Blackmail North

by Philip McCutchan

  “Contact, Mr Shard.”

  Shard sat up straight. “Where and how?”

  “Army helicopter reports four persons seen in searchlight, proceeding along Buttertubs Pass south of Swaledale.”

  Shard looked at the road map, open on his knee. He whistled. “Right down there! Looks as if they must have done some hitching after all.”

  “Yes, sir. Where are you now?”

  Shard said, “Southbound along the A685, coming into Kirkby Stephen. I’ll deviate onto the road through Swaledale at Nateby, and turn off for the Buttertubs Pass just beyond Thwaite. Keep me informed and tell the helicopter I’m moving in.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Shard turned in his seat and spoke over his shoulder. “All right, Harry? I reckon this is going to be it.”

  “Holding tight, sir.” Kenwood added a query. “Guns?”

  “If we have to,” Shard answered, “and I don’t think there’s much doubt we will.” He spoke to the driver, “Take it as fast as you can, but try not to come off. What’s it like as a road?”

  “Grim, sir. Long drops, very narrow — single track with passing places. Spectacular by day, lethal by night!”

  “Thanks,” Shard said drily.

  *

  They must know by now, Shard thought, that they’d had it; once the searchlight had picked them up it could be only a matter of time. The drive was a nightmare one; but the police driver took it beautifully and Shard didn’t find his foot doing too much braking. They came through the village of Thwaite and turned up the road that climbed out of Swaledale into the Buttertubs Pass that ran through to Hawes in Wensleydale: a rain-swept road tonight, bleak, hostile, with a long drop on the left to the Cliff Beck and beyond it the fellsides rising steep and formidable to the eminence of Lovely Seat. There was wind too, now, a high and screaming wind that took the car in a giant’s grip, calling for strong hands to hold it steady on its course. Above them were the navigation lights of the reporting helicopter, and its searchlight beam cutting down from the night sky. Ahead along the steep road were stationary lights, the lights of cars, probably patrols from Richmond or Leyburn. The beam of the searchlight seemed unsteady, moving this way and that; Shard, working it out for himself, was not surprised when the report came in:

  “Lost contact.”

  “Keep trying, please, report immediately anything’s seen. Where did you lose them?”

  “North side of the road, above the parked police cars,” the disembodied voice said from out of the sky. “Up on the fells.”

  “Okay.” They drove on, slowing as they came to the narrowed-down area of search, watching the beam of light from above, still moving this way and that, seeking and not finding. The fugitives had gone to ground on the fellside. “We’ll flush them out, Harry,” Shard said.

  “Why not wait, sir? Wait for them to give themselves up?”

  “We haven’t the bloody time,” Shard said tersely. He motioned the driver to stop as they came up to the parked vehicles. “Here we go,” he said, and brought out his revolver. As he opened the door a swirl of wind took it, pulling it from his grip to swing back violently against its stop. The coldly whistling wind, storming across the peaks, flung almost solid water into their faces and they were drenched within seconds: there was no rain anywhere like that of the fells. The drought had broken with a vengeance, everything streamed water that the hard-dried earth could not assimilate. If the road had not been steep it would have been a river; as it was, water cascaded past, doing its best to rival the great falls at High Force and Hardrow. Shard looked around: the scene, what was visible of it in the lights from the car and the helicopter, was ruthlessly bleak and bare.

  Shard walked over to the nearer police car: it contained a Chief Inspector. Shard said, “I’m going up with my detective sergeant. I’d like you to cover down here if you will.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Shard nodded. “Right, Harry, keep with me for now. When they’re sighted, we’ll diverge.” He ran to the roadside and started a scramble up the steep slope. It was a dreadful climb: he felt sweat pour down his body in spite of the wind’s penetration. Grimly he went on, teeth set: the fugitives must have climbed somehow, and if they could, then so could he. Or maybe they’d found an easier ascent. Panting as though he’d run ten miles flat out, he became aware of Kenwood’s shout from behind him.

  “They’ve got ’em again, sir!” Kenwood, reaching Shard, clutched his arm and yelled in his ear. Looking towards the foot of the searchlight beam, Shard saw the drenched figures away to his left, huddled in the poor shelter given by a rock cluster set in a horseshoe shape and perched on the fellside like the sangars used by the old army in India when passing under picquets through the Khyber Pass. Excitement rose in Shard like a sweeping flood-tide: if it was the last thing he did, he was going to get Fiona Mackintosh out of Arab hands: not only because it was fairly obvious that Uthman like Jamie meant to use her to put pressure upon her husband, which would be eased by her release, but also because, having twice before been in helpless contact with her, he had a balance to redress. Motioning Kenwood to move left and position himself below the fugitives in their rock shelter, he lifted his gun and called along the wind.

  “Up there! All you can do is give yourselves up. You can’t get away now. All I need do is bring in the helicopter and have you gunned down from above.”

  He waited; there seemed to be no reaction whatsoever. Maybe they were too numbed in the cold and wet and the tearing wind even to think straight. If so, he could understand. He began a cautious climb again, was aware of Harry Kenwood moving upon the huddled group after reaching a point immediately below them. Suddenly Shard slipped, was unable to regain a grip on the steep rise of the ground: he started slithering willy-nilly, back towards the road below. He fetched up against an outcropping of rock and lay for a moment winded and gasping, then felt himself for broken bones. He seemed intact; when he got to his feet he saw the searchlight beam moving up the slope, higher up the fell, and in its circle the miserable figures still trying to beat it. No sign of Kenwood: Shard struggled back up the fellside, trying to close in behind, and as he heaved his protesting body up ward he heard the first of the revolver shots: two of the Arabs had opened fire, presumably on Kenwood; return fire came rapidly, a series of single shots, and on the last one the leading Arab, still held in the searchlight, spun and seemed to leap into the air, and then fell back and plunged down the slope with blood pouring from his head. A moment later Shard saw one of the two remaining Arabs lift a chunk of rock and fling it sideways. There was a cry from the darkness. After this, things developed fast: police officers had come from the cars down on the road and were now running for the foot of the slope. Seeing them, the two Arabs, dragging Fiona between them, turned to their left and began a staggering, hopeless run from capture. Shard just caught a shout from the Chief Inspector, saw him waving a hand frantically in the direction being taken by the Arabs, then saw him lift an automatic rifle and take aim. In the loom of light from the helicopter a sheep started up, a flurry of dirty white wool scampering away from intrusion and bleating out a noisy warning to any of its brethren who might be in the vicinity of strange happenings. Water poured down the slope, washing over projecting rocks. The loneliness could not have been more intense, more terrifying, and it was worsened, heightened, by the appalling scream of the wind. Shard saw the impact of the Chief Inspector’s bullets: both the Arabs keeled over, dragging the girl with them. As they fell, they let go. She was free … Shard saw the Chief Inspector climbing up towards her. He made towards her himself.

  They were both too late.

  The girl, staggering, obviously much distressed and distraught, dropped to the ground and began a disastrous roll down the fellside towards the road. Horrified, helpless, Shard watched, was watching when very suddenly she vanished from sight. He heard an appalling cry of terror that was torn away by the wind. He let himself slide down for the road and as soon as he reached the
hard surface he ran along until he was below the spot where he had last seen Fiona, a little way above the road. Careless of the Chief Inspector’s shouts of warning he climbed again, found himself on a rough rock surface. Tripping over a rock protrusion, he went flat, picked himself up and moved on again, only to be pulled up physically by the strong arm of the Chief Inspector who had run in behind him.

  “Take it easy, sir. There’s a buttertub dead ahead. The girl went down. I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t in time.”

  Feeling drained, Shard nodded. He went forward with the Chief Inspector; the restraining hand stopped him again, just in time. He was on the brink of nothing, a yawning pit in the ground — one of the buttertubs that gave the high pass its name, deep pits in the earth formed by erosion over millions of years. Shard moved backwards a little way, got down on his stomach and slid forward again. Up above, the helicopter pilot, tending his machine, moved the searchlight right over the hole in the ground, an immensity of depth, of eroded rock. The bodies were at the bottom, clearly to be seen: the girl’s head was a broken egg, drooling blood. An Arab had crashed down onto an upthrust sliver of rock that protruded right through his chest. He hung, a butterfly on a pin. Shard turned as Kenwood came up, his face pale as he stared down.

  “Careful, Harry, it’s a long drop. You all right?”

  “I’ll live, sir.”

  “You deserve to. I don’t know about me. A fat bloody lot of good I’ve been to Mackintosh’s wife!” Shard walked away from the hole, bent down by the second Arab, feeling for the heart: his hand came away sticky. “Stone cold dead. No help anywhere, is there!”

  “Yorkshire,” Kenwood said tonelessly, “can be a cruel place at times. Down south they’d never believe it. All industry, they think, and slums clustered under the shadows of the mills … furnaces and factories, and spinners and weavers and what-have-you by the million living cheek by jowl beneath the falling soot …” His voice tailed away into the wind, and it was not until he’d stopped that Shard realised he’d been yacking only because he couldn’t remain silent, had to keep babbling.

  Thirteen

  THEY WENT BACK to the Leeds mobile, bitter thoughts crowding Shard’s brain as he trudged through the filthy night. Failure had to be admitted, except insofar as the death of the girl could be considered to have put a spanner in the works of Uthman — who, Shard guessed, would not be one of the Arabs here present and dead in the Buttertubs Pass: this had been work for underlings. Uthman would certainly not at this stage risk himself in the limelight and on the roads or fellsides. Bent against wind and rain, cold and shivering and sick with the sense of dismal flop, they reached the car. The driver was taking a call as they got there, and as Shard got in streaming water he reported, “For you, sir. Police at Barnard Castle, relayed from Leeds. A young woman’s made a statement and asked Barnard Castle to contact you. Name of Lindeman, Aurora Lindeman.”

  “Go on. This interests me!”

  The policeman said, “It seems she saw a suspicious character earlier this evening … a man, looking like the Middle East, last seen in London by a friend of hers. She thought you’d want to know.”

  Shard nodded, and caught Kenwood’s eye in the car’s interior light. “Where’s this girl now? Barnard Castle?”

  “No, sir, staying in a hotel near by. The Morritt Arms at Greta Bridge.” The driver opened his road map and held it for Shard to see. “Just under forty miles, sir, north-east.”

  “We get there — fast,” Shard said. Once again he caught the eye of his DS. When you had just lost the only real lead you had, anything became worth following up.

  *

  In the Foreign Office the Head of Department had wasted no time at all: the brass was immensely co-operative. The Establishment had been shaken rigid by the disappearance of Hedge: he was, after all, a top man and he had a lot of knowledge that lesser men had not. And the time-scale was desperately tight now, with the RAF bomber crews waiting in their aircraft for take-off orders, their flight courses laid for Murzuq in Libya. No-one was under any illusions as to the future if they should be ordered in to blast Arab territory: even the NATO alliance would be unlikely to survive the storm. Shard’s requests were met in full, though actual hope was small: military and air force helicopters were ordered into the North Yorkshire area to begin constant patrols from dawn. The whole of the dales would be covered, yard by yard, from low-flying machines whose crews were to report the smallest movement in the country districts; every farmer, every shepherd would that day have his working journeys plotted. To ease the spotting problem, the National Park area and its contiguous lands would be kept free of further tourist entry; every road would have a check-point manned by soldiers under orders to permit only essential journeys to proceed. Hedge’s bogey, the press, was informed officially of large-scale manoeuvres. This they would naturally not believe, and unofficially they were told that any further probing would be regarded as an unpatriotic act. To attempt a complete clamp would be unrealistic now and leaks had to be accepted as the troops moved into position. Infantry supported by armoured units had already been hurried into the operational area from all over: Salisbury Plain, Aldershot, Colchester were backing up Catterick; only Northern Ireland was being left at full undepleted strength along with Scottish Command who might have to cope with trouble along the oil coast. And every policeman, every soldier throughout Britain was watching out for Mackenzie Edinburgh Castle Mackintosh and for Uthman.

  *

  Rain was still teeming down when the police car pulled off the by-pass on the A66 Scotch Corner to Penrith road and entered Greta Bridge: tonight, Brignall Banks would be far from fair, though Greta Woods would soon be green again. The car stopped outside the Morritt Arms and Shard and Kenwood made a dash for the inadequate shelter of a stone porch. Shard pushed open the door and walked into a highly-polished hall: it was late, but there was a young man in reception. Miss Lindeman would be told she was wanted. The young man indicated the lounge. “Bar’s shut,” he said. There was an Australian accent and a wealth of hair. “Wet, aren’t you? Talk about drowned rats, my God. The lady’s residential status permits me to make an offer. Open up the bar if you like. Eh?”

  “Thanks,” Shard said gratefully. As the Australian went up to get Aurora, Shard led the way into the elegant lounge, comfortably furnished with deep leather chairs and expensive rugs and more high polish. They went on through to the bar: more comfort was at hand. Shard sat near the remains of a wood fire, the glowing embers and the fragrance bringing some solace to his drenched state. Looking through the servery itself to another part of the bar, he caught the outline of an immense bear and got to his feet with a startled exclamation.

  Kenwood grinned. “Relax, sir. It’s stuffed.” Shard dropped back into the chair, cursing his nerves: the time factor was playing him up more than it should. The Australian came back, waving a hand.

  “She’ll be right down. What’ll you drink?”

  “Whiskies. Large ones. Have one yourself, pour whatever Miss Lindeman wants. Then leave us, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure.” The whiskies and orange juice poured, he left the bar. As he went, the girl came in.

  “Simon —”

  “In answer to your call.” Shard caught Harry Kenwood’s eye; on the way he’d told Harry about the girl and now he read envy.

  “What is this about, Aurora?”

  “I saw a man,” she said, sounding a little lame now: maybe she hadn’t expected such a prompt dash through wind and rain, and was hoping her information would be found worth while.

  “An Arab?”

  She nodded. “Yes —”

  “You recognised him — or that’s what I assume. How come? You haven’t dropped into this before, or so you told me in Robin Hood’s Bay.”

  “That’s true,” she said, taking her orange juice from Kenwood and sitting down by the fire. “I’m here with a friend — Fizz Fairfax, the one my sister and I both knew, the one who keeps the boutique in Bunnigan’s
block. She came up yesterday and I thought I’d take some leave.”

  “And?”

  She told him, quickly and with a minimum of verbiage: early that evening, just after six o’ clock, she and her friend had been in Barnard Castle. They had gone into a pub for a drink, a positively working-class pub it had turned out to be, containing a loud-mouthed, beefy man who was hectoring a bunch of brow-beaten customers and asserting that when Edward Heath had gone into the Common Market he, Ted, personally and with malice aforethought, had nicked into his own pocket, as a true conservative, one hundred and forty pence of every pound in British pockets. The beefy man had then gone on to denounce the Middle East for its grip on wealth world-wide via the oil that had been put into the earth for all men to share as brothers. From behind a tall potted palm, appropriately, a brown-skinned man had risen with a wrathful face and, in his right hand, a knife-blade just visible.

  “He went up to the beefy bloke,” Aurora said, “and called him something basic and picturesque. In English. The beefy bloke didn’t like it, but then he saw the knife. He almost fell through the floor.”

  “And the Arab?”

  “Out into the street with his point made. But Fizz had seen him before and recognised him.” She paused, lifted an eyebrow at Shard. “Want her to tell you herself? She’s in the hotel, but I thought —”

  “Leave her to her sleep. I’ll take your word. Go on — time’s precious.”

  She nodded. “Right. Well, Fizz had seen him hanging about outside the boutique — outside Bunnigan’s, you see? And then she’d seen him again after the bomb went off, keeping in the background of the crowd but taking an interest. So she thought, anyway.”

  “No mistake?”