The Follow

by Paul Grzegorzek

  ‘This is pointless!’ Rudd complained as we passed the house for the fourth time.

  ‘Have you got a better idea?’ I asked, just as frustrated as him.

  ‘No, but… Hang on, what was that?’ I turned up the radio and listened to the message that I had tuned out.

  ‘…have the vehicle, southbound on Grand Parade. It’s four up. Permission to stop it, over?’

  ‘Negative 107,’ replied the controller, ‘we are not to divulge police interest. Keep obs on the vehicle and do not attempt to stop. Received?’

  ‘107 roger. It’s swinging back round now, heading north up Grand Parade towards London Road.’

  Rudd immediately floored the accelerator and I flicked the lights and sirens on. We sped through the traffic on Dyke Road and headed towards the town centre, barely braking as Rudd hurled us around corners at seventy miles an hour.

  ‘Charlie Papa 281, comms,’ I called up over the radio, trying to sound calm despite the adrenaline the drive was flooding me with.

  ‘281 go ahead.’

  ‘281, we’re making from Dyke Road in a plain vehicle, can we get updates on that vehicle’s location until we get there please?’

  ‘Roger that. 107 have you still got the vehicle?’

  ‘Yes yes. It’s now stuck in traffic waiting to head up London Road toward Preston Circus. We’re about three cars behind and I don’t think he knows we’re following.’

  Rudd had been following the conversation and now drove down Old Shoreham Road towards Preston Circus. If the car came out that way it could only go north and we would be able to pick it up easily. We got down to the traffic lights opposite the fire station in less than a minute, turning off the lights and sirens well before we got there. The last thing we wanted to do was spook a car full of people that cut dealers up for fun.

  Rudd pulled round the corner and we stopped just past Barclays bank, facing north. The vehicle would have to come past us and it would look perfectly natural if we pulled out after it.

  ‘281, we’re in position north of Preston Circus, can you ask 107 to back off once we’re sure it’s coming this way?’

  ‘Roger. 107?’

  ‘Yeah, 107 copy the last. The vehicle is still travelling north on London Road, just passing Richer Sounds now.’

  I looked in the mirror and could just see the Cherokee pulling up at the traffic lights. I nudged Rudd who nodded and gripped the steering wheel nervously. The marked car pulled up next to the Cherokee at the lights and even from here I could see the young officer ostentatiously not looking at the occupants of the other vehicle. I shook my head and reached for the radio to tell him to act natural. It’s instinctive to look at another vehicle when you’re at traffic lights, particularly if you’re in a police car and I really didn’t want these guys spooked; they were too dangerous.

  Before I could press the button on the handset, it all went wrong. The Cherokee suddenly pulled out through the red traffic lights and took an illegal left up towards New England Hill. 107 immediately put on his blues and followed, leaving me and Rudd cursing as we tried to turn against the oncoming traffic.

  ‘Drive up on the pavement!’ I directed Rudd, and we shot around the corner past startled pedestrians who leapt out of the way.

  Once on New England Hill I could see 107’s lights up ahead of us under the bridge and towards Old Shoreham Road. We shot up the hill with our lights off, not wanting to show the car out if we caught up. The radio suddenly blared into life.

  ‘Charlie Charlie 107, I’m in pursuit of the vehicle heading west on Old Shoreham Road. Request permission to continue follow.’

  ‘Negative 107, pull off and leave the vehicle, we have plain units in the area. Acknowledge last please.’ There was silence on the other end of the radio. Whoever was driving 107 obviously wanted some glory and was willing to get it at the cost of our job.

  ‘Catch up with that idiot will you?’ I asked Rudd, and then clutched desperately at the dashboard for support as he made a sharp turn at almost ninety.

  I could see the two vehicles ahead, both tearing up towards Dyke Road. They were going at least twice the speed limit and I was worried what would happen when they hit the traffic lights ahead. By the time we reached the brow of the hill we were only two car lengths behind and I heaved a sigh of relief as the lights turned green. We shot through the lights in convoy and then the Cherokee braked suddenly, almost causing the marked car to plough into it. Rudd braked rapidly and we screeched to a halt with a squeal of tyres.

  I hung on for dear life as we just missed the back of 107 and saw out of the corner of my eye the driver’s window of the Cherokee roll down. Even though I could see what was coming I had no time to shout a warning as a pistol was extended through the window and two shots went off, shattering 107’s windscreen and making Rudd and me scramble for cover behind the dashboard.

  Huddled in the footwell, I threw my hands over my head and prayed that no more shots would follow. I was rewarded with the sound of the four-wheel drive screaming off again, so I opened the door and ran for 107, hoping against hope that the driver was unharmed.

  26

  I GOT to the other car in record time and yanked the door open on the driver’s side. The officer inside was young and I couldn’t put a name to him. He was also bleeding from glass cuts to his face and he stank where he had voided his bowels but otherwise he was unharmed.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked, gripping the hand he still had glued to the steering wheel.

  He turned to look at me, his eyes so wide they seemed about to fall out. ‘They shot at me!’ he whispered hoarsely. Tears began to fill his eyes and trickle down his cheeks.

  ‘Look, you’re okay. Come on; let’s get you out of the car.’

  He nodded and let me pull him from the vehicle. His eyes were still the size of saucers and probably would have been larger still if he’d seen the bullet hole in the headrest, only millimetres away from where his head had been.

  ‘What’s your name, mate?’ I asked, trying to bring him back from whatever dark place he was in.

  ‘Me? Gavin. You’re Gareth Bell, aren’t you? We worked together on that drug job last year.’

  I nodded, not remembering him or the job. ‘Yeah, I remember. Look, we’ve got people coming; you just sit here with me.’ I led him to the kerb, ignoring the angry beeps of protest from other drivers who wanted to get past. I looked over to Rudd who was on the radio in our car and pointed to Gavin, then wiggled my hand to indicate he wasn’t doing so well. Rudd held up two fingers, which I took to mean that help was only a couple of minutes away.

  My relief at Gavin not being too badly injured was beginning to give way to anger at his stupidity. He had been forbidden to carry on the follow but had done so anyway, resulting in him being shot at and losing our chance at catching the Cherokee. After this they would no doubt burn it out somewhere and pick up a new vehicle.

  ‘Do you smoke?’

  Gavin began fumbling in his pockets and produced a battered packet of Marlboro’s and a lighter.

  ‘Good man.’ I took two out of the packet and lit them, passing one back to him. I could hear sirens now; it sounded as though every emergency vehicle in Brighton was converging on our location. I stayed sitting with Gavin, one arm around his shoulder as he began to shake, and let Rudd get on with everything else.

  The cuts on the officer’s face were superficial, little more than scratches really, and I checked carefully to make sure that he didn’t have an extra hole anywhere that shock wasn’t letting him feel. By the time I’d finished, an ambulance arrived along with half a dozen police cars and a fire engine. The paramedics took Gavin straight to the ambulance and I waved him off, standing up and brushing myself down as Derek Pearson arrived on scene looking more than a little harried. He made a beeline straight for me. ‘Well?’ he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at me as if it was all my fault.

  ‘He’s fine sir, just a few cuts and shock.’

&nbs
p; ‘What happened?’

  I gestured towards the damaged car. ‘He was ordered to pull off the follow and he didn’t. They got as far as here and obviously decided that they didn’t want to play anymore. They pulled up and fired two shots out of the driver’s window with a pistol. By the time we poked our heads back up they were gone.’

  He shook his head. ‘No one shoots at one of my officers in my city and gets away with it. Get yourselves back to the Nick and write it up. Don’t miss anything out. I want these men, Gareth.’

  I nodded and went to collect Rudd. We had to leave our car there as part of the crime scene so we blagged a lift with a marked vehicle. The radio was alive with the sound of units, mostly armed response, calling in as they searched frantically for the Cherokee before it was dumped.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked Rudd as we climbed the stairs to the office. We’d both said nothing on the journey back. Even though we hadn’t been the target of the shots it was still sobering to be so close to an incident like that.

  ‘Yeah, fine. I reckon Kev’s going to tear us off a strip though.’

  ‘Why? We didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘I know, but what should have been a simple follow turned into a bloody shooting.’ My answer died on my lips as we walked into the office to see Kev standing at his desk, one hand on his hips and the other pointing to the inspector’s office. We dutifully filed in and waited until he was seated before speaking.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, doing his best not to look angry and failing miserably.

  Rudd explained this time and, by the time he had finished, Kev was looking more concerned than angry.

  ‘Okay. It sounds like you did everything you could. At least no one was seriously hurt. We’ve got units out scouring the city for the vehicle so if it’s still around we’ll find it. Make sure you write it all up properly, this is going to be going right up to the top.’

  We both nodded in unison and went to our desks. The office was almost empty, it now being after four, and we were blessedly free from enquiring colleagues as we bent our heads over our desks and got on with it. It took almost two hours to get everything done, making sure that absolutely everything we could remember was down on paper. As we left the office, Rudd invited me out for a beer.

  ‘Thanks mate, but I’ve got other plans.’

  He waved and left me to it. I pulled out my phone and hesitated before dialling Sally’s number. I wasn’t sure what sort of reaction I would get if I called, but I missed her and I needed her company tonight. It rang a good dozen times before she picked up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Uh, hi, it’s me. Are you free tonight?’

  There was a long silence, then, ‘I suppose so. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’ve literally just finished work. Those guys in the Cherokee shot at an officer in front of us today.’

  ‘Shit, is he okay? Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, everyone’s fine. I could really use your company though.’

  ‘Of course. Come on over.’

  I drove straight to hers, only stopping to pick up a couple of bottles of wine on the way. Despite her concern on the phone I was still nervous as I rang the doorbell, almost jiggling from foot to foot as I waited for her to answer. When the door finally opened, however, my nerves vanished and I stepped into Sally’s arms and wrapped mine around her. The contact was more than welcome after a day of death and violence and I felt myself relaxing as I held her.

  ‘Uh, Gareth, are you planning to let go and come in at any point?’

  I released her with a laugh and closed the door behind me. ‘Sorry, it’s been one hell of a day. You look lovely.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  ‘You always look lovely.’

  ‘Creep.’

  I smiled and went through to the kitchen to find a corkscrew. I might not be entirely out of the doghouse yet, but I was pretty sure that things were looking up.

  27

  THE NEXT morning found me back at my desk looking at reports. It seemed that the drugs that I’d found last week coupled with the stabbings had screwed with Davey’s network, and the team headed out to check the streets and confirm what we were reading.

  As the intelligence suggested, Davey’s crew were nowhere to be seen. We spent the day poking around and calling in favours to find out where they were hiding. No one on the streets wanted to talk to us, however, so just after four I took a car over to the hospital to see Jimmy and give him the good news. He was sitting up in bed when I got there, propped up on several pillows and watching a film on a portable DVD player. As I approached the bed he looked up and flicked it off.

  ‘Thank God, that’s the third time I’ve watched that film in the last week.’

  ‘Oh I see, so I’m only a diversion from your endless boredom now?’

  ‘Stop being so bloody melodramatic. That’s always been your issue Gareth, you never appreciate other people’s problems. Take mine for example. I’m stuck here with a hole in my lung that isn’t healing properly, bored to tears because my so-called best friend can’t be bothered to bring me any new films, and he makes the papers, gets stabbed, and I have to find out about it from aforesaid newspapers. That’s nice, that is!’

  I sat down on the bed hard enough to make him wince. ‘Jesus, Jimmy, how long have we been married? You go on worse than Lucy did!’

  He looked away for a moment, as he always did when I mentioned Lucy. He’d always had a thing for her, and in fact he had been the one who’d introduced us after he met her in a club one night, to his eternal annoyance. She’d seemed interested in him until I came along but had shaken him off and clung to me immediately. I still wasn’t sure why; not that it mattered anymore.

  ‘So,’ I said, trying to think of something to move past the awkwardness, ‘you saw the newspaper article then. What did you think?’

  ‘You should have shaved your legs first.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with hairy legs, they’re manly!’

  ‘Not when you can’t see the skin underneath.’

  ‘They’re not that bad!’

  We both grinned, feeling a shared camaraderie in knowing but never mentioning the whole Lucy thing, as if it drew us closer instead of being a problem. Every time it came up, we would dive headlong into a ridiculous argument about anything, just to let the moment pass.

  ‘So what else have you been up to?’ he asked, and I filled him in on the events of the last few days. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said when I finished explaining, ‘I’m out of the game for a few weeks and the whole division gets turned upside down. Did SOCU have their job logged anywhere?’

  I shook my head. ‘Of course they didn’t, they’re cowboys. They had it logged with their own people but they don’t trust us mere mortals back on division, so we wouldn’t have known even if we had called it in.’

  It wasn’t fair calling SOCU cowboys as they actually did a bloody good job, but I was annoyed and venting and Jimmy knew it.

  ‘So how did it feel?’

  ‘The coke? Horrible. It was like being on a fairground ride that doesn’t stop. You know what I’m like about being in control and I couldn’t shut it off.’ I shuddered at the memory.

  ‘Do you think that’s the last we’ve seen of Davey then?’ he asked, changing the subject again.

  I shrugged. ‘I hope so, although I suspect that he’ll surface again like the bad penny he is. He’s too much of a psycho to go down gracefully. If those shooters yesterday were his, they’ll probably be long gone as well.’

  ‘What about the streets; has it made a difference?’

  ‘Nah, it’s still crazy out there and only getting worse. It always will be, you know that. Every other dealer in the city has just started expanding. Nature abhors a vacuum.’

  Which was the problem with Brighton. You can dent the supply, or the demand, but never both at the same time, which is what we need to do to cut the number of users and dealers and hence the crime rate. Someone once told me that if someone has a £
100 a day habit, they steal £10000 worth of stuff a month in order to feed it. So you do the math and work out where most of the money from burglaries, robberies and other thefts goes. Most of the users only steal to get their next fix, so remove the supply for long enough and the users will go elsewhere to find their drugs. But if you only strike at the dealers, the demand is still there and someone will always be willing to turn that to their profit despite the risks.

  ‘So you did come to cheer me up then?’

  ‘Sorry Jimmy. I just get so bloody fed up sometimes. It feels like we’re doing all this for nothing. We nick one lot and another just steps in. It’s like trying to put out a fire with a water pistol.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me mate, I work there too, remember?’

  ‘Yeah I know. Anyway, that’s enough being miserable. What have the docs said about your lung?’

  His expression immediately made me wish I hadn’t asked. ‘They think I’m developing pneumonia so they’ve got me on all sorts of antibiotics. I can’t eat without being sick and to be honest with you I’m just bloody fed up and I want to go home!’

  I reached over and squeezed his arm affectionately. ‘I know mate, but just stick it out. I’m sure they’ll kick it into touch soon and then you’ll be out and about and getting into trouble with the rest of us, I promise you. Look, I’ve got to go mate, I’ve got things to do, but I’ll come see you for longer in the morning and bring you some different films, okay?’

  He nodded and I shook his hand as I got up and left. I walked back past Bramber ward to see if Billy Budd was still there, only to discover that the bed he had been in was now occupied by an elderly gentleman. At least that was one problem solved.

  I left the hospital via the main entrance, then turned and walked back into the shop to pick up a paper. I wanted to see if anything had made the nationals yet about my drug bust or the shooting yesterday.