Call for Simon Shard Read online

  Shard scowled into his glass, didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Yes, I’m worried. Drugs — heroin — I told you. It’s one of my aims in life to stamp out the hard drugs traffic. I’ve seen the misery — ” He broke off. “I’m not forgetting my principal duty, Hedge.”

  “I’m glad,” the pink man said with heavy sarcasm. “So glad!”

  “As I suggested on the phone, Hedge, there’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is, yet.”

  “Well?”

  Shard said, stroking his long jaw, “A very attractive girl, a striking girl, dressed, I’d say, for London rather than a climb up Rough Tor…pretty conclusively death by natural causes — ”

  “Exposure?”

  “And starvation, Hedge — starvation! With heroin to the tune of around a hundred thousand pounds on the body — maybe more, the market’s climbing daily. I don’t like the mixture, the ingredients. There’s another, of course.”

  “My telephone number.”

  “Yes…”

  “How,” the pink man asked, “do you assess that, Shard?”

  For a moment, Shard’s eyes gleamed. “Leaving out an affair?”

  Pink deepened to red, dangerously: the lower lip jutted. “Don’t make jokes, Shard. Don’t make jokes.”

  “I’m sorry. Frankly, I can make no assessment at this point, Hedge.” Shard waved his glass in the air. “I suppose there’s a chance she meant to get in touch with you — if so, I don’t know why.” He glanced at Hedge. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “No suggestions?”

  “None.”

  Shard nodded. “Not even the drugs — not your pigeon, Hedge. That is, I mean, if she meant to hand them over. She wasn’t a heroin addict herself — nothing in the body, according to forensic in Cornwall. She didn’t look to me like a pusher, but of course that doesn’t have to be conclusive. Any tip-off would be unlikely to go in your direction. It’s a mystery — your telephone number.”

  “I want it solved, Shard.”

  “Because of the Press?”

  “Partly.”

  “You can deal with the Press, can’t you?”

  “Certainly not directly, officially — unless national issues are involved. Are they — d’you think?”

  “I don’t know.” Shard spread his hands.

  “I’d like you to find out.” Hedge took a deep breath, sent it out again, whistling through set teeth. “Of course I have strings, but I don’t want to risk pulling them. No smoke without fire — you know how people’s minds work! I must not stick my neck out. That could make it so much worse.”

  “Yes, I see that.”

  “Anything else known about the girl — apart from her name, and the Cherbourg connexion?”

  “Nothing so far. The local police are checking, but so far they’ve drawn a blank. She doesn’t seem to have been noticed in Camelford, and she wasn’t staying in any hotels over a wide area — at any rate, not as Yvette Casabon. And even under any other name, I’d have expected some remembrance. I told you — she was striking. I mean that. Classical features, a dimple in the chin. I can imagine her laughing…I can imagine how vital she must have looked. It’s a tragedy.”

  “You’re getting involved, Shard,” the pink man said accusingly. “Personally involved.”

  “And why not?” Shard asked with a laugh. “Oh, I know one’s not supposed to. But in my book, however heretical, it goes with efficiency.” He stood up, put his drained whisky glass back on the shining silver tray. “I’d like to get home to bed, Hedge,” he said. “Unless there’s anything that can’t wait?”

  Hedge looked annoyed but said, “Oh, you can go home, Shard. Don’t let me stop you — ”

  “Thanks. In the meantime, the case is in very good hands. I was impressed by the Chief Constable and the Head of CID. They’ll keep me informed all along — ”

  Hedge broke in. “You’re going to Cherbourg. First thing in the morning, Shard.”

  “I see.” Shard frowned, stroked his jaw again, seemed uncertain. “I realise your personal anxiety, though I don’t believe, truly, that you need worry. As for me, I have anxieties too — ”

  “What anxieties?”

  “Beth — my wife, Hedge. She’s not been well. I’d prefer not to go to Cherbourg just at this moment — ”

  “I understood you to say you’d become involved, Shard.”

  “Yes. I’m also involved with my wife and family. I say again, I’d rather not leave the country, Hedge.”

  Hedge said, “I’m sorry, but you’re going. You’ll find out all you can about this Yvette Casabon and report back to me personally. It shouldn’t take long, a day or so at the outside. You’ll soon be back.”

  *

  Beth was asleep when he got in, and he kissed her feather-lightly but didn’t wake her. He went to bed in his own room; they didn’t share a room: Shard snored mightily. He always went in to her in the early morning. He went to bed that night worrying and loathing Hedge, whom he thought a pompous bastard and currently a bloody stupid one. Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine hated Hedge’s guts, and had very likely over-done the undertones of his phone call, taking the opportunity of being as Shard wished, if that was the case he hadn’t, not this time. Beth had been having a series of nasty headaches and the doctors didn’t know why. Tests were being done. It sounded more serious than migraine. Very badly, Shard wanted to be at home and on hand, and certainly he didn’t want to worry her, and she always did worry over his safety when he was away. Desperate things did happen from time to time, and men didn’t come back. In fact it was because his predecessor hadn’t come back that he, Shard, had been seconded. Beth didn’t know it, but that predecessor had ended up in the innards of a concrete-mixer in Buenos Aires…he’d had to be cut out with pneumatic drills. God damn Hedge — but Shard could appreciate his anxieties up to a point. Men in high places…the Press never did hold back short of a libel action, and Hedge wouldn’t want that — and even a libel action was often enough an acceptable risk to the Press in the interest of a really big scoop. Had there been anything in it, Hedge could have been said to have driven the girl to kill herself, even. And then there was the fact of heroin. Yes — nasty for Hedge undoubtedly, and he would want to get out from under, double quick. Understandable — but, in Shard’s view, no need for panic action.

  *

  Post mortem photographs reached Shard before breakfast. That morning Beth’s head was bad again: she was sick and green. Migraine symptoms like before, but the doctor had been non-committal all along about that. Sitting by the bed, Shard gently rubbed her forehead with menthol, which seemed to help. His fingers were long and supple, more like a musician’s than a copper’s, Beth often said. They brought her comfort.

  His words did not.

  “I have to be away a couple or so days, darling.”

  “Please not, Simon.”

  “Orders. Duty.”

  “Can’t you get out of it? Send someone else?”

  “It has to be me, Beth. I’m sorry. I did try, but it was no use.”

  “Hedge in person?”

  He smiled. “Very much so.” The smile, which was for Hedge and not Beth, was acid. “I’ll make it quick, and you really don’t have to worry. This is easy, a soft number. Just checking an identity — that’s all.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” Shard said, and kissed her. “I’ll ring Mrs. Andrews — it’s not her day, but she’ll come. I’ll ask her to stay overnight till I get back. If she can’t…your mother might come up, perhaps.”

  “She can’t leave Daddy…”

  Guiltily, Shard felt relief: once ensconced — when her husband wasn’t ill — mother-in-law tended to linger, but he’d felt bound to make the suggestion. He kissed Beth again and went into the kitchen where he made coffee and boiled an egg. Go to work on an egg, go to death on an egg…he caught himself up. Damn it, he’d told Beth this was simple and it was — or should be. But something was nagg
ing at him, and he felt an extraordinarily strong sense of danger and nastiness, a feeling that wouldn’t let go of him. Unusually so: Shard had Scots blood in him and colleagues had sometimes remarked, laughingly to some extent, on a quality of second sight — but never before had he felt so inwardly certain of evil. He had first felt it, not when viewing the body after it had been brought down, but when he had gone with the local police to where it had been found, on the rock-strewn slopes of the tor. There was to him an uncanny feeling about that place: between two great boulders, huge smoothsided things that centuries ago had toppled with the other clitter from the then summit of the tor. A grey day, with a hint of another mist to come down and seal off Rough Tor in a damply clinging shroud. More crows, birds of prey now hovering over the carcase of a half-eaten cow that stank to heaven. The crevice where the girl’s body had lain, the crevice into which, perhaps feeling death creeping upon her, she had crawled for shelter in the night. Why? What had she been doing there? There was no evidence in that cleft, no clues that Shard could see. Just that immense feeling of evil, of something that went far, far beyond the natural if tragic death of an attractive girl.

  CHAPTER III

  On the body, there had been just two letters. Along with them in the handbag had been the normal assortment: a compact, handkerchief, keys, paper tissues, and so on. Very little money, all sterling coins, and no cheque book or credit cards. The letters were entirely impersonal: one was from a bank, making reference to an overdraft — it was on this one that Hedge’s telephone number had been scrawled — and the other was from a garage, justifying a charge for a repair item on a Simca. The bank one was of fairly recent date, the garage one was old, and both were from Cherbourg. Both were addressed to the Hotel Tourville in Cherbourg — addressed, that was, on the letter sheets themselves. The envelopes, which would possibly have borne a forwarding address in Britain, were in neither case present.

  A hotel, a bank, a garage: a fair enough start. Shard was optimistic. Someone would remember her: Shard was much surprised when no-one did, except vaguely as a name that had stayed in the hotel — and left that forwarding address, which turned out to be the Regent Palace Hotel in London, more virtual anonymity; a name that had an account at the bank; a name that had used the garage (once only) for the repair on the Simca — a fairly basic job on the gearbox, and expensive. The garage proprietor shook his head dubiously at the photograph taken after death.

  “It is a long time ago, M’sieur, I cannot be sure. I do not think I remember the face…but I see many faces. The name is in our books, that is all I can say.”

  And a similar experience at the bank. The manager was able to check that he had once interviewed a Mile. Yvette Casabon, but was vague about the photograph; and after checking with his chief clerk he told Shard that the account had been transferred, shortly after the date of his letter, to the bank’s branch in Chatillon-sur-Seine in the Haute-Marne.

  “I see. You have no address, other than the Hotel Tourville, M’sieur?”

  “None, M’sieur, I regret.”

  “But now the account’s been moved…I wonder if you’d be kind enough to check for me, M’sieur?”

  The manager’s shoulders lifted around his face, and his eyebrows went up. “It would be possible, of course, but it would not be ethical, M’sieur, to”

  “I am a police officer, M’sieur.”

  “Ah yes, M’sieur, this is so, but not of our own prefecture — ”

  “I will get the authority of your prefect of police if necessary, M’sieur, I promise you, but this will put everyone to a lot of bother. As one of our partners in Europe — ”

  “Yes, yes, M’sieur, I too am anxious to co-operate.” The Frenchman clasped his brow with a wealth of drama in the gesture, then said, “I will make the enquiries for you, M’sieur. It is perhaps my duty in the cause of Europe. We are now one.” Shard inclined his head, hiding a smile. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s kind of you, M’sieur.”

  He waited while the manager consulted a list of numbers and then took up his telephone and dialled. After some delay, and some irritability, he got through.

  There was a polite conversation with a fellow manager, then the query was passed. After another wait the manager put a hand over the mouthpiece and looked across at Shard. “The account has been closed as of one week ago,” he said. “The overdraft was paid off and the account closed.” Unease came with dead ends, frustrations. “Paid off, how?” Shard asked.

  “By draft from London, through Barclays Bank in High Street Kensington. Have you further queries, M’sieur?”

  “Yes. Would you ask the manager if he knew Mile. Casabon personally?” Another conversation. Then: “But no, M’sieur, he had never met her. The account was transferred as, shall I say, a paper transaction, through the post.”

  “And the address, the lady’s address?”

  “Still the Hotel Tourville.”

  “I see. That’s all, and thank you for your help, M’sieur.”

  *

  Blank, blank and blank again. Shard walked the streets of Cherbourg beneath a bright sun and a cloudless sky. He sniffed fresh air appreciatedly, air redolent with strange French smells, of cooking and of harbour mud, and of the sea and fuel oil and tarred rope. Much better than London’s diesel fumes that fouled buildings and strangled trees and men. He walked because his mind worked better on the move, but this time he could find no help to clear the mental fog. Walking along the Avenue de Paris, he thought about the overdraft. It had been not large, not small — around one hundred and eighty pounds, expressed in sterling. It didn’t prove much: depending on the girl’s financial standing, about which the bank manager had not been able to help beyond saying she’d had no regular inpayments, it could have been hard to raise the pay-off or it could have been easy. Blank again. But the money had come from somewhere, after that letter from the bank. And why shift the account, why bother, when she was nowhere near Chatillon-sur-Seine? Maybe she’d intended to go there; but the Madame at the Hotel Tourville had given that London address. And why hadn’t the girl given her bank the London hotel address, rather than leave it as Cherbourg?

  For Shard, it looked like a long slog with no leads visible. There was the Regent Palace, of course, and Barclays in High Street Kensington, but Shard didn’t expect miracles from either of them. He stared across the turbid water of the canal alongside the Avenue de Paris, then turned back on his tracks towards the Avenue Aristide Briand; but at the intersection with the Rue du Val de Saire he turned left, and went over the swing bridge into the criss-cross of little streets that formed the town centre. He liked the atmosphere, liked the small shops, the individuality, the muted bustle and brightness and friendliness, the fresh smells of fruit and bread. He sat outside a small cafe and sipped cognac and thought about the loneliness of Bodmin Moor. Just across the Channel…

  The bright sun cast a shadow on his table and he looked up and saw Hedge.

  Coldly, he stared. He said, “Well, well! I’m not sure that I like this. Don’t you trust me?”

  Hedge, looking white around the jaw, sat at the table unbidden. A waiter approached in a black jacket and white apron. “Cognac,” Hedge said abruptly.

  He waved a hand towards Shard. “And another for M’sieur.”

  “I say again, Hedge, don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course I do. I wanted to be around myself — that’s all. I flew out just after you’d gone. It was a sudden decision.”

  “A risky one.”

  “Possibly — ”

  “Stupid, too. I’m sorry, Hedge. I prefer to work on my own. I thought you knew that. It’s not your job to come into the field.”

  Hedge was angry. “Don’t teach me my job, Shard. And don’t be impertinent.”

  “Sorry again.”

  “Well, never mind all that now.” The cognac came, and its coming temporarily silenced Hedge. When the waiter had gone, he said, “Those photographs.”

  “Oh, yes.”
/>   “You have them?”

  “I have.” Shard brought them from his wallet, passed them to Hedge. Hedge studied them closely. “Know the girl, do you?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Hedge handed the photos back. “Tell me what you’ve done here in Cherbourg, Shard.”

  “It’s a blank.”

  “Tell me.”

  Shard did so. Hedge asked, “The prefecture?”

  “I’ve not bothered them. I assume you didn’t want me to?”

  Hedge nodded vigorously. “No, no, you’re quite right. Hesseltine will be doing that. You and I…we’re acting independently — of course, you know that.”

  “Yes, I do.” Inwardly, Shard smiled. Poor Hedge, he didn’t want to be openly involved — and he looked as if at any moment his guts would give way. “But frankly…it’s going to take the prefecture to dig up what we want.”

  “But the forwarding address — and the bank in Kensington — ”

  “For my money, hardly worth bothering to check — I will, of course, but those ends are bound to be covered.” He paused, “There is another way, of course.”

  Hedge looked up. “What’s that, then?”

  “An advert in the newspapers, locally. You know the sort of thing: Will any relatives of a Mile. Yvette Casabon please contact…”

  “Contact who?”

  Shard smiled, lit a cigarette, blew smoke. “That’s the nub, rather! I think I’d suggest…your own solicitors.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” Hedge dabbed at his face with a linen handkerchief. “D’you know, I don’t think we want to stir up too much…fuss.”

  “We don’t?”

  Hedge looked unhappy, almost penitent. “No. Er…that’s one of the reasons why I came, actually, Shard.”

  “Oh? To draw me off — d’you mean?”

  “Well, yes. In a way.”

  “Then why send me in the first place, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I reached another decision, Shard, that’s all. I wasn’t myself yesterday — I’d had a shock, a very personal shock.” He executed another face-dab: he was sweating like a pig, very uncomfortable in his climb-down role. “I think we should, perhaps, let sleeping dogs lie. Especially since the name doesn’t appear to ring many bells here in Cherbourg.”