The One Safe Place by Ramsey Campbell Page A

to be his route. It led to another gathering of traffic lights, before which a black Peugeot was parked on double yellow lines, an orange sticker in its window signifying that the driver was disabled. "Must be some zippy cripple," Don mused, not the kind of comment he would have made if there had been anyone to hear, and hoped that the driver couldn't read lips. Don glanced at him in passing and received such a hostile red-eyed glare that he didn't even consider asking for directions. The lights ahead turned amber, and he trod on the brake. As he did so the driver of the Peugeot jerked a phone away from his face and swung the car out from the curb.
    He obviously expected Don to drive through the amber so that he could follow through the red. Don saw the black car rush toward him in the mirror, and pressed his shoulders and the back of his head against the seat-rest and snatched his foot off the brake pedal. His head filled with a stench of burning rubber that seemed to epitomise his panic. Then the Peugeot veered around him, so close he felt the Volvo shake, and slammed to a halt in front of him.
    He tramped on the brake again, barely in time. The stench had become a sour taste in his mouth. "You nematode," he called the other driver, which helped his lips not to shake. "You pedicule. You fumarole, you—" He was trawling his mind for further insults when he met the glare of the red eyes in the Peugeot's rear-view mirror.
    They were accusing him of having caused the incident, and that was more than he could take. He grabbed the magnifying glass and pretended to scan the registration number of the Peugeot, mouthing it, though in fact the two cars were so close together he couldn't see the plate. He laid the glass beside the book and saw the red eyes bulging with rage in the mirror. The man's shoulders writhed, and his upper body lurched toward the gearshift, though the traffic lights were still against him.
    He was going to back his car into the Volvo, Don realised in disbelief. He clutched his own gearshift in order to reverse, just as a green bus bumbled out of the last side street he'd passed and blocked the road behind him. Then a long white police car bearing a tubular crest of unlit lights arrived at the intersection from the right and indicated a right turn. The traffic lights ahead of the Peugeot began to reach for green, and the car roared away along the left-hand road.
    Don braked in case the police went after the Peugeot, but the police driver frowned at him. The bus emitted a sound more like a burp than a honk, and Don sent the Volvo across the intersection, almost stalling in his haste. The lights were already changing behind him, and as the bus cruised after him the police car swerved to overtake both it and him.
    As its crest brightened he was sure it was about to howl and force him to stop. It sped away, its tube unlit after all, and he saw that only a wedge of sunlight between houses had caused it to appear to be switched on. "Not guilty," he told himself, with a wry grin at needing to be told, and followed the police car around a prolonged curve of the road. Suddenly its crest and its other lights blazed, and it raced into another main road, halting traffic bound for the centre of Manchester.
    That was the Wilmslow Road, the half a mile of it which was occupied by Indian restaurants and sweetshops and grocery stores, and Don was almost home. Unlike the police, he waited for the traffic lights to give him the signal. Two cars crossed in front of him after they should have, and the red facing him was just sharing its glow with the amber when he saw a black Peugeot approaching far too fast behind him.
    Surely it wasn't the same car—surely the driver couldn't have hung back until the police were out of sight. Nevertheless Don took off at speed across the intersection before glancing in the mirror. He saw the Peugeot swing around a turning car with barely inches to spare and rush after him. The sight almost