Nightmare City (10 page)

‘
See you now,’ Henry said affably.

He and Seymour walked out.

Rider remained at the bar. Jacko and Isa materialised out of
the woodwork. Jacko stayed behind the bar. Isa asked him what it
was all about.

He gave a sneer. ‘Nothing - just one of my
tenants. Nothing to worry about.’ But he was
worried, and frightened. ‘Fuck that bastard Conroy!’ he said
between gritted teeth and slammed the bar top with his fist. ‘Fuck
him for getting me involved again.’

Out on the street Henry took the number of the Jag and radioed
it through for a PNC check.

The two detectives got into their car, an unmarked Rover Two
series. ‘He didn’t even ask “Why?” when I mentioned the zoo,’ Henry
said. ‘I find that intriguing. I mean, if a cop asked you if you’d
been somewhere, surely you’d-’

Henry’s audible musing was interrupted by a very garbled
message on the personal radio. A patrol was shouting, but most of
the words were impossible to make out - with the exception of,
‘Assistance! Assistance! Officer down!’

Chapter Six

‘
We’ve to take the stuff back to the warehouse - the deal’s
off for some friggin’ reason,’ Dundaven said to his passenger,
whose name was McCrory.

He ended the call on the mobile and tossed it onto the
dashboard of the Range Rover. They had been mooching around
Blackpool, killing time in amongst all the tourists, pretending to
be trippers themselves, whilst waiting for the call from Conroy.
The theory was that they would look less suspicious on the move
rather than parked up in some back alley somewhere. Two guys
sitting in a motor always attracts attention.

The mobile had chirped whilst they were driving south down the
Promenade from Gynn Square, stuck in the flow of
traffic.

However, McCrory breathed a sigh of relief at the news. ‘Thank
fuck for that, Dunny.’ He was getting decidedly jumpy, trolling
around the place with enough firepower in the back to arm a unit of
the SAS. ‘Let’s get the crap outta here.’

Stopping and searching persons and vehicles is one of the most
fundamental functions of a police officer. Its effectiveness in
preventing and detecting crime cannot be over-stressed.
Stop-searches result in thousands of arrests each year, mostly for
minor criminal and drug-possession offences, as well as more
spectacular ones. The Yorkshire Ripper, the Black Panther and
members of the IRA responsible for planting bombs in the north of
England were all arrested by officers exercising their basic
powers.

Many officers stop-search using the numbers game: if enough
people and vehicles are stopped, the theory goes, sooner or later
there will be a result.

Some officers simply have a nose, an eye, an ear - an instinct
– for pulling the right person or vehicle at the right
time.

Or in some cases, the wrong time.

PC Rik Dean was one such officer. He had three and a half
years’ service, but at the age of thirty-two, had another eight
years’ experience behind him as a Customs and Excise
officer.

Blackpool Central had been his first posting as a cop and he
loved the place. The work was hectic - Blackpool never stood still
- and the social life was even better now that he was
divorced.

He was one of those policemen who just seem to fall over
villains. He didn’t know why - it just happened. When he stopped a
car, odds could be laid he’d find a hoard of stolen goods; if he
pulled a person, he’d find heroin. And he didn’t know why. He’d
look at someone, or a car, his brow would furrow, his head would
tilt to one side and he’d say, ‘Let’s have a look at
that.’

Which is what he did that Sunday afternoon.

He was working the 2-10 p.m. shift. When he paraded on duty he
was given a thick wodge of arrest warrants, mainly for people who
had failed to appear at court, and was told to go and execute a few
of them. The warrants, that is.

He was partnered with a policewoman called Nina. She was
nineteen years old, had only recently finished her initial training
and joined the shift, and was still wet behind the ears, slightly
hesitant and shy in everything she did. Rik had decided she could
execute the warrants to build up her confidence in dealing with
people. At ten o’clock when the tour of duty finished, he might
suggest a drink in the bar. And who knew where that could lead. .
.

Apart from being a cracking thief-taker, Rik was also a serial
policewoman seducer, with five so far to his credit. He couldn’t
resist a woman in uniform, and they seemed unable to resist him
with his trousers down.

Again, he did not know how he did it. Just happened. If he
could have distilled, bottled and sold his policing and womanising
skills he would have made a fortune. Or so he thought and often
joked.

The afternoon had been fruitless and frustrating, made more so
by the way the station was buzzing frenetically with chatter about
last night’s massacre at the newsagents and this morning’s murder
on the beach. Detectives were everywhere, suffused with their own
importance, carrying bits of paper, looking serious, talking in
whispers, attending briefings.

And Rik was envious. He wanted to become a detective and get
involved in jobs like those.

‘
No reply,’ Nina said wearily. She climbed back into the
passenger seat of the Maestro and dropped the warrant onto the pile
in the footwell. ‘That’s eight we’ve tried with no luck,’ she
complained. ‘I’m getting bored with this.’

‘
Me too.’ He started up the engine and the less then elegant
police car moved off. It was 4.30 p.m. and they’d been pounding on
doors solidly since the start of the tour. ‘Let’s kick it in the
head for a while and cruise.’

‘
Yeah, good idea.’

‘
If you see anything you fancy stopping, just give me a nudge,
will you?’

‘
Yeah, will do.’

Rik was not really in the mood to do much. His thoughts were
on enquiries, arresting murderers and big-time crims.

Nina sat back, removed her hat and ran her hand through her
cropped, spiky blonde hair. She heaved a deep sigh which pushed her
bust tightly up against her tunic. Rik saw the rise of the material
out of the corner of his eye and gulped. Nina smiled. She had ideas
for ten o’clock too.

Unfortunately for both, their thoughts of a future liaison
would soon get put on indefinite hold.

Rik drove down the Promenade, coming onto it from the north at
Gynn Square, travelling slowly south. There was a huge amount of
traffic about, as well as pedestrians. From a sluggish beginning,
the brightness of this January day had attracted many day-trippers
into town.

The evening was drawing in now and many were planning to
leave. He drove little faster than walking pace, content to
watch.

‘
We’ll mosey down south, come up by Squires Gate and work back
round to Marton. There’s a couple of warrants for up there,’ he
said.

‘
Suits me fine.’

Rik’s mind was coasting in neutral. He was not interested in
working hard that afternoon. His thoughts were a mixture of how
best to word his application for CID, what might happen between him
and Nina, and how great it would feel to be a detective.

He saw the vehicle for the first time as he reached the
junction with Talbot Square and stopped at the traffic lights at
the head of the queue. From this point southwards, Blackpool’s
Promenade is basically a dual carriageway, two lanes in either
direction.

Rik had pulled up on the inside lane.

He was looking around aimlessly, eyes flitting about between
the task of driving, glancing at female pedestrians and gazing out
to sea.

Policework was way down the list.

The fact that the vehicle which pulled alongside him at the
lights was a Range Rover 4.6 HSE, green with a grey flash down the
side and bull-bars wrapped around the grill, did little to arouse
his curiosity. He cast his eyes over it but thought
nothing.

Nor did he pay much attention to the passenger, a male, early
twenties, who happened to look down at him and catch his eye ever
so briefly. The man turned quickly away and said something to the
driver whom Rik could not see from his lowdown position in the
Maestro.

The lights went to green.

The Range Rover surged ahead of the police car. Rik was not
concerned about that. He was happy enough to let other cars
overtake and speed along as they wished. Catching speeders was the
job of the traffic department, not his.

He did notice that the vehicle had been registered in
Liverpool, the last two letters of the index number being
KB.

That was enough for him to ask Nina to radio in and ask for a
PNC check. With the high volume of cars stolen from that area he
had no qualms in checking any vehicle registered there.

The reply was that it was not stolen, but the current owner
was not listed on the computer. The previous owner had notified
DVLA of the sale of the vehicle two months before. Even that did
not have much effect on Rik - not consciously. Thousands of
vehicles were without current owners. It usually meant they had
recently changed hands and the paperwork was still going
through.

He drew in behind the Range Rover which had stopped at the
next but one set of traffic lights on the Promenade at the junction
with Chapel Street. Tussaud’s Waxworks were on their
left.

Now Rik could see the driver’s face reflected in the door
mirror. The man continually checked the mirror, looking back at Rik
whilst speaking animatedly to the passenger.

That was probably what swung it for Rik. He hardly knew any
drivers who checked their side mirrors as often as this
one.

The lights went to green.

Once again the Range Rover accelerated away.

The Maestro, not built for speed or agility (what exactly was
it built for, some officers had been known to ask) had a problem
keeping up, but the volume of traffic held the bigger car back. By
the time they reached the next set of lights, Rik was behind it
again.

Now Nina was sitting up, taking notice. ‘Something
wrong?’

Somehow the atmosphere had changed. She could sense Rik’s new
alertness, like a charge of static.

He played it down, shrugged. ‘Just gonna pull this guy. D’you
fancy issuing him with a producer?’ He was referring to the form
HORT1 issued by police to drivers for them to take their documents
into a police station to be checked within seven days.

‘
Sure.’ She peered at the Range Rover but failed to see
anything wrong with it. She believed the PNC check she’d done had
been simply routine, nothing else. ‘But why, what’s he
done?’

‘
Nothing ... probably nothing,’ said Rik. ‘We’ll stop them
after they’ve gone through the lights.’ His head was at a slight
tilt, his brow furrowed.

The Range Rover was indicating a left turn at the lights which
would take it onto Lytham Road.

When the lights changed, the big vehicle moved off as though
turning left, but halfway into the junction the indicator’ went of
Land the vehicle veered right and kept going straight down the
Prom.

Rik thought he was in for a chase. He absently fingered the
transmit button Oh his personal radio.

He flashed his headlights a few times and turned on the blue
flashing roof-light and pipped his rather pathetic horn. He wished
they’d fit proper two-tone horns.

Initially the Range Rover did not respond.

Rik was about to call for back-up when, drawing level with the
Pleasure Beach, the Range Rover pulled into the side of the road
and stopped.

Rik pulled in behind, leaving a gap of ten metres.

Neither occupant of the Range Rover got out.

‘
Go and give him a chit,’ he said to Nina. She had already
prepared her clipboard and put her hat on. ‘And smell his breath.
He could’ve had some bevy. I’ll hang on here.’

He had a premonition that the driver might just try and speed
away.

He was right.

When the Range Rover had pulled up initially alongside the
police car at Talbot Square traffic lights, McCrory looked down to
his left and nearly had heart failure. ‘Shit, Dunny,’ he said
through clenched teeth. ‘Cops. Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

McCrory was a small-time thief and drug addict in his early
twenties who was known to his acquaintances as ‘Bits ‘n’ Bats’,
often shortened to ‘Bits’, due to his habit of helping himself to
other people’s property, their bits ‘n’ bats. He had ingratiated
himself onto the lower rungs of Conroy’s organisation without ever
knowing who his ultimate employer was, and had proved himself to be
a trustworthy deliverer of packages, unusually for a druggie. Never
completely aware of what he was carrying, these packages ranged
from drugs, the occasional handgun and cash.

Today he had been hired to assist in the delivery of what was
in the back of the Range Rover to Rider’s club. As he had lumped
the firearms into the vehicle he had palpitations. He had no
illusions about what he’d been required to deliver in the past. He
could guess at drugs, and maybe money sometimes, but he had never
even considered that he might have carried guns before. Just the
action of putting his hand on them made him break out into an
ice-cold sweat. He felt completely out of his depth, but he was
unable to back out. He’d already been hired, received half his fee,
and did not have the guts to say no thanks. That would have made
him appear unreliable. Maybe expendable.