A/N Thanks to all for reading & reviews. The prize goes to Firebird, although I imagine others will also have guessed correctly ...
The world ended for Millie. She stood frozen, staring at nothing while her blood pounded furiously in her ears. It seemed to go on forever, the sounds of the gunshots reverberating off the dry, stained walls, tugging at her consciousness, whooshing through the stale air around her body. Except that the air that seemed to swirl around her came with scraping, stumbling footsteps, and then something slammed into her legs, nearly knocking her off her feet. Jerkily she looked down, still wide-eyed, as she felt him tug at her wrist.
"Shit … I'm sorry, I couldn't … Millie! Get down will you?" Max rasped.
Millie dropped to her knees and pulled him to her, digging her fingers into his shoulders though the cotton of his shirt and burying her face into his neck, needing to feel the pulse beneath his skin as if she couldn't really believe that he was alive. Another shot fired out and he returned her grip as a different sound, not a gun this time but no less disturbing, joined the echoes in the room.
"He's getting away!" whispered Max urgently, scrambling to his feet and pulling Millie with him.
"But Georgie!"
"Too late … it's too late for him, but I'm not going to let that bastard shake us off now. We're too close."
Together they burst back out into the bright sunlight, squinting while they gained their bearings. A car door closed with an expensive clunk and Millie turned sharply to see a figure in Georgie's abandoned Lexus, just as its engine juddered to life.
"He's in Georgie's car," she mumbled almost to herself, while Max still struggled to come to terms with the ferocity of the sun, shielding his eyes.
"Wha-? Millie, wait!" he cried out as she began to run towards their parked cars. "The Vauxhall! We'll take the Vauxhall," he insisted, grateful when she swerved towards the blue pool car, laden with tracker and various other bits of kit that might just prove useful. Also, if he was honest, he really preferred to avoid his own car getting scraped, crunched or shot at, if at all possible.
The Lexus streaked past and out of the car park on to the service road. Max forced the car into gear and followed, wheels spinning, screeching with the effort required to catch up.
"Faster," urged Millie shrilly, as the Lexus disappeared out of sight heading away from the centre of Canley.
"I'm going as fast as this thing will go, Millie," retorted Max, his foot flat to the floor. "Useless heap of shite," he added in disgust before noticing that she was reaching into her back pocket. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to call it in," she mumbled, already scrolling thorugh her stored numbers, "to the IBO at Sun Hill."
He hesitated for a moment, eyes flitting between the road and car ahead and the suddenly very self-possessed woman next to him. "Wait," he urged, playing for time so that he could figure out the best way to deal with this.
Her thumb paused, hovering over the phone. "Why? We need back up, you said we needed back up."
"That was before he murdered Georgie and took off!" exclaimed Max. "We have no idea where he is heading."
"Even more reason to call it in," countered Millie. "He must be going to wherever he's got Mum. I don't want him being able to get to her first."
"Think about it Millie! He knows we're following him, how is it going to help if half the Met with lights and sirens turn up on his tail as well? We know what he is capable of. We've just seen what he is capable of. If he panics …" he left the possibilities hanging in the air between them. "If there is a chance that he is going to wherever he's holding Sondra I don't want to give him a reason to change his mind."
Millie stared at her phone thoughtfully. "We can't stop him on our own. I just don't want to be unprepared."
"What? Like haring off after Georgie without telling anyone? That wasn't unprepared?"
"You would have made me wait! There wasn't time!"
Max stared ahead, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel as he swerved violently to avoid someone in the road. The Lexus was still in view, its course no less erratic. "Do it." He spoke through gritted teeth. "They can track us, and keep CO19 well back. No sirens unless necessary."
Millie dialled. "This is PC Millie Brown from Barton Street. I'm with DI Carter, in pursuit of a suspect we believe to be Nikolai Antonov, heading east on Wainwright Lane, following a gold Lexus registration EN11 GFF. Get an ambulance and a unit over to the old brewery on Harpsden Road, there's been a fatal shooting."
"Got that," the nameless IBO officer replied efficiently before Millie heard a questioning voice in the background. "DCI Manson is here, PC Brown, he'd like a word. I'll pass you over. You're on speaker, Sir. PC Brown can hear you."
Millie steeled herself, not for courage but to stop the flow of vitriol that she really would like to unleash on the man. "It's Manson," she whispered to Max, covering the phone with her hand.
"Try to be nice," he muttered back at her, his eyes fixed firmly on the road and their quarry still ahead.
"Sir-" she broke off as the car again swerved violently forcing her to clutch at the hand rail at her side.
"So you've found Antonov?"
"Yeah, he arranged to meet Georgie."
"So I gather. What happened?" Manson's voice was tight.
Millie bit down on her lower lip, knowing that saying the words would make her Godfather's death real and final. "He's dead. Antonov shot him."
"Right. And Antonov got away?"
"No, not exactly," she retorted defensively, "we're following him."
"Well if you had waited before tearing off, both of you, you might not be just following him, we might already have the man in custody!" Manson exploded.
"There was no time!" Millie wailed, sick of having to repeatedly defend her actions. She'd done the right thing, she knew that. Max shot her a warning glance but she simply narrowed her eyes and scowled at him in return.
In the IBO, Neil turned sharply to find Grace watching him with concern. Her soft eyes brought him back to his senses, realising that now wasn't the time for blame and scapegoats. Antonov had to be caught and brought in, preferably alive if skins were to be saved and promotions won. Anything else could wait until later. He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. "Where are you now?"
"Currently heading east on Lea Valley Road, we're in the blue Vauxhall pool car, registration … er … um-"
"I've picked up the tracker device on their car, Sir," the IBO officer called out, "their position is up on screen. All eyes now swung towards the large flat screen dominating the wall opposite.
"Right, we've got you. I'll get CO19 to catch up with you."
"Keep them right back, no sirens" Millie instructed firmly. "Antonov knows we're behind him, but we don't want him to panic if he thinks half the Met are on his tail." Out of the corner of her eye she could see Max's grim approval at the repitition of his words, bolstering her own confidence. "We need to know where he is going. Can you get a helicopter to watch from the sky?"
"Yeah," he glanced down at the officer seated to his right. She nodded and mouthed 'on it'.
The IBO lapsed into silence, listening to Millie's intermittent narration of the course of the journey as the chase continued. The route took Max and Millie further from the centre of Canley and out on quieter roads. The tracker device on the car made her commentary largely unnecessary but it she needed to be able to do something and the occasional 'Got that' was strangely comforting. She could almost convince herself that this was a normal day at work. Fewer cars, fewer people, ghost-like relics of a more industrious age occasionally punctuated the straight roads built for commerce, for the days when the people of London were needed to make the objects that made the world go round, before it could all be produced so much more cheaply elsewhere in the world. Post war industry had encroached on farmland on the edge of London, but with each recession over the decades gradually the sheep made it back on to the disused railway sidings, grazing on drought-parched grass, filling the gaps that industry and commerce had failed to populate.
Momentarily lost in her disconnected thoughts, Millie was jolted back to the present as the Lexus took a sudden right prompting Millie's heart beat wildly, panicking that Antonov might be lost forever. Her alarm increased when despite taking the same turn it was nowhere to be seen, the road ahead deserted. Her eyes widened, her hands gripping the phone tightly as Max raced on. "Where-? There!" she cried, pointing diagonally to the right. "Over there!"
Max accelerated, following her directions up a slope leading off the road into what appeared to be a boarded up pub. The empty Lexus parked haphazardly in front of it. "The Hind's Head," she yelled into the phone while disentangling herself from the seat belt.
Listening intently, Grace quickly dived into the file of notes listing Drobyshev Holdings properties. "Hind's Head? That sounds familiar, Guv. Here … here it is! How did this get missed? Look, it's part of the Drobyshev portfolio."
"Max? Wait for back up! Max?" There was no reply.