Gene gave the Magnum a flick of the wrist. Ka-chunk! The barrel snapped back into the housing, ready for action.
From the twilight shadows at the far end of the road there came a clamour and a roar, as if a rampaging, diesel-powered dragon were approaching.
Gene rested his finger on the trigger of the Magnum. He stilled his breath. He focused. He flexed and limbered his shooting arm; tilted his head; made the vertebrae in his neck go crack.
And then Gertrude appeared, rattling out of the shadows at speed, making straight down the road directly for Hunt. Its bank of headlights flared, turning Gene into a motionless silhouette.
‘Guv, that thing’s going to slam straight into you and just keep on rolling.’
‘It will not pass,’ Gene murmured, almost to himself.
‘It’s going to flatten you, Guv, and the Cortina!’
‘It – will – not – pass!’
Gene raised the Magnum.
The truck blasted its horn, sending a ragged spear of steam stabbing up into the darkening sky. Gene replied with the Magnum. Fire spat from the muzzle. Gertrude’s windscreen exploded. A second shot cracked the radiator grille and thudded into the engine block. A third, fourth, and then a fifth ripped one after the other through the front axle.
But it was the sixth that delivered the sucker punch. It smacked through the bonnet and struck something – something vulnerable, something vital – deep inside Gertrude’s rusty bodywork. The truck screamed like a transfixed vampire. The cabin lurched forward as the axle beneath it gave way and flew apart, busting the chassis and driving the front bumper into the tarmac like a plough. Sheer weight and momentum carried the broken-backed monster forward a dozen or more yards, gouging a furrow in the road and throwing up showers of stones and debris, until, with a shuddering crack, the truck jolted to a stop. The man in the mask came catapulting through the jagged remains of the windscreen and fetched up in a ruinous heap at Gene Hunt’s feet. The cargo of old fridges and metal piping crashed and smashed like a steel wave that broke over the cab and cascaded deafeningly all over the road. Gertrude’s mortally wounded engine spewed a noisy jet of steam and then died. The headlights went dark. The scattered metallic debris came to rest. A last shard of glass fell from the windscreen and tinkled onto the road. Silence settled over the twilit street.
Gene glanced about at his handiwork, nodded to himself, and blew the smoke from the muzzle of the Magnum. Another job well done.
‘You are mad,’ said Sam, shaking his head slowly as he looked from the gun to the shattered remains of the lorry, from the bloodstained man crumpled at the Guv’nor’s feet to the Guv’nor himself, standing there in his camel-hair coat and black-leather string-backs, wreathed in a slowly arcing aura of gun smoke. ‘This isn’t law enforcement – this is some sort of crazy macho playground you’re romping around in, you and your bloody Magnum. This isn’t what I signed up for. This isn’t the job I know. What the hell am I doing saddled with you, Gene?’
From the corner of his mouth, Gene replied, ‘Go on home to your kids, Herb.’ He leant over the groaning man sprawled at his feet, kicked away the now-dented licence plate bearing the name Gertrude, and said, ‘And as for you, sunshine, you’re nicked – what’s left of you.’
CHAPTER TWO: SLEEPING BEAUTY
The truck thief lay motionless in the intensive care ward, a cluster of clumsy plastic tubes tied with bandages to his nose and mouth. Beside him, a ramshackle tower of boxlike machines wheezed, chugged and beeped, keeping the lad in the bed on the very cusp of life. A nurse checked a paper read-out covered with wiggly lines, twiddled a fat dial or two, and fidgeted with the hem of the starched white sheets.
‘You’re not relatives,’ she said to the two men standing at the foot of the bed. ‘What are you? Police?’
‘DI Tyler,’ said Sam. ‘This is DCI Hunt. We’ve just, um, arrested this man.’
‘How? By dropping an anvil on him?’
‘He pranged his stolen motor,’ put in Gene. ‘I think he might have bumped his noodle.’
‘Sorry to have to bother you with this, Nurse,’ said Sam, ‘but does anyone here have a clue as to this young man’s identity?’
‘No.’
‘When he was undressed, was there no ID found on him? No wallet, nothing like that?’
‘His personal things are over there,’ said the nurse, indicating a small wooden locker. ‘But there’s nothing of interest, just shredded rags. We had to cut his clothes off when he came in here – what little clothing hadn’t been cut off him already.’
She stared fiercely at Gene.
‘He tripped on a kerb stone,’ said Gene, innocent as a cherub. ‘Anyway’s up, we need to have a chat with him.’
‘You’ll find that rather difficult, officer. He’s still unconscious.’
‘My uncle’s unwashed pantaloons he’s unconscious! He’s faking it. I can sense it. Sleeping Beauty here can hear every word we’re saying – can’t you, old son?’
‘He’s certainly not faking anything,’ said the nurse, aghast.
‘Is he not? Let’s put it to the test, why don’t we?’ He strode over to the bed, took hold of the truck thief’s ventilator tubes, and gave them a rattle. ‘Wakey, wakey, pretty baby, or I wrench these gizmos out your epiglottis and shove ’em right up your—’
‘For God’s sake!’ the nurse spat, shoving Hunt back. ‘You two are leaving right now. Right now! Or else I’m calling the police.’
‘Calling the police?’ said Gene, fishing out a packet of Embassy No. 6s. ‘There’s a flaw in your logic there. See if you can spot it.’
‘This boy is unconscious, and likely to remain so for some time – assuming he ever recovers at all,’ the nurse said fiercely.
‘I’ve been telling my DCI the same thing,’ said Sam, deeply uncomfortable to be associated with Gene when he was behaving like this. ‘Come on, Guv. This lad’s not going anywhere, we can always see him another time. They’ll let us know when he comes round.’
Truculently, Gene jabbed a cigarette between his lips. The nurse gave him a look: Don’t you dare …! Fixing her with a fierce look of his own, Gene raised his lighter, toyed at the flint with his thumb – then eased off.
‘Don’t take it personal, luv, I’ve had a day,’ he said. ‘Tyler – let’s roll.’
Sam apologized to the nurse for his DCI’s atrocious behaviour, and turned at once to go. He reached the plastic swing doors that led out of ICU into the busy corridor beyond, but found he was alone. Glancing back, he saw Gene rummaging through the small wooden cupboard which contained the tattered, blooded remains of the truck thief’s clothes. As the nurse furiously declared that she was going to get the porters to throw him out, Gene suddenly raised aloft a folded sheet of paper.
‘Nothing but rags?’ he said. ‘This could be vital.’ And to Sam: ‘See what happens if you take these medical birds too serious?’
He shoved the piece of paper into his pocket and – to Sam’s infinite relief – strode briskly through the swing doors and away along the corridor.
‘What a filthy, arrogant, reckless brute,’ the nurse said, shaking her head. ‘He should have been a consultant.’
They emerged into the cold night air outside the hospital. Ambulances clanged by. Gene sparked up his cigarette and drew deeply on the nicotine as if it were the very elixir of life.
‘You need to clean your