The Boy Who Liked Monsters (Commander Shaw Book 19)

by Philip McCutchan

  I stood and waited. Leclerc was going to draw this thing out, savouring it.

  He told me to approach the brink.

  Seven

  I didn’t do as Leclerc had ordered: I didn’t go any nearer the long, long drop. I stood my ground and said that if Leclerc had just a moment in hand to listen, there might be a few things I could tell him that he knew already.

  “Yes?” he said, sounding derisory. “If I know already, why should I listen?”

  I shrugged. “Probably no reason at all. But you might be interested, just the same. So I’ll tell you.” I paused, nearly frozen in the biting wind. I was aware of Leclerc, standing close to me, shivering with that grinding cold. Then I said, “A kidnap.”

  “A kidnap?” I fancied he was a little rocked by that.

  Yes, I told him, a kidnap. A kidnap of a child, aged six. He asked where this information had come from. He didn’t like the fact that I had it; he didn’t like it at all. He had moved closer, and was gripping my arm hard.

  I said, “That was the information Neskuke had got hold of, wasn’t it, Leclerc?”

  “Neskuke died – ”

  “Yes, I’m well aware of that. I repeat, I’m aware also of the kidnap. You can guess how, Leclerc.”

  “No, I cannot.”

  He was giving nothing away, even now. I said, “Alphonse Freyard, before he died. But that’s not all. Freyard said only that a kidnap was in prospect, was being planned for. He didn’t say it had happened already.”

  “And this is what you are saying?”

  I said yes, that was right. I was, in fact, improvising now, guessing, following what I believed to be the case. I said, “You’ll be aware, of course, through your grapevine, that I was myself kidnapped in Cherbourg, and taken … well, a long way south.”

  Leclerc said nothing. The wind howled and battered; there was a sharp cry as one of the gunmen, moving his frozen feet up and down, slipped on the rock and went down. He picked himself up and moved farther away from the pit’s brink.

  I said, “The child’s in that house, isn’t he, Leclerc?”

  Through the wind I heard his sharply indrawn breath, almost against my ear. The grip on my arm tightened. He didn’t say anything but I knew that his very silence told me I was right. I asked him where the house was, not expecting him to tell me, and he didn’t. I was taking a big gamble now but I couldn’t see that there was much to lose. That Buttertub was very close, and a concerted push would see me in it, dropping to the wicked jags below.

  Leclerc, at last, very late in the day for me, was starting to take an interest in what else I might know. He said as much. I said I wasn’t saying any more. There were things, I said, that a man needed to reserve. He seemed to get the point, or anyway the point as he himself saw it, with the eyes and mind of a man well accustomed to treachery. “You do not wish to die,” he said.

  I agreed that I did not. His answer was, as I had naturally anticipated, that I was close enough to death already and that a little more talking might save me. It might indeed; but not, I knew, for long. In any case, though Leclerc wasn’t to know this, I had nothing more to talk about. But I said that if they pushed me into that Buttertub, then certainly they wouldn’t learn anything further. We were both now at the stage of uttering self-evident truths. But it was a necessary pantomime and we both knew the score.

  I said, “Let’s get away from danger, shall we, Leclerc? I don’t trust you so close as we are now.”

  He got the point, and said grudgingly, “All right. We shall go back to the car.”

  “At least it’ll be warmer,” I said. I was told to turn around and with Leclerc and the other two gunmen crowding me I moved for the car. Just before we reached it I stopped suddenly, and ducked, with Leclerc still gripping my arm. There was a furious yell from Leclerc as he went right over my head, and stumbled about like a lunatic in the darkness, not quite losing his balance totally. The other two men cannoned into each other and in the general confusion I straightened, found a aw right ahead of me and crunched a fist into it. As the man went down, hitting his head on a projection of rock, I was on him fast and got a grip on his automatic, a nice, heavy job.

  I swung it on the others, who were just about visible, darker shadows in the night. I told them to hold it, not to move. There was a string of French obscenities from Leclerc, and I sensed rather than saw that the third man had lifted his gun and was about to fire, but I got my shots in first, aiming not to kill but to disable, because I needed someone alive to take back with me to Focal House. There was a scream and a sound of falling. I moved in closer and the shot man lurched to his feet, then again stumbled, this time backwards. I wasn’t aware immediately of what had happened, but when the fresh screaming started I made an accurate guess, because the screaming came from farther and farther away before ceasing altogether as the gunman’s body hit the jags a hundred feet below the earth’s surface.

  I said, “All right, Leclerc. Any trouble and you’ll go the same way. I’ve got you covered. Move for your remaining mate, and get him into the car. And watch it. Watch it very carefully.”

  *

  Leclerc drove, with his villain dripping blood in the seat next to him and me in the back, very watchful with the captured automatic in my hand and the other guns on the seat beside me. We drove back the way we had come, skirting Hawes lying peaceful in the night, through Bainbridge and Aysgarth. Near Aysgarth we passed a police patrol, the mobile’s crew taking no notice of us. I was thinking ahead: in West Witton I could scarcely leave the car with the two men in it in order to contact Felicity Mandrake, nor could I take them at gun point into the Wensleydale Heifer. There had to be an alternative, and the only one I could see was the police. I told Leclerc to drive right through West Witton to Richmond via Leyburn, a longish drive. In Richmond I found a policeman with a flat cap, standing by his patrol car. I told Leclerc to stop, and leaned out of the back. I recognised the officer: he’d been driving one of the cars that had brought the law to the Sillitoe home earlier.

  “You again,” he said, remembering, no doubt, his first-ever contact with 6D2.

  “With company. I haven’t time to go into details, but where’s the station?”

  “It looks like you want a hospital,” he said, looking into the car.

  “He’ll keep. First, the station.”

  He told me where it was, and I urged Leclerc into movement again. At the nick I got him out, leaving the wounded man. He was safe enough; he’d passed out cold. The station wasn’t fully manned; a telephone call was made and a half-dressed inspector turned up in a car and a bad temper. He knew all about Mrs Sillitoe’s murder and he knew about 6D2. I said I was turning in a wounded man and leaving it to him to arrange hospitalisation and a police guard on the bed. He was to be held incommunicado and at all costs the press was to be fended off, any old yarn would do, the man could have been mugged. I said there was also a body in the Buttertubs Pass and I’d like the police to extricate it under cover of the night and thereafter say nothing.

  The inspector didn’t like any of it; and I think my tone was somewhat peremptory which irritated him. I was dead tired and anxious for nothing to go wrong, no leaks, or Max would have my head. I said something along those lines, adding that we were all at the mercy of our bosses, with which he agreed. He would do what he could, he said, but it was all highly irregular and for all he knew he ought to be charging me with wounding and murder, or anyway manslaughter. I said he needn’t worry on that score; Max would take care of details of that sort.

  “What about this man?” he asked, indicating Leclerc, who was glowering with a constable right behind him in case of trouble.

  “He’s mine,” I said. “For delivery in London.”

  When the wounded man had been removed, I got the police to phone through to Felicity and then Leclerc drove me back to West Witton and the Wensleydale Heifer, where we were met by Felicity. She was relieved to see me and didn’t ask questions when she saw Leclerc. The t
hree hours I’d given her had elapsed and she’d rung Focal House, circumspectly, from a call box. She didn’t expect taps on lines in the country areas of North Yorkshire and neither did I; and at Focal House they had ways and means of protecting incoming calls from their end. I asked if there had been any reaction and she said no.

  We left Leclerc’s car in the hotel car park and drove out of West Witton in the hire car, which was not now going to be returned to York.

  *

  I slept in the car for most of the way, with Felicity holding the gun on Leclerc while, once again, he drove. She woke me when we needed fills of petrol and that was all. So I was a shade less weary when we drove into the underground parking lot at Focal House. Within minutes of our arrival we were in Max’s office suite. Max had already been contacted by North Yorkshire Police so he had most of the story. He was able to tell me that the body had been removed from the Buttertubs Pass.

  “Dead, I presume?”

  “Dead, yes. And so’s someone else: your second villain. You’re rather prodigal, Shaw. We’re losing too many potential talkers.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said, “but it was him or me – ”

  “Better aim’s what’s wanted, Shaw.”

  “All right,” I said. I indicated Leclerc. “Dammit, we’ve got him!”

  Max nodded and managed a smile. “As you say.” He got to his feet and walked across to where Leclerc was standing under guard of two of our strongarm boys, men with leather faces and much muscle: one had been a physical training instructor in the Grenadier Guards. Max stared down at Leclerc: Max was a tall man, an impressive figure. “Have you anything to say, Leclerc?” he asked conversationally.

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “Nothing about a house in southern France, or about a young boy who’s been kidnapped?”

  “No, I know nothing. And you have no authority – ”

  Max cut in on that. “My friend, you’d be much surprised. Or possibly you wouldn’t. You’ve crossed swords before with our organisation.”

  “No, I – ”

  “We know quite a lot about you, Leclerc. Don’t try to pull any wool. If you have nothing to say in here, you’ll go below to where you’ll find, shall we say, a certain anxiety to open you up. I ask you again: have you anything to tell me, here and now?”

  Leclerc was as white as a sheet by this time, and shaking a little. Though he insisted again that he had nothing to say, I knew it wouldn’t be all that long before he broke once he’d gone down to the basement, and the interrogation room. He was taken away and I filled Max in on detail, mostly about the Sillitoe house. And that likeness, the girl in the painting and on the little gold medallion, that seemed proof enough of Neskuke’s involvement somewhere along the line. Max agreed that it was a pound to a penny that Neskuke had been on a warning mission with the villains close behind him.

  “I’m wondering about the others, Shaw,” he said.

  “The others?”

  Max gave a gesture of irritation. “Dammit, those diplomats that disappeared around the same time as Neskuke. Bonn, Brussels, Paris – ”

  I said, “Yes, I remember. But where do they come in?”

  “I don’t know. As I said – I’m wondering.”

  “Red herrings,” I said. “We’re stuck with a kidnap. Has anything broken yet?”

  Nothing had; still with juxtaposed Freyard-inspired notions in his mind, Max filled me in with the latest news about the arms talks. They were, it seemed, going well. Kulachev was confident not only of bringing the whole thing to a signature but also of containing the opposition inside the Kremlin, the hard-liners who didn’t like his liberalism and had accused him of selling out to American Imperialism. The American President was also confident. Great Britain was in agreement though the NATO brass wasn’t entirely happy. No general liked being deprived of what he’d become accustomed to. I asked about the French attitude. Max said they didn’t appear to have one, they were more concerned with internal politicking but were expected to go along with the worldwide desire for peace rather than nuclearisation.

  “So all is jollity?”

  “Yes. Except for that kidnap,” what Freyard said was genuine and I don’t see any reason, necessarily, to doubt it. I wish to God we knew who the boy’s supposed to be. No demands yet, no one reported missing.”

  “If it hasn’t happened yet,” I said, “there’s your answer to both your mysteries. But I believe it has happened.”

  Max leaned across his desk, big hands playing again with the ebony ruler, eyes narrowed at me. “It has to be short-circuited. I say again – it has to be. If it’s already happened, then the boy has to be cut out.”

  I knew that; and I very much wanted to see it happen. I didn’t like the nastiness of children being used in the game of politics, power and intrigue and I couldn’t find the word that was bad enough for men – or women – who maltreated them physically and mentally. I knew something else: if Louis Leclerc didn’t come up with anything useful that might alter the picture, it was back to France for me, and a long, long trail to that house, address unknown.

  *

  Leaving Felicity with Mrs Dodge, Max’s middle-aged secretary, I went down to the interrogation room deep beneath the massive building. Leclerc was waiting in an anteroom, quite a comfortable apartment with easy chairs and a thick carpet, and pictures on the walls, country scenes. Soft lights … the whole idea was that the contrast would be the worst when the man to be interrogated went into the adjoining room, or cell would be an apter description. Before Leclerc’s interrogation started I had a session with the man who would be doing it, a Northern Irishman recruited in Belfast. He’d been a member of the proscribed UDA and he’d had plenty of experience of interrogating the IRA, extracting the precise details so that the UDA could mount effective reprisals. Mutual murderers; I didn’t like their methods or their lack of morals but I had to admire their efficiency. This man, in particular, was good: he knew just how to play on the nerves of his victims and just where the most pain could be inflicted without it showing when he didn’t want it to show afterwards. But in 6D2 we don’t allow physical duress. Not often, anyway.

  He asked if Leclerc might perhaps be an exception to the general rule.

  I answered carefully. “He’s not going anywhere. Not free, that is. But we have to watch it. Anything inflicted now, might rub off on the police later.”

  He nodded, non-committally. “What’s he being charged with?”

  I said that would be up to the police, whom Max would be contacting. There would be a holding charge, nothing very special. Desertion, probably, from the Zonguldak. Held for extradition to France, or maybe Turkey. That would do for quite a while, until we got something more pointed, like proof that he had killed Mrs Sillitoe. Our man asked for a full briefing, which I gave him, bringing in Leclerc’s past, and Neskuke, and the other vanished British diplomats. And overridingly the boy. I didn’t need to stress the secrecy angle; all our men were well steeped in that aspect. But I did say that this time it was extra special, since there was the suggestion that world harmony could depend on it.

  He sounded derisive about that. “Peace,” he said witheringly. “There’ll never be that.”

  I gave him a smile of innocence. “Being an Irishman,” I said, “you should know.”

  He shrugged and turned away. I followed him through a door that led from a passage into the interrogation room, from the side opposite the anteroom. I sat on a hard chair, in shadow, next to the two armed men who stood by the door, a heavy affair of solid steel, through which Leclerc was brought. The interrogator sat on one side of a plain wooden table, Leclerc was given a seat facing him. The traditional bright light was shone into his eyes; he would be unable to see his interrogator. Except for the ticking of a wall clock, the cell was very silent. The light, the only one that was switched on, gave a back-glare that reflected off bare brick walls. As well as being silent, it was stuffy; down here, there was no air-condit
ioning. It was all said to add to the atmosphere of gloom and tenseness, not to say terror. The very fact that we were a private organisation basically held its own kind of fear: there was not the sanction of the State, not overtly anyway, not the accountability to Whitehall or parliament.

  The proceedings started.

  “You are Louis Leclerc, once an officer of the French Navy.”

  There was no answer.

  “You are a blackmailer. You are a murderer. In France you were given a life sentence. You escaped. As you were told earlier, we know a lot about you, Leclerc. We believe you to be currently involved in a kidnap. What have you to say?”

  “I have nothing to say. Not to you, not to anyone else. I am a subject of France – ”

  “And a deserter from a ship.”

  “I have nothing to say. Nothing to confirm, nor deny.”

  “Unhelpful.”

  No response, just a shifting of Leclerc’s feet, and a smell, accentuated by the room’s stuffiness, of sweat. Leclerc would know what a grilling could be like. The interrogator waited patiently, saying nothing further, letting Leclerc sweat more. After about a minute of this, Leclerc started a long tirade, some in French, some in English. There was a whining note in his voice. He was a killer and a bully, and blackmail was, I reckoned, a coward’s trade. It would be just a question of time once our man put the real squeeze on. In any case Leclerc was on a bad wicket and no one was more aware of that fact than he was himself. All we had to do, and this our man told him, was to keep him safe until the arms talks had been concluded and then hand him over to the French authorities as a man who’d escaped from one of their maximum security prisons. That was, unless Mrs Sillitoe’s murder was pinned on him in the meantime.

  All this was impressed upon him while certain other avenues were prepared. On a signal from the interrogator, one of the guards came forward with a heavily knotted rope and a steel spike. He made sure Leclerc had a good look before he looped the rope around the Frenchman’s forehead and then inserted the spike between the rope and the back of the head and gave it a couple of preliminary, tightening turns. As the knots bit, Leclerc cried out in agony. I thought this was going a shade far: if the rope was to be fully tightened bruises would show when Leclerc was passed to the police. But, because our man knew his business, I didn’t say anything. I just waited.