The Hoof Read online

  “Who informed the Minister of State, who informed the —”

  “Oh, shut up, Shard!” Hedge hissed like a snake, his pink face turned to deep red. “You know as well as I do, the proper chain of command must be followed otherwise we’re in bedlam. The Prime Minister was personally informed. Now we must act fast. Murder … though I think the world’s a cleaner place without that man Locci and his kind. All such — such smart Alecs. One can’t help feeling a kind of rapport with the Hoof, can one?” he asked, smiling chummily for once.

  “I can.”

  “Oh?” The eyebrows went up sharply. “Damn it, the unions have been totally responsible for the appalling state of the country!”

  Shard shrugged. “No political discussions for me. I’m a policeman. Murder’s murder.”

  “All the strikes! The pickets — the dreadful violence.”

  “I’ll leave the ethics of it all to you, Hedge.”

  “All the wretched victimisation of non-union labour.” Hedge was wound up now; there was an inward and baleful look in his eye. “Pricing good men out of employment by ridiculous wage demands. Wrecking everything.”

  “Possibly.”

  “It’s all gone a long way beyond Tolpuddle now.”

  “And the Hoof, if he’s the villain, is creating a new set of martyrs —”

  “I wouldn’t call them that!” Hedge sniffed.

  “Which would be foolish even if it wasn’t a crime. Crime’s my job, as I’ve said. The first thing is to draw up a list of all those next at risk —”

  “And then?”

  “Clamp a police guard on each. After that, find the Hoof and see where we go from there.”

  2

  Shard knew without being told in so many words that Hedge wasn’t going to be happy with this job and that he was going to prove an even thornier Hedge than usual. The co-operation though not the aggro was likely to be minimal, just enough to ensure that Hedge didn’t incur displeasure from higher authority.

  Shard went down to the security section soon after Hesseltine had arrived at the Foreign Office. There had been a row brewing; Hedge’s dislike of the ACC had showed, and the ACC had reacted tartly. Hesseltine had been Shard’s boss at the Yard and his loyalties were still divided; he would have preferred them still to adhere wholly to Hesseltine, in fact. Hesseltine was a first-class policeman and a fair, unprejudiced man. A pleasure to work for. Now he was being fair to the unions and that got Hedge on the raw. Anyway, a list of union bosses likely to be in danger was drawn up: Barney Peters of the Miners’ Federation, Hugh Slant of the Rail and Road Transport Workers, Gerald Tutt of the Executive, Clerical and General, the white collar union and powerful because it included most of the computer programmers and operators. A number of others: NALGO, COHSE, NUPE — from whom Frankie Locci’s NUHE had been a breakaway group — Electrical Trades Union, NATSOPA, the various Civil Service unions, the General and Municipal. Hedge’ s lip had had a decided curl as each name was brought up and listed. He didn’t think it fitting that such people had become so important. Once, importance had resided in those who wore bowler hats, which Hedge still did. Now the union men would be provided with armed plain clothes men from the Diplomatic Protection Group backed up by others from the FO. In the meantime the Yard had made its own dispositions to apprehend the Hoof; and throughout the country all police forces had been alerted. According to Hedge, the Hoof had drastically altered his personal appearance over the years. Shard could see him as he had been: a big man, six foot three, broad and tough, with mean eyes, small like those of Hedge. Low forehead, thick shock of brown hair, now apparently gone. He had looked like a wrestler, with long dangling arms that seemed ever about to grab for a hold. Although that couldn’t be altered, it seemed that the Hoof had undergone plastic surgery and was equipped with a new nose, lines on his face that hadn’t been there before, and sundry other small differences. He had to be supremely confident of his new appearance, and blissfully unaware that his identity had been rumbled by the French police, or he’d have found a more discreet way in than Gatwick.

  Shard’s security line burred. It was Hesseltine, who had returned to the Yard.

  “Simon, there’s been a call. Phone box. Some outfit calling themselves the Workers’ League of Freedom. They’re claiming responsibility.”

  “Are they known?”

  “No. I’ll be in touch if anything develops. What are your movements?”

  Shard said, “I’m going to have a word with Locci’s wife. Just on the off chance.”

  *

  Frankie Locci had lived in Hounslow, not far from his work, which was why he walked sometimes, just for some fresh air, rather than take the Rover. Locci had been no longer a poor man at the time of his death and the house was a good one, pretty expensive. Frankie had been half Italian and fifteen years before, while on a union-organised package tour to Naples and Pompeii and all around, he had found a full-blooded Italian bride whom he had brought back to Hounslow and married. Slim and pretty then, by now Maria Locci had widened out.

  Opening the door to Shard, she virtually filled it. The gaps were cemented by what appeared to be a football team of children of varying ages. When Shard identified himself they all burst into tears and Maria Locci wrung her hands.

  “The police again, it is too bad —”

  “Not the police. Not Scotland Yard. May I come in, Mrs Locci?”

  “No, if you are not the police you can’t come in, no. We shall all be murdered in our beds.”

  Shard sighed. Sometimes you just couldn’t win. He tried another tack. Selecting a black-haired head on a level with Mrs Locci’s ample hips, he patted it gently. “You have a handsome little boy Mrs Locci.”

  “A good boy, Alberto. Yes, he is handsome and clever, aren’t you, my little Alberto cherub?” She clutched at the small form fiercely, protectively. There was a strong smell of garlic. “There, there, little one, you are safe with momma, safe from the man —”

  “The man don’t mean no ’arm,” a shrill voice said with a jeering note and a very English accent. Alberto wriggled violently. “Bloody let go of me, will you?”

  As though automatically obeying orders, Mrs Locci let go. “You think he is all right, Alberto cherub?”

  “Course ’e is.”

  Mrs Locci moved back a pace, allowing room. “You can come in,” she said, still not looking too happy. Shard made a mental note: keep on the right side of Alberto and he was made. Thanking Mrs Locci, he went in. His trained eye took in a lot all at once: parquet flooring in the hall, a gaudy but expensive barometer, capo di monte figures on a chest, embossed wallpaper, a heavy pile carpet on the stairs that rose to a half landing. He was led to the lounge: stereo equipment, blissfully silent at the moment, a twenty-four inch television in a cabinet, a bar across one corner, a suite that could have come from Harrod’s, another heavy pile carpet in brilliant red and green diamonds with a baby’s feeding bottle in the middle of it, velvet curtains with silk linings. Shard had entered the wrong trade.

  Alberto marched to the bar. It was very well stocked: Italian and French wines, gin, whisky, vodka and an array of liqueurs. Alberto waved an arm. “Name your poison, Mister.”

  Precocity wasn’t in it. Mrs Locci, who was babbling like a brook, didn’t seem to notice. Gravely Shard said, “I think you’re a shade young yourself, laddie, and I’m on duty. So the answer’s no.”

  At the word duty Mrs Locci had stopped in mid-speech. His remaining words rang out louder than he’d intended. “Duty?” Mrs Locci repeated. “Then you have come for the letter, yes?”

  Shard hesitated, thinking at speed. He was saved from making a decision by Alberto, who said shrilly, “Don’t be bloody daft, ’e couldn’t ’ave come for it, could ’e? You ain’t told the fuzz, right?”

  “No, that is right, you are so clever, little Alberto cherub, I have not told the — the police.” Mrs Locci collapsed onto a sofa; it seemed to fold inwards round her. “The letter, ’Oly Mother of God
, the letter! My poor, poor Frankie.” She burst into fresh tears: it was going to be a long slog, Shard thought, and tact would be needed. He cleared his throat, waiting for the tears to subside. All the other children except Alberto, all girls — four of them — were crying too.

  Alberto said, “Shut up. You going to show the man the letter, momma?”

  The tears were suspended. Damply Mrs Locci looked up. “Should I, Alberto cherub?”

  Alberto was the man of the house now. He said, “Reckon you should. If ’e’s the fuzz … what ’e said, ’e wasn’t, but I reckon ’e is.”

  Shard lifted an eyebrow, quizzically. “Why do you reckon that, Alberto?”

  “Look like it an’ all, don’t you? Why did you say you wasn’t?”

  “I’m not from Scotland Yard, that’s why. I’m something different.”

  “Special Branch?” Alberto, eleven or twelve at a guess, was all there, black eyes alight with drama, slim body almost vibrating with vicarious glory and glamour. It would be all round his mates in no time but Shard was unworried: just as fast if not faster, the villains’ grapevine would have sent the word through the underground ramifications of crime that Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Shard of the Foreign Office was on this job. Nothing was lost that could ever have been saved.

  “You can call it that,” he said. “May I see the letter, please?”

  Mrs Locci met her young son’s eye, and Alberto nodded. She reached, as Shard had expected she might, into her bosoms. There was an air of melodrama as she brought out a square envelope with a first-class mail stamp. She said tremulously, “It is addressed to my Frankie but I opened it. Alberto thought I should, so I did. ’Oly mother of God, such things it says.”

  She handed it over. There was a silence now, no crying. Every eye watched that envelope as Shard took it from a fat fist. The silence was guarded, as though the visitor might bite. Even Alberto was looking tense. Shard studied the face of the envelope. The name and address were written in very stiff capitals, as though drawn with a ruler so that even in capital form no individuality would show through. The ink was from a black nylon-tipped pen, broadish. Shard glanced at the postmark: 21 December. He looked up. “When did this come?”

  Alberto answered, “Just ’alf an hour ago, Mister. Second post like.”

  “You’ve seen the postmark?”

  “Yes.”

  Shard looked hard at the boy. “You’re telling the truth, Alberto?”

  “Yes! I swear on the Bible.” He swore on something else as well: “Bloody Post Office buggers. Christmas, see.”

  Shard nodded. It was probably true. The boy looked honest and sincere. The posts were in a mess most of the time, and Christmas was impossible. Shard pulled out a single sheet of cheap paper, lined and thick with a pulpy feel. The message was simple and pointed. It read, in capitals: FRANKIE LOCCI WATCH OUT YOU BASTARD WE ARE GOING TO GET YOU AND YOUR FAMILY.

  There followed some foul language personal to Frankie himself. Not unexpectedly, there was no signature. Nor, Shard guessed, would there be any fingerprints. The paper could be bought at any branch of Woolworth’s. There was just the possibility of the stamp: criminals had been known before now to forget about the thumb that pressed the stamp down on the envelope. It was a pity about Christmas. If Locci had got the message in time, he might be still alive. Might. No use thinking bloody thoughts about the Post Office in any case. It was done now and Mrs Locci and the children had to live with it. For how much longer? The message said, ‘and your family’.

  Once again Shard looked up. He said, “I don’t need to say I’m sorry about this — about the delay —”

  “’Oly mother of God,” Mrs Locci said, crying again, “my poor Frankie …”

  “I know. May I use your phone?” Shard had noted the telephone in a corner.

  “For what? My Frankie —”

  “This message. You’re all in danger, or could be. We have to take note of it —”

  “You’re going to arrest us?” Mrs Locci seemed on the verge of hysteria.

  Shard smiled. “Of course not, you’ll stay here unless my chief suggests a change of residence as safer. No, I’m going to ask for protection, that’s all. You’ll have a plain clothes police officer assigned to you, day and night, until we’ve found who did this thing.”

  Large black eyes stared into his own. “You will find this person?”

  “Yes, we’ll find him.”

  His call made, Shard waited around till the plain clothes man reported. That didn’t take too long: Shard’s department moved fast. Shard gave his DC the info, then took his leave. Alberto went with him to the door. Shard said gravely, laying a hand on the boy’s thin shoulder, “Look after your mother, right? And your sisters.”

  “Them,” the boy said with a note of disgust. “I’ll look after momma all right.” There was a fierce protectiveness akin to that of Mrs Locci herself. Alberto was standing up to his new responsibilities, all right. As Shard went down the short path between winter-shaggy grass dotted with small red gnomes the boy called after him in a taut, sharp voice: “You get that bugger, Mister, promise?”

  Shard said, “I promise to do my very best, laddie. We don’t usually fail.” He turned away towards his car; he didn’t often bring it to Seddon’s Way or the FO but today, for no real reason except that he was dead sick of London’s underground, he had. The sex supermarket on the ground floor of his office block had a parking space temporarily vacant on account of the lessee being sick; Shard had taken advantage. But there were snags in the use of cars when you worked in Security. Shard bent and took a look underneath, a careful one. All clear, but you never knew. He drove back to Seddon’s Way, thinking about the Loccis. Now the family had come under threat, the thing had grown much worse, much nastier. From his office he rang Hedge to tell him about the letter. Hedge complained that once again he’d been trying to get him without success.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes. Mortimer. Jack Mortimer, Power Workers. The wife’s attended — she lives in Bath, no distance. She confirms the identity.”

  “I see. Did she have a letter?”

  “No-one has said so. Could Locci’s have been something personal, something purely personal to himself, do you suppose, Shard?”

  “Could be, yes. It could explain the curious fact of a warning, perhaps. Someone who just couldn’t resist scaring the daylight out of Locci and family rather than just go into action unannounced … and unappreciated as it were. We still haven’t enough to tie in a wider-spread vendetta, or the Hoof either come to that.” Shard paused. “It’s a hard thing to say, and a nasty one, but a third killing might point the way.”

  “Yes, indeed, I’ve been thinking the very same thing.”

  There was unpleasantness in Hedge’s tone. Saying he had much to do, Shard cut the call while Hedge was still speaking, something he would be balled out for next time they were in contact. So what? Feeling disgust with Hedge, Shard once again locked up his office and made his way to the fingerprint section at the Yard, not too hopefully. His lack of hope was borne out: the stamp was clean of prints. He would need to get some checks on the envelope and contents, just to isolate the Loccis and the postal service and see what if anything was left. The handwriting experts weren’t worth the time that would be wasted. From the fingerprint section Shard went up to see Hesseltine. The ACC said that a report had come in from Devon and Cornwall Police: there had been a sighting by a mobile of a man who could have been the Hoof, in the village of Lydford on the northern fringe of Dartmoor. But they’d lost him when the mobile had gone into a nasty skid on some black ice. A call had gone out to all patrols in the area but the man hadn’t been picked up again. There was no certainty that it was the Hoof anyway.

  *

  Later that day, a little after lunchtime, two men who could have been plain clothes police officers moved in on Barney Peters, general secretary of the Mineworkers’ Federation, as he was walking towards the underground car pa
rk near Marble Arch. He was coming down the Edgware Road with a detective sergeant of the Diplomatic Protection Group a few paces behind him. His mind was projecting ahead to the afternoon’s work: his union was engaged in pay negotiations with the Coal Board and so far was getting nowhere. Behind the Board stood an implacable government, giving nothing away beyond a too-meagre percentage. Peters’ members would never stand for it — according to Peters; a strike was very much on the cards. That afternoon Peters had some hard talking to do. Not all the areas wanted to strike and that had to be faced. It was up to Peters to persuade the laggards that militarism was the only thing likely to make any impression on Whitehall. He was too preoccupied to be aware of an altercation going on behind him. Two men had inserted themselves between himself and the detective sergeant, who was being impeded by a third man, an apparent drunk who had draped himself round the detective sergeant’s neck. This manoeuvre just gave time for the two other men to close in on Barney Peters, seize his arms, force them together behind his back, and slip a pair of handcuffs over his wrists in the same instant that a dark blue Cortina pulled alongside. Peters was too flabbergasted even to yell out. He was hustled towards the car as a man in the front passenger seat leaned back and shoved the rear nearside door open. As the Mineworkers’ leader was bundled in, a revolver butt took the detective sergeant behind the right ear, hard, and he went flat on the pavement. The Cortina moved off into the traffic and at the Marble Arch roundabout it turned left along Oxford Street then took the next turning but one, left again into Portman Street. It halted in Portman Street for long enough to transfer Peters to a maroon Citroën, which then lost no time in moving off north across Upper Berkeley Street into Gloucester Place. Barney Peters was hastened through a dark afternoon full of snow clouds into Park Road whence the course was north into the Finchley Road after which sundry twists and turns took the Citroën towards the entry to the M1 at Staples’ Corner.