Overnight Express

by Philip McCutchan

  Next door to Jean Fison, the female Dr MacAllister was doing her best to keep cool and wishing she could make contact with her husband; but when she’d tried, the attendant had pushed her back in like he’d pushed Miss Fison. Meanwhile there was a problem. The problem was Fenella.

  “I want to go to the lavatory, mummy.”

  “You can’t. You know as well as I do, the door’s locked.”

  “I want to go!”

  The tone was fairly desperate. As a doctor, Sue MacAllister knew that going was important and Fenella was a special case, but to cope in the circumstances, to cope nicely anyway, was not possible even for a doctor. She said, “Hold on as long as you can but if you have to go, you have to go and that’s all about it, Fen.”

  “Go where?” The voice was a wail now.

  “Here,” Sue MacAllister said, knowing that this was just the start of it. The train had perhaps sixteen lavatories, two to each of say eight coaches aboard an InterCity; how many passengers? Four, five, six hundred? Maybe more. And the train standing, not in a station certainly, but on a viaduct. In the meantime, unknown to her, Ian Costermaine had been trying without success to enter a toilet compartment. Trying, that was, to move along the aisle towards it.

  He was stopped by an automatic rifle, assembled from one of the heavy cases. “Go back to your seat.”

  “I want to use the toilet.”

  “You cannot. It is forbidden.”

  “How long is it forbidden for, for God’s sake?”

  “That is up to your people, your Prime Minister. Now, go back to your seat or I shall shoot.”

  The man was calm, not even a raised voice. He radiated confidence and authority and it was plain he would shoot if he felt it necessary. Ian Costermaine, worrying about the vital interview in Edinburgh, turned tail and went back to his seat. When he didn’t turn up, someone else would get the job. They would know, of course, about the London train stationary on the Durham viaduct but they wouldn’t necessarily make the connection and anyway they wouldn’t hold the job if they found someone suitable from those that did get there. It was all monstrously unfair, the suffering of the innocents inherent in all acts of terrorism.

  *

  A full summary and assessment of the situation as seen from the street below the viaduct and from the railway station had gone from Durham police to Mrs Heffer’s hotel suite in Perth: she found it unhelpful, being a bald statement of the physical facts and, as yet, no demands from the hijackers, believed to be from the Middle East.

  The time was 0605; a streaky dawn was just coming into the sky over Scotland as the Prime Minister saw when she marched across the room and threw up a window, thrust her head out and breathed deeply six times. Fresh air was important, it unclogged the brain from sleep and gave a good start to a day that was going to be much busier even than she had intended. There was a lot to be done during the morning; she would attend the conference in the afternoon. The morning was to be — or was to have been — devoted to a hospital visitation, a progress round Dewar’s whisky bottling plant on Perth’s outskirts, and another of the Caithness Glass factory adjacent, so many workers to be given gracious smiles that would induce them to vote Tory next time round. Not was to have been: still would be. Mrs Heffer took one more deep breath and turned round to her assembled audience: Party Chairman, Leader of the House, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Minister for the Environment, Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, all ready to jump through their various hoops when bid.

  Jaw out-thrust, she said, “Something must be done.”

  There was a discreet chorus: “Yes, Prime Minister.”

  “But what?”

  There was no specific answer to that one, just murmurs that this was a time to wait and see, wait upon developments from the other side. Mrs Heffer’s natural instinct was to send in the army, plus helicopters, plus SAS, plus everything that moved and fired. It was probably the instinct of all Britain; but Mrs Heffer held her horses and fought her instinct down. She knew, alas, that hijacks were not best handled that way, but she was not going to agree that ‘wait and see’ was the only way. She said ominously, “The Middle East is your responsibility, Roly.”

  Rowland Mayes, Foreign Secretary, agreed that this was so but made the point in a self-deprecatory murmur that a hijacked train was the pigeon of the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. He made this point without much hope: the Home Secretary was bedbound, that very morning to be operated upon for the removal of his prostate gland, and in any case Rowland Mayes knew that Mrs Heffer, notorious for being possessed of fixed ideas, believed that terrorism always came from foreigners and believed also that the Home Office was entirely parochial and she didn’t deal with underlings. Though the Home Office mechanism would presumably operate, Rowland Mayes read in Mrs Heffer’s eye that this time it was going to operate through himself as hijack overlord. He supposed he should feel flattered but in fact felt merely ill-used.

  Mrs Heffer ignored his remark about the Home Secretary and his office. She said sharply, “What I just said, Roly. What do you intend to do about it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Someone put me in touch with the Home Office, please. They may have some ideas if little else.” She frowned as if struck by a sudden thought as she watched an aide moving for the telephone. “Roly?”

  “Yes, Prime Minister?”

  Rowland Mayes’ soft voice, silly grin and spectacles acted as an irritant upon Mrs Heffer and her frown deepened. “Didn’t a number of my MPs intend catching the 2335? And Dickie Cross?”

  “I believe so —”

  “Find out for certain, Roly. Believing so is no good, is it? Now, as to my programme for today: unless the situation changes, I shall not. We go ahead as planned. Everything will have been spruced up for me and I won’t let people down.” Mrs Heffer somehow managed to convey, with her brilliant smile, that obstinacy was the politeness of princesses.

  *

  The dawn spread its light over Scotland, over Durham, over the outward serenity of the Foreign Office, over Hedge still waiting for developments in his office. Miss Fleece, brought from her bed in Fulham by an impatient telephone call from Hedge in person, was now in attendance; and Hedge had drunk several cups of coffee. As he chewed his fingernails and worried about high persons in Perth, the Treasury came on the line again, an assistant under-secretary known to and disliked by Hedge, an assistant under-secretary worrying about his boss.

  “The press must be muzzled,” he said.

  “What about? You can’t muzzle a train on a viaduct,” Hedge said reasonably enough.

  “No, no. Sir Richard’s presence —”

  “Home Office,” Hedge said, and cut the call. He had quite enough on his plate without minding the Home Office’s Ps and Qs. He had just put down the telephone when Detective Inspector Orwin was announced by Miss Fleece. With him was Detective Sergeant Kenwood, carrying some papers, the result of his enquiry into the Friends of Hira, who were apparently a fringe group, an offshoot of the PLO, known around the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean but so far of little account beyond.

  “So far,” Hedge said portentously.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hedge scanned Kenwood’s notes: they didn’t seem to convey a lot, he thought, very sketchy. Kenwood made the point that the Friends of Hira were indeed sketchy, seemed never to have attempted anything spectacular and he had been unable to find out any precise names. While Hedge was going into all this and dreading a call from Mrs Heffer, his internal telephone rang and Kenwood answered for him. Kenwood’s face was blank as he reported: “Home Office, sir, heard the BBC radio news. They’ve reported the hijack, as expected. But they’ve gone and blown something else: the fact that there are MPs aboard the train … and they’ve given away Sir Richard Cross’s position as Permanent Under-Secretary to the Treasury.” Kenwood paused. “I don’t think Mrs Heffer’s going to like that very much, sir.”

  The expression on Hedge’s face indicated that he was in full agreement. But
the Home Office could carry that can all by themselves.

  *

  British Rail was in a flap now, the brass sounding out from Durham south to the metropolis via York, everything and everyone astir. There was a multitude on the platforms at Durham, high above the town, the station manager plus a top official sent up by helicopter from York, plus the police, the latter including the chief constable. The cab of the hijacked eight-coach 125 was a mere matter of yards from the end of the platform: the driver and co-driver with two apparent Arabs could be seen through the windscreen, clearly enough, drinking from a flask. One of them had given a cheeky wave, but there had been no other contact. The police orders were, no-one was to approach the viaduct. The train had been called on the radio telephone in the cab but the call remained unanswered.

  The chief constable was baffled. “Not much point in a hijack if they don’t tell us what they want. What’s the idea?”

  The BR man from York said that maybe it was a psychological thing.

  “Come again? What’s psychological about it?”

  “Keep us guessing. Softening us up.”

  The chief constable grunted. “There’s someone who won’t be softened up and she’s in Perth.”

  “Let’s hope she stays there.”

  “Check!” The chief constable stared across the awakening city, bright, fresh and clean beneath the early light, some traffic already moving but so far few pedestrians about. The area around the viaduct was being kept clear, with plenty of beat men ready to man crowd barriers. This was a very public hijack. The chief constable looked across at the castle and the cathedral on their great rock in a meander of the River Wear, the twin edifices, the embodiments of Church and State dominating the whole town together with the railway station and the viaduct. God and the military, or in the latter case today an adjunct of the university, and British Rail. And bloody useless they all were, the chief constable reflected, against a bunch of bandits with so many people in their grip. While he was thus thinking, BR’s chairman, Lord Arkwright, was on his way to a hastily-called conference at the Home Office, a conference attended by the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, the Minister of State, Home Office — the Secretary of State being in hospital — a high official from the Environment, others from the Ministry of Transport, the Scottish Office bothered about a vital rail link being cut, Defence Ministry, plus the Very Reverend Hugo Pavitt representing the Archbishop of Canterbury since there had as yet been no time to muster anyone from the See of York and there was concern about Durham Cathedral being somewhat close to any explosion; and Hedge representing the Foreign Office.

  In Perth Mrs Heffer took a brisk walk in the grounds of her hotel, to clear her mind further. She came upon a fishpond and sent the Foreign Secretary to find food for its occupants: Mrs Heffer was fond of exotic fish.

  “What sort of food, Prime Minister?”

  “Fish food, Roly. Bread, if there’s nothing else.”

  Shaking his head, Rowland Mayes hurried back inside the hotel, thinking what a splendid woman the boss was. Like a rock; lesser women wouldn’t be bothering with fish at a time like this: there was something Drake-like, fish instead of bowls. Bread was found, a bag of crumbs, and Rowland Mayes hurried back to the fishpond. A bulky figure in a sort of housecoat like a kimono, Mrs Heffer happily cast the crumbs, turning her back on the Foreign Secretary’s beaming smile and the sunrise reflecting from his spectacles. The feeding was interrupted by the Party Chairman, hurrying from the hotel to report indiscretion on the part of the BBC. Mrs Heffer’s face turned thunderous.

  4

  There was a radio in the cab of the motionless express: the BBC news penetrated loud and clear. There were pocket radios elsewhere in the train, among the passengers, but they were forcibly removed by the armed men: the passengers were best kept in the dark vis-à-vis the outside world, the safe world.

  In the cab, the name of Sir Richard Cross was picked up and there was gratification.

  “A high official of the British Treasury! An important man!”

  “A bloody nob,” the driver said. “You want him, do you? I reckon he’ll be in a sleeper. Check the sleeping car attendants’ lists, they’ll know.”

  One of the Arabs found the Crosses on Sam Frudge’s list. “This one,” Frudge said, thumbing towards one of the locked doors. “Want ’em, do you?”

  The Arab didn’t. “Not yet. Later. For now, they are to think we do not know. You understand?” Briefly, a knife was shown and moved towards Sam Frudge’s throat. “No-one but you could tell them. So we would know.”

  Sam Frudge’s face whitened. “Sealed lips,” he said. After the Arab had gone he went along to his galley at the end of the sleeping car compartment, lit a fag, blew smoke, and stared down at Durham. There was a roundabout beneath the viaduct, not slap beneath but a little east of it, the exits leading to Millburngate, North Road, Sutton Street. No traffic on it but plenty of fuzz lurking. Sam Frudge wondered what they were going to do: obviously they had the situation clear, but what could they do? The hijackers had them all ends up — all of them, fuzz, government, passengers and train crew, station staff, the lot. Near the roundabout were houses, people living in them, people also possibly at risk when the shooting started if ever it did.

  Or the explosion: after all, they could probably blow the train if they had a mind to. That hadn’t sounded like an empty threat. If that happened, then they would blow him too and never mind that he wasn’t a nob like Cross.

  Nasty!

  Sam Frudge went out into the corridor where the windows of the exit doors were openable, and took a look along towards the station platform, sticking his head out of the window to do so. Sticking his neck out too: a shout came from an armed man on the walkway alongside the train and Sam Frudge hurriedly withdrew. So near and yet so far. No escape.

  In one of the locked compartments the incorporated accountant was a worried man and not just for his skin. When things went wrong like now, other things could come out; and the incorporated accountant was a married man, his wife being in Twickenham, Middlesex. She would hear the news and would worry, but not half as much as he would; he didn’t want any trouble, not on account of his secretary who was replaceable both in bed and at her desk. She was just something to brighten a spell of work in Edinburgh, incorporated accountants not being such dry sticks as their popular image might suggest. But in the meantime there was no further interest in sex. The present held matters of life and death and Angela was white and weepy.

  Back along the train there were sore heads: the Birmingham badge boys had come to with hangovers and there were empty bottles stacked all around them. And they were belligerent, at least at first, when they were told what was going on. There was a good deal of foul language and racist sentiment. The fat man with the Birmingham device on the back of his leather jacket got to his feet, truculently, and advanced along the aisle towards the man with the gun, which to start with he didn’t see.

  “What’s the effing idea, eh?”

  “Go back to your seat.”

  “Eff you for a start, mate, bloody little —”

  The gun showed then. There was a sharp report and a stench of gunsmoke. The bullet glanced across the fat man’s pudgy left arm and spun him round. Blood ran. The bullet sped on and embedded in some woodwork. Women screamed and men went pale. A small girl wedged between her mother and father had an attack of hysterics, and was loudly shushed. Without another word, the fat man staggered back to his seat and flopped down into it, clutching his arm while blood continued to flow through his fingers.

  “You have been warned,” the man on guard said.

  Shard was in the next coach to the rear; in what was otherwise a silence, the shot came through. Shard looked around at rising fear manifesting on the faces. He was still impotent, still frustrated. He knew that his best value to the train and passengers lay in anonymity, in not thrusting himself forward until precisely the right moment, which might come when the negotiations started and
the forces of law and order moved in close, ready for the final act whichever way it was to go. He would be the Trojan horse, in situ with the hijackers.

  Like all the others, the ordinary passengers, his thoughts were largely back home. Beth would know by now, probably: before all the pocket transistors had been snatched away aboard the train, they had heard the first few words from the BBC; and Beth would certainly get it in the next broadcast once she was out of bed. She would worry desperately: she always did, even when there was nothing to worry about. And her mother wouldn’t be much help. Mrs Micklem would be on the phone pronto, mendaciously sympathising, trying not to let it show that she had hopes of being relieved of a son-in-law. Beth would see through that and would writhe but be powerless to slap her mother down: it wasn’t something anyone wanted to put into words, to argue about, and Mrs Micklem was a strong personality in any case. It took Shard himself to slap her down firmly enough.

  And Hedge: how would Hedge be coping, how would Shard’s DI, Bob Orwin, be coping with Hedge?

  *

  The conference room in the Home Office was stuffy, unseasonally warm. Hedge farmed himself with a piece of blotting-paper. He was seated next to the Archbishop’s man, the Very Reverend Hugo Pavitt, who was a crashing bore and kept on making sotto voce comments about what had happened to York Minster some years earlier, a thunderbolt sent by God. Hedge couldn’t see the connexion but Pavitt went on to mumble something about Durham Cathedral and stained glass that could shatter.

  Hedge said wearily, also sotto voce since the man from the Defence Ministry was speaking at the moment, “If there’s firing, my dear fellow, it’s not likely to be towards the cathedral.”

  “One never knows what may —”

  “Quite, quite.” Hedge’s tone was sharp and it inhibited Hugo Pavitt, who mumbled a little more and then stopped. The Defence official was saying something about the SAS Regiment being put on an alert and helicopters standing by, ready to be flown in if necessary — but only, of course, if necessary: a low profile was always best, at any rate in the early stages. This was received with unanimous approval. Lord Arkwright of British Rail, however, had a suggestion: power units could be moved in, both ends of the train.