‘ 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.
He knew that another major enquiry would need kick-starting. And if the policewoman died — was she dead already? he asked himself — it would take precedent over the murdered girl on the beach.
The idea of two police officers being killed in two consecutive days in the same town appalled him. Some coincidence.
Beyond the built-up area, the A584 becomes a good, fast dual carriageway for about three miles before it
