The Hoof

by Philip McCutchan

  Eve said, “I thought this was the —”

  “Coronel,” the old lady said again, a hand pressing her meagre, sunken chest. “Know ’ow old I am, do you, dearie?”

  “No, I —”

  “Ninety bloody two. And ’e was a leadin’ stoker. Them were the days.”

  “I’m sure they were. I thought this was the office of the Workers’ League —”

  “No, dearie, oh no. That lot’s packed up and gorn, you see. Last week that was. They rented a room at the back — people used to come an’ go through ’ere like. Don’t know where they are now I’m sure.”

  “But —”

  “On’y bin ’ere a few days — funny lot.” The old lady gave a sniff. “I don’t ’old with that there Socialism. Too uppitty, like that there Lord George.”

  Suddenly, she shut the door and almost simultaneously turned the key. It was like sleight-of-hand. Eve heard the bolts being shot across. Fear gripped hard: it was like a nightmare, a nightmare into which solid Shard had vanished. Eve Brett almost ran round to the back of the line of shops, looking for a back way, a service alley.

  Nothing.

  She tried to identify the back of the old lady’s premises, fancied she had done so by counting back from the side street. No help there. Just a window, blank, uncurtained, somehow filled with menace. Shard had to be in there somewhere … unless he’d already been removed. The old lady? She sounded like a crackpot but she didn’t have to be one. The premises shrieked out for a search. No use on her own: Eve Brett started looking for a telephone box, or a copper on the beat. If she found the latter, she wouldn’t be able to convince him all that fast; like Shard, she had no identification on her person. And speed was vital.

  *

  Hedge, called out to yet another conference, was fending off queries as to why he hadn’t produced results to date. More strictly, of course, it was the Head of Security who was under attack, but Hedge was unable to sidestep his own responsibilities. Blame was heavy in the air, as thick as incense. The mob violence was worsening; it wasn’t just the trade union killings. There were different targets emerging, the mobs fanning out from the depressed areas to attack the parts where privilege lived or took its pleasures. South Kensington, Knightsbridge, the better parts of Hampstead plus the once slummy parts east that money had turned into class areas. Not them alone: Hedge himself had been cowering in the Athenaeum the night before when a howling mob of blacks and whites had surged in down Lower Regent Street and up the Duke of York’s Steps from the Mall. Every window in the Athenaeum had been broken and stones and filth had entered the sacred precincts, while the front of the building had been lit with the terrible flames from the petrol bombs. Water-cannon had moved in and had had some effect until the mob got under the jets of one of them and lobbed a petrol bomb into a hatch. The vehicle had gone out of control and had plunged sideways down the Duke of York’s Steps to make a flaming tomb in the Mall. A strong body of police had protected the inmates of the Athenaeum, but only just. At the same time another mob had swept along the Chelsea Embankment, making west after attacking the Royal Army Medical College at Millbank and setting it aflame. Troops had been turned out from Chelsea Barracks but the mob was strong enough to go right through them. Government had not yet authorised the use of firearms other than with plastic bullets and these hadn’t been enough. By daybreak, the whole of the Chelsea Embankment had been a mass of fire. It was just like the war. A number of police had been left dead and pathetically few arrests had been made. Hedge trembled to think what the next night might bring. Whitehall itself could be the target for attack; but the dispositions had been made for that eventuality.

  One of the persons present at the meeting was a newspaper proprietor, Markham Stack, always a nuisance in adversity, talking with his usual pompousness about the freedom of the press, its simple duty to inform. The Head of Security was in an aggressive mood and snapped back that, surely, the freedom of the country was rather more vital.

  “It’s a point of view,” Stack said judicially, placing long fingers together and tapping them gently. “However, I consider the two concepts to be complementary one to the other, don’t you? The newspapers should be utterly free to comment as well as to report the news —”

  “I’ve not noticed much holding back on either.”

  “Ah! But very clearly the purpose of this meeting is to persuade the press not to publish what you don’t want published, is it not?”

  The Head of Security blew out a long breath. “Of course it is. We don’t want any adverse comment because we don’t want to alarm the public. Don’t you understand, for God’s sake?”

  “Certainly!” There was a cynical smile starting to spread over Markham Stack’s face. The Head of Security reddened dangerously. Stabbing a thick finger towards Stack, he spoke of the need not to undermine authority even further than it looked like being undermined by current events. The longer the forces of law and order could be seen to be in control, the better their chances of remaining there. A gross dis-service to the nation would be performed by any persons spreading alarm, fomenting the situation, denigrating the efforts of Security and the Yard who were genuinely doing their best. It was while the Chief was speaking that the closed line burred and Hedge took the call. Everyone seemed to be waiting for him to utter. Into the instrument he said, “Yes, I see,” then replaced it. His mouth opened and shut again; this was hardly the time … he dithered for a moment while the Head of Security stared at him, then he said, “A routine matter, Head.” Around him the discussion went on. It seemed never-ending and Hedge, with much now on his mind, made a poor showing. He sensed a great deal of criticism appearing next day in Markham Stack’s leader. At last the wretched meeting ended. When Stack and the others had gone, Hedge waited for the Head of Security to get back to his office after ushering them out personally, then he took up his internal line and made the report.

  “Shard, Head. He’s disappeared! The Yard’s had a report from Devon and Cornwall Police in Plymouth. I thought it better not to say anything —”

  “While that man Stack was present? You did right, Hedge. We have to try to hold this. Any comment from Plymouth?”

  “Er … no.”

  “You sound unsure.”

  “Well, there was something I really didn’t quite get, something about the battle of Coronel —”

  “Coronel?” The head sounded stupefied.

  Hedge said, “Well, I don’t know if it’s at all important and it’s quite likely Hesseltine got it wrong. I —”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be in touch myself with Plymouth.” There was a pause. “Who have we down there, apart from Shard? What’s the girl’s name?”

  “WDC Brett —”

  “Yes. You’d better send Kenwood to back her up. See to that at once.”

  *

  Devon and Cornwall Police had given every possible assistance. By the time the Foreign Office meeting had broken up, the empty shop and the flat above in the Barbican had been discreetly surrounded by plain clothes men, with cars and uniformed officers waiting out of sight. By permission of the Chief Constable, the plain clothes men carried side-arms in shoulder holsters. Eve Brett was with them, her face pale but firm. She was convinced they were already too late, that she herself had probably been too late when she’d rung the bell that had produced the geriatric left-over from Coronel’s bloodbath.

  She accompanied the DI in charge when he rang the same bell. He allowed just thirty seconds, then rang again. No reply. Eve said, “We’d better hurry, sir.”

  The DI nodded. He was a stolid man, square-faced and calm. He waited fifteen seconds, during which time he tried the door-handle. There was no movement when he turned and pushed. He said, “Right, now then.” He stood back a few paces, then threw his weight against the door. The whole building seemed to shudder but the door withstood the beef. The DI repeated the manoeuvre; the top panel showed a crack. The next onslaught splintered the wood. By this time a crowd had gathe
red, men from the fish market and their customers, plus the by now customary sprinkling of punks. Catcalls came across. The plain clothes men formed a line and held the crowd back. The uniformed officers were brought in: the chance of surprise had already gone. At the door the DI worked fast, assisted by a DC. The splintered wood was smashed right in, a hand felt for the bolts at top and bottom. The lock was recalcitrant: no key on the inside. The DI took a pace back, placed the muzzle of his heavy revolver against the lock on the outside, and fired three times.

  Then he went in. Behind there was a rising sound, a curious baying, a kind of blood-lust almost, Eve Brett thought as she followed in. More punks had gathered, their hair forming a rainbow.

  The police assault pounded up the stairs after two men had detached to investigate a door off right, in the passage that formed the hall: the house-door to the shop premises. Up top there were five rooms on two floors, plus a bathroom and kitchen. They were all empty of life and there wasn’t much furniture either.

  In the room at the back on the first floor they found a pool of blood. Fresh, the DI said, glancing at Eve Brett’s face. From the pool, drops led back to the door. Five of them, but nothing on the landing outside the door. A quick check back down the stairs and hall showed no more blood drops.

  “That’s funny,” the DI said, looking puzzled. He turned to his sergeant. “We’ll dust for prints. Get forensic here — check the blood group.” He turned again to Eve. “Mr Shard. Was he, is he, a big man?”

  “Yes,” Eve said. “Tall, well built. No fat — but big, yes.”

  “Uh-huh. If ever he was here —”

  “I’m quite certain he was, sir.”

  “Right. Then he won’t have been easy to remove, if the blood says what I think it says. And he won’t have been got out the back way.” The back was just a high wall, as Eve had seen earlier, no gate, no back exit of any kind. A tiny patch of yard, concreted, just enough to stop the lowering of a body from a window directly into the street even if anyone had taken the risk, the certainty, of being seen. The DI went on, “We’ll ask around. Someone in the fish market’ll be sure to have seen something.”

  “Then why didn’t they contact —”

  “Look, lass.” The DI took her arm. He said quietly, “This isn’t the Foreign Office … by which I mean no offence, just that down here things are — more real. The public, the ordinary public, doesn’t think an awful lot, get me? The grey matter doesn’t stir, not unless it’s jerked into action by the very obvious.”

  “You mean —”

  “I mean Mr Shard wasn’t obviously brought out, that’s what I mean.” The DI pushed her towards the stairs. The sergeant and two DCs were left in the house to do the routines. Outside, the punks were at it still, jeering, menacing but not going any further than that. The police presence was a shade too strong. The DI, face grim, went straight through the mob, shouldering the weird forms aside with powerful shoulders. The jeering grew but no-one tried to stop the DI. His face looked unstoppable; behind the mob he halted and faced the fish salesmen. He asked his questions. It was a woman who answered first, a middle-aged housewife who’d been queuing for some while. Just as she’d got there, she told the DI, an ambulance had drawn up. A stretcher had been taken into the house and after an interval had come down with a man in it. No, she couldn’t say what he looked like, he was wrapped in a blanket and driven away fast, presumably to hospital. Once the woman had uttered, others joined in, a real chorus of help to the police. The old lady who lived there, no-one seemed to know her name, she hadn’t been there long and kept herself to herself. Already, in her short period of residence, she had acquired a reputation for being a bit gone in the top storey, a real queer one.

  “Did she,” the DI asked, “go with the ambulance?”

  It was believed she had. The DI asked, “Did anyone notice the registration number of the ambulance, or whether or not it belonged to the local hospital group?”

  No-one had got the number and there was some confusion as to the area authority. Some said it was local, others had no idea. The point was decided by a very old man, so old that he looked as if he could have been at Coronel himself, a man who seemed to be something of an expert on ambulances, almost what the DI would have called, had he felt in the mood, an ambulance spotter. He knew all the Plymouth ambulances, Health Service, St John’s, Red Cross and private, he had lived in Plymouth all his life and expected to die there. At any moment, by the look of him … and he said this one had been private. No markings at all. Yes, he was positive. Further, it wasn’t a Plymouth one.

  “Didn’t ’ave the aura if you follow my meanin’. Different, ’ard to say what, like. Not so classy. Do with a polish up. It were dirty and muddy.”

  “Are you saying it looked as though it had come a long way?”

  “I reckon. Yes, that’s it. A long way.”

  “You don’t, by any chance, have any theories as to where it might have come from?”

  There was a cackle of laughter and a throaty rumble. The old man’s percipience didn’t extend that far. It was now a matter of urgency to find the ambulance and its occupant. It wouldn’t have had much of a start; if the old crone was aboard, then it would have pulled up after WDC Brett’s first visit.

  10

  The ambulance had in fact driven out of Plymouth before the police call went out for an interception of all such vehicles. It had taken the A386 for Tavistock, and in Tavistock it had been driven to ground in a semi-derelict warehouse. Its occupants then transferred to a dark blue van, a Ford Transit. The old crone from the Barbican was placed in the back, in an armchair safely held fast with ropes, a weird sight. With no further delay, while the police started their ambulance hunt, the Transit van drove out on the road across Dartmoor, to pass the grim grey prison, then Two Bridges, Moretonhampstead, Exeter. At Exeter it picked up the M5 to head north past Bristol. It moved very fast: the man behind the wheel concentrated hard and drove well through foul conditions. Beside the driver sat Ponto; Kries was in the back with the old crone and Shard, who was still in the stretcher from the ambulance. Shard had come round fairly early on to find himself helpless, roped down hard like a strait-jacket. He was still gagged, too, so was unable to ask questions of Kries. His head ached and he felt sick; and there was a big pain in his stomach.

  The van went on north, no stops in service areas other than for petrol. It seemed to be going a long way. Kries, wedged into a corner and travelling uncomfortably, smoked cigarettes and kept his trouser leg clear of his gun even though Shard was unable to move hand or foot. Shard felt sheer savagery, worrying about Eve Brett, wondering what she would have done, whether she too would fall into the trap.

  A long, long time later Ponto looked round from the front, where he was comfortable in a seat. “ Not far off now,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Kries said. No clues at all as to where ‘not far off’ might be …

  *

  Harry Kenwood had arrived in Plymouth a little after lunch. Once he got there, Hedge kept on ringing from Whitehall, asking for news. Hedge was distraught: any minute now the press was going to get hold of it and the whole country would know that his number one security man had been killed or kidnapped. The blood had spoken for itself. If the Hoof was able to do that and get away with it, the end, Hedge inferred, was nigh. As success bred success, so did failure breed failure. Things would go from bad to worse. There would be more and more killings and then the country would erupt. And the cabinet would have Hedged head. Thus spake Hedge.

  For the fourth time Harry Kenwood put down the receiver and swore beneath his breath: Hedge was torment to his field men.

  *

  The snow had stopped falling but what lay on the ground was thicker in the north than it had been down south. The Transit van had stopped at last, not petrol this time but an arrival somewhere. Shard was lifted out in the stretcher, into a murky dawn: it had been a long trek. As he was moved he looked at the old woman, Coronel’s relict: she
was lolled sideways, mouth hanging open, eyes sightlessly staring. She had died way back, somewhere near Carlisle though Shard hadn’t known the location; the excitement had perhaps been too much for her. As Ponto remarked, she was old, very old. From then on she had been both an embarrassment and a danger. To be stopped with a dead geriatric was a nasty thought but there had been nothing to be done about it. She couldn’t be left on the hard shoulder.

  Ponto clicked his tongue and said, “It is a pity, this. She must be disposed of quickly now we are here.”

  “Shouldn’t be difficult,” Kries said. “Jesus, what a dump.” He sounded cold and he was. From the stretcher Shard saw snow-covered bleakness; mountains loomed through a mist and there was water not far off, a dismal stretch of grey. There was also a house with a garage; the van was now being driven into the garage. From the far distance came the skirl of the pipes; they were in Scotland.

  Still roped down on the stretcher, Shard was conveyed into the house.

  *

  In London things were looking gloomier and no light seemed to be in prospect. Another union man, who had happened to be abroad at the time Frankie Locci’s discovered corpse had started the panic, had disappeared a few days earlier. The man was not a union leader, just a very militant father of a chapel in one of the print unions, and he had been in Finland as a member of a fraternal delegation visiting the workers in the newsprint mills. When Hedge had been told of the disappearance he fulminated about junkets in the fleshpots which, he said angrily, was the real reason behind the mission. Just about the same time as Shard reached Scotland an airtight container had come in from Finland by sea and had been discharged in the port of Shoreham in Sussex. Soon after this Sussex Police in Shoreham had taken a call, anonymous like the others, advising them to open up the container, which held newsprint. The chapel father’s body had been found on top of rolls of paper, dead as mutton. This news reached the Foreign Office via the Yard and Hedge’s mood grew more morose. The trouble was spreading and could involve the whole continent before long. Then, hard on the heels of this news, came word that there was another build-up of possible mob violence.