links up with the 583. Henry gunned the Rover as fast as it would go. In the circumstances, that meant the needle hovered around 105 m.p.h. Rather generous, Henry felt, but it didn’t stop the steering wheel rattling like mad in his hands.
They reached the traffic lights at the 583 within minutes.
No sign of the Range Rover. The trail was growing cooler by the second. For no reason other than they didn’t want to give in so easily, Henry slowed down, turned right at the lights and drove towards Preston. Neither was expecting anything now.
‘ I’ll go as far as the Lea Gate,’ Henry said, naming a pub some way up the road, ‘and spin it round in the car park.’
Seymour nodded.
The radio had gone quiet. No other patrols had spotted the vehicle. Very depressing, particularly for Henry. It would be a hundred times more difficult to make arrests from enquiries. Much easier to catch the bastards red- handed.
Seymour saw the vehicle first.
On the forecourt of a petrol filling station on the opposite side of the road. By the time he’d blurted it out, Henry had cruised past. He craned his neck round. Yeah. Could be the one. Too far away to see the registered number. Two men with it. One by a pump, filling it up. The other in the driver’s seat.
‘ It must be,’ said Seymour.
‘ Let’s check it out.’
The road at that point was not a true dual carriageway. Two lanes did run in either direction, but they were separated by white lines, not a central reservation.
Henry was travelling slowly in the inside lane. With a rush of adrenalin, and little thought for a tactical approach or safety, he wrenched the wheel down and performed a U-turn across four lanes of traffic.
Cars skidded and braked everywhere. Horns blared angrily. V-signs and dick-head gestures were flashed. People swore.
Henry ignored them.
He’d seen his target and was homing in.
And likewise, Dundaven had seen the approaching danger. He knew it could not be anything other than the law.
‘ Leave that. Get back in,’ he screamed through the open window at McCrory who was in the process of filling the thirsty machine with endless gallons of juice. He flung the nozzle to one side, spraying excess petrol across the forecourt, and ran to his seat, slamming his door behind him.
Henry veered onto the forecourt off the road.
Dundaven put all his weight on the accelerator and aimed the huge Range Rover purposely towards the oncoming police car. Intention: to ram and disable.
‘ Hold on,’ Henry cried out and wondered fleetingly whether his right, left, or both legs would be broken.
The two vehicles met virtually head-on. The bull-bars wrapped around the front of the Range Rover crunched into the front lights and radiator grill of Henry’s motor, bringing both to a skeleton-rattling halt.
Dundaven kept his foot rammed to the floor and pushed Henry’s car across the forecourt, causing it more and more damage. Then he slammed his brakes on, went into reverse and put his foot down again. With a screech of tearing metal the Range Rover extricated itself, tyres squealing and smoking on the concrete surface.
When he had enough space to manoeuvre, Dundaven was back into forward gear and was pulling away.
Dundaven’s right hand appeared out of his window, waving the shotgun in the general direction of the police car. He loosed off both barrels at the two officers who cowered down like frightened rabbits. It was a badly aimed shot, taken as the Range Rover was speeding past, and the discharge missed them completely. Once again the recoil was very great and he was unable to keep hold of the gun which jerked out of his hand onto the forecourt Then he was gone, slewing across all four lanes of the dual carriageway and accelerating away towards Preston. The massive engine responded superbly to the throttle.
In contrast, the rather smaller engine of Henry’s car had conked out. He twisted the key in the ignition and prayed there was not too much damage. The starter motor coughed pathetically. Henry almost threw up his hands in despair, got out and kicked the car in anger.
But before he did, he tried it once again.
Roughly it fired up. He dabbed the gas pedal a couple of times and the unwilling engine came back to life like it had been in shock.
The process of restarting seemed to take for ever. Time which was allowing those two bastards to escape. In actual fact he was only a matter of seconds behind his target when he re-crossed the road, which by now was becoming accustomed to dangerous driving.
The view down the front of Henry’s car was no longer smooth and sleek. Instead it looked as though a heap of tangled metal had been clamped to the radiator, the bonnet having creased up like a blanket after a bad night.
He pushed the car to the limits of its performance in each gear and all the while he expected it to die on him. Surely, he thought, the collision must have damaged some of the workings.
‘ Keep going, y’bastard,’ he intoned under his breath.
Because now he was mad. The driver of the Range Rover — apart from shooting a police officer — had rammed him and tried to kill him. He did not take kindly to that.
Seymour, cool as ever, was talking slowly into his radio.
Henry threw a quick glance at him. Blood was pouring out of a cut just below the left side of his scalp where he’d cracked it on the door. When he’d finished passing his message, Henry asked him if he was all right to continue.
Seymour scowled at Henry as though he was a complete prick.
‘ Let’s catch these cunts,’ he said grimly.
If Dundaven had been given the chance, he would have dumped the Range Rover at the first opportunity and stolen another car. That would have been the sensible thing to do.
He did not have that option.
The cargo in the back made it impossible. So he was stuck with what he’d got and had to make the effort to get it back to safety.
He was pleased by the way things had gone at first. He’d got out of Blackpool easily. The problem he next faced was that he needed to refuel the vehicle. The big engine was guzzling petrol faster than a tramp guzzled cider, and he didn’t have enough left to get back to Manchester. Not at the speeds he’d be travelling at.
The refuelling had been going well.
McCrory, still stunned, was responding with blind obedience to everything. He made an excellent petrol pump attendant.
Then the detectives spotted them.
Dunny had hoped to ram the cop car into oblivion, but the manoeuvre had been nowhere near as effective as intended. This was confirmed by McCrory, who was keeping tabs out the back window.
‘ They’re there, they’re behind us,’ he shrieked.
‘ I should’ve wasted ‘em,’ growled Dundaven with regret.
‘ There’s another cop car with ‘em now,’ McCrory said.
Dundaven checked the mirror and glimpsed the blue light. He overtook a slow-moving bus, causing oncoming traffic to avoid him, then cut back in and shot through the next set of traffic lights which were on red. In the middle of the junction he had to slam on, twist and turn, accelerate away, keeping going all the time.
McCrory leaned forwards and peered up through the windscreen.
‘ Now the fuckin’ helicopter’s there,’ he howled in anguish. ‘We haven’t got a hope in hell, Dunny. We are fucking doomed. On my daughter’s life, we are doomed.’
‘ Shut yer pathetic hole,’ Dundaven warned him. ‘We are not doomed.’ Well, I’m not, he added silently.
He mounted the pavement with the two-nearside wheels and overtook a series of cars on the inside, pulling back onto the road inches before he hit a lamp post.
