Shard at Bay

by Philip McCutchan

  “Tack won’t be lingering, sir.”

  “No, probably not, but it’s something. Now here’s the important thing, Orwin. This girl doesn’t appear to know their forward planning but she believes they came south with intent — that it’s in the south they go into action. That was to some degree corroborated in Mr Shard’s report, of course — Devon-port, Portsmouth, Salisbury Plain — oh, and Catterick.” Hedge drummed his fingers. “Catterick’s north.”

  “Yes, sir. But Mr Shard did say the military establishments were a blind.”

  “Yes, quite. I was about to say that — I do know what was in his report, Orwin.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Now there’s something else and it’s much less helpful I’m sorry to say, very sorry indeed. It’s this alleged bribery business, Orwin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The girl confirms it. She says Mr Shard was taking bribes. She’s quite positive. She says he was in the habit of visiting this man Tack when she was there with him. Chapter and verse …”

  “But you don’t believe it, sir,” Orwin said firmly.

  “Me?” Hedge looked up. “No, no, of course I don’t. But it doesn’t make things any easier.”

  “It doesn’t, sir.”

  Hedge blew out his cheeks and sat back from his desk at full arms’ stretch. “We have a good deal of thinking to do, Orwin. We have to get inside the minds of these men. Detachment X … Against The Holocaust. Well, we know that’s rubbish now, a mere blind as Shard said.” Orwin had the idea Hedge was going into repetition rather like the man who forgets what he was about to say next and goes back a stage or two to get his bearings. Hedge went on, “We have to try to get there before them as it were, Orwin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, have you got any ideas to offer? I mean as to a target, don’t you know.”

  Orwin shrugged. His mind was a blank and he said so. “It could be anywhere, literally.”

  “Neither us nor the police — nor Defence Ministry — can guard everywhere, Orwin. We must narrow down. Let me offer a few suggestions: Parliament, the Palace — the PM even. Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s …” Hedge rambled on; he had many suggestions to make, some sensible, others less so. “Just to make you think, really, Orwin. Stir the imagination …”

  Orwin got to his feet; it might be churlish, but he was a busy man. He had lines of his own to investigate, lines that at this stage he didn’t want to talk about to Hedge. If you once put something to Hedge, however tentative it might be, he nagged away at it and wasted time and temper. Orwin went down to his section and put a call through to the Yard. Tack, he was told, had flown from the address given by the girl but the flat above the sex shop was under observation. There had been no further talking and so far no leads to Tim O’Carse or the man known as Blakey. The Yard hadn’t yet got to the end of all the Blakes, but of course ‘Blakey’ could be just a nickname. Orwin then called Shard’s home number, keeping him in the picture of events.

  *

  Tack had gone away soon after an expected telephone call had failed to come through from the house off the North Circular; that failure in communications had prompted Tack to drive past the house and he had seen police activity around it. That had caused him alarm and he hadn’t returned home since. He had avoided all his contacts, just in case. After driving past the house he had gone on to pick up the A1 at Mill Hill and had then pulled into a lay-by to do some thinking. Having thought, he drove on until in South Mimms he found a telephone box from which he called a number in Grays, Essex. It should be safe enough; and there was just a possibility that the grapevine had picked up some news.

  It had. It had picked up more than news. No names were mentioned but the instrument at the Grays end, answered by Blakey, was handed over to the bearded Irishman Tim. All Tim would say, and Tack didn’t press for more, was, “Get here pronto.”

  Orders were obeyed. When Tack, an hour or so later after a mix of fast driving and traffic delays, was sitting in the Grays house he learned that his girl had been taken by the fuzz and Shard had got away. Tack reacted badly about the girl but was told to hold his horses by Tim O’Carse.

  “You knew the risks.”

  “Right, I did. But I never thought —”

  “Well, now, it’s happened. It needn’t be too bad for us. She’ll be questioned, naturally, but she doesn’t know a lot, remember.” O’Carse paused, staring at Tack. “That is, not unless you told her anything you shouldn’t. Did you now?”

  “No,” Tack said uneasily. “Course I didn’t, not a thing, only what she needed to know, and like you just said, that wasn’t much.”

  O’Carse nodded. “Right, then. I’m not worried. And I doubt if they’ll find much to charge her with. They just may let her go … like they did Ho Suzy. Just may, if they don’t get what they want by questioning.”

  “They’ll put a tail on her,” Tack said, still uneasy.

  “That’s to be expected. But she doesn’t know this address. She’ll lead them only to yours — which you’ll not be visiting again. Is there anything there?”

  Tack knew what he meant by ‘anything there.’ He said, “No. It’s clean. You know I never —”

  “Just checking. You remain here, Tack.”

  “What about Tracy?” Tack asked in reference to the girl. “Where’ll she go?”

  O’Carse grinned and scratched at his beard. “She’ll be out on a limb, Tack. Homeless — no help to the fuzz at all. And we don’t need her any more.” He spread big, hairy-backed hands in a wide gesture. “Afterwards, we’ll pick her up again. That’s a promise. In the meantime you’ll obey orders. From now on until we’re ready, no-one leaves this house.”

  *

  Later that morning there was a conference. Tim, Tack and the grey-suited Blakey attended it, together with the occupier of the Grays house, a man named Mussuq from one of the Gulf states, a man who, if ever he returned to his own country, would face death. Mussuq made no contribution to the conference, he was merely the provider of a safe house. Also present were four men who had come in singly at spaced intervals. Hard-faced men all of them, and all with Irish accents. Two of them were in working clothes and both were HGV drivers, expert handlers, by their own estimation, of artics and container lorries, very tough knights of the road; the other two were equally tough but were not lorry drivers. They had served in the British Army and they were the gun experts, trained marksmen as good as anything the police could provide. Blakey attended this conference with an outfit of road atlases and Ordnance Survey maps. There was a discussion that had the feel of a final going over, a last check that they’d got everything right, no snags, nothing left uncovered, every possible contingency thought of. This was going to be big — that was very much in the air. Something else, when the maps had been put away, also needed a last check.

  One of the ex-army men got to his feet. “I’d like to see the stuff again,” he said. “Just to be sure.”

  “That’s okay,” O’Carse said. He went out of the room with the other man and opened the door of a big cupboard beneath the stairs. This was the armoury, totally unsuspected in its ordinary, day-to-day surroundings. Grays, Essex — dull but respectable and very handy for London. A workaday place where none of the men except Mussuq himself — and he had been accepted by now, after a residence of ten years or so — would ever be likely to be remarked upon. The armoury contained automatic rifles, Chief’s Special revolvers, Colt .45 automatics and a number of detonators, currently safe, which could be activated by remote control.

  The ex-soldier looked around, poked about, seemed satisfied, but asked, “Where’s the police gear? I thought you were going to have it brought here.”

  “I am. Not yet, though. Time’s not that short — and we still can’t be sure what Shard found out.”

  10

  The press had been a little restrained but not silenced; far from that. It was known by now that Detective Chief Superintendent Shard had been suspen
ded from duty pending full investigation of the alleged bribes. The press was in fact being cautious about Shard, simply stating the facts. But there was speculation about what was going on in the Establishment and what the implication of the bribes might be. A house in northwest London had been raided by the police after a man had been shot, and it was after that that Shard had reported back. And a girl had been taken into custody but not so far charged with any offence, which was odd.

  What was going on?

  Faslane, the dying man at Millbank, the explosion in the New Forest near Southampton, Faslane again — it hadn’t taken the Scottish newspapers long to get hold of that. Defence Ministry was saying nothing. They had put up a spokesman to say that. And Shard, of course, was a very special policeman attached to the Foreign Office …

  There was dirt around, and a conspiracy on the part of the Establishment to keep quiet. It was the duty of the press to dig. The public had to be held safe from danger, and there was a feeling of danger around London. The press skated round the point that the feeling was largely engendered by themselves; most Londoners were phlegmatic enough and went about their daily chores unheeding. If a high-ranking police officer took bribes, so what? That was his affair, and that of the police themselves. Explosions? Good grief, they were always happening these days! You took your chance, you took your life in your hands perhaps if you stopped to think about it, but then you didn’t stop to think about it because if you did you would never go out at all. You’d starve in safety.

  Then the thing started to become political.

  There was always a politician around to stir things up his way or that of his party upon whom his career depended. The Opposition asked questions in the House. Could the Prime Minister give an assurance that there was no danger to security in the lapse of Detective Chief Superintendent Shard from the normally high standards of the Metropolitan Police? No, the Prime Minister could obviously not, pending the putting together of the results of an inquiry; but the honourable member who had asked the question should remember that Mr Shard had denied the allegations and there was no proof that he had lapsed in any degree. Ah — but he’d been suspended from duty, hadn’t he?

  “A routine measure,” the PM said acidly. “May I make the point that if there had been no suspension in the circumstances, then the honourable member would be complaining on that account?”

  There was a certain amount of uproar and cat-calling and a member was heard to shout out that the whole thing was a disgrace and reflected badly on all concerned and that there was a question now of public security being at immediate risk. Later the Prime Minister made it plain that extra security precautions were being taken in all military and naval establishments and there was no cause for alarm. When a minister passed a scrap of paper, and the PM read the message about Shard’s report, there was something of a dither but the PM issued no correction to the statement on defence establishments or indeed any further comment. The matter was closed. In any case, what Shard had reported about the attacks on the defence establishments being merely a blind was certainly not up for discussion in the House.

  Despite the efforts of the Opposition to raise the temperature, the BBC news broadcasts were vaguely soporific: there was nothing to worry about after all and the government was doing all that was necessary. This blandness was not so apparent in the US Embassy and Hedge was once again put under verbal pressure by Mr Taft, who demanded audience.

  “It’s not good enough. Your man’s under suspicion — okay, I accept that he’s out of circulation. But what damage has been done already?”

  Hedge said, “None, so far as I know.”

  Taft pounced on that. “So far as you know. But how much do you know, Mr Hedge?” When there was no answer, he went further. “Are you certain your man didn’t reveal any secrets when he was being held by these people — that is, making the assumption he was in fact innocent of accepting bribes, are you certain he didn’t succumb to pressure —”

  Hedge interrupted frostily. “I have every confidence that Shard would have done no such thing.”

  The American’s face said clearly that he didn’t have the same confidence at all. The British were still too inclined to evaluate persons on an old-fashioned basis, a basis of trust and personal knowledge. Oh, sure they went in for screening, but once a man had been screened and passed okay he became one of the chaps and could get away with murder. There had been so many instances of that. And Taft didn’t accept that Detachment X was now believed not to have any military target in mind: there were blinds and blinds. And sometimes a blind could itself be a blind. Mr Taft talked on around this point until Hedge scarcely knew whether he was coming or going. The Americans, he had always thought, had curious minds. It was also very plain that Taft was thinking the same thing about the British. Anyway, after Taft had gone back to Grosvenor Square, Hedge began to believe he could be right: Shard could have been fed — or could have found in that house on the North Circular — some intentionally-laid false trail. Perhaps that was why he had been kidnapped and let go. Perhaps it was just as well that all the defence establishments had been put on an alert and the security strengthened. There would be no diminution of that and never mind Shard’s report.

  *

  Shard said, “I’m going out. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t worry about me.”

  Beth asked, “Where are you going?” She had her arms full of dirty washing, bound for the washing machine. There had been something in Simon’s tone that said he wasn’t just going for a walk. “Or don’t you want to say?”

  “The old patch,” he said. That was all; he kissed her and left. He walked along to the tube station and caught a train going south, changed for Leicester Square where he got out and walked through to Soho. Once, back in his Yard days as a DI, Soho had been his patch. Not all that long ago; and he still had plenty of contacts, useful people who kept their ears to the ground and didn’t mind earning a bit of tax-free cash now and again. What he proposed doing held its dangers for a suspended officer but the risk could be worth while. He pushed through the crowds, the mix of white and coloureds and Chinese, the prostitutes both male and female … even prostitution had changed these days, had largely lost its honesty. Return a girl’s look and you were already half-way to losing a sizeable amount of cash. Fifty quid, she would say, and here’s the key of my flat, see you there in fifteen minutes. That was the last you saw of her, the flat didn’t exist and she had plenty more keys all cut for a few pence. Today they were well in evidence, all ages from sixteen to an unbelievable sixty. Some of the older ones recognised him and kept clear, turned up side streets or into shop doorways when they saw him coming along. Others tried it on and got a brush-off. He watched the respectable business men, umbrellas, city suits, brief cases, giving quick looks over their shoulders as they entered the massage parlours or the strip joints before catching their trains home. Soho appealed to a whole spectrum who found home life dull and matrimonial sex savourless. It would probably never be eradicated and Shard hoped it wouldn’t; massage parlours and prostitutes provided a safety valve, or the honest ones did. Get rid of them and the floodgates of sexual crime might open. Besides, Soho was always useful to the police, a handy concentration of vice, criminals of all sorts, and grasses.

  Shard went into a strip show. Or rather, its ‘front’. He knew the routine: a girl at a desk would relieve him of twenty quid and give him a piece of card, which he would take to another address as an introduction, and at this second address, if he wasn’t sent to a third, he would pay over more cash — or use a credit card if he hadn’t the cash, they were all on Barclay-card or Access or American Express and so on — before he was allowed to see so much as a bare leg. It was all reciprocal: other ‘fronts’ sent the punters here to this one. But Shard wasn’t going through all that. He knew the girl and she knew him.

  She smiled and said, “Hi, Mr Shard. Haven’t seen you in ages.”

  “No. How’s life, Mandy?”

&nbs
p; “Life’s okay — I s’pose. I take it you’re not here as a punter, are you?”

  Shard grimaced. “Hardly.”

  “Duty, then? What we done now?”

  He waved an arm around. “This. But all right — it’s legal the way you play it and suckers have only themselves to blame. But I’m not strictly on duty.”

  She nodded, looking sympathetic. “I did hear.”

  “I thought you just might.” Soho was full of ears and it never took long for police news to penetrate. It paid for the shadier operators to know as many police facts as they could get hold of. “But don’t believe all you hear.”

  “Mean you’re not —”

  “No further comment, Mandy. Except that my business is — well, call it personal. And I know you can keep your mouth shut, Mandy. When it suits you.”

  “That’s right,” she said, dimpling. She was a pretty girl, tall, slim, sexy, and she didn’t spend all her time at the pay desk. Now and again she stood in for a stripper, pranced and pirouetted and bent down in front of the heavy-breathing punters drinking it all in and thinking their own thoughts or fantasies as they stared wide-eyed from the gloom of the small auditorium.

  Shard counted out five tens and they vanished as if by magic. Fifty accepted said positively you could trust Mandy: she wouldn’t talk about Shard’s visit. She asked, “Well?”

  “Is the boss in?”

  “Yep. Upstairs.”

  “I’d like a word. Tell him it’s purely personal. He’ll understand.”