“A busy day for customers?”
“Oh — I get you, sir! Yes, you could call it busy. I didn’t know there were so many Arabs in the whole country, sir.”
Shard grinned, nodded a dismissal. “Make yourself scarce. I’ll not be here long — I hope!” The constable straightened and went on with his beat. Shard spared a thought for the nick, all the London nicks and their long-suffering station officers. Identikits were not always easy to identify from: there would be any God’s amount of suspects wheeling in for a check-out. If it were not so bloody serious, Shard thought, it would have its funny side: all that gesticulation, all the offended innocence! The trouble was, it took time, it soaked up watching manpower, and it gummed the works, but it was all inevitable. He drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel, watched the crowds: like so much of London, all colours. Time pressed hard on Shard: zero hour was now just a matter of five to six hours off. Thoughts of the time-scale loosened his guts, increased his blood pressure, brought him out in a sweat, made sitting tamely behind the wheel into a supreme effort of will. Again he thought of Beth: fought the images down, layering them with others: he was selfish to think about his own problems. All London faced similar ones, even if they didn’t yet know — and the cops, of course, did know and were mostly in his boat with him. That young constable he’d just spoken to: there was probably a wife, maybe children, pretty certainly a mother and father. It didn’t do to think: coppers shouldn’t think other than constructively. Shard went on drumming, still feeling the wateriness inside. Probably coppers should never even get married …
His radio stirred: his call-sign. He flicked a switch “S 2, over.”
“Jigger 4. Contact, contact. Over.”
“Right, I’m coming in. Out.” Shard snapped off the switch. Jigger 4 had taken Foxton Lane. Shard let in his gears, took the corner fast, going quickly up through the gearbox. Along Foxton Road, another corner around Foxton Buildings and into Foxton Lane. Outside Number 16, the police car, empty and unattended. Something settled in Shard’s gut: a knot of apprehension though he didn’t know quite why. He slammed on his brakes just ahead of Jigger 4 and got out fast, up the dirty stone steps with his gun in his hand, and into the hall. The hall was long and narrow and dirty, with peeling wallpaper and paint old and cracked into spider’s-web patterns. And there was silence … Shard went along the hall towards a door at the end, glancing up a staircase as he went. He was by the door when the daylight went and he heard a slam: he whirled round fast, flattening his body to the wall. From inside the front door there was a vivid flash and lead zinged past the end of his nose. He fired back blind, aiming for where he fancied the flash had been. He heard movement. A laugh came back to him from close by, and he went into a crouch, firing again. Something came down on his head, hard, and all his world was filled with flashes of red, green, orange, blue, a kaleidoscope that ended in funereal black.
*
He felt sick: he heard himself groaning, retching, but didn’t at first connect the sounds with himself. They seemed disembodied and somehow unreal despite the rising sickness that culminated, within moments of his returning consciousness, in a gush of vomit.
“Dirty beast.”
The voice was a woman’s. Shard, his head reeling and spinning, opened his eyes but saw only more flashes, whorls of light that gave him pain so that he closed his eyes again. A moment later, just as he was realising that he was wet through already, a dash of cold water took him over the head. He gasped and shivered. His senses were coming back: he was brought to full awareness by a familiar scent. To a point, the hunt had been successful, Hedge’s diligent and brave lead a good one: he had made a find all right, though not in the manner intended.
Opening his eyes again, he saw the guns staring him in the face from all round: one, two, three, four, five, two of them in the hands of Terry and Nigel from Stalling Busk, Terry’s eyes as fishlike, as coldly pink-rimmed as ever. Nadia Nazarrazeen, not underground at all, was well supported. His lips felt stiff and liable to crack, and his tongue was as dry as a bone in spite of the water-dousing; but he managed a question: “What happened?”
The woman — and even in his sickness and his gall she was attractive — laughed in his face. “You were neatly tricked, Simon Shard, that is what happened!”
“The radio call?”
“Yes.”
“One of your mob? But the voice —”
“Was a policeman’s. Don’t cast blame — he had no option. There were guns … one went off after he had called you.”
“You killed him?”
She nodded. “All are dead. Open your eyes properly, and look.”
Feeling cold as death himself, Shard lifted his head, looked where the girl was pointing. Across the carpet, on a long cushioned sofa against the farther wall, four men sat, with a fifth, Jigger 4’s driver, on the floor with his back to the wall. Five plain-clothes men, very still, eyes open and vacantly staring, all with their front clothing charred by guns fired close, and blood still redly drooling from small holes. Shard felt choked, unable to breathe. “You bitch,” he said. “You filthy, murderous little bitch.”
She didn’t mind that: she went on smiling and there was no retaliation. Just the steady guns to inhibit movement. Shard’s head was bursting. He said, “You’ve put yourself in a spot, haven’t you?”
“How so?”
“My bosses —”
“No, no. They are satisfied, and will remain satisfied for long enough. A report was sent by radio, that you had found nothing precise but were following a possible lead to Knockholt Pound.” Again she laughed.
“Why Knockholt Pound?”
“It is a funny name, and tickled my sense of humour. You may wish to ask about the cars, yours and your men’s: I shall tell you, Simon Shard, they have been driven away and left.”
“But someone will come —”
“Yes, in time. But we shall not be here.”
“Where, then?”
“You will see. You will come with us.” She shrugged: Shard became aware of her breasts, full dark cream in the low-cut dress, the cleft clearly exposed. “We didn’t want you, we have no need of you, but you came into the district and now we cannot leave you. It is on your own head.” She lifted her wrist, looked at a tiny watch, richly jewelled and golden. “Try now to get up, Simon Shard.”
Delay was the obvious answer: too obvious. He tried it and was discouraged with a man’s boot against his side, kicking painfully. Then he was dragged upright and set on his feet, the guns nudging. Sickness returned; retching, bringing up his very stomach lining, he was manhandled to the door. His head throbbed: it felt as if it had grown to the proportions of a mountain range, with a very special peak dead top central.
*
The dead policemen were left behind, sitting upright in their silence: it didn’t matter any more, Nadia Nazarrazeen said with total indifference. Shard enquired, as they went out into a back garden, small and derelict, about her future safety vis-à-vis the law. Whatever might happen in regard to the main threat, she was already many times a killer. Was she going to enjoy a life sentence for, as it were, en route murder?
“That is taken care of,” was all she would say. Part of the bargain to be made? They all crossed the garden towards a wrought-iron gate into a back alley — Shard and Nazarrazeen, Terry and Nigel, and three dark-skinned Arabs in Western jeans, Levis. Terry looked out, then nodded. He and Nigel went off to the right along the alley, vanishing round a bend. The rest of the party headed left at a brisk pace that made Shard’s head worse. At the end of the alley was a car, a Volvo. One of the Arabs unlocked the driver’s door and got in, opening the other doors. Nadia Nazarrazeen got into the front passenger seat, the other three squeezed in the back, surrounding Shard: a tight fit, and uncomfortable. The car drove off fast, no more delays. It made into the heart of London, right up into the West End — right along Victoria Street, past New Scotland Yard. Shard’s chief emotion now was amazement at effront
ery, at total confidence. A whole car-load of Middle Eastern faces on a day like this, and his own face known personally to quite a few London coppers, sergeants and above anyway … if this wasn’t a risk he didn’t know what was! But in the event no one looked at them twice: there were other things on lay minds, this not yet being one of them; and the police mind was largely underground. In safety, in anonymity, the Volvo purred across Westminster Bridge, over the Thames, lying now not below rain but below a clear blue sky with the cloud distant over north London. Buses ran past, taxis, cars … below on the water tugs chuffed ahead of their strings of laden or ballasted barges, up and down the river. From Westminster Pier a river-bus set off gaily, leaving the landing-stage and swinging round to head for Tower Bridge, and HMS Belfast, and the Cutty Sark, and the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, with men, women and children bulging the decks and dangling dangerously over the guardrails. If they didn’t come back too soon, they would be safe, maybe … the Volvo slowed, stopped briefly on the bridge, and the girl got out, flipping her hand in a goodbye gesture and walking towards a flight of stone steps to the river-walk below, not hurrying. More effrontery: Shard had to admire her for her supreme self-confidence. The Volvo was driven on, turned around a one-way system by St Thomas’s Hospital, and back once again over Westminster Bridge: no sign now of Miss Nazarrazeen. On the north bank the Volvo turned right, going along the Embankment where Shard had mounted his abortive tail in the early hours. Beyond Blackfriars Bridge it entered a maze of smelly side alleys between New Bridge Street and St Paul’s, coming eventually to rest behind a dry-cleaners’ van stopped with its rear doors close to a manhole in the centre of the alley. The Volvo was driven equally close, so that its front bumper was almost at the lip of the manhole. As the Volvo stopped, the rear doors of the van were opened up: a big man dressed as a sewerman leaned down and banged on the manhole cover with a thinnish iron bar, sending some kind of signal: two, three, two. Then stop. Looking up, he grinned through the Volvo’s windscreen at the driver. Then he jumped down and levered out the manhole cover. The moment the cover was manipulated out of its socket, Shard was hustled from the car and taken to the lip of the exposed sewer entry: looking down with his head swimming, he saw the metal rungs of a vertical ladder leading into blackness. One of the men from the car swung himself down first: then Shard. As he began to lower himself into the gloom and the rising stench, Shard heard both the van and the Volvo start up: they would be away as soon as the whole party was down, as soon as the manhole cover had been slotted back in position … he looked up, saw the last pair of legs swing down above his head, then the blackout of the last circle of daylight. From below, and distantly, came a low sound, a mixture of sounds — what seemed vaguely like moving water, plus a hum of electric motors, plus disjointed booming sounds. The smell increased and the darkness, thick and tangible, remained as they went down rung by rung. Then, suddenly, the darkness went: far below them still, a bright light came on, throwing strange shadows as it rose past the man climbing down below Shard. The metal ladder shaking under their weight against the brickwork, they continued down to a platform above a moving river of water, where two more men were waiting: more sewermen, men in thigh-high waders, flushers maybe, the troglodytes who cleaned the channels under their gangers. They carried safety-lamps that would glow red if they encountered air contamination, and they carried guns.
One of them asked, “Who’s this?” He indicated Shard.
“A detective who grew too curious.”
“Dangerous — isn’t it?”
“His visit is well authenticated,” the dark-skinned man said, “you have no need to worry. Is everything ready at control?”
The flusher nodded, drawing the back of a hand across his nostrils. “All ready.”
“The explosives?”
“They’re down.” In the electric light, Shard recognised the look of fear in the man’s eyes. “Listen, when do we clear out, eh?”
“There’ll be time for that. For the present, you’re all right here.” The dark man’s tone was hard. “And here you stay, remember that! You are in this very deep, my friend, deeper by far than you now are in the sewer!” He laughed, but there was no humour.
“Oh, I’ll stay,” the sewerman said. “Just give us good warning for out — that’s all I ask. Right out of bloody London!”
“Yes, this you shall have.” The man looked towards Shard and his companions of the descent. “Come now, there is some way yet to go.”
*
“Mr Shard doesn’t answer, sir,” the switchboard reported to Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine.
“From where — Seddon’s Way?”
“Yes, sir. Shall I try the FO, sir?”
“Yes, do that.” Hesseltine drummed his fingers and waited: hoped Shard was getting places but began to suffer frustration’s pangs; tried hard to force an occupation of his mind with other work. He hadn’t too long to wait: today the name of Simon Shard, Detective Chief Superintendent, had its built-in call for speed. But again it was blank: no knowledge. Hesseltine was impatient but not yet worried: there had been absolutely no reason to doubt the authenticity of the radio call that had said Shard was chasing a lead. Anxiety might start up later: Hesseltine, as the top cop he was, used a part of his mind to prepare for that anxiety: if and when Shard didn’t show, there would be someone else to look out for in the booking halls and subway stations. Very likely he was there already: no lead after all, and so straight down as pre-indicated.
*
Shard, feeling ill, waded the horrible scummy water flowing through the sewer, flowing and smelling, filthy collection from the drains and God knew where else. The procession had two torches, powerfully beamed, provided by one of the custodians of the platform below the manhole. They walked in a crouching attitude for what seemed to Shard an immensely long way. At intervals, widely spaced, there were more platforms and sometimes more lights: electricity cables ran right the way along. It was a horrible experience in that close foetid airlessness, and Shard’s heart was sinking with his hopes: it was getting too near the end. He could see no way out, short of getting hold of the guns that were guarding him, and that wasn’t on: just one move out of turn, that was all they needed … and the rushing black sewer-water waited to hurry his body away. It was no consolation that all things, good or bad, had to come to an end: and it was no consolation that the present journey ended, some way farther along, in a clamber up onto a kind of walkway that led to a concrete-lined chamber situated off one of the undermanhole platforms, a chamber filled with electrically operated machinery and a plastic-covered, padded bench on which sat, of all people to find in a sewer, Hedge.
Hedge, who was being guarded by four Middle Eastern gunmen, didn’t appear to notice that Shard was off colour. He was looking thoroughly wretched, but he improved quickly when he saw Shard. “It’s you!” he said unnecessarily; then looked mortified, as though he shouldn’t have said a word.
“It’s all right,” Shard said. “They know who I am.” He added a sir, since Hedge was supposed to be the boss man, little though he looked the part at the moment. “Hand-cart — I presume?”
“Yes. Cigarette packet?”
Shard nodded. “I think that was a mistake — sir. If I may say so.” In the electric light, he studied his fingernails for a moment, watched by the four gunmen, who were now in process of taking over Shard himself from his escort. The hand-over made, the escort left, going back the way they had come. Shard went on, “It only led to more deaths — five policemen.”
“Oh, my God. It seemed a good idea.”
“Yes. Maybe it was me — my personal bungle. I’ve a nasty feeling it was, in fact.” Shard stared at the Arab faces. He said, “I’m beginning to get the drift. On the way in, your friends weren’t talking … but I didn’t really need to ask. This sewer runs close enough to a section of tube tunnel for you to cut through — right?”
One of the gunmen smiled. “This is correct.”
“Clever — to have got away with it! The sewers were one of the items on our list. But this you’ll know, of course —”
“Yes, we know. We found it easy —”
“Traitors, quick-money bastards, in your pay?”
“That, yes. Also stories from the German POW camps. It was easy to hide the entrance, easy to carry away all we dug out.”
“Where is this entrance?”
“Here,” the Arab said. “Here, in this compartment. Your Mr Hedge is sitting over it at this moment. I will show you — it is time we began to make ready, in any case.” He took a screwdriver from a pocket and began removing the heavy screws holding down the legs of the bench, screws that passed right through eyelet-holes in a rough floor covering of heavy-duty canvas and on into metal sockets set in the concrete beneath. He put each screw carefully into his pocket: a reflex action, result of constant repetition, like the wartime escapees? Shard watched: when the operation was complete, the Arab glanced up at Hedge, still sitting in state on the bench.
“If you please,” he said with oily politeness.
Hedge stared, then ticked over. He rose huffily, clutching at Shard for support as the gunman pulled the vacated bench away from the wall and drew back the canvas floor-covering.
From outside came a hair-raising scurrying sound, followed by an outbreak of squeaking. Hedge looked ill.
“Rats,” Shard said briefly. “Fighting.”
“I know! They’re not the first, Shard, not the first by a long chalk. I feel pretty bad as a matter of fact, and I blame those damn rats!”
“It’s much too soon for Weil’s Disease to show. Or to be caught,” he added with hasty reassurance, noting the extra look on Hedge’s face. Then he turned his attention to the bared floor: there was a neatly cut square of concrete being lifted out, to leave an entry fully adequate to take a man of Hedge’s bodily thickness. Behind this came armful after armful of cottonwool packets, used no doubt as a sound damper: when it was all out, and there was a hell of a lot of it, together with a square of wood cut to hold it in place below, Shard heard the hollow rattle of a tube train tearing along the tunnel somewhere underneath.
A Very Big Bang Page 17
