Pursuit of Arms

by Gerald Hammond

  “Five. One man, a slob in black leather and jeans, chucked a chair out through a window. He was climbing very carefully through the broken glass when one of our men collared him.”

  “Uninjured?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not now,” came Ronnie’s voice from the barn.

  Keith and Paul York moved round the corner to where Ronnie’s torch was illuminating a neat row of prisoners, each handcuffed and sitting against the wall. They were in various states of disrepair and their mouths were taped.

  “Have you been roughing up prisoners?” York demanded. “We’ll have none of that. Nothing justifies it.”

  “Aye, it does,” Ronnie said. “You didna’ see my niece, and her face black and swollen with the bruises.”

  “He’s right,” Keith said. He managed a surreptitious wink and hoped that York could see it in the poor light. “The brutalising isn’t done yet. If Munro isn’t here before I have time on my hands, I’m going to start some castrating around here. First, does any of these men have a broken limb?”

  “Not to say a limb. I could break one for you, though,” Ronnie said helpfully. “Or I bust that one’s wrist earlier.”

  “Wrist will do. Untape his mouth, and if he won’t tell us how many men were in there with Joyce we’ll hang him up by that wrist until he changes his mind.”

  But O’Donnell, when his mouth was freed, proved to be in no mood to invite further discomfort. There had been seven men, he said very quickly, plus Joyce.

  “We’ve dealt with seven,” Keith said. “Now I’m going in after Joyce. And if I get any nasty surprises, my friends will pull you like a wishbone. Do you want to change your story?”

  O’Donnell shook his head dumbly.

  “I’ll winkle the old biddy out of there for you,” Ronnie said.

  “No you won’t,” Keith said. “You’re too impetuous. And she’s mine. York, will you come and back me up?”

  “You’re getting out of line. Wait for Munro.”

  “He’ll turn it into a siège. That bitch gave my daughter a bash in the face and I’m going to take her myself.”

  “That’s not a reason for me to lay my head on the block beside yours,” York said.

  “At least wait outside. If she’s armed and quick, I may need rescuing. After all,” Keith said persuasively, “I only brought you along because you said you could disarm somebody in the dark.”

  York sighed. “That far and no further,” he said. He added, to Ronnie, “And no beating up prisoners while I’m away.”

  “Give me your torch,” Keith said.

  The shattered window was in the gable of the house furthest from the straw stack. Out of the darkness Keith raised his voice, amplified by a trumpet improvised from a sheet of flabby plastic. “Joyce Henshaw,” he bellowed. “This is Captain Jenkinson of the S.A.S. We have removed your hostages and taken all your men. You are on your own now. The house is surrounded. You have five minutes to come out with your hands up. After that time, we’re coming in with stun grenades and tear gas, and we will be shooting.”

  There was no reply and no sign of life. The night had gone silent. Keith led Paul York on an oblique course which brought them to the side of the gaping window. Listening hard, Keith could hear nothing. He reached high with his hand, switched on the torch and risked a peep over the sill. The McLelland’s living room looked deserted. Its door was closed or nearly so. He switched the torch off quickly.

  “I’m going in,” Keith whispered.

  “What about the five minutes?”

  “Fuck the five minutes. If she walks out, well and good. If not, I’m going to catch her before she expects us.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “The stupidity’s all my own. Shut up and stand by.”

  Gently, Keith removed the last shard of any size from the window. He and his gun made entry at a cost of only slight further damage to his clothes and person. Using the torch for a few seconds from floor level he could see under the furniture. Unless Joyce was clinging to the back of the settee, the room was empty. He crawled to the door and, using the muzzle of his gun, eased it slowly open.

  The house was pitch dark but there was a small area of faint luminescence that puzzled him. As his eyes adjusted it seemed to grow brighter and to develop hard edges. He identified it at last as the glow from the torch which he had left beside the fork-lift, seen along the length of the passage and through the open door of the far bedroom.

  Keith waited. Entering the room had been ordeal enough without extending the risks. All that he stood to lose was the calling of his bluff.

  He was soon rewarded. A shadow slipped across the area of luminescence. Joyce was moving from room to room, looking out of windows to assess whether any escape-route had been left open.

  The shadow appeared again. He adjusted his grip on the gun, in case the woman was armed and turning his way. But the shadow grew smaller and moved through the bedroom door. He could make out the shape of a dumpy figure in a skirt. It passed out of his sight. He began to crawl along the passage, slowly and softly.

  The noise, when it came, was sudden and dramatic — a groan, a croak like that of an old-fashioned bulb motor-horn, and then the drumming of heels. He got to his feet and advanced, trying switches as he went; but the lights of the house had been killed when the roof was lifted.

  If he had not expected it, the sight which greeted him in the torchlight would have been surrealist. Before climbing up to look over the wall-head at the apparently unguarded area outside, Joyce had hitched up her skirt so that Keith was confronted by an expanse of pale blue Directoire knickers. Janet had waited until Joyce’s head and shoulders were outside before pulling the string which led to the fork-lift’s lever, thereby lowering the roof onto her back. The woman was half crushed, the drumming of her heels against the ceiling already weaker.

  “Janet!” Keith called.

  “Hoy?” came back faintly.

  “This is the last of them. Lift the roof just enough to let her breathe.”

  “Not until she drops that cannon. It looks just like the Taurus three-five-seven you used to show off with, drilling holes through anvils and things, and I’m not coming out of cover while she’s still holding it . . . OK, she’s dropped it.”

  Keith heard the beat of the engine change. The roof creaked. “Enough?” Janet called.

  “No,” the woman gasped.

  “Ample,” Keith said. “Drop it again if she does anything but stay put.”

  He walked back along the passage looking into the rooms as he went. “We’ve got the lot,” he told York. “You can go and guard the guns. Tell everyone to stay alert until Munro turns up.”

  “Right.”

  Keith returned to Joyce. The two men were inert but still breathing. He placed his torch carefully on top of the wardrobe and recovered his pick-handle yet again. Then he wound his hand round the flex of the light-fitting and pulled it down. It would have inhibited his swing.

  Chapter Twelve

  When Keith emerged at last from the farmhouse, through the window, he was in a mood of elation although he knew that reaction would follow. The scene was brighter. Three police cars were splashing light around the forecourt. Officers, whom Keith recognised as belonging to Munro’s personal team, were trying to inject order into an intrinsically disordered throng.

  Munro himself was almost dancing, ogrish in the weird light. It was several seconds before he realised that he had lapsed into Gaelic. He began again. “You did it!” he cried. “By the good Lord, you did it! And nobody dead?”

  “I don’t think so,” Keith said. “Not a shot was fired by our side, so I’ll tell our men to say nothing about shotguns. Can we get them out of sight?”

  “Put them in the boot of my car. Well done! Oh, well done! And now I take over the prisoners?”

  “You do. But Paul York takes charge of the guns.”

  “He shares the blame and he shares the credit,” Munro said. “That seems fair.
Here he comes now.”

  “There are three more inside,” Keith said. “They’re in the far bedroom. Two men unconscious on the floor, and the woman stuck through the ceiling.” That seemed to Keith to be the shortest way to express the facts.

  “The woman is —?”

  “Go and see for yourself. Call to Janet James and she’ll lift the roof for you.”

  Superintendent Munro turned away without another word. That night, he could believe anything.

  Paul York arrived, breathing heavily, and took Keith’s shoulder in a crushing grip. The big man from Special Branch was far from his usual bland self. “What the hell have you been up to?” he demanded.

  “You know exactly what I’ve been up to,” Keith said. “I’ve been saving my daughter from where your balls-up landed her. And if you break my collar-bone, I’ll sue you.”

  York kept his grip but let some of the pressure off. “With the guns, man. The guns.”

  Keith divined that they were speaking of the trailer-load. “What about them?”

  “You know bloody well what about them. There’s a hole cut in the roof of the trailer. The guns and ammunition were all crated and neatly stacked, and now there’s a damn great hole in the middle. I’d guess that nearly a quarter of the load’s gone for a walk. What have you to say about that?”

  For the moment, Keith’s inclination to involve himself in the problems of others was at a low ebb. “Not a lot,” he said.

  “I bet you haven’t.” York’s grip tightened again. “Now I see why you kept me hanging around while I should have been standing over those guns. You’ve pulled one of your fast ones again.”

  “Let go of me,” Keith said. “I’ve no intention of taking you on at your own game, but I can deliver a kick in the crotch as well as the next man.” York took his hand away. “That’s better. The only fast one I’ve pulled is your chestnuts out of the fire where you dropped them. I’ve been too damn busy rescuing my wee girl to give a thought to those guns. The nearest I’ve ever been to them was when I walked past the stack of bales. The most likely explanation is that the gang partly unloaded them, intending to send them out in small batches. Take a look around, and if you can’t find guns you should at least find some empty crates.”

  York considered the idea and found it reasonable. “The buggers!” he said. “I’m going to borrow a couple of men off Munro to guard what’s left, just in case you’re still coming it, and then I’m going to beat the truth out of one of those scum.”

  “You were the man who thought that unarmed prisoners were sacred,” Keith pointed out.

  “I can change my mind.”

  “They’ll be on their way to hospital by now.”

  “Then I’ll interrogate them there until they’re old and grey,” York said. “Hey, Munro! I want to talk to you.” His bulk cruised away across the forecourt.

  *

  The scene was still changing. A sort of order was emerging. Munro had instructed that nobody was to leave the scene. But Wallace, after delivering Deborah and her mother to the hospital, had carried out Molly’s thoughtful instructions and visited Briesland House to collect food and almost the entire contents of Keith’s carefully hoarded cellar. A party was developing in the Dutch barn. The officers had no power to dampen it and, their seniors being engaged elsewhere, they began to join in the jubilation and to accept surreptitious tots of Keith’s vodka or tins of his beer.

  Janet and Wal were dispensing most of the hospitality from the open back of Wal’s estate car. Ronnie was in attendance, but more concerned with being served than serving. Keith joined them and grabbed a paper cup and a huge ham sandwich.

  “Where’s Peter?” he asked with his mouth full. “Didn’t he get the signal. It’s not like him to miss out on a celebration.”

  “I signalled him twice,” Janet said. “He didn’t acknowledge, so I decided that he’d either dozed off or gone straight home. He’s beginning to feel his age. Give me another gin and tonic,” she added to Wallace.

  Wallace obligingly poured her another and topped up the paper cups all round. “He’s not that old,” he said. “He’d want to be in on the fun. Perhaps one of us ought to go up and look for him.”

  Dawn was near, Keith was tired and the long uphill walk was unattractive. “I think that the cops would consider it their business,” he said. “I’ll mention it. Some time soon. Who’s cutting sandwiches?” He poured some more of his own best whisky.

  One of Sir Peter’s foremen arrived to collect another bottle of whisky and one of vodka. Keith asked him to spread thanks pending his own tour of gratitude.

  “Och,” the man said, “the boys were glad to help get the lassie back. But is it right that we’re on overtime?”

  “It is.”

  “Until we get home?”

  Keith would have liked to say that the blame lay with the police and not himself for keeping them out of their beds, but he could not bring himself to be so churlish. He agreed. The party in the barn became more boisterous.

  “This is costing a packet,” he said to Wallace. “How would it stand as a business expense?”

  “Bring me the receipts and we’ll see what V.A.T. we can recover, or what you can deduct against tax,” Wallace said unhappily. “I honestly don’t see it as a fair charge against the business. If you want a personal contribution . . .”

  “Good Lord, no,” Keith said, laughing. “You’ve done more than enough tonight. It was the before-tax thing that I was after. But I take it that if I pay the bills I keep any compensating rewards? I might be able to screw something out of Eddie Adoni’s insurers.” He was careful not to sound optimistic.

  “Well . . .” Wallace said slowly.

  “You can’t have it both ways,” Keith said. “If we share the expenses, we share the rewards. If not, not.”

  Wallace exchanged a glance with Janet. Keith had conjured profit out of nowhere in the past and he might do it again, but with Eddie Adoni jailed for attempting to steal his own load, his insurers were unlikely to have paid out anything. “You pay the bills,” he said suddenly, “and keep any spin-offs. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Keith said. He smiled quietly to himself in the darkness.

  Paul York had materialised again out of the darkness. His attitude was aloof but hunger and tension defeated him. He joined the group, accepted a beer and began to wolf down a sandwich.

  “Is it right what Keith was saying, that half the guns are missing?” Ronnie asked him.

  “I don’t think half,” York said. “I suppose there’s no harm talking about it. Assuming that the crates were similar in size, I’d judge that twenty-two have walked. Near enough a quarter of the load. And if I find that any of you lot were involved, I’ll break each of you in half or smaller.”

  “You could try,” Ronnie said. “But we was concerned more with getting my wee niece and the McLelland family out safely to be thinking about your damn guns at the time. Are Miss Butch’s old guns safe?”

  “I’m assuming so,” York said. “They were at the back of the trailer where there’s been no interference, and there are crates there of a different shape and size. I can’t get a look at the markings without starting to unload. Getting back to the modern weapons, I’ve searched as best I can in the dark,” he told Keith. “There’s no sign of guns or empty crates around the house or outbuildings.”

  “For what it’s worth, I’ll tell you what I think,” Janet said carefully. Her voice was beginning to slur with tiredness and alcohol. “If Newton Lauder’s seething with Russian spies, isn’t —”

  “As a matter of hard fact,” York broke in, “the Russians seem to be the one group not represented.”

  “You know what I mean,” Janet said testily. “Foreign spies, then. Isn’t it more likely that one of those groups has pulled something clever? We were as secretive as we could be, but anybody watching us yesterday must have seen that we were getting ready for something. If they kept watch from the high ground, they’d have seen us g
athering in Oldbury Farm Road; and that’d have told them where we were heading. Then, when we went in, our ears were full of the noise of the aircraft and the traffic and the fork-lift. We mightn’t have heard if somebody had brought a silenced cross-country load-carrier — an Argocat or suchlike — down to the other side of the straw bales.”

  “If it was something like that,” Wallace said, “you’ll find cut fences when you look in daylight.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” York said, “but you’ve put your finger on just what I’m most afraid of. If the guns reach some subversive group, word is likely to get back. If the group has British sympathy, I’ll survive. But if the guns turn up in the hands of the I.R.A. or some modern equivalent of the Baader-Meinhof gang and get used in an anti-British act of terrorism, I’m a dead duck.”

  “Don’t howl before you’re hurt,” Keith said. “Sir Peter Hay would have seen any such thing through his night-sight, and his brief was to smack a bullet against the wall of the house if he saw anybody unexpected approaching.”

  “That’s a relief,” York said. He had looked as if he would never smile again, but now his still blackened face produced a beam of genuine warmth. “I’m glad your daughter’s safe.”

  Keith was still trying to find a suitably manly and unemotional answer when they were interrupted. Sir Peter’s voice could be heard approaching. He seemed to be brushing off an importunate constable, but so far from his usual authoritarian manner he was bleating like a lost lamb. Keith was both relieved and concerned to see no sign of the rifle.

  “There you are,” he said, homing on the group around Wallace’s car. “I told that bobby to let Munro know that I’m among those present. I take it that we won the day?”

  “We did,” Keith said. “All the hostages are safe, the gang in custody and most of the guns recovered.”

  “Splendid! No thanks to me, though. The damnedest thing happened. But first things first. Is that a whisky that I see before me? Thank you, my dear.”

  Sir Peter drank, and seemed refreshed. Keith was making faces at him. Sir Peter nodded minutely to indicate that he was aware of the policemen listening from the shadows. He flicked his thumb in the direction of the hill, from which Keith gathered that the rifle was safely bestowed where no certificate-conscious officer was likely to find it.