The Only Game

by Reginald Hill

  Beck himself, his damp hair slicked back in thirties style and wearing a Noel Coward robe over his swim trunks, looked the most Anglo-Saxon thing there. Finally he too tired of this charade of a polite English welcome and drawled, ‘OK, so you’ve tracked me down, Inspector Dog. That’s quite a nose you’ve got.’

  Dog produced his tobacco and papers, looked enquiringly at Jane, read her blankness as permission and rolled a narrow cigarette.

  ‘Forget the “inspector”,’ he said. ‘I’m no longer a policeman.’

  ‘You’ve left the Force?’ said Beck.

  ‘We left each other,’ said Dog.

  He lit his cigarette and through the smoke watched their reactions. Beck, he assessed, was nimbling feverishly round all the angles while Jane had fixed on one. He avoided meeting her gaze. It was too early to seek positive reaction.

  ‘If you’re not a cop, then what the hell are you doing here?’ asked Beck.

  Dog shrugged.

  ‘What would I be doing here if I were a cop?’ he asked.

  For a second Beck looked angry, then he laughed.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ he said. ‘Special Branch, the FBI, the Garda, none of them’s got any standing here. But mine was a good question too. What do you want, Dog?’

  ‘That’s a large question, if not necessarily good. May I answer it frankly?’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  Dog Cicero hesitated as if Beck had said something worth close consideration, then said, ‘I would like to speak with Jane. There are things I need to say to her, things I’d delayed saying till after Noll was found. But, as you may recall, when that happened, I didn’t get the opportunity.’

  Beck sipped his cold tea.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘There she sits. The floor’s yours.’

  ‘I should prefer alone,’ said Dog apologetically.

  ‘I bet!’ Beck considered a moment then said, ‘OK. You’ve got it.’

  He rose and looked down to the pool where Maria and Noll were still playing. They saw him watching and waved. He waved back then went through the sliding patio door into the villa.

  ‘So here we are,’ said Dog.

  ‘Say what you’ve got to say!’ These were the first words Jane had spoken since his arrival. She had been sitting trying to guess what he was playing at. Knight errantry was out of fashion. Not that he looked like a knight errant. But what else was she to think of a man who, uninvited, had put her needs before his career and now followed her halfway across the world?

  ‘How’s Noll?’ he asked. ‘How’s he settled down after … everything?’

  She’d noticed this ability he had to go off in an unexpected direction, usually as now in a manner which forced you to follow.

  ‘He’s fine,’ she said shortly.

  ‘No after effects?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve watched him very carefully. We talk about it as if it was all a game. It means having to listen to him burbling on about his fabulous Auntie Bridie, but that’s a small price to pay for having him happy.’

  ‘And you? Are you happy?’

  ‘What the hell kind of question’s that?’ she blazed. ‘And what gives you the right to ask it?’

  He didn’t reply and his silence forced her to answer herself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You deserve better than rudeness after what you’ve done for us. But what do you really want? Some kind of explanation of why I came here? It seems a long way to come for an explanation if that’s really why you’ve come.’

  ‘It’ll do for starters,’ he said. ‘You seemed pretty certain things were over between you and Beck …’

  ‘What did you expect me to do?’ she demanded. ‘All right, if I’d got Noll back and there’d been no sign of Oliver, I’d have got my head down somewhere, changed my name, asked for police protection, done anything to keep him safe. But it didn’t happen like that. Oliver was there. Tench was probably on his way and I can guess what protection from that bastard would mean. Flynn was dead, Thrale looked like he was dying, and Irish memories feed on dead flesh. Above all else, Oliver was ready to take Noll with or without me, he made that quite clear. So tell me, Inspector, sorry, Mister Cicero, what choice did I have?’

  He took a deep breath. It would be easy to offer sympathetic agreement. But whatever came out of this encounter, for good or for bad, there had to be no ambiguity.

  He said carefully, ‘The absence of choice is a circumstance more rare than most people suppose.’

  She looked at him incredulously, feeling anger tightening her throat. Worse than a knight errant, this was a missionary priest!

  She said, ‘Is that one of Uncle Endo’s little saws for winning at cards?’

  ‘He puts it more graphically. Choice and breath run out together, something like that.’

  She leaned across the table and looked directly into his eyes.

  ‘OK. So tell me about my choices.’

  He didn’t flinch from her gaze.

  ‘Specifically, you could have held on to Noll and said no. I doubt if Beck would have shot you. More generally, it was a choice between this …’ he gestured around … ‘which is reasonably safe, extremely comfortable, and very dishonest, and other kinds of existence which would be none of these things.’

  She shook her head in disbelief.

  ‘You really have come all this way to preach at me!’ she said.

  He rolled another cigarette. One suck. One exhalation. It was gone. It occurred to her that this was the pleasure of a man who scorned to assume more than the briefest fragment of futurity.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I let myself be diverted. But I didn’t want to risk deception merely for the sake of sticking to the point.’

  ‘Deception?’ She frowned. ‘How could you deceive me? And even if you did, why should it matter?’

  He said, ‘I’m going to invite you to come away with me. In the unlikely event you agree, it would surely matter if I’d obtained that agreement by a deception, wouldn’t you say?’

  Her eyes rounded in amazement. Every time he opened his mouth, he came up with some new occasion of anger or surprise. It occurred to her that she was being bounced from one reaction to another without ever getting the chance to settle into a studied and developed response. With this man, you should never forget Uncle Endo!

  She said, ‘By “with you” …?’

  ‘It’s an offer of help, it’s an offer of love. Acceptance of one is not conditional on acceptance of the other.’

  ‘Love,’ she said softly. ‘Because we made it together? I needed … someone; you needed … God knows what. But love …!’

  ‘Yes, love.’ He had the absorbed look of a man who has been running on instinct but has at last reached the point where he can sit quietly and sort out his own motives. ‘From the start. Well, almost from the start. I thought it was complicated and confused, but it wasn’t. It was simple. That’s why I behaved as I did. That’s why I had to track you down across the world.’

  ‘But it’s crazy! Things don’t happen that way outside of soap operas, not without hope, encouragement, a future …’

  ‘Oh, but they do. It’s happened twice to me. Perhaps that says something about me you’d rather not know. No one should get mixed up with a man who’s always drawing to an inside straight. Last time it happened, it left her dead, me not much better. This time, God willing, it won’t come to that. But the worst thing of all last time was, it left me not knowing. Never able to know. I told Thrale he was lying. In that situation, he would lie. Equally, in my situation, I would want to believe he was lying. This time whatever else happens, I need to be sure I’ve got things straight, that I’ve heard the truth, no matter what it might be. No hole cards. I’ve paid to see.’

  ‘You want to know whether I’m in love with you?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he laughed. ‘We’ve got to clear away need-to-know before we get on to want-to-know. What I need to know is the truth, or rather a series
of truths. You had no suspicion Beck was a Noraid bagman till he “died”? You really believed the substitute corpse had drowned accidentally? You came back to England to hide from him, not meet him? You had no knowledge of his Father Blake disguise till that day in the cottage? You thought he was hanging back to rescue me?’

  ‘Yes; yes; yes!’ she blazed. ‘I guessed about the body later but at the time … And what do you mean, thought he was going to rescue you? He did. You and that woman. It was in the papers. You were pulled clear of the fire …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘We survived. One more need-to-know. Do you still love him?’

  She said, ‘No.’ And wondered how she would answer his next question. Wrong. She knew how she would answer it, but she wondered how she would want to answer it.

  When he spoke, so sure was she of what he was going to say that she had to ask him to repeat what he actually did say.

  ‘I went to see your mother before I left England.’

  ‘My mother? How is she?’

  ‘Fine. No. Not really fine. But better now than she was. It really knocked her about, worrying what had happened to Noll and you, then not knowing where you were. I told her you were all right. I said I was sure she would hear from you eventually.’

  ‘I wrote. Oliver said we couldn’t risk posting it here but that he’d get someone to post it from the States or somewhere else.’

  Dog said, ‘That would take time. I’m sure she’ll get it eventually. She’s thinking of selling up and moving back to Ireland.’

  Jane said, ‘But why? I thought she’d never go back, that’s what she always said.’

  Dog said, ‘I think she feels she moved to get away from the troubles, but what happened last December made her think there was no getting away from them, so she might as well be near them rather than waiting for them to catch up with her.’

  Jane put her hand to her face.

  ‘I never brought her much joy, did I,’ she said. ‘We were always so different.’

  ‘Alike in one thing,’ he corrected. ‘You’re both strong. And you both learn. She’ll make it, I’m sure. And most of the changes in her will be for the good. She never uttered one word of blame for you, I thought you’d like to know that. She cried when she spoke of Noll. The only thing she really let herself go on about was Beck. I’m afraid that pretending he was a priest was in her eyes a long way beyond the unforgivable. Whatever other good reasons he has for not going back to Britain, your mother doubles them!’

  He managed to make her smile. And seeing the smile, he asked the next question.

  ‘Do you want to come away with me?’

  It was not the form she had expected. Will you come away with me? was easily answered. But this …

  Still they were playing the truth game, so she said, ‘Some of me does. A lot. Maybe most.’

  He nodded as if she’d confirmed some basic intuition. Then he reached over the table with his left hand and took her right. She didn’t pull away. So hand in hand they sat in silence for thirty seconds or more.

  ‘Now isn’t this a touching scene,’ said Oliver Beck.

  He had changed into slacks and a tee shirt and he no longer looked Anglo-Saxon. He sat down and glowered at Dog and said, ‘You’ve got a hell of nerve, coming here and sweet-talking my wife.’

  Dog met his gaze for a moment then dropped his eyes to the tea tray, picked up the silver dish with the teacakes on it, turned it over so that its contents fell onto the tiled floor, and looked at the small cube of plastic stuck underneath.

  ‘I should have believed you when you said you were all ears,’ he remarked.

  ‘You’ve been listening to us?’ exclaimed Jane. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘He wanted to know if my intentions were dishonourable,’ said Dog. ‘More important, he hoped I would let slip how I got here.’

  ‘Now why should that bother me?’ asked Beck.

  ‘Because if you thought I’d got here purely under my own steam you’d get your minder in there to take me on a little walk to the bottom of the garden, then toss me over the terrace.’

  He glanced through the open door of the villa where, almost invisible in the shady interior, the man Antonio stood with a machine pistol in his hands.

  Jane said, ‘Oliver, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Dog. ‘Oliver knows it’s royal flush odds against me picking up his trail on my tod. No, I got help, Beck. Family help. I asked my Uncle Endo. And he asked his friends. You owe them a million, by the way. Dollars, not pounds, so it won’t hurt all that much.’

  ‘You what?’ exclaimed Beck. ‘I owe … you’ve got to be joking!’

  ‘There were expenses,’ said Dog apologetically. ‘Friendship only goes so far. I said you’d pick up the tab. It’s up to you whether you pay or not. That’s for finding you, by the way. If I don’t get home safely, the price goes up. I think they reckoned everything you’ve got would just about cover it.’

  Beck said softly, ‘And to think that just a couple of minutes ago you were shooting Jane the heavy moral line. You’ve got strange friends for a preacher.’

  ‘In my time I’ve met some very strange preachers,’ said Dog. ‘Way I look at it is, what’s the best use for all that Noraid cash? Buying bombs to blow up civilians? Not good. Buying you all life’s little luxuries? Better, but not much. Buying me a chance to offer Jane and Noll another chance? Well, there’s no competition, is there? It would be cheap at twice the price!’

  ‘A chance to do what?’ enquired Beck.

  ‘To talk to visitors without a gun-toting heavy in the background, for a start.’

  Beck made an impatient gesture and Antonio slipped out of sight.

  ‘Now let’s hear it,’ he said.

  Dog leaned forward and spoke with sudden urgency. But it was Jane, not Beck, he was addressing.

  ‘This isn’t a life,’ he said. ‘It’s a siege. With him, this is it forever. You know what he is. He’s a thief, a cheat, a killer. You’ve admitted you want to come away with me. So do it!’

  Jane tensed her muscles to stop them from shaking. She had felt like this before races. All the training, all the preparation seemed to count for nothing; body limp, mind unfocussed; the running track a desert road; the finishing tape the unattainable line of the horizon.

  She said, ‘He’s still Noll’s father.’

  ‘Yes. And he’ll be Noll’s mentor and exemplar if he grows up here,’ said Dog grimly.

  ‘At least he’ll be safe here!’ she cried.

  ‘Safe? I found you, didn’t I? At least away from here the danger stops at kidnapping. But when they find Beck, they’ll come with guns blazing!’

  ‘Very colourful,’ said Beck dryly. ‘But perhaps, Mr Cicero, you ought to tell us something of your financial background and prospects before Jane makes up her mind. Or do you anticipate subsidizing your new life with a little of my tainted wealth?’

  He was back to his English parody, this time the paterfamilias interviewing a suitor for his daughter’s hand.

  Dog smiled thinly, knowing he had cards that Beck had not yet guessed at.

  ‘I’ll get by,’ he said. ‘Uncle Endo bankrolled me into a big Vegas game while his friends went looking for you. It lasted a fortnight. I’m glad you were so hard to find, Beck. After a week I was well down. But then I started getting into the swing of things and by the end of the second week I’d won myself a barrowload of chips. Jane, what do you say?’

  She looked at him in such a distress of uncertainty that he had to look away. Suddenly his voice became harsh and loud, his expression aggressive and challenging. ‘OK,’ he snarled. ‘Let’s check to the dealer. Beck, what do you say?’

  This was the way he’d played the last big pot in that smoke-filled room in Glitter Gulch. For thirteen days he had kept his face and mind a blank, his voice a monotone, unchanged from when he was losing heavily to when the chips started to flow his way. Now unexpectedly, shockingly, he had been
all naked aggression. He had caught Endo’s eye in the shaded rank of spectators beyond the sharp cone of light stamped down on the table, and he had seen surprise and doubt there. He had bounced them all out except for the other big winner, a lean, drawling sixty-year-old from Texas who looked like an extra in a John Wayne movie. He read the change of tactic as a giant bluff and he smiled almost sympathetically as he pushed forward the huge pile of chips needed to cover Dog’s bet. Forty years of making a living at the tables showed in that smile when Dog turned up the card which filled his running flush. It didn’t flicker or diminish, though it turned a little rueful as the Texan said over his shoulder, ‘Knew I should never have taken those two dollars off you at blackjack in sixty-four, Endo’.

  Now here he was again, forcing the play he wanted. All Beck had to do was say, ‘Jane, don’t go,’ and he guessed the game was over. But the man was smiling like the Texan and behind those eyes too a computerful of calculation was clicking.

  ‘What do I say?’ said Beck. ‘I say, Jane, you’re an independent adult. Go, if that’s what you want. I won’t try to stop you. Only I can’t let Noll go till I’m sure he’s going to be safe. Now don’t look like that. Isn’t it reasonable? Dog, don’t you feel it’s only reasonable? You two get yourselves settled somewhere if that’s what you want, then get back to me here and we’ll settle on some mutually beneficial arrangement about Noll.’

  Dog let out a long slow sigh of relief. The man was greedy. He thought he saw a chance of getting everything he wanted with minimum hassle. But best of all, or worst if you looked at it from Jane’s point of view, he had just revealed that despite their years together, he didn’t know her, didn’t understand the tempered steel which formed the core of her being. No hope ain’t the same as no chance, Endo had said. But in this case it was the same. There was no hope, no chance, of Jane Maguire leaving the villa without her son, and a man who truly loved her would have known that.

  Jane said, ‘You bastard. You stupid bastard! Do you think I’d just up and leave … how could you even dream …?’