The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

by Desmond Bagley

  His pay-book showed that he was unmarried but was contributing to the upkeep of his mother. The payments ceased in 1943 when she died. From that time until his discharge his savings showed a marked increase. I thought that anyone who could save out of army pay in those days must have lived a quiet life.

  His medical record was similarly uneventful. Looked at en masse it appeared alarming, but closer inspection revealed just the normal ailments which might plague a man over a period of years. There were a couple of tooth extractions, two periods of hospitalization - one for a bout of influenza and the other when he dropped a six-inch shell on his left foot. Luckily the shell was defused.

  My attention was caught by the last entry. Benson had complained of aches in his left arm which had been preliminarily diagnosed as twinges of rheumatism and he had been given the appropriate treatment. He was thirty-three then, and rheumatism seemed a bit odd to me, especially since Benson had a cushy billet for a soldier in wartime. Not for him route marches in the pouring rain or splashing about joyfully in the mud; he worked in a warm office and slept every night in a warm bed.

  Evidently the medical officer had thought it odd, too, when the treatment didn’t work. In a different coloured ink he had appended a question mark after the previous diagnosis of rheumatism, and had scribbled beneath, ‘Suggest cardiogram.’ The amendment was dated 19 December, 1946.

  I went back to the general service file where I struck another oddity, because his immediate superior had written as the last entry, ‘Suggested date of discharge - 21 March, 1947,’ Underneath another hand had written, ‘Confirmed’, and followed it with an indecipherable signature.

  I sat back and wondered why, if it had been suggested and confirmed that Benson should be discharged in March, 1947, he should have been discharged three months earlier. I consulted the medical record again and then rang Tom Packer.

  This account started with Tom Packer because it was at his place I first met Penny. I rang him now because he was a doctor and I wanted confirmation of the idea that was burgeoning. If he didn’t know what I wanted he’d be certain to know who could tell me.

  After a brief exchange of courtesies, I said, ‘Tom, I want a bit of free medical advice.’

  He chuckled. ‘You and the rest of the population. What is it?’

  ‘Supposing a man complains of a pain in his left arm. What would you diagnose?’

  ‘Hell, it could be anything. Have you got such a pain?’

  ‘This is hypothetical.’

  ‘I see. Could be rheumatism. What’s the hypothetical age of this hypothetical chap?’

  ‘Thirty-three.’

  ‘Then it’s unlikely to be rheumatism if he’s lived a normal civilized life. I say unlikely, but it could happen. Did he say pain or ache?’

  I consulted the medical file. ‘Actually, he said ache.’

  ‘Um. Not much to go on. Doctors usually have real patients to examine, not wraiths of your imagination.’

  I said, ‘Supposing the man was treated for rheumatism and it didn’t work, and then his doctor thought a cardiogram was indicated. What would you think then?’

  ‘How long has the man been treated for rheumatism?’

  ‘Hang on.’ I checked the file. ‘Three months.’

  Tom’s breath hissed in my ear. ‘I’m inclined to think the doctor should be struck off. Do you mean to say it took him three months to recognize a classic symptom of ischæmia?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Ischæmic heart disease - angina pectoris.’

  I suddenly felt much happier. ‘Would the man survive?’

  ‘That’s an imponderable question - very iffy. If he’s had that ache in his arm for three months and if it is ischæmic and if he hasn’t had treatment for his heart then he’ll be in pretty bad shape. His future depends on the life he’s been living, whether he smokes a lot, and whether he’s been active or sedentary.’

  I thought of Sergeant Benson in an army stores office. ‘Let’s say he’s been sedentary and we’ll assume he smokes.’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he’s dropped dead of a coronary one morning. This is hypothetical, isn’t it? Nobody I know?’

  ‘No one you know,’ I assured him. ‘But not quite hypothetical. There was a man in that condition back in 1946. He died about a month ago. What do you think of that?’

  ‘I think that I think I’m surprised, but then, medicine isn’t a predictive sport and the damnedest things can happen. I wouldn’t have thought it likely he’d make old bones.’

  ‘Neither would I,’ I said. ‘Thanks for your trouble, Tom.’

  ‘You’ll get my bill,’ he promised, and rang off.

  I depressed the telephone rest, rang Penny, and asked her the name of Benson’s doctor. She was faintly surprised but gave it to me when I said my boss wanted to tidy up a few loose ends before I was transferred. ‘It’s just a matter of firm identification.’

  The doctor’s name was Hutchins and he was a shade reserved. ‘Medical files are confidential, you know, Mr Jaggard.’

  ‘I don’t want you to break any confidences, Dr Hutchins,’ I said. ‘But the man is dead after all. All I want to know is when Benson last had a heart attack.’

  ‘Heart attack!’ echoed Hutchins in surprise. ‘I can certainly tell you all about that. It’s no breach of confidentiality on a doctor’s part if he says a man is perfectly well. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Benson’s heart; it was in better condition than my own, and I’m a much younger man. He was as fit as a flea.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ I said warmly. ‘That’s all I wanted to know.’ As I put down the telephone I thought I’d handled that rather well.

  I sat back and checked off all the points.

  ITEM: Sergeant Benson was suffering from heart disease at the end of 1946. His condition, according to Tom Packer, was grave enough so that no one would be surprised if he dropped dead.

  HYPOTHESIS: Sergeant Benson had died of heart disease some time after 18 December, 1946 and before 4 January, 1947.

  ITEM: Civilian Benson was discharged at Earl’s Court on 4 January, 1947 and subsequently showed no trace of a bad heart condition.

  HYPOTHESIS: Civilian Benson was a planted substitute for Sergeant Benson, exactly as Chelyuskin was a substitute for Private Ashton. The method was exactly the same and it happened on the same day and in the same place, so the likelihood of a connection was very high, particularly as Benson worked for Ashton for the rest of his life.

  COROLLARY: Because the methods used were identical the likelihood was high that both substitutions were planned by the same mind. But Ogilvie had told me that the idea was Chelyuskin’s own. Was Benson another Russian? Had two men been smuggled out?

  It all hung together very prettily, but it still didn’t tell me who Benson was and why he had shot Ashton.

  THIRTY

  Ogilvie was pleased about all that even though it got us no further into cracking the problem of why Benson should kill Ashton. At least we had seen the common linkage and he was confident that by probing hard enough and long enough we - or rather I - would come up with the truth. All the same he coppered his bet by having me do an intensive investigation into the life of Sergeant Benson before he joined the army. Ogilvie was a belt-and-braces man.

  So I spent a long time in the West Country looking at school records in Exeter and work records in Plymouth. At Benson’s school I found an old sepia class photograph with Benson in the third row; at least, I was assured it was Benson. The unformed young face of that thirteen-year-old gazing solemnly at the camera told me nothing. Some time in the ensuing years Benson had had his features considerably rearranged.

  There were no photographs of an older Benson to be found in Plymouth, but I did talk to a couple of people who knew him before the war. The opinion was that he wasn’t a bad chap, reasonably good at his job, but not very ambitious. All according to the record. No, he hadn’t been back since the war; he had no family and it
was assumed there was nothing for him to go back for.

  All this took time and I got back to London just as Penny and Gillian were about to leave for America. I drove them to Heathrow myself and we had a drink in the bar, toasting surgical success. ‘How long will you be away?’ I asked Gillian. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with a scarf tied wimple-fashion and large dark glasses; style coming to the aid of concealment.

  ‘I don’t know; it depends how the operations go, I suppose.’ She sketched a mock shiver. ‘I’m not looking forward to it. But Penny will be back next week.’

  Penny said, ‘I just want to see Gillian settled and to make sure everything is all right, then I’ll be back. Lummy wants to go to Scotland with me.’

  ‘So you undermined his certainty.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said noncommittally.

  ‘Did you arrange for the auction?’

  ‘It’s on Wednesday - viewing day on Tuesday. We already have a flat in town.’ She took a notebook and scribbled the address. ‘That’s where you’ll find me when I come back, if I’m not in Scotland.’

  Gillian excused herself and wandered in the direction of the ladies’ room. I took the opportunity of asking, ‘How did you get on with Ogilvie?’ I had arranged the meeting with Ogilvie as promised. He hadn’t liked it but I’d twisted his arm.

  Penny’s brow furrowed. ‘Well enough, I suppose. He told me pretty much what you have. But there was something…’

  ‘Something what?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was like speaking in a great empty hall. You expect an echo to come back and you’re a bit surprised when there isn’t one. There seemed to be something missing when Ogilvie talked. I can’t explain it any better than that.’

  Penny was right - there was a hell of a lot missing. Her psychic antennae were all a-quiver and she perceived a wrongness but had no way of identifying it. Below the level of consciousness her intelligence was telling her there was something wrong but she didn’t have enough facts to prove it.

  Ogilvie and I knew there was something wrong because we had more facts, but even we were blocked at that moment.

  I saw them into the departure lounge, then went home and proceeded to draw up an elaborate chart containing everything I knew about the Ashton case. Lines (ruled) were drawn to connect the dramatis personae and representing factual knowledge; lines (dashed) were drawn representing hypotheses.

  The whole silly exercise got me nowhere.

  About this time I started to develop an itch in my mind. Perhaps it had been the drawing of the chart with its many connections which started it, but I had something buried within me which wanted to come to the surface. Someone had said something and someone else had said something else, apparently quite unrelated and the little man Hunch who lived in the back of my skull was beginning to turn over in his sleep. I jabbed at him deliberately but he refused to wake up. He would do so in his own good time and with that I had to be content.

  On the Tuesday I went to the Ashton house for the public viewing. It was crowded with hard-eyed dealers and hopeful innocents looking for bargains and not finding much because all the good stuff had gone to the London flat or to Sotheby’s. Still, there was enough to keep them happy; the accumulated possessions of a happy family life of fifteen years. I could see why Penny didn’t want to be there.

  I wasn’t there to buy anything, nor was I there out of mere curiosity. We had assumed Ashton had hidden something and, although we hadn’t found it, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. When I say ‘we’ I really mean Ogilvie, because I didn’t wholly go along with him on that. But he could have been right, and I was on hand to see if any suspicious-looking characters were taking an undue interest. Of course, it was as futile an exercise as drawing the chart because the normal dealer looks furtive and suspicious to begin with.

  During the morning I bumped into Mary Cope. ‘Hello, Mary,’ I said. ‘Still here, then.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m to live in the house until it’s been sold. I still have my flat upstairs.’ She surveyed the throng of inquisitive folk as they probed among the Ashtons’ possessions. ‘It’s a shame, sir, it really is. Everything was so beautiful before…before…’

  She was on the verge of tears. I said, ‘A pity, Mary, but there it is. Any offers for the house yet?’

  ‘Not that I know of, sir.’

  ‘What will you do when it’s sold?’

  ‘I’m to go to London when Miss Penny and Miss Gillian come back from America. I don’t know that I’ll like London, though. Still, perhaps it will grow on me.’

  ‘I’m sure it will.’

  She looked up at me. ‘I wish I knew what was in God’s mind when he does a thing like this to a family like the Ashtons. You couldn’t wish for better people, sir.’

  God had nothing to do with it, I thought grimly; what happened to the Ashtons had been strictly man-made. But there was nothing I could say to answer such a question of simple faith.

  ‘It’s not only Mr Ashton, though,’ said Mary wistfully. ‘I miss Benson. He was such a funny man - always joking and light-hearted; and he never had a wrong word for anyone. He did make us laugh, sir; and to think that he and Mr Ashton should die like that, and in a foreign country.’

  ‘Did Benson ever talk about himself, Mary?’

  ‘About himself, sir? How do you mean?’

  ‘Did he ever tell anecdotes - stories - about his early life, or when he was in the army?’

  She thought about it, then shook her head. ‘No, Benson was a man who lived in the present. He’d joke about politicians, and what he’d read in the papers or seen on telly. A real comedian, Benson was; had us in stitches a lot of the time. I used to tell him he should have been on the stage, but he always said he was too old.’

  A real comedian! What an epitaph for a man whose last macabre joke was to shoot his master. I said, ‘You’d better look sharp, Mary, or some of these people will be stealing the spoons.’

  She laughed. ‘Not much chance of that, sir. The auctioneer has Securicor men all over the place.’ She hesitated. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I can make it in my flat.’

  I smiled. ‘No, thank you, Mary. I don’t think I’ll be staying long this morning.’

  All the same, I was there next day for the actual auction, and why I was there I didn’t really know. Perhaps it was the feeling that with the dispersal of the contents of the house the truth about the Ashton case was slipping away, perhaps to be lost forever. At any rate I was there, impotent with ignorance, but on the spot.

  And there, to my surprise, was also Michaelis. I didn’t see him until late morning and was only aware of him when he nudged me in the ribs. The auctioneer was nattering about a particularly fine specimen of something or other so we withdrew to Ashton’s study, now stripped rather bare. ‘What a bloody shame this is,’ he said. ‘I’m glad Gillian isn’t here to see it. Have you heard anything yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ he said broodily. ‘I wrote to her but she hasn’t replied.’

  ‘She’s only been gone four days,’ I pointed out gently. ‘The postal services weren’t that good even in their palmy days.’

  He grinned and seemed oddly shy. ‘I suppose you think I’m making a damned fool of myself.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘No more than me. I wish you luck.’

  ‘Think I have a chance?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. In fact, I think you have everything going for you, so cheer up. What are you doing here anyway?’

  ‘That model railway still interests me. I thought that if it’s broken up for sale I might put in a bid or two. Of course, in model railway terms to break up that system would be like cutting up the Mona Lisa and selling bits of it. But it won’t be broken up and I won’t have a chance. Lucas Hartman is here.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Oh, everybody in the model railway world knows Hartman. He’s a real model railway buff, but he calls it railroad because he’s an American.
He’s also quite rich.’

  ‘And you think he’ll buy it as it stands?’

  ‘He’s sure to. He’s up in the attic gloating over it now.’

  ‘How much do you think it will bring?’ I asked curiously.

  Michaelis shrugged. ‘That’s hard to say. It’s not exactly standard stuff - there’s so much extra built in that it’s hard to put a price on it.’

  ‘Have a try.’

  ‘For the rail and rolling stock and normal control instrumentation, all of which is there, it would cost about £15,000 to build from scratch, so let’s say it might bring between £7000 and £10,000 at auction. As for the other stuff built in, that’s more difficult to assess. I’d say it’ll double the price.’

  ‘So you think it will bring somewhere between £15,000 and £20,000.’

  ‘Something like that. Of course, the auctioneer will have a reserve price on it. Any way you look at it, Hartman will get it. He’ll outbid the dealers.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ I said philosophically. ‘It will fall into good hands - someone who appreciates it.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Michaelis gloomily. ‘The bloody thing beat me in the end, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you know those schedules I talked about - I showed you one of them.’

  ‘The London, Midland and Scottish, I think it was.’

  ‘That’s right. I compared them against old Bradshaws and got nowhere. I even went right back to mid-1800s and nothing made sense. The system doesn’t seem to compare with any normal railway scheduling.’

  ‘Not even when those schedules were clearly labelled “LMS” and so on,’ I said slowly.

  ‘They don’t fit at any point,’ said Michaelis. ‘It beats me.’

  There was a picture in my mind’s eye of Ashton’s clenched fist opening to reveal a railway timetable - Stockholm to Göteborg, and it was like a bomb going off in my skull. ‘Jesus!’

  Michaelis stared at me. ‘What’s wrong?’