‘You did,’ said Keith, ‘thank you.’
‘Before I live this down, I shall be an old man. But never mind my worries just for the moment. We must find out who was shooting with it that night.’
‘Let’s try process of elimination,’ Wallace suggested. ‘If Tweedledee was shooting the . . . the antique, it wasn’t him. Which of the others have firearms certificates?’
‘Definitely none of the women,’ Munro said. ‘Nor the three leather boys.’
‘Smiler does,’ Keith said. ‘And McSween.’
Ronnie had been listening, rapt but silent, as a child listens to the grown-ups. Now he stirred, opened his mouth and closed it again.
‘I’d put my money on McSween, the ex-cop,’ Wallace said. ‘His cousin drives the new J.C.B. And his name appears on the time-sheets as mechanic-fitter, although he’s in full-time work now for the security company.’
Ronnie found his voice. ‘He was in yon gambling club. With that nursing woman.’
‘So he’s in the money too,’ Keith said. He paused. ‘Nursing woman?’
‘Aye. Hanging on his arm, dressed to kill wi’ her bubbies near hanging out. That nursing body,’ Ronnie explained, ‘that Molly was on about.’
Keith spoke to Ronnie, but his eyes were locked with Munro’s. ‘The nursing auxiliary that kept trying to get Molly to sit in the chair by the window in a red dressing-gown?’
‘That’s the one,’ said Ronnie’s voice.
There was a brief, agonised silence as brains rushed to catch up with the fresh knowledge. Then Munro whipped out his radio. ‘Give me talk-through,’ he said. ‘I want whichever officer’s up at the hospital. Immediate.’
Keith was into the office and on the phone. He took a business card from his wallet and dialled the number on it.
‘– if she comes in,’ Munro was saying, ‘take her into custody. You have cuffs with you? Over.’
‘Yes, sir. Over.’
‘Cuff her to the end of the bed, keep her incommunicado and away from the window, and keep the door locked–’
The telephone was answered. Keith identified himself to the security company.
‘Oh, Mr Calder,’ the voice said. ‘The rifle was sent out to you the week before last, by hand of one of our officers. He’s been off sick ever since then, but I’m sure he’ll get it to you in a day or two, when he recovers.’
‘Is that Mr McSween?’ Keith asked hoarsely.
‘You know him?’
Keith hung up and burst out of the office. ‘McSween’s got his hands on a Mannlicher rifle consigned to me,’ he said. ‘He’s been off work since Molly was attacked.’
Munro broke off his radio discussion. ‘You think he’s up on the hill behind the hospital?’
‘If he thinks Molly’s his big danger, where else?’
Munro nodded. His radio came alive. ‘Sir, Mrs Calder wants to know whether her husband’s with you. Over.’
‘He’s here and all in one piece. Over.’
‘She says to tell him that she’s remembered some more. Over.’
‘Ask her what–’
Keith tired of being the last link in a chain. ‘Let me talk,’ he said. He took the radio, firmly, out of Munro’s hands and pressed the ‘Transmit’ button. ‘This is Mr Calder. Can I speak to her? Over.’
‘That can be arranged.’ With the radio beside his ear he could recognise the voice of the fair-haired W.P.C. There was a pause. ‘No, I’ll hold it, dear. Now go ahead.’
Molly’s voice came through clearly. ‘Keith, I’ve remembered somebody taking a revolver on sale or return.’
‘Over,’ said the W.P.C.
‘Was it McSween with the Webley and Scott?’ Keith asked. ‘Over.’
‘I might’ve known you’d be ahead of me,’ Molly said disgustedly. ‘Yes, it was that one, and him. And, Keith, the black book. I know where I put it. But I suppose you know that too? Er – what do I say? Over?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Keith said. ‘Tell me. Over.’
‘It’s in the car,’ Molly said. ‘The glove-locker thingy. I put it in to take home for storage, and I never got around to taking it out. Over.’
‘Well,’ Keith said, ‘may twenty thousand beautiful angels –’ He broke off. The expression was not suitable for broadcasting. ‘Well done, and cheerio! I’m handing back to Mr Munro now.’
Munro took the radio. ‘If that nursing woman gives any trouble,’ he said, ‘invite her to put on the red dressing-gown and to sit by the window. If she still wants to make trouble, sit on her head. Somebody will be up to take over in a few minutes. Out.’
The men in the shed looked at each other.
‘Janet should go home,’ Keith said. ‘Wallace can take her – they’ve done their bit. Ronnie can go and get the book from my old car. I’m coming along with you.’
‘Very well,’ Munro said. ‘You two, up to the hospital and make sure that what you do is done safely.’
Sergeant Ritchie nodded comfortably.
Keith took a note out of his wallet. ‘Buy a wig,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be convincing.’
*
Chief Inspector Munro, a sergeant and a constable climbed the hill with Keith. It took nearly an hour before they were in position. The policemen lacked Keith’s fitness and his ability to move quietly through forestry plantations. Even when they were crouched behind a dry-stone dyke, fifty yards from where they knew the man must be, it was another minute before Keith could spot him. In the end, because the rain had stopped and midges were swarming in the humid air, it was a puff of cigarette smoke that gave him away. He was lying in a hollow between gorse bushes, covered by a camouflaged groundsheet which itself was sprinkled with dead grass and leaves.
Munro produced his radio.
‘Hold it,’ Keith whispered urgently. ‘As soon as he fires, he’s going to move quick before anyone looks for him.’
‘He’ll abandon the rifle, surely?’ Munro asked.
‘Not if he wants to bluff it out. He’d rather give it a good clean and deliver it to me just as he was supposed to, with apologies for being late. He’ll want to get into dead ground as soon as he can, so he’ll make for the gate away to our left. I’ll cover him from behind the wall, make him drop the rifle, and you can arrest him like gentlemen.’
‘I’m for that,’ Munro muttered.
They crept sideways to the gate. ‘Remember now,’ Munro said, ‘You’re to put all thoughts of revenge out of your mind. You are not here for revenge. This is a legal arrest, and the law will take care of the matter. Perhaps you had better give me the pistol.’
‘I’ve got a permit to carry it,’ Keith said. ‘Have you?’
‘You know I have not.’ Munro sighed. He hesitated and then pressed the ‘Transmit’ button and drummed his fingers on the casing.
The prearranged signal would have been clearly audible to the control operator, who passed the word to the officers at the hospital. The watchers on the hill had no way of monitoring its progress, and from their oblique position they could not see the dummy go up in the window. They waited. Just when Keith was sure that nothing would ever happen, there was a small movement under the groundsheet and the crack of a rifle came echoing back off the hospital wall and then from the surrounding hills. Before the echoes had died, a figure was up and running, leaving the discarded groundsheet behind but carrying the rifle at the trail.
When McSween was twenty yards off, Keith put his head over the wall, holding the Webley and Scott in a two-handed grip. ‘Stop right there,’ he said, ‘and drop the rifle.’
He had underestimated McSween’s panic at meeting the man whose wife he believed he had just killed. McSween tried to bring up the rifle on the run.
Keith had time to waste for just one shot; the second would have to kill. He snapped a shot at the barrel of the rifle as it came up, missing the rifle but plucking McSween’s sleeve. He took aim again where he knew the heart must be. But McSween, startled and confused, stumbled and half-fe
ll. He recovered his footing, but a clump of turf was impaled on the muzzle.
‘Go ahead and pull the trigger,’ Keith said, ‘if you don’t mind blowing your own fool head off.’
McSween’s usually florid complexion was grey. He looked from side to side like a cornered animal, then swung the useless rifle round his head and hurled it towards Keith. It landed in the branches of the fir trees behind. McSween took to his heels.
Keith shrugged his coat off and vaulted the gate, paused to hand Munro the revolver, and set off after McSween. Behind him, at first, he heard the shouts and pounding feet of the two policemen. Soon they lagged behind.
‘Come back,’ Munro shouted.
Keith replied with a salute over his shoulder, with two fingers. ‘Pick up my coat and the rifle,’ he called back.
Munro’s voice was fading in the distance. ‘No violence, mind. Make a legal arrest. No revenge or I’ll nail you to the wall.’
Keith waved again. He angled down the slope, herding McSween up towards the empty hills.
*
Twenty minutes later McSween turned at bay, his back to one of the dry-stone dykes that fringed the high moor.
Keith had the advantage of ten years, twenty pounds and an active life-style, and after the past few inactive days he was ready for a good leg-stretch. He settled into an effortless lope that he could have kept up for most of the day. McSween was paying the price of a sedentary habit. He had also been a heavy smoker, and he was wearing a full suit of oilskins against the wet day and the prospect of having to lie still for long hours. Keith kept the gap between them at a steady fifty yards, and soon he could smell sweat and hear laboured breathing as McSween floundered over the uneven ground.
They climbed steadily, the town dropping away below and then falling out of sight. McSween slowed and looked over his shoulder. Keith put his hand back and pulled his knife from the sheath taped across his belt. McSween spurted ahead, up the edge of a field of kale and then, slowing, across a pasture, until he came out at last onto the moor. Then, spent, he put his back to the wall and waited, legs shaking, chest heaving and sweat pouring down his scarlet face.
Keith stopped in front of him. McSween met his eyes defiantly for a second and then looked away. McSween was the bigger man, but there could be no doubt as to who was dominant.
A long silence was broken only by the roaring of McSween’s lungs. Keith was almost sure that he could hear the man’s heart thumping in time with the pulse in his neck.
‘Did you ever skin a fox?’ Keith asked suddenly.
The other man stared, still gasping, and then nodded.
Keith kept both his face and his voice as cold as death. ‘That’s what I’m going to do to you,’ he said. ‘Only, since you’ll be alive, it’s called flaying. It’s the worst thing that I can think of to do to anybody, so it’s just right for a callous bastard like you. Killing you would let you off the hook too soon, and prison would be a doddle. You killed my wife and you kicked my dog and you tried to burn my business down, and I’m going to have the skin off you so neatly that I’ll be able to blow it up and let it float away on the wind. You’ll be left with all your nerve-ends sticking up like stubble. I dare say they’ll jug me,’ Keith went on viciously, ‘but if you’ve managed to grow a new skin by the time I get out, by God I’ll do it again!’
McSween, spreadeagled against the dyke, shook his head slowly from side to side. The tail of a scarf with a Chinese pattern was loose at his throat. He met Keith’s gaze, looking for a way out, searching for the least sign that what was being said was a bluff. But he saw no comfort in Keith’s eyes.
Keith moved in closer. A stray sunbeam broke through the gathering mist, and he moved the knife so that it drew McSween’s eyes. He spoke matter-of-factly and with absolute conviction. ‘If you struggle, you’ll make it worse. I’ll just spill your guts into the heather and leave you to manage as best you can. But if you just keep still I’ll do it neatly. I’ll take the skin off your belly and leave the bag intact.’ He moved closer again. ‘It’s not difficult. This’ll interest you. You just lift a fold of skin below the navel –’
McSween broke again. With a frantic effort he snatched a large stone from the top of the dyke and plunged at Keith’s head. Keith slipped aside and feinted with the knife, and the stone splashed down harmlessly into a patch of bog. McSween set off once more. Keith grinned wickedly to himself and followed.
They went along the edge of the high moor. In front of them, red grouse burst out of the heather. Keith had time to count the packs. The mist cut away the distance and, with nothing to mark their progress but the endless undulations of the wall and occasional glimpses of the forestry below them, they could have been marking time in the heather. When McSween looked back his face was a purple moon, black-veined at the temples. His breathing became a bellow, and his run degenerated into a shambling stagger as he forced himself somehow onward at any cost. When, at long last, a pattern of dark figures punctuated the mist, he managed to accelerate towards their protection in one last spurt, and then pitched down on his face at the feet of the searching policemen.
Keith slipped his knife back into its sheath. The last that he saw was one of the officers giving McSween’s corpse the kiss of life.
Chapter Seventeen
Even the air in Munro’s room seemed to be under strain from the tensions pulsing between its walls.
As the senior officer present, Superintendent Blackhouse had displaced Chief Inspector Munro from his desk chair. He was slouching with great casualness to obscure the fact, obvious to all, that he was building himself into an overpowering rage. Later, thinking it over in the calm of his own home, Keith realised that Blackhouse must have been almost demented with fury or he would never have ignored the danger signals which Munro kept waving under his nose.
Keith, who had been trapped in the room by the eruption of Blackhouse, held possession of the only other chair. He would have preferred to hide behind the gaggle of sergeants and constables who had been trailed reluctantly into the room by Blackhouse; but these had been shifting nervously in their attempts to hide behind each other and had fetched up ranked against the wall. Keith tried to hide behind Blackhouse’s shoulder.
Blackhouse spoke with lofty disdain. ‘Munro,’ he said, ‘you’re a bumbling fool. You just bloody well can’t make an arrest in a murder which, for reasons that we won’t go into just now, I’ve been put in to investigate.’
Despite his position, which was that of a schoolboy in front of the headmaster’s desk, Munro seemed the calmest person in the room. Only a tremor in the hands loosely clasped behind his back betrayed the pressure he was under. ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘do you tell me that I cannot do something that I have just done?’
Blackhouse’s fists clenched, and he forced them open again. ‘Don’t add impertinence to your other sins,’ he said.
‘Do you not think,’ Munro asked gently, ‘that we should have the rest of this discussion in private?’
‘No . . . I . . . do . . . not! Munro, you’ve made a mess and I’m going to rub your nose in it. I’ll make you an example to every man on the force.’
‘You can try,’ Munro said. ‘But I do not think that you will succeed. Evidence came into my hands which justified the arrests, and I had reason to believe that the culprits were likely to flee in order to avoid arrest.’
Blackhouse leaned forward and wagged a shaking finger. ‘The fiscal won’t prosecute when I tell him that I’m investigating a more promising line. Then what’ll you do? Let them go with an apology?’
‘I doubt that. What might be your alternative line? The Weatherbys? And with your best witness in jail for fraud?’
‘I have other irons in the fire.’
‘They’ll have to be good,’ Munro said softly, ‘if they’re going to compete with a confession dictated, read and signed before witnesses and backed up by a mass of supporting evidence.’
Blackhouse abandoned his attempt to seem casual. He slam
med the desk, and Keith would not have been surprised to see his fist disappear into the solid timber. He glared around. ‘Why wasn’t I told this?’ he demanded.
None of the other officers met his eye.
‘Perhaps,’ suggested Munro, ‘nobody felt that they owed you that much.’
‘You’ll wish you hadn’t said that.’ Blackhouse brought his temper under control. He leaned back in the chair, rocking it on the rear legs. ‘What did you do, beat a confession out of him? And what about the other man? McSween, who used to be one of us. I remember him. None too bright but a good officer, a firm man. Did you get a confession from him too? How did he come to die in your custody? Answer me that as you’ll answer the fiscal.’ He leaned back until the chair was near the point of balance.
‘He didn’t,’ Munro said. ‘He overstrained his heart while avoiding arrest, again in front of witnesses.’
‘Pursued! Hounded! By that man Calder.’ Blackhouse had quite forgotten that Keith was in the room. ‘If I get nobody else, I’ll get him. I suppose you don’t deny that he let a firearm out on loan, in contravention of the Firearms Act 1968?’
‘Not Mr Calder, but his wife.’
‘Just the same, she was acting on his behalf. I’ll put him out of business before I’m done.’
‘I doubt it,’ Munro said. ‘You’re quite sure you won’t have this out in private?’
Blackhouse was not to be warned. ‘We’ll have it out here and now.’
Keith found that if he put his leg out to full stretch he would just be able to get his toe to Blackhouse’s chair.
‘Very well.’ Munro lifted a small, black book off the desk. ‘This is the register of shotguns let out on sale or return. The last item, in Mrs Calder’s writing, is for the pistol in question.’
‘Well then –’
‘Pinned to the page was a letter – addressed To Whom It Might Concern. It says that Sergeant McSween is leaving the police to take up a post with a security firm. It says that his first assignment will be a bodyguarding job for a visiting head of state. It says that he is being granted a certificate for the purchase of a firearm, and asks whoever-it-may-concern to render him assistance in equipping himself. Do you want to know who signed it?’
The Revenge Game Page 19