Rodney was Angela’s younger brother, and a brand new constable on the local police force. Rodney thought the issue serious enough to take it up with his sergeant, who nearly dismissed the matter before remembering the new message from Scotland Yard. Something about trucks that had recently been to the London produce markets. By 8:45 it got to Nathan Chatham.
Slaton decided he’d keep moving until three in the morning, then look for a place to hole up. If he couldn’t find satisfactory shelter, he’d stay in the woods. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but as long as he kept them searching a wide enough area, it would be safe. He wondered if he was being overly cautious, if perhaps little Jane had kept quiet after all. Or maybe her mother wasn’t the suspicious type. Then a car would come into view, or a plane would fly overhead and the thought would be vanquished.
He considered hopping into another truck or stealing a car, but the area was thinly populated. There would be few such opportunities to choose from, and, more to the point, few for Chatham to check out. Slaton was glad he’d met Chief Inspector Nathan Chatham. He wondered what the man was up to. Was he still mired down questioning Christine, hoping she held some key to it all? At least she was safe now, Slaton thought. Maybe the great inspector was pacing furiously in his office, empty-handed and trying to predict the unpredictable. Or were men swarming around a little farm nearby, taking photographs, searching a produce truck for some shred of a hair, and slinging pointed questions at a bewildered little girl? Perhaps not.
Slaton had, however, settled on one point. Of all the people looking for him now, there was one man at Scotland Yard who was the biggest threat. He had the resources, home field advantage, and something else — that calm self-assuredness that emanated from people who regularly got what they were after. Chatham would be tenacious, and there was only one way for Slaton to get the man off his tail. He had to give Chatham that second weapon, along with those responsible for taking it. And to do that, he had to get clear.
To begin, Slaton could only assume that the encounter at the farm had exposed his position. If Chatham started a search, he’d get a map and place a big marker on the farm. From there, he’d blockade all roads and rails leading away from the area, the distance of the inspection points being proportional to the amount of time since Slaton had last been seen. Then another circle would be drawn, this one corresponding to that same amount of time, but smaller because it assumed travel on foot. The allowance would be generous, probably six or seven miles per hour. Within that circle, the search would proceed methodically, as many men around the perimeter as possible, an effort to contain, and dogs in the center to track and flush. That’s how it would happen, and so Slaton’s tactics were set. Stay clear of the major roads and lines of communication. Move on foot, but move fast.
There was advantage in knowing what the inspector had to do. Adding to it, Chatham could never guess where Slaton was headed. The only question was how best to get there. He took another look at the touring map he’d found in the addict’s car, and the name of the village jumped out at him. Uppingham. It lay fifteen miles farther to the northwest. This was his immediate objective. Slaton had been there before, on more casual business, and he knew the area. The more he thought about it, the more Slaton liked the plan. It would provide a number of critical tools for the work ahead. And it would screw one particular inspector straight into the ceiling.
Chatham was ecstatic when the news came in about Jane Smitherton-Cole’s encounter with a stranger. In minutes he’d been able to confirm that her grandfather had indeed been to the New Covent Garden Market that morning, and almost certainly carried someone from there to his daughter’s farm. And while Chatham wouldn’t typically put much emphasis on the testimony offered by a six year old, Jane’s description had matched Slaton squarely. The command center at Scotland Yard was put into action.
The local police began a search of the immediate area around the farm near St. Ives. Chatham ordered a blockade of the roads leading away from the district, and a checkpoint was set up along each end of the rail line that traversed three miles to the south. The police from four surrounding counties were dispatched, with another two hundred to arrive within the hour. Two military posts had deployed nearly their entire detachments, three hundred at last count. The troops would provide a wide-ranging assortment of tools to aid the search, everything from all-terrain vehicles to dog teams. Then there were other things Chatham had never heard of, let alone understood, including four Westland helicopters, equipped with low-light TVs, searchlights and infrared something-or-others. The helicopters would cycle through a search pattern that centered around old man Smitherton’s truck.
Within the hour, west Cambridgeshire would be overrun by an authoritarian cast of thousands, all in the interest of finding one man. Never in his twenty-eight years at the Yard had Chatham seen such an array of forces brought to bear. He only hoped that soon he’d have something to show for it.
In the first hour, Slaton estimated he made nine miles, but only by staying on a secondary road that was light on traffic. It helped considerably that he was only carrying the backpack, now looped over his shoulders, and lighter after getting rid of the bottle of rum. Slaton ran at a steady clip along the shoulder. By staying on the road, he knew his chances of being spotted were greater. For the time being, though, speed was all-important. Also, the cloud cover had thickened, allowing no moonlight through. This would make moving to the fields and forests painfully slow, not to mention the increased chances of turning an ankle or tearing up his clothing.
Every five or ten minutes, a passing car would force Slaton to scurry aside and conceal himself in the overgrown hedgerows, those that seemed to so conveniently border all English roads. He estimated eight miles in the second hour, then the clouds began to break and he decided to move to the fields. There, on choppy, uneven ground, his pace slowed considerably. He circumnavigated a few flocks of sheep so as to not make any disturbance, and kept well clear of the few buildings he could make out. Most were barns and sheds that looked like they hadn’t been used in years, but Slaton couldn’t allow a repeat of his earlier mistake.
Cresting a hill shortly after ten o’clock, he spotted a small village in the distance. Nestled low in a valley, its lights cast a subtle yellow hue into the misty air above. Slaton moved perpendicularly to the city, and a few minutes later came to a road. Staying behind the ancient, ivy-covered stone fence that ran alongside, he followed along until he came to a road sign. It declared the place two kilometers ahead to be Oundle.
He found a grassy spot and sat down, leaning back against the wall. Slaton stretched out his legs and felt immediate relief in the tired muscles. The sweat on his exposed face and neck began to feel cool in the night air, no surprise with a temperature near the freezing point. He noted that his shoes and the bottom of his pants were covered in mud and grass. One shirtsleeve was sodden from a slip he’d suffered crossing through a gully.
He took a long draw from the water bottle in his pack, then pulled out the map and a small penlight. Slaton wished he had the luxury of a topographical map, something that showed terrain contours, but at least the one he had was of sufficient scale to identify the smaller roads and towns. He instinctively held the map in a concave manner, shielding the source of light — the reflected illumination only found his eyes and the wall behind. Slaton quickly located Oundle, then estimated where he’d gotten off Smitherton’s truck. He was disappointed, but not too surprised, to find that he’d only made twenty-one miles, two less than he’d hoped. Still, the going had been rough. Recent wet weather had made the fields exceptionally soggy, and footing for the last hour had been a real problem. He’d have to go back to moving along the roads.