick decision.

“Sophie, my darling,” I shouted, “brace yourself against the seats as hard as you can.”

With about four hundred yards still to go to the temporary traffic lights, I took my right foot off the accelerator and stood hard on the brake.

My old Volvo 940 station wagon weighed a little over one and a half tons, but, in spite of their age, the brakes were in excellent working order. With a small amount of shuddering from the antilock system, the car pulled up in a much shorter space than that shown as the stopping distance for eighty miles per hour in the Highway Code. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the tires had actually dug grooves in the road surface, so quickly did the car come to a halt.