The Guilty Are Afraid

She was driving fast, but not dangerously fast. I spotted a patrolman standing at the corner of an intersection. I saw him stiffen as the Buick went past and he stared after it, not sure whether it was going fast enough for him to whistle after it. I took my foot off the gas pedal and touched the brake, slowing as I drove past the cop. Then I accelerated again.

I saw now she was heading for the mountain road. Then suddenly a big prowl car swept out of a side turning and slid between me and the Buick. If I hadn’t slammed on my brakes I would have smashed into its rear bumper.

The Cadillac slowed, and I lost sight of the Buick as Margot turned on to the twisting mountain road. The prowl car ahead of me surged forward, took the first bend of the road with a screeching of tyres and stormed after the Buick.

What I feared might happen had happened. Rankin had been speaking the truth. The order to nail me, to manufacture an accident, had gone out. The two flat-capped cops, driving in the prowl car, had recognized my Buick and they were carrying out their orders. It was too dark for them to see who was driving. They would naturally assume that it was me, leaving town. I was sure now the order to manufacture a smash had come from Creedy. He had known that Katchen’s prowl cars had been alerted to hit the Buick at sight. He had put Margot in the Buick and directed her on to the mountain road.

He knew as soon as she realized a police car was after her she would try to get away. He knew she wouldn’t stand a chance of outdriving a police driver. This was his way out: no publicity, no trial and a worthless, degenerate daughter out of the way.

There was nothing I could do to stop this now, but I kept on, sending the Cadillac roaring up the twisting road, my spotlight on to warn traffic coming in the opposite direction that I was on my way.

I heard the long wailing blast of a police siren ahead of me. The bends in the road prevented me seeing the two cars, but every now and then I caught the flash of their headlights as they whipped into the turns.

Then suddenly I saw them ahead on the higher level of the snakeback road and I slammed on my brakes. I wouldn’t have believed it possible for Margot to have driven so fast, for she was now a good mile ahead of me. I jumped out of the car and stood on the grass verge, looking up. The road wound up the hill and long stretches of it were in sight.

The prowl car was only twenty yards or so behind the Buick: its headlights blazing on the Buick’s bumpers, its siren screaming.

No one could hold that speed on such a road for long. Ahead I saw the first of the hairpin bends. Margot must have seen it too. The prowl car driver knew the bend was ahead for he had already cut speed and had dropped a hundred yards or so behind the Buick. Margot came to the bend at something like sixty miles an hour. I heard the screaming of tortured tyres as she crammed on the brakes. The long white fingers of light from the headlamps swung out into the black void like antennae of some huge insect sensing danger.

I felt my heart suddenly lurch as the Buick left the road and shot off into space. For a brief, unbelievable moment it seemed to be driving through the air. In the silence I heard Margot’s terrified scream: a sound that chilled my blood, then the Buick turned over, and a moment later it struck an enormous boulder, bounced away from it, slithered in a fog of dust, uprooting small trees and loosening rocks, sending them banging down the hillside. Then, with a loud, dull crash, it came to rest not two hundred yards from where I was standing.

I ran as I had never run before. My one thought was to get her out before the wreck caught fire. The car lay on its side, wedged against a huge boulder. As I started the short climb up to it, I could smell the gasoline fumes.

I reached the car. It was too dark to see into the broken interior. With a shaking hand, I took out my flashlight and sent the beam probing into the car.

Margot lay curled up against the driver’s door: a little trickle of blood ran from her mouth and down her chin. Her blonde silky hair hid most of her face. I saw her fingers move: then slowly close into fists, then open again.

I reached inside and gently pushed aside the soft gold hair. Her eyes were closed, but at the touch of my fingers, she opened them and we looked at each other.

She tried to say something: her lips moved.

“I won’t leave you,” I said. “They’ll get you out without hurting you . . .”

Futile words, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She moved her head slightly; then her face stiffened. She tried once more to say something, then she made a pathetic little grimace and died.

As I stepped back, the headlights of a car came sweeping up the road. A Lincoln pulled up and Frank Hepple tumbled out and came running over to me.

“I spotted you following her and I came after you” he said. “Is she dead?”

“Yes.”