Henry saw it happen in his rearview mirror. He cringed as he experienced the impact by proxy and watched as the front wheels of the traffic car, then the rear, went over the legs and lower abdomen of the poor unfortunate man.
The traffic car braked and stopped.
‘ One down, one to go,’ muttered Seymour. He shifted in his seat and made himself comfortable whilst holding a blood-sodden handkerchief to the cut on his head.
It looked like being a long one.
Dundaven’s dilemma was now which route to take. He needed to get back to Manchester if at all possible. If he could get onto the estates in Salford he knew he could shake the cops, helicopter included.
But Salford was thirty miles away.
The most direct route was to head to the M6 at Junction 31, then onto the M61. Once on the motorway his options became limited. The police, if they could get enough vehicles together, could box him in, slow him down, make things very difficult. Not that he intended to stop. Ever. Whatever the situation he would keep on going… but on the motorway, the cops would have the upper hand.
The other choice was to head into East Lancashire, which he also knew well, being the area where he operated. Blackburn, maybe. It was a big enough town where he could probably abandon the Range Rover and go to ground. Then he’d have to face the consequences from Conroy. Definitely not appealing. He’d rather be arrested.
He was quickly running out of options.
Whichever he chose, he knew that if he continued to drive like an idiot, refuse to stop, maybe ram a few more cop cars, and wave the shotgun about, all they would do was follow him at a safe distance. That was their policy. They didn’t like getting people hurt. It tarnished their image.
He needed to make a decision quickly.
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.