Well, at least in the dark no one could see the colour of your car. The torrential rain falling on this part of the Peak District made his BMW gleam like a great, black fish. Charlie wanted to think of his car as a shark. Sleek and powerful, with a grille full of sharp teeth. But right now the shark was beached and helpless. The rear wheels of the vehicle churned uselessly in the mud at the side of the road.
He’d owned the BMW too long, of course. If he’d replaced it with a newer model, he could have had the all-wheel drive version. That would have got him out of the mud, for sure. Right now, though, he was stuck. The front wheels were on the edge of the tarmac, but there was no traction at the back, just his tyres hissing and screaming as they dug themselves deeper into the mire, spraying mud everywhere. Instead of creeping back on to the road, it was in danger of slipping further towards the shallow ditch.
‘What if someone comes? We’re sitting ducks here, Charlie. They’ll see us in their headlights plain as day.’
Dean looked at the woman standing in the roadway. He’d left only his sidelights on, to avoid flattening the battery. But they were good enough to pick out her skinny legs, a bright green skirt turning darker and darker in the rain, a pale face above thin shoulders hunched inside a totally inappropriate woollen jacket. When he’d picked her up earlier in the evening, her hair had been blonde and pushed into eye-catching waves. Now it was lank and sticking to her skull. The result wasn’t very attractive. Not for the first time, he wondered what it was that he’d ever seen in her.
Headlights. Yes, she was right. Anyone could see the colour of his car in the beam of their headlights. And worse – they could make out the number on a licence plate too, unless it was obscured by mud.
Dean made sure the handbrake was on, then walked back to the rear of the car. It wasn’t too bad. No shortage of mud there. He smeared a bit more across the plate, completely obliterating the numbers before the letters TKK. Those two numbers gave away the year the car was registered – narrowed it down to a six-month period, in fact. He didn’t know much about these things, but he imagined having the numbers would make it much easier to trace a vehicle. How many models in the BMW 5 series were registered in the UK in those particular six months? Not many, he supposed. Especially this colour.
‘Don’t worry, Sheena, we’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘There’s no one around at this time of night. We’ll just give it another try.’
Up to now, he’d been doing the pushing, with Sheena at the wheel. But she did have a tendency to press the accelerator pedal too hard. She didn’t seem able to exercise any restraint, no matter how often he shouted instructions at her.
‘Too late, Charlie,’ she said.
He looked up. ‘What?’
‘I said “too late”.’
And she was right. Again.
Dean twisted round when he caught the flash of light in his wing mirror. He couldn’t see the make of the other car as it turned the corner near the woods and came slowly down the road. Its lights were on full beam, and they dazzled him, so that he had to raise a hand to shield his eyes from the glare.
At first he thought the driver was intending to go straight past them, as most people would. Everybody was reluctant to stop and help strangers, especially late at night and in a remote spot like this. You just never knew what might happen, or who you were dealing with.
But the car braked and drew in to the side of the road. Dean found himself praying that the driver wouldn’t be someone he knew. They weren’t all that far from home, just a few miles outside Wirksworth. And so far tonight his luck hadn’t been good. He’d already missed the chance to push Sheena into the ditch and make her hide. They were picked out in those headlights like a pair of sitting ducks.
For a moment, the doors of the car remained closed. Who was sitting in there behind that glare? It wouldn’t be a woman on her own, at least. No solitary female would have stopped in these circumstances. It was much too risky. It would have to be a man, perhaps two or more.
Dean began to get anxious now. He started to calculate what possessions he had on him that might be valuable to robbers – about two hundred pounds in cash, his credit cards, an iPhone, a decent watch. And of course there was the BMW itself. If they could get it out of the mud, they were welcome to it. There was nothing else of any value.
‘Who is it, Charlie?’ asked Sheena plaintively.
‘I’ve no idea. Just keep quiet. Let me do the talking.’
He thought he heard her snort. She had an unappealing little derisive laugh that irritated him sometimes. But perhaps she was just catching a cold standing in the rain. He had a mental image of a sniffling Sheena with a red nose and watering eyes, her bag stuffed with tissues. That would be just great.