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Poe shook his head. ‘He’s ten steps ahead of us here. I don’t know what his escape plan is, but I do know he has one.’
‘We go in then,’ she said. ‘Grab the bastard before he has a chance to play his fancy tricks. You OK with this, Jo?’
‘You’re gold commander, ma’am,’ Nightingale replied.
Mathers nodded to herself. Decision made. She pressed the transmit button again.
‘Sixty seconds then. Everyone into position, please.’
‘But before the ground teams were able to move in and apprehend the suspect, the wheel turned again?’ Commander Ratface said.
‘Yes, sir. Quebec 252 said the man sitting opposite Henning Stahl had passed an envelope across the table.’
‘Which was when Sergeant Poe shouted—’
‘—Don’t fucking touch it!’ Poe screamed at the monitor.
The tech beside Poe jumped. So did Mathers.
Stahl, in the process of reaching for the envelope, sharply pulled back his hand. He looked in Poe’s direction.
‘Has he just heard me?’ Poe said.
‘CouldHenning Stahl hear Sergeant Poe?’
‘Yes, sir. The Botanist must have taken his hand off the radio jammer to pass Stahl the envelope. We could hear Mr Stahl and he could hear us.’
‘But it was a short-lived victory, I understand?’
‘It was, sir.’
‘And why was that?’
‘Because the parkrun finished.’
A second klaxon sounded and the drumbeat of footsteps changed tempo as five hundred people moved from gallop to canter to trot. The run had obviously finished.
‘Now what?’ Poe muttered, his eyes fixed to his binoculars again.
‘The suspect is standing up,’ Quebec 253 said.
Poe flicked his head towards the live helicopter feed. The man opposite Stahl was indeed getting to his feet. Poe also noticed the runners had started to leave Chance’s Park. They were using the eastern exit.
‘Cancel my last order,’ Mathers said. ‘I say again, cancel my last order. Suspect is about to leave the park. We’ll arrest him on the street as originally planned. Quebec callsigns to advise if he uses a different exit to the runners.’
Poe went back to his binoculars. Back to Plan A, he thought. He wondered how long it would last. Not very, he imagined.
‘This is the bit I’ve struggled with, Detective Superintendent Mathers,’ Commander Ratface said. ‘You had three helicopters watching the suspect, you had every exit covered and your communications had been restored.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Yet you still managed to miss him. How is that possible?’
‘The Botanist had one last trick to play, sir.’
‘What’s he doing?’ Mathers said. ‘He’s taking off his … oh shit!’
Poe span round to watch the helicopter feed. Saw the Botanist remove his coat, roll it up and wedge it in the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms. Saw what he was wearing underneath. He joined Mathers with an ‘Oh shit.’
