Shard at Bay

by Philip McCutchan

  There were quite a few people about but they thinned out as Shard approached the road where the house was. The safe house of Detachment X, but it wouldn’t be for much longer. A police mobile cruised past, seemed to slow a little as it came up by Shard and he had a feeling he was being scrutinised, but the mobile didn’t stop. He had happened to be in some shadow, between two street lights and the moon temporarily cut off by a high rise building. Lucky: the local coppers would be, like all coppers everywhere, on the lookout for Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Shard, suspended from duty and now vanished. How dirt could stick! Probably half the force believed he’d taken bribes. He felt more and more unclean: to be shrinking away from a mobile, it was the end. And he had to admit that the fact he’d vanished after a killing wasn’t doing him any good at all. During the long day in the strip joint, Guts Flambardier had come along to tell him he was being a fool. Flambardier had been genuinely concerned.

  “You should report, Mr Shard,” he’d said. “Tell the Yard, leave it up to them.”

  He wouldn’t. Maybe he was just obstinate, maybe his powers of judgment had gone for a burton, the result of the stigma of suspension, of the sheer nastiness of the faked-up charge against him, which still stood in fact because it had to. Police routines were rigid. Shard had begun to feel for the criminal, or anyway the innocents who got themselves landed with a charge they knew to be false. It had always got him in the guts, like a twisting knife, when a man eventually proved his innocence after some years in gaol. All the wasted, frustrated years, the grating injustice. It would, in his case, drive him to madness he felt sure. However, the principal, indeed really the only, reason he wouldn’t report was what he’d already told Flambardier: his first thought now was for Beth. The men of Detachment X had to be fanatics; they wouldn’t hesitate to kill a hostage if they saw the fuzz closing in, a hostage who might already have learned too much and whose evidence had to be silenced for the benefit of the rest of the iceberg of which O’Carse and Tack and the others were almost certainly just the tip.

  Something like that …

  Flambardier had seen the determination and had given up. Now, in Grays, on his own, Shard was facing the practical difficulties. He had to remain unseen, he had to penetrate the house quietly after he’d sussed out it and its surroundings. Not an easy thing to do. For one thing Grays wasn’t quite asleep yet. He looked down the road, the one he had to penetrate: there was light showing from most of the houses, which were all detached and standing in their own grounds — not large, but one of the good roads in Grays. Not all that good; they’d seen better days, gone down in the world, perhaps a result of the withdrawal of the liner companies from Tilbury. There were bangers parked in the driveways of the nearer houses, and motor-bicycles. There was, Shard found as he drifted along the road, almost an air of a council estate. The house he sought was at the far end.

  He turned and walked back again, going instead into the next road now that he’d had a preliminary recce of the target road itself. He moved on, normal walking pace: a lingerer could be an object of suspicion. From beside him there was a scuffle, a sound of anger and fright, and a spitting cat sped across the roadway pursued by a dog that now started a frenzied barking. The cat vanished into a garden, darting through a hedge, and the dog was brought up short by an iron gate, and yelped. From a house a little ahead of Shard a front door opened and the dog’s owner came down the short drive.

  “Endersby! Bad dog, Endersby. Come here.”

  Endersby, some name for a dog. Anyway, Endersby came back surlily, the cat having gone beyond his capabilities. Beneath a street light, Endersby’s owner caught Shard’s eye and grinned.

  “Bane of my life, that dog.”

  “Dogs will be dogs, when there’s a cat.”

  “That’s right. Good night to you.”

  “Good night,” Shard answered. Endersby had just missed fame: dog of the man who might have recognised Shard and reported to the police. That was the way things happened sometimes: dog chases cat and bowls out villain. But the man had been totally unaware.

  Shard moved on. When he reached the end of the road he would need to shift round to the target road to identify the house. After that, ingress to the back garden. He’d noted a service alley of a kind, more of a beaten track really, between the roads. It shouldn’t be too difficult; he wasn’t necessarily looking for a fight. What he wanted was to suss the place, learn all he could, and then contact the local police and insist on going in with them to ensure Beth’s safety.

  *

  That same afternoon, allowing no grass to grow, Hesseltine with Home Office backing had got things moving vis-à-vis the Dartford Tunnel and the route of the four coaches from Harwich. There would be a police escort which would break away a little south of the tunnel exit. The tunnel itself had had a preliminary check and so far all was well. From now on until the Common Market party had passed through there would be a police watch, mounted by plain clothes men at both ends of the tunnel. And the carriageways would be under continual monitoring by the military, also in plain clothes, the bomb squad from the Ordnance Corps keeping guard with their detector apparatus. Once all this was in train, Hesseltine relaxed on that score. If Detachment X had designs on those children, they wouldn’t succeed in the Dartford Tunnel. Of course, there were other places — almost anywhere in fact — but none so tailored for nastiness as the enclosed stretch of the tunnel. A check on the route of the coaches showed nothing similar. No more tunnels. Going north ultimately, they were to head through Newcastle itself which meant they wouldn’t go through the Tyne Tunnel. After that Scotland — no tunnels, but some bridges. That wasn’t the same thing at all. But the bridges would be watched. It was possible — not easy, but possible — for armed men to seal both ends of a bridge and hold coaches in the middle. No chances would be taken. But they could be barking up the wrong tree. Hesseltine wondered if he was guilty of a bee in his bonnet about those children, overdoing it. Too much concentration on a mere idea that wasn’t even a hunch.

  The Head of Security had put a call through to Hedge in Faslane, keeping him in the picture. Hedge had pooh-poohed the notion. Typical of Hesseltine, he said.

  “How d’you mean, Hedge?”

  “Tangential thinking. He allows his mind to … to dart about —”

  “Better than mental constipation, I’d say. But I’m not committed to his ideas. We’re by no means neglecting the defence side. How are things on the Gareloch?”

  “Quiet,” Hedge said.

  “Keep in touch.” The Head of Security rang off, and Hedge shook his head in wonderment. Children! Really not at all likely, though if anything did happen to them it would bring the whole show very much within the scope of the Foreign Office, the name of which would be mud and very unfairly so, since it would be a purely police matter to protect coach parties. But the Foreign Office would incur the opprobrium since the children were foreign. Although Hedge, having racked his brains in the few moments after taking the telephone call, could remember nothing about the visit being brought to his notice, he knew that it must have been submitted to the Foreign Office, and that the Foreign Office must have given the whole tour its blessing. Hedge brought out his handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead and cheeks, which were shiny with sweat. It was so hot. So hot that he could almost fancy the heat was drawing extra smell from the peace camp and its inhabitants. On the phone, his boss had spoken of demands possibly being made, the hostage element … had Hedge any ideas on that? Hedge had not; he thought about it as he emerged into the open, risking the stench, making for the room that had been allocated to him — he felt in need of a rest on his bed. What demands? Nothing very substantial occurred to Hedge. Oh, of course, in a general way, defence. Detachment X Against The Holocaust? Well, yes … they might demand the dismantling of the nuclear bases, all of them, but that was scarcely a practicable possibility. It would take months to dismantle everything even if there was surrender on the part of government, and no ter
rorist could keep four coaches sealed up that long. A promise? But promises could be broken, and would be the moment the coaches were driven out.

  No. It wasn’t on at all. As he’d said — typical Hesseltine and Yard thinking. The EEC party was safe enough and he, Hedge, was at the sharp end as usual. He was convinced that something dreadful was going to happen at Faslane. And he believed the Head thought so too. And Pippin. He was really quite flattered at the trust being reposed in him. His ego was assaulted only by the presence of Hocking.

  Then all of a sudden he recalled something, and recalled it with a flutter of his heart: there had been a submission of some sort about a party from the EEC, though he couldn’t recall anything about children, and he’d dictated a memo about it to Miss Fleece, scarcely giving it a thought at the time. It hadn’t seemed at all important; it had been a long time before the advent of Detachment X in any case. Hedge screwed up his eyes and thought frantically back. He hadn’t even passed it to the Head, he seemed to remember. If only he had Miss Fleece with him. There had been something about a guarantee of safety, a sheer formality of course, but …

  Oh, dear. It couldn’t be the children, surely? But if it was, then that submission and that memo would come to light and it all bore his initials. He would be stuck with it, and it would hurt.

  *

  The recce round the front of the house had established for Shard which back gate from the service alley would connect. He moved back into the service alley. Three rear gates from the bottom he stopped and eased the gate open. No sound. And now no moon. Cloud had drifted up: heavy cloud. The weather could be breaking. Cautiously Shard moved through an overgrown garden. Shrubs, brambles, long grass, unkempt hedges round the perimeter and another cat. The cat hissed and moved astern, then took off at speed. Thank God there was no Endersby. Shard moved towards a light, glowing red behind a thin curtain. There had been no light in the front of the house. If he was going to pick anything up, then the lit window was the place for eavesdropping. The night was hot, sultry — thunderstorms around? The window might be open.

  There was no guard. Shard hadn’t expected one. They wouldn’t see the need. There was a lot of anonymity; you didn’t expect international terrorism to shack up in Grays, Essex. Grays was a very unlikely core of earth-shaking events. And you didn’t destroy your anonymity by a parade of guard dogs and gun-toting toughs.

  It was a longish garden — long and the width of the house and garage. Shard’s approach was very quiet. No more than an occasional crackle from the undergrowth. He got right up to the window, stepping onto a neglected flower bed and flattening his body against a brick wall. The window was, as he had hoped, open a little way at the top but he was unable to hear any conversation. The light was on still and Shard found a small field of vision where the curtain had been pulled away a fraction from the side. He couldn’t see anything and he fancied the room might be empty. Then a man moved into his sight. A bearded man whom he recognised as the Irishman O’Carse. And O’Carse — there was no doubt it was him — was wearing police uniform, that of a chief inspector. He was visible for some thirty seconds and then he moved away. The house remained quiet. Was Beth there? Currently Shard could see no way of finding out short of an entry. Anger mounted in him; for a moment of madness he thought of crashing through the window, throwing O’Carse into confusion, and then blundering about in a frantic search for Beth. And it would be blundering about, and not for long either. He couldn’t assume O’Carse was on his own.

  There was only one thing: wait a little longer and hope to overhear some talk, then beat it fast for the police and rely on them listening to a suspended officer, and heeding that officer’s demand that he should lead the squad that went in, because his wife was, or might be, in there with the villains.

  The light remained on: Shard waited. After what seemed like half the night there was movement again in the room. Two men now, two men talking. There was a reference to a woman, no name mentioned. Beth? That apart, the conversation, so far as Shard could pick it up, was uninteresting, irrelevant, no more than chit-chat. It could be he was wasting time, but he was kept there by the possibility of Beth, so near and yet so far, a cliché that really meant something now.

  There was a drop of rain and quite suddenly the temperature had dropped too. A light wind came up, eddying round the house. Within little more than half a minute the rain was coming down fast, lashing at Shard against the wall. From the middle distance a rumble of thunder followed some brief summer lightning. Then the light in the room went out, the curtains were pulled back, and the window was thrown up from the bottom. Shard moved a little farther away.

  A man leaned out. Shard couldn’t see him very well, close as he was, but the build was that of the man from Glasgow Central, the man in the grey suit.

  The man said, “It’s a soaker, Tim. A real soaker.”

  Shard scarcely breathed. He hadn’t been seen, but the man was still looking out of the window, leaning out, not minding the rain evidently. It had been a long, hot summer and rain was pleasant. That was when the next lightning came, accompanied by its heavy roll of thunder, now very close. The lightning, summer lightning again, lit the garden like day and held it for some seconds. Shard was clearly outlined against the wall, like a pinned butterfly.

  15

  Blakey had seen him, and reacted fast, calling out to the Irishman in the police uniform. Both men were through the window in a flash. In the instant he knew he’d been seen, Shard had made for the party wall dividing the gardens to his right. A hedge, as unkempt as the rest of the garden, grew against the wall. That didn’t help. Shard was heaving himself over the wall when a hard grip went around his legs and he was yanked backwards, dragged through the hedge as his handhold was pulled from the wall. He fell on his face, hitting gravel. Before he could utter he was dragged up again and O’Carse sent a fist crashing against his jaw. Another blow; then he sagged dizzily until he was put right out by the barrel of a heavy revolver coming down on his temple.

  He came to with a dry mouth, a bloodied face, a pounding head and feeling sick. He was on the floor in a barely furnished room; and men were looking down at him. O’Carse, Blakey, a Middle Eastern person unknown to him, and an equally unknown fourth man — Tack.

  “Welcome back,” O’Carse said, grinning. But the grin wasn’t meant to show humour and it quickly vanished. O’Carse squatted on his haunches and stared into Shard’s face. In his hand was a cosh, pliant and heavy. He said, “You’re going to answer some questions. If you don’t, you get this. First question: how did you get on to this address?”

  Shard gave no answer. O’Carse repeated the question and then struck with the cosh. Lightly: it didn’t have to be hard and it hurt wickedly, taking Shard’s temple where the gun-barrel had hit and left a discolouring lump. The room seemed to lift and move around him.

  “Now,” O’Carse said. “Spill it, right? Or else.”

  “It’ll have to be else,” Shard said. Again the cosh came down. The sick feeling mounted. Shard said, “Contacts.”

  “Sure. Which?”

  “Anonymous. A grass. Phone call. That’s all I know.”

  “A suspended copper?”

  “That’s not necessarily known widely.”

  “All right, so you had a tip-off. What else were you told?”

  “Nothing else. What about my wife?”

  O’Carse made a coarse remark, looking savage, but wasn’t giving anything away about Beth. He asked, “How far did this tip-off go? Who else got it?”

  Shard said, “I don’t know. It could have been only me. On the other hand it might not.”

  “But you didn’t pass it on yourself.”

  “No,” Shard said, it being the only thing he could say. If he’d passed it on, he wouldn’t have come in on his own. O’Carse obviously knew that. But O’Carse could be left in the air all the same, not knowing if the word about his safe house had spread or would be spreading. And it was clear enough to Shard that O’
Carse was worried: a decision had to be made, get out quick or stay. Not an easy decision for anyone to make; villains never liked being forced out of HQ before they were ready. It tended to throw off the details of the organisation, upset the fine balance of the plans. Whatever they might be: for what it was now worth, Shard might be able to find out.

  He sensed irresolution in the air as O’Carse tried to reach his decision. For now, there was no further use of the cosh, though O’Carse was swiping it against his free hand as though it might be brought into play again at any moment. Shard made an attempt at probing on his own account.

  He asked, “What did you want me for in the first place?” He added, “Back on the Inter-City from Glasgow. Why?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Shard persisted. “When you lost me, you went for my wife instead … to use her as bait to get me back, perhaps. From which I assume you have a use for me. I find that reassuring.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it seems to tell me you want me alive.”

  O’Carse said, “I wouldn’t bank on it, Mr Shard.” He paced the room, pulling at his beard. He was distinctly uneasy but there were no more questions. He would see no point: the fact of Shard having come to the house was enough to be going on with. Meanwhile Shard thought about that police uniform, which was now off. A trying-on session was what it had been, probably. So somewhere along the line there was to be impersonation, possibly some police officers marked down for killing, with O’Carse and his mob taking their places. Where? That was the big question. In many ways Detachment X had it made already. Or would have had if he hadn’t turned up in Grays to throw a spanner in the works.