Dead Simple

garage, but some years back that had been converted into what was now the sitting room.
    He started the car. In an hour they would be at Gatwick Airport. Tomorrow, or later today – she always had a problem with the time zones – they would be back in Australia. Home. Specks of drizzle pattered onto the windscreen. Regardless, she slipped on her new Gucci sunglasses. Vic had cropped her hair – no time to go to a salon – then she had put on this morning a short, dark wig. If there was any search at all at the airport, they would be watching for Ashley Harper. There was just the smallest possibility they might be looking for Alexandra Huron. But as she looked at the passport in her handbag, which still had two years to run, she smiled. Certainly no one would be looking for Anne Hampson.
    Vic put the gear lever into drive , then fumbled around. ‘Where’s the fucking brake?’
    ‘It’s a handle; you pull it.’
    ‘Why the fuck do they have a handle? Why didn’t you rent a normal car?’
    ‘How much more normal than a Mercedes can you get?’
    ‘One with a proper parking brake!’
    ‘For Christ’s sake!’
    He slid down his window and shouted out, ‘Bye, fuckwit. Have a nice rest of your life!’
    ‘Vic?’
    ‘Yeah?’ He accelerated away fiercely down the potholed road, which the council seemed to have forgotten. ‘What’s the matter, missing your lover boy’s dick already?’
    ‘You know something? It’s bigger than yours!’
    He lunged out at her, slapping her face, the car swerving onto the overgrown grass verge, then back onto the road, lurching through a pothole.
    ‘Does that make you feel good, hitting me?’
    ‘You are just a fucking slapper.’
    They reached a T-junction and turned right by a modern housing development, the trees still saplings.
    ‘And you’re just a bully, Vic. You’re a sadist, you know that? Does that make you feel good? Is that how you really get your rocks off, tormenting someone like Michael?’
    ‘And you get your rocks off by screwing him and knowing that one day you are really going to screw him?’ He turned to glare at her, then pulled out onto the main road.
    It happened so fast, all she saw was what felt, for an instant, like a sudden change in the light. There was a tremendous bang; she felt a fierce jerk; her ears went numb; and the interior of the car filled with what looked like feathers, and reeked of cordite. At the same time the horn began to blare.
    ‘Oh shit, oh shit, shit, shit!’ Vic hammered on the steering wheel with his fists; the driver’s air bag hanging like a spent condom from the wheel boss, and another air bag limp beside his head.
    ‘Are you all right?’ he asked Ashley.
    She nodded, staring at the bonnet of the car, which was raised jaggedly up in front of her, the Mercedes star that had been on the end now invisible. There was another car, white, stopped at a crazy angle in the middle of the road a few yards away.
    Vic tried to open his door, and seemed to be having difficulty. Then he threw his weight against it and, with a scream from the hinges, it opened.
    Ashley’s door opened without a problem. She unclipped her belt and stepped out shakily, then pinched her nose and blew hard to clear her ears. She could see a bewildered-looking grey-haired woman behind the wheel of the other car, a Saab, with much of its nose crumpled.
    Vic inspected the damage to the Mercedes. The offside front wheel was crushed and buckled and pushed right into the engine compartment. There was no chance of the car being driveable.
    ‘You stupid fucking bitch!’ Vic yelled, above the blare of the Mercedes horn, at the Saab.
    Ashley could see another car coming up the road, and a van coming from the opposite direction. And she could see a young man running towards them. ‘Vic,’ she shouted urgently, ‘we need to do something, for Christ’s sake!’
    ‘Yeah, right, we need to do something. What do you fucking suggest?’

85
    Back at the Incident Room, Nick Nicholl suddenly yelled at Grace. ‘Roy! Line seven, pick it up, pick it up!’
    Grace stabbed the button and lifted the receiver to his ear. ‘Roy Grace,’ he said.
    It was a Detective Sergeant from Brighton police station called Mark Tuckwell. ‘Roy,’ he said, ‘the Mercedes you have an alert out on, blue saloon, Lima-Juliet-Zero-Four-Papa-X-Ray-Lima?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It’s just been involved in a RTA in Newhaven. The occupants, one male, one female, have hijacked a