There was no immediate sign of the Mondeo, but given the state of this place it could be anywhere and Heck wouldn’t see it until it was right on top of him.
He walked back up the ramp and climbed into his Fiat, releasing the handbrake. It was tempting to freewheel down there with his headlights off, but if he did encounter the Savage brothers, that would look suspicious in the extreme. Instead, he behaved as normally as possible, switching the engine on and driving down as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Once below, he casually prowled, turning corner after corner. There were other exits, he noticed – some were caged off, others stood wide open. His heart sank as it occurred to him that his targets might have exited the place altogether; perhaps they’d sensed they were being followed and had used this car park as a diversion. But then, as he cruised another gallery between rows of padlocked doors, he saw light ahead – and not street-lighting. It was orange, and it flickered.
Firelight.
He proceeded for forty yards, before parking and creeping the rest of the distance on foot. The firelight was reflecting on a wall beyond the next T-junction. But when he edged forward the last few feet and peeked around to the right, he spied a parking bay in which a couple of ragged, elderly men were burning rubbish in an oil-drum. They were bearded and grizzled; one glanced around – his face was weasel-thin, his mouth a toothless maw.
Heck swore under his breath.
He went back to his Fiat. Somehow or other the bastards had eluded him. He slotted his key into the ignition – and bright illumination fell over him. In his rear-view mirror, two powerful headlamps approached from behind.
Heck sank down so low that he couldn’t see the vehicle as it passed him slowly by. But when he peered after it, it was the Mondeo. It reached the end of the drag, turning left. Heck jumped out, running back to the T-junction on catlike feet. The Mondeo was now making a second left-hand turn. He scampered after it, sweat stippling his brow. From the next corner he saw that it had stopped some thirty yards ahead, alongside another row of lock-ups.
The Savage brothers climbed out, conversing quietly. Heck flattened himself against the damp concrete wall to listen. He fancied he heard them use the word ‘van’, which excited him so much that his hand unconsciously stole to his radio, though he managed to restrain himself from grabbing it. He risked another peek. Jason Savage was clambering into the Mondeo’s driving seat, switching its engine back on. Meanwhile, Jordan Savage approached the nearest lock-up, produced a key and, opening its narrow side-panel, sidled through into darkness.
Heck felt a tremor of anticipation the like of which he’d never known.
It was several minutes before Jordan Savage reappeared, but when he did he had changed his clothes, or had put other clothing on over the top: black waterproof trousers and a black hooded anorak. He handed something to his brother through the window of the Mondeo – it looked like a pistol. Heck couldn’t quite identify it, but a Ruger Mark II had been used in all eight killings to date.
Jordan Savage stepped back inside the lock-up and closed the side-panel behind him, while the Mondeo pulled forward. The lock-up’s main door was then lifted laboriously from within. Headlamp beams shot out as a second vehicle emerged. Heck clutched the concrete corner he was braced against with such force that it almost drew blood from his fingernails. When a white transit van rolled into view, he jerked backwards, retreating quickly from the corner and fishing his radio from his jacket.
‘DS Heckenburg on Taskforce, to Sierra Six … over?’
‘
DS Heckenburg?’
came a chirpy response.
‘Urgent message. Immediate support required. Underground car park at Fairwood House. Send as many units as possible, block off all exits … but silent approach. I also want a Trojan unit, over.’
‘Could you repeat the latter, sarge?’
Heck tried to keep his voice low. ‘Get me a Trojan unit pronto! And get me supervision … DI Hunter and Chief Superintendent Humphreys. I’m sitting on two targets I believe to be the M1 murderers, so I need that back-up ASAP, over and out!’
He turned the volume down again as the message went rapid-fire across the airwaves. Lurching back to his car, he unlocked the steering, knocked the handbrake off, and pushed the vehicle forward. As he reached the end of the drag, he yanked the handbrake on and crept on foot to the corner, where he risked another glance.
The white van sat behind the Mondeo, both rumbling and chugging fumes. The two twins were standing together talking. Jason Savage had removed his donkey jacket and put on a similar black hooded anorak to his brother.
If they would just keep the conflab going until the cavalry arrived …
‘Any change today, sur?’ someone asked loudly.
Heck twirled. One of the tramps had come stumbling around the corner and now was standing out in the open with hand cupped. His threadbare garb reeked to high Heaven; grey locks hung in matted strands over his semi-glazed eyes.
Heck glanced back towards the Savage brothers, who were suddenly staring in his direction. A piercing light sprang forward as one of them switched on a torch. Heck jumped back around the corner, but the tramp didn’t move except to shield his eyes.
No doubt the Savage boys knew there were human derelicts down here. No doubt they’d seen them before and had discerned there was no threat from them. But it was plainly obvious to anyone that this particular hobo was interacting with someone else.
‘Just a little change, sur,’ he said again in fluting Irish, sticking an empty hand under Heck’s nose. ‘A couple of pounds wouldn’t go amiss …’
Heck chanced another glance. One of the two brothers, it was difficult to say which, had opened the driver’s door to the van and looked set to climb into it. The other was still frozen in place, still peering along the passage.
‘Get down, you damn fool!’ Heck hissed. ‘Get on the floor now!’
‘Just a little change, sur.’ The tramp tittered crazily. ‘An entry fee, if you loike. The price of visiting our little parlour …’
Heck lunged forward, grabbing the skeletal figure by the lapel of his coat and dragging him out of the torchlight, hurling him to the floor. At the same time he bellowed: ‘Armed police! You’re completely surrounded! Drop your weapons and get on the ground with your arms outspread!’
The response was two thundering gunshots, the first kicking a chunk the size of a fist from the concrete corner in front of Heck, the second careening from the opposing wall, whining past his ear. There was an echo of slamming doors.
Heck slid forward to look. Both brothers must have leaped into the transit van, for it was already haring away down the passage, its tail-lights receding. The Mondeo sat unattended. Heck raced back to his Fiat, stepping around the groaning tramp.
‘’Tis a cruel thing to manhandle a fella so,’ came a feeble voice.
Heck leapt behind the wheel, slammed his key into the ignition and hit the gas. The tramp, only just back on his feet, gave a V-sign to the windscreen, only to be blinded by Heck’s headlights. He toppled backwards as Heck wove the car around him, accelerating past the lock-ups, tyres screeching. Far ahead, the transit van rounded a corner at such speed that its bodywork drew sparks from the opposing wall. Heck took the corner tightly as well. The van was still far ahead; at the end of the next drag, it ascended another ramp into the sodium-yellow glow of the streets.
‘DS Heckenburg … chasing!’ Heck shouted into his radio. ‘Two suspects for M1 murders travelling in a white Ford van, leaving Fairwood House car park by what I believe is the east exit … no registration as yet! Urgent warning! At least one of the suspects is armed, shots already fired … no casualties, over!’
There was nothing more dangerous, nor more discouraged in the modern police, than high speed pursuit of suspects through built-up areas, yet Heck knew he had no choice. For so many months they’d had nothing – no forensics, no CCTV footage, no crime-scenes, no survivors (bar one, who was brain-damaged), no likely suspects at all – and now, suddenly, they had everything … just in front of him, by a skinny fifty yards, yet moving at seventy mph through a busy town-centre.
Horns blared and pedestrians scattered, shrieking, as the white van mounted pavements to cut across junctions. Other vehicles swerved and skidded into shop-fronts, lampposts, or each other; panes of glass imploded, splinters of metal flew. Heck weaved frantically through the chaos. Reaching out of his offside window, he managed to throw his detachable beacon onto the roof of his Fiat. He shouted again into his radio, updating the Comms suite as best he could. By the approaching wail of sirens, other units were close by, but it still seemed likely, at least initially, that the target vehicle would escape. He lost sight of it completely when it sped through a stop-zone on red, other vehicles slewing sideways, one crunching headlong into the traffic light, buckling its pole and bringing the signal head down in a mass of dancing sparks. The cars in front of Heck shunted together, while others turned skew-whiff in their efforts to avoid the pile-up. By instinct, Heck shot down a right-hand alleyway, trying to evade the snarled-up junction, only to see the van zip past the end of the alley, now headed in the opposite direction.
‘DS Heckenburg to Sierra Six!’ he bawled into his radio, swerving into pursuit. ‘Target vehicle doubling back on itself, headed west along …’ He scanned the buildings flicking by, trying to catch a street name. ‘Heading west along Avebury Boulevard. The suspects are Jordan and Jason Savage, and they live at eighteen, Wilberforce Drive and fourteen, Boroughbridge Avenue respectively. I repeat they are armed and highly dangerous!’
Just ahead, the van mounted a pedestrianised precinct, sending benches cart-wheeling. Heck mounted the precinct as well, but the van slid to a halt about forty yards in front, smearing rubber as it pulled a handbrake turn, its engine yowling. Heck only realised at the last second that he’d been lured into a side-on approach. He ducked as a gun-muzzle flashed from the driver’s window, the projectile punching through the top corner of his windscreen, spider-webbing it.
‘Where’s that bloody firearms support!’ he shouted, backhanding the Fiat into reverse, crashing through heaps of boxes.
A local police patrol, a Vauxhall Astra in yellow and blue Battenberg, came hurtling onto the precinct from the opposite end, sirens whooping. The van responded by lurching forward again, bolting down a side-street and veering left onto another main road. The patrol car made immediate pursuit, litter swirling from its wheels. Heck went next, still shouting into his radio.
‘Target headed north along Saxon Gate! Seventy-five plus!’
The van was all over the road as it hit speeds it had never been designed for, sideswiping a litter-bin through a shop window; flying over a controlled crossing, a woman and child running for their lives to get out of its way. The Astra kept pace from behind, only for the van’s back doors to burst open and one of the Savage brothers to crouch there and take aim with his pistol. Over the howling engines and shrieks of tortured rubber, Heck barely heard the detonations, but the three rapid gun-flashes were clear enough. Its windscreen peppered, the Astra crashed over the outer-wall of a civic building with explosive force, the footings tearing out its front undercarriage, so that it finished standing on its nose in an ornamental pond.
‘Police RTA on the entrance to Portway!’ Heck bellowed. ‘Ambulance required!’
He wasn’t sure that his instructions were even being heard. The airwaves were alive with crackling static and frantic messages. In front of him, the van’s rear doors slammed open and closed as it juddered from side to side. The gunman knelt just inside them, apparently slotting another magazine into place.
‘Heading east along Portway!’ Heck shouted. ‘These guys are fucking packed! Get me that Trojan pronto!’
Sirens could now be heard from all directions. A Thames Valley motorcyclist overtook Heck in a swirl of blues and twos. It tried to overtake the van as well, but the van swung right, sending the bike hurtling onto the pavement and glancing along a wrought-iron fence, from which it caromed back onto the blacktop, managing to right itself again – only to flip end-over-end when it struck the kerb of a traffic island, its rider somersaulting through the air.
Heck only glimpsed this in his rear-view mirror as he blistered past. ‘DS Heckenburg to Sierra Six! We now have two police RTAs … one on Saxon Gate, one on Portway! At least two officers injured! Ambulances essential! Still pursuing!’
Ahead, flashing blue lights were clustered across a bridge. He hoped this meant that a stinger unit had been deployed underneath, but the white van rocketed through unhindered. Two more police vehicles, a Vectra and a Vivaro came surging down the slip-road; not soon enough to intercept the target, though they managed to block Heck’s progress. He shouted and swore as he took evasive action.
The gunman in the van’s rear opened fire again, concentrating first on the Vectra. Two holes the size of hubcaps were torn in its bonnet. A third slug missed, and ricocheted from the road surface, blasting Heck’s offside mirror to shards.
The Vectra promptly lost speed, pouring black smoke. Heck accelerated into the gap, he and the Vivaro running neck and neck. On an open, empty road there were manoeuvres they could attempt, boxing the van in, bringing it to a forced halt. But too many members of the public were around. A Royal Mail vehicle spun out of control as the target rear-ended it, trying to ram it out of the way. Heck swerved again to avoid a body-crumpling collision. The Vivaro wasn’t so lucky: it slid across the opposing carriageway, hitting a row of bollards, jerking around on impact, steam boiling from its mangled radiator. The van hastened again as it found open space, the gunman in the back falling from left to right, unable to get a shot off at his one remaining pursuer, Heck.
The two vehicles tail-gated each other as they blazed across a flyover, beyond which signposts gave directions to the M1 motorway.