Pursuit of Arms

by Gerald Hammond

  “What happened?” Keith asked.

  “Damnedest thing,” Sir Peter said again. “I tucked myself into the bushes just below the main road and started to keep watch. That night thing’s damned good, by the way. Much better than the one I’ve got. You’ll have to get me one of them. Anyway, I scanned the country and nothing seemed to be happening. I was just watching you two lads moving in to tackle the sentries when I heard a sound behind me. Before I could move, somebody put what felt like a gun-barrel against the back of my neck and said, ‘Keep still.’”

  Sir Peter paused and drank again. Paul York uttered a low groan.

  “He reached over my shoulder and took the whatsit away. There was nothing I could do about it. Frankly, I was half expecting a bullet where I wouldn’t know much about it. But no. I heard him sit down behind me, and any time I moved or tried to look round he said the same thing again. ‘Keep still.’ Or, to be more accurate, ‘Kip steel.’ First time he said it I thought he’d made a nervous mistake, a sort of Spoonerism, but he said it the same way each time.”

  “That’s all you heard him say?” York asked.

  “That’s the lot.”

  “Foreign accent?”

  “I’d say so. But ask me from where and I couldn’t tell you, not on the basis of two words. Anyway, I sat there like a dolt, praying that there wasn’t, as you feared, somebody out with a rifle and night-sight, or that this character wasn’t going to sound the alarm or take a shot at you. But, again, no. After a bit I got some of my courage back. My box of sandwiches was open beside me, so I took one and he didn’t seem to object. He even had the nerve to reach past me and help himself. In fact, he shared my sandwiches with me. I daredn’t complain. If I’d had a second mug, I’d have shared my coffee with him, just to keep on his good side.

  “I saw the lights of the fork-lift come on and heard one very faint pistol-shot. Then, later, the ring of torches began to light up, and everything began to look as if it might be going more or less according to plan. And still we sat there. I remember he handed me a hip-flask over my shoulder and I took a swig. It was something with lime, vodka at a guess. Very warming on a cool night.”

  “Vodka?” said York.

  “Yes. Nothing in that, of course. Barman in the club was telling me that the Scots are drinking more vodka than whisky these days, because you can mix it with more flavours of soft drinks.

  “I saw the police-cars arrive, and I was given the signal to come down. Couldn’t acknowledge it, of course. Then, later still, I heard a car stop on the main road above me, heading downhill. I think I’d heard the same car, which was a bit of a rattle-trap, go up a few minutes before. My companion said ‘Kip steel’ again and I heard him move. When I got up the nerve to look round he was already up the embankment — he must have shot up it like a monkey — and a second later a car door slammed. I tried to get up to the top in time to see his number, but it’s more rock-wall than embankment and I found I couldn’t get up it at all. I got my torch out and looked around.” Sir Peter lowered his voice. “He’d left the rifle behind, but the cartridges were scattered in the grass.”

  “That mercury-filled stuff costs a bomb,” Keith said.

  “I picked it up, all but two or three rounds which I dare say will turn up in the daylight. And then I came on down,” Sir Peter finished simply.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The new day passed in a haze of exhaustion punctuated only by occasional snacks and by dozing whenever no policeman happened to be wanting yet another statement.

  Deborah, Keith knew, was at home with Molly. She had been released by the hospital as being in good heart and, apart from the bruising, uninjured.

  The others, one at a time, were allowed to depart. Just when Keith thought that he could go home, he was dragooned into staying on to check the guns against the invoices as they were unloaded at last into the factory, under a guard of armed policemen sufficient to have repelled a mass invasion. He refrained from mentioning stable doors, and soldiered on. When he was free at last, a siege of reporters, some probably real and others more probably spurious, was lying in wait. Several followed his taxi out to Briesland House. He gave each one of them his evasive answer.

  His car, repaired to the stage of being usable, was waiting outside the front door.

  The police had passed a message and Molly had a meal ready. Keith was almost too tired to eat. He forced some food down, then fell into bed and slept twelve hours away. It was another bright morning before he came downstairs, fit, happy and starving.

  He found Munro in the kitchen, taking coffee with Molly. The superintendent, an habitually moody man, looked as near to contentment as Keith had ever seen him.

  “How’s the slipped disc today?” Keith asked in greeting.

  “A miraculous recovery,” Munro said. “Just miraculous.”

  Keith kissed his wife on the cheek. He had been asleep when she arose. “Where’s Deborah?”

  “I let her go along to the market-garden,” Molly said. “She got there all right, because I phoned Mrs Thing. If we stop her going to and fro on her own we’ll make her nervous. She was a bit shy about the bruising, but I told her not to say anything and they won’t either. Was I right?” she finished anxiously.

  Keith thought it over while he poured milk onto cereal. “Absolutely right,” he said at last. “There’s nobody running around now with any reason to molest her. And what’s the latest on everything?”

  “Reporters everywhere,” Molly said. “They were camped in the drive. Mr Munro sent them packing, but they’re probably waiting at the road until he goes away.”

  “It is to be expected,” Munro said. “There has been no more than a formal statement and ten thousand rumours. They know that the gang has been taken, that there had been hostages who have been released safely and that we have recovered most of the guns. Your name has been whispered. So the media have the bones of a story and no details at all.”

  “Just the circumstances to drive them frantic,” Keith said. “We told our team to say nothing, but that’s too much to hope for. One of them at least will sell the story to the papers. But we warned them all, several times and very seriously, that anyone mentioning shotguns would land himself in the shit along with the rest of us. Anyway, it makes a better story if our party was only armed with pick-handles.”

  “That is true,” Munro said. “My men have been told that anyone mentioning shotguns will take over the duty of speaking to the schools about road safety. If there is one thing that a grown man hates, it is standing up before a classroom of giggling girls,” he explained. “Those guns are still in the boot of my car and they make me feel like an accessory to an offence, which I suppose is the case. I will unload them in the privacy of your garage before I leave and we will forget that I ever had them.”

  “Had what?” Keith said.

  “That’s good. Of course, when the full story gets out, you will have the credit for capturing an armed and dangerous gang while yourselves unarmed. You will become some sort of folk hero.”

  “Big deal,” Keith said, opening his boiled egg. He was uninterested in becoming any sort of folk hero except insofar as it might help to boost the firm’s business. “But what about yourself and Chief Inspector York? Are you redeemed? What’s been Superintendent Doig’s reaction?”

  Munro settled his bony frame more comfortably in the kitchen chair and smirked. “At first, he was put out. Naturally. No man likes to have his case solved behind his back. I explained your reasons for not wanting direct police interference and that you had only brought us into it at the last moment and in conditions of great secrecy.”

  “That satisfied him?” Keith asked.

  “Far from it. He was winding himself up to make an official complaint when York suggested, without quite saying it aloud, that if it came to an inquiry Sandy Doig could be made to look a fool. Lord, but that man York is subtle and devious! That, I suppose, is how one gets into Special Branch. He made it clear that, if
criticism is in the air, Sandy would be as vulnerable as anybody. But if, on the other hand, we formed a mutual admiration society, each, in his report, praising the zeal, intelligence and discretion of the others, it might well be overlooked that Sandy Doig had never asked the right people the right questions when the right answers were just awaiting the asker. So now we are agreed. The case has been solved on the basis of ‘information received’, as are most cases; results have been obtained which are very satisfactory from all points of view, and everybody has what he wants.”

  “Except for the missing guns,” Molly said.

  “We are not saying too much about that,” Munro said in tones of mild reproof. “Indeed, the press statement makes no mention of them at all. After all, in very few cases is one hundred per cent of the haul recovered.”

  “There’s always some wastage?” Keith suggested.

  “The very word! As long as the other guns are not used in this or a friendly country, Chief Inspector York’s reputation will remain almost as untarnished as my own,” Munro said complacently. “The present indications are that the missing guns never reached Newton Lauder at all. Two Edinburgh men have been found who say that they stopped for a snack at the transport cafe at Logiemuir, at about the time when the vehicle would have been in that area. They saw a van parked beside a blue, articulated lorry and a man on the van’s roof. They thought nothing of it at the time, but now it seems that the driver might have stopped for food and some opportunist thieves pulled their van in on the blind side of it and went in through the trailer’s roof, rather than through the doors which were in full view.”

  Keith kept his face carefully blank. “And has nothing happened to suggest the opposite, that the load did reach Newton Lauder intact?”

  “Nothing,” Munro said; and Keith, who had long experience of the superintendent as an adversary and occasionally as an ally, was sure that he was not dissembling. “But York is still not quite content. I feel that the man is worried. Perhaps it is that opportunist thieves would not have the contacts for selling the guns abroad. Their outlet would be the criminal black market.”

  Molly paused in the act of filling Keith’s cup. “But what about —?” She broke off as Keith kicked her ankle.

  Munro looked at her, smiling, with his eyebrows raised.

  Molly faltered, blushed and recovered. “I was just thinking,” she said. “I think that he may be worrying himself needlessly. Coincidences do happen, but you’d have to be up the pole to believe in the coincidence of opportunist thieves robbing a lorry which another gang had already marked down. Couldn’t it be that one set of agents was on the job already, the P.L.O. or somebody like that? They were following the lorry in a van or a big car and they took their chance when they saw it to get the arms they wanted for their own reasons. They only took twenty-two boxes because that was all that they could carry.”

  “Or maybe Eddie Adoni had yet another customer,” Keith said.

  “Either of you could be right,” Munro said, “or the truth may be something else again. Perhaps we shall never know. And now, if you’ve finished your breakfast, perhaps we can get those shotguns out of my boot and I can go on my way feeling like a responsible officer of the law once again.”

  With twenty-three shotguns removed from the boot, Munro’s car rode several inches higher on its springs.

  Keith had intended to slip away but Molly almost dragged him into the house, sat him down and poured more coffee.

  “I’ve already got coffee oozing out of my every orifice,” he complained.

  “But I want to talk to you,” Molly said, “and you only stay in one place when you’ve got a cup in your hand. Are you diddling Wallace again?”

  “I never diddle Wallace,” Keith said indignantly. “I just let him diddle himself sometimes. Has Wal been on the phone already?”

  “Not Wal. Janet. She said you let Wallace choose whether the costs and the rewards belonged with the firm or with yourself. And she said that whenever you seem to be giving the sucker an even break he’d better count his fingers afterwards. Well, that’s what she said. Because of Eddie Adoni being in jail and his insurers not paying out, Wal chose to stay out of the financial thing, but they’re beginning to wonder whether they’ve been had. Have they, Keith?”

  Keith sighed. He had hoped to postpone this discussion for several days, perhaps for ever. “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I think I can screw a reward out of the real owner of the guns, His Coffee-coloured Excellency. And I’m planning to share it with Wal and Janet anyway, because they backed us up so handsomely yesterday and last night. I couldn’t have got Deborah back without their help. We owe them.”

  Molly looked at him with suspicion. “Then why didn’t you say so last night?”

  “Because I want it to be a gift, not a business deal.”

  “Why do you want it that way?” Molly persisted. “And don’t tell me you’re being noble and making a grand gesture, because that wouldn’t be you.”

  Keith muttered something about drops of water wearing away stones. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you more. If, and only if, you’ll promise to keep absolutely mum about it until I tell you.”

  “I promise,” Molly said.

  “Well, don’t forget. If I’d told this to Wal and Janet last night, they’d have opted for a half-share of the costs and of all the rewards. But I think there’s more to come. And I feel entitled to cut myself a piece of cake. Last night it was only a gut-feeling, but now I’m becoming more and more sure that those guns did reach Newton Lauder despite what those Edinburgh men told the police. And you said something to Munro which may have given me a useful hint.”

  “You didn’t let me say anything about the man who held up Sir Peter,” Molly said. “Janet told me when she phoned.”

  “Munro didn’t know anything about that,” Keith said. “Interesting, isn’t it? Of course, York looks much better if it’s thought that the guns were stolen at Logiemuir and not while he was just a few yards away. And York was present when the statements were taken. He knew that I didn’t go beyond what I knew from my own knowledge what Peter told us would have been hearsay. Peter was the last to make a statement — he spent most of the night seeing that the men all got home and that the tractor and things were all safely returned. So I think that York got hold of Peter and said that he’d be just as happy if that part of the tale never came out. He’s probably said the same to Ronnie and Wal, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets hold of me during the day. But he never expected Janet to mention it to you.”

  “And that’s why you’re sure the guns all got here?”

  “That’s not the only reason,” Keith said, getting up. “Thanks for the coffee. I must go. See you later.”

  “Keith, promise me that you won’t do anything which might put Deborah into danger again!”

  “I promise.”

  “What was it I said that gave you the clue? You can’t just —”

  But the door had closed. Apparently, he could.

  *

  During that morning, the news leaked out that Deborah had been among the hostages and that Keith himself had led the rescue party. The immediate frenzy among the reporters hampered Keith’s efforts to deal covertly with the host of details still requiring his attention. He was forced to make much use of the telephone in the flat above the shop. Despite her promise Molly must have dropped some hint, because Janet welcomed him without reservation.

  One of his calls was to Mr Smithers at Millmont House. The deep, smooth voice sounded very pleased with life in general. “Mr Calder? I thought that I might be hearing from you.”

  “And you were right,” Keith said. “I think that we should meet.”

  “I was about to suggest it. Would you like to dine with me here?”

  “I would very much. But my wife has always preferred me not to visit Millmont House.”

  “I can understand that,” Mr Smithers said. (Millmont House, about twenty miles from Newton L
auder, functioned as if it were no more than a very up-market hotel, club and health farm, but its speciality and raison d’être was an in-house call-girl system unsurpassed in Europe.) “The ladies here still speak highly of you.”

  “I helped them once,” Keith said. “No more than that.”

  “Of course. Where, then?”

  Keith was about to suggest some secluded rendezvous when he remembered that there was nothing confidential about his dealings with Mr Smithers. “How about the Newton Lauder Hotel at eight?” he suggested. “The cocktail bar.”

  “Eight, then. I’ll look forward to meeting you.” And Mr Smithers disconnected.

  Another call was to Molly. “It looks as if I’ll be late,” he said. “It’s a busy day and I can’t make any progress for reporters.”

  “I suppose,” Molly said. “Try to give me warning and I’ll have a meal ready.”

  “How’s Deborah?”

  “Concentrating too hard on living her usual life. She hasn’t said a single word about her . . . adventure. And she’s gone back to playing with her dolls. Wouldn’t it be better if she talked about it?”

  “Probably,” Keith said. “But don’t try to draw her out, let her make the choice.”

  “All right. I wish we could get her interested in something new.” Molly sounded worried and Keith guessed that she was hiding a deep concern.

  “Tell her she can come around with me for a few days,” he said. “That usually perks her up. Well, see you later.”

  “Hold on,” Molly said quickly. “Keith, what was it I said which gave you an idea?”

  “You always give me ideas.”

  “Seriously, Keith.”

  “Seriously, only three words. I doubt if you’d remember any of them.”

  *

  In mid-afternoon an erroneous rumour that the police were about to make a full and crucial statement drew off his tail of reporters. The rumour was spread by friends in the rank and file of the local police at Keith’s request, and Superintendent Munro proved to be in no great hurry to deny it. Keith was freed to start tying up his loose ends.