With freezing hands The Pan fumbled with his keyring.
‘Snurd,’ it said on it.
There was a button, which he pressed and after a few minutes a sound similar to a light aircraft engine drifted across the water. A small dot appeared in the dawn sky. Snurds do look like cars and they are used for getting around but that’s where the similarity ends. They run on water for a start (the engine splits off the H2 and discards the O). In addition, this one had a revolving number plate, a submarine conversion option, machine guns behind its lights, wings and a number of other handy bolt-on extras. The wings and submarine conversion option were normal; the machine guns were legal so long as they only fired blanks (they didn’t, but The Pan had never used them); the dodgy part was the revolving number plate, which had saved his life several times so far.
“Don’t tell me a two-bit piece of plankton like you has a snurd with a homing button?” exclaimed Big Merv.
“Er, yes.” He was proud of his snurd. It was running well; it was in good condition considering the price he paid, and it had been a bargain.
“Is this it?” asked Smasher Harry in disgust, as it dipped low over a row of derelict buildings opposite and landed in front of them. It was small, two-tone in shades of light and dark silver, and somewhere, in another version of the universe, it was a variant of a late nineteen sixties Lotus Elan. In K’Barth it was merely a Snurd SE2. “You’re having us on. You can’t outrun the Grongle police in that!”
“Yes I can,” said The Pan as it folded its wings away. He hoped it hadn’t heard. For a supposedly inanimate object it was surprisingly sensitive and easily upset.
“Don’t make me laugh. It’s a hairdresser’s snurd. You won’t last two minutes in it,” said Frank.
“I’m a full-on GBI and I’ve lasted four years so far,” replied The Pan smugly. “Surviving a police chase isn’t about straight-line speed, it’s about manoeuvrability and cornering,” he winked, “and a bit of low cunning.”
“Alright, don’t push it, son,” said Big Merv, “I hear you, you’re a survivor. But I weren’t born yesterday so I know that no-one lasts four years on the blacklist.”
“I have,” said The Pan.
“Lying little smecker,” Frank muttered, while in all likelihood, Smasher Harry only allowed this piece of insubordination to go unpunished because he’d been forced to hand his pickaxe handle to Frank when Big Merv had handed him the second umbrella. Big Merv looked The Pan up and down.
“Yeh? I don’t think so,” he jabbed a finger at Harry and Frank. “You two, wait here. This ain’t gonna take long. With any luck I’ll be back soon enough for us to finish ’im off before it sets.”
The snurd obligingly opened its doors and sank significantly as Big Merv climbed sullenly inside. His nickname did him justice; there wasn’t much room once he had made himself comfortable and The Pan squeezed into the driver’s seat as best he could.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Home for some dry togs,” ordered Merv, “I’ll show you. An’ you can do it on the road, none of this airborne cobblers. We’re not drawing attention to ourselves. Once I’m set, we’ll go to a nice outta the way spot I know and you can show me what you’re made of.”
The Pan nodded, pressed the starter, and they bunny-hopped away into the night.
****
“I said we shoulda dumped him in the river,” muttered Harry as he and Frank watched from under their umbrellas.
****
“Stop!” shouted Big Merv.
“No. No,” begged The Pan. “Please, it hasn’t warmed up yet.” He hadn’t warmed up yet either.
“Alright. Drive, you scab.”
The Pan could tell Big Merv was uncomfortable – The Big Thing was famed for his dislike of travelling – but it seemed he’d also decided to give him a second chance and everybody knew that once Big Merv made a decision, he liked to bide his time while he saw it through.
It was early morning by this time, and following Merv’s directions, The Pan drove through the gradually building rush-hour traffic without mishap to the centre of the city. As they stopped at a set of traffic lights a police vehicle pulled up alongside them.
Not ideal at all.
“Don’t look at them, keep your eyes on the road ahead,” he said.
“What?” asked Merv menacingly.
Arnold’s pants! He’d just said that out loud, hadn’t he?
“Sorry, talking to myself.”
“You’d better be you little squirt, coz no-one orders me around.”
Sensing the hostile stares from the snurd next to him, The Pan kept his eyes glued fixedly to the lights in front but it was to no avail. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the Grongles in the patrol snurd talking earnestly to each other and breaking off occasionally to stare out of the window at him. He knew what that meant, they were running a check through their on-board computer. They must have seen him on a poster somewhere and recognised him.
Big Merv might be a bank robber but as a high-status gangster he would have bribed the right people and cultivated the right contacts to ensure his record remained spotlessly clean, even of the most innocuous traffic offence. On the other hand, The Pan’s criminal record, or at least, the list of enquiries with which the police required his help, was long enough to dwarf War and Peace. It was all petty crime, usually stealing essential items like food, clothes, toothpaste or soap but unfortunately, that made no difference and what with being on the blacklist and still at large, the police wanted him quite badly. The officer in the passenger seat climbed out of his vehicle and walked over to the SE2.
“Oh marvellous,” muttered The Pan, “here we go.”
“Shut it, you spigot,” growled Merv as the officer leaned down and knocked on the window.
Oh, didn’t life suck?
With a resigned sigh, The Pan wound it down. Well, it wasn’t as if things could get any worse.