The Dark Side of the Street. Jack Higgins

      1

      War Game

      Somewhere across the moor gunfire rumbled menacingly, strangely subdued in the heat of the afternoon, and below in the quarry where the prisoners laboured stripped to the waist there was a sudden stir of interest.

      Ben Hoffa worked in the shadow of the north face amongst a jumble of great blocks of slate and he paused as he swung the ten pound hammer above his head and lowered it slowly to look up towards the distant hills, a hand shading his eyes from the sun.

      He was a small man in his late thirties, muscular and wiry with good shoulders, his hair prematurely grey, the eyes as cold and hard as the blocks of slate around him. His partner, O’Brien, a tall, stolid Irishman, loosened the crowbar he was holding with easy strength and straightened, a frown on his face.

      ‘And what in the hell would that be?’

      ‘Field Artillery,’ Hoffa told him.

      O’Brien stared at him blankly. ‘You must be joking.’

      ‘Summer manœuvres – the Army hold them every year around this time.’

      In the distance, three transport planes moved over the horizon and as they watched, a line of silken canopies fluttered open as men stepped into space to float down like thistledown blown on a summer breeze. The sensation of space and complete freedom was so acute that O’Brien was conscious of a sudden aching emptiness in his stomach. His hands gripped the crowbar convulsively and Hoffa shook his head.

      ‘Not a chance, Paddy, you wouldn’t get five miles.’

      O’Brien dropped the crowbar to the ground and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand. ‘It makes you think, though.’

      ‘The first five years are the worst,’ Hoffa said, his face expressionless.

      There was the crunch of a boot on loose stones behind them. O’Brien glanced over his shoulder and reached for the crowbar. ‘Parker,’ he said simply.

      Hoffa showed no particular interest and continued to watch the paratroopers drift down behind the breast of the moor three or four miles away as the young prison officer approached. In spite of the heat, there was a touch of guardsman-like elegance about the neatly starched open-neck shirt with its military-style epaulettes and the tilt of the uniform cap over the eyes.

      He paused a yard or two away, the staff in his right hand moving menacingly. ‘And what in the hell do you think you’re on, Hoffa?’ he demanded harshly. ‘A Sunday School outing?’

      Hoffa turned, glanced at him casually and without speaking, spat on his palms, swung the hammer high and brought it down squarely on the head of the crowbar, splitting the block of slate in two with an insolent grace.

      ‘All right, Paddy,’ he said to the Irishman, ‘let’s have another.’

      For all the notice he had taken of him, Parker might not have existed. For a moment, the prison officer stood there, his face white and then he turned suddenly and walked away.

      ‘You want to watch it, Ben,’ O’Brien said. ‘He’ll have you, that one. If it takes all year, he’ll have you.’

      ‘That’s what I’m counting on,’ Hoffa said and ignoring the expression of shocked amazement that appeared on the Irishman’s face, he swung the hammer high above his head and brought it down again with unerring aim.

      Hagen, the Principal Officer, stood by one of the Land Rovers at the top of the dirt road that led into the quarry and smoked a cigarette, a black and tan Alsatian crouched at his feet. He was a tall heavily built man nearing retirement and a thirty year sentence spent at various of Her Majesty’s Prisons had failed to erase an expression of natural kindliness from the pleasant bronzed face.

      He watched Parker approach, aware from the set of the man’s shoulders that something was wrong and sighed heavily. Amazing how difficult some people made it for themselves.

      ‘What’s wrong now?’ he said as Parker joined him.

      ‘Hoffa!’ Parker slapped his staff hard against the palm of his left hand. ‘He really needles me, that one.’

      ‘What did he do?’

      ‘Dumb insolence we’d have called it in the Guards.’

      ‘That’s an Army charge – it won’t wash here,’ Hagen pointed out.

      ‘I know that only too damned well.’ Parker leaned against the bonnet of the Land Rover, a muscle twitching in his right cheek. ‘It doesn’t help matters when every con in the place treats him like Lord God Almighty.’

      ‘He’s a big man in their book.’

      ‘Not in mine, he isn’t. Just another cheap crook.’

      ‘Hardly that.’ Hagen laughed gently. ‘Nine hundred thousand quid is quite a bundle by anyone’s standards and not a sou of it recovered