The Hoof Page 4

  “Correct, Solly.”

  “Well, now.”

  “Depending on total results, it might be just a little more.”

  “How much more?”

  “Put a sock in it, Solly. Take my word, or leave it.”

  The small man gave a sigh. It was really quite a good offer. “Right, Mr Shard. Do me best. But don’t look for fast answers. This could take time.”

  Shard nodded. “I realise that, but work the fastest you can.” He hesitated. “A word of warning. We don’t want to lose you. The Hoof’s a bastard — you know that. So watch it.”

  Solly was dropped in Kensington Church Street, vanished in the crowds before Shard had started to pull back into the stream of traffic. Solly would be in touch with Seddon’s Way as soon as he had anything to report; in the meantime, a hundred quid in tens was safely in his wallet. Shard grinned; it wouldn’t go all that far but it might give one of Solly’s women a night out followed by a night in for Solly.

  *

  The message from Leeds came through to Seddon’s Way via the Foreign Office. Shard called back: Harry Kenwood was out with the search and Shard spoke to the Chief Superintendent. There was nothing further to add and so far the toothcomb was biting through nothing. Musingly Shard said, “There’s something odd. Lighter, coins, buttons and so. Metal. Why? I mean, it looks as though there’s been a deliberate removal —”

  “Of all metal objects. Point taken — it’s been on my mind too.”

  “Any theories?”

  “None. None of my own, that is. Forensic’s muttered about possible fire, sparks and that, but I’m none the wiser. Are you?”

  “No,” Shard said. The Chief Superintendent asked him if he was coming up to Leeds himself. He said he wasn’t, not yet anyway, his DS was a good man and didn’t need nanny. But he would be available if and when anything broke. Ringing off, Shard looked at his watch then called the Foreign Office and spoke to Hedge.

  “The inquest —”

  “Yes, yes.” Hedge sounded busy, efficient, authoritative; it was amazing what Hedge could get into one simple word twice said. Shard made a spot diagnosis: either the Head of Security or the Minister of State, perhaps both, were present. “I’m awaiting the coroner’s verdict and approval but it’s a formality and you can assume the funeral will take place as already indicated —”

  “Are the arrangements actually made, Hedge?”

  “Of course. The funeral directors merely await our confirmation, that’s all.” Still authoritative, Hedge banged down his receiver. His end, Shard gave the handset a rude gesture. Then he sighed. He detested funerals and this one was going to be a fraught occasion if ever there was one. Italians were nothing if not loudly emotional. Family minded too … Maria Locci would be only too well supported by tearful relatives.

  *

  The night passed with no more linked deaths, but the next morning’s newspapers were still speculating. In the absence of hard news from the Yard, they had brought in the experts and the political commentators to write articles. The writers knew it all and wrote with assured certainty: the backlash had started, was likely to escalate, no union leader would be safe. They would become scared men and they might moderate their politicking — if it wasn’t too late. And a lot more. Shard flipped through the pages in growing disgust. Murder was murder, but a lot of guns were being jumped in the interest of literary, query, fees. Two union leaders dead plus one vanished didn’t make a congress. It was still possible the whole thing was coincidence. Possible but, of course, unlikely. He had to give the experts that much, and he supposed they had to live though he’d often wondered why. Not that the omniscient TV wasn’t a damn sight worse. TV had a lot to answer for; over-swift communication was a two-edged sword and one edge was lethal to good order. Apart from the old adage about ignorance being bliss, the need to guard each utterance was a continuing menace to any police investigation. You needed to be a diplomat rather than a dick. And internationally — what one might call Hedgewise — the wretched little screen could cause any amount of trouble: at any time of tension, the experts had to have their useless say to inform the public, or misinform it usually, and lambast the other side with dangerous rudery. Or give widespread and unfortunate coverage to off-the-cuff remarks by politicians, like when, back in 1981, the US hostages in Iran had teetered on the brink of their release after sundry comments about barbarians and paltry rug-sellers …

  At three p.m. Shard was seated in a pew at the back of the late Frankie Locci’s church. A number of union men and women had come to pay their last respects — persons from Locci’s own union plus fellow general secretaries from other unions together with their detectives, the latter all armed. There was a low buzz of conversation from Maria’s supporters while the coffin was awaited; this would be under strong police guard like the union leaders, the live ones. The relatives were easy to pick out: they were all crying hard and gesticulating profusely. Sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins of varying degrees of consanguinity, Maria’s mother and father notified as having flown in from Naples, a real family gathering like most funerals and with plenty of news to impart to those not seen for some while. Shard fidgeted, feeling an interloper in private grief though Frankie Locci had been a too-public man and must therefore expect intrusion.

  Shard kept his eyes on the move. If by some freak of over-confidence the Hoof should show, he was unlikely to recognise Shard, who had been just one of many in the body of the Old Bailey when the Hoof had been prominent in the dock. Shard kept a ready hand for his gun, disencumbering himself from the Order of Service pressed upon him. Church or not, funeral or not, that gun would be used if it had to be. Shard hoped it wouldn’t; the press would make a meal of him afterwards.

  The doleful music changed; the congregation rose to its collective feet. White surplices and birettas bobbed. The cortege was coming in.

  Shard looked sideways as the coffin itself came abreast of his pew, borne along on a trolley flanked by grave-faced union leaders. Behind came priests and acolytes. Maria herself was already in a pew at the front of the church, face puffy, eyes red, not currently crying. At the aisle end of the pew was little Alberto in a smart suit, looking grave and contained, a hand on his mother’s arm. Three of the little Locci girls were on Maria’s right. Shard felt immense pity for them, Alberto especially, the one on whom so much domestic responsibility had now settled. The way the boy looked when the coffin came up to rest beside him was sheer tragedy.

  The service started. Shard was soon lost in the unfamiliar order. The proceedings took a long time; one of the union men delivered a very lengthy speech, praising the dead man for his untiring efforts on behalf of his oppressed fellow workers in the Health Service. All cant, Shard thought, sheer boloney. Locci had been by all accounts much more concerned with his own advancement in the union, and the porters and so on were no more than his pawns, his cannon fodder in his own personal fight.

  The service ended at last. The coffin was wheeled away to a hearse to make the journey through London’s busy streets to its interment in the cemetery. The mourners shuffled out with downcast faces. Only the family plus the important union men, the bearers, would attend that interment and take part in the committal service. The hearse would be heavily guarded by police, plain clothes men, and uniformed men would be waiting at the cemetery gates to deal with crowds and any other difficulties. High authority feared some sort of demonstration; you never knew what the NF might decide to do, and Frankie Locci had been very much unloved in that quarter.

  Shard went out to his car and drove off behind the hearse, then deviated and took another route so as to reach the cemetery gates, hopefully, before Frankie Locci’s remains. He made it. He managed to park and run back to the cemetery before the hearse drove in with the parish priest up front with the driver. The coffin was off-loaded as the family cars and the union cars came up behind. The procession formed along a narrow path. Away ahead Shard could see the gaping, freshly dug grave, mounds of earth an
d a number of wreaths, one of them, a gigantic affair, formed into the emblem of NUHE, as he could see when, outflanking the main body of mourners, he closed the graveside and stood back in the lee of a vast marble edifice with angels on guard over it. The NUHE emblem must have been a difficult one to portray florally: a porter’s trolley flanked with rolled bandages and surmounted by the effigies of two nurses, in uniform with wings sprouting, over them again the single word UNITY and beneath the whole lot the hand-linked figures of a chef, a hospital porter, an anonymous female figure who could have been a ward clerk or someone in administration, and another in a long white coat, presumably a para-medical to represent dispensers and the like. No doubt the florist had done his or her best but the result was something of a disaster. Not that it mattered. The trouble came before it could be properly assessed by those concerned.

  Reverently the coffin was placed in the lowering straps and the immediate family closed in towards it, beckoned by the priest, who began to intone his office: the day was bitterly cold and the priest looked perished. He had not got far when the whole scene disintegrated in a raw, wicked flash of red and orange. There was a stupefying noise. Earth, stones, pieces of coffin, pieces of human flesh, flew in every direction. Blood spattered like rain, dappling the lying snow to make the cemetery look like a battlefield. Shard, protected by the marble tomb from actual injury, was blown flat by the blast. Narrowly missing him, a dislodged angel toppled to the ground.

  He picked himself up, stared around in horror and momentary bewilderment. The police were running in from the gate. There were shouts and screams, the dreadful crying, the keening of hysteria. The coffin had vanished; scattered flower petals were falling back still. Bodies lay everywhere, the wounded writhed in agony. Gathering his senses, Shard took charge.

  4

  The coffin had completely disappeared: it was just as though it had never existed. There were many dead. Soon the ambulances were coming in, and the police cars, with sirens screaming out their alarm. Someone had called the fire service as well, and the fire appliances added to the bedlam. Beyond the gates crowds gathered and were held back by a strong line of uniformed men already reinforced from the local nick. It was fairly clear the coffin had held a time device, and a big one.

  The note, the letter to Frankie Locci, had mentioned the family.

  *

  “Tragic,” Hedge said, mopping his face with a white silk handkerchief. He had got the word and had come in person with his driver. He was upset, appalled at the carnage even though much of it had been removed by the time he got there. The dead had included Alberto and three of the little girls, all that were present of the young Loccis — the middle girl, Angela, had been left at home with Frankie Locci’s mother. Maria had been taken away badly injured and screaming. She might live, might not. Four more union leaders had died, men of varying importance. It had been a fairly clean sweep and it had taken in a number of persons not in the least involved except as mourners. Friends, neighbours and some of the relatives, including the old couple from Naples, Maria’s parents. Three of the funeral directors’ mutes had gone along the path of their clients. They had been accompanied by the priest.

  Hedge asked what had caused the explosion. Shard told him his theory.

  “In the coffin, how diabolical! How did it get there, Shard?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll be finding out, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “The undertakers’ men?”

  “I doubt that rather strongly. They were just the cats’-paws.”

  “How d’you mean, cats’-paws?”

  Shard said, “I mean the device could have been planted after the undertakers had finished with the coffin. An intruder, after the screwing down.”

  “Difficult, surely?”

  “I should imagine so, Hedge. So is most villains’ work. They seem to find a way, don’t they?”

  Hedge didn’t answer that; he sniffed and walked away to harangue the uniformed branch. By now all the ambulances had moved off, so had the unwanted fire engines. The crowds still hung about ghoulishly: there was something extra special about sudden death in a graveyard. Shard made his way down the path to the gates and along to his car. He drove to the funeral directors’ establishment, not far away. The boss was still back at the cemetery; Shard wanted a preliminary word with one of the underlings. There was a youngish man, prematurely bald, seated at a desk in a kind of parlour, dressed in a black coat, white shirt and muted, discreet tie. Tinned church music hung in the air.

  “Good morning, sir,” the undertaker’s man said. He looked distressed: he would have got the word by this time, probably. “Can I assist?”

  Shard produced his official card. “Detective Chief Superintendent Shard.” He didn’t add that he was no longer at the Yard. “You’ll have heard what happened?”

  “Yes. Dreadful. Our staff —”

  “I know. I was there. I want full details of the Locci arrangements, please.”

  “Oh. Yes, I suppose you do. Please take a seat.”

  Shard sat, facing the black-coated man across the desk. The man looked distrait. “Mr Rocola would probably prefer —”

  “Mr Rocola is?”

  “My employer, Mr Shard. My boss.”

  Shard leaned forward. “Now look. Mr Rocola’s still at the cemetery. He may be there some time, also answering questions. Meanwhile I want your answers, Mr —”

  “Scape. John Scape.”

  “Right, Mr Scape. Here’s the first. What time was Mr Locci’s body, what there was of it, delivered from the police mortuary?”

  Scape delved into a drawer and produced a file. “I wasn’t on duty myself, Mr Shard, we work a shift system of course, one of us always on hand to assist at once at a time of grief and distress.” He scanned the file and said, “The body came in at four-thirty p.m. yesterday —”

  “How?”

  “That I can’t say, Mr Shard.”

  “I know it’ll have come in by police van, unmarked. I’m referring to the container. If I’m not mistaken, it’ll have been a plastic bag. Right?”

  “Quite right, Mr Shard.”

  “And then?”

  “The remains were removed from the plastic bag. I gather Mr Rocola didn’t think it quite proper. They were placed in the coffin.” Scape gave a cough. “There was a lot of excess space and this was filled with white muslin. It was all very respectfully done.”

  “I’m sure it was. After that? Was the lid screwed down right away?”

  “Yes, it was. Then it was unscrewed again.”

  Shard stiffened. “Why?”

  Mr Scape looked suddenly ill at ease. “I’m afraid that was my doing, Mr Shard. We had a request, you see — I was on duty by that time as it happened and I’d stayed on late — normally the duty gentleman’s on the end of a telephone at home, but there were a number of enquiries to be dealt with and —”

  “This request,” Shard said. “What was it?”

  “Yes. Well, of course, it’s usual for relatives to wish to see the departed in our chapel of rest. We take special pains to prepare them —”

  “In Locci’s case, there was virtually nothing to see, Mr Scape. Or to prepare. Are you telling me someone wanted to take a last look at arms and legs?”

  “Well — yes, I am. Naturally I did my best, in a very tactful way, to dissuade him, but the gentleman was adamant. I was in no position to refuse his request when it came to the crunch, Mr Shard. The gentleman, an uncle he said he was, a Mr Clandings, Mr Locci’s mother’s brother, wished to pray beside the exposed body —”

  “So you made the arrangements?”

  Scape nodded. “Yes. In the circumstances, of course, as you said yourself, there was pretty well no actual preparation, not of the corpse that is. I just had to shift the re-opened coffin into the chapel of rest and switch on the music. And see to the floral decorations and the lighting.”

  “And this you did. This you did, do I t
ake it, without contacting the police?”

  “Well, yes. Should I have done?” Scape blinked nervously. “I thought, once the police had handed over the remains, their part was over and done with. The body became our responsibility. I simply never thought —”

  “All right,” Shard interrupted. “You acted with the best of intentions — I accept that. So the gentleman came. Was he, by any chance, carrying anything?”

  Scape said, “Yes, as a matter of fact he was. A small case. Old fashioned, what they used to call an attaché case I believe. Brown,” he added helpfully. He didn’t seem worried; he wouldn’t have heard the police theory yet, about the siting of the explosive device.

  *

  Shard drove to the Foreign Office: Hedge was back when he got there. Shard went straight up and reported. He said, “Scape’s description of the bomb planter didn’t tally in any way at all with the Hoof. Too small. Anyway, after the man had gone, Scape screwed the lid down again and shifted it out of the chapel of rest and thought no more about it. It was easy.”

  “Too easy.” Hedge was beside himself. “It’s all Hesseltine’s fault. There should have been a police presence on the coffin, right the way through till the burial —”

  “I don’t suppose that was considered remotely necessary, Hedge —”

  “Then it should have been, and I shall report as much to the Minister. Not that that part of it is our concern in any way, thank God. It’s purely police.”

  Shard nodded. “The whole thing is, really. I still don’t see where the FO comes in. It’s Home Office, basically.”

  Hedge shifted irritably in his chair. “We’ve been into all that, my dear fellow. The Hoof! His neo-Nazi involvement on the continent. I’m much more concerned about the Hoof than about these wretched union officials — the country’d be better off without them and no-one can deny that. It’s simply that in my view at any rate the deaths impinge on the Hoof —”