Free Plender by Ted Lewis

to confess.
    There was only one place I could think of. On the way home, off the main road, there was a track that led down to the river. At one point it forked. If you went right, you got to the sailing club. The clubhouse was built on the edge of a vast, disused brick pit. I was a member of the sailing club: I went there quite often but more for the drinking than the sailing.
    But if you went left at the fork, the track led to the remains of the attendant brick works. One of the buildings was still in fairly good shape, a kiln house. In the kiln house there were ovens. One of them still had its cast iron door attached to it.
    That was where it had to be. If I passed another car driving down there I’d just make for the sailing club. If I didn’t, then I’d switch off my lights and turn left for the brick works. On my way back I’d still keep my lights off and watch for any approaching headlights; that way I’d know when it was safe for me to pull out of the brick works road.
    It was the only thing for me to do.
    There was no sign yet of the approaching train. Come on, I thought. For Christ’s sake.
    A movement in the driving mirror caught my eye. The white jet of headlights swung out of the car park then flared up in the glass in front of my eyes. A silver grey Cortina rolled to a halt behind me. I began to sweat. It was as if the boot were wide open and whoever was driving the Cortina could see the bleeding body of Eileen frozen in the car’s headlights.
    I pulled myself together. Nobody in the world except myself knew what was in the boot of my car. Nobody else would know. The only way I would be discovered would be if I panicked. And a silver grey Cortina parked innocently behind me was no reason for me to panic.
    The train appeared. A two coach deisel. Then the gates staggered open and I rumbled the car across the rails. I looked in my driving mirror. The Cortina paused for a moment before pulling away.
    PLENDER
    I kept a good fifty feet between us all the way. He really began to get worried when he found I was still with him on the river road. He tried to shake me by putting on a burst of speed. In that car he could have lost me any day of the week, but he wasn’t going to risk anything by letting his motor do its stuff. So I stayed with him when he accelerated away and slowed down when he slowed down still keeping the same difference between us.
    I smiled to myself. What he must be thinking. A body in his boot and a Cortina up his arse.
    I wondered where he thought he was going to get rid of it. Not down on the river, surely. He may as well have dumped it on top of Queen Victoria’s statue in Princes Square. Five minutes. That’s how long it would take before somebody fell over it. He must have seen too many British pictures.
    KNOTT
    I’d be at the turning in five minutes. What the Christ was I going to do? The Cortina had stayed behind me all the way. It couldn’t be the police. Didn’t all police cars have to be marked? But supposing it was? Supposing I’d been seen putting Eileen in the boot. Supposing the driver was just following me and waiting to see what I was going to do? Didn’t they sometimes just follow you in order to throw a scare into you? That had happened to Kate once, one time when she’d driven down to London. She’d been over the limit and a patrol car had stayed right behind for a good ten miles. She’d thought she’d had it until they suddenly pulled out and overtook her and went haring off in front of her.
    But even if there was nothing more to it than the fact that the Cortina’s driver just happened to be taking the same route as me, I couldn’t chance going through with my earlier plan. The Cortina’s driver would be bound to remember my car when Eileen’s body was discovered, when the news went out on television, when Peggy the barman remembered seeing the two of us together—Christ, what a bloody fool I was. Why didn’t I turn round and take Eileen’s body back and