I sat down at the chair of the desk that Constables Whittaker, Ward and Flower spent most of the day arguing over. The noises of the station beyond gave way to the ticking of the office clock, and I looked at the time: 3.30 p.m. The clock chimed — you never thought it was going to, but it always did — and the significance of that chime to me just then was that I had two hours forty-five minutes left in which to book accommodation for the week-end away I’d promised the wife (for I would be meeting her at our usual spot in the middle of the footbridge at 6.15 p.m.).
Looking back later on, though, it seemed to me that the three-thirty chime marked the start of one of the most sensational periods ever to pass in York station.
It all began at three thirty-one, when the telephone rang in the police office, the sound clashing with that of running feet from beyond the office door and the cry: ‘The gun… There’s a gun in his hand!’
Chapter Two
It wasn’t logical, but I arrested my dash towards the door to answer the phone.
‘You are not, repeat not…’ I heard the voice on the line saying before I replaced the receiver with a crash. It had been Dewhurst, governor of the York station exchange. Evidently he’d got wind that I’d been using a company telephone for private business.
I was through the office door in the next instant — out into the muffled sunlight, and the black sharpness of the station atmosphere, the smell that makes you want to travel. Everywhere people were running and screaming. The very trains seemed to have scattered, for I couldn’t see a single one.
Only three people were not moving and they stood on the main ‘down’ platform — number five — amid abandoned portmanteaus and baggage trolleys. I stood on the main ‘up’ — number four. One of the three held a gun out before him and the other two faced him; it was plain that not one of them knew what the gun would do next.