A Very Big Bang

by Philip McCutchan

  “As to the reality, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s real, sir. They mean it.”

  “And can do it?”

  Shard said, “It’s not impossible, sir. Security’s faced with many problems when handling millions of commuters. If these people are able to place their bombs … well, I’ve referred to what appears to be a large amount of explosive. Any large explosion in a confined space has immense potential. I’ve no doubt London Transport will confirm the dangers, and the possibilities.”

  The Prime Minister sought the view of London Transport. “Sir John?”

  Sir John Ainsworth, heavy built, pugnacious, removed his glasses and dangled them from his fingers. He said, “I do confirm. Lives and property — very much at risk. Lives especially, and that’s what we’re most concerned with, of course —”

  “But property?”

  Ainsworth shrugged. “London’s London! The whole network is heavily built over, as we all know. It depends, naturally, on the size of the explosion, but … well, I’m no explosives expert, but I would suggest that the force of any explosion such as we’re talking of, would tend to dissipate laterally along the tunnel, rather than upwards against the strength of iron and the sand and cement grouting, plus the weight of London clay. Line of least resistance, don’t you know — though I’d not care to be too dogmatic about this. Foundations could be shaken, and then there’s all the other networks — gas, electricity, telephones, water …”

  “Sewage …”

  “Yes, sewage.” The discussion became more general, but Ainsworth’s views as to lines of least resistance and the lateral spread gained support: it was pointed out that arch construction such as tunnelling was immensely strong, virtually indestructible. Shard, listening to the views and arguments, heard sense and nonsense mixed. And something nagged, though he couldn’t have put a name to it other than to say that there had been some extra quality in Tom Casey’s voice when he had made that call to Seddon’s Way, something that spoke rather eloquently about something special, something that Shard felt went beyond a big bang in a tunnel or a train in motion. And there was another angle: terrorists were incalculable, were men of strange minds; extremists so often seemed able to bring off extremes, things impossible to the moderates and the law-abiding. Because they were so incalculably and unpredictably unorthodox, they were so much harder to combat. Men of government were seldom fitted to cope, their minds were too rigidly set on fixed courses, working along those lines of orthodoxy and the expected, the lines of men who themselves were accustomed to follow the rule book. Always the vagabond had the advantage …

  Graciously permitted to leave before any hard decisions were taken, Shard got into his car and headed for the Mi. Utterances lingered in his mind: the Prime Minister, in saying that in his view the time had not yet come to alarm the public and in accepting Shard’s plea to avoid panic action, had referred to the fact that for some while past the security services had been prepared for operations by Middle Eastern terrorists in London; they hadn’t let any grass grow. And had said something else: “We shall cope. You’re our co-ordinator, Mr Shard. Ask, and you shall receive! At this stage, we’re content to leave it in your hands. We know you’ll be doing your best.”

  Shard, inching through London’s traffic, felt a momentary coldness: he’d asked for it, it was what he wanted, but it left no room for error. On his further word would depend Prime Ministerial decision and action, and that word mustn’t come even a second too late. He pondered on his quarry, Nadia Nazarrazeen: he had nothing on her but the statement of Father Donnellan, now dead. Checks had produced the blankest blank ever: Home Office Immigration had no knowledge, nor had the FO’s Passport Section, nor had the Yard, nor — scraping the bottom of the barrel — had Customs. Nor, another barrel-bottom, had the Dublin Garda or the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who had been asked to check this along with the prints on the Uzi. Yet Shard felt, more by an instinct that had seldom let him down than by cool reason, that Nadia Nazarrazeen was the key; though at the same time he had to admit that she could be in a separate compartment of Tom Casey’s life, the purely love compartment. This he didn’t believe — again for no very clear reason. Such reason as he found lay along perhaps shaky lines: Nadia Nazarrazeen sounded like a terrorist and had indisputably produced death — indisputably in Shard’s book, anyhow. And again: Tom Casey, whose duty it had been to convince and infiltrate, may have found that to act naturally was the best way in, and Tom Casey’s natural way was to make love.

  *

  Shard, with half his mind still on the possibility of tails however remote, watched carefully on the motorway but found nothing to arouse any suspicions. He took it fast, disdaining the service areas except for a stop for petrol at the last oasis before the MI8. No worries, all the way into York. Unhopefully he made contact with the police: they had already reported to London by telex, no knowledge of any Nadia Nazarrazeen. Nevertheless, the one available fact remained, rock-like: Tom Casey had struck gold here in York. That had been a pretty short while ago: even if they had shifted base in that short interval, the villains must have left traces.

  “What do you propose, Mr Shard?” the officer in charge asked him.

  “I’ll circulate.”

  “That’ll take time, won’t it?”

  “It’s still the best way in my book.”

  “I’d have thought that to concentrate on London … you know what I mean, a watch on the stations —”

  Shard interrupted with a laugh. “That’ll be done too — for what it’s worth. Remember there are 279 stations all told. How do you stop determined terrorists getting to the target? Think of London’s rush hour, or any time of day come to that! You can’t check everyone for arms and explosives, and gentlemen from the Middle East are no rare flowers.”

  The Superintendent rubbed at his chin. “They hold all the cards, right enough —”

  “Most of them, anyway. Once I get to Nadia Nazarrazeen, I’ll have a few of them myself — and I have a need to be fast. I’m not familiar with your patch, Superintendent. Can you give me a man who is?”

  “I can, Mr Shard, but you’ll appreciate that the clients will also be familiar with him —”

  “I know. I want his words of wisdom, not his physical presence. Someone, maybe one of your DCs, who’s close to the ground and what crawls in it.”

  “I’ll see to that right away,” the Superintendent said, lifting an internal telephone. All arrangements made, Shard had an idea.

  “I don’t need my car for what I’m going to do in York. In a sense this is gilding the lily … don’t tell me! But just in case my registration’s been noted outside the nick, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if I were seen to go back to London, all empty-handed. You’ve probably got someone near enough my shape on a dark night!”

  *

  The York police gave fullest co-operation: Shard had a long and useful talk with a DC who could have fooled anybody he was a genuine layabout. His information was comprehensive and included the address of a cellar used as a dosshouse by dropouts: his practical help included items from the CID ragbag after a close and critical survey of Shard’s own potentialities for fooling the fraternity.

  “Not a hippie, sir.”

  “Too old?”

  The DC grinned. “Well, sir, there are hippie daddies —”

  “Not that old,” Shard snapped.

  “No, but you want to be a hundred percent.”

  “I told you, did I not — I want to be someone who knew Detective Sergeant Casey. How about an ex-con … become one of the travelling gentry, a tramp?”

  “Yes, that’d fit, sir. Nicked in the Republic?”

  “It’d have to be that.”

  “Can you do an Irish accent?”

  Shard shook his head. “Not to convince. It won’t be necessary. The British do go to darkest Ireland, you know! I could have been on the run, couldn’t I?”

  “I reckon you could, sir, yes.” The DC stu
died Shard through half-closed eyes. “A mixture of gear in that case: anything you could have picked up, plus overall filth and a smell of meths. We’ll louse you up a bit.”

  “Thanks very much,” Shard said, sounding bitter. He underwent the lousing process and when geared up didn’t recognise himself in the mirror. Even the stench was genuine: the garments had come from very real tramps and the meths was straight from the bottle. Meths, stale urine and dried sweat made a horrible combination and Shard, when forcibly and convincingly ejected from the nick an hour or two later, was aware that the police were glad to see him go. Half an hour after ejection, as he made his horrible way along the ancient streets of York towards Monk Bar, his car ostentatiously headed Londonwards along the A64.

  *

  Shard got utterly lost: York was not an easy city for the visitor. He shambled, spreading stench, off course, past Whip-ma-Whop-ma Gate, found himself in a big oblong of shops, a wide thoroughfare. A uniformed constable watched, distantly from a corner: Shard reduced the shamble, glad of distance to dissipate the meths-smell. Moving on, he found his guide-line in the massive rearing eminence of the Minster, and headed for it as straight as possible, worrying about time and deadlines and thinking of horror in London’s underground. Soon he found himself coming right down upon the Minster, with a pedestrian crossing leading to steps up to a massive door. He fumbled across the road, tattered garments flapping out in a light wind, was woefully conscious of the stares of passers-by, though these assured him that he was sailing under convincing colours. Along Deangate, then confidently left for Monk Bar. Shard lurched, muttering to himself and belching — he had actually drunk some meths for good measure as to his breath — under the bar, along the narrow pavements below the old city walls. A wild and undignified leap saved his life from a stream of traffic just beyond the bar, where he crossed the main road from Thirsk on the fringe of the North Yorkshire moors. Grumbling and muttering, almost convincing himself by now, he tottered on unkempt legs down a street of old moth-eaten buildings, looking out for his goal. He identified it quickly enough: a tall house, all windows boarded, clearly unoccupied except by, as he knew, the unsavoury. In the pavement in front of this house, which had seen far better days, was a sagging wooden cover over what had been a coal chute, a cover held from below by battens. Following instructions given at the nick, Shard approached this wooden cover and brought his foot down on it, three times followed after a pause by two more bangs. Then he mounted three cracked stone steps and repeated his message with a fist on the door.

  He waited.

  From far off inside the building came the sound of footsteps, dragging and uncertain. A few moments later the door opened. At first Shard saw no one in the intense dark, then he made out a man, very tall, a man who started to cough as clean air struck him.

  “Who is it?” the man asked between coughs.

  “Let me in, brother, I can’t walk another step.” Shard blew meths, hopefully, but knew the aroma must lose the battle against what was coming from the interior. He almost retched as the tall man drew him inside and shut the door. He stood there in pitch darkness, darkness so thick that it seemed to muffle thought itself. He felt the tall man take his arm and urge him forward. Moving dead slow, feeling well ahead with his feet and his free arm, Shard moved, assailed by the smell of defeated humanity, of men and maybe women who had hit bottom and hit it hard. As he went, Shard felt oppression grow, and with it doubt: this horrible house might well be an operating base for him, but in all conscience it might be little more: in any society, you tended to stratify and to remain in the strata you rose to or descended to by natural selection — or the strata you chose for yourself. Once identified with the occupants of this house, with the deadbeats and the bums and the alcoholics, you might find it hard to make the contacts you wanted. The people who had killed Tom Casey, whatever else they were, could not come into the deadbeat category. The wires could after all fail to cross in time — and time was short.

  Shard moved on, feeling trapped. From somewhere beneath his feet, a scream sounded suddenly — horrible, chilling, a maniac sound of hell-fire followed by a sobbing that rose and fell.

  Beside him, the tall man, invisible but tangible, said nothing.

  Five

  He was bedded down on some sacks and newspapers, no questions asked. His neighbours on either side were close, and slept disturbingly and noisily, breathing through organ pipes, yattering from time to time, lashing out with legs and arms. The screaming and the sobbing continued intermittently. Shard felt sick from the smell, which was made up of very many elements, all of them human. Not till the light of morning, coming dimly through the cracks around the wooden cellar cover, outlined the room, did Shard actually see his companions. Hair, long hair — dark, fair, grey, white, all dirty — overflowed the sacks and newspapers and torn overcoats: white faces leered, eyes semi-sealed with crusty scum or blank behind their closed lids. The air was thick and heavy. In the street above, traffic moved; hurrying footsteps boomed on the wood of the pavement-set cover, and through the cracks water dripped: a rainy day.

  Shard sat up, head aching: the meths and the atmosphere had combined cruelly. He looked around more closely from his new position. His right-hand neighbour was a woman: naked breasts flopped sideways free of newsprint, a nipple overshadowing a picture of Edward Heath in The Sunday Telegraph. The breasts were thinly flaccid and the face gaunt and yellow, yet Shard believed the woman to be young, at least in years. He recoiled in horror: people like these he had met often enough in his days as an ordinary copper in the Metro, but he had not lived with them, woken up in the early morning with them, so close as to feel their cold-sweating flesh against his own.

  He saw a man watching him from a corner, a man who seemed tall as he lay beneath an overcoat, booted feet projecting into freedom.

  The admitting man, hall-porter of the night before?

  Right! The man spoke: Shard fancied the accent was East Anglian. “Sleep well, mate?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Jesus, I’m dry.”

  “What d’you drink?”

  A hoarse laugh, scornful: “Christ! Any bloody thing.”

  Shard got to his feet, picked his way over and between the dead-out bodies, bringing out the meths bottle. Reaching the tall man, he took a grip on his guts and swigged — just a little for local colour: one thing sure, he didn’t want to put his lips to the rim after the tall man. Then he handed the bottle over.

  “Thanks, mate.” The tall man drank, left just a little behind. The tongue came out, licking around the lips, not wasting a drop that could be gathered in by a little effort. “Where you from, then?”

  “London.”

  “The Smoke, eh. How d’you come up — motorail?”

  Shard grinned. “Yes, with the Rolls. Jeeves is getting on in years, for long drives.”

  A fit of coughing, night-suspended, started: the tall man went from white to purple, nearly strangling. “Wet bloody day, tickles me bloody tubes.” Cough, cough, cough — then violent ejection, past Shard, glutinous, horrible. “Sorry, mate.”

  “And you?”

  “Me?”

  “Where from? Been here long, in York?”

  “Long enough. Go back south if I had the bloody strength left. Too bloody cold up here, too bloody wet, too much bloody fog. What you want to come for?”

  Shard shrugged. “Change of air.” Time might be short and getting shorter, but it was always a mistake to rush things.

  Cough, cough. “Done any bird, have you?” The tall man paused. “Don’t be shy in this house, I’ve done bird.” Haunted eyes examined Shard. “You don’t have the look, quite …”

  “What look?”

  “On the road look, or the dropout look. You can tell. So I reckon it’s a case of bird — see?”

  Shard laughed. “Okay, you’re right. The Ville — three years. GBH.”

  “The Ville, eh.”

  “That’s right. Though I got picked up i
n Ireland, Dublin.”

  “Dublin, eh.”

  “That’s right.” Shard laughed again. “So now I aim to start life afresh.”

  *

  Hesseltine was on the phone, early that morning, to Hedge at home, Hedge shaving soft pink skin. “What is it?” Hedge snapped down the line when summoned from his bathroom.

  “Hedge, have you any word from Shard?”

  “No! And don’t expect to, yet.”

  “Then you’ve not read the papers —”

  “No, I haven’t. I’m shaving, Hesseltine.”

  “I apologise. Late last night a car crashed on the M1 just south of the MI8 junction. Fatally. It was Shard’s car —”

  “My God — is Shard —”

  “No, Hedge. The body wasn’t Shard’s. Enquiries have just revealed that it was a DC from York. I thought you ought to know.” Hesseltine paused. “This is getting police-depletive. I don’t like that. I hope you’ll pull your finger out, Hedge.”

  He rang off.

  *

  They walked, the tall man and Shard — looking for chances, as the tall man put it, what they might find to eat or flog. The tall man’s name was Nose: he wouldn’t admit to more than that. His nose was not big enough to account for the nickname: it was the fact that, continually when not coughing, he picked it, a revolting performance. They walked wet pavements beneath a brighter sky, a promise of a nice clear day. Hungry, with the aroma of meths on the breath of Nose, and on his whiskers, they walked back beneath Monk Bar, into the walled city, shambling along with Shard uncomfortable and scruffy behind face stubble. It didn’t take Shard any time to pick up one thing: they were under surveillance — or anyway, he was. He recognised the fresh youthful face: the DC of the night before, in a plain car caught in the jam of traffic just inside the gate, waiting for the lights to change against the road from Thirsk. He saw the eyes: he had been recognised too. The traffic began to move, the jack disappeared behind. Farther on, as Shard and Nose headed up along Goodramgate, the DC passed again, going the other way. He’d lost no time in turning, and he was talking into a two-way radio. The next move came as no surprise to Shard: two uniformed coppers, closing in from ahead to take forearms in hard grips.