Ellis Peters - George Felse 13 - Rainbow's End by Ellis Peters Page B

down that slope at speed, and sailing out silently to the indignation of the unwary. Sergeant Moon had often warned him about it.
    That was exactly what the car lying in wait there did now, just after Bossie had passed the end of the lane. Only the otherwise profound silence of the night warned him. He had already tuned out his own light footfalls, and infinitely small though the betraying sounds were, they came to him clearly, if at first inexplicably. The slight crunch of gravel on a hard lane surface, under tyres, the whip and slither of untrimmed leaves along a wing, very soft indeed and yet seeming to bear down upon him at frightful speed. He felt the rushing displacement of air, and sensed a heavy projectile hurtling out upon him.
    Instinct did well by Bossie. The sudden gleam of lights cast his shadow on the road ahead, and he realised that the car, engine now running, was sweeping into a right turn after him. To leap to the left would have been to remain in its path a couple of seconds longer. Bossie flung his music-case away from him, and leaped to the right, instead, aiming high into the thick verdure of the autumn hedgerow, clear of the road.
    He all but made it to safety, his hands spread to grasp even at thorn to haul himself higher out of range. The front wing of the car struck him glancingly on the left hip, and flung him sprawling aside, short of his aim but clear of the wheels. He hit the road with arms spread, which partially saved his face, but even so his head struck with some force, and his cheek slid jarringly along the tarmac. He lay winded and bruised and half-stunned, feeling the grain of the road coarse as boulders, and groping with wincing finger-tips around him, without the power to prise himself up from the ground and run.
    Dazedly he wondered what the red glow was, that was very gradually growing brighter and nearer. Then he knew. The car that had hit him had halted some yards ahead, but no one had got out to run and see what damage had been done. What he was watching with sick fascination, was the rear lights backing gently towards him. Not directly towards him, rather away to the left, carefully and slowly, drawing level with him now. All this time he must have been staring straight at the rear number-plate, only there weren’t any numbers, or any letters, either, only a blank. And the rear wheels were sliding softly past his left shoulder, down to his hip, down towards his knee…
    He broke clear of his daze in a frantic heave, and tried to raise himself, and nothing would work, nothing at all, and the car was creeping back, half a minute more and it would be clear of him and behind him, and then he knew what was going to happen, and he scrabbled frantically with nerveless hands and ungovernable toes to scuttle away into the grass, and knew he wasn’t moving so much as an inch.
    ‘Now, look here, God,’ raged Bessie’s submerged Christian innocence, somewhere deep inside him, ‘this isn’t fair, you can’t just stand there! It isn’t bloody good enough!’ He was accustomed to pray as candidly and robustly as he argued with his father, and in a comparable emergency he would probably have sworn at his father, too. It was now or never, wasn’t it?
    The lights of an approaching car swept an arc above him, rounding a curve still some hundred yards back, darkened momentarily, and returned in a steady glow, though still with the bulk of a hedge between. Seconds, and they would be here, and the car by Bessie’s side had not yet cleared his body, and had no time now to straighten out behind him. The engine throbbed, the forward leap at speed tore the long twigs of the hedge swishing after it, and the long grass surged and strained forward to follow. The rear lights reappeared large and bright, and soared away, diminishing, until they vanished in red pin-points round the next corner, accelerating all the way.
    Bossie let his breath spill out of him like blood, rested his grazed cheek in his