The Revenge Game

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Whether he was shot or not,’ Sir Peter said, ‘he was dumped in the canal with chain weighting him down, so there’s no doubt that he was murdered.’

  ‘That’s not what you said this morning,’ Keith pointed out.

  ‘This morning I was trying to rock Munro’s boat for him, because I wasn’t sure you hadn’t been up to something again.’

  ‘Of course he was murdered,’ Janet said impatiently. ‘But getting back to my question, who’d do it? Present company excepted, of course.’

  ‘I only knew him as an occasional customer,’ Keith said, ‘and a damned fine shot. Ronnie?’

  Ronnie shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘I never knew him, not to call knowing him. I’ve seen him in the pub, the Bridge Inn. So’ve you, when you’ve been with me.’

  ‘You’re oftener in the Bridge than I am.’

  ‘Only because you’re more often in here, you and . . .’ Ronnie broke off. He had nearly said Molly’s name. He hurried on. ‘The Bridge is nearer for me. He was a real loner was Frazer, but whiles I’d see him with the others from Canal Cottages. He was inspector on the canal, but far as I could see he did damn-all inspecting. I rarely saw the pub without he was in the bar unless he was away at the shooting contests. When the pub was shut he was either scuttering in his garden or walking away through the fields and into the woods, up to no good at all. Between times, he was a devil with the women. Beats me how he found time for it all, even without working at his job.’

  ‘Which,’ Keith said, ‘explains how the canal got to be so run-down. Andrew says the lock-gates were rotten, and nobody seemed to notice.’

  Sir Peter grunted. ‘It’s an isolated piece of canal,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t link up with the Union, and now that the Forth and Clyde Canal’s closed the traffic’s all up north, through the Caledonian and the Crinan. So I think the Authority preferred to forget about this canal. They used it as a dumping-ground for forgotten staff, or men hanging on for retirement.’ He topped up his glass and Janet’s from the wine bottle that stood between them.

  ‘Whatever way,’ Ronnie said, ‘the real work was always done by Mike Snelgrove. They call him “Smiler”. Him that was made up to inspector when it was clear George Frazer wasn’t coming back.’

  ‘I know him,’ Sir Peter said. ‘He does smile, too, until you’re sick of the sight of it. But he’s obliging. I see a bit of him, because we share some casual labourers, and also he’s got the best equipped workshop for miles around. Always willing to do an emergency repair, or to turn out the J.C.B. at a moment’s notice and at very reasonable cost.’

  ‘And I don’t suppose that the Canal Authority sees much of the money,’ Keith said, ‘but that’s their problem. Who else lives in that little enclave of theirs?’

  ‘That’s a good word, “enclave”,’ Janet said thoughtfully. ‘It is like an enclave. They lead a life of their own, and they don’t mix much with the rest of the town. Ronnie, you live nearest . . .’

  ‘And give us the layout,’ Sir Peter said. ‘I don’t know the geography at all.’

  Ronnie bolted his last mouthful, pushed aside his empty plate and began arranging the spare cutlery in the form of a sketch-map. ‘You go up the hill –’ he laid down a fork ‘– past my cottage –’ the salt cellar ‘– and over the canal bridge –’ two coffee spoons. ‘There’s still some of the town on your left, –’ a plate ‘– but past the canal and on your right –’ two knives represented the canal ‘– it’s all open country except for a row of buildings all belonging to the Canal Authority, between the canal and a rough dead-end road –’ and he laid down a spoon. ‘First off, though, there’s some allotments. Then what used to be the inspector’s house. Frazer lived there, but by the time it was sure that he wasn’t coming back Smiler had made up his mind that he didn’t want to move. It was let to a retired couple for a whilie, but they moved away up to Inverness to be near their daughter and it’s empty again.’

  ‘I suppose it’s all been redecorated?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Oh aye. The old couple was aye tarting away at it,’ Ronnie said, with all the contempt of one who believed that paint and wallpaper that were good enough for his father were more than good enough for himself. ‘Then there’s the workshop building, with its own slipway, where the machinery and boats are kept and worked on.’ Ronnie placed a match-box between the canal and the ‘dead-end road.’

  ‘Beyond the shed there’s a group of cottages. In the old days, there was ten but-and-bens for the canal-workers, but the Canal Authority knocked them together in pairs, so now there’s five houses, four of them arranged around a green that fronts onto the canal. The first’s gable-on to the canal, and Smiler lives there with his wife and a couple of kids. She’s a tough old boot and the kids are going the same way.

  ‘Then there’s the two cottages across the back of the green. In the first one you come to, there’s those two brosy lads that do forestry for you, Sir Peter. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they’re called in the town.’

  Sir Peter smiled. ‘Is that what they call them? I didn’t know, but it fits. Of course, I don’t employ them more than about half-time. I believe they work for the Canal Authority in between. They’re good enough workers, but . . .’

  ‘A wee bit thick?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘That’s what I’d’ve thought,’ Ronnie said. ‘They’re bachelors, but often enough there’s a bit of female company moved in there, or in the next one. That’s where those three lads live that nobody can thole. Long hair, black leather and motor-bikes. They’ve been in trouble, all three of them, for rammying. No serious fighting with bloodshed, but bad enough to stand in the way of a shotgun certificate. Yet I’ve seen them shooting at the clay pigeons, so they must borrow off the others.’

  ‘You don’t need a certificate to use somebody else’s gun at the clays,’ Keith said.

  ‘Is that the way of it? Anyway, the tall fair-haired bugger became foreman when Smiler moved up, but God knows what the others do for a living, if anything.’

  ‘Next to that, there’s the other cottage that’s gable-on. Jock McSween lives there with a whole gaggle of kids. He’s a widower. You may mind, he was a sergeant with the police until a whilie back, but he was never well-liked. A coarse bugger, rough with prisoners and foul-mouthed,’ Ronnie said innocently. ‘He left some months back and became a guard with one of they security companies.

  ‘Then there’s the last cottage at the back, away from the green. There’s two wifies live there – Mrs Donald and Mrs Franks they call themselves. Nobody’s ever seen a husband, though they’ve three kids between them. They seem to live mostly by doing the cooking and cleaning for the men – except Smiler, who’s got a wife of his own – and maybe doing them other little favours.’

  Janet cleared her throat. ‘Like keeping them warm at night?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s rumoured that they’re no better than they should be. Maybe not quite so good.’

  Janet’s eyes gleamed. ‘You mean they’re two of those? Men knocking at the door at night and leaving a fiver on the mantelpiece?’

  ‘Huh!’ said Ronnie. ‘You’re away out of date, lassie. A fiver buys nothing today.’

  ‘So you do know!’

  Ronnie smirked. ‘I’m not saying whether I do or I don’t. But I could be interested. What do you usually charge?’

  ‘Yuck!’ said Janet. ‘To you, twice the price.’

  ‘Hoy!’ said Sir Peter. ‘That’s more than enough on that subject, children. Keith, you might consider engaging one of the ladies to come and char for you at Briesland House. Haifa day cleaning and leave a meal in the oven for you. That sort of thing.’

  ‘It’d save us some time,’ Keith admitted. ‘And maybe we could get some more information out of her.’

  ‘And be kept warm at night,’ Janet said.

  ‘Have you seen those two?’ Ronnie asked in disgust. ‘A fiver would be too much for the pair of them. Hell, I’d more expect them to pay me.’


  Janet had a riposte ready, but Sir Peter cut her off. ‘When I said that that was more than enough,’ he said coldly, ‘it was not my oblique way of inviting you to continue. That subject is now closed. Keith, what I had in mind was to give these people easy access to the place, so that they can find out for themselves that there’s nothing there. It might save the house from burning down.’

  Keith thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘That’s a good thought,’ he said. ‘You’re more subtle than I knew, Peter. Ronnie can go up and use his charm in the morning. But are you sure that the trouble all stems from Canal Cottages?’

  Sir Peter raised his curly eyebrows. ‘Not necessarily. With a woman like that on the place, it would be easier for anyone at all to slip her a fiver and gain access than to risk arson. But that whole colony – what did you call it, an enclave? – has an oddness about it. I can understand a working man dressing well, if that’s the way he wants to spend his money, or buying a good car –’

  ‘Or a good gun,’ Keith said. ‘I’ve sold at least one “Best English” gun up that way. Secondhand, but still in four figures.’

  ‘There you are, then. But when a man has all those things and more beside, and no visible source of extra money, and doesn’t even look for overtime, there’s something wrong somewhere. Those men never do a hand’s turn more than is strictly necessary.’ Sir Peter was careful not to elaborate. The more suspicions he could plant in Keith’s mind, the less leisure Keith would have for worrying over Molly.

  ‘I’ve looked down from the hill,’ Janet said thoughtfully. ‘You can usually see several of the men lazing about or polishing their cars, even on a weekday morning.’

  ‘Suppose you’re wrong,’ Keith said. ‘Suppose we get her in, and suppose Briesland House burns down tomorrow night?’

  ‘Then at least we’ll know I was wrong,’ Sir Peter said blandly.

  ‘That’ll be a great comfort,’ Keith said. ‘I prefer to put my faith in the insurance company – and in the trouble the police took to publicise their removal of all the paper.’

  ‘Except,’ said Janet, ‘that there may be somebody somewhere, saying to himself, “If they’d found Keith’s book they’d have come to arrest me by now, and they haven’t, so it’s still around somewhere and I’d better go on starting fires until I’m sure that it isn’t around any more”.’

  ‘That makes me feel better, too,’ Keith said.

  Sir Peter gave Janet a secret nod of approval. ‘Just so long as it makes you feel more careful,’ he said. ‘What I think is that the sooner we get this mystery out of the way the better. How many firearms certificates were there up at the canal?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, unless they were my customers,’ Keith said. ‘Frazer, of course, and the security guard. But I spoke to the rifle and pistol club in Edinburgh a few months ago. Smiler was there, and Tweedledee, and so were two of the black leather brigade.’

  ‘The black leather boys wouldn’t have firearms certificates, from what you said.’

  ‘There’s about as many off-the-register firearms as there are legitimately held ones,’ Keith pointed out.

  ‘And,’ said Janet, ‘if those two old bags have access to all those houses they could have made use of any firearms that were kicking around.’

  Keith snorted. ‘And put a bullet into Frazer in defence of their honour? I don’t buy that. The proposition, I mean, not the honour.’

  ‘Well, I could believe it,’ Janet persisted. ‘That time that he came after me in the whins, I was afraid. He was drink taken. His face was puffy and he had grey stubble, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked . . . as if anything good in him was beyond reaching. “Put your gun away,” he said. “I’ve a better one to show you.” Well, I wasn’t going to put my gun down for anything, because he’d made up his mind that nothing else was going to stop him. So I snicked my safety-catch off as loudly as I could, pointed the gun at his middle and told him that I’d pull the trigger if he came any closer.’

  ‘He should’ve known that you didn’t really mean it,’ Ronnie said.

  ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ Janet demanded.

  ‘Just that you’d never have the heart to shoot a man.’ Ronnie’s voice was very innocent.

  ‘I’d have shot him,’ Janet said, ‘and he knew it. And I must have been yelling at him, because somebody heard me and clyped to Munro, but nobody came to see if I needed help. He was the kind of man that gets rape a bad name,’ Janet finished, ‘and I told him so.’

  The return of the waiter to clear the dishes and to pour coffee put an end to confidential discussion. Sir Peter was content to let matters rest, confident that he had sown the right seeds. While he spoke to Ronnie about red deer on the Dawnapool land, Keith had the chance of a word with Janet. ‘You’re not busy on your Dad’s farm just now?’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a holiday,’ she said. ‘Two of my cousins came through for the harvest, so I was just an extra pair of hands getting in the way. They’ll send for me soon enough if the combine breaks down again –’ Janet was a first-class mechanic ‘– but until then I’m a lady of leisure if you want any help.’

  ‘Lady enough to give Wallace James a hand?’

  ‘In the shop, you mean?’

  ‘On his boat. Barge, I should say. I’ve asked him to help out with the shop, at least until I can get things straightened out and while Molly’s laid up. But while his barge is high and dry he wants to get it dried out and do whatever it is one does to barges. Painting the bottom, I suppose. The nights are drawing in, and he’ll need all his time if he’s working for me by day . . .’

  ‘I’ll give him a hand,’ Janet said carelessly. The faint pink in her cheeks was invisible in the lamplight. Janet had been very much taken with Wallace James. He was, she thought, a cut above the moon-faced farmers’ sons, or the coarse and inarticulate manual workers of the town. Regular contact with Sir Peter and his friends, and a better than average education, had given her an increased awareness of the shades of social and cultural difference. To be sure, Wallace was only a bargee; but in another sense he was a ship’s captain with a university degree. He was shy, but as a result he was respectful. Sometimes he stammered, but when he gained confidence and his stammer left him he had a voice and accent that sent little shivers through her. His sensitive, intellectual face and, truth to tell, slightly scrawny body were, to her, the epitome of caste. She longed to take his mutilated hand and kiss it better.

  But, she told herself, a man of his education would never look at a farmer’s daughter with a strong Borders accent and no knowledge of the world.

  *

  Ronnie drove his Land Rover very carefully out of town. He had had a few drinks, but Keith, in the passenger seat, was most of a bottle ahead of him.

  As he drove, Ronnie rambled. ‘They’re all poachers up at Canal Cottages, the bloody lot of them. I don’t believe the butcher’s made a bawbee out of them in years – except on what he’s bought from them. But you can’t catch the buggers. If they’re going out, they have those bairns posted at all the junctions at dawn to see which way Hamish and me are going. I’ve told and told Sir Peter. He’s all for a quiet life. But it’s not just one now and again, it’s all the damn time, and it’s all revenue lost to the estate. And they don’t stop at a deer. The farmers’ve been losing sheep. The police take an interest in that all right, but you know what they are about poaching; they don’t see it. And I can’t be awake and everywhere all the time.’

  ‘True,’ Keith said. He was twisted round in his seat, trying to calm Sir Peter’s two Labradors who were rampaging in the back of the vehicle, excited by the new events.

  ‘Course, Frazer was the worst of the lot. When he wasn’t in the pub he was prowling the forestry with a pistol under his coat, on the lookout for a deer. I tackled him whenever I saw him. “You leave me alone,” he said the last time. “There’s no police here.” “I’m going to search you,” I said, “and if you’ve got a firearm on you I
’m taking you in.” “Just try it,” he says. “If I’ve not got it on me, I’ll have you charged with assault.” “And if you have?” I said. “Then,” he said, “I’ll blow your bloody head off.” Without support from Sir Peter or the police, what could I do? I was still laying for him, and if I could have caught him taking a deer over the boundary I’d have had him up and got his certificate withdrawn.’

  ‘You should’ve asked me,’ Keith said. ‘We could’ve planted one of his bullets in a beast and sworn that we took it off him at the boundary. Same as we did to Grotty Henderson.’

  ‘We were young then. Was that new pistol you sold him any good?’

  ‘He had to pay me nearly a hundred quid cash adjustment.’

  ‘I mean for poaching. Could it really knock over a deer?’

  Keith laughed. ‘Almost the perfect poaching weapon for a good shot and a patient stalker. Barrel near as dammit twelve inches and firing the long rifle cartridge. Let me put it this way. I’d reckon to drop a roe-deer stone dead nine times out of ten at fifty yards with it, and I’m not in the same class as Frazer was. He nearly made the Olympic team a few years ago, and I’d have backed him to hit a standing pheasant in the head at fifty yards every time.’

  ‘And it’s quiet and it goes under a coat,’ Ronnie said bitterly. ‘Why did you sell the beggar a thing like that?’

  Keith shrugged, a wasted effort in the darkness. ‘If I refused to sell a gun that might be used for poaching, I’d sell nothing,’ he said.

  A small panda car was parked in front of Briesland House, and a very young constable was waiting patiently. ‘We’ve finished,’ he said. ‘Here are your keys.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Keith took the keys. ‘Has anyone been lurking?’

  ‘Not that I’ve seen.’ The constable gave Keith what no doubt he considered to be a regulation issue Piercing Look. ‘Were you driving the Land Rover?’ he asked.