The Hoof

by Philip McCutchan

“Or the Hoof on the deaths would be more accurate.”

  “What?” Hedge blinked.

  “Never mind.” Shard got to his feet. “You don’t have to remind me — my job’s to find the Hoof.” He paused. “Tell me one thing, Hedge: are you expecting an invasion of neo-Nazis from the continent, or what?”

  Hedge glared. “You can joke, Shard. There’s many a true word said in jest, remember. With the trades unions in a state of demoralisation, anything can happen, including massive support from the continent for a rightish backlash!”

  “So you do admit that the unions have some useful function after all?”

  Hedge seethed. “Get out, Shard.” As Shard reached the door he saw Hedge taking up his telephone, the internal line. He was about to state his complaint about Hesseltine. Shard went down to the courtyard and got into his car. Finding the Hoof still meant a certain duplication of the purely Met side; it would be desirable to have a word with Maria Locci as soon as she was fit to talk, if ever she was. Shard drove to the hospital where she’d been taken, meaning to ask her if she happened ever to have heard anything about a man known as the Hoof, a name he hadn’t mentioned to her last time they’d met. He hadn’t wanted anything to spread at that stage, anything that might trickle through to the Hoof himself that a link had been seen, or suspected, with Frankie Locci. But now he had to take a chance. However, he found that Maria was in the intensive care unit and no way would she be allowed visitors.

  *

  Back in Seddon’s Way the security line rang: Harry Kenwood, from Leeds. So far it was a blank. No sign of the missing policeman. What did Shard want him to do?

  “You want to come back to the smoke, Harry?”

  “It’s not that, sir. It’s just that I’m a spare hand up here.”

  “Losing faith?”

  “In your theory, sir?” There was a pause. “Let’s just say, it’s not kind of coming together, not in any way at all. Has there been anything on Peters, your end?”

  “No. When there is, you’ll be informed pronto, Harry. Just stay put for the time being, and keep me informed. All right?”

  There was a sigh. “I suppose so, sir.”

  Shard rang off. The whole thing was an impasse, a static situation in a sense, one where you just waited around to hear about more union bosses being murdered in nasty ways. Shard was convinced Barney Peters was dead. He went down into Seddon’s Way and bought an evening paper: the stop press was blank. It would be different next morning. In the meantime the experts, the evening ones, were still at it, prophesying according to their politics: doom or everlasting light. The country was split about the unions. Shard threw the paper aside with an angry, fed-up gesture. He disliked inactivity and currently he could see nothing useful to do. Half his mind was in Leeds still, half was with Solly, who had to be given time to report. Nothing further had come in from Devon and Cornwall Police; the Lydford sighting had probably been a false alarm. God alone knew what the Hoof could have been doing in a village like Lydford anyway, even the gorge would probably be a sheet of ice … Shard was thinking he might just as well go home early for once. When things started up, he wouldn’t see Beth for days on end. But once again the security line buzzed at him and he reached for the handset.

  Hedge.

  “Developments, Shard. Get here.” Slam.

  Shard lost no time in locking up and shifting across to the Foreign Office. Hedge wasn’t alone: Head of Security, Minister of State, Hesseltine, an under-secretary from the Home Office and a man from the Ministry of Defence, a soldier by the look of him and he was: a major-general, Sanderson by name.

  “Ah, Shard. You’ll have to get results. There’s been a telephone call to the Home Office.” This wasn’t Hedge, it was the Head of Security.

  Shard asked, “May I know its purport, sir?”

  “You may.” The chief was looking sick, really worried — so were they all. “Made anonymously as to the actual caller, but said to be from the Workers’ League of Freedom —”

  “Again!”

  “Again, Shard. They’re claiming responsibility — again. This time for this afternoon’s tragic business, the cemetery. Nothing about Peters.”

  Shard asked, “Do you confirm there’s nothing known about this Workers’ League of Freedom, sir?”

  “Yes. We haven’t anything at all. That presupposes it’s not only new but small — if it was big ‘Panorama’ or ‘World in Action’ would have been onto it by this time.” The Head of Security gave a bitter laugh: TV was always the bugbear, it got right under the skin. “If you want me to speculate, I’d say it’s nothing to do with the workers as such. Someone, probably from the political right, has hit on a popular title, as indeed Hedge has already suggested — right, Hedge?”

  Hedge nodded and studiously avoided Shard’s eye: both of them knew where that suggestion had originated. Hedge said, “It’s the rightist backlash, of course. I’ve said before, it’s been building up for some time and it was bound to come. To burst, like a boil.”

  “Yes. But it’s to be contained. I can’t stress the vital importance sufficiently. We must all — all of us in this room — coordinate our efforts to crush it. That’s axiomatic but I stress it all the same. None of us need be in any doubt that it’s the Hoof that’s behind it. We know a lot about what the Hoof’s been doing since his gaol break. We know he has massive links on the Continent, that he has international neo-Nazi backing with all that that entails — finance especially. Also, he’s got a prepared situation here in the UK. The Left and Right are fairly equally distributed and it’s believed the Hoof intends to form a counterblast to the Left, pre-empting the Left’s ideas of a revolution, such as an SWP spokesman put forward a couple of years ago. He’ll be making use of the escalating discontent among the rank and file of the unions, and the unemployed — perhaps them in particular. Three million is quite an army.” The Head of Security leaned forward, face grave. “I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I foresee a damn sight more mob violence and destruction of property than we’ve ever faced before. The country’s ripe for real trouble, the whole situation is tinder dry. We have to get the Hoof and his domestic thugs before things run out of control. I’m told that you, Shard, have the best chance of doing that.”

  “I’ve been trying,” Shard said. “So far without success. I haven’t a single, solitary lead.” He turned towards Hesseltine. “How about the Yard?”

  The ACC shrugged but didn’t answer directly. The Head of Security went on, “What are you doing about it so far, Shard? I’d like your report here and now.”

  Shard had been put right on the spot. He said, “Apart from what you know already — the deployment of the Diplomatic Protection Squad and our own men, and my DS sent to Leeds — I can only say I’ve a nose at work. Largely, I have to wait for him — I know it’s not good enough. But Britain’s a large patch, sir.”

  “You don’t usually make excuses, Shard.”

  “I try not to —”

  “All right. What about the man who planted the bomb in the coffin?”

  “I’ve got a man on that, sir. Nothing’s come back to me yet. I don’t expect it to. Any tracks’ll be well covered.” Shard looked round at the faces staring back at him, almost all the top executive brass of Britain in the context of law and order and general security. All of them haunted by the spectre, however distant so far, of riot and a breakdown of control, all of them giving the impression it was being left up to him. That, of course, was an illusion: other wheels were turning somewhere.

  *

  Just as the meeting broke up a call came in from the intensive care unit: the DC on duty in the corridor outside. Maria Locci was conscious but well doped on account of the pain. Shard might get through to her, might not. Would he come along? The doctors didn’t like it at all, but he had stressed the urgency, the vital national interest that could be served by a few words from the latest victim. In the end they’d agreed. Shard said he would be along right away. He was on the point o
f leaving when another call came in: Devon and Cornwall Police, from Exeter. There had been a traffic accident, or RTA in the jargon, involving a pedestrian. A hit-and-run, no trace of the driver or vehicle. The pedestrian had severe head injuries, a crushed pelvis, and an almost gutted stomach. He’d died in the ambulance on the way to the accident and emergency unit but he’d been just able to mutter a word or two. He wanted Detective Chief Superintendent Shard informed in London; Devon and Cornwall Police had contacted the Yard and had been put onto the Foreign Office. The pedestrian’s name had been Solly — just Solly, no surname. And no message either: Solly hadn’t lasted long enough. Shard spared a sad thought for Solly by way of requiem, then went down for a car and driver to take him to see Maria Locci. By fast driving where possible and a knowledge of short cuts his driver got him there within forty-five minutes of the phone call. It wasn’t fast enough: Maria Locci had died just a few minutes earlier. Death was becoming a too frequent interloper; but it had been a long shot anyway. Shard went back to the Foreign Office and another long shot: he rang through for the security files to be opened up. His own file in Seddon’s Way was comprehensive but there just might be something extra on the Hoof in the computerised Top Secret index, kept in the basement behind many keys, many checks, many alarm systems plus a human guard twenty-four hours a day. There was quite a lot on the Hoof but nothing he hadn’t already got from his own microdot information. It took time since there were a number of cross-references to continental, post-gaolbreak links, or possible links, that had to be read through. Some could prove useful; Shard made a note of them. But there was nothing whatever to indicate who or what the Hoof’s UK contacts might be. There was a psychiatrist’s report which, when the jargon was broken down, said that the Hoof was a nut case of a sort and motivated by revenge; that wasn’t new either.

  Shard looked at his watch, yawning. Eleven p.m. Latish, and he preferred to remain handy. Full of apologies, he rang Beth the moment he had been checked out of the file section. He said he wouldn’t be back that night. He would use his emergency doss at the Foreign Office. Thereafter, during a largely sleepless night, Shard thought again about Solly, died in the line of duty. Exeter — again, the West Country. More than a coincidence? Solly was good at his trade and didn’t waste time and effort — he’d gone for a purpose.

  Exeter, Lydford … not so far apart.

  But again, why Lydford? The Hoof, in a small village, would stand out a mile to anyone looking for him. But if the Hoof didn’t know he was being looked for? Even if that was so, he would need a purpose to visit Lydford. It wasn’t as though it was summer; the Hoof couldn’t be part of a mass of emmetts, gawping at the ruins of the castle or the rush and tumble of the gorge … thought drifted away into sleep but sleep was visited by nightmares about murdered trade unionists who, in the manner of nightmares, metamorphosed into murdered politicians. Roy Jenkins vanished over a Welsh hillside, screaming, pursued by his namesake Clive Jenkins wearing horns and making a long nose with his fingers. An elongated and thinned-out Mrs Thatcher, undergoing torture on a rack before attempted disposal by Mr Benn, won a vote of confidence in a House filled with sulphurous smoke and changed into a crowned figure on a throne in Buckingham Palace. Shard woke up: the telephone was ringing. Just a couple of burr-burrs before the DC on duty answered it.

  It was for Shard: Hesseltine, also in his office at the Yard. Hesseltine said, sounding grim, “Another one down, Simon.”

  “Who?”

  “Porter Wellman. Broadcasting Staffs Association.”

  Shard swore. “How?”

  “Gunned down at his front door half an hour ago. They got his escort too — I’m sorry, Simon. One of yours — DC Merridew. And Wellman’s wife, who shouldn’t have chanced it but did.”

  Shard felt dead inside: Merridew was one of his up-and-coming men — had been. Young and keen, wife, two tiny children. And parents, people all too often not thought about at times of tragedy. This was coming close to home now. Shard said, “I suppose the bastard or bastards got clear away?”

  “Yes. IRA stuff. As before, we have no leads. No-one still alive saw a thing.”

  The call was cut. Shard swore savagely beneath his breath, feeling helpless. If only the break would come. With every copper in the land on the watch for him, the Hoof must surely slip up somewhere.

  5

  That morning there were sundry disturbances which could have been coincidental but which could on the other hand have been orchestrated. There were riots outside four London Jobcentres and two in Manchester. In each case the police had to be called to restore peace. In one of the London centres women in the dole queues had objected, stridently, to personal questions asked by the DHSS clerks. The others in the queues had joined in, anything to break the dreary monotony of life with the unemployed. In the others the clash had come between black and white. In Balham a strong posse of skinheads, all of them unemployed and armed with knives, coshes, iron bars, blocks of wood, scaffold poles and in five cases sawn-off shot-guns, attacked a group of blacks, also unemployed, hanging about a street corner in idle innocence. The skins attacked to shouts of ‘Sieg heil.’ A good deal of blood flowed in a running battle, with more skins and more blacks joining in, until the police came in and after some hours brought the situation back to normal: brooding, menacing, knife-edge, finger-on-the-trigger surface calm.

  The whole thing was ripe, all set up in advance, just as the Head of Security had suggested, for the Hoof to exploit. The Hoof and his confederates were out to exploit a growing vacuum. Vacuums, abhorred by nature, had always to be filled. Where law and order slipped, people like the Hoof were given their opening. Shard got a car from the section and drove across the river to Balham when he got the first reports. He overheard what one of the skinheads yelled as he was dragged away to a police van.

  “Wogs out! Chuck the bastards back where they effing come from! If they’re black, send ’em back! Three million unemployed equals three million effing wogs, right?” There was a pause to draw breath, then the next words came out loud and clear from the back of the police van: “Effing unions, load of shit, think more of the effing wogs than of whites, effing good thing the effing leaders are being effing killed …”

  Shard felt cold and sick. This was going to spread. It would be popular and in a sense there was even logic in it. But it made a sick and nasty world and would sound like music to the Hoof. He would see his strong-arm mob all ready for him, all ready for the sort of leadership he could provide.

  *

  Up in Leeds Harry Kenwood was involved in the long slog, the long slog to find Barney Peters and PC Hurst. Leeds in the depths of a hard winter wasn’t funny. Snow lay everywhere, old slushy muck and fresh white drifting down to cover it and then become slush in its turn. The search was largely on foot and had extended way beyond Hurst’s beat. All unfrozen water in the Leeds area had been or was being dragged and searched by skin divers — river, Leeds and Liverpool canal, lakes, ponds out in the nearby country, quarries. It was a round the clock business and Kenwood was raw-eyed from lack of sleep. Buildings were gone through — derelict houses yet to be cleared away by the bulldozers, yards with broken-down gates, public lavatories where locked cubicles weren’t always reported as soon as they might be, station areas with ancient sheds not often in use, all that sort of thing. No bodies. Trudge and drive, drive and trudge beneath tall, gloomy buildings standing like sentinels or like monuments to a past when heavy industry throve and the workers had filled the air with the clangour and sweat that produced profit and wages. Harry Kenwood talked about the current situation as he delved into yet another building with a DC from Leeds Police. The DC’s father and grandfather had worked in the building of locomotives, an uncle had worked in iron and steel manufacture, two aunts in textiles.

  “All gone now. Almost. My dad’s on the dole.”

  “What does he say about it all?”

  The DC grinned. “Says they worked harder in his day. If they still worke
d, it wouldn’t ever have happened.”

  “And you?”

  “I say the same. Self-inflicted wounds, that’s what it’s been, Sarge. The bloody unions … they aren’t blameless!”

  “Yet they got better conditions, better wages.”

  “Yes.” The DC slapped his arms around his body; breath steamed into the air each time a mouth opened or a nose exhaled. “That’s true, they did, I wouldn’t deny. But it all went too far. Once they got into power politics … you know what I mean. They had to ask for more and more, had to stir up the lads, just to keep their own jobs — keep one step ahead of the militants who were pushing them over the edge and hoping to snatch their jobs away from them. New privileged class, the union bosses. Big salaries, loads of perks, holidays for the wife and kids, they’re not doing so badly. Better than you or me’ll ever get. That’s what my dad says … and I reckon he’s right.”

  Kenwood asked, “Is he a Conservative?”

  The DC laughed. “Jesus, no, not my dad. Voted Labour all his life, but that’s still what he thinks. I read somewhere, just ten per cent of the British work force’ll be enough to carry on in, what, thirty, forty years. Result of microprocessor technology. When that happens, the union bosses’ll need their feather beds more than ever.” He paused. “Know something else, Sarge?”

  “What?”

  “I shouldn’t say this, but I think this Hoof, he’s sort of public spirited.”

  Kenwood said, “You’re right, you shouldn’t say that.”

  “No. We’re not supposed to think, are we? Not supposed to have politics.”

  “Only in private,” Kenwood said. They moved on, searching, probing, shifting things to look behind and underneath. Cats spat venom and ran with blazing green eyes for safety. Harry Kenwood thought about the relentlessness of political dogma. In truth it could send the country right down the slippery slope, give the final push. You could say what you liked about the unions but they were a fact of life and they did represent a kind of stability. There was something more than ludicrous about seeing the Hoof as a latter-day Hitler but events could make it seem not so ludicrous after all. The search, the long slog, went on and on and was duplicated in all other areas of the city of Leeds and its environs. But when what turned out to be the break came that late afternoon, it came from where the Leeds Chief Super had in fact believed all along it would: from the very beat PC Hurst had been patrolling. On the face of it there was no involvement of Hurst but because it happened to be his beat when he had vanished, Kenwood was called by radio and given the word. He and the DC went back for their car at the rush.