Pursuit of Arms

by Gerald Hammond

  “I will suggest it. Good morning.”

  “Wait a minute,” Keith said. But Mr Smithers had rung off. “I was only joking,” Keith told the bedside clock. God, was that the time?”

  Keith was finishing a hasty breakfast when there was a ring at the door. “It will be for you,” Molly said.

  “Not necessarily,” Keith said, but he went to the door. There was a car in the drive and on the doorstep a tall man in a macintosh, hat in hand.

  “Mr Calder?” he said. “I’m from the Glasgow Post, covering the arms hijack and murders. My paper would pay handsomely for a tip-off on the whereabouts of the guns or the criminals.”

  “If I knew anything like that, I’d tell the police,” Keith said. He had had some experience of reporters, and this man was too well-dressed and too urbane. “How do I know you’re a reporter?”

  “If you’re in any doubt, you could phone my editor. But whoever I am, I can still make it worth your while to give me your story. Do you have any idea as to where they might be hiding? Or where they got their information?”

  Keith decided that an evasive answer was called for. “Fuck off,” he said, and slammed the door.

  Ignoring repeated ringing of the doorbell, he picked two envelopes off the mat and carried them back to the kitchen. Each was addressed by hand and unstamped.

  “Who was it?” Molly asked.

  “One of the foreign spies, I think,” Keith said. “Just ignore him.”

  One of the envelopes was addressed to ‘Mr and Mrs Calder’, so he passed it to Molly as he sat down. Molly often complained that she rarely received letters, forgetting that she never wrote any. The other envelope, grubby and addressed to himself in a barely literate hand, he slit open.

  It was from Dougie Scott.

  I did what you said and asked round. The only chiel round here as been seen meeting strangers a lot lately was Ian Skinner they call him Pig you’ll mind he did 3 out of 7 for G.B.H. in Glasgow. He was seen sevral times meeting a man in the lay-by on the main road, same man diffrent car each time, may have been more often of course.

  Other thing is he hasn’t been seen round for a few days. I dont like it Im getting out back when this is over. If Ive helped rememember your promis.

  D.S.

  Scott evidently believed that Ian Skinner had helped Joyce’s Boys and had been put down for his trouble. But Keith knew Skinner by sight and by reputation. He had seen the squat figure, with its ill-matched brown hair and yellow beard, within the last day or two. Had Skinner not been in the square when Deborah was examining cars the day before?

  Keith looked up, frowning, and opened his mouth to make some comment. The sight of Molly drove all other thoughts from his mind. She looked, suddenly, ten years older. She had turned the colour of dirty snow and was leaning against the table as if about to collapse. A moment later, indeed, she dropped into a chair and curled almost into a foetal position, her arms crossed over her breasts and her head on her knees.

  His first thought was that she was having a heart attack. He jumped to his feet and put a hand on her shoulders in case she had fainted altogether. The note which she had been reading was lying on the table beside a scrap of ribbon. He snatched it up with his other hand. It was clumsily printed in block capitals with a left-hand slope.

  *

  IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR DAUGHTER AGAIN IN ONE PIECE INSTEAD OF A LOT OF LITTLE BITS, STOP NOSEY PARKERING. CALL OFF ALL YOUR SPIES AND SAY NOTHING TO THE POLICE. ANY MORE ENQUIRIES AND WE’LL POST HER BACK TO YOU ONE PIECE AT A TIME, NOSE FIRST.

  IF YOU’RE GOOD, WE MAY ALLOW YOU TO BUY HER BACK UNHURT. HAVE £25,000 READY IN USED NOTES.

  *

  The message hit Keith with as much impact as it had Molly. He sank, rubber-kneed, into a chair beside her and put his arms round her, to draw comfort as well as to give it. He closed his eyes against the sight of the words. “Oh my God!” he croaked.

  After a few seconds he felt Molly stir. “Keith, what are we going to do?”

  Chapter Nine

  “This is a judgment on me,” Keith said hoarsely. “It’s my fault for getting involved. You’re always telling me not to, and now I’ve done it once too often and brought this on us.”

  He felt Molly shaking him gently. “I told you to get involved,” she said. “If it’s anybody’s fault it’s mine. So stop thinking about whose fault it is. We couldn’t have stood by and done nothing when something so terrible had happened close to us. Are we going to call the police?”

  “Have they really got her?”

  “They sent the hair ribbon which she had on this morning.”

  Keith opened his eyes. He had stopped shaking. He found himself looking into Molly’s eyes, which were wet with tears. In them he saw his own reflection and more. He could see that although she was at the limit of her strength she would hold up until the crisis was past. Then, he thought, they could crack up together.

  “No police,” he said. “You saw what they wrote. We can’t take any chances. We’ll have to do what they say.”

  She was still in the circle of his arms, but she held his lapels and shook him again. “You’re not thinking.”

  “I know,” he said. “My mind’s gone numb.”

  “You must think,” she said. “If we ever needed your mind, it’s now.” She broke out of his clasp and stood up. Standing behind him, she began to rub his neck muscles in just the way which she knew relaxed him. She was clumsy, and he could feel shudders coming though her fingers. “I heard what that man York told you last night,” she said. “These people have gone so far that now they’ll kill at the least sign of danger. Do you think they’d really let us have Deborah alive once she’s been in their hands, seen their faces and heard them talking?”

  “If we paid the money . . .”

  “No,” Molly said firmly. “They’d take the money if they thought they could get away with it, and they’d keep her alive until then. But once they had it they’d kill her and whoever brought the money as well. No, Keith, if we want to see her . . . alive . . . again, we’ve got to do something or let the police do it.”

  “No police,” Keith said again. “Just Munro.” And hearing his own voice uttering one firm decision, he knew that he had accepted the unacceptable as a fact and was ready to wrestle with it. As both Munro and York had reminded him, he had faced such challenges in the past and had triumphed without the help of the police or even despite their active opposition. But this time, it mattered. This time, it was essential that he prevailed. And his heart sank, because every gambler knows that when he must win, that is the time when he will lose.

  Keith pushed the thought aside. Already his mind was racing.

  “Could Paul York help?” Molly asked.

  “Maybe, but not yet. I think he’s Special Branch.”

  “He’s what?” Molly said.

  “Special Branch. The penny only dropped when Dougie Scott phoned me last night and wanted to tell what he’s told me in his note — which isn’t much, by the way, and none of it good. And York couldn’t hide a little gleam in his eye, which made me think of wiretapping. And I realised that he’d told me things which Munro didn’t know yet, like the identity of the gang, but he didn’t yet know things which the regular fuzz knew, like the fact that Joyce had been seen. That made him police, but not a regular, and working under cover. That adds up to Special Branch. Left the Lothian and Borders Police under a carefully fabricated cloud so that he could do infiltration work. And we definitely do not want Special Branch muscling in just yet. I’m going to phone around until I get hold of Ronnie or Munro, and one of them can pick me up somewhere private. We need more to go on.”

  “If you go searching around and asking questions, you may make . . . make it worse,” Molly said. “Couldn’t we agree to pay them the money and then turn up at the meet prepared to be as bad as they are, and quicker?”

  Keith had already considered and discarded the idea. “We’ll keep that for a last resort,” he said. “
There’s too much risk that somebody may spook them in the meantime, and they decide to cut their losses and run.”

  Molly shivered. “And you’re sure you don’t have enough to work on already?”

  “Not by a mile,” Keith said.

  “Something you haven’t recognised yet? You’re sure?” she persisted. “Nothing that Mr Munro said . . . or Paul York . . . or Dougie Scott . . . or Deborah?”

  “No,” Keith said. “Absolutely, definitely not. Unless . . .” He fell silent. Molly rubbed on. Keith’s neck muscles, which had felt like iron bars, were slowly relaxing.

  “You just might be right,” Keith said suddenly, getting up. “We’ll get Janet to fetch you and to keep you with her in the flat. It might help if you tried to look like me when she picks you up, just in case somebody’s watching. Wear one of my coats and a hat pulled down, and sit on a cushion. Take a gun out of stock if it would help you to feel more secure. I’ll keep in touch.”

  “All right,” Molly said. She put up a brave face. “I know you’ll do everything possible. Just be careful. And don’t forget one thing. I may not be as good as you are at puzzling things out, and putting myself inside the other person’s mind, but, if the worst comes to the worst, I can shoot.”

  “So you can.” Gratefully, Keith kissed his wife.

  *

  He left the house by the basement door, which opened into a small courtyard overlooked only by an impenetrable shrubbery. Round the corner of the garage, formerly a stable, he slipped across the back drive and took to an almost forgotten path which squeezed along between the shrubbery and the high garden wall. A narrow gate let him out into the wood. He could have followed a ride, but preferred to take a more difficult route through the trees. Soon he was hot and the midges were maddening him, but at least he could be certain that he was unobserved. He was very conscious of the weight of the huge Le Mat revolver that he had taken from among the collectors’ items in stock. Its weight of three pounds and more was against it, but he had ammunition available to fill its chambers with nine rounds of .44˝ cartridges and the central barrel around which the cylinder rotated with its single .65˝ cartridge of heavy shot. The only holster which would take it was old-fashioned and it would be slow to draw, but once he had it out he would have fire-power. The weight under his armpit was balanced by the binoculars bumping on his opposite hip.

  Once in sight of the Newton Lauder road he waited, merged with the shadow of a small larch. Superintendent Munro’s car arrived, slowed and stopped. Keith still waited until the only other car in sight vanished around the far bend, before darting across the open verge and dropping into Munro’s passenger seat. He slid down until only the top of his head was visible.

  “Back through Newton Lauder,” he said, “and up the hill to the canal bridge.”

  Munro turned the car in the track which led to Keith’s back drive and set off back towards the town. “What’s adae?” he asked. “You’re acting gey canny, and your message sounded urgent.”

  “It was urgent all right,” Keith said. “But wait until Ronnie’s with us. It’s not a story I want to tell twice. Sound your horn outside his cottage and he’ll follow us.”

  “I’ll do that,” Munro said. “Am I allowed to know where we’re going?”

  “We’re going to see what we can see. Deborah —” Keith’s voice nearly broke on the name “— told us where to look.”

  “I don’t call it to mind.”

  “I didn’t either until just now, but the more I think about it the more I’m sure I’m right. Trust me a little longer.”

  “Of course.” Munro slowed and turned left. Keith could see the tower of the police building. They climbed for perhaps a minute. Munro slowed again and sounded his horn. Keith sat up; the danger area was past. Ronnie’s Land Rover had fallen in behind.

  “I have disturbing news,” Munro said. “These people — Joyce’s Boys — were already high on the wanted list. They carried out a bank-raid in Salford two weeks ago. The raid was unsuccessful, but a teller and two passers-by were killed and a gun bearing fingerprints was dropped.”

  “So,” Keith said, “the gang have to get abroad and they know it, and this caper is a last-ditch attempt to get some money together?”

  “That is how I see it. And they will be all the more difficult to handle.”

  “That’s for sure.” But Keith could see one crumb of comfort in the news. If Joyce’s Boys failed to get money for the guns, they might be desperate enough for cash to follow up the chance of a ransom for Deborah . . .

  “Chief Superintendent Doig,” Munro said, “is becoming convinced that the guns have been smuggled away already, disguised as a milk tanker or some such dissimilar vehicle. His investigations are being handicapped by the diversion of manpower into maintaining the road-blocks. When the first search finishes, tonight or early tomorrow, he intends to dispense with road-blocks, or so I’m told.”

  “That doesn’t give us long,” Keith said. “Go right here.”

  “Not long at all.” Munro turned off as instructed and began to nurse his car carefully around the potholes in an unmade road. “Your friend Miss Baczwynska has been telephoning Sandy Doig about once an hour.”

  “Well, she would,” Keith said. “Pull off on the left here.”

  Munro pulled onto a triangle of firm grass where his car would be partly screened by a small stand of hawthorns and rowans. They transferred to Ronnie’s Land Rover. Keith took the middle seat.

  “Take us up to where we got the woodcock last October,” Keith said.

  Ronnie glanced at him curiously. “Your day for what-d’you-call-it messages, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Cryptic,” said Keith.

  “Cryptic messages, that’s right. ‘Get hold of our thin friend from Shabost and tell him to pick me up where Fat Simon ran over the fox.’ What sort of way’s that to talk?” He turned up a track, climbing diagonally up the side of a hill which cut off their view of the town.

  “I had to be guarded,” Keith said. “I think my phone’s tapped, and we’ve got trouble. Deborah’s been kidnapped.”

  The Land Rover wobbled and nearly left the track.

  “That’s bad,” Munro said. “Och, that’s just terrible!”

  Ronnie grunted agreement. “The poor wee bairn,” he added. “You think she’s up here?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think the guns are up here?” Munro asked.

  “Could you see an artic getting up here? They’d have had to use mules,” Keith said. And, indeed, the Land Rover was scrambling up a narrow, rocky track with the hillside falling away under the nearside wheels.

  “Then why are we coming up here?” Ronnie asked.

  “To look where Deborah told us to look. At least, I think she did. If I’m wrong, we’re in dire trouble.”

  They lapsed into silence. Ronnie nursed the Land Rover upwards until they were on a level with the surrounding hilltops. They left the Land Rover in a field-gate and crossed the edge of a rough pasture to where a plantation hung askew over the crest of the hill like a towel thrown carelessly over a rail. They climbed a fence. The superintendent tore his trousers but the other two were more practised at passing barbed wire. Keith led them, pacing uncomfortably across the ridges and furrows while forcing through the prickling branches, to the furthest corner where he squatted down, screened by a fringe of low gorse.

  “Look but don’t show yourselves,” Keith said. He passed Munro his binoculars. “You brought it?” he asked Ronnie.

  His brother-in-law squatted down beside him and produced the most powerful of his several stalking telescopes. “Look where?” he asked.

  Munro, stiffer in his limbs than the others, had seated himself. “It’s a good question,” he said. “There is a devil of a lot to look at. It is time you told us where to look.” He waved a hand at the expanse of view, which ranged from the south junction below and in front of them, up the valley to their right, past Newton Lauder until the valley and
the visibility both faded among the hills to the north.

  “We’re looking at the farmland this side of the town,” Keith said.

  “We could have seen it better from where we were yesterday.”

  “I think that’s the first mistake we made, being seen up there,” Keith said. “That, and spreading the word too widely that we wanted information. The result was this letter.”

  He handed Munro the anonymous note. Munro read it, frowning, with Ronnie seething over his shoulder.

  “You’re sure that this is not a trick?” Munro asked. “They do have her?”

  “I phoned the market-garden. She never arrived.”

  “Tae hell!” Ronnie’s speech always got broader as he became angry. “The puir wee bairn! If ye ken whaur she is, tell’s. Nae bugger’ll keep me free fetchin’ her oot.”

  “And both of you dead, likely,” Keith said. “Superintendent, let’s just suppose that I know where she is. What would you advise me to do? Do I ignore the warning and go running to Chief Superintendent Doig?”

  Munro looked for inspiration in the sky, high above the sunlit farmland. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “It is a terrible decision to be making. My training insists that I advise you to come straight to the police. But it would depend on circumstances.”

  “I’ll put it another way,” Keith said. “If I go to Doig and tell him where she is, and that hostages are being held in some particular place, what will he do?”

  “He is not a fool,” Munro said, “one who would rush straight there and knock on the door.”

  “But would he surround the place and call on them to come out with their hands up?”

  “Knowing, as he does, the identities of these people, he would be more likely to ask for help from some such body as the S.A.S.”

  “I don’t fancy that a lot either,” Keith said.

  “They are very highly trained,” Munro said. He did not meet Keith’s eye.

  “But to do what?” Keith asked. “Could we be sure that they would approach with stealth, with the safety of the hostages as the prime objective?”

  Munro was looking very unhappy. “The safety of hostages would be a high priority,” he said.