And then the tractor driver did something that happens far too regularly on country roads.
He fucked-up the townie driver.
Without a signal, without a warning, not even a backward glance, he turned right across the path of the overtaking car.
The Escort driver had nowhere to go. Braking was useless, quick manoeuvring was out of the question. He screamed.
The front end of the Escort smashed into the coupling between the rear of the tractor and the front of the trailer. The roof of the car was effectively sliced off, but the rest of the car did not continue to go underneath the trailer and come out of the other side to continue a comic pursuit. It became a tangled, mangled, twisted mess.
The driver was killed instantly. His head was severed from his body with the efficiency of a guillotine.
Henry Christie found it a hundred yards back down the road where it had rolled face down into a grate.
Chapter Seventeen
It took longer than anticipated to carry out the transfer. There were fifty money-containers constructed of Kevlar-steel, all about the dimension of a medium-sized suitcase. They were all very heavy indeed and must have been tightly packed inside. Even allowing for a prearranged systematic transfer, there was a very edgy ten minutes during which everyone of the team felt vulnerable and exposed as they passed the containers from the back of the security van, down the line, into the back of the Sherpa.
Then it was done. The money was in. Crane and Smith slammed the rear doors shut.
Hawker jumped into the driver’s seat of the security van and started the engine. A minute later he was on the M6 heading south. Behind him, in one of the Audis, was Price. Their task was to run the van down to Staffordshire and dump it about a mile away from the gates of the security waste-disposal unit. By doing this, time would be bought for Crane and Smith to sort out the money as necessary — if the radio-control room of the security company were not alarmed by the length of the stoppage which would have been transmitted to them from the tracker unit fitted to the van.
Putting their minds at rest was Hawker’s first job.
‘ Alpha One to base, Alpha One,’ he called up on the radio system.
‘ Alpha One — go ahead. We’ve been concerned.’
‘ All OK. Repeat, all OK,’ Hawker said coolly. ‘A bad case of the runs in here today, but we’re back on the road now. Please inform the waste centre we’ll be running late.’
‘ Roger — wilco.’
The money weighed down the back of the Sherpa, making steering light and very imprecise. Crane edged slowly away from between the two HGVs, but instead of driving on to the motorway, he went up the Staff Only road at the back of the service area, turned right at the end of it, and drove over the motorway towards the A6. From there he would travel north up to Lancaster and then back over to the warehouse in Morecambe.
While he drove, Smith busied himself with a mobile phone and left a message on a pager.
In the truckers’ cafe on the northbound side of the service area, two lorry drivers had been dawdling over a long meal and numerous cups of coffee. One of them received Smith’s pager message. He looked up at the other man and nodded. ‘Time to move.’ These were the two men who had earlier parked the two curtainsided heavy goods vehicles parallel to each other, leaving a space wide enough for the security van to squeeze into. They paid for their grub, then walked across the covered footbridge to the southbound side of the services. Their task was to now abandon the HGVs. A few moments later both were thundering down the motorway. Unbeknown to one of them, he was carrying four corpses.
Smith slid his mobile phone on to the dash. ‘That went like a fucking dream, even if I say so myself.’
Crane nodded grimly. He negotiated a tight curve in the road.
‘ No cops, nothing,’ Smith said. ‘Brilliant.’
‘ They’ll be wondering what’s hit them,’ Crane agreed. He checked his mirrors. Close behind was the Audi sports car driven by Gunk Elphick. Thompson was in the passenger seat, Drozdov in the rear. Crane recalled the Russian’s actions in swiftly disposing of the two security guards, almost as a challenge. The man was a ruthless, clinical killer, someone to be wary of. ‘It’s not over yet,’ Crane said. ‘Not by a long chalk.’
Henry remembered that when he had joined the police twenty-odd years earlier he had actually been issued with a piece of yellow chalk; it had come with his appointments — his staff and handcuffs — and also a tape measure and two pairs of white cotton gloves. He had only ever used the chalk once and had lost the tape measure and gloves. He was thinking about this because he was watching a traffic officer dutifully marking the position of the vehicles in the road with her piece of trusty yellow chalk. Subsequently she would measure up the scene and draw a plan of the accident.
The road was closed in both directions, completely blocked, probably for several hours to come. The traffic department, now renamed the Road Safety Department, had moved in and taken control. The Fire Brigade were busy disentangling the gnarled wreckage of the tractor/trailer unit and the Ford Escort. It was proving a difficult thing to achieve and was made all the more distasteful by the ghost-like presence of the headless body trapped in the driver’s seat, still gripping the steering wheel with both hands.
Henry and Danny stood a little way back, leaning on her scratched and battered MX-5.
Henry’s euphoria at the chase had dissipated; his excitement gone. He was starting to feel cold and not a little dithery. Maybe shock was setting in. His hands were thrust deep into his trouser pockets.
Next to him, Danny stood there arms folded, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. She was slightly disgusted with herself in that she was more concerned with her damaged car than a fatal road traffic accident victim. She was about to remonstrate with Henry but stopped when she caught sight of FB approaching, purpose in his stride and a bundle of something in his hands.
‘ Yours, I believe,’ he said, presenting Danny with two smashed side mirrors. She took them from him and tossed them into the back of the MX-5. To Henry he said, ‘Is this the guy who did the ‘copter?’ He jerked his thumb towards the carnage.
Henry looked down at FB. He was much taller than him. ‘I think so.’
FB chortled with disbelief. ‘You think so? Fuck me, that’s brilliant. You chase some poor fucker and chop his friggin’ head off — and you think so? For your sake, it better be right, otherwise you’ve some real hard explaining to do — because I won’t be doing it for you when the press come snapping, understand?’
Henry shrugged. He had expected nothing more.
‘ What a bleedin’ mess, this and the bomb scare at Control Room.. ’ FB was saying to no one in particular when one of the traffic officers came from the crash scene and said, ‘Excuse me — found this tucked down between the dead guy’s legs.’ She held up a revolver between finger and thumb. A blob of blood dribbled off the end of the barrel.
FB eyed Henry, who allowed himself a wry, slightly victorious smile. ‘You’re a lucky bastard,’ FB said, licking his lips.
‘ Aren’t I just?’ said Henry. To the traffic officer he said, ‘Get someone from an ARV to check it over, make it safe, then get it bagged up for evidence.’ The policewoman moved away.
Henry perched a cheek of his backside on the edge of the front wing of Danny’s damaged car. ‘There’s another thing,’ he said to FB. ‘The guy’s got previous for damaging police property.’
‘ How do you know that?’
‘ I recognise him, what’s left of him — the head, that is.’ Unusually, FB was lost for words. Danny swivelled, snatched her cigarette out and looked at Henry, awestruck.