It had happened to Strike before. The instantaneous shift from calm to calamity. The slowing of time. Every sense suddenly wire-taut and screaming.
The tanker was jack-knifing.
He heard himself bellow ‘BRAKE!’ because that was what he had done last time to try to stave off death—
But Robin slammed her foot on the accelerator. The car roared forward. There was no room to pass. The lorry hit the icy road on its side and spun; the Civic hit it, flipped over and skidded on its roof towards the side of the road; a Golf and a Mercedes had slammed into each other and were locked together, speeding towards the truck of the tanker—
They were hurtling towards the ditch at the side of the road. Robin missed the overturned Civic by an inch. Strike grabbed hold of the door handle as the Land Cruiser hit the rough ground at speed – they were going to plough into the ditch and maybe overturn – the tail end of the tanker was swinging lethally towards them, but they were travelling so fast that she missed that by a whisker – a massive jolt, Strike’s head hit the roof of the car, and they had swerved back onto the icy tarmac on the other side of the pile-up, unscathed.
‘Holy fucking—’
She was braking at last, in total control, pulling up on the hard shoulder, and her face was as white as the snow spattering the windscreen.
‘There was a kid in that Civic.’
And before he could say another word she had gone, slamming the door behind her.
He leaned over the back of his seat, trying to grab his crutches. Never had he felt his disability more acutely. He had just managed to pull the crutches into the seat with him when he heard sirens. Squinting through the snowy rear window, he spotted the distant flicker of blue light. The police were there already. He was a one-legged liability. He threw the crutches back down, swearing.
Robin returned to the car ten minutes later.
‘It’s OK,’ she panted. ‘The little boy’s all right, he was in a car seat. The lorry driver’s covered in blood but he’s conscious—’
‘Are you OK?’
She was trembling a little, but smiled at the question.
‘Yeah, I’m fine. I was just scared I was going to see a dead child.’
‘Right then,’ said Strike, taking a deep breath. ‘Where the fuck did you learn to drive like that?’
‘Oh, I did a couple of advanced driving courses,’ said Robin with a shrug, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.
Strike stared at her.
‘When was this?’
‘Not long after I dropped out of university. I was… I was going through a bad time and I wasn’t going out much. It was my dad’s idea. I’ve always loved cars.
‘It was just something to do,’ she said, putting on her seatbelt and turning on the ignition. ‘Sometimes when I’m home, I go up to the farm to practise. My uncle’s got a field he lets me drive in.’
Strike was still staring at her.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to wait a bit before we—?’
‘No, I’ve given them my name and address. We should get going.’
She shifted gear and pulled smoothly out onto the motorway. Strike could not look away from her calm profile; her eyes were again fixed on the road, her hands confident and relaxed on the wheel.
‘I’ve seen worse steering than that from defensive drivers in the army,’ he told her. ‘The ones who drive generals, who’re trained to make a getaway under fire.’ He glanced back at the tangle of overturned vehicles now blocking the road. ‘I still don’t know how you got us out of that.’
The near-crash had not brought Robin close to tears, but at these words of praise and appreciation she suddenly thought she might cry, let herself down. With a great effort of will she compressed her emotion into a little laugh and said:
‘You realise that if I’d braked, we’d have skidded right into the tanker?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, and he laughed too. ‘Dunno why I said that,’ he lied.