Overnight Express

by Philip McCutchan

  “But the hijackers — they’ll be sure to search beneath the train! You said it was quite a bang, Prime Minister.”

  “Yes. In which case the situation will have changed, I quite agree. But we must wait.” Mrs Heffer, face strong and unyielding, marched to a window and stood looking out in the general direction of Buckingham Palace. The Queen was back and would be anxious, but this was not the moment to use the telephone to the Palace, however secure, however trustworthy the Queen might be; Mrs Heffer didn’t for one moment doubt her integrity, of course; but strictly this was not HM’s business at all and one could never be too careful — so many ears. And the Queen might go on again about the hostages for whom, naturally, Mrs Heffer had every sympathy … it was such a pity they were there at all; without them she could have a determined go and show the hijackers that Britain was still great and strong.

  “Coffee,” Mrs Heffer said, turning from the window. An aide was despatched and coffee came for all present. Mrs Heffer took a gulp; the Lord Privy Seal got some down the wrong way and choked. The strain was telling now; Mrs Heffer looked impatient at the choking sounds and, red-faced, the Lord Privy Seal scurried from the room. The clock ticked on. Britain now hung upon Hedge: no fresh orders were forthcoming while Mrs Heffer awaited the next move from Durham. When the coffee cups had been emptied another report came in from Hedge: the gas party had withdrawn intact, pipelines and all, but there had been shooting.

  “Shooting,” Mrs Heffer said. “That means they were seen by the hijackers, Mr Hedge.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister.”

  “But the hijackers won’t necessarily know what was being attempted. What went wrong?”

  Hedge said, “One of the party missed with a spanner, a heavy one. There was a lot of force behind it, Prime Minister, and it hit a wheel.”

  “I thought all tools had been muffled, Mr Hedge?”

  “The muffling dropped off, Prime Minister.”

  Mrs Heffer’s next words were lost to Durham in a sudden upsurge of local sound, sudden gunfire coming apparently from the train and then a high screaming accompanied by a rising murmur of horror from the troops and police in their withdrawn positions. Hedge gabbled something into the telephone about going outside for a look, then rang off. When he got outside he found the searchlights had come on again and the roundabout and viaduct were once again brilliantly lit. Beneath the viaduct the net swayed back and forth as though it had received a near miss. Beneath again, a figure lay sprawled and inert, a figure like some enormous bat with wings spread in death: Judge Prestwick, in wig and gown.

  *

  It had been when he had heard the clanging noise from beneath the train that Shard had finally decided the time had come.

  “They’ve tried something and it’s aborted,” he said to Ian Costermaine. “That’s going to precipitate something, any moment —”

  “The big blow?”

  “Or more killings first, perhaps.” Shard looked along the train. The armed guard on the coach was thrusting head and shoulders from an open window in the section by the toilet compartment. Shard moved fast and without noticeable sound. He got close up behind the man and reached for the neck. He dragged the hijacker backwards from the window, smashed the head hard against the bulkhead behind, and as the body sagged lifted it upright again with a smashing blow to the chin. When the man sagged finally to the floor Shard, picking up the sub-machine gun that had fallen, moved back into the coach.

  “Stay right where you are till I tell you different,” he told the passengers. “Keep down, keep in what cover you can find.” He moved fast, making towards the rear portion of the train. Costermaine was behind him. They moved towards the Birmingham tearaways. When they reached them Shard saw the next armed guard, behind the badge boys, coming through to the front portion. As he was spotted and seen to be armed, the hijacker opened fire, raking the aisle with a sustained burst. Four of the badge boys fell. A bullet snicked through Shard’s shirt sleeve and then he sent in a burst towards the hijacker, who went down in a pool of blood. Shard pushed through, picked up the sub-machine gun, and handed it to Ian Costermaine.

  “All right?” he asked

  “Yes —”

  “Take over the rear half,” Shard said. “I’ll leave you with half the Birmingham mob. I’ll take the others and move back for the cab.” He passed the orders to the badge boys; they rallied round. This was their scene, all right. Shard’s half followed to the front of the train. The passengers stared at him fearfully as he passed. They asked no questions: they were thankful that someone had taken charge, that whatever the result the nightmare would soon come to an end now. Tethers had been stretched far enough for them to be glad of simply that. Lady Cross was weeping quietly, her composure gone at last, and Sue MacAllister was doing what she could to comfort her. Miss Tuffin still held Ernest Lorimer’s hand. The MP seemed to be in a state of blue funk now. Shard found his path barred by the Chinese girl, Sun Wun Foo,

  “I help,” she said.

  “How?”

  “There will be bombs.”

  “Yes —”

  “Hidden. I look, I search.”

  “But —”

  “I understand hidings. In Kowloon many, many things are hidden from inspectors of Hong Kong Police. Also in London I hide french letters, vibrators, suggestive pictures in case of search of premises. I —”

  “All right,” Shard said. “But be careful — and don’t touch. Just report.” He looked round, saw Jean Fison. She said she would accompany Sun Wun Foo and act as messenger. Shard nodded, and went on his way towards the cab, the hijackers’ redoubt. En route he met Sam Frudge.

  “You. You have access to the cab.”

  “I don’t have a key if that’s what you mean, only the cab crew —”

  “Access isn’t just the key. How do you communicate?”

  Before the man could answer Shard had seen the approach from ahead, two of the hijackers coming through, guns lifted. This was no time for parley: Shard fired. Just before his bullets took their target, a burst came from ahead and the sleeping car attendant absorbed it. Shard moved on, still with Costermaine behind him. Seconds could count now: he wished all the luck in the world to Sun Wun Foo, truffling around for bombs. She wasn’t much but she was all he had.

  *

  Hedge was reporting again, from the Homestead Sleep Centre to the Cabinet Office, and he was in a state of high excitement. “Prime Minister —”

  “No,” Rowland Mayes “It’s me —”

  “Where is Mrs Heffer, Foreign Secretary?”

  “Gone to the lavatory. What’s happening, Hedge?”

  “A very great deal, Foreign Secretary. Something is taking place aboard the train, a lot of gunfire … my man Shard without a doubt. So fortunate I put him there —”

  “Yes. Any deaths?”

  “I fear so, yes. Judge Prestwick, hurled from the train.”

  “Oh, my God! They’re getting desperate, Hedge! A hostage of value! What are you doing about it?”

  “About Judge Prestwick?”

  “No, about the situation, my dear chap —”

  “Ah yes. Well, I believe this is what you might call the crunch, Foreign Secretary. Shard will need all assistance. The police and troops are ready for any back-up measures. It needs only the Prime Minister’s word to send them …” Hedge’s voice tailed off. “Are you there, Foreign Secretary?”

  The voice that next spoke was female and sharp. “Send them in, Mr Hedge. Send them in at once!”

  Hedge put down the telephone and hurried out into the open to pass the orders. He felt a terrible looseness in his bowels as he looked up at the train, the train that might at any moment erupt in flame and utter devastation, and not very far away from him. The orders given, he moved for the perimeter. As he said to the chief constable in passing, he could command a wider view from there. He watched as the police and troops regrouped. As a body of men moved out for the station bursts of fire came from the train, pinn
ing them down. No casualties, but quite a nasty warning, Hedge thought. For a moment, they were immobilised and useless, except perhaps as another target to occupy the men opposing Shard aboard the train. Hedge quaked, hands poised to give cover to shatterable eardrums, wishing he was encased in lead like Bede. Just suppose the thing turned out to be nuclear!

  *

  Shard had reached the cab. The communicating door was, as expected, locked. That was easily dealt with: Shard fired a burst with the gun muzzle close, and the lock disintegrated. He went in fast through the stench of gunsmoke, fired as he saw a figure in the alleyway alongside the power unit. Bullets clanged and ricochetted; the man vanished. It had been just before his entry that Shard had heard the sound of despair that had accompanied the shooting and descent of Judge Prestwick. If he reached the cab intact, then at least Sir Richard Cross might be saved. When he got there he was confronted by four men, two white, two Middle Eastern, plus the man from the Treasury who had vomit down the front of his shirt. A gun fired; Shard slid sideways just in time and behind him the badge boys moved in under effective cover of his own stream of lead.

  Behind, down along the train, Sun Wun Foo carried out her search together with Jean Fison. Bombs were a different kettle of fish from french letters and vibrators and the other appurtenances of the Chinese girl’s trade: much more lethal, or anyway more immediately lethal, and also harder to identify probably since they would certainly be concealed in innocuous looking things like zip-bags or suitcases or parcels or such. But Sun Wun Foo had a native cunning and that confessed knowledge of how to outwit the Hong Kong Police and when she found a plastic bag placed unobtrusively behind the pan in one of the toilet compartments she opened the bag very cautiously indeed and inside found what was plainly an explosive device.

  “Look,” she said to Jean Fison, who looked and saw a bird’s nest of flex and what at first sight appeared to be some sort of plastic padding, plus what she took to be a miniaturised aerial, a receiver of signals, with an end protruding a little way from an eyelet in the plastic, the piece of metal being camouflaged by a decorative magnetic butterfly. Sun Wun Foo said, “Go, please, and tell the detective.”

  “What’ll you do meanwhile?”

  “More search. Not one device only. Go quickly, please.” Jean Fison went on jelly-like legs to find Shard.

  *

  The television cameras were back again. This was history in the making and no TV executive could bear not to make use of his medium to the full. So in full it was; many people, chiefly the elderly, thought it was totally wrong but watched just the same. The Cabinet was not displeased and although a ban had been discussed early on in the hijack it had been decided to let the BBC and ITV have their heads. As Mrs Heffer said, it would do Britain good to see victory being won, and if it did happen to go the other way, well, then they would see the sheer beastliness of hijackers for themselves, the best possible propaganda.

  “Such nastiness, Roly, should never be concealed however unpleasant, however horrible.”

  So there it all was again, in the searchlights’ glare, as Shard moved matters towards a climax and the broken body of Judge Prestwick lay below the Durham viaduct. There was danger in its removal, which was pointless anyway — a tentative sortie by police and ambulancemen had drawn gunfire and one of the ambulancemen had been badly wounded. In London Lady Prestwick looked and saw, gasped with horror and blanked out the screen, her hands shaking, all her being crying out against brutality and the awful insensitivity of television. At Leeds and Bradford airport, Judges Bessell and Orp, withdrawn now from the aircraft to await developments, also watched and saw the end of one of their own cloth, a man who had shared the same bench. They watched in horror and alarm but a little later, when they were told about the gunfire aboard the train following upon the murder of Judge Prestwick, they felt some relief. It looked as though the climax might be approaching and might after all not involve themselves, and thus they were able to think again of the future. Who would become Lord Chief Justice now? Poor Prestwick had had the best chance …

  Beth was one of those who didn’t watch at all. Like old Mr Irons and his grieving wife in Wensleydale, she had been sedated and was sleeping, unaware now of the swift and sudden movements of events up north. She wouldn’t have watched at this stage in any case, not wanting to see Simon blow up.

  At the Irons’ farm near Hawes, Fred’s widow did watch. Fred was out of it now; soon the body would be brought to lodge awhile with the funeral director in Hawes, and shortly after that, or as soon as the government gave permission, it would be buried in the little churchyard at Hardraw, next to the Green Dragon Inn, a peaceful little plot where in their season lambs gambolled and kept the grass down around the graves. The wife from a neighbouring farm had come in to be with Kath Irons and as they waited for the drama to unfold, no longer having a direct interest in those aboard the train, the talk turned, as so often in the hill farming communities it did, to finance.

  “Will you go ahead with the plastic animals and that, Kath?”

  “Don’t know. It’s likely. Got to live.”

  “Aye, that’s reet.”

  “Won’t be the same without Fred.”

  “No, course it won’t, love.” There was a pause. “Going to have his mum and dad live here?” The old Ironses were not present; Kath hadn’t seemed to want them and in the circumstances they had preferred to go back to their own bungalow in West Witton.

  Kath answered the question, “No.”

  “Well, I can’t say as I blame you. Sorry, love. It was tactless, was that. What about the little lad?” The baby was tucked up asleep, not crying now. The christening had after all been put off.

  Kath said dully, “I don’t know. He’ll have to be baptised soon, I know … same church as Fred’s funeral,” she added, sounding bitter. Tears flowed. The other farm wife leaned forward and patted Kath’s arm.

  She said, “I’ll go and mash some tea, love, just you sit there.”

  She made the tea and brought it in and after a couple of sips Kath suddenly said, “I wonder if there’ll be compensation?”

  “Compensation? Well —!” Her friend bit off further words. She was of an older generation, between the old and the young Ironses. They were all Yorkshire, of course, but some were more Yorkshire than others and took more notice of brass.

  “Those that died. Government ought to pay up, I reckon, breadwinners gone like that, all for nowt.”

  “Aye …” This was no time to remonstrate but the older woman had lost two much older brothers in the Second World War and there had been no talk of compensation then, only a pittance of a pension for a widow and that if they were lucky. She remembered, now, her father saying after the 1914-18 war that they told you to fight for your country but after you’d done so and won they gave you bugger all for it.

  They sat in silence after that, just watching the screen. Currently it all looked peaceful. There was no firing. People moved about on the ground and now and again the cameras showed a little fat man keeping well back like all important people but prancing about as if he were God. Someone, some reporter, referred to him as the coordinator from the Foreign Office, there with full Home Office sanction. The viewers were given a short lecture on protocol in such situations, but neither of the Yorkshire women took much notice. They expected a huge explosion at any moment and wondered a little at the bravery of the reporter in being so close.

  Then, as they watched and drank their tea, something very unexpected happened.

  The train began to move out.

  *

  “Keep at it,” Shard said, his gun rammed into the back of the driver, one of the two men who had taken over back in Euston after the initial attack on the scheduled train crew. “And keep it slow.”

  The train edged along the viaduct, the front portion drawing into the station, moving past the crumpled body of MacCantley. Looking down towards the roundabout, Shard saw the movement of police and troops, armed men now moving
fast for the climb up to the station. None of them would be certain as to what was going on aboard the train, but they were all set to give assistance if someone was going to attempt a take-over. The sound of sirens came up as more ambulances were moved in, to stand by for God-knew-what developments. In the cab Shard was about to extract information from the hijack crew as to the whereabouts of explosives when Jean Fison entered and made her report.

  “Just the one?” Shard asked.

  “So far, yes. We’ll be going on with the search. Most of the passengers are helping now. Are we going to stop in the station?”

  Shard nodded. He was about to tell Jean Fison to drop the search and the moment the train stopped to get out pronto with as many of the others as possible when there was a heavy jerk and the train gathered speed. Shard was momentarily thrown off balance. There was a maniacal gleam in the eyes of the driver, reflected back from the windscreen: he was taking no notice of Shard’s gun. He said nothing but the eyes spoke for him: the game was up and he’d had it anyway, and no-one was going to get off the train before the charges blew. That was, so long as he or his dead body could keep the starting mechanism held down.

  *

  A hand was laid on the arm of the purple-cassocked figure kneeling before the High Altar in the cathedral. “My Lord …”

  “What is it, Dean?”

  “The train has moved, my Lord.”

  “Moved!” The Bishop rocked back on his heels. “Where to?”

  “Through the station, and beyond. Perhaps far enough. I believe the danger is past, my Lord, and the Venerable Bede is safe.”

  “Praise be to God,” the Bishop said simply and, joined by the dean and the Very Reverend Hugo Pavitt from the see of Canterbury, offered full-hearted thanksgiving, hoping that it would not prove premature. The train and its passengers, the Bishop had deduced from what the dean had said, were not yet in the clear.

  *

  They called it, unless Shard was out-of-date on his technics, the dead man’s handle. The driver was very dead, killed not by Shard but by one of the Birmingham mob who had pre-empted Shard’s move, going in with astonishing speed for a man of such bulk and lifting joined hands which he brought down on the driver’s neck, using massive force. The neck snapped like a twig and the body, already bent forward, came down heavily and sprawled across the dead man’s handle to leave the train hurtling dangerously towards Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It took a little while to free the lifeless hand from the lever and then drag the body clear.