The Game

by Gerald Hammond

  Bardolph, still cursing, switched from the general to Keith in particular, but his remarks were so improbable that Keith let them pass him by. ‘Not on your fucking life,’ Bardolph finished.

  Keith swung the cosh experimentally against his hand. It was heavy and hard, intended to injure as much as to subdue.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Warrender said quickly.

  ‘Shut your gob, you wee blether. He’s giving you the glaiks.’

  ‘He’s what?’

  ‘Bluffing,’ roared Bardolph. ‘He’s just bluffing. He’d not dare.’

  Warrender fell silent, waiting.

  A few years before, Keith might easily have carried out his threat, but time had softened him. Despite the pain between his shoulders and the bruises on his ribs, he could not bring himself to cause a serious injury in cold blood. But perhaps a sharp rap over the knee with the cosh . . . He stepped forward.

  Warrender swallowed, audibly. ‘Bluffing he ain’t,’ he said.

  ‘He is, I tell you.’

  So Warrender was the weaker vessel. Without comment, Keith addressed the cosh to the man’s kneecap. ‘Humbert Brown,’ Warrender yelled before the blow could fall. Bardolph cursed him for a “feartie”, which satisfied Keith. The two men were unlikely to be so good a team as to substantiate each other’s lies while choosing between physical danger and financial loss.

  ‘Humbert Brown?’ Keith said. He remembered seeing the name on lorries, and on building sites. ‘The contractors? What are they after?’

  ‘Buggered if I know. It’s true,’ Warrender added quickly, cringing away for the few inches possible. ‘They told us to find out what happened at Millmont House, Sunday night a week past. They said two men set off to go there, one of ’em called Harold Fosdyke. They were going to ask for a bird by name of Hilary. One of ’em hasn’t been seen since, maybe both, they weren’t sure.’

  ‘What are the men’s real names?’

  ‘I dunno that either. They said to investigate the Millmont House end first, an’ if we needed to know more after that we might get told.’

  ‘And who in Humbert Brown told you all this?’

  ‘Just a voice on the phone. We called up to offer a better deal than Green’d give.’ Warrender leered deprecatingly. Clearly business was business. ‘We was put onto a voice, that’s all.’

  Keith thought it over. It sounded probable. If there was a major scandal brewing, the less that was known to a pair of disreputable turncoats the better. He gathered up the equipment from their pockets and turned away.

  ‘You’re not going to leave us like this?’ Warrender said incredulously.

  ‘What’d you have done to me, if we were the other way round?’ Keith asked. ‘Think yourselves bloody lucky I’m leaving you in such good shape. If one of you can’t climb through that fork, just hang about until somebody comes along with enough patience to find the keys for you.’ He threw the keys of the handcuffs, and the Citroen’s keys, into a bed of nettles. ‘Or you can starve to death for all I care. But I’ll tell you this. If you’ve lied to me you’d better be gone before I’ve time to come back, or you’ll be walking on four soggy stumps.’

  He turned away again. Behind him, Bardolph spoke viciously. ‘You bugger of hell,’ he said. ‘You better get home and guard that wee’n good. Because I’ll get fitside wi’ you one day, see if I don’t.’

  Keith stopped and turned. His bowels seemed to have turned to cold fire and his fists had clenched until they hurt. He waited a full half-minute until clear speech came to him. ‘I’m truly sorry,’ he said. ‘But you’ve just talked yourself out of a pair of kneecaps.’

  Chapter Seven

  From a callbox in a small village near Eskbank, Keith phoned Mrs Heller. The cramps were easing out of his neck and stomach by then, but his hands were still shaking and when Mrs Heller came on the line he found that his voice was unsteady. ‘I’ve just had a run-in with the two men from the Granton and Green agency,’ he said.

  ‘Are you all right? I’m warned that they’re dangerous.’

  ‘I’ll do. Better than them. Their client’s Humbert Brown, the big contractors. If you let them know that the men dropped their name, that’ll maybe break their contract.’

  ‘Leave it with me. I’ve got some pull.’

  ‘They were rough,’ Keith said, ‘but in the end I was rougher. It could be called criminal assault. I just might need an alibi.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘None.’ Keith hoped that he was right.

  There was a pause of no more than a few seconds. ‘Where are you speaking from?’ Keith told her. ‘Right. You called in past our finance house in Edinburgh, asking for a further loan. You saw Mrs Graham. She’s fat and forty, with glasses. You were there from ten until after eleven . . .’ She spoke on, detailing the discussion off the top of her head. It was an impressive performance.

  ‘Did I get my loan?’ Keith asked hopefully when she had finished.

  ‘No, you did not.’

  When Keith was off the line she phoned Humbert Brown and asked to speak to a Mr Howarth. He was unavailable. She left a message asking him to call her back on a matter of urgency.

  Keith changed his trousers in the back of the car.

  *

  The house was deserted and it was mid-afternoon before Keith traced Mr J. M Scott of Perth. He turned out to be the proprietor of a busy ironmonger’s shop and the secretary of a shooting club, but he would have made three of the man in the photograph and Keith remembered seeing him at a clay pigeon shoot a few months before.

  Initially he was hostile, under the impression that Keith was enquiring into possible breaches of the Firearms Act. When he realised that Keith was merely seeking to return a lost camera, he spoke freely.

  ‘I remember the Kentucky kit,’ he said. ‘I made it up and took it out, whyles. I didn’t hit muckle, it was like trying to swat midges with a rolling-pin. So I swapped it.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Nobody I knew. He turned up at an informal shoot we had on a local farm, for muzzle-loaders only. I don’t know who brought him. He fancied the Kentucky, and he had an original double-flintlock by Bowls of Cork which was too small for his liking. It’s only twenty-eight bore. I rather fancied it. I gave him a whacking great cash adjustment, but it was worth it. I’ve been using it to shoot rats. Grand sport.’

  Keith produced the photograph.

  ‘Yon’s the lad. And that’s the gun. I was almost sorry to part with it. I’ll maybe build another.’

  ‘They discontinued the kit,’ Keith said. ‘You’ve no idea who he was, or where he was from?’

  Mr Scott scratched his bald head. ‘I mind he said something about Dundee.’

  Keith shrugged. Dundee is a sizeable city, but its shooting community is small.

  *

  When Colin Howarth called Mrs Heller back he sounded puzzled, but he was more worried. ‘Is it about your swimming pool?’ he asked. He hoped very much that it was no more than that.

  ‘No. You’ve got that job and you’ll finish it,’ she said grimly. ‘Or else. I’ve read the contract.’

  Howarth felt himself come out in a cold sweat. The only other project in which the redoubtable lady had an interest in common with Humbert Brown was large and at a very sensitive stage. ‘My dear Mrs Heller,’ he said smoothly, ‘I believe you. How can I help you?’

  She punched her words in like hammer-blows. ‘Your firm sent two men from the Granton and Green agency to snoop around here. They bugged my room and the closed-circuit television, tried to pump one of my girls and a porter, and threatened an agent of mine.’

  Behind his breastbone, Howarth’s ulcer began to glow. Whatever he said now would be wrong. ‘I don’t know about any such thing,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Then you’d better bloody well find out and quick. We’re part of the client syndicate you know, and if we throw our weight in against you –’

  ‘Please,’ Howarth broke in. He swallowed, hoping tha
t some of his excess saliva might help quench the hot coal in his gut. ‘Let’s not even think about such a contingency. I’m sure somebody’s taking our name in vain, but I’ll find out for sure. Just tell me how I can satisfy you.’

  ‘You can tell me what it is that your firm wants to find out.’

  ‘Even if I could, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t suppose you understand –’

  ‘I understand perfectly,’ Mrs Heller said.

  ‘Oh. Mrs Heller, I’m only guessing. But I’ve heard whispers on the company vine. I don’t know that your visitors have anything to do with what I’ve heard, but I do know that our staff are trying to learn more about some unspecified events in order to hush up a potential scandal if it exists. So, if the matters are the same, our interests are likely to be identical . . .’

  ‘Our interests are almost certainly absolutely adverse,’ she said, ‘and I’m not prepared to haggle one damn bit. I can afford to talk to the police, because not one of my people has stepped outside the letter of the law –’ except Keith Calder, she told herself, who could do his own worrying ‘– whereas your agents have committed a whole series of illegal acts, and they’ve admitted working for you. So you’d better call them off, or prove to me that they are, as you said, taking your name in vain. Otherwise, if they or anybody else that I can trace back to you comes sniffing around here, or molests any of my people, I’ll scream for the police so loud I’ll give them a headache and you too. And then I’ll tell the project committee that if they even allow you to tender, if anyone even mentions your name, we’ll jerk out our finance. And a very good day to you.’

  *

  If Keith could have reached Dundee before the shops closed, he would have started with a round of his fellow-gunsmiths. But he met the rush of homegoing traffic in Perth Road. He swept along Riverside Drive with the wind beating in through his broken window and confounding the radio’s attempts at a faithful reproduction of the Dissonance Quartet. A private plane was touching down on the small airport. He turned up Roseangle towards the heart of the town.

  A small garage was preparing to close, but they promised to replace his window for him first thing in the morning. He lugged his suitcase to the Angus Hotel, booked a room and ate a thoughtful meal.

  Back in his room, Keith started telephoning. His first few calls were abortive. A phone was unanswered, somebody wasn’t expected home for another hour and a lady was abroad on holiday.

  He tried his home number and Molly’s voice came sweetly over the line. ‘I shan’t be home tonight,’ Keith said. ‘Probably tomorrow some time.’

  ‘All right.’ She sounded disappointed but she kept anxiety out of her voice. ‘How’s business going?’

  ‘I’m making progress, but I’m making enemies. I don’t want them trying to get back at me through you. Could you go and stay with Janet and Wallace for a day or two?’

  Molly asked no questions and expressed no surprise. Keith had made enemies before, but she had a sublime faith in his ability to triumph. Besides, a little umbrage kept him out of mischief ‘They don’t have much room,’ she said, ‘and there’s two of me now. Would it do if I got my brother to come and stay here?’

  ‘Ronnie’s back home is he?’

  ‘Just today. I’ll ask him, then. And, Keith, if there’s trouble, do I call the police?’

  ‘Good question.’ He thought about it. ‘Call them if you must but say as little as possible. I’ve been a wee bit rough. They started it, but the law might not see it that way.’

  ‘All right. Keep your nose clean,’ Molly said, ‘and everything else. By the bye, my bag came back through the post today. Nothing missing, no message, postmarked London. See you tomorrow, then. And I’ll expect you on top of your form, the morn’s night.’ It was a delicate warning to him. A reduction in his sex-drive would not pass unnoticed.

  Keith’s next call made contact with a one-time shooting crony. ‘I’m at the Angus,’ Keith said. ‘I don’t have a car. Would you like to join me for a dram?’

  Tony Carter had never been one to refuse such an invitation. ‘Toot the flute and bang the drum,’ he said, ‘Look out the window, here I come.’ Not quite as good as his word, he arrived within ten minutes and was nearly refused entry to the hotel. Keith had forgotten how badly-dressed Tony invariably was; by comparison, the scruffy Jim Bardolph was almost elegant. Anyone might have mistaken Tony for a worker in heavy industry just coming off shift – until he spoke. He had a Cambridge degree in chemistry and a Harvard degree in business management.

  They chatted for a few minutes about cartridges, the Game Fair, the year’s grouse prospects and the price of whisky before Keith produced his photograph of Don Donaldson. ‘Can you tell me anything about this lad, or put me in touch with someone who can?’

  Tony glanced at the photograph. ‘I think he’s away on holiday just now.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Of course I know him,’ Tony said, laughing. ‘I’d know him even if I didn’t shoot with him about once a fortnight. Everybody around here knows him. His face is in the Courier just about every week.’

  Keith looked up at the tiled ceiling for a moment. ‘You mean the hall porter could have identified him for me, without my having to hang around buying you doubles of the most expensive whisky ever distilled?’ (Tony took the hint and ordered another round). ‘Come into a quiet corner and tell me everything you possibly can about him.’

  They established themselves at a quiet corner table. ‘Of course,’ Keith said, ‘if he’s a friend of yours . . .’

  ‘Not to call a friend.’ Tony Carter shrugged with his hands. ‘And I can’t tell you anything that you couldn’t find out by asking around for ten minutes. His name’s Donald Illingworth. He’s a bachelor, which is a pity – we should breed a few more of his type around here. He’s an engineer.’

  ‘Which kind? Civil, mechanical, structural or what?’

  ‘Civil. A builder of roads and sewers. He has a one-horse private practice here, but he doesn’t get much work locally – the big noises hate his guts and the builders are scared to employ him. But he’s supposed to be pretty good, gets a lot of work further afield and gets called as an expert witness sometimes.

  ‘He’s a keen shooting man. I see him at the clay pigeons almost every meeting. He shoots a muzzle-loader as well, but mostly he turns up with a rusty old Spanish side-by-side that does a double discharge almost as often as it misfires. He says it’s the only gun that he can hit things with, but you wouldn’t know it because he’s badly co-ordinated. More lead goes up than birds come down. He has a share in a small and impoverished syndicate that shoots a couple of farms. They release about two pheasants a year both of which wander straight over the boundary, but they have a lot of fun.’

  ‘None of that sounds like much to get in the papers,’ Keith said. ‘What’s so newsworthy about him?’

  ‘Ah. He has a bee in his bonnet about the local sport and pastime. You may remember, Keith, that on wet Sundays, when in other parts of the country they’re playing golf or swapping wives, we around here go in more for civic corruption. It’s less fun but more profitable, which is what counts with the locals.’

  ‘Don’t be cynical,’ Keith said. ‘Just go on about Illingworth.’

  Tony fiddled with his glass. ‘To understand him, you’ve got to know a little of his background,’ he said. ‘A strict, religious upbringing in a gloomy old ban of a house hung with swords and flintlocks, the kirk twice on Sundays and babies the result of immaculate conception. Mother from one of the Western Isles – you know how strict they can be – and father a pillar of the local community, kirk elder, town councillor and all that. Then, about fifteen years ago – I was in the States at the time, and young Donald was just finishing college – there was a big scandal. Not the first nor the last, but this time Donald’s father was slap bang in the middle of it. He and a building contractor and some others were convicted of fraud, corruption, conspiracy, embezzlement. Everything short of
committing buggery with a pig, and from what I remember of the old man I wouldn’t have put that past him. Old man Illingworth went to Perth Prison and died there.

  ‘All this was very traumatic for a youngster doing his last year of studying. Mrs Illingworth went back to her croft or whatever, but Donald stayed and finished his course. Not unnaturally, he reacted violently against his upbringing. He blamed his mother for the crash – not without some justification, because she liked to keep up a bit of style, and her poor sod of a husband was only a grocer in a small way of business. So Donald cut himself off from the family, put his plate up here and stuck it out. His characteristics seem to follow with the inevitability of a psychiatric textbook. He rejected religion and all notions of conventional morality. He also developed a mistrust of women, and he’s always avoided strong personal ties with them. Those two things together turned him into the local tom-cat. A bit like you used to be if you don’t mind my saying so, Keith.’

  ‘I’m a happily married man now,’ Keith said mildly.

  ‘Then there’s hope for him yet. But he also rejected hypocrisy He’s fairly rubbed the town’s nose in some of his amours. But on the other hand he became compulsively honest.’

  ‘Genuinely honest?’ Keith asked.