‘The same night, Charlie came back from the village pub. Another man had tried to pump him. This one was smaller, grey-haired, with a thin face and a big, curved nose. Charlie said that he was a snazzy dresser, but the bigger man was a scruff.
‘With so much interest being taken in us, I thought I’d better bring forward the annual check. I called in the man who designed and installed our electronic systems.’
‘Jake Paterson?’
She looked at Keith sharply. ‘He talked?’
‘Not a word. He’s a neighbour of mine, and it has his sort of ingenuity written all over it.’
‘I see. Well, he came and checked the place over with another gadget. He found transmitter bugs in here, under the desk and also under your chair. He’ll have had some funny listening off that one. So it looks as if he came prepared to be fetched in here. And there was another transmitter attached to our T.V. circuits, outdoors. We’re clean again now. I don’t think he could have learned anything useful, and if he wants his equipment back he’ll have to dig under the new swimming-pool for it.’
‘A pity,’ Keith said. ‘We could have used it to mislead.’
‘I thought of it, but we don’t know enough. Almost anything that we said could turn out true. We never found out where the receivers were, but a grey car was parked up on the hill for a couple of days. It’s gone now.’
‘I suppose nobody got the number?’
‘It was gone before we knew it was there. Anyway, your pal Paterson said that the equipment was good-quality, German stuff of standard makes. He said it was the kind of gear an agency might use, official or private. He’s checking us over twice a week until this is all over, and no strangers get to come in here any more.
‘Next thing.’ She took a fat envelope out of a drawer. ‘I’ve got your photographs.’
‘Now, how the hell,’ Keith asked, ‘would you get them done so quickly over a weekend?’
‘I whistled up the taxi-plane,’ Wallace said.
Mrs Heller smiled gently. ‘We have a professional photographer for a client. He’s more interested in the photographs he can get of himself with a time-lapse camera than in what he’s doing. I think they turn him on his wife. Well, she’s due for a surprise. For a little extra co-operation he worked all day yesterday.’ She slid a small selection of photographs, clipped together, out of the envelope. ‘We’ve passed them round all the girls and the porters. Four of our clients appear in the photographs, but only one was here that night or for a month before that. Hilary’s customer.’
She slid the photographs across the desk and Keith and Wallace studied them together. There were three prints in all. The first showed a group of men waiting to shoot. Two of them were in the act of loading, and one of these was ringed. The second print showed the same man raising his gun to fire, while the third was a blow-up of part of the same photograph, concentrating on his head and the hands holding the gun.
The man was lean and dark and he looked intense. He must have been insufferably hot in his shooting-jacket, but Keith guessed that he wore it for the many pockets that held wads and cards and pricker and percussion caps. In the group photograph, he seemed to be of average height or less, and he was probably the lightest man in the group.
‘Don Donaldson,’ Mrs Heller said.
Wallace grunted. ‘Not a customer that I’ve seen in the shop.’
‘We might show Molly the photograph,’ Keith said. ‘He may have recognised her, even if she didn’t recognise him at the time.’ He took the blow-up out of Wallace’s hand. The detail was sharp. ‘That’s a Kentucky rifle. Very odd!’
‘Would it take the ball that we dug out of the chair?’ Mrs Heller asked.
‘Don’t rush me. Let me think aloud. That ball would have fitted some Kentucky rifles – Pennsylvania long rifle, to give it its proper name. But this isn’t an antique, it’s a reproduction. The ones I know are smaller calibre. But he wouldn’t be trying for clay pigeons with a rifled barrel. Wal, what did I say the ball weighed?’
‘Near as dammit three-quarters of an ounce. Your very words.’
‘What’s that times twenty?’
‘Fifteen ounces,’ Wallace said promptly.
‘Just under a pound. In other words, the ball would go up a twenty-bore barrel with room to spare for a patch.’ Keith looked at Mrs Heller and smiled ‘Never mind my havering. The point is that there’s a twenty-bore shotgun version of this rifle, which could take the ball. What’s more, this had been built from a kit. The brass patch-box hasn’t been inletted well, and the line of the comb looks wrong. Wal, who was it made a twenty-bore Kentucky kit?’
‘Pedersoli, I think. We never stocked it, though.’
‘No. It isn’t even in the current catalogues. It was for the American market. Paddy imported a few, but they didn’t go well and he gave them up. Shall I speak to him?’
Mrs Heller put her hand on the telephone. ‘Number?’
Keith pulled out his diary. The back pages were crammed with addresses and phone-numbers. Mrs Heller relayed the number to the porter on the desk. ‘One other thing,’ she said to Keith. She handed him a letter. ‘The analysis of the lead ball.’
Keith took the headed paper and glanced quickly down the lines of typing. ‘One and a half percent antimony,’ he said, ‘no tin, no calcium, no silver.’
‘Not antique, then,’ Mrs Heller said.
‘Not ordinary scrap lead either,’ said Wallace.
‘I think,’ Keith said, ‘that he must have been casting lead balls out of spent bullets. Which might make him a member of a rifle club. But then again, he might have got permission to clean out the target area of a club or a territorial army range or something.’
Mrs Heller’s telephone made a servile noise. She picked it up, listened for a second and then handed it to Keith. ‘Mr Holdbright’s on the line.’
Keith took the phone. For a minute he exchanged friendly insults and compared notes about the Game Fair with Paddy, and then he got down to business. ‘Paddy, I’m trying to get in touch with somebody who did me a favour at the Game Fair. He was shooting a twenty-bore version of the Pennsylvania long rifle, built from a kit. I think you were the only importer . .? Could you put me in touch with him?’
The receiver made miniature mutterings for several minutes. Keith gave Paddy the phone-number of Millmont House. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll do the same for you some day.’ He disconnected. ‘If I don’t see you coming. He only sold four of those kits. One went abroad. It may have come back, of course, but he doesn’t think so. Two went to customers he knows well. One of those isn’t finished, because Paddy’s got it back to bore the ramrod pipe. The other definitely wasn’t at the Game Fair, and anyway the man’s Form F isn’t through yet. The fourth was sold by post, somewhere up this way he thinks. He’s looking up the name and address and he’ll call me back.’
‘While we’re waiting,’ Wallace said ‘J-just a thought. If those two visitors, the ones who bugged the place, are from an agency, somebody in the credit business might know them.’
‘Good thought,’ said Debbie Heller.
‘And I know people in the credit business,’ Wallace finished up.
‘So you do. But I know somebody who spends half his time having credit checked’ She pressed down a lever on her intercom. ‘Gordon, dear . . .’
While she spoke to her husband, Keith was amused to see yet another facet of Debbie Heller appear. She adored her husband. Although in effect she was handing out orders, she spoke in a lover’s tones. There was a faint blush on her cheek, and she twined her legs together. A startling weakness, Keith thought, in a tiger-minded ex-tart.
‘He’ll see what he can find out from the agencies we use,’ she said when the call was finished. ‘Now . . .’ she took some papers out of a folder on her desk. ‘While you were making money and enjoying yourselves down at the Game Fair, I was –’
‘Making money and enjoying yourself up here,’ Keith said.
She gave
him a look that almost gave him hypothermia. ‘I was unremuneratively and miserably interviewing every member of this establishment, without getting any further forward. It seems that Don Donaldson had that part of the grounds to himself on Sunday night. My staff are consistent in their stories, bear each other out and are corroborated in every respect by the records. I’ve had a search made of both chalets and the ground between and around, and if there’s anything significant to be learned I’ll – I’ll submit to rape by a mad donkey. We’ve saved you lots of little bags of Hoover contents, rubbish from waste baskets and pedal bins, and path-sweepings. And the best of British luck with them!
‘Last of all, while you were down at the Game Fair making money and having fun,’ she said firmly, ‘I was wading through all the records, the chits, accounts, computerised bookings and the log, and I’ve listed everything that relates to those two girls or the two chalets and which could possibly be relevant.’ She gave Keith and Wallace each a page of neatly typed notes. ‘None of it takes us much further, but it’s a framework to hang more facts on as we get them.’
Keith began to read the notes. Each was preceded by a number, eight digits from the computer, four if the entry was from the porters’ log.
(Wednesday)
1935 Booking. Fosdyke for self (no pref) and Donaldson (Hilary). Saturday nogo. Booked Sunday 1900. Dinner – trs to Catering.
(Sunday)
1410 Gate. Visitor, Hilary, 16. H notified.
1456 Dr, visitor ex 16.
1705 Annette. Needs extra chalet at 1900. Booked 15.
1835 Dr, Hilary into 15.
1846 Dr, Annette visitor exq.
1854 Gate. Visitors for 15. Wh Granada Est.
1915 Dinner to 15. (The meal was printed in detail. Keith whistled respectfully. The men had done themselves well).
2134 Warning call, Hilary.
2139 Dr, Annette ex 15.
2143 Dr, Annette into 9.
2153 Gate. Visitor, Hilary, re M.G. Spoke 16, still visitor.
Booked 4. Dr, Hilary ex 16.
2205 Dr, Hilary’s visitor into 4.
2221 *No 15 Man. Says let door slam.
‘If he let the door slam,’ Keith said, ‘he was inside to speak to the porter. How did he get out? That has to be the shot.’
An incoming telephone call interrupted him. Paddy Holdbright. Keith listened, expressed gratitude and put the phone down. ‘It was posted out to a Mr. J. M. Scott in Perth,’ he said. ‘Would your porter find out whether he’s on the phone?’
‘Of course,’ Mrs Heller said. She gave a crisp instruction, without explanation, over the intercom. She blinked at Keith from behind her glasses. ‘But would anybody describe Perth as ‘Somewhere up this way?’
‘Paddy would,’ Wallace said. ‘I don’t think he’s been north of Newcastle in his life. If the address said Scotland . . .’
Keith had gone back to the notes.
2236 Dr. Hilary into 4.
2344 A/C for 15 settled, cash.
2348/Gate. White Granada Est out, driver only.
Dr. Visitor ex 4.
(Monday)
1022 Dr. Hilary ex 4.
1345 Dr. Hilary into 16.
1412 *No 16. Hilary says damaged chair.
He was still looking at the list, trying to extract some meaning from it and wondering what was missing, when the porter’s voice came over the intercom to say that there was no telephone in Perth listed to a J. M. Scott at the address given by Paddy Holdbright. One was listed for a different address. He had spoken to the man’s wife, who was positive that they had not moved house in fifteen years. She had shrieked with laughter at the suggestion that her husband might be competent to build a gun from a kit.
Mr Heller followed the porter on the intercom. He had a pleasant voice, accentless. Keith noticed a nice balance between affection and respect, and developed his own suspicions as to who wore the black lace trousers in that household. ‘They don’t work for any Edinburgh agency,’ Mr Heller was saying. ‘I phoned the J.D.V. Agency in Glasgow – they only do credit-checking, so I could be sure that the men weren’t theirs. They checked with a contact who does divorces, and called me back. They came up with two names. The big one that you know as Jonathan Brown could be Jim Bardolph – note the coincidence of initials? The other man sounds to them like a Cyril Warrender who works with Bardolph. The two have done some free-lancing, some of it verging on industrial espionage. They have a bad reputation. But lately they’ve been working for the Granton and Green agency in Motherwell. That’s all I could find out.’
‘Thank you. You’ve done very well.’ The words were a pat on the head for a good dog. She clicked off the intercom and pressed down another lever. The porter answered ‘Get me the Granton and Green agency in Motherwell,’ she said ‘They’ll be listed under Private Enquiries, or some such.’
‘What are you going to say?’ Wallace asked.
‘I don’t know. Play it off the cuff Bluff a little and see what I can get.’
A few seconds later, the Granton and Green agency was on the line. ‘I want to speak to the person in charge,’ she said ‘This is the chairperson of the Personal Service group of companies. Yes, I’ll hold on for Mr Green for thirty seconds. After that I go elsewhere.’
There was a pause of not more than ten seconds.
‘Mr Green? This is Mrs Heller. I’m speaking from Millmont House. You sent two operators through to bug my room and the C.C.T.V. system. You needn’t bother denying it, the men were James Bardolph and Cyril Warrender. You’d better believe it! Yes, boy, will I be making trouble! Unless I get a little cooperation. Bugging’s illegal, I’ll have you know.’ She listened for a full minute, and when she spoke again her voice sounded amused but her eyes were hard. ‘My dear man, I suggest that you read up your law. Our chalets are owned individually by the girls and I can show you the conveyances. We do not advertise, solicit or cause a nuisance. We’ve stood up to the procurator fiscal before and no doubt we’ll do it again. I can make a damned sight more trouble for you than you can for me. So take my advice. I want the name of your client, and I’m prepared to pay you a thou’ for it. Otherwise I rock your little boat and the hell with you! Twenty?’ Her voice was outraged. ‘You’re out of your skull. I’ll go to two thou’ and that’s my top figure. Take it or I’ll find your client on my own, and I’ll tell him that you gave me his name for twenty quid and a free ride on one of the girls.’
Mrs Heller listened in silence to the squawking of the receiver for a few seconds. Then she switched on her telephone amplifier. The man’s voice came through, clear but metallic, with a Glasgow-Irish accent that could have done duty as an anvil. Keith could hear the strain of rapid thought in his brief hesitations. ‘An area of common interest,’ he was saying. ‘My client thinks something happened at your place, a week past Sunday. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t want to know who he is. My guess is we’re both trying to find out the same things. Now, I don’t know what he’s really after, but I know that nobody’s after you. We’ve got the choice of working together and sorting it all out, or working against each other and maybe laying an egg. Either way, you don’t need the name of my client.’
‘I want to have it all the same.’
‘Confidentiality’s part of my stock-in-trade.’
‘Stock-in-trade is for selling,’ Mrs Heller pointed out. ‘And I’ve been taping this call.’ She winked at Wallace.
‘So have I. And that means you can’t edit it.’ The distant Mr Green seemed to have been through similar permutations before. ‘And I’ve got your threat on tape, so don’t come that one.’
There was a silence. ‘I want to think it over,’ Mrs Heller said at last, calmly.
‘So do I. Send somebody over to trade information and we’ll see. Otherwise you know my figure.’
‘At twenty thou’ you can get stuffed.’
‘You too, hen, likely for much less. And I mean that sincerely.’ They heard him hang up.
In a thoug
htful tone of voice Mrs Heller suggested that Mr Green was not only illegitimate but addicted to a startling range of perversions. Her imagery was not mere vulgarity. At one point Keith found himself with a clear and hilarious mental picture of a dwarf Mr Green performing an illegal act with a reluctant penguin.
‘He probably wasn’t taping, any more than I was,’ she finished.
‘I wouldn’t take any chance on it,’ Wallace said.
‘I’m not going to. Would you like some lunch.’
Keith would have enjoyed another free meal of Millmont House standard, but Wallace said quickly that they’d better be getting back to the business and Keith could hardly deny it.
‘Very well,’ Debbie Heller said. She looked at Keith. ‘You’ll follow up Mr Scott of Perth and see where he leads. Then, if we still don’t know who Mr Green’s client is you could go and see him and find out what you can. There’s no point paying out good money to buy information we could get another way.’
Keith was no more chauvinistic than any other male, but taking orders from a woman offended against his vague belief that man should be the dominant partner. ‘You leave it to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll do whatever’s best.’
Mrs Heller smiled sweetly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You do that. Now tell me please, what’s the best that you’re going to do?’
Keith smiled back while he thought furiously. ‘I think I’ll go and see Mr Scott of Perth,’ he said at last.
‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you thought of that.’
Wallace gave one of his rare laughs.
As they were leaving, Keith paused in the doorway. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘too many of us promote ourselves out of what we do really well. A woman as beautiful as you are is wasted in management.’
The Game Page 7