Shard at Bay

by Philip McCutchan

  *

  The CID officers tailing Ho Suzy had been efficient. Longish hair, dirty jeans and sweat shirts bearing slogans of up-to-date appeal — the various ways of doing it, standing up, under water, up a mountain — had blended them nicely with the crowds as Ho Suzy made her way along Victoria Street to the subway at Westminster. She had caught a Circle Line westbound and had got out at Gloucester Road but only to change trains onto one bound for Ealing. She had got out finally at West Kensington, had crossed the North End Road to the west side and walked along it into the Hammersmith Road, swinging a handbag from her left shoulder, never once looking round. Perhaps it was too good to be true.

  She crossed to the north side of the Hammersmith Road, walked westerly, then turned off right towards Brook Green. She was walking purposefully; she had to be dumb, not to suspect. Once in Brook Green she twisted and turned a bit, so many streets, but the tail had no difficulty in seeing her enter a three-storey house, somewhat sleazy, in Downton Street. She went up some steps, opened the front door, went in and slammed it behind her.

  From a telephone kiosk some distance off, while one of the CID men kept obbo on the house, the word went through to the Yard and Hesseltine was informed. His orders, watch it and report all comings and goings, were just routine. It could prove a long slog. One of the men went round the back, checked his bearings, isolated the house, lit a cigarette, and drifted to the end of the service alley onto which the house backed. He had noted that all the windows at the back of the house were heavily curtained, the curtains themselves of a thick, dreary material and very dirty. All one house, not flats as such as had been established from the lack of duplicated bell-pushes by the front door. Not flats as such, but maybe rooms used by prozzies. Ho Suzy could be one. If so, it was going to be quite a job, reporting back to Scotland Yard on the comings and going of the punters, none of whom were likely to be of interest anyway. But it was a complication that didn’t, in the event, arise. There were no callers, and no-one left the house. Not, that was, until after dark that night when a small man with yellow skin, visible in the street lamps, left by the front door which he shut behind him. He walked briskly north, a CID man keeping his distance behind. The second CID man used his walkie-talkie and called the Yard. He was told to stay on obbo and await his relief. The Yard called the Assistant Commissioner Crime, who had gone home to bed leaving orders that he was to be kept informed.

  Hesseltine decided the time had come to investigate the house in Downton Street. The man on obbo was called and told to expect reinforcements, armed. More or less as an afterthought, Hesseltine called Hedge, told him what he proposed to do.

  Hedge concurred. Better to carry on using the Yard. He still didn’t want to involve the Foreign Office overtly.

  Within the next half hour, something resembling the Heavy Mob, the Flying Squad, though in fact it wasn’t them, turned up in Downton Street.

  The CID man approached them and reported to the Detective Inspector in charge. “No movement, sir.”

  “All quiet on the Western Front, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Won’t be for much longer,” the DI said cheerfully. “Door locked, I take it?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  The DI nodded, moved towards his two cars, gave quiet orders. There was another vehicle round the back and officers were moving up the service alley, disturbing cats and dustbins. The DI went fast up the steps, taking the lead, and shoved the front door open. He was met by total silence, like the grave, eerie. A stench of dirt and decay. His torch — he hadn’t yet found the light switch — showed peeling wallpaper and a lack of stair carpet. The stairs reached up a long way and were steep. Still nothing stirred as the torch beam travelled up the stairs.

  “Right,” the DI said, and his voice seemed to echo. “Room by room, basement and ground floor first.”

  Empty. So were all the rooms on the first floor. And the third. They found Ho Suzy on the fourth floor, in a bathroom or what passed for one — cracked handbasin, lavatory pan, bare floor, brown-stained bidet of all things, no bath, but a good deal of blood. Ho Suzy was slumped on the pan with her head down. The dripping had stopped, but the ends of the hair were matted. The DI’s face was pale; he’d never seen anything quite like it. From the girl’s right ear a hatpin, old-fashioned, long, thin, made of steel, protruded. It had gone through the eardrum into the brain.

  7

  The press got onto it: more trouble for Hedge, though it was scarcely his fault. The Head of Security was really bad now, should never have returned to duty and was confined again by doctor’s orders. The Permanent Under-Secretary was seriously alarmed and ticked off the incidents on his fingers: Faslane, Millbank, Shard’s disappearance, the explosion in the New Forest, Ho Suzy dead and no clue at all to the killer. It could be assumed that the killer had been the yellow-skinned man who had left Downton Street but the Yard’s tail had lost him after not very far. He had, the report said, kind of merged with the dark and vanished. And, as already foreshadowed by Hedge, the press had got hold of something else: Shard’s disappearance. The speculation had already started. There was the bribery, and there was the cash, as admitted by Mrs Micklem. It was all a pressman’s dream of heaven.

  “Do you see any links, any leads?” Sir Edmund asked, after his enumeration of events.

  “I’m afraid not, Under-Secretary.”

  “What about those men in Dublin?”

  “Garrity and Phelan? There’s been nothing fresh so far.”

  “Red herring?”

  “The Garda didn’t seem to think so, Under-Secretary. And the New Forest explosion tends to support their theory of a simple bombing campaign.”

  “Yes. What we need to know is, where next?”

  Hedge said helplessly, “There’s no knowing.”

  “Find out,” Pippin said.

  “Yes, Under-Secretary.” Dismissed, Hedge went back to his office. It wasn’t really fair, half a Yard job, half his. Split command, but he was determined to remain on top. Sitting at his desk, attended by the conscientious Miss Fleece, Hedge felt somehow unclean. The press again: remarks about the paternity of Ho Suzy’s baby, which now might or might not be born. That depended on the medics, but certainly she had looked very far gone and it could yet, Hedge supposed, be born by caesarian section or whatever. It was horrible to think that the Foreign Office had become involved in anything so distasteful as fornication, even if only by innuendo …

  *

  Almost concurrently with Hedge’s thoughts in London, something happened up north. There was a loud explosion and a bright flash of flame that seemed to come over the stone wall and into the room occupied by Shard. The building rocked. Then there was silence broken only by the distant reaction from the grey-suited man and the bearded Irishman. They had become excited; and after a while one of them came to Shard — this time the grey-suited man.

  “RAF plane,” he said. “Probably on a training flight, a Tornado.”

  Shard had heard them from time to time, another indication that he was still in the north. Flying at speed over the hills, down the glens — if this was Scotland — between the crests, tricky work. He asked, “Anyone eject?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You haven’t bothered to look, give a hand to —”

  The man laughed edgily. “Would you, in our place? Grow up, Mr Shard. We’ve moving out, fast. Any time now, the district’ll be swarming.” After that they didn’t lose any time. Shard was given another injection. Once again he remained conscious but without speech or movement. The blindfold was replaced and he was carried out to the estate car and concealed beneath the rug, the handcuffs still on his wrists. The car was started up, lurched back to the road, and then driven fast. Around ten minutes later it slowed and stopped and a window was wound down and Shard heard voices. The new accent was Yorkshire. Someone, probably a police officer, talking to the driver, the grey-suited man this time. They might not want to reveal the bearded ma
n’s Irish accent. Yes, they’d seen the crash and were driving to report it. They had tried to render assistance but it had proved impossible and they thought the best thing to do was to get a report in as fast as possible. There was a word of approval and then they got on the move again.

  So near and yet so far. Shard felt throttled with frustration. There was no more stopping after that. Traffic passed, going fast as the sounds told him, no doubt ambulances and RAF vehicles and more police. They were taking a number of bends, some sharp, giving an uncomfortable time to Shard. No doubt the Pennines and a normally lonely road through the dales, beneath the high fells. There were RAF airfields on the fringe of the dales — Leeming, Dishforth, Linton-on-Ouse. Shard heard the men talking now, as though they had only just got around to thinking about the crash per se. Someone, it appeared, only one, had ejected and had been seen. His parachute, as he came down very close to a craggy peak, had caught on a rock projection and his body had swung in hard against the rock itself, and then the parachute material had split further and the airman had fallen a long way. That was what Shard gathered from fragments of conversation. The man might still be alive, might certainly have had a better chance if help had come earlier. Shard heard the bearded man say, “It’s a risk the bastards take, that’s all. Don’t expect me to have any sorrow for them.”

  The drive went on. The bends seemed to straighten out after a little over an hour and the speed increased. They stopped for petrol, stopped for more petrol later on, a matter of hours later, and soon after this the speed came right down and they were obviously in traffic.

  *

  Disturbing reports reached Hedge. Harry Kenwood, Shard’s DS, had been keeping his ears open in pubs where he was not known. He had heard many a conversation.

  “Bloody fuzz, feather their own nests all right, eh.”

  “A young girl like that, and got knocked off because of it more than likely.”

  “Discrimination against the coloureds —” This was in the London Borough of Camden.

  “Racism, do what you like if they aren’t white.”

  “Fuzz always takes bribes, stands to reason.”

  It was all quite unreasoning, but as had been remarked in Kenwood’s hearing more than once, where there was smoke there was fire.

  “A damn stupid thing to say,” Hedge said furiously.

  “I quite agree, sir, but people say it. And they’re saying it all right. We can’t win, sir, we never can.”

  “Any other sort of talk … personal, say, to Mr Shard?”

  “Only what I’ve reported, sir.”

  Hedge nodded. “All right, Kenwood, thank you.” He sat on in thought after Kenwood had gone. The pubs — the common people. It would be a nine-days’ wonder unless it was stirred up again. (That was what Hedge hoped, anyway. If there were more explosions there might be a reaction, confidence lost in the authorities.) But in the corridors of power other things were being said, certainly not by responsible people such as the Permanent Under-Secretary and his ilk, but by members of parliament, some of whom could have axes to grind. Some of them had talked to Hedge and asked questions: was it the fact that Shard had, as it were, defected? Were secrets being passed? And again the hint: where there was smoke … mothers-in-law might be very ill advised to talk to the press, but they were often in possession of secrets themselves. If Shard was really in cahoots … Hedge reacted angrily and in defence of his department, but he had been forced to advise the Permanent Under-Secretary that there was a very restive air around Westminster. And the clubs were seething with rumours. Perhaps it was time a statement was issued?

  “Not at this stage,” Sir Edmund had said.

  “But really, I think —”

  “No, Hedge. We’ve far too few facts to go on. Also, I don’t want to play into the hands of these people. I don’t want authority to be seen to be rattled. And another thing: we still have no idea as to who our adversaries really are. We have one Arab, one Korean girl, and three Irishmen if you count the two in Dublin. So, for now, the less said the better. We must wait upon events for a while, Hedge. We must see which way the cat jumps.”

  But the cat seemed to be in no hurry, or if it was then its jump was being made under excellent cover. Hedge felt as though he were on the brink of a precipice, or moving about on an earthquake that might suddenly swallow him up. All those blocked avenues! The dead couldn’t talk, and Hedge would so much have liked to know more about the bribery of Shard, the alleged bribery that was. If only he could get at the reason for it … he was beginning to think it could even in some twisted way be aimed at himself via his department. Discredit one of his top men and you discredited him as well. There was a saying that rot began at the top and worked down. If that should prove to be so, then there loomed the threat of premature retirement, honourless and with an inadequate pension.

  Hedge cast about in his mind for enemies. He had made a number during his time in the Foreign Office but apart from the mutual dislike he had to concede that they were very decent people — gentlemen, not the sort who would do anything dastardly behind his back.

  *

  In his new location, Shard still had no idea where he was other than that, because they had been in traffic, it was a certain enough guess that he was in a town and probably a large one. The traffic crawl had lasted right through to their final stop and there had been city sounds all about him. When they did stop it was in a garage, an integral one from which he was carried with the blindfold removed into the kitchen area of a house. Then into a room furnished with a bed and a bare mattress, a small room with a barred window like in his last habitat, and looking out onto a wall, this time brick not stone. Once again the effect of the injection was starting to wear off and he could make independent movements, small ones to begin with. The men looked down at him and the bearded man advised him to get some sleep because they might not be there long. Behind the two men Shard saw another man hovering, a small man with a yellowish skin, a look of the Far East. Nothing more was said and all three went away, locking the door behind them. Traffic sounds came to Shard, muffled but not too distant. They were not far from a busy road. A little later there was a smell of cooking, not very good cooking, greasy, and the smell was the horrible stench Shard associated with hamburger stalls.

  Hamburgers it was. Two were brought to Shard on a cold plate, a mess, with chips and peas, already congealing. This was brought by a woman, guarded by the bearded man with a gun, and Shard’s wrists were freed from the handcuffs while he ate. The woman stood watching; she was young, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt advertising CND. The bearded man, even when on guard duty, couldn’t keep his hands off her. Fondling, though keeping his eyes on Shard, he spoke into her ear.

  “Tack’s a lucky bastard.”

  “He’s not here,” she said, giggling a little.

  “Ah, that’s true enough.” The bearded man’s face suffused with anticipation but no more was said. Shard finished his meal and surprisingly felt better for it. The girl went out, came back with a glass of water. Neither of them spoke to Shard. When he’d drunk the water the glass was removed and they left. Soon after this the girl came back in and handed a newspaper to Shard. It was a national daily, no local clues, that morning’s paper. For some reason or other, maybe neglect of duty but maybe because it didn’t matter, the handcuffs had not been replaced and Shard was able to read without difficulty. He was featured as expected. An intriguing mystery … total disappearance, but linked with the sick passenger off the train from Glasgow. It was not specifically suggested that Ho Suzy’s unborn child was Shard’s, but the juxtapositioning of the guesswork couldn’t have left many people without that impression and Shard, although he had been warned, seethed afresh. There had been nothing further from Mrs Micklem but it was reported that she had been called, along with Shard’s wife, to the Foreign Office. In his imagination, Shard relished the scene. But didn’t relish what he knew would be happening around his home; siege by the press, reporters and came
ramen snooping everywhere Beth went. He also read the guarded, more responsible editorial reactions. The Foreign Office was coming in for some stick. Like Hedge, Shard thought it was time some official statement was issued …

  Beyond the door, from the hall, a telephone rang. It didn’t ring for long. Shard heard heavy footsteps and then the Irish tones of the bearded man, answering.

  “Hullo. Yes, it’s Tim O’Carse.” (Or it could have been Tim of course.) “Yes, we got here an hour or so. Yes. No, no, we’ve not questioned him at all yet … I’ve been waiting for more — yes.” There was a lengthy silence from the bearded man, then a sound of annoyance, even anger. “What? You —” Another pause, then: “Ach, very well then, we’ll come.”

  The receiver was crashed down, a show of temper — or disappointment. Tim spoke to the girl. “We have to go, it’s your bloody …” A door banged and the voice was lost to Shard, who was left wondering. Inside the next minute his door was opened and the grey-suited man entered with the handcuffs, which he slipped onto Shard’s wrists again while Tim stood in the doorway with his gun, looking angry enough to use it the moment he thought he needed to.

  They left him, locking the door again. A few moments later he heard footsteps in the hall followed by the slamming of the garage door and the sound of the car starting up.

  He listened for more sounds. None came. The house was silent, had a deserted feel, but he knew it wouldn’t be deserted. The girl and the yellow-skinned man would be there still, was his guess.

  *

  During the night Hedge was called from his bed: Detective Inspector Orwin, on duty in the security section, had had an urgent call from Defence Ministry —

  “What is it?” Hedge demanded, sounding panicky. “Faslane, sir —”

  “Again?”