‘You’re the one who’s fucked — make it easy on yourself: give up now,’ Henry said, soothingly. ‘Life won’t be bad for you, cosseted in a padded cell. It’ll probably be quite nice. You can be who you want to be all the time.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. You see, it’s not my time yet. I have things to do, wrongs to put right. I mean, take this job, for instance. I came into it in the first place because it was the last bastion of the white man. Now look at it. A shambles. Promoting Pakis and women, leaving us behind. I mean,’ he babbled, ‘you should be pleased by what I’ve done for you, Henry.’
‘Why?’ Henry said, eager to keep the talking going.
‘You’re back on the investigation, aren’t you? I got the lovely Jane Roscoe out of the way. You should be thankful, but you’re not, are you? You just don’t see it, do you?’
‘All I see is a person who needs help.’
‘Fuck you!’ Taylor shouted again, losing it. He went for Henry.
The baton sliced through the air. Henry ducked and lost his footing in Blackthorn’s blood, his ankle twisted under him and he fell awkwardly, knee-down onto the dead body. Automatically his hands went out, palms down, to break his fall, but they went straight into Blackthorn’s gaping stomach. Henry twisted away from the intestines, repelled and horrified, but also aware that Taylor’s baton was swinging towards him again. He bobbed his head and launched himself away from Blackthorn’s body, rolling across the room, aware his hands were covered in blood and body slime. He scrambled towards the fireplace where he could see a poker.
Taylor moved quickly. He whammed the baton into Henry’s side. The pain was incredible, but it was only from the strike of the baton, not an electric discharge. Henry rolled with the blow, reaching desperately for the poker with his fingertips. Missing it.
Taylor bore down on him, raising the baton, a scream on his lips. Henry covered his head and kicked out wildly, catching the back of Taylor’s knees, forcing him to stumble backwards. Henry drove himself at Taylor, going for a bearhug. Both men, entwined, struggling for advantage, rolled across the floor and over Captain Blackthorn’s body, which suddenly seemed to come to life as they fought over it, his legs and arms twitching madly, head turning, and noises being driven out of the windpipe.
With a roar, Taylor broke free, still keeping hold of the baton which he tried to bring back into play, to get it onto Henry’s chest to deliver the stun.
Henry pulled away and punched Taylor as they rolled back over the body, its arms flailing. The two men battled amongst entrails and loops of rubbery intestines. At the back of his mind, Henry was utterly repulsed by this, but could not afford to give a shit. He might well be sloshing about in the organs and innards of a dead man, but he was fighting for his own life too. The two men split apart.
Henry tried to come in with a head butt. It did not connect. Taylor managed to swing the baton across Henry’s lower back with a stinging blow.
They were face to face, still on the floor, pawing at each other, each trying to get into a position of power. They slid towards the hearth. Henry kicked and punched, while Taylor tried to use the shock baton. Henry found himself underneath Taylor, trying to grab the wrist of the hand holding the baton — then, bang! Henry’s head smacked against the edge of the raised hearth with such force that his brain jarred for a precious moment. A split second was long enough for Taylor to rear up on his knees and press the end of the baton onto Henry’s chest, above his heart. Taylor laughed victoriously. Henry waited for the punch of the shock. He knew that all Taylor had to do was lightly pull the trigger in the baton handle and 150,000 volts would shoot through him and then Taylor would butcher him. Henry braced himself.
Click. Nothing.
Taylor pressed the baton harder into Henry’s chest. Click, click. Still nothing.
The realisation suddenly passed between both men: for whatever reason the baton was not working correctly.
Henry was first to react. He grabbed the baton and tore it out of Taylor’s grip. Taylor lost his nerve. He ran. Henry went after him, leaping across the gutted corpse and out of the flat, spinning into the hallway to see Taylor disappear out of the front door, which he slammed behind him. Henry slowed slightly, thinking that Taylor might just be on the other side, waiting to pounce.
He opened it gingerly but the man had gone down the front steps and was running towards the promenade. A car was coming slowly up the street which Taylor flagged down, having no trouble in so doing because he was in uniform. Henry shouted a warning, which was lost in the night. Taylor opened the driver’s door and heaved the poor unsuspecting driver across the bonnet of a parked car. Taylor dropped into the seat and accelerated towards Henry who was now in the middle of the street.
Henry was no fool. He jumped smartly out of the way of the approaching car and ran to the CID car, scrambled into it and had started it as Taylor veered left out of the street towards the town centre. Henry crunched into first and stepped on the gas.
Christ, he had been good. Taylor’s histrionics at the scenes of the murders of Geri Peters and Joey Costain had taken everyone in. But it had all been a tissue of lies: he had not chased anyone through the hospital at all; he had raced along the corridors himself, forcing people out of the way, chasing a shadow that existed only in his mind. Henry realised why he had been so unsettled at the scene of Geri Peters’ murder: there had been no coffee cup. Taylor had said he had been out to get coffee when Geri Peters was being murdered but, of course, he had himself been smothering her. No doubt he had tried to hang Geri earlier in her cell and attempted to make it look like suicide. Taylor’s name had been on the list of people the custody officer remembered seeing in the office that night. Taylor hadn’t had any prisoners in the cells, so why had he been there? Henry remembered Geri Peters’ words before she had been put into the ambulance: ‘One of yours.’ At the time they had meant nothing to him. Now they meant everything. ‘One of yours’ meant PC Taylor.
Taylor drove onto the promenade. It was virtually deserted at this time of night. He wasn’t going too fast and Henry was about a hundred metres behind him.
Henry had the list of similar killings, all linked by MO, but not by motive — until he had worked it out. Louise Graveson was a lawyer specialising in equal opportunity and racial cases. She had just won a quarter of a million pounds for a black female police officer at an employment tribunal where the allegation had been of sexual and racial abuse by a white male sergeant. Another victim, a black woman councillor from north London, had been a witness at another employment tribunal where a black man had won damages for unfair dismissal on racial grounds. Then there was the police support staff worker, again in London, who had ended the career of a white police inspector who had harassed a black PC. A journalist in the West Midlands who was constantly rubbishing the way in which minority groups were treated by large organisations.
Taylor had been waging an insidious guerrilla-like murder campaign against anyone with the temerity to stand up for the rights of the minority on behalf of Hellfire Dawn.
Taylor speeded up. So did Henry who was desperate to stay with him.
Henry picked up his radio; glancing down at the display he fiddled with the channel button and glancing up, he drove. He locked back onto Blackpool’s radio frequency. ‘Thank God for that,’ he breathed.
‘Inspector Christie to Blackpool. Urgent. In pursuit of a silver Honda Accord being driven by PC John Taylor, who is a murder suspect. No time to explain. Suspect is armed and dangerous. We’re on the prom, north towards Talbot Square. Assistance to stop him please.’
The communications operator was cool despite the shock of hearing what he had just heard. He began to deploy patrols, then stopped and said, ‘PC Taylor, go ahead.’