Nightmare City (11 page)

The man in control - who McCrory believed to be the controller
of the purse strings - was called Hughie Dundaven. He was a gruff
Scot in his early thirties who had been involved with Conroy for
several years. He had risen quite high in the hierarchy and ran a
couple of council estates in the Burnley area for Conroy and
oversaw some clubs. He had been responsible for hiring McCrory, but
he was having his regrets.

‘
Just fekin calm down. Relax. Be cool, we’ll be reet,’ he
said.

‘
Be fuckin’ cool?’ McCrory blurted. ‘Jeez, an’ how am I
expected to be fuckin’ cool?’ All he wanted to do was jam a needle
up his arm and escape this madness. Buckets of perspiration rolled
off him. He shivered and squirmed as though he was sitting on a
hedgehog.

He was beginning to grate on Dundaven’s nerves.

‘
Just shut the feck up. It’s only a cop car. They’re not goin’
ter stop us.’

‘
He looks suspicious to me.’ McCrory panicked as he caught the
eye of the policeman and twisted away.

‘
Dinna fekin look at him then, you knobhead. Act natural. If
he sees you jumpin’ about like a prick he will stop us, wonnee?
Otherwise there’s no reason tae.’

The lights changed. Dundaven shot away.

And there was no earthly reason why they should have been
stopped. The car was clean, decent, and he was driving
fine.

When stopped at the lights near to Tussaud’s, the police car
was behind them. Dundaven had paid no heed to it until McCrory,
looking through the back window of the Range Rover, had panicked,
‘He’s still there. I don’t like this, Dunny. It’s doin’ me head in.
I need a fix.’

That was the point where Dundaven looked into the door mirror
and ranted to McCrory, ‘Will you fekin calm doon, you twat! You’s
gettin’ tae me now. It’s nothin’. He’s drivin’ doon the Prom,
lookin’ at the totty,just like you’d do if you were a cop in
Blackpool. . .’ And all the while he could not stop himself from
looking in the mirror, in which he could see Rik’s face, looking
back at him.

At the next set of lights Dundaven was undecided which way to
go, even though he was signalling left. He wanted to get to the
motorway but wasn’t sure of the quickest route. The last moment saw
him cancelling the signal, going straight ahead down the Promenade.
He swore at McCrory for getting him riled up, the useless
cunt.

McCrory peered backwards over his shoulder almost
constantly.

‘
He’s still with us,’ he observed unnecessarily for Dundaven,
who could quite clearly see through his mirrors. ‘Still with us ...
oh fuck, oh fuck, Dunny, he’s flashing us to stop, he’s flashing us
to stop! Oh my fuckin’ God!’

McCrory flipped round in his seat to face the front. He shrunk
low as if he hoped a hole would appear in the floor pan into which
he could be sucked. In a grand gesture of despair he dropped his
shaking head into his hands. ‘We are fucked. They are gonna find
all that lot in the back. We ... are ... completely goosed, Dunny.
On my daughter’s life, we are going to prison.’

‘
No, we’re not,’ Dundaven’s harsh voice grated.

He pulled into the side of the road, stopping like a good
motorist should, and keeping the engine ticking over. He quickly
reached between the seats and rummaged underneath a car blanket. He
extracted two weapons - sawn-off shotguns with the stocks
removed.

McCrory’s eyes widened. ‘Oh God, I need to OD on heroin like
now. A fuckin’ shooter!’ he whined. Now he
knew
he was out of his
depth.

Dundaven forced one of the guns into McCrory’s unwilling
hands. Then he wound his window down and waited patiently for the
arrival of a rather pretty policewoman.

Nina adjusted her cap again. She walked past the front of the
police car, aware that her male colleague was eyeing her up
appreciatively; aware, also, she was responding to the admiration
by swaying her behind ever so slightly provocatively. Nothing
anyone else would have noticed, but enough for Rik, whose
intestines did a little skip of pleasure.

She went to the driver’s window of the Range Rover, standing
in the roadway, but feeling safe as Rik had put the blue lights and
hazard warning lights on, she held her clip-board in two hands,
resting the bottom edge of it on her tunic, against her
belly.

‘
Hello, is this your car?’ she asked Dundaven. She smiled
genuinely. He returned a wide smile, which was also
genuine.

Glancing down she caught sight of the shotgun in his
lap.

And the one in the hands of the passenger.

‘
Yes - and this is mine too,’ Dundaven said.

The gun swung up.

Nina did the thing which probably saved her life.

Automatically she brought up the clipboard and shielded her
face. Dundavan pulled the triggers, firing both barrels at her. The
poorly balanced gun kicked back in his grip and he almost dropped
it.

The lead shot from the two cartridges ripped the plastic
coated clipboard to shreds in Nina’s hands. This obstruction,
though slight, managed to dissipate some of the force of the
blast.

Even so, she took it full in the face. The knuckles of both
her hands where she had been holding the board were pulped by the
shot.

She staggered back into the road, her hat flying
off.

A passing car swerved, but caught her almost full on. She
cartwheeled onto the bonnet and crashed into the windscreen. The
motorist braked sharply and her limp body was thrown back onto the
road.

‘
Get the other one, the driver,’ Dundaven screamed at
McCrory.

‘
What the fuck..?’ quibbled the hired hand.

‘
Get the other one - shoot him.’

McCrory knew better than to argue. In a trance of acquiescence
he got out of the Range Rover, ran down the side in a low crouch
and when he got to the rear nearside corner he pointed the weapon
at the police car. Not really aiming, hoping he hit nothing,
McCrory pulled the triggers. Without waiting to see what, if any,
damage or injury he’d caused, he scurried back to his seat. Tears
were streaming down his face. ‘Oh man, oh man,’ he kept saying to
himself.

Rik could not believe his eyes for a moment.

The figure of Nina stepping backwards like a boxer who’d been
k.o.’d had made him angry for a second. One of the rules was you
always spoke to drivers on the pavement, but if you speak to them
in the road, don’t forget where you are. Be careful.

Then the car struck her and a man appeared at the back of the
Range Rover brandishing a shotgun.

Rik was half out of the car at that moment.

He saw McCrory, whom he recognised instantly as the passenger,
saw the gun, and launched himself back into the police car across
the two front seats. The hand brake slammed into his chest. He
realised he’d made a bad choice. If the man wanted to kill him he
was trapped. The windscreen shattered, peppered with shot,
spidering out like cracked ice. It did not give.

Rik winced and fumbled for his radio. He blabbered his first,
virtually incoherent message into the mouthpiece, expecting the man
to appear at the side of the car and blast him to Kingdom
Come.

Nothing happened.

Rik took a chance. He raised his head. Through the cracked
screen he saw the Range Rover accelerating away.

He pushed himself out of the car and ran towards Nina’s
prostrate form in the road. Her face was a gory mess. Rik
recognised the wound as consistent with a shotgun blast and now
everything made sense. She had walked backwards into the car
because she’d been fucking shot.

A bone in her left thigh was sticking raggedly out through the
skin. Her left arm was twisted and looked to be badly broken. She
wasn’t moving. Rik thought she was dead.

‘
Repeat your message, caller,’ he heard his radio
say.

He looked at the Range Rover getting further and further away,
then to Nina. He knew where his priorities lay.

The first police car to respond squealed around the corner of
the nearest side road. Henry Christie was at the wheel.

Chapter Seven

Normally Henry was a poor listener where the personal radio
was concerned. Most of the time he had it turned right down or off.
Generally he used it solely for his own convenience, but that
afternoon he was glad he’d just checked Rider’s car and the volume
was up.

He and Seymour were probably less than two hundred metres away
from the incident. They were on the scene within
seconds.

Henry’s experienced eyes took it all in. The policewoman lying
on the road. The shattered windscreen of the police car. The
shocked, ashen face of Rik Dean, a bobby Henry would have been very
happy to have on the department. The public beginning to gather and
gawp.

He pulled up alongside. Rik ran to him.

‘
Down there, down there,’ he pointed wildly. ‘Green Range
Rover. Two on board, white males. Shotgun. Shot her. Shot at me!
Christ!’

‘
OK pal, you stay here and look after her. Assistance’ll be
along in a few seconds,’ Henry told him.

He rammed the gear lever into first and put his foot hard down
on the accelerator.

Henry’s CID Rover was not equipped with blue lights or sirens.
Nor was it ‘souped-up’ as so many misinformed members of the public
would like to believe of police cars. It was a bog-standard saloon
with no extras, bought at a massive discount with another
forty-nine of the same model, all in a puke-green colour which
tended to sell poorly to private customers. Hence the discount.
Although quite new in terms of date of manufacture, it had been
mistreated, badly driven and sneered at over the last eighty
thousand miles of its police service. A typical cop car, in
fact.

Despite all that, the engine was still pretty
live1y.

Henry had to rely on the rather pathetic-souding horn,
flashing his headlights and massively exaggerated hand signals -
some rude - to make progress down the Promenade. He drove
dangerously, taking-risks which would make him sweat on reflection.
In and out of the traffic. Fitting the car into gaps that, by
rights, were not wide enough for a motorcyclist, but which
miraculously opened up as he hit them. He prayed his luck would
hold out.

Next to him, Seymour held loosely onto his seat belt, swaying
and rocking with the momentum, coolly relaying their position to
comms in a flat unemotional voice. He might as well have been
sitting in a pram.

‘
Tell them to get the helicopter up,’ Henry said. He braked
sharply, making the car stand on its nose, veered acutely to the
left and narrowly missed an on-coming Bentley.

He shook his head at his driving skills. It was just like
being on his mobile surveillance course again.

But there was nothing to say that the Range Rover was even on
the coast road now. Could easily have turned off, doubled back,
anything. Henry carried on. Wherever he went it was a
gamble.

It was surprising how far a vehicle can travel in a short
time.

Although Henry had been on the scene very quickly, he was
probably about ninety seconds behind the Range Rover even then. By
the time he’d spoken to Rik, he was probably about two minutes
behind.

And, of course, the Range Rover wanted to get away.

The occupants weren’t going to dawdle along and take in the
sights any more. They wanted freedom.

And though Henry was driving like a maniac down the Promenade
towards St Annes, he was constantly having to brake, slow down,
swerve. If the Range Rover was having just a fraction of an easier
time of it, the distance between them would be constantly
increasing.

The comms operator, having got the full story from Rik and
other officers now at the scene of the shooting, circulated the
registered number of the Range Rover to all patrols. Within a
minute or so the whole of Lancashire Constabulary were on the
lookout for it. She also confirmed that Oscar November 21 - the
force helicopter - would be in the air within minutes.

Four minutes after leaving the scene, Henry was driving
through St Annes, a less brash, slightly posh resort to the south
of Blackpool.

If he’s anything like smart, Henry thought to himself, he’ll
dump the Range Rover pretty fucking soon, if he hasn’t already done
so. It was an observation voiced a moment later by Seymour. Great
detectives think alike!

‘
He could be anywhere now,’ Henry said with frustration. He
eased his foot off the gas. ‘Shall we continue to
gamble?’

‘
I don’t think we have a choice, boss.’

Henry visualised the pathetic bloodied figure of the
policewoman lying on the road and agreed. They had to give it a
shot for her.

His right foot pressed down again. They sped out of St Annes,
through the next town, Lytham, emerging onto theA584, heading
towards Preston. His hopes of coming up behind the Range Rover
diminished with each passing second. He decided to drive to where
the A584 joined the A583, at Three Nooks Junction. If he’d had no
luck by then, he’d call it a draw and drive back to
Blackpool.