Willows & Lane 01 Lane by Peter Grainger

Author:Peter Grainger [Grainger, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B01MRBZPQH
Publisher: Covey Publications
Published: 2017-01-29T21:00:00+00:00

Lane had braked late and hard, no handbrake this time, and somehow she had managed to swerve the Skoda in through the gap in the stone wall. The beams from the headlights bounced wildly up and down the trunks of trees as she launched the car down the track, which appeared to be so uneven compared to the road that one hardly noticed the buckled wheel.

Emily Willows turned in her seat and saw that the Volvo too had made it through the entrance, and she had a sinking feeling then that the men behind them had achieved their aim; they were slowly boxing in their intended victims. This forest track led nowhere but into more darkness – there was no hope now of finding a friendly stranger, and as for the police… Well, if they hadn’t caught up with them on a busy A road, what chance was there here? The two of them were on their own, and most of this dark, dark night still lay ahead.

Lane said, ‘Oh, bugger…’

The Forestry Commission doesn’t allow vehicles very far into these woods, even the ones with public access. Naturally enough, they use a tree to control matters – a tree trunk, to be precise, placed horizontally between two vertical posts, held there by gravity and a pair of open brackets. They don’t use the biggest trunks, of course, just the stem of a larch or a lodgepole that can be lifted out of the way in a moment by a couple of hefty lumberjack types, just a mere stripling of a tree some ten inches in diameter. And perhaps four feet from the ground beneath. That’s what Lane was thinking as they approached the tree trunk, hardly slowing down – it must be at least four feet from the ground.

‘Duck. Cover your face.’

Perhaps not quite four feet. The trunk connected with the very top of the windscreen, just the last two or three inches, but that was enough at the speed they were doing to smash it into ten thousand fragments. As the screen imploded, the log was forced upwards and out of the brackets by the impact. It rolled over the roof of the car and then down across the rear window, but it had been carried far enough by what was left of Emily’s car not to drop back into the brackets – it fell with a thump onto the track behind them.

Emily had ducked down into the passenger’s foot-well, and she did not see what Lane saw in the driver’s wing mirror. The Volvo had braked hard, too hard on the dry, sandy surface of the track, and collided heavily with the tree trunk. That might have done them some damage or it might not – either way, they were not driving around it. If they wanted to come on and finish this, they had to get out and move that log if they could. Maybe this was over now.

Lane thumped the steering wheel as she drove along

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