Strangers

by Paul Finch

  But that wasn’t the only problem. First of all, she had to catch up with her targets. She powered across the Grantwood Gardens estate to its nearest entrance, which was on Beaumont Road. This in itself was a gamble. There were likely to be several other exits from the estate which the fugitives might have used, but Beaumont Road was a major artery in the district and the most likely to facilitate an escape. Even so, Lucy hesitated before pulling out into it. Did she go left or right?

  Greater Manchester was now in the midst of rush hour, vehicles bottled up in both directions. Had they opted to go right from here, in effect turning across two lanes, it would have taken them longer to make good their flight. So most likely they’d gone left. Even then, the slow-moving traffic would hinder them, though it would hinder Lucy as well.

  By necessity, she decided, the niceties of road behaviour could not be a consideration this evening.

  She turned her machine left, but instead of forcing her way in among the sluggish, exhaust-pumping cars, she mounted the kerb and proceeded along the pavement. She didn’t screw the throttle for fear of pedestrians stepping out in front of her, but by the time she’d reached twenty-five she was already overtaking the traffic on the road. A couple more hundred yards – that was surely all it would take before she spotted them, but now, even at this low speed, her left arm was giving her problems. The increased throb of the Ducati’s v-twin engine sent painful vibrations along the fractured bone, and while the clutch wasn’t heavy, the fingers on that hand were stiff and restricted by her cast.

  She gritted her teeth and pressed on, passing more and more slow-moving cars, many of their drivers and passengers glaring at her as she shot by, assuming her some lout attempting an illegal short-cut. And then, only a minute or so later, she spotted the Volkswagen CC.

  It was about fifty yards ahead, and as she’d hoped, mired in the same jam.

  She quickly decelerated and, when the first gap came along, veered out into the traffic to fall in place about five cars behind it.

  Her thinking on this was twofold: firstly, because of the felons’ sedate pace, they clearly thought they’d eluded any pursuit and so were not risking mindless stunts like dangerous overtaking or heading the wrong way down one-way streets – but if they suddenly became aware of her now, she might panic them into doing precisely that; secondly, she was in no position to take these crazies down by herself, and so the best policy was to sit on their tail, hopefully without being noticed, and guide the support units in.

  She filched her phone from her pocket, activating its speaker. ‘Adam, I’m on the A58, heading south. You’ve got to get someone along here, mate … everything’s cool at present, but these bastards are going to throw me off at some point.’

  Apparently oblivious to her, the CC now swung casually north onto Wigan Road. This was a less congested route, and so the car slowly accelerated away. Lucy had to weave around a couple of the vehicles in front in order to make the turn herself, catching several angry toots, but determined to stay in touch. When the CC then veered onto Hulton Lane, Lucy banked in pursuit. This was an even more open road, so the target accelerated again. There were still a couple of cars between them, but now Lucy suspected that the duo had spotted her after all. She throttled up, trying discreetly to close the gap, and at the same time wondering what the endgame here was going to be.

  She had no clue where the fugitives thought they were running to. They might have pre-prepared a bolthole for themselves, in the event of an emergency abandoning everything, including their house and their old lives, in order to stay at liberty. But that couldn’t be easy in this day and age. And if they’d noticed that she was tailing them, they were hardly likely to make it happen now. Not without trying to get rid of her first.

  She dug her phone out again, but it was increasingly difficult. It meant she had to hold course with her left hand, and that limb wasn’t just agony now, it was dead wood in terms of the control she could affect through it.

  ‘Adam!’ she shouted. ‘I’m still sitting on these bastards. Where are you all?’

  ‘Lucy the whole network’s gridlocked. Everyone’s struggling …’

  ‘Enough excuses, Adam … we’re approaching St Helens Road, but I think they’ve clocked me and I expect we’ll have rabbits very, very soon. I need that support!’

  Ahead, another line of traffic waited at the junction with St Helens Road.

  The CC decelerated again, so Lucy decelerated too. The lights changed and they proceeded, St Helens Road dipping under the M61 motorway, after which the CC swung onto Plodder Lane, now heading east towards Farnworth. The aptly named Plodder was basically a B road and largely empty of other cars, and Lucy found herself directly behind the target. There was about forty yards between them, but it was now a certainty that she’d been spotted. Slowly but noticeably, the CC sped ahead, effortlessly accelerating to fifty. Lucy did the same, increasingly tense though at least feeling good that they were veering towards the border with the N Division, as that was where most backup was likely to come from.

  But then, at Glynne Street, the suspects broke for it.

  The CC made a sudden crazy swerve, swinging out into Albert Road, cutting across two entire lanes of oncoming traffic, causing much screeching of tyres and shunting of vehicles, its driver then flooring his pedal as the southward route opened up in front of him.

  Lucy threaded through the resulting chaos as fast as she could, which wasn’t very.

  By the time she’d hit Albert Road, there was no sign of the CC. She zipped forward, looping around a sharp bend and only just avoiding an elderly couple in the act of crossing. The male of the two shook his walking stick at her as she blistered past.

  The Volkswagen CC was fast, but the Ducati Monster was faster still, and nippier on the turn. When the target swam back into view, Lucy swiftly gained on it – only for its driver to make another unexpected manoeuvre, swerving right and vanishing onto the Collingbourne council estate. Lucy was horrified. There were still likely to be school kids around here. Despite the cold and dark, there might even be younger children playing out.

  There was certainly lots of double-parking, which massively narrowed the thoroughfares they were now chasing through.

  Again, she was perplexed as to where the fugitives thought they were running to. They’d reached the boundary between the K Division and the N, but this estate was a huge cul-de-sac in its own right. Still the CC attempted to shake her off, screeching around concrete islands, bulleting through unmarked crossroads. Unsuccessful with that, it hit the side streets and back alleys, wheelie bins flying everywhere, trash exploding in fountains. Hot breath fogged the inside of Lucy’s visor as she clung on behind; the pain in her arm now penetrated her entire left side. She was almost dizzy with it; only by focusing on the tail lights in front to the exclusion of all else, did she hold the course.

  On the far edge of the estate, they spun onto a narrow lane called Chorlton Green. It ran between a row of drab maisonettes on one side and a tall hawthorn hedge on the other. Beyond the hawthorns lay the Barcroft playing fields, which were currently hidden in darkness. Lucy didn’t think that Chorlton Green led anywhere else, just swung right at its southp-east end and curved back among the council houses – which meant that if she could get some support units here, these maniacs were finally trapped.

  She attempted to call Comms again, but almost lost control in the process, skidding along the gutter and nearly crashing headlong into a concrete waste bin, which some stupid kids had toppled over. She swerved past it so sharply that she smashed through a flimsy garden fence, and ploughed across two overgrown front lawns before regaining the road.

  ‘Adam!’ she panted. ‘I’m on the Collingbourne, on Chorlton Green …’

  ‘Lucy, it’s difficult keeping track of you …’

  ‘Just send me anyone you’ve got!’

  She cut the call and revved forward, catching up with the CC more quickly this time. A shabby old van was in the process
of making a three-point turn, and the CC had been forced to slow as it approached, its driver hitting his horn repeatedly. A burly looking guy in a vest and overalls pants emerged from one of the maisonettes, outside of which the pavement was cluttered with furniture; he gestured with a V-sign and shouted obscenities. But the CC driver, spotting Lucy in his rear-view mirror, swung his wheel right, hit the gas and mounted the pavement. The guy in the vest dived to safety as the car bullocked by, clouting a ratty-looking couch out of its way and inadvertently clearing a path for Lucy too.

  She almost bucked from the saddle as she leapt over the kerb, but fishtailed through the wreckage of furniture and hit the road surface again, still upright.

  The CC accelerated ahead of her, now tearing up the narrow street at sixty-plus. Lucy throttled up too, but not quickly enough to prevent his next bizarre tactic: a sharp turn through a gap in the hawthorn hedge. Lucy screeched in pursuit, almost ditching as she did, the stink of burnt rubber filling in her nostrils – and found herself jolting along a muddy track lined on both sides by more dense hawthorns. They were heading onto the playing fields, she realised. Somewhere on the left up here there was a small clubhouse – little more than a changing shed really – and on the right a bunch of rugby and football pitches. Beyond all that, there was woodland where the fleeing twosome might duck out of sight, but the CC wouldn’t be able to go much further. She screwed the throttle harder. The route curved and twisted, but the Ducati handled the leaf-cluttered quagmires with ease, and she constantly glimpsed the CC’s tail lights, especially when it skidded to a sudden, ear-rending halt.

  It had no choice, she now remembered. This access road was only a few hundred yards in length, and then there was a pair of concrete bollards.

  ‘Gotcha!’ she whooped.

  But even as Lucy swept up from behind, the CC’s two front doors burst open and a figure emerged one on either side, the pair of them sprinting past the bollards into the darkness.

  Lucy throttled after them, skimming through the gap between the hedge and the car, passing the concrete obelisks and racing along what was now little more than a footpath. Her arm throbbed as the bike bounced and slid, but the running shapes were only forty yards in front. Her headlamp picked them out cleanly: the man was in surplus army trousers, boots and a black anorak; Darla Maycroft’s hooded running top was bright blue with white piping. She’d lost her woolly cap, her fair hair streaming out behind her.

  They were clearly in good condition; pounding along with hard, heavy strides. But for all their strength and stamina, Lucy was on wheels. She gained steadily, engine roaring – only for the duo to suddenly diverge, breaking apart in opposite directions.

  Briefly, she was thrown. She’d no idea where the woman had gone – the fair-haired form had literally just vanished into the darkness on their left. But the man had veered onto the actual pitches, which lay spread out to her right, their level grassy surfaces and the white structures of football and rugby posts clearly discernible in the yellow streetlight filtering through the hawthorns.

  The woman was the main target, officially. But the man was still in sight.

  Lucy swerved after him, her back wheel slewing amid heaps of muddy autumn leaves, but quickly regaining traction and propelling her forward again. He was going full pelt, like a lunatic, throwing a single glance back towards her as he went. She caught a half-glimpse of his pale, sweat-slick face. Then he veered left, heading across the first pitch from its east side to its west. Lucy powered after him, throttling hard. In some ways it was almost too easy. How she was going to physically restrain him when she dismounted, she didn’t know, but simply pursuing him was no problem.

  And then he too disappeared.

  Just dropped out of view … directly in front of her.

  Lucy was stumped – but only realised the truth when it was too late.

  One of the pitches was much lower than the others, and the next thing she knew, she was skidding down a terrifying gradient. The shape of the man flipped blurrily past in her left-hand vision as he rolled away sideways.

  Leaving Lucy entirely alone.

  There was no time to effect a controlled crash. The flat surface of the lower pitch rushed up and hit her at a one-twenty-degree angle. The jolt was colossal, Lucy almost thrown over the handlebars. She clung on, but the bike went wildly out of control, zigzagging across the slick grass and heading straight for a set of rugby uprights, the tall steel shaft of the nearest post a brilliant white in her headlight.

  She bailed off, hitting the ground with a brutal impact, which hammered through her entire body. Miraculously, her broken left arm was spared as she cradled it tightly across her chest, even managing to shield it when, through sheer momentum, she found herself rolling pell-mell through leaves and muck.

  In the background meanwhile, the collision between the bike and the post was huge, a booming CRUMP! of steel and a rending of magnesium alloy.

  Moments of uncertainty passed, during which Lucy lay half-insensible. Only slowly did she become aware of the world around her, first as a cold dampness seeped through her clothes from the well-trampled pitch, and then from the distant shouts of laughter.

  Laughter?

  Someone thought this was funny.

  Gradually, in the sluggish mix of her thoughts, she remembered.

  They’d got the drop on her pretty completely: wrecked her bike, broken her body …

  And they thought this was funny?

  In which case she was damned if she was leaving it here. Not after coming this far, getting this close …

  But Lucy was so groggy that just climbing back to her feet was an ordeal. Every part of her body hurt: joints were twisted; limbs felt like putty they were so battered. She grunted with pain as she pulled her helmet off and dropped it, her head swimming as she tottered back towards the upward slope. And yet she could still hear them. Some way distant, but hooting with laughter. Clearly they’d found each other again in the darkness, and now felt they were onto a winner.

  If nothing else, that galvanized her, giving her new strength.

  Which she was clearly going to need.

  When she reached the darkened slope, she was still so dazed that it reared above her like the south face of Everest. But she knew she couldn’t afford to dally. All they needed to do was get back to their CC. Lucy had their address, but they surely didn’t intend to return home. More likely they’d just disappear. That wasn’t impossible. Other killers had done it – certainly for long enough to claim more victims.

  She whimpered for breath as she laboured up the muddy, tussocky incline. When she clambered onto the flat at the top, it was all she could do not to flop down onto her face. It was impossible to see very far in the darkness, but those two lunatics had to be back at their motor by now. If they reversed it to the main road, they were away. It was that simple.

  She limped on regardless, heading roughly towards where she thought the playing fields entrance was, but so physically beaten, so shaken from the crash that her eyes struggled to attune to the dimness and any real sense of direction eluded her.

  At which point she heard their jeering laughter change in timbre.

  Suddenly, without any obvious explanation, their scorn had gone. Instead, there was anger and shock there. It rose in intensity. Even though they must still have been eighty to ninety yards away, she could hear them clearly.

  ‘Fuck!’ the man shouted. ‘What the actual fuck!’

  ‘You stupid bastard!’ the woman shrieked. ‘Didn’t you even look?’

  ‘There’s no fucking glass here, you dumb bitch! Check it yourself!’

  Lucy stumbled forward faster. It was all grey murk, all fog and pain, nothing but grassy emptiness on every side of her. She thought she was crossing the final pitch, but if it turned out not to be that she’d have no hope of collaring them, whatever their problem was.

  But then, a squat, boarded structure emerged through the gloom in front, with a black rectangular aperture in the
middle of it. The changing shed – for the local football and rugby teams. If nothing else, that nailed Lucy’s location. She was slightly off course, but swerving left, she put herself back on the path to the bollards.

  Fifty or so yards along it, she found the CC. There was no sign of the two fugitives – she couldn’t even hear them anymore. But the car was exactly where they’d left it.

  Up close to it, she tottered to a halt, wreathed in breath and sweat, amazed.

  Ribbons of rubber and ply cord hung where the CC’s front tyres had once been. No wonder the duo were so furious, but it was mystifying all the same. There was a hefty dint in the car’s front bumper, from where it had caromed past the old sofa, but that minor impact could not have been sufficient to blow out the front tyres. Likewise, there was no broken glass lying around. As Lucy hurried past the vehicle, she saw that its rear tyres hung in tatters too – and still there were no fragments of glass to explain it.

  Whatever had caused this, it was an unlooked-for boon, but even though the fugitives were now on foot, they could still vanish back onto the Collingbourne if they got far enough ahead. She dashed on down the track, fumbling for her phone – only to find that her pockets were empty. She must have lost it in the crash – her last link to her colleagues gone.

  But there was no time to go back and search.

  Panting, she rounded the corner onto Chorlton Green, and saw them again: about a hundred yards away on her left. Possibly feeling the exertion themselves, they’d now slowed to a walk, albeit a fast one – which might still be enough to get them away.

  Directly ahead of them, a right-hand turn led back onto the estate.

  Lucy blundered in pursuit, still clutching her arm to her chest, briefly imbalanced and as such half-tripping over a kerb, which caught their attention. They were still far ahead when they glanced back, but immediately they started running again, perhaps sensing that they were close to eluding her, that one final effort was all it would require.