Blackmail North Read online

  “I’ll live, I’m tough. I have a lot to do.”

  “As you say, sir. I’ve brought a stretcher — people have fallen before, though not so many since the fence was built. I’d say you didn’t fall?”

  “I was probably thrown. Use your radio, Sergeant. A Mrs Mackintosh and three men in denim jackets, with guns and a cudgel. Plus another man, short and dark, given to whistling. Road blocks, all exits from Aberfeldy. It’s vital.” Shard, his voice weakening, fell back into unconsciousness.

  *

  He came to in a bedroom: visible under a bedside light were the constable and the girl from reception, by which Shard judged himself to be in the Breadalbane Arms. When the signs of life showed, the girl went out and came back with the sergeant, then left again.

  “Are you better, sir?”

  “Yes. More or less. Anything to report?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir. No-one’s been picked up at the road blocks.”

  “The hills, the open country?”

  “Covered the best we could, sir. But it’s the devil of a job is that.” The sergeant grinned. “Back in 1739 they formed the Black Watch to scour the braes and glens — the watch on the highlands — but the highlanders beat even them!”

  “I doubt if we’re up against highlanders this time, Sergeant.” Shard paused. “Do you know who Mrs Mackintosh is?”

  “I do not, sir.”

  Shard said, taking his head in his hands in an effort to keep it from splitting asunder, “It’s important but it’ll keep — just concentrate on finding her. You’ve brought in adjacent forces, I hope?”

  “We have that, Mr Shard.”

  “I should have said earlier — hold the press off. That’s an instruction from the Foreign Office and it’s to be obeyed. I’m sorry to tread on good Scots toes, but I’ll have full backing from Edinburgh to regularise it. Is there any more whisky?”

  The sergeant handed over the flask. “More whisky than there is water for it!”

  Shard sat up in the bed, his face white tinged with green. His body was stiff with bandages: a doctor had attended him whilst he was unconscious. He took a pull at the flask. “I’m getting up and going with you to the nick, Sergeant, no argument. I’ll fill you in on the way, so far as I’m permitted. As soon as we get there, I want you to call Whitehall, I’ll give you a number, and ask my man on duty to give you a line to a Mr Hedge.”

  “Mr Hedge?”

  Shard nodded and regretted the movement. He winced. “That’s right, Briar Hedge, very prickly at the best of times. He won’t thank you for disturbing his sleep.”

  *

  When Shard took over the call, Hedge’s voice was savage, a savagery that struck right through the layers of recent sleep and night-phlegm: “Shard, Shard, I’ll have you sacked, back to the Yard and good riddance —”

  “Now what’s up, Hedge?”

  Hedge seethed into the telephone. “That damn silly schoolboy mind of yours — I’ve suffered it before, I’ve told you — damn it all, I’m not Briar Hedge and I don’t like the inherent disrespect. You work for the Foreign Office, not the Billingsgate fish market —”

  “I apologise humbly, Hedge …” The instrument rattled into his eardrum, and he held it away, then replaced it and cut incisively into the stream of rebuke. “Hold it, Hedge, this is important. Mrs Mackintosh has been taken.”

  The noise stopped. There was a pause. “Taken? What do you mean, Shard?”

  Shard explained, adding that he was in one piece and operational, a fact that didn’t seem to please Hedge particularly. “I’m working on it, with very able assistance from Aberfeldy Police —”

  “Highland goats —”

  Shard clamped his teeth shut and pressed the receiver hard against his ear, but his eyes told him that Hedge’s high-pitched, angry voice had reached Scottish territory. The sergeant’s face froze into ice. Shard said into the phone, “I shall report excellent co-operation to Head of Security. In the meantime, I’m asking for a search nationwide both sides of the border. And I mean nationwide, Hedge, all Chief Constables, all forces John o’ Groats to Land’s End. I’ll leave it to you to dream up something tor the press. Lost your bucket and spade, perhaps.” He banged the handset down, his face at one and the same time both hard and apologetic. He looked at the sergeant. “I’ve a feeling you heard. I can only apologise for my boss.”

  “It’s all right, Mr Shard, we’ve heard that sort of remark before. Maybe you’ll understand now why there’s a strong urge for independence!” The sergeant’s face thawed a little. “What do you intend to do now, sir?”

  “Back to bed. I’m groggier than I thought, unless it’s the whisky. First thing in the morning I’m driving to Dyce and a plane for London, then —” Suddenly, Shard stopped, struck by a thought that had somehow eluded him to date: his mental processes hadn’t been helped by the battering he had taken.

  “Are you all right, Mr Shard?” the sergeant asked.

  “Yes. Just a thought. It’ll keep.” The thought was: a hundred pounds to a penny the Mackintoshes had been taken by different sets of people, rival interests: one the Libyans, one the Israelis. Once Mackintosh had gone, the other side had to have a bargaining counter. Why? What were the stakes? Given time, he would find the answer. He said, “Look, I need fresh air. It’s a nice night. I’ll clear my head better by walking.” He had brought his car.

  “As you say, sir. Will I have your car driven round for you?”

  “Don’t bother, Sergeant, thanks. It’s not far. I’ll walk back for it in the morning.”

  “As you say, sir,” the sergeant said again. Shard went off, on foot. The air felt good: there was a crispness about Scotland’s nights even in high summer. Shard had just reached the Breadalbane Arms when all hell broke loose from the direction of the nick. A big explosion and a lot of flame. Shard went back, running hard. All around him windows opened. When he reached the nick he found every window shattered and his car a funeral pyre, a flaming, wrecked funeral pyre for one very scattered police constable.

  Four

  “HOW GHASTLY FOR you,” Hedge said, and shuddered: there was an ashamed look in his flabby face, as though he regretted his remark about highland goats. “Why did it happen?”

  “Someone,” Shard answered sardonically, “planted a bomb linked to the ignition, didn’t they?”

  “I didn’t mean that. You told the sergeant not to follow with the car, you said.”

  “Yes. He got his constable to shift it into the nick garage for the night.”

  “Such bad luck,” Hedge murmured. “A simple order, and then tragedy.” He brightened, rather phonily. “It could have been worse — it could have been you.”

  “That was the intent, wasn’t it?” Shard said irritably.

  Hedge nodded. “Yes, indeed. You’ll have to watch it, my dear fellow —”

  “I’m used to it. I’m always at risk.”

  “Yes,” Hedge agreed again, and shuffled things about on his desk. “You know, someone took an enormous risk — right outside the police station!”

  “Where, in fact, passers-by wouldn’t think twice, and only the two coppers manning the station. Not so risky — but whoever did it was used to handling explosive charges.”

  Hedge lifted an eyebrow. “Oil?”

  “Yes. Or trench excavation.”

  “No other leads?”

  Shard said, “None. But I’ll make an assumption: one of the men I met in the birks stayed behind in Aberfeldy. If that’s correct, then we have a description.”

  “Of the bomb boy?”

  “It’s possible, and it happens to be all we have.”

  “But he won’t have remained in Aberfeldy after the explosion?”

  Shard gave a tight grin. “Unlikely!”

  “Those men whose descriptions you passed.” Hedge began tapping a finger on his desk. “There’s been no result from your section or Hesseltine. Nothing on the files, it seems, and no joy from the road blocks or anywhere else �
�� ports, airports.”

  “Maybe they’re tunnelling out.”

  “That’s a joke?” Hedge asked frigidly.

  “Take it which way you like, Hedge. What I think we need to consider now, is why did Mackintosh’s wife choose that particular time to go to Aberfeldy?”

  “Didn’t you say —”

  “Romantic associations — yes, I did. It really doesn’t quite tie up, though. So far as we know, she’d not been in touch with her husband since his release by the Libyans, and somehow I doubt if she’d have let him go home and be re-routed by the daily help —”

  “You put a watch on the bungalow, didn’t you. Any result?”

  “No,” Shard said irritably, “and it’s not relevant now. What I’m getting at is this: she could have had a message. Not from Mackintosh — from someone who maybe said he was representing Mackintosh.”

  “Telling her to meet him in Aberfeldy?”

  “In the birks, yes. With that romantic association in mind, she probably wouldn’t have taken much convincing.”

  “I still don’t see why. All that way? Why not hijack her direct from her own home?”

  “Because in all the circumstances, they’d have assumed a police or Special Branch watch on the bungalow.”

  “Ah — but that would also indicate, surely, a discreet escort if she moved out — a police tail?”

  Shard nodded, and blew out a long breath. “It’s a point, Hedge. But the birks lend themselves to what they did, in fact, do — and I was a tail of a sort! A bloody lot of good I did her.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t reproach myself too much, my dear fellow.” Hedge ran his eye, and there was a gleam in it, over Shard’s bandages and plasters. “You have honourable wounds to show. You did your best.” Somehow the words and the tone managed to convey that Shard’s best had been decidedly below Foreign Office standards. “The thing is, what now?”

  “The start of a long slog, if one or both of the victims doesn’t drop into the net within the next twenty-four hours. We have to fit names to those descriptions, Hedge.”

  “The computers have attempted to do that already — I told you. I’ve been onto C-SICH and Central Register too,” Hedge added. The Combined Services Information Clearing House sorted all British and Commonwealth intelligence and Central Register housed MI5’s collection of dossiers covering some two million persons including foreign nationals. “Result, nil. All we have is Uthman. I hope you’ll be making every effort in that direction.”

  “I’ve not had much opportunity yet,” Shard said coldly. “He won’t be forgotten. But as to the others, they don’t have to be on the files you mentioned. We need to check with 37.” This was an allusion to Interpol HQ in the Rue Valery in Paris. “And we need to check the embassies.”

  Hedge gave a very hollow laugh. “Another joke. Can you see them co-operating?” He added before Shard could come back on that, “Oh, yes, we have our plants, I’m aware of that, but it would all take the very devil of a time. And which embassies? Both the Israelis and the Libyans have friends whom they could be using.”

  “Give me,” Shard said, “an idea of the time-scale on this job. When is what might happen, expected to happen?”

  Hedge shrugged. “Really, I’ve no idea. But — to coin a phrase — it’s always later than one thinks. Isn’t it?”

  *

  Hedge, Shard thought disagreeably as he left the Foreign Office, loved platitudes. The man was crammed full of them to the extent that self-satisfaction left room. His wife was a martyr. Wives: Shard rang his home from a call-box, said he might be home that evening, time unspecified, and no complete certainty in any case. To his chagrin, he had got Mrs Micklem: Beth had gone out shopping.

  “Does that mean you want me to leave, Simon?”

  Tongue in cheek Shard denied any such wish. “I say again, mother-in-law, there are uncertainties.”

  “Yes. It’s so unfair on poor Beth.”

  “Agreed. Ring my boss and tell him so.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Simon. I just think you might insist more. Be positive with them. They’ll respect you more.”

  “Balls,” Shard said, but not into the telephone, which had been rung off on him. Not for the first time in his recent career he reflected that no young copper on the beat would dream that a Detective Chief Superintendent, however young for his rank, had to walk warily of a mother-in-law. Leaving the kiosk, Shard was approached by a keen-looking woman of around thirty at a guess, wearing a long skirt and a bikini top.

  “Mr Shard?”

  He nodded.

  “Detective Chief Superintendent Shard?”

  “Since you seem to know already, yes. Now may I ask who you are?”

  “Sheila Branscombe. I work for a news agency —”

  He held up a hand. “Before you ask — no comment. Anything you ask will get that reply. How long have you worked for a news agency, and which is it?”

  “Not long. A matter of … three weeks. TransEuropean News Flash —”

  “Never heard of them. Tell your editor, for any information, any time, call Press Office. He should know that you don’t approach me, ever. You may get shot.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she said, not looking at all penitent. She was full of zeal. “I only wanted a word about this man Mackintosh.”

  Shard was well schooled against surprises, but this shook him. “Really?” he said.

  “Yes —”

  “Where is this News Flash outfit?”

  She said, “Shepherd Market.”

  “Right.” He laid a hand on her arm, gripping it. “That’s where we’re going. Start walking, and I’ll get the first taxi.”

  “You can’t —”

  “I can. Just try stopping me, and you’ll end up in a police cell. Move.” She gave him a look, then moved. His face was like ice. He was conscious that to some extent he was taking it out of her, making her a whipping-boy for Mrs Micklem, but his anger and anxiety were real enough in basis. Hedge, and who would blame him, was going to do his nut over a leak. Grimly pushing through tourist London along Whitehall Shard asked, “Who’s your editor, Miss Branscombe?”

  “Mrs Branscombe, I am, but Sheila will do.” He liked her scent, he noted in passing. “My editor, who’s also the proprietor, is Knackers Bunnigan.” She glanced sideways. “Knackers is what he’s known as. Real name … do you know, I just don’t know, come to think of it?”

  “Never mind,” Shard said. He pushed on, retaining his grip. No bloody taxis, he thought, the tourists take the lot. They came down past the Horse Guards, the sentries all blue and white and gold, sabres flashing in the strong, hot sunlight. A black horse sucked disdainfully at an ice cream cornet held out by a square-headed bespectacled small boy in leather pants: a German, doing what he could to bring the British cavalry to its knees. Poor damn sentry, what had London come to? Thankfully, a taxi answered Shard’s signal a little way short of Trafalgar Square. In the back, Mrs Branscombe’s scent became even more seductive. He revised his opinion about her age: she wasn’t much more than middle twenties, she just led a tiring life and the sunlight had brought it up. She protested again at the kidnap and Shard let her rant: he found her indignation attractive. When she ended he said, “It’s not you I’m after, it’s Mr Bunnigan.”

  “Knackers knows his job.”

  “No doubt. I know mine too.” Little more was said until the taxi pulled up in Hertford Street. From the taxi Mrs Branscombe led the way into an alley smelly with unemptied food bins, around which stray cats prowled and spat at each other’s successes. One was lurching about with an old french letter caught on its foot. Home from home, Shard thought, just like Seddon’s Way, to which he had been bound when accosted by the lady of the press. Mrs Branscombe turned into a dirty doorway with a long board of bell-pushes at its side, and Shard noted that his own office block was way down in the score of resident prostitutes: this place had no less than four bell-pushes in red with the names Nancy, Melissa, Juanita and Gelda.
He followed his guide up a steep staircase with lino-ed treads and on the wall a series of brilliant green cardboard arrows inscribed TransEuropean News Flash; at the third landing this message was painted on the frosted glass pane of a door, through which Mrs Branscombe went with Shard behind her.

  The door opened directly into a room. Knackers Bunnigan sat at a large table covered with paper, a typewriter before him. Shard stared: TransEuropean this may well be by name; in physical form it was pure transatlantic. Bunnigan, naked to the waist against London’s close heat and puffy with unshed beer, wore a massive amount of hair on his chest and a green eye-shade below a totally bald head. A cigar stuck from his mouth like a gun in a turret, and the first thing he did was to belch. When he spoke, the accent was mid-Atlantic rather than trans. There was a phoniness about it.

  “Gee whiz, Sheil, who’s the boy friend?”

  Shard struck first. “The name’s Shard, Detective Chief Superintendent. I believe your name is Bunnigan?”

  “Sure, that’s right —”

  “And you’ve sent this young lady to ask questions. I’ve come to ask you some —”

  “Listen —”

  “You listen.” Unbidden, Shard took a hard chair opposite the proprietor, and leaned across the mass of paper, his face grim. “I promise you this, arrest will follow refusal to answer. Now then.”

  Knackers Bunnigan looked puzzled and unhappy; the cigar rolled a little between his lips. “Jesus Christ,” he said in a hurt voice, “I done nothin’ wrong! I gotta business to run, a livin’ to make, right? I collect nooze, I don’t bust the law, never have, have I, Sheil?”

  “All right, so don’t start now. You sent Mrs Branscombe to ask questions about a man named Mackintosh, am I right?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m here to warn you to send out nothing whatever about that name. I quote the Official Secrets Act — even the watered down version is strong enough to get you, Mr Bunnigan. Understood?”

  “Why, gee whiz, sure it’s understood, I never —”

  “Then we’ll leave it at that. But not quite. I want to know your sources and what they’ve told you.”