Strangers (15 page)

As always, her complete lack of options out here served to deepen her despondency.

It went completely against the grain for a police officer to turn a blind eye to such casual brutality. And yet here she was, unable to protect one silly, drunken girl who yet again had managed to antagonise the vicious boor she’d voluntarily enslaved herself to.

Despite all, Lucy hit a button on her left and powered down the passenger window as the twosome struggled their way past – and now she realised that it wasn’t Digby.

This guy, who was someone she hadn’t seen before, was quite young, and in physical terms was a beanpole, with a mop of fair hair and, when she glanced up as he passed, a juvenile snarl on his thin, acne-scarred face.

‘It’s dead simple, love,’ he shouted over Tammy’s tearful protests. ‘You’re under arrest for prostitution. You can have it easy or you can have it hard, but either way you’re coming with me.’

Under arrest?
, Lucy thought.
For ‘prostitution’?

There was no such criminal offence.

They veered towards the van. The guy was wearing tracksuit bottoms, a sweatshirt and a shimmering yellow pair of Nike Air Max trainers. He was twenty at the most. Few cops were out and about in plain clothes at that age. As she watched, scalp tingling, the back doors to the van swung open. Another figure climbed out and came round the vehicle to meet them.

Lucy was approximately thirty yards away. In the late October gloom, it was difficult to distinguish him, but he was of relatively small stature with thin shoulders and a hunched posture. He halted in front of the van, glancing warily left to right.

‘What’s that?’ Lucy murmured to herself. ‘Making sure no one’s here to see what you’re up to?’

Evidently, the two men hadn’t spotted that she was inside the darkened Beetle. Once Des had gone into the caf, they’d thought the coast was clear.

‘And how old are
you
?’ she wondered. By his slim build, she put this one in his late teens, maybe even less than that.

This was all very wrong, but, of course, as usual, Tammy was too drunk to have worked that out for herself, or, if she had, too drunk to resist them adequately.

The second character now took hold of Tammy’s right arm, and despite her increased wailing, he and his mate hauled her around to the rear of the van together. There was a double slamming of doors. The van’s headlights speared to life, and it lurched forward, engine growling.

‘Shit!’ Lucy glanced back towards the front of the café. ‘Des … come on!’

But there was no sign of him. Most likely he’d be queuing to get served. And there wasn’t even sufficient time now to jump out and go looking for him. Besides, to openly seek his help inside the café would be to risk her cover.

The van rumbled past the Beetle. Lucy turned and peered after it. Its back doors were firmly closed and there were no windows in them. Equally absent was a seam of light running down the middle, shining through the narrow gap between those doors to indicate that conditions inside were at least tolerable for the prisoner.

She pulled her mobile from her shoulder bag, despite knowing there wouldn’t be time to use it. A frantic readjustment of the rear-view mirror showed the van swinging left onto the East Lancs. At this time of night, with rush hour over, it would be gone in seconds.

‘Shit!’ she said again, heart racing.

She glanced right. Des’s key still hung in the Beetle’s ignition.

‘Sorry, DC Barton,’ she said. ‘I’ve no bloody choice.’

She levered herself up and over the gearstick and into the driving seat, and turned the key. The engine juddered to life. Snapping her seatbelt into place, she got her foot down, spinning the car around in a fast three-point turn, and gunning it towards the exit and out onto the dual carriageway beyond. Thankfully, there was minimal traffic, and the high-sided van came back into view some ninety yards ahead, keeping a steady pace. Lucy accelerated in pursuit, but discreetly – the last thing she wanted was to create the impression that she was chasing it.

As she did, she took her mobile out again and thumbed in Des’s number.

‘Yello!’ he said jovially. She could hear women laughing in the background. It sounded as if he was exchanging banter with the girls behind the café counter.

‘Des, it’s Lucy,’ she said. ‘I’ve borrowed your car.’

‘Yeah, that’s …
what
?’

‘Sorry, no time to explain. You’ve just got to trust me. I’ll be back as soon as poss.’

‘But … where are you going?’ There wasn’t much joviality in his voice now. ‘Lucy, hang on … this is no bloody good!
What do you mean you’ve borrowed my sodding car
?’

‘Look, just stand by, okay?’ To Lucy’s surprise, the van swung sharply off to the left. She hit the pedal hard to try and catch up. ‘I think a bunch of scrotes have just abducted Tammy.’

‘Lucy, what the hell are you talking about?’

‘I’m not sure, I’ll tell you when I know more.’ She cut the call, thoughts racing.

The left-hand turn now approached. It connected with what looked like a single-track lane. She swung into it, and brought the Beetle to an abrupt halt, grit and leaves spraying from her tyres. She shouldn’t be doing this. Even if what she suspected was true, she was endangering her covert status and therefore the status of the entire operation.

But there were some things you just couldn’t sit by and ignore.

As quickly as she could, she called Des again.

‘What the hell is going on?’ he yelled.

‘Des … listen. I don’t want to get personally involved in this unless I absolutely have to. So I need some divisional support. Can you get on the blower … do it discreetly obviously, and try to get some uniforms to investigate the first left turn-off north of the café? Be economical with the facts, eh? Don’t tell them I’m a copper … say an abduction’s been reported by an unnamed member of the public who’s currently in pursuit, or something like that. Look, I’ve gotta go if I’m gonna keep tabs on them. I’ll stay in touch.’

She rammed her foot down again, grinding more grit as she tore down the lane, which immediately began curving and twisting. In truth, this was a nightmare scenario. Even assuming the local lads responded immediately, it would take minutes for them to get all the way out here … and how far away would the target vehicle be by then? She’d only dallied a second or two and she’d already lost sight of its tail lights. Ahead, trees were now ranked thickly down either side of the lane, their leafless branches interlocked overhead – it was more a tunnel than a road. But there was still no sign of the van. Lucy accelerated again, pushing up from forty to fifty to sixty.

Signposts and farm-gates flickered by in her peripheral vision.

With no clue about the geographic layout at this end of the East Lancashire Road, she had no idea where she was, except that she was about six miles from her home-patch in Crowley, and at least twelve from Manchester city centre.

Another turn-off veered into view ahead, this time on the right.

Lucy smashed her brake pedal flat, screeching to a halt over thirty yards.

This new turn led onto a dirt track rather than a metalled lane, and meandered off into total blackness, probably leading to a field or a barn or something; a regular road to nowhere. Even so, she backed up and spun the wheel again, to try and see better in the flood of her headlights. Her gaze fell on recently churned tyre-marks in the track’s muddy surface. It was still a gamble that they’d come this way, but if these guys were some bunch of scumbag rapists, as Lucy suspected, they wouldn’t be heading anywhere easily accessible to the general public.

She gunned the Beetle forward onto the rutted surface, tyres slewing through fresh heaps of fallen leaves. She no longer had concerns about trying to pretend that she wasn’t following them – on an isolated route like this, the moment they spotted her headlights they’d know what she was up to. She thus roared along, the unmade track rising and falling in undulating humps. More leafy grit flew as she careered around ever-sharper bends. And now, at last, she spotted them again. She depressed the pedal, steadily closing the gap between them.

The rear of the van ballooned towards her, a dingy brown, smeared with oil and grime. It wasn’t exactly flying, but it was travelling at a good fifty, which on this road was pretty perilous. Lucy slowed a little so as not to collide with it, but there was now only thirty yards between them. This certainly seemed to have distracted the van driver. At the next tight bend, he skidded along the verge, his nearside wheels threshing leaves and twigs. There was an open stretch after that, the dim ribbon of the road extending for several hundred yards.

A veteran of several chases, Lucy expected her opponent to floor it.

But he didn’t. He maintained his current pace, and then she realised why. These guys were supposed to be the police. Openly running would be the last thing they’d do, especially if they now thought they were being followed by one of Tammy’s friends. Trying to maintain their pretence would be the most obvious tactic – but that would suit her, because ideally she wanted to follow them rather than tackle them. On which subject, realising that she’d made another turn since she’d last spoken to Des, she grabbed at her phone again … only for the van driver to suddenly lurch his vehicle left onto an even narrower track.

Lucy dropped the phone onto the passenger seat as she swung after it. This thoroughfare was equally rutted and muddy, but now she could see that it was actually a driveway rather than a road. It curved away through the woodland, terminating on the forecourt of what looked like a derelict house.

The van pulled up sharply. Lucy braked too, slithering to a halt about twenty yards at the rear of it, though from the exhaust pumping out of its tailpipe, its engine was still running. Before she could decide what to do next, one of the van’s rear doors clunked open and a figure sprang out. It was the beanpole with the blond hair and the snarl. He slammed the door closed behind him, and came quickly towards her.

She noticed that he was pulling on a pair of black leather gloves.

‘Christ …’ she breathed.

Her heart thumped her ribs as she braced herself. She could hardly expect to speak with authority here and yet
not
reveal who she was. Even if she did reveal it, it wouldn’t be easy laying the law down in thigh-boots and fishnets. The only option was to try and rough it, just bullock her way through as if she was an ordinary outraged citizen. Meanwhile, the guy, even though young, looked meaner the closer he came. He might be tall and thin, but there was something lithe about him – the way he walked, the way his arms swung at his sides – as if he was actually quite athletic.

She cast around for a weapon. She had her rape alarm and Mace in her shoulder bag, but that was down in the passenger-side footwell. She wouldn’t be able to reach it in time. Instead, her left hand scuttled along the dash and into the glovebox, which, typically for Des Barton, was crammed with grotty bits and pieces. As the blond guy rounded the front of her car towards the driver’s side, her fingers rooted amid broken pens, half-eaten sweets, wads of paperwork – and then alighted on an aerosol canister. She yanked it out, but it wasn’t especially heavy in her hand. When she gazed down at it, she saw nothing more useful than a tin of de-icer.

The guy leaned down at her window.

Swallowing her nervousness, Lucy lowered the pane to speak with him.

‘And what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ he wondered, his gaze creeping down to her fishnet-clad thighs. He seemed amused by the sight. ‘You want to get arrested too … you slutty little bitch?’

‘I need to see your ID,’ she said.

‘You need to see my ID?’ He stuck his ferrety face right into hers, and dangled a pair of handcuffs alongside it. ‘How’s this? Now get out the fucking car, like the good little cocksucking slapper you no doubt are.’

‘Wait,’ she replied. ‘Here’s my ID.’

‘Your …?’ Puzzled, he leaned even closer.

And she ejected the aerosol’s contents into his face.

He tottered backwards with a screech, cupping both hands to his eyes. At the same time his feet slid in the mud and he thudded down onto his back. Lucy kicked the driver’s door open and leapt out. She landed the toe of her left boot in his groin as he writhed there, at which he gagged and curled into a ball. With no time to actually stop and think about what she was doing, she ran towards the van, swerving through its plume of exhaust to its offside. The driver’s window was already wound down. The driver turned a startled face towards her. It wasn’t the younger guy she’d expected, which meant there was more than two of them. This one looked older than the beanpole, with fatter cheeks, a mop of greasy hair, piggy eyes and a wispy moustache under his fat, flat nose.

It was the nose she aimed for, banging her right fist into it. Lucy wasn’t the kind of copper who indulged in this sort of behaviour often, but the crunch of cartilage was strangely satisfying. With chicken-like squawks, the driver groped at his face, blood geysering through his grubby, ring-cluttered fingers.

‘Wanker!’ she spat, before backing toward the rear of the van, shaking her hand hard to ease the sting out of her knuckles. It hurt so much when you actually hit someone; the movies never got that bit right.

She yanked down on the lever of the van’s rear doors, and with an echoing
CLUNG
, they sprang open. She assumed the combat posture as the glow of her own headlights permeated the dank interior, fully expecting the next bastard to jump right out at her. However, he didn’t. This was the younger one, the teenager with the narrow shoulders. He cowered at the far end, crushing himself against the partition wall. His face was written with panic, his eyes glinting with tears. His hands had clawed in front of him, but only as if to ward her off.

Alongside him, Tammy lay bound and gagged, lengths of washing line knotting her wrists together in the small of her back, strips of silver duct tape plastered across her mouth and around the back of her head.