The Revenge Game

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘You’re prepared to admit all this?’

  ‘Admit all what? Wyatt had a valid certificate for a silenced rifle. Any subsequent work on the silencer was not done by me.’

  ‘He already had a silencer.’

  ‘If you know that, then you know that what I’m telling you is true. Yes, he had a silencer and he was dissatisfied with it. And his certificate did not specify that he was allowed only one silencer for that rifle, or I’d have insisted that he traded the old one in. Trouble was, he didn’t like this one any better. Let’s face it, silencers may be all right on a car but they only louse up a good gun. Anyway, I don’t know who he passed it on to.’

  ‘And that’s your story?’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ Keith said. ‘And if you want to dispute it, the burden of proof’s on you.’

  ‘It is, Mr Calder, it is. And it’s a burden that I may be happy to assume some day. Did you know that Mr Weatherby had a Luger?’

  ‘No,’ said Keith. It was the first time that he lied.

  ‘You supplied him with ammunition for it.’

  Suddenly, in Keith’s mind, a set of vague ideas solidified into a herring of most extraordinary redness; but the moment was not ripe for it. ‘If you’re going to throw out unsubstantiated accusations,’ Keith said, ‘we’ll continue this discussion in the presence of my solicitor, if at all. Here I am, a respectable businessman, giving up my valuable time to aid you in the pursuit of justice, and you’re wasting it. And your own, which I help to pay for. You’re getting all this down?’ he asked the sergeant.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Calder.’

  ‘All right,’ Blackhouse said. ‘All right. But if there should come the day when I can substantiate them, my lad, I’ll have you.’

  ‘And if you make threats, I’ll have you,’ Keith said. ‘Now, do you have any reasonable questions, or will you leave quietly?’

  Blackhouse held his temper, but his glare, Keith thought, was three inch magnum and full choke. ‘What can you tell me about George Frazer?’ he asked at last.

  Keith could feel his own hands shaking, but he managed to smile politely. ‘That’s more reasonable,’ he said. ‘I knew Frazer slightly as a customer. I never knew him socially at all. Not many people did. I suspect that he was a bit of an inverted snob. I remember coming across him in the bar at Queen Street Station in Glasgow once. He didn’t want to know me at all, but he was yapping away to some scruffy Irish yob with a Belfast accent. That’s the side of him that most people saw, that and the drinker and lecher who neglected his job.

  ‘But there was another side to Frazer. He was a superb, natural shot, who could have made it onto the Olympic team without any bother at all if he could have laid off the booze, and who was so knowledgeable and meticulous with his guns that he used hand-loaded cartridges – not, I think, for financial reasons but because he could get better consistency that way than using ammunition loaded by the manufacturers.

  ‘And he was very knowledgeable indeed about the guns themselves. I remember, I wrote an article once about the Lefaucheux pinfire revolver. He phoned me, rather curtly, to query some point about the mechanism, and after I tried to argue with him he walked in with one the next day. It turned out that he had quite a collection of early revolvers, but he’d never talked about them and he wouldn’t even invite me up to see them.’

  The superintendent’s mood had changed while Keith spoke, irritation being, at least in part, replaced by interest. ‘That’s a better profile of the man than I’ve had yet,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Every witness has painted him as either black or white. You show him in black-and-white. But where are the shades of grey, the colours?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you expect the rest of the spectrum to be hidden in the contradictions?’ Keith asked.

  Blackhouse frowned, a ferocious bunching of the forehead. ‘Explain,’ he said.

  ‘I repeat, I hardly knew the man, but I get to learn a lot about my customers by what they buy.’ The time was ripe, Keith judged, for his herring to swim past Blackhouse’s nose. ‘Part of his standoffishness might be explained by his being a very cautious crook. Didn’t you find that he had more money than his tax-returns would suggest?’

  ‘Never you mind what I’ve found,’ Blackhouse grunted.

  ‘You did, then.’

  ‘If you’re pulling my leg, you’ll be sorry,’ Blackhouse said. ‘I’ve got his firearms certificate. He didn’t buy much from you.’

  ‘He bought a lot of loading materials from me, and they don’t go on his certificate,’ Keith pointed out. ‘But he only had to buy a pistol off me once in a blue moon to give me a sight of his certificate, and it caught my interest. He owned a lot of pistols, and I mean a lot.’

  ‘He was a big-time competitor,’ Blackhouse said impatiently. ‘He spent whole weekends at Bisley, competing in different events. With his reputation, and his list of successes, we could hardly refuse to let him own the equipment.’

  ‘Of course,’ Keith said. ‘And if he tried to get to the top in every event, he might need a dozen different pistols. But nobody has the time and money for that, and his technique would be spoiled by having to practise with so many different weapons. Frazer had three first-class competition pistols, and he’d need them, but he owned a number of others, mostly the cheapest on the market. Between them they made up just about every calibre in common, current use. He had at least a couple of two-twos, a two-five, a thirty-two, Parabellum Lugers in seven-point-six-five and nine millimetres, a three-five-seven which would also let him buy three-eight ammunition on the same certificate, a forty-five and something else. And he bought one hell of a lot of ammunition, which is all on his certificate.’

  ‘He’d need a lot,’ Blackhouse said. He sounded almost plaintive.

  ‘Except that he loaded his own. He’d hardly practise with something different, and even if he did he couldn’t have gone through as much as he was buying.’

  ‘I’m told that he held private competitions with his neighbours in that big shed.’

  ‘Only with two-twos,’ Keith said. He hoped that it was true, or at least that Blackhouse had no information to the contrary. Otherwise his red herring might turn out to be a pale green minnow.

  ‘Tell me what you’re inferring,’ Blackhouse said. He sounded almost polite.

  ‘Quite by chance,’ Keith said, ‘I found out that a number of pistols, both revolvers and automatics, were recovered from the canal. Can I take it that their numbers corresponded, more or less, with George Frazer’s pistols?’

  ‘I’m not here to hand out information.’

  ‘It’s a reasonable supposition. Whoever killed Frazer covered up his death by emptying his cottage. Any guns registered to Frazer would probably go into the canal. But were there any extra guns, not on his certificate?’

  Blackhouse hesitated. Clearly, in his book, the dictum that it is more blessed to give than to receive did not apply to information. ‘You can take that,’ he said at last. ‘Two.’

  Keith gave a silent shout of joy. It was a reasonable probability that during the years of the canal’s existence somebody other than Frazer’s murderer would have used it for the disposal of incriminating guns. Keith’s herring was indeed a herring after all.

  ‘I’m told,’ he said, ‘that Frazer gave generous presents to his lady friends. That can be damned expensive.’

  ‘You should know,’ Ashwood said under his breath.

  ‘Drink costs money, too. So do guns and ammunition. He was always well-dressed. Travelled a lot. Altogether he lived much better that a canal surveyor could on his salary.’

  ‘You think he was fiddling the books?’

  ‘I think,’ Keith said firmly, ‘that he was known as the specialist purchaser of stolen or off-register side-arms. Plenty of pistols circulate on the black market, but ammunition gets expended. Suppose that Frazer was matching up ammunition to the pistols and selling them again at a fat profit. Anything outdated would then disappear into Frazer’s personal co
llection.’

  Blackhouse had followed Keith’s thesis, even nodding from time to time, but now he frowned again. ‘A collector who breaks the law, or a crook going out to rob a bank, only wants a handful of rounds.’

  ‘But don’t forget the Irishman I saw him talking to in Glasgow, when he didn’t even want to be recognised. Belfast’s almost as close to Glasgow as we are here. If I was John Citizen in Belfast, and I had sympathies with either side, or might be suspected of having sympathies, or had ever been seen talking to a soldier or a policeman or a suspected informer, I’d be happier with a revolver in the house and enough ammunition to ensure that I – and my family – were practised in the use of it and still had enough left over to withstand a siege. That’s discounting the organisations themselves. And the Ulster Constabulary don’t exactly hand out private firearms certificates. I bet there’s a huge black market in ammunition in Belfast.’

  Despite himself, Blackhouse was becoming half-persuaded. ‘But if either the I.R.A. or the U.D.A. knocked him off because he was supplying either the other side or their sympathisers, surely they’d have taken the guns along?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Not if they were Scottish-based sympathisers closing off the other side’s source of supply. They might well have preferred to dump a dozen guns, rather than risk holding onto any that were registered to a man that they’d just murdered.’

  If not convinced, Blackhouse was at least impressed with Keith’s reasoning. He asked a few questions about Mrs Weatherby’s love-life, to which Keith was able to protest honest ignorance, and the two policemen departed.

  Keith lay back in his chair and laughed until he almost cried. And the best of it was that he had told nothing but the truth. Except, of course, for the Irishman. Keith had totally invented the Irishman.

  *

  Superintendent Blackhouse, suddenly friendly, would cheerfully have given Keith a lift into Newton Lauder; but Keith was anxious to part from him before the superintendent thought of any uncomfortable questions. He let him go, and phoned Ronnie at the shop.

  The Land Rover, when it arrived, looked unfamiliar. ‘When did you get a long-chassis?’ Keith asked.

  ‘This is Sir Peter’s. He says you can use it until Wal brings your car back.’

  ‘It took a gent to think of that,’ Keith said.

  In the square, as he got down, Ronnie produced a handful of envelopes. ‘These were in the shop’s letterbox,’ he said.

  Absently, Keith pushed them into his pocket. He called at the florist and then drove up to the hospital to visit Molly.

  *

  Molly was still bandaged, but such of her as was on view looked brighter. There was some colour in her cheek, and although her voice was low she was using it more freely. She chattered softly about the flowers and her own progress and about hospital life while Keith rejoiced in the improvement and wondered whether he dared to open his mail. He decided that, although Molly would notice immediately any glance that he made towards another woman, she was too engrossed in her chatter to notice whether he was listening or not.

  Three brown envelopes with windows were put by for later consideration – probably by Wallace, Keith decided. Two white envelopes contained orders, and another held a cheque. The last was unstamped and addressed only with his name. While Molly spoke about the nursing orderly and the red dressing-gown and the chair by the window, Keith sat in the chair, half-listening but examining the contents of the envelope.

  The man on the hill drew a bead on Keith’s back. He took up the trigger slack. Then he sighed and laid down the rifle. If he killed Keith, he would lose his chance at Molly. And Molly was the real danger.

  The slip of paper in Keith’s hand was green. It was a Canal Authority indent form, filled out in pencil, requisitioning diesel oil for the dredger. 1,500 gallons had been changed to 2,000. The whole face of the form had been struck through, also in pencil. On the reverse side was written boldly Back by 3.30, and in a different hand, Mr Calder, want to see you about this. And you should speak Jock Sparrow. Douglas K. Cruikshank.

  ‘And I told her she could go to hell,’ Molly murmured triumphantly. ‘Didn’t I?’ she added to the fair-haired W.P.C. who seemed to have taken over permanent day-duty as Molly’s guard.

  The w.p.c. smiled. ‘What she actually said was “Awa’ hame for your half-egg and your belly washed”.’

  ‘Good God!’ Keith said. ‘I didn’t know my wife used expressions like that.’

  Molly giggled. ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘But I heard a snotty-nosed kid in one of the closes say it to his sister, and I saved it up. I knew I’d want to say it to somebody one day.’

  ‘Well, now that you’ve got it off your chest, don’t say it again.’

  ‘Mr Calder,’ said the W.P.C. She hesitated, and almost blushed. ‘While you’re here, would you mind standing guard for a few minutes? It’s all these cups of hospital tea.’

  Keith tapped the bulge under his left arm and nodded. The W.P.C. slipped out of the room.

  ‘I’m glad she’s gone,’ Molly said. ‘Give me a proper kiss.’

  ‘I was going to.’ Keith knelt down beside the bed and kissed her; not the prim peck given in front of the watching policewoman but with passion. His nose rubbed against cotton bandages, and he smelled antiseptic ointment.

  ‘Keith, I’ve been so miserable,’ Molly said, ‘and I couldn’t get you alone to ask you. It sounds silly but . . . will you still love me if I’m . . . marked?’ She lifted a hand to touch the bandages.

  Keith kissed the tip of her nose. ‘You’ll still be Molly, won’t you?’

  She smiled, reluctantly. ‘Yes, of course I will.’

  ‘You’ll still be nice to me and wash my socks and keep me comfortable and laugh with me?’

  ‘I promise.’

  He slipped a hand under the bedclothes, listening for the policewoman’s return. ‘And you’ll still have two of these?’ Having let the words slip out, he realised that they might be disastrous.

  But she laughed. ‘Ouch!’ she said, still quivering. ‘I’m not ready for laughter yet. No problem there. And you can stop the inventory. I’m not ready for the other thing either.’

  Keith ran his hand over the familiar warm softness and came up against the wadding of more surgical dressings. A new, grim determination came over him. He had mourned and then raged for Molly the friend, had come to terms with his grief and found that it was wasted. Now, on top of his own guilt over Dougie Cruikshank, it came to him that Molly the lover had also been savaged . . .

  She saw the change in his face, and he felt her flinch. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘If you’ve got a scar then you’re Molly-plus-scar and that’s an end to it. There’ll never be anybody else. You’re still one of a kind. Anyway, almost any scar can be removed, these days. The surgeon’s knife–’

  ‘Knife!’ she said. ‘I’ve remembered something new. When the man attacked me, I saw the knife in his hand. You remember the ones we had with the deer’s-foot handles? We sent them back. You said somebody’d tried to design a blade that would do everything from building a log cabin to skinning a boy scout, and the result was that it wouldn’t do anything properly. You were annoyed because I’d already sold one of them to somebody.’

  ‘Who did you sell it to?’

  Molly opened her mouth, and paused. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue. It’ll come to me.’

  ‘Of course it will,’ Keith said. He went on talking until the W.P.C. came back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Keith had first met Jock Sparrow, some years before, they had both been using ferrets at dawn on a golf course where neither of them had any right to be. The situation could have flared into enmity, but instead had established a sporadic friendship. Keith knew vaguely where the old reprobate lived, and after asking his way at a couple of farms he halted the Land Rover at an isolated cottage, primly neat in a regimented garden. Jock’s wife, a fierce little woman with raw hands, said that h
e was out with ‘they beasts’ on Pratt’s Farm.

  Keith drove another few miles. From the road, he spotted a small figure moving on a low hill. He abandoned the Land Rover and took to his feet, walking softly as he neared his quarry because noise above ground deters rabbits from bolting. Jock Sparrow was kneeling at a hole. Keith was still ten yards away when a rabbit came up like a jack-in-the-box from a hole at his feet, pulling the peg of a purse-net out of the ground. The rabbit was caught by the head and forelegs, but its back legs were free. Instinctively, Keith trod on the peg until he could lift the rabbit. Covering the hole with his foot, he extricated the rabbit and broke its neck over his knee, and then knelt down to reset the net. Jock gave him a wave and a nod.

  Ten minutes later Keith was paunching a haul of eight fat rabbits while Jock slipped a jill ferret into a bag and stowed her in his box. ‘Another yin still down,’ Jock said. ‘She’ll have killed.’

  ‘Got a line-ferret with you?’

  Jock shook his head. He was a placid, cherubic old man, dressed by his own choice in tattered old clothes which, to the credit of Mrs Sparrow, were spotlessly clean. ‘My old hob don’t work well on a line,’ he said. ‘I got yin o’ they radio bleepers now. If she doesna’ come out in twenty minutes, I’ll howk her out.’

  While they waited they lifted the purse-nets and took a seat on a bank. Keith wondered whether Jock knew that Dougie Cruikshank was dead. ‘Did Dougie speak to you recently?’ he asked.

  ‘Dougie Cruikshank? Aye. He was havering at me a few days back.’ Jock’s calm face came as near to showing irritation as Keith had ever seen it. ‘I telled him I knew nothing about Dodd Frazer, but he went on and on about ane nicht in partic’lar.’

  ‘In August of last year?’

  ‘I dinna’ ken whit date, but it was the new moon, I mind that. Ane of my nephews was biding wi’s and wanted us to go out wi’ the foumarts. Well, it was o’er early in the year for ferreting, but I said we’d maybe try the long net. You dinna’ get so mony does in milk wi’ the long net, an’ you can aye let the young’ns go. So we wanted the darkest nicht, an’ that was the nicht o’ the new moon.’