Lane. Only now, on the northernmost edge of the Greater Manchester Police force area, with the great bulk of Winter Hill looming on her right – an amorphous escarpment on the star-speckled October sky – did the red-brick conurbation of the cityscape dissipate properly, to be replaced by the more pastoral villages, woodlands and stone-walled farms of rural Lancashire. In due course, she even veered away from this, riding east into the foothills of the West Pennine Moors, dipping and looping along narrow, fantastically twisty lanes. A few minutes later, deep in Lever Country Park, in the close vicinity of the renovated Tudor structure that was Rivington Barn, she throttled slowly down. A famous meeting point for bikers from all across the north of England, this picturesque but isolated spot was for the most part deserted late at night, but now one particular car park – a small area about four hundred yards from the Barn, hemmed on three sides by thick belts of trees – was a riot of light and noise.
Lucy homed in on it, gliding in among the many bikes parked haphazardly across its gritty surface and the bodies milling there in blue denim and worn leather. As usual, they were all ages, from rangy, pimply-faced teens to characters in their fifties with capacious ale-guts, bald pates and grey fuzz beards. Women of various ages were present too – Hell’s Angel type activity had never been exclusively confined to the guys.
Regardless of gender, the back of each jacket had been emblazoned in fiery orange letters: LOW RIDERS.
They fell silent as Lucy rode slowly among them, a natural alleyway parting for her. She hit the anchors properly at the far edge of the car park, where she turned the engine off and lowered her kickstand. She climbed from the bike, took off her crimson helmet and shook out her black hair, which tumbled glossily down her back and shoulders.
Immediately, there were wolf whistles, ribald comments.
Lucy didn’t react. She was in her motorbike leathers, which while they weren’t exactly skin-tight, were pretty clingy. Add to that her constant work-outs at the gym, which meant that she was in good shape. But when she turned and fronted them, and they recognised her as the copper she was, someone hawked and spat.
The Low Riders weren’t just a motorcycle club. They were traditionalists, with an ‘old-school’ ethos: Live fast, die hard. Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. We operate by our rules, not yours. All of which translated into a lifestyle of endemic lawlessness and a natural distrust of the police.
Yellow teeth had now appeared in nasty, defiant grins. Lucy saw bottles of brown ale, the scattered empties as well as those half-full and clamped in oily fists (even though most of these guys would be on the road in the next hour). She saw spliffs too; not many, but enough on brazen display to signify a challenge. Not that making a drugs bust was why she was here tonight – as they realised perfectly well, hence their brashness.
One of them came swaggering forward.
It was Kyle Armstrong, president of the Crowley chapter.
Lucy hadn’t seen him for quite some time; he was in his mid-thirties now, but still the way she remembered him: tall and lean, with truculent ‘bad boy’ looks, a tar-black mane hanging to his collar, and thick black sideburns. In his tight jeans, steel-studded belt and leather jacket, which he almost invariably wore open on a bare, hairy chest, he had a raw animal appeal. He might be out of time, fashion-wise, but he’d always reminded her of one of those classy heavy rockers of the early days, an Ian Gillan or Robert Plant.
Of course, she’d never let him know that was what she thought about him. Armstrong’s ego was already the size of a barrage balloon.
‘New length on your locks,’ he said approvingly. ‘Just like the old days. Going plain clothes obviously suits you.’
Beforehand, when in uniform, a spell that had only ended about ten months previously, Lucy had always kept her hair cut square at the shoulder. She hadn’t been overly fond of that style, and so Armstrong was quite correct; being a CID officer did have its perks.
Again though, she wouldn’t admit this to him. Mainly because she wasn’t in the mood for banter. Were it any other low-to-mid-level criminal who’d requested a meeting with her, she’d have told him that he was the one who’d have to travel, but she and the Low Riders’ president had something of a shared past, which, being hard-headed about it, meant that a useful outcome here was marginally more possible than the norm.
Even so, she didn’t have to pretend that she liked the arrangement.
‘What do you want, Kyle?’ she asked.
He stepped around her, unashamed in his admiration for her leather-clad form, which irked her, though it was insolence rather than an actual threat – and anyway it didn’t irk Lucy as much as it did Kelly Allen, or ‘Hells Kells’, as Lucy had once scornfully (and secretly) known her, a busty beauty of a biker chick, famous in the group not just for her impressive physique, but for her waist-length crimson-dyed hair, which very much matched her temperament. Many years ago, Kells had zealously sought out Armstrong’s personal affection, and when she’d finally secured it – and it didn’t come easily – she’d defended that status like a tigress.
Kells currently watched from about ten yards away, not looking her sexy best in a raggedy old Afghan coat, but her kohl-rimmed eyes blazing under her blood-red fringe.
Armstrong, meanwhile, had moved his attention on to Lucy’s bike.
‘I heard you’d written Il Monstro off chasing some bad guys,’ he said.
‘Banged it up a bit,’ she replied. ‘Nothing that wouldn’t fix.’
‘How about the villains of the piece?’
‘They’re both doing life.’
‘Ouch.’ He grinned. ‘Should’ve known better than to mess with you, eh?’
‘So should you by now. What’s this about?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he chuckled. ‘I’m not after rekindling that fire we once had together.’
‘Good … because that’s dead.’ She could sense the rest of them watching her in expectant silence, which annoyed her all the more – it might be a police thing, but Lucy never liked being the only person on the plot who didn’t know what was going on. ‘In addition to which,’ she said, ‘it’s late and I’m in Court tomorrow. So, whatever it is, make it quick.’
‘All right … can we walk a little?’
‘If you don’t want the rest of the crowd to know what you get up to, you shouldn’t bring them with you,’ she said as they strolled along a narrow, moonlit path. ‘Or is that like asking someone to go out without his pants on?’
‘It’s them I want to talk to you about,’ Armstrong replied. ‘Or one of them. But there’s no point everyone being party to the nitty-gritty, is there?’
She supposed he was right about that. The rest of the clan would know that he’d asked her here to make some kind of deal, but the fewer of them who knew what it specifically entailed, the less chance there was that the info would leak out.
‘The word is you’re a big noise now,’ he said. ‘A full-time detective no less.’
‘And?’
He turned to face her, his wolfish features saturnine in the woodland gloom. ‘I need your expertise.’
Lucy had expected nothing less, but was still cheesed off about it. It was amazing how many of these outlaw gangs fell back on the law when it suited them.
‘Don’t look at me like that, babe,’ he complained. ‘We’ve never been enemies.’
‘Really?’
‘Look … we’re on different sides of the fence, I agree. But we weren’t always, were we?’
‘I was young and stupid back then,’ she said.
‘Some might say you’re stupid to do what you do now.’ Briefly, he sounded