Stuart Pawson - Chill Factor

Scott Walker had just reached the poetic bit — Loneliness…is the cloak you wear — when a movement in the wing mirror caught my attention.

“They’re here,” I said. Emptiness…follows everywhere. I reached out and cut him off before he could break my heart.

“Aw, I like the next bit,” Detective Constable Annette Brown complained without conviction, twisting round in the driver’s seat to see through the back window.

“I’ll sing it to you later.” I clicked the transmit button on my RT three times and spoke into it: “Charlie to Young Turks. Wake up, we’re in business.”

“Promises, promises,” Annette mumbled quietly.

“And you can put it back on Radio Four,” I told her. We were sitting in my car in the short-stay car-park outside Heckley station — that’s railway, not police — with Annette in the driving seat. It’s fifty pence for twenty minutes, except that the barrier was fixed in the upright position with all the covers off the electrical boxes so that it looked as if it were faulty. There were five other unmarked police cars nearby, including a couple of hastily arranged armed response vehicles, awaiting the connection from Manchester that had just arrived. It would have looked bad if we’d all had to stop, one by one, and put a fifty pence piece in the box before we could follow our suspect, so I’d arranged for the barrier to be out of order for an hour. That’s the sort of power I have. Impressive, eh?

A trickle of people were leaving the concourse: businessmen with briefcases; younger people with sports bags, heading for the taxis and buses or looking for somebody meeting them. “Hey,” Annette suddenly remarked. “You never told us about the sales conference. Did you learn anything?”

“Some,” I replied. “It was interesting to see our man in action, and I’m now an expert on how to sell double glazing.”

“Which might come in handy,” she reminded me, “after today.”

The warbling of my mobile phone prevented me from dwelling on that prospect. “Priest,” I said into it.

“He’s off the train and will be with you any second,” a voice with a London accent told me. “He’s wearing a blue leather blouson, fawn slacks and carrying a huge Adidas bag. I suggest you lift him as soon as he’s clear of the building.”

“Understood,” I replied, and broke the connection. “And ignored,” I added, quietly.

“Boss…” Annette began, “are you sure this is wise?”

“Oh, it’s Boss now, is it?”

“Charlie, then.”

“Um, Sugar Plum?” I ventured.

“Get stuffed.”

“Here he comes.” I put the radio to my mouth again. “Young Turks, Young Turks, Robin leaving concourse now. Wearing a blue leather blouse and carrying a big Adidas bag.” The most wanted man on our books stepped through the automatic doors and looked around him. “And,” I added, “a suntan like George Hamilton III.”

Six cars along from us a blue BMW moved forward. “We were right,” Annette said. “It’s the BMW.”

The telephone was warbling again. I switched it off and threw it in the glovebox.

Annette started the engine. “Charlie…” she tried once more.

“I know, I know,” I told her. “You’re right, it’s not wise. But what’s wise got to do with it? I didn’t get where I am today — ” I gestured expansively towards the raised barrier, symbol of my power, “- by being wise, so let’s do it.” The BMW had pulled out of the car-park and stopped at the kerb in front of the station entrance. Robin exchanged a quick word with the driver and climbed in the back, throwing his bag in first. I clicked the RT. “Charlie to Jeff and Pete,” I said, more urgently than before. “Robin just leaving in blue BMW. We’ll do it my way, so he’s all yours.”

“Got him,” and “Understood,” came back to me, and a motorbike and a rusty Ford Fiesta parked in the road outside the station moved off. The car looked grotty, but there was a turbo-charged sixteen hundred engine under the bonnet, and the tyres were extraordinarily wide.

“Besides,” I said to Annette, “we don’t have enough firepower. He wasn’t expected to get off at Heckley, and he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot himself out of trouble.”

“Oh God!” she exclaimed. “I’ve just seen Batman.”

Batman was our contact, and he’d been following Robin for the last eight hours. I turned to look. A big man with the beginnings of a beer gut had emerged from the station. He was wearing Burberry check shorts that came to just below his knees, a Desperate Dan T-shirt and some chunky sandals that could have been made by Land Rover. With socks.

“Jee-sus,” I hissed.

Batman stabbed a finger at the mobile phone he was holding and shouted something at it. My phone, in the glove box, remained resolutely silent. He did a little war-dance, shooting glances from one side to the other, as if his feet were on fire and the man with the bucket of water hadn’t turned up.

“Charlie…” Annette tried again.

“No,” I told her.

Batman pushed a woman away from the door of the first taxi in the queue and climbed in. The Asian driver tried to remonstrate with him but Batman was in no mood for an argument and the force of his personality, reinforced by a warrant card, prevailed. Besides, the driver had always dreamed of the day that a top cop would climb into his cab and tell him: “Follow that car.”

“Flippin’ ’eck, I’ve always wanted to do that,” I declared. Annette looked across at me, sighed and shook her head. She’s shaken her head quite a few times, recently. “Charlie to Young Turks,” I said into the radio. “Move off, move off. ARV1 in front, ARV2 behind me. Let’s go, and note that it’s the taxi we’re stopping. Have you got that?”

The ARVs were an afterthought, at the super’s insistence, and not completely in on the plan. “The taxi?” one of them queried. “You mean the BMW?”

“No, the taxi. Not the BMW. Understood?”

“Batman? We’re stopping Batman?”

“Affirmative, Batman.”

After a long silence one of them said: “Understood,” and the other grudgingly admitted: “You’re the boss.”

It almost went perfectly. When I gave the signal we boxed-in the taxi and forced it to a standstill. Annette squealed to a stop alongside him, leaving my wing mirror parked neatly behind his, but with no room for me to open the door. She leapt out, slamming the door at her side behind her. As I unbuckled my seat belt the driver glared across at me, his eyes wide with fright.

I had to climb over the centre console, avoiding the gear lever and handbrake, and slide the driver’s seat back before I could push the door open, so everything was under control when I finally arrived on the scene. The ARV gunmen had Batman spread-eagled across the bonnet of the taxi, their Glock 9mm self-loading pistols aimed at his head. They’d pulled on their chic little baseball caps with the black and white checks, especially for the occasion. “OK, boys,” I said as I negotiated my way around the jammed-together cars, “put them away, he’s one of us.”

The ARV officers lowered their guns and stared at me, mystified. Batman stretched upright and turned round. He looked a lot uglier than before, and had developed a twitch at the corner of his mouth. From the colour of his face his blood pressure wasn’t too good, either. I said: “DI Charlie Priest, Heckley CID,” by way of introduction, but decided that a handshake was probably a trifle over-familiar.

For a few seconds he couldn’t speak, his breath rasping in his throat as if he’d just completed the four hundred metres hurdles, his shoulders rising and falling as he fought to drag air into his lungs. When he did his voice had a cracked, bluesy tone, a bit like Tom Waits. “Detective…Chief Inspector…Moynihan,” he eventually gasped as he turned in my direction. “Metropolitan Police…Regional Crime Squad.” His arm slowly raised until it pointed straight at me, his fingertip an inch from my nose. I stared along the length of it, straight into his piggy eyes as he hissed: “And if it’s the last thing…I ever do…I’m going to have…your fucking head on a plate.”