Henry’s heart leapt.
‘ Yeah, yeah, good idea,’ he said eagerly. ‘What time should I come round?’
‘ Ten?’
‘ I’ll be there.’
The pips started to go.
‘ I love you, Kate,’ he managed to say before the line went dead. He hung the receiver up slowly with a wide smile on his face, juxtaposed with a feeling of trepidation in his guts. At last, he said to himself. At last.
As he turned away from the payphone which was in the Crown Court building, he bumped into Lisa Want who was standing directly behind him. His smile dropped; his face became a mask of contempt. He tried to shoulder past her but she stood her ground.
‘ Look, I’d like to say I’m sorry,’ she told him. ‘I heard you giving evidence — I hadn’t realised what you’d been through, OK?’
He snorted in disbelief. ‘I have no doubt in my mind that you do not have a conscience, and if you ever get the opportunity to shaft someone, you’d do the same thing all over again. Goodbye, Miss Sleaze-bag.’ And he edged carefully around her, as if to avoid contamination, and strode towards the exit.
‘ Ungrateful son of a bitch!’ she uttered, and stamped her feet angrily like a child.
Outside the court building the victorious team of detectives, including FB, but not Donaldson and Karen, were waiting for Henry. They cheered as he appeared. He modestly acknowledged this with a bow, then they all moved off towards the city centre, where it was their intention to take over a pub and get riotously pissed out of their heads.
Just as they reached the prison gates, they encountered a crowd of journalists and sightseers. A buzz of expectation went through them as the prison gates were flung open and the convoy taking Hinksman to Strangeways roared out and sped down the hill.
Some of the detectives gesticulated rudely at the rear of the prison bus.
Henry merely stood there, hands thrust deep in his pockets, staring at the back window. He was sure that Hinksman would be looking at him through the one-way glass. He allowed himself another smile and thought, Goodbye, you bastard. I hope you rot in hell.
Henry had probably smiled more times that day than on any other in the last six months.
The bus and escort were out of sight within seconds, the sirens accompanying them becoming less distinct.
Henry then shivered with a sense of foreboding. Something was wrong. His smile dropped. What was it? He looked up into the sky. The force helicopter clattered overhead, moving with the convoy.
The gang of detectives surged down the road. Henry caught up with them and tapped FB on the shoulder.
‘ Boss?’
‘ Henry, what is it?’
‘ Er… nothing, I hope. It’s just… I’ve suddenly had a very bad feeling. ‘
‘ You’ll be all right,’ said FB, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘C’mon, you just need a drink inside you. There’s a lot to celebrate.’
‘ Yeah, sure,’ said Henry. But as much as he tried, he couldn’t rid himself of that feeling of impending doom.
Lisa Want watched the detectives strut down the hill like a group of lager louts. She was utterly furious with Henry: it was the first time ever that she’d apologised to anyone for a piece she’d written, and the last.
But she did have to admit that the guy was right: she would do it again. It was in her blood.
A nondescript man approached her.
‘ Lisa Want?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘This is for you.’ He handed her a package; she noticed that he was wearing gloves. ‘The man in it is the Chief Constable of Lancashire. The woman is a hooker. You don’t need to know her name.’
Then he was gone, leaving Lisa holding the tape.
The police convoy — two cars to the front and rear of the caged prison bus containing Hinksman — sped down the hill away from Lancaster Prison and the crowd of onlookers. The traffic-lights at the bottom of the hill next to Waterstone’s bookshop were set on green for them. The convoy should have turned left and gone into the one- way system which rings Lancaster; however, a few minutes before the convoy had left the prison, the last police operation for the trial had come into effect. Officers had stepped into all relevant junctions and stopped all traffic, enabling the convoy to turn right against the flow of traffic.
It worked smoothly.
Within a minute the convoy was travelling south towards Galgate along the A6. Once south of Galgate, the plan was to get onto the M6 and drive like the clappers to Manchester and Strangeways.
A grim-faced Hinksman sat sullenly in the back of the van, subdued and angry. His hands were secured in front of him by rigid handcuffs. The inane chatter of the two officers who sat in the cage with him only served to fuel his anger. Captured by a pathetic detective whom he had grown to hate and vowed to kill, then beaten by British justice, Hinksman was a killer with a grudge.
He rocked back and forth as he thought about his predicament.
Sent to prison for life — and no one had made any attempt to free him. What the hell was going on? What had happened to Corelli, and to Lenny Dakin — the two men who had most benefited from his skills and abilities at causing mayhem and death? Where were they now, he asked himself.
Lenny Dakin was actually parked up in a stolen Jaguar XJS with false number plates on the slip road leading up to Lancaster University.
He was contemplating how easy it had been to snare August. The manager of his casino in Blackpool always kept him abreast of ‘interesting’ people who used the facilities on a regular basis, and August had been a regular for about four months.
Not being one to miss out on any opportunity, Dakin had set him up twice with women. If he’d wished, he could have had pictures then, but he hadn’t bothered. He’d simply put August on the back burner for when he really needed to exploit him.
Then it had been very easy indeed.
Dakin sniggered and peered out of the front windscreen of the Jag.
He had a fairly good view from that position up the A6 towards the city. Suddenly the convoy came into view. He glanced up into the air: the chopper was there. A handset from a CB radio was resting in the palm of his hand. He pressed the transmit button and said coolly, ‘We’re on.’
The village of Galgate lies astride the A6, south of Lancaster. There is a set of traffic-lights at a crossroads in the centre of it, where a country road crosses the A6 at right-angles. A pub is situated on one corner, shops on the others.
It is a quiet place, not particularly picturesque and to be honest, not somewhere you’d normally stop for anything.
But it is a place where, with a little thought and planning, a gang of professional criminals who specialise in springing prisoners from custody could ambush a police convoy if they so wished.
Dakin watched the convoy speed by from his position near the University. His heart began to beat quickly and he became very excited. He’d heard about this team, read about their exploits in the newspapers and now — after a great deal of difficulty in actually tracking them down through intermediary after intermediary — had hired them himself. And they didn’t come cheap. He hoped they were worth their fee. He was about to find out.
The traffic-light control box was easy to break into with a small jemmy. The man had done it many times before. It took him only a matter of seconds and no one saw him do it anyway. Not that anyone would have thought much about it, because he was wearing a Lancashire County Council boiler suit and looked official, like he knew
