Nick Oldham: Nightmare City

It had been a hectic afternoon and looked set to become a bloody night.

The custody office at Blackpool Central police station, always busy even at the quietest of times, was full to bursting. Since noon, over sixty prisoners had lurched through the door. Usually fighting, either between themselves or with their arresting officers, the majority were drunk and often covered in blood, vomit, snot or beer or a combination of all four. They were all males with an age range between sixteen and twenty-four. And all of them were connected with the football match which had taken place that afternoon between Blackpool and Bolton Wanderers at the Bloomfield Road ground.

What had started as a trickle of prisoners before the match became a raging torrent when the visiting side went ahead and won convincingly. Miffed, the home supporters reacted in the only positive way they knew. With violence.

When the final whistle blew, the crowd surged out of the ground and a series of running battles between opposing fans broke out, culminating in a massive head to head confrontation on a large car park adjacent to the football ground. This was only broken up when officers in riot gear waded in and got the message across: the police were not taking any shit today.

Despite numerous arrests from that one incident, the fighting continued unabated. This was because Blackpool, unlike most other towns, has countless attractions which make visitors reluctant to leave until at least a few have been sampled. Thus the Bolton supporters would not be departing until the early hours of Sunday when the night clubs kicked out; it also meant that Blackpool fans would harry them until they went.

All in all, a recipe for trouble.

The fighting gravitated away from the Ground into the town centre pubs and cafes. The police, even though reinforced from across the country, were stretched to their limits.

In the custody office, Acting Detective Inspector Henry Christie was up to his eyeballs in prisoners. He and a team of three Detective Constables had been assigned to help process and interview any prisoners suspected of committing more serious offences.

The majority of youths had been arrested for run-of-the-mill matters such as minor assaults, public order offences and drunkenness. Henry and his team could therefore have spent a relatively stress-free afternoon had he so wished; however he was uncomfortable when it became apparent that the large number of prisoners were keeping uniformed officers off the streets where their presence was desperately needed.

Eventually, after listening to the personal radio going berserk without respite, Henry made an unpopular decision. He volunteered his detectives to assist with any prisoner, no matter how trivial the reason for arrest. This would speed up the process and release uniforms back outside as quickly as possible.

His DCs were disgruntled by the gesture.

‘ Not our fuckin’ job,’ one of them moaned bitterly, ‘bein’ a fuckin’ gaoler.’

‘ Just do it,’ Henry said shortly, ‘and I’m sure it’ll reflect in your next appraisal.’

Henry took his jacket off, rolled up his sleeves and knuckled down to the task. When his reluctant team saw this, they also got down to it without further dissent.

Two hours later, without having had the opportunity to finish a cup of tea, he’d taken so many sets of fingerprints and mug-shots, charged so many prisoners and flung so many bodies into cells, that he’d lost count.

He’d had his fill of skin-headed, foul-mouthed, smelly, lager-bloated youths who wanted to hit him or spit at him. In fact, he was surprised he hadn’t decked several of them already. He was proud of his remarkable, but waning, self-control.

He began to hope that the few football supporters who were still at large would do something horrendously bad — like machete each other to pieces — so that he and his team could be liberated.

Anything to get out of this hell hole.

Prior to hitting the shop they cruised the dark January streets in a stolen Alfa Romeo 164 3.0 Super, scouring the area for any signs of blue uniforms. They also had a scanner tuned into the local police frequency.

Nothing seemed untoward. The meagre resources of law and order were concentrated on rampaging football supporters, making the chance of a stray PC drifting by virtually nil; it would also mean that the response time to incidents would be vastly increased when the alarm went up. Which it would. Very shortly.

They were feeling good, hyped-up and buzzing. Adrenalin and speed coursed through their veins and sinuses like white water, pushing them up to a high plateau from which they felt they could take on the world.

As in the past — and their Modus Operandi detailed this — all four of them were expensively and identically dressed in Dolce amp; Gabbana casuals: white tennis tops with black collars and cuffs, the letters DG clearly visible on their left breasts, grey slacks and two-tone (black and white) shoes. On their wrists they wore identical Dunhill watches.

The weapons they carried, and had shown they were prepared to fire, were a frightening combination which seemed to have been purposely chosen to complement their designer clothes. Each carried a semi automatic 9mm ‘Baby Eagle’ pistol in a shoulder holster; the three who would actually do the business had an Italian SPAS 12 sawn-off shotgun and two mini-Uzis between them.

Whilst driving around they handed a carton of Lucozade to each other which was tossed out of the window when empty. They had found that the bubbles assisted the speedy percolation of the amphetamines into their bodies.

It was 7.27 p.m. Saturday evening. The perfect time.

They were ready to roll.

‘ We know what we have to do,’ the man in the front passenger seat said, whipping up enthusiasm. ‘Let’s get it done.’

‘ Yeah, let’s fuckin’ do it,’ voiced one of the others.

They all fitted their white porkpie hats onto their heads and pulled on surgical face masks, including the driver.

The Alfa pulled up unspectacularly outside the newsagents.

The shop was owned by a couple of middle-aged gay men, formerly actors who had bought it between them when they came to the sad conclusion that if they weren’t careful they would spend the rest of their thespian days as soap-opera extras. They had been running the shop about four years, building it up from nothing into a thriving, profitable business.

Since the advent of the National Lottery, trade had boomed as they were the only Lottery retailer in that particular area of Blackpool. Like other newsagents they had taken to staying open late on Saturday evenings in order to catch as many last-minute players as possible.

Today the shop had taken in nearly two thousand pounds of extra revenue, as a treble rollover and a forty million pound jackpot had brought out punters in ever-hopeful droves.

Three men stepped casually out of the Alfa, leaving the driver sitting at the wheel. They trotted without undue haste across the pavement and filed into the shop.

Inside, two people were queued up at the till, eagerly hoping to get their lottery slips through the machine before the 7.30 p.m. deadline. Another customer was browsing idly through a woman’s magazine in the rack by the door. She looked up unconcerned when the first of the men came through the door. It took a second for her eyes to register with her brain that he was carrying a shotgun. Her mouth popped open. She began to scream.

With an absolute cold lack of compassion the lead man nonchalantly pulled the trigger back and blasted the left side of her face off — cheek, eye and ear. She spun backwards into the magazine rack, toppled over to one side and, in an instinctive gesture, reached out and grabbed a card stand which overturned as she fell to the floor, covering her with rude birthday cards.