Xion Usland Zero: Chapter 31

Nash was behind Norton, and she was closing in on the Harley.

Travis turned in his seat. They were right behind Norton on his tail, and for a second, he met Nash’s eyes.

‘Yeah, bitch, we’ve got you this time,’ Molly said.

Travis’ lips curled in a sneer, and Nash could see the way the wind had nipped his cheeks. ‘Sweet rosy apples,’ he muttered under his breath, gaining a concerned look from Renshaw.

Alan didn’t look back, but he’d be aware of them in his mirrors. ‘Hang in there, Alan,’ Nash said into the car.

Travis reached into the pocket of the side pannier, making the Harley swerve again. Alan righted it, but managed to slow down considerably. Nash hit the mic. There was only one way that the bike was allowed to slow, and that was if Bernstein wanted it to. ‘Watch him. He’s up to something,’ Nash yelled.  

Travis pulled out a fistful of metal objects and turned in his seat. Nuts, bolts, washers and nails, quickly gathered from Alan’s garage as he escaped, rained across the road. Tiny assimilated caltrops of roofing nails and debris were scattered behind the Harley like rice at a poor man’s wedding. Nash saw the glint first and knew it was trouble.

Too close to the action to see what Nash had, it took Keeley a second too long to react to his warning. Travis threw his weapons, and the road was awash with metal and iron fragments.

She swerved and banked, but couldn’t avoid it all. Braking hard, Nash watched in horror as she tried to stop the bike from falling underneath her. She made a contralateral manoeuvre, but one of the tyres caught a bolt and slid sideways. She banked and let it go into the skid, using a transversal slide before correcting it and pulling up hard. She almost had it under control when the back end fishtailed. She controlled it for one heartbeat, and then another, while Nash held his breath and lost sight of her as he had to hit his brakes just as hard.

His car was spinning. He rolled into the turns and pumped the brakes rather than standing on them to keep four wheels on the ground.

Then the world tipped, disappeared, and when he came to a stop, they were upright and unharmed. ‘Everyone okay?’ he heard Phil saying, and Nash pulled himself together. Phil had turned in his seat to take Molly in his arms. Old habits die hard. Nash averted his eyes and looked forward.

Less than a second had passed, and Norton’s bike was still moving through the air. It slammed down on the tarmac with sparks cleaving ruts into the road and the wheels shrieking. Norton rolled. Her elbow cracked the pavement, and Nash felt the pain too, as air punched out of her lungs, winding her.

Everything stilled.

A woman up ahead was thrown into a wall and screamed. There was no sound, she was too far away, but he realised that you can see a scream as well as you can hear it. He saw the Harley swerve violently at the last second to avoid hitting the couple at the crossing. The man, in his sixties, was sideswiped and thrown to the ground by the force of trying to leap and pull his wife out of the way.

Nash cursed and grabbed the radio. ‘Pedestrian down. Askam railway crossing. Get medical support now. Elderly male struck by suspect vehicle.’

Nash watched the Harley disappear around the bend towards Ireleth. Several police vehicles tried to get through the roadblock of spilt iron. A couple made it. The rest stalled with blown tyres and punctures, creating more of a blockage.

‘Two vehicles got through. They’ll be able to keep eyes on the suspect,’ Renshaw said. But Nash was more concerned about Keeley. The comet of sparks made his pulse drop, and the bike lay on its side with its wheels spinning. Gravity never showed mercy.

Molly was already out of the car, leaving her door wide open as she ran. She reached her as Keeley was trying to sit up. Molly dragged the bike off her partner on her own until Renshaw caught up to take the other side.

‘Stay down,’ Nash ordered, crouching beside Norton in his funeral suit. ‘You mustn’t try to move.’

‘They got away.’ She coughed. She took off her helmet, and her voice was ragged.

‘You shouldn’t have done that, you’re supposed to leave it on until the ambulance comes. Your head might fall off.’

‘Funny, boss.’

‘You’re alive. That’s what matters.’

Nash eyed the blood running from her temple and took his grey silk pocket square from his breast pocket. He pressed it to Norton’s head, but it was ineffective and soaked through in seconds.

‘That bastard dropped metal on you like Mario Kart,’ Brown said. ‘Are you okay, babe?’

Keeley managed a tight laugh. ‘Babe? Jesus. Yeah, I’m fine. Help me up.’

‘Not a chance,’ Nash said. ‘You’re released from duty until you’ve been checked out.’ Behind him, an officer was already calling for an ambulance.

‘I’m fine, honestly. How’s my bike?’ She tried to get up to assess the damage.

‘I’m no mechanic, but I think it’s okay. A bent fork, maybe,’ Renshaw said.

Norton slumped back down to the ground. She pushed Nash’s hand away with the square and wiped her wound with the back of her sleeve. The zip on her leather jacket opened the cut wider, and a river of blood poured from her head into her eyes. She pouted. ‘It’s nothing. I’m good. Don’t pull me, boss. I want in.’  

‘You’ll be in. Once you’ve been cleared.’

He heard comms filling up the line and stopped talking to listen. Sightings were being called in. He heard civilians shouting in the background, and horns were blaring.

‘They’ve cut over the fells to Broughton Road. He’s weaving through Upper Market Street now.’

A frantic call was radioed in. ‘Shit. He nearly took out the benches outside the Golden Ball. People are diving for cover. No civilians hurt so far.’

Another agent came in with an update. ‘He’s tearing down the back lanes.’

Nash made sure Norton’s wounds were superficial and left her with Brown. He joined the pursuit with Renshaw. Everything was moving too slowly. He floored the accelerator, pushing his car to its limit, tires squealing around a blind turn, catching a glimpse of a rear light in front of him before it vanished again. There were plenty of police cars on the road, but this was his collar.

More updates came in. Travis was forcing Alan to ride like a maniac, cutting paths and leaving chaos in his slipstream. They’d be lucky to survive, and Nash wasn’t about to let Bernstein escape justice.

The Shell garage blurred as he roared through Ulverston. A blue child’s balloon floated skyward in the wake of panic. Sirens wailed across the rooftops, and multiple cars tried to box the suspect in. Nash thought Travis should have stayed on the Broughton road because, back on the A590, he’d hit the longest cul-de-sac in England with only one road in and one road out as far as the M6. Bernstein didn’t know the area, and Taylor wouldn’t be giving him any headers.

But Nash wasn’t taking into account the minor routes, and Travis, always one step ahead, had planned meticulously. When he caught up to the action, Nash saw Travis leaning into Taylor’s shoulder to shout directions. He rode pillion, as if he knew every shortcut, alley and place too narrow for a patrol car to follow. This killer was a machine.

The net was tightening—but not fast enough. Travis shouted directions, and Alan took a left at Haverthwaite crossing. Alan gunned the bike on the country road, risking death on every slurry deposit. It was a single lane, and if a young Farmer came belting around one of those corners in Daddy’s Merc, Alan and Bernstein would be toast. He just hoped that Farmer Jack Jr wouldn’t have earbuds. The convoy must have sounded like a rocket invasion, but Nash feared a nasy collision.

Taking a sharp left, Alan made it into Grizedale Forest with a trail of police behind him. He screamed past the visitor’s centre, doing eighty, but Nash knew the score before Travis made his next move. He’d planned this all along, and there wasn’t a damned thing Nash could do to stop it. ‘Get more bike details out here. Now,’ he screamed, but he knew it was too late. The Harley took the blue trail up the mountain’s gravel track. It was inaccessible to anything but hearty bikes and goats. Norton was off the chase, and no cars could get through.

By the time they’d put roadblocks at every exit, Travis had made it to Coniston and was long gone, with multiple escape routes to choose from.

They picked up his trail within the hour, but it was a retrospective trail of scattered crumbs.

A field gate had been left ajar, its cattle allowed to escape onto the narrow country lane. Nash rubbed his chin in frustration at the irony of the police not being the only ones who could produce roadblocks. They found bike tracks in the mud and Alan’s suit jacket dumped in a ditch.
            Every available unit searched for the next hour, but Nash had no choice but to call his team off the search. More street units were deployed, but Bernstein had somewhere to hole up undetected and had gone to ground.

He barely spoke on the drive back. His driving was within the speed limit, the lights and sirens killed, but Nash’s fury was apparent in the way he held his body and the vein dancing at his temple. Brown and Renshaw knew when to let him think.

Brown appeared beside him in the station car park. ‘By the way,’ she asked, ‘What the hell is the wake-up rule?’

Nash laughed. ‘In the army, if a superior officer wakes you up, and you’re groggy and half-asleep, you can call him anything you like without being court-martialled for the first thirty seconds. After what I said to that trumped-up agent, I’m hoping it applies to high-stress situations, too.’

Brown screwed up her nose in thought. ‘Nah. I think you’re screwed.’

‘Yep, I reckon.’

‘Norton, wait up,’ Brown said as Keeley pulled up and limped to the entrance. Nash shook his head as she gave him a sheepish grin. He knew she’d refuse to get in the ambulance. She’d put herself at unnecessary risk and would have to be reprimanded for disobeying his orders—but then, so had he. How much hypocrisy did command afford you? At least her bike was rideable, but roadworthy was another matter.

Nash looked to the horizon, over industrial estates, buildings, factories and supermarkets. Travis was shedding skin again, but this time it wasn’t his own.

He still had a hostage, and Nash had no reason to believe Alan was still alive.

 

Xion Island Zero is book 6 in the DCI Nash series. They're all on KU. Hush Hush Honeysuckle is Book One, and this is the Amazon link.

https://books2read.com/u/4EB0zg