Warrender bumped the Merc down onto the roadway and gunned after Megan. She was near the crossroads with Victoria Street now, and he had to weave in and out of traffic to catch her. As she reached the junction, he was on her.
He drew level with Megan’s car in the middle lane.
‘Ram the bitch,’ Doran said.
Warrender swerved right and both cars skidded on the wet surface, turning ninety degrees to face the oncoming traffic. The Orion bumped the kerb, the rear end mounting it and continuing its slow spin until it hit the sandstone balustrade of the car park for the municipal offices. The car shuddered and stalled.
Megan reached for the door handle, but the side collision jammed it against the balustrade, and she had to scramble across and out the passenger side. Doran was out of his car.
She ran to the wall; the drop into the car park was steep. ‘Do it,’ Doran shouted. ‘It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.’
Panicked, Megan turned, facing the solid bank of headlights: traffic heading towards the tunnel entrance at the end of Victoria Street. She saw shock and concern on the faces of pedestrians. Someone even called, ‘Are you all right, love?’
‘Get down!’ she screamed. ‘He’s got a gun.’
A second car drove out of the mass of traffic to her left, bumped onto the pavement, and headed towards her. Megan turned wildly. She was trapped between Doran and this new threat, and Doran was reaching into his pocket. She turned again to the wall, and looked down on the branches of London planes, just beginning to show tender spring shoots. Then the driver of the second car shouted to her.
‘Get in!’
She looked towards the car, then to Doran, in an agony of indecision. His hand came out of his pocket.
‘For fuck’s sake, Megan, will you get in?’
She whirled back. ‘Foster?’
She ran, keeping her head low, using her car as a shield. Doran shouted something at her back. As she reached Foster’s car, he raised his arm. As she pulled open the passenger door, he took aim. She dived in, and he fired on them. She bumped her cheekbone against Foster’s arm, and simultaneously, something grazed the sleeve of her jacket, embedding itself in the upholstery with a soft thud.
Foster ducked, muttering, ‘Fuck,’ under his breath, then he jammed the car in reverse and, keeping his head down, yelled into his radio as he drove. ‘Bastard’s shooting at us. Request assistance! Request assistance! Firearms backup requested! Now!’
Motorists crouched, car horns blared, pedestrians screamed, diving for cover. Doran advanced, arm raised, and the drivers nearest the kerb began to panic, steering their cars right, trying to avoid the line of fire. Doran fired twice, and two holes appeared in the windscreen. Megan screamed, crouching lower. The sirens were closer, but it seemed the police responders must be hampered by the traffic. The helicopter clattered overhead, its PA on, its spotlight on Doran.
‘Foster?’ The radio was barely audible over the noise. ‘Lee, what the hell are you doing?’ It was Rickman.
‘Stay down,’ Foster yelled, ‘the cavalry’s arrived.’
‘Police,’ the PA system boomed. ‘Put down your weapon and lie face down on the ground.’
Foster didn’t wait to see if Doran obeyed. He continued along the pavement, engine screaming as he reversed at speed. There was no way out at the next junction, traffic was massed against them; these drivers, unaware of events around the corner, irate at their inability to turn into the flow, edged forward, blaring horns. Some got out and peered over the traffic, trying to get a better view. Foster carried on, scraping the car’s undercarriage on kerbstones as he bumped off then back on at the far corner.
The police cars closed in, slowly forging a way through, and Doran turned and ran back to his car.
The next turning was one-way in their favour and Foster spun the wheel, rattling them both as he came down off the kerb again and manoeuvred into the flow of traffic. ‘I think we lost them,’ he said, his breathing ragged. ‘It’s okay, you can sit up.’
She did. ‘Shit, Foster!’ she gasped. ‘Shit shit shit!’ She hit him hard in the shoulder. ‘I thought it was them. I thought you were—’ She bent forward, hiding her face in her hands and Foster slowed down, reaching out to her. His hand hovered for a second, then he gently placed it on her back. She was shaking, and he could feel the fevered heat of her fear through the thick wool of her jacket.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Rickman’s voice sounded loudly from the radio. ‘Foster, for God’s sake! Get out of there. Leave this to Armed Response.’
‘The boss,’ Foster said. ‘I’m playing hookey.’
‘Foster,’ Rickman said again. ‘Come in.’
Foster flicked the switch, turning the radio off. They had almost reached the end of the road and he put both hands back on the wheel. On the corner, he caught a glimpse of the rear end of a Mercedes, its taillight out. ‘Oh, God . . .’
Megan saw, and her eyes widened.
‘Hold on,’ he said. He turned into the oncoming traffic on Dale Street. It was sparse, here, but he had to swerve to avoid two cars, and he heard a dull crunch as another braked sharply and a fourth car rear-ended it. He turned left, tearing up Vernon Street, the new grey sets buzzing beneath the tyres. They hit a ramp and heard a screech as the sump hit the bricks. Cresting the ramp, the car lifted a foot, then clanged down onto the road again, sending sparks flying right and left. The street was just wide enough for one car, and Doran was close behind them.
‘Bloody loony must’ve done a U-turn into the traffic,’ he muttered, keeping an eye on the Merc in his rear mirror. Behind it, flashing lights: the ARVs were in close pursuit.
At the Travel Inn, a businessman looked on in horror as they ploughed through his luggage, scattering it. Doran followed after, and they heard the man’s dismayed yells diminishing as they raced on.
Foster saw steel hoardings jutting out at the side of the road and jigged the wheel right.
Warrender, at the wheel of Doran’s car, was slower to react. He caught the steel hoarding at an oblique angle. It shuddered, teetered, groaned, then crashed onto a following police car.
‘Oh, crap.’ Beyond the hoardings, Foster saw traffic barriers on both sides of the junction, three feet high, guiding traffic right. ‘Hold on tight,’ he yelled, spinning the wheel, burning rubber, heading into the chicane. He scraped the side of the car against the barriers with a scream of tortured metal and starburst of bright white sparks. Megan held the hand grip over the door, her eyes tightly closed, her lips pressed together. They shot out of the junction into a pulse of traffic.
Warrender fought with the wheel of the Merc, desperately trying to correct the right swing caused by the collision. He over-steered, hitting the traffic barrier at the head of the junction, avoiding a head-on impact, but colliding with the second barrier, ending with the car wedged within the chicane. More police cars howled down the street, the last of which, seeing the problem, reversed out onto Dale Street and screamed down Moorfields to block off their escape route. The police helicopter hovered as armed officers surrounded Doran’s car.
Chapter Forty-eight
‘You got your confession,’ Foster said.
They were parked in one of a cluster of interconnected streets in Kensington. Named after the London district by a planner with a sense of humour, the narrow terraces lacked gardens and their front doors opened directly onto the street. Many of the houses were empty and boarded up, some had SOLD signs tacked to the red brickwork. Refurbs; inward investment from southerners with a mental image of a place that was far from the reality.
‘You heard?’ she seemed surprised.
Foster flicked on the radio. It was still hot with noise: Doran and Warrender arrested, chaos in the city centre. ‘My all-seeing eye — well, ear, if you want to be accurate.’ He turned down the volume, leaving just enough so he could keep an ear open in case they sent search parties out for him and Megan.
She nodded. ‘
Is it enough — I mean, will it be?’
Foster shrugged. ‘A case like this, it isn’t any one thing. But it all adds up: the stuff you gave us on his tax fiddles will help.’
She grimaced apologetically. ‘I never did come through with that other stuff, did I?’
‘The fact he took a couple of pot shots at you in front of about a hundred witnesses — that’s almost as good as.’
A smile sparked in her eyes. ‘Always glad to assist the police in the fight against crime.’
‘Yeah, right . . .’ Foster looked at her. Her jacket was smeared with white powder, her cheekbone red and swollen where she had hit it. The bruising on her forehead from her previous injury was fading and she had covered it fairly effectively with make-up. ‘You’re okay, though?’ he said.
She found the bullet-hole in her jacket and poked a finger through it. ‘He’s ruined my suit.’ She laughed, and Foster noted the tremor in it.
‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘You’re okay?’
She looked into his eyes and he saw warmth and gratitude. ‘I’ll be fine. What about you? Your boss didn’t sound too pleased.’
‘I’ll survive.’ He glanced around the car’s interior. The holes in the windscreen had already begun to crack in a spider’s web of fine fissures; the side panel and frame had been shunted inwards by the impact with the barriers, and the glove compartment flap was askew. He found two bullet-holes in the upholstery. He didn’t like to think where the third had ended up. ‘Not sure the wheels’ll make a full recovery,’ he said.
She laughed, this time sounding steadier. ‘I hope you weren’t attached to it, because—’ She pressed the flap release to illustrate her point and a jumble of items fell out of the compartment onto her lap.
Foster reached across, knowing what was there, not wanting her to see it, but she slapped his hand away. ‘We don’t know each other that well,’ she said, lifting the items and turning to put them on the back seat. Foster got a faint waft of her perfume as she leaned across; a delicate, warm fresh scent.
An A to Z map of Liverpool slipped as she placed it on the seat, revealing a sheet of artists’ paper beneath it. It was Sara’s sketch of her.
She picked it up and turned back. Foster saw in her face that she recognised it as Sara’s work; he also believed absolutely, and for the first time, that Megan’s affection for her friend had been real.
She seemed to sense his scrutiny and tried to make light of it. ‘Sergeant Foster!’ she said, ‘I’m touched.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t start looking at wedding dresses just yet.’
She studied the paper again, her eyes shining.
‘Why d’you do it?’ he asked.
‘I had to get Doran,’ she said simply, still studying the picture.
‘Not Doran — this hacking lark. What d’you get out of it?’
She looked up from the sketch. ‘The challenge. The game.’
‘Hacking bank accounts isn’t a game,’ Foster said.
She seemed surprised. ‘But it is. It’s all about the search — the quest. It’s about belief and play: you have to believe that the system can be hacked, and then you just have fun with it. You just keep at it till something gives.’
‘And you walk off with a pot full of money.’
She lifted one shoulder. ‘Sometimes. But that’s not the point — the point is, you got past their security. You found a way in. You saw the number patterns and reconfigured them to your own mosaic.’
‘But you weren’t even into hacking till recently,’ Foster said. ‘From what I’ve seen, you were pretty low-tech, by hacker standards. It was more about into making people do what you want.’
‘Not making,’ Megan said, ‘Persuading. Violence is for morons.’
‘Cheers, Megan.’ Violence was part of his job. Was he now hearing what she really thought of him? And all the rest — the flirting, the pretence at identifying with him — was that just another of her scams? Had she persuaded him to do what she wanted?
She looked into his face and seemed to read the insult he felt. ‘Don’t you have an expression, “necessary force”? That’s not violence — that’s containment.’
‘Now you’re patronising me,’ he said, ‘And if violence is for morons, what does that make your brother?’
Something flickered across her face, like fleeting pain, and he instantly regretted what he had said.
‘What Gareth did was unforgivable,’ she said. ‘He knows that. It’s why he never applied for parole, never tried to take the case to appeal — because it’s unforgivable and even if society forgives him, he can’t forgive himself. He could have been anything he wanted, and he blew it. But Doran helped him along the way, and he deserves to pay more than anyone.’
Foster couldn’t bring himself to apologise, not after what Gareth had done, but Megan had no part in that, and wanted to take away some of her pain. ‘You’ve done what you set out to,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’ She smiled to herself. ‘And then some.’
‘Give it up.’
‘Give what up?’ She flushed and then paled; he put it down to fear of the unknown — fear of the ordinary, perhaps.
‘This,’ he said. ‘This crappy life, moving from town to town, never belonging anywhere.’
‘You say “belonging”, I hear “ownership”,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to be owned.’
‘Why’ve you always got to see the negative? Belonging is about sharing, being involved, giving something of yourself. Having a place where people know you and care about you. But it does mean you’ve got to put something into it as well.’
‘Who are you trying to persuade?’ she asked, ‘Me, or yourself?’
‘What?’ Foster asked, affronted.
‘You keep people at bay — it’s not a criticism,’ she added, as if expecting an argument. ‘It’s just the way we are. We can’t change it; why make ourselves miserable trying?’
‘We?’
She inclined her head. ‘Me and you — we’re two of a kind.’
He wasn’t sure he liked being included in her cosy circle of two. ‘We’re on opposite sides of the law.’
‘Fine line,’ she said, teasing. ‘Genius and lunatic, crook and cop.’
‘Admit it,’ Foster said, ‘Your heart’s not really in it.’
She laughed, astonished. ‘What do you mean? I’m good at this.’
‘Who d’you think you’re kidding?’ Foster demanded. ‘You gave up a whole load of money to a charity.’
‘I couldn’t very well keep it!’ she exclaimed.
‘See what I’m saying? And you staged this little drama tonight.’
‘Doran killed my friend. He put my brother in prison.’
‘The two people who made you feel you belonged.’
She frowned, refusing to concede the point. ‘And now I’ve honoured my debt and I’m free to slip away.’
‘But you’re still here.’
She batted her eyelids at him and gave him a seductive pout, self-mocking. ‘I like you — and I’m trying to corrupt you.’
‘I’m incorruptible,’ he said.
She held his gaze, the mocking sparkle in her eyes now directed at him.
‘You even gave back Doran’s money,’ he said. Something chased across her face, too swiftly for him to capture the look. ‘Let’s face it, Megan, you’re crap at this,’ he concluded. ‘Too much conscience.’
‘I can be ruthless,’ she said, her tone a little hurt, but still teasing.
Foster snorted. ‘You know why you’re an internet scammer and not a con artist?’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I’ve a feeling you’re going to tell me.’
‘When you actually meet the people you steal from, you feel bad about it. On the internet you can kid yourself they’re as phoney as you are, but face to face . . .’ He sucked air between his teeth. ‘Different pot of scouse altogether.’
She looked offended.
‘Added to which you’ve got a
lousy poker face. I can read you at fifty yards.’
She smiled. ‘Yeah? What am I thinking now?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m serious. The Fraud Squad are watching you. They gave you a break this time because they’re grateful. But as the wise man said, gratitude has a short half-life. If you carry on, they’ll nick you — and soon.’
She frowned, studying his face. ‘You’re letting me go . . .’
‘I’ve got nothing on you.’
‘Well, I’m not about to argue,’ she said, still surprised.
‘Computer fraud isn’t my department.’ The way Foster saw it, Doran was a crook and a killer, he saw his job as protecting the innocent. ‘Anyway, like you said, Doran owes you.’
‘I don’t want to land you in more trouble,’ she said, ‘I mean, the car . . .’
‘All I’ve got to say is I stopped at a junction and you jumped out and legged it. These streets are like a rabbit warren.’
Her eyes hadn’t left his face. ‘I have a sizeable pot of money set aside. And I’ve got a really sweet idea for a scam.’
She was joking, he thought, but only to hide the fact that she was serious. He hesitated, then laughed. ‘Stop — I don’t wanna have to arrest you.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m just saying, we could have a good time.’
He looked into her mocking grey eyes and saw a kind of longing. He could almost see himself doing it. Almost.
‘Thanks all the same — I’ve got a life here.’ He thought about Rickman. ‘People I care about. People who care about me.’
She lifted her chin. ‘The blonde bombshell.’
‘Naomi?’ he said, surprised. ‘No. Not in a million years.’
She sighed. ‘You men are so dense.’
‘Naomi?’ he repeated, and she nodded, amused.
‘I don’t know why the hell I’m telling you.’
‘Naomi,’ he said a third time, under his breath. ‘Blimey.’
‘One of the advantages of a solitary existence,’ Megan said, ‘is you get plenty of time to think.’ She lifted her shoulder. ‘It’s also one of the disadvantages.’
He nodded, still trying to get to grips with the idea.
SEE HER DIE a totally gripping mystery thriller (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 2) Page 34