Shard Calls the Tune Read online

  Shard Calls the Tune

  Philip McCutchan

  © Philip McCutchan, 1981

  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 1981 by Hodder & Stoughton Limited.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

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  1

  The fat, pink-faced man sitting like an anaemic salmon in the Inter-City as it pulled smoothly into Paddington, knew that he was possessed of a bomb. Mishandled, that bomb, like all bombs, could explode in his face; but, as ever, there was the other side of the coin. The pink-faced man’s eyes glistened and a tongue emerged from his mouth to wet full red lips, after which they glistened also in London’s afternoon sun. Without seeing her, the eyes stared towards their owner’s secretary, primly seated in the window seat diagonally opposite to the left: the coach was second-class, owing to a cock-up at Cardiff, or rather Swansea or wherever the train had started from — not enough first-class accommodation, and Hedge’s reservation had gone for a burton. So here he was, second class; Miss Fleece liked window seats, Hedge did not. They left him with a feeling of being trapped should anyone take the aisle one after he had ensconced himself.

  The eyes focused. “Miss Fleece?”

  “Yes, Mr Hedge?”

  “That man who button-holed me. Confidential, you understand? Nothing’s to be said. I’ll report to the Minister, of course … after I’ve made certain investigations.”

  “Yes, Mr Hedge.”

  “There’s probably nothing in it,” Hedge elaborated, knowing very well that there was. “If so, I shan’t waste the Minister’s time.”

  “No, Mr Hedge.”

  The pink-faced man wiped his forehead with a linen handkerchief and prepared to disembark as the train stopped. It was quite a manoeuvre: his stomach took a good deal of freeing from the confines of the table before it, and then there was his umbrella, and his brief-case, and his bowler hat, and his overnight bag. And the nineteen-eighties, almost unbelievably, had brought a deteriorating nastiness to people’s manners that was even worse than the seventies. Even in the first class, they shoved and pushed and never mind the fact that one was a gentleman, and Hedge’s pained looks only made them worse, as though they gloried in being common and pushing. And their clothes! Even stockbrokers and the like had taken to wearing brown shoes with city suits. Hedge, dealing with his stomach’s release, looked down at his own neat black shoes, twinkling with polish from one of those wretched squares of impregnated paper. He rather liked his feet; they were small, well-shaped and aristocratic. They now carried him free of the train from Cardiff, in the wake of the shovers and pushers, and towards a taxi, which was obtained for him by Miss Fleece.

  “Foreign Office,” Hedge said to the driver, then sank into the back seat and allowed his mind to fly back along the railway lines to the Severn tunnel. The man had materialised about five minutes after the Newport stop, in fact, walking up the aisle and into the next coach before returning and plonking himself in the seat opposite Hedge and next to Miss Fleece. He appeared to have no luggage beyond the Daily Telegraph. He was a big man, muscular where Hedge was fat, and he was completely bald with large ears like sails. He was not British and he was not a man to beat about any bushes. As the train became enveloped by the Severn tunnel, he leaned forward and said in a low but perfectly distinct voice.

  “You are Hedge.”

  Hedge had started. Hedge he certainly was, though in fact such was not his name. In the Foreign Office he was known to all as Hedge, and this was indeed his function: he was a screen, or hedge, for the Head of Security. He was not accustomed to being addressed as Hedge by every Tom, Dick and Harry outside diplomatic circles. “I beg your pardon?” he said, eyebrows lifted.

  “You are Hedge. I know this. I have little time.”

  “Yes, but look here —”

  The man raised a hand. “Please.” The voice held authority. “You are what the British call a VIP. There is an important matter of which you must know. Apart from myself, no one else in the political West knows this.”

  “Knows what?” Hedge asked blankly.

  “This.” The man reached into an inside pocket of his suit and brought out a piece of paper on which words had been written in stark black felt-tip, as Hedge saw when the man held the paper before his eyes, holding it so that his open palms shielded it from the sides. The message read: Kolotechin is about to defect and wishes to be met in Naples. That was all; no date, no details. Hedge opened his mouth and sucked in air, in a great state of confusion and intense excitement. Kolotechin! It was almost inconceivable: Kolotechin was the head of the Russian security police, the KGB. A top defector if ever there was one, a prestigious prize for the West, a man whose successful defection to Britain could redound to the credit of Hedge personally. But really … men like Kolotechin didn’t defect! On the other hand Hedge recalled that Beria had done so, or tried to, way back in 1953. Beria, a former Kolotechin, hadn’t pulled it off; he’d been apprehended in Spain and then exchanged back to his homeland for some Spanish prisoners-of-war. Hedge leaned forward to glean further details, avidly, but the man got up and walked away towards the front of the train. Much agitated, Hedge resolved to follow, but his stomach impeded him for long enough to allow the man to vanish. Breathlessly, Hedge sped through the train like an anxious elephant and right up at the front end was convinced he saw the man disappearing into a lavatory compartment. He mounted guard for what seemed a devil of a long time, during which the train stopped at Bristol Parkway and Hedge darted to the platform side and stared out just in case. He failed to see the man and resumed his vigil outside the door of the toilet, from which in due course emerged a large lady in dark blue jeans, a lady who glared back at him when he bounded forward. Hedge flushed pinker and made his way, lurching from side to side, back along the train. He decided not to pull the emergency stop handle; to do that would break security and cost £50. He kept his eyes open en route but failed to spot the man; there were other lavatories, of course, some vacant, some engaged, and Hedge conscientiously checked the vacant ones and spent a while hovering outside the engaged ones until he seemed to be attracting attention, whereupon he stopped. Being seen to hang about outside the doors of conveniences could be dangerous; and in all probability the man wouldn’t say, or write, any more even if he did find him …

  What a bother it all was! Rushing about gave Hedge indigestion, and he was suffering it still in the taxi. He took a tablet, another in a succession of antacid stomach panaceas. The vehicle reached the august purlieus of the Foreign Office where Hedge, once in his own sanctum, was presented with further problems. These were heralded by a voice on his internal telephone: the voice of Simon Shard.

  “Hedge?”

  “What is it, Shard?”

  “Something’s come up. I’d like to, too.”

  Hedge clicked his tongue. “Like to what?”

  “Come up.”

  Hedge snapped, “I’ve told you before, I detest your wretched Scotland Yard sense of humour, Shard. It’s really not consistent with the Foreign Office. Is this important?”

  “I think so.”

  “Oh, all right, come up, then.” Hedge rang off, looking cross. He wanted to think about Kolotechin, weigh all the pros and cons — and de
cide whether or not to involve Shard, for one thing. For a policeman, Shard was a good man, there was no denying that, but he still saw himself more as a Detective Chief Superintendent of the Yard than as a leader of the Special Branch — not the ordinary Special Branch, but the special Special Branch attached for all purposes to the Foreign Office. This self-vision meant that Shard was as straight as a die and wouldn’t bend his principles towards establishing private credit for his boss, which had often been a confounded nuisance in the past and could be so again. The wretched man simply didn’t see things in a diplomatic light, that was his trouble. There was nothing in the least dishonest in trying to drum up a knighthood, but Shard didn’t appear to agree. The police were all the same: boneheaded. Hedge had often half decided to boot Shard back to the Metropolitan Police where he would probably end up as Commissioner with a knighthood of his own, damn the man, but he’d only get a replacement of a similar sort.

  Shard came in and Hedge stared somewhat haughtily at height and muscle, no flab, and an uneven-featured face that even Miss Fleece responded to on occasions.

  “Well, Shard, what is it? I’m rather busy, you know, with ends to tie up after Cardiff. Sit down.”

  “Thanks.” Shard dropped into a chair and crossed his legs. “How did you get on? Any progress?”

  “Little enough.” Hedge frowned as indigestion bit again. “The Welsh are quite impossible. I couldn’t even get Dewar’s.”

  “Dewar’s?”

  “Whisky. I think they pronounce it differently — I couldn’t make them understand in my hotel.”

  Shard grinned. “I saw an advert in an American magazine once. Pronounced Dooers, it said. Didn’t you try that?”

  “I’m not an American,” Hedge said scathingly. “However, don’t let us dwell on it, my dear Shard. What I went to Cardiff for … I might just as well not have gone in some ways, although if I hadn’t —” He broke off in some confusion, not yet having made up his mind about involving Shard.

  “If you hadn’t?”

  “Never mind that. The point is, I met with a stone wall, a stone wall of, I think, Welsh Nationalism. They don’t like Whitehall, and their police, like all police, think they have all the answers on security matters.” Hedge dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. “Have you ever heard of someone called Max Boyce?”

  “Of course.”

  Hedge looked disagreeable. “I don’t see why of course, I must say. His songs have an anti-English flavour. I went to a reception last night. I was talking about the advantages of being under the English umbrella, the Whitehall umbrella don’t you know. A crowd of Welshmen placed themselves round me rather rudely, and sang a song about Twickenham, and a bottle that had once held bitter ale. I think that sort of thing stirs up racial disharmony, but of course in the Foreign Office one acquires the breadth of mind to disregard it. Well, what is it you want, Shard, what are you reporting?”

  Shard grinned again. “Racial disharmony in a sense — and a Welshman as it so happens.”

  “Oh, don’t talk in riddles, my dear Shard, I haven’t the time —”

  “Hughes-Jones.”

  “What?”

  “Goronwy Hughes-Jones, Hedge.”

  “Oh, that Hughes-Jones.” Hedge clicked his tongue. Goronwy Hughes-Jones, a professor of nuclear physics attached to the Welsh universities, was a confounded nuisance to the Foreign Office, had been such for almost three years. Whilst on a tour of Communist bloc countries, he had got himself arrested in Moscow on a charge of espionage and had been incarcerated in the Lubyanka gaol. Britain wanted him back, naturally, not least because he was a top man in his line and had been about to desert the academic life for a post in industry; and it was a pound to a penny that the espionage charge had been a trumped-up one. The nuisance-value lay largely in the furore that his fate had caused in diplomatic circles and the many energetic bodies that had besieged Whitehall by post and delegation to get him back: he had been a travelling lay preacher, and many pulpits were the poorer for the lack of his thunder. All of which had impacted against Hedge, rather unfairly he had thought considering that British Security’s arm, however long, could scarcely be expected to reach right into the heart of Moscow with a continuous availability of arrest-prevention.

  Hedge sighed and asked, “Now what’s happened to him?”

  “Nothing, yet. But it’s about to.”

  “Oh, my God, not an execution, Shard?”

  “We must hope not,” Shard answered. His tone was serious now. He looked Hedge in the eye. “There’s been more word from the Kremlin apropos the Foreign Secretary’s visit there for the VIP yack. The message has come through from our Embassy — this was reported to me in your absence, Hedge — that the Foreign Secretary is to be impressed by a limited amnesty for British and American nationals held on political charges —”

  “And this is to include Hughes-Jones?”

  Shard nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Well, that’s good news, surely?”

  “Not necessarily. It’s believed to be a ploy.”

  “To what end, for heaven’s sake?” Hedge was looking perplexed.

  Shard leaned forward. “You’ll remember the reports we’ve had over the years, Hedge. Hughes-Jones had been worked on to change his loyalties — to work for Russia in his speciality —”

  “Yes, yes. But he never did.”

  “No. He’s a patriot. That — according to our Moscow Embassy — is the trouble. The Russians are out to get him now, but they’re remembering detente. They don’t want an execution and all the opprobrium that’ll flow from it and stir up the Human Rights brigades world-wide. It’s believed, and this is only a theory although one the Embassy holds pretty strongly, that he’ll be murdered while the British delegation is in Moscow — and the hand of the killer, Hedge, will be said to be a British one.”

  “Good God, surely that’s too ridiculous to hold water?”

  “No, it’s not. Far from it. It’ll be the British showing any future Hughes-Joneses that Security always gets its man —”

  “We don’t do things like that, Shard.”

  “I know we don’t,” Shard said patiently, “but in the mind of the average Russian, we do. Internally in Russia, it’ll go down well. Externally, we’ll never prove the contrary. Besides, there’s another point, isn’t there?”

  “What?”

  “Hughes-Jones’ guilt is established beyond doubt, and established by us British ourselves in the act of a vengeful murder.”

  The pink had left Hedge’s face, which was as white as a sheet. If the Welshman died, and if all that followed happened as predicted by Shard, the Foreign Office would be in for a very bad time indeed and the chief bearer of the brunt would be the Head of Security; and next to him stood Hedge. There wouldn’t be any knighthoods then, not for the man who had failed to protect the boss. Once again Hedge wiped his face; he felt quite feverish. The Welsh were a confounded nuisance and Hughes-Jones’ death would give an immense fillip to Welsh Nationalism. Hughes-Jones could almost become a folk hero, a bludgeon to be wielded against English Whitehall; Max Boyce would write a song. It must not come to that — it must not! Hedge said almost savagely, “He must be protected, Shard. You agree?”

  “I do. The question is, how?”

  Hedge snorted. “There speaks the confined police mind, Shard! You ask how, and I answer this: subject to confirmation by higher authority, I’m attaching you to the Foreign Office team for Moscow. You’ll not go in your official appointment, of course … I’ll think up good cover for you shortly, it should be easy enough. Your job’ll be to safeguard Hughes-Jones and see that he’s brought safely out of Russia with the Foreign Secretary’s party.” Moodily he added, “And there’s another thing … I suppose I’d better tell you. I want you to try to make contact discreetly with Kolotechin.” The killing, as it were, of two birds with one stone might be a good idea and in the new circumstances Hedge knew he could scarcely hold onto the information about the chief
of Russian security police and his intentions. Kudos might yet come his way, of course, if all went well. When Shard went back down to his own office, Hedge sat deep in thought. Shard had promised to dig in regard to the bald man with the large ears, the go-between for Kolotechin, though he was far from optimistic that anything would emerge. One bald, big-eared man was much like another, though not all would vanish aboard the Cardiff to Paddington train — which, together with the man’s non-British nationality, formed just about the sole clue. Hedge wished desperately to have that man brought in for some very private questioning, but it was only half an hour after Shard had left his room that he knew he never, never would in this world. Shard rang to say that he’d had Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine on the phone from Scotland Yard — his former boss and still his good friend.

  “Well, Shard?”

  “A bald man with big ears was found in a toilet compartment aboard your train, Hedge. Dead. The first report from forensic indicates poisoning.” There was a pause. “You, Hedge, are Suspect Number One —”

  “What?” Hedge’s voice was a screech.

  “Several passengers complained to the guard that a fat man with a pink complexion spent most of the run from Cardiff lurking outside lavatory doors.”

  “You — you —”

  “It’s all right, Hedge, you needn’t have a stroke, I’ve put in a word for you with Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine. You won’t be arrested.”

  Shard rang oft.

  2

  After viewing the body and finding nothing whatever to identify it, Shard spent much of a long, hot afternoon trying to get a line on the bald, big-eared man, operating from his ‘cover’ office in Seddon’s Way off the Charing Cross Road, where he was ostensibly a commercial philatelist. His premises were down-at-heel and smelled of cheap scent wafting around from the next floor up, which was occupied by a prostitute named Elsie, this trade name being set in lit-up letters above a red bell-push; below him, on the ground floor, was a Sex Supermarket in which Elsie was said to hold shares. Farther along Seddon’s Way were three strip joints and a massage parlour, the latter so discreet that Shard, when he had the time to gaze from his office window, was able to reflect sardonically upon the public faces that went in and came out. From Seddon’s Way Shard controlled his field men and when necessary arranged contacts with a whole spectrum of curious persons — ex-cons, current criminals, homosexuals, drop-outs, junkies, foreign nationals either on the personal make or wanting to hit back at authority in their own countries for divers reasons. All of them useful in their own ways, and paid out in cash for services rendered. This afternoon Shard made a number of phone calls but to no avail; and went diligently through his microdot files looking for baldness and big ears, also to no avail. Frankly, he didn’t believe it mattered very much; the message had been passed and that was that. And Shard, reaching a brick wall and deciding to pack it in and go home, fancied rather strongly that Hedge, in order to get what fame and fortune he could out of it, was going to play the thing his own way in any case.