A Kind of Madness

A KIND OF MADNESS

Philip Mincher

The speeding car came up and over the hill as the rain started. McGovern kicked his bike into life and waited.

It was a souped-up Ford. They were tramping, in anybody’s language. They roared down the hill, opening her up. McGovern rode out and got in behind them, and before he had the bike into top they were out of sight around the bend. The rain was going to make it a nasty one.

It was nearly dark, and with the rain there had been no chance of getting a number. He’d have it soon enough, McGovern thought. Nobody was going to get away with anything.

He took the bend and there was a straight of a hundred yards to the next one. They were tramping, all right. He wound the Triumph up and roared down and into the bend, and as he leaned into it the rain began to come in real earnest. He went into the bend mindful of the greasy slick on the road in sudden wetness.

They had a couple of hundred yards on him. There was a long straight now of maybe a mile. He switched on his lights and the siren roared after them through the rain.

There was not much traffic on the road yet, and most of it was coming towards them. Most people would be thinking about eating at that time. The lights came up quickly and flashed by as he hammered after the Ford.

He hit seventy and the gap began to close. They had put their headlights on, and he could see the car dark against the splash of light from ahead; yet with the tail-light out or missing. He came up on them towards the end of the straight, and he could see there were four or perhaps five in the car, and then they spotted him or heard him, and whoever was at the wheel put his foot down and went for the doctor, and they were drawing away on him at the next bend..

You fool, McGovern thought. You bird-brained idiot.

He took the bend and they were out of sight, and the next, but they were still gaining, and he knew as he lay into the curve of the road that they were cutting corners to beat him off and that they had gone mad with it, and that on this road and in this weather it wasn’t going to be long before somebody got hurt.

They came up on a car going in the same direction and as they passed, sliding away out on the wet, slippery bitumen, another one came towards them and McGovern thought here it comes now they’re going to go, and he was throttling down as they slithered back in, and then juddered past and away, and the other two cars came up and were passed, the outside one off and maybe into the ditch, the horns blaring above his siren as he tore past. Somebody was going to get hurt, all right.

He wrapped open the throttle as far as he dared. Nobody has to be brave, he thought. Nobody gets any medals. It was quite dark now, and the rain was getting worse. I could just lose them, he thought. I could just let it be. He had only himself to convince.

They would be young, McGovern thought. They would risk anything to beat him. They’d been doing their piece before the rain; probably they would have buttoned off when it started to get heavy. But now the only important thing would be to beat him, to shake off the law whatever the risk. It was a kind of madness and a kind of pride.

Two miles and on to the motorway, he thought. That’s what they’re holding out for. They’re going to do or die up there.

He thought about Payne and Harrison with their radar set-up under the flyover. They’d have the box turned off now, but they might be sitting put waiting for a break in the weather. If they were, there was a chance they’d get that number, or at any rate radio ahead for someone to be waiting for them at the other end. That way he could button off and let somebody else have the thing. When they hit the motorway and went up through the sound barrier, he could wave them goodbye and stay in one piece. There was comfort in that idea. Keeping up this pace in these conditions was like doing a tight-rope act at high speed and not knowing how much rope you had left.

And you, Officer. How do you figure in this? If they piled up now it’d be because you’re pushing them. If they die defying the law, has the law won? Hell, he thought, I don’t know. It depends what side you’re on, for a start. Or if it’s a kind of pride with them to keep it up, maybe it’s the same with me to stay with them. Pride or madness, I don’t know.

They came up to the motorway. He could see the car clearly now, already streaking away under the great yellow lights. All right, he thought. Let them do it. He watched them going away from him.

Payne and Harrison were set up under the flyover as he had been hoping. Harrison’s bike was on its stand against the flyover wall, the car was turned facing out into the traffic while they sat out the rain. As McGovern came up they were pulling out to go after the Ford. He tore past and they pulled out and followed him, red light flashing.

They’ll be using the radio, he thought. It might save me a broken neck at that. So now we sit put and cut out the heroics, and watch it happen.

They roared along the motorway and it happened, all right. Whoever was driving misjudged a bend and they slewed and clipped a marker at the best part of seventy miles an hour. The car spun once on its wheels before it hit the opposite kerb and rolled, and as McGovern came abreast of the place, buttoning off and fighting to keep his own wheels under him, they mounted the far kerb of the opposing lane and ploughed through another marker, and you could tell there was death in it, and the sound of it came to him over the siren as he went past.

He brought the bike carefully to a halt. Then he braced himself and rode back to see what was left.

The car had vaulted the ditch and flattened a fence before its tons of free energy had been spent. It lay on one side in the grass, body distorted and bleeding oil. Payne had pulled the Department car in on the traffic side of the wreck, red light blinking. McGovern propped his bike and ran to help the other two. It was raining heavily.

Harrison got a door open. It was a shambles inside, but at least a couple of them were alive. You could hear that much. McGovern had to take a hold of himself as they started to work; it was the same old mess as always. He had to tune his senses after the long, numbing chase.

He heard himself asking Payne about an ambulance.

‘Coming, Mac’. Payne bent to the task of the moment. He did not look at McGovern as he spoke.

There were five of them, all young. They were wrapped up with each other and with rubbish that had been flung around, twisted and clinging like garments in a spin-drier. There were three boys and two girls. It was hard to tell at first, with the hair and the way they were.

The driver was dead. That didn’t take much deciding. There was a girl in a bad way mixed up with him.

‘Better leave it for the zambucs’, Payne said, and they moved to the others. They had two of them out before the ambulance arrived. One of the young men actually climbed out of the back door under his own steam. He seemed OK, just cut a little. The other boy was not so lucky. They were lifting him out as the ambulance men took over. He was a sick boy. They got him on to the stretcher and one of the ambulance men got into the front with the badly hurt girl. McGovern and Harrison started to untangle the other girl from the rubbish in the back. She was conscious. As they lifted her out she turned shocked, neurotic eyes on to McGovern and spat a word at him through pulped lips:

‘Snake’!

It stung him like a slap on the face. He wanted to cry out. ‘She’s sick, Mac,’ Harrison said quickly.

‘Sure’, McGovern heard himself saying. He was numb with it. They lowered her on to the waiting stretcher and she started to cry. That just about made it complete.

Cars were pulling up and lining the side of the road. Payne came up and said, ‘What about handling the traffic, Mac? We’ll look after the mess’. As he spoke he was not looking at McGovern’s eyes.

‘OK, Don’, McGovern heard his own voice answer.

‘Good man’, Payne said, and turned quickly away.

McGovern moved wearily through the rain. He felt empty. He was starting to work on the traffic as the first of the tow-wagons arrived. They’d have got it all on the radio, of course. Standing in the rain he imagined Payne’s voice crackling over the air while the chase was on: ‘Better alert an ambulance, Charlie. Young McGovern’s on their tail, nobody’s going to know when to stop ………’ And he saw in his mind the youngsters in the hot car with their pride to slip the law overwhelming all caution, resenting his persistence, mad with it, with the young girl who would be old in minutes screaming, ‘Lose him, lose the snake ……….’, and the boy who was now dead accelerating away through the rain ……. and he, McGovern, staying with them because somebody had told him once that the law is for all of us.

The traffic rolled steadily by, each vehicle slowing, then dawdling past, the drivers and the passengers looking out, hungry to see all; then driving on, each a little more cautiously, dwelling on it, saying it might have been us, you never know when your number’s going to come up - yet without really believing it could ever happen to them, or that any number that came up would ever, in the realms of credibility, be theirs.

After a while McGovern stopped seeing the faces and thought only of the traffic that came up through the rain and passed at his bidding. It was easier that way.

English\RST\A Kind of Madness