Nightmare City (2 page)

Whilst driving around they handed a carton of Lucozade to each
other which was tossed out of the window when empty. They had found
that the bubbles assisted the speedy percolation of the
amphetamines into their bodies.

It was 7.27 p.m. Saturday evening. The perfect
time.

They were ready to roll.

‘
We know what we have to do,’ the man in the front passenger
seat said, whipping up enthusiasm. ‘Let’s get it done.’

‘
Yeah, let’s fuckin’ do it,’ voiced one of the
others.

They all fitted their white porkpie hats onto their heads and
pulled on surgical face masks, including the driver.

The Alfa pulled up unspectacularly outside the
newsagents.

The shop was owned by a couple of middle-aged gay men,
formerly actors who had bought it between them when they came to
the sad conclusion that if they weren’t careful they would spend
the rest of their thespian days as soap-opera extras. They had been
running the shop about four years, building it up from nothing into
a thriving, profitable business.

Since the advent of the National Lottery, trade had boomed as
they were the only Lottery retailer in that particular area of
Blackpool. Like other newsagents they had taken to staying open
late on Saturday evenings in order to catch as many last-minute
players as possible.

Today the shop had taken in nearly two thousand pounds of
extra revenue, as a treble rollover and a forty million pound
jackpot had brought out punters in ever-hopeful droves.

Three men stepped casually out of the Alfa, leaving the driver
sitting at the wheel. They trotted without undue haste across the
pavement and filed into the shop.

Inside, two people were queued up at the till, eagerly hoping
to get their lottery slips through the machine before the 7.30 p.m.
deadline. Another customer was browsing idly through a woman’s
magazine in the rack by the door. She looked up unconcerned when
the first of the men came through the door. It took a second for
her eyes to register with her brain that he was carrying a shotgun.
Her mouth popped open. She began to scream.

With an absolute cold lack of compassion the lead man
nonchalantly pulled the trigger back and blasted the left side of
her face off - cheek, eye and ear. She spun backwards into the
magazine rack, toppled over to one side and, in an instinctive
gesture, reached out and grabbed a card stand which overturned as
she fell to the floor, covering her with rude birthday
cards.

By this time all three men were in the shop, facing the
remaining customers and owners.

With a burst of low fire from an Uzi, the two customers who
were standing side by side at the till were virtually sliced in
half. As the bullets punched them full of holes, their writhing
torsos, spitting and gushing blood, were thrown together against
the counter. From there they quivered to the floor, where for a few
moments they appeared to be fighting each other in a grisly
conflict which was actually their death throes.

The owners had not moved. Terror, like a vice, gripped them,
constricted their throats and held their hearts in a claw-like
embrace.

The cacophony of bullets echoed away, leaving
silence.

Three violent men faced two gentle men.

No one spoke until the man holding the shotgun stepped
forwards. He brought the weapon up and pumped the action. He aimed
it straight into the face of one of the owners, less than two
inches away from his nose.

‘
Get that bastard in the back out here now,’ he said quietly.
The sound of his voice was muffled by the face mask, making it more
sinister and deadly. ‘Otherwise you’re next.’

He was smiling behind the mask.

He spun the barrel of the gun towards the other man. ‘You go
and get him -
now!’
His aim returned to the first man. ‘Or I’ll kill this
fucker.’

At 7.40 p.m. Henry slumped wearily back against the cell
corridor wall. He was completely shattered. The prisoners kept
coming. All the cells now contained a minimum of three and it was
proving a logistical nightmare to ensure that opposing fans didn’t
end up in cells with each other. It was likely that by the end of
the night there would be five in every cell.

‘
C’mon Shane,’ Henry urged the sallow youth who was washing
the fingerprint ink off his hands in a wash basin. He had been
arrested early in the day (and had missed the match) for slashing a
Bolton fan across the face with a Stanley knife. He had been
completely uncooperative throughout his period of detention. ‘I
haven’t got all night,’ Henry geed him up.

‘
Why don’t you just fuck off,’ responded Shane, speaking into
the basin. He pulled the plug. The dirty water belched
away.

Henry bridled. The temptation was to smash Shane’s shaven head
against the wall and say the young man had attacked him without
provocation. There was no one else in the corridor, no one else to
see them, one word against the other. Henry’s patience was so
paper-thin that, for a fleeting moment, this was a realistic
option.

Then he shrugged it away. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said with a
wicked smile, ‘but I’ll lay odds that remark has completely
ballsed-up any chance you had of bail. Looks like court on Monday
for you.’

With his back still towards Henry, Shane stood upright. With
the exception of his red Doc Marten boots which had been removed
and were outside his cell door, Shane was dressed exactly as he’d
arrived in the custody office: in a pair of loose-fitting jeans and
nothing else. He’d lost his jacket and T-shirt long before his
arrest.

He was a thin boy, no muscle, and the lily-white skin of his
back was streaked with scratches and grazes where he’d been rolling
around on the ground, fighting. He’d also been drinking heavily,
but having been in custody for almost seven hours, he’d sobered up
somewhat. The process had left him with a bad head and a mean
disposition. Henry’s remark about bail rankled him.

Still facing away from the detective, he appeared to pull his
jeans up, fiddling with the button and the fly for an inordinate
length of time.

Henry tutted and raised his eyes.

Just then Shane spun quickly round, catching Henry unawares.
In his hand was a slim flick-knife which had been concealed in the
waistband of his jeans.

The silver blade shot out, locked into position.

He lunged at Henry.

At the very last moment Henry saw him coming. With a curse on
his lips he pivoted out of the way. The knife plunged into thin
air. Shane stumbled clumsily, slashing wildly with the
blade.

Henry didn’t have time to think, only react.

The lack of any alcohol in his system was the only thing that
saved him. It meant he could move quicker and with better
coordination than Shane. And his six foot two, fourteen stone body
(slightly overweight, but modestly fit) gave him the edge as
regards power and strength.

For a brief instant, Shane was at right angles to Henry, who
punched the young man on the side of the head, just below the
ear.

Shane staggered away, but recovered quickly. He turned and
charged at Henry, running the knife at him as though he was holding
a bayonet, screaming, ‘You’re dead, you cunt!’

But the move was telegraphed, giving Henry ample time to
sidestep again, like a matador. Had he wanted he could have allowed
Shane to run past him, put a boot up his backside and sent him
sprawling like the stupid lad he was.

But the ‘red mist’ - the police officers’ worst enemy -
slotted down over his eyes like a visor.

He knew he shouldn’t. Knew it was wrong. But he’d been so
wound up that afternoon that he shrugged the angel off his left
shoulder and nodded conspiratorially to the devil on his
right.

He parried the knife to one side with the palm of his hand,
grabbed Shane’s wrist and twisted. A yelp of pain shot out of
Shane’s mouth, his fingers opened, and the knife clattered
harmlessly to the floor. Henry continued to apply the pressure,
twisting until he was almost at the point of breaking the wrist,
then he yanked Shane towards him so they were nearly face to
face.

Shane’s breath reeked of stale alcohol and vomit.

Henry gave a hard, dry smile, pulled down on the wrist like he
was pulling on a toilet chain and at the same time drove his right
knee up into the young man’s testicles. An animal-like howl of
agonising pain burst up from the deepest recesses of Shane’s
abdomen and exited via his mouth. Henry let go.

Clutching his privates with both hands, Shane collapsed
weeping to the floor. Moaning. Crying.

Henry picked up the knife. He touched the release catch with
his thumb and the blade slid harmlessly back into the
handle.

The ‘red mist’ lifted. He hoped - belatedly - he hadn’t done
too much damage.

The Custody Sergeant, Eric Taylor, appeared in the corridor.
‘Henry! What the fuck’s going on here?’

‘
Nothing I can’t handle ... but whoever searched this prisoner
wants their balls chewing off.’ He handed the flick-knife to Taylor
who looked at it, then at the writhing body on the
floor.

‘
Make sure you put an entry on the custody record to cover it,
will you? For your own safety. Then go up and see comms. There’s a
big robbery come in, firearms job - somebody shot, I think. They
want you to turn out to it.’

‘
With respect, Eric, as much as I’ve enjoyed myself today in
the dungeons - thank God for that!’ He walked off down the
corridor, stopped and turned back. ‘Oh, and by the way, don’t give
him bail. He got me really mad.’

The first officer on the scene had done all the right things.
She had quickly checked for any signs of life, found none, but
requested comms to call an ambulance anyway, just to be on the safe
side. She retraced her steps carefully to the front door of the
shop, bundled several gawping members of the public away, stepped
outside and closed the door behind her. The scene was effectively
sealed off.

Onlookers had already begun to gather. She ordered them back.
Then as calmly as she could, after taking a deep quavering breath,
she relayed a situation report over her PR and asked for
help.
Quickly, please.

Henry Christie and a Detective Constable called Derek Luton
were the next officers on the scene, arriving before the
ambulance.

Before going in, Henry got the story from the female
officer.

With trepidation, and not a little disbelief, he opened the
door, ensuring he didn’t spoil or leave any fingerprints on the
gloss-painted wood.

One of the first things he’d been taught as a young copper was
that there was only one occasion when it was acceptable for a
police officer to be seen by the public with hands in pockets. That
occasion was at the scene of a crime. It was OK because it
prevented an officer touching and possibly tainting evidence which
is all too easy to do.

Let your eyes do the walking, he’d been told. Take it all in
for a few minutes, then take your hands out.

It was a piece of advice which had stood him in good stead for
many years. Apart from anything else, it was a way of preventing
panic rising at a particularly violent or messy crime. Like this
one.

He stood just inside the door of the newsagents. Luton was one
pace behind him.

‘
Christ!’ breathed the young detective into Henry’s
ear.

Henry pursed his lips and gave a silent whistle. It was an
effort to keep his hands pushed in his pockets. He wanted to rub
his eyes because they could not believe what they were looking
at.

‘
Do you see what I see, Degsy?’ he asked Luton.

‘
Er - yep, think so,’ he replied unsurely.

‘
You stay here and don’t move,’ Henry told him. ‘And make sure
no one else comes through that door.’

‘
You got it.’

Taking care not to step in the blood - difficult because there
appeared to be gallons of the stuff - he moved around the body of
the female shopper covered in birthday cards. He took a couple of
long strides to the counter where he squatted down briefly to look
at the bodies of the two customers. Both still clutched their
lottery slips. Some jackpot, Henry thought.

He stood up, walked behind the counter.

The bodies of the two shopkeepers were lying in an untidy
pile, one
on top of the other. They seemed
to be clinging to each other in a final embrace. Both had massive
head wounds. They had obviously been blasted against the shelves
behind the counter and the contents had tipped over them. Packets
of cigarettes, cigars, matches, were scattered
everywhere.

At first Henry did not spot the other body lying in the
semi-gloom of the hallway which connected the shop to the living
area beyond.

Carefully he stepped over the shopkeepers and went to inspect
what he truly hoped was the last body.