The Game

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The Game Page 10

by Gerald Hammond


  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. He’s the sort of fellow who borrows a couple of cartridges from you at a shoot and then follows you around for weeks, trying to give them back. His enemies have tried to discredit him for years, but they could never make anything stick.’

  ‘Enemies?’ Keith pricked up his mental ears.

  ‘Yes. His honesty became fanatical. He became a crusader against public corruption.’

  ‘Aha!’ A state of covert war between. Illingworth and a major contractor began to take on credibility, although it seemed to Keith that the engineer seemed to be cast more probably as the victim whereas the photograph suggested that he was the survivor.

  ‘It didn’t do his practice too much harm except locally,’ Tony went on. ‘Honest professional men shine in the dark around here.’

  ‘And everywhere else.’

  ‘Maybe. He got onto the council for a while, but he was such a bloody nuisance that I think, reading between the lines, that all the parties got together, even the Nats, and put their best men up against him to squeeze him off Since then he’s been prowling around the outskirts and running to the procurator fiscal with any bitties of dirt that he digs up. Just at the moment he’s hitting the headlines with allegations about the Firth Bay project, but he can get just as uptight over a can of paint for a councillor’s front door. In his own way he’s done a lot of good; in fact, when he’s learned a bit about the facts of politics he may become a useful lad to have around.’

  Keith got up and fetched another round while he thought about it. The personality of Donald Illingworth – Don Donaldson at Millmont House – fitted the missing parts of the puzzle to perfection. Almost every detail was accounted for. ‘Does Illingworth shoot small-bore?’ Keith asked as he sat down.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Does he have a source of spent bullets?’

  ‘He’s pally with a major in the Territorials.’

  ‘That’ll be it, then,’ Keith said. ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Illingworth? Out Invergowrie way somewhere, I think. Try the phone book.’

  ‘If I drop you home, can I borrow your car until tomorrow morning?’ Keith asked. ‘I’ll pay for taxis if you need to go anywhere.’

  *

  The telephone directory gave Donald Illingworth an address in Inchgavie. Keith drove there in Tony Carter’s Granada and found an area of new dwellings, partly houses and partly two-storey flats, close to the banks of the Tay. Keith thought that Illingworth would be a fool if he didn’t get down to the mudflats after the geese. In which case there would be a magnum shotgun and heavy cartridges in the house. So, if he had to break in, Keith had better make damn sure that Mr Illingworth had not returned from his holiday abroad. On the other hand there was a high probability that he had no intention of coming back until all danger was past. What, Keith wondered, would a man of compulsive honesty do if someone else were arrested for his crime?

  Illingworth’s home was an upper flat in a quiet cul-de-sac. From habitual caution, Keith drove round the corner. The road petered out where houses were still under construction. Keith left the car beyond the last street light and walked back. The sun was almost gone, the lamps dripping splashes of light onto the creeping greyness. The upstairs flat was dark. A Jaguar gleamed in the street below.

  The bell rang audibly in the upper flat but produced no reaction. Keith moved to the door of the lower flat and plied a brass horseshoe door-knocker. The sound of a record-player, floating out sentimental guitar music, was suddenly muted, and a few seconds later the door was opened by a woman. Against the light, Keith could only tell that she was tall and well-rounded and longhaired. He stood as straight as his bruised ribs would let him and tried to look respectable.

  ‘I’m looking for Donald Illingworth,’ he said.

  ‘He’s away. On holiday.’ Her voice was young, accentless.

  ‘Would you mind telling me where?’

  ‘Would you mind telling me why you want to know?’

  If she had said “I don’t know” or “Somewhere in the Med.” or “Go to hell”, Keith would have let the matter drop, at least as far as she was concerned. But when she answered one question with another Keith’s mental signals began to light up. He put all his virility into his voice, at the same time cocking his head in little-boy appeal. ‘It really is very important. And I think it may be important to Mr Illingworth that I talk to him as soon as possible,’ Keith said. He wondered whether it was the truth. It would be nice to know. He handed over his business card – a calculated risk.

  She studied him for a second in the light that came past her shoulder. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

  The small living room was crowded with good furniture, as if she had moved from a larger house. They sat and looked at each other. She would have seen a darkly handsome man of athletic build and still fit in early middle-age. Keith saw, first, that she was wearing a wedding ring, and then that she was older than her voice, perhaps in her early thirties, but that the years had not hardened her; she still had the perfect complexion and the soft look of the pubescent girl.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Keith said, ‘you’d rather I spoke to your husband?’

  She half-smiled. ‘You can if you like. You’ll find him at sixty north, about three east. He’s on an oil rig,’ she explained.

  In Keith’s experience, this was a way of saying that she knew exactly when her husband could be expected home. Keith was prepared to bet that a virile bachelor would not live upstairs from this woman without some adultery being practised – and practised until they got it right. Assuming, of course, that they liked each other . . .

  ‘Is Donald Illingworth a friend of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘We,’ she stressed the word, ‘get on very well with him.’ She looked away for a revealing second, and unconsciously her hand smoothed down her skirt. She looked down at the card again. ‘That’s why I wanted to know who was asking about him. Is it about guns?’

  ‘In a roundabout way,’ Keith said. ‘I can’t tell you very much. There was an incident in the Borders last week. I’ve been asked to look into it, to see whether it can be resolved and hushed up without any scandal Illingworth was there. Obviously, if I go around telling all about it then it can’t be hushed up. I can only ask people to trust me.’

  ‘Would you like a drink? Or coffee?’

  If Keith had any more whisky he was going to have a grand night and regret it in the morning. ‘A cup of coffee would be fine,’ he said.

  ‘I was just making some.’

  When she came back with the coffee – percolated, with cream floating on the top – she had had time to think. ‘I’ll come part of the way to meet you,’ she said. She stopped pouring and looked intently into his face. ‘I had a phone call from him yesterday evening. Never mind where from, but it must have cost him a bomb. He wanted to know whether anyone had been asking questions about him. Would he have had you in mind?’

  Keith thought quickly. His name might easily be mentioned. ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘I think he knows that I was trying to find out who was there at the time. He’s more likely to be worrying about the police, but they don’t know anything yet and they certainly won’t be called in by my clients. What Illingworth doesn’t know is that other people are making enquiries. In particular, a large firm of contractors. Well, in view of his crusade against left-handed contractual dealings I’d guess – and it’s only a guess – that the contractors are much more likely to be a danger to him than I am. They could have a motive to ruin him. My clients have a motive for discretion.’

  She handed him his cup and sat chewing her lip. ‘Is it really that serious?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it could be. But I can’t help if I’m left in the dark.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true. Well, tell me what you want to know, and if I think he’d want you to know it I’ll tell you.’

  ‘I wish I knew what I want to know,’ Keith said. ‘Tell me about th
e phone call.’

  ‘H’m.’ She sipped her coffee while she thought and then decided. ‘He rang about seven last night I thought he was stoned, but then I realised that that’s how tension takes him. It was as if he’s been under strain, keyed up, for a long time. I asked if his holiday was doing him any good and he said not really and we chatted about nothing, which struck me as odd when it was costing a fortune a minute and he’d be seeing me before much longer. And then he asked whether anyone had been asking about him.’

  ‘About him? Not After him?’

  ‘About,’ she said. ‘Definitely. Well, I’d taken a couple of messages for him and I read them out, but they were only shooting invitations, and to speak to the Round Table. That sort of thing. Then he said, “And nobody’s been to the door that you couldn’t identify?” And I said that there hadn’t. Even then he span out the conversation, as if he was giving me a chance to remember and tell him something. I said “You’ll still be back next Wednesday?” And he said something like “Probably, but I’ll let you know”. Something like that. And then, just before he rang off, he asked whether there’s been any word from his family, and I said no, and that was about it.’

  Keith kept his face blank and tried not to show any other signs of his sudden interest. ‘What family would he mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m only repeating what he said. He never spoke much about his family. I know he had a mother but he’d quarrelled with her. He was always sad about that,’ she said, moist-eyed. ‘It seemed to be the great conflict in him, and yet it’s what drives him on. I’m sure you understand. He wants people to be worthy of his trust, that’s why he hates any kind of dishonesty, and he feels that his family betrayed each other and himself Do you understand?’

  ‘He just doesn’t trust anybody?’

  ‘He doesn’t even trust himself, because he isn’t sure what may be in his own genes. He never asks anyone to trust him. He never even carries a credit card.’

  Keith had a fleeting mental picture of a suspicious Mr Illingworth making love to this Amazon and being caught counting his testicles afterwards. ‘I suppose it comes out in things like never leaving the key with somebody else – like you – when he goes away?’ he suggested.

  ‘That sort of thing.’

  ‘Or would that be because he keeps his bits of evidence up there, about corruption in high places?’

  She shook her head emphatically and then frowned. ‘If I thought that, I’d be scared to sleep here alone,’ she said. ‘But he told me once that he keeps most of it in his head, and any hard evidence goes straight into the bank. Do you think it’s true?’

  ‘It sounds like him,’ Keith said, ‘but I’ll ask. Where is he?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not telling you that. I think I trust you,’ she crossed her legs carelessly, ‘but he asked me to tell nobody and I’m not going to do anything to increase his untrustingness.’

  ‘It does you great credit,’ Keith said. He wondered who he knew in G.P.O. Telecommunications who could trace a call for him. ‘You’ve got my phone number, in case you think of anything you’d like to tell me; and I’ll take yours in case I think of any questions you might like to answer. And if Illingworth calls you again . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  Keith could not think of any informative message which he would care to pass through a third party. ‘Beg him, in his own interests, to phone me. He can even reverse the charges.’

  *

  Walking back to his car, Keith was conscious of an unaccustomed glow of virtue. The old Keith, the notorious philanderer of a few years ago, would never have detected those signals of availability from such a source and passed them by. Since his marriage, Keith had held to his own fashion in fidelity. With mistresses of long standing he had felt no need to change established precedent, but he had made very few new conquests, and those only when he succumbed to temptation which he could honestly consider irresistible. His will-power, he thought, was increasing.

  The truth of the matter lay deeper than Keith cared to admit to himself As the father of a daughter, his role as a predatory male was open to question. Because what was good enough for him today might some day be good enough for some other male with little Deborah. Or for Deborah’s husband.

  Unaware of this conflict between his libido and his psyche, Keith gave himself a pat on the back and looked forward to telling Molly what a reformed character he had shown himself to be. Not too damn reformed, he admitted to himself, but reformed nonetheless.

  In his reverie, he almost walked past a car newly parked under the last street lamp, some yards short of Tony Carter’s Granada. It was a large, grey Citroen.

  Keith retired into the shadow of a builder’s hut while he thought about it. Presumably the two men had been freed, or had freed themselves. He was prepared to bet that Bardolph was not back in action, but Cyril Warrender was something else again; and he might have picked a fresh partner. Presumably he was not giving up the promised reward easily. He had not come to the door of the downstairs flat. Breaking into Illingworth’s flat might have been a logical move.

  Keith waited, leaning against the corner of the hut and nursing his sore ribs.

  Warrender was taking his time. Searching a flat without revealing his presence would be a slow business. But, Keith thought, perhaps he was visiting the flat downstairs and giving the lady a hard time. Well, the lady would just have to take her chance. Keith came cautiously out of the shadows. He jammed a broken match into one of the Citroen’s tyre-valves so that the tyre began to deflate, and then moved to a new hiding place from which he could see the front doors of the flats. If Warrender came out of the wrong door, Keith would know what information to beat out of him.

  But, at long last, it was out of the door from the upper flat that Warrender came, walking softly and avoiding the spillage of light. With even greater caution, Keith moved through the rubble on a parallel track until he was back in the shadow of his hut. He waited while Warrender found the flat tyre and cursed, waited while he changed the wheel clumsily in the dark, waited still while he put the tools away. Warrender could have a new partner who might be standing silently in different shadows across the road. Only when Warrender was unlocking the driver’s door did Keith emerge. He came up behind Warrender, his right fist already raised, and tapped him on the shoulder with his left hand.

  Warrender span round. Even in the poor light of the remote lamp, the shiner that screwed his left eye shut stood out like a cowpat in the snow. With all his might, Keith punched him in the other eye. Warrender slammed back against the car and sat down hard. He leaned back tiredly against the Citroen. ‘What did you do that for?’ he asked plaintively.

  ‘Would you rather I’d called the police? Or broken your kneecaps like your pal Bardolph?’

  Warrender fingered his eyes, and then rested his elbows on his knees. ‘You didn’t break both Jim’s kneecaps,’ he said. ‘Only one of ’em. Kneecaps don’t break that easy. I’ll show you some time.’

  ‘I’ll get his other one next time round. You, you’re following too damn close on my heels. You’ll find it more difficult with both eyes bunged up, that’s what that was for. What did you find in Illingworth’s flat?’

  Warrender hesitated and then shrugged. ‘Nothin’.’

  Keith sighed. ‘Turn out your pockets,’ he said.

  ‘Now look ’ere –’

  ‘I’ve only got to wait until your other eye shuts,’ Keith pointed out. ‘Or stamp you flat Either way I can go through your pockets in my own good time. I’m not feeling too kindly to you just now. You held out on me this morning. You knew bloody well who Illingworth was.’

  Warrender had his own grievance. ‘Bloody ages we was hung on that tree,’ he said. He pulled himself to his feet and emptied his pockets onto the roof of the car. Since that morning he seemed to have acquired nothing new except a few pieces of bent wire and a strip of plastic – for house-breaking, Keith presumed. There was still no notebook.


  ‘Kick your shoes off,’ Keith said, stepping back.

  ‘I’ll see you –’

  ‘Kick them off, or I’ll jump on you.’

  Warrender stooped to untie his laces. As he did so, he broke wind loudly. He kicked the shoes to Keith. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s always like that when I get nervous.’

  A piece of paper showed white in one of the shoes. Keith picked it up and turned it to the light. The paper was folded, but the opening words caught and held his eye.

  Bemera. Tuesday. My Dear Boy . . .

  ‘If that’s the way it takes you,’ Keith said absently, ‘you’d better not go down in a –’

  The blow took him in the solar plexus before he could say ‘Diving suit.’ It caught him unprepared. Given warning he could have ridden the blow, but with his muscles relaxed it drove the breath out of him and paralysed the nerve-centre that controlled his breathing. He folded to the ground, slowly suffocating.

  Cyril Warrender pushed his feet back into his shoes and tied the laces carefully. Then he walked to where Keith lay on the ground and kicked him hard in the face.

  By the time that Keith was taking any interest in the world again, the grey Citroen was gone.

  Chapter Eight

  Keith lay on the bed in his impersonal room in the Angus Hotel, holding a bag of ice to his upper face with one hand (the floor waiter had been sympathetic) and the telephone to his ear with the other. The bell was ringing in the flat in Newton Lauder.

  Wallace answered the phone at last. ‘How are you getting on?’ he asked.

  ‘Did you read the top right-hand headline in the Scotsman this morning?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Not yet but . . . I’m looking at it now. I got you.’

  The headline had referred to revelations by a Dundee councillor that the city’s Craigowl exchange was being used for telephone-tapping on an international scale.

  ‘It looks as if somebody’d better get over to the Western Isles,’ Keith said. ‘I’ve had a bit of a knock. Could you go?’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like my sort of trip. This isn’t just because you’re afraid of flying?’

 

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