The train rattled through the dark. It was the last service of the evening, dubbed the Luvvies Train because of its popularity with patrons of the London theatres. But it took a particularly dedicated luvvy to travel beyond St Neots, especially on a Monday. Mostly those left in the emptying carriages were tired men and women who’d been in London on business that was a bit too much for one day and not quite enough for two.
Such a one was John Holloway, managing director of Holloway’s (Boots & Shoes) of Castlemere. He’d been visiting the London retailers, listening to their views on why some lines sold like hot cakes and others like soggy sandwiches. But the conversational possibilities of soles, welts and toe-caps were exhausted by mid evening so he caught the last train home.
After it left the InterCity line and struck off across country there were only six people remaining in the first carriage: Holloway, a teenage girl in jeans and a woolly jacket, a woman of about fifty with a briefcase, a couple in their early twenties and a man in a black leather jacket slumped in the corner. He appeared to be asleep, except that once when Holloway glanced his way he caught the glint of a hawkish watchful eye under the heavy lid.
With nothing more to go on than that – the jacket might have made some people wary but Holloway had the greatest respect for black leather – he felt himself growing uneasy. He was a pragmatic man of fifty-nine: travelling late had never worried him before. That it was bothering him now made him wonder if perhaps subliminal danger signals were being broadcast, and though he wasn’t sure what they meant he thought he knew where they were coming from.
For now he did nothing. But he decided to observe the order in which these people left the carriage. If the couple and one of the women left at Castlemere, and the man in the corner didn’t, Holloway thought he’d travel further rather than leave the other woman alone with a man with those eyes.
But the dark miles poured steadily past the window, marked only by the lights of the occasional farmhouse, and nothing happened. The girl got up and walked through to the next carriage. The man in black watched her but made no attempt to follow. Holloway looked at his watch. A few more minutes and they’d be in Castlemere. He began to feel rather foolish. He thought he’d been wrong, that what had seemed like danger signs were only the disagreeable vibrations given off by a tired man at the end of a long day. He thought he was probably giving off some of his own.
Then, down the train, just close enough and loud enough to leave no doubt as to what it was, a girl screamed.
Holloway felt a sudden certainty, though he hadn’t heard her speak, that it was the girl from his carriage. But whatever had happened the man in black wasn’t responsible; the cry had brought him from his seat and he was half way to the connecting door, a tall angular man who moved like an assassin.
The second carriage was as sparsely peopled as the first: a couple who might well have been to the theatre, two middle-aged women, two teenage boys. One of them went to get up but the man gestured him back like reprimanding a puppy. ‘Stay here. I’ll deal with it.’ His voice was thick with purpose and an Irish accent.
There were more people in the third carriage: so many it seemed some were having to stand. One was the girl from the first carriage, and she’d have been screaming still but for a gloved hand clamped on her neck and the lancet point of a knife pricking the skin under her ear. Her face was creased up in terror, her mouth a ragged ‘o’, and she was shaking.
The man holding her had a ski-mask over his face. Beside the girl he seemed big, but not big enough to stand out of a line-up of ordinarily well-built men. Two other men wore the same uniform of dark ski-masks, gloves and jeans. Each had a rucksack that the passengers were filling with valuables.
The man holding the girl was in charge, yelling orders and menaces. ‘You want to get home tonight? In one piece? Then do as you’re told. Hold on to your rings and we’ll cut your fingers off. Hold on to your earrings and we’ll cut your ears. Give’em up and we’ll be on our way, but if anyone tries to stop us I’ll kill her.’ His hand jerked and the terrified girl, her face framed by a floss of fair hair, danced like a marionette. ‘So nobody rushes us, nobody pulls the communication cord, nobody plays the hero. ’Cos if this turns nasty people are going to die, and one of them’s going to be her.’
The sight of the knife stopped Detective Sergeant Donovan in his tracks. His instincts told him to go for it, that he could reach the man before he made the giant mental leap between threatening to kill someone and doing it. But it was too big a gamble for the sake of some jewellery. If he did nothing and no one got hurt, that would be enough. If he started a war that ended with a teenage girl getting her throat cut, it wouldn’t matter who got their diamonds back and who did time: he’d be on Shapiro’s carpet first thing tomorrow morning, and he’d deserve to be. He took a step back.
‘You.’ The man with the knife had seen him. ‘Where are you going?’ Under the throaty bellow there was an accent lurking but Donovan was no expert on English accents.
‘I heard a yell, I thought I could help. I guess I was wrong.’
A ski-mask does more than hide large parts of the face. It emphasizes those parts that do show. When the man in this one smiled it was like the last ten minutes of Jaws. ‘I like a man who can admit his mistakes. A man who knows when he’s made one is less likely to make another, right?’
Donovan nodded silently.
‘OK, back the way you came. You were at the front, yes? Well, go tell them what’s happening. Tell them no one’ll get hurt if they do as they’re told. Stay where I can see you. Go on, do it.’ He took the knife away from the girl’s throat long enough to stab at the air.
‘I’m going,’ Donovan said quickly. He backed two or three paces, then turned and jogged up the train.
When he reached the first carriage he stood in the doorway, blocking it. Hard and low he said, ‘I’m a police officer. Listen to me and do as I say. There’s a robbery going on. They’ll be here in a minute. Don’t argue, and don’t go for the communication cord. Has anybody got a mobile phone?’
Emily Murchison nodded, her eyes round with alarm. She’d been jolted from a doze by the sudden flurry of activity; mentally she was still addressing a sales conference that had finished three hours before.
‘Keep it out of sight, they’re watching me. Dial this number,’ – it was the front desk at Queen’s Street, the only one he could be sure would be manned – ‘then hold it in front of me. If you see them coming, ring off and kick it under the seats.’
Though Donovan looked like a Hell’s Angel on his day off his voice could convey real authority when it had to. Miss Murchison did as he said.
When he heard the tone alter and the mutter of words – it might have been Sergeant Tulliver, who always muttered, or just the distance between the instrument and his ear – Donovan spoke his carefully chosen sentences. He spoke up, in the hope that Tulliver or whoever would hear and understand, and also so that he would be heard by the men in ski-masks.
‘My name’s Donovan,’ he said. ‘Everybody keep calm, but this train’s being robbed. Steamers – three of them, they’ve taken a girl hostage, they’re threatening to cut her throat. They started at the back of the train so they’re almost through: when they’ve got our wallets they’ll stop the train and disappear into The Levels. If everyone co-operates they’ll be away from here in five minutes and we’ll be in Castlemere in ten. So can we all just sit it out?’
‘Good,’ said the man behind him, and Donovan shied like a startled horse. He hadn’t realized they were so close. But Miss Murchison had: she’d waited as long as she dared, then slid the phone out of sight under the table. It was too late to kick it away from her under the seats; instead she slipped it under the skirt of her coat.
‘So let’s everybody follow Mr Donovan’s good advice,’ said the big man, ‘and keep calm and co-operate. You.’ He pointed the knife at Miss Murchison, whose heart skipped a beat. ‘That’s a nice scarf you’ve got. Spread it on the floor, and everybody put on it everything they think we might want. Cash, watches, jewellery, plastic, cheque-books.’
Donovan couldn’t risk parting with his wallet: his warrant card was in there. He made a show of emptying it on to the scarf – cash, credit card, everything the robbers would be looking for. They wouldn’t be looking for a warrant card. Other policemen had difficulty believing Donovan was one.
‘OK?’ he asked bitterly when he was done.
‘OK,’ agreed the man with the knife. He looked at Miss Murchison. ‘You next’
The sales director of Castle Spa, bottlers of soft drinks and mineral waters, was proving equal to the occasion. She produced the mobile phone as if taking it from her pocket. ‘I believe these have a certain secondhand value.’
Inside the mask, black wool hemmed with yellow, the thick-lipped mouth beamed. ‘They do that. Stick it on the scarf.’
Donovan watched stony-faced, praying to a deity he only believed in for real emergencies. He thought his prayer had a good chance of being answered. The man with the knife couldn’t pick the phone up without dropping either the weapon or the hostage, and when his colleagues arrived they’d be ready to leave. They’d shovel the contents of the scarf into a rucksack, pull the cord and jump out as the train stopped. There was neither time nor any reason for them to start playing with the buttons on a mobile phone. But if they do, Donovan was praying, please don’t let them hit the last number redial button.
Also on to the scarf went Miss Murchison’s purse, her ear-rings, a gold locket with pictures of her parents in it and three heavy gold rings from her right hand; and a wallet, purse and wedding rings in two different sizes from the young couple. At first the wife couldn’t get hers off. The man with the knife growled, ‘Take it off or I’ll cut it off.’
She gave a little shriek and her hands knotted so that she couldn’t have got a glove off, let alone a ring. Her husband gave up tugging at it and started to rise, putting his body between her and the knife.
Oh, God, thought Donovan in despair, this is where it goes from robbery with menaces to assault occasioning grievous bodily harm or maybe murder.
He edged in front of the knife, pressed the young man back to his seat, took the girl’s hand in his own and raised it to his lips. ‘’Scuse me.’ He put her finger in his mouth, made it slick with his saliva and drew off the ring with his teeth. He wiped it on his shirt and dropped it on to the pile.
All at once they were finished. The booty was bundled into a rucksack and the three men, their hostage still in tow, made for the door. One of them pulled the communication cord and they braced against the expected braking.
Nothing happened. The train continued oblivious through the darkness of the Castlemere Levels.
‘Mustn’t be working,’ said Donovan, dead-pan. Or just possibly, he thought, somebody got a message to the police, who called the station, who called the driver on the radio and told him not to stop for anything.
‘I’ll make it bloody work. You.’ The knife jabbed in Donovan’s face. ‘You lead the way.’
Stall, thought Donovan. Time’s on our side – every minute brings us closer to home. ‘The way where?’
‘To the frigging driver!’ For the first time perspiration was beading the skin round the man’s eyes and there was alarm in his voice. ‘He sits at the front, yes?’
Donovan did as he was told, led the way past notices threatening plague and mayhem on anyone disturbing the driver and tapped diffidently. ‘Excuse me, but—’
A strong hand yanked him away. ‘Bugger that!’ The big man wrenched open the door and thrust the weapon inside.
The train began to slow. Filling the doorway, the man with the knife looked back at Donovan. If a ski-mask can look puzzled, this one did. Not a word had been spoken.
Donovan pushed past, looked into the cab. The driver was still in his seat, bent over his console, a finger hooked inside his tie. His face was white and running with sweat, his eyes stretched; choked sounds came from between clenched teeth.
‘God help us!’ With his hands under the driver’s arms Donovan eased him out of the cab, leaving it empty. He sat the man on the floor, loosened his tie and belt, took off his own jacket to cover him. ‘Try and breathe lightly. The worst’ll pass in a couple of minutes.’ One way or another, he thought parenthetically.
Behind him the man with the knife was staring at the vacant cab. ‘Can you drive this thing?’
Donovan eyed him sourly. ‘It doesn’t need anyone to drive it, it’ll stop itself. Have you never heard of a dead man’s handle? Well, this is what it’s for. Bursting in like that, you’ve given the poor sod a heart attack.’