Rollerball (Commander Shaw Book 17)

by Philip McCutchan

  And, thanks to the ACC’s planning and briefing, it did.

  At 9.43 I saw the dark blue van coming along, taking it fast. Already the intercepting car was on station behind me in Ponsonby Place, stopped with its engine running and waiting its cue to come on stage. I lifted a hand and the car got moving, coming out at speed and weaving a little to give authenticity, took the turn, shot across the road with a scream of tyres, right into the track of the prison van, which braked hard.

  I sank back into the shadows, but watched out for Henry Kissinger. I saw the rear door come open and two prison officers emerge, looking genuinely shaken. One of them was holding a wrist carefully and limply as though it was broken. The other ran round to the front and then chummy took his lovely opportunity. Out he came, floored the hurt prison officer with a vicious blow to the back of the neck, and went across the road flat out. Behind him there was a splendid cock-up, with the van driver yelling realistically at the unmarked police car and the prison officer joining in while his mate lay on the wet road, groaning. No-one paid any attention to chummy — except me and Felicity and Jim Parsons. We all joined up and let chummy have something of a start and I told Felicity to beat it back to 6D2 to report to Max. I said, “Chummy looks as if he’s heading for Pimlico underground,” and moved off behind him, keeping a discreet distance and accompanied by Parsons. I was proved right about the underground: Henry Kissinger made it and went down at the rate of knots, with a couple of glances behind him that didn’t seem to tell him anything since we were keeping well against the buildings and in deep shadow.

  At the ticket office there was no sign of chummy; we bought tickets for the farthest point that came to mind: Ongar. On the platform a train was just coming in and at the far end I saw chummy. We didn’t rush thereafter. He got in the front coach and we got in about three coaches up. Watching out at Victoria I saw chummy emerge and we got out as well. He headed for the exit, moving fast — there were crowds around and we had some difficulty in keeping him in view but we didn’t lose him and tailed him to the westbound District Line platform, also crowded. He got onto the first train in, which was a Richmond one. I looked out at each station but no chummy. Finally he disembarked at West Kensington and ran up the steps, pushing past some half-dozen people who had also got off. Coming up behind to the North End Road we saw him cross over and head towards Gunters tone Road. There, we separated. I saw a bicycle against the wall and I told Parsons to ride like mad along Gwendwr Road into Gliddon Road, then turn right and right again into the bottom end of Gunterstone Road and keep tabs on chummy if I should miss him, which in fact I did. I lost him about half way along Gunterstone Road. It seemed likely he’d gone into a house, but which one I couldn’t say.

  Parsons, however, was coming up on his nicked bicycle, upon which he would scarcely have aroused chummy’s suspicions.

  I asked, “Where did he go?”

  Parsons gave me the number. “Flats,” he said. “I don’t know which one.”

  It didn’t matter. The house would be under surveillance from now on out. From my filthy duffel coat pocket I brought a Parker cartridge pen with very special cartridges: the ink was there all right but the reserve chamber at the top contained a tiny transistorised transmitter. I called Focal House, made my identification, said where I was, gave the number of the flatlet house and asked for two field men to take over soonest possible. I put the cap back on the Parker, slid it into my pocket and kept back round a corner but not so far back I couldn’t see the house, where chummy might perhaps not linger. And a few minutes later bad luck hit us a smack in the face. Singing and shouting came down the road from the direction of West Kensington station. It had a Scottish sound to it and the racket was enough for a battalion of highlanders, though in fact, as we saw a moment later, it was just one man, little more than five feet high beneath a street lamp.

  I said viciously, “Damn. He’s going to rouse the neighbourhood. Tight as a newt.”

  “European Cup,” Parsons said.

  “What?”

  “Chelsea playing Celtic. Rare for English clubs to play Scottish ones but — ”

  “Who won?”

  “Chelsea.”

  “They would,” I said bitterly. The Scot would be out to blame any Londoner that he happened to see, and he’d already seen us. He came along at the gallop, waving a rattle and something worse: a broken beer bottle, very jagged.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” he called raucously. At first I thought he knew Parsons by name but then remembered the usual form of Scottish address to strangers. We didn’t respond; the Scot started singing. Something about ‘pack yer bags and go.’ Then he realised we hadn’t answered his call and a stream of abuse came out. He crossed the road and came up behind us, beer bottle poised. It hadn’t been only beer he’d been drinking; he smelt like a whole distillery. He lunged with the bottle. I caught Parsons’ eye: the noise was enough to wake the dead.

  “Bluidy capitalists. Jimmy Reid’s the only laddie … keep the shipyards open and stuff bluidy London. Bluidy Chelsea’s all capitalists too.” This and a lot more; he was screeching it all out. Heads came out of windows and someone shouted down and the Sassenach accent made the Scot much worse. He became a one man football mob. Neither Jim Parsons nor I could get near him for quite a while. He was like a Catherine wheel. He was everywhere at once, amazingly nippy on his feet, drink or no. He launched himself at us and got Parsons in the neck with his jagged bottle. As Parsons went down with blood zipping like a fountain, I managed to get a hold on the Scot, who thereupon kicked me hard where it hurt most. I doubled up in agony and the Scot’s bottle crunched on the pavement, a very near miss because he slipped on the blood. He was up in an instant and running like the wind along Gunterstone Road. By this time the police had been sent for, and an ambulance. I let the Scot go; Parsons needed aid and I gave it as best I could, but it was too late. Parsons had bled to death. Windows banged shut, no-one wanting to get involved. The police came in pretty fast even though with Celtic in town there would be plenty of trouble spots to deal with. And, of course, Henry Kissinger would have vanished. It was too much of a risk; he wouldn’t be waiting for the fuzz to come knocking on doors for evidence. I watched the flat for a goodish time, then I went in. The door wasn’t even locked and there were other signs of much haste. I turned over the flat, which was a sleazy set-up consisting of a bed-sitting-room, kitchen and bathroom. I found nothing except a Vehicle Registration Document giving the number of a Cortina, blue, 1980. This document was in the name of James Orris Donovan Broadley. There was no knowing whether in fact this was Henry Kissinger, but it might help. It didn’t. A check with all files and computers that night showed nothing on Broadley and no reports came in of the car being seen until, in the early hours, it was found parked in the forecourt of a block of flats round the corner in Gliddon Road, and a subsequent check failed to find any tenant who knew anything about the owner or whether or not permission had been given for the car to be parked there. Chummy probably reckoned, rightly enough, that it would be too hot to use. And he wouldn’t have risked going back for the registration document, with the fuzz coming down the road.

  7.

  I collected all the information on file about the heavy balls that had been picked up. In addition to the one in Belford, others had been found in various places along the A1 from around Stamford to Berwick-upon-Tweed. The one conclusion I could come to was the obvious one, that there had been a loose box in a lorryload and it had shed at intervals as it bumped along. Heading south — the balls, where there was dual carriageway, had been found in the south-bound lanes. None of it seemed to help much, as Max stressed.

  “Time’s passing,” he said. He looked on edge: the Establishment was leaning on him. They wouldn’t be able to maintain secrecy indefinitely and already the political parties were manoeuvring into position for the run-up to the election. The atmosphere was fraught and still no-one had any idea what the big threat might be. No-one seemed able to think beyond res
ervoirs. There was talk of mounting police and military patrols to watch over all the water supplies, but the Home Office and Defence Ministry were at loggerheads: the Home Secretary’s view was that anything of the sort would lead to public speculation and eventual panic, and panic was not good for the governing party on the eve of a general election …

  As for me, I still didn’t feel wholly convinced about reservoirs. It was all too clumsy. There was something else and it nagged at me continually, but whatever it was it couldn’t quite get through. I pondered again on tetradoxin and its presence on those balls. So far as was known, no more of the poison had turned up, although the community physicians in the areas where the balls had been found had been notified and were on the watch, as were the hospitals. Also, the balls themselves had been collected — those, that was, that were known to have been found and reported by their finders to the police on account of their extraordinary weight. Those balls had been examined by lesser lights than Professor Railton and had been, as a result of his notes, subjected to extreme pressures. No tetradoxin had emerged.

  That led me to suppose that only a sample of the balls had been treated if that’s the word. Possibly even just the one I’d taken to Australia — hence the Jap interest in it and through it me — and the one that had killed the child in Belford.

  Why?

  I blew out a long breath at Max. “Impasse,” I said.

  “Never mind an impasse. We have to find the answer. We’re going to. The Home Office has put a team onto checking all factories making ball bearings, or did I tell you?”

  “Yes,” I said. They were calling it a routine inspection; I didn’t see much point. It wouldn’t be legitimate ball-bearing manufacturers that were producing the heavy balls. If only the men behind that outrageous demand would come up with something positive … but of course they wouldn’t until the last minute, so as to allow us the shortest time possible to deploy against them and their plans. I asked, “What about that money?”

  Max stared. “What about it?”

  “In my view, there should be consultations — perhaps there have been — with the Swiss bankers and the EEC … and the drafts and whatnot prepared and held in readiness.”

  “Nonsense.” Max’s jaw closed with a snap. No surrender was his watchword.

  I said, “It’s common sense. We’ve not got far, we’ve not got anywhere in fact.”

  “I don’t like defeatist talk, Shaw.”

  “It’s not defeatist. It’s defence. Suppose it is the water supply, nationwide. We can’t afford to let that happen — literally, we can’t afford it. I reckon that to have all the paperwork ready … look, at least it’s a sort of counter, a talking-point, isn’t it? That’s better than too much bloody adamancy in a situation like this.”

  Max made a sort of growling noise and got to his feet. He moved restlessly over to one of the big windows, stared moodily towards the Post Office Tower, the Greater London Council offices across the river, back to the Palace of Westminster and the abbey. London was all there below him and to some extent he held it in his hands, and a lot more besides. All the population in its infinite variety: I thought of the English countryside, of the West Country rivers and estuaries, of the Yorkshire Dales straddling the Pennines, of the midland conurbations, of the great seats of learning at Oxford and Cambridge, and I went mentally on north to the glens and lochs of Scotland and I gave a sudden shiver. So much could be at risk now. Every means had to be used to prevent whatever disaster might be coming.

  I don’t know if Max’s mind was running along similar tracks but he turned back into the room and said, grudgingly, “It’s been discussed as a matter of fact. I think I remarked on the New Wets. They’re in favour and they could sway others in the end.”

  “As the time runs out?” I asked pointedly.

  Max nodded. “I don’t believe they’ll sway the PM, though. That’s where the adamancy resides! I don’t disagree. We have to show a united front, a strong front.”

  I said, “All the same, I’d advise preparations. It’s a lot of money to be taking out of the system, and we’ll need to take into account the likely currency split too.”

  Max was about to give me a rough answer when a telephone burred on his desk. He answered and I saw his sudden look across at me. He listened, saying little.

  “Scotland Yard,” he told me when he’d rung off. “The ACC. There’s been a report from Tayside Police in Perth. A man found floating in the Tay, not quite dead. Died later in hospital. Bullets in the back of his car. Cause of death not yet established — not the effects of the water or of gunfire — but there’ll be a post-mortem.”

  “Any identification?”

  “A civil servant … DOE. Name, Hector MacNaughton.” Max paused, a little white around the mouth. “He said something before he died. Just one word. Rollerball.”

  I met Max’s stare. Rollerball, and we were dealing with those heavy balls, balls that had rolled along the Al. I said, “I’ll get up there pronto.”

  *

  I took Miss Mandrake. We were flown up by a special jet from an RAF airfield after being helicoptered from the pad on the Focal House roof. We reached the Perth nick in the early evening. I was told there that the man, whose job was Environmental Pollution, was believed to have gone into the Tay not long before being found. His bullet-holed car had been found not far back up the river; he’d snagged on an obstruction. Scotland Yard had been informed because the officer in charge at Perth had used his head and ticked over about that word rollerball.

  We were driven to the hospital and taken to see the pathologist. The post-mortem had already been conducted; the man had died of something rare and nasty. But it wasn’t tetradoxin.

  “A fungus,” the pathologist said. “Amazing to find it. It’s known as Fusarium Sporotrichoides. Absolutely lethal, and remains so for a very long time — ”

  “Like anthrax?”

  “No,” he said, “not so long as that. Six years … and it can persist even after being heated to boiling point.”

  I met Felicity’s eye: applied heat — but then we’d been dealing with tetradoxin. It seemed as though our villains had a whole list of filth tucked away. The pathologist went on for a while but nothing much else was relevant. We went back to the nick where we were told that Hector MacNaughton’s duty schedule that day had covered four calls: one in Perth itself, a factory producing dry-cleaning materials; one in Crieff involving a tannery; a distillery in Aberfeldy; and an industrial complex near Pitlochry. I was pondering this when a call came in. It was from Max and it was for me.

  I took it. Max said, “Hold onto your hat. There’s been a speed-up. Someone’s rattled because of that dead man — that’s my guess. They’ve been in touch. We now have four days and they demand that all police and military movements be halted.”

  “They haven’t begun yet,” I said.

  “And now they’re not to. That’s come from Downing Street. We await further contact.”

  “And me? Do I inhibit myself as well?”

  “No. But you’re to be discreet. Very discreet, are you with me?

  I said, reluctantly, that I was. The order was confining and it didn’t help. I said so to Felicity, and added, “Somebody has to stick his neck out, and never mind Downing Street.”

  “Head on the chopping block,” she said warningly.

  I shrugged. It always was. We left the nick and I assumed we would have a tail. The villains had excellent lines of communication as I’d observed before. The rush north by Commander Shaw and Miss Mandrake was unlikely to have gone unnoticed after that Environmental Pollution man had stuck his nose into a hornets’ nest. Those bullets were evidence enough that they’d tried to stop him getting away, and I wondered why they had troubled themselves to infect him with their fungus. They could well be regretting that now. We hadn’t gone far from the nick, and had not in fact spotted a tail, when a PC came running out behind us: I was wanted.

  Max again.

  �
�Another contact,” he said “still unspecific, but what they call the ‘strike’ is about to get rolling.”

  “Rolling?” I repeated.

  “That was the word used.”

  “Rollerball,” I said, and Max rang off.

  Once again we left the nick. An unmarked car had been offered the first time we started off but I’d refused it. Police numbers could be known, and I preferred to go along to Dickson’s garage, as recommended by the police, for a self-drive hire car which with luck might be more anonymous. And I’d decided to play a hunch: I doubted if big scale nastiness could gain a foothold right inside Perth or Crieff and a distillery was an equally unlikely milieu. The industrial complex up by Pitlochry was an obvious choice in the light of developments, not least because they’d said in the nick that one of the factories was being run by guess who, Japs. I still couldn’t identify any tail but we took a devious route to Dickson’s office in the Dunkeld Road. The police had been in touch and I threw 6D2 at the girl and quoted the Official Secrets Act, full of convincing blarney. We were given a Datsun of all things and we drove out of Perth, heading north along the A9. The day was gone long since; the darkness lay heavy and cold and there was plenty of lying snow at the roadsides; though the lanes were clear enough there could be black ice. I risked that in the greater interest. I’d had plenty of practice in dealing with skids. As it turned out there were no problems and we made Pitlochry in good time. Following police directions, I drove about halfway through the little town and took a right-hand turn for the east, up a stiff hill. The industrial complex. I’d been told, was fairly new and there were still some empty premises. There had been complaints about its siting but these had been over-ruled in the interest of employment. The enterprise I was making for was Kyoto Electronics and they made micro-computers and calculators.

  I left the hire car on the eastern outskirts of the town, beyond the Burnside Hotel. The complex was about a mile and a half from the main road through Pitlochry. I got out and began walking, leaving Felicity in the car, which was fitted with a radio telephone and CB. Alone with her handbag-size automatic. If anything untoward happened, or if I failed to show up after a couple of hours, she was to alert Perth who would call Focal House.