Sacrifice

Chapter 2

M1 MANIAC LATEST – POLICE ADMIT FEW LEADS

If it was possible for a newsagent billboard to shriek, this one did.

Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg observed it through the driver’s window of his Fiat while he waited at a traffic light. Homeward-bound commuters darted across the road in front of him, muffled against the February evening. Much of the heavy winter snow had cleared, but dirty, frozen lumps of it lingered in the gutters.

Heck eased his Fiat forward, glancing continually at his sat-nav. Milton Keynes was a big place; it comprised about two hundred thousand citizens, and like most of the so-called ‘new towns’ – purpose-built conurbation designed to accommodate the overspill population after World War II left so many British cities in smoking rubble – its suburbs seemed to drag on interminably. After half an hour, the entrance to Wilberforce Drive appeared on his left. He rounded its corner and cruised along a quiet, middle-class street – though, in the current climate of terror, all these streets were quiet after nightfall, particularly in towns like Milton Keynes, so close to the M1 motorway.

The houses were semi-detached, nestling behind low brick walls or privet fences. All had front gardens and neatly paved driveways. In the majority of cases, cars were already parked there, curtains drawn. When he reached number eighteen, Heck halted on the opposite side of the road and turned his engine off.

Then he waited. It would soon get cold, so he zipped up his leather jacket and pulled on his gloves. Eighteen, Wilberforce Drive seemed almost impossibly innocent. A snug pink light issued through its downstairs window. A child’s skateboard was propped against its garage door. There was even the relic of a snowman on its front lawn.

Heck took his notes from the glove-box and checked through them. Yes – eighteen, Wilberforce Drive, the home of Jordan Savage, thirty-three years old, a married man who managed the local garden centre for a living. The homely environs made it altogether less menacing a scene than Heck had expected. It would be easier than usual to walk up the path and rap on the door here – this wasn’t the sort of place where cops normally got their teeth knocked out. But Heck was still nervous that he might be on the wrong track.

Not that he would ever know sitting behind his steering wheel. But before he could open the car door, another door opened – the front door to number eighteen. The man who stepped out could only be Jordan Savage: his solid build and six-foot-two inches made him unmistakable; likewise his shock of red, spiky hair. No doubt, up close, those penetrating blue eyes of his would be another give-away.

Savage was wearing jeans, a sweater and a heavy waxed jacket. As Heck watched, he moved the skateboard aside, took a key from his pocket and opened the garage door. There was a vehicle inside; a green Mondeo Sport. The registration mark checked out as well. It was the same car the Traffic patrol had become suspicious of and had stopped that dank October night. The Mondeo’s engine rumbled to life, its headlights snapped on and Savage eased it down the drive. If he noticed Heck seated in the car opposite, he gave no indication, but turned right along Wilberforce Drive, heading for the junction with the main road. When Savage was a hundred yards ahead, Heck switched his own engine on and followed.

Tailing a suspect was never easy, especially when you were doing it unofficially – but Heck had performed this task dozens of times. Once they were on the main road, he stayed about three cars behind – not too close to attract attention, but close enough to keep a careful eye on his target. Even so, after two and a half miles, when the Mondeo suddenly veered left onto what looked like another housing estate, he was taken by surprise.

This neighbourhood was less salubrious than the previous one. Its houses were council stock, some terraced with communal passages between them, some with front gates hanging from broken hinges. But its central artery was called Boroughbridge Avenue, and that rang a bell of familiarity. Heck didn’t need to rifle through his notes this time to know that this was where Jason Savage, Jordan’s twin brother, lived.

The Mondeo stopped outside a two-flat maisonette. Jordan Savage didn’t get out, but sat there, his exhaust pumping winter fog. Heck slowed to a halt as well – just as a glint of light revealed that a door to the upstairs flat had opened and closed. A figure trotted down a narrow flight of cement steps.

Even from fifty yards away, the similarities between the two men were startling. Jason Savage, who was a mechanic by trade, wore an old donkey jacket over what looked like black coveralls, but he too was about six-foot-two and had a thatch of bristly red hair. He climbed into the Mondeo’s front passenger seat, and it drew away from the kerb. Heck remained where he was, wondering if they were about to make a three-point turn, though apparently there was another exit from this estate – the Mondeo drove on ahead until it rounded a bend and vanished.

Heck nosed forward. This was better than he’d hoped for, but it could also mean nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time that two brothers had spent an evening playing darts together. That said, when he swung around the bend and found himself at a deserted T-junction, he briefly panicked.

Trusting to luck, he swung his car right and got his foot down. Leafless trees closed from either side as he passed through public woodland – this didn’t look promising, but then it gave way to the high fencing of an industrial park, and about fifty yards ahead a red traffic light was showing, a lone vehicle waiting there. Heck accelerated and, to his relief, recognised the Mondeo. He’d be directly behind them now, but he couldn’t afford to worry about that. His police instinct – the ‘hunch’ honed through so many criminal investigations (or alternatively, ‘his imagination’, as Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper called it), told him he was onto something.

The light turned to green as he pulled up behind the Mondeo, and it swung left. Heck followed, but decelerated a little. They were on another main road, with houses to either side, followed by shops and pubs. More and more vehicles joined the traffic flow. Heck slowed down further to allow a couple to push in front of him. Jordan Savage worked his way across the centre of Milton Keynes, negotiating roundabouts and one-way systems as if he could do it blindfolded. Heck, who wasn’t a local and in fact had never even been to Milton Keynes until he’d arrived here as part of the enquiry team some six months earlier, found it more difficult, though thankfully that ultimate bugbear of the covert tail – a traffic light or stop-sign separating him from his target – never occurred. It almost did as they approached a bustling intersection, but Jordan Savage halted at the white line even though, if he’d floored his pedal, he could probably have made it through the break in traffic.

Heck was only one car behind Savage at this stage. He too slowed and stopped, by chance underneath a large Crimestoppers noticeboard. As well as various telephone numbers, including the hotline to the Main Incident Room at Milton Keynes Central, it carried a massive e-fit of the so-called ‘M1 Maniac’, a frightful figure with hunched, gorilla-like shoulders, wearing a black hood pulled down almost to his eyes, which in turn were half-covered by a fringe of lank hair, and a collar zipped up to his nose. It was impossible to tell in the yellowish glow of the streetlamps, but in normal daylight those eyes would be a startling blue and that fringe a vivid red. To emphasise this, the artist who’d constructed the e-fit had only colourised those sections; the rest of it was in black and white.

Heck followed as the Mondeo advanced through the intersection. The vehicles between them peeled off left, but the Mondeo headed straight on, taking a narrow street between industrial units surrounded by high walls. Past these lay shabby apartment blocks: broken glass strewed their forecourts, ramshackle cars cluttered the parking bays. Heck slowed to a crawl, but still managed to keep the Mondeo in sight. It was about a hundred yards ahead when it turned right, appearing to descend a ramp.

He cruised forward another fifty yards, then pulled up and stopped. He grabbed the radio from his dashboard, switched its volume down and shoved it under his jacket, before climbing out and walking the rest of the way.

The ramp swerved down beneath a monolithic tower block, which, from a rusted nameplate, was called Fairwood House. As Heck ventured down, he kept close to the wall on his right. When he reached the bottom, he halted, waiting until his eyes adjusted. A labyrinthine underground car park swam slowly into view. Unlit alleyways wound between concrete stanchions, or led off along narrow alleys between rows of padlocked timber doors. There was no immediate sign of the Mondeo.

Heck 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 was just looking for a parking space. Once below, he casually prowled, turning corner after corner. There were other exits, he noticed – some were caged off, others stood wide open. 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 garage doors, he saw orange, flickering light ahead.

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. 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.

He went doggedly 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. The Mondeo was now making a second left-hand turn. He chased 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 concrete wall to listen. He fancied he heard them use the word ‘van’, at which his hand unconsciously stole to his radio, though he managed to restrain himself from grabbing it. He risked another peek. Jason Savage clambered 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, stepped through into darkness.

Heck felt a massive tremor of anticipation.

It was several minutes before Jordan Savage reappeared, but when he did he had changed into 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 about twenty yards. 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 with such force that it almost drew blood from his fingernails. When a white transit van rolled into view, he jerked backwards, retreating quickly, fishing his radio from his jacket and easing up its volume.

‘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 to the corner, where he risked another glance at the suspect vehicles.

The white van sat behind the Mondeo, both chugging fumes, while the two twins talked. 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 firearms support arrived …

‘Any change today, sur?’ someone asked loudly.

Heck twirled. One of the tramps had come stumbling around the corner and was standing out in the open with hand cupped. 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 and had discerned there was no threat from them. But it was plainly obvious to anyone that this particular tramp was interacting with someone else.

‘Just a little change, sur,’ he said 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 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. An entry fee, if you loike. The price of visiting our little parlour …’

Heck lunged, 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 fist-sized chunk from the concrete corner in front of Heck, the second whining past. There was an echo of slamming doors.

Heck slid forward to look. The transit van 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, staggering back to 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.

Heck thumbed the volume control on his radio and shouted at the top of his voice. ‘DS Heckenburg chasing! 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 severely injured), 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 miles per hour 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 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 sharply to avoid the pile-up. Instinctively, 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, 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!’

Ahead, the van mounted a pedestrianised precinct, sending benches cartwheeling. 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. 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 the top corner of his windscreen, spider-webbing it.

‘Where’s that 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 lurched 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. 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, Heck barely heard the detonations, but the three rapid gun-flashes were clear enough. With windscreen peppered, the Astra crashed over the outer wall of a civic building with such explosive force, the footings tore out its front undercarriage, so that it finished standing on its nose in an ornamental pond.

‘Police RTA on the entrance to Portway!’ Heck shouted. ‘Ambulance required!’

He wasn’t sure that his instructions were even being heard. The airwaves were alive with frantic messages. In front, the van’s rear doors slammed open and closed as it juddered from side to side. The gunman knelt just inside, slotting another magazine into place.

‘Heading east along Portway!’ Heck shouted. ‘These guys are fucking packed! Get me that Trojan quick!’

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 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 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 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 accelerated again as it found open space, the gunman in the back falling 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.

Heck swore volubly – there would be many, many more road-users on the motorway – and these guys had shown no interest in preserving innocent life.

Before they reached it they hit another roundabout. Here, more police patrols – Traffic unit Range-Rovers – were waiting at the turn-offs. They seemed more interested in holding back the public than in attempting to intercept the target, allowing it to roar away unimpeded, spewing black fumes. Possibly, Milton Keynes Comms were issuing orders for officers to stand off. But Heck had received no such instruction, so he continued the chase, bulleting along the slip road and down the access ramp.