Hartinger's Mouse (Commander Shaw Book 12) Read online

  Hartinger’s Mouse

  Philip McCutchan

  © Philip McCutchan, 1970

  Philip McCutchan has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1970 by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  1

  ON the 14th July a curious deposit of yellow-brown dust, brought down, apparently, by rain showers covered a good deal of the British Isles. The night had been exceptionally warm, a temperature of 31 degrees Centigrade having been recorded as far north as Manchester Airport. Over much of the country there had been really heavy rain, and flood conditions had been reported in the West Country; there had also been severe rainstorms over a large area of Western Scotland. I had been in York myself, spending a night at a hotel after a job involving an escaped political detainee who had tried to hole up in the Dales without too much success; he was now in the York nick awaiting an escort to London. I had Jagger of the Home Office with me and while I was enjoying breakfast, and lingering over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, Jagger came in looking upset.

  I grinned at him. “What’s got you out of bed?” I asked. Jason Jagger wasn’t normally an early riser; he more or less made his own hours at the Home Office — he had the kind of imprecise standing that allowed such laxity. Today, when far, far away from London, I’d scarcely expected to see him emerge at all.

  Jagger ran a hand through his overlong hair and said, “You did mention an early start.”

  “I know I did,” I said, “but I felt it would be too much to expect results, all the same. What’s up?”

  He sat down and asked, “Have you seen my car?”

  We were using his because he couldn’t tear himself away from it, even for a couple of days. It had been given him a week or so earlier by some aunt or other, and it was an E-type Jag; a nice car and one I’m quite used to, but not with Jagger driving it. He’s a horrible driver, but he’d wanted to let it out on the M1 and I’d given in. I had been worried both for my own safety and his licence all the way up, because he took some of it at 130 mph, but there it was. We’d made it, but we still had to make it back again. I said, “I haven’t seen it this morning, no. Has it been knocked off?”

  I dare say I’d sounded hopeful, because he gave me a sick look and said, “Of course not.” I remembered all his anti-theft devices. “It’s ruined, though. Absolutely ruined!”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s covered with some sort of yellowish muck. Sticky — ugh!” He made a face. “Spotted — you know.”

  “It’ll come off.”

  “Not easily. I tried. It smears. All the other cars out there are the same. God knows what it’ll do to the cellulose!” He was practically in tears, and wouldn’t eat his breakfast. “We’ll have to take it somewhere to be washed down before we leave.”

  I shrugged. I was really in no particular hurry to report back — I’d phoned through to Max from the nick the night before — and I didn’t want to belt down the M1 with Jagger playing up about his bodywork and trying to reach London before the yellow spots dried hard. I said, “Do as you like, it’s your car, Jagger. What d’you think the stuff is — what caused it?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered irritably.

  “I was only asking. Why don’t you eat some breakfast?”

  He gave me a withering look. “You sound like my mother, sailor. You should always have a good breakfast before a long journey, was what she always said.”

  “Dead right she was too.” I stubbed out my cigarette and got up. “If you’re not going to follow her excellent advice, Jagger, let’s go and look at your car.”

  We did. We went out to the car park, which was perfectly dry underfoot in spite of what must have been the rain during the night. It was a lovely day now, hot, but with a bit of a breeze and the blue sky had fluffy white clouds sailing across. The rain had gone; but it had certainly left something rather odd behind it. As Jagger had said, all the cars were spotted pretty badly. The stuff looked like scabs at first sight, round raised blobs about half an inch across. I smeared one with my finger and Jagger protested strongly. I said, “Just sampling.” I smelt the stuff: negative result — no smell at all. I decided not to taste it. And something — I really don’t know what — made me rinse off that finger under the hot tap as soon as I went up to my room to put my things together, and I advised Jagger to do the same. In the light of subsequent events, that was a wise thing to do, though I didn’t think any more about it at the time. And as I remarked casually to Jagger, because at that time I hadn’t seen the countrywide reports, “Maybe it wasn’t the rain — it could have been some lunatic with a garden spray and a bloody silly sense of humour.”

  Jagger said vindictively, “He wouldn’t be laughing if I got my hands on him!”

  “No,” I said agreeably, though I doubted the proposition. Somehow I couldn’t see Jagger impressing anyone with his fighting ability — he wasn’t the sort. He had a good brain, and got by on that. Usually, it kept him away from physical violence.

  “Anyway, why don’t you think it’s the rain?”

  “I didn’t say that necessarily. It most probably was. But look around you, Jagger. There’s no sign of rain. The ground’s bone dry. So there couldn’t have been much — for another thing, if there’d been a real downpour, the cars wouldn’t be just spotted, would they? They’d be all-over yellow, or at least streaked. So what we had must have been a very short business — just a few heavy drops, probably, like the shower you get before thunder.”

  Jagger said, “I don’t really care what caused it, sailor. All I want is to see it washed off.”

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s go and do that very thing, right now.” Which, after carrying down our overnight grips and settling the bill, we did — and, after a long delay at a five-minute car wash, because half York seemed to have the same idea — we achieved a nice, clean E-type, much to Jagger’s relief. He asked the man if he had any ideas as to what the stuff was, but the man hadn’t. We left it at that and headed for the A19 to join the A1 at Balby, and then the motorway, and Jagger had us into London by lunch time. He went to the Home Office and I went to 6D2’s headquarters at Focal House. I was shown into Max’s room straight away and I elaborated to him on my telephoned report. It hadn’t been a difficult job and the de-briefing, as it were, didn’t take long. When I had finished Max leaned back in his chair and grinned at me. That grin always transformed the man and I liked it; it showed his humanity, a basic humanity that had never been destroyed in his exacting work as Executive Head of 6D2 Britain — tough work that was, so tough at times that it could acidulate the soul and strip a man down to nothing more than cynicism held together by bared nerves with all warm blood and feeling gone away. When a man spends his life digging out facts for various Governments and big business interests — facts that plenty of ill-disposed persons will go to any lengths to keep hidden — and risking his own and his agents’ necks constantly in the process, life is apt to go sour on him and curdle in his very guts. That had happened to me, in the days when I was working for British Defence Intelligence. After spending my early years at sea with the Royal Navy I had not been keen to be transferred to the Naval Intelligence Division; and when eventually the Navy had been cut to the bon
e I lost all interest I had ever had in protecting the remnants of the Pax Britannica in that particular way. I’d quit, though they had pressed me not to, after the horrible business of the American spacecraft; and had been rescued from a boozing spree by a girl called Anya Kiselyov, who had inveigled me into 6D2 and a life, if anything, a damn sight more dangerous than any Defence Intelligence expert had been called upon to face; but with 6D2 it was different somehow. The thing was expanding, not closing down — was looking to the future rather than the past. I had always detested living in the past. Admittedly I had joined 6D2 chiefly because of my bank overdraft and because there was precious little other employment I was any use for, but now I was getting used to the feel of it after a couple or so major jobs and a variety of smaller ones like the one just finished. And I hoped that, like in the case of Max, I hadn’t yet been dehumanized.

  With that grin on his square, tanned face Max asked. “How was Jason Jagger this time?”

  “Fair,” I said, returning the grin and knowing exactly what Max, who didn’t like long hair and psychedelic clothes, meant. “He had his breakfast upset by a dirty car, but he recovered once it was clean.”

  Max grunted. “Fussy little bugger … I read somewhere that excessive car cleaning is symptomatic of a lack of sexual satisfaction.”

  “I can’t see that applying in Jagger’s case.”

  “Possibly not. Was his car, by any chance, spotted with a yellow-brown deposit?”

  “Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it was. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing important. But interesting … we’ve been suffering from the same thing, here in London. Several of our people who haven’t got garages … they’ve been comparing notes. One of our men who came in from Long Melford in Suffolk, and another from Salisbury, also report a similar phenomenon.” Max shrugged. “I dare say we’ll have our curiosity set at rest before long. Some backroom bod will come up with an answer. Well, Shaw — what’s on your plate now?”

  I said, “Doesn’t that depend on you?”

  “I’ve nothing in mind for the moment. If I were you. I’d take a few days’ leave.”

  “Exactly how many days?”

  “Let’s say fourteen, extendable if nothing big crops up. How’s that?”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll bring my paperwork up to date, then, and book myself a flight to Majorca.”

  Max shuddered realistically and said, “You might just as well save the fare and go to Southend or Blackpool, my dear fellow.”

  *

  Because I was inclined to agree with what Max had said, I didn’t really intend going to Majorca. I thought, if I could find the right company, that a couple of extendable weeks in the West of Ireland might be nice. I’ve always had a hankering for Connemara, which is an ideal place in which to get away from it all. The Irish, and those in Connemara especially, don’t know what the rat race is all about and don’t want to. I was thinking about Ireland while I got ahead with that paperwork, and was still making plans as I took the tube back to the mews flat. I even rang a travel agent and found out the details about taking the E-type — mine, not Jagger’s — over to Dublin. And after that I rang a girl who I thought could do with a quiet holiday for two in Connemara, and fixed her for dinner that night at the Roman Room in Brompton Road. Over dinner I talked her into it; but I never made that trip to Ireland’s west, because when I got back to the flat around midnight my telephone was ringing and Max was on the line.

  He said, “Thank God.”

  “Why?”

  He sounded testy, which was unlike him. He was usually either in a good mood or a downright bad one, no half measures. He said, “Because you haven’t gone to Majorca, Shaw. And now you’re not going at all. I’m sorry, but there it is.”

  “What’s blown up now?” I asked, trying not to sound too bad about it.

  Max said, “I don’t know yet. But I want to talk to you. Now. Here — Focal House.” He added, “Haven’t you looked at the evening papers?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve been too busy — planning the holiday that never was. What’s in the papers?”

  “Never mind, you’ll see when you get here,” Max said, and the call clicked off. I went over and picked up an evening paper — I’d bought one on the way to the Roman Room but hadn’t even glanced at it. When I opened it I saw, or thought I saw, what Max meant. It was on the front page, not a headline, but very clearly presented. Jagger’s yellow-brown spots had been noted in a hell of a lot of places, all over Britain, from Norwich to Anglesey, from Eastbourne to Thurso. But chiefly in Scotland, where the rain had been mostly too heavy to bring it, whatever ‘it’ might be, down in spots, but where a curious discoloration had been noted in many places where rain was lying in pools. There was no explanation given, but the Meteorological Office, it seemed, was interested.

  I looked quickly through that paper to see if there was anything else. This didn’t really seem quite enough to make Max ring me late at night from Focal House, or to make him cancel my leave. But there was nothing else that seemed likely to tie in. So I threw the newspaper down on a chair and went to get the car out. And as I did so I noticed that I was rubbing one of my finger-tips against the material of my jacket and I realized now that I had been doing this on and off throughout the evening. I looked at the finger in the garage light. The tip was red from being rubbed, and it had a decided itch. It was the finger I had used to smear one of Jagger’s car’s yellow spots.

  2

  THERE was a commissionaire on duty at Focal House as well as the strong-arm night guards and although he knew me well enough he scrutinized my pass just as though I were a stranger; we never did leave anything unchecked in Focal House. We were more security conscious than any Government department and could probably be rivalled only by the Pentagon. I was whisked up in a lift and walked along corridors lit only at intervals by the police lights, past the locked office doors and through the brooding night silence to Max’s room.

  Max was with his Chief of Staff, a retired brigadier named Cockburn-Hawkes, who had served in the Royal Armoured Corps. He was a good type, nothing of the blimp about him. He looked worried that night, and so did Max. Max said, “Sorry to bring you round at this time of night, but something’s come up and I don’t like it.” He threw an evening newspaper across his desk at me. “Better catch up on your reading. Sit down.”

  I sat. I said, “It’s all right, I’ve read it now. It doesn’t strike me as all that serious. Do I gather there’s something else?”

  Max caught Cockburn-Hawkes’s eye and nodded. “You might say that, Shaw. I’ve had a report from the Ministry of Health, unofficially at this stage of course.” I knew what he meant by ‘unofficially’. 6D2 had its operators inside various Government departments as well as elsewhere — not to work against the Establishment, naturally, but to ensure that we got the whispers nicely in advance so that we were ready when the official notices came through asking for our assistance. This time, there had evidently been no such request — yet. Max went on, “It seems that some of that yellow-brown stuff descended upon one of the Ministry’s top scientists. He was interested enough to scrape some together and send it down for analysis.”

  “And?”

  Max said heavily, “Result negative.”

  “In what sense?”

  “In every sense. The analysis produced a nil result. They don’t know what the stuff is, Shaw.”

  “But surely,” I said, “they must be able to arrive at its composition, break it down into its component parts or whatever the jargon is?”

  Max shook his head. “One would think so, but they’ve not been able to do that. All they’ve been able to isolate is the rainwater and a few chemicals that the stuff would have gathered from the atmosphere on its way down to the ground. Nothing else at all.” He lifted his hands, let them drop again. “They simply do not know what the stuff is. They’re completely flummoxed. Because they’re flummoxed, they’ve become intensely interested. The
y asked at once for full reports from the affected areas, and the Medical Officers of Health got busy.” Max gave me a shrewd look from under his thick eyebrows. “Did you touch any of the stuff, Shaw?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling suddenly a little worried. I held up that finger-tip. “It’s started itching.”

  Once again Max caught the brigadier’s eye, then looked back at me. “You’re not the only one,” he said. “That’s what this is all about. Throughout the affected areas, the Medical Officers of Health and their staffs have developed the same symptoms, and local G.P.s who’ve been contacted have also reported a rush of people to their evening surgeries, all complaining of much the same thing. In addition, various people who were out and about when the rain brought the stuff down — street sweepers, night workers, police constables on the beat — have contacted their doctors with very nasty skin troubles in exposed parts of their bodies. The symptoms, apparently, are much more pronounced in the G.P.s’ ordinary patients than in the MOH staffs, the men who’ve been handling the smears taken from cars and so on — this appears to be due to a doctor’s normal habit of washing his hands after touching anything —”

  I broke in, “That’s what I did. I ran my hands under a tap just after I’d touched Jagger’s car.”

  Max nodded. “So all you’ve got is the itching sensation. The others have had a complete loss of skin surface and some sores have developed. What about Jagger?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He touched the stuff, I know that, but I didn’t hear him complain about any after-effects. I haven’t seen him since we got back into London, though.”

  “You’d better contact him first thing in the morning, Shaw, and you’d better come in and see the medical section yourself, just as a precaution.”

  “Just as you say,” I agreed at once. “But what d’you think all this is in aid of anyway? I mean … where do we come in, in the middle of the night?”