by Nick Oldham
Rider had seen it too.
Something inside Henry twisted like colic. He wanted to burst into tears.
Gallagher flicked a switch and the light in the cage came on.
With the engine still running and lights on, the three detectives stepped out of the van.
Henry caught Rider’s expression. He was just as petrified.
The back doors of the van opened. A burst of cold air whooshed in, making Henry shiver and feel weak.
Gallagher, Tattersall and Siobhan pushed their faces up to the metal grill.
Gallagher’s face, in the light given out by the interior bulb, looked evil. He smiled.
‘End of the road, Henry.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I say. It’s been decided to whack you, pal - and you, mate.’ He indicated Rider and rested the muzzle of his pistol on the cage door. ‘Sorry an’ all that, but you should have taken the hint and done what you were told. Your life would have been good, with all sorts of perks, not least shafting Siobhan here as and when you liked.’
‘I’d rather fuck a rusty drainpipe,’ Henry said.
‘So you’re gonna shoot us, is that what you’re sayin’?’ Rider cut in.
‘Yup.’
‘And how you gonna explain that?’ he asked incredulously.
Gallagher jerked a finger at Henry. ‘He knows enough about us to answer that one, don’t you, Henry?’
‘Creatively, I suppose,’ Henry conceded.
‘Spot on,’ Gallagher said. He shrugged. ‘Just thinkin’ off the top of my head ... you’re overpowered by the prisoner in the back of the van who has secreted a knife on him. We ... ahh ... realise that unless we accede to his demands he’ll kill you and so we play it safe. Drive down here as he tells us and open the back door. He’s got the knife to your throat ... demands our guns ... he shoots you in the back of the head. We overpower him and in the struggle he gets shot dead too. Something like that. And we’ll be heroes.’
Siobhan said, ‘Whatever the circumstances, we’ll fit a story to answer the evidence. What it boils down to is that both of you are due to die.’ She spoke with glee and a sneer.
‘Like all the others?’ Henry demanded.
‘Exactly like the others,’ she confirmed.
‘Derek Luton had you sussed, altering those statements. Which one of you killed him?’
Tattersall gave Henry a friendly wave and a smile through the cage door.
A lurching sensation went through Henry.
‘And Geoff Driffield? What about him?’
‘Team effort,’ Gallagher said. ‘He thought we were going to catch that gang of gypos, poor sucker. We turned up instead. Just unfortunate they hit that shop up the road at more or less the same time as we hit dear old Geoff.’
‘And what had he done to you? Looked at you wrong?’
‘Got caught collecting evidence against us. He had to go.’
‘You know other people are involved with me - people like the FBI?’
‘We’ll deal with them as and when we need to. Anyway, I’m sick of talking now,’ said Gallagher, ‘getting pissed wet through. What I want you both to do is climb out of here nice and slowly, walk up to that factory wall and put your noses up to it, OK? I see you’ve taken his cuffs off, Henry, but it makes no odds. If you piss about, we’ll shoot you anyway, so it’s as broad as it’s long. If you want it over quick and clean, just follow orders.’
Henry and Rider exchanged glances.
‘Is that FBI shit true?’ Rider asked.
‘Yeah,’ Henry squeaked.
‘Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better.’
Henry’s throat felt like his windpipe had been constricted by a boa and despite the cold, a clammy sweat had formed under his armpits.
Siobhan smacked the release catch and the locking bar sprang open.
The three armed detectives took a few paces back and covered Henry and Rider as they slowly descended out of the van. Henry saw Siobhan was holding some kind of machine pistol and looked very confident with it.
‘Up to the wall,’ Gallagher reiterated.
Henry’s heart-rate was incredible. He thought it had reached his limit. A myocardial infarction was more likely to be the cause of death than a bullet.
He and Rider walked side by side to the wall. By the time they reached it they were both drenched.
‘Right up to it,’ snapped Gallagher.
Henry stood with his nose pressed up to the bricks. His hands hung loose and weak. He closed his eyes despairingly and let his forehead drop onto the wall.
‘Who’d like to be first?’ Gallagher offered the choice.
Rider said, ‘Kill the cop first. At least it’ll give me some pleasure before I die.’
‘But you’re both in this together,’ Siobhan argued. ‘We’ve listened to your little chats.’
‘Just shoot the cop first,’ Rider insisted. ‘He’s still a cop, isn’t he?’
‘Thanks,’ breathed Henry.
Gallagher stepped forwards and placed the muzzle of the revolver at the back of Henry’s head at the point where vertebrae and cranium met.
‘Don’t worry, Henry, you won’t feel a thing.’
Terror welled up inside him and made him want to shit and vomit and scream and cry and wake up from this fucking nightmare of nightmares.
Rider looked at Henry. ‘Always wanted to see a cop get blasted away. I’ll die happy now. . .’ and on the H of Happy his open-palmed left hand shot out with the intention of smacking the revolver away from Henry’s head before Gallagher fired.
Except Gallagher was ready for this manoeuvre. He stepped smartly back a stride, pulling the gun away.
Rider slapped thin air and found himself staring down the barrel of the revolver.
‘You idiot,’ Gallagher laughed. ‘I was hoping you’d try that, because I wanted to kill you first anyway.’
Henry’s mind clicked into gear at that moment. His right hand swung to the leather pouch on his belt which held his extendable baton. He thumbed up the catch and drew it out, making his movements smooth and unhurried.
‘You’re too slow,’ Gallagher taunted Rider. ‘Do you want to see if you can bat it out of my hand now, before I blow your head off?’
Hoping Gallagher wasn’t too far behind him, Henry swivelled at the hips and in one flowing motion pirouetted and released the catch on the baton which extended with a whoosh and a click. He turned 180 degrees with the baton swishing through the air like a sword and slammed it against Gallagher’s right forearm with all the force he could muster. Had it been a blade, Gallagher’s hand would have been sliced off.
Gallagher screamed. The gun jumped out of his grip, skittering away into the darkness.
Coming back round for a second time, Henry whacked the baton against the side of Gallagher’s head; it connected against his eye-socket with a satisfying jolt.
Neither Siobhan nor Tattersall, standing behind their DI, were able to shoot for fear of drilling holes into his back.
In that moment of confusion, Rider grabbed Henry’s jacket and dragged him bodily into the van’s headlights, shouting ‘Run!’ For a second both men were completely exposed. Two shots were hurriedly fired ... then they were beyond the headlight beams and had launched themselves into the total wet blackness of the night.
Siobhan was in time to glimpse Henry’s disappearing back. She flicked the safety off the machine pistol and riddled the night with bullets.
Blindly, Henry pitched himself headlong onto the ground, landing clumsily and jarring his sore chest and dropping the baton. He ignored the pain and forced himself to roll along the hard ground for about twenty metres, feeling the spray of bullets passing only inches overhead.
He righted himself onto one knee, aware fleetingly that his clothing was now in an abominable state. His trousers were tom, jacket sleeves ripped.
And besides hurting his chest, he had also caught his ear, which felt as if it had been ripped
away from the stitches. The pain was dreadful. But Henry pushed himself on. Where was Rider? Had he been hit?
Henry scrambled up and ran into the further darkness, not knowing what sort of terrain lay ahead. Next thing he tripped. He went head over heels down a steep grassy bank, expecting to roll and tumble into something awful. He came to an unexpected stop. More bullets cracked above.
Henry stopped breathing. Tried to listen. The heavy sleet deadened everything.
Voices. They were searching. Can’t make out the words, but there’s annoyance there.
Keep still. Don’t move. Odds are against them finding you. My ear, my fucking ear!
The engine revving, the beam of headlights lighting up the land to his left ... getting closer, the van crawling closer. More voices - Siobhan’s - and some shouts.
The headlights swept to the spot where Henry lay.
He knew they would see him. He was briefly reminded of those World War II POW escape films. He knew that if they saw him, he was dead.
The lights passed over him. The engine grew fainter.
Henry breathed out cautiously, but didn’t move. It could be a ploy to flush him out. He was wet and cold, but fuck that. Hypothermia was better than lead poisoning. He gritted his teeth at the pain in his ear.
Ten minutes passed.
A hand clasped his shoulder. ‘You OK?’ It was Rider. He had been lying up only feet away.
‘No, not really.’
‘They’ll bring other cops in to search. We need to make some progress, Henry.’
‘Let ‘em,’ said an exhausted detective. ‘We can give ourselves up.’
‘Are you fucking thick, or what?’ Rider was incredulous. ‘You’ll be an accomplice to me. You’ll get convicted of that and all the other shit, and probably end up murdered in prison. We can’t give ourselves up yet anyway, not until it’s safe - not until we’ve decided on a way out of this crap.’
‘So what do you propose?’ Henry couldn’t have given a toss at that moment. Everything was too much for him.
‘First things first. Let’s get out of here and stay free.’
The plane touched down at Manchester Airport at nine o’clock. The pilot handled the atrocious weather conditions with aplomb. The passengers gave him a round of applause and were glad to be alive. They disembarked and having collected their luggage, made their way through Customs. Only a couple were stopped, their cases searched perfunctorily. Scott Hamilton and his companion, Raymond de Vere, sailed through unchecked, were met by a driver at the meeting point and led immediately to a waiting Mercedes.
Behind, in front, and around them, a team of expert watchers, military and police trained so they understood all aspects of the game, slotted unobtrusively into place.
The two men didn’t have a clue.
‘Henry should have been in contact by now,’ Donaldson announced to Kate and Karen. He looked at his watch. 9.30 p.m. He eyed his wife worriedly.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Kate. She knew that when her two guests and husband had got into their secretive scrums the evening before, something exceptional was taking place, but she couldn’t begin to guess what it was. She wasn’t that interested, actually. Policework bored her rigid.
Karen took a deep sigh. ‘I think you need to know that Henry’s become involved in a police corruption enquiry, and there’s just the remotest possibility he could be in some sort of danger. God, it sounds corny even saying it, but it is remote,’ she tried to stress. ‘We’re involved in it too, and just waiting to get updated by Henry. He should have spoken to us by now.’
Kate’s mind homed in on the word ‘danger’. ‘Does it involve Derek Luton?’
Karen nodded.
Kate closed her eyes. ‘Christ!’
‘Kate, does Henry normally phone in when he’s working late?’ Donaldson asked.
‘No, not really. Sometimes ... I mean, I usually see him when I see him.’
‘So we’re probably making a mountain out of a molehill,’ Donaldson said. ‘But just to put my mind at rest, will you phone in and ask to speak to him, honey?’
She did. At the end of the conversation she put the phone down slowly, a crease of puzzlement on her face. ‘They said he’s taken a prisoner to Preston, but they sounded strange. Almost as if they didn’t want to talk to me.’
On being alerted by the NWOCS, every available police officer in the Preston area had descended on the industrial estate and a search began. The officers were told they were hunting a suspected murderer and the police officer who had engineered his unlawful escape from custody. Both were considered to be very dangerous men.
Raymond de Vere settled comfortably into his room at Conroy’s country club where wine, sandwiches, fruit and coffee were provided, followed by a high-class hooker who demonstrated an imaginative use for a banana. De Vere gratefully devoured it in situ.
In a ground-floor seminar room, Conroy, McNamara, Morton and Hamilton met up.
‘Before we begin, Rider and Christie have escaped from custody,’ Morton announced with some trepidation. ‘And knowing what they know, leaves us with a problem. Rider has decided to grass on us.’
‘I thought you were going to kill them,’ whined Conroy. He tugged his pony tail agitatedly. He was heartily sick of Rider and that damned detective who should have been wasted long ago instead of all this pussyfooting around.
‘They got away. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t there.’
‘You should have been more ruthless in the first place,’ said McNamara, entering the bickering which looked set to spiral out of control. All three men were on edge.
Hamilton stepped in, stroking his goatee thoughtfully. ‘These two guys causing you heartache?’
‘Heartache?’ muttered Conroy. He turned to Morton. ‘You’ve made a complete balls of this.’
‘Whoa, gentlemen,’ Hamilton interjected, raising his hands to pacify. ‘What you need is a professional solution. If you recall, I mentioned two friends of mine who specialise in such matters. They work quickly, efficiently and cheaply. And they have a one hundred per cent track record. They are very, very high class - exactly the type you require to deal with these two people, I would suggest.’
‘But we need them now,’ said Conroy.
‘Would tomorrow morning do? They’re in Paris as we speak. An hour from Manchester by air.’
They all nodded.
‘I’ll contact them,’ Hamilton said. ‘All you need to do is use your resources to pinpoint the position of these individuals and let my friends do the rest.’
An air of relief seeped through the room.
‘That leaves us with the question of where the goods are going to be displayed.’ Morton looked at Conroy.
‘By midnight, Rider’s club will be staffed by my people.’
Not having received any instructions to the contrary, Jacko kept the club up and running. Unusually, even for a Saturday night, the place was packed, doing a roaring trade.
Weekends were the only times doormen were employed - four bruisers not renowned for their interpersonal skills. Two kept door, two drifted around inside. They changed their roles on a regular basis.
Conroy’s men swaggered up to the front door - six of them - and confronted the two lounging by the till. There was an exchange of words and gestures and Rider’s employees acknowledged defeat. They slunk away from the doors and disappeared into the wet night, now unemployed.
The other two were located in a strategic position overlooking the dance floor. They had no qualms about joining their pals.
A bloodless coup - so far.
Jacko was a different proposition. He was bundled into the manager’s office and beaten into a messy pulp.
Almost a bloodless coup.
Now Conroy ran Rider’s club, practically if not legally. Maybe the latter would follow.
The man who had led the assault used the phone in the manager’s office to convey the good news.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They were out of the immediate area within minutes, working their way cautiously through the industrial estate towards the retail end which was nearer to the town centre.
Henry held his left hand over his ear which was bleeding profusely through his fingers.
They skirted past a drive-thru McDonald’s and scurried through the dark car parks of Texas Homecare and Morrisons, with what used to be the docks on their right. They stayed in the blackest shadow, ducking when a car approached, rising slowly when it passed.
Henry Christie, fugitive. Unreal, surreal. He was floating through a different world and was struggling to remind himself that this was reality.
A few minutes later they were in the car park of the Ribble Pilot, a modem pub right on the dockside. Rider crouched down, pulling Henry with him. They worked their way around the parked vehicles and Rider tested every door.
One opened.
It was an old Ford Granada.
‘I loved these motors,’ Rider whispered. He slid in and fumbled around in the wires underneath the steering wheel, until his hands expertly found the ignition wires. He ripped them out, yanked two apart to expose their metal ends, touched them and they sparked and - voila! - the engine started first time.
Henry remained on his haunches outside the car.
‘Get in.’ Rider reached across and flicked the catch on the passenger door.
‘We’re gonna steal a car?’ He could not believe it. This was getting all too much.
‘Yep, and if you don’t get in, I’m going to drive off without you.’
‘Oh my Christing God!’ Henry chunnered. He went round to the other side of the car and got in.
It was an automatic. Rider slotted it into Drive. Moments later they were back on the A583, heading towards Blackpool. Henry cowered down in the passenger seat. Aiding and abetting the unlawful taking of a conveyance. He was having grave problems coming to terms with this additional responsibility, on top of everything else. His brain was due for implosion.
‘Let’s just hope the owner’s set in there for the night ... give us a head start,’ Rider was saying.
