Blood Run East

by Philip McCutchan

  “Where do I take her over, and when?”

  Smith glanced at his watch. “Not yet. Patience! Later there’ll be a car outside —”

  “With her in it?”

  “No, no. Empty and waiting for you. Before you go down, I’ll hand you the keys and documentation, all correct for the continent — green card, AA five-star, the lot.”

  “And the woman?”

  “You’ll drive towards Knightsbridge, and turn along the Brompton Road. Keep in the near-side lane. There’s a bus stop outside Harrod’s. Katie Farrell will be in the queue, with two officers from my department. She’ll be wearing a light blue head scarf and dark glasses and carrying a yellow hand-case, zipped. One of my chaps will give her the tip when you approach, slow. She’ll recognise you, wave, and call your name — Andrew. You’ll lean across and push your passenger door open. She gets in, full of gratitude. You drive off smartly and head for Southampton. The Townsend Thoresen Viking 1 leaves from the Old Docks at 2100 hours.” Smith added, “You shouldn’t have any trouble with the woman, Shard. She’s only too anxious to get out!”

  *

  At half past six, with full documentation in his wallet, plus passage tickets, Shard went down alone and put his case in the boot of an unobtrusive dark green Ford Escort. He drove into Knightsbridge, and into the Brompton Road, moving slowly in a stream of homeward-bound traffic, stop-start-stop, eyes watching the kerb closely. The passers-by looked drab and full of worries; they mostly had pinched faces, faces that reflected the day and age, the age of austerity and shortages and hardships for which Katie Farrell’s paymasters, his mission’s initiators, had been primarily responsible when they had shaken the West’s prosperity back in 1973: Shard reckoned he would face a lynching from the crowds if they got a whisper of what he was doing. He edged along the near-side lane, began to approach the bus stop: a bus was just pulling away. Four places back in the remaining queue was a girl between two men, a girl in dark glasses and blue head scarf, carrying a zipped grip: Shard caught her eye, and reached towards his passenger door.

  She waved, called something, smiling.

  He pushed the door open.

  “Andrew, how lovely!”

  “Get in.”

  She got in, slammed the door. Shard rejoined the traffic, hooting angrily behind him. The two men showed no reaction, stared as vacantly as anyone else awaiting the advent of a London Transport bus. Shard glanced sideways: the dark glasses and head scarf remained in situ, unrevealingly, but perfume stole out, not too obtrusive but very, very heady. Shard felt irritation: the bloody woman, he thought, could almost have known … known that he was susceptible to scent discreetly used! It did things, as Beth had discovered early on. He couldn’t help the way he was made, but neither could he drive through London’s traffic, nor sail the night seas to Cherbourg, with his nostrils finger-clasped. He drove in silence, a silence that Katie Farrell didn’t break any more than he, and thrust his thoughts dutywards, towards Mr Brown and Britain and oil shortages and petrodollar surpluses, towards Hedge’s wife and Hedge himself and the shadowy men who would be waiting somewhere along the track from now on out to snatch Katie Farrell away to their own concepts of justice. Driving west, he joined the M-3, still silent. However sexy the girl was, this was no holiday trip; he hated all she stood for, all she believed in. That stopped any desire to fraternise. All the same, he felt something in the air later when the motorway signs showed the slip road for Camberley: he thought of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. There was a kind of tension emanating from Katie Farrell and, guessing why, he let something snap.

  He said savagely, “You’re scared, aren’t you!”

  Her voice was cool; tension or no, she scored a point for self-possession. “Am I?”

  “You know you are.”

  “Why should I be?”

  He snapped at her: “Military area.” He pointed left. “Over there is Aldershot. And Guildford.”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “No.”

  “You’re all part of the outfit. Don’t try to shift the responsibility.”

  She laughed. “All the English are oppressors. Don’t you try to shift that responsibility. Andrew, my love!”

  He looked sideways in the fading daylight, feeling cold anger well up. “Now just you listen. You can drop the endearments — when we’re alone. Tonight aboard the Viking, we have a shared cabin booked. That’s for obvious security reasons. Don’t provoke me. If I have to be a bastard, a bastard I can be, and with much pleasure. I have to deliver you. I’ve been given no instructions to deliver you unmarked, and we shan’t be disturbed in the cabin. Do you get me?”

  There was a hint of a smile, and she shifted a little in the seat, brushing her body close to Shard’s. “Is that a threat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I like big, strong men.”

  “Shut up,” he said. “You talk like a poor man’s Mae West.” She laughed, lightly: more scent wafted. Shrugging her shoulders she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll behave. I want to get where I’m going, don’t I?” She said no more. Shard drove on fast towards Basingstoke and Winchester and the A-33 that would carry him down to Southampton. Past Basingstoke the light went: Shard looked at his watch, and as he did so he heard the bleat of a siren coming up fast from behind: in his rear-view mirror he saw the flashing blue lights, two of them. Instinctively he slowed; one of the police cars swept past, flashing on its stop sign, waving him down onto the hard shoulder. The second car pulled in behind as Shard obeyed. From the lead car a uniformed constable approached and Shard wound his window down.

  “What is it?”

  “Mr Garrett?” The man crouched on his haunches.

  “Right.”

  “I have orders to intercept, sir.”

  Shard looked blank. “Intercept what, Constable?”

  “You, sir.”

  “You know my orders?”

  “Not in detail, sir. I’m merely following instructions —”

  “From whom?”

  “From the Chief Constable, sir.”

  “I see. And your force?”

  “Hants Police, sir.”

  Shard nodded. “All right. Now — what do you want me to do?”

  “Follow me, sir, please.”

  Shard smiled. “All right,” he said, “but I’d like to know why?”

  The police officer gave a jerk of his head, indicating the route South and West. “It seems there’s the likelihood of a hijack on the A-33, sir. We’re going to escort you along an alternative route.”

  “All right,” Shard said again, nodding. “Just as you say.”

  The constable straightened, saluted, walked back to his car. Shard said, “Keep your head down. Miss Farrell,” and let in his clutch. With his foot hard down, the Escort responded beautifully: they shot ahead, skimming past the lead car before the uniformed man had got in. Bullets followed them as the cars got on the move. Katie Farrell, the dark glasses off now, stared at Shard.

  “What’s the idea?” she asked.

  Shard grinned tightly through his windscreen as he sent the Escort hurtling ahead. “Sixth sense, plus two other things.”

  “What things?”

  “I saw the way that man looked at you: hate’s an under-statement. And the accent wasn’t cop. It was retired army officer. These people aren’t professionals when it comes to the crunch. You can consider that as attempt number one, Miss Farrell, now past.”

  “Past?”

  Shard grinned again. “No follow-up. Too risky for them to keep shooting on the move. They’ll live to fight another day. I didn’t expect them to be on to us quite so soon, that’s all. We’ll take this as a warning — they’re better organised than I’d expected, what with mobiles and all. And I’ll tell you something else for free.”

  “What’s that?”

  With deliberation Shard said, “I’m glad we got away without my having to damage them. Because, wha
tever my job says, I happen to think they’re right.”

  “That’s not friendly,” she said, pouting.

  “Nor am I. I happen to think, Miss Katie Farrell, that you should be spending the rest of your life in prison, preferably guarded by women who’ve lost husbands because of your activities. No — don’t come back on that, or I might react. Just shut up, right?” She shut up; Shard kept the speed going: the night-dark countryside rushed into his headlights, the trees silvered ghostlike, air streaming cool through his driving window. Into Southampton and its crowds and lights, slow now; Shard deviated into police headquarters and called the FO, making a report of the attempted interception. Then down to the Old Docks, over the railway sidings, past a filling station, down to the check-point and the scrutiny of officialdom. Shard handed the passport through, was given a searching glance and a nod and, without comment, his embarkation card. He drove on through, turned for the great ramp of the car ferry, was beckoned into an echoing cavern of steel and paintwork and the smell of oil and petrol. They were among the last few to embark: as they got out of the car with their hand-cases, the drive-on doors were already coming up to slot into position for the outward passage to Cherbourg. They shut with a clang of steel, a final sound. Shard, not normally a man of nerves in the plural, gave a sudden shiver: the shutting of that door left him with the feeling of a coffin-lid, the workaday car deck becoming the coffin itself. They were shut into it, with what, with whom? Too much was known of their movements already: the opposition was scarcely likely to leave them in their anonymity for long, now the first assault had been made.

  Shard shook himself free of such fantasies as coffins. He put a hand on Katie Farrell’s arm. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll find that cabin.” As he spoke there was a crescendo of sound from somewhere below and the deck started shaking as though it must part company with the vessel’s hull as the screws right below them began to thrash the water, propelling the car ferry off the stern-on berth. Again the coffin-image: it was a doomful sound, a thud of earth magnified a millionfold.

  3

  IN SELF-DEFENCE Shard closed his mind against naked flesh: Katie Farrell, in the privacy of the cabin, without dark glasses and head scarf, with long fair hair falling about her shoulders, was enough to stir cast iron. Her eyes were Irish blue, her clear skin had a light tan, she had an attractive smile … Shard had to face the fact that terrorists were not all of the criminal classes, that some of them could be ordinarily nice people who took an utterly detached view of the bestial and criminal content of their activities. Hence it was possible for them to appear, like this Katie Farrell, as fresh flowers of youth with pretty faces, disarming smiles, and simple charm. You had to keep telling yourself the lady was a killer, and that made the job harder. In addition, this was one naked: Katie Farrell had stripped right off.

  Behind his mental shut-off Shard reflected. She hadn’t wanted to go to the cabin, he had to give her that; she’d said, “I’d like a drink, Andrew. The bar looks nice.”

  “We’re going to the cabin.”

  “Well, if not a drink — maybe it’s too public — why not stay on deck and watch the lights of England fade?”

  “We’re going to the cabin. I’m giving you an order.”

  “Ah, you’re a hard husband —”

  “Shut up.” He took her arm in a policeman’s grip, hurting her. “You’re a martyr to seasickness —”

  “I’m not —”

  The pressure of fingers increased. “This deck, port side. Number 24. Get there.”

  She got. Once inside with the door closed and curtains drawn over windows that gave onto a deck furnished with couchettes, he had told her to open up her hand-case.

  “What for? You don’t imagine I have a bomb, do you?”

  “You’ve had them before. Do as you’re told.”

  She glared. “Look, mate! You’re not the first. It’s been checked already.”

  “I’m sure it has, but I like to do my own checking too. I’m kind of personally involved.”

  “You’re a bloody perfectionist, are you?”

  He shook his head. “No. Just a self-preservationist who takes no chances at all, which is a fact you’d best bear in mind, Miss Farrell. Now — do as you’re told.”

  “I will not!”

  “All right.” He took the case and unzipped it. He turned it upside down, spilling femininity and intimacy but no bombs. That was when she’d shrugged, smiled, and said flippantly, “Well now, you may as well do the job thoroughly and see if I have explosives tucked away where no explosive should ever be,” and she had undressed and stood stark naked before him with her upraised arms lifting small, tight breasts into pinnacled mounds, provocative and sensuous. The abdomen, he noticed, showed considerable operation scarring: an appendectomy low down, and elsewhere what could have been the result of a caesarian section: abortion? She was not known to have any children. On the fringe of the pubic hair was a birthmark, a red double moon, very distinctive. “Go on, then,” she said.

  Even in his own ears he sounded prim and unctuous. “There will be,” he said, “no personal examination.”

  “Why deny yourself a pleasure, Mr Detective?”

  “Look,” he said heavily, “I’m not a nude-struck youth. I’ve seen it all before, many times. It fails to thrill.”

  “Like hell it does,” she jeered. “Aren’t you just being faithful, or something?”

  “Faithful?”

  “To your wife, to Mrs Detective. I suppose you’re married?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re married again now, bigamist!” Her eyes mocked. “What would Mrs Detective say?” She laughed. “Does she know?”

  He said, “Get dressed. That’s another order.”

  “You’re full of orders.”

  “Which you’re going to obey,” he said harshly. “Look. Miss Farrell. We have a long way to go, and we’re never going to be out of each other’s company en route. I have a job to do and the sooner it’s done the better. Meanwhile we both have a vested interest in success, right?”

  She shrugged, turned aside and reached for a packet of cigarettes. Shard flicked his lighter and held it out; as she bent towards the flame the long fair hair, tumbling about her face, fell across his hand like spun silk. Answering his question she said on an outblown cloud of smoke, “I want to get there, yes.”

  “Then please co-operate. Trouble could come at any moment. If our friends get hold of you, you’re a dead duck, as though I need to tell you that.”

  She blew more smoke, eyes narrowed. “You don’t really care, do you?”

  “Not for you,” he said brutally. “But I obey orders as well as give them. I might point out that my life’s at risk too. I aim to protect that as well as yours. I may be prejudiced, but I reckon it’s a more valuable thing, Miss Farrell.”

  She laughed. “I call that unpolicemanlike.”

  “Call it what you want,” he said indifferently. “Just get dressed, that’s all.”

  This time, she obeyed: Shard watched as long slim legs stepped into briefs and creamy breasts vanished beneath a jumper. No bra; maybe she’d burned that somewhere back along the lib line. Skirtless, she lay on the lower of the two bunks, reading a paperback that she had taken from the feminine mêlée of her hand-case. One thing — she was still cool. In her line of business, she had to be; but he would have expected a little more overt awareness of the thin rope she was treading. She hadn’t even referred back to the abortive cutting-out attempt back on the M-3. Shard, sitting on a hard chair alongside the bunk, deciding to remain wakeful throughout the passage, did some circumspect probing as to Hedge’s missing wife: Katie Farrell had nothing to offer. The chances were, she genuinely didn’t know: the principle that the less you knew the less you could give away was not confined to the establishment forces. Shard, listening to the beat of engines, feeling the roll and pitch as later the car ferry met a strong wind south of the Needles, thought of other things: of failure princi
pally, and its results. Death for Hedge’s wife and a vengefulness on the part of the men of power in the Middle East that could turn off the oil taps and cause another kind of death, a quick throttling of western industry that would leave Europe gasping for its life’s breath. He switched these thoughts off: like Katie Farrell’s naked body, they were better disregarded. While switching off, he reflected glumly that once the world’s most viable protection had been a British passport; now it was an oil well. The Middle East had overtaken with a vengeance, guaranteeing sanctuary and sanctity for its friends …

  *

  “No breakfast. I’m sorry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too much risk.”

  She said angrily, “Oh, God, they must know I’m aboard after last night. Those phoney cops knew our route … and Southampton’s the fairly obvious end of the A-33.”

  “Sure. But this isn’t the only ship sailing out of Southampton. In any case, it’s not them I have in mind right now.”

  She glared, blue eyes hard. “Who, then?”

  “The passengers, who happen to be mainly British.”

  “My face isn’t that well known —”

  “There have been photographs. Even so, it’s not just the general public. There could be others, soldiers on leave, troops who’ve served in Belfast — or security men and other official people. Men who know of you but are not in the present picture — get me? We don’t want scenes.”

  “Aren’t you over-reacting?”

  “Yes,” he said, “perhaps I am, but it’s safer that way, so that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “Don’t we ever eat again?”