Hunter Hunted

by Jack Gatland

  And by then he’d be far away.

  As he walked back through the concourse, heading towards Kings Cross Underground Station, he saw four police cars pulling up outside, the sirens flashing as officers emerged, running towards the concourse. He felt a sudden pang of fear at this. How had they found him so quickly? However, he forced himself to slow, to move to the side as they passed him; nothing more than a curious onlooker. They ran for the platforms, but looking at his watch Declan knew they were too late to catch the train. And, if he was correct, the first stop would be Stevenage, over half an hour’s journey away. Even if they stopped the train and started a search through the carriages, it would be about an hour from now before people realised that Declan wasn’t there. And by then, he’d be on another train, heading in the other direction.

  Using the Travelcard, Declan caught a Circle Line train to Paddington where he found another self-service ticket machine and, using almost the last of his cash, he bought an open return to Maidenhead. Running for this train, he almost missed it, clambering in as the doors beeped and closed.

  Now on a seat beside the window, Declan stared out of the window as the train emerged out of the station, following the tracks westward as they took him to safety. He knew he was taking a risk here; the whole point of the subterfuge was to give him time to escape, to become a ghost. But he was heading to a known location, and one they would surely examine. He had no choice, though. This wasn’t an escape for him; this was still an active investigation, whether or not he was legally allowed to. He just needed a little time to set up the basics. He knew he’d created a breathing space with the trains, but how long he had, he didn’t know.

  It was late afternoon by the time Declan arrived in Hurley upon Thames.

  He’d caught a taxi in Maidenhead, spending the last of his money on the fee and a small tip, asking to be dropped off outside The Rising Sun pub. From here it was a short walk; one that Declan needed, if only to work out the next part of his plan.

  He’d given his keys in before he escaped, so there was no way he could quietly enter his house. He remembered his father had once placed a spare back door key under a statue in the garden though, and he was relying on this to be his way in. If not, he’d have to break a window to enter, just like someone had done a couple of days ago when they stole his father’s iMac.

  He also knew that he didn’t have long; the rucksack on the train would have been discovered by now, and they’d already be racing to find him. Hurley was a known safe house. It was only a matter of time before they arrived, but he’d expected this when he decided to travel here.

  Passing his house, a semi-detached one on the end of a series of similar houses, Declan kept to the fence as he slid around to the side, finding a secluded spot to climb over the wooden slats, landing clumsily in his garden. Skulking through it, monitoring the surrounding houses, Declan walked over to a large statue of Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. Easily five feet in height, it was an ugly bloody thing that Patrick Walsh had loved. And, as Declan forced it from its long-standing base, creating a small circular motion to spin it around, he saw the old rusted key sunken into the ground below.

  Taking it, he ran to the back door and was overjoyed to see that it still worked; the door unlocking with a solid click. Opening it and slipping inside, Declan closed the door behind him and for the first time in an hour breathed a sigh of relief. For a slight moment, he was safe.

  Pulling out the phone that he’d taken from the back of a toilet in what seemed like a lifetime ago, Declan turned it on to see that Trix had been telling the truth. There was only one number in it and, as he walked up the stairs, he dialled it.

  Trix answered on the third ring.

  ‘You’re popular,’ she said. ‘They’re spitting bullets right now.’

  ‘You can still hear them?’ Declan asked, surprised.

  ‘Of course,’ Trix replied. ‘I’ve been listening since they brought you in. They had a call from Sutcliffe about fifteen minutes ago and he was close to having a stroke.’

  ‘Then you know what happened,’ Declan entered his father’s study now, sliding the bookshelf across to reveal the secret room. ‘And you know I need Pearce’s address.’

  ‘She won’t help you,’ Trix’s voice was distracted, as if she was doing something else while talking. ‘She’d rather make a deal with Baker. If she helped you…’

  ‘I know, but she’s the only option I have,’ Declan sat on his father's chair. ‘I need to prove Kendis right.’

  ‘I’ll find the address and send it to you,’ Trix said, her tone all business. ‘Are you at your father’s house?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Declan replied. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I said before, cell towers,’ Trix could be heard typing. ‘I know you think it’s safe there, but it’s not. Get out now.’

  ‘Why?’ Declan was already rising, walking out of the study, moving to the window in the study that looked out over the front garden. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Get out now,’ Trix insisted. ‘It’s why Sutcliffe called the office, to put things in motion. They’re blanketing every known location of yours. Liz’s house, your old apartment in Tottenham, and Hurley. They’re coming for you.’

  But it was too late. As Declan looked out of the window, he saw the flash of blue lights and heard the faint sounds of sirens through the glass. As he backed away from view, he saw the cars were already screeching to a halt outside his house and police officers were emerging, spreading out to cover both front and back entrances. Down the street, he could see another officer, a blond Viking of a man, knocking on his neighbour’s doors. Disconnecting the call and walking back to his father’s desk, Declan listened to the sounds outside; the police officers hammering on the front door, the shouts as they barked orders to each other. Soon they’d find entry into the house, and it was a matter of time before they found him.

  He couldn’t help himself. He laughed at his immediate situation. He’d thought he would have had at least an hour before he had to leave. Instead, he’d only had a matter of minutes. There was no escape.

  Declan was surrounded.

  19

  Door To Door

  DCI Sutcliffe had been furious when Frost let Declan Walsh escape. He was even angrier when he learned, half an hour later that Declan had escaped, not out of the toilet as people believed, but up through the ceiling and somehow onto the roof, an escape verified by some tourists in Temple Inn who had watched ‘the man running over the roofs’ earlier.

  They’d worked out that he’d escaped into Fleet Street partly through following the route, but also because twenty minutes later he’d bought supplies by credit card in St Pauls. Sutcliffe had scoffed at this; the man was a fool. How did he not understand that they could track the receipts? He obviously hoped to use speed rather than intellect, to gain distance from London. This was also obvious from the other receipts that they had picked up, the taxi to Kings Cross and the train to Whitby.

  Arriving at the station, Sutcliffe and his unit, primarily comprising Frost, his bleeding nose now stemmed and Fitzwarren, sickeningly eager to please checked with the first responding officers to see what they’d learned. Bullman and Kapoor hadn’t joined them, still believing that Alex Monroe had been attacked by someone separate to Walsh, but Sutcliffe didn’t care about them. He simply needed to catch Walsh.

  The police had arrived moments too late, he’d learned. The train had already left the station by the time they ran onto the platform, but two units were now deployed to the first stop on the route, and the ticket inspectors had been sent an image of Declan to help them identify him as they walked up and down the seven carriages. There was a station officer, a small, scrawny little runt of a man who claimed that Declan had asked him which train to catch, but with this, something felt off here. Who was Walsh visiting in Whitby, and why did he take a sleeping bag?

  The more he thought about it, the more he realised that Declan Walsh wasn’t the idiot he’d been making
out to be. He’d obviously had help escaping, but by who? The only people who’d been on his side were his team, most of whom hadn’t been in the room and Charles Baker.

  But Baker’s office had wanted Declan destroyed.

  Sutcliffe had audibly hissed with annoyance, surprising several of the surrounding officers. Frost and Fitzwarren had walked back to him, both with faces of deep disappointment.

  ‘Let me guess, they didn’t find him?’ Sutcliffe asked. ‘CCTV didn’t pick him up?’

  ‘Actually, it did, sir,’ Fitzwarren spoke up. ‘We have him entering the two thirty train on platform eleven.’

  ‘So Stevenage it is,’ Sutcliffe suggested. ‘We can get there just in time to arrest him if we put our foot down.’

  ‘No,’ Frost was still watching around Kings Cross, as if expecting Walsh to be watching him back. ‘This feels too easy. He’s leaving us a bloody good trail, but he’s not that stupid.’ He looked to Fitzwarren. ‘Is he?’

  ‘He, well, he thinks with his heart,’ Fitzwarren replied. ‘So there’s a chance that he could have done this.’

  ‘And you’re not just saying this to delay our investigation, are you?’ Sutcliffe enquired. ‘Some misguided loyalty here?’

  Fitzwarren bristled visibly at the accusation. ‘You’ve seen how Anjli and Davey reacted to me,’ he said. ‘I’m classed as a traitor because I valued my job and my career over loyalty.’

  Sutcliffe nodded. ‘So, if you were Walsh, where would you go?’

  ‘Maybe his ex-wife’s,’ Fitzwarren suggested, but Frost cut him off.

  ‘He’ll go back to Hurley,’ he said. ‘It’s out of London, it’s a sleepy village and he has everything he needs there. It’s a bolthole.’

  Sutcliffe remembered the house in Hurley very well; the first time he’d ever met Walsh was on the doorstep, as he tried to take a suspect out of the premises.

  ‘We go there,’ he said as he looked to his watch. ‘If he is doing that, he has to make his way to Paddington, and to Maidenhead. We’ll likely miss him at both stations, so let’s just cut to the chase and go to his house.’

  ‘Should we pass this on?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Sutcliffe replied. ‘Just get to that bloody house before he leaves. I want that bastard back in custody.’

  Frost and Fitzwarren left Kings Cross at a run as Sutcliffe pulled out his phone, dialling a number. He knew he needed to let the Crime Unit he currently commanded know about the current plans, while he still had to wait for a response from the Stevenage police once they had searched the Whitby train. And then, after both, he’d need to speak to Chief Superintendent Bradbury, if only to give him an update.

  But before that, he had a more important call to make.

  ‘Charles Baker’s office,’ he said to the operator who answered. ‘Tell him it’s DCI Sutcliffe.’ He waited a moment, glancing around the station as he did so. Bradbury would probably want to do some kind of televised press conference. He loved doing those bloody things. He was thinking of ways to escape this when the phone answered.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Walsh is in the wind. I’ll get him back, but I wanted you to know.’

  He paused, listening to the voice at the other end of the phone.

  ‘You don’t need to worry,’ he continued. ‘I have this under control. I’d have had it a damn sight better controlled if you’d told me about the operatives you sent after the Muslim.’ Another pause as he listened. ‘Well, perhaps you—no, of course I’m not questioning you. I’m just saying that there’s a lot riding on this, and we need to…’

  One last pause.

  ‘Of course not, sir,’ he whispered, his face whitening. ‘I’m completely loyal to Rattlestone. And you, of course.’

  The call disconnected. Sutcliffe, now looking quite queasy, stared down at his phone as if he genuinely expected it to attack him.

  He really needed to find Declan Walsh.

  In Hurley, PC De’Geer was the first to arrive on scene. A tall, muscled man with Scandinavian heritage, he looked like a Viking who’d had his beard trimmed, his hair cut and had then been squeezed into a police constable’s uniform. He’d surveyed the house, checked the area and rather than confront a potential terrorist on his own, he had instead knocked on the surrounding doors, speaking to the neighbours, looking for anyone that might have seen Declan Walsh that day. By the time he’d moved to the second door, more police cars had arrived, and more officers were surrounding the house, banging on the front door, peering through the windows.

  It stayed like this for another ten minutes; PC De’Geer carried on speaking to the neighbours while his colleagues waited impotently around the house, unsure that the suspect was even in there.

  There was a neighbour, a battle-axe of a lady who claimed continually that Walsh was a ‘bad sort’ and that she was sure that she’d seen him on the street less than an hour earlier, but she also claimed that his father had been a spy, had worked with the Russians and even faked his own death, so she was a little unreliable in the witness stakes.

  Eventually a Mini screeched to a halt outside the house, and two men climbed out. One was a blond man in a three piece suit, while the other was older, cleaning his rimless glasses as he looked around.

  ‘Who was first to respond?’ he shouted. PC De’Geer walked over.

  ‘I was, sir,’ he said. The man with the rimless glasses nodded.

  ‘I’m DI Frost, this is DC Fitzwarren, and we’re taking this over. Why aren’t we in the house yet?’

  ‘Because we have no evidence to believe that the suspect is even in there,’ PC De’Geer replied. ‘The last we heard was that he was on—‘

  ‘The train?’ Frost interrupted. ‘Yeah, that’s wrong. We checked it at Stevenage. All we found was a rucksack with his suit in. Chances are he doubled back just before it left.’

  PC De’Geer nodded to this. ‘Even so, sir, we have no proof—‘

  ‘I’ll give you bloody proof,’ Frost snapped, walking up to the door, and opening the letterbox.

  ‘Walsh!’ he shouted through the hole. ‘We know you’re in here! Don’t make this more difficult for yourself!’

  There was a silence as Frost waited. Then, sighing, he straightened, pulling out a small black package from his pocket. Opening it, he pulled out two lock picks.

  ‘I thought I heard someone in danger,’ he explained as he picked the lock. ‘Best to make sure, eh?’

  And with that, the lock to the front door clicked open, and DI Frost entered the house.

  Billy had only ever been in the house once, back when the last police standoff had occurred, but he’d never had a chance to really look around. That said, he still felt uneasy about entering the premises without due cause or a warrant, but Frost ignored his concerns.

  ‘He’s a terrorist,’ Frost explained, pulling on his blue latex gloves as they walked up the stairs, the ground floor now completely examined by the officers who joined them as they moved upstairs. ‘Rules change when you deal with that.’

  ‘I know,’ Billy replied, his own gloves already on. ‘But it’s different for you. I still see the man I worked with.’

  ‘The man they forced you to work with,’ Frost reminded him as they entered the main bedroom, looking around. ‘You didn’t choose to work with Monroe’s band of misfit toys. What did you do that got you transferred, anyway?’

  ‘I was in Cyber Crime,’ Billy replied, opening a sliding wardrobe. ‘My uncle was running a Ponzi scheme with shitcoins. That’s a derogatory term for cryptocurrency that doesn’t give any worth to the investor.’

  ‘A play on words from Bitcoin,’ Frost nodded. ‘That must have pissed off your family.’

  ‘They disowned me,’ Billy pulled aside some suits, peering in. ‘I’ve been trying to rebuild that relationship since. Nothing in here.’

  Frost pulled out his phone, looking at it irritatedly.

  ‘Of course he’d live in a piece of shit village with no signal,’ he muttered. Billy looked
at his own phone.

  ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘Mine’s on four bars. May I?’ He held a hand out. Frost looked at him in confusion ’You probably need to renew your carrier settings,’ Billy continued. ‘Cyber expert, remember?’

  Frost passed Billy the phone and after a couple of minutes tapping on it, Billy passed it back with a smile.

  ‘Three bars,’ he said. ‘Not quite perfect, but enough for a call.’

  Placing the phone back in his pocket with a grudging nod, Frost led Billy out of the bedroom, allowing the officers to carry on, walking across the corridor into a room filled with boxes. A half empty bookshelf was at the other end, and the room looked to all extent like a storeroom.

  ‘Christ,’ Frost muttered. ‘Minimalist much?’

  ‘He’s just moved in,’ Billy suggested. ‘I don’t think he’s had time to unpack.’

  The Viking-looking officer, PC De’Geer leaned around the door frame, almost dwarfing it.

  ‘Nobody up here, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Is there a loft in the house?’ Frost retorted. ‘He does so love to crawl around in lofts.’

  PC De’Geer left to check and Frost looked back to Billy.

  ‘You’re wasted in this department,’ he said. ‘When this is done, I’ll see if I can get you transferred to mine.’

  ‘What, DCI Sutcliffe’s team?’ Billy looked surprised at the offer. Frost laughed.

  ‘Christ, no,’ he said. ‘Sutcliffe’s a tool to be used. After this, I’ll be a DCI myself. I’ll have my own department. You can be my first Detective Sergeant.’

  Billy smiled. ‘A promotion would be nice,’ he replied, spying something on one of the boxes. Walking over, he picked up a police issue extending baton.