Macbeth

The rain stopped suddenly and everything around them became even darker. They had driven into the tunnel. The tarmac and the hewn black walls seemed to swallow the lights of the headlamps; all they could see was the lorry’s rear lights.

‘What shall we do?’ Angus asked. ‘The bridge at the other end, and if they pass the middle...’

‘I know,’ Banquo said, lifting his rifle. The town stopped by the statue, their area of jurisdiction stopped, the chase stopped. In theory of course they could carry on, it had happened before: enthusiastic officers, rarely in the Narco Unit though, had arrested smugglers on the wrong side of the boundary. And every time they’d had a nice fat juicy case thrown out of court and had to face censure for gross misjudgement in the course of duty. Banquo’s Remington 700 recoiled.

‘Bull’s eye,’ he said.

The lorry began to swerve in the tunnel; bits of rubber flew off the rear wheel.

‘Now you’ll feel what a heavy steering wheel is really like,’ Banquo said and took aim at the other rear tyre. ‘Bit more distance, Angus, in case they go straight into the tunnel wall.’

‘Banquo!’ came a voice from the back seat.

‘Olafson?’ Banquo said, slowly pressing the trigger.

‘Car coming.’

‘Whoops.’

Banquo lifted his cheek off the rifle as Angus braked.

In front of them the ZIS-5 veered from side to side, alternately showing and cutting off the headlights of the oncoming car. Banquo heard the horn, the desperate hooting of a saloon car that saw a lorry bearing down on it and knew it was too late to do anything.

‘Jesus...’ Olafson said in a lisped whisper.

The sound of the horn rose in volume and frequency.

Then a flash of light.

Banquo automatically glanced to the side.

Caught a glimpse of the back seat in the car, the cheek of a sleeping child, resting against the window.

Then it was gone, and the dying tone of the horn sounded like the disappointed groan of cheated spectators.

‘Faster,’ Banquo said. ‘We’ll be on the bridge in no time.’

Angus jammed his foot down, and they were back in the cloud of exhaust.

‘Steady,’ Banquo said while aiming. ‘Steady...’

At that moment the tarpaulin on the back of the lorry was pulled aside, and the Transit’s headlamps lit up a flatbed piled with plastic bags containing a white substance. The window at the back of the driver’s cab had been smashed. And from the top of a gap between the kilo bags pointed a rifle.

‘Angus...’

A brief explosion. Banquo caught sight of a muzzle flash, then the windscreen whitened and fell in on them.

‘Angus!’

Angus had taken the point and swung the wheel sharply to the right. And then to the left. The tyres screamed and the bullets whined as the fire-spitting muzzle tried to track their manoeuvres.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Banquo shrieked and fired at the other tyre, but the bullet just drew sparks from the wing.

And suddenly the rain was back. They were on the bridge.

‘Get him with the shotgun, Olafson,’ Banquo yelled. ‘Now!’

The rain pelted through the hole where the windscreen had been, and Banquo moved so that Olafson could lay the double-barrelled gun on the back of his seat. The barrel protruded above Banquo’s shoulder, but disappeared again at the sound of a thud like a hammer on meat. Banquo turned to where Olafson sat slumped with his head tipped forward and a hole in his jacket at chest height. Grey upholstery filling fluffed up when the next bullet went right through Banquo’s seat and into the seat beside Olafson. The guy on the lorry had got his eye in now. Banquo took the shotgun from Olafson’s hands and in one swift movement swung it forward and fired. There was a white explosion on the back of the lorry. Banquo let go of the shotgun and raised his rifle. It was impossible for the guy on the lorry to see through the thick white cloud of powder, but from the darkness rose the floodlit white marble statue of Kenneth, like an unwelcome apparition. Banquo aimed at the rear wheel and pulled the trigger. Bull’s eye.

The lorry careered from side to side, one front wheel mounted the pavement, a rear wheel hit the kerb, and the side of the ZIS-5 struck the steel-reinforced fence. The scream of metal forced along metal drowned the vehicles’ engines. But, incredibly, the driver in front managed to get the heavy lorry back on the road.

‘Don’t cross the bloody boundary, please!’ Banquo yelled.