Play to the End

by Robert Goddard

  “Ian Maple? Who’s he?”

  “You can drop the pretence with me, Roger. It’s pointless.”

  “Sobotka’s under arrest, Toby. He’s facing a lengthy prison sentence for drug trafficking. Doubtless he’s doing everything he can to chalk up some points in his favour. Pinning something on me would win him a whole load of points. So, if he could lead the police to where you seem to think I’m holding Derek Oswin, he would. But he can’t. Because I have no more idea where Oswin is than you have.”

  We’d joined the Lewes Road and passed the turning that formerly led to Colbonite. Roger was driving faster as the traffic thinned on the dual carriageway out through the suburbs.

  “You’re the one who’s been cosying up to Oswin this past week, not me,” he continued. “You’re the one who knows how his picky little mind works. So, it shouldn’t really be beyond you to figure out why he’s done a runner. Or where to.”

  Could it be true? Had Derek vanished of his own accord? Had he faked his own abduction? I began to think about the scene at his house: the evidence of a struggle; the carefully scattered clues. It could have been stage-managed. Even the “commotion” the neighbour had heard on Wednesday night could have been the work of one clever, calculating, painstaking man.

  “Want to know what I think, Toby? I think Oswin’s been pulling your strings all week. A twitch here, a twitch there. And off you’ve gone, causing me more trouble than he ever could.”

  “No. It’s his manuscript you’re worried about. It’s what he says in it about Colbonite. That’s why you removed the original from Viaduct Road and stole the copy I’d sent to my agent.”

  “Run past me how I managed that last bit, given that I didn’t know you had it to send. I don’t even know who your agent is. Or care.”

  “Jenny could have told you.”

  “Well, we can check that with her, can’t we?”

  “Derek can’t have…done it all himself.” The words died in my throat as the implications of such a possibility ramified in my mind. There was more to consider than his apparent abduction. There were the stolen tapes, returned with a threatening message in which only his voice featured. And there was the missing manuscript, the damage it might do Colborn rendered tantalizingly unquantifiable. I hated Colborn because Jenny preferred him to me. It was as simple as that. And Derek knew it. The question was: had he exploited my hatred to serve his own?

  “Do you know what the biggest irony is in all this, Toby? It’s the fact that none of the digging for dirt you’ve done would have mattered if Sobotka hadn’t gone and got his collar felt. He’s been useful. But not useful enough to justify the risk he’s exposed me to. I can’t afford to have the police sniffing round my business affairs. They might catch a few iffy aromas. Chances are I can fend them off. But not if you feed your suspicions into the works. I have a horrible feeling that would give their investigation more momentum than I can soak up.”

  “I’m surprised you think you have anything to worry about,” I said bitterly. And it was true. I was surprised.

  “That’s because you don’t know what’s likely to emerge. Maybe Oswin does. I’m not sure. Either way, it’s time I put you in the picture.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s time I told you the truth.”

  “You must be joking. You tell me the truth?”

  “It’s up to you whether you believe it, of course. But I think you will.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Wait and see.”

  He paused for a moment, concentrating on the flow of traffic as he joined the A27, eased the Porsche into the outside lane and took her swiftly up beyond the speed limit as we headed east towards Lewes. Then he resumed, his tone of voice bizarrely relaxed.

  “You and Jenny would still be together if you hadn’t lost your son. Let’s be honest, now. You would be. Peter’s death was too big a blow for you to bear. You blamed yourselves and each other. And the blame drove you apart. Most of all, though, the loss did that. The grief. The pain. The having him and then the not having him.”

  “If you’re expecting me to thank you for your six penn’orth of psychological platitudes, then—”

  “I’m making a point, Toby. Bear with me. If I’d died aged four and a half, do you think my parents would have parted? I don’t. In fact, I suspect they’d have drawn closer together. Back together. Because I wasn’t theirs. Not wholly. I wasn’t their son. I was twenty-eight when Mother told me who my real father was. Twenty-eight. I thought I knew exactly who and what I was. Then she took it away from me. She had some idea that I needed to understand her. She was egotistical to the last. Suicide’s a pretty selfish act, don’t you think?”

  “Depends what leads to it.”

  “In my mother’s case, the realization that I wasn’t going to forgive her. Driving off Beachy Head, where she’d staged so many calculatedly indiscreet assignations with Kenneth Oswin, was her way of making me feel guilty for not stopping her. It was her last mistake. I didn’t blame myself for what she’d done. I blamed her.”

  “But you never told your father that you knew the truth.”

  “My legal father, you mean? No.”

  “So there was never any chance he might blame you.”

  “Ha. You reckon that’s why I said nothing to him, do you? Nice try, Toby. But wide of the mark. I said nothing because he said nothing. I wanted to be as real a son to him as I could be. And I believed he wanted the same.”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “Not strongly enough, as it transpired. He hankered after Mother. More and more as he aged. I didn’t know about the medium until I was sent the tape. If I had, I’d have put a stop to it. As it was, I had to deal with the consequences as best I could.”

  “What consequences?”

  “His abrupt change of heart. His U-turn on the question of compensation for Colbonite workers suffering from cancers supposedly caused by exposure to a chloro-aniline curing agent we used in the dyeing shop. Suddenly, he was all for giving them every penny he had. And every penny I stood to inherit from him. The séance was a set-up. I’m sure of it. The medium was probably one of our former employees, or the relative of one. ‘Whatever wrongs you’ve done, it’s not too late to put them right.’ Remember that line? Money’s what she was talking about. A commodity that doesn’t count for much in the spirit world.”

  “You don’t believe the medium was in touch with your mother, then?”

  “Of course I don’t. It was a scam. But a clever one, I admit. Father swallowed it whole. He suddenly saw a way to assuage the guilt he felt for not saving Mother from herself by throwing money around in a fit of late-life generosity. I tried to talk him out of it, but his mind was made up.”

  “Some would say he simply saw the error of his ways.”

  “Only people with soft hearts and simple minds. We’ve got a National Health Service to look after the sick and dying. None of the so-called victims had any claim on my birthright.”

  “Even though one of them was your real father?”

  “What had Kenneth Oswin ever done for me? I owed him nothing. The debt was all the other way.” Roger sniggered. “Though I suppose you could say he paid it off in the end.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, even as his meaning began to dawn on me.

  “I couldn’t let Father squander the capital the sale of Colbonite had left him with. I’d been loyal to him. I’d done his dirty work. And I wasn’t about to be cheated out of my reward. I couldn’t make him see reason. He was determined to go ahead. So, I had to stop him.”

  “You’re saying—”

  “Oswin killed him at my bidding, Toby. Yes. You’ve got it.”

  “But…why would he…”

  “I promised to look after Derek. Financially, I mean. Oswin was dying. And he was worried his son wouldn’t be able to cope without him. As we’ve seen, I think he underestimated the resourcefulness of my half-brother, as you kindly defined him. So, the deal wa
s that I’d featherbed Derek for the rest of his life…provided Oswin made sure I had the means to do so.”

  “You…played one father off…against the other.”

  “That’s one way to put it. And I’ll tell you what, Toby. They both deserved it.”

  “You welched on the deal, didn’t you?”

  “No. Valerie Oswin did that. I’d made an initial payment to her husband, without which he’d never have gone ahead, and another afterwards. But the cheques were never cashed. After he died, she sent them back to me. Exactly how much she knew, I have no idea.”

  “And Derek, what does he know?”

  “Nothing, I suspect. His father had every incentive to keep our agreement to himself. And that’s where it could—and should—have stayed. Our secret. Mine and a dead man’s. But now, of course, I’ve been forced to share it with you.”

  “I haven’t forced you.” That was surely true. Indeed, I couldn’t understand why he’d revealed so much to me, glad though I was that he had—for more reasons than he needed to know. My puzzlement on the point made little impact on me at that moment, however, amidst my astonishment at discovering how coolly and almost casually, by his own admission, he’d arranged his father’s murder.

  “Blame circumstances, then. Perhaps it’s fairer to,” he went on. “They’ve conspired against both of us, I’m afraid. Have you noticed, by the way, that we’re not on the right road for Tunbridge Wells?”

  “What?”

  He braked heavily and flicked on the indicator. “We should have taken a left at the last roundabout but one.” The car slowed sharply to a crawl. Roger steered it up over the grass verge and we came to a juddering halt by an overgrown five-bar gate. “This is the Eastbourne road.”

  I was still trying to absorb all the implications of what he’d confessed to and, come to that, why he’d confessed. The sudden switch of subjects to the banalities of route-finding barely registered. As far as that went, I took him at his word, realizing I’d been unaware myself of our surroundings for several miles. I assumed he was about to turn round and head back, although there hardly seemed room for the manoeuvre. But he didn’t attempt to. Instead, he jumped out of the car, strode round to my side and pulled the door open.

  As he did so, I saw the gun in his hand, held low, where no passing driver would glimpse it, displayed for my benefit alone. “Move over, Toby.”

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Move over to the driver’s seat.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. Or, believe me, I will shoot.”

  I looked into his eyes and read there only deadly seriousness. The fear of imminent death jagged into me. “All right,” I said. “All right.” I released the seat belt, then cautiously levered myself over the gearshift and handbrake and settled behind the steering wheel.

  “Belt up,” said Roger. I obeyed. Then he slipped into the seat I’d just vacated and slammed the door, shutting out the rush of traffic. He pushed himself well back and away from me, the gun still held in his hand, still pointing straight at me.

  “I thought we had an agreement,” I said, my voice unsteady.

  “We do. I just didn’t mention all the caveats. But then, neither did you. Like taping our conversation.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I did, of course, and can’t have sounded genuinely uncomprehending. But I had to mount some kind of pretence.

  “You ran the tape to the end of the séance when I went in to see Delia, then started recording when I came back out. I saw you reach into your pocket to press the button as I came down the drive. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, but I was looking out for it, you see. I was expecting it.”

  “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “No need. What can be recorded can just as easily be erased.”

  “You want the tape?”

  “Not yet. And there’s no need to switch the machine off. Let’s just carry on as we are. Start driving.”

  “Where to?”

  “Straight ahead.”

  “To Eastbourne?”

  “Just drive. I’ll handle the navigation.”

  I put the car into gear, edged out into the traffic and took her up to fifty.

  “Give her a bit more. She likes to cruise.”

  I accelerated. We flashed past a sign: EASTBOURNE 10, HASTINGS 22. The road ahead was a ribbon of drizzle-glossed black between dun-green fields. Low grey cloud had camped on the downs to our right. The chilling thought struck me that I might never see the sun again. This could be it: a dull winter’s day, my last on Earth.

  “Nothing to say, Toby? Perhaps you should stop recording after all.”

  “Why don’t you do the talking?” I cast him a quick glance. “You’ve done most of it so far.”

  “Why do you think I’ve told you the truth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think about it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m serious. Think, Toby. What possible purpose could it have served? Take your time. Mull it over. We’ve a few miles to go yet.”

  “I could never prove you conspired with Kenneth Oswin to murder your father.”

  “Without the tape, you mean? No. I don’t suppose you could. But you could tell Jenny what I’ve told you. If you could convince her it was true, she and I would be finished.”

  “She wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn’t. Who can say? If someone else corroborated the story, of course, she’d have to believe it. She’d have no choice.”

  “No-one else knows. You said so yourself.”

  “Did I? I must have forgotten Delia.”

  “Delia?”

  “She prevaricated when you challenged her about her hospital visit to Oswin. I noticed the way she avoided my eye when she said she had a few ‘doubts’ about Oswin’s truthfulness. I could see it was more than that. She knew he’d lied when he denied I’d spoken to him about my parentage. And she knew why he’d lied.”

  It was suddenly as clear to me as it was to Roger. “Why should he lie?” I’d asked her. “Ah,” she’d replied. “Clearly there are limits to your perceptiveness.” Yes. There were limits to my perceptiveness. But not, apparently, to hers.

  “When did she rumble me, I wonder?” said Roger, musingly. “There and then in the hospital with Oswin? Or later? Well, it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter at all. Because I’ve devised a solution to all my problems. And you’re it, Toby.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll explain when we reach our destination. Speaking of which, I need to set up our rendezvous there with Jenny.” He plucked a mobile phone out of his pocket with his free hand.

  “Don’t drag her into whatever you’re planning, Roger.” I glanced pleadingly at him. “For God’s sake.”

  “Don’t worry. At least”—he gave me a lopsided grin—“don’t worry about Jenny. She’s going to be fine. I’ll make sure of that. Now, keep your mouth shut.” He extended his arm until the barrel of the gun was jabbing into my ribs, then punched in some numbers on the phone and held it to his ear. A few seconds later, he got an answer. “Good morning. I need to speak to one of your guests urgently. Her name’s Jennifer Flood. My name’s Roger Colborn. Yes, I’ll hold.” A few more seconds passed. “Thanks.” Then a few more. When he next spoke, it was in a tone I hardly recognized as his. “Hello, my sweet…Look, I’m sorry, but I persuaded Delia to tell me where you were staying…I know, but…Well, this is an emergency, I’m afraid. It’s Toby. He’s become completely unreasonable…None of my doing, I promise…I’m on my way to meet him now…I had to agree for Delia’s sake…Well, naturally that’s a worry, especially after what happened yesterday…He came to the house…Not pleasant, no…Look, I can’t see this ending well unless you’re there to talk him round…You will come, won’t you?…It’s for the best. We need to put a stop to this…Beachy Head.” So. Our destination was the place where Ann Colborn had gone to kill herself twe
nty years ago. My heart was racing now, sweat beading on my upper lip. Most of what Roger was telling Jenny he seemed to be making up as he went. But his prediction was spot-on. I couldn’t see this ending well either. “I don’t know,” he continued. “It makes no sense. But then he isn’t making sense…Yes…The lay-by closest to the lighthouse…Right…You’ll see the car…OK…Yes, I will be…See you soon…Love you…’Bye.” He rang off and dropped the phone back into his pocket.

  A minute or so of silence followed. Then I asked a question I wasn’t sure I wanted answering. “Why are we going to Beachy Head?”

  “I’ll explain when we get there.”

  “But we’re not just going to talk to Jenny, are we? We could have done that in Tunbridge Wells.”

  “No, Toby. We’re not just going to talk.”

  “You said that if I could convince her you’d paid Kenneth Oswin to murder your father, she and you would be finished. You must realize the same certainly applies if you kill me.”

  “That’s true. So, maybe I won’t kill you. Maybe. You’ll find out soon enough. Until then, I’m not sure we have anything more to say to each other. Just drive. I’ll give you directions when you need them.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up,” he shouted so loudly that I flinched. “Question time’s over.”

  Aside from telling me which turnings to take and when, Roger Colborn didn’t say another word as we skirted Eastbourne and headed south across the empty, rolling downs towards the end of the land and the end of our journey.

  My fear didn’t diminish as we went on. If anything, it increased. But I began, slowly and slightly, to control it, to calm my mind just enough to think about what he might be planning.

  Little good it did me. If he meant to kill me, he surely wouldn’t have told Jenny where we were going. But, if he meant to let me live, how could he guarantee I wouldn’t, sooner or later, tell her what he’d confessed to me and play her the tape to prove it? How, come to that, could he be sure Jenny wouldn’t phone Delia and be given a version of events wildly inconsistent with the one he’d just presented?