Dead Man's Footsteps

police would not have thought about that.
    He would be all right. The bitch should never, ever have messed with him.
    Roy Grace quickly caught up with the lumbering Honda, then sat yards from its tail. Pewe radioed that they were approaching the Beachy Head Hotel.
    Suddenly, the Honda veered sharply right, off the road and up on to the grassland that separated the road from the cliff edge. Grace did the same, wincing as his beloved Alfa’s suspension bottomed out. He heard and felt the grinding scrape of the exhaust striking the ground andsomething falling off, but he was so focused on the Honda he barely registered it.
    A whole cluster of vehicles and people were ahead of them now. He saw a British Telecom truck blocking the road, with a swarm of police officers near it. Two motorcycles. Pewe turned up the volume on the radio.
    A voice said, ‘Target Two may be coming back for the van. It’s in the copse behind the ice-cream vehicle. Cut him off. Target One is in the van with her mother.’
    Pewe pointed through the windscreen. ‘Roy, it’s there. That’s where he’s heading.’
    Grace could see the large, oval-shaped copse, with the brightly coloured ice-cream van parked a short distance in front of it.
    Target Two was accelerating.
    Grace dropped down a gear and flattened the accelerator. The Alfa shot forward, the suspension bottoming again in a dip, throwing both unrestrained men up, banging their heads on the roof.
    ‘Sorry,’ Grace said grimly, drawing level with the Honda.
    On his outside now, barely inches from his door, was a flimsy-looking railing at the cliff edge. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Target Two, a heavily bearded man in a baseball cap. To his right, the railing ended suddenly, leaving shrubbery marking a completely unguarded drop now.
    Grace ploughed through undergrowth, grimly hoping the shrubbery wasn’t concealing an indent in the cliff they would suddenly plunge down.
    He eased off the accelerator, driving level, trying to get the nose of his car just a couple of feet in front, to force the Honda further away from the edge. The copse and the ice-cream van were looming up rapidly.
    As if anticipating his thoughts, Target Two swung the Honda’s steering wheel to the right, banging hard into the passenger side of the Alfa. Pewe let out a shriek and the Alfa lurched perilously close to the edge.
    The copse was coming even closer.
    The Honda nudged them again. The heavier of the two cars, its nose well in front, it pushed them further over. They bounced crazily on some stones and uneven ground. Then it nudged them again, even closer to the edge.
    ‘Roy!’ Pewe squealed, holding on to his unfastened seat belt and sounding petrified.
    They were boxed in. Grace floored the accelerator and the Alfa shot forward. The copse was now no more than two hundred yards away. He cut in front of the Honda sharply, and then, with the intention of hiding the fact that he was braking, he yanked the handbrake full on instead of pressing the brake pedal.
    The effect was instant and dramatic, and not what he had expected. The tail of the Alfa broke away and the car started to slide sideways. Almost instantly, the Honda slammed into the rear wing, sending the Alfa barrel-rolling, side over side.
    The force of the impact sent the Honda veering to the left, out of control, ploughing into the rear of the ice-cream van.
    Grace felt himself hurtling, weightlessly, through the air. Air that was a cacophony of booming, echoing metallic noises.
    He landed with a thump that winded him, jarring every bone in his body, and with a force that rolled him over several times, helplessly, as if he had been ejected from some freakish funfair ride. Then, finally, he came to a halt face down in wet grass, with his mouth jammed into mud.
    For an instant he was not sure if he was alive or dead. His ears popped. There was a brief moment of silence. The wind howled. Then he heard a terrible scream, but he had no idea where it came from.
    He scrambled to his feet and immediately fell over again. It was as if someone had picked up the entire headland and tilted it sideways. He stood up again, swaying giddily, surveying the scene. The bonnet of the Honda, which was lurched over at a strange angle, was embedded in the destroyed rear end of the ice-cream van. The driver of the Honda appeared to be in a daze, pushing at his door, while two police officers in stab vests were pulling on it. Smoke was coming out of the underside of