Nightmare City hc-2

by Nick Oldham

  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 lea
ves 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.

  Henry made a feeble attempt to pull himself together. He sat up, tugged down the sun visor, flicked on the interior light and inspected his ear. What he saw made him whimper.

  It was hanging on by a thread of gristly skin, swinging like a sign outside a pub. He moaned. Blood flowed onto his left shoulder and dribbled down his chest.

  ‘ It’s a fucking mess,’ he blurted out, almost crying.

  ‘ It’ll be all right,’ Rider comforted him. ‘ So long as you get some medical treatment fairly soon. Better than a bullet in your brain at any rate.’

  ‘ I don’t mean that,’ Henry said churlishly. ‘I mean everything — the whole fucking shooting match. What the hell are we running for? I’ve done nothing wrong.’ He was rambling a bit as he tried to unscramble his brain. ‘Let’s just give ourselves up, John. We’ve nothing to fear.’

  Rider took a left at Three Nooks and headed towards Lytham.

  ‘ They’ve just tried to kill us, mate — that’s what we’ve got to fear. What we need is some breathing space so we can reorganise ourselves and plan ahead. Presenting ourselves at a police station isn’t the answer, not to my way of thinking. If we do that, they’ll simply say we escaped from custody and we’ll be fucked again.’

  Christ, the pain.

  ‘ Right, OK,’ said Henry in an attempt to be positive. He was thinking now… slowly, but at least he was thinking. ‘We need to get our act together, get the evidence together and then hit the bastards with it. We could go to my house-’

  ‘ Like fuck we could. They’ll be watching and waiting, just like they’ll be watching and waiting at my flat. I have a better idea — somewhere we can crash out for the night, then see how things look in the morning.’

  Henry slumped back in the big comfy seat. ‘Whatever,’ he said dejectedly.

  They did more than watch Henry’s house. On the stroke of midnight they raided it.

  A mean-tempered Gallagher with a bandage wrapped around his right arm and an ugly-looking swelling by his right eye, banged angrily on the front door.

  Tattersall and Siobhan were directly behind him. Three other NWOCS detectives hovered behind them, looking hard and uncompromising, like they’d never smiled since joining the cops.

  Kate raced to the door. She and the Donaldsons had been sitting in the lounge, tense, awaiting any developments. Karl stood with her at the threshold.

  ‘ Is Henry Christie here?’ Gallagher demanded.

  ‘ No, I-’

  Before Kate could say anything more, Gallagher interrupted. ‘He’s wanted for assault, allowing a prisoner to escape and other corrupt practices, including rape and sexual assault. We’re gonna search the house.’

  Donaldson stepped forwards. ‘Now hold on a moment, buddy.’

  ‘ By force if necessary,’ Gallagher warned him.

  ‘ Where’s the warrant?’

  ‘ Under English law we don’t need one. Now step aside and let us in, or we’ll gladly kick the fuck out of you.’

  The officers poured in to the house. They pushed past Kate and one went straight through to the back door which he opened to allow three more detectives in. They had been watching the rear to prevent Henry escaping out back.

  ‘ What do you mean, rape and sexual assault?’ Kate cried. She was confused and on the edge of tears.

  Gallagher sneered evilly at her. ‘Your husband can’t keep his hands off other women, can he?’ he said with extreme cruelty.

  ‘ Shut it, asshole,’ Donaldson warned him, and stepped forwards menacingly. Gallagher and he were much of the same height and build. It would have been an interesting conflict.

  ‘ Go on, do it,’ Gallagher invited.

  Donaldson gritted his teeth and held back.

  The moment passed.

  ‘ Now I suggest you get everyone in the house assembled in the living room,’ said Gallagher.

  They parked the Granada in a badly-lit street in South Shore, and sat there hoping not to draw attention to themselves.

  Henry found an oily cloth in the glove-box and pressed it to his ear. The bleeding had lessened. Coagulation was taking place.

  They had another brief argument about presenting themselves at a police station. Henry’s instinct told him this was the way forwards. Rider laughed at him.

  ‘ That’s what comes of never having been on the wrong side of the law,’ he sneered. ‘You wanna look at it from a crim’s perspective occasionally. When a cop’s out to get you, it’s a godawful feeling when you know you can’t t
rust anyone. And for some, that’s what it’s like. A police station can be a place where everything you do or say is twisted.’

  Which was hard for Henry to perceive. He had always — truly — believed that if he was in trouble he could go to the law and be dealt with fairly and justly. In a matter of days his world had been up-ended. Now he didn’t know who to trust, who to turn to, where to go. The badness of this squad seemed limitless, its influence phenomenal. Who could he go to who wasn’t touched by it?

  Sitting there with a bleeding ear, a thumping head, in soaking wet clothes, he felt very much alone. He knew he could trust Karl Donaldson — but how could he get to him? And he knew he had to trust John Rider.

  There was a silence between the men, filled by the engine ticking over. Warm air blew out of the vents.

  ‘ So did you kill Munrow?’

  Rider turned his whole body in his seat to look at Henry. A slash of yellow light fell across his eyes. The rest of his face was in darkness. He said nothing.

  ‘ I thought so,’ Henry concluded.

  The search had been thorough. An hour after starting, the police withdrew, taking nothing away with them despite having visited every nook and cranny.

  Gallagher looked cheated.

  ‘ What did you expect to find?’ Donaldson asked him. ‘He ain’t done nothin’ wrong, bud — unlike some people I could mention.’ He looked knowingly at Gallagher then gladly closed the front door behind him.

  Donaldson returned to the lounge where the two exhausted daughters had crashed out on the settee and the two weary women, hollow-eyed, looked tiredly at him.

  Kate had gone beyond crying.

  ‘ Is it true?’ she begged desperately. ‘Can Henry really have helped a murderer to escape? And rape? What does it mean?’

  ‘ You can take it from me that Henry has not raped anyone, nor has he helped a murderer to escape,’ Karl hissed quietly, one eye on the two girls. This was a conversation they didn’t need to overhear. ‘Henry’s as straight as an arrow; he’s just become involved with people who aren’t.’