by Nick Oldham
‘What’s the “something”?’
‘Haven’t a clue, boss, but I think it involves missing kids and organized criminality, if that doesn’t sound too dramatic. And it involves people who are more than happy to kill.’ She took a breath. ‘Anyway, first things first.’
‘Find Henry?’
‘And if I do find him and he’s in a bloody pub, I’ll knock his bleedin’ lights out.’
‘What’s your plan?’
‘Head to the coast and go and knock on a few doors on spec, give ’em a surprise.’
‘Now you sound like Henry Christie!’
‘And all the better for it. Gotta go!’ she said, ended the call and dialled 999 because that was the only sure way she knew of contacting the police directly.
The call was answered on the sixth ring. ‘Police emergency.’
Blackstone quickly told the operator who she was and asked for someone to call her back immediately so as not to clog up the emergency line. A comms room despatcher was back on to her within a minute. Blackstone gave him instructions to look up the keyholder details for the offices of Blackpool Children’s Charity and Hindle’s Builders on Granville Street, Blackpool. ASAP.
When she outlined the urgency of the call, he said he would do it straight away.
The problem with Blackstone’s request was that keyholder lists for properties were not always up to date and even non-existent for many places. It relied on the property owner to keep police records up to date, but not many did, which often caused problems when police attended a burglary at a property and they couldn’t get hold of anyone to turn out.
Nevertheless, she drove hard and fast along the A583, ignoring the average-speed cameras dotted along the route, realizing she would have to plead an emergency if she ended up with a fixed penalty notice through the letterbox. She already had six points on her licence and any more would put her in danger of disqualification.
A call came in on her phone.
It was comms responding to her request with just two mobile phone numbers for keyholders, which was a start, but no actual physical address for either, which was a bummer but the way of the world. She told the operator to text both numbers to her, then she had a bit of a brainstorm.
‘Do me another favour, will you? Look up Blackpool Children’s Charity on the internet. See if you can get the address of a Julie Clarke from that.’
Blackstone knew that accessing details of registered charities was usually simple enough because it was a legal requirement for them to post all financial dealings to the Charity Commission, which then shared them publicly online.
She hung up and waited for the response as she hurtled towards Blackpool while counting up the extra penalty points she was surely accruing and fervently hoping she was heading in the right direction, in more ways than one.
A minute or so later, the comms operator was on the phone again. ‘The charity is actually registered to that office in Granville Street – no other addresses listed.’
‘Whose names are listed as officers of the charity?’
‘Julie Clarke – at that address.’
She thanked him and hung up, then swerved on to a garage forecourt, stopped and banged both hands on the steering wheel in frustration.
Her mobile phone rang again.
‘I knew something would turn up,’ Rik Dean said, ‘but it’s not good,’ he added bleakly.
‘What is it?’ Blackstone asked, afraid she didn’t really want to know.
‘CCTV footage from a house further down the street from Clanfield’s flat. The occupant arrived home, saw the police activity and checked his security camera, which was inside his house, looking out; it gives an oblique view along the street … it’s on an SD card but I’ve got a copy of it on my phone – just the crucial minutes.’
‘Send it to me, boss.’
Moments later, Blackstone’s phone pinged as the incoming message from Rik Dean landed. She tapped her screen to open up what he’d sent.
The camera must have been in an upstairs room, positioned to get a view along the street, which she recognized as the one on which Clanfield’s front door was located, but the angle was such that she couldn’t actually see the door itself, nor anyone at the door.
A black Range Rover crept into view at the top of the street and stopped. A beast on the prowl.
From the left of the screen, Clanfield burst into view, exiting the front door of his flat, Blackstone assumed, into the road, looking over his shoulder, and the Range Rover shot forward and was on him, ploughing him down, running over him and then reversing. The splurge of blood and brain from his flattened head was horribly visible.
Blackstone could hardly believe her eyes.
Then, from the same direction as Clanfield, Henry Christie came into view, dashing to the edge of the footpath, almost losing his balance, his arms flailing as he seemed to teeter.
Blackstone watched as two masked men jumped out of the car, both clearly armed with handguns, and overpowered Henry quickly. They dragged him to the car, pinned him down, searched him and bundled him into the back seat. One of the men, a slightly built guy, did not get in, but jogged away out of sight – was he going for Henry’s car? – and the Range Rover set off with Henry as a prisoner, running over Clanfield’s prostrate, mangled body again.
She paused the image, rewound it a little way and used her finger and thumb to enlarge it.
The front registration plate of the car had been deliberately obliterated, but she could see what seemed to be some damage to the front bumper. It was hard to make out for certain because as the image was made bigger, the grainier it became, but there seemed to be a dent in it, which, in her soul, she knew would perfectly match the damage caused to the rear of her Mini Cooper. She peered closely at the driver, but he seemed to be wearing a face mask.
She let the video run on and the vehicle zoomed out of shot. Maybe there were three people, including the abducted Henry, in the back seat, but they too were hard to make out properly.
Her phone rang. Rik Dean said, ‘Have you watched it?’
‘Yep.’ She gulped. ‘This is bad.’
‘What the hell have you two got your noses stuck into?’ Rik demanded rhetorically. He’d asked a similar question before, but that was before he knew that his colleague, close friend and brother-in-law had been snatched off the street at gunpoint following a brutal murder. ‘These guys are armed. I’ve already got two armed response vehicles cruising the area. I just hope we won’t need them.’
Blackstone felt she was about to explode, that a time bomb was masquerading inside her chest as her heart and there was nothing she could do to disarm it. She also wanted to bang her head against a brick wall to knock some down-to-earth cop sense into her brain.
She had tried the two mobile numbers that comms had texted to her, those of Clarke and Hindle, but both were unanswered and went to voicemail. She had left an urgent message on both, coupled with a hint of threat.
But now, quite simply, she did not know what to do or where to go.
Henry had been taken at gunpoint and his car had also disappeared. She had no idea where he was, how to find him, how to rescue him. Suddenly, she felt useless.
‘C’mon, c’mon, work through this,’ she intoned to herself, still fist-pounding the steering wheel. ‘They’ve got Henry, they’ve got his car … Jesus! The car!’
For some unaccountable reason, Blackstone was now driving back along the A583 towards Preston, away from Blackpool. She didn’t know why she’d spun around, hardly even recalled doing it, but realized she must have done so at Marton Circle.
Her mind was a blur and she knew she had to get a grip to be of any use to Henry.
At that moment, she had reached the outskirts of Kirkham on her left-hand side, a town about halfway between Blackpool and Preston.
His car! Henry’s car, for goodness’ sake.
Gripping the wheel with her right hand, she searched her phone for the numbers of the people
who had most recently called her: Rik Dean and Diane Daniels.
She was about to press Diane’s number when magically it came up on the screen: Diane was calling Blackstone.
Simultaneously, the first words the two women said were, ‘His car!’
‘You first,’ Blackstone said to Diane.
‘It’s got a GPS tracker on it, came as standard with all the other bells and whistles,’ Diane said. ‘If nothing else, it tells you exactly where the car is, even if Henry isn’t with it.’
Blackstone did an air punch and said, ‘Yes! And how do we access that information?’
‘I rooted out all of the bumf for the car and I’m logged on to the manufacturer’s website now. I followed the links to the GPS company website, entered the correct codes and passwords, et cetera, and I’m now looking at the car’s location on a map. It’s stationary at the mom— No, it isn’t,’ she cried. ‘It’s moving … it’s just started moving,’ Diane said. ‘And it’s moving fast!’
‘Where is it?’ Blackstone asked. She was driving towards Preston, still not knowing if she was going in the right direction.
‘Spen Lane, now New Hey Lane.’
‘Those names mean nothing to me,’ Blackstone admitted.
‘Countryside, between Kirkham and Clifton,’ Diane clarified. ‘Wow – fast, sharp left into Moor Hall Lane … going really fast … now sharp right, Vicarage Lane, heading towards Blackpool Road.’
‘I’m on Blackpool Road!’ Debbie shouted. ‘Just gone past Kirkham,’ she said, trying to work out the geography in her head, hoping she was in the right area. This was a road she had travelled many times, and in the fairly recent past she had spent a bit of time on the back roads putting her Mini through its paces on the narrow lanes where, with its wonderful balance and grip, the car came into its own. But she hadn’t actually known the names of the roads she’d hurtled along.
‘Turning left out of Vicarage Lane on to Blackpool Road, heading towards Preston – now!’ Diane said.
‘And I’m right behind it,’ Blackstone shouted. ‘And it’s definitely not Henry at the wheel.’
The white Audi convertible skidded out of the side road maybe thirty metres in front of Blackstone without even pausing at the junction. She had to slam on her brakes, but the sports car accelerated away towards Preston. Although the driver didn’t look in her direction and the evening was now dark, she could tell from the build of the man at the wheel that it wasn’t Henry. This was a man smaller in stature, slouched quite low down on the seat. It could have been the man from the CCTV footage who, Blackstone had assumed, had gone to get Henry’s car after Henry had been bundled into the Range Rover.
The car slithered as he put his foot down, and Blackstone almost thought he was going to lose control, but he kept it going. Although she ground her gears into second to start picking up the speed she’d lost by braking, the Audi was soon well ahead of her and she knew she had no chance of keeping up with it in a straight line. It was a very fast car.
‘I’m with him, Diane,’ Blackstone said into her phone. ‘Can you stay with the tracker? I need to speak to Rik Dean and I don’t have my PR with me. I’ll have to use my phone.’
‘Got it – stay safe,’ Diane said, immediately understanding the situation. The line went dead.
Blackstone, cursing that she didn’t have a personal radio, steered with her right hand and had to dab at the screen of the mobile phone with her left hand to get to Rik’s number, while still concentrating on keeping up with the Audi which soared away from her.
‘Debbie – what’s happening?’ Rik answered immediately.
Ahead was a set of traffic lights at which the Audi bore left – ignoring the red – off the main road and into the village of Clifton, which gave Blackstone some hope, as she too ran the red light on to the narrow, twisty main street of the village, on both sides of which were many parked cars, making it even tighter.
At least now she had both hands on the wheel as she sped through the village and made up some ground on Henry’s car.
Blackstone’s mobile phone was quickly patched by comms into the force radio system and her transmissions were now being broadcast across the Preston and Blackpool areas so patrols could hear what she was saying as her car screamed through Clifton at sixty miles an hour in the twenty zone.
‘He’s gone through Clifton village and turned left, heading towards that nuclear place,’ she said, knowing she needed to keep her voice calm and measured, rather than shouty. ‘Don’t know the name of road.’
The comms operator who had inherited this chase – and was now looking at a screen in front of her which showed a live map with the position of Blackstone’s car from the signal transmitted by her phone, plus the positions of all the patrols converging on the area – took cool control of the pursuit.
The first thing she did was to caution Blackstone and ask her to comply with the force pursuit policy. Meaning, ‘Back off.’
Blackstone gave a harsh chuckle and muttered, ‘As if.’
It was a response the operator knew she would get, so she didn’t push it for the moment because what was important was to keep tabs on the Audi; when other patrols were properly involved, she would give Blackstone the hard word to pull out of the chase.
‘Suspect vehicle on Clifton Lane,’ the operator said, filling in Blackstone’s lack of street-name knowledge. ‘Towards Westinghouse,’ she said, ‘the nuclear fuel processing plant. DS Blackstone is in her private vehicle in pursuit for the moment.’
Several patrols gave their positions and confirmed they were closing in, as did the police helicopter which had been scrambled from its base at Warton, close by. It would be with the pursuit within a couple of minutes at most.
As Blackstone’s Mini left the environs of the village, the Audi was well ahead of her, and she struggled to keep it in view on the bends, but her hope was that the driver didn’t even yet know he was being chased by the cops. With luck, that nugget would come as a surprise to him very shortly.
Then: ‘He’s done a right!’ Blackstone said, knowing her voice was rising shrilly again.
The operator said, ‘Patrols, that is on to Deepdale Lane.’
The lights of the vehicle disappeared as Blackstone skidded around the very sharp right-hand junction, feeling her two nearside wheels lifting off the ground.
The road twisted and dipped, with the nuclear processing plant on her left; once past it, there was a ninety-degree left-hander as the road became Darkinson Lane for a stretch and straightened out but passed over a narrow railway bridge and then almost immediately over an even narrower canal bridge. Blackstone saw the lights of the Audi up ahead as she skittered around this bend and put her foot to the floor of the Mini.
A patrol called up saying he was at the far end of this road with another and that they intended to block the junction, which would give the Audi driver nowhere to go, other than up a farm track.
Blackstone sped over the railway bridge, then into the dip prior to the next hump that was the canal bridge, not slowing down and hitting it at about fifty, which was much too fast and the little car took off, all four wheels leaving the road, then crashed down heavily and swerved wildly as she fought for control, and got it.
‘We’re in position, road is blocked,’ the patrol called up.
In the distance – as she’d flown through the air – Blackstone had seen a glimpse of blue and red flashing lights in the moment before she hit the tarmac. And ahead she saw the force helicopter appear low in the sky as the powerful night spotlight came on and illuminated the Audi.
The guy was trapped.
Except that as he raced towards the roadblock, the driver suddenly anchored on and swerved into a ditch, leapt out and over a low hedge to run across what was once a field but had been scraped and cleared in preparation for a new distributor road that would connect the M55 to the north with the dockland area of Preston to the south.
As Blackstone reached the scene, the helicopter had a
lready picked up the fleeing man in the beam of the spotlight as he ran, stumbled, picked himself up and ran again. He was just a dark shape, but Blackstone could make out he had a handgun as he twisted around, stopped, shaded his eyes with one hand and loosed off two wild shots at the helicopter.
Blackstone slewed to a halt in front of the two police cars – one of which was an ARV – that blocked the road, as a third one joined them – a dog patrol. Within moments, a huge German Shepherd had been deployed and was on the trail of the man who was still being remorselessly followed by the crew of the helicopter.
Blackstone swore, knowing that she could not get involved in this and that it was also wasting time. Quickly thinking the scenarios through, there was every chance that the man could be brought down by the dog, or get shot, or go to ground and escape, or he might decide to stage a siege … She knew he might even surrender immediately, but having taken several shots at the helicopter, she thought that unlikely. And even if he did throw down his gun and stick up his hands, time would be dragging on for Henry. And possibly running out.
She disconnected her mobile phone from the force radio system and called Diane as she did a reverse three-point turn in the narrow road – because she suddenly had an idea how to get to Henry quickly. Possibly.
Now facing the direction from which she’d come, Blackstone stuck her foot to the floor and the Mini picked up speed.
Diane answered immediately. ‘Debs! What’s happening?’ she asked worriedly.
‘The guy’s ditched the car – literally – and he’s on the run, but won’t get far, there’s a German Shepherd on his arse and cops with guns and mean dispositions … but I’ve come away from it. Listen, you said Henry’s car— Fuck!’ she groaned as the Mini took off again over the canal bridge and bounced down the other side, throwing her up into the roof and down again into her racing seat. ‘Sorry … you said his car had just set off. Where exactly was it when it set off?’
EIGHTEEN
Even if he’d been thirty-five years younger, fitter, more courageous, Henry Christie was pretty sure he would still have been completely terrified by this experience.