Now get me that bloody chopper!’
The Aggies was one of numerous spoil-heaps in Crowley. A former hotbed of coalmining and cotton-weaving, the township was sandwiched between Bolton and Salford, November Division on the GMP register. It had definitely seen better days, the glory years of muck and brass having long departed. Most of its factories were closed, either boarded up or redeveloped into carpet warehouses, while its collieries were totally gone, pitheads and washeries dismantled, even some of the slagheaps and derelict brows flattened and built over, though for the most part these remained as barren, grey scars, sometimes covering hundreds of unusable acres.
The Aggies was typical. A hummocky moonscape dotted with the ruins of abandoned industry, no road led over it. Lying between inner Crowley and Bullwood (an outer district that was almost as depressed as Hatchwood Green), it was rectangular in outline, which meant that someone trying to get clean across it on foot, so long as he knew his way, had a reasonable chance of reaching the other side ahead of someone in a car, as the latter would have to drive the long way around. And it wasn’t as if Lucy could activate the blues and twos. At its lower, western end, the Aggies terminated in a swampy region caused by a polluted overflow of the River Irwell, and a mass of black and twisted girders marking out the remnants of the old Bleachworks, which had burned to cinders twenty years ago. Aside from that, it was wide open down there – there were no other houses, and the stretch of road looping through that section, Pimbo Lane, was unlit, so anyone crossing the Aggies from south to north, especially on the higher section in the middle, would clearly spot the police car’s beacon as it raced around to intercept him.
But if nothing else, the day and the hour were in the officers’ favour. All the way down Darthill Road, they met not a single vehicle coming the opposite way, and as they swerved onto Pimbo, only a night-bus cruised past, and its driver had the sense to pull into the kerb to allow them swifter passage.
Meanwhile, messages crackled on the force radio. They broke constantly and the static was loud, but it was just about possible to glean from them that the AP, who had only just turned eighteen, had suffered facial injuries and wounds to her neck and chest, but that otherwise she was safe and well. Apparently, she’d described her assailant as somewhere in his late twenties, blond-haired and wearing a green tracksuit with white piping. Peabody scribbled this down as Lucy steered them at reckless speed along the swing-back lane.
They arrived in Bullwood five minutes later, Lucy slowing to a crawl and knocking the headlights off as the BMW prowled from one darkened side street to the next. She’d zeroed in on several rows of terraced houses, each one of which terminated at the edge of the Aggies. Superficially, you couldn’t gain access to the wasteland from any of these residential streets – in some cases there were garages there, in others wire-mesh fencing had been erected. But the local urchins enjoyed their desolate playground too much to tolerate that. Thanks to the various holes they’d made over the years, passage through was easily possible if you knew where it was.
The only question now was did their suspect know all that?
Assuming he had come this way at all.
The first three streets were bare of life, nothing but cars lining the fronts of the identical red brick terraces. Most house lights were now off, given that it was almost midnight. But in the fourth street, Windermere Avenue, they glimpsed movement, a dark figure sauntering out of sight into the mouth of a cobbled alley. Lucy turned her radio down to the minimum and indicated that Peabody should do the same, before cruising on past the top of the road and pulling sharply up before the next street, Thirlmere Place.
‘Leave your helmet off,’ she whispered, opening her door.
Peabody nodded and slipped out onto the road, just as a walking man appeared from Thirlmere, turned sharp right and receded away along the pavement. It was difficult to distinguish details in the dull streetlamps, but he wore a light-coloured T-shirt, which fitted snugly around a muscular, wedge-shaped torso. More important than any of this, he also wore tracksuit bottoms, and had a tracksuit top tied around his waist by its sleeves.
If this was the guy, one might have expected him, on hearing the chug of the engine, to try to hide, but instead he was going for “normality”, Lucy realised; rather than skulking in some backstreet and probably drawing more attention to himself, looking to brazen it out by hiding in plain sight – like he was just an everyday Joe on his way home.
They walked after him, padding lightly but gaining ground quickly, hands tight on their duty belts; Lucy clutched her CS canister, Peabody the hilt of his extendable Autolock Baton. When five yards behind, they saw sweat gleaming on their target’s thick bull-neck, dampening his fair, straw-like hair. They could also see his tracksuit properly – it was green with white piping.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ Lucy said. ‘Can I talk to you?’
He walked on, not turning, not even flinching at the sound of her voice.
They closed the gap, at any second expecting him to bolt.
‘Excuse me, sir … we’re police officers and we need to speak to you.’
What Lucy didn’t expect was for him to whirl around and throw a massive punch at her, but she was now so used to these situations that her reactions sat on a hair-trigger. She ducked the blow and wrapped her arms around his waist.
‘MALCOLM!’ she shouted.
Peabody might have been a newbie, but he threw himself forward and crooked his own arms around the assailant’s bullet-shaped head, crushing his Neanderthal features in a brutal bear-hug, and at the same time dropping down with his full weight, dragging the guy to the pavement. The three of them landed heavily, the suspect on top of Peabody, Lucy front-down on top of the suspect. The two men got the worst of it, the suspect primarily as Lucy dug her left elbow into his solar plexus and drew her CS spray with her right hand, ejecting its contents into his gagging, choking face. He squawked and convulsed. With a satisfying click, Peabody snapped one bracelet onto his brawny left wrist.
‘You’re locked up, you bastard!’ Lucy gasped down at him as he writhed, using her right forearm to compress his throat. ‘You’re bloody locked up!’ She put her radio mic to her lips. ‘1485 to Three … re. the attack at the phone-box on Darthill Road. One detained at the junction of Pimbo Lane and Thirlmere Place. Require immediate supervision and prisoner transport, over.’
‘Pig-slut!’ the prisoner choked. ‘You’ll fucking die for this …’
‘What did you say?’ Lucy asked, levering herself backwards now that Peabody, who was clearly stronger and handier than he looked, had got both the prisoner’s hands cuffed behind his back. She grabbed the guy’s throat in a gloved claw. ‘Eh?’
‘Nothing,’ he gagged. ‘For Christ’s sake … I said nothing!’
‘Nah …’ She shook her head. ‘Sounded to me like your response to caution was “okay, I did it … you’ve got me banged to rights”. Did you hear that confession too, PC Peabody?’
‘Absolutely, PC Clayburn,’ Peabody replied. He wasn’t just handier than he looked, Malcolm Peabody, he was in the right job too. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely!’
Lucy groaned with relief as she stripped her gear off in the female locker room: the straight-leg combat trousers, the duty belt with its various appointments, the stab vest, the radio harness,
