Pursuit of Arms

by Gerald Hammond

  “But not the first?”

  “It would have to take its place with the safety of their own men and the success of the operation.” Munro tried to bite off the last word.

  Keith pounced on the slip. “So, as far as they are concerned, the operation would be the capture of the criminals. They might decide to go charging in with stun grenades, sweeping each room with gunfire at waist level, half a second after shouting at the hostages to lie down. Have you thought of that?”

  “That is possible.”

  “And anyone who was slow or deaf or dazed by the stun grenades or tied to a chair could get killed?”

  “It has happened,” Munro said with a helpless gesture. “You know that it has.”

  “Well, maybe that’s the best we’ll be able to settle for, but I’m not convinced yet.”

  Ronnie eased himself into a kneeling position. “If you’ll not tell us where she is,” he said, “we can’t even think about it.”

  Keith nodded and returned to Munro. “You’re not here as a policeman,” he said, “you’re here as a friend. If I tell you where the guns are, which is presumably where the men and Deborah are also, will you promise me that you’ll say nothing until I tell you to?”

  Munro opened his mouth and closed it again. Finally, he forced himself to speak. “You have my word,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Keith said. “Ronnie, see what you can see around the buildings at Lairy Farm. Mr Munro, take a look at the fields. You see the newly-cut stubble, two fields left of the farm buildings?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the next field beyond it there’s a root crop, spuds I think. The darker green. You see that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which of those fields would you say was the larger?”

  Superintendent Munro was puzzled but persevering. “I’d say that they were much of a muchness. But what can that have to do with it?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Keith said. “Bear with me. Where the potatoes are, Neill McLelland had his barley last year; and he stacked his straw bales pretty much where he’s got them again this year. I built my hide against them, when I was shooting pigeon over decoys on his oilseed rape, so I remember them well. Just the same sort of bales, each about five feet in diameter and four feet thick. He had a stack two bales deep, about sixteen bales long and four bales high, something like a hundred and twenty bales altogether. This year, off the same sized field, his stack is five bales thick and longer with it. And a tarpaulin over the top. It’s a thrifty farmer who takes that much trouble over barley straw.”

  “He could have grown a longer-stemmed barley,” Ronnie put in.

  “You saw it when it was cut,” Keith said. “It was just the same height.”

  “Because there’s so many bales,” Munro said carefully, “you think the trailer’s hidden inside them? But the lassie said . . .”

  “Exactly! Neill was hauling more straw bales to his farm when Deborah and I passed him that morning.”

  “Maybe he just wanted extra straw.”

  “What for?” Keith asked. “He’s no extra beasts to bed with it during the winter, which is about all a farmer uses the straw for. But he’d need about another sixty, just to close in the ends. His neighbour this side just cleared and drained some boggy land. It goes to pasture next year, but just now he’s got extra straw and no need for it. He’ll have straw for the asking.”

  Munro sat and scratched his head for a minute. He took a look through Keith’s binoculars and lowered them again. “But how would a city-bred gang know all that?” he asked plaintively. “Would the farmer be in it with them? Mr McLelland seems an upright man.”

  “I’m sure that he is,” Keith said. “When we picked Deborah up yesterday, she was complaining that his daughter hadn’t turned up to play. To me, that suggests that the family’s being held and only allowed outside one at a time.

  “On the other hand, I had a note from Dougie Scott this morning. He says that Ian Skinner, the one they call ‘Pig’, has been meeting with strangers. When he’s out of jail, he’s always scrounging round the farms for odd jobs or unwanted junk while keeping his eyes open for anything he can come back and steal later. He’d be just the man to provide that sort of information. Dougie thought that Pig had already been put down, having outlived his usefulness; but I think he’s been lying low. I’m sure he was in the square when we looked for cars yesterday.”

  “You’re both right,” Munro said. “He was in the square yesterday. But this morning we found him on the road below here. A hit-and-run.”

  They were silent for a few seconds, in memory of the late ‘Pig’ Skinner. The epitaph was left to Keith. “We’ll manage without him,” Keith said. “But what a thing to do, just in case he talked later!”

  Ronnie lowered the telescope. “That’d not be the reason,” he said. “Not if they were quitting the country anyway. More likely it’d be to save having to pay him.”

  “That’s worse,” Keith said. “Do you see anything down there?”

  “Not a thing moving. Give me a little longer.”

  Keith’s worries redoubled. Lack of movement might mean that the men had pulled out, leaving no living soul behind. But, he told himself, Neill had no dairy cattle, only stirks. The farm would survive untended for a day or two.

  Munro recognised the strain showing in Keith’s eyes. “How do you see the sequence of events?” he asked. He knew that Keith’s strength was his ability to see things clearly through another man’s eyes, and that he would be better using that ability than worrying himself sick over what might or might not be.

  Keith pulled his mind back from the horrors. “Something like this,” he said. “They had it all pre-planned and they’d done their groundwork. During the night, or around dawn, there’s a knock on the farmhouse door. When it’s opened, men burst in and hold guns on the family. ‘If you don’t do as you’re told,’ they say to Neill, ‘we’ll do awful things to your wife and daughter. And the first thing you do is to rearrange your straw bales to make a hollow rectangle of such-and-such a size.’ ‘I don’t have enough bales,’ Neill says. ‘That’s OK,’ he’s told. ‘Joe Donaldson, next door, has already sold you his surplus and you’ve got use of his fork-lift. Fetch as many as needed. You’ve got until midday, or somebody dies.’ We must have crossed with his last load.

  “Meantime, Pig Skinner has been talking with people or listening to gossip. At the last minute, he hears that the destination’s been changed. Are they going to abort the job? Not yet. Somebody has the bright idea of phoning me and pretending to be the driver. Either I blurt out the new address, which I don’t, or I lead them to it, which I’m fool enough to do. The operation goes ahead. The load arrives and . . . you know as well as I do, or better, what happened at the factory.

  “The artic. leaves the industrial estate by the back way and comes down the Oldbury Farm Road where it’s well-screened by the trees, and waits near the mouth until it gets the signal that the road’s clear. You know fine how that road goes quiet at times. When there’s a lull in the traffic, it crosses the road and goes down the dip to the farm and backs its trailer into the hollow between the bales. Neill boxes it in while the cab goes off to be hidden and later dumped in the carrier’s yard.”

  Munro had been nodding throughout Keith’s explanation, but now he frowned. “Why would they get rid of the cab?” he asked. “They’d be needing it again, surely?”

  “A point,” Keith admitted. “But remember, if we’re right, they were expecting to lead you away with a decoy vehicle and be on the road again within a few hours at the most. They wouldn’t dare use the same combination. The plan would be for a tarpaulin or a new coat of paint over the trailer, and I’ll bet there’s a different cab somewhere, waiting for a phone-call to come in and collect the trailer when the coast’s clear.”

  “You make it sound plausible enough,” Munro said. “Maybe it could have happened that way. But did it? That’s what we still don’t know.”

&n
bsp; Ronnie had been waiting for his turn to speak. “Aye, we do,” he said. “There’s still no sign of the McLellands, but there’s two men keeping watch at the farm. You’re a good guesser,” he told Keith.

  “I wish I was as good with the horses,” Keith said. “Where are they?” Gently but firmly he took the telescope away from Ronnie. Munro raised the binoculars again.

  “One fellow’s in the Dutch barn,” Ronnie said. “He’s watching the front of the house and the approach. He’s in deep shadow, but you can just make him out when he moves. The other’s at the back, tucked into the hedge just to the right of the dead tree.”

  “I see the one in the hedge,” Keith said. “Flat cap and a Mexican moustache.”

  “Give me the telescope a wee minute,” Munro said. “I can’t make out a damn thing with these glasses.”

  Keith handed over the telescope. “If it’s descriptions you’re after,” he said, “the one in the hedge is bald. He mopped his head just now.”

  A silence fell as Keith and Superintendent Munro studied the scene. Ronnie, unable to see any detail with the naked eye, grew restless. “When do we go in?” he asked.

  “Tonight,” Keith said.

  “Tonight?” Munro echoed. “Man, you can never be ready by then.”

  “We must,” Keith said simply. “The devil of it is that the nights are so short, which also means that dark’s a long time off. If I could think of a way to make it in daylight, I’d go in sooner. You see, we daren’t leave it a minute longer than we have to, for two reasons. Firstly, the signs are that they won’t leave anyone alive when they pull out. And they’ll pull out as soon as the road-blocks go. Could you persuade Doig to keep them at least until morning?”

  “He’ll not be keen,” Munro said, still scanning through the telescope. “They’re tying up two cars and at least ten or twelve men in shifts; including about six of the men who are trained in firearms, and they’re few enough. You could persuade him yourself, better, with an anonymous tip that the load’s going out by road tonight.”

  “What’s the other reason?” Ronnie asked Keith.

  “The other reason is Deborah. She’s been reared among guns. You should have seen her strip a Browning for Eddie Adoni. And she can shoot, too.”

  “That wee lassie?” said Munro.

  “Of course. She’s followed me around like a puppy ever since she could toddle. Anything I did, she wanted to do. Well, I don’t believe that any knowledge is ever wasted; so if I let her do something at all I’d teach her to do it as well as she was capable of. So I know she can shoot. She knows she can shoot. If one of those men puts down a pistol within her reach, she’s quite capable of lifting it and saying ‘Stick ’em up’, or whatever they say for it on the telly these days. But those men don’t know that she can shoot, and they won’t believe it.”

  Munro pursed his lips. Deborah could trigger a bloodbath. So also could any of the men now working for Chief Superintendent Doig, just by arriving at the farm, but he had more discretion than to point this out. “What can you do that the S.A.S. cannot?” he asked.

  “We may not have their technical resources,” Keith said, “but we do have our skills. Ronnie’s been a stalker all his life and he can move like a shadow when he wants to. We know every inch of the ground. If the worst comes to the worst, we can shoot. Most important of all, we have a first priority of keeping the hostages alive. Nothing else matters.”

  “Right,” Ronnie said.

  Munro put down the telescope. “I do not believe that I am hearing this,” he said, “and yet I know that it is so. Well, if it must be — and I suppose that this is also true — then, because I brought this upon your heads, let me give you some advice.”

  “I’d be grateful,” Keith said. “But . . . hold your horses. Somebody’s come out of the farmhouse. I think . . . Yes, it’s midday: it’s the changing of the guard.”

  Through the lenses, they saw a youth with long hair emerge from the Dutch barn and be relieved by a tubby man with spectacles. The man in the hedge was replaced by a taller man with protruding ears. The door closed again and all seemed deserted. Munro wrote down every detail that they could remember between them.

  “Joyce’s Boys, each of them,” Munro said. “Now I can give Sandy Doig a report which will make my record shine in the dark.”

  “You’ll have a lot more to tell him by the time I say you can speak,” Keith said. “Go ahead with the advice.”

  “Surely.” Munro handed the telescope back to Ronnie. “That is a fine glass,” he said. “I could almost count the hairs in the man’s ears. Well, now. First of all, try not to shoot anybody. Indeed, try not to kill or injure any one of them, but if you must do so, try not to do it with a gun. The law dislikes firearms.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Keith said.

  “Next, if you should tackle one of them without shooting him, but he dies because you’ve been too rough, tie him up anyway. It will be good evidence that you did not mean to kill him and did not know that you had done so.

  “Then, if you must shoot, shoot indoors. One of those men indoors is an intruder; outdoors, the burden of proof would be on yourselves. By the same token, shoot your man from the front, never from the back; you could never justify shooting a man to prevent his escape.

  “Lastly, if you must shoot, shoot to kill.”

  “What?” Keith was surprised into saying. “You’re sure you’ve got that right?”

  “It is perfectly sensible advice,” Munro insisted. “Think about it. Once you have pulled the trigger, the law will be concerned; it will not be greatly more concerned if the bullet finds his brain instead of his backside. In the circumstances, you may have trouble but in the end you will be exonerated. That is with the criminal side of the law. On the civil side, it is different. If you wound a man, he can sue you; and, the law’s view of firearms being what it is, with every chance of success. Dead, he cannot sue you.”

  “His family could,” Keith said.

  “For loss of support, out of the earnings of crime? I do not think that they would get very far. Forbye, the death of such a man would save the taxpayer the cost of a trial and of many years board and lodging, and I am myself a taxpayer. You’ll remember my words?”

  “To my dying day,” Keith said. He had known Munro for ten years or more, and now when for the first time he felt that he was meeting the real man he liked him better. “But for now, would you mind spending some of the day keeping watch? We need to know how many men can be seen and the routine and times when they change over.”

  “Surely,” Munro said. “It will look well in my report, when you let me make one.”

  *

  Keith had become accustomed to the fact that the flat over the shop, where he and Molly had begun their married life, was now occupied by Wal and Janet and was decorated and furnished accordingly. But with his mind filled with worry and plans, he had forgotten again, so that when he rushed in through the flat door he suffered a moment of disorientation. Janet and Molly were sitting in tense silence, talked out. Molly looked up with frantic eyes as he came in.

  “Nearly there,” he said as cheerfully as he could. “We know where she is. I’ll tell you when you need to know. We’ll get her out tonight.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll think of something. Don’t I always? First, I need your help.”

  “Anything,” Molly said and Janet echoed her.

  Keith and Molly each knew the importance of keeping the other busy during times of crisis. He took a second or two to regather his thoughts. “Get on the phone,” he said. “By this evening, I want a good rifle with integral silencer and flash eliminator, fitted with a Phillips night-sight — the Dutch-made one — and already zeroed. And I’ll want to know what range it was zeroed at. And fifty rounds of ammunition, mercury-filled if possible. You may have to go as far afield as O’Neill in Maidstone. He can put it on a one-two-five train from London in the hand of a messenger, and you can get s
omebody with a fast car to meet it at Berwick-on-Tweed.”

  “Are you going to shoot somebody?” Molly asked. She did not sound hostile to the idea.

  “I don’t think so,” Keith said. “But if I’m fumbling around in the dark, I want to be covered by somebody with a rifle and a night-sight, just in case somebody else is watching me through one. When you’ve fixed all that, borrow Wal’s car, belt out to Briesland House and bring back the metal step-ladder.”

  “Anything I can do?” Janet asked.

  Keith remembered what had been at the forefront of his mind when he entered the flat. “You’re the one who can do voices,” he said. “Find another phone — the shop one, if you can’t be overheard — and make an anonymous call to the police. Be Cockney. You’re the disenchanted girlfriend of one of the gang. Mention Joyce’s Boys. Say that there’s a plan for getting the guns out the moment the road-blocks are removed.

  “Then see if you can get hold of Paul York. He’s putting up at the hotel. I’d like him to meet me here, threeish.

  “After that, hang on and take messages. Ronnie’s having a look-around and he’ll be coming here. Tell him to wait for me. I’ve got Munro’s car and I’m going out to find Sir Peter. I’ll be back in an hour to an hour and a half. And,” Keith added on an afterthought, “I’ll be hungry.”

  Chapter Ten

  He returned in a little over the hour. Ronnie, grubby but pleased with himself, was already at the flat, and, with a drink in his big fist, was telling Molly and Janet the story of their journey up the hill insofar as he understood it. He had already mentioned Lairy Farm, but Keith was pleased to note that Molly showed no signs of rushing off in that direction.

  “Somebody phoned up,” Janet said. “He sounded too English to be true. He said that he represented the real owner of the guns, and he’d pay well for advance information when they turn up.”

  “You may get more like that,” Keith said. “And reporters, real and spurious. Give them all an evasive answer.”