Paul panting with the effort of saving their lives.
Behind them, Sampson was less lucky: he too spun the wheel to avoid the stag, and found himself completely off the road, his car lurching to a halt an inch away from a pine tree. As the stag trotted away into the trees, oblivious to Sampson’s murderous glare, he reversed back onto the road, giving Kate and Paul more precious seconds with which to gain a lead over their pursuer.
Paul laughed wildly. ‘A tractor and a fucking stag. If I was religious I’d think someone was looking after us. What next?’
They headed deeper into the forest and Paul continued to drive as fast as he could on this bumpy road. The forest began to thin – and just as it did, the black Audi reappeared in the rear-view mirror.
Kate grabbed his arm. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Hold tight again.’
As they emerged from the forest, Paul spotted a turning to the right, a crooked wooden signpost pointing towards what was probably a tiny hamlet with more deer than people, but they had no choice. They had to find help.
They swung into the lane and found themselves driving down a curving, narrow lane, overhung with trees. They crossed a bridge over a gurgling stream, the suspension shaking as they hit a bump in the road. Kate had had dreams like this – nightmares in which she was being chased, and her pursuer was close behind, gaining by the second, the panic growing ever more intense. In those dreams she was always saved when she woke up.
She fished her mobile phone out of her bag.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Calling 911 – I mean, 999.’
He reached out and snatched the phone from her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t want you to call the police.’
‘Why the hell not? We’re being chased by a guy who just murdered someone. If I call the police they might be able to get someone out here. Someone to stop Sampson.’
He took the next bend at high speed. They swayed in their seats. ‘No. I’m sorry – I’ll explain later.’
‘No.’ She tried to grab the phone and he snatched it away, throwing it out of the window.
She gawped at him. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
She shrank away from him. ‘Who are you?’
‘What? You know who I am.’
Kate pressed herself against the door. ‘I don’t understand why you just . . .’
Bang.
Kate jumped in her seat. ‘What was that? Did we hit something?’
‘Fuck’s sake. He’s shooting at us.’
Another bang.
‘And you wouldn’t let me call the police?’ Kate started to cry. ‘He’s going to kill us. Oh, Jack . . . I’ll never see Jack again.’
Paul grasped her hand. She tried to pull it away but he held firm, steering the car with one hand. ‘Kate, listen. You have to stay calm. I’m going to get us out of this. And then I’ll explain about the police. I promise. Just trust me. Okay?’
She blinked. ‘Okay.’
‘Good. Now, see that house in the distance? The big white one? That’s where we’re going.’
It looked like the kind of house the lord of the manor would live in. Huge, picturesque and surrounded by rolling fields. A hill rose up behind it, with a few other small stone buildings dotted around. The narrow lane they were driving down widened out as they reached the hamlet of Little Marrow, and another thin road led towards the large house. Paul turned into it and carried on at top speed. A pair of horses watched them over a fence. A second later, the Audi turned onto the road behind them. This was what it felt like to be hunted.
‘Keep your head down,’ Paul instructed.
They swerved left onto a road marked ‘Private – Keep Out’ and found themselves at the end of a long driveway, the start of which was marked by a gate that stood open. They drove up it, and the house loomed into view.
Gravel crunched beneath their tyres as they approached the house – more of a mansion – and saw a group of five men and a woman, all in their fifties and sixties, dressed in Barbour jackets and wellies.
All the men were carrying shotguns. It was a shooting party, heading into the countryside to shoot pheasants or rabbits. A couple of English pointers ran around their heels. All of them, people and dogs, stared at the Peugeot as it came to a halt, and Kate and Paul jumped out of the car.
The dogs came barrelling towards them. Kate held her breath, but the dogs just sniffed at her, then Paul. The woman in the Barbour squinted at them.
‘Can I help you?’ Her voice was so upper crust it was almost regal. Then, to the dogs: ‘Plum, Pudding, get back here.’
One of the shotgun-wielding men stepped forward. Kate had lived in America, supposedly a country populated by NRA-approved trigger-happy killers, if you believed the English media, and had never seen a gun, not once. Now, in England, she had seen enough in one day to last a lifetime.
‘What’s going on?’ the man asked in a voice that matched the woman’s.
Paul said, ‘I’m really sorry to intrude on you but we need your help. We’ve . . . run out of petrol.’
The man looked over Paul’s shoulder. ‘And what about him? Has he run out too?’
They looked back. Sampson’s black Audi waited menacingly at the end of the drive.
The man who had spoken to Paul, clearly the lord of this manor, took a few steps towards Sampson’s car.
Sampson weighed up his odds. Five men with shotguns, and they looked like they knew how to use them. They’d probably been killing things since they were at boarding school. He put his foot on the accelerator and drove on. Kate and Wilson had got away, for now. It was time to put some more distance between him and the scene of the widow’s death, anyway. Stupid old bitch. Still, she’d be with her husband soon. Not in Heaven or Hell – Sampson didn’t believe in all that shit – just mouldering in the grave.
He headed back towards the forest. There was something he needed to pick up before he left the scene completely – he’d seen the phone bounce to the ground from the window of the Peugeot as he came around a bend. The sudden movement near the hedgerow had caught his eye, even at speed.
As the sound of the Audi’s engine faded into the distance, Kate and Paul exchanged a look of relief, and Kate put her hand on her chest. It felt as if her heart was about to burst out. She turned, as the woman in the Barbour said, ‘Who was that?’
Kate
