The Only Game

by Reginald Hill

  It was time to cut in and play his winning card. Or perhaps his losing card. Bearers of bad news are rarely rewarded with their heart’s desire.

  He said, ‘He didn’t dream. He just hoped. It’d make things a lot easier, wouldn’t it, Beck?’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ demanded Beck, and Jane looked the same question. It was her look that Dog answered.

  ‘For a million dollars, Endo’s friends did the thing thoroughly. They needed to be sure they weren’t offending anyone really important before they pinpointed Beck. Well, they weren’t. He’d bought a few minor officials, that was all, and they were anybody’s for a handful of cruzados. But he needs protection, not against Thrale and his ilk – only self-help, big guns and eternal vigilance can protect him there – but against official hassle. If the Americans and my lot find where he is, they’re going to start serving extradition papers like a short-order cook serves breakfasts. Now there’s one certain protection against getting extradited from this country. If you’re married to a native Brazilian and have a child by her, it doesn’t matter who waves what papers, they won’t send Daddy away.’

  Jane said, ‘So what are you saying? That Oliver …? But that’s absurd …’

  Dog’s gaze slipped from hers and slowly turned till he was looking down at the pool. Jane’s followed. Noll looked to be asleep now in the huge chair but it wasn’t Noll they were looking at. Flat on her back, legs splayed in an unconsciously abandoned pose, lay the gleaming figure of Maria.

  The thickening figure of Maria …?

  ‘You’re saying he’s got her pregnant? Oliver …?’

  She didn’t need to complete the question. Beck smiled at her a boyishly rueful smile and said, ‘You called the shots, honey, when you held out for your own bed.’

  ‘My fault, you mean? My fault again? To hell with that! One thing’s for sure. You can’t marry her. Or have you forgotten Babs back in New York?’

  Beck shrugged, looked at Dog and said mockingly, ‘Low man brings it in.’

  Jane looked blank. Dog said, ‘It means, to get players really committed at stud, it’s the one with the lowest hand who has to lead the betting.’

  ‘And your hand’s really low, ain’t it, Dog?’

  He thinks I can’t win, thought Dog. He knows what I want and he thinks there’s no play to get me it. He knows all I can do is pour pain on Jane. And the bastard doesn’t care.

  He said, ‘It’s Reno rules all the way with you, isn’t it? That was where you got your quickie divorce five years ago, only you didn’t shout it around. An estranged wife often came in useful. But you showed the papers quickly enough last week, didn’t you?’

  ‘Last week?’ echoed Jane.

  ‘When he married Maria,’ said Dog flatly. ‘For the past seven days you’ve been a guest in the house of Mr and Mrs Oliver Beck.’

  There was no struggle for belief. Everything Jane recalled of the change in Maria’s attitude, plus the change in her appearance, fell into place. And if any doubt had remained, Oliver Beck’s face would have dissolved it.

  He said, ‘Well, there we have it, folks. Bet you really enjoyed that, Dog. Jane, I’m truly sorry it didn’t work out. I could see how things were going to be between us, and once I knew Maria was in the club, I had to take the chance to protect my back. Don’t worry. I’ll see you right …’

  ‘No you won’t,’ said Jane. ‘Noll and I don’t want anything from you …’

  ‘You speak for yourself, hon,’ he said easily. ‘But as for Noll, he’s going to get the best.’

  She turned to Dog then, looking for help. He could see she was ready to offer him anything for a way out of this dilemma, but he knew he had nothing to offer.

  Beck spelled it out.

  ‘No use looking at Dog, hon. Dog’s all chained up in his kennel! He can tell the Feds and the Branch, but they can’t touch me now. Or he can drop word to Dublin, but he knows that’ll mean a Semtex tea party round the pool one day with everyone getting a piece of the cake, so he’s not going to do that, not with Noll here, and here Noll stays!’

  He was right. It was the end of the game, even though he still had a hole card. Endo had said, ‘You want this guy taken out, say the word. They’ll throw it in for the million.’ But it was not a card he knew how to play. Jane was still regarding him with hope born of, and almost indistinguishable from, desperation. He had nothing to give her, nothing to say. He looked away from her, looked behind her into the open door of the villa into the shade as dark as his future. His eyes bored into the darkness in search of some symbol of hope, but all they found was the figure of Antonio. He had after all only retreated into the depths of the room where he still remained, gun in hand, ready to advance again as soon as his master snapped his fingers.

  And now he must have realized Dog had spotted him for he was advancing anyway. And now he was at the doorway unblinking in the sunlight which limned his face and form. But it wasn’t Antonio. It was his own death Dog saw standing there and it had the features of Bridie Heighway.

  5

  She said, ‘Stay still. No use looking over my shoulder, Beck. Your handy man’s not coming. Don’t you recognize his gun?’

  She motioned Beck into a tighter group with the two seated figures. Now the Beretta 93R’s twenty-round magazine would be quite enough to cut them all down in a single burst.

  Beck said, ‘It’s Bridie, isn’t it? We met a couple of times in Belfast way back. And how are things with you, Bridie? You look a tiny bit peaky to me.’

  She looked like a ghost. Pale beyond remedy of even the Brazilian sun, flesh honed almost to the bone, she was herself at last, undisguised with only a single role to play.

  She had been rehearsing it for months as she sat in a series of cells and interview rooms. There had been no trouble not answering the endless stream of questions. Most of them she didn’t even hear as her mind roamed forward to a time beyond this when the man who had murdered Jonty Thrale and the man who had led him to his death would be in her grasp.

  She set no period on her revenge but, if forced to an estimate, would probably have guessed at a couple of years minimum, and possibly a lot longer if the Brits managed to manufacture the serious evidence she knew was lacking. It didn’t matter. When life ceases to have meaning, time is no longer of the essence.

  ‘Did you break out, Bridie? Or did Tench turn you loose?’

  It was the killer who spoke, the frozen-faced soldier who had murdered her love.

  She almost shot him then but a desire to prolong the moment, perhaps an awareness of the utter emptiness that lay beyond it, stayed her finger on the trigger.

  ‘Yes, that would be it,’ Dog Cicero went on. ‘Tench let you go. He must have decided he could get a better result that way than putting you behind bars for a two or three stretch.’

  He didn’t sound afraid, and that was bad. She wanted him to be afraid. Her last memory of Jonty was of a man sobbing in pain and terror. Perhaps a bullet in the stomach was a good idea now. Except that she guessed that the first shot was going to cue the other two into desperate motion and after that there would be nothing for it but the long, destructive burst which would bring the curtain down.

  She saw him glance at the woman, the boy’s mother, and smile. His hand moved on the table and she came to the brink of action. But it only strayed to cover the woman’s and squeeze it. So, there was something between them. Her mind took this in, weighed it. She’d been wondering what to do about the woman, but if she were emotionally involved with Cicero, this gave birth to new refinements of revenge.

  She said flatly, ‘I’m going to kill you all, you know that. Your only options are to sit quiet till I’m ready, or pick your own time by making a move.’

  Now they knew. It wouldn’t stop them wriggling, but they knew and that was important.

  First wriggle came from Beck.

  ‘Surely killing me’s a little outside your brief, Bridie,’ he said with complete calm. ‘That’s not the
way to get your money back, and there’ll be long faces in Dublin if you go back empty handed.’

  ‘I think you’re mistaking the situation, Beck,’ said Cicero. His voice was just as calm, but while Beck’s had been the calmness of control it seemed to Heighway that his was the calmness of indifference.

  She moistened her lips in anticipation of ripping that indifference to tatters. A bullet through his girl friend’s breast perhaps …

  He was still speaking.

  ‘Miss Heighway isn’t here out of zeal for a cause. In fact I doubt if the actual cause ever meant all that much to her. No, this is personal business, so you’ll need to dredge up something better than money to talk your way out of it.’

  ‘No one’s talking their way out,’ said Bridie Heighway. ‘Nothing anyone can say will change a thing.’

  ‘Good,’ said Cicero. ‘Accepting that, we can at least check out a few facts without being accused of special pleading.’

  He knows I want to spin out the climax, thought Heighway. And he’s trying to use it. I’ll let him have the first one in mid-sentence, just when he’s thinking he’s getting somewhere.

  But the direction of Cicero’s sentence took her by surprise.

  ‘Did Jonty Thrale kill Madeleine Salter?’ he asked brusquely.

  ‘Who?’ She’d let herself be surprised into answering.

  ‘The woman at the college, whose telephone number you got from Mrs Maguire, which led you to Jane.’

  Now she was curious where this was leading.

  ‘No. I didn’t even know she was dead. What reason would Jonty have for killing her?’

  ‘I did wonder,’ said Dog. ‘Then presumably it was you, Beck. That’s the first place you’d go when you came down to London hoping to make contact with Jane. She probably told everything she knew to you as Father Blake, but you wanted to be sure, and once you’d moved from confession to inquisition, she had to be permanently silenced. Jane, I’m sorry. I thought it might be him, but I wouldn’t have said anything till I was sure.’

  Maguire was looking at Beck in horror.

  ‘Is it true, Oliver?’ she demanded. ‘You murdered Maddy? Oh God! Maddy …’

  This was fun, thought Bridie Heighway. This trio had pain of their own to spread among themselves, poisoning their last moments more than mere fear could.

  Beck’s only response to Maguire’s accusation was to shrug. A man trying to find a way out of dying didn’t waste energy on irrelevancies. Fixing his eyes on the woman with the gun, he said urgently, ‘OK, if this is personal, you’ve got even less reason to kill me. How have I harmed you? It was this bastard here who brought all the trouble to your door. Blow him away by all means. You’d be doing me a favour. After that, well, do whatever you want. If money’s a problem, I’d be delighted to help.’

  ‘And the woman?’ probed Heighway. ‘What shall I do about her?’

  Beck considered then shrugged once more.

  ‘Up to her,’ he said indifferently. ‘They’re sitting there holding hands. If they want to be together that much, I don’t see why I should stand in their way.’

  Suddenly she was tired of them all, tired of their wriggling, tired even of the pain they were inflicting on each other.

  Dog saw decision enter her eyes as he’d seen it enter the eyes of hundreds of poker players. Time for one last bet.

  He said, ‘You think I killed Thrale, don’t you? Why?’

  She said, ‘I know you killed him.’

  He nodded and said, ‘Of course. Toby Tench told you that, didn’t he? I’m sorry to tell you this, Bridie, but it’s not personal after all. Whether you like it or not there’s only one reason you’re here and it’s nothing to do with avenging Thrale. You’re working for the Brits! Toby Tench has recruited you for Special Branch!’

  He began to laugh, recovered, said, ‘I’m sorry. Look, what did he tell you? That I got out of the cottage and left you and Jonty to burn? Then the fire brigade turned up, just in time to rescue you, but not Jonty? Is that it? Of course it is. Then he turns you loose. I bet he let slip that I’d gone to America. He was sending you after me, Bridie, don’t you see? If the trail happened to lead to Beck, well and good, but his main concern was for you to put me out of the way. No time to explain why, but that’s the truth of it. And the rest of the truth is, I didn’t kill Jonty. I didn’t even leave him to burn. This bastard blew his skull off with his own gun, then he cracked my head open with it and left me to the flames. But I got out, Bridie. I got out and, like an idiot, I dragged you out with me. God help me, I saved your life so that Toby Tench could turn you loose to kill me!’

  He spoke with a passion which surprised himself and he saw the force of his outburst had reached the Irish woman. He had almost convinced her. He could see it in her face. But he could also see that it didn’t matter.

  Oliver Beck saw it too. The time for words was past. Best would have been for Cicero to make the move, draw the fire. But the fellow was all mouth. One last thought, three million – had it been worth it? Maybe. The next couple of seconds would tell him that.

  Then he blanked out thought and launched himself forward.

  One useful spin-off from the pig’s outburst – it concentrated Heighway’s attention so there was a fraction of delay in her reaction. But all it meant was that she had to step swiftly sideways to avoid his flailing arms and her first shots caught him high on the right shoulder instead of through his chest.

  He screamed in pain. His impetus carried him towards the open patio door and what had been assault became flight. Inside it would be cool and shady with places to hide, weapons to find. All he had to do was reach the shadows.

  He passed through the doorway and the second burst of bullets passed through with him, splintering his spine and throwing him face down onto a white leather sofa. For a couple of seconds he thrashed helplessly in a spasm of short-circuiting nerves. Then he was still.

  Every sinew in Jane’s body was screaming at her to run, to let the sound of the shots explode her into action as the starting pistol had in her athletics days. But Dog Cicero’s mind had computed the odds and opted for stillness. His hand closed tight on hers, communicating more than imprisoning, for she could easily have pulled free. Instead she obeyed, and when the smoking muzzle swung round to bear on them, it found a motionless target.

  He’d been right. But he’d also been wrong. Because they were so still, Bridie Heighway did not fire immediately as she would certainly have done at a moving target. But in flight, there would have been a faint chance that Dog’s broader frame would have protected Jane long enough for her to reach cover. Now all he’d won was a few seconds’ respite. Nothing had changed in her face. Their sentence was still written clear there.

  ‘Isn’t it enough?’ said Dog, gesturing at the corpse of Oliver Beck.

  ‘What could ever be enough?’ she hissed.

  ‘But not her! Why kill her?’ he demanded desperately.

  ‘Why not?’ said Bridie Heighway.

  Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  Then a voice called, ‘Auntie Bridie! Auntie Bridie!’

  And running up the steps from the lower terrace came the excited figure of Noll Maguire.

  The gunshots had aroused him. Behind him, Maria too had been awoken and was crouching by her lounger, her face slack with doubt and apprehension. But Noll had only the egotistic certainty of the loved child.

  ‘Is that the gun Billy promised me, Auntie Bridie? Have you brought it for me?’

  Beneath his hand Dog felt Jane’s clench into a fist, hard and cold as a snowball. She wanted to call out to Noll but was terrified he might come running to her, putting himself between the Beretta and its target. So she bit her words back and watched as her son clung to Bridie Heighway’s legs and reached up covetously to the unwavering gun.

  ‘Please, Auntie Bridie, is it mine?’

  She looked down at the eager, hopeful face of the little boy and he looked up into her pale, ice-sculpted featur
es. There was nothing there but cold, lonely hate. But the world had not yet taught him how to react to that. Funny faces were part of Aunt Bridie’s treasure-trove of talents, and this one just made him laugh out loud with uninhibited delight.

  For long moments there was no response. Then slowly, miraculously, she began to smile. And finally she stooped and swung him up in the crook of her free arm.

  ‘No, not this one, my little piglet,’ she said. ‘This one’s too big for you. But I’ll send you another one, I promise. As soon as I can. Now I’ve got to go away. Will you step with me a little way and see that I come to no harm?’

  She set him down and took him by the hand. Jane was on her feet.

  ‘Not again,’ she said in a voice full of agony. ‘Please. Not again.’

  ‘Just a little way, I promise,’ said Bridie Heighway. ‘You’ll not be wanting him to look in there.’

  She nodded towards the open patio door, then she turned to Dog.

  ‘Cicero, they tell me you’re a gambling man. I should give it up. Your luck must surely have run out. You can’t keep on winning with all the losing hands God keeps dealing you.’

  The boy was tugging impatiently at her hand.

  ‘All right, Noll, we’ll be off,’ she said. ‘You remember that song I taught you? “Green grow the rushes oh”? Shall we sing it as we go?’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted the boy.

  ‘Right then. I’ll give you one oh. Green grow the rushes oh! Now it’s you.’

  ‘What is your one oh?’ carolled Noll.

  ‘One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.’

  So hand in hand and singing in turn, they set off together down the path to the gate.

  Jane Maguire stood and watched them go.

  Beside her, Dog said urgently, ‘It’ll be all right, I know it will.’ But he could tell she didn’t hear.

  He left her and turned to meet Maria who was coming hesitantly up the steps. He stopped her from going any closer to the doorway into the villa and said, ‘Senhora Beck, please do not go inside. There has been an accident to your husband, Senhor Beck, a serious accident. Stay down by the pool for a while. I must make arrangements. Rest assured, you and your baby will be looked after as your husband would have wished. Only there must be no fuss, no disturbance, you understand. If there is any disturbance, if the authorities come before we are ready, they will take all this, the villa, all your husband’s money, everything. You understand?’