Chapter 8
Bradshawrang as he was passing theAngel of the North, the twenty-metre high steel sculpture that overlooked the A1 near Gateshead.
‘Are you there yet, Poe?’
‘Not yet, Tilly. What’s up?’
‘Spring-heeled Jack’s been arrested.’
‘You got him?’ he said, surprised.
‘Yes. DI Flynn noticed him climbing over his garden fence. She thinks he’d seen some of the police watching the house but he needed his passport. It was in his pocket when he was arrested.’
‘Did they grab him inside?’
‘Gosh, no!’ Bradshaw said. ‘He jumped out of a top-floor window then took off down the seventeenth simulation route I’d mapped out.’
‘Remind me which one that was.’
‘It was where he broke into the house three doors down, ran up their stairs then jumped out of a back window on to an apple tree. He could then leap on to the roof of the shop next to the railway line.’
‘So who got him?’
‘DI Flynn was the one who arrested him,’ Bradshaw said. ‘I followed her in case he ran, of course. I watched her catch him.’
‘Did he resist arrest?’ He hoped so. Flynn was a black belt in Krav Maga, and was more than a match for someone who was good at jumping.
‘He did.’
‘Is the boss OK?’
‘She has a limp.’
‘Did she fall?’
‘No, Poe. She kicked Spring-heeled Jack so hard in the testicles she bruised her foot.’
‘Ouch.’
‘And then she said, “Try jumping now, you F-word C-word.”’
Poe laughed. At least something good had happened today.
‘Do you know anything more about what’s happened to Estelle Doyle?’
‘Northumbria aren’t saying anything. I may need your help at some point.’
‘I’ll leave now.’
‘No, get the boss’s permission firs—’
‘I’ll leave now, Poe. We have to help Estelle Doyle. She would help us.’
‘That’s true.’
‘And she’s very fond of you.’
‘She’s fond of all of us, Tilly. I don’t know why, all we ever do is cause her trouble.’