Find Them Dead

9 Tuesday 27 November

Horton accelerated as Grace and Davey struggled to clip on their seat belts, then turned the car around, racing back down to the intersection with the main road, where he waited. ‘Little fucker on a red moped, green helmet, just threw acid in a man’s face and grabbed his mobile phone. Heading north down this road. Part index, Charlie Alpha Zero Eight—’

At that moment, a bright red moped raced across their path.

‘That’s him!’

In a long-rehearsed move, Paul Davey, in the front passenger seat, leaned forward and punched on the blue lights and siren, as Horton pulled out in front of a line of traffic and accelerated hard. The car, whup-whup-whupping, raced past several vehicles, gaining speed, seemingly oblivious — to Roy Grace in the rear seat — to the oncoming traffic, which melted away as Horton swerved through an impossible gap between a bus and a taxi.

The moped rider appeared ahead between a van and a minicab, a hundred metres or so in front.

They were gaining on him.

Horton swung out, overtaking the van. A red traffic light was against them. The moped ran it. Taking a risk that Roy Grace would not have done in Brighton, Horton barely slowed, following it straight over the lights, cars braking sharply to their right and left. Grace held his breath. His buddy Glenn Branson’s driving used to scare the shit out of him, but Glenn drove like a dawdler compared to this guy. Although he had to admit, Horton was a brilliant driver.

They were gaining.

Twenty metres behind the moped now.

Of all the methods employed by muggers, those using acid — mainly sulphuric, car-battery acid — were the ones Grace hated the most. The young guy, whoever he was, who had just had the hideous stuff thrown in his face for nothing more than the pathetic value of a black-market mobile phone, was now going to be facing life-changing injuries. Perhaps blinded. Years of agonizing plastic surgery. Whatever looks he might have once had destroyed. And probably terrified to ever go out in public again.

Still gaining.

Ten metres.

‘There’s an alleyway coming up in five hundred metres, guv,’ Horton cautioned, and Paul Davey nodded in confirmation. ‘He swings left down that and we’ve lost him. Permission to take him down?’

Like an armed officer faced with a gunman, who had a split-second to decide whether the gun pointing at him was real or fake, Grace was aware he had only seconds to make the call.

A few months ago, the Commissioner of the Met had given an instruction to her officers to go ahead and knock riders off their bikes if there was no other means of stopping them, but this was not universally supported. Protests in the papers and all over social media. Poor little moped riders should be free to throw acid in people’s faces without having the nasty big bully police knock them off and scrape their little knees. And the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) had recently issued a statement questioning the morality of the Commissioner’s decision.

Morality? thought Roy. Some people had a damned skewed idea of morality.

The car accelerated, drew level with the moped’s rear wheel. Roy could hear the rasping of its exhaust. Saw the rider’s green helmet with some jagged motif on it. His blood boiled as he saw the arrogant stance of the rider, glee in his body language. Glee at what he had done.

‘Knock the bastard off, Dave,’ he commanded.

‘Knock the bastard off, with pleasure, sir.’

Horton swung the car sharply left, striking the centre of the moped’s rear wheel hard. The effect was instant and catastrophic for the machine and its rider.

The rear kicked out hard left, hitting the kerb in front of a Kebab House, catapulting the rider several feet through the air before he struck the ground with his helmet, somersaulted and lay still.

Horton pulled the car up in the middle of the road beside him and the three officers leaped out. Two black youths were racing up to the motionless figure. One of them shouted out at the police, ‘You fucking racist murderers!’

The rider was already stirring, and climbed up onto his knees.

‘What did you do that for, you filth?’ the other youth shouted.

Horton, followed by his colleagues, ran up to the rider before he could get to his feet, silently relieved he wasn’t seriously hurt — to avoid the inquiry that would go with any injury. He grabbed the rider’s right arm, pulled it behind his back and snap-cuffed him. Then he yanked back his left arm and cuffed that, too. Paul Davey, wearing protective gloves, shoved up the rider’s tinted visor and said, ‘You’re nicked, mate.’

Davey began to pat him down, carefully, aware of the youth’s hostile eyes peering out from under his helmet. An instant later, the Inspector pulled out of a pocket a small glass bottle containing a clear liquid, half of which had gone. Shaking with fury, he held it up to the youth. ‘Thirsty? Like a swig, would you?’

The rider was shaking his head, wildly.

‘What’s your name?’ the Inspector asked him.

‘Lee.’

‘Lee? Lee what?’

‘Lee Smith.’

‘So, it’s all right to throw this in someone else’s face, is it, Lee? But you don’t want any yourself? Why’s that? Want to tell me?’

The rider stared in sullen silence.

Horton placed the bottle in an evidence bag, then wrapped it up in a cloth and placed it in the boot of the car before returning to the rider to read him his rights.

Grace walked over to the two youths on the sidelines, aware that a considerable crowd was now forming. He could hear sirens approaching — an ambulance and back-up, he assumed. ‘Would you like to be witnesses as you seem so interested and saw everything? Care to give me your names and addresses?’

Both of them hesitated, glanced at each other, then sprinted off, shouting abuse as they did so.