Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

“Do you mind, Captain?” he asked Malcolm. “I don’t think there’s any places round here that take in guests.”

“No, I don’t mind. I like it,” said Malcolm stoutly. “But I’ll need to go to the toilet.”

He needed more than that. They found a little coppice just outside a village called Birley, and Dick drove up the lane that bisected the trees and found a little open area between it and a field. They ate the sandwiches and the buns they’d bought at midday, and Malcolm drank a bottle of pop. That did it. He had to leave the car quickly and be sick under a tree.

“Not very sick,” he said, accurately enough.

Then he was ready to sleep.

Dick dozed. He found it difficult to get proper sleep on the rare occasions that they slept in the car. In the middle of the night he slipped out and acquired new number-plates in Birley — he couldn’t find an abandoned car, but he took the plates off the oldest car he could find parked in the road. When he got back to his own car he spread himself over the two front seats and tried to sleep again. Sleep was very slow in coming, but when it did, it brought The Dream again. The Nightmare.

He dreamt he was driving away from a small town, out onto the wider road, Malcolm beside him, excited and chattering. All was well, wonderfully well, and they were laughing together, making silly jokes, and full of joy in each other’s company, as ever.

Then, in his mirror, he saw at a distance a police car. It couldn’t... No, of course it couldn’t. Why should he assume they were after him? But he increased his speed a little. Then, with the special tempo of a dream, things began to take on the excitement of a car chase in a film. The police car increased its speed, too — not by very much, but enough to make sure they would catch up with him before long. Dick in his dream was much less cool than the Dick in real life. He could think of nothing else to do but increase his speed again. The police car did the same. “I’ve got to do something,” Dick said to himself. “I’ve got to do something that shakes them off.”

The road stretched straight ahead, but there was an intersection approaching. Dick swerved off onto a winding country road. On the left, though, was a wood, and seeing a lane into it Dick swerved aside again and went into it. Please God the police would go on. The road had been dry and there were no tire marks. But he kept up a good speed. The lane was rutted, the car jolting as it coped with the new conditions. In the seat beside him, Malcolm was crowing with delight and jumping up and down. As the car ploughed ahead down the lane as fast as Dick could push it, Malcolm released his seat belt and strained forward to see.

“Malcolm, belt yourself in again!” he called.

Suddenly, ahead were trees. The end of the lane, the reassertion of thick woodland. There was space enough between two of the trees, but as he aimed at it the car no longer did what he wanted, diverted by the roughness of the terrain and the thick undergrowth. The left-hand wing bashed with a shattering shock into one of the trees, and the boy in the seat beside him hurtled forward and hit the windscreen with a thud that...

Dick woke, sweating and shuddering. He was conscious that his half-waking mind had exerted some kind of control over his sleeping one, and had prevented him from screaming or trying to reach the boy in the backseat. Stiffly he got out of the car. Trees — that was what had set it off, and the little path winding through them. He fumbled in his pocket and lit a rare cigarette. Then soberly he went about his early-morning business, fetching a screwdriver and drill and starting to change the plates. He memorised the numbers as a precaution in case he was stopped. The old plates he buried.

He shivered in the cold of the morning. In the car, Malcolm was stirring. They could be on their way.

“We can treat ourselves tonight,” he said to the little boy, who was still rubbing his eyes. “Look at the money we’ve saved.”

“Can we have breakfast soon?” said Malcolm, whose mind focussed on immediate rather than long-term prospects.

When Selena Randall had left the police station, Inspector Purley looked at DC Lackland, who had sat in on the interview.

“What did you think?”

“Still hung up on publicity, using the tabloids, getting on television, that kind of thing.”

“Yes. I don’t think I got through to her.”

“You got through while she was sitting here, but it won’t last five minutes once she gets home and is sick with worry. She’s bound to clutch at straws.”

“I know. But the case of Carol Parker is different. While there was a chance her son was in the country, there was a point to the television appeals. Frankly, the appearance Mrs. Randall saw yesterday on daytime television was useless. The woman should be in Germany, not here. That’s where the child will be by now.”

“And they’re not inviting her.”