Judgement Call (6 page)

And there was also something familiar about it, but he couldn't quite place it as his brain shuffled through all this information.

He braked sharply, looking into his rear-view mirror to see the car pull out onto Bury Road and head south.

He yanked the wheel down and executed a fast three-point turn, his car rocking on its bouncy suspension.

He was going to check out the Rover, but because he wasn't remotely certain that the fire he could see down in the valley had anything to do with the robbery, or that the Rover itself was even suspicious – and that he had left his checkpoint without permission – he decided he wouldn't trouble comms for the moment, just see how things developed.

By the time his car's nose had reached the junction, the Rover was almost out of sight. Henry skittered out with a slight misgiving at the sight of clouds of very iffy-looking exhaust smoke behind him as he floored the Cavalier in first, then second, and with a very rough gear change between that might well have sheared off some nasty cogs, he accelerated after the Rover.

It was moving quickly and by the time he came up behind it, it was approaching the set of traffic lights just outside the village of Edenfield, basically the last outpost of Lancashire Constabulary before entering Greater Manchester's area.

The brake lights came on as the car slowed for a red light.

Henry could actually now see the outline of four people on board – in his first glimpse back down the road he thought there had only been three, so maybe one of them had been bent over tying a shoe or something. The two in the back, their features indistinguishable, turned to look out of the rear window.

The car stopped for the light, giving Henry chance to catch up. As he slowed behind it he reached across for his flat cap and fitted it onto his head. Just in case there were any shenanigans here, he didn't want anyone to claim he couldn't be identified as a cop. Whoever was in the car, innocent or otherwise, had to know what he was before he even spoke to them.

The light was still on red. Henry pulled up twenty feet behind the Rover.

The men in the back were still looking at him.

He had their attention.

He pointed at them with his right forefinger and jerked it to the left:
pull in
.

Suddenly both rear doors swung open and the occupants got out, faces angled downwards, pulling balaclava masks over their faces.

Both brandished sawn-off shotguns.

‘Holy crap,' Henry uttered.

Both guns arced up in his direction.

He crunched his car into reverse – blunting more cogs – and literally stood on the accelerator pedal, his back pressed hard against his seat, and the car swerved backwards, Henry with his right hand on the wheel, his torso twisted at forty-five degrees, his head jerking forwards and backwards.

The men ran fast and low, catching up with him, and then, as if synchronized, they aimed and fired. Henry heard the slightly delayed stereo of the discharge, then physically felt the impact of the blast from the shot as it hit the car, thudding into the bodywork like pebbledashing being flung against a wall.

Henry screamed, ‘Shit,' kept his foot rammed on the pedal, thankful there were no other cars behind him to impede his ignominious retreat.

Message delivered, the two men ran back to the Rover and bundled themselves into the back seat, their doors slamming as the car sped off through the lights.

Henry stalled his car, swore, slammed in the clutch and twisted the ignition key with his right hand, using the forefinger of his left hand to press the transmit button on his PR and call for assistance. As the engine fired up, he went after the Rover, still speaking into his radio, trying his best to sound cool and laid-back, even though the front of his car had just been blasted by two shotguns.

He raced into Edenfield, where because of parked cars on either side the road narrowed, just about wide enough for two cars to pass, and the speed limit dropped back to thirty, not really a village to hurtle through.

Henry touched sixty.

The Rover was still in view and Henry speculated what the plans of its occupants might now be. They were being chased by a lone cop and as the border with Greater Manchester loomed, and patrols in that area were hopefully being alerted by Rawtenstall comms, Henry thought they might try and ditch the car and try to escape on foot. But then again, maybe not. Henry knew there wouldn't be many patrols to deploy over the border and the police over there would have to drop everything and converge on the chase, all of which took time.

The sergeant called Henry, who replied, ‘Go 'head.'

‘The Rover was reported stolen in the early hours of this morning from Failsworth, Manchester.'

Henry ingested this information. That fitted more or less with what he knew of this gang's MO. Steal two cars from Manchester, use one to commit the robbery, ditch and burn it, then jump into another stolen one which is then abandoned. He guessed that the smoke he had been about to investigate would be the car used in the robbery.

A look of grim satisfaction came onto Henry's face. It had been worth leaving the checkpoint.

He smacked the steering wheel in triumph, then succinctly brought comms up to speed with his current location and situation.

The Rover was still ahead and in sight. Once it had passed through Edenfield centre it veered right and headed towards the roundabout that formed a junction with the bypass, at the point where that road became the M66 motorway, but there was no actual slip road onto the motorway which meant that the driver's options were becoming limited.

The Rover careened onto the roundabout, narrowly avoiding other traffic, and rocked dangerously as the driver forced the car into a tight left turn straight off the roundabout and back up towards Edenfield again.

Henry stuck with it, part of his mind trying to recall why the Rover seemed familiar, and on this stretch of road he gained on the Rover, which appeared to have lost some power, or maybe the driver had missed a gear or two. At the next junction, Henry expected the car to go right, but to his surprise it skidded sharp left, towards Edenfield. As the car screeched around this corner, the rear nearside passenger hung out of the window and blasted both barrels of his shotgun at Henry.

Instinctively, Henry ducked and once again felt the splatter of lead shot against the front of his car. He pulled his foot off the accelerator, relaying his position to comms again – still trying to keep the fear and excitement out of his voice. He was told that a section patrol and a traffic car were en route, as was DI Fanshaw-Bayley from the scene of the robbery, and to keep the car in sight if possible, but not to engage the occupants in any way. Bit too late for that, Henry thought wryly.

The two-car chase shot back through Edenfield village, traffic coming towards them along the narrow road, being forced to swerve out of the way and slam on.

Henry clung on and, as the adrenaline flooded into his system, he did not once have the thought that he might be being foolhardy. Even though he had now been shot at twice, it never occurred to him to abandon the pursuit or that he might lose his life. All he wanted to do was catch criminals and this was one hell of a way to do it. Combining danger, adrenaline, excitement and screeching tyres. Things couldn't get much better and this was the beauty of a cop's life: the humdrum followed by the intense rush. If he could have thrown sex into the blend, it would have been perfect for him … though perhaps that could come later.

They cleared the built-up area in a haze of speed and at the traffic lights where Henry had been first shot at, the Rover bore left, forking towards Haslingden and dropping underneath the bypass towards a tiny settlement called Ewood Bridge.

Henry relayed the change of direction to comms, just as the Rover braked sharply almost at the bottom of the hill and came to a slithering stop.

Henry slammed on. He later reflected that he could have taken the opportunity to smash his car into the back of the Rover, but he didn't, and what happened, happened.

Once again the rear doors of the stolen car opened and the two still-masked men jumped out, wielding their shotguns.

Henry crunched his car into reverse, but the robbers sprinted up to him, one either side of the police car before he could put any distance between him and them. One blasted Henry's front nearside tyre which immediately deflated with a sickening lurch.

The man on Henry's side then took a further two steps up to the driver's door window and placed the muzzles of both barrels up against the glass at the level of Henry's head.

Then, Henry felt real terror for the first time.

He looked at those black side-by-side holes, like the eyes of death staring at him. Something inside him churned all his organs into a quivering mush, his heart, lungs, kidneys, the whole of the inside of his chest seemed to drain away.

Then the man swung the weapon like a pendulum and drove the barrels through the window, smashing crumbled glass all over Henry. He leaned in and forced the weapon into Henry's face.

‘Your lucky day,' the man growled, his eyes burning behind the two holes in the balaclava. He reared away from Henry and ran back to the Rover with his accomplice. They bundled themselves back in and the car sped away down the hill.

Henry watched it, almost catatonic in fear.

Then his vital signs clicked back in. He breathed in and shook himself out of his trance, then exhaled very slowly and unsteadily, both hands gripping the steering wheel, pulling himself together. He answered his radio to a desperate-sounding comms, demanding his current position and situation report, which he relayed with a distinct tremor in his voice.

The two-tone brown Rover was never seen again – at least not in working order. It turned up in Salford, Greater Manchester, having been set alight on a recreation ground and burned to nothing more than a blistered shell, of no forensic use whatsoever.

It also transpired that the fire Henry had been driving to investigate on the industrial area was the getaway car from the robbery. By the time the fire brigade arrived, it too was just a blackened shell. That car had also been reported stolen in Manchester earlier that day.

Henry peered over the cracked rim of his mug of tea. The DI had taken a seat opposite, his wide frame only just supported by the plastic chair. The two men eyed each other suspiciously.

‘What I don't get,' the DI said, as though it was painful to say, ‘is why you were in Edenfield in the first place. If my memory serves me correct, you should've been on a checkpoint in Queens Square.'

‘Ahh,' Henry said. Rumbled. This was the question he had thought he would not face – why did you leave your checkpoint?

‘And remember this, PC Christie,' Fanshaw-Bayley waggled a stubby finger at him, ‘you can't kid a kidder.'

‘I got bored,' Henry admitted. He placed his mug down on the table. The two men were in the refreshment room on the first floor of the police station. Henry had stolen a teabag and liberated someone else's milk from the fridge to make himself the brew. He had wanted to sit down alone for ten minutes, just to pull himself together, to regroup.

He had charged into the incident without any thought, really, and it was only on reflection – and ‘reflection' wasn't something the young Henry Christie did willingly – he realized he should have backed off. Maybe. Most car chases don't end up with a shotgun being stuffed up the nose and he would argue that he wasn't to know it would culminate like that.

‘I got bored and went to check out any likely areas where they might dump the getaway car. I thought that if they were going to pass me at the checkpoint, they would have done so … so I went for a mooch.'

‘Against explicit instructions.'

‘If that car had driven past me at the checkpoint, the result would have been the same. I'd've gone after it.'

‘There's a flaw there.'

‘I know,' Henry admitted. ‘The Rover wasn't the one they used as a getaway from the scene. It was the Vauxhall Ventora burned out down Holme Lane. But that car did not drive past me, which also means they had some local knowledge because they must have come off the main road and found their way to Holme Lane via the back roads – and that isn't a straightforward journey. You need to know your way around to do that.'

Fanshaw-Bayley considered Henry. ‘You think they have a local connection?'

‘Probably.'

The DI nodded, then changed the subject. ‘I've had all the top brass ringing me to see how you are.'

‘I'm deeply moved. None of the calls seem to have found their way to me, though.'

‘That's because I want any credit for catching these bad guys,' Fanshaw-Bayley said and blinked like a reptile. ‘Not a jumped-up PC with attitude.'

‘At least you're honest,' Henry said.

Fanshaw-Bayley smirked as though he had heard something mildly amusing. ‘I'm a detective.'

Henry nodded knowingly. Some, not all, of the detectives he had so far encountered in his short career were not especially honest, other than in their quest for self-aggrandisement and plaudits. They seemed manipulative schemers only interested in themselves and were held in poor regard by other members of the constabulary. But the CID was a very powerful branch and had very influential people right up to the top of the organization who wielded a lot of clout. Henry wasn't sure how healthy that was for the force but he did know one thing – none of that made him want to be a detective any less. He was just certain that if he ever became one, he would be different. He would treat the uniform branch with respect, not disdain; he would share knowledge and information.

‘Anyway, that said,' the DI continued, ‘I can see a spark of something in you. I think you have a bit of work to do on your reasoning and your obvious dislike of being told what to do, but you've got a bit of an instinct in here.' He tapped his own forehead. ‘So maybe one day you might make a jack … but you cannot go about raising your hackles to your superiors, nor can you go about
not
following orders. Get that?'