‘ In order to kill you, I don’t need to. I’ve got two canisters of gas here, one of which will kill you in seconds if I push it through the vent. The other is CS which will make you want to get out anyway — but I warn you, if I have to use the CS, I’ll kill you as soon as you open the door.’
There was silence.
Drozdov opened the driver’s door. Crane ‘shushed’ him with a gesture before he could speak.
‘ I’m coming out,’ the guard said weakly.
Both Crane and Drozdov raced round to the back of the van as the door opened a quarter of an inch.
The guard peered out through the crack. Crane motioned him out.
Hesitantly he stepped down. Hawker grabbed him and flung him against the ERF trailer on to which the body of the security guard had been dumped alongside Colin Hodge. He stood next to his mate. They exchanged glances of abject terror. They were ordered to put their hands on their helmets and face the trailer.
‘ What do we do with these two?’ Drozdov hissed to Crane.
Crane eyed him. ‘I’ve shown my balls — now it’s down to you.’
Drozdov walked up behind the guards. Quickly, without any degree of remorse, he shot them in the back of their necks with clinical precision, angling the muzzle of his pistol upwards, killing them instantly.
He spun and bowed graciously to Crane.
Henry Christie was thinking hard as he powered Danny’s MX-5 down Hutton Hall Avenue towards the exit. Yes, he had seen a guy walking towards the helicopter, but his mind and emotions had been elsewhere. Now he was trying desperately to recall some facts. What was he wearing? What did he look like?
He put his foot down and screamed the engine in first out of the gate, over the speed ramps — and up to the junction with the dual carriageway, the A59, which ran by Police Headquarters, left to Liverpool, right to Preston. He could not actually cross the carriageway at this point because the gap in the central reservation had long since been sealed to traffic: too many accidents caused by too many drunken cops was the reason Henry had been given.
That meant he had to turn left, no matter what.
Which was a problem because as his sharp eyes skimmed the immediate vicinity he spotted a man on the other side of the road running down a narrow path which led on to a quiet lane backing on to the A59.
It was only a fleeting glimpse, but enough for Henry, from years of culminated experience, to say, ‘That’s him — shit!’ He struck the steering wheel in frustration.
Then he peered at the gap in the central reservation which had been closed to cars and other motor vehicles by use of concrete bollards. It was still possible to get across on a push bike or on foot.
Henry’s mouth sagged open as he examined the width of the gap between the posts. Surely a car as petite as a Mazda MX-5 could fit through?
Danny — there was no need for telepathy because she could read his face like a book — suddenly realised what he was going to do.
‘ No,’ she warned him.
He revved the engine, gave her an evil ‘sideways’, released the clutch and almost stood upright on the gas pedal. The wheels screeched and the car lurched towards the impossible gap. Henry held on tight to the steering wheel. Danny whimpered, cowered and covered her eyes in horror. ‘My car, my car,’ she cried.
At the very last moment, the driver suffered the gravest doubts as to whether the little sports car would be narrow enough to squeeze through and come out the other side in a fit state to keep working.
By then it was too late to brake.
‘ Breathe in,’ Henry suggested.
Danny clamped her eyes tight shut.
Many years before, as a young, bright and often very stupid and immature uniformed PC, Henry had become somewhat of an expert in getting police cars, vans, Land Rovers and the like, through unlikely gaps between fence posts, bollards and all other manner of very narrow places. There had been occasional scrapes, but generally his reckoning had been perfect. All it took, he boasted to his colleagues, was nerve, skill and the innate ability to line up the vehicle at the correct angle.
But now, the older man, whose self-judgement was muddied by the passage of time, was horrified to see the fast-approaching gap between the bollards getting tighter and tighter and tighter — and then suddenly he had no choice because the car was in there and he had to keep going — or get stuck.
Snap! Snap!
The wing mirrors were shorn off with clinical precision.
And that was it. He was through. He whinnied an almost hysterical roar of triumph.
‘ Jesus Christ!’ Danny yelled. ‘My car!’ Henry careered on to the opposite side of the road, wrestling with the tiny steering wheel, causing a car which was hurtling down the road to brake, swerve and pass with an enraged blast of the horn from a driver who had been certain his number was up.
‘ We haven’t finished yet,’ Henry said grimly.
‘ You’d better be sure this is the right guy,’ Danny warned him.
Underneath, however, she was secretly exhilarated both by the chase and the change in Henry Christie as the cop in him had slicked back into place. Even if it was a cop suffering from the ‘red mist syndrome’.
A hundred yards down the A59, he slammed on sharply, lifting the rear end of the car, yanked the steering wheel down to the left and mounted the kerb with a crash of front bumper and a sickening scrape of sump.
He drove across the pavement and on to a short footpath which led through to a cul-de-sac abutting the dual carriageway. As the MX-5 bounced down, a car in front of them tore away from the side of the road, slithering. It was a white Ford Escort XR3i. Though now a few years old it had been lovingly maintained by a careful owner who, at the moment, beavering away in her office in Preston, was blissfully unaware the car had been stolen. It could still pick up its skirts. The driver looked back over his shoulder and saw the MX-5 behind. He jumped to the right conclusion.
The cops were on his tail.
He cursed with a violent tongue and rammed the accelerator to the floor. At the same time he leaned across into the passenger footwell with his left hand and picked up the revolver lying there. He slotted it, barrel down, between his thighs.
In the MX-5 Henry asked Danny if she had a personal radio with her.
She shook her head.
‘ Looks like we’re on our own,’ he breathed philosophically.
The MX-5 was right up the rear end of the Escort. Henry was determined this was going to be a victory.
As the driver of the Escort sped towards the junction with what used to be the main road between Preston and Liverpool before the dual carriageway had been built, he was faced with a major decision.
To go right would mean travelling in the direction of Preston. Busy roads, built-up areas, slow-moving traffic, lots of cops. But also lots of rat runs, possibilities to ditch the motor and leg it over the fences, gardens and down back alleys.
Turning left would take him towards more rural areas. Fast-winding roads, fields, cows, fewer cops. And also the chance to outpace and out-manoeuvre the bastard behind.
Both ways had good and bad selling points.
The only reason, in the end, the driver chose to go left was for practical driving purposes only. It was easier to negotiate the left-hand turn at speed. So without any noticeable reduction in mph, he skidded out of the side road, slewing sideways across the tarmac. He wrestled with the wheel, almost losing the car in the gardens opposite. Then he regained control and gunned it away.
Ahead of him was a tractor, pulling an empty, flat trailer, trundling merrily along. Easy to pass.
Behind, Henry edged out of the side road with more prudence than his prey. From bitter experience, he knew that fully liveried cop cars are far less likely to get hit than plain ones.
Intending to shoot by the agricultural combination, the driver of the Escort veered out on to the wrong side of the road, desperate to put the farm vehicles between himself and the pursuing Mazda.