Lifting the Lid(30)

She was joking of course. Or was she? Maybe the woman was a total headcase, and he’d tipped her over the edge by messing up her—

There was the sudden blare of a horn, and Trevor had to swerve sharply to avoid the oncoming car.

‘Jesus. Keep your eyes on the road, will you? You want to get us both killed?’

Nothing further was said for the next several minutes. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and Milly snoring loudly on the back seat. Trevor caught a glimpse of her in the rear-view mirror and realised at the same time that the dark blue Ford Mondeo was still there, about sixty or seventy yards behind them.

‘I wish he’d overtake if he’s going to,’ he said.

‘Who?’ Her voice seemed wearily unconcerned.

‘The car that’s been behind us ever since we left the festival site. He’s had plenty of chances to get by.’

The woman skewed her head to look in her wing mirror. ‘Slow down a bit.’

Trevor eased off the accelerator pedal and watched the Mondeo drop back.

‘Now speed up again.’

He accelerated and so did the Mondeo, maintaining the same distance between them as before.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘That’s all I need.’

‘Are we being followed?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘Who is it?’ Trevor knew that this was probably a silly question the moment the words left his lips and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get an answer. Presumably, they must be something to do with the Scottish bloke or Patterson.

‘We’ll have to try and shake them off whoever they are.’

Despite the seriousness of his situation, Trevor couldn’t help but laugh. ‘In this?’

‘Why? What speed will it do?’

‘Sixty? Sixty-five maybe if it’s going downhill with a following wind.’

‘Oh terrific.’ She continued to monitor the progress of the Mondeo in the wing mirror, a heavy frown indicating that she was deep in thought. ‘You got much fuel?’

‘Plenty. I filled up before I got to the festival.’

‘How big’s the tank?’

‘Dunno exactly. About eighty litres, I think.’

‘Right,’ she said, staring into the wing mirror. ‘I think I’ve got an idea.’





CHAPTER TWENTY



For a dead man, Harry Vincent didn’t look too bad at all. In fact, apart from the roll of belly spilling over the waistband of his brightly striped swimming shorts, he appeared to be in remarkably good condition. His skin was tanned to a pale teak colour, and his thick sandy hair, combed backwards from his forehead, was only just starting to show signs of thinning.

Lying on the sun lounger beside the pool, he had been watching his wife swim back and forth for the past ten minutes or so, sipping his rum and Coke and occasionally pulling on his cigar. They had been childhood sweethearts, and even now, forty-odd years later, he loved her as much as he had done during those heady days of teenage romance. Harry knew she felt the same way about him.

He exhaled a large cloud of cigar smoke and smiled. He had worked hard all his life to be where he was now, lazing in the late afternoon sun at his Greek villa while Donna sent ripples of silver across the surface of the pool. By his own admission, his labours had rarely been within the boundaries of what might be considered legal, but there again, as he often told himself, how many bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers or politicians were there who could honestly say they had never once broken the law in pursuit of their goals? Okay, so maybe very few of them had actually had people killed during the process, but what about the arms dealers whose apparently legitimate trade resulted in the slaughter of countless thousands of innocent men, women and children? At least he’d never been responsible for the deaths of any women or children, and most of the men had pretty much deserved what they’d got.

As far as he was concerned, he was little different from any of the so-called captains of industry who are driven to succeed at all costs and no more ruthless than the chief executive of some blue chip multinational. Where his own ambition and work ethic had originated from, he couldn’t be sure. He certainly hadn’t inherited them from his father, who had been a builder by trade but a drinker by inclination. Like so many of his contemporaries growing up in the East End of London, he had simply wanted to escape – to carve out a better life for himself – and this of course meant making money. Lots of it.

Some of his own mates had looked to the boxing ring as their way out, but Harry had seen at first hand the physical cost to too many of the older kids who had explored this route and failed. Apart from joining the army, the only other alternative was crime. Not the petty pilfering, burglary and car theft sort of crime, but the big league, where the risks were inevitably greater but the rewards immeasurable. Harry had witnessed the consequences of failure in this area too, but he had believed himself to be far smarter than those who had got caught, and to a great extent, he had been proved right over the following years.