The Hoof

by Philip McCutchan

  He nodded. “I sympathise, Ivy, I really do.”

  “Well?”

  He grinned and said, “All right. But not now and not here.”

  “Of course,” she said briskly.

  “Trust me? No amount stated — yet.”

  She nodded. “You’ve always played fair, Mr Shard. No names, but I know who you want. Give me an ’and with this bloody earring.”

  Shard leaned across to assist. Wafts of eau-de-cologne rose from the bosom and the address was whispered into his ear: 36 Gunter Street. “Thanks,” she said when the earring was fixed. After a little more general conversation, Shard left the pub. Gunter Street was right here in Soho, not far to walk. Evidently Lacroix felt safer in more familiar surroundings, where his friends were, or he hadn’t the contacts to move farther out. Shard walked into Gunter Street and found Number 36. It housed a strip show. The windows were heavily curtained in scarlet dralon; nothing of the interior could be seen. Cards on the door said you could pay by Access or Barclaycard plus some others. The monthly statements of some people must read oddly. This place was called the Razzmatazz Superdooper Doll.

  Shard went in. Heat hit like a hammer. Behind a semicircular reception desk sat a man with a long, pale face above a red T-shirt, smoking a cigar. He said, “Sorry, we’re not open yet.”

  Shard smiled. “Doing the accounts?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing at all. I just want to see a friend. It’s a social call.”

  The cigar shifted a little. “So who’s the friend?”

  Shard said, “The name’s Lacroix.”

  “Lacroix, eh. Never heard of him. Sorry.” The eyes had gone as hard as ice.

  Shard trusted Ivy implicitly. He said, “Just take me to him, that’s all you have to do.”

  “I told you —”

  “Sure. I know what you told me.” Shard’s voice was crisp, carrying authority. His right hand slid meaningfully into his jacket. “Just take me to him and you won’t get hurt. In case it conveys anything to you, I’ve come from the States. From Luigi Giraldo.”

  15

  Down his internal phone Hedge said, “I want Mr Shard. Kindly tell him.”

  “Not here, sir.”

  Hedge clicked his tongue. “Who’s that speaking?”

  “DC Brand, sir.”

  “I see. Where is Mr Shard?”

  The DC said, “He went to Soho, sir. Attempting to find the man Lacroix. That was more than three hours ago. Detective Sergeant Kenwood’s gone to have a look round, sir.”

  “You sound worried,” Hedge said.

  “We are, sir. He —”

  “Mr Shard is frequently longer than one expects — it’s a damn nuisance. Let me know immediately he gets back, and tell him I want him.”

  “Very good, sir.” The receiver rattled in Brand’s ear before he had got the words out. He sat back at full arms’ stretch. Hedge was a right bastard, not only for criticising a senior officer to his own juniors, but also because his tone said clearly that he didn’t give two pins for Mr Shard as a man. Hedge was in need of a prop or a scapegoat and he’d been left without one. Too bad. Brand got on with his current task, which was sifting through a load of xeroxed information about the time spent in Britain by Luigi Giraldo. Bumph mostly, sent in from the Yard. When Mr Shard got back, he would want a summary, with the essential points brought out. But DC Brand could find nothing of relevant interest and there was no mention of Kries or the Hoof, or even of Lacroix.

  *

  Shard was taken up a ricketty staircase into the regions above the stage where during their working hours the nudes gyrated for the benefit of tired businessmen. The building was a lofty one and Lacroix lived in an attic. As Shard set foot on the last flight of stairs Lacroix came out from a room and stood staring down from the landing.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, speaking to the man from reception.

  “Says he’s a friend.” There was a pause. “From Luigi Giraldo.”

  Shard saw the sudden fear in the narrow, strained face above him. Luigi Giraldo was a big man over there in USA; if he’d sent a man to London to see Lacroix, see anybody for that matter, then that man wouldn’t be denied. If he let himself be denied, then another man would be sent over to get him. That was how things went in Giraldo’s empire. All this, Shard knew as well as Lacroix did.

  He came face to face with the Frenchman. Lacroix licked at his lips, looking hunted and found. He asked, “What does Giraldo want, then?”

  “We’ll do this in private,” Shard said. His automatic was out now and he was alert for sudden trouble. The Giraldo pretence wasn’t going to be kept up for long. He jerked the automatic towards an open doorway to Lacroix’ right. “Is that your room?”

  Lacroix nodded.

  “Then we’ll go in. You first, Lacroix.”

  Lacroix shuffled sideways, into his room. Shard kept right behind him. The room was scent-laden and close; a revolting atmosphere. A gas fire burned, full on. There was a feeling of staleness that made Shard feel physically dirty, seemed even to make his clothing feel greasy. In one corner was an unmade bed, the sheets and blankets trailing over a littered floor covered with linoleum. The riches of the strip show were evidently not expended on the attic or on Lacroix. There was a scattering of birdseed on the linoleum and by the dirty window a budgerigar stood silently, forlornly on a perch in a gilded cage. The fug must be killing it, Shard thought.

  Neither of the men sat down. Lacroix stared at Shard, eyes wide, loose mouth trembling.

  Shard said, “Not working these days, Lacroix?”

  “No.”

  Shard nodded; even without WDC Brett’s report on the Frenchman’s working life it would have been easy enough to guess his calling, and easy enough also to guess that Lacroix would be finding too much risk in admitting clients currently. Shard said, “Hiding from Kries.”

  There was no response.

  “Dead scared of Kries, aren’t you, Lacroix? With good reason, of course. However, there’s other things to be gone into, right?”

  “What things?”

  “People. The Hoof. And Frankie Locci.”

  “Locci’s dead.”

  “I know. But he was a friend of yours, Lacroix. However, tell me first about the Hoof, who’s not dead.”

  “The Hoof?”

  “Yes. Everything you know about him.”

  “This is for Giraldo?” Lacroix spread his hands wide and gave an eloquent shrug. He was genuinely surprised. “But Giraldo knows! There is nothing I know that Giraldo does not.”

  “And Kries? What about Kries, who scares you stiff?”

  Lacroix said, “Kries, Kries, you keep on about Kries.” Then, for no apparent reason, his face suddenly whitened and seemed to crumple, to pucker up, and he almost collapsed backwards onto the bed. When he did speak it was in little more than a whisper. He said, “You have come from Kries … not from Giraldo.”

  To Shard, he looked as if he was waiting for death. Giraldo, powerful as he was, wasn’t right here in Gunter Street. Kries was the more imminent enemy and it was all up now for Lacroix. But he might have taken precautions: the man from reception would have been enlisted. Shard moved back for the door, keeping his automatic pointed at Lacroix. Reaching for the handle, he turned it suddenly and flung the door wide. It just missed the man standing outside on the landing. That man was not the one from reception; it was Kries. Shard’s hand was gripped and the automatic twisted up to the ceiling. From behind the open door another man came out: Ponto. Something heavy came down on Shard’s head and he fell.

  Kries stepped across him and went into the room. There was a scream from Lacroix. The scream ended in a long-drawn sigh and a gurgle as Kries used a knife. Kries stood back, looking satisfied, wiped the knife-blade on a bed sheet. Without turning he spoke to Ponto.

  “Right, that’s it.” Revenge was good.

  “What about him?” Ponto gestured down at Shard. “You didn’t expect him, Kries.�
��

  Kries nodded. “Dead right I didn’t, but now he’s here he’ll have to keep with us.” No time lost, Shard was carried down the stairs and deposited temporarily behind the reception desk. Kries went into the small bar that formed a section of the reception area, a bar that was not yet open. There was no bartender on duty and in a corner lay the body of the man who had been doing the accounts. Protected from the street by the curtained windows Kries went behind the bar and brought out a bottle of whisky, went back to the desk and poured the whisky over Shard’s head and face and some into his mouth. Shard gasped, starting to come round. Ponto booted his head savagely. Unconsciousness returned. Kries left the bottle behind the desk.

  Ponto asked, “How do we get him out?”

  “Go get a cab,” Kries said. “And hurry. We have a drunk to get home.” He shoved back the bolts from the door which he’d locked after coming in. Ponto went off, fast. They only just made it. As the taxi, with Shard embarked, pulled away from the kerb, the girls were already starting to arrive for work.

  *

  Hedge was livid when the word came through from Hesseltine: the girls, finding the bodies, one up, one down, had called the police. After the upstairs body had been identified as that of Lacroix, Hesseltine had been informed as a matter of urgency and he’d called Hedge. Hedge, who was aware from DC Brand that Shard had gone to find Lacroix, was able to put two and two together without difficulty.

  He spluttered down the phone at Hesseltine. “A place called what?”

  “The Razzmatazz Superdooper Doll. We know it, of course.”

  “What a name. What’s happened to Shard?”

  “No idea, Hedge. We don’t even know he was there — he mightn’t have got onto Lacroix.”

  “Yes, that’s true. But he hasn’t reported back yet.”

  “If I get any word,” Hesseltine said, “I’ll be in touch right away.” He rang off; Hedge sat back, mopping at his face and feeling quite ill. It wasn’t fair; too many alarms and excursions, sometimes he felt his age and more. Shard was a confounded nuisance, upsetting him when he had so much to do, so many decisions to make. He should have more consideration. And where the devil was he now? The telephone went again — Downing Street and Hedge practically genuflected, his voice becoming a purr of deference. When the call ended Hedge rang for his secretary to bring a glass of water and took a tablet from a phial in his waistcoat pocket. It didn’t do any good and the telephones kept on and on at him. Eventually Kenwood reported in.

  “Ah, Kenwood. Any news of Mr Shard?”

  There was but only up to a point. The stout Edwardian lady who ran the bar in Soho wasn’t one of his noses but there were always wheels within wheels and Kenwood knew a nose who was friendly with the stout lady. So the trail was confirmed as leading to the Razzmatazz Superdooper Doll; but there it had stuck. By the time Kenwood had got there the Yard had been and gone again, leaving a uniformed man behind. For the time being business was suspended and the girls were at a loose end. And that was all Kenwood knew.

  *

  The taxi hadn’t had to go far. Kries yelled through to the driver to stop near some shop premises off Shaftesbury Avenue. Shard was taken into a doorway amid a stench of whisky and propped up by Ponto while Kries paid off the driver.

  “Some people,” the driver said.

  Kries agreed with the sentiment. “People that can’t hold it shouldn’t take it.” When the taxi had driven away, Shard was propelled round the corner to where Kries had a car parked, an unostentatious Cortina. The group got a number of stares but no particular interest was aroused, in Soho anyone was liable to be either blotto or doolally from gawping at blue films, nothing unusual about it. Certainly no-one even thought of taking the Cortina’s number. Later, as a result of an appeal from Scotland Yard, the taxi driver called in at the nick to tell them what he knew, but that wasn’t much. The drunk had last been seen in a shop doorway; when the shop was checked, nothing at all was known.

  Shard had come round in the Cortina but Kries was holding the knife firmly against his side and the look on his face said very clearly that he would use it the moment he felt he had to. There was no way out. When the Cortina stopped it was in a garage. Before Shard was brought out, Ponto shut the garage door. Then Shard was taken straight through into a house, the garage being integral. He was put into a compartment housing a gas-fired boiler. The boiler was not lit and the place was cold. The walls were bare concrete and in one corner stood an unoccupied cardboard carton with part of an old blanket in it, a cat’s bed. There was a saucer of stale Cattomeat, partly eaten, and some biscuits. High up in one wall was a window, propped open on a metal bar. The cat’s entry and exit, far too small to admit a human body. Pushing Shard in, Kries said, “That’s where you stay till it’s all over. After that, we’ll see.”

  That was all. Kries locked and bolted the door and went away. Shard heard his footsteps along the passage outside and then there was silence. Shard still felt dizzy; he slumped to the floor for a while till the worst of the feeling passed, then he climbed up on the boiler and looked through the small window. What he saw was not propitious: just a blank brick wall some four or five feet away. From the middle distance came shrill siren blasts. The river. The sounds were desolate and uneasy. Soon after Shard got down the cat stole in following upon a flying leap from the wall.

  *

  Far to the north The MacSkean was taking whisky, brooding over the Clyde as it flowed past a room not far from the Broomie-law. The MacSkean was worried about the American, Kries. He didn’t trust the man and he foresaw trouble for the Hoof. There was many a slip … The MacSkean splashed more whisky into his glass, looking dourly uneasy. Then he walked over to a cupboard in a sideboard and brought out a heavy revolver, currently not loaded. He spun the chambers, his eyes glinting strangely. He delved into the cupboard again and brought out some ammunition. Then he went back to brood again over the waters of the Clyde. Seeming to come to some decision, he took up the telephone and dialled Glasgow airport.

  16

  Early on Sunday the bomb disposal squads had moved into Smith Square, unobtrusively and in anything but army uniforms: the TGWU had been informed in the meantime that special precautionary measures were being taken in view of the targets offered by the coming together of the union brass plus the Prime Minister, who was still refusing to back down. Looking like a body of cleaners or electricians or plumbers the army personnel were admitted by a side door and at once got efficiently to work with their detectors. They were still at it when next morning the staff began arriving: clerks and secretaries and personal assistants, plus the various advisers indispensable to any meeting of VIPs.

  When the arrival for work was complete, the Major in charge of the military teams reiterated the orders he’d already given to the week-end caretaking staff: all doors would be shut and locked and no-one would be allowed off the premises until the conference was over and all the leaders had dispersed. There would be no outward telephone calls. The Major was backed by the presence of an officer from the Yard’s anti-terrorist squad: a chief superintendent had come in inconspicuously the day before with the disguised bomb disposal experts plus enough officers from the Yard’s communications section to take over Transport House’s telephone exchange.

  There was an objection from a hatchet-faced middle management man, who asked, “Do you expect to find bombs, or what?”

  “Safety of all concerned,” the Major answered obliquely. “You never know what you might find.” His tone indicated that there was to be no argument. “I’d very much appreciate your co-operation —”

  “Safety?” The official was incredulous, scandalised. “To shut us all in with what might be bombs? I’ve never heard anything so daft as to call that safety!”

  “If there are any devices, we’re going to find them and render them safe. We’ve had a good deal of experience over the years, thanks to the IRA. You’ll have nothing to worry about providing you do as we ask and if everyone ke
eps their cool.” The officer added, “It’s all in your own interests, you know.”

  The official was not convinced. “You found anything yet?”

  Smoothly the Major said, “Just leave all that to us.” He turned away with the Chief Superintendent from the Yard, who had remained blank-faced whilst the other two had been talking. There was tension in the air; at all costs a panic had to be avoided and failure was not even to be mentioned in the hearing of the Transport House staff. Largely there tad been failure despite the most thorough search either the Major or the Chief Superintendent could recall, starting at the bottom and working up to the top of the big building — except in the one place: the committee room where the TUC brass was to meet and which had now been put out of bounds to everyone except military and police personnel. The detectors had found something behind a wall of the room, over an ornate chimney piece. It was not going to be easy or quick to get at. Enquiries of the maintenance staff, casually made so as not to arouse alarm, had produced the information that a few days earlier, on the Friday to be precise — before Shard’s information had reached London — some workmen had arrived with tools and other equipment and with fully authenticated written instructions to carry out specialised repair work in the chimney. The soldier’s thought was that, if only the staff had been taken into the confidence of the security services, they would have ticked over in retrospect and valuable time would have been gained. But the security people worked in their own fashion.

  *

  The weather the night before had stopped all flights out of Glasgow airport. The MacSkean had had no option but to travel by the train. At Euston next morning he left the overnight express and went with his bag up the escalator to the buffet where he breakfasted on bacon and egg and coffee. He was not wearing the kilt now; he was dark suited and could have been any Englishman about to start a day’s work. But his accent, when he had ordered his breakfast, remained what it had always been: Scots. This was overheard by the plain clothes man who had been hanging about by the top of the escalator from the Glasgow arrival platform and who had already noted The MacSkean as being a possible fit, a possible likeness to one of the villains as described by Shard, who had felt it worth having a rail and airport watch established just on the off-chance.