‘And you knew this how?’
Paula glared at him. ‘Because I remember the case. Sir.’
He turned his back on her and paced the hallway. ‘I came here with the intention of calling off this stakeout. I still think you’re a long way from a case we can take to court. But we’re all here now. You’ve got until ten this morning. Then we’ll review the situation.’ He grabbed the front door handle and made to leave.
‘Your car’s round the back, sir. It’d be easier and more secure if you left that way.’ She watched him blunder down the hall in the dark. Then the murmured exchange with one of the other officers. Then the back door opening and closing. She waited till she could see the BMW headlights disappearing down the road before she went back upstairs to her vigil. She radioed, ‘Base to all units. As you were.’
The gradual lightening of the sky brought no change. The occasional car passed the end of the drive but none of them was a Porsche four-by-four. Paula’s mouth was dry and bitter from too much coffee, her eyes sore and gritty from too much staring into the dark. The uniformed officers had been relieved at six, the AFOs two hours earlier. By eight, the daylight was so bright she had no compunction about using her phone.
‘Morning, gorgeous,’ she said when Elinor answered. ‘Sleep well?’
‘I missed you. Are you still on stakeout?’
‘We are. It’s been a long n— Oh fuck, I have to go.’ Paula ended the call just as the Porsche came into sight on the road. She hit the radio button. ‘Base to all units. Eye contact with suspect vehicle. Turning into driveway now.’
The big SUV slowed to a halt as it approached the front door. The engine stilled and Mark Conway climbed out of the driver’s seat. He shook his legs and rolled his shoulders as if he’d been sitting too long.
‘Base to Mobile One. Move into position across the drive. Repeat. Move into position across the drive.’ Paula spoke softly, as if Mark Conway might hear her through his double-glazed windows. His retreat would be cut off inside a minute.
As she had this thought, something caught Conway’s attention. He was staring at the ground, turning his head this way and that, angling his line of sight to give him different perspectives. Abruptly, he straightened up and stared intently at the house.
‘The fucking gravel,’ Paula said. Churned up by half a dozen vehicles, and none of them had thought to rake it over.
Conway was already back behind the wheel, the engine roaring into life.
‘Base to all units. Mobilise. Mobilise now,’ Paula yelled, running down the stairs and heading for the front door. She pulled it open just in time to see the police car hadn’t quite completed its manoeuvre to close off the drive. Conway must have stamped on the accelerator for the Porsche surged towards the gap. He almost made it. But the Porsche smashed into the wing of the police car so hard it rocked on its suspension then, almost in slow motion, turned on its side.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Paula shouted as the four-by-four rocketed down the road. A marked police car slid to a halt beside her and she jumped into the passenger seat. ‘Go,’ she cried, dragging the seat belt across her body as the car raced down the drive in a scatter of gravel. ‘Blue lights,’ she commanded. ‘And two tones.’
The AFOs were right behind them in their Range Rover, washing them in blue light and deafening sound. The Porsche was already out of sight but Paula knew there was nowhere to go for the best part of a mile. Then they’d hit morning traffic and the bottleneck of the bridge over the River Brade.
As they approached the junction, Conway came into view, snarled up in traffic waiting to turn right. ‘Got him,’ Paula breathed.
Too soon. With barely a pause, the Porsche mounted the footpath and careered onwards. Because it was a country lane, there were no lampposts to impede him. His wing mirror clipped a Give Way sign, but it didn’t stop him.
Paula’s driver looked terrified, but he followed in the wake of the four-by-four. As they hurtled on, Paula saw the white face of a terrified teenager in school uniform who’d thrown himself into the hedgerow. They lurched round the corner. ‘I think we’re catching him,’ the PC in the back seat said, excited as if he was playing Grand Theft Auto.
They weren’t. A voice yelled from the radio. ‘Lay-by ahead, pull in and let us past, we’re faster than you.’
Paula swivelled in her seat to see the passenger in the Range Rover gesticulating wildly. ‘Pull over, like he said.’
They tore into the lay-by, tyres screaming and let the Range Rover thunder past. Paula’s driver set off after it, gears crunching as he tried to keep up. ‘The bridge,’ Paula moaned. ‘It’ll be solid.’
She’d barely uttered the words when they heard a deafening bang, a scream of metal, the sound of collapsing masonry and a series of whooshing splashes.
Whatever had just happened, it sounded like Mark Conway’s bid for freedom had ended spectacularly badly.
63
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gave a stern warning to those of us who confront the worst that we do to each other. ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.’ It’s a warning we would do well to heed. Empathy is a necessary tool but we have to guard against the horrors we see becoming our new normal.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
There was no mood of triumph in the ReMIT squad room. A job well done was a righteous
