The Catch Read Online Free

an earlier glimpse of the pedestrian as the car’s headlights swept round a bend in the road.
    It was Hank O’Brien. He was on the left-hand side, walking on the uneven grass verge along the edge of the tree line. Stomping home, no doubt plotting his revenge.
    He should have been on the other side, Dan thought, dredging up a memory of the Highway Code. At night you’re supposed to walk towards the traffic.
    Dan automatically lifted his foot from the accelerator. By now the lights had picked up O’Brien’s unsteady gait. There was room for him to shift another foot or so away from the road, but with typical arrogance he made no concession to their approach. Maybe he was too preoccupied – or too drunk – to react.
    Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic, so it was perfectly safe for Dan to encroach on the opposite lane. That was exactly what he set out to do.
    He was conscious of glancing at the mirror, noting the darkness of the landscape behind him; he felt the subtle shift of the muscles in his arms as he eased the steering wheel to the right—
    Then Robbie said, ‘Let’s scare the shit out of him,’ and he leaned over and yanked on the wheel.
    The Fiesta, in the process of drifting right, made an abrupt lurch to the left. Dan felt the loss of traction as the front tyre slithered on to wet grass and mud. Then an impact, grotesquely loud and somehow unexpected, a voice in his head shrieking: How the hell did that happen?
    There was a startled cry from Robbie as a fist-sized spider web of cracks materialised in the top left-hand corner of the windscreen. A heavy form thumped against the passenger-side window and was gone.
    Dan was already correcting the steering, the Fiesta slipping obediently back on to the road, Robbie also straightening up, his arms flopping demurely into his lap as if nothing had happened – and even if it had it was nothing to do with him. Dan hit the brakes, remembering too late that he ought to check his speed. It would be important to know exactly how fast he’d been going.
    For the investigation.
    For the trial.
    By the time he looked, the needle was juddering towards zero. No use to anyone, but it couldn’t have been more than forty to begin with, and the limit for the road was, what, sixty? Fifty, at the very least.
    Well within , he thought, and the phrase became a nonsensical litany repeating in his head. He might not be very confident, but that didn’t make him a bad driver. He was safe, sensible, cautious. He was well within .
    Then it registered that the car was stationary, and Robbie was staring at him with a look of horror and disbelief that must have mirrored his own expression.
    ‘I just wanted to scare him,’ Robbie said. ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’
    ‘We knocked him down.’
    ‘He’ll be okay. Let’s just go.’
    It took Dan a few seconds to digest the idea, so terrible and so attractive, before he managed to respond.
    ‘No.’
     
    ****
     
    He heard himself say it, and was perplexed that a sound could emerge so calmly from a body where every cell felt weak and flaccid, sloshing around like water in a bag.
    Robbie twisted in his seat, looking over his shoulder. ‘It’s still clear. Come on.’
    Ignoring him, Dan checked the mirror, then kangaroo-hopped the car forward like some hapless novice driver, parking with the nearside wheels up on the verge. He activated the hazard lights, turned off the ignition and took the keys with him as he got out of the Fiesta. Deep in his mind the possibility must have lurked that Robbie might commandeer the car and abandon him to his fate.
    And it was a fate Dan saw clearly, as he stepped into the vanilla-scented air of a spring evening. It dropped into his vision like an elaborate stage set, gliding down on silent ropes and pulleys.
    He saw newspaper reports and TV footage. Grainy photos of a thin, haunted man attempting to shield his identity from the cameras as he was marched into court. He saw the shame etched