The lever freed, the train began to slow.
Already they were well clear of the town — beyond Newton Hall Junction, past Low Newton and HM Remand Centre, across Finchale Road and beyond Red House. Scattered outskirts, some scrubby open land. Shard used the intercom.
“All passengers, clear the train the moment we stop.” He looked round at Sir Richard Cross, at the one white railman left alive: the Middle Eastern mob had taken the blast of his sub-machine gun earlier. The bodies lay huddled and bleeding. To Cross Shard said, “From what the driver was trying to do, I’d say we’ve not got all the time in the world. He must have known he wouldn’t live long, but reckoned it might be time enough. You’d better get out pronto.”
“If you think so.” The Treasury man didn’t wait: his long, thin body vanished along the passage alongside the power unit, making presumably for Lady Cross. Shard’s thoughts ran on: Jean Fison had made that report. What had happened since could already be known to the wider world beyond Durham. He didn’t know the set-up but assumed the obvious, that the hijackers would have backup elsewhere. There could be someone with orders to blow the train by remote control — Jean Fison’s aerial attachment? — when anything looked like going wrong. He took a deep breath and turned to the Birmingham mob.
“I’m going through the train to look for explosives. We’re not so far from civilisation that we want a blow-up. You lot get clear — and take that crewman with you. I’m holding you responsible for him.”
Shard left the cab, moving for the open door to the passenger accommodation. As he came through the train was slowing further and already the passengers were crowding the aisles and moving for the doors and some of them had already scrambled down to the track to move away fast into the surrounding dark. Shard caught a glimpse of the Crosses beating it, Sir Richard’s angular body scampering in rear of his wife, whose bulky build was unsuited to speed. He was shouting at her to hurry; Shard didn’t catch her response. Ahead, Ian Costermaine was coming towards him with the other half of the badge boys, herding along three of the hijackers. Then he heard a voice, a panicky one, coming through an open door, from outside the train.
“Will someone help me, please?”
Jean Fison. Shard looked down from the door, alongside one of the toilet compartments. He saw a shadow, and the white of a face. “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s the Chinese girl … she was looking beneath the train and now she can’t move.”
Shard jumped down. It was difficult to make out much in the darkness. Jean Fison explained. “She was feeling around, Mr Shard, and somehow or other she’s caught her arm. Now I think she’s fainted.”
There was no sound. Shard squirmed in beneath the train. Silly girl: all the devices would, he believed, be inside, not outside. He saw the small body, lying trapped: the right arm appeared to be at an odd angle, the hand invisible in the tangle of pipes and cables overhead. Shard reached up tentatively, felt around blindly, made contact with a heavy, powerful spring that seemed to have wrapped itself around the hand. Very gently he pulled at the arm. There was no give but a high scream came from the Chinese girl, brought to consciousness by sudden agonising pain.
“We’ll get you out,” Shard said. “Try not to worry. We won’t leave you.”
He didn’t believe she’d heard: she had fainted again, mercifully. He asked Jean Fison if she’d be willing to stand by while he tried to make contact with Durham. She said of course she would. He climbed back up to the train. There was a radio telephone in the cab, which was now deserted. Shard called Durham: for a long time, no reply — the strike was still on. When it was answered by a police sergeant who took it upon himself, in the circumstances, to break and enter the office where he heard the sound of likely urgency, Shard made a brief report and asked for medical assistance pronto. A surgeon, who would need to carry out an emergency amputation. This passed, Shard went back to where Jean Fison was waiting.
“She’s come round again, Mr Shard.”
Back beneath the train Shard spoke to the Chinese girl. “There’s a doctor on the way,” he said. “You’ll be all right.”
“You go away, please.”
“I’m staying.”
“Please. You are needed, to find explosive devices. I am not worried. To die is to live again.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“I am. I know this. Please go away. You cannot help. I think the train will blow up.”
Shard believed she was right. The presence of the devices was known and only the one had been found. Any of the packages, bags and so on still aboard the train could be the culprits, and time was almost certainly very short now. Everything depended on how the men controlling the hijackers decided to react: as Shard had felt earlier, they would know something had gone wrong but they wouldn’t know what — unless they had intercepted his recent radio telephone call. If they could no longer bring off their main objective, they could at least leave their mark by blowing up the train.
*
Hedge had reported to London: by this time he had shifted himself to Police HQ, his role at the roundabout finished.
“A girl?” Rowland Mayes repeated.
“Yes. A young Chinese girl.”
“Chinese …”
“Yes, Foreign Secretary. And my man Shard standing by. I gather the train’s more or less empty now, but for him and the Chinese girl. And another woman.”
“Nationality?”
“I don’t know, Foreign Secretary.”
“How far from Durham?”
“Oh … four to five miles I would say —”
“I see. Well, I think things are moving very satisfactorily really, Hedge, don’t you?”
“We’ve all done our best, Foreign Secretary.”
“Quite. Is there anything else?”
“Only that a doctor is on his way.”
“Doctor?”
“To treat the Chinese girl, Foreign Secretary. Amputate the arm.”
“Oh yes, of course.”
“I suppose there’s been no progress in regard to the Friends of Hira — their mobile HQ, I mean?”
“I’m afraid not, Hedge.”
“They may still blow the train up, Foreign Secretary,” Hedge said remindingly, though in all conscience, even if by some miracle the forces of law and order did happen to find the bloodstained Friends of Hira, it would be much too late. Obviously. Poor Shard; they hadn’t always seen eye to eye and often enough Shard had got above himself and had been quite rude, but death was a very final thing to happen.
*
At the scene north of Durham they awaited the arrival of the medics. At the Dryburn hospital the emergency routine had gone into operation, the team medical officer having picked up his emergency haversack and put on his orange tabard. The ambulance control vehicle with its distinctive green and white chequered top carried the main part of the equipment together with the emergency box containing an amputation set, a tracheotomy set, wire cutters, Brook airway and Heimlich chest valve. The site medical officer in his green and white tabard was on his way behind a police escort. All that could be done would be done.
Shard was back aboard the train. So was Ian Costermaine, with some of the Birmingham mob: the rest of the passengers were now well clear, including both the Drs MacAllister who might, just might, have had the wherewithal to put Sun Wun Foo out of pain until the teams came in from the hospital. Costermaine said he’d caught a glimpse of Ernest Lorimer, MP, running fast into the night with Miss Tuffin. Jean Fison was still with the Chinese girl, just talking to her quietly, and Shard and his small band of helpers were going through the bags, cases and packages, when Shard heard a small sound, a very small sound, coming from a brown-paper-wrapped parcel, oblong shaped and of about the size to contain, say, a man’s suit or a woman’s dress.
A piece of the wrapping paper was tearing. And something was slowly coming through, a tip of something shiny and metallic. Shard shouted to the others to clear the t
rain then grabbed the package and ran to the nearest door, standing open. He jumped down, ran from the train’s vicinity. The device was heavy, but Shard got a swing on it and threw it like throwing a discus. Nothing happened: maybe he had upset the mechanism, he didn’t know. He had just turned back to face the train when the world appeared to erupt around him. He was taken in the grip of a hot gale from blazing, shattered carriages and sent spinning through the air like a child’s top to fetch up, by this time unconscious, in something mercifully soft.
In Ealing next morning Beth awoke after a night spent tossing and turning and dropping off fitfully to sleep to hear the BBC news broadcast saying the train had blown up a little way north of Durham Town. Almost everyone had cleared the train some while before the series of explosions had wrecked it, but there were believed to have been some casualties, one of them a Chinese girl and others, members of a medical team that had reached the train in the moment of the explosions.
There was no word about Shard. Not on the BBC. It came when Beth, her fingers shaking, answered a call from Shard’s DI: Simon was okay, just some bones broken. Nothing to worry about. That was when Beth broke down.
*
Hedge, flown south in the early hours, was given audience of Mrs Heffer.
“I think you did splendidly, Mr Hedge.”
“Thank you, Prime Minister.”
“Such a very successful ending. A great pity about the casualties, of course, and our sympathies go to the relatives although I understand one was Chinese, or was it Korean — but never mind. Dickie Cross is safe and that’s an immense relief I must say, the Treasury is so important to us all. Poor Hester, a terrible time for her but ended now. And Ernest Lorimer, of course, such a stalwart, and he was with poor Margaret that dreadful time in Brighton … so was I, of course.” Mrs Heffer paused. “Well, Mr Hedge, I believe that together we’ve shown these people something absolutely splendid — shown them they can never hope to get away with that sort of thing.”
“No, Prime Minister.”
Mrs Heffer gave a brilliant smile and patted at her hair: she was dead tired and it was early morning but she managed to look perfect, and there was an inner glow that overlaid the tiredness and those wretched clusters of little wrinkles round the eyes, for she believed now that she had the next election in the bag. As Judge Bessell and Judge Orp were given breakfast at Leeds and Bradford airport, prior to being returned to London in much relief, services not after all required, and as the teams of workers sweated away at the heavy task of clearing the lines to and from London and the North, and making repairs, and dealing with the remains of the dead, Hedge made his way from Number Ten to the Foreign Office just down the road, enjoying the fresh air of a wonderfully fine morning and looking forward to his bed as soon as he could leave for home. He almost felt as if he were walking on that fresh air: Mrs Heffer had been very charming. He had now been lifted from comparative obscurity to be a nation’s hero. Interviews would come and he would be on the television …
Such a good thing he’d thought of sending Shard. Whilst speaking to Mrs Heffer it had occurred to Hedge to mention Shard and what he seemed to have achieved, but somehow he hadn’t got around to it. In any case, Shard had only been doing the job he was paid for. One of Mrs Heffer’s remarks had indeed been that he, Hedge, had responded above and beyond the call of duty, a nice phrase and an appropriate one with all the right connotations.
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Overnight Express Page 19