Hunter Hunted by Jack Gatland (best value ebook reader .TXT) 📗

the other receipts that they had picked up, the taxi to Kings Cross and the train to Whitby.

Arriving at the station, Sutcliffe and his unit, primarily comprising Frost, his bleeding nose now stemmed and Fitzwarren, sickeningly eager to please checked with the first responding officers to see what they’d learned. Bullman and Kapoor hadn’t joined them, still believing that Alex Monroe had been attacked by someone separate to Walsh, but Sutcliffe didn’t care about them. He simply needed to catch Walsh.

The police had arrived moments too late, he’d learned. The train had already left the station by the time they ran onto the platform, but two units were now deployed to the first stop on the route, and the ticket inspectors had been sent an image of Declan to help them identify him as they walked up and down the seven carriages. There was a station officer, a small, scrawny little runt of a man who claimed that Declan had asked him which train to catch, but with this, something felt off here. Who was Walsh visiting in Whitby, and why did he take a sleeping bag?

The more he thought about it, the more he realised that Declan Walsh wasn’t the idiot he’d been making out to be. He’d obviously had help escaping, but by who? The only people who’d been on his side were his team, most of whom hadn’t been in the room and Charles Baker.

But Baker’s office had wanted Declan destroyed.

Sutcliffe had audibly hissed with annoyance, surprising several of the surrounding officers. Frost and Fitzwarren had walked back to him, both with faces of deep disappointment.

‘Let me guess, they didn’t find him?’ Sutcliffe asked. ‘CCTV didn’t pick him up?’

‘Actually, it did, sir,’ Fitzwarren spoke up. ‘We have him entering the two thirty train on platform eleven.’

‘So Stevenage it is,’ Sutcliffe suggested. ‘We can get there just in time to arrest him if we put our foot down.’

‘No,’ Frost was still watching around Kings Cross, as if expecting Walsh to be watching him back. ‘This feels too easy. He’s leaving us a bloody good trail, but he’s not that stupid.’ He looked to Fitzwarren. ‘Is he?’

‘He, well, he thinks with his heart,’ Fitzwarren replied. ‘So there’s a chance that he could have done this.’

‘And you’re not just saying this to delay our investigation, are you?’ Sutcliffe enquired. ‘Some misguided loyalty here?’

Fitzwarren bristled visibly at the accusation. ‘You’ve seen how Anjli and Davey reacted to me,’ he said. ‘I’m classed as a traitor because I valued my job and my career over loyalty.’

Sutcliffe nodded. ‘So, if you were Walsh, where would you go?’

‘Maybe his ex-wife’s,’ Fitzwarren suggested, but Frost cut him off.

‘He’ll go back to Hurley,’ he said. ‘It’s out of London, it’s a sleepy village and he has everything he needs there. It’s a bolthole.’

Sutcliffe remembered the house in Hurley very well; the first time he’d ever met Walsh was on the doorstep, as he tried to take a suspect out of the premises.

‘We go there,’ he said as he looked to his watch. ‘If he is doing that, he has to make his way to Paddington, and to Maidenhead. We’ll likely miss him at both stations, so let’s just cut to the chase and go to his house.’

‘Should we pass this on?’

‘I’ll do it,’ Sutcliffe replied. ‘Just get to that bloody house before he leaves. I want that bastard back in custody.’

Frost and Fitzwarren left Kings Cross at a run as Sutcliffe pulled out his phone, dialling a number. He knew he needed to let the Crime Unit he currently commanded know about the current plans, while he still had to wait for a response from the Stevenage police once they had searched the Whitby train. And then, after both, he’d need to speak to Chief Superintendent Bradbury, if only to give him an update.

But before that, he had a more important call to make.

‘Charles Baker’s office,’ he said to the operator who answered. ‘Tell him it’s DCI Sutcliffe.’ He waited a moment, glancing around the station as he did so. Bradbury would probably want to do some kind of televised press conference. He loved doing those bloody things. He was thinking of ways to escape this when the phone answered.

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Walsh is in the wind. I’ll get him back, but I wanted you to know.’

He paused, listening to the voice at the other end of the phone.

‘You don’t need to worry,’ he continued. ‘I have this under control. I’d have had it a damn sight better controlled if you’d told me about the operatives you sent after the Muslim.’ Another pause as he listened. ‘Well, perhaps you—no, of course I’m not questioning you. I’m just saying that there’s a lot riding on this, and we need to…’

One last pause.

‘Of course not, sir,’ he whispered, his face whitening. ‘I’m completely loyal to Rattlestone. And you, of course.’

The call disconnected. Sutcliffe, now looking quite queasy, stared down at his phone as if he genuinely expected it to attack him.

He really needed to find Declan Walsh.

In Hurley, PC De’Geer was the first to arrive on scene. A tall, muscled man with Scandinavian heritage, he looked like a Viking who’d had his beard trimmed, his hair cut and had then been squeezed into a police constable’s uniform. He’d surveyed the house, checked the area and rather than confront a potential terrorist on his own, he had instead knocked on the surrounding doors, speaking to the neighbours, looking for anyone that might have seen Declan Walsh that day. By the time he’d moved to the second door, more police cars had arrived, and more officers were surrounding the house, banging on the front door, peering through the windows.

It stayed like this for another ten minutes; PC De’Geer carried on speaking to the neighbours while his colleagues waited impotently around the house, unsure that the suspect was even in there.

There was a neighbour, a battle-axe of a lady who claimed continually that Walsh was a ‘bad sort’