As he turned, putting the revolver into his pocket, the truck swung round the shoulder of the mountain and his throat went dry. A police car was moving towards them, at least half a dozen other vehicles strung out behind it.
Costello gave a hoarse cry and the police car slowed to a halt, turning broadside to block the narrow road. ‘Brake, you stupid sod! Brake!’ Morgan cried.
Costello seemed to lose all control. When he rammed down his foot, it caught the accelerator instead of the brake pedal and the truck shot forward. Its offside wheels ploughed into the rain-soaked grass shoulder and the wheel spun in his hands. Morgan had one quick glimpse of the steep slope dropping a hundred and fifty feet to the boulders in the stream below and his hand grabbed for the door handle. He jumped as the truck started to go over and the door swung back behind him, smashing Costello in the face as the old man tried to follow.
Morgan somersaulted twenty feet down the slope, coming to rest against a gorse bush. As he picked himself up the cattle truck bounced against a rock shelf fifty feet below. It soared into space, turning over almost in slow motion and Fletcher was tossed out, arms and legs flailing wildly.
The truck landed upside down in the stream bed with a terrible, grating crunch, and Fletcher landed on top of it. The petrol tank exploded immediately like a bomb, and orange and yellow flames lifted into the rain.
Morgan scrambled up the slope. He was badly shaken and blood poured down his face from a gash above his right eye, but the instinct for survival was strong. As he crossed the road he heard voices and turned to see several
uniformed policemen running towards him. He fired and one of them seemed to trip and fall headlong. The others immediately scattered and Morgan ran for the shelter of a shallow ravine and followed its course up the side of the mountain.
Rogan had stopped running and was on his way back to the farm when he heard the first terrible crunch of metal as the truck went over the edge. He started to run back as the petrol tank exploded, and reached the point where the road curved round the shoulder of the mountain as Morgan fired at the police and staggered across.
A police car roared along the road and slewed broadside to protect the constable who had been shot. A large, heavily built man in a fawn trenchcoat jumped out and ran, crouching, to drop to one knee beside him.
Rogan recognized Dick Vanbrugh at once. The strange thing was his own lack of surprise, but he didn’t stop to analyse that. He turned and ran back towards the farm. Hannah was standing in the gateway as he entered the yard.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘No time for questions. Grab your coat and get back out of here fast. We’re leaving. I’ve still got a key for the shooting brake, remember?’
When he drove out of the barn, she was pulling on her sheepskin coat by the water trough. He opened the door and she scrambled in and slammed it as they drove away.
When they moved through the gate and turned left towards the head of the valley, she touched his arm. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Through the Long Cut, Brendan’s waiting up there now with the mailbags. Thetwo I brought into the house were the dummies.’
‘What about the others? What happened back there?’
‘The whole place is crawling with peelers. The truck went over the edge of the road.’
Her face was very white. ‘And my uncle?’
‘It went up like a torch.’
She turned away, crossing herself automatically. He reached out and took her hand and she held it tightly as they went over the brow of the hill and down into the village.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THROWN clear by the force of the explosion, Jesse Fletcher floated face down in a pool of water three feet deep. Most of his clothing had been burned away and several ribs showed through the charred flesh of his back.