‘Ha!’ Steel banged the back of Logan’s seat. ‘Got the bastard now! We—’
Screaming belted out from the back of the van, yells of terror from the front, as Tufty tried to make the same turn – passenger-side wheels bouncing over the weird sticky-out chunk of pavement that protruded beyond the end of Don Street.
The whole van parted company with the ground: going airborne, an Unintended Flying Object heading straight for a flimsy set of bright-orange, temporary, plastic barriers and a fifty/sixty-foot plummet into the river beyond.
6
Tufty held on tight to the steering wheel, knuckles white with the strain, eyes wide, eyebrows trying to clamber their way to safety. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’
Logan grabbed hold of Branston.
Barrett babbled away in the background, battering out the words as quickly as possible: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb...JESUS!’
Her womb-fruit must’ve been smiling on them, because at theverylast moment the van’s wheels thumped down on the teeny chunk of tarmac left, giving them a bit of grip before the granite setts began.
Hurling them down into darkness, past a cluster of signs: ‘WEAKBRIDGEAHEAD~ 3 TONG.V.W.’, ‘WARNING NOUNAUTHORISEDACCESSBEYONDTHISPOINT~ BARRIERCONTROLOPERATION300YDS~ RESTRICTEDTURNINGFACILITIES’ and a no-entry-to-cars-and-motorbikes ‘EXCEPTFORACCESS’. Which wasn’t exactly inviting...
The settsburrrrrred and rumbled beneath the police van’s tortured tyres, making everything vibrate.
Stone walls leapt up on the left, holding the embankment back as the road sank deeper and deeper to a tight right turn – rushing towards them at ever increasing pace.
Even though it hadn’t rained for a week, the van still slithered on the little rectangular blocks, arse-end skittering out as they tried to make the corner, rear wing striking sparks against the granite wall.
But they’d made it to the bottom of the hill alive, and there was Mr FreezyWhip, just ahead.
Steel grabbed her Airwave handset. ‘Grandholm Bridge: heading north!’ A cruel grin snarled across her face as they clattered over the narrow bridge. ‘There’s bollards at the end here. He’stoast.’
An almightyBANGsounded up ahead.
From the look of things, Mr FreezyWhip had rear-ended a bright-red hatchback, presumably as it was in the process of lowering the bollards that kept the vulgar public from accessing the residents-only areas.
The ice-cream van bulldozed across the barrier, while the bollards were down, but the things were already sprouting up from the ground again, ready to catch a poor unsuspecting police van unawares.
Tufty took one hand off the wheel to pull down the sun visor, but all he found there was the sign: ‘DON’T ENCOURAGE HIM!’ He flipped it up and down again, as if that would change anything. ‘Oh noes!’ Looking more and more panicked with every passing second. ‘Where’s the police pass? WHERE’S THE POLICE PASS?’
Too late.
The van’sfrontwheels got past the barrier OK, but the rest of the vehicle wasn’t so lucky. A rising bollard must’ve clipped the underside about two-thirds of the way back, because the back end jerked into the air in an agonised screech of metal-on-metal.
And everyone was screaming again.
The rear wheels thudded down against the setts and Tuftyhauled the wheel to the right, to avoid ploughing straight into that rear-ended hatchback, flinging everyone sideways. Then they raced along the mill road: parkland on one side; a line of trees on the other, with the River Don just beyond.
Only now an alarming grinding noise came from somewhere under the van, and the exhaust howled and roared like a werewolf locked in a train-station toilet.
They snarled along beneath the spreading branches, through the dappled pools of shimmering light.
Technically, they should’ve been gaining on Mr FreezyWhip, but whatever the bollards had done to the drive chain it wasn’t good. The van was slowing down. And a quick glance in the rear-view mirror revealed clouds of greasy blue smoke filling the leafy lane.
But instead of making good his escape, Charles MacGarioch slammed on Mr FreezyWhip’s brakes – the front end dipping as the tyres slithered on the setts.
The ice-cream van lurched right, leaving the road and crashing between the trees at the side of the river, through the bushes. Momentarily flying – like a big, fat, rectangular swan – before diving nose-down into the River Don in a huge whoosh of spray.
A wrinkly clutch of old ladies stood in the middle of the road, staring as the ice-cream van bobbed in the fast-flowing water. Most of them had ancient dogs on the leash, except for one who appeared to be walking her husband. And he was the only one who seemed oblivious to the fact that if MacGarioch hadn’t swerved into the river, he would’ve ploughed through them like brittle meaty skittles.
Tufty whacked his brakes on too, and the police van shuddered to a stop – right next to the hole that Mr FreezyWhip punched through the undergrowth.
The doors flew open, and everyone piled out.