Overnight Express Read online

  “Ah. You’ve tapped?”

  “Without success, I’m afraid. The deadline is now announced — midnight. The Friends of Hira demand safe conduct for the hijackers — we always expect that, of course. There’ll be a device planted, susceptible to activation by remote control. This will ensure their escape. A helicopter is to be provided, and then an aircraft to fly them and the persons handed over out of the country, destination not revealed.”

  “Midnight,” Hedge said. “Oh, dear.”

  “Of course, we don’t take that as final. These things never are, are they?”

  “No, Foreign Secretary.”

  “When the deadline passes, we must expect … well, trouble for the hostages.” Rowland Mayes meant deaths but there was no point in being too forthcoming. “In the meantime we’re making prudent arrangements.”

  “And they are?”

  “You’re to contact the train,” Rowland Mayes said. “We have no means ourselves of contacting their radio set-up, of course. The PM wants you to make it absolutely clear there’ll be no concessions. Just one moment.” There was a silence, and the line took on a muffled sound as of the Foreign Secretary’s palm being clamped over the other end. A longish pause, then the voice of the Prime Minister herself, unmistakable in its firmness and resolve.

  “Mr Hedge.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister?” Hedge gave a small bow over the handset.

  “Mr Hedge, I’ve just been told of the appalling thing that’s happened. Simply dreadful and because of that, because I cannot allow the passengers to suffer if it can possibly be avoided, I have made a decision that I feel should help.” A pause for breath. “You’ll still pass the message to the train about no concessions. But for your information, and that of anyone you feel should be told, I am having the word leaked that the gaoled terrorists are being moved to a northern prison.”

  “And the judges, Prime Minister?”

  “Not the judges.” Mrs Heffer’s voice was crisp, somewhat impatient at the mere suggestion.

  “I see, Prime Minister. And the gaoled terrorists … are they in fact being moved to —”

  “Of course they’re not. But if we’re seen to shift, or possibly to be ready to shift, our ground in the hijackers’ direction as it were, not that we will, then it should help the hostages. Do your very best, Mr Hedge. I and Great Britain depend on you.”

  “You may certainly rely on me, Prime —” Hedge broke off: the line had been cut. Well, that was a Prime Minister’s privilege, naturally. Hedge put down the handset and mopped at his face, watched by a chief superintendent. Hedge said nothing to the police officer. Frankly, he wondered how Mrs Heffer’s stratagem could possibly help the hostages. When the deadline passed there would presumably be reprisals and never mind the phoney movement of prisoners. Also, he wondered how the leak was to be made convincingly — or even at all, when there was no contact with the hijack radio station. He had been given no order to leak it himself, and he couldn’t anyway except by openly announcing it to the train. And that would scarcely be a leak in the accepted sense.

  Much bothered, Hedge went back by car to the scene. He gathered the chief constable, the rear-admiral, the major-general and the fire chief round him in a close knot of top people. He reported what the PM had said, and the chief constable handed him the microphone of the loud-hailer. His voice, after some initial clicks and fizzes, boomed out.

  “Train ahoy,” he said, and flushed: it must have been the proximity of the mariner at his side. There was no response, not even gunfire. Just in case, Hedge had stationed himself in the lee of a concrete footbridge support. He went on with his message, the simple one that there would be no concessions, that the deadline would be allowed to pass. He then added something off his own bat, since he believed the Prime Minister to have inferred that he would be permitted some sort of discretion within which to do his best: the authorities might well parley, said Hedge — no promises, but they might — if the hijackers refrained from harming any more of the train’s passengers. That, he thought, together with the forthcoming leak, might certainly help. Mrs Heffer was undoubtedly a very astute woman, a finger on everybody’s pulse.

  *

  Acutely aware of the pathetic body in the net, Shard looked down: currently there was no sign of Hedge but there had been no mistaking the voice. Beside Shard Ian Costermaine shifted restlessly. “A bit daft, isn’t it?” he said. “To say blatantly there’ll be no concessions. What about us?”

  “Don’t worry too much. It’s routine. There’s a lot of time between now and midnight.” Shortly before Hedge had shouted up, the hijackers had used the train’s communication system to announce the deadline. “It’s the sort of response the gunmen’ll expect anyway.”

  “So really there’s no change?”

  “No change,” Shard confirmed. He looked across at Sir Richard and Lady Cross. The Treasury man was pale, his face all screwed up, teeth biting at his lips. Lady Cross was sitting straight and firm but frowning, like Queen Mary hearing the news of Mrs Simpson over fifty years earlier. She was a fighter, all right. A firmer support in a showdown than her husband. In the meantime Shard felt as useless as ever, yet knowing that his greater use lay in his retaining his anonymity until it could be effective to reveal himself, a role he was far from accustomed to. He got to his feet. He wanted to see how the girl’s death was affecting the rest of the hostages. A move along the train, ostensibly visiting the toilet compartment, all the way along if he was allowed to. The permitted toilets would probably be occupied: that might give him scope. Moving along, finding a mixture of naked fear, apathy and sheer anger, feeling half stifled in the thick atmosphere, he looked out again from the windows. The sun was going down now beyond the County Hospital. He looked towards the river and the great cathedral beyond, outlined starkly against a clear sky. If the train was blown up, and it might well be when the hijackers’ patience ran out and they saw they were getting nowhere, Durham was going to lie badly damaged. Shard looked down; the scene by the roundabout didn’t change much. Still the fire appliances, the ambulances, the doctors wearing different coloured tabards, the various military vehicles, the police and troops, and Hedge. Hedge would be co-ordinating, being a nuisance. As Shard watched, another car drove up and a clergyman emerged, a stringy man with a pale mauve shirt-front if such was the right word. The clergyman approached Hedge and gesticulated up at the train.

  Shard moved on, found a face he knew from television appearances and from having once encountered him at the time of the Brighton bomb at the Grand Hotel: Lorimer, the Member for one of the south coast constituencies — Lancing West, Shard remembered. There was a vacant seat next to the MP and Shard dropped into it. Opposite were the two professional-looking people, man and wife with children, whom Shard had noticed earlier. The children were standing up by the window. The parents appeared capable, reliable, and he needed allies.

  He spoke to Lorimer, addressing him by name.

  Ernest Lorimer raised an eyebrow: a constituent? He said cautiously, “I’m sorry, your face eludes me, though I’m sure we’ve met.” He coughed. “Heffer House …?”

  “No. Grand Hotel. You’ll remember.”

  “Oh, dear me, yes!” Ernest Lorimer looked immensely sad, his face crumpling, the look he used when the unemployed questioned him about their plight. He had not in fact been actually in his bedroom at the Grand Hotel on that fateful night, but had hurried to the scene from a nearby and less public hotel. “Terrible, terrible. Can one ever forget?” He adjusted his bifocals. “And you are?”

  “Shard. Detective Chief Superintendent. Just between the four of us, please, Mr Lorimer.” The professional-looking couple had been very obviously listening, and now the man gave a nod, ticking over at once. He introduced himself and his wife: Shard had been right — both professional, both medics. Shard explained his need. “When the time comes, I’ll want some people I can rely on.”

  “To do what, precisely?” This was Sue MacAllister, narr
owing her eyes and looking sharp.

  “I don’t know yet. One can never forecast … these hijacks, each has its own characteristics, they develop differently. I have to decide as things turn out.”

  “Play it by ear?” Lorimer suggested.

  “That’s right. I’d watch your children if I were you, Dr MacAllister.” Shard addressed them himself. “What your parents and I have been discussing, it’s taboo. Secret. Not a word to anyone — all right? What are your names?”

  “Fenella.”

  “Dominic.”

  “Right, Fenella and Dominic, you’re in this with me. We work together. I’m a detective, you understand?”

  “Are you going to save our lives?” the boy asked timidly. Shard grinned. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. As for me, I’ll just be doing all I can. And you’ll both have to act very grown-up.”

  He got to his feet and moved on. He knew he’d left reassurance behind him: the passengers, the victims, were after all not entirely on their own. The children, the boy especially, had been impressed — Shard had seen that in the eyes. A real, live detective. That was really something, and he’d asked their help. As he entered the next coach he was halted by a gun-muzzle in his stomach.

  “Go back.”

  “I want the toilet. The others are engaged.”

  There was a shrug, somewhat indifferent. Even hijackers were human and grew tired, even careless perhaps. Later, Shard wouldn’t find it difficult to get hold of a gun. He was allowed through, and the armed bandit slumped to the floor in the space outside the carriage, his automatic rifle across his knees. Shard moved into the press of badge boys. He smelled pot; all the booze was gone now, long since. All the other passengers had shifted, leaving them to it.

  Shard wasn’t welcome.

  “Who’re you, eh?”

  “Piss off out of it, this is our fucking coach.”

  “Wanna be done over, do you, eh?”

  Shard recognised a face from out of the past, the past when he’d been a DI in the Met, working under Hesseltine. The face belonged to Frosty White; Shard had got him sent down for GBH. Frosty White had grievously bodily harmed his own brother, found in bed with his, Frosty’s, wife. Extenuating circumstances, perhaps, but GBH was GBH and no argument.

  “You, eh,” Frosty said.

  Anonymity blown: it had always been a risk, of course. A pity it wasn’t one of the many cons he’d been able to help after they’d come out. Shard said, “Me as ever was. Keep your cool, Frosty. I’m here to help. And to ask for help.”

  “You bastard.”

  “You want to go back to your wife —”

  “Do I fuck. Divorced her, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t know.” Shard did, in fact: it always paid to keep tabs on cons from the past. He said, “Knowing you, Frosty, you’ll have someone else by now.”

  “So what’s it to you?”

  Shard shrugged. “Nothing, not my concern. But you want to get out of this. And keep your voices down all of you.” He and Frosty were now the centre of a mob, a noisy one. He knew that at any moment there might be violence against his person. He looked around, steadily, meeting eyes, trying to project authority from his own. Shard stared them out, then spoke low but crisply. “Keep quiet about me, for your own sake, for everyone’s sake. This hijack’s for real. I’m in a position to know that. They’re playing for high stakes and they mean all they say. Sure, all hijacks to date — in this country — have come to nothing. Mostly, anyway.” The Libyan Embassy hadn’t been exactly a hijack. “And you know as well as I do, there’ll be no concessions. So we’re due to be blown up. Those of us that aren’t shot first, one by one, as the deadline passes. Just think about it, why not?”

  They thought about it. The air of threat grew less, one of unease grew stronger. They sweated beneath their tattoos. One of them said, “Nothing we can do. Any move and that bugger’ll open fire.” He gestured back towards the space outside the carriage. “Already shot Big Mahon.”

  “Dead?”

  “Not dead. Grazed his fucking bum.” A bottom was bared by Big Mahon, a hairy man with what looked like a female organ tattooed on his chest, setting off the hair pictorially. There was a raw patch, nasty looking.

  Shard said, “You’re a tough bunch, just what I need. Help me when the time comes, say nothing about who or what I am in the meantime. All right? Afterwards, you’ll have helped to save the train. Or we hope so. I’ll contact you later. This could be the only hope for all of us. So think about it.”

  He pushed through. They let him go, stood about the aisle with an assortment of expressions, thoughtful, scared, sneering, dismissive, truculent, the lot. Shard found the toilet empty and used it, walked back past the badge boys. In the space beyond the armed man thrust his gun upwards from his slumped position but didn’t utter. Shard more or less stepped over him and was tempted to kick the face to a pulp and grab the gun, but knew the time hadn’t come to stir anything up. He just said ironically, “Pardon me,” and moved on. He felt the stare, the glitter of dark eyes behind him.

  Back in his seat Shard counted his possible allies: Ian Costermaine, the MacAllisters, Lorimer for what he might be worth, the Crosses, or anyway Lady Cross, twenty-odd tearaways. Not much, but a nucleus — a nucleus with scant time on which to build more. Or maybe there would be plenty of time: the hijackers might be in no hurry. As the evening shadows lengthened over Durham station there was a shout from the cab at the head of the train, and one of the soldiers on guard waved a hand, then walked along the platform towards the exit gate. Ten minutes later a trolley was pushed along, loaded with food: bread, pastries, milk, water, fruit. The trolley was left, the troops withdrew, and a man left the cab along with Frudge and another sleeping car attendant and the trolley was pulled closer to the train and unloaded. No-one interfered: it was still a time for playing it cool. But Shard, watching from his window and from the window opposite, saw that more troops had in fact been moved in. Back from the northbound platform there was a sort of tower, with terraces leading up to it. The tower was now manned; and in the station car park on the southbound side there were two ambulances together with some fire appliances, and armed police in riot gear had been sent up a ladder leading to a flat, battlemented roof atop the station buildings.

  Help of a sort, but if the train blew they wouldn’t have a hope.

  *

  There was a shop called the Homestead Sleep Centre near the viaduct. The Homestead Sleep Centre had been among the earlier evacuees and their premises made a handy shelter for Hedge while he awaited developments. The buses had all gone from the bus station behind the roundabout, being valuable properties, and the bus station now contained an assortment of military and civilian vehicles, one of them being the car allocated for Hedge’s personal use, plus driver.

  Hedge sat in a swivel chair in the boss’s office at the Sleep Centre and co-ordinated. His telephone was in constant use — London asking for information, London passing messages about this, that and the other — nothing really helpful, Hedge thought. No precise orders, not even from Mrs Heffer. For this there was a reason: Rowland Mayes had been on the line to inform Hedge that he was representing the PM who preferred to keep a low profile herself.

  “All the way through, Foreign Secretary?”

  “Well, until she sees which way the cat jumps.”

  “Ah.” Hedge had a shrewd idea as to what that might well mean. Mrs H was facing an election before not many months were out and she wouldn’t want to put a foot wrong. Rowland Mayes, that loyal soul, was her longstop, or perhaps wicket-keeper. Hedge knew that he, too, was much at risk. Both he and Rowland Mayes could be considered, perhaps, expendable in the greater interest. That was all very well for Rowland Mayes, to whom loyalty was all and who was very well lined indeed, nicely featherbedded financially: the loss of his political career wouldn’t matter so much to him, it would be an honourable wound, he would as it were have fallen in battle for the Leader. Not so for Hedge, who wa
s far from wealthy though his salary was excellent enough — worth keeping, by God!

  Hedge got to his feet and paced the office. He felt confined and claustrophobic and he went outside, noting the time as he went. Good heavens, time flew! Not far off midnight, and the deadline loomed.

  He went back inside: he must remain handy for the telephone. In any case, open-air Durham had a very threatening feel, he had found, all bright street lights and desertion apart from the military and the rest, all of them looking pent-up. There was a rising wind and the sky looked like rain, all black and heavy, not very nice. As Hedge regained the comparative cosiness of the office, the telephone rang, a sound of menace, but it was only the dean, still worrying about old bones, about the Venerable Bede, demanding to know how much time they had.

  “I’ve no idea, Dean, none at all. Why d’you ask?”

  The voice along the phone was apologetic: the dean knew the strains and anxieties of high office and didn’t wish to be a nuisance. “I was thinking … a lead wall. Lead casing round the tomb. Suppose the explosion’s nuclear?”

  Hedge snapped, “Fiddlesticks, Dean! If the cathedral is shaken, lead won’t save Bede.”

  “But surely —”

  “Pray to God, Dean. Gather up your Bishop and pray. I have to go now.” Hedge banged down the receiver: a uniformed police superintendent had appeared in the doorway, making urgent signs. “Yes, Superintendent?”

  “Contact from the train, sir.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Five minutes to midnight. A reminder about the deadline.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all, sir.” The police officer lingered. “Any action, Mr Hedge?”

  Hedge said, “I’ll call Whitehall.” He said it with firmness, with decision. He dialled and got the Foreign Secretary after some delay. He reported on the situation. “All in hand, Foreign Secretary. Have you any particular orders for midnight … for after the deadline passes?”

  There was none: Hedge was just to report the situation again in five minutes’ time. Whitehall, it seemed, didn’t expect much if any reaction. In time, the hijackers would announce a fresh deadline.