Shard at Bay

by Philip McCutchan

  The coffee came, Miss Fleece retreated again, and Hedge went on thinking about Hesseltine. Hesseltine had virtually reprimanded Hedge for not having kept him informed. Hesseltine had learned about the visit of Detective Chief Superintendent Shard to the Clyde Submarine Base from Strathclyde Police, more or less by accident.

  Hedge had said snappishly, “He’s my man. Not yours.”

  “On secondment, I agree. But —”

  “And as such, nothing to do with you, Hesseltine.” Hesseltine’s patience had sounded very forced; the gritted teeth could almost be seen. “I should have been kept informed of the course of events, Mr Hedge. We have — or we may have — to work together on this. I’ve been contacted by Defence Ministry … this thing could become nationwide, all the defence establishments. And that includes London.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Don’t try to teach me my job, Hesseltine, I don’t like it. And I think you’re seeing Reds under the bed, frankly. Just a dead Arab!”

  “And a dead Irishman,” Hesseltine said in a flat tone.

  Hedge started. “What? What was that, Hesseltine?”

  “I think you heard.”

  “Where?”

  “Here in London.”

  Hedge said aggrievedly, “I’m sure there are plenty of dead Irishmen in London at any given moment. What’s special about this one?”

  “The body bore gunshot wounds and it was found, still alive but bleeding to death, in a cul-de-sac behind the RAMC HQ at Millbank —”

  “Army! That’s Defence Ministry —”

  “Outside the military establishment, Hedge. So it’s ours. But I thought you ought to know. There’s a connexion with Detachment X. The DEATH slogan had been tattooed on the body, on the chest. And there’s something concerning Shard personally …”

  Hedge listened with his mouth hanging open, a pudgy hand using his handkerchief to wipe away sweat. The moment Hesseltine had finished he had put through the call to Faslane, demanding Shard.

  *

  The Inter-City swung easily through the Southern Uplands, Glasgow and Motherwell left behind, gliding almost soundlessly on welded rails towards the Carlisle stop. Shard was hungry for lunch, not yet being served. Soon the stewards would be coming through. No-one else had joined his particular coach after he had taken his seat; the train seemed in fact to be far from full. One or two people had walked past, probably heading for the lavatory or maybe, hungry like himself, chasing up the restaurant car’s possibilities. The train’s gliding motion was sleep-making and from time to time Shard dozed, his jacket removed and rolled up on the rack. While awake his mind was busy, probing around the puzzle of Detachment X, tending to see it as no more than yet another manifestation of the lunatic fringe, the ever-lasting protesters, but protesters didn’t normally get shot in service establishments and Whitehall’s immediate reaction was natural …

  With Carlisle still some way ahead nature asserted itself in another way: Shard got up and walked through to the lavatory. That was when he became aware of the grey-suited man. Something made him turn and look over his shoulder. The man was coming through from the next coach in rear, almost as though he had been waiting for some movement on Shard’s part. Shard went on through to the toilet compartment, aware of the man coming up close behind. He hadn’t got the door shut when it burst in upon him with the man’s weight behind it. There was little room for manoeuvre: the wash-basin, the toilet seat, took up almost the whole space, and Shard was held helpless behind the door as the grey-suited man squeezed it hard against him. The man had something in his hand now … Shard heaved against the door, but the man had his back against the frame and was immoveable. Shard aimed a fist at the face but found his wrist gripped and held and then, through his jacketless shirt sleeve, he felt the sharp penetration of a needle into the fleshy part of his upper arm. A hypodermic: and at once there was a coldness, a freezing coldness that seemed to take the strength from his arm and then from the rest of his body.

  He staggered, slumped, collapsed across the toilet seat. He was unable to speak but he was conscious. He was not in control of his limbs. He lolled stupidly, like a rag doll.

  The grey-suited man looked down at him, not saying anything. There was a push at the half-open door and an elderly man looked in, questioningly, eyebrows raised.

  The grey-suited man said, “A friend — taken ill.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

  “Not to worry —”

  “I’ll get the guard. There may be a doctor on the train.”

  The old man was gone before he could be stopped; the grey-suited man shrugged. The guard turned up inside two or three minutes.

  “Could be a stroke,” he said.

  “No. He’s liable to these attacks. I’m used to this —”

  “I’ll call for a doctor,” the guard said.

  “No use — not without the right drugs which a doctor wouldn’t have with him. How far off Carlisle?”

  “Thirty-eight minutes …”

  The grey-suited man said, “We’re getting off at Carlisle. Being met. I’ll get him to hospital and he’ll be okay. No need for a doctor meantime.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.” The guard acquiesced. He didn’t want any responsibility, just the friend’s assurance. Shard was lifted from the toilet compartment and laid out on two empty seats and his jacket retrieved from the rack and put over him.

  Carlisle came up and the train glided to a stop; the guard held the journey up while the grey-suited man ran for the barrier and spoke to his waiting friend. They both came back at the rush and Shard, with the guard’s assistance, was lifted down to the platform, watched by a gawping crowd, and carried through the station to a waiting estate car. This vehicle, once Shard was in, drove off fast, heading for propaganda purposes in the direction of the hospital initially but then making for the M6 motorway southbound.

  *

  “No Shard,” Hedge said savagely. “He should have been here by now, surely?” The train notified by Strathclyde Police would have reached Euston an hour and a half earlier and Hedge was livid, waving fat hands at Miss Fleece and at Detective Sergeant Kenwood from Shard’s security section. “Check with Euston,” he said to Kenwood. “Use my phone.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kenwood did so. Yes, the Inter-City ex Glasgow had arrived, five minutes late. There had been a delay at Carlisle, ten minutes, and only five had been made up. Kenwood was about to ring off and tell Hedge when the man at the other end, a chatty man, said something else and Kenwood’s expression changed.

  “What is it?” Hedge asked plaintively.

  Kenwood put a hand over the mouthpiece. “A passenger taken ill at Carlisle, sir. A man, accompanied by a friend.”

  “Well?”

  “Could possibly be Mr Shard, I suppose, sir.”

  “You mean he didn’t arrive in London?”

  “The sick passenger didn’t, sir, no. He was taken off by this friend, said to be being taken to hospital.”

  Hedge shook. “Give me that phone, Kenwood.” Kenwood handed over and Hedge spoke pompously. “This is an important matter, whoever-you-are. I want the name of the passenger removed at Carlisle.” There was a pause. “You don’t know? Damn it all, I would have thought …” Hedge’s voice tailed away and his face went red; he disliked being addressed as mate. He banged down the handset angrily and drummed fat fingers on his desk. “Where’s Mr Orwin?”

  Detective Inspector Orwin was not yet back from Millbank, Kenwood said.

  “He’s to report as soon as he is. Thank you, Kenwood, that’s all for now.”

  Harry Kenwood went down to the security section. Hedge glared across his room at Miss Fleece. “I’ll have to speak to Hesseltine again. Get him, will you.” Then he changed his mind. “Get the police at Carlisle first.”

  The call went through; Carlisle nick knew nothing of the removal of a sick passenger but at the behest of the Foreign Office would pull out all the stops in a search for Detective Chief Superintendent Shard until
such time as they were called off by Hedge, who was unable to say for certain that the passenger was Shard. Shard could at times be unpredictable, even insubordinate in subtle ways, seeming to think that Hedge was a congenital idiot or something. Hedge rang off simmering. It was going to be a long day, and he had a dinner party. Had something happened to Shard? Hedge recalled that he himself had once been hooked off a train by villains, but not from a toilet compartment. How in heaven’s name had Shard come to be in a toilet compartment with another man? Hedge got back on the phone again, this time to Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine.

  “I am reporting facts, Hesseltine. Or rather, what may become facts. Shard seems to have disappeared.” He gave Hesseltine the details, adding that Carlisle had been alerted and he was awaiting information. In the meantime, this would be handled by the Foreign Office though the co-operation of all northern police forces, co-ordinated by the Yard, would be appreciated. Having said this Hedge rang off and at once regretted having given Hesseltine a loophole through which he might well contrive to take over. But it was too late now and of course Shard had to be found. Hedge was now totally convinced that Shard had been the sick passenger, the only doubt being the sick part.

  On the heels of his call to the Yard, his internal line burred and he was informed that he was required by the Permanent Under-Secretary. Yet again; Sir Edmund had been demanding him all day, ever since a personal call had come through from Commodore Rushcroft and even more since Hedge had been forced to report his earlier conversation with Hesseltine, the personal matter, a nasty one to be sure but obviously false, about Shard. Once again Hedge left his office suite and ascended on high to report progress or the lack of it to Pippin, an ill-chosen nickname for a rock of a man with a face like a bull and heavy eyebrows hanging over eyes that pierced like bayonets. Or marline-spikes; Sir Edmund looked more like a retired admiral than a diplomat. Hedge reported Shard’s apparent disappearance and soon after he had gone back to his own room Detective Inspector Orwin reported back from Millbank, where he had joined the team from the Yard. He was able to satisfy Hedge on a point that had occurred to him only while he’d been with Sir Edmund and had caused him to miss a heart-beat, since Sir Edmund might well have asked the question, how was the Millbank body’s nationality known? It hadn’t occurred to Hedge to ask Hesseltine. Orwin said the man had spoken before he died and the accent had been heavily Southern Ireland. And he had uttered Mr Shard’s name, apparently.

  “Yes,” Hedge said. “I want to talk to you about that, but first the actual details of the — the affray. Did no-one react?”

  Orwin said, “The guardroom at the RAMC depot did, sir, and saw two men beating it in the direction of the subway — Pimlico, sir. But they made their getaway —”

  “By tube, surely not?”

  “No, sir. The army used its loaf — and the telephone to Pimlico underground station. The villains didn’t go down the subway.”

  “No clues?” Hedge asked despairingly, though strictly it was Hesseltine’s job to catch the killers.

  “None, sir. It’s like Belfast — they always get away with it. Makes one think maybe they came from there.”

  “Yes,” Hedge said, frowning in thought. “Yes, it does. An IRA gunman … pursued by Ulster loyalists, the illegal sort? Do you know what the Assistant Commissioner’s doing about this, Orwin?”

  “Not really, sir. All I know is, the body’s being fingerprinted. We might learn something from that.”

  “Yes.” Hedge placed his fingers steeple-wise beneath his chin and closed his eyes for a moment, looking like a parson in prayer. He was beginning to feel his age; that awful night drive down from Scotland was with him yet, he was still tired even after a full night’s sleep last night. So many things battered at his brain, decisions, decisions and the need to think things through so that he got it right before the decisions were made, and got it right at conferences too. And always the press waiting to pounce and catch the establishment out. It was too bad; everything moved so fast these days …

  “Are you all right, sir?” Detective Inspector Orwin was solicitous, sounded worried. He hadn’t been as long as Shard in the Foreign Office, under Hedge. “A glass of water —”

  “Oh, I’m perfectly all right!” Hedge snapped. “Don’t fuss.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  One had to keep going and never show the strain so far that people asked if you were all right and offered water. That way lay premature retirement and Hedge was not a wealthy man nor a retiring one. He made an effort and sat up straight, “Tell me, Orwin. Was any mention made by the Yard people of a connexion between — this Irishman and Mr Shard?”

  “Not to me, sir.”

  “I see.” Another decision. “Well, I shall confide in you, Orwin, as my senior man in Mr Shard’s absence. I shall pass on what the Assistant Commissioner told me. In the strictest confidence, of course, that’s understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m telling you only because it’s relevant to our, er, investigations, and I’m telling you what was told to me — without prejudice. That’s to say, neither I nor Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine place any credence in it. Neither does the Permanent Under-Secretary.” Hedge took a deep breath and there was a glitter in his eyes, almost as though he were taking perverse pleasure in what he was about to say. “What the Irishman said before he died amounted to this: Mr Shard was taking bribes from the Irish National Liberation Army — INLA. I have to add this: the Assistant Commissioner, acting under instructions from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner himself, immediately put an investigation on Mr Shard’s bank account and discovered a large sum of money credited by means of a draft paid in through a bank in Liverpool.”

  4

  Detective Inspector Orwin didn’t believe a word of it either, and said so in plain language. It had to be an attempt to frame Shard. There was no dirt in Shard’s life. The whole thing was too obvious to be taken seriously; and it would take the Irish to imagine it could stick. Hedge stressed the fact, the incontrovertible fact, of the money in Shard’s account. Oh yes, he might be able to account for it if he was guilty — though of course he wasn’t — but it would be hard for even a top police officer to account for a sudden inflow of a hundred thousand pounds sterling. And there was more to come: Shard’s house had been done over by C6, the Fraud Squad, and a sum of money, five thousand in used fives and tens, had been found hidden in his garage, wrapped up in an oily cloth at the bottom of a large Tesco’s carton used for the stowage of aerosol cans of de-icer, damp start, car polish, old rags, cloths and so on. Shard’s wife was very upset. There was the mother-in-law staying in the house, Mrs Micklem, whose reaction had been different and this had been noted by the investigating officers. Mrs Shard had said she often took the car out in Shard’s absence and usually left the garage open. This, said Hedge, was incredibly stupid for a policeman’s wife but was probably true.

  “It is, sir.”

  “Oh?” Hedge’s eyebrows went up. “You know, do you?”

  “They’re good friends of mine, sir. I’ve often been to the house. I’ve heard Mr Shard telling Beth off about it —”

  “Beth?”

  “Mrs Shard, sir.”

  “Oh.” The details of Shard’s domestic life, except when garages and such obtruded into duty, were of no concern to Hedge. Nevertheless, sleuthlike now, he asked a relevant question. “And the mother-in-law? Have you met her?”

  “Once, sir.”

  “And?”

  Detective Inspector Orwin grinned. “A tough old nut.”

  “H’m.” Hedge fiddled with things on his desk. “Pending further information in regard to Mr Shard’s whereabouts —” Orwin interrupted. “It’s not being suggested, is it, that there’s any connexion between Mr Shard’s disappearance and the clap-trap about the bribe?”

  “By no means,” Hedge said. “Certainly not! I told you, the story’s not being believed. However, as a policeman, you’ll know the routines h
ave to be gone through.”

  Orwin nodded reluctantly. This was true enough; but was one of the aspects of police work that made a man wonder why he’d ever joined the force. If you couldn’t trust Shard, who could you trust? But being fair, he knew it was in Shard’s own interest to have all suspicions cleared away. Now he made a suggestion. “How’d it be, sir, if I went along to have a word with Beth — Mrs Shard, set her mind at rest?”

  “She’ll not have been told he’s missing yet. That’s not to leak, Orwin. The press is being held off. We want to keep these people in the dark. That having been said — and marked well by you, Orwin — I’ve no objection to your going round.” Hedge paused, dabbing at his cheeks with his handkerchief. It was a very hot day and his air conditioning didn’t seem to be working as well as it should. More blasted economies forced on VIPs by the Treasury and its First Lord. “Er … eyes and ears open, you understand?”

  Orwin didn’t like that. Leaving Hedge’s room he began to appreciate the difficulties under which Shard worked. Hedge was a right old bastard.

  *

  Hedge had gone to his club for a drink before his dinner party when Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine rang through and asked the Permanent Under-Secretary if he could drop round for a chat. Sir Edmund made himself available, courteously. He had a lot of time for Hesseltine. Shard was on both their minds: a good man in trouble of two sorts currently. You couldn’t sweep accusations of bribery under the carpet. One thing above all that was worrying both Hesseltine and Sir Edmund was why. Why the alleged bribery — why the frame?

  “Just to throw dirt, d’you suppose?” Sir Edmund asked.

  Hesseltine shrugged. “We can’t say yet. Pressure of one kind or another … I’ve an idea we’ll be informed before long.”

  “By INLA?”

  “Presumably, sir, yes.”

  “That’s another thing.” The Permanent Under-Secretary lifted himself from his chair. “Whisky?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Sir Edmund crossed the room to a corner cupboard and brought out a decanter and a jug of water. Neither he nor Hesseltine used soda, an insult to good whisky. He brought the glass across, frowning. “As I said, there’s another thing: another why, if you like. Why, all of a sudden, an Irish involvement? We’ve been thinking in terms of Arab terrorists until now, Hesseltine.”