The Hoof

by Philip McCutchan

  “Every blasted time!” Hedge said in a frenzy, waving his arms in the air. “It follows every Trade Union killing like the night the day. What is it now?”

  His informant was Hesseltine, on the security telephone. Hesseltine said, “North Sea oil.”

  “What?”

  “Mobs have been converging from all over — train loads of them — the North Sea oil terminals on the Clyde and the Forth. They’re massing at the gates. Unemployed workers — and they’re being inflamed. My guess is, they could decide to rush the gates and interfere with the pumping systems, even try to stop the inflow.”

  Hedge mopped at his face. “I shall talk to the Head of Security right away, also Defence Ministry. Can’t the local police make some arrests?”

  “The situation’s touch and go,” Hesseltine said. “They’re watching it, but so far the demo’s peaceful — more or less. An arrest might push them over the brink.” He paused. “All the same, it might not be a bad idea to have troops held somewhere in readiness.”

  *

  Shard didn’t see the old woman again and had no idea what had been done with her; possibly the body had been thrown into the loch with heavy weights attached. That was a nasty thought and one that could impinge upon himself; but he didn’t believe there was any immediacy. Ponto and Kries could, or so he hoped, be assumed to have some use for him or he would have been disposed of already. No doubt an interrogation would come, but for now Kries and Ponto seemed to be too busy with other matters. Although nothing specific had yet been said on the point, Shard believed that the Hoof might show at any time.

  Meanwhile other people were turning up. The house was presumably very remote, a lonely part of the highlands, for there was no particular secrecy — so far, anyway.

  After Shard had been carried inside and laid on the floor of what looked like a study, lined with books, the distant sound of the pipes had come inexorably closer. They were playing Over the Sea to Skye as they neared the house and as they ceased a sharp command rang out, military style. Some minutes later footsteps were heard and a number of kilts approached Shard and swung around his head. Tartan wool stockings encased thick legs like miniature cabers. Faces stared, tough, weathered, whisky-red. The leader of the Scots appeared to be some sort of clan chief: he was addressed as MacSkean, and when referred to in the third person he became The MacSkean. Taking into account the piper’s tune, the whole thing began to take on the feeling of a bizarre replay of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s landing at Glenfinnan in 1745, to be welcomed by his highland clansmen.

  But it was nothing so romantic.

  The MacSkean said in a deep-throated voice, “Aye, well,” and aimed a kick at the stretcher. The foot was hefty; Shard winced as shoe-leather scraped his face. The MacSkean turned to Ponto and said, “So you don’t know who he is.”

  “No,” Ponto answered.

  “Then you’ll be finding out.” It wasn’t a query; it was an order.

  Kries said, “I guess he’s a dick. I know the look of dicks, and that’s what he looks like.”

  The MacSkean gave Kries an up-and-down look. “And you are who, sir?”

  “The name’s Kries.” He tried a joke. “You can forget the Jesus.” That got a flat reception; The MacSkean was possibly a devout Presbyterian. Kries sensed the frigidity and said, “What the heck, it was just a joke.”

  “You’re an American?”

  “Sure.”

  The MacSkean grunted but didn’t criticise further: the grunt was sheer eloquence in itself. He turned to Ponto and said, “I hope it’ll not be long now. They’re all ready, and they’ll be hard to hold. I’ll not deny we Scots have our failings. One of them is the whisky. If you don’t know Glasgow, then I do.” He seemed about to say more but shut his mouth when a vehicle was heard approaching. Two vehicles: as they stopped outside the windows, Shard could see the roofs of two Range Rovers. A number of men entered the house but didn’t come into the study. Ponto went off with The MacSkean, leaving Kries to watch over Shard. There was a buzz of conversation audible after the study door had been shut, and some laughter, but this faded as the men moved away. Shard wondered about Kries, about his part in whatever was being planned by the Hoof, that shadowy figure that might be about to show, up here in the north. There was something uneasy about Kries, something that didn’t quite fit, though Ponto seemed to have accepted him. When the Hoof came, all might be explained. Shard asked Kries whereabouts they were. Kries gave a hard laugh. “Jeez, it sounded like Loch Vermin, but I could have got it wrong.”

  He didn’t like Scotland.

  *

  Another uneasy personage was The MacSkean. The MacSkean didn’t like the English and came back to say so after the meeting had broken up and the Range Rovers had gone off on their chain-circled tyres. Looking down at Shard he went into a mad-sounding diatribe, enumerating English vices right back to the days of Flodden field, on through the highland clearances to the two world wars, won by the Scots, and on again to the present. All that was good in Britain had come from the Scots. The great feats of engineering were attributable to the Scots. MacAdam had revolutionised road building; Bell had invented the telephone, Baird the television, a very mixed blessing; even marmalade came from Dundee, as did cake. The trouble was, as Shard reflected, The MacSkean was dead right. Shard, who had Scottish ancestry on his mother’s side, liked Scotland and admired its people for all their achievements. What grated was the fact of being taken for a full-blooded Englishman, but The MacSkean was derisive when he mentioned the distaff connection with Clan Anderson. The Andersons were lowlanders, corrupt moneymakers and English lickspittles from south of Edinburgh, and that made them worse than the English themselves if such were possible. Not only that; in the late 1700s one of them had worn King George’s scarlet Hanoverian uniform as an officer of the East Lothian Fencibles and had shown disloyalty to the memory of Prince Charles Edward thereby. Highland recollections were long, so were the feuds.

  “But we’re about to show you,” The MacSkean said.

  “Can you be more precise?” Shard asked from the floor.

  “Aye. The oil! It’s ours. Not yours.”

  “And you think the League will help you get it back?”

  “Aye! More than that. I know it will. And it’s going to take more than Sassenachs such as yourself to stop us.” The MacSkean turned on his heel and went out. A couple of minutes later the pipes struck up and marched away. The faintly music-hall element made it all the more sinister.

  11

  Up by the oil terminals the mood had worsened.

  As more and more groups gathered, the police presence grew stronger to meet the threat. The mere sight of the blue uniforms in their hundreds was an exacerbation. The mob surged backwards and forwards and fighting broke out. Policemen suffered injuries, mostly minor; there was no retaliation on the mob despite the provocation. Hesseltine’s belief in moderation for the time being had been endorsed by the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland and the appropriate orders had gone out to all police areas concerned. But it was growing ugly now and soon harder decisions might have to be made. A few hotheads had already got inside the terminal yards and there had been fighting as they had tried to interfere with the operations. Despite the strength of their presence, the police were very heavily outnumbered; it could come to an army job. The troops were already moving into position. Two companies of the Black Watch had been brought in and kept out of sight, two more companies of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were on their way plus a formation of half battalion strength from the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the Royal Scots and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

  It was hoped they would not be needed, but, as the Home Secretary remarked to a meeting of the cabinet hastily summoned as the worsening situation reports reached Whitehall, the oil could become the nub of the Hoof’s endeavours.

  “If the supply’s cut off, we’re in real trouble. Not at once, but soon enough. The mobs must not be allowed to gain
a foothold.” He paused. “I’ve had other indications and they link in: a number of power stations have also become a target for the mobs. I believe Hesseltine’s time of moderation is running out fast.”

  In the Foreign Office, Hedge was having similar thoughts. He considered Hesseltine to be utterly wrong-headed. The time to strike was now. The mobs should never have been allowed to group in the first place: there, someone had slipped up badly and the Scottish Office must take the blame as well as Hesseltine who, though confined strictly to the Yard, was always listened to by Whitehall, God alone knew why …

  Hedge glared down from his office windows, down into Parliament Square. The snow had gone, was just a slushy mess now, ruinous to good shoe-leather. There were crowds going about their business and a coming and going to and from the House, everything looking normal. But it was a surface normality; Hedge felt danger in his very bones, a horrid feeling that something was about to break and that its breaking would finish him if it didn’t finish Britain. Worms crawled along his spine, worms of fear of what was as yet unknown, of what the Hoof might have up his sleeve.

  And where was Shard? Where in God’s name was Shard?

  Hedge felt naked without Shard. Shard’s DI was a good man, first class in fact, but he wasn’t Shard, and Hedge was much regretting his many differences with the latter. It was a case of come back Shard all is forgiven. And it might be too late. As Hedge teetered on the verge of panic his telephone rang and he nearly jumped to the ornate ceiling. He padded to his desk and answered. It was his secretary, reporting that Detective Sergeant Kenwood was just back from Plymouth.

  “Send him up,” Hedge ordered.

  “Yes, Mr Hedge.”

  Hedge waited impatiently. When Kenwood reported, he had nothing to offer. Shard had vanished into thin air, in the ambulance.

  “Kries,” Hedge asked. “Could they be together?”

  Kenwood shrugged. “We don’t know, sir —”

  “But it’s possible? We do know this: Kries was anxious to make contact with this Hoof — the man who telephoned said that. If he can be believed, and we have to assume he can or we have nothing to go on at all.”

  Kenwood said, “It’s possible, sir, yes.”

  “What about that woman, then?”

  “Woman, sir?”

  “The one Kries was living with. We should bring her in again — or Hesseltine can.”

  “She’s already told what she knows, sir.”

  Hedge snapped, “We can’t be certain of that, can we? I’ll get Hesseltine to bring her in, Kenwood. You never know.”

  Kenwood asked, tongue in cheek, “Never know what, sir?”

  “Oh, don’t be impertinent, Kenwood.” Hedge took up his security line to speak to the ACC at the Yard. He put his suggestion but Hesseltine’s reaction was similar to Kenwood’s. Hedge persisted. “If we put on the pressure … even leak a few things to the press … just an idea … how do we know Kries isn’t fond of the woman?”

  “I’d say that’s unlikely. Just a handy screw, Hedge.”

  “There’s no need to be vulgar, my dear fellow. If you don’t pull her in, I shall. Oh, I agree it may lead nowhere, but the thing’s getting desperate and we simply have to react, have to — to pull out all the stops as they say, don’t you follow?” There was no response; Hedge shook the instrument, face furious. “Hesseltine, are you there? Hesseltine! Oh, damn the man!”

  Hesseltine had rung off. Fuming, Hedge looked across his desk at Kenwood. “I never get proper co-operation, never. I shall act on my own. Bring that woman in for questioning.”

  *

  The MacSkean, Shard reflected, did not appear to be a clan chief of the old sort, an aristocratic chief. Aristocrats didn’t kick, especially when the victim was literally down. The MacSkean was probably one of those dreadful afflictions that came now and then to the clans, some remote blood relative unexpectedly thrown up by the system when the reigning chief died. Possibly illegitimacy somewhere. Shard recalled one or two Americans who had become unlikely chiefs of highland clans, the long-delayed result of emigrations over the last hundred and fifty years or so. It was sad for Scotland, it was even sadder for himself currently. But when The MacSkean had gone, Kries took it upon himself to release Shard from the stretcher’s constriction. Life became a little easier even though his wrists were still roped behind his back. At first he found himself unable to stand, but by degrees circulation came back to his legs and the numbness vanished. He said, “Thanks. But why?”

  “Lack of circulation can kill, right?”

  “Does that matter to you?”

  Kries gave a nasty laugh. “You could be useful some time, some place.” He turned away to the window and stood brooding, disliking Scotland’s mist and snow and the dull metal of the loch. Loch Vermin, he’d said. It was obvious he’d meant Loch Fermin. If so, then they were a long way north, in the wild country that lay between Beauly and Loch Alsh, a bitter, underpopulated terrain of mountain and glen and scarcely a road worthy of the name. Mere tracks, and not so many of them. The last few miles in the van had borne that out: it had been a hell of lurching and slithering wheels and they had been forced to move slowly in contrast to the headlong dash from the south.

  Kries was still looking sourly at Scotland when the sound of the pipes was heard again: The MacSkean was coming back. Ponto went out to meet the clan chief; The MacSkean pushed him aside irritably and strode into the room.

  “What’s all this?” he said, sounding brisk. He looked like a sergeant-major, straight and bouncy. “Why release the man?”

  Kries said, “My say-so, right?”

  “No, not right at all, wrong. Just like an American, no idea of security.”

  “Now look here —”

  “Please don’t argue with me, Mr Kries.” The voice was a whip-lash. “You know who’s coming? Well, I’ll not say, but the man’s not to be free. This house has a cellar. Use it. It’s very secure.” The MacSkean paused. “The alternative’s the loch — but he might be a useful hostage for a while, and we shall see.”

  He turned and went out again. Kries looked furious, muttered something about porridge and haggis. But he followed The MacSkean out, and Shard heard him asking how to find the cellar.

  *

  Hedge had decided to interview Roz Zymo personally. She would be impressed by his importance, by the plush surroundings of the Foreign Office, by the opulence of his own room in it. When she was brought in by Kenwood Hedge treated her with smooth but firm politeness. He saw that she was in a highly nervous state; Kenwood’s visit to her home would have been discreet and tactful but Esher could be an uncomfortable place if anything at all should leak to the neighbours. In Esher, though they might well sleep around, it would never be with American gangsters.

  Hedge said, “Well, well, well. I’m extremely sorry about all this. You’ve been a little indiscreet, my dear young lady.”

  “Yes …”

  “I don’t need to say, you’re not obliged to answer my questions. All the same I’m hopeful, very hopeful, that you may be able to help us.” Hedge paused, then asked over the tips of his fingers, touching together parsonwise before his face, “I take it your husband is still absent?”

  She nodded.

  “There’s no reason why he should be made aware … it wouldn’t be our business, except perhaps if national security should become, shall we say, breached. Do you follow me, Mrs Zymo?”

  Roz did; Hedge was an oily man with an oily smile, and she found him as slippery as an eel. If she didn’t answer his questions, she was for it. Divorce loomed. She said in a shaking voice, “I think I do understand, Mr Hedge, but I don’t see how I can help.”

  “Very easily.” Hedge dabbed at his nose with a white linen handkerchief. “Tell me about the man Earl Denver Kries.”

  “I’ve already done that.”

  “To the police,” Hedge said irritably, reminded of Hesseltine. “I’m not the police. Don’t worry about any duplication, Mrs Zymo. And
take your time, there’s no hurry.”

  Roz gave a deep sigh and said it all over again, everything she’d told the Yard, the everything that didn’t amount to much when added up. At the end of it Hedge said there was nothing new. “Go back over the past,” he urged, “this wasn’t the first time you’d, er, met Kries, was it?”

  “No.”

  Hedge raised an eyebrow. “How many times before?”

  “Six or seven.”

  Hedge made a note on a sheet of paper. Note-taking always shook persons being interviewed, it had a sinister look. “Six or seven, yes. Go on, Mrs Zymo.”

  “But there isn’t anything else,” she said, beginning to cry a little. Hedge clicked his tongue but was otherwise impervious. With prods and urges he dragged her back over those past visits, bringing into the light of day everything that might have a bearing however remote, however unsuspected, on the present and the future. That it had all been ninety per cent sex he naturally understood and the sex part was unlikely to be helpful, but there was the other ten per cent. Hedge was patient and not unskilful; probing was in his nature, the digging up of dirt — it was a proficiency at this that had got him where he was, in the higher echelons of the Foreign Office, not that anybody had ever put it that way. Who had they met during Kries’ visits to London, where they had been — dinners out, trips beyond the metropolis or within it — what Kries had said, what his interests were, who were his business contacts — all that sort of thing. The sort of thing the police should have dug out but evidently had not. Hedge worked hard but got nowhere. As a final desperate try, he suggested telephone calls.

  Roz reacted. “Telephone calls?”

  “Yes. Did he make many, and to whom, surely you can remember something?”

  She said slowly, “He never, ever, made a call from the room.”

  “Ah. Was that not, perhaps, a little odd, a little suspicious?”