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.
