When Hell Freezes Over

  When Hell Freezes Over

  Rick Blechta

  Also by Rick Blechta

  Knock on Wood

  The Lark Ascending

  Shooting Straight in the Dark

  Cemetery of the Nameless

  As editor:

  Dishes to Die For...Again

  Fondly dedicated to my son Jan who helped greatly in this book’s design and is someone of whom I’m ordinately proud.

  One

  I must make it clear from the start that ultimately I did have a choice—but that’s always easy to say in hindsight. Right?

  You hear about this sort of thing all the time: the “I don’t want to get involved” syndrome. To myself, I’d rationalized my behaviour over the years as “minding my own business”, something I’d honed to a razor’s edge. How many times had I thought to myself or even said out loud while watching the telly that I wouldn’t have been fool enough to jump into such-and-such a situation? I’d shake my head at the apparent stupidity of whichever person had come to the aid of someone they quite often didn’t even know.

  But as it turned out, when a life or death situation actually thrust itself into the safe little cocoon I’d wrapped around myself, I discovered one really doesn’t have any time for choice-making. It turned out to be more a matter of reaction, cause and immediate effect.

  When a person you’ve never seen comes running up to your vehicle, screaming for help, you could respond with a gut-reaction stomp on the accelerator and lie to yourself later that you’d been startled, which was why you’d taken off. I’ve thought about that a lot. Perhaps I would have been happy with the course my life took afterwards if I’d done that. Perhaps not.

  Having spent a rather long day visiting my mum, (who steadfastly refuses to move from our old terrace house in Bacchus Road, Winson Green, Birmingham), I’d gone to bed early on in my old room, but had woken in the wee hours. Finding myself unable to sleep, I’d made the decision to start my trip north rather than wait until morning. A quick note to mum, (who was used to this sort of thing), and I was on my way.

  As I drove along the deserted streets, my mind was wandering around in the foggy memories of my early years. I slowed for a traffic light next to Dudley Road Hospital, where I’d been born forty-nine years earlier. Before the car had completely come to a stop, a young woman yanked the passenger door open and fairly leaped headfirst into the seat.

  Stunned, I turned to say something marvellously intelligent like, “What seems to be the problem?” when she froze me with a panicstricken wail.

  “Goddammit! Get me the hell out of here!” When I still didn’t throw the Jaguar into gear, she grabbed my arm and yelled right into my face, “Don’t you understand? If they catch us, they’ll kill us both!”

  What finally got my blood and the car’s petrol pumping was the sight in my rear view mirror of two human mountains sprinting out of the darkness a hundred feet behind. They paused only momentarily before pointing in our direction. Almost immediately, a car hove into view back in Aberdeen Street, accelerating towards the two men.

  Only then did I decide I would run first and ask the questions later.

  Birmingham, England, has the reputation of being a tough city, even though the city fathers have spent a great deal of money in recent times trying to dispel its blue collar proclivities. However, there’s no denying that there are areas no sane person would venture into after dark without a large group of mean-looking friends.

  I knew that, because I’d grown up hard against one of Her Majesty’s toughest prisons in a tough part of a tough city the locals call Brum. The only way I’d kept my face pretty and possession of all my teeth was by being exceptionally fleet of foot and adept at keeping a weather eye out for potential trouble. Even though my family had lived in the city for three generations, the plain fact was that a lot of people in my neighbourhood took exception to us being of Irish descent. My brother, Bobby, had always been too proud to run from a fight, resulting in his face (and head and ribs and kidneys) being rearranged violently on several occasions. Entertaining no illusions on that score, I’d scarpered whenever trouble had beckoned. Bobby I’d always considered a bit of a fool for standing his ground.

  The car behind us accelerated past the two running men, and it wasn’t hard to figure out that the driver’s plan was to cut me off to give his friends the few moments they needed to catch up. Fortunately, their saloon car would be no match for my classic Jaguar E-type with its 265 horsepower engine.

  Throwing the gear shift forward, I left thirty feet of rubber as I sped off. At the next roundabout, I wrenched the car around onto Ladywood Middleway, my goal being the city centre, hopefully busy with nightlife, even at this late hour. If someone wanted this woman badly enough to chase her down a public thoroughfare, I wanted to have the greatest number of people and definitely a few constables around in the event they caught up with us.

  The years away from my native city betrayed me, though, as I turned into Broad Street. Nothing looked familiar, and the streets were steadfastly unpopulated. A cold rain began falling, perhaps explaining the lack of late-night clubbers. Keeping one eye to the rear, one to the front and a third I didn’t know I possessed looking for the law, I made my way as fast as I could. Normally, traffic would have been at a crawl.

  As we approached the roundabout at the bottom of Broad Street, I flicked a quick glance to my left. My passenger had her head down between the seats and all her attention out the rear windscreen. I took a hard, tires-squealing right in hopes of losing any pursuit in the side streets near the Gas Street Basin, which I knew well. Instead, I found a street narrowed by construction hoarding, fences and torn up paving. The place had the look of absolute desolation, not a soul in sight.

  I downshifted, unsure of my bearings. Where was this? Had things changed so much?

  “Why are you slowing down?” she asked. Unmistakably American: New York, or that general area, although when she’d first jumped in the car, I could have sworn she sounded British. “You don’t know where we are, do you?”

  I checked my mirrors before answering. No sign of the car. Perhaps the driver, stopping to pick up the two runners, had lost track of me.

  Perhaps.

  “Something like that,” I admitted, slowing to a stop.

  “You don’t live in this city?”

  “I was born here, but I haven’t lived here for twenty-five years.”

  Whatever she was about to say in answer came out instead as a sharp intake of breath as a car appeared around the corner ahead of us. We both gasped until a passing street light revealed that it had a white bonnet. Maybe they could tell me where the hell I was. I started forward again, cutting the distance between us.

  Flashing my lights at the other car, I was in the act of rolling down my window when it swerved right in front of me, forcing me to hit the brakes as hard as I had the accelerator earlier. Three large men leaped out, two from the front seat and one from the back—a different three men, and they too, looked as if they meant business.

  Striding forward, the one from the back seat brought a two-foot length of pipe down very hard on the Jaguar’s bonnet. The metal crumpled like aluminum foil.

  “Out...now!” was all he said, his accent revealing him as a local.

  A thousand things went through my head, and for the first time I thought of opening my door and bolting the way I had so many times in the past. But that had been when it was only my skin, my danger. This time I had someone with me who was squeezing herself back into the seat as if she wanted to disappear into the leather upholstery.

  The man with the pipe came up on her side of the car as his companions were approaching mine. He tapped on her window almost gently with the
piece of metal. “Out. I’m not kidding.”

  The girl—she looked to be younger than I’d at first thought—had the knuckles of her right hand pressed against her mouth and merely shook her head, her eyes wide with fear.

  Crash! With a lightning flick of his arm, the window exploded all over the inside of the car. What would have happened next, I dare not think, but right at that moment, a car screeching around a corner behind us seized the attention of the three villains. Glancing in the mirror, I confirmed it was the black car and groaned inwardly. I probably couldn’t handle even one of these brutes, and now there would be six.

  The black car stopped quickly about five yards behind me. Its occupants got out slowly, and stepping in front of their car’s headlights, became three huge silhouettes as I looked at them through my rear view mirror.

  Our attackers had stepped away from the Jag and stood tensely, the man with the pipe tapping it gently into his open palm. “Get out of it,” he hissed at the newcomers.

  His two companions on my side of the Jag stiffened, and a quick glance in the mirror confirmed that behind us the middle man had pulled a gun.

  I saw my only opening before bullets started flying and whispered, “Grab hold of something,” out of the corner of my mouth, then slammed the car into gear.

  Driving solely on instinct, I lurched forward, yanking the wheel as hard and fast as I could to the right. As the rear end swung wildly around, the three in front ducked for cover while the three behind must have been taken by surprise, because no shots were fired.

  I almost made it by the car in front, but in yanking the wheel to get around it, the back of the Jag swung wildly and caught the nearside rear wing solidly before bouncing off. Straightening the wheel, we took off, making a hard left over a canal bridge as if the very hounds of hell were after us. I suppose they were.

  I have no idea whether the two groups of thugs decided to have it out on the street right there, or jumped into their respective vehicles to give chase. I drove as if traffic laws didn’t exist, going through lights and screeching around corners like some crazed Hollywood stunt man as my passenger braced herself as best she could.

  I finally began recognizing landmarks, but even then I only slowed down marginally. Very few cars were about, and no police that I could see. Every block or so I checked behind us but saw no sign of pursuit. At last, up ahead I glimpsed the familiar silhouette of an official vehicle.

  When I began to slow, my passenger gripped my arm for the second time. “Don’t stop, please!”

  “Why not? Those bastards nearly trashed this car and were trying to kidnap you and God knows what else!”

  “I know, but we mustn’t stop for the police. You have to get me away from here!”

  Okay. I had time to think this one out. It wasn’t a matter of reaction only. I could have stopped. I should have stopped. A lot of things would have turned out differently if I had.

  But in my mind’s eye, I can still clearly see us driving sedately past that police car as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

  ***

  Even though I’d surprisingly decided that we weren’t going to seek official help, there was still the matter of the smashed window to be dealt with. I didn’t know of an all-night breakdown service, and I wasn’t about to head back the way we’d come to roust me old mum out of her bed to ask her. There was no one around any more who I knew well enough to call on for help at 4:38 in the morning. The over-riding factor, though, to every alternative passing through my mind, was putting as much distance as possible between myself and those two carloads of thugs. Perhaps my “flight from fight” tendency had finally asserted itself, but in a more grown-up form: I now had a car in which to run away.

  So I did the only sensible thing possible: got on the Ring Road with the goal of getting to the M6 and driving north—the way I’d originally meant to travel.

  At speed on the highway, the wind howled through the jagged remains of the passenger window with a vengeance only winter and seventy-miles-per-hour can produce, making it even more imperative to get the thing covered over. Miraculously, neither of us had been cut on the glass littering the interior of the car.

  By the time I’d begun considering the situation, Stafford appeared to be the logical choice for what I needed: not too close to the city and of sufficient size to have a twenty-four hour service station. It also had a railway station where I could dump the girl, one with connections to other lines. As chance would have it, I’d been in the area the day before to arrange transport back to Canada for a musical instrument I’d purchased.

  “Why are we getting off?” my companion asked as we exited the motorway.

  “We need petrol,” I told her, “and we have to do something about that window.”

  She looked over and smiled feebly. “I want to thank you for what you did...stopping for me. I’m very sorry about your nice car.”

  “That’s just the problem. This isn’t my automobile. It’s borrowed.”

  “Oh...”

  “Oh, indeed. This Jaguar is the apple of its owner’s eye, and he is not going to be pleased with what’s happened.”

  Ahead, all I could see was darkened buildings and very few cars. Finally, we rounded a curve and ahead on the right saw a brightly lit Esso station with an attached Tesco Express and cash point, just what we needed.

  I pulled up to a pump and got out gingerly, carefully shaking offthe numerous little chunks of glass littering my clothes. My passenger also got out, looked around for a bit and decided the paper towelling the station provided would have to do for sweeping out the glass she’d been sitting in.

  After filling the car, I checked out the damage to the body. It was as bad as I’d feared. Not something that couldn’t be put right, but it was “going to cost a mint to put this to rights!”—as I could hear Angus bellowing when he saw it. I asked the night attendant, an elderly Sikh, if he could help out with something to cover the window. I fed him a story about yabbos and a fight outside a pub. The old man sympathized and came up with a translucent plastic garbage bag which I stuck on with a roll of gaffer’s tape I found in the car’s boot. He also loaned me a dust pan and brush to help with the glass removal, but made me swear to pick up any chunks that fell on the ground.

  Using the cash point, I got some extra notes to pay for the petrol, bags of crisps and peanuts along with two cans of Coke. The old gent also got a five-pound note for his trouble.

  Returning to the car, the girl was already sitting inside. Not wanting to talk to her through the sheet of plastic, I went around to the driver’s side and got in. “Can I drop you at the railway station?”

  She looked startled. “Drop me? Where are you going?”

  I started the engine. “I’m afraid I’m off to Argyll to return this rather sad-looking automobile to its rightful owner—although I’m afraid it’s going to be a memorable homecoming.” I smiled at her. “He has a temper as red as his beard.”

  “Where is Argyll?”

  “Scotland. Northwest of Glasgow. You do know where Glasgow is?”

  “Of course I do,” she answered sourly. “Can’t I go with you?”

  Now I was startled. “Look, this whole situation is surreal enough without prolonging it. I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. I’ll drop you at the railway station, and you can go wherever you want to go. The sooner you’re out of my life, the sooner I can start to work thinking up an explanation for poor Angus as to why his car looks the way it does. I only have a eight-hour drive in which to accomplish that feat. I wasn’t kidding about his temper. Now, where can I drop you?”

  At my words, she looked even younger. It said something about her that she didn’t fall back on that age-old ploy of women: rivers of tears. I would have booted her arse out of the car for that. Oh, I could see that she considered it for a moment, but I wasn’t her daddy, and perhaps she saw from my expression that it wouldn’t work.

  The girl was not what I would call drop-dead gorgeou
s, but there was definitely something about her that made you want to look twice or maybe three times. She had huge hazel eyes in an oval face. Her mouth seemed a bit too large, but that could have been due to her choice of bright red lipstick. Her very fair complexion and thick, dark brown hair (pulled back at the moment) made her look rather like one of those women in Old Masters paintings. As for the rest of her, she had on a long, heavy coat, so I couldn’t tell much. Physically, she seemed much like any young woman in her twenties: everything had pretty well assumed its final form, but life hadn’t yet imprinted much in the way of character. Only her gaze, steady, patient and intelligent, belied the fact that she was simply just another cute specimen of the human female. One could get lost in those eyes...

  She sighed deeply. “Okay. My name is Regina Mastrocolle. I’m from the States.”

  “I’d noticed that,” I responded dryly.

  Ms Mastrocolle made a face. “You can’t drop me at a station or a bus stop, because I have no idea where to go, where I’d be safe. Those men found me once. I have to assume they can do it again.”

  I nodded. “That seems logical.”

  “I also have a pretty good idea who they are.”

  “Explain.”

  “The first group of men work for my father.”

  “Your father?”

  “He hired them to bring me home.”

  “You’ve run away?” When she nodded, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “How old are you?”

  She drew herself up a bit at that. “I’m going to be twenty-five in a month.”

  “Then why ‘run away’, as you put it? A woman your age should be able to just leave, if she chooses.”

  “You obviously don’t know much about Italian families—and you’ve never met my father. He is il Padrone. The boss.”And from the way she looked at me, I could see that she had a bit of la padrona herself. “Look, obviously I’m in trouble. I’d like to put as much distance as possible between myself and those people you met earlier. You said something about Glasgow. Would it be possible to drop me there? I’ll pay for the gas.” She smiled engagingly. “Whaddayasay?”