The Players And The Game

by Julian Symons

  ‘Hunchback?’

  ‘Just a joke.’ She became aware that somebody was in the back of the car, turned. ‘It’s a little party, is it? Where are we going?’

  ‘Why did you bring somebody else with you?’

  She turned back towards the driver, and so never saw the pad that was pressed firmly over her mouth and nostrils from behind.

  Chapter Twenty

  Extracts from a Journal

  Saturday, July 23

  Why is what seems like fulfilment disappointing, so that in the end it is not fulfilment at all? I have looked for an answer to this from the Master, but have not found it. Yet surely he knew such sorrows, the joys that turn to ash, better than any man who has ever lived.

  The girl Pamela. I read what I wrote about her only a day or two ago. ‘She has understanding, her vision sees beyond what is trivial,’ etc. All wrong, wrong. She was nothing but triviality, mere modern rubbish.

  I am copying here part of the tape that we made. Bonnie is keeping the tape. It gives her the most passionate pleasure. I cannot say that it gives such pleasure to me, but I note it down. In a sense Pamela’s triviality is our justification.

  We had set everything up. She was tied in a suitable manner. I have noted only part of the tape, there was a great deal more.

  Dracula: What you have to understand, Pamela, is that you are in a communion with us that is something quite new. You are entering a different world from any you have ever known.

  Pamela: Oh, stop talking such balls. If you want kinky sex, let’s get on with it.

  Bonnie: You see. Let me –

  Dracula: No, Bonnie.

  Pamela: What is it? What’s she want to do with me?

  Dracula: Pamela. I want you to understand.

  Pamela: I’m not a lizzie, but I don’t mind trying.

  Dracula: Listen to me. The communion Bonnie and I want is not sexual, though sex may enter it. It is religious. Try to understand. Can you imagine being subjected to torments, and rising through and beyond them to another plane of being, to utter peace? Can you imagine the total joy when fantasy becomes reality? You remember, I asked you that in my letter.

  Pamela: Yes.

  Dracula: Tell me, what is your greatest, deepest fantasy?

  Pamela: Oh, I don’t know. Being able to go to Yves Saint-Laurent’s autumn show and order all the clothes I want. Going in the Royal Box at Ascot, and everyone noticing me. Going to bed with a man on a yacht, and it turns out he’s a millionaire, and makes me a present of the yacht.

  Dracula: Is that all?

  Pamela: I could think better if I was free.

  Dracula: Nothing else, nothing higher?

  Pamela: I don’t know. I don’t know what you want me to say.

  Dracula: We don’t want you to say anything, it is what you want to say. Let me tell you something. I am Count Dracula. She is Bonnie Parker.

  Pamela: You’re mad. (A scream.) What’s she doing, keep her away. Oh.

  Bonnie: Bonnie likes the sight of blood, you see. It excites her. I’ll kiss it, that nasty cut.

  Pamela: Keep away from me. Please keep her away from me.

  Dracula: Keep away.

  Bonnie: It’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’

  Dracula: No no. Pamela, don’t you understand anything of what is meant by the pain barrier? Athletes feel it, and if they are great they go beyond it and find themselves somewhere where pain doesn’t exist. Is it a fantasy to think that you can get beyond pain? For those athletes it is true, they make that fantasy become reality. That is what we are trying to do. When does pain become pleasure, and pleasure become pain? Consider all this as a game, and yourself as one of the players.

  Pamela: Oh Christ, Christ, get me out of this.

  (A scrabbling sound then, her attempt to run out of the room with her legs hobbled, a thud as she is pushed to the floor.)

  Dracula: You see, don’t you? I am your superior. I order, you obey.

  Pamela: Only because you’ve tied my legs, you bastard.

  Dracula: The circumstances do not matter, it is the fact that matters. Have the vision to see yourself as a slave.

  Bonnie: Come on. Let’s do something.

  Dracula: You do not understand. Crawl across the floor to me, Pamela. Kiss my feet.

  Those last words I spoke gently, a good master to his servant. They were rewarded by a flood of filthy abuse which I shall not transcribe. Indeed, I shall put down nothing more. What happened excited and disgusted me, but it was a disappointment. The Game should be a Thing-in-itself, the image of a perfect Reality. Yet it always fails.

  Comments and Reflections. I said before that there was sex in what we did, and it must be exorcised. Did we do that here? I cannot remember.

  The tape-recorder. A failure. Bonnie does not think so, she is keeping it to gloat over and replay. But I shall not permit its use again. I am shocked by what the tape says. It does not tell the truth I hoped for.

  Bonnie. She has a kind of blood lust. My aim is purity, the perfect relationship, hers is to cut and maim. Was this once my aim too? Yes, but something more. Bonnie takes only her own satisfaction seriously, not the Theory of the Game. That is not permissible. It must be stopped.

  Last night she laughed at me, asked why Dracula did not play his proper vampire’s part. But it is the Theory that stirs me, its abstract perfection. I do not like the taste of blood.

  All this written on the following day, Saturday, in deepest depression. Uncertain of intentions, desires, whether to go on. By ordinary standards what I have done is ‘wrong’. Do those standards matter? The Master says: ‘All “evil” actions are motivated by the instinct of self-preservation, or still more accurately, by the individual’s eye to pleasure and to the avoidance of pain; but as motivated in this way they are not evil.’ Or again he speaks of the lonely man who conceals his thoughts and lives in the cave of his imagination. ‘From time to time, we take revenge for our violent concealment, for our enforced restraint. We come out of our cave with frightening looks, our words and deeds are then explosions, and it is possible that we collapse within ourselves. In such a dangerous fashion do I live.’

  I am that violent concealed man. I am Friedrich Nietzsche. And you out there, all you others, are not you also concealed in your caves?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The End of Friday

  It was after eleven o’clock when the bell rang. Norah looked at her husband. ‘That man.’

  The brigadier had been occupied with The Times crossword. At her words he made a feebly negative gesture, as though it would silence the bell.

  ‘No doubt he wants to create a brawl. You must send him away.’

  ‘I don’t quite see–’

  ‘Charles. Must I go myself?’

  The bell rang again. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Just get rid of him.’

  The door revealed Paul Vane. ‘Well,’ the brigadier said with apparent surprise. ‘It’s you, Paul.’ His son-in-law stared at him. ‘What sort of a night is it?’ He went outside, sniffed the air, looked up at the stars. ‘Fine night. How are you, Paul, my boy?’

  ‘Is Alice here?’

  It struck the brigadier for the first time that Paul was not entirely sober. The outer signs were not great, some disarrangement of the hair, distinctly dirty shoes, a wild look, but the fact was unquestionable to somebody who had seen as many men three sheets in the wind as the brigadier. ‘Alice,’ he said like a man naming a strange animal. ‘You’re looking for Alice.’

  ‘Are you going to ask me in?’

  ‘Of course, Paul. It’s only–’

  They were in the hall. The drawing-room door opened framing Norah. She advanced, glaring. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Just to know if Alice is here. I want to talk to her.’

  She glared in the direction of the stairs, as though calculating the possibility of interposing her body if Paul made a dash for them. Then she said unwillingly, ‘We can’t tal
k out here.’

  The brigadier trotted behind them, happy that decision had been taken out of his hands. ‘Spot of whisky?’ he suggested The words were ignored.

  ‘Alice is here, then.’

  ‘She is in bed. She has taken a sedative. I should not think of disturbing her.’ Advancing on Paul, and positively swelling a little as she did so, she said, ‘Alice has left you for good. From what she’s told me, I’m not surprised.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The schoolchildren.’ She averted her eyes. ‘And now you have mixed yourself up in this unsavoury affair. I think she has been very forbearing.’

  Paul Vane raised his arm. Norah stepped back, giving a refined scream. The brigadier moved forward and clutched the arm. ‘Now then, Paul, old man–’

  ‘Let go of my arm, what the hell’s the matter with you.’ He jerked his arm free. ‘She’s my wife. I want to talk to her.’

  ‘Alice is asleep. I absolutely forbid it.’ Now Norah did move to stand in front of the door. ‘If you want to communicate with her you can write a letter. Or telephone. But I doubt if she will speak.’

  Paul Vane looked so miserable, so utterly lost and hopeless, that the brigadier was moved to pity. ‘Couldn’t we, my dear – after all, Paul has his rights–’

  ‘No.’ As though sensing that the danger was over she moved from the door. ‘Alice is overwrought. I will not have her disturbed.’ She accompanied him like a bodyguard on his way out of the house.

  The brigadier came too, and put his head through the car window. ‘Careful how you go. Don’t want any accidents. Norah’s right, you know, no good talking tonight. Leave things a day or two, you’ll find it may all blow over. I mean, women.’

  The car started, went down the drive. Its tail light disappeared. ‘You should have let him see her.’

  His wife scuffed the ground with her shoe. ‘He’s made marks on the gravel.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A Hard Saturday

  Saturday morning, o-nine-thirty hours. Hazleton’s first thought when Vane opened the door was that here was a man going to pieces. It was not just that he was wearing an old shirt and trousers so that his usual appearance of bandbox smartness had gone, or that he was unshaved and smelt of drink. Something more than this showed in the pinched nose and red eyes. Hazleton had seen enough men toppling towards collapse to recognise one now. Just one little push and – what would happen then?

  Honesty as the DCI practised it was always a matter of policy, and he thought it politic to be half-way honest now. He refused to join Vane in the whisky he was drinking, and said, ‘I won’t beat about the bush. Yesterday we had a man watching you. Last night you gave him the slip. Where did you go?’

  Vane looked out of the window. ‘You’ve called off the hounds.’

  ‘For the moment. If we put them on again we’ll try to make sure you don’t get away so easily. Well, Mr Vane?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Where were you?’

  Vane sloshed the whisky about in his glass. ‘What the hell business is it of yours? I don’t mind saying, but what the hell business is it of the bloody police?’ Hazleton waited. Vane pushed a piece of paper towards him. ‘I found this waiting for me when I got home last night. A nice little welcome.’

  Hazleton read the letter. ‘What does it mean, “That and everything else”?’

  ‘I told you the other night. About – not doing it.’

  ‘So you did. That’s what “everything else” means, is it? It doesn’t mean your wife is worried about your connection with murder.’

  ‘Of course it bloody doesn’t. You’re persecuting me, trying to plant something on me. Somebody’s–’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing.’ For a moment the man had looked frightened. Why?’

  ‘So you found this note. What did you do?’

  ‘Went out and got drunk.’

  ‘Not immediately. You got home before seven, left at a quarter to nine.’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell I did. Drank. Sat and thought. Then went out so that I could drink with other people.’

  ‘You went out at eight forty-three. Our man says you deliberately set out to lose him. Why?’

  ‘It wasn’t too difficult.’ The ghost of a smile flickered round Vane’s mouth. ‘I didn’t want to be followed about.’

  ‘Nobody else spotted you.’ Vane shrugged. ‘You came back at twenty-three fifty-seven, three minutes before midnight.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Where had you been?’

  ‘Drinking. Not in town, that may be why your chaps missed me. I went to a pub out at Pranting, I think it may be called the Spread Eagle, then to another one there, and a couple of others, one near Green Common.’

  ‘The Duke’s Children?’

  ‘If you say so. I was trying to get drunk. Have you ever tried to get drunk, Inspector, and just not been able to? Are you that human?’

  ‘The pubs close at eleven. It’s not an hour’s drive back from Green Common.’

  In Vane’s bleary eyes there was a sort of calculation. ‘I went to call on my military father-in-law and my bitch of a mother-in-law. I wanted to see my wife. And they wouldn’t let me. They wouldn’t wake her up.’

  If it had been me I’d have bashed the bedroom door down and dragged her out by her hair, Hazleton thought. ‘And what time was this?’

  ‘I don’t know. Must have been after eleven.’

  ‘When you left there you drove straight home.’

  ‘I expect so. I told you, I’m hazy.’

  Hazleton closed his book. ‘You’re staying here for the present, are you? I mean, people in your circumstances sometimes move out to a hotel.’

  ‘And you’d like to know which it’s going to be.’ He went over to a desk, picked up a card and dropped it in the detective’s hand. ‘My address from Monday, for the next two weeks,’ Hazleton read:

  The Jay Burns Lawrence School of Management

  Grattingham Manor

  Hampshire.

  ‘Mr Jay Burns Lawrence runs some imbecilic course for managerial people, full of all sorts of stupid tests. Thanks to your interference in my affairs I’m being sent on it. Following me about. Calling at the office, making insinuations, talking to Lowson, asking him things. You’re persecuting me.’

  Hazleton pocketed the card. ‘I’ll keep this if I may. If I were you I should stop drinking. In preparation for those tests.’

  Eleven hundred hours. The telephone rang and rang. In the end Sally Lowson put down the receiver. She had made up her mind. She dialled the police station and asked for Chief Inspector Hazleton.

  Fifteen hundred hours. Paling was off duty. Hazleton spoke to him on the telephone. ‘It looks like a real break. A girl who’s been in touch with Abel. And we’ve got an address.’

  Paling had been trying to make a precise identification of some Roman coins he had bought at a sale. He put them aside with a sigh. Half an hour later he was in the office.

  ‘I talked to this girl Sally Lowson earlier, simply because she was a friend of Gordon.’

  ‘The journalist. Does he come into it?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it. The girl works up in Timbals London office, father’s the managing director. She’s got a friend there named Pamela Wilberforce. This Wilberforce girl got hold of one of these sex magazines that introduce singles and couples to each other. Not the ordinary friendship magazines but, you know, the kind of thing they sell in Soho.’

  ‘I can’t say I do know the kind of thing.’

  ‘She had one. Here it is.’

  The magazine was called Meet Up. It consisted solely of numbered advertisements, except for an introductory page about how nice it was for friends to meet, signed ‘Bert’ in facsimile. Paling read:

  E.63. ATTRACTIVE SEXY HOUSEWIFE, 25, would like to entertain generous mature men at her comfortable flat Satisfaction guaranteed. London.

  E.64. BUSINESSMAN, 30, wants to meet
kinky females. Has passion for rubber, enjoys TV. Essex.

  E.65. MY NAME IS STELLA. I am a real doll, and so is my husband. Would you like to watch us, or take part in three-handed fun, either sex. Have own place. London/Sussex.

  ‘What does “enjoys TV” mean? Not a quiet evening at home, I presume.’

  ‘I asked Sally Lowson that. Seems it’s transvestism. All a kind of code. She thought everyone would know what it meant.’

  ‘Are they all prostitutes?’

  Hazleton shook his head, pointed to the next advertisement.

  E.66. HUSBAND AND WIFE, young, sporty, would like to meet other couples for sex fun. No kinks, no professionals. North Wales.

  ‘Wilberforce showed the Lowson girl the magazine and they agreed to answer some of the ads. Lowson says it was a joke, but they were half-serious if you ask me. Anyway, they answered this one.’ He turned the pages, pointed to it.

  E.203. INTERESTED IN DRACULA? Horror films? Bonnie and Clyde? Gentleman, with lady helper, interested in reaching psychological reality by unlocking psychic emotional forces, would like to hear from ladies. Blankshire, Rawley or district.

  ‘You see the number.’

  ‘The one on the envelope in Louise’s bag.’

  ‘Yes. What happened is that Wilberforce answered the ads. They decided not to go on with it. The reply from E.203 was signed Abel, and they thought this particular one was such a good joke they showed it to Louise Allbright because she was always going on about wanting adventure. The Lowson girl knows Allbright wrote to Abel. She doesn’t know what happened after that.’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell us this before? Put it another way, why is she telling us now?’ Hazleton had rarely seen the Toff so stirred up. ‘To know something like this and not tell us–’

  ‘I gather Wilberforce talked her out of it. Why she’s come to us now, that’s the pay-off. They fiddled about on their own. Wilberforce wrote to Abel, got a letter from him, arranged to meet last night outside a shop in Station Road. The idea was that for safety’s sake they’d both go along. He didn’t turn up, they had a bit of an argument, and Lowson left the other girl standing there. She tried to ring her later Friday night and then this morning, got no reply. Then she got the wind up and rang us. I had a word with Saunders in the Met, and they made a call at the Wilberforce girl’s flat. The caretaker opened it up. She’s not there, and it looks as though she’s not been back.’