Nick Oldham - Instinct

‘Gotcha.’

‘Oh, Karl — you planning on staying up here tonight, or going home?’

‘Hadn’t given it a thought.’

‘Spare room at the Christie household if necessary,’ Henry invited him. ‘Just turn up if you need it. Cheaper than a Premier Inn.’

‘Roger that.’

Henry drew the Mercedes on to the forecourt of the petrol station situated just five hundred metres before the motorway junction and parked up close to the exit ramp. An ideal position from which to view passing traffic. The two officers picked up their just-warm meals.

‘I knew Karl would be involved somewhere,’ Henry smirked, then sat back in the comfortable leather seat, watching traffic, not hopeful for a result. ‘Suicide bomber in Blackpool,’ he murmured, taking a bite from his chicken burger.

‘Why bloody Blackpool?’ Rik said, disgusted.

Henry shrugged. ‘Terrorists terrorize. Hitting a target like Blackpool makes the whole country feel unsafe. Up to now, if you don’t live in London you feel pretty secure strolling around your own town. Remember the IRA?’

‘Mm.’ It was a bitter murmur from Rik’s throat.

‘Surprised they don’t do it all the time — make everybody feel threatened all the time. Provincial towns… middle England… low-class places…’

‘I get your point,’ Rik said uncomfortably.

‘I’m sure they have the resources and the willing bodies,’ Henry pressed on relentlessly.

Rik raised his hands in defeat. ‘I get you.’

Henry grinned.

‘So, come on then,’ Rik demanded, making his point with a chicken leg. ‘Have you ever actually sat at a checkpoint after a job and actually seen the offending vehicle drive by?’

‘ Twice, actually. ’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘True. Once, when I was on the crime car and a taxi driver got robbed at gunpoint, the offenders stole his cab and came sailing past ten minutes later. That was a good lock-up,’ Henry remembered with pride. ‘Other time was after a post office robbery… that got a bit messy, but it was a good result.’

‘OK — so twice in thirty years?’

‘You’ve got to cover all avenues.’ And to confirm it, the comms operator informed all patrols that all checkpoints in the division were now covered by static patrols and adjoining divisions were doing the same.

‘So if he tries to get out of Blackpool by main road, we might get lucky,’ Rik said cynically. ‘There’s loads of other ways out.’

Henry looked at him and shook his head sadly, then returned his attention to the traffic flowing by. He could not help but feel a pulse of excitement in his veins. A murder and a suicide bomber in one day. He thought about his ‘Intention to Retire’ report sitting on his computer’s hard drive, waiting to be printed off. Days like this meant it could wait a little longer. Kate’s illness and death had certainly taken the sheen off police work for Henry, but that had been the fault of the circumstances as much as anything. A loved one dying took the shine off everything. However, there was no doubt about it, he still got a serious buzz from coppering, even if he’d had a mental hiccup earlier at the murder scene. But that was something he’d occasionally witnessed in other colleagues when they’d been affected by personal trauma. He just never thought it would get to him on the job, thought he was immune to it.

‘So Carter did a runner?’ Rik said. ‘Think he’s guilty?’

Henry screwed up his nose. ‘Famous last words, but no, I don’t think he did it. He’s a decent lad, really.’

‘You go all soft around him,’ Rik said.

‘He’s had a tough life.’

‘He’s a little shit and I wouldn’t put it past him.’ Rik was very unforgiving, never able to accept that an individual’s upbringing or situation was any excuse for criminal behaviour. It was a point of view Henry knew well.

‘Take your freakin’ blinkers off,’ Henry whined — a slightly ironic statement as at that exact moment a Ford Fiesta with a cracked windscreen drove past them on the main road in the direction of the motorway, one Asian male on board.

Henry’s adrenaline spurted into his already fast-pumping blood flow as he bagged his food and clicked the Mercedes into drive. He moved smoothly off the forecourt, slotting in three cars behind the Fiesta which was in the nearside lane.

‘See,’ Henry said. ‘You get lucky if you do the work.’

Rik glowered, stuffed his uneaten meal back into its package then picked up his PR.

The Fiesta peeled left on to the M55, picking up speed but not excessively so. This made Henry frown slightly. He hung back as cars in front of him moved out to overtake the Fiesta leaving a sixty metre gap between himself and the Ford. The speed edged slowly upwards to the seventy mark as Rik relayed the position to comms. The force control room at headquarters then muscled in and took over the running of the ‘follow’, diverting and deploying traffic and motorway patrols. The FIM made the decision that if the Fiesta stayed on the motorway, a rolling road block would be instigated to box it in and bring it to a halt on an appropriate stretch of hard shoulder when enough patrols were there, together with armed officers.

Henry was instructed to keep his distance, simply report progress, and not to get involved directly.

First to join was a big Volvo traffic car, overtaking Henry and dropping into the space between his Merc and the Fiesta. The speed was still around the seventy mark.

‘Doesn’t really give the impression of a desperate man,’ Henry commented dryly.

‘The Fiesta isn’t a fast car, especially a shit heap like that one,’ Rik said.

‘Granted… but…’

‘Yeah, I know… I’ve been in a car chase with a Reliant Robin three-wheeler going faster than that.’

Another traffic car tore up alongside Henry, then moved ahead so that it was abreast with the first one in the nearside and middle lanes of the motorway, both still hanging back from the Ford. Control room said that other traffic cars were a few miles ahead of them on the motorway, waiting.

Henry’s mobile rang.

‘Henry — it’s Karl.’

‘Yeah — we’re with the Fiesta,’ Henry said. ‘Something odd, though.’ Henry explained the lack of urgency in the demeanour of the supposedly fleeing felon who’d knocked over a cop and been back-up for a suicide bomber. ‘He’s just trolling along at seventy, no evasive tactics, dangerous driving, attempts to force cop cars off the road or anything.’

‘Did you get a look at the driver?’

‘Not a good one,’ Henry admitted, and arched his eyebrows at Rik, who shook his head: he didn’t get a good look either. ‘Just enough to see an Asian male.’

‘Tell them all to take care,’ Donaldson said. ‘Could be a set-up — oh, and by the way, I shot the driver.’

‘You what?’ Henry blurted, but Donaldson ended the call on that note. ‘Shit,’ Henry said.

Another traffic car joined the chase as the convoy reached the exit for Kirkham, but the Fiesta stayed on the motorway, which meant that the next exit was at Broughton, north of Preston, about eight miles distant and eight minutes at the current speed. That was enough time and distance to pull the car if they could get their act together. This was already being discussed over the airwaves and Henry could see this would be the preferred option, rather than allowing the Fiesta to get on to the M6 where life would become much more complicated and far busier.

Henry picked up the PR and put that point across to the FIM, his only reservation being that there were no armed officers present at the moment. That problem was negated when a plain Volvo sports saloon roared up behind with two AFOs on board. Added to that there was another traffic car further ahead, waiting on the hard shoulder. That gave three liveried traffic cars and an armed response vehicle… game on.