sight that greeted him when he burst through the swing door stopped him in his tracks. A man in the blue overalls of a lorry driver lay sprawled across the floor, blood spreading from his chest across the white lino of the floor. Standing over him, Ali looked up at Ceda. In his right hand he held his pistol, smoke seeping from the muzzle.
‘He went for me,’ he said simply, as if that explained everything.
Against the far wall, three other men backed away in horror. The door to one of the cubicles opened and a man came out, his face frozen in fear.
‘You idiot!’ Ceda roared and made a grab for the pistol. But Ali snatched it out of reach, his eyes warning him not to try again.
‘He insulted me, I said. No one calls me names and gets away with it.’
Without stopping to listen Ceda spun on his heel and made for the exit. ‘Come on,’ he shouted at Ali.
In the space of seconds the whole painfully prepared escape procedure had collapsed about him. The pre-positioned cars, the garage hideaway, the recced routes – everything. All to no avail. Within minutes the police would be on to them. Speed was now their only chance – and even that might not save them.
Don Headley swerved on an impulse into the slow lane, carving up a lorry in the process. The driver blew his horn and Don waved an apology as he veered off the motorway and headed up the exit road into the service station. He had been driving for well over an hour and felt in need of a strong coffee. Because of the exercise with the police he had not had a decent night’s sleep for several days and his eyes had started to blink shut as the motorway unfurled beneath him, its rhythmic pulse on his tyres soothing his nerves and lulling him into a fatal sleep. He had to wake himself up if he was to make it to Hereford in one piece.
Some way back he had wound down his window, letting the cold air blast in. For a while it had worked, but since he was well used to exposure to the elements even that had eventually been blunted by his fatigue. Now, only a substantial intake of caffeine would do the trick.
It was a service station he had used many times before. He had lost count of the number of times he had made the M4 trip between Wales and London, but over the years he reckoned he must have sampled the delights of every service station along the way. Most of them were pretty rough; various companies had bought them as part of a job lot, stamping each one with its own insipid identity. It had got to the stage where Don preferred to take his own sandwiches and a flask of coffee, and simply sit in the car park by himself before filling up with petrol and pressing on. That morning, however, there had been no time for such preparations, so he turned towards the restaurant and shops and looked for a parking place.
There was the usual assortment of visitors, families with young kids, sales reps in their Fords, Vauxhalls and Rovers, the occasional foreign tourist coping with the difficulties of driving on the left, and a variety of coaches and articulated lorries. An icy wind cut savagely across the car park, sweeping in across the surrounding open fields. He hurriedly wound up his window and shivered, deciding that he would need his jacket once out of the car.
He found a vacant space reasonably close to the buildings, swung his car in and switched off the engine. The car rocked in the stiff breeze that howled along the avenues of vehicles, struggling to get in. When he opened the door the wind grasped at it and tugged it wide. Don stepped out on to the tarmac and turned up his collar, then locked the door and set off towards the main entrance. He had gone only a few yards when he heard a commotion and looked up to see two men pushing their way out of the concourse. In their haste they shouldered aside an elderly couple, almost knocking the man to the floor.
‘Bloody impatient bastards,’ Don muttered. Everyone was in such a rush these days.
The old man staggered but managed to regain his balance, turning after the men and shaking a wizened fist at them. He shouted something but his words were lost in the wind.
But something else was happening. Through the double glass doors Don could see people throwing themselves to the floor while others scurried for cover. In his half-awake state, the images refused to order themselves in his brain. It failed to register that there was anything untoward about it all. He reached the doors and only then did he hear the shouting.
‘He’s got a gun!’
‘Someone call the police!’
‘Get a doctor! There’s a man dying in here!’
Suddenly Don’s head cleared. He took one look at the chaos inside the concourse and then spun to see where the two men had gone. A large lorry was just pulling to a halt, obscuring his view. He ran around it and scanned the car park. Two cars were tearing away from the service station, but through a thin screen of bare trees he just caught a glimpse of the men ducking into a waiting car. The engine was already turning over, white plumes of exhaust hanging in the cold air, and the next moment the wheels were spinning as it set off.
Don’s hand went automatically to his chest and felt the reassuring bulge of the shoulder holster. There might just be time to head them off and get a couple of clear shots at the car before it disappeared past the petrol pumps.
He sprinted past the rows of parked cars. People stared at him in surprise and alarm, unaware of what had just happened in the restaurant area. Someone called out a warning and Don narrowly managed to avoid running headlong into an approaching van. He veered to one side, bouncing off the sides of it and regaining his balance with difficulty. On the far side of the car park he could see the car and its occupants accelerating away. It was heading in the opposite direction to the other two cars. In Don’s mind the connection was quickly made. They were all part of the same team. He had seen that the men were Asian and could hardly believe what his instinct told him: that they were the ones from the Bramley Road incident.
However, unlike the two cars that had screamed away towards the exit, the one he was running after was making for a barrier that led out of the rear of the service station on to a minor road. It was a restricted entrance for use by the service-station staff only, and from it access could be gained to the local town and road network. Whoever was in charge of the car obviously had his head screwed on. The other two, by taking to the motorway, were in effect entering a potential trap. The next exit from it was several miles away and by then the police might be able to have a cordon in place. At the very least they would be able to position observers who could report on the cars’ direction and progress to enable armed officers to pursue them.
The other car, by taking a back road, was not restricting itself in any such way. It would be able to go in any number of directions and so multiply its chance of escaping.
Don covered the last few yards to the end of one of the rows and as he reached the last parked car he skidded to his knees and drew his 9mm Browning pistol. Holding it in a two-handed combat grip, he steadied himself against the car door and brought the gun into the aim, waiting for his target to appear and enter his sights.
There was the sound of squealing rubber and the car roared into view, the tyres spinning as the driver swung it round towards the barrier. Don waited until he had a clear line of sight and then squeezed off a rapid double tap at the rear window, where he was able to make out the silhouette of a man sitting upright in the centre. He saw the glass frost as his bullets found their mark but the car continued towards the barrier.
He dropped his point of aim to the fuel tank and was about to fire another double tap when
