The Revenge Game

by Gerald Hammond

  Keith laughed. ‘Prepare yourself to become a sweet little old lady, full of strong tea and good works,’ he said.

  ‘What a louse you are! When will I see you, then?’

  ‘I’ll bring Molly up to visit with you when she gets out of hospital.’

  ‘And I’ll bet you bloody well would, too. God, you are getting like George Frazer. Nice as ninepence when you want something, and an absolute bastard when you’ve got what you want.’ She hung up.

  Keith dialled the police station and spoke to Munro. ‘Where are you?’ the chief inspector asked. ‘You sound out of breath.’

  ‘I’m at Briesland House.’ Keith turned his head away and breathed deeply.

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ Munro said, and the line went dead.

  The phone rang again almost immediately. Keith dealt with an enquiry from the shop. This was followed by a call from one of Keith’s suppliers. The rifle concerned had been dispatched to him by the usual carrier, ten days before.

  When Munro’s call came, the chief inspector was on a pay phone. He sounded fretful. ‘I have been calling and calling,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Keith said. ‘Incoming calls.’

  ‘I will forgive you,’ Munro said graciously, ‘because your wild guesses have been turning out to be right. A copy of Loading Monthly goes up to Canal Cottages each month. The pathologist found traces of two different poisonous gasses in Cruikshank’s metabolism – stibene and arsine – but he admitted that he might well have missed them if he had not been told what to look for. And there were definite signs of violence on the man.’

  ‘Poor little devil!’ Keith said.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘There was a note from him through my letterbox. It says he wanted to see me about some fiddle that was going on up at the canal.’

  ‘Now that,’ Munro said, ‘is just what we have been wanting.’ He sounded, for him, almost enthusiastic. ‘There is nothing conclusive, but it throws doubt on Blackhouse’s suppositions. Grave doubt.’

  ‘But we don’t know what else Blackhouse has got. If you hand this evidence over to him, and he chooses to regard it as coincidental, Derek Weatherby might still be arrested and you’d be inhibited from investigating the canal. And I’ve just heard that the Weatherbys are on the way home.’

  ‘I am in no great hurry to hand anything over to That Man,’ Munro said, ‘but I must make a report.’

  ‘To your super?’

  ‘He is on leave. I’ll have to report to Edinburgh.’

  ‘Do it in writing,’ Keith suggested. ‘Put a second class stamp on it and it may never get there.’

  ‘Now, Mr Calder,’ Munro said, ‘you know that I could not be doing a thing like that. I am just going off duty, but I shall have to phone Edinburgh in the morning. Remember, they may leave me to deal with this aspect; but if they give it to Blackhouse, he may delay looking into it. He is chasing off after some Irish connection just now.’

  ‘By morning,’ Keith said, ‘I hope to have cast iron evidence of fraud up at the canal, and you may have good enough grounds for an arrest in connection either with Frazer or with Cruikshank, maybe both. Just in case they rumble us at the last moment, we wouldn’t want them to scatter. Could you arrange things so that at any time from dawn on I could phone you, and you could produce enough men quickly to seal the place off and pull everybody in?’

  ‘Everybody?’

  ‘The signs are that all of them are in it to a greater or lesser degree, even the women. Pull one in and the rest’ll take the gate.’

  ‘You’ll not phone me unless the evidence is cast iron?’

  ‘No.’

  Munro paused. Over the wire, Keith could hear him humming a Gaelic lament to himself. ‘Mr Calder,’ he said suddenly, ‘what will you be doing tonight that will provide cast iron evidence by dawn?’

  ‘If you insist on an answer to that question,’ Keith said, ‘the evidence may never be cast iron at all. And it may go hard with the Weatherbys.’

  There was another silence on the line. Keith wondered whether he had pushed Munro’s stern, Calvinist conscience too far. But either his lust for evidence, or perhaps it was his hatred of Blackhouse, won the day in Munro. ‘The question was never asked,’ he said. ‘If you get into trouble, we never spoke. You can telephone me at the station, any time after six, and there will be men there at once. The word will be “Canal”. But don’t use it unless you have the evidence.’

  ‘“Canal”,’ Keith said. ‘Right. Now, if we get evidence of fraud, I’d like to be able to connect it up with Frazer’s death. Could you find out whether there was any damage to the skeleton, other than the hole in the skull?’

  ‘I can tell you that,’ Munro said. ‘I examined the skeleton when it was found. One of the floating ribs was broken; we found the piece nearby.’

  ‘Could it have been broken by a second bullet?’

  ‘In my opinion,’ Munro said cautiously, ‘it could. The pathologist would not commit himself. But there was no sign of an exit wound.’

  ‘I don’t think there was an exit wound,’ Keith said slowly.

  ‘If you take it that the attacks on my wife and the shop were aimed at avoiding any connection between the murderer and a particular gun, there must have been a bullet left in him when they dumped him in the canal. I mean, a bullet which had come out the back of his neck would be very difficult to connect with the death.’

  ‘There was no bullet found near the skeleton.’

  ‘It could have travelled far enough in the mouth of a big pike. Or it might not have been recognised. Bullets aren’t all bullet-shaped, you know. Could you put your hand on any unidentified small scraps of metal that turned up in the canal?’

  ‘I could try,’ Munro said. Keith heard him sigh as he hung up.

  Keith wiped off his gunstocks. By the time that they were dry enough for a final polish, he would have overhauled the guns. When he went downstairs there was a snack on the table and a meal in the oven, but Jessie Donald had gone.

  *

  Keith bolted his snack and drove into Newton Lauder. He paid Molly a flying visit and then went in search of Andrew Gulliver.

  Gulliver, it appeared, had finished his business and gone. Cantley, the loss adjuster, however, was at the shop, frowning over the builders’ quotations. Keith drew him into urgent discussion.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The small hours of a black night. Drizzle was threatening to turn into full-blooded rain.

  ‘You bide here,’ Keith said under his breath. ‘Watch the shed. Anything sudden or loud or suspicious, belt down to the phone box in Ugie Place, dial nine-nine-nine and get the message “Canal” to Munro. Just that one word. Got it?’

  Janet nodded. Then, realising that nobody could see her nod, she said, ‘I’ve got it. You won’t let Wally get hurt, will you?’

  Wallace made a rebellious noise, but Keith chuckled. ‘Have no fear,’ he said, ‘Keith is here.’

  ‘That’s what worries me. When you’re around, sparks usually fly. And I don’t want any of them flying off Wal.’

  ‘We’re not looking for trouble,’ Keith said, ‘but only Wallace knows what we’re looking for and would recognise it if we saw it. Don’t worry, I’ll bring him back safe.’

  ‘You do, or I’ll never forgive you.’ Janet put up the hood of her duffel-coat and backed into the hedge.

  ‘Nor will I,’ Wallace said.

  They lowered themselves into the canal, clambering down the masonry and then dropping the last few feet. Keith led Ronnie and Wallace, squelching, across to the canal slipway. Beside the slip, the deep slot for floating lockgates sliced into the building, just wide enough for a man to walk sideways. When they were under the building, Keith switched on his torch. A metal ladder was recessed into the wall, and above their heads the slot was covered with heavy boards. Ronnie climbed up and pushed two of the boards out. Wallace followed him through the gap. Keith came last, helped from above, and they dropped the boards int
o their bed.

  ‘Keep your torches on the floor,’ Keith whispered. Even a whisper seemed too loud in this hostile territory. He led the way up the long alley which had served as a pistol range. They stopped outside the office enclosure. Rain became loud on the roof, and a leak dripped nearby. ‘Help yourself,’ Keith told Wallace. ‘Ronnie, you go to the far door and guard the switches. We may be in the right, but we’re the intruders. If there’s a rammy and somebody gets hurt we won’t have a leg to stand on – if we’re recognised.’

  ‘I got you,’ Ronnie said.

  Keith paused to examine the J.C.B., looming vast and functional near the landward doors. The fitter’s workshop was locked up, but shining his torch through the wire mesh he could see gunsmith’s tools and a stripped-down small-bore rifle. He walked down the length of the shed to take up his vigil. He had hardly settled down on the upturned dinghy before Wallace was out and signalling with his torch. Keith walked back to him.

  ‘I can’t work by torchlight,’ Wallace said.

  ‘You’ll have to.’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got to compare papers. I need both hands and decent light. Who’s going to see at this Godforsaken hour?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Keith said.

  ‘And the rain keeps dribbling down my neck. The Authority paid for a new roof two years ago, but I bet they didn’t get one.’

  By torchlight, they draped a heavy tarpaulin round the wire mesh sides of the Office. Inside the landward doors, the switchboard was neatly labelled. Keith turned off all the switches and threw the masterswitch, then pressed down the switch marked ‘Office’. Despite the tarpaulin, a glow was thrown up onto the roof which would be visible from outside. Visible, but perhaps not noticeable.

  He went back to guarding the slipway doors. The waiting was agony. His feet were cold in his wellingtons. His bowels felt hollow. In the hostile atmosphere his mind refused to relax. He fretted over the possible outcome of the night. He was sure that he could see the first grey light of dawn in the high windows.

  Time inched by, slow as a slug and twice as repellent.

  For a distraction, Keith switched on his torch and examined the underside of the big dredger-reedcutting vessel. It was in a pitiable state, stained and pitted with rust.

  Afterwards, Keith was never sure whether he had heard a small sound, or whether his exploration was from no more than boredom and curiosity. A ladder lay at the dredger’s stern, tucked almost out of sight under the cradle. Keith stood it against the stern and began to climb.

  Above, the dredger was in an even worse state than below. The small wheelhouse would have been a disgrace as a labourer’s privy, while the big engine stood without cylinder-head, a mask of rust blurring the details of its parts. It was many a long day, Keith decided, since the dredger had been in the water, and it would be many another day before it floated again.

  As he turned to descend the ladder, the beam of Keith’s torch flicked down into the well of the boat and he saw the body.

  *

  Keith’s first impulse was to go quietly away and to pretend to himself that he had seen nothing. This was not out of necrophobia – he had butchered too many stags to have retained any horror of death. But, at the moment when his mental picture of the pattern of events was beginning to take shape, another body was a complication that he would rather had passed him by.

  He gave himself a mental shake. Facts were facts. And the man might not be dead.

  Keith steadied his torch and took another look. The body was not dead. Nor was it a man. It was Jessie Donald.

  He climbed down into the well, and while he studied her his mind rushed hither and yon, trying this new factor into a dozen different slots in the puzzle. The unfortunate Mrs Donald had been tied, not solely for the purpose of restraint but with vindictiveness for maximum discomfort, with many turns of clothes-line pulled and knotted tight so that her puffy flesh bulged between the bonds. A child’s rubber ball which was forced between her teeth had been drilled for a strand of wire which was twisted together behind her head.

  On top of pain and cold, Jessie Donald was in a state of terror. Her body, though rigid, was trembling; her eyes bulged whitely and, Keith saw with revulsion, she was in process of wetting herself. He turned the torch on his own face for a few seconds, and when he looked at her again she had begun, as best she could, to relax.

  If she thought that Keith had come to her rescue, he soon corrected that impression. Crouching down so that he need do no more than whisper, he spoke slowly, thinking aloud.

  ‘You . . . stupid . . . old . . . bat!’ Keith said distinctly. (She made a muffled honking sound.) ‘I asked you one little question and you jumped to a bloody dangerous conclusion. Then I tried to warn you. If you’d had a damn bit of sense you’d have seen the danger and kept your big yap shut. But no. Not caring a monkey’s chuff who you might be putting in danger, you come back here all set for a bit of blackmail.’ Mrs Donald honked again. Keith prodded her with his forefinger. ‘Don’t interrupt while I’m talking to you. There’s just no other reasonable explanation.

  ‘Well, it backfired on you, and here you are. And good luck to you. Did you tackle him in here, I wonder? Or did he hump you in here under the eyes of your friends, and not one of them bothering to interfere?

  ‘Now, I didn’t put you here and there’s no obligation on me to let you go. Your friend left you this way, and as far as I’m concerned you can wait for him coming back.

  ‘But you’d better think about this.’ Keith slowed down even more. He was thinking about it himself. ‘Your friend, whoever he is, plays rough. Two men have died already. He’s had a go at my wife and at me, just because we knew too much for his safety. So, if he wasn’t prepared to pay you off, why didn’t he kill you? It’d be his style. Could be that he just wanted you out of the way for a while.’ Keith paused, and then shook his head. ‘No. That makes no sense. You’d be just as dangerous tomorrow or next week. More likely he wants to keep his options open. What options, did you ask? And so do I.’ Keith paused again, then went on with more confidence. ‘Let’s think around it. Suppose he needs time to do something that’ll get everybody off his back. If he fails, he’s skipping out. And if he does a bunk he’s nothing to gain by killing you. Yours might turn out to be just the one murder that could be proved against him if he’s caught and brought back. But if he succeeds with whatever it is that he’s doing, if he gets clear on the other counts, maybe it’s in his mind to come back for you and dig a quiet grave in the bed of the canal. How does that grab you, Toots?

  ‘But,’ Keith said, ‘that leaves one loose end. What the hell would he be away doing? Well, you can tell me that. I’m going to uncork you for a minute or two, and give you one chance to tell me everything you know. If you do that, you go loose. But if I catch you out in one single lie or evasion, you can stay here for ever or until –’

  Keith broke off. A disturbance had broken out at the landward end of the shed. As he heaved himself up onto the stern, the dim glow from the office enclosure was extinguished and the windows jumped into being as grey squares against the blackness. Seconds later, a flash and the high crack of a shot came from the direction of the office, and the sound of a body falling. Somebody groaned.

  *

  Keith was scrambling frantically, trying to find the top of the ladder without using his torch, when the main overhead lights flickered and flashed on, showing him the ladder ten feet away. Inconspicuous against the ragged wheelhouse, Keith paused and took stock.

  The facts were only too obvious.

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee, rising early, had seen the glow of light in the shed and had arrived, hot in defence of their employer’s property or of their own secrets. Keith could not tell which man was which, but at the far end of the shed the wicket in the big doors stood open and Ronnie was struggling with one of the men for control of the switches. At the slipway end the boards were up again and the other burly figure was approaching along the alley at a pondero
us trot.

  Keith was reluctant to open battle, if only because the law might not be unhesitatingly on the side of the righteous as defined by Keith. On the other hand, the whole situation had already become disastrous. Ronnie was having a hard time, and there was no sign of Wallace.

  As Keith launched himself from the height, Ronnie’s strength prevailed and the lights snapped out. Keith found himself falling through darkness. He missed his target completely, partly broke his fall with his feet, almost broke his knees with his fall and ended up flat and half-winded on the filthy floor but still with enough presence of mind to roll.

  The lights came on again. (As Ronnie said later, ‘Every time I put the lights off, he knew where I had to be; and ilka time he put them on, he could see me coming.’) They showed Tweedledum launching a kick at the place where Keith had landed. Keith had time to force himself to his feet. The two men glared at each other. They rushed.

  The lights went out. Ronnie was still faithful to his last instruction, although the time of its relevance was past.

  Keith swerved, to try and take his man from the rear. He heard Tweedledum thump into one of the props of the dredger, moved in that direction and found nothing. He circled warily, recovering his breath and feeling around with his hands.

  When the lights came on again, they were standing nose-to-nose. Keith brought his knee up, before the other could swing a punch. Tweedledum went down, holding himself tenderly and whimpering.

  Keith sprinted up the alley. In the office, Wallace was sitting on the floor. Before the lights went out again, Keith had time to see that he was blinking dazedly. There was a raw burn on his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Keith asked into the darkness.

  ‘Somebody blew my brains out.’

  ‘It seems to have healed up again.’

  The lights came on for the last time. Keith ran towards the switchboard. He was in time to see Ronnie land a paralysing chop on Tweedledee, just where the man’s shoulder met his neck. Keith stepped over the prone form. ‘Get something to use as a club,’ he said. ‘Stand guard. There something I want to do before the police get here.’ He set off purposefully towards the dredger.