The Charlie Cobb Series

Chapter 12

12

Here’s a tip. If you’re gonna steal a getaway car, don’t pick a dinky little runabout with skinny tyres.

I almost wipe the thing out as we handbrake-slide across a busy intersection. Pedestrians dive for cover as we skid over the road and bump up onto the curb.

I spin the wheel to the right just in time to avoid a bunch of human skittles and a parked blue Aston Martin. But I’m pretty sure I just knackered the suspension.

I keep my foot to the floor and head up Peter Street. It takes us between the circular stone library that sits on the left and the grand old Midland Hotel on the right. As a small line of cars wait at a red, I pull to the right into the headlight glare of oncoming traffic.

I steer left in time to cut back in ahead of the queue at the lights. But I see police cars blocking off Oxford Road ahead: my alternative route out of the city.

Without thinking, I brake and throw a hard left. The Yaris mounts a sweeping pedestrian area in front of the library and old gothic town hall.

The only obstacles here are scattered trees and passers-by. I swerve around the trees and punch the horn. We snake from side to side. Dozy pedestrians slow to move out of the way fast enough.

The cops follow me at a safe distance. The kid looks ready to chuck his guts up, buckled up with hands over his eyes.

I can’t help laughing as I look at him. It’s just like when I was young. Stealing cars. Giving the pigs the runaround, then getting paid after.

If you had to ditch the car, you still got the thrill of the chase. Jumping over hedges. Cutting through people’s back yards. Sometimes you’d get caught. Others, you’d lose ‘em long enough to nick another plush set of wheels off someone’s driveway. Such a buzz. Better than s*x. I'd forgotten how good it felt.

Anyway, the smile is soon wiped off my face when I almost crash into a run of wooden benches on the right. I veer left, but we’re blocked off by grey bollards and the white stone war memorial.

So I turn right again. I head for Princess Street, which cuts down the side of a large, pillared art gallery.

Only trouble is, there’s a tram pulling out of the St Peter’s Square stop. Another of those big yellow snakes trundling the opposite way.

“No man, don’t do it!” the kid shouts. “We’re gonna die.”

Too late. I pull off the pedestrian area and across the tracks in front of the first tram. We bump and fly across both tracks to the sound of blaring tram horns.

I think the kid might be right.