The man in control — who McCrory believed to be the controller of the purse strings — was called Hughie Dundaven. He was a gruff Scot in his early thirties who had been involved with Conroy for several years. He had risen quite high in the hierarchy and ran a couple of council estates in the Burnley area for Conroy and oversaw some clubs. He had been responsible for hiring McCrory, but he was having his regrets.
‘ Just fekin calm down. Relax. Be cool, we’ll be reet,’ he said.
‘ Be fuckin’ cool?’ McCrory blurted. ‘Jeez, an’ how am I expected to be fuckin’ cool?’ All he wanted to do was jam a needle up his arm and escape this madness. Buckets of perspiration rolled off him. He shivered and squirmed as though he was sitting on a hedgehog.
He was beginning to grate on Dundaven’s nerves.
‘ Just shut the feck up. It’s only a cop car. They’re not goin’ ter stop us.’
‘ He looks suspicious to me.’ McCrory panicked as he caught the eye of the policeman and twisted away.
‘ Dinna fekin look at him then, you knobhead. Act natural. If he sees you jumpin’ about like a prick he will stop us, wonnee? Otherwise there’s no reason tae.’
The lights changed. Dundaven shot away.
And there was no earthly reason why they should have been stopped. The car was clean, decent, and he was driving fine.
When stopped at the lights near to Tussaud’s, the police car was behind them. Dundaven had paid no heed to it until McCrory, looking through the back window of the Range Rover, had panicked, ‘He’s still there. I don’t like this, Dunny. It’s doin’ me head in. I need a fix.’
That was the point where Dundaven looked into the door mirror and ranted to McCrory, ‘Will you fekin calm doon, you twat! You’s gettin’ tae me now. It’s nothin’. He’s drivin’ doon the Prom, lookin’ at the totty, just like you’d do if you were a cop in Blackpool…’ And all the while he could not stop himself from looking in the mirror, in which he could see Rik’s face, looking back at him.
At the next set of lights Dundaven was undecided which way to go, even though he was signalling left. He wanted to get to the motorway but wasn’t sure of the quickest route. The last moment saw him cancelling the signal, going straight ahead down the Promenade. He swore at McCrory for getting him riled up, the useless cunt.
McCrory peered backwards over his shoulder almost constantly.
‘ He’s still with us,’ he observed unnecessarily for Dundaven, who could quite clearly see through his mirrors. ‘Still with us… oh fuck, oh fuck, Dunny, he’s flashing us to stop, he’s flashing us to stop! Oh my fuckin’ God!’
McCrory flipped round in his seat to face the front. He shrunk low as if he hoped a hole would appear in the floor pan into which he could be sucked. In a grand gesture of despair he dropped his shaking head into his hands. ‘We are fucked. They are gonna find all that lot in the back. We… are… completely goosed, Dunny. On my daughter’s life, we are going to prison.’
‘ No, we’re not,’ Dundaven’s harsh voice grated.
He pulled into the side of the road, stopping like a good motorist should, and keeping the engine ticking over. He quickly reached between the seats and rummaged underneath a car blanket. He extracted two weapons — sawn-off shotguns with the stocks removed.
McCrory’s eyes widened. ‘Oh God, I need to OD on heroin like now. A fuckin’ shooter!’ he whined. Now he knew he was out of his depth.
Dundaven forced one of the guns into McCrory’s unwilling hands. Then he wound his window down and waited patiently for the arrival of a rather pretty policewoman.
Nina adjusted her cap again. She walked past the front of the police car, aware that her male colleague was eyeing her up appreciatively; aware, also, she was responding to the admiration by swaying her behind ever so slightly provocatively. Nothing anyone else would have noticed, but enough for Rik, whose intestines did a little skip of pleasure.
She went to the driver’s window of the Range Rover, standing in the roadway, but feeling safe as Rik had put the blue lights and hazard warning lights on, she held her clip-board in two hands, resting the bottom edge of it on her tunic, against her belly.
‘ Hello, is this your car?’ she asked Dundaven. She smiled genuinely. He returned a wide smile, which was also genuine.
Glancing down she caught sight of the shotgun in his lap.
And the one in the hands of the passenger.
‘ Yes — and this is mine too,’ Dundaven said.
The gun swung up.
Nina did the thing which probably saved her life.
Automatically she brought up the clipboard and shielded her face. Dundavan pulled the triggers, firing both barrels at her. The poorly balanced gun kicked back in his grip and he almost dropped it.
The lead shot from the two cartridges ripped the plastic coated clipboard to shreds in Nina’s hands. This obstruction, though slight, managed to dissipate some of the force of the blast.
Even so, she took it full in the face. The knuckles of both her hands where she had been holding the board were pulped by the shot.
She staggered back into the road, her hat flying off.
A passing car swerved, but caught her almost full on. She cartwheeled onto the bonnet and crashed into the windscreen. The motorist braked sharply and her limp body was thrown back onto the road.
‘ Get the other one, the driver,’ Dundaven screamed at McCrory.
‘ What the fuck..?’ quibbled the hired hand.
‘ Get the other one — shoot him.’
McCrory knew better than to argue. In a trance of acquiescence he got out of the Range Rover, ran down the side in a low crouch and when he got to the rear nearside corner he pointed the weapon at the police car. Not really aiming, hoping he hit nothing, McCrory pulled the triggers. Without waiting to see what, if any, damage or injury he’d caused, he scurried back to his seat. Tears were streaming down his face. ‘Oh man, oh man,’ he kept saying to himself.
Rik could not believe his eyes for a moment.
The figure of Nina stepping backwards like a boxer who’d been k.o.’d had made him angry for a second. One of the rules was you always spoke to drivers on the pavement, but if you speak to them in the road, don’t forget where you are. Be careful.
Then the car struck her and a man appeared at the back of the Range Rover brandishing a shotgun.
Rik was half out of the car at that moment.
He saw McCrory, whom he recognised instantly as the passenger, saw the gun, and launched himself back into the police car across the two front seats. The hand brake slammed into his chest. He realised he’d made a bad choice. If the man wanted to kill him he was trapped. The windscreen shattered, peppered with shot, spidering out like cracked ice. It did not give.
Rik winced and fumbled for his radio. He blabbered his first, virtually incoherent message into the mouthpiece, expecting the man to appear at the side of the car and blast him to Kingdom Come.
Nothing happened.
Rik took a chance. He raised his head. Through the cracked screen he saw the Range Rover accelerating away.
He pushed himself out of the car and ran towards Nina’s prostrate form in the road. Her face was a gory mess. Rik recognised the wound as consistent with a shotgun blast and now everything made sense. She had walked backwards into the car because she’d been fucking shot.