Blood Run East

by Philip McCutchan

  “We were not.” The tone. Shard fancied, was a little defensive and the statement failed to ring true. “We didn’t know she was going to turn up there.”

  “This I rather doubt. Let me reconstruct for you: you’d got the information that Katie Farrell was hopping the twig again, and you decided to stop her, for reasons of your own that I think we know about: you and your organisation, whatever that may be, and I shall find out, believe me — you didn’t like the hand-over of Katie to the Middle Eastern interests. Maybe you didn’t mean to meet her at Gatwick. You knew she was heading for Orly airport, and you decided, just in case she had seen you or O’Riordan before and recognised you at Gatwick, to make Orly before her and tail her from the airport. After that, I suppose you might have flown out for Belfast … a happy little party going back to Ulster. Or more likely you had your own means of getting back in unobserved. How’s that, Mr Stephens?”

  “Ah, shut up,” Stephens said.

  Shard grinned. “I don’t believe it’s far out. It’ll do for me. From now on out till you either bloat in Worthing or return in health to London, you’ll not be seeing your friend O’Riordan again — and you can read what you like into that!”

  Stephens shrugged indifferently, but there was a wary look in his eyes: he had the message. Shard was going to say he’d coughed; which Shard was. After that, Stephens clammed up, though he became decidedly jittery once the cars had turned off the A-23 at Bolney to head for the Worthing road. Coming down through the Findon valley Shard watched out for any signs of disease: in fact, the streets were deserted except for patrolling mobiles and now and again an ambulance. Coming past the private road to the golf club later on, Shard noted no movement of cars in or out: the greens, the club house would be deserted now. In Union Place after the weirdest drive Shard had ever experienced in a built-up area in daylight, his cars pulled into the parking bay of the police station. Warned ahead by radio, the reception committee was waiting: a Chief Inspector, a sergeant and six PCs.

  The Chief Inspector saluted. “Where do you want them, Mr Shard?”

  “This one in a cell.” Shard indicated O’Riordan. “The other in the charge room. And in both instances, complete privacy. If you have any clients currently in the cells, I want them out.”

  *

  With Stephens under safe guard in the charge room, Shard followed O’Riordan down the steps to the basement: himself and alone, he would be interrogator and guard. All police officers were told to clear the cell flat: the Superintendent didn’t like it and said so, plain and pointed. “My patch,” he said. “I like to know what goes on.”

  “It would be better if you didn’t.”

  “That’s another thing: I run this station clean, Mr Shard. You know what I mean.”

  Shard said, “I know and I appreciate it. But we’re dealing with dirt, and there may not be much more time left. I’m sorry, I’m over-ruling you. As co-ordinator, I have the right … and I shall take the full responsibility. None of it will brush off on you, Superintendent.” He paused, meeting the police chief’s angry eye. “It’ll be done efficiently and O’Riordan knows the score — coming from Ulster, he can’t help but know that I’ll not be bluffing. And he’ll never talk under the soft press, that’s for sure.”

  Shard turned away, nodded at the gaoler, who pushed a key into the lock of a heavy door. The door swung open: Shard walked in, face blank but every part of him alert for trouble. The cell was long and narrow: O’Riordan stood at the far end, alongside a wooden shelf-like platform raised some eighteen inches from the floor to form the basis of a bed. Shard, whose hand had been round the butt of his holstered gun as he entered, now brought it into the open.

  “Belfast,” he said. “Your lot — whoever they may be — don’t hesitate to use guns. Nor do all the others. And nor do I — not now.”

  “What are you doing with Stephens?”

  “If that’s his real name — but never mind that for now. He’s in the charge room, as you know. Being charged.”

  “What with?” O’Riordan’s eyes narrowed. “Now look. You have five days to play with. Why charge him now? That’s not the usual form. Cat-and-mouse usually — isn’t it?”

  Shard smiled. “What, precisely, are you admitting?”

  “Nothing,” O’Riordan said at once. “Nothing you don’t know. We’re part of an organisation — all right, so this you knew. That gives you an excuse to hold us. But —”

  “But the charges? I’ll tell you something, O’Riordan.” Shard moved slowly in from his stance against the door, his gun aimed at O’Riordan’s stomach. “Stephens — he’s coughed. Not quite all — but enough.”

  O’Riordan waved a hand contemptuously. “Ah, don’t give me that! Jesus … I’m not grass green!”

  “Your belief is immaterial. All I’m asking is that you tell me the rest.”

  “The rest being?” There was a sneer on O’Riordan’s face and in his voice. “Suppose you start by telling me what it is that Stephens is supposed to have told you?”

  “Right, I’ll do that. As a result of information received, you knew Katie Farrell was flying out for Orly. You intended to pick her up in France once she was outside the airport. Then you would have smuggled her back into Northern Ireland for your boyos to deal with. She’d have been killed — for the second time.”

  O’Riordan looked up sharply. “What’s that?”

  “Don’t act green with me,” Shard said softly. “You knew all about that, didn’t you, O’Riordan? You probably knew whose the body really was too — right? You may even have fixed the whole thing —”

  “I did not —”

  “That, you’ll have to prove by your answers to my questions, O’Riordan. And just bear this in mind: what’s going on is the filthiest thing terrorism’s ever faced civilisation with. When you go down, you’ll wish we still had the death penalty. Prisons are strange places — maybe you know that. The cons are not going to like you. And I’ll be pressing, so far as I can — and so will high legal authority — for the longest possible sentence. Start thinking in terms of thirty, forty years, O’Riordan, and start thinking now.”

  “You don’t impress me,” O’Riordan said savagely.

  “Why not?”

  O’Riordan stared. “Ask a silly question,” he said. “And —”

  “All right, I’ll answer it myself: you know what’s going to happen. The chances are you know when, too. You knew very well what had hit Worthing. You think prison, all legal processes of trial and sentence, will be in the melting pot when it spreads further. You could well be right — if it happens! I’m here to see it doesn’t. I’m here to get every last bit of information out of you, and if you don’t start talking fast you’re going to face the kind of thing both sides have handed out in Northern Ireland.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “As if you didn’t know!”

  O’Riordan waved a hand in the air, looking cool enough. “Here in Worthing, in a British nick? Worthing’s a respectable place.”

  “Tit for tat,” Shard said grimly. “You’re not worried by a prison sentence, which you see as hypothetical. By the same token, my reputation doesn’t stand to lose much either! And it won’t be here: we’ll be going on a little trip to Chanctonbury.” There was sudden caution in O’Riordan’s face, caution tinged with alarm: Shard was convinced the man knew the facts concerning Katie Farrell’s supposed death, and the identity of the real victim of that water-tank half way up to Chanctonbury Ring. Nevertheless, O’Riordan seemed prepared to call what in his view could have been Shard’s bluff: maybe he just didn’t believe that any British copper would behave in the way Shard had suggested; and maybe, Shard thought, no British copper would to date. But no British copper had ever before been faced with what he was faced with, and one could never be certain of what one’s reactions were going to be in a new situation until the moment had come …

  “Well?” Shard asked.

  O’Riordan stuck two
fingers in the air. “Nothing doing,” he said.

  Shard moved back towards the door of the cell, which on his orders had been left unlocked, covering his retreat with his gun. He let himself out, locked the door on O’Riordan, and pressed a bell-push: the Superintendent came down followed by the gaoler and two constables.

  “Any luck, Mr Shard?”

  Shard shook his head. “None — yet. We move into Stage Two. I’ll take one of the cars from Gatwick, with its driver and crew. If you’d be good enough to give them the order, Superintendent, I’d like them to come and get O’Riordan now.”

  “Stage Two being?”

  Shard smiled, but his face was tight. “Better not ask,” he said. “None of your men will be involved and it’s not your worry.”

  *

  Back through the Worthing streets towards Washington: from the car Shard saw things to alarm him. The population was restive now, people were coming out of their homes to where a police mobile had been surrounded, brought to a halt on the Findon side of the Durrington roundabout, alongside the cemetery. Its crew were doing their best, but the crowd, mostly old people, were angry and dead scared: there had been no hard information and rumour was running riot. There could be trouble, especially when the army moved in — so far, the troops were outside the town, helping with the road blocks and standing by for use when required for other duties by the police authority. Shard’s mind worried around the possibilities: maybe Worthing should be given the truth straight, but if that were done, would it be possible to hold the news from the rest of the country? Almost certainly not, and never mind the muzzled Press, radio and television. Hard as it might be, Worthing must be left to stew until a final decision had been reached upon the advisability of Martial Law being declared. Farther on, just past the Cissbury public house, a corpse lay huddled, shapeless, a clothes’-bag of burned corruption in the gutter. A dog sniffed at it, whimpering and pawing: his dead master? Shard, about to tell the driver to blast it away with his horn, decided not to. Dogs had feelings too, were susceptible to grief and tragedy. Turning off the London road through Washington, the police car, with O’Riordan under the guns and handcuffed in the back, headed east for the track up to Chanctonbury Ring. Outside a house not far from the Washington-Steyning road, three young children played, oblivious to encroaching death, but Shard read the almost paralysed horror in the face of the mother, watching them from a doorway: she, too, had heard rumours, would be wondering how long the open country would be safe.

  Taking the car as far as possible, they walked the rest of the way up the steepening hillside, O’Riordan still between the escort. The sun was going down now, the shades of early evening falling over Chanctonbury and its death-tank and all that lay fallow below the ground. O’Riordan’s face was grey, his eyes haunted. Shard felt in his bones that the man would talk before long provided he could be made to believe that the time for bluff had long passed: that was the crux.

  The tank came into view. As they came up to it. Shard halted the procession. He told the police escort to withdraw a little way down the slope of the track. “You,” he said to O’Riordan, “back up to the tank. Over there. Keep clear of the drop.” He pointed, keeping his gun aimed at the man’s stomach. “Don’t try anything or I’ll shoot.”

  O’Riordan stared at him, then, shrugging, moved for the perimeter of the water-tank. Reaching it, he turned and faced Shard who had taken up a position half-a-dozen yards away from him.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Well, what, O’Riordan?”

  O’Riordan licked his lips. “What do you want now?”

  “I want talk, O’Riordan. I want answers. I’m going to have them, believe me! I’ll start by telling you something: there’s a demand that the British Government concede to the sort of aspirations held by the Ulster militants, or isn’t that news to you?”

  “It’s news.”

  “Oh, yes? You don’t know who’s uttered the demand?”

  “No.”

  “Then start thinking,” Shard said. “While you’re thinking, ponder on this too: I want to know the time and place, or places, where the threat against Britain is to materialise. And I want names — identities of those involved and where they can be picked up. I want to know precisely where Lavington fits, likewise a man called Azzam and his masters in the Middle East. I want the lot, O’Riordan. I’m going to have it.”

  O’Riordan swallowed. In the falling sunlight Shard could see the sweat on his face, greasily shining, and the staring look in the eyes. O’Riordan, accustomed in his own country to handing out brutality, could use his imagination to the full and, no doubt, could believe in the reality of the threat that lay in Shard’s manner. Shard said quietly. “I think you understand, don’t you, O’Riordan. You have two minutes to make a start.” He shot the cuff back from his left wrist and glanced at his watch. “I’m counting now. In one hundred and twenty seconds I’ll start shooting. Right ankle, left ankle, right shinbone, left … then the knee-caps. You’ll be a shattered man. What’s left goes in the water-tank. I think you know I mean it more than I’ve ever meant anything in all my life.”

  He waited, counting seconds.

  *

  They carried O’Riordan back down the rough track to the police car. They carried him screaming, blaspheming, sobbing: he had held out well and Shard’s threat had been for real. When he’d squeezed the trigger Shard’s eyes had seen through a red mist: for a copper he was behaving abominably, but as co-ordinator he realised the basic truth: one worthless man could not be allowed to stand against a nation’s life. Shard, trained as a police marksman, laid his bullets clean: first the right ankle splintered, and, yelling, O’Riordan hopped. But he wouldn’t talk: the left ankle went. Then both shins. O’Riordan fell to the ground and screamed.

  “Not the knees, you bastard, not the knees —”

  “Talk, then.” Shard moved forward, his own face pouring sweat now, his basic instincts telling him that bastard was the right term. He stood over O’Riordan, his gun aimed at one knee-cap. Two more bullets and the man would be a cripple for life, short of miraculous surgery — and the water-tank waited. O’Riordan went on screaming: Shard was aware of police consternation down the track. Again he said, “Talk and it’ll stop. But talk now.”

  “Christ …” Writhing, O’Riordan sobbed. But he talked. When talking was done, Shard put his gun away and called up the police constables. They looked shaken, hostile, were barely polite: they hadn’t been in Ulster. They lifted O’Riordan’s broken body carefully, the legs dangling in sheer agony. In the car the screaming continued: the man wouldn’t pass out. Shard said, “A doctor — the nearest is the MO at Wiston House. Drop me there too. Then stand by to take O’Riordan where the doctor wants, and remain with him till you’re relieved. I’ll inform Gatwick. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shard caught the man’s eye, saw the dislike. He said. “I don’t usually make excuses, and I’m not going to this time. I know I’ve been a bastard, full stop. But you’ll carry out my orders to the letter and you’ll not leave O’Riordan for a second. And now let’s get moving.”

  *

  Wiston House provided transport to London: at the Foreign Office Shard was passed a message from Detective Sergeant Kenwood, sent from Paris and timed at 1928 hours: Katie Farrell had de-planed at Orly and had taken a taxi to the Gare de Lyon: there she had been met by a man and a woman with an Arabic look about them. Kenwood was watching them, would tail, and would report again when possible. Shard, before contacting Hedge, put a call through to Paris and spoke to a senior police officer known to him personally. He passed brief details then said, “From information received, the Farrell woman is understood to be making for Marseilles and thence to Tunis. We’d like her stopped at Marseilles and held pending a further decision. Can you cope?”

  “Oui, M’sieur Shard —”

  “Thanks a lot. Watch out for my Detective Sergeant — I don’t want him caught in the cross-fire
!” Shard rang off, sat back for a moment thinking of O’Riordan’s screams, then called Hedge’s private number and said he would be round right away.

  15

  “WHAT ABOUT THAT man Lavington?” was the first thing Hedge asked, slopping brandy into a tumbler: he’d just finished his self-got meal, a late supper rather than dinner, and the remains seemed scarcely worthy of the brandy, which Shard knew was a good one.

  “Never mind Lavington for now, he’ll keep —”

  “But I do mind. He’s vitally important — you said so yourself. Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know, Hedge. Look, I —”

  “You don’t know?” Hedge stared, mouth open, eyes round and accusing. “What a thing to admit!”

  Shard compressed his lips, then said patiently, “He’s somewhere in Devon or Cornwall, with a strong bias towards Cornwall. He’s being watched out for and there’s nothing more I could do by being there — though that’s not to say I shan’t be going west again shortly.”

  “Why?”

  “If you’d just allow me to explain what I came to explain, the rest might well be seen to follow — even by you.”

  “There’s no need to be impertinent. Shard. Oh — go on, then, explain.” Hedge paused, eyebrows lifted. “Brandy?”

  “Thanks. I was wondering when you were going to ask.”

  Hedge frowned. “It’s not cheap these days. I seldom drink it myself since the last tightening of the screw.” With care, he poured a small measure and handed the glass to Shard. “Now,” he said, all attention.

  “I’ve got names, dates, places. I think I’ve got nearly the lot.”

  “Nearly?” Hedge sat down with a thump. “Who from?”

  Shard told him. “I’m waiting for a check on the real identity but I doubt if that’s important now. The rest is — or had better be, since I stretched the rules in obtaining it —”

  “I don’t want to know about that.”

  “Not unless questions are asked? All right, Hedge, I do understand. Now just listen, will you?” Shard sat down facing Hedge, stared into the puffy face and small eyes. “As we thought, the Middle East’s the villain — not the Ulster militants, though O’Riordan and his lot are involved. They’re a break-away group and they’ve been too clever, Hedge, took on too much by themselves. I regret what I did to O’Riordan … but he’s a killer and he’s broken the law so he had to suffer even though he hasn’t in fact done anything directly against the State —”