The bike left the road at the crest of the hill, thumped down on its rear wheel, swerved madly, but Crazy held it upright and braked down to about 50 mph for the town centre, then, once he had negotiated the pelican crossing and the mini-roundabout without knocking anyone over, he opened the throttle again up the hill over the railway line.
Miller could not help but laugh. The wind in his face and hair, the roller-coaster ride he was having was fantastic. The feeling was unbelievable, that combination of speed, danger and blood-letting.
Then he heard Crazy scream an obscenity.
The A59 is not a wide road as it snakes out of Burscough, so it was very easy to place the police van and the traffic cop’s plain car at an angle and effectively block the road completely. There were no footpaths on either side, with nowhere for vehicles to go, unless they chose to go off-road into the recently ploughed fields on either side.
The motorcycle cop stood astride his powerful BMW. The other two officers stood in the road, stopping traffic and working their way on foot down the short line of stationary cars and puzzled drivers, towards Burscough, anticipating the arrival of the pursued bike.
It came speeding into view.
Henry was speaking calmly into the radio, telling the three cops up ahead to take extreme care and not to put their lives or others’ lives in jeopardy. The men on the bike were dangerous in the extreme.
They acknowledged his warning.
Crazy braked hard and almost launched himself and Miller over the handlebars as the speed of the bike reduced from eighty to zero within a fraction of a second. He stopped about fifty metres away from the two cops on foot, who started to approach hesitantly.
Miller had his pistol in his waistband. He produced it and rested it on Crazy’s shoulder to take aim at the officers. They dived for cover behind a car and the police motorcyclist cowered down, hoping his machine would offer protection. Miller did not fire. He patted Crazy on the back and indicated for him to about-face.
Crazy revved the engine, released the clutch, spun the bike on the spot and headed back towards Burscough.
Behind him the two officers on foot raised their heads slowly from their cover and spoke on their radios. The one on the motorcycle set off in pursuit.
‘Coming this way,’ the ARV constable said to Henry. He racked his MP5 so it was ready. He was a happy man. He had been trained for this sort of thing and was looking forward to putting it into practice.
Henry reached the set of lights that Crazy had ignored. Three cars had been involved in a minor bump, blocking part of the road. Henry could not see any injuries, so he sneaked past and speeded up towards the town, wondering if he was actually going to come face to face with the motorcycle.
He hoped so. He had already decided that, given half a chance, he was going to ram the bastard off the road and fuck the consequences.
‘Which way?’ Crazy shouted over his shoulder, the wind taking his voice away with it.
‘Back into town,’ Miller screamed into his ear. ‘Left at the roundabout towards the motorway down the back roads.’
Crazy acknowledged these directions with a thumbs up.
He was approaching the railway bridge at 70 mph.
Henry reached the mini-roundabout as the motorbike came into view on the crest of the railway bridge just ahead of him. He screeched to a halt. The bike kept coming.
‘You might want to close your eyes, cos I’m going to ram him and I don’t want any witnesses,’ Henry said to the armed constable.
‘You have my permission to go for it, sir.’
Henry pressed the accelerator, brought up the clutch with a dithering foot, and held on to the handbrake as he built up the revs. He thought how much he had actually come to like the Vectra. It had been a good workhorse. Now it was going to go to the knacker’s yard.
Crazy saw the Vectra. So did Miller. They recognized it as the one Henry Christie was driving. Both knew he would go for them because he had to. Otherwise he was going to lose them.
Crazy powered the bike down the short hill, went wide across to the wrong side of the road to get into the best position to cut left at the roundabout. He leaned over at such a sharp angle that his knee was almost touching the road surface, and only the edges of his tyres were in contact with the tarmac. The bike twitched. Crazy corrected it expertly, then its back end twitched again; he corrected it instantaneously.
He saw the Vectra leap forwards.
In his mind Henry had prepared himself for the ram. He was going to go for it. He brought the clutch up, dropped the handbrake, virtually stood on the accelerator.
And probably for the first time since he was seventeen, he stalled a car.
The Vectra lurched as though it was going to be sick, then died.
Crazy was ready for the impact, but it did not come. He laughed out loud when he saw what had happened, then screwed back the throttle to take him out of the corner, across the edge of the roundabout. His rear end twitched, but this time he could not control it. As his rear tyre touched a minute patch of diesel spilt on the road, the wheel whipped away. Crazy fought for control. He could not pull it back and the bike went down in a shower of sparks and slid at a speed of about 60 mph across the road and under the front end of the Vectra.
Henry saw the bike go. He gripped his steering wheel, ducked his head uselessly, lifted his knees up and braced himself for the impact. It all happened within a milli-second, yet he saw it all in wonderful, coloured, sharp detail. The sparks were spectacular, like a Roman candle burning. The rear passenger took off in flight from the pillion and zoomed like a missile out of Henry’s view. The rider held on tight to his machine, fighting desperately with it all the way until the moment of impact when it collided with the front of the Vectra with a crash so loud and distorted that Henry would never forget it.
The bonnet crumpled up like a blanket and the front of the car lifted as though on a jack.
Then it was over.
‘You okay?’ he asked the ARV officer.
‘Never better.’
Henry got out on shaky legs and looked at the motorbike and rider, both trapped tightly underneath his car. The rider was still moving, but Henry saw that his left leg was sticking out at a hideous angle below the knee and shards of bone had pierced his leather trousers. Then the rider was still.
‘Boss!’ the armed officer called to Henry.
Henry looked across the twisted bonnet of his car. The pillion passenger had rolled across the pavement and slammed up against a wall. He was now, miraculously, on his feet, staggering, gun in his right hand, towards the ARV officer who had his MP5 in a firing position. The passenger was covered in blood. His left arm hung loosely at his side and his face seemed horribly deformed. He was trying to raise the pistol and fire it.
The armed officer was getting very tense, very close to shooting this man down. Henry could see the tension in the constable’s shoulders.
‘Armed police,’ he shouted. ‘Drop your weapon, drop it now!’
The man still came towards him.
‘Armed police,’ he said again. ‘Drop your weapon or I will fire.’
With what looked to be an amazing feat of strength, the injured man raised his gun, but as he did so he lost his balance, toppled over backwards and discharged the gun once into the air.
Seventeen
It was a very tired, harassed and angry Henry Christie who, at 6 a.m. two days later, took part in the briefing of a full firearms team and a full squad of hefty support unit officers at Fleetwood police station.
Prior to this Henry had faced many hours of relentless scrutiny following his, allegedly, very ill-judged decision to move a witness who was under a substantial threat without putting in place a pre-planned firearms operation. It had been a harrowing time for him as his decision-making was continually criticized as being poor and also because he received no support whatever from Bernie Fleming. Henry would not have minded so much, but he was, misguidedly it transpired, trying to protect Fleming from the fall-out. But Fleming seemed to have developed a case of memory loss and, oddly, could not recall receiving any phone call from Henry prior to the incident taking place.