Nightmare City (13 page)

He was travelling down the steep hill, Brockholes Brow, away
from Preston towards motorway Junction 31.

In his rearview he saw the crunched-up front end of the police
car he had rammed on the forecourt, right up there, giving him
nothing, pushing him hard.

Seymour had staunched the blood flow from the cut on his head.
He dropped his red-drenched hankie on the car floor where it landed
with a squelch. He delicately touched the wound again and winced.
Blood dribbled out again. He swore and held the sleeve of his
jacket over it and pressed.

Henry had drawn up right behind the Range Rover on the steep
Brockholes Brow. Only a matter of feet separated them.

Injured though he was, Seymour was full of bright
ideas.

‘
If had a pound of sugar,’ he said laconically, ‘I could lean
out of the window and put it into his petrol tank. That’d stop
him.’ He had noticed the filler cap had not been secured. Petrol
had splashed out on a couple of bends.

‘
Just check the glove box,’ Henry said urgently. ‘I think
there’s a bag of sugar in there.’

They both cracked up laughing.

‘
I just love chases,’ Seymour said. ‘Such fun.’

Brockholes Brow is a very steep hill about a mile long with a
speed restriction of 30 m.p.h. They were touching eighty in their
descent, whilst dangerously overtaking, cutting in, braking,
accelerating. Only just missing other cars, leaving a trail of
chaos behind.

Henry stuck with it all the way, as if he was being
towed.

He didn’t hold out much hope of this bastard being stopped by
fair means. The man was obviously - and quite rightly - desperate
to get away. He’d shot a cop and God knows what’d happened to the
passenger. Henry couldn’t begin to comprehend that. It was like a
nightmare.

No, he thought. There were only two ways to stop this guy: if
he ran out of petrol, or if the police employed foul
means.

Another traffic car joined in behind Henry. There was one
positioned at the foot of the hill, ready to pull out in front of
the speeding Range Rover.

As the tons of hurtling machinery hit the flat, the driver of
that waiting police car saw what was coming. He decided that
discretion was the better part of valour. He wanted to get home for
tea, so he sat there and let them all fly past. He tagged on
behind.

The pursuit was taking on the appearance of
Death Race 2000.

For a January Sunday in the north-west of England it had been
an excellent day. Warm, sunny, still. One of those special winter’s
days - but a winter’s day nonetheless.

And daylight does not last long in winter, however good the
day has been.

By 4.50 p.m. as the chase approached the motorway, the night
was drawing in. quickly.

Street-lights were flickering on. Car headlights had been on
for a while.

The darkening day was the reason why, at the last moment,
Dundaven chose to take the motorway as a route to freedom. Maybe
the cops wouldn’t have it all their own way, he thought. Once he
got on the motorway he would keep his lights off and drive blind.
He knew that a good long stretch of the M61 was unlit and this
would be to his advantage. Even with the helicopter and its
searchlight up above.

He hardly reduced his speed on the approach to the first
roundabout which forms Junction 31, keeping in as straight a line
as possible on the wide, newly constructed road. He raced
underneath the M6 bridge, with the River Ribble to his left,
negotiated the second roundabout and picked up the M6
south.

He was feeling pretty confident when he came off the slip road
and entered the motorway proper, easily overtaking the police Range
Rover which was lying in wait for him.

Henry switched on his headlights, hardly expecting them to
work. He was mildly surprised when both lit up, even the offside
one which had been damaged in the collision. It shone at a very
acute upwards angle, lighting up the spare wheel on the back door
of the Range Rover.

‘
Handy if the Luftwaffe appears,’ Seymour said.

They both started giggling again.

Each had settled into the pursuit now and were enjoying it, in
spite of its dangers and the obvious lunatic they were
after.

The traffic car behind Henry now flexed its muscles, pulled
out, easily overtook him and cruised alongside Dundaven.

Silly manoeuvre.

Or as Seymour put it, ‘The stupid prat.’

He was not wrong.

Dundaven looked sharply to his right, mouthed something down
at the officers, yanked his steering wheel and barged into the side
of the traffic car. The driver fought for control but spun
spectacularly away, bounced off the central reservation barrier and
the car flipped onto its roof. It continued to spin like a top
until a car speeding down the outside lane, driven by an
unsuspecting member of the public, smashed into it. Then
another.

Dundaven in the Range Rover, Henry in the CID car, left this
twisted chaos behind.

Seymour peered back but had difficulty making out exactly what
had happened in the deepening gloom. He swore grimly and faced
front again.

Henry grabbed the PR and shouted, ‘No one is to try and pull
this vehicle again.
No one!
Relay that to all patrols.’

From up in the sky the searchlight which hung on to the
underside of the helicopter came on. For good reason the light was
known as the ‘Nightsun’. It emitted a light equivalent to 30
million candle-power. The whole light was fully remote, controlled
from within the cockpit of the helicopter, and the beam width could
be focused tightly onto a target. Which it was on the vehicle
below.

The pursuit came off the M6 at the next exit, straight onto
the M61, no slowing down necessary.

Dundaven increased his speed. Within moments the big vehicle
was touching 115 m.p.h., courtesy of its 4.6-litre
engine.

By contrast, Henry’s car started to flag. The engine, less
than half the size and ten times as worn, tried valiantly, but had
extreme difficulty keeping around the 100 m.p.h. mark.

Dundaven hared easily away. The gap increased with each
second. There was no escaping the helicopter, however, which had a
cruise speed of 125 m.p.h.

Seymour confirmed their position to Control Room, and that he
believed their ultimate destination could well be Greater
Manchester.

He asked for their patrols to be alerted.

‘
Unless we get him stopped on the motorway, we’ll lose him,’
Henry concluded. ‘Here, give me the radio again. Perhaps there is
something we can do.’

A traffic patrol officer called Sharp sat behind the steering
wheel of his pride and joy: a brand new Volvo estate car, kitted
out in the new orange, blue and white livery of the Lancashire
Police.

He was parked on Anderton Services on the M61, literally only
metres from the boundary with Manchester and about six miles south
from the current position of the chase which was less than five
minutes away from him.

His call sign came up and the Control Room operator asked him
a question to which he replied, ‘Yes, one on board.’

He was given authority to use it.

It was his lucky night.

He drove quickly down to the bottom of the services exit road
and stopped on the hard shoulder. He turned on every light his car
possessed so no one would fail to see him. He scurried around to
the tailgate of the Volvo, opened it and pulled out his new piece
of kit.

He was shaking with nervous anticipation.

History in the making.

The first officer in Lancashire to use ‘The
Stinger’.

Dundaven drove hard down the motorway, leapfrogging as
necessary. Overtaking on the inside or hard shoulder. Followed all
the while by that fucking helicopter.

Resting on his knee was the shotgun.

Holding the steering wheel with his right hand and left knee,
he deftly broke the weapon with his free hand. The remnants of the
two cartridges which had killed McCrory were expelled. Without
letting the speed drop, he reached back between the seats and felt
under the blanket where the shotguns had been secreted originally.
He found a box of cartridges and dumped them out onto the
bloodstained passenger seat. He skilfully slotted two into the
empty barrels and closed the weapon.

Once loaded, he transferred the steering to his left hand, the
shotgun to his right. Then he attempted to do what he always did to
people or things which annoyed him.

He leaned out of the window, braced himself against the
doorframe, aimed as best he could and wrapped his forefinger around
the double triggers.

This was happening as he sped past Anderton
Services.

He hardly noticed the place really; vaguely saw the police car
with its lights ablaze and thought he might have seen the figure of
a cop standing by the car. But that was all. What he was bothered
about was getting a good shot at the helicopter.

The Hollow Spike Tyre Deflation System is its technical name.
Better known as ‘The Stinger’, it consists of a lightweight plastic
frame with metal spikes protruding from it and is designed, in
manufacturer’s parlance, ‘to safely resolve pursuit situations’. By
rolling out the frame like a red carpet across the path of a
vehicle, the hollow spikes imbed themselves in one or more of the
tyres. Gradual deflation and subsequent loss of speed follow.
That’s the theory.

The Stinger had been used in several police forces with a good
deal of success, though vehicles had been known not to pick up
spikes in their tyres. Lancashire had eventually bought a large
number of the systems.

This was the first time one had been deployed.

Sharp was ecstatic as he watched the fleeing Range Rover bump
over it. He yanked it back in and bundled it into the back of the
Volvo.

Had it done the trick, was the next question.

Dundaven fired both barrels upwards, remembering to keep hold
of the weapon. At the same time he felt a dull ‘thu-dud’ when the
wheels went over something in the carriageway. A hump or something.
Maybe raised tarmac over a repair. Nothing really.

The observer in the helicopter saw Dundaven’s head and right
shoulder leaning out of the window and the shotgun aimed at them.
He informed the pilot and both of them said, ‘What a wanker he must
be if he thinks he’s going to even come close.’ They stayed exactly
where they were on station above him.

He missed completely, all of the shot eventually falling
harmlessly away.

‘
That’ll show the fuckers,’ Dundaven said with
satisfaction.

He dropped the shotgun onto the passenger seat and returned
his concentration to driving. Not that far to go now.

The Range Rover slewed to the right.

He corrected the steering, thinking nothing of it. A gust of
wind.

It happened again.

‘
Wooaw,’ he gasped. The wheel almost ripped itself out of his
grip. This time it was a little harder to control at 117 m.p.h.
‘What the fuck is happening?’ he demanded out loud. Puncture,
maybe?

It veered to the right again. Dundaven held tightly to the
wheel, trying to keep the speed up but finding it increasingly
difficult. With each second the vehicle became more and more
unstable. Next it went left. Something was very definitely
wrong.

With a flash he remembered the cop on the motorway.

And the bump on the road.

He groaned angrily and reached for the shotgun.

‘
The Stinger!’ he hissed.

Sharp, the traffic officer, had caught up with Dundaven in
less than two minutes. The speed was now lower than fifty and
dropping.

The helicopter radioed the apparent success to all
patrols.

Within another minute Henry was back in the chase.

Seconds behind him was another traffic car and an Armed
Response

Vehicle (ARV) - which was double-manned - each officer armed
to the back teeth with a variety of weapons.

Another helicopter appeared in the sky, the one belonging to
Greater Manchester Police.

Dundaven saw everything converging on him. He fought to keep
the speed up, but could not halt the decline. Having picked up
spikes in both front tyres, the Range Rover was proving impossible
to control. It seemed to have had enough of him and wanted to stop
the whole crazy business. He was powerless, like the rider of a
horse which had a mind of its own. He slowed and stopped in the
centre lane.

The helicopters hovered above, lights blazing down on
him.

There were no other cars about other than cop cars, because
three miles back Control Room had activated the overhead matrix
signs and brought the motorway to a standstill.