Chill Factor (20 page)

Dave had arrived first and was sitting in our usual corner. I collected the pint he’d paid for and joined him.

“Sophie heard from Cambridge this morning,” he told me before I was seated. “We’re going down at the weekend to look at her accommodation.”

“Fantastic. I’ll have to buy her a present. Don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you what she might want.”

He looked glum. “Just about everything. Pots, pans, microwave. You name it, she needs it. Then there’s a small matter of books, tuition fees, meals, rent. It’s never-ending.”

“That’s the price of having brainy kids,” I said.

“Brainy
kid
. Daniel wants to be a footballer or snooker star.”

“He could be in for a rude awakening,” I warned.

“He’ll take it in his stride. We did.”

“That’s true.” We were both failed footballers. Dave had his trial with Halifax Town the same time as me, with a
similar
result: don’t call us, we’ll call you.

“This beer’s on form,” I said, enjoying a long sip.

“It is, isn’t it.”

“So where’s Golden Balls with this flippin’ moustache?”

But at that very moment Detective Sergeant Nigel Newley’s full attention was elsewhere. He was gazing into the green eyes of Marie-Claire Hollingbrook, her face framed by the riot of golden hair heaped upon her pillow, her full lips parted and her naked body languidly spread-eagled across the bed. They were the first green eyes Nigel had ever seen, and he was stunned by their beauty. They were unable to return his gaze, because Marie-Claire had been strangled, several hours earlier.

“Do you ever regret not making it as a footballer?” Dave asked me.

“Nah,” I replied. “This is a lot better. Do you? They’d have taken you on if you hadn’t fluffed that goal.”

“No, I don’t think so. Can’t imagine how I missed it though. An open goalmouth in front of me, and I kicked it over the bar.”

“As I remember it, you kicked it over the grandstand.”

“It was a wormcast. The ball hit a wormcast and bobbed up, just as I toe-ended it. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“Sentenced to a lifetime of ignominy by a wormcast.” I said.

“I know,” he replied, glumly raising his glass and draining it.

“Just think,” I continued. “Of all the millions of worms in the world, if that one particular specimen hadn’t crapped on that one particular square centimetre of grass on that one particular day, you might have married one of the Beverly sisters.”

“Blimey. Frightenin’, innit?” he replied.

“Innit just. Same again?”

“Please.”

“Pork scratchings?”

“Cheese and onion crisps.”

I went to the bar to fetch them.

The phone call we were hoping for but not expecting came next morning, just as I was having my elevenses. I went downstairs to control, to catch the action. Arthur, a wily old sergeant, was in the hot seat. He slid a filled-in message form towards me as I moved a spare chair alongside him.

“Anything come in about the dead girl in Halifax?” I asked. There’d been a report about it on the local news.

“Just the bare details, pulled off the computer. We haven’t been asked to assist, yet.”

“Our young Mr Newley will be up to his neck in that one,” I said, secretly wishing that I was there, too.

“Ah! Nigel’ll find ’em.”

“So what have we here?”

“From the Met Regional Crime Squad,” he said as I read. “One of their men thinks he’s seen Kevin Chilcott at the Portsmouth ferry terminal. He rang in from a phone box and is now trying to follow him. Last report came from the arrivals concourse at 10:37 hours.”

“So what do they expect us to do?” I asked.

“Be alert, that’s all. He could be going anywhere.”

I explained to Arthur that we were responsible for raising the APW on Chilcott, because of the messages from Bentley prison, but the phonecalls were to London, and that was probably where he was heading. “Stay with it,” I told him, “and keep me informed. I’ll be in the office.”

I went back upstairs and finished my coffee. One by one, for no reason that I could think of, I rang Dave, Annette, Jeff and three others on their mobiles and told them what was happening. “Keep in touch,” I told them, “he might be coming this way.”

The super was unimpressed when I told him. “He’ll be heading for London,” he declared, dismissively.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I agreed.

But he wasn’t. Arthur rang me on the internal at 14:20 hours, saying that Chilcott, with the RCS chief inspector tagging along behind him, had boarded the 13:30 express from Kings Cross to Leeds. I went downstairs again and spoke directly to the RCS control, in London. Their man, I was told, was starting his holiday, but had found his way into the arrivals section hoping to meet his parents, who were coming home. He’d seen Chilcott come off the boat and
followed
him. They caught the train to Waterloo and
transferred
to Kings Cross, where Chilcott had purchased a
single
to Leeds. The DCI was unable to communicate from the Portsmouth train, but he could from this one. He was, they said, wearing holiday clothes, which made him somewhat conspicuous.

Our own Regional Crime Squad, based in Leeds, went on
to full alert, borrowing our ARVs and booking the chopper for the rest of the day. They made arrangements to evacuate the station minutes before the London train arrived and dressed several officers in natty Railtrack uniforms. Marksmen were positioned around the adjacent platforms and steps taken to block-off all the exits and roads. ETA was 16:01, and Chilcott’s feet wouldn’t touch the ground.

At 15:06 the express stopped at Doncaster and Chilcott left it. The RCS detective got off, too, but had to hide behind a wall until Chilcott boarded the 15:40 to Manchester. That arrived at 17:00 hours and Chilcott and his faithful shadow then boarded the 17:12, Manchester Piccadilly to Newcastle.

“Could be Leeds, after all,” the super stated. He’d joined me in control when he realised that this one wasn’t going away. Dave wandered in and I told him to collect as many bodies as he could, urgently.

“No, Boss,” I told Mr Wood. “If there’s one place he isn’t going, it’s Leeds. He could have stayed on the Kings Cross train if he was going to Leeds.”

The Met’s RCS control room had managed to find
someone
in the railway business with the authority to spend some time talking to them, and were now being relayed times and destinations. “That train stops at Heckley,” I told my
contact
. “Where else does it stop?”

I wrote them down as he read them off. Oldfield, Huddersfield, then Heckley, Leeds, York and Newcastle.

“What time at Heckley?”

“17:54.”

“Six minutes to six. Struth, any chance of delaying it? I think he could be coming here and we’re a bit depleted.”

They said they’d do what they could.

I sent someone to Heckley station to arrange things there. We needed parking spaces and easy access. Mr Wood rang the Assistant Chief Constable to organise the issuing of weapons. Our ARVs were in Leeds, so we improvised,
borrowing two off-duty officers from the tactical firearms unit who’d missed the shout to dash to Leeds, in their own cars.

“Just the man,” I said when Jeff Caton wandered in. “Did I see your crash helmet in the office, this morning?”

“I’ve come on the bike, if that’s what you mean,” he replied.

“Good.” I turned to Mr Wood. “Can we have a word, Boss?” I asked. He adopted his worried look and the three of us moved outside, into the corridor.

“So far,” I said, “all we are concentrating on is lifting Chilcott. What I’d really like to know is: what is he doing over here? If he’s up to something on my patch, I want to know what it is.”

“What are you suggesting, Charlie?” Mr Wood
demanded
wearily.

“Just that we don’t arrest him straight away. I think we should follow him for a bit longer, find out who he’s
working
for.”

“No,” Mr Wood stated. “Definitely not.”

“He’s been tailed for three hundred miles. Another
twenty
won’t hurt.”

“I said no.”

I turned to DS Caton. “What do you think, Jeff?”

He shrugged, embarrassed by the position I’d placed him in. “Mr Wood’s the boss,” he said.

“But could you do it, on the bike, working with someone in a car?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“No, Charlie,” Mr Wood said. “If he gets off at Heckley, you arrest him. And that’s my last word.”

“It seems a shame, though, doesn’t it?”

Gilbert heaved a sigh that would have blown a small galleon off the rocks. “Just…just make it look good,” he said.

“Right,” I replied. “Right.” I looked at my watch. It was

17:33. Twenty-one minutes to go.

We had a lightning rehearsal in the briefing room, with me drawing a plan of the station and slashing arrows across it. I designated who would ride with whom and appointed Annette as my driver.

“Code names?” someone asked.

“They’re Batman and Robin,” I replied.

“Da-da da-da, da-da da-da,” they all chanted.

“Who’s who?”

“Chilcott’s Robin. Put my phone number in your
memories
, but we’ll use the radio when the action starts, switched to talk-through but no chit-chat. OK?”

“OK,” they replied.

“And no heroics. He’s dangerous, so don’t forget it. There’s enough widows in Heckley already.”

They strode out, talking too loudly and fooling around, but I hung back as Jeff zipped up his leather jacket and pulled his helmet on. Two others joined us and then Annette came over. “What do you think, Jeff?” I asked.

“Always obey the last order, that’s my motto,” he replied.

“And you two?”

“We’re game,” one of them replied.

“OK,” I said. “Nothing’s decided, yet. We’ll play it by ear if he gets off the train. Just listen for my instructions.”

“Of course,” one of them said, “there’s always the
possibility
that he has already jumped off, or he stays on it, isn’t there.”

“He’ll get off,” Jeff stated, his voice muffled by the gaudy helmet. “I can feel it in my water.”

“What was all that about?” Annette asked as she jerked my car seat forward. The clock on the dashboard said 17:41.

I told her briefly what I had in mind.

“Does Mr Wood know?” she asked.

“Um, partly.”

“And he agrees?”

“Yes. Well, no, not really.”

“Oh, Charlie!”

I rang the RCS control on my mobile and gave them my number. Batman had commandeered a phone from a fellow passenger and was in regular communication with them. All along the line itchy-fingered policemen were assembling outside the railway stations, wondering if the nation’s most wanted criminal was going to grace their gunsights with his presence. The possible receptions varied. In some places he would be discreetly followed, in others shot on sight. We, I hoped, were doing it properly. As the train left each station Batman would pass a message back to the RCS and they would alert whoever was in charge at the next one down the line. At Heckley, that was me.

The train station is just down the road from the nick, so we made it with minutes to spare. A uniformed PC was at the coned-off entrance to the car-park, supervising a man in overalls who was working on the barrier. I thanked them both and told them to go for a cup of tea. We spread
ourselves
out, enjoying the luxury of all those parking places. Other cars, frustrated by having to drive round the block, started to fill the remainder.

“Presumably,” Annette said, “if he is getting off here somebody will be meeting him. Taking a taxi would be risky.”

“Good point,” I agreed. We sat in silence for a few
seconds
, until I asked her if she was going away for the
weekend
. My mobile rang before she could reply, but her
expression
and the hesitation told me the answer. “Heckley,” I said into the phone.

“Leaving Huddersfield,” the RCS controller told me. “Still on-board.”

“Understood. Out.”

I turned to Annette. “They’ve left Huddersfield. We’re next.” I clicked the transmit button on the radio I was holding in the other hand and said a terse: “Stand by, we’re next,” into
it. You can never be too sure who’s listening to radio traffic.

“There’s an interesting BMW just pulled in,” Annette told me.

“Where?”

“Behind us.”

I adjusted the wing mirror with the remote control, so I could see it without turning my head. It was R registered, silver, with four headlights. “Looks expensive,” I remarked as I made a note of the number.

“Series seven,” Annette stated. It sounded about right to me but cars aren’t my strong point. She produced a tube of mints and offered me one. I shook my head. The clock changed from 17:50 to 17:51.

“Let’s have some music,” she said, pushing the radio power button. A politician was sounding off about
something
or other. He used the expressions
spin doctor
and
mind set
in the same sentence, and would probably have slipped in a
sea change
had Annette not hit a station button. Two more tries and she was rewarded with Scott Walker’s warm tones. “That’s better,” she said.

“We haven’t been for a meal for a while,” I remarked.

“No,” she agreed.

“It’s Thursday.”

“So it is.”

“If Chilcott’s not on this train we could go for one.”

“A girl’s got to eat,” she declared, throwing me a big grin.

I smiled at her and started to say: “You should laugh more often. It suits you,” but the phone started warbling
somewhere
in the middle of it.

“Heckley,” I said.

“He’s on his feet, heading for the door. Looks like this is it.”

“Understood. Out.”

I needed a pee. It’s always the same: the least bit of
excitement
and I remember that I haven’t been to the loo for four hours. “This could be it,” I told her, and clicked the send
button
on the RT. “Charlie to the Young Turks,” I said into it, “it’s looking good for us.” Three cars down in the facing row Dave raised a finger off the steering wheel in
acknowledgement
, and a face in a window to my left raised an eyebrow. I
wish
I could do that. Smoke puffed from the exhaust of the car in front as he started the engine. I reached forward to kill Scott Walker and we both pulled our seatbelts on.