Nightmare City

by Nick Oldham

  He did not have that option.

  The cargo in the back made it impossible. So he was stuck with what he’d got and had to make the effort to get it back to safety.

  He was pleased by the way things had gone at first. He’d got out of Blackpool easily. The problem he next faced was that he needed to refuel the vehicle. The big engine was guzzling petrol faster than a tramp guzzled cider, and he didn’t have enough left to get back to Manchester. Not at the speeds he’d be travelling at.

  The refuelling had been going well.

  McCrory, still stunned, was responding with blind obedience to everything. He made an excellent petrol pump attendant.

  Then the detectives spotted them.

  Dunny had hoped to ram the cop car into oblivion, but the manoeuvre had been nowhere near as effective as intended. This was confirmed by McCrory, who was keeping tabs out the back window.

  ‘They’re there, they’re behind us,’ he shrieked.

  ‘I should’ve wasted ‘em,’ growled Dundaven with regret.

  ‘There’s another cop car with ‘em now,’ McCrory said.

  Dundaven checked the mirror and glimpsed the blue light. He overtook a slow-moving bus, causing oncoming traffic to avoid him, then cut back in and shot through the next set of traffic lights which were on red. In the middle of the junction he had to slam on, twist and turn, accelerate away, keeping going all the time.

  McCrory leaned forwards and peered up through the windscreen.

  ‘Now the fuckin’ helicopter’s there,’ he howled in anguish. ‘We haven’t got a hope in hell, Dunny. We are fucking doomed. On my daughter’s life, we are doomed.’

  ‘Shut yer pathetic hole,’ Dundaven warned him. ‘We are not doomed.’ Well, I’m not, he added silently.

  He mounted the pavement with the two-nearside wheels and overtook a series of cars on the inside, pulling back onto the road inches before he hit a lamp post.

  He was thinking quickly, weighing up the odds which were shortening against them. McCrory was a liability. If they did get caught, he would definitely talk till the cows came home. Though he didn’t know much, he knew a little and the cops could follow up on it. Dundaven made a decision.

  The shotgun McCrory had used on the police car was at McCrory’s feet where he’d dropped it in disgust. Dundaven pointed at it. ‘Put two more shells in that and hand it to me.’

  Without enthusiasm, the other man picked the weapon up. His fingers were shaking as he did what he was told.

  ‘What you gonna do with it?’ he asked and placed it into Dundaven’s beckoning left hand.

  ‘Open yer door just a crack an’ I’ll show ya.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Just fekin do it!’

  McCrory pulled back the handle. The door was unlocked and slightly open.

  ‘This is what I’m gonna do.’

  He put the weapon to McCrory’s head and pulled both triggers. This time when the gun recoiled he made sure he kept tight hold of it.

  McCrory was catapulted out the side door.

  By the time the chase hit the outskirts of Preston, Henry had been joined by a traffic car and the force helicopter. Other police vehicles in the area were converging.

  The Control Room at force headquarters had taken over all communications. Their first instructions to Henry were that he should withdraw from the pursuit immediately and let the traffic car take up the following position.

  It was one of those radio transmissions that, for some reason, Henry did not quite receive. This was one he was not going to give up. He’d face the consequences later.

  He managed to stay in sight of the Range Rover as it bobbed and weaved through traffic. His own driving was more restrained and careful ... but not by much.

  They were about fifty metres behind, with nothing between them, when the passenger door opened and the body of a man seemed to leap out of the vehicle.

  It corkscrewed out, appeared to stick gruesomely to the side of the Range Rover for an instant before suddenly losing grip, flopping onto the ground and bouncing into the road in front of Henry.

  ‘Jesus, look out!’ bellowed Seymour, losing his composure for the first time.

  Henry’s reactions had now become fine-tuned. He had a micro-second to react and steered brilliantly around the body, his car lurching madly on two wheels, close to overturning. The body continued to roll and bounce along behind them. The driver of the traffic car didn’t have a chance in hell of missing it. He did well, but ran over it with all four wheels.

  Henry saw it happen in his rearview mirror. He cringed as he experienced the impact by proxy and watched as the front wheels of the traffic car, then the rear, went over the legs and lower abdomen of the poor unfortunate man.

  The traffic car braked and stopped.

  ‘One down, one to go,’ muttered Seymour. He shifted in his seat and made himself comfortable whilst holding a blood-sodden handkerchief to the cut on his head.

  It looked like being a long one.

  Dundaven’s dilemma was now which route to take. He needed to get back to Manchester if at all possible. If he could get onto the estates in Salford he knew he could shake the cops, helicopter included.

  But Salford was thirty miles away.

  The most direct route was to head to the M6 at Junction 31, then onto the M61. Once on the motorway his options became limited. The police, if they could get enough vehicles together, could box him in, slow him down, make things very difficult. Not that he intended to stop. Ever. Whatever the situation he would keep on going ... but on the motorway, the cops would have the upper hand.

  The other choice was to head into East Lancashire, which he also knew well, being the area where he operated. Blackburn, maybe. It was a big enough town where he could probably abandon the Range Rover and go to ground. Then he’d have to face the consequences from Conroy. Definitely not appealing. He’d rather be arrested.

  He was quickly running out of options.

  Whichever he chose, he knew that if he continued to drive like an idiot, refuse to stop, maybe ram a few more cop cars, and wave the shotgun about, all they would do was follow him at a safe distance. That was their policy. They didn’t like getting people hurt. It tarnished their image.

  He needed to make a decision quickly.

  He was travelling down the steep hill, Brockholes Brow, away from Preston towards motorway Junction 31.

  In his rearview he saw the crunched-up front end of the police car he had rammed on the forecourt, right up there, giving him nothing, pushing him hard.

  Seymour had staunched the blood flow from the cut on his head. He dropped his red-drenched hankie on the car floor where it landed with a squelch. He delicately touched the wound again and winced. Blood dribbled out again. He swore and held the sleeve of his jacket over it and pressed.

  Henry had drawn up right behind the Range Rover on the steep Brockholes Brow. Only a matter of feet separated them.

  Injured though he was, Seymour was full of bright ideas.

  ‘If had a pound of sugar,’ he said laconically, ‘I could lean out of the window and put it into his petrol tank. That’d stop him.’ He had noticed the filler cap had not been secured. Petrol had splashed out on a couple of bends.

  ‘Just check the glove box,’ Henry said urgently. ‘I think there’s a bag of sugar in there.’

  They both cracked up laughing.

  ‘I just love chases,’ Seymour said. ‘Such fun.’

  Brockholes Brow is a very steep hill about a mile long with a speed restriction of 30 m.p.h. They were touching eighty in their descent, whilst dangerously overtaking, cutting in, braking, accelerating. Only just missing other cars, leaving a trail of chaos behind.

  Henry stuck with it all the way, as if he was being towed.

  He didn’t hold out much hope of this bastard being stopped by fair means. The man was obviously - and quite rightly - desperate to get away. He’d shot a cop and God knows what’d happened to the passenger. Henry couldn
’t begin to comprehend that. It was like a nightmare.

  No, he thought. There were only two ways to stop this guy: if he ran out of petrol, or if the police employed foul means.

  Another traffic car joined in behind Henry. There was one positioned at the foot of the hill, ready to pull out in front of the speeding Range Rover.

  As the tons of hurtling machinery hit the flat, the driver of that waiting police car saw what was coming. He decided that discretion was the better part of valour. He wanted to get home for tea, so he sat there and let them all fly past. He tagged on behind.

  The pursuit was taking on the appearance of Death Race 2000.

  For a January Sunday in the north-west of England it had been an excellent day. Warm, sunny, still. One of those special winter’s days - but a winter’s day nonetheless.

  And daylight does not last long in winter, however good the day has been.

  By 4.50 p.m. as the chase approached the motorway, the night was drawing in. quickly.

  Street-lights were flickering on. Car headlights had been on for a while.

  The darkening day was the reason why, at the last moment, Dundaven chose to take the motorway as a route to freedom. Maybe the cops wouldn’t have it all their own way, he thought. Once he got on the motorway he would keep his lights off and drive blind. He knew that a good long stretch of the M61 was unlit and this would be to his advantage. Even with the helicopter and its searchlight up above.

  He hardly reduced his speed on the approach to the first roundabout which forms Junction 31, keeping in as straight a line as possible on the wide, newly constructed road. He raced underneath the M6 bridge, with the River Ribble to his left, negotiated the second roundabout and picked up the M6 south.

  He was feeling pretty confident when he came off the slip road and entered the motorway proper, easily overtaking the police Range Rover which was lying in wait for him.

  Henry switched on his headlights, hardly expecting them to work. He was mildly surprised when both lit up, even the offside one which had been damaged in the collision. It shone at a very acute upwards angle, lighting up the spare wheel on the back door of the Range Rover.

  ‘Handy if the Luftwaffe appears,’ Seymour said.

  They both started giggling again.

  Each had settled into the pursuit now and were enjoying it, in spite of its dangers and the obvious lunatic they were after.

  The traffic car behind Henry now flexed its muscles, pulled out, easily overtook him and cruised alongside Dundaven.

  Silly manoeuvre.

  Or as Seymour put it, ‘The stupid prat.’

  He was not wrong.

  Dundaven looked sharply to his right, mouthed something down at the officers, yanked his steering wheel and barged into the side of the traffic car. The driver fought for control but spun spectacularly away, bounced off the central reservation barrier and the car flipped onto its roof. It continued to spin like a top until a car speeding down the outside lane, driven by an unsuspecting member of the public, smashed into it. Then another.

  Dundaven in the Range Rover, Henry in the CID car, left this twisted chaos behind.

  Seymour peered back but had difficulty making out exactly what had happened in the deepening gloom. He swore grimly and faced front again.

  Henry grabbed the PR and shouted, ‘No one is to try and pull this vehicle again. No one! Relay that to all patrols.’

  From up in the sky the searchlight which hung on to the underside of the helicopter came on. For good reason the light was known as the ‘Nightsun’. It emitted a light equivalent to 30 million candle-power. The whole light was fully remote, controlled from within the cockpit of the helicopter, and the beam width could be focused tightly onto a target. Which it was on the vehicle below.

  The pursuit came off the M6 at the next exit, straight onto the M61, no slowing down necessary.

  Dundaven increased his speed. Within moments the big vehicle was touching 115 m.p.h., courtesy of its 4.6-litre engine.

  By contrast, Henry’s car started to flag. The engine, less than half the size and ten times as worn, tried valiantly, but had extreme difficulty keeping around the 100 m.p.h. mark.

  Dundaven hared easily away. The gap increased with each second. There was no escaping the helicopter, however, which had a cruise speed of 125 m.p.h.

  Seymour confirmed their position to Control Room, and that he believed their ultimate destination could well be Greater Manchester.

  He asked for their patrols to be alerted.

  ‘Unless we get him stopped on the motorway, we’ll lose him,’ Henry concluded. ‘Here, give me the radio again. Perhaps there is something we can do.’

  A traffic patrol officer called Sharp sat behind the steering wheel of his pride and joy: a brand new Volvo estate car, kitted out in the new orange, blue and white livery of the Lancashire Police.

  He was parked on Anderton Services on the M61, literally only metres from the boundary with Manchester and about six miles south from the current position of the chase which was less than five minutes away from him.

  His call sign came up and the Control Room operator asked him a question to which he replied, ‘Yes, one on board.’

  He was given authority to use it.

  It was his lucky night.

  He drove quickly down to the bottom of the services exit road and stopped on the hard shoulder. He turned on every light his car possessed so no one would fail to see him. He scurried around to the tailgate of the Volvo, opened it and pulled out his new piece of kit.

  He was shaking with nervous anticipation.

  History in the making.

  The first officer in Lancashire to use ‘The Stinger’.

  Dundaven drove hard down the motorway, leapfrogging as necessary. Overtaking on the inside or hard shoulder. Followed all the while by that fucking helicopter.

  Resting on his knee was the shotgun.

  Holding the steering wheel with his right hand and left knee, he deftly broke the weapon with his free hand. The remnants of the two cartridges which had killed McCrory were expelled. Without letting the speed drop, he reached back between the seats and felt under the blanket where the shotguns had been secreted originally. He found a box of cartridges and dumped them out onto the bloodstained passenger seat. He skilfully slotted two into the empty barrels and closed the weapon.

  Once loaded, he transferred the steering to his left hand, the shotgun to his right. Then he attempted to do what he always did to people or things which annoyed him.

  He leaned out of the window, braced himself against the doorframe, aimed as best he could and wrapped his forefinger around the double triggers.

  This was happening as he sped past Anderton Services.

  He hardly noticed the place really; vaguely saw the police car with its lights ablaze and thought he might have seen the figure of a cop standing by the car. But that was all. What he was bothered about was getting a good shot at the helicopter.

  The Hollow Spike Tyre Deflation System is its technical name. Better known as ‘The Stinger’, it consists of a lightweight plastic frame with metal spikes protruding from it and is designed, in manufacturer’s parlance, ‘to safely resolve pursuit situations’. By rolling out the frame like a red carpet across the path of a vehicle, the hollow spikes imbed themselves in one or more of the tyres. Gradual deflation and subsequent loss of speed follow. That’s the theory.

  The Stinger had been used in several police forces with a good deal of success, though vehicles had been known not to pick up spikes in their tyres. Lancashire had eventually bought a large number of the systems.

  This was the first time one had been deployed.

  Sharp was ecstatic as he watched the fleeing Range Rover bump over it. He yanked it back in and bundled it into the back of the Volvo.

  Had it done the trick, was the next question.

  Dundaven fired both barrels upwards, remembering to keep hold of the weapon. At the same time he felt a dull ‘thu-dud’ wh
en the wheels went over something in the carriageway. A hump or something. Maybe raised tarmac over a repair. Nothing really.

  The observer in the helicopter saw Dundaven’s head and right shoulder leaning out of the window and the shotgun aimed at them. He informed the pilot and both of them said, ‘What a wanker he must be if he thinks he’s going to even come close.’ They stayed exactly where they were on station above him.

  He missed completely, all of the shot eventually falling harmlessly away.

  ‘That’ll show the fuckers,’ Dundaven said with satisfaction.

  He dropped the shotgun onto the passenger seat and returned his concentration to driving. Not that far to go now.

  The Range Rover slewed to the right.

  He corrected the steering, thinking nothing of it. A gust of wind.

  It happened again.

  ‘Wooaw,’ he gasped. The wheel almost ripped itself out of his grip. This time it was a little harder to control at 117 m.p.h. ‘What the fuck is happening?’ he demanded out loud. Puncture, maybe?

  It veered to the right again. Dundaven held tightly to the wheel, trying to keep the speed up but finding it increasingly difficult. With each second the vehicle became more and more unstable. Next it went left. Something was very definitely wrong.

  With a flash he remembered the cop on the motorway.

  And the bump on the road.

  He groaned angrily and reached for the shotgun.

  ‘The Stinger!’ he hissed.

  Sharp, the traffic officer, had caught up with Dundaven in less than two minutes. The speed was now lower than fifty and dropping.

  The helicopter radioed the apparent success to all patrols.

  Within another minute Henry was back in the chase.

  Seconds behind him was another traffic car and an Armed Response