The Only Game

by Reginald Hill

  She looked at him disbelievingly. He slipped the water pistol into his pocket, glad of an excuse to get it out of sight before she spotted what it really was.

  ‘I mean it, Bridie,’ he said. ‘The boy’s all I want.’

  Perhaps it was his despair which persuaded her. He saw decision in her eyes. Then she started to set the boy down.

  It wasn’t easy. The only place the scared child wanted to be was in his ‘auntie’s’ arms. She prised his fingers apart, murmuring reassurance. Dog watched with growing irritation. If Jane had moved quick, perhaps run into some of the police round Little Staughton … Bridie Heighway counted odds too, and the sound of a fast-approaching siren might throw her into reverse.

  If he’d found Billy Flynn’s gun, the wise thing would have been to shoot her now as she lowered the boy to the floor.

  Would he have done it? Could he have done it?

  ‘Hurry it up,’ he urged.

  She straightened up. ‘Why am I trusting you?’ she wondered.

  ‘Because I’ve got an honest face?’

  The words came out more savagely than he intended.

  ‘Oh yes. That was Jonty, wasn’t it? That makes it even odder. Is it the girl, then? You’ve still got a soft spot for red-haired colleens, is that it? If that’s the case, then you’re on the wrong side, Mr Cicero. You should be with us, trying to put that traitorous bastard Beck out of the way.’

  Too late it dawned on him that she wasn’t just idly passing the time of day with this provocative talk. It was for a purpose that she’d so totally engaged his attention.

  His first thought was Billy. He half turned, drawing back his foot to kick the youth back into submission. But he was still far from fully conscious.

  Then Bridie screamed, ‘Jonty! He’s armed!’

  And now he turned fully, his hand dragging the plastic water pistol from his pocket.

  A man was standing in the hallway beneath him. He wore a crumpled blue business suit and a homburg, and on his thin, unremarkable face was the melancholy expression of an insurance salesman about to remind you of your family responsibilities.

  But it was a gun in his hand, not a policy.

  ‘It’s all right, Bridie,’ he said. ‘I don’t think Mr Cicero’s going to squirt us to death.’

  There was another figure behind him. Tall, red-haired, wild-eyed.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry, Dog. I was going to go … then he came … I had to tell him, else he said he’d hurt Noll … Where is he?’

  Dog glanced up the stairs. Bridie Heighway had swept the boy out of sight. To protect him? Or merely clearing the decks in case of action?

  Jane followed the direction of his gaze and tried to push past Thrale but he swung his free arm savagely across her breast and snarled, ‘Wait! If you please, Mr Cicero, will you drop that thing? It may be only a water pistol, yet I find it strangely distracting.’

  Dog looked down at the piece of moulded plastic in his hand and shrugged ruefully.

  ‘I knew I should have got the cap gun,’ he said. And squirted a jet of household ammonia into Jonty Thrale’s face.

  The man’s control was tremendous. The burning liquid hit him full in the right eye. He cried out once, turning his head away. The automatic he held wavered a fraction, then steadied. He squeezed the trigger. If Dog had stayed upright he must have been hit. But he had launched himself forward over Billy Flynn and hit Thrale’s knees in a flying tackle.

  He heard the gun’s explosion, heard the unmistakable sound of a bullet excavating flesh, heard a shriek of pain, and did not know if it was his flesh, his cry, his pain. There was no time to find out. As Thrale was driven backwards, he was twisting to his left to keep his gun arm free. Dog thought, a man with a bullet in his body ought to be able to think at least as fast as a man with ammonia in his eye. The gun came crashing down on the back of his skull and waves of agony delivered the message that whoever got hit before, it wasn’t him. He’d got hold of Thrale’s gun arm now. He grappled it to his chest like a passionate lover, dropped his head to the taut and twisting hand and sank his teeth into the thumb’s hard ball. Now it was Thrale’s turn to cry out. And his cry brought Bridie Heighway running out of the bedroom where she’d deposited the boy and unearthed the old army revolver which she held unwavering in both hands. But there was nothing for her to shoot at for Jane Maguire came leaping over the struggling bodies in the hallway and blocked her passage down the stairs.

  ‘Noll!’ she cried. ‘Where are you? What have you done with him, you bitch? What have you done?’

  ‘Stand aside!’ ordered Bridie, in a harsh, unfemale voice. ‘Or I shoot.’

  ‘Oh, I should, if I were you, I should!’ said Jane, beyond reach of threat or reason. And she began to ascend.

  The revolver held steady on her breast. Bridie Heighway had no thought for anything but Thrale struggling in the hallway below. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  Then a voice behind her said, ‘Mummy’.

  Distracted, Heighway turned her head – only for a second, but it was enough.

  The supple, high-tuned muscles of Jane Maguire’s long legs exploded her up the remaining stairs beneath the extended arms. She drove her fist into Heighway’s solar plexus and as the woman doubled over, Jane rose to her full height, got her shoulder into Heighway’s rib cage and heaved her backwards like a sack of coals.

  Her triumph was Dog’s disaster. His assault on Thrale’s gun hand was close to success. Flesh had parted and he could taste blood. He bit harder, certain now the man must release his automatic very soon. Then a heel crashed into the back of his neck with a force that made him gasp with shock. Thrale wrenched his arm free, raised his bloody hand high and brought the butt of his gun down on Dog’s head again and again. He tried to maintain his grip on Thrale’s body but the blows were dissipating his strength like morning mist and he had no power to resist as the Irishman hurled him backwards.

  The blow to his neck had been inadvertent. Bridie Heighway had come rolling down the stairs in a series of uncontrolled somersaults and her foot could as easily have hit Thrale as Dog. She lay stunned but she hadn’t let go of her weapon. Now she raised her head, glanced back, saw that Thrale was now in total command of the lower battle, and turned her attention to the enemy above.

  Jane Maguire was kneeling beside her son. The little boy was terrified by the noise and violence and the smoke, but he had no doubt where he wanted to be. He flung his arms round her neck in a grip which came close to strangling her, but she had no thought of complaint as she folded him in her arms and sank her face into his tangle of rich brown hair. Then she let her gaze drift down the stairs to see Bridie Heighway looking up at her, her face twisted with hate. Jane smiled. The world was full of terrors. But this moment’s joy was, for this moment, more powerful than all these terrors put together.

  Dog had passed beyond terror almost to acceptance. He lay back, all strength gone, and watched his death approach. Once before he had escaped this man. But death is not escapable. All death needs is patience. The best a man can hope for is to die in comfort, and he felt surprisingly comfortable. His right arm was resting on the elephant-foot umbrella stand and his head was reclining against something nice and soft. What was it? he wondered. He turned his head slightly and found himself looking into a wide, staring, unseeing eye.

  Billy Flynn. That was where that first flesh-crunching bullet had gone. Poor Billy. So evil, yes. But so young.

  There was something else about Billy he couldn’t quite remember … a mystery …

  But now the time was close for an end to all remembering … all mysteries …

  Jonty Thrale had brought his automatic forward till the muzzle touched Dog’s cheek on the frozen side of his face.

  ‘It was me who did this, did you know?’ said Thrale.

  Dog regarded him with indifference. Man who gloats ain’t thinking of the next pot, said Uncle Endo. Only this time there wasn’t going to be a next pot. Like Billy Flynn,
he was all played out. Billy Flynn … he remembered the mystery now. What had happened to his gun? Down the stairs … body flying through the air … gun flying through the air … then disappearing into the air! It wasn’t possible … there had to be an answer … he was sure he could tease it out if only he had time …

  But time was up. The gun had moved across to his good cheek.

  ‘I always hated leaving a job half done,’ said Jonty Thrale.

  ‘Was she one of yours?’ said Dog hoarsely.

  He didn’t want to know. He’d realized some time earlier how little it mattered. But he suddenly wanted that extra time. Resignation and acceptance might be a comfortable way to go, but not for a man taught to play cards by Endo Cicero, one time Poker Champion of the World, who’d lifted an ailing child in his arms and said proudly, ‘This boy’s going to make it. This boy’s my nephew and he ain’t got no dog in him.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Thrale, with slow delight. ‘She was definitely one of ours.’

  ‘You’re probably a liar,’ said Dog. ‘But thanks for taking the time.’

  And he put his hand into the elephant’s foot, grasped Billy Flynn’s gun, and shot Jonty Thrale twice in the stomach.

  Bridie Heighway had brought her gun up to fix on Jane once more. Neither it nor her gaze wavered, but still she did not squeeze the trigger. She had learned many strange and terrible things since some trick of her genes had intertwined her life so utterly with Jonty Thrale’s. But she was not yet sure if she had learned how to shoot a woman she was sure she hated who had her arms around a child she was sure she loved.

  Then the sound of the shots behind her temporarily postponed the problem.

  She turned in time to see Thrale falling backwards, his face twisted with shock and pain.

  ‘Stay still, Bridie,’ said Dog. ‘Drop the gun.’

  Naturally she paid no heed but kept turning.

  He would have shot her, he had no doubt of that. But he needed to get the gun out of the elephant’s foot before he could manage that and his hand was tangled up with God knew what rubbish.

  It was Jane who saved him again. The smoke on the landing was dense and choking now. The fire in the bathroom had burnt its way up into the attic and there was an explosion as it burst its way through the roof tiles and sent a tongue of flame licking into the cold night mist. Not even the threat of the gun could have kept her up there any longer. Clutching Noll tight in one arm she came down the stairs, and with her free hand chopped Heighway viciously at the base of her neck. The Irish woman sighed like a sated lover and collapsed with the slow grace of a stage swoon.

  Dog looked up at Jane and tried a smile of love, of trust, of gratitude. But she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were on the front door which was swinging slowly open till it came to a halt against the recumbent figure of Thrale, lying on his back with his hands clasped across his bleeding belly.

  Cold mist drifted in to mingle with the swirling smoke. And now the vapour coagulated, took shape and substance, and became a man.

  Dog looked at him in disbelief, then coughed a painful laugh.

  ‘Where the hell have you sprung from?’ he demanded. ‘A priest is just what we need round here!’

  But the bearded figure of Father Blake had no eyes for him. His gaze was fixed on Jane Maguire.

  Now she moved slowly forward, stepping over Dog without even looking down at him.

  He heard her say, ‘Oliver?’, then she repeated it, certainly. ‘Oliver!’

  He wanted to believe she was talking about her son, but he knew she wasn’t. She was face to face with the priest now and his arms went round her and round Noll, and the three of them held still for a long agonizing moment in a triangle of total exclusion.

  Then the fire raging above sucked up this draught of new energy pouring through the front door and came exploding through the ceiling of one of the downstairs rooms, and for the first time, Dog saw as well as heard the flames.

  ‘Quick, get out!’ cried Blake/Beck. ‘My car’s up the lane. I’ll take care of things in here. Hurry!’

  Jane Maguire hesitated, looking at Dog. He wanted her to go. He wanted her to stay. He wanted above all to know how much she knew, how deeply he was betrayed.

  Then Noll’s terror at the flames burst out in a long cry of ‘Mummy!’ and she turned and vanished through the door.

  Beck stooped over Jonty Thrale. Interesting rescue priorities he has, thought Dog, struggling to rise and finding the pistol whipping he had received had damaged the link between his brain and his muscles.

  Then he realized Beck’s priorities had nothing to do with rescue.

  He straightened up with Thrale’s automatic in his hand. Deliberately, he put it to the Irishman’s head and squeezed till the magazine was empty.

  Blood, bone and brains fountained out and, as if excited by this rival destruction, the fire came roaring through the kitchen ceiling and sent its red tongues licking into the entrance hall.

  Dog was on his feet, moving towards Beck. Or perhaps he was moving towards the door. Whatever, Beck took it for menace, and lashed him back with a blow to the head from the empty gun. He fell across Bridie Heighway, saw Beck step forward as if to finish the job, saw him hesitate as a sound of distant bells drifted through the door, saw him turn and run.

  Once more Dog rose. Something very serious was happening in his head. Whole areas of his body seemed totally disconnected from his mind. His right arm and right leg swayed in and out of control as if not yet decided whether to commit themselves wholly to the mutiny. All he wanted was to get away from this heat, to see the sky again. But as he began to crawl towards the door, something stirred and moaned beneath the pressure of his weight. It was Heighway, still unconscious from the power of Jane’s blow.

  He shrieked at his limbs with the voice of his old RSM, and muscles that a moment ago had hardly got the strength to move his own body to safety now began dragging the woman’s, inch by painful inch. The heat was tremendous. Only the solid stone walls and the flagged floor saved him, giving the fire nothing to get a purchase on. The bells were louder now, but whoever was coming on their peal would be too late. His mind was computing odds. Without Heighway, he could probably get evens; with her, he’d be lucky to get eight to five dog. But they were his kind of odds. Hadn’t Uncle Endo said so? No use giving underdog odds against a kid who ain’t got no dog in him. They just don’t mean a thing!

  The door was close now. He knew now he was going to do it again. But how much longer could he go on hobbling, crawling, slithering away from death?

  How much longer did he want to go on?

  That was a question to be set aside for later … like the other question, the one about Jane Maguire … Now he just wanted to lie and look up at the grey uncaring sky. It had started to snow. The bells sounded louder and louder. Soon it would be Christmas, the children’s time …

  He closed his eyes, but his mind stayed full of snow and bells. He shook his head violently, crying out at the pain, but he kept on shaking it till snow and bells ceased together.

  Part Five

  1

  Parslow said, ‘How could you do this to me, Dog? I took care of you, spoke up for you. There were plenty who didn’t like you, you must have known that. Man with your background … and you didn’t try to be liked, did you? But I went out on a limb for you, and this is how it ends …’

  Dog Cicero looked at him curiously. Did he really believe all this? Then he turned his curiosity inwards, and wondered if perhaps there was not something believable there after all.

  He tried to lift his head and winced at the pain which still whispered in slow swirling currents beneath the oil slick of drugs.

  ‘Eddie, I’m sorry … Is there any news?’

  ‘There’s going to be an enquiry, naturally. You’ll be dismissed from the Force, there’s no doubt of that. And there’ll probably be criminal charges. The papers are onto it and there’ve been questions in the House and the Branch want to thro
w the book at you …’

  Dog shook his head gently. A busted flush is like a busted skull. Shake it any which way you like, you ain’t going to get nothing but grief. Endo. Or was it Endo? He sometimes suspected he’d got into a habit of authenticating his own half-baked apophthegms by ascribing them to his uncle.

  He said, ‘I meant, news of … Beck.’

  He couldn’t bring himself to mention her name.

  The fire brigade and the police had found him unconscious outside the charnel house of Grazey Lane Cottage. They hadn’t come there because of any startling piece of detective work but because a neighbouring former had spotted the smoke and dialled 999.

  It wasn’t till Dog recovered consciousness an hour later that a true picture of events could be put together. By that time Oliver Beck and his family had vanished completely. With air- and seaports jammed for the Christmas exodus, they had probably slipped out of the country with no bother.

  ‘News of Beck? What do you expect? A postcard?’ snapped Parslow. ‘All our fault, of course. The whole fiasco. All the blame dumped on us, except what’s spilled over onto Northants.’

  ‘Blame?’ said Dog. ‘All right, yes … but surely with Thrale and Flynn dead, Heighway in custody, not to mention a murder case cleared up, there has to be some credit …’

  ‘Oh yes. There’s credit,’ said Parslow bitterly. ‘And can’t you guess who’s got it? Your chum Tench and his wild bunch, that’s who. You’ve a lot to answer for, Dog. A hell of a lot!’

  There was a limit to the crap even a man staked out on a dunghill could take.

  As Parslow made for the door, Dog said faintly, ‘Eddie’.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘In case I don’t see you again. Happy New Year.’

  New Year came and went. Dog didn’t celebrate. He would have discharged himself from hospital if the neurologist hadn’t warned him sternly that he wasn’t yet out of danger from his severe head wounds. The threat of death wouldn’t have stayed Dog. The threat of vegetabilization did. So he rested quiet in his bed, a model patient, shuffling and dealing a pack of cards, charting his recovery in the dexterity of his fingers and the accuracy of his memory.