‘No it is not,’ Keith snapped. ‘I’ve been kicked just above the nose, and both my eyes are closing.’
‘How’s the other fellow?’
‘Pretty much the same by now. But Warrender’s a determined sort of sod, so you’d better get there first.’
‘We’d best meet and talk,’ Wallace said. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘You’d better come to me, and don’t hang about. I don’t think I could drive, not safely. I’ve got a blinding headache and I’m seeing double. I was going to ask you to send Molly up by train to drive me back.’
‘I’ll work something out. Tell me where you are and I’ll either call you back or come.’
*
Keith was roused from an unstable sleep by a voice and then by a soft form reclining beside him on the bed and tender kisses on his bruised face. ‘You sound like Wallace but you feel like Molly,’ he said. ‘Which are you?’
He felt Molly laugh shakily against him. ‘Who did that to you?’ she asked. ‘What a lousy thing to do! I’ll scratch his eyes out.’
‘Don’t bother. I’d just given him a poke that’ll close his other eye for a week – I’d already closed the first one – which is probably what gave him the idea. It was probably quits when I got careless. All the same, I’ll tie his long nose in a knot if he comes near me again. Is it morning already?’
‘It’s not even midnight,’ Molly said. ‘Wal brought me up in a helicopter.’
‘One that Personal Service often hires, in connection with business,’ said Wallace’s voice.
‘It’s waiting down at Riverside. I’d never been up in one before. It was noisy, but I did enjoy myself,’ Molly said wistfully. ‘You can see everything.’
‘When I fly, I don’t want to see anything,’ Keith said. ‘And don’t set your heart on a chopper; we’ll never afford one, and they scare me witless.’ He moved uneasily and groaned. ‘God! Where’s my ice-bag?’
He heard water slosh. ‘It’s all melted,’ Molly’s voice said ‘Shall I get some more ice?’
‘Please.’ He heard the door open and close. ‘Has Big Ears gone?’
‘You’d be in trouble if she hadn’t.’
‘I was going to say I meant you. What’ve you told her so far?’
‘Roughly the facts. But not the – er – nature of the establishment.’
‘Right. Listen, now.’ Quickly, Keith recounted the events of the day. ‘I don’t know,’ he finished, ‘why Warrender should think that the mother’s letter was important, but then I don’t know what was in it. And I don’t know what he may have seen in the place and not bothered to take away with him. I was going to bust in there and take a look for myself, but I can’t do it with my eyes bunged up. Wal, couldn’t you –’
‘Put it right out of your mind.’
‘Well, if we’re still in the dark after my eyes are open again, I’ll come back. Or if it becomes urgent we can hire somebody. It still seems to me that you’d best go over and see Mrs Illingworth, who wrote to him on an unspecified date from Bernera, which I seem to remember’s an island off the coast of Lewis. Or possibly of Harris. I suppose she lives there, but God knows and it’s for you to find out. Thing is, Warrender may be on his way over in front of you.’
‘Unless he can afford to hire a chopper,’ Wallace said, ‘he’ll be behind me. There isn’t a plane until morning, and even if he charters one he’ll have to come down at Stornaway Airport – I don’t see a charter pilot sitting down on some beach in the dark. Then he’ll have to hire a car, and Gaelic doesn’t have any word as urgent as mañana.’
‘If you get there first, stay ahead. I put his mate into hospital, but he may have picked a new partner by now. Maybe you’d better take Ronnie along as a bodyguard.’
He heard Wallace chuckle. ‘I’d get into more bother with Ronnie along. I use my head, not my fists.’
‘Just about as hard,’ Keith admitted. ‘If you can track Mrs Illingworth down, find out whether anyone’s been asking questions about her baby boy in the last few days. Or in the last few months, come to that. And whether he’s been in touch with her. And be canny, Wal. If she gets a hint he’s killed somebody she’ll hold her wheest or go screaming to the police, whichever way it takes her.’
‘Yes.’ Wallace hesitated. ‘You’re sure he’s the culprit?’
‘Somebody got hurt, and he’s still walking around. I suppose it’s just possible that he’s carrying around a minor flesh-wound, but I have my doubts. I’m still hoping that “Harold Fosdyke” may turn up as walking wounded.’
‘Uh-uh,’ said Wallace’s voice. ‘If that’s your hope abandon it. This may change your thinking. Debbie Heller followed up your advice. She had the gardeners scouring the grounds. One of them found a dug patch deep in the shrubs not far from Chalet Sixteen.’
‘They’ve opened it up?’ Keith asked wearily.
‘Yes. It contained – still contains – one dead body, male, answering Hilary’s description of “Fosdyke”. Hilary hasn’t seen it yet; Debbie couldn’t trust her to stay dumb for ever. But there’s no doubt about the description. There’s a hole clean through the neck, you’ll be gratified to hear. Nothing in his pockets.’
‘Goddam!’ Keith felt a sadness settle over him, not for the deceased Fosdyke but for Illingworth. Keith had been aware of a distant affection for the builder of roads and sewers. ‘Is the gardener trustworthy and loyal?’
‘She should be. She’s an ex-tart, outlived her attractiveness. Most of the domestic staff are in that category. They never talk to the cops. Not that it matters,’ Wallace said. ‘I suppose this hardens your attitude? You want to lay this in Munro’s lap now?’
Keith pondered and then shook his head slowly and carefully. ‘Yesterday, that’s what I’d have wanted. But now I’d opt for waiting until we’ve got all the information we can grab, before we do anything irreversible.’
‘But you’re the one who kept saying “Call the cops . . . call the cops . . . call the cops.” I thought your needle had stuck in the groove.’
‘And I may say it again. That’s why I asked whether your garden-whore – Christ! What am I getting into? – could be trusted to be discreet. She can always find the body tomorrow or the next day. For the moment, I want facts. It looks bad for Donald Illingworth. If we throw him to the fuzz he’ll be ruined, along with two of your companies. The young ladies of Millmont House will take a financial beating, and so’ll you and I.
‘Here we have a lad brought up strictly and morally. Then, just while he’s at college, his parents turn out to have feet of low-grade pig-shit. Well, he could’ve gone either way. He develops a mistrust of personal relationships and of the morality he’s been taught, so his sex-life’s given over to casual affairs and to tarts. He rebounds from his old man’s corruption by becoming fanatical about back-handed dealings. He sets up as a campaigner for honesty in local politics. Tilting at windmills if you like, but some windmills need to be tilted at.
‘The characters in this drama, as far as we know them, seem to consist of this paragon of honesty if not of virtue, and a big contractor whose reputation isn’t exactly sweet. Which horse would you back?’
‘I wouldn’t back any horse with a bookie who called himself Honest John,’ Wallace said. He sounded amused. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you, Keith, that public prating about honesty often covers up more dishonesty than anything else? And that this – what did you call him? – builder of roads and sewers has a lot in common with a big contractor?’
‘Are you trying to persuade me to go to the police?’ Keith asked. ‘Have we changed roles?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me honestly, Wal. Aren’t Humbert Brown good customers at Millmont House?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Orgies for councillors?’
‘Such has been known.’
‘Yet Illingworth hadn’t been there before,’ Keith pointed out. ‘No, Wal, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of what little
doubt there is. I think Donald Illingworth killed “Harold Fosdyke” and buried him in the garden, but I want to know why before I blow the whistle.’
Wallace sighed, loudly, for Keith’s benefit. ‘Knowing won’t change facts,’ he said. ‘And his mother would be the last person to know them, or to tell me if she did.’
‘She must know something,’ Keith said. ‘Try and find out what it is.’
‘Will d-do. You can’t be wrong all the time. Molly told you her bag came back through the post? She guesses that he looked inside, saw the tails sticking out of the cassettes and knew that he’d pinched a lot of unexposed film, so instead of chucking it away in a ditch like any reasonable man he spends a few quid posting it back. That at least suggests that his compulsive honesty isn’t all a put-on. Well, if that’s the lot I’d better be getting back to the chopper.’
‘You’ll land in the small hours,’ Keith said. ‘Better sleep here and go over at dawn.’
‘You’re joking!’ Wallace said. ‘Do you have any idea what one of those things costs to keep hanging around? I’ll go over now. At least, with a chopper, you’re flexible. I’ll cruise around, and if I can’t spot a hotel still showing lights I’ll doss down in somebody’s shed. The weather’s still holding.’
Molly came back a few minutes later. Keith pressed the replenished ice-bag gratefully to his throbbing face. ‘Has Wally gone?’ Molly asked. ‘Damn, damn, damn! I wanted to hear all about it. Never mind, you can tell me in the car. Do you want to go down overnight, or shall we stay here. Janet said she could cope with Snooks.’
‘Deborah,’ Keith corrected automatically. ‘We’ve no choice. I got a window busted in the car. If they can’t replace it by lunchtime we’ll take it as it is and be grateful for the air-conditioning. Can you get a room?’
‘I can double with you.’
‘It’s a single bed, you may notice.’
‘Plenty of room if we snuggle up a bit. Then I can kiss your poor face better.’
‘You can try, I suppose,’ Keith said. ‘Just get in gently. You usually come in from fifty feet without a parachute.’
‘What rubbish!’
‘It is not. Being joined in bed by you comes somewhere between doing an assault-course and being raped.’
*
Mrs Heller phoned Mr Howarth of Humbert Brown at an hour of the morning which was early enough for him and could have been considered to be the very crack of dawn for one of her sisters in frailty. Her voice made him think of shaving with a ragged blade; it had the same keenness and the same capacity for leaving his nerve-ends exposed. His ulcer flared like a hot coal in a gale.
‘Your man Warrender,’ she said, ‘has just tried to kick my agent’s face in.’
‘I don’t admit that he’s our man,’ Howarth said, ‘but we’ve been trying to contact him to buy him off We can’t reach him. He’s travelling.’
‘I suggest you cut short his travels, and quick. The joint committee meets in three days, and unless I know by then that you have absolutely no agents out I’m going to tell the committee that our finance will be withdrawn if your name’s even mentioned. Good day to you!’
She hung up on his protests and left the room. One minute later, in sensible brogues instead of her usual elegant slippers, she left the house. Near Chalet Sixteen she turned off the path and picked her way between two rhododendron bushes. In the glade beyond, the young Scots Pine stood bravely against its stake like some puny martyr. It gave reason enough for the signs of disturbance on the ground. As she looked, her smooth young face took on twenty years.
She was roused by a voice filtering through the bushes from one of the many loudspeakers scattered about the grounds. ‘Mrs Heller to the house, please,’ it said, gruffly but politely. ‘Immediate visitors. Mrs Heller to the house, please.’
“Immediate” was a code-word. It meant police.
She took her time, forcing relaxation into her mind and body as she walked. Waiting in her office she found a thin, dark man in the uniform of a senior police officer – she was vague as to the exact meaning of the badges. He was accompanied by a sergeant who lurked silently in a corner.
‘I am Chief Inspector Munro,’ the thin man introduced himself. ‘And this is Sergeant Ritchie. I am investigating an incident or a series of incidents.’ His voice was West Highland, his diction careful, as if Gaelic would still come easier to his tongue.
‘Yes?’
‘I am wondering whether you might not have something to tell me?’
She forced herself to smile. ‘You’ll have to be more specific than that,’ she said. ‘My life story would curl your hair.’
He looked without smiling. ‘It might curl what little I have left,’ he agreed. ‘Has anything more than usually unusual happened here during, say, the past week?’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Do you know a Mr Calder? Keith Calder?’
She kept her face still and hoped that the muscles around her eyes were giving nothing away. ‘The gunsmith? He overhauled and valued a collection of antique guns that we bought.’
‘Have you seen him recently?’
‘He came here the day before yesterday, to value a pistol for me.’
‘Is he doing anything else for you?’
‘No.’ She tried to time the word, neither too quick nor too slow.
‘M’hm.’ Munro opened his case. He laid a photograph on the desk in front of her. ‘Have you ever seen this man?’
‘No,’ she said. To her own ears her voice sounded too quick. The picture was a poor Polaroid shot of the snooper who had confronted her in this room. He seemed to be wearing pyjamas and an expression of suppressed fury. ‘Not that I remember.’
‘You would see a lot of men here.’ Munro laid down another photograph. ‘And this one?’
‘No.’ Her mouth was dry. She remembered not to moisten her lips, nor to sit too still. The photograph showed the man whose body lay near Chalet Sixteen. He was laughing with a woman in the garden of a small house.
The shocks were coming too fast. Her head swam. She wondered whether to buy time by letting herself faint. But a faint would be an admission. She pushed a pencil off the desk, bent to pick it up and held the position until her head cleared. Quick as light, during the process of straightening up and laying down the pencil, her mind flitted over facts and suppositions. She thought:
The bastard knows what we do. What else does he know?
Humbert Brown wouldn’t have told the fuzz a word.
He doesn’t know about the body. The man’s wife may have reported him missing.
He wouldn’t have told his wife where he was going. They never do. Not even the man who comes about the rates. Especially him, come to think of it.
But the man’s wife might know the general area he was going to. That would be enough for this bugger to bring along that photograph. Does he know there’s a connection between the two?
If he does, I can’t see how.
So what put him on to us?
That damned private dick.
Calder shouldn’t have put him in hospital.
Should I cancel that alibi? Let Calder go down?
The man may have talked in shock. Spur of the moment. Would he go on talking?
Does he know anything to matter?
Probably not. He was fishing in the pool where the fish swam last, but he didn’t catch more than a tiddler. His mate may have hooked something bigger since then, but he wouldn’t know about that.
Would he?
I’m glad Calder put the bastard in hospital.
Can this copper be sure that either of them ever came here?
Probably not.
Probably? Was somebody watching them watching us?
‘Is it important?’ she heard her voice ask.
Munro hesitated while he scratched his nose. ‘Very important,’ he said.
Debbie Heller was expert at reading a man. He doesn’t know, she thought exultantly. ‘Leave the photograph
s with me,’ she said. ‘I’ll find out whether anybody here has ever seen either of them.’
‘I wish to interview them myself.’ Munro flushed darkly and avoided the amused eye of his sergeant.
Nice try, she told herself But the staff were well briefed and Hilary had been sent away for a few days respite. ‘You do, do you?’ she said. ‘We’ll see them together. I’ll call them in at five-minute intervals.’
‘And I want to see your list of appointments for the past week. You do keep a list?’
‘We do not operate off a street corner,’ she said coldly. ‘Is this in confidence, outside of whatever it is that you’re after?’
‘You have my word.’
‘And whatever you’re after, it isn’t just to prosecute us?’
Munro shook his head. ‘Again, you have my word.’
‘I’ll accept it,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a print-out from the computer. But you won’t find many real names. And any real names which you do find, and which aren’t implicated in anything criminal, you will kindly respect.’
Munro grunted. ‘They will remain confidential,’ he said, ‘but I will not respect them because I do not respect what you are and what you stand for. Oh yes,’ he held up his hand as if to ward off an interruption, ‘I know that you have helped us from time to time with word of things that have been overheard here. You have even let our men set up a listening-post. But that does not mean that you represent law and order. It does not alter the fact of what you do, and I shall never approve of it.’
Debbie Heller smiled inside. She would rather bandy moralities with the chief inspector than have to lie to him about visitors. Keep him on the hop, she told herself. ‘If you make any such suggestion about me outside this room,’ she said, ‘I’ll sue you. I’m the chairman and managing director of a substantial group of companies. Those companies happen to include one of which you don’t approve, because it makes accommodation and a secretarial service available to girls. Well, tough titty! You may not like the morals. You may even think that it offends against the law. But you’d get no support from the procurator fiscal and you know it.’
The Game Page 11