The Players And The Game

by Julian Symons

  The masks of my life are slipping away. What is my true face?

  Practical Comments. With the police visit to East Dulwich it was obvious that the magazine must end. It is little more than a year since it began, and I sent youths to that small shop in a Mitcham back street. At first I could not believe it when they came back carrying armfuls of letters from those moved by the frantic itch. Was this what people hid behind their different, discreet masks? I had not known it. So what had been begun for money, as an idea that occurred to me when I bought one of these magazines and answered an advertisement, became something else. I suppose there was an attraction in the magazine from the first, an attraction beyond money. Perhaps the idea of my own anonymity, of disguise? I cannot be sure. Not for months did I think that my mask, Dracula, who longed to rule and be loved, might find his worshippers here.

  I read all this over. What does it tell me about the truth of masks? I do not know. What do I want? I do not understand. What are these things I have done or not done, what made me do them? I cannot be sure. My purpose is to understand the nature of reality, yet how strangely has it been made manifest.

  Last night a dream. Creatures crying out, asking for pity. In a motorboat my fingers trailing through the sea. The sea was blood.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sunday Night

  Just before midnight on Sunday the weather broke. The first drops of rain fell, warm, heavy, slow. In ten minutes these drops had become a steady downpour which soaked everything and everybody involved in the scene at Green Common – everything, that is, except the body, which was protected by a covering quickly rigged up on poles by the scene-of-crime squad, as soon as they got there.

  Even so the body got wet, and the surrounding area became muddy although it had been roped off. And everybody else became very wet indeed – Hazleton directing affairs from his caravan after the first ten minutes, Paling wandering about with his hands in the pockets of his well-cut raincoat, Sir Felton Dicksee in sou’-wester hat and thighboots, Plender who had come on duty before Ray Gordon’s telephone call to the police. And of course the scene-of-crime squad and their uniformed cousins, taking flashlight pictures, shouting incomprehensible technical instructions, or just poking about in the surrounding grass, got wettest of all. Dozens of lights illuminated the dripping leaves and sodden ground and the driving lances of rain, some from the headlights of the police cars drawn up around, others from the floodlights set up by the scene-of-crime men.

  Paling turned away after looking at the body, and almost bumped into Sir Felton. The Chief Constable was in an excited state. ‘Didn’t I say it? Didn’t I ask for a full-scale search? You see the results, Paling.’

  Paling felt damp soaking through his trousers, and he had had enough of the Chief Constable. ‘We weren’t searching here, sir. Somebody stumbled over the body.’

  Sir Felton ignored this. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Not the Wilberforce girl. We’ll know more when Dr Otterley arrives. I don’t know if Hazleton’s got anything fresh.’

  Hazleton was on the telephone, and he was shouting. ‘Bloody well find him, and get him out here.’ He lowered his voice and said sweetly, ‘Tell Dr Otterley I’m sorry to disturb him, but this is very urgent. Yes, I know you say he’s out and you’re trying to get a message through, my dear, I’m just saying this in case you talk to him.’ He put down the telephone. ‘Bloody doctors, what do we pay them for? It’s Otterley, sir. His housekeeper says he’s out somewhere at dinner and can’t be located. I believe he’s tucked up in bed and she won’t wake him up.’

  Sir Felton frowned. He never liked to hear even a hint of slackness. ‘Who is she, Hazleton?’

  ‘We haven’t disturbed the body, sir, but it’s obvious she’s been dead some time. It isn’t the Wilberforce girl, but it could be the au pair. And she hasn’t been where she is now for long, you can tell that from the state of the grass. Dumped in the past week, more recently very like. Covered by some sort of sacking bag, the kind you use for vegetables. Some clothes are there too, put beside her. Otherwise she’s naked, as you may have seen.’

  ‘That gap in Vane’s alibi,’ Paling said. He reminded the Chief Constable. ‘He went to a pub by Green Common on Friday night, then there was a time lag. Just about enough time to allow for dumping a body.’

  ‘Why should he do that?’

  ‘We’d been talking to him, he got worried. Why do people do silly things?’

  Hazleton did not want to disagree openly. He remained silent. There was a clatter outside. It was the mobile canteen, with cups of tea. Sir Felton took a silver-covered flask from his pocket, poured some of the contents into his plastic container of tea, and offered it to his companions. Both accepted. Hazleton was thinking that there was something, after all, to be said for the Chief Constable, when he said sharply, ‘Poky place, this. Should have a proper murder-room.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We didn’t get the news until nearly eleven-thirty, too late to set up in a church hall or women’s institute. With this we’re right on the spot.’

  Sir Felton grunted. ‘Talked to the people who found the body? That journalist.’

  ‘Sergeant Plender’s doing that now, sir. In one of the cars.’

  Plender talked first to Ray Gordon, then to the girl. There seemed no reason to suspect their stories of being untrue. Gordon had been mixed up in the case at an early stage, but why should he use this means of calling attention to himself? He had telephoned the London papers already, and was frantically anxious to ring them again.

  ‘In a detective story you’d have arranged to find the body so that you could get a news scoop.’

  ‘If you believe that–’

  Plender stopped him. ‘I don’t. Just thought I’d mention it, that’s all. Okay, we’ll get your statement typed up and you can go.’

  Afterwards Plender stretched luxuriously. He had brought himself up to date with what had been happening when he came on duty, and something in the reports he read had stirred his memory, although he could not think what it was. He decided to have another look through the papers in the morning.

  Outside it rained, and they waited for the pathologist. Much police work, like other forms of co-ordinated effort, consists of waiting for something to happen, for some link in the chain of causation without which the whole thing is ineffective. In the meantime, however, the reports of the scene-of-crime men gave Paling and Hazleton something to think about. The clothes found beside the body were similar to those that Anne Marie Dupont had been wearing when she disappeared. Without moving the body it was possible to see a tarnished silver ring on the middle finger of her right hand, and Anne Marie had worn a similar ring. There would have to be a formal identification, but there seemed little doubt that the body was that of the missing au pair. All this was interesting for the DCS and the DCI (the CC, to their relief, had gone home), but those outside the caravan simply stood around and got wetter. They had been doing this for half an hour when Otterley arrived. It turned out that he had gone on from his dinner party to a friend’s house for a nightcap. He was in the medical tradition of genial callousness.

  ‘Well, what have you got for me? Something juicy, I hope.’ When he bent down beside the body he sniffed, and whistled. ‘Very gamey. Been hung too long, like pheasant. Some more light here, if you please. Why do people always find these things at night? Now, what’s been happening to you, young lady? Nothing nice, by the look of it.’

  He opened his bag, took out a pair of forceps and some buff envelopes, carefully picked crumbs of something from the girl’s body and put them in an envelope.

  Half an hour later he reported to Paling and Hazleton. ‘You want me to perform miracles for you, gentlemen, no doubt. Too late at night for miracles, but actually there’s nothing too difficult here. You’ll understand I mean it’s not difficult to make informed guesses. Facts will have to wait for the pm. Is that what you want?’ They said it was.

  ‘Right. She was a well-developed girl, good p
hysical condition, height about five-three, age about twenty. Cause of death, strangulation. Some form of ligature, probably a rope – I’d better say again that these are guesses. She’d been physically assaulted, cuts all over her body, face, breasts, buttocks, genitals. What look like nasty bite marks on breasts and neck.’

  ‘Dracula,’ Hazleton said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing. Go on.’

  ‘Sexual assault too, again savage, brutal. May have been some sort of instrument. Looks as though her wrists were bound. The assaults weren’t the cause of death though, that was the ligature. Just torture. Very jolly.’

  ‘Would you say one person was involved or two?’ Paling asked.

  ‘Two or three, you mean, don’t you?’ Otterley replied with insolent good humour. ‘The victim was involved, very much so. How many others? Shouldn’t care to say, may have been a dozen. Pm may help, but I doubt it.’

  ‘When was she killed?’

  ‘Not asking for the day and hour, I hope. Six weeks to two months ago. It’s a guess, mind, but you’ll find I’m right. Does it fit? From the looks on your faces I should say it does.’

  ‘It fits,’ Hazleton said. Anne Marie had disappeared on the night of 27 May, and it was now the 25th of July.

  ‘Of course you’d realised that she wasn’t killed where she was found. Hadn’t been there more than three days. But here’s something you won’t know. There are fragments of stuff in her hair, on her body, on that sack covering her. The lab will check on them, but they look to me like concrete not properly set.’

  ‘You mean she was buried in concrete and taken out again?’

  ‘I must say that’s the thought roaming about my mind. And now, gentlemen, I propose to depart for my bed and some well-earned shuteye. I’ll tell you more when I’ve had the lady on the slab, but don’t expect anything dramatic. My guess would be that I’ve given you all the news that matters.’

  After Otterley’s departure the scene rapidly changed, so that it resembled the dismantling of a Big Top after the end of a circus. The body was removed, the floodlights packed up, the improvised covering for the area around the body removed. The cars departed. There remained only the ropes surrounding the place where the girl had been found, and a solitary police car with a couple of men in it whose job was to keep away the curious.

  Paling and Hazleton were among the last to leave. Should they pull in Vane for questioning, or leave him to stew until they got the lab report?

  ‘I hate to say it at this time of night, but we ought to pick him up now,’ Paling said. ‘If he carried a body in his car boot there must be traces of it.’

  ‘And tomorrow he’s going on some sort of management course in Hampshire.’

  They sent Plender to pick up Vane, and returned to Rawley. Twenty minutes later the sergeant rang to say that he could get no answer from the house, and that Vane’s car was not in the garage.

  ‘Our bird’s flown,’ Paling said. ‘That settles it. We pull him in.’

  Hazleton agreed. It looked as though his sense of smell had failed him after all.

  Hazleton dropped into bed at a quarter to four in the morning. At eight-thirty the telephone rang and rang. Plender’s voice, fresh and cheerful (but then he had had time off) said, ‘The dredger’s found another one, sir.’

  The DCI was still half asleep. ‘Another what?’

  ‘Body. In the pond at Batchsted Farm. The Wilberforce girl.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  One Way of Solving your Problems

  Monday morning, o-nine-thirty hours. Paul Vane drove his car up an avenue of oak trees which came out at an eighteenth-century country house, with a lot of later additions that had converted its original squareness into a rectangle. A man took his suitcase, and directed him round to the garage at the back. When he returned the door was opened by a well-scrubbed smiling figure dressed in country tweeds.

  ‘I’m Jay Burns Lawrence. I’d like it if you’d call me Jay. And you’re–’

  ‘Paul Vane.’

  ‘Glad to know you, Paul.’ He led the way through a panelled hall to a large comfortable living-room where two men sat talking. ‘This is Paul Vane. Paul, meet Peter Madeley and Geoffrey Sturtevant-Evans.’ Madeley was tall with a craggy face and deep-set eyes, Sturtevant-Evans a dapper figure who had an air of wishing to dissociate himself from his companions and surroundings.

  ‘You’re bright and early,’ Lawrence said.

  ‘I drove down last night and stayed at the pub in the village.’

  Lawrence smacked his thigh. ‘If only I’d known. You could have stayed here, like Peter and Geoffrey. Of course they had some way to drive.’

  ‘From Leeds.’ Madeley made it sound like Vladivostok.

  ‘And Geoffrey comes from Swansea. They wanted to be in at the start of things, like yourself. The others will he along later, quite a small party this time, eight in all. Smoke, Paul?’

  The cigarette case opened like a trap. ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘I’ll say to you what I’ve already said to the others. You’re here for a couple of weeks. You’ll find meal times posted in your rooms, and we’d like you to be here for them, but apart from that you’ll do what you like for the first week. Get to know each other, discuss any problems you may have, either business or personal, play games – there are tennis courts, though I’m afraid the weather’s not too good for them, a very well-fitted games room – go out for walks, do whatever you like.’

  ‘Church architecture is one of my interests,’ Madeley said sepulchrally.

  ‘I believe Grattingham Church has a rather famous font. By the end of the week you’ll be tuned in both to yourselves and to each other. In week two you’re split into groups of four – actually, you’ll find you split naturally into groups – and you carry out certain practical work – situation assignments. I won’t go into them in detail. I’ll say no more than this. The course fulfils the old religious injunction: Know Thyself. And it fulfils another: Know Thy Neighbour.’

  Later Paul Vane was shown up to a light airy bedroom, with a window looking out on to the garages at the back and the park-like gardens. He stared at his face in the mirror. There were deep dark shadows under his eyes, the graze on his face showed clearly. He breathed on his hand and sniffed. It seemed to him that a whiff of liquor came off. ‘I shall have to be very careful,’ he said, without having any idea of what he meant.

  Outside a thin rain persistently fell.

  Monday morning. Ten hours fifteen minutes. A thin rain persistently fell. They had opened up Batchsted Farm and taken the body of Pamela Wilberforce inside. Dr Otterley, jokier than ever this morning, had made his preliminary examination. The girl had probably been killed on Friday night, possibly early on Saturday morning. She had been strangled with a ligature like the others, cut like the others. Her genitals and rectum had been violated by some sort of instrument like a bottle or a dildo. In this case, however, there were no bite marks on breast and neck, and there had been no attempt at intercourse. More detailed news after the post-mortem. ‘Keeping me busy,’ Otterley said with a chuckle as he drove away. ‘Try and wait twenty-four hours before you find the next one, there’s a good chap.’

  A murder-room had been set up in the village hall at Sutton Willis. There Hazleton and a depressed Paling dealt with the mass of incidental details like getting hold of Pamela’s father to identify his daughter, and Dick Service to identify Anne Marie. Ray Gordon’s telephone calls had caught the morning papers which blossomed into headlines ranging from ‘Missing Girl Found Dead In Wood’ to ‘Rawley Maniac Strikes Again’. The London reporters were down in force, and discovery of the second body had made them frantic as bees in search of their queen. Paling felt that he could hardly bear it, and the fact that the Chief Constable might arrive at any time did nothing to assuage that feeling. He made a statement to the reporters suggesting that an early arrest was likely. This sent most of them to the village pub, which opened at ten-thirty to
better business than it had done for years.

  Monday morning, ten-thirty hours. Plender stood at the door by Bay Trees fiddling with the lock. DC Paterson waited behind him. Plender had had no time to look at the papers and check on that curious feeling about missing something. The second key worked, and they stepped into the hall.

  There is something unmistakable about an empty house, and Plender knew that there was nobody in it even as he called Vane’s name. They searched methodically from top floor to cellar, finding nothing of interest until they reached the cellar. The floor here was concrete, but in one corner this had been disturbed, and an excavation made. It was obviously the place from which Anne Marie Dupont’s body had been taken.

  The light in the cellar was dim. Paterson shone a torch in Plender’s direction. He saw that the concrete near the part dug up was of a lighter colour, and different in texture, from the rest of the cellar floor.

  ‘He buried her and concreted it over,’ Paterson suggested.

  ‘Yes. But why dig her up?’

  Paterson was not hesitant about expressing his opinions. ‘This hole where he put her, Sarge, it’s not very deep. You can see that from the amount of soil there now. I reckon he did the job in a hurry, didn’t put her far enough down, spread the concrete thin and uneven, and it cracked. Then she’d start to smell.’