Cover
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
Dedication
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