“Sir?”
“I believe he’s going to transmit a signal and that signal has to go a long way. He won’t be able to do it from behind a rock, right down low in the shadow of the tor, Mr Welsh.” Shard tapped a ball-point against his teeth. “For my money, he’ll be aiming to climb Rough Tor.” He looked up at the Chief Inspector. “You’re aware of the facts, I suppose, or what we believe to be the facts?”
“Yes, sir. A radio-controlled blow-up at three points — Porton Down, West Sussex, Nancekuke.” The police officer hesitated. “Mind if I make a suggestion, sir?”
“Go ahead.”
“A police marksman, sir.”
“To pick him off at long range?”
“Yes.”
Shard smiled. “I’m a police marksman myself. It could come to that — but not yet, Mr Welsh!”
“I don’t understand why, sir.”
“Then I’ll tell you: I’m working on theory, nothing else at the moment. The attacks could come from some quite different quarter, something we haven’t even begun to suspect yet and so haven’t covered for. The one man we have who may be able to tell us is Lavington. Which is why he has to be kid-gloved until I can take him off his guard.”
“It’s brinkmanship, sir — isn’t it?”
Shard nodded. “You don’t have to tell me.” He glanced along the line of maps on the table, jabbed in three places with the cap of his ball-point. “Stithians, Drift, Bussow — Cornwall’s water, all at risk. Stithians — the biggest — south-east of Nancekuke and right in the windstream. Just a pinch of botulinum … I know! We’ll still play it my way. And in the meantime I want you to draw in the net the other side of Rough Tor, all right?”
*
Hedge stuck to Shard like an unwelcome leech as, with Katie Farrell and Detective Sergeant Kenwood, they left the harbourage of the command post, back temporarily in the cars again, heading for the foot-slog operation. They headed out of the town, took a right-hand turn signposted for Rough Tor, drove fast along a narrow road into the rain and the blustering wind. They passed troop concentrations, reserves concealed behind high hedges; in a farmyard was a squadron of heavy tanks, fine last-resort vehicles for the moor so long as they navigated clear of bogs. They came down a long, bleak stretch, down a steep hill and up again, through a gateway with a cattle-grid: the moor stretched, grey, lonely, rain-swept, with Rough Tor itself invisible behind a Film of falling water.
“Lower Moor,” Shard’s driver said, waving a hand into the rain. “Do we wait here, sir?”
“Yes,” Shard said. He got out, followed by the rest of the party, which included a PC provided by Welsh as guide. They got on the move at once, no time lost, sliding through mud on a rocky base, slithering downhill to a boulder-filled stream, accompanied by Hedge. Shard had done his best to persuade Hedge that he would be better off by remaining in the Camelford command post, though this suggestion had been clearly unpopular with the Chief Inspector and the gunner Major; they had not been impressed with Hedge’s chemist’s pack, for one thing. While Shard had been map-reading Hedge had sprayed his throat and had then fussed silently, his manner and expression both very eloquent fussers. In the command post he would be the most monumental liability and the Chief Inspector had clinched his vanishment from the scene by remarking, as it were casually, that he would be glad of the presence of the brass as a complete can-carrier afterwards — a proposition which, Shard was convinced, had already occurred to Hedge. Likewise he had refused to remain in the police cars on the fringe of the moor. It could have been a courageous desire to be in the very front line but Shard had his reservations on the point. Meanwhile, as they trudged along, Hedge kept yacking about his wife: naturally her proximity to one of the threatened areas was a worry to him, but Shard wished he would contain it.
“Why not join her, Hedge?”
“I don’t see that it would make any difference.”
“The reassurance of your presence?”
“Well … yes.” Hedge plodded on: they were all muddy now, feet gaining weight with every step. There was worsening visibility, almost solid water in the wind that sliced, slashed and sogged. “My duty’s here, though … the Head of Department would say … and anyway there’s no transport to be spared.”
“Back in Camelford, they —”
“No, no.” Hedge halted for a moment, looking round fearfully: Bodmin Moor was a far cry from Eaton Square and taxis. “I’d only get lost. It’s good of you to suggest it, Shard, but no.”
Shard gritted his teeth and silently blasphemed as he trudged on behind the police guide, watching out as closely as was possible in the overall filth. In spite of mackintoshes and Wellingtons provided by Chief Inspector Welsh, they were all wet through: Hedge, who had small feet for his size and had been provided with huge Wellingtons, had kept his town shoes on inside, and the expensive leather was squelching around in water that had come over the top as, at one moment, he had plunged them into the stream. It was getting bloody cold, too, Shard thought. More plod, more mud, and the police constable ahead held up a hand and turned.
“Far enough, sir.”
“In the screen, are we?”
“Yes, sir, part of it, right on the perimeter.”
“Well done! I can’t see a damn thing more than — what — twenty yards ahead.”
“I know the ground hereabouts, sir. Brought up on it, I was.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Shard said, and meant every word. “Look, where’s the nearest field command outpost?”
“That way, sir, about half a mile.” The constable pointed left. “The ground’s a little marshy both sides of where we are now, so you’d better watch it, sir.”
“I will, don’t worry. Can you find that outpost, d’you think, and get back here in one piece?”
“Oh, yes, sir, no difficulty.”
“Then do that, please. Tell whoever’s in charge where I am. I don’t want to use my radio in case it gets picked up, and I don’t want him to use his — except in an emergency when I’m to be contacted at once. And I want to know about any movements Lavington makes. All right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And tell the officer in charge I’m taking over the command and intend moving forward in twenty-yard hops as soon as you get back here. Give him a time — you’ll be the best judge of that.” Shard clapped the PC on the shoulder. “Off you go, lad — and stay out of the bog!”
When the policeman had faded into the wind-driven sheets of rain Shard said, “From here, it’s a case of slither.”
Hedge shivered. “Slither, Shard?”
“On our stomachs.”
“My God.” Under Hedge’s borrowed police mackintosh was a Savile Row suit, all four hundred guineas of it. “Is that really necessary, Shard?”
“Yes. Of course, you can still go back —”
“No, no, no.” Clearly, Hedge’s mind was filled with thoughts of bogs. “I’ll manage somehow.”
“Great!” Shard swung round on Katie Farrell, who was somehow contriving to look seductive still: the high collar of the dark blue mackintosh suited her, set off her face and figure wonderfully. If Shard was right, Lavington must have made a lovely meal of her: the contrast with Violet Lavington was almost cruel. Now, Shard decided, was the time for a full probe. Suddenly he asked, “What are you thinking, Katie?”
“Thinking? Nothing.”
“Your mind’s no blank, Katie. Or are you one hundred per cent bitch?”
She stared. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning this,” he said harshly. “Lavington’s out there, not far off. He hasn’t much longer. I’m going to get him, you know. I may have to kill him.”
“So?”
He looked at her intently. “You don’t care?”
“Should I?”
He fancied there was a wariness, and also a brittle quality. It was the brittleness that intrigued him and he pressed to see if it would shatter. “You’ve slept with him, Katie. You’ve been his
mistress —”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Am I being?” He laughed. “I don’t think so, Katie! You got into this business first of all in the line of … let’s call it, duty. For some dirty reason, your path crossed with his. Then other things started to cross — didn’t they? It became an affair. Lavington was an unsatisfied man and dedication to his work didn’t compensate for no sex. You came as a godsend.” Looking into her face still, he was aware of her reaction: she had paled, and half shut her eyes, looking dangerous, a snake about to strike, but a bloody attractive snake, he thought: fury heightened her sexiness, made Bodmin Moor feel almost warm and dry like bed. He could do with her himself, forgetting even Beth for the length of time it took. He went on, “Then things went wrong for you. You were arrested. I can well imagine how that put the wind up Lavington! When you were hooked off the blood run, he got really scared — didn’t he, Katie?”
“Get stuffed,” she said.
“You could have been the lead-in to what he was doing. He’d have known that sooner or later you’d be picked up. So he made arrangements for you to die. Appear to, that is. At the time it didn’t matter to Lavington that the manner of your supposed death linked with the death stocks ex Porton. He was near enough to the off, wasn’t he? And it all helped to confuse the issue. Clever! So what have you got to say, Katie?”
She almost spat at him. “Nothing!”
“Oh, well,” he said, smiling, “there’s time yet. Just so I know where I stand for now. Harry?”
Kenwood moved in closer. “Sir?”
“Whatever happens, don’t let her get away. Use your gun if you have to, but don’t kill her.”
“Understood, sir.” Kenwood checked the barrel of his revolver, checked the silencer that, like Shard himself, he had fitted after leaving the Camelford command van. They waited: a moment later Katie Farrell opened her mouth and gave a shout. Kenwood made a grab for her, but the back of Shard’s hand got there first, slamming cruelly across her mouth. Her lips split and blood ran, and she cried.
“Shut up!” Shard said in a snarl. “Do that again and I’ll put you on your back.” He was breathing hard. “A warning — wasn’t it? You love the bastard after all. Or maybe you just don’t want him to fail!”
He was about to say some more when he heard the suck of footsteps in the mud, and the constable’s helmet and mackintosh loomed through the rain, approaching at a makeshift run. “Mr Shard, sir, that shout —”
“You heard it, did you. Well?”
“Lavington will have heard it, sir.”
“How right you are,” Shard said, sounding bitter. “Now you’re back, we close that twenty yards inward. Any news?”
“No, sir, no further sighting.”
“I don’t like it,” Shard said. He was about to get on the move when his radio began beeping. He answered; the Chief Inspector came through from Camelford.
“There’s a report from London, from the Home Office.”
“Well?”
“The Prime Minister. He’s sticking, won’t meet the demands. He’s preparing to speak to the nation at 2100 hours, on all TV and radio channels, and to announce Martial Law and a batch of emergency regulations. Message ends, over.”
Shard said, “Thank you, control, out,” he caught Kenwood’s eye. “A little late in the day … we just have to make his talk redundant — that’s all! Hedge?”
“Yes?”
“Best foot forward, Hedge. We’re advancing.”
He turned to face ahead: from beside him, there was a hollow sucking, surging, muddy sound as Hedge got under way.
18
“HOLD ON!”
Quietly, hand raised, Shard once again halted the advance. The light was really going now, the filthy weather shortening the day drastically. Shard glanced at his watch for the hundredth time: 1935 hours, just under an hour and a half to go if the time-schedule was kept to. Carefully, watchfully, he stood up. Mud and slime drooled from his mackintosh: behind him now, Hedge was practically in tears. The Bodmin Moor mud had a high penetrative quality and the Savile Row suit was black inside as well as out, and Hedge was conscious of having a nasty smell of sheep too. Shard moved ahead of the others, who remained mud-prone, half sunk. He stumbled over a rock, then again over a big boulder, nearly went headlong. By now they were, after a number of short advances, on the lower slope of Rough Tor itself — the boulders alone told Shard that.
He stopped, listening out. No sounds, no signs of human life. Lavington, he was convinced, had shifted berth unseen, was maybe climbing up the tor already. If so, he was keeping well out of sight — or more likely had got himself beyond the visibility of the ground watchers. Shard cursed, wished with all his being that he had felt able to use the helicopters but knew that his decision not to had been the right one. Turning, he beckoned the others on. He heard them moving up behind him, breathing hard. The wind blew strong, right off the sea, filled with salt, lashing them with rain that found its way into every crevice of clothing: why did people ever come to the West Country for their holidays? They struggled on, beginning to climb, the local man, the policeman, just ahead of Shard, leading the way. They were no longer on their stomachs now: they heaved themselves from boulder to boulder, with Hedge puffing like a steam engine. Once again, Shard called a halt.
“Keep down and keep quiet. Watch the woman, don’t let her give tongue.”
“What are you going to do, Shard?” This was Hedge, sounding querulous. In the dimming light, Shard watched him take a pill from his mobile pharmacy, and swallow.
“I’m going in, Hedge. I’ll take the guide and Katie Farrell. No escort. Harry?”
“Yes, sir?”
“A careful watch. If I miss him — if you see him before me — you know what to do: get him talking, don’t move right in.”
*
It was a tricky business, the trickiness revolving around Katie Farrell. He kept her right ahead of his gun but he couldn’t be sure of its effects: she was well aware he wanted her to live, and equally well aware that a wounding shot — even should Lavington fail to catch the report of a silenced gun — would turn her into an impediment to climbers. Heavy breathing apart, they went up in silence, along the muddy track between the boulders that scattered the sides of the tor, squeezing through narrow gaps. For all Shard could tell, Lavington was holed up behind any one of the boulders, watching them: if so, the shot in the back could come any moment. That gave Shard a naked and unprotected feeling. Yet Katie was in a sense a protection: when Lavington saw her, he would have something to ponder. Curiosity alone might inhibit both the gunshot and the lethal crunch. They climbed on: Shard’s leg muscles began aching and his back felt stiff. The ground was slippery, keeping one’s balance was not easy: they lurched against the huge boulders. But at last the ground levelled out, though the going was rough and difficult still. Now they were in amongst the grotesque capping, the high edifices of igneous granite, freaks of nature, immense, impressive, age old — stone upon vast stone perched and balanced in seeming precariousness these last million years as gradually the softer layers had eroded away to leave the hard granite cores.
They had reached the top.
No Lavington in sight — no-one in sight at all. Shard said, “Move right, get in the lee of the rock piles.” He pushed her ahead of him. Up here, the wind was cruel, tearing at them, billowing the mackintoshes out like tents, almost sending them off their feet. They moved behind the piled heavies and found shelter: to either side the granite loomed, vast and solid. Keeping his gun in Katie’s back Shard pushed her along behind the guiding policeman. Cautiously, watchfully, they moved along the summit, listening out, alert for the smallest indication, the smallest movement. It was an eerie business as the wind and the rain swirled about the lonely, rocky top of the tor, gusting around the perched pinnacles as though it must cast them down to start an avalanche of huge stones. The going was terrible, lethal: one slip could mean a broken arm or leg. If Lavington was up
here, then he was very well concealed … Shard felt his heart sink as he reached another area of open ground, a rough circle where, set into the rock, lay the war-memorial plate to the army’s 43rd Wessex Division, a reminder of death and courage and sacrifice Shard stared down the other side of the tor, down what appeared to be a sheer drop with the distance lost in the foulness of the rain and the deepening dark. He found no sign of life — no human life: here and there on the side they had climbed, the sloping side, a grey-white splodge indicated a suffering sheep half tucked behind a boulder. Somewhere in the rain below the southern drop Chief Inspector Welsh’s men — those ordered by Shard earlier to close the net on the far side — could be presumed to lie hidden, or to be making their way up by means of sloping ground farther to the east. If Lavington was not up here, then somewhere along the muddy, treacherous line they had all lost him. If that was the case then things looked bad: Shard’s watch said 2005 hours. Fifty-five minutes left to the nine o’clock news broadcast, to the Prime Minister’s announcement to the nation, to catastrophe. Once this thing started, it could not be reversed. Shard’s head seemed to swell and burst: everyone in the bloody country, he thought, depended on him; and he was stuck, useless and impotent, on the summit of Rough Tor. Just one thing had jelled: when he caught up with Lavington, the time for the soft approach would long since have gone. Now there would be no time left for Lavington to talk: Shard’s guess had to be the right one, and Lavington had after all to die before he transmitted.
Shard looked into Katie Farrell’s eves: he told her his decision. “Have you anything to say?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Think, Katie. Think hard. He’s going to die.”
“Only if you find him.” She was shivering from the cold and wet.
“If you had anything to tell me now … he might live. Give me the facts, Katie.”
She stayed silent, looking back at him, her face pale and tight. He said, “He may not have to die, don’t you see? If this thing doesn’t go into action the way I’ve assumed it does, if Lavington doesn’t have to send out a signal, then there’s no point in killing him.”
Blood Run East Page 20
