The following article contains spoilers from an episode of Emmerdale that hasn’t aired on ITV1 yet, but can be viewed on ITVX.

Killer John Sugden (Oliver Farnworth) was on the run in Monday (September 22)’s Emmerdale – but he had a plan, and it involved Caleb Miligan (William Ash).

Police are currently swarming all over the village in the hunt for John, who is now known to have killed Nate Robinson (Jurell Carter) as well as attempting to murder Mackenzie Boyd (Lawrence Robb) and Aaron Dingle (Danny Miller). That’s only the top of a potential charge sheet that includes whacking various people over the head, drugging Chas Dingle (Lucy Pargeter), deliberately causing Jacob (Joe-Warren Plant) to have a severe allergic reaction… the list goes on.

And one of the many illegal things he did was to conceal the body of Anthony Fox (Nicholas Day), Ruby Miligan (Beth Cordingly)’s rapist father. John wasn’t responsible for that death at all, and in fact sorted out disposing of the corpse in order to protect Aaron from possibly going to prison for killing Anthony.

It turned out that Aaron hadn’t killed Anthony, and it was Ruby who’d ended her evil father’s life. Now John has is the only one who knows where Anthony’s body has been concealed, and he also knows he can use that information to give him a hold over Caleb.

In this episode he came to find Caleb at the depot and told him all it would take would be a phone call to the police and Ruby would soon be hauled in for questioning over her father’s killing. Caleb didn’t think he’d go through with that threat, because his DNA would be on the body as well as Ruby’s.

John had thought of that, and said he’d been very careful to keep his DNA off the body.

John’s blackmailing demand is for Caleb to get him in one of his trucks that’s going abroad, so he can make his escape. In return, Ruby will be in the clear.

This has put Caleb in an impossible situation. On one hand, if he doesn’t do as John asks, his beloved wife will end up in prison, because as John said, after five minutes of questioning she’d crack.

But if Caleb agrees to help John flee the country, he’s helping his nephew’s killer evade justice – which is something Cain (Jeff Hordley) and the rest of the family wouldn’t be able to forgive him for.

By the end of the episode it looked like he’d decided that Ruby’s freedom was his number one priority and he agreed to get John in a van going to Rotterdam the following day.

But he had a grim warning for John. If he should get caught at any point, he was not to mention Ruby’s name to the police.