Strangers

by Paul Finch

  But there were some things you just couldn’t sit by and ignore.

  As quickly as she could, she called Des again.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ he yelled.

  ‘Des … listen. I don’t want to get personally involved in this unless I absolutely have to. So I need some divisional support. Can you get on the blower … do it discreetly obviously, and try to get some uniforms to investigate the first left turn-off north of the café? Be economical with the facts, eh? Don’t tell them I’m a copper … say an abduction’s been reported by an unnamed member of the public who’s currently in pursuit, or something like that. Look, I’ve gotta go if I’m gonna keep tabs on them. I’ll stay in touch.’

  She rammed her foot down again, grinding more grit as she tore down the lane, which immediately began curving and twisting. In truth, this was a nightmare scenario. Even assuming the local lads responded immediately, it would take minutes for them to get all the way out here … and how far away would the target vehicle be by then? She’d only dallied a second or two and she’d already lost sight of its tail lights. Ahead, trees were now ranked thickly down either side of the lane, their leafless branches interlocked overhead – it was more a tunnel than a road. But there was still no sign of the van. Lucy accelerated again, pushing up from forty to fifty to sixty.

  Signposts and farm-gates flickered by in her peripheral vision.

  With no clue about the geographic layout at this end of the East Lancashire Road, she had no idea where she was, except that she was about six miles from her home-patch in Crowley, and at least twelve from Manchester city centre.

  Another turn-off veered into view ahead, this time on the right.

  Lucy smashed her brake pedal flat, screeching to a halt over thirty yards.

  This new turn led onto a dirt track rather than a metalled lane, and meandered off into total blackness, probably leading to a field or a barn or something; a regular road to nowhere. Even so, she backed up and spun the wheel again, to try and see better in the flood of her headlights. Her gaze fell on recently churned tyre-marks in the track’s muddy surface. It was still a gamble that they’d come this way, but if these guys were some bunch of scumbag rapists, as Lucy suspected, they wouldn’t be heading anywhere easily accessible to the general public.

  She gunned the Beetle forward onto the rutted surface, tyres slewing through fresh heaps of fallen leaves. She no longer had concerns about trying to pretend that she wasn’t following them – on an isolated route like this, the moment they spotted her headlights they’d know what she was up to. She thus roared along, the unmade track rising and falling in undulating humps. More leafy grit flew as she careered around ever-sharper bends. And now, at last, she spotted them again. She depressed the pedal, steadily closing the gap between them.

  The rear of the van ballooned towards her, a dingy brown, smeared with oil and grime. It wasn’t exactly flying, but it was travelling at a good fifty, which on this road was pretty perilous. Lucy slowed a little so as not to collide with it, but there was now only thirty yards between them. This certainly seemed to have distracted the van driver. At the next tight bend, he skidded along the verge, his nearside wheels threshing leaves and twigs. There was an open stretch after that, the dim ribbon of the road extending for several hundred yards.

  A veteran of several chases, Lucy expected her opponent to floor it.

  But he didn’t. He maintained his current pace, and then she realised why. These guys were supposed to be the police. Openly running would be the last thing they’d do, especially if they now thought they were being followed by one of Tammy’s friends. Trying to maintain their pretence would be the most obvious tactic – but that would suit her, because ideally she wanted to follow them rather than tackle them. On which subject, realising that she’d made another turn since she’d last spoken to Des, she grabbed at her phone again … only for the van driver to suddenly lurch his vehicle left onto an even narrower track.

  Lucy dropped the phone onto the passenger seat as she swung after it. This thoroughfare was equally rutted and muddy, but now she could see that it was actually a driveway rather than a road. It curved away through the woodland, terminating on the forecourt of what looked like a derelict house.

  The van pulled up sharply. Lucy braked too, slithering to a halt about twenty yards at the rear of it, though from the exhaust pumping out of its tailpipe, its engine was still running. Before she could decide what to do next, one of the van’s rear doors clunked open and a figure sprang out. It was the beanpole with the blond hair and the snarl. He slammed the door closed behind him, and came quickly towards her.

  She noticed that he was pulling on a pair of black leather gloves.

  ‘Christ …’ she breathed.

  Her heart thumped her ribs as she braced herself. She could hardly expect to speak with authority here and yet not reveal who she was. Even if she did reveal it, it wouldn’t be easy laying the law down in thigh-boots and fishnets. The only option was to try and rough it, just bullock her way through as if she was an ordinary outraged citizen. Meanwhile, the guy, even though young, looked meaner the closer he came. He might be tall and thin, but there was something lithe about him – the way he walked, the way his arms swung at his sides – as if he was actually quite athletic.

  She cast around for a weapon. She had her rape alarm and Mace in her shoulder bag, but that was down in the passenger-side footwell. She wouldn’t be able to reach it in time. Instead, her left hand scuttled along the dash and into the glovebox, which, typically for Des Barton, was crammed with grotty bits and pieces. As the blond guy rounded the front of her car towards the driver’s side, her fingers rooted amid broken pens, half-eaten sweets, wads of paperwork – and then alighted on an aerosol canister. She yanked it out, but it wasn’t especially heavy in her hand. When she gazed down at it, she saw nothing more useful than a tin of de-icer.

  The guy leaned down at her window.

  Swallowing her nervousness, Lucy lowered the pane to speak with him.

  ‘And what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ he wondered, his gaze creeping down to her fishnet-clad thighs. He seemed amused by the sight. ‘You want to get arrested too … you slutty little bitch?’

  ‘I need to see your ID,’ she said.

  ‘You need to see my ID?’ He stuck his ferrety face right into hers, and dangled a pair of handcuffs alongside it. ‘How’s this? Now get out the fucking car, like the good little cocksucking slapper you no doubt are.’

  ‘Wait,’ she replied. ‘Here’s my ID.’

  ‘Your …?’ Puzzled, he leaned even closer.

  And she ejected the aerosol’s contents into his face.

  He tottered backwards with a screech, cupping both hands to his eyes. At the same time his feet slid in the mud and he thudded down onto his back. Lucy kicked the driver’s door open and leapt out. She landed the toe of her left boot in his groin as he writhed there, at which he gagged and curled into a ball. With no time to actually stop and think about what she was doing, she ran towards the van, swerving through its plume of exhaust to its offside. The driver’s window was already wound down. The driver turned a startled face towards her. It wasn’t the younger guy she’d expected, which meant there was more than two of them. This one looked older than the beanpole, with fatter cheeks, a mop of greasy hair, piggy eyes and a wispy moustache under his fat, flat nose.

  It was the nose she aimed for, banging her right fist into it. Lucy wasn’t the kind of copper who indulged in this sort of behaviour often, but the crunch of cartilage was strangely satisfying. With chicken-like squawks, the driver groped at his face, blood geysering through his grubby, ring-cluttered fingers.

  ‘Wanker!’ she spat, before backing toward the rear of the van, shaking her hand hard to ease the sting out of her knuckles. It hurt so much when you actually hit someone; the movies never got that bit right.

  She yanked down on the lever of the van’s rear doors, and with an echoing CLUNG, they sprang
open. She assumed the combat posture as the glow of her own headlights permeated the dank interior, fully expecting the next bastard to jump right out at her. However, he didn’t. This was the younger one, the teenager with the narrow shoulders. He cowered at the far end, crushing himself against the partition wall. His face was written with panic, his eyes glinting with tears. His hands had clawed in front of him, but only as if to ward her off.

  Alongside him, Tammy lay bound and gagged, lengths of washing line knotting her wrists together in the small of her back, strips of silver duct tape plastered across her mouth and around the back of her head.

  ‘Come on, love, we’re going home;’ Lucy said, taking the girl by the ankles and lugging her forward.

  Re-energised by Lucy’s arrival, Tammy scrabbled the rest of the way on her bottom and ankles, and jumped outside, audibly roaring under the duct tape. She needed no assistance as she pulled and yanked at the clothesline, finally releasing her own hands. When she tore off the gag, she coughed and choked, a stream of rancid vomit spilling out. It was anyone’s guess how long it had been percolating in the back of her throat.

  ‘You soppy little bastards!’ Lucy told the kid in the van. He still pressed himself into the wooden partition, eyes wide with terror. ‘You picked the wrong night to come out and play, didn’t you? I ever see you trying to abduct girls around here again … I’ll follow you home afterwards and slit your throat while you’re in bed! And your bloody mates! You getting me … you little toad, you fucking little shithouse! I SAID DO YOU GET ME?’

  He nodded and whimpered, a bubble of green snot appearing at the end of his nose.

  Lucy took Tammy by the elbow and steered her back towards the Beetle. The girl yammered incoherently, sobbing and trying to speak at the same time.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Lucy said. ‘It’s over now.’

  They reached the front offside of their ride, where the tall, thin blond was still lying scrunched into a foetal ball. It struck Lucy that she might have inflicted more damage than she’d intended with that kick. But the devil if she cared now. Tammy clearly felt the same, because she kicked him too, savagely – in the back and the head, before stepping around to the front and landing another couple in his face, to which he could do no more than groan aloud, eyes screwing shut as his head flirted backwards and sideways.

  ‘Enough!’ Lucy said, grabbing her elbow again, hastening her to the front passenger seat and pushing her inside. If nothing else, Lucy wanted to get them away from here now, before any police units arrived; that would save a shedload of awkward explanations. She slammed the door closed, rounded back to the driving seat and leaned down one more time to the injured blond.

  ‘You and your mates are lucky you’re still alive,’ she hissed. ‘But don’t be reassured by that. I’ve clocked your registration mark. That means every person I know will be looking out for it. So you’d better stay at home from now on, sonny. Or move cities, or change your life and become a fucking monk. Because I’ll tell you now, you’re not going to be safe doing anything else.’

  Chapter 11

  ‘Listen, it’s no biggie,’ Tammy said, sniffling over her coffee. ‘We get raped from time to time. There’s nothing we can do about it. It goes with the territory.’

  Lucy regarded her askance from the other side of the café table. Even given the mess Tammy was in – her hair a frenzy, her eyes red and bleary, cheeks streaked with clotted mascara – this was an astounding comment.

  ‘How can you talk like that?’ Lucy finally asked.

  ‘You’re in the lifestyle too,’ Tammy said defensively. ‘You telling me you’d never let them take it for free if they were trying to muscle you?’

  ‘I think that was a bit more than people muscling you, love. God knows what those three losers had in mind. I’m not sure it would’ve stopped at rape.’

  ‘It would have.’ Tammy wiped her nose with a tissue. Despite the fact she was still sniffling, her usual bravado was already returning. ‘They were just kids.’

  ‘So how come you’re still crying?’

  Tammy shrugged. ‘Had a scare, but that’s all.’

  Yet more bravado, Lucy realised.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful,’ Tammy added hastily. ‘I’m more grateful than I can say. I don’t know any other girl who’d do what you did tonight. I owe you one big time.’

  That was one thing Lucy could at least relax about. It had crossed her mind that merely helping Tammy the way she had might have threatened her cover, but the girl seemed happy to accept that it had simply been a generous act from a fellow lost soul.

  ‘I couldn’t let it happen.’ Lucy sipped her own coffee. ‘You’ve been friendly to me since I showed up here. And while I could do something, I thought I should. I’m a bit handy.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw …’ Tammy cackled. ‘Where did you learn all that stuff?’

  ‘Saltbridge.’

  ‘What … over in Crowley?’

  Lucy nodded warily. She hoped she wasn’t saying too much. But her elaborate and carefully memorised cover-story had needed to accommodate her Crowley accent, which in the ears of a foreigner might only be slightly different to that of an inner-Mancunian, but to a native of the north-west would easily be detectable, and telling easily detectable lies was never a good way to start when you were going undercover.

  ‘Rough area, Saltbridge?’ Tammy asked.

  ‘Roughish,’ Lucy said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Harpurhey, originally.’

  ‘Bloody hell, you ought to have developed some street-smarts too.’

  ‘I have.’ Tammy straightened in her seat as though attempting to puff herself up, which was pretty laughable given her bedraggled state. ‘Hey … I’m alright, me. Just took my eye off the ball for a sec.’ She glanced furtively around, and seeing that the counter staff’s attention was elsewhere, lowered her cup beneath the table, at which point there was a noticeable glug-glug-glug as she flavoured her coffee with vodka.

  ‘Your problem is you’ve got too much of a taste for that stuff,’ Lucy commented. ‘Half the time you can’t see what’s going on under your nose.’

  ‘Whatever gets us through the night, isn’t it? Anyway, just helping me out doesn’t give you a right to lecture me. You’re not my mum.’

  ‘You sure you’re alright?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Tammy rubbed at the welts where the clothesline had bitten into her wrists. ‘Where’d you get the car, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Lucy glanced through the cafeteria window to where the Beetle was parked next to a hedge. She hadn’t driven Tammy back to the lorry park for the simple reason that Des would still be there, probably hopping from foot to foot by now, which would have been something of a give-away. ‘I nicked it.’

  ‘You nicked it?’ Tammy gawked at her. ‘You fucking serious?’

  ‘Took the first wheels I could find, didn’t I?’

  ‘And you just left it out front like that?’

  That might have been a mistake, Lucy now realised. The car was next to a hedge, but close to the slip road. It could easily be clocked by passing traffic, especially if that traffic happened to be police officers looking for a recently stolen motor. And okay, it wasn’t exactly stolen, but this was the lie she was trying to sell.

  ‘Perhaps we’d better get going,’ she said, standing up.

  Tammy looked hesitant. ‘If we get caught in a stolen car, Digby’ll be all over me with that belt of his. I’ll look like raw meat when he’s finished.’

  ‘You let him push you around too much as well.’

  ‘It’s easy for you to say that. You being so … what’s the word you used, “handy”?’

  Lucy went to the counter to pay. When she’d finished, Tammy was done with her coffee/vodka, and they went outside together.

  ‘I know a chop shop where you could drop this off,’ Tammy said as they climbed into the Beetle. ‘But I doubt they’d touch it. Right bloody dustbin.’

  Lucy sai
d nothing as she slid behind the wheel. Now that her passenger was alert to the fact they were in a hot car, and looking it over more carefully, she hoped there was nothing lying in plain view that might indicate its owner was a policeman. Not that it would be easy to spot anything specifically in Des’s scruffy interior, especially when the doors were closed and the lights off.

  ‘You ever thought of getting out of it?’ Lucy asked, as she drove back to the East Lancs.

  ‘What … this life?’ Tammy sounded amused. ‘And waste the gifts God’s given me?’

  ‘I don’t think he intended you to use them this way.’

  ‘You’re doing the same thing.’

  ‘Yeah. Wish I wasn’t.’

  ‘Well … how do you think I feel? I mean deep down?’ Tammy sniffled again.

  Lucy glanced sideways and saw fresh tears sparkling in the girl’s lashes. As before, the ‘tough chick’ routine had proved wafer-thin, especially now the adrenaline was flagging and a fuller understanding of what had nearly happened was dawning on her.

  ‘Sodding bastards,’ she said, swallowing hard.

  ‘If it’s any consolation, they won’t try it again.’

  ‘I only hope they do. With any luck, they’ll run into Lotta.’

  ‘Who?’

  Tammy remained tearful, but gave a crooked grin. ‘They won’t know what’s hit ’em then.’

  ‘Who’s Lotta?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Top beauty, she is … hottest ticket in town. But you wouldn’t mess with her.’

  ‘Hardcase?’

  ‘Put it this way, Keira, love … she’d make you look like a nursery teacher.’

  ‘Good to know girls can look after themselves.’

  ‘It’s more than looking after herself. Lotta once told me that if she ever got the chance, she’d collect the dicks and ball sacks of every bastard who ever stuck it to her and put them on shields on the wall in her flat.’