booksnew/source/Bane/Bane19.txt

CHAPTER NINETEEN
Barbara gave two toots on her horn as she swung the big estate out
of the driveway and down the hill to the town. She was still smiling
with pleasure at what Nick had said and at the compliment from
her daughter.
It was a vote of conhdence but, then again, they were probably
both biased. Having said that, she had taken care to ensure that she
was looking good and she was feeling good. It had been an
interesting night and today she was going to give them her best
shot.
‘They will need their heads looked at if they don’t hire me,’ she
thought as she spun the wheel at the main road and headed east
past the shops. In her head she thought through all the questions
she might be asked and she hoped she wouldn’t be overcome by
nerves when she finally got right down to it. It had been a long time
since she’d worked, but her qualifications were still good and she
wasn’t the nervous type.
Out through Westbay, past the allotments, round the slight
curve at Milligs the big Volvo cruised smoothly. The streets were
quiet, and there was hardly any traffic on the road. She’d passed by
the shops, there was hardly anybody to be seen, but that didn’t
register.
Barbara hoped that Paddy wouldn’t tire Nick out, but she was
sure her endless chatter and boundless enthusiasm just might. She
was glad they’d taken to each other. Since that first day they’d met
in the car park, and she’d suddenly been overcome with anger and
fear when she saw the stranger talking to her daughter, she’d been
thinking about him a lot.
He was different, naturally, from the boy she’d known, but there
was something about him that was still the same. Yes, she had
invited him home last night, then invited him upstairs and she had
no regrets. She knew there was a feeling between them, and if she
talked straight to herself she would have said it was too early to
have that sort of feeling. Maybe she wasn’t ready to talk straight to
herself just yet. She had Paddy and she had the rather remote
elderly man she called father, but there was something missing
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from her life and it wasn’t just a man.
There had been something missing from her life for a long time.
And recently, she had begun to think that that blank space, that
nagging empty spot, would be empty no longer. Barbara had not
pondered the compulsion that had sent her back to her home town
again after almost a lifetime away. She had just done it, without
questioning the drive. There were some things in her life that just
demanded to be.
Out across the low bridge over Strowan’s Water, and the power
steering took the sharp turn as easy as thinking, then rolling swiftly
along the solid road mettle, Barbara thought she was glad she had
come back.
Ahead the road took a lazy left and a matching right. The trees
whipped past on either side, heliographing sunlight through on the
firth side, darker on the north. After the second bend, the Kilmalid
Bridge hove into sight. There was a sign before it giving the usual
exaggerated picture of a hump-back bridge, which in this case
wasn’t too exaggerated. You couldn’t see oncoming traffic from
either side. Barbara slowed slightly, but the Volvo had enough
momentum to whip over the hump and down the other side with a
slight judder from the rear shockers and an exhilarating stomach
wrench like a roller-coaster drop.
Barbara was still thinking her thoughts when something ilashed
over the trees ahead and to the right, catching her eye.
The big white bird wheeled in the air, stalled and spun on a
wingtip, then it back-beat twice before folding its wings and
dropping from the blue sky. It dived straight for the car.
Barbara had seen the Hash of white and her eyes flicked back
down to the road again. She didn’t see the big bird swoop until it
was only yards from her windscreen, and by then it was just a blur
of white flashing in front of her eyes.
Instinctively, her hand left the steering wheel and came up to
protect her eyes and her head jerked back against the tough
headrest.
The gannet hit with a crashing thump that instantly snowed out
the windscreen and covered her with bulleting glass. In slow
motion she saw the great yellow spear of the beak slide right
through, followed by the head and two brilliant blue eyes. Blood
spurted all over her white suit and she screamed. The eyes stared at
her and the blood gouted, squirting from a jagged hole in the bird’s
neck and out through its beak that was opened in a wide, silent
seabird shriek. Suddenly, the whole window started to cave in, and
that looming head seemed to lunge towards her. Barbara’s other
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hand came off the wheel and she instinctively jammed her foot
hard down on the brake. The car started to iishtail on the road,
swiping the hedges on either side. Barbara was still in the world of
slow motion, as if unaware that she was in a car, and that the car
was hurtling along the Kilcreggan Road. Her eyes were transfixed
by that gaping yellow and red maw and those piercing blue eyes
that were now changing to white. The beak opened wider,
impossibly wide, as if it was going to rip the head apart in beak-
hinges, and a gout of blood flew out on to her face. And then the
dead eyes turned pure white, and from the gaping stretch of that
awesome mouth she heard a sound that was like a croak, but it was
more like a low, vicious laugh.
The Volvo hurtled forward, despite the screeching of her brakes
that left twin black snakes of burnt rubber on the road. Even then,
Barbara might have walked away from this, but for the petrol
tanker that was rumbling around the corner ahead.
Jim Semple was taking the bends at a fast clip. Not too fast on a
narrow road like this, but enough to give the satisfaction of
handling his machine. Up high in the cab he could see pretty well
ahead over the hedgerows except for the places where there was a
stand of trees, but he never drove beyond his limit. He’d been
driving heavy goods, low loaders, artics and tankers for a quarter
of a century and had never had a bad one yet, touch wood.
Anyway, this high off the road, if he did hit somebody, even head
on, the chances were that he’d be way above any trouble.
He whistled as he drove his first load of the day. He’d pump out
at the BP station in Kirkland, then across to the little station at
Luss where he’d shed the rest of it, and have a nice ploughman’s
lunch at the bar of the hotel and then back to the terminal at Old
Kilpatrick.
Jim got round a tight bend, just skimming the hedge, and then
powered up the gears on the straight, feeling the big engine pulling
ahead, fairly shoving the load. At the end of the straight there was
a left bend and Jim dropped down again at the right moment,
keeping the revs just right on the dot, and giving the air brakes just
a touch, just a hiss. Then he put the foot down and hauled on the
wheel and was round this one, then same again for the right,
smooth and powerful, the brakes sneezing hard to take the weight,
then just as he was getting into the far straight the Volvo shot right
out of nowhere coming {ish-tailing straight at him.
Jim’s eyes flew wide at the same time as he jerked on the wheel
and hit the brakes. The Volvo was careering from side to side. Its
front window was frosted right over, and there was something like
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a sheet, all white and red, cluttering across it.
He yanked hard on the wheel, pulling the tanker right into the
hedge, and he could feel the big tyres digging hard into the soft soil
on the verge and the rat—a—tat of small branches clicking off the
nearside mirror and scraping along the bowser. The car shot past
on his right and he flicked a glance down. There was a face at the
window and then it was past. Jim hauled back again at the wheel,
whipping the tail round, hoping it was moving fast enough in the
swing to miss the car. He felt, rather than heard, the jarring bump
as the Volvo’s front headlamp and bumper clipped the rear wheel.
In the estate, Barbara’s world whirled dizzily. There was a
crump and a sickening jar, and then she was upside down. The seat
belt socked her right across the chest, and everything started to
lurch around, as if her eyeballs were loose in their sockets and she
was being shaken like a rat in a dog’s jaws. Then there was a huge,
devastating thump as the dashboard and steering wheel came up
and smashed her. Inside her chest she felt something break and
there was a huge, sickening pain in her head and everything spun
away to nothing.
Jim Semple saw the Volvo in his rear—view mirror. He didn’t see
the car hit, but as soon as he felt it, he shot a look at the glass and
saw the estate car spin crazily, like a ballet dancer, on one
headlamp, and then it tumbled out of sight.
All this had happened in about the space of one second and Jim
was still hauling on the big wheel and still standing on the brakes to
try to get his speed down. The nearside wheel, still in the soft earth
at the side , hit a rock and the wheel jerked hard to the left, and Jim
felt himself losing control. That sick feeling of losing it swept
through him.
The big tanker ploughed down twenty feet of hedge and tore a
gout out of the grass as the momentum carried it forward. Ahead,
the hump—back bridge loomed into view and Jim wrestled the
wheel around. He felt the cab swerve back on to the right line and
almost had time to breathe a sigh of relief. But that last wrench out
of the verge had been enough to set the back of the tanker just off
line and the big wheels dug up the grass as the whole load began to
shift. The rear clipped a small ash tree and broke it off at waist
height and then it just started to slide, jack-kniiing round,
demolishing the fence. It started to roll just a bit and then the cab
spun round on its pivot, bit off the main tanker, bounced and its
wheels left the ground as the lorry rolled, like a dying caterpillar.
Jim Semple was thrown against the roof of the cab and back down
on the floor as the tanker flipped over and down the gully, crashing
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through the saplings just at the edge of the bridge. There was an
immense crashing sound as the cab hit the big black pipe, and then
it was all over for Jim Semple. The pipe just broke in two, and the
two—foot wide high-pressure stream of gas caught fire with a huge
ker-whump that melted the glass and roasted Jim Semple to a
cinder in the space of three seconds. Five seconds after that, the
whole tanker caught tire and the bowser, nestled under the bridge,
roared into a fireball. The immense upward pressure of the
explosion under the bridge lifted the whole arch in one and
scattered the rocks and stones all over the road.
By the time the fire engines arrived, the cab of the tanker had
completely melted, and there was hardly anything left of the
ruptured tank. There was nothing left of Jim Semple.
It was another ten minutes after that before anybody noticed the
wrecked Volvo in amongst the trees. Two ambulancemen
clambered through the undergrowth and found Barbara Foster
lying in a pool of blood underneath the crushed steering wheel. It
wasn’t until they got her into the ambulance that they found a
heartbeat, weak and liuttery, but a beat none the less.
It took them less than half an hour to get her to the Western
Infirmary, and by that time her heart had stopped beating three
times. A team of doctors worked on her for four hours, cutting,
stitching, injecting, draining. She had shattered her left thigh.
There was a bad fracture on her skull, and severe swelling of the
frontal lobe of her brain. She had been given twelve pints of blood,
and had four splinters of bone removed from her lung. Added to
the multiple lacerations, contusions and abrasions, Barbara was in
a bad shape. But she was alive.
She was also in a coma.
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