The Judas Sheep

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘No, I’m just looking,’ I’d reply, eyes watering.

  At home I took a big sheet of paper and drew a rectangle on it, the same shape as my kitchen. Along one side I represented the worktops and the sink. The dishwasher would have to go in place of one of the cupboards. I drew a square for the washing machine, linked to the sink by a couple of pipes, and wrote WASHER in it. The dishwasher would need more pipes, and they’d need electrical connections. It was going to look like a Sellafield under there.

  Did the dishwasher need to be near the sink? That was the big question. Or did the washing machine? Annabelle would know, but it was a feeble reason for ringing her. She’d be an expert in such things – all I knew about was being a policeman, but there were doubts about that.

  I crossed out WASHER and wrote NICOLA. In the square for the sink I wrote PROSTITUTE, and on the pipe linking them I put DNA. The dishwasher became MRS NORRIS, linked to the prostitute by the expensive watch.

  I drew three more squares, radiating out from Mrs Norris, and wrote CIGS, HURST, and LORRY DRIVER in them. Off to one side were Darren and his gang, with more lines joining them to the cigarettes and the two dead drivers. I tore the sheet into shreds and went to bed.

  Dave Sparkington volunteered for unpaid overtime during the by-election. ‘If somebody bumps off the Prime Minister I want to be able to tell my grandkids that I was there,’ he explained.

  ‘You’re supposed to prevent it,’ I told him, testily.

  ‘Humph!’ was his reply. Who’d be a Prime Minister?

  The campaigns started in a civil-enough fashion, but soon degenerated into personalised slanging matches. The candidates were cleancut newcomers, with impeccable credentials and winsome images. Then it was leaked that the Opposition hopeful had been sent down from his first university for shagging the Provost’s daughter. His lead in the polls immediately leapt by a further ten points, much to the dismay of the Government’s spin doctors. Annabelle went out distributing leaflets, and received much leg-pulling from me for it. She tried to persuade me to go with her, but I informed her that policemen weren’t allowed to express a political standpoint. She called me a lackey of the State.

  The day before the election, Heckley nick was like a stockbroker’s office on Derby Day. Everybody was out playing. They’d all been seconded to our neighbours, and were now poncing about on rooftops or poking into manholes, looking for weapons of assassination. They were armed with pictures of Shawn Parrott and an armoury of equally lethal hardware. Particular attention was being devoted to grassy knolls.

  I had a coffee with Gilbert and listened to the phones ringing unanswered. Eventually the system would bring the more persistent callers to him, unless, of course, I was at my desk, in which case they’d come to me first. I decided to go out.

  A woman from Keighley had been mugged in the town over the weekend. We’d recovered a handbag which may have been hers, so I decided to drive over and ask her to identify it and make a statement. It was a bit feeble, but it would do.

  ‘How’s Annabelle?’ Gilbert asked.

  ‘Very well, thank you. Pass the spoon, please.’

  He handed it to me and looked grave. ‘I can’t see us doing well in this election, Charlie. The PM’s handled the whole thing very badly.’

  ‘Us!’ I protested. ‘Speak for yourself.’

  He shook his head, as if in despair. ‘What are you doing today?’

  ‘I have to go over to Keighley, to interview Mrs Webster, the woman who was mugged on Monday.’

  ‘Good idea. Better show how keen we are, with her husband being Chairman of the Bench.’

  I hadn’t known that. ‘Just what I thought,’ I replied.

  He dunked a chocolate digestive. ‘Do you really think they’ll have a go at the PM?’

  ‘Nah. They just want to cause disruption, which they’ve already done. Still, you never know, do you?’

  What was it Governor Conally said in 1963? ‘Now you can’t say we don’t love you in Texas, Mr President.’

  My next cuppa was from a china cup in Mrs Webster’s sitting room. The bag was hers, but the contents were missing. Her assailant had a mohican haircut, which made him rather conspicuous, so an ID parade might not go down well with the brief of the youth we’d arrested. Ideally, we’d let them all wear hats. Failing that, we’d organise a street ident, where the victim tries to pick him out of the crowd. ‘That’s him,’ she’d say. ‘The one handcuffed to the policeman.’ Mrs Webster was badly shaken by her ordeal, but was willing to cooperate in any way. I wondered how muggers would fare in her husband’s court from now on.

  It was a beautiful day, so I bought a sandwich and ate it in the car, parked near the river. I tuned in to the local station to catch the news, make sure mayhem wasn’t breaking loose during canvassing. There was only one item, the full programme being devoted to the by-election. It was the biggest local story since the Queen opened the new Municipal Swimming Pool. She should have told them she couldn’t swim.

  ‘The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are even competing in their modes of transport,’ the newsreader was saying. ‘The PM is already in town, having arrived in an Army Chinook helicopter which landed on the Grammar School playing field. Meanwhile, firefighters are standing by over the length of the Settle to Carlisle railway line in anticipation of Andrew Fallon’s journey. He is travelling by train later this afternoon, demonstrating his support for the railways, and will be hauled by the record-breaking steam engine Mallard. The last time a steam train did this journey, over fifty grass-fires were started along the line.’

  Great, I thought. The bloke can’t stand cigarette smoke but has no compunction about igniting most of the North of England. Wait till I see Annabelle. The newsreader was rabbiting on: ‘Trainspotters are expected to congregate at famous beauty spots like Dent and the Batty Moss viaduct to take advantage of this opportunity to see the legendary locomotive Mallard for what might be the last time. Thanks to Fallon, the Opposition candidate can now safely rely on the trainspotter vote.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I nodded in appreciation of the thought. Wouldn’t mind seeing Mallard again myself. It was common enough on the local lines when I was a kid, but I’d never seen it on the Batty Moss viaduct. I’d never seen any steam train up there. It promised to be a memorable event. If I’d had my camera in the car I might have been tempted to play hookey and have a drive over. What was it? A hundred feet high and quarter of a mile long, with twenty-four arches?

  How did I know that?

  I walked over to the bin and dumped my litter, brushing the crumbs off my trousers. Who’d told me about Batty Moss viaduct?

  Annabelle had been there, but it wasn’t her. We were at the cottage, when …

  It was Darren.

  He saw the photo on the mantelpiece and knew all about it. What was it he said? They’d been ‘just for a look’ and he ‘liked to know what he was talking about’.

  I thought about my other conversations with him. He’d said they had something big planned for the middle of this week – something that would make them rich.

  And that they had five million cigarettes.

  It was them, the drugs gang! They’d hijacked the lorry and murdered the driver. They were responsible for the disappearance of Mrs Norris and Harold Hurst’s death. One of them had strangled two women. And now they were planning an assassination, but it wasn’t the Prime Minister they were after – it was Andrew Fallon.

  Norris had been the inside man for the hijack, possibly as a down payment, and now he’d hired them to bump off the man who wanted to wreck the tobacco business. Maybe they’d had dealings before, hence the disappearance of Mrs Norris. They’d killed Tom Noon to set up the election, and put Fallon just where they wanted him. It made sense, and it was all going to happen at Batty Moss viaduct. Soon.

  I dialled the Heckley number. ‘Put me straight through to Mr Wood, please; it’s urgent.’

  ‘Superintendent Wood.’ He sounded fed up. I’d
soon alter that.

  ‘It’s Charlie, Gilbert. Listen. It’s not the Prime Minister they’re after, it’s Andrew Fallon. He’s coming down on a train from Carlisle. Get him off that train.’

  Poor Gilbert sounded hesitant. I was only putting his reputation on the line, in front of the nation’s press. He wanted an explanation.

  ‘No time. I’m going to Batty Moss. Ring Fearnside. Ring anyone, but get Fallon off that train. At a guess they’re going to blow up the viaduct.’ I switched off before he could argue.

  I made a tyre-squealing U-turn, causing a woman in a Mitsubishi Shogun to hit the anchors, depositing her two children and a Labrador pup on the floor, and screamed up through the gears. Ribblehead, and the viaduct, were about thirty-five miles away. I drove with the headlights on and used the horn a lot. I’ve done the advanced course, but I think my instructors would have disowned some of the manoeuvres I made.

  It’s a right turn in Settle, and then you’re on a typical Yorkshire Dales switchback, I never actually took off, but I achieved weightlessness for several seconds over some of the bigger brows. A couple of lorries carrying limestone from the quarries slowed me for a while, but I bullied my way past them. I barely noticed Pen-y-ghent on my right and Ingleborough on the other side as I swept through Horton-in-Ribblesdale in a flurry of gravel and irresponsibility.

  Where do they all come from? I negotiated the junction at Ribblehead and the roadsides were lined with parked cars. The train had obviously not gone through yet. I turned left towards Chapel le Dale, now driving slowly, assessing the situation. A police Escort was parked on the verge, and I pulled up behind it.

  The local bobby had a boozer’s face and a paunch to match. I wondered if the more liberal opening times had taken some of the attraction from his job, now that there was no need to steal a crafty pint or four in the landlord’s kitchen with the door locked.

  ‘DI Charlie Priest,’ I said, waving my ID at him. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Oh, er, dunno, surr. I’ve been told to get misself ’ere and look out fer anything suspicious. Can’t be more specific than that.’

  ‘When’s the Mallard due?’

  ‘’Bout fifteen minutes, surr.’

  ‘Are there always this many trainspotters for a steam train?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know, surr. One of them told me it’s a special. Apparently it’ll stop on the bridge for photographs, then go back and come over again, making a lot of smoke. Should be a proper spectacle, if you ask me.’

  I scanned the valley between us and Whernside, spanned by the viaduct. The railway line ran above the road, near our position, so we couldn’t see the tracks. The sun was at this side, and the flat area beside the railway was dotted with little groups of enthusiasts, cameras on tripods, waiting for Mallard to make an entrance. They wore bobble hats and anoraks to protect them against the ravages of a warm summer’s day.

  ‘OK,’ I said to the bobby. ‘I want you to radio in and get everybody available up here. Any ARVs within striking distance are to join us. Then tell the nearest helicopter to stand by. On second thoughts, get him airborne.’

  His jaw fell on to his paunch. This was a bit different from his normal fodder of pig movements and sheep scab precautions. ‘Yes, surr. Right away, surr.’ He fumbled with his personal radio.

  ‘It might be better if you used the car radio,’ I suggested, ‘just in case they’re using a scanner.’ It’s too easy to monitor the personal radios.

  ‘Yes, surr.’

  ‘And stop calling me sir. Charlie will do.’

  ‘Yes, surr. Charlie.’

  I listened to him trying to raise help, saying: ‘This Inspector Priest says …’ to every query.

  ‘They want to know what it’s about,’ he told me, looking up from the radio.

  Tell them we think someone is going to blow the bridge up, with the train on it.’

  He gulped and turned pale, before repeating what I’d said.

  I was standing alongside his car, talking to him through the window while I let my gaze wander across the scene, inspecting the viaduct from one end to the other. Suddenly a figure appeared in the middle, jogging towards us.

  It’s a single track over the bridge, the total width being about ten feet. A small wall, about eighteen inches high, gives a degree of protection to anyone walking across. I think the figure must have been kneeling down, concealed by the parapet. Now that he was nearer I recognised him as Darren.

  As he reached our end of the viaduct he slowed to a walk, not in a hurry now that he was unlikely to be suddenly confronted by a train. He stepped off the track and descended the embankment at the other side, out of my sight.

  ‘Lend me your handcuffs,’ I told Dangerfield of the Dales.

  ‘Handcuffs?’

  ‘Yes, handcuffs.’

  I vaulted the British Railways standard seven-strand wire fence and galloped down the bank at this side, towards the first span of the viaduct. Darren was in for a surprise.

  He was leaning with his back against the stonework, under the massive cathedral arch, lighting a cigarette, when I breezed round the corner.

  ‘Hello, Darren,’ I said, still puffing from the sudden exertion.

  ‘Ch-Ch-Charlie!’ he exclaimed, aghast.

  ‘Shawn sent me. Said to make sure you had a gun.’

  ‘Shawn? Yeah …’

  His hand moved towards the zip of his combat jacket, but my fist hit him in the face before he got anywhere near it. It was a beauty, starting right down in my foot and moving up through my leg and shoulder, just like we were taught. Darren flew backwards and fell in a heap, blood spurting from his nose and a bewildered expression on his face, like a pet dog that’s just been whipped for the first time.

  I had a cuff round one wrist before he realised what was happening. He jerked the other arm behind his back and took a kick at me. I grabbed his foot and slapped the other bracelet round his ankle: Unorthodox, but effective.

  I took the gun, a standard-looking automatic, maybe a thirty-eight, from inside his jacket and ejected the clip. I put the bullets in one pocket and the pistol in another.

  ‘Detective Inspector Priest,’ I told him. ‘Police. Sorry, Darren, but you’re nicked. Don’t go away.’

  I climbed the embankment, pulling myself upwards with big handfuls of willowherb and ragwort. I knelt down for a rest at the top, waiting for my respiratory rate to catch up with the adrenalin rush. What had Darren been doing in the middle of the viaduct? They couldn’t be attempting to blow the thing up – it would take an atom bomb to do that. The answer was somewhere in the middle, two hundred and twenty yards away.

  Ten feet wide seemed suddenly narrow, like walking a plank. I jogged between the lines, leaning sideways into the stiff breeze that was blowing up there, hoping it wouldn’t suddenly cease and send me staggering towards the edge. Every ten yards I looked back over my shoulder – I’d have felt silly if a train coming the other way had flattened me.

  It wasn’t what I’d expected. Two climbing ropes were neatly coiled at the side of the track. One end of each was looped under the rail and tied around the anchorage. So that was it. Two people were going to get off the train and abseil down off the viaduct. Presumably after killing Andrew Fallon. And then what?

  The answer came immediately. Over the roar of the wind in my ears came the chom-chom-chom of a helicopter. I looked up and saw it over Whernside, and it wasn’t one of ours. It swooped round in a big arc and hovered over the trainspotters. They gathered their gear and fled from the downdraught, holding their hats on while composing strong letters to various public servants.

  And then I heard another noise; a sound guaranteed to wipe away the years from the most disenchanted, embittered, disillusioned grown-up in the land and reduce him to a starry-eyed, rubber-kneed schoolboy. It was the long mournful wail of the A4 Pacific steam engine.

  Most American locomotives make that noise, but in Britain it is only the streamlined A4. The words of the old
song flashed through my mind: You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles …

  But it wasn’t a hundred miles away, it was less than one. And I couldn’t get this bloody knot undone.

  A cop in a film would have severed the rope with a single shot from his gun. If I’d tried it I’d have probably caught a ricochet in the balls. I grabbed a large pebble from the ballast between the rails and started to bash the crap out of the first rope. I was about halfway through, striking blindly into a mess of frayed ends, when the whistle blew again. I looked up and saw Mallard coming round the bend in the track, black smoke pouring from the stack and white superheated steam billowing around its wheels. It was a shot the trainspotters would have killed for, but for me it had lost all romance. I attacked the rope with renewed fervour.

  I did it. When I was through I gathered the coils in my arms and cast the lot into space. ‘A hundred feet high,’ Darren had said. It looked more like a thousand to me. I knelt down while the dizziness subsided and took hold of the second rope. Mallard was nearly at the end of the viaduct, creeping forward with the characteristic CHUFF-chuff-chuff-chuff, CHUFF-chuff-chuff-chuff of that type of engine. I threw the pebble down – there had to be a better way than this.

  She was about fifteen yards away when I stood up and started running. I won the hundred yards in the school sports in eleven point two seconds. Afterwards I worked it out at nineteen miles per hour. Mallard can do a hundred and twenty-six, but she has lousy acceleration.

  I was fleeing down the middle of the track, jacket flapping behind, glancing over my shoulder every two seconds at the clanking, roaring behemoth bearing down on me. Steel screeched against steel, and a sudden change in the breeze enveloped me in a cloud of steam and smoke and the smell of hot oil.

  She’d stopped. I slowed to a jog and in a few seconds was at the end of the viaduct. I jumped off the track and rolled and slid to the bottom of the embankment.

  Darren hadn’t moved very far. I collapsed on the grass beside him, recovering my breath.