The Only Game

by Reginald Hill

Beck in his hands. Thrale in his grave.

  Nothing – not a kidnapped child, not a distraught mother, not a meddling priest, and certainly not a childhood friend – was going to get in his way now.

  5

  Father Blake’s driving got better as they sped up the Ml, and after a while Dog drifted off into a fitful sleep.

  He awoke to find Blake’s elbow digging into his side.

  ‘Next exit,’ said the priest. ‘Then I’ll need navigation.’

  The sign showed Northampton a few miles to the east. As he massaged the fatigue out of his face, Dog thought of Mrs Maguire. A cold woman, he’d felt, but what kind of coldness? He knew from experience about the frost that comes after sorrow, binding together what else must fall apart. But if this in its turn is thawed by a stronger, hotter grief, what happens then?

  It struck him he didn’t know if he was thinking about Mrs Maguire or himself.

  ‘Are you with us yet?’ demanded the priest.

  ‘West,’ grunted Dog. ‘Head west.’

  Along the motorway the air had been like a wintry breath, hazing the headlights. But as they headed west along the narrower A road, the haze thickened as tendrils from the surrounding fields began to link fingers ahead of them, and when they turned into a winding unclassified road, it was like moving into the gas tunnel Dog recalled from his army training days. Blake almost missed a sharp bend, hit the brake, made it, and swore in a most unpriestly fashion.

  ‘I see why you wear the collar,’ said Dog. ‘It’s a symbolic gag.’

  ‘I thought everyone knew that,’ said Blake. ‘Damn this weather.’

  ‘We may be glad of it later. Easy now. We can’t be too far away. Ah, that must be it. Don’t stop! Tench’s men could be watching for any vehicle showing a special interest.’

  What he had spotted was a large sign off to the left and reading CLAYPOLE QUARRY: COUNTY COUNCIL TRAVELLERS’ SITE.

  ‘What’s that?’ demanded Blake.

  ‘I’d have thought you’d know,’ said Dog. ‘Lots of your flock in there, Father. Local councils can’t just keep moving gypsies and travellers on any more. The law says they’ve got to provide permanent sites with facilities laid on. The art is picking some spot so out of the way or so completely derelict that none of your ordinary fixed voters will complain. A disused quarry must have seemed just about perfect, to the council I mean. And to Jonty Thrale too.’

  ‘I thought that gypsies were very clannish,’ objected Blake.

  ‘Real gypsies, maybe. But I reckon what we’ll find in there is everything from sixties hippies in beat-up transits through teepee people to your scrap metal dealers in sixty-foot trailers. One thing they’ll all have in common, though, is a deep and abiding distrust of the law. Pull in here and let’s have a look at the map.’

  Blake pulled in by a gate leading into a field. Dog spread the map out on his knees and studied it carefully. After a while Blake said impatiently, ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘No problem. Just a matter of tactics.’

  ‘Let’s see.’ The priest leaned over and peered at the map. ‘OK, so we don’t want to go down the main approach. But what’s wrong with this farm track here? It takes us close round this north side and there seems to be another track winding down here.’

  Dog said patiently, ‘True. That’s the first thing I saw, so it’s also the first thing Tench’s team saw. If I were in charge I’d put a car here to cover the approach track and a man up here with night glasses and a radio. The relief team are probably resting up in one of these two farmhouses with some story about druggies or car thieves among the travellers. Farmers hate them and are ready to believe anything about them.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Blake. ‘I’m teaching my grandmother, aren’t I? What do you suggest?’

  ‘I can’t see any alternative to slogging cross-country,’ said Dog. ‘You don’t happen to be carrying two pairs of walking boots and a couple of anoraks, do you?’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Blake. ‘We’re getting company.’

  There was a growing radiance in the mist ahead. Soon it was joined by the noise of an engine even more erratic than the Popular’s, and finally an ancient camping van came lurching out of the white swirl. Once it had been gaily decorated in rainbow whorls, but now rust was erupting through the flaking paint, and the effect was like smudged make-up on a very old tart.

  The van stopped alongside them, a window wound down in spasms, and a man with a flowing salt-and-pepper beard and a friendly smile leaned out and said, ‘Peace, brothers’.

  ‘Hi,’ said Blake, out of his window.

  ‘You folk in trouble?’ enquired the man.

  To Dog’s surprise, Blake said, ‘Afraid so. The engine’s just packed in and we were wondering where the nearest phone might be. You’re not heading anywhere near one, are you?’

  ‘Well, we’re making for the campsite at Claypole Quarry just a ways down the road here. You’re welcome to a lift.’

  ‘Is there a phone there then?’

  ‘No, but some of the gyps with the big trailers have car phones now and they might let you ring a garage if you flash some folding money. Only I shouldn’t let them know where your car’s situated, else by the time the breakdown people get here, you’ll likely be short of a couple of wheels. Hop in the back. Frodo, open the door.’

  ‘Perhaps you should teach your grandmother after all,’ murmured Dog as they got out of the car.

  The van door was opened by a sullen-faced youth in his late teens, presumably Frodo. A girl of about ten was lying on a bunk. In the passenger seat was a thin-faced woman of indeterminate age with a small child asleep across her lap and a very young baby in her arms.

  ‘Have you been to this site before?’ asked Dog.

  ‘Just once,’ yelled the driver over the grind of the engine. ‘Don’t much care for organized sites, and in any case, the gyps usually get there first and make sure what they call the hips aren’t welcome. But the people got established here in numbers early on so the gyps have just had to put up with it. And with Christmas coming on, we thought it would be nice to head somewhere with a few facilities and a bit of company.’

  They reached the direction sign and turned off the road. The combination of grimy glass and swirling mist made it impossible to see anything out of the side windows. Presumably it was as difficult to see in from outside, but Dog kept well back just in case.

  The track descended quite steeply then levelled out, and now over the driver’s shoulder he could see lights, the vinegary glow of electric bulbs through trailer windows and the dancing red of camp fires burning holes in the mist. Even this brief glimpse showed the described apartheid, with gleaming trailers and a couple of traditional caravans at one end of the site and a more battered and eclectic collection of hippie vehicles at the other.

  The quarry had been dug out of the face of a hillside leaving a broad arena, backed by fifty-foot cliffs to the north with open ground sloping away to the south. Under the cliffs ran a row of sentry box toilets with standpipes between them, presumably in compliance with some official version of ‘permanence’. On the blasted rock above the toilets someone had aerosoled some words. Dog made out a couple of them through the swirling mist and his schoolboy memory supplied the rest.

  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

  There was an ironist at work here. Perhaps irony was all you had left if, as he guessed of their driver, you had started down the love, peace and flower power trail in the sixties and found a quarter-century on that it petered out on this derelict margin of society.

  The van came to a halt, reversed, halted again, and the driver said, ‘Here we are, folks.’

  Frodo opened the rear doors and jumped out. They were backed close up against another van, providing useful cover. Dog did not doubt that powerful night glasses would be trained on the new arrivals and while Blake might pass as just another traveller, he himself was too readily identifiable.

  Blake said, ‘What now?’
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  ‘First thing is to spot the car number.’ He recited it to Blake who repeated it, nodded, and said, ‘Then?’

  ‘Then you do nothing,’ said Dog grimly. ‘If they’re here, they’ll be armed and they’ll be ready to fight.’

  ‘Look, I’m not afraid …’

  ‘I am. Not just for you. For all these other people. For myself. For the boy.’

  ‘Are you coming out, brothers?’ enquired their host, who had walked round to the back of the van. ‘We’ll be joining our friends in a brew and you’ll be very welcome.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ said Dog.

  He turned up the collar of his coat and climbed out. He was relieved to see just how dense the mist was. The walls of the quarry seemed to hold it in and he doubted if even good night glasses could make out much of what was going on down here. Nevertheless he kept close to the driver, endeavouring to keep him always on the open side.

  Already his eyes were taking in vehicle numbers. What happened if he spotted the one he was looking for he didn’t know. His warning to Blake to keep out of it masked a complete blank. His forward thinking hadn’t got any further than finding a vantage point from which to spot the boy and his captors. Now Blake’s quick thinking had got them right into the thick of things, but he doubted if the priest could think quickly enough to get them out if Bridgid Heighway and her young sidekick came at them with Armalites blazing.

  He realized he’d made up his mind that Thrale wasn’t here. No way that he would be sitting on his arse in this dump when all the traps for Oliver Beck were set elsewhere. He was pleased with his logic. It cut down the odds. Also it meant his mind could concentrate on rescuing the boy without any distractions of revenge. And it would be a distraction, he admitted, touching the stiff side of his face and watching the flames leap around a blackened kettle on the camp fire. It would certainly be a distraction.

  Someone thrust a tin mug into his hand. He could feel the heat of the scalding tea through the metal but he did not flinch.

  ‘I’m Gandy,’ said the bearded driver, by way of introduction.

  ‘Like the Mahatma?’ enquired Dog.

  ‘A happy coincidence,’ grinned the man. ‘No. Short for Gandalf. I got rechristened twenty-odd years back. Hell, that was some ceremony! Total immersion of everything!’

  ‘I bet. I’m Dog.’

  Blake was sitting on a rock by the fire, deep in conversation with a group, very much at his ease. So far Dog had to admit he’d been an asset, but how would his godly principles react if and when the blood began to flow?

  ‘Dog, you say? I like it. But why …?’

  ‘It’s God backwards. Do those toilets work?’

  ‘Who knows? But the night is dark and the countryside wide and empty.’

  ‘Never believe it, Gandy,’ said Dog. ‘Excuse me. Nature calls.’

  He set off towards the line of boxes, weaving in and out of the scatter of vehicles. Their variety was great. Caravans, campers, canvas-topped pick-ups, transits, beat-up estates, and an ancient bus still carrying a destination board which read Woodstock.

  But nothing with the number he sought for. Could they have changed it? Then Tench’s men would have recorded the change and it would have been entered on the computer.

  He had reached the line of toilets. His pretended need was now real and he went into the first. It was relatively clean and worked perfectly well. He washed his hands under the standpipe, dried them on his handkerchief, wondered if this behaviour might be aberrant enough to draw attention, then grew angry at himself at the thought. These people so far had shown him nothing but courtesy. What right did he have to patronize them?

  But when he returned to the camp fire, all attitudinal analysis washed from his mind.

  Father Blake had vanished.

  He looked around and could see him nowhere. Gandy was in the van holding a feeding bottle to the baby’s lips.

  ‘What’s happened to my mate?’ demanded Dog.

  ‘Gone over to the gyps to try for a phone, I expect,’ said Gandy cheerfully. ‘He should have waited for you. You need someone to watch your back when you’re talking to a gang of Irish tinkers.’

  Irish tinkers. That was the phrase that did it. He’d been looking in the wrong place. If Thrale’s team was going to lose itself in a group of travellers, it wouldn’t be these freaky drop-outs he’d choose but that other more rigid and strongly capitalist society with its strong Irish links and fierce tribal loyalty.

  ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ said Gandy, holding up the baby. ‘She’s my seventh, you know. That’s meant to mean something, special powers, that kind of stuff. You like to hold her, Dog?’

  ‘Later maybe,’ said Dog. ‘I think I’d better check on my friend.’

  Trying to avoid the appearance of hurrying he made his way across the divide between the two encampments.

  He spotted the car number almost immediately. It belonged to a Ford Granada parked alongside a blue and gold caravan, slightly travel-stained but otherwise in good condition. The side door was open and there was a sound of upraised voices from within.

  Dog rushed forward. The watchers would have been alerted by now so there was no more need for discretion. He went in crouched low. If there were guns waiting, speed and surprise were his only defence, and pretty feeble at that. But as his eyes took in the scene he saw he needn’t have worried. Muscular Christianity was in control.

  Father Blake was holding a young man against the wall in a judo lock which forced his arm where no arm was supposed to go. A terrified-looking woman crouched in an armchair clutching a young girl who was the only one present not registering any extreme of emotion. Dog recognized none of them. Certainly the woman and the child were not those he’d seen at Rhadnor House, though at a distance they might have passed for them.

  At a distance … His mind had already read the script before Blake looked towards him and shouted angrily, ‘It’s not Noll! But this bastard’s going to tell me where he is!’

  ‘I don’t know! For God’s sake, it’s the truth. I don’t know!’

  Dog believed him. But whether it was the truth or not, there was no time for further questioning. There were several men crowding at the steps leading up to the doorway.

  ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ demanded a burly man with a broad Galway accent. ‘Sean, boy, are you all right?’

  ‘Blake, we’ve got to get out of here,’ said Dog urgently. ‘Tench’s men will be on their way.’

  The priest turned and looked at him, weighed what he’d heard, then nodded.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  He released the young man who slid to the floor. The threatening group at the door saw the look on Blake’s face and melted away like snow off a boiler. Dog leapt after them with the priest close on his heels. Across to the left he could see headlights sawing madly at the mist as a car came bucketing down the track into the quarry.

  ‘Where to?’ demanded Blake.

  ‘Now you want instructions!’ groaned Dog. ‘Round here.’

  He ran behind the next trailer. Blake thought he intended to head for the cliffs but Dog grabbed him and pulled him to the ground.

  ‘Under here!’ he hissed, rolling beneath the trailer.

  ‘They’ll find us in no time! We can climb out of here, get back to the car.’

  ‘It’d take at least half an hour, probably more. By that time they’ll be sitting there waiting for us. What the hell did you think you were doing in there?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I lost my rag when I realized it wasn’t Noll.’

  ‘Isn’t wrath still a sin? Just stay calm, will you? Say a prayer, and move when I tell you.’

  The car was in the arena now. It came bouncing over the frost-rutted ground, skidded to a halt in front of the blue and gold caravan, both front doors flew open, two men rolled out and came up carrying guns. One was Tommy Stott. He scurried forward to crouch on one knee against the side of the caravan holding his weapon in two hands aimed at
the door. The second man dived past him to the other side of the door and adopted a similar pose.

  ‘They’ve been watching “Miami Vice”,’ said Dog. ‘Come on. Nice and easy.’

  He got to his feet. Most of the inhabitants of the other trailers had emerged, but their attention was riveted on the live cop show unfolding before their eyes. There was a short hiatus while the two armed men seemed to have a silent debate as to which was going to have the possibly fatal honour of going in first. Then Stott jumped forward and threw himself through the door while his mate followed behind, to crouch at the foot of the steps aiming into the caravan.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Dog.

  He walked easily forward towards the car which stood there with its doors wide open, its engine still running.

  The second cop followed Stott into the caravan and the spectators were emboldened to press forward in their eagerness to miss nothing.

  ‘This time I’ll drive,’ said Dog.

  He got into the driver’s seat, pulled the door quietly shut.

  Someone saw them and shouted. Tommy Stott came out of the caravan, hampered by the crowd, his mouth open wide in a yell of fury, his gun held high. Dog let in the clutch and stood on the accelerator. Behind them was a confusion of noise, perhaps even a shot but he couldn’t swear to it. The mist was confusing and he momentarily lost the entry track. When he spotted it, they were almost past. He swung the wheel over, they ran up a shallow embankment, and for a moment he feared the car was going to flip over.

  Then they were on the track, bouncing upwards out of the quarry.

  There was a voice squeaking at them out of the car radio. Dog plucked the microphone from the dash and yelled into it, ‘Major incident, Claypole Quarry! Request armed assistance, ambulance, fire brigade, May Day, May Day, May …’

  He pulled the mike loose and threw it out of the window.

  ‘What the hell was that in aid of?’ demanded Blake.

  ‘It’s better than the kind of discreet help the Branch will be trying to whistle up,’ said Dog.

  A few moments later they saw Blake’s car ahead.