Present Day
I jumped into the police car. A sexy yet firm and official female voice on the car radio called out for the real owner of the vehicle to answer, but he was currently indisposed and wouldn't be replying any time soon. I switched off the radio. The keys were still in the ignition. I turned on the engine and accelerated away, not even looking back for a second. All I could think about was getting back to her and our new life together. Packing up our shit and getting the hell out of this goddamn country once and for all. Just take off to France, like Celine had suggested, and make a go of life on the continent together. Of course, I felt bad about Mum. I thought about driving back down to the borders to see her, if only for ten minutes, to apologise for what a horrible, inconsiderate bastard of a son I'd been to her all those years. How I'd never kept in touch. How I'd never looked after her and cared for her like any decent son should have watched over his only parent. I'd never even told her how much I loved her. Not once. And I did love her. With all my heart.
I shook those thoughts from my head. Realistically, there was no time. I would phone her, either on the road south or whenever we reached just wherever the hell it was we were gonna end up. If I owed anything to the woman who gave me life and did the best job she possibly could of raising me, I owed her that much.
Everything was going swell driving along the A1 from Dunbar to Edinburgh until I hit the Musselburgh turnoff and a police transit van exploded onto the dual carriageway directly behind me from the Haddington roundabout. The lights on the van were flashing wildly and the horrendous noise from the sirens echoed throughout the countryside.
This didn't look good.
The van was right up my arse as I accelerated. I sped up to well over one hundred miles per hour, continuing to weave in and out of the thin afternoon traffic. If I could just make it to the Newcraighall turn-off, I might have a flickering chance to lose the bastard. I spied another two police cars screeching down the opposite motorway lanes ahead. They must be coming for me, yet thankfully they had a fair trek to go to find a turning point along the steel barrier frame that split the two sides of the carriageway in half.
The slip road down to the retail park was fast approaching. The police van hounding me remained hard on my tail. There was no sign of any other police cars blocking my route ahead, so I took the turn off, gently applied the brakes and swerved around another four cars as they slowed for the red light. Not me, though, no danger of that. I bumped up onto a narrow curb and blitzed through the intersection like a bat out of hell, mounting the next pavement to avoid smashing into oncoming traffic from the crossroads. When I peeked into my rear-view mirror, I was shocked to see the large framed police van doing the same thing while clipping cars and taking out all road signs in its path. I returned my concentration to my own driving and rattled through another two roundabouts, passing through another retail park and hitting the approach road to the Niddrie estate. This would be as good a place as any to lose these persistent policemen fuckers. Niddrie! Sending a patrol unit into the heart of that schemey, war-torn shithole was every Edinburgh policeman's worst nightmare.
I drove along a boarded-up housing street, then another before taking a sharp turn down a narrow side street. The whole scheme was strewn with garbage, more stray dogs than you could swing a cat at, the occasional random fire burning in a garden or two, and smoke coming from the roof of another random building. Cars with smashed windows, cars without tyres, tyres without cars—all of this decorated the housing estate passing me by.
Then there were the dozens of tracksuit-wearing teens and neds (Non-Educated Delinquents) wearing their clan hoodies and baseball caps. All lounging around, sitting and standing, smoking and drinking, sniffing and staring. The police van remained glued to my rear and sped recklessly with me around the next street corner. I caught another glimpse of the groups of lounging teens in my mirror as they jumped to attention, fully alert and falsely believing for a few anxious seconds that the screeching police van raging behind me was coming for them. Then they relaxed, laughing amongst themselves while playfully pushing one another as the van whizzed on by, still close behind me in the police car out in front.
I made a sharp turn just before a row of shops and sped into a large park and grassland area. I swerved around a frail old man walking his dog as he entered the park. Perhaps he was deaf because he didn't hear me roaring up behind him until it was too late. When I swerved around him, he crouched to the ground in sheer fright, looking like he'd literally shat his pants. I zoomed on by, inches from his bum cheeks.
The police van followed, hot on my heels, into the park after me. It was like something from a car chase movie. The van was racing alongside me. I could see a crazy-looking policeman behind the wheel. Just by the glint in his eyes I could see that he meant business. No doubt about it. He pulled back and away for a second, then barged at my back end before pulling up beside me on the passenger side. I almost lost control during his sneaky manoeuvre, yet somehow managed to keep the vehicle from spinning away from me. I couldn't help but give an innocent little wave to the raging policeman. It must have pissed him off big time because he swerved into me again with even more ferocity, forcing me towards a group of trees in the swiftly approaching distance.
'Shite! Shite! Shite!'
I should've braked. That was the right and obvious thing to do. That was what the police driver had expected me to do. So, I accelerated harder instead. Fuck it. The police van sped with me, both of us dragging and scrapping the other along. As we reached the trees, I saw my split-second opportunity. There was a blind summit approaching. It was a deceiving little dip in the grass which led towards the small forest of trees ahead. I didn't think, I just swerved right, edging the van along with me. Quick as a flash, I swerved left, swinging the full front bonnet of my vehicle hard into the side of the police van. I slammed on the brakes, including the hand-break. The van was rocked off balance with the manoeuvre. The dip in the grass didn't help with its balance. The driver tried to turn his van away from the dip in a desperate bid to regain control...until the most amazing thing happened. The van hit a hidden log and flipped up and over onto its side, skidding and rolling down the grassy slope towards the trees. Watching it happen before my eyes was spectacular. Like a work of art I had randomly created.
'WOO WHOO!' I couldn't help but roar in a moment of pure exhilaration. I did hope the driver was okay, though. Hopefully he'd been wearing his seat belt like I had. If not, then hard lines, he wasn't very good at his job. I didn't stop to find out and continued towards the far end of the park. Eventually, I found another main road and realised that I wasn't too far from Edinburgh city centre. Maybe a mile or two at the most. It was time to ditch the police car.
I sped through another set of red lights, almost ready to pull over and chance my luck on foot when I spotted a speed camera dead ahead. No better parking place, I supposed, than on top of my second pet hate of all time. Second, that is, to traffic wardens. I headed straight for the steel contraption, ramming into its grey metal exterior, completely uprooting it from the ground while slamming the main body of the camera down hard onto the concrete road in front of me. A couple of passing cars beeped their horns. Some even cheered and waved from their rolled-down car windows with sheer and utter joy as they drove by. Some young neds waiting at a bus stop across the road started applauding and cheering me on too. One even toasted an already half-consumed can of lager into the air like he was accepting me as one of his own. A smashed-up police car on this estate was worth more than any million-pound winning lottery ticket, that's for sure.
I exited the car and waved back at the neds and all the passing drivers still beeping their horns. I smiled and took a bow before getting the hell out of there. I legged it over a nearby stone wall and made my way towards the southeastern foot of the volcanic hill, Arthur's Seat.