Escape From The Country - NEW CRIME FICTION - Chapter 6
Kemp from Special Branch turns up at Francesca's house and hands her a Kevlar vest.
This is the final chapter of my short story Escape From The Country. Please let me know your thoughts and don’t forget to like, share and comment underneath
CHAPTER SIX
Francesca had just finished her 8:30am Teams meeting in the small back bedroom that she had converted into a home office during Covid. The plain room looked out over a neat patch of garden and an untidy lane that ran behind her brown panelled fence.
The lane was mainly used by the bin-men and sometimes by teenagers who wanted to smoke dope, drink cheap cider or sniff nitrous in private. Which is why Francesca was surprised to see a short female in a bulky looking black bomber jacket and a black baseball cap looking at her house. She appeared to be alone. Maybe a delivery person with the wrong directions. The woman kept walking and disappeared from view up the lane.
Francesca couldn’t focus on her emails. She felt disorientated by the extreme events of the last few days: the rioting, the vitriol aimed at the Police and the strange cleaning of Stuart Hill’s flat. She was beginning to understand paranoid people who saw threats everywhere.
She decided to get up and check out the woman in black. She already had her trainers on and was headed downstairs when she saw a shadow through the front door’s frosted glass. Francesca stopped halfway down and stepped carefully to pick up her night stick from the hall table keeping her eye on the door the whole time. She felt in her pocket for her phone and realised it was upstairs plugged into her laptop.
The shadow moved away, its form losing shape and Francesca stepped forward to open the door. The hooded figure was stood two metres back from the door: it was Kemp from Special Branch.
“What are you doing here?”
“Let’s go inside Superintendent. Please?” Kemp looked serious.
They stepped into Francesca’s hallway. Kemp shut the door and put down a blue backpack.
“Inside the bag is a Kevlar vest for you Superintendent.”
“Why?”
“Put it on under a jacket before you leave the house. There is an operation at Southampton Central railway station going down at 11:15am. You are not officially invited and I am not officially here either.”
“Kemp, what are you on about?”
“Superintendent, I know this is confusing. Please use your personal vehicle today, and switch off your service phone. You can listen in to the op on this.” Kemp handed her an iPhone box. “Your team has been compromised by people who have access to police vehicle tracking and communications. Park on the North Side of the station and do not enter the building before 11:00am. No matter what you hear, do not intervene.” Kemp left, closing the front door gently behind her.
“Fucking Special Branch.” Francesca said to herself as she heard a car start up and pull away somewhere down the road.
At 10:44am Francesca parked her red Alfa Romeo Giulia Veloce in the furthest corner of the Southbrook Road car park just past Southampton Central station in the shadow of one of the port city’s brutalist grey buildings. It had been difficult to drive wearing a bulletproof vest with a baggy jacket over the top. She switched on the phone Kemp had given her, connected the earpiece and pulled herself and the 6kg vest got out of her car.
Everything seemed normal. The background roar of city traffic, the hiss of hydraulic bus doors and the reversing alarms of a Tesco delivery truck all went on as usual. In front of the station a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses were offering to save the souls of an uninterested Southampton public. A container freight train from the port roared, rumbled and shook the ground as it headed out onto the rail network.
The summer air was already getting warm and Francesca felt cold sweat in the small of her back as she crossed the road to the station. She caught a fleeting sight of her reflection in the automatic glass door as she entered the station building: could no-one else see the unnatural bulk?
Of course this could be a trap that she had allowed herself to be walked into and, with her service phone switched off, she was on not only her own and at risk but also operating outside department regulations. What was she doing? Risking her career? Her life? For what? To be a witness to some weird Special Branch op? Or as cover for it, so that someone could clean up the mess and take the blame when it went tits up?
She bought a ticket to Pokesdown, paying cash as some kind of futile precaution against identification. The ticket barrier beeped and clicked as she passed through and onto the platform where an announcement advised passengers to ‘stand behind the yellow line’. Seconds later a single diesel engine sped through the station, alone. Was it chasing its train or being chased. She stopped dead, suddenly aware that any of the people here could easily push her in front of a train.
Nausea rose in her as she climbed the steps to the bridge that crossed to platform 4. Kemp had instructed her to wait there by the hot food stand. A smell of reheated pasties and weak coffee rose up through the stairs and into the elevated corridor.
“See it. Say it. Sorted.” Leaked out across the station PA. Francesca could build suspicions about anyone on the station and, as sweat started on her forehead, she was aware how suspicious she looked and how she had been left so exposed.
Then a male voice in the earpiece:
“Target SH on Western Esplanade, ETA 3 minutes.”
“Blue team please confirm ETA.” Kemp responded.
“Blue team, we are still ten minutes away.” Another male voice.
“Make that three max Blue Team.” Kemp again.
Francesca walked down on to platform four at 11:13am. The train for Cardiff Central was pulling away and she leant against a cold white wall, her shoulders feeling the full 5kg of Kevlar. The hot food smell was worse here.
“Target SH approaching South Side ticket office.” The male voice.
“In position. Blue Team updates?” Kemp was almost pleading.
“Four minutes away.” Francesca was only metres from Kemp. She strained to stay calm, to not intervene and stay put but found herself edging towards Kemp’s location.
“Target SH, South entrance ramp. Target Three car approaching. Please confirm.” A new female voice. Northern and calm.
“I have eyes on Target SH. Oh shit. Where is my back up?” Kemp was struggling now. Francesca did not know what danger the woman was in or what support she had.
She heard tyres squealing, shouts of “Stop Police.” And then three gunshots followed by screams of mass panic.
“Target SH DOWN. Three targets down. Civilian down. Where’s my fucking back up?” Kemp was shouting.
Francesca vaulted the ticket barrier towards the noise, shouting “Police!”
She waved her warrant card and identified herself.
The screaming did not stop. People were trying to escape and climbing straight over the three motionless figures laying across the main exit.
Francesca saw Kemp, stock still with the gun held by her side and went straight to her.
A man lay on the floor crying.
Four members of the public held down a ferociously struggling woman.
A female station worker helped a heavily bleeding man.
A large bloodied knife lay discarded.
In her ear “Blue Team on scene.”
This was a fucking shit show.
