Shard stared at him in silence for a moment, frowning. Then he said, “With respect, Hedge, I think you should tell me just what’s in your mind to do.”
“Yes, yes.” Hedge closed his eyes for a moment. “I think — I repeat — we should play this down. She is best forgotten after the inquest — which, I gather, is certain to establish natural causes. There should be no objection to…proper burial, Shard, for one thing.”
Shard sucked in his cheeks. “And the drugs?”
“Purely a police affair. Not ours, Shard.”
“Not officially, no.”
“Nor unofficially, Shard. I know your feelings and the reason for them — but I say again, nor unofficially.”
Their eyes met in a hard, hard stare. Hedge could be obstinate, though he would have called it firm. Shard at times could have a Nelson’s eye, though he would have called it a dutiful use of initiative. But Hedge, after all, was his boss. He held the stare, but shrugged. “An order?”
“An order, Shard. I’m sorry for the shift of plan, but I’m withdrawing you to London.”
Shard fondled his cognac glass. “And once the inquest is over the girl will be buried?”
“The girl will be buried as soon as possible by the authorities once it is established there are no relatives. That will be the normal course, with which I shall not interfere by raising any red herrings.”
Shard looked nasty. “And the Press?”
“A risk I now see I must take — and I also see it’ll be a lesser risk than if I was ever known to have reacted.”
Shard stood up with a swift movement. There was anger in the set of his lips, hard anger. “I always obey orders,” he said in a too-even voice. “I shall do so now. How do we go back — together?”
“Separately. You first, on the next flight. I have my own aircraft.”
“Then good-day to you.”
Shard swung away, leaving Hedge sitting and staring. Walking along rapidly, he felt mad. Mad and bitter. Hedge was a bloody fool, wasn’t fit to hold his job. He wasn’t the top man and never, please God, would be. He should never have been allowed to get where he had. Shillyshally didn’t make command material, nor did covering up, especially when there wasn’t, in fact, anything to cover up — or was there, after all? Shard gave a sudden hard laugh, a shouting of his disdain and dislike.
Was Hedge lying, had he been having an affair? Unlikely: there were too many guardians of moral standards lurking around, watching, unseen, checking that top people didn’t lay themselves open to compromise or blackmail — as indeed Hesseltine must know. Yes, unlikely: but not totally impossible — total impossibility was seldom the fact in life. Shard laughed once again: did Hedge propose to bury his indiscretions?
Maybe time would unearth — unbury — that; and there were still the drugs, the heroin, the dirt of the day. Where there was heroin, there was death, and that included Bodmin Moor, even if the death was natural. The girl would be buried then, but Simon Shard’s task would not. Walking blindly on, he stepped into the roadway to be assailed by a strident and prolonged horn blast: stepping back fast, he saw that he had almost been run down by a nun, in full habit on a motorcycle. He stared after billowing black skirts, bat-like atop two thin wheels.
He laughed again, a kinder laugh this time: perhaps there were funnier sights than Hedge.
*
“I told you you didn’t need to worry, darling. How’ve you been?”
Long fair hair, the ends curling up below a firm chin and a wide mouth, a mouth that smiled. “Better, Simon.”
“Let’s hope it lasts. How about Mrs. Andrews?”
“Gone off. She couldn’t stay, Simon, genuinely. To do with her sister.”
“And your mother?”
“I didn’t bother her.”
Shard nodded. “Early bed tonight…understand, do you?” His tone explained what he didn’t put into words.
She frowned, not seriously. “Snores and all?”
“Snores and all, darling. Damn the snores, I’ve had a lousy day, full of — frustrations.”
“In France?”
“Don’t joke,” he said, wagging a finger in her face. His own face looked longer than ever, long and grim and bitter still, thinking thoughts about Hedge. “I’ve had a bellyful of bastards, or anyway, one bastard. No names, no pack drill, but you can always make a guess.”
She nodded, reached out a hand to him as they sat on the sofa. “You hate that man. I’m sorry, Simon.”
“It’s not your fault…well, not entirely.” He grinned. “You did press rather.”
“It was a step up.”
“Ha — that depends how you look at it!” Suddenly, he took Beth in his arms and kissed her, a hungry kiss with all kinds of feelings and emotions bedded in it. “I’ve a suspicion,” he said in her ear, “that I’m going to stick my neck out, pretty hard. God knows what the result’ll be, I don’t. Do you mind?”
He felt the slight stiffening of her body, the tension and the worry. For a while she didn’t answer and he didn’t push. Then she said, “Oh, Simon, I married you, didn’t I? I’ve been a copper’s wife quite a time now, and I understand however much I hate — some things. I hate your obstinacy — ”
“Dedication,” he said with a grin. “Dedication to duty!”
“I want to say some rude words to that.”
“Say them, then.”
“You’re a copper,” she said. “You’d run me in for obscenity.”
He chuckled. “I,” he told her, “am about to be obscene myself. I can’t wait till bedtime!”
“No,” she said. “Not now.” She put her head in her hands, and he noticed the change of colour, of mood too, so sudden, in her face.
“What is it, darling?”
“Dizzy, Simon. So dizzy…”
“Darling.” He took her in his arms, gently. “Just relax. Lie down and keep quiet. I’ll draw the curtains.”
*
Blank at the Regent Palace: the record showed the girl had stayed there up to a week ago. Nothing further known, no address given. Barclays in High Street Kensington also had records but no visual memories of whoever had actually paid in the cash to Mile. Casabon’s account. But four days later, as a result of formal police enquiries via Interpol — much along the lines, though more protracted, of the enquiries he had himself been inhibited from making — news reached Simon Shard in his office in the squalor of Seddon’s Way: news telephoned through from Cornwall by the local police, keeping in touch as promised. “Yvette Casabon — ”
“Yes?”
“Photographs have been circulated, Mr. Shard, and a positive result’s come in just now.” There was a pause; Shard shook with impatience, felt again the needle of danger, but was unprepared for what he heard next: “Yvette Casabon’s alive and well.”
“What? Say again.”
“Yvette Casabon’s alive and well, Mr. Shard. The mother’s been contacted — her daughter wrote to her airmail from Australia three days ago, which puts the letter after the time of death on Bodmin Moor. Yvette Casabon, now Mrs. Yvette Gilder, is living in New South Wales with her husband…on a sheep station in the outback.”
“Coincidence of name?”
“You mean two Yvette Casabons, Mr. Shard?”
“Could be, couldn’t there? This mother: what was her reaction to the photographs?”
“No resemblance to her daughter. And we gather there are no other Casabons in Cherbourg or district. It seems the advice from Interpol is that the dead woman, Mr. Shard, can be definitely regarded as not Yvette Casabon.”
“I’ll be buggered,” Shard said wonderingly. One of his wonders was what the devil he was going to say to Hedge now. Hedge would crawl into a corner and die the death. “What about the body?”
“On ice,” the police officer said laconically. “The coroner hasn’t notified a time for the inquest yet. In the light of the new development, it looks as though she may have to stay on ice for quite a while. We wouldn’t w
ant to have to exhume.”
“We would not,” Shard agreed. Hedge would hate an exhumation order — the Press always loved an exhumation, and if it could be linked scandalously with Whitehall…poor Hedge. Never mind the confusion of identity — that would only whet appetites. And Shard had a feeling, a feeling that was more than strong, that the yes or no to any later interference with the body would, even in such circumstances, lie with the Home Office rather than the Foreign Office which, for present purposes, meant Hessel-tine and not Hedge. Shard went on, “I’m going to ask you to hold everything till I come back to you. Will you do that?”
“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Shard.”
“Please do. There’s a chance this may have other implications — I can’t be more precise at this moment. Thanks for calling.
Shard slammed down the handset and sat staring into space. Vaguely he heard footsteps on the stairs outside, more of Elsie’s hot-breathing clients — must be after 2 p.m. His watch confirmed: 2.30. Hedge would not be back from lunch yet. Shard went on staring, staring at walls draped with sheets of squared paper on which were stuck stamps: at a filing cabinet full of loose-leaf albums of stamps: at a glass-covered counter in which there were more stamps. British, Colonials, and Foreign. Some good, most very cheap, one or two gems for authenticity. When Hedge provided cover, he didn’t spare the taxpayers’ money, credit where credit was due.
Hedge was going to do his nut.
*
“If necessary,” Hedge said, white-faced, “I can over-ride Hesseltine. And I don’t mean just in regard to an exhumation, either!”
“If necessary for reasons of national security, Hedge.”
“Yes, quite. Given that, we can take over entirely. Hesseltine, the Yard, the Home Office itself…they can be faded right out of the picture, Shard.”
“I repeat — ”
“Yes, yes,” Hedge butted in irritably, dodging crowds — they had met, as if by chance, at the Piccadilly end of Lower Regent Street and were now walking west towards the Ritz Hotel, with Hedge, bowler-hatted, waving an umbrella dangerously to emphasise points. “I’m willing to put it to higher authority that national considerations could be involved — which for all we know they may be — ”
“You’ll have to convince, won’t you? Give a reason?”
“You mean you don’t agree?”
“No,” Shard said baldly.
“May I ask why?” Hedge sounded icy. “One death from exposure, one substitution — as it were — of identity — ”
“Plus heroin.”
“Even plus heroin, it doesn’t constitute a national emergency, Hedge.”
Hedge snapped, “I never used the word emergency! In any case, when you’ve been longer with us, Shard, you’ll realise we prevent emergencies by anticipating them before they’re born.”
“Point taken. As the midwife, perhaps you’ll tell me the steps to the actual birth of this one?”
Hedge sounded angry. “I’ve told you before, don’t make jokes. It’s within my jurisdiction to assess a situation and act accordingly — or at any rate advise accordingly if the matter should require higher sanction — ”
“Which this does.”
“Yes. You may leave the details to me, Shard.”
“Mean you’ve decided?”
Hedge nodded, swung his umbrella with a vigorous and decisive movement.
“Remember the risk, the increased risk that comes from bumping a thing up. Remember the Press.”
“That’s just what I am remembering,” Hedge said smugly, and smiled. “With our Department in full charge, to the exclusion of all others, the Press is muzzled from here to eternity…or as far into eternity as makes little difference! Right, Shard?”
“I suppose so,” Shard agreed with reluctance, wondering, since this was indeed the case, why Hedge hadn’t taken this line earlier — and deciding that the identity situation had either gone to his head or had given him the excuse he’d been wanting all along. “No doubt you’ll let me know if you manage to convince higher authority, Hedge?”
“Of course. And I guarantee I’ll do that. It’s the way I want it. It should be the way you want it, too, Shard.”
“Why?”
“Drugs, Shard.”
Shard paused before reacting. “You mean I’ll have a free hand on that angle…even under the Department, Hedge?”
“Yes, I mean that exactly.”
It was a sop, of course: the price Hedge was prepared to pay. Shard wasn’t of vital importance to the F.O., but currently his co-operation was vital to Hedge. Sop or not, Shard felt a surge of blood: the heroin had nagged at him continually. He’d wanted to get his teeth into that: if Hedge got his way, he would. There was, however, something else to nag: his anxieties about Beth…
Hedge said amendingly, “Of course, even free hands have limits, Shard.”
“H’m? What was that?”
Hedge spoke loudly. “I said, even free hands have limits. I’ll do the best I can. Broad direction will be the boundary — nothing more than that.”
Shard grunted. To him, limiting a free hand made no sense, but he wasn’t a freelance, he had to take orders. He asked, “How do you see the work-out, Hedge? What are your ideas of broad direction?”
Hedge said, “For a start, you to Australia.”
“I thought as much,” Shard said dourly. “It’s a long way for a long shot, isn’t it? I mean, there could be two Yvette Casabons, whatever Interpol likes to think. As a name, it’s not all that uncommon.”
They were past the Ritz now and turning down into the park towards the palace. The trees looked gloomy and no birds sang. On a bench, a tramp huddled into his rags. Farther on, a couple sat, not quite copulating. Pettishly Hedge said, “Reluctance, reluctance! This Gilder woman has to be interviewed, you know that as well as I do. Shard, I do like keenness.”
“Hedge, I like my wife. I’m worried about her. I did tell you.”
“Yes, yes. Well, I’m sorry. Duty’s never easy, and sometimes it’s — ”
“Don’t, please, lecture me on duty. With respect, Hedge, I know all about duty — ”
“So you’ll go to Australia.” There was a very final snap in Hedge’s voice. No use pressing the point further: it just had to be accepted that Hedge was an unfeeling bastard. In this case he was probably right anyway: Australia had to be visited. And no doubt Hedge knew well enough that a cop with Shard’s experience could always, somehow, manage to keep his private worries in a separate compartment.
Sydney — or more precisely the sheep station at Warrandarrah — would be a different proposition from Cherbourg: Shard might well be away, and a long way away, for quite a while. So this time, Mrs. Andrews being unwilling, mother-in-law had had to be invoked once Hedge had come on the line to Seddon’s way to report success with the top brass. Beth’s father, this being possibly a longish visit, was coming too, in a semi-invalid condition…As British Airways hurried him Sydneywards, Shard thought about mother-in-law. She wasn’t the best companion for Beth, whether or not she was her mother. Mrs. Micklam, though wary of Simon Shard, for she had cause to know his temper, was accustomed to her own way with husband and daughter, and Beth was not a very forceful watchdog in her own home. Simon Shard, staring down through the cloud ceiling at snatches of France, suddenly snapped his teeth. If, when he got home again, there was so much as a cushion out of place, let alone wholesale redistribution of his furniture, then Mrs. Micklam would need to watch out.
In the meantime, Shard watched out himself.
During the embarkation procedures, he had taken a detective’s care to observe the airliner’s passenger complement very closely. A mere precaution, which habit made him take even when going on holiday: it held its own interest, too. It was always intriguing to speculate, try to work out relationships, occupations, income brackets. Good exercise, at least when you were able to check your results. You could be very, very wrong: the estimated clerk with loving wife, eighteen hundred a ye
ar with prospects, semi-detached in Balham, could often turn out to be the Assistant Under-Secretary of State with secretary/ mistress, eight thousand a year and reached the end of the road, flat in South Kensington and cottage in Surrey. These days, people were mixed, uncertain, uncategorised. To go by type was unreliable — except perhaps in the case of the over seventies. The genuine oldies, those of genuine class, were typed. You really could pick out the retired colonel, the incognito bishop, the former public schoolmaster. The phoney-oldies stood out a mile. The man who looked like a television producer’s idea of a pre-war retired colonel — for instance — was quite likely to be a con man.
This current bunch could hold any number of villains of all varieties, but the one that held Shard’s trained interest was the one who was studiously avoiding catching his eye as they all moved out for the airliner and who, when embarked, sat just about as far away from Shard as he could manage. Sharp faced, well dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and a striped tie, accompanied by a briefcase, otherwise alone. Quiet, sober, composed, compact, reserved. A lawyer, a doctor? Banker, company director, chartered accountant? Or someone with an interest in Simon Shard that he was at too-obvious pains to deny?
For no reason that he could have put a finger of decision or real deduction upon, Shard’s feeling of danger rose to a crescendo as the airliner headed out for Rome.
CHAPTER IV
Rome was anti-climax: seven of the passengers left, nine embarked. Shard scanned the faces: nothing to call for special comment. The sharp-faced man remained on the flight, now wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and reading some documents from his brief-case, as Shard saw when he sauntered down the aisle to stretch his legs. Shard’s own seat companion, a shy girl who had answered but had not initiated conversation, was among those who disembarked. In her place came an Australian, bound home for Sydney. He lost no time in telling Shard this as the airliner lifted from the Rome runway.
“Can’t wait,” he said cheerfully. “Can’t wait to see the bloody Bridge again.” He said Bridge with a capital B.
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