by Nick Oldham
The mobile had chirped whilst they were driving south down the Promenade from Gynn Square, stuck in the flow of traffic.
However, McCrory breathed a sigh of relief at the news. ‘Thank fuck for that, Dunny.’ He was getting decidedly jumpy, trolling around the place with enough firepower in the back to arm a unit of the SAS. ‘Let’s get the crap outta here.’
Stopping and searching persons and vehicles is one of the most fundamental functions of a police officer. Its effectiveness in preventing and detecting crime cannot be over-stressed. Stop-searches result in thousands of arrests each year, mostly for minor criminal and drug-possession offences, as well as more spectacular ones. The Yorkshire Ripper, the Black Panther and members of the IRA responsible for planting bombs in the north of England were all arrested by officers exercising their basic powers.
Many officers stop-search using the numbers game: if enough people and vehicles are stopped, the theory goes, sooner or later there will be a result.
Some officers simply have a nose, an eye, an ear — an instinct — for pulling the right person or vehicle at the right time.
Or in some cases, the wrong time.
PC Rik Dean was one such officer. He had three and a half years’ service, but at the age of thirty-two, had another eight years’ experience behind him as a Customs and Excise officer.
Blackpool Central had been his first posting as a cop and he loved the place. The work was hectic — Blackpool never stood still — and the social life was even better now that he was divorced.
He was one of those policemen who just seem to fall over villains. He didn’t know why — it just happened. When he stopped a car, odds could be laid he’d find a hoard of stolen goods; if he pulled a person, he’d find heroin. And he didn’t know why. He’d look at someone, or a car, his brow would furrow, his head would tilt to one side and he’d say, ‘Let’s have a look at that.’
Which is what he did that Sunday afternoon.
He was working the 2-10 p.m. shift. When he paraded on duty he was given a thick wodge of arrest warrants, mainly for people who had failed to appear at court, and was told to go and execute a few of them. The warrants, that is.
He was partnered with a policewoman called Nina. She was nineteen years old, had only recently finished her initial training and joined the shift, and was still wet behind the ears, slightly hesitant and shy in everything she did. Rik had decided she could execute the warrants to build up her confidence in dealing with people. At ten o’clock when the tour of duty finished, he might suggest a drink in the bar. And who knew where that could lead…
Apart from being a cracking thief-taker, Rik was also a serial policewoman seducer, with five so far to his credit. He couldn’t resist a woman in uniform, and they seemed unable to resist him with his trousers down.
Again, he did not know how he did it. Just happened. If he could have distilled, bottled and sold his policing and womanising skills he would have made a fortune. Or so he thought and often joked.
The afternoon had been fruitless and frustrating, made more so by the way the station was buzzing frenetically with chatter about last night’s massacre at the newsagents and this morning’s murder on the beach. Detectives were everywhere, suffused with their own importance, carrying bits of paper, looking serious, talking in whispers, attending briefings.
And Rik was envious. He wanted to become a detective and get involved in jobs like those.
‘ No reply,’ Nina said wearily. She climbed back into the passenger seat of the Maestro and dropped the warrant onto the pile in the footwell. ‘That’s eight we’ve tried with no luck,’ she complained. ‘I’m getting bored with this.’
‘ Me too.’ He started up the engine and the less then elegant police car moved off. It was 4.30 p.m. and they’d been pounding on doors solidly since the start of the tour. ‘Let’s kick it in the head for a while and cruise.’
‘ Yeah, good idea.’
‘ If you see anything you fancy stopping, just give me a nudge, will you?’
‘ Yeah, will do.’
Rik was not really in the mood to do much. His thoughts were on enquiries, arresting murderers and big-time crims.
Nina sat back, removed her hat and ran her hand through her cropped, spiky blonde hair. She heaved a deep sigh which pushed her bust tightly up against her tunic. Rik saw the rise of the material out of the corner of his eye and gulped. Nina smiled. She had ideas for ten o’clock too.
Unfortunately for both, their thoughts of a future liaison would soon get put on indefinite hold.
Rik drove down the Promenade, coming onto it from the north at Gynn Square, travelling slowly south. There was a huge amount of traffic about, as well as pedestrians. From a sluggish beginning, the brightness of this January day had attracted many day-trippers into town.
The evening was drawing in now and many were planning to leave. He drove little faster than walking pace, content to watch.
‘ We’ll mosey down south, come up by Squires Gate and work back round to Marton. There’s a couple of warrants for up there,’ he said.
‘ Suits me fine.’
Rik’s mind was coasting in neutral. He was not interested in working hard that afternoon. His thoughts were a mixture of how best to word his application for CID, what might happen between him and Nina, and how great it would feel to be a detective.
He saw the vehicle for the first time as he reached the junction with Talbot Square and stopped at the traffic lights at the head of the queue. From this point southwards, Blackpool’s Promenade is basically a dual carriageway, two lanes in either direction.
Rik had pulled up on the inside lane.
He was looking around aimlessly, eyes flitting about between the task of driving, glancing at female pedestrians and gazing out to sea.
Policework was way down the list.
The fact that the vehicle which pulled alongside him at the lights was a Range Rover 4.6 HSE, green with a grey flash down the side and bull-bars wrapped around the grill, did little to arouse his curiosity. He cast his eyes over it but thought nothing.
Nor did he pay much attention to the passenger, a male, early twenties, who happened to look down at him and catch his eye ever so briefly. The man turned quickly away and said something to the driver whom Rik could not see from his lowdown position in the Maestro.
The lights went to green.
The Range Rover surged ahead of the police car. Rik was not concerned about that. He was happy enough to let other cars overtake and speed along as they wished. Catching speeders was the job of the traffic department, not his.
He did notice that the vehicle had been registered in Liverpool, the last two letters of the index number being KB.
That was enough for him to ask Nina to radio in and ask for a PNC check. With the high volume of cars stolen from that area he had no qualms in checking any vehicle registered there.
The reply was that it was not stolen, but the current owner was not listed on the computer. The previous owner had notified DVLA of the sale of the vehicle two months before. Even that did not have much effect on Rik — not consciously. Thousands of vehicles were without current owners. It usually meant they had recently changed hands and the paperwork was still going through.
He drew in behind the Range Rover which had stopped at the next but one set of traffic lights on the Promenade at the junction with Chapel Street. Tussaud’s Waxworks were on their left.
Now Rik could see the driver’s face reflected in the door mirror. The man continually checked the mirror, looking back at Rik whilst speaking animatedly to the passenger.
That was probably what swung it for Rik. He hardly knew any drivers who checked their side mirrors as often as this one.
The lights went to green.
Once again the Range Rover accelerated away.
The Maestro, not built for speed or agility (what exactly was it built for, some officers had been known to ask) had a problem keeping up, but the volume of traffic he
ld the bigger car back. By the time they reached the next set of lights, Rik was behind it again.
Now Nina was sitting up, taking notice. ‘Something wrong?’
Somehow the atmosphere had changed. She could sense Rik’s new alertness, like a charge of static.
He played it down, shrugged. ‘Just gonna pull this guy. D’you fancy issuing him with a producer?’ He was referring to the form HORT1 issued by police to drivers for them to take their documents into a police station to be checked within seven days.
‘ Sure.’ She peered at the Range Rover but failed to see anything wrong with it. She believed the PNC check she’d done had been simply routine, nothing else. ‘But why, what’s he done?’
‘ Nothing… probably nothing,’ said Rik. ‘We’ll stop them after they’ve gone through the lights.’ His head was at a slight tilt, his brow furrowed.
The Range Rover was indicating a left turn at the lights which would take it onto Lytham Road.
When the lights changed, the big vehicle moved off as though turning left, but halfway into the junction the indicator’ went of Land the vehicle veered right and kept going straight down the Prom.
Rik thought he was in for a chase. He absently fingered the transmit button Oh his personal radio.
He flashed his headlights a few times and turned on the blue flashing roof-light and pipped his rather pathetic horn. He wished they’d fit proper two-tone horns.
Initially the Range Rover did not respond.
Rik was about to call for back-up when, drawing level with the Pleasure Beach, the Range Rover pulled into the side of the road and stopped.
Rik pulled in behind, leaving a gap of ten metres.
Neither occupant of the Range Rover got out.
‘ Go and give him a chit,’ he said to Nina. She had already prepared her clipboard and put her hat on. ‘And smell his breath. He could’ve had some bevy. I’ll hang on here.’
He had a premonition that the driver might just try and speed away.
He was right.
When the Range Rover had pulled up initially alongside the police car at Talbot Square traffic lights, McCrory looked down to his left and nearly had heart failure. ‘Shit, Dunny,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Cops. Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
McCrory was a small-time thief and drug addict in his early twenties who was known to his acquaintances as ‘Bits ‘n’ Bats’, often shortened to ‘Bits’, due to his habit of helping himself to other people’s property, their bits ‘n’ bats. He had ingratiated himself onto the lower rungs of Conroy’s organisation without ever knowing who his ultimate employer was, and had proved himself to be a trustworthy deliverer of packages, unusually for a druggie. Never completely aware of what he was carrying, these packages ranged from drugs, the occasional handgun and cash.
Today he had been hired to assist in the delivery of what was in the back of the Range Rover to Rider’s club. As he had lumped the firearms into the vehicle he had palpitations. He had no illusions about what he’d been required to deliver in the past. He could guess at drugs, and maybe money sometimes, but he had never even considered that he might have carried guns before. Just the action of putting his hand on them made him break out into an ice-cold sweat. He felt completely out of his depth, but he was unable to back out. He’d already been hired, received half his fee, and did not have the guts to say no thanks. That would have made him appear unreliable. Maybe expendable.
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.
