Sixty
Chopra was spot on about the road, which was largely unmarked and peppered with potholes and refused to stay straight for more than a few hundred yards at a time.
There was now precious little light left.
This, combined with the fact that Cheshire was driving every bit as fast as he had to, meant that McDougall spent most of the time clutching the small handle above the passenger window, while Miller was forced to brace himself against the dashboard every time Cheshire threw the van around a corner, and let out an involuntary yelp on several occasions.
They were still six or seven miles short of their destination when Cheshire nodded towards the rear-view mirror and Miller turned to see the lights moving fast towards them. Not a pair, because they were too far apart, so more likely two single headlights from separate vehicles.
The drone had spotted them, too.
‘Looks like motorbikes,’ Chopra said.
‘Maybe it’s a really wide car,’ Miller said.
‘Could be nothing …’
Now they could hear them too, the roar of powerful engines as the two bikes accelerated behind them.
McDougall turned to look. ‘It’s not nothing,’ he said.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Cheshire asked. ‘I’m going about as fast as I can go.’
‘Try to keep calm,’ Chopra said.
Cheshire’s eyes flashed to the rear-view again. ‘Easy for you to say.’
‘Just slow down a little and move inside as far as you can. All being well, they’ll simply go past.’
‘I don’t think they want to go past,’ McDougall said.
‘Let’s wait and see.’
They did not have to wait long. While one bike stayed back, the other accelerated rapidly until it was level with the van.
Its rider, dressed head to foot in black and wearing a helmet with a blacked-out visor, raised one arm to show that he was carrying a gun, then used it to signal to Barry Cheshire, instructing him to pull the van over to the side of the road.
Cheshire did what he’d been told, and turned the engine off.
‘Well, unless they’ve got a really urgent parcel to deliver, I think we might be in trouble,’ Miller said.
The rider climbed off his bike and walked around to the passenger side of the van. He tapped on the window with the pistol, and once it had been lowered, he ordered McDougall to get out. ‘Nice and slowly …’
‘Whatever you want, pal.’ McDougall opened the door and stepped out with his hands raised, the handle of the gun just visible, tucked into the back of his trousers.
‘Oh,’ Miller said, very quietly. Though there was little he could do about it, he could not ignore the powerful sense that things were about to go spectacularly pear-shaped.
The rider shouted at Miller and Cheshire, ordering them to stay where they were, then turned his attention back to McDougall. ‘Now, I want you to walk to the back of the van and open the doors.’
‘I don’t know what you think’s in there,’ McDougall said.
‘Oh, we know exactly what’s in there.’
Miller watched through the open window as the biker pointed with the gun and he and McDougall disappeared from view, walking towards the back of the van. A few seconds later, Miller heard a single shot and, a few seconds after that, he heard an awful lot more. A rapid exchange of gunfire.
Then everything went quiet …
Until Chopra burst back in on the comms, panicky and ranting about compromised operations and crisis protocols.
Miller ignored him.
He turned to see that his travelling companion was white-faced and staring straight ahead; breathing rapidly, with both hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel.
He leaned across and laid a hand on the man’s arm.
Working out why Barry Cheshire might get a little upset at the sound of gunfire was far from being the trickiest piece of detective work Miller had ever done.
He ignored Chopra’s babble for another few seconds, then shuffled across the seat and stepped down on to the grass verge.
A figure lay still, hard against the rear wheel.
A moment later, Miller heard a motorbike starting up and watched the second rider come tearing out from behind the van and ride away into the distance. He waited until the bike’s tail light had gone before kneeling down next to the body of the man McDougall had shot.
He gently lifted the visor – which had a neat bullet hole at its centre –and stared down at what was beneath it. There was not a great deal left of the man’s face, but there was just enough to be instantly familiar.
Pixie. Or Dixie.
Whichever one it was, the surviving twin had lost his shadow.
So, somehow Ralph Massey had found out what was in the van and dispatched his boys to hijack it.
Miller wondered which would upset Massey more: their failure to do the job he’d sent them to do or the fact that one of them had died trying.
He had a fair idea, but didn’t have time to give it too much thought.
He stood up and moved cautiously towards the rear of the van. It was almost pitch black, so he used the torch on his phone to navigate his way across the slippery verge. ‘Google … ?’
Malky McDougall was splayed out near the rear doors and the hand he had pressed to his neck was doing very little to staunch the blood that was leaking through his fingers.
‘Ach, bugger,’ he said.
Miller hurried back to the van in search of something he could use to stop the blood, but by the time he returned, clutching a dirty rag he’d found in the glove compartment, it was clear it was going to be of very little use. He knelt down next to McDougall’s head and did his best anyway.
Tearing aside the blood-soaked collar, he glimpsed a simple tattoo: a heart, inside which Malky’s name was entwined with Jacqui Cutler’s. Clearly, the man’s devotion to his employer had gone beyond the purely professional.
‘Lucky shot,’ McDougall croaked. ‘Done for me …’
It was obvious that McDougall understood which way things were going, and how rapidly, but Miller did what he was supposed to do and held up his phone. ‘Don’t be daft. I’m calling an ambulance.’
‘No point,’ McDougall said, fighting for breath.
‘I know, right?’ Miller put the phone away. ‘Bloody waiting times.’
‘Tell Jacqui I’m sorry.’
‘Yep, will do.’ Miller would have liked to know what McDougall was sorry for, but guessed that now might not be the time to ask.
‘And tell your man there in the van that it was nothing personal. Me going round to kill him that night.’
‘That’s a very thoughtful gesture, Google, but can I just check … is this a roundabout way of confessing to the murder of Darren Grant?’
‘Aye, if you like.’ McDougall’s eyes rolled back into his head. ‘Why the hell not?’
Miller supposed that, as last words went, they were as good as any.
When he climbed back into the van, Chopra was still on the line and sounding even more panicky than before.
Thanks to the overhead view provided by the drone, he obviously had a reasonable idea of what had just taken place, but was now demanding a full status update.
Between snatched gulps of air, Cheshire was telling him as much as he knew, which, aside from hearing a fair few gunshots, wasn’t a great deal.
Miller took over. ‘That could have gone better.’
‘Emergency services are on their way,’ Chopra barked.
‘Tell them there’s no need to rush.’
‘McDougall?’
‘It could certainly have gone better for him.’
‘Any ID on the dead biker?’
‘Well, it’s one of two,’ Miller said.
‘We need to abort.’ Chopra sounded more measured suddenly, keen to assert control of the situation. ‘Close the operation down right now.’
‘That feels a bit … hasty,’ Miller said.
‘Hasty?’
‘Yes, because we’ve still got a van full of drugs and Battersby still has Justin Cutler. So I vote that we press on.’
‘What you “vote” is neither here nor—’
‘Agreed.’ Cheshire leaned close to the microphone. ‘We should press on.’
Miller nodded to Cheshire, who started the engine.
‘Don’t get me wrong, sir … I can definitely see where you’re coming from.
I mean, yes, leaving two bodies by the side of the road is obviously a bit messy, and no it’s far from ideal operationally speaking …
but it’s not the end of the world, is it? ’