Dead Simple

unlucky streak wiped him out.
    He’d then teamed up with a bent Quartermaster called Bruce Jackman, in charge of the ordnance supplies, and found an easy way to make fast money by selling off guns, ammunition and other military supplies via a website. When that was in the process of being rumbled, he’d garrotted Bruce Jackman, and left him hanging in his bedroom with a suicide note. And had never lost a night’s sleep over it since.
    Life was a game, survival of the sharpest . In his view humans made the mistake of trying to pretend they were any different to the animal world. All life was the law of the jungle.
    That didn’t mean you couldn’t love someone. He’d been deeply, crazily, besottedly in love with Alex from the moment he had first seen her. She had it all: real class, style, stunning beauty, a great body, and she was a dirty cow in bed. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman and way more. And she was the only woman he had met who was more ambitious than himself – and who had a game plan to achieve her simple goals: make a fortune when you are young, then spend the rest of your life enjoying it. Dead simple.
    Now all they had to do was get to Gatwick Airport and catch a plane.
    The interior of the Freelander stank of diesel fumes from the exhaust of the massive lorry in front of him, crawling at less than 30 mph. He pulled out to see if he could pass, then pulled back in sharply as a truck thundered past in the opposite direction. Increasingly impatient, they followed the truck through a sweeping, dipping, S-bend, past a quarry sign, then up a hill, the truck slowing even more. He slipped his left hand over into Ashley’s lap, found her hand, squeezed it. ‘We’ll be all right, angel.’
    She squeezed his hand back, by way of a reply.
    Then a blue sparkle in the mirror caught his eye. And a cold sliver of fear whiplashed through his belly.
    He watched the mirror carefully. Tarmac, grass and trees unspooled behind them. Then the sparkle of blue again and this time there was no mistaking it. Shit. Any second it would come into sight around the corner.
    Pulling out again, he suddenly saw to his right a wooden public-footpath signpost, and a wide track, and in one swift jerk of the wheel, swung the Freelander right across the path of an oncoming van and onto the bumpy, overgrown track, the car crashing into a deep, water-filled pothole, then out the other side. In his mirror he saw a police car flash past in the opposite direction, much too fast, he hoped, to have seen them.
    ‘Why have you turned off?’
    ‘Police.’ He accelerated, felt the wheels spinning, gripping, the car lurching forward, sliding up the ruts, then down again. They passed a farmyard, with an empty horse-box outside and a silent tractor, and a corrugated iron structure filled with empty sheep pens.
    ‘Where does this go?’ Ashley asked.
    ‘I don’t fucking know.’
    At the end of the track he turned left onto a metalled lane; they drove past several cottages, then reached a very busy main road. Vic, winding down his window and dripping with perspiration, said, ‘This is the A27 – it takes us to the A23 – straight up to Gatwick, right?’
    ‘I know. But we can’t go on the main road.’
    ‘I’m thinking – the best way—’
    Both of them heard the clatter of the helicopter. Vic stuck his head out of the window and looked up. He saw a dark blue helicopter bearing down out of the sky straight towards them. As it arced round, the sound even louder, it was low enough for him to read the stencilled white ‘ POLICE ’ beneath the cockpit.
    ‘Bastards.’ There was no break in the traffic, so he judged it too risky to go straight over. Instead he made a left turn, accelerating hard out in front of a Jaguar, which proceeded to flash him with its lights and hoot, both of which he ignored, staring fixedly ahead, his brain in panic mode. The traffic was slowing down ahead. Shit, it was coming to a standstill! Pulling out to the right a fraction and peering past the traffic, he could see the reason for the jam, despite part of his view being obscured by a tall caravan.
    A police car had blocked off the road, and there was a large blue ‘POLICE STOP’ barrier either side of it.

87
    ‘They just rammed through a police barrier at the Beddingham roundabout,’ the Ops Clerk, Jim Robinson, informed Grace, ‘and are now proceeding west on the A27. Their next turn-off options are the roundabout in one mile,