Games with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller

But doubt, like night, has swallowed the last of the half-light.

A ghostly white sign shimmers in the gusty, malcontent air. I squint it into focus: ‘Brighton 8 miles’.

I slow to 40 and strain my eyes. The A273 slip road loops around so that I’m now heading north again; Brighton-bound A23 traffic pounds past to my left, headlights mercilessly fanning the lay-by like ravenous searchlights. The phone boxes command centre stage, spotlit by an amber streetlight. Good visibility brings mixed tidings; easier to see, harder to flee.

My car creeps into the lay-by, past the phone boxes. I perform a laboured three-point turn, helping myself to a 180-degree, headlight-illuminated view of the lay-by and the A273 beyond. I’m expecting the glint of hidden back-up cars, the outlines of poised police Ninjas. I see neither. Dread claws at my insides like a trapped rat. Surveillance are in front and behind. But they’re not here. It’s just me and him.

‘Right, I’ve pulled up at the phone box,’ I inform the dashboard’s covert radio, squeezing into my baseball cap and forensic gloves. I leave the car engine idling, my headlights beaming so that at least my non-existent back-up can see me.

I lean back, grab the money bag and step out. The trees shiver like widows at the workhouse door. Gravel crunches beneath my feet, but I can’t feel it. Halfway across, I spin 360. Nothing.

I jog to the phonebox, open it, the door squealing like teeth down a violin. I palm the underside of the cold metal shelf, feel paper, yank it free. The small brown envelope has double-sided tape on each corner. I turn over to see a giant letter ‘A’ scrawled in black marker. Christ, I think, how far through the alphabet is he planning to take me tonight?

Sprinting back to the car, I throw the cash in the back, get in, lock the doors and rummage inside the envelope. I flick on my pencil torch and read the instructions, typed on a cut-down piece of A4 paper.

This route will show if you’re being followed.

Continue on B273 for 75 yards.

Take Underhill Lane to right.

After 100 yards bear left (signposted public bridleway).

150 yards down is a small outbuilding on left.

Pick up black bag by red / white cone.

Further message in bag.

On reading the message, transfer money parcel from your holdall into this bag.

Take money and bag with you.

I repeat the instructions twice, then endure the longest five minutes of my life, at least since Matt’s last car-based meltdown. God how he’d hate this; twenty minutes is the most he can take, almost to the second, before he kicks off against his car seat’s straitjacket straps and sweat-sucking foam. I’ve found only one remedy to pacify us both; belting out nursery rhymes at full pelt.

Fuck it, I think, and launch into an impassioned version of Wheels on the Bus. Somehow, it works, banishing all terror so that by the time I take the right turn into Underhill Lane, I’m wondering what a bobbin is and lamenting the existential plight of Incy Wincy spider.

Hedges join hands above me, so it’s a virtual tunnel. Potholes swallow individual wheels whole, rattling my teeth with such ferocity that I have to sing Postman Pat in scat.

I fork left onto the bridle path. My headlights pick out the unmistakeable metallic shape of a car buried deep in bushes. My heart throbs in my ears and behind my right eye.

‘Donal?’ crackles the two-way radio.

‘Jesus,’ I yelp; Crossley’s urgent whisper just snapped my last functioning nerve.

Sounding like a snooker commentator, he husks: ‘The bridle track is through open fields. He’ll be able to see and hear surveillance vehicles.’

‘Which means?’

‘They can’t risk following you.’

‘Shit.’

‘That’s not all,’ oozes Crossley. ‘He’s taking us so far out of range that our radio signals are getting weaker.’

‘Spit it out for fuck’s sake.’

‘Listen carefully, Donal. Just because you can’t hear us doesn’t mean we can’t hear you. Carry on as before. Repeat his instructions twice aloud and wait five minutes before proceeding. Just make sure we know his plans. Understood?’

‘Great, so any second now, I’ll be completely alone with this madman?’

Silence. Then a faint thwack dices the air; the reverberation of distant rotor blades.

‘If I can hear a chopper then so can he. Call it off, for the love of God.’

‘That may be our sole means of trailing you,’ snaps Crossley, sounding posher now, under pressure.

‘Then don’t.’

The chopper’s blades melt away to deathly silence, save for my juddering trundle.

‘Have you at least got visuals on me sir?’ I beg the silence.

The radio’s dead. I’m on my own. My palpitating heart thrums against the seat belt, creating an unnerving sash of terror.

Four little ducks went swimming one day … I scat, sounding like Tom Waits strapped to a bucking bronco.

Sneering gargoyle vegetation melts away to something scarier; vast and empty night-sky nothingness.

I’m out in the wide open now, alone and exposed, completely at the mercy of this maniac. Of course, he knows that police radio signals don’t work out here. He’s been one step ahead of us all along.

The rutted track slows me to a bumpy walking pace. For all I know, he could be strolling alongside, gun trained at my temple. Maybe he’s just waiting for me to pull up and get out, so he can soundlessly throttle me in the warm night breeze before spiriting away with the cash.

And no little duck came back quack, quack …

‘I’m so sorry Matt, and Zoe,’ I blurt, like some deathbed confessor. How I wish I was home with them right now, where I should be.

‘We’re picking you up again, Donal,’ crackles Crossley’s strangled whisper, jolting me back into cop mode.

‘Thank Christ,’ I mouth.

My feeble headlights suddenly pick out neat vertical lines. I squint, pulling into focus a wet corrugated tin roof weighing down a squat and long-forgotten outhouse. In this ocean of wet black, my eyes seize suddenly upon a luminous mini-lighthouse; a red and white traffic cone.

‘Holy shit,’ I whisper. ‘It’s the endgame. I’m approaching the traffic cone and, I presume, the bag. Sir?’

‘Awaiting instructions.’

I pull up and look around. All black. I figure if he’s here, my best hope of survival is to offer up the cash, the car and no resistance. I get out, headlights on, driver’s door open, key in the ignition, cash on the back seat.