‘We has a hot pursuit!’ Tufty put his foot down, making the tyres squeal, sending blue smoke billowing into the hot afternoon air – then the van shot forward, clumping up onto the pavement to get around the patrol car blocking the road. Nearly losing a wing mirror to a communal recycling bin, then clumping back onto the tarmac again, soon as they’d passed the second roadblock vehicle.
At the bottom of the lane, Tufty gave the wheel a hard twistto the right, and the van’s back end kicked out, leaving smears of burnt rubber on the sun-baked tarmac – curling in the wing mirror as they fishtailed onto Gordon’s Mills Road. Narrowly missing a bluebottle-green Škoda.
Yeah...
Disco time.
Logan hit the dashboard button, and the van’s siren wailed, blue lights flickering and swirling as they roared back towards town.
They’d just wheeched through the pedestrian crossing when Barrett banged on the roof. ‘That’s him!’ turning to point through the back windows. ‘That’s him there!’
Tufty slammed on the brakes and the ABS kicked in, juddering the van to a halt as Charles MacGarioch hurple-jogged across the road in the rear-view mirror. ‘Got it!’
He whacked the gearstick into reverse, and they were whining backwards, at speed. Past the bus stop, where a lone auld mannie ogled at them. Stopping halfway across the pedestrian crossing.
Logan threw the passenger door open and tumbled out. ‘HOY!’ Sprinting towards the tree-battered figure scrambling his way over the chest-high wall at the side of the road.
Barrett rumbled the side door back, leaping free of the van, handcuffs at the ready...but they werebothtoo slow. Charles MacGarioch disappeared straight down. For the second time that day.
Logan peered over the wall. ‘Sod.’
A twenty-foot drop, not quite vertical – the steep slope densely overgrown with elder and hawthorn and jaggedy-sharp brambles.
Down there, on the road below, a red Kia’s hazards flashed, security system wailing as the driver blundered out into the hot afternoon to gawp at the large new dent in her car’s roof. The windscreen all cracked and opaque.
The car alarm clashed with the more familiar jingly tinkle of ‘Greensleeves’ coming from the mysterious ice-cream van that had haunted the afternoon – it was parked outside a modern block of flats, with a line of kids gathered by the serving hatch. Others already munching on their purchase and staring at the accident. A bit of theatre to go with their Pokey Hats and Funny Feet.
A cavalcade of copyright-infringing cartoon characters frolicked all over the van, along with the words ‘MRFREEZYWHIP’SICEALICIOUSTREATS!’ in bright cheerful letters. And perched on top: an eight-foot-long fibreglass 99 cone, complete with red sauce.
Charles MacGarioch limped into view, glancing over his shoulder at Logan and Barrett, his face covered in scrapes and scratches from the recent trampoline-tree trauma and downhill bramble scramble.
Logan stood on his tiptoes, scanning the slope for an easier / less painful way down. The main road had a turn-off about four hundred feet further along, that doglegged around onto Papermill Gardens, where Charles MacGarioch was limping his way towards Mr FreezyWhip’s ice-cream van.
OK.
‘HOY!’ Logan waved at Tufty, then pointed at the junction. ‘That way! We’ll cut him off!’ He slapped Barrett on the shoulder and clambered over the wall, crackling and snapping and shoving and half-falling his way down the steep drop and out onto the road below, emerging next to the wailing Kia.
Up on Gordon’s Mills Road, the police van Dopplered away.
MacGarioch yanked open Mr FreezyWhip’s driver’s door and clambered in behind the wheel.
‘Gah...’ Barrett staggered out of the undergrowth, looking as if he’d been pulled through several hedges sideways. Spittingout spiders’ webs and bits of leaves. He curled a mocking lip at the ice-cream van. ‘Well, he’s not going to get very far inthat, is he. Probably only does about ten miles an hour.’
Mr FreezyWhip’s engine snarled into life and the chimes grew louder. Then the kids scattered as the van leapt forward, bouncing through a shrubbery border, and across another bit of the car park, slaloming between parked hatchbacks, onto the tarmac and hammering it off into the distance.
Sod...
Logan sprinted after it.
He’d barely gone half a dozen paces before the police van appeared at the far end of the road, roaring towards them as Mr FreezyWhip accelerated away. On a collision course.
The silly buggers were going to play chicken, weren’t they.
Because young men were thick and invincible.
Till they fatally weren’t.
Thankfully, someone more sensible than Tufty must’ve intervened, because the police van swerved at the last moment, stomping on its brakes to avoid wrapping itself around a lamp-post.