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.
