Dangerous Games

by Sally Spencer

  The van slowed, then came to a halt. He heard the driver’s door open, then the sound of footsteps as the driver walked around it. Next the back doors opened, and the Cypriot climbed in.

  ‘Where are we?’ Bygraves croaked.

  ‘Why should you care?’ his captor asked, kneeling down beside him.

  ‘Please, I’d like to know.’

  ‘Well, since you seem so interested, I will tell you. We are parked in a lay-by outside Dunethorpe.’

  ‘And why … why have we stopped?’

  ‘Ah, that is a much more intelligent question,’ the other man said, rolling his prisoner over, until he was pressing against the side of the van. ‘We have stopped because I need to give you an injection.’

  Bygraves felt his bowels turn to water. ‘You’re … you’re going to kill me,’ he moaned.

  ‘You have known that for a long time,’ the Cypriot told him. ‘But if you think the injection will be lethal, you are wrong. That would be too easy a death – too merciful a punishment.’

  ‘Then what …’

  ‘The injection will cause temporary paralysis,’ the Cypriot said, wedging Bygraves against the side of the van with his knees, and using his freed hands to unbutton his prisoner’s left shirt sleeve. ‘You will not be able to move, but you will be conscious. You will be able to understand exactly what is going on, and when death comes, you will feel it just as much as your poor victim did.’

  ‘Please …!’ Bygraves gasped.

  ‘Let us play your game again,’ the other man suggested. ‘What if you knew you were about to hang, but could do nothing about it? Would you feel regret for what you had done – or only regret that you had been caught.’

  ‘I do regret it!’ Bygraves said. ‘I regretted it the moment it was over, and I’ve never stopped regretting it since.’

  ‘Then you should have taken the opportunity to surrender yourself to the police, as you were instructed to,’ his capture said harshly.

  ‘If … if you let me go, I promise I’ll do just that.’

  ‘Too late,’ said the other man, picking up the syringe and looking for a suitable vein.

  Noah had survived the Flood. Moses had delivered his people from Egypt and into the Land of Milk and Honey.

  The Cycle moved on to the New Testament – the birth of Jesus, the miracles, the arrest.

  ‘What comes next?’ Jo asked Baxter. ‘The crucifixion?’

  ‘You’d think that would be the next logical step, wouldn’t you?’ Baxter agreed. ‘And in all the other cycles I’ve heard about – the York Cycle and so forth – that’s exactly what does come next. But we’re awkward buggers in Dunethorpe, and we do things differently from everybody else on principle. Besides, we like things to be clear cut, and we hate to see any loose ends left dangling.’

  ‘Loose ends? What loose ends?’

  ‘Well, we’ve seen the villain of the piece – Judas – being villainous, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And now, being the plain-speaking, plain-living people we are in Dunethorpe, we want to see him punished for it.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We want to see Judas top himself,’ Baxter said.

  Judas Iscariot – better known as a plumber called Ted Osslethwaite – appeared in the window archway with a rope around his neck.

  ‘I have betrayed my master for thirty pieces of silver,’ he said.

  He had another line still to deliver, and in the first few rehearsals, he had said it almost immediately, much to the director’s frustration.

  ‘We need a dramatic pause,’ the director had told him.

  ‘A dramatic pause?’ repeated Osslethwaite, who knew a great deal about U bends and ball-cocks, but very little about acting. ‘What’s a dramatic pause?’

  The director had looked up to the sky, as if badly in need of some divine guidance. ‘Count to ten before you speak again,’ he said, spacing out his words as if talking to a simpleton. ‘And count slowly … one elephant, two elephants, three elephants …’

  Now the rehearsals were over. This was the real thing, and Osslethwaite – determined to get it right – began his counting now: ‘One elephant … two elephants … three elephants …’

  Though he’d never intended to – though the director would later be furious that he had – he found himself glancing back over his shoulder, at the scaffolding a couple of feet below him, where he had placed the dummy which was due to take his place.

  ‘Four elephants … five elephants … six elephants …’

  Once he’d delivered his second line, the lights would all go out for ten seconds.

  ‘And only ten seconds,’ the director had said emphatically, ‘because if it’s any more, some of the audience will start to think it’s funny. Then we’ll get catcalls and giggles, and the whole atmosphere will be destroyed.’

  Ten seconds then – in which time Osslethwaite was expected to climb onto the scaffolding himself, pick up the dummy and throw it through the archway, so that when the lights came on again, what the audience would see Judas hanging from the wall.

  It shouldn’t be a difficult thing to do, even in the dark, because he’d practised it enough.

  ‘Seven elephants … eight elephants …’

  Osslethwaite was beginning to feel mildly troubled. When he’d glanced back, he’d seen the dummy just where it should be, right enough, but he’d also got the impression that there were a couple of people lurking in the shadows.

  And they shouldn’t have been there, because the director had made it quite plain that when you weren’t on stage – or about to be on stage – you should keep well away from the set.

  ‘Nine elephants … ten elephants!’

  ‘I am no longer worthy to live on the green and beautiful earth that the Lord my God has provided for me!’ Osslethwaite-Judas said. ‘I will kill myself.’

  The lights went out, and Billy Osslethwaite was on the point of turning round when he felt a sharp blow to his head, and his lights went out as well.

  The first time Baxter had been alone in the dark with a girl, he had been sixteen, and they had been at the cinema. Then, he had taken the opportunity to steal a hurried, furtive kiss. Now, he felt the return of that urge, but instantly recognized the absurdity of following it through, since the girl in question this time was actually a woman, and in a couple of hours or so they would be in bed together.

  Or maybe it wasn’t so absurd after all, he told himself. Maybe he should treat Jo as if she were his first girlfriend, and he was totally infatuated with her.

  But then the lights came on again, and the decision was taken out of his hands.

  He looked up at the arch, expecting to see the Judas-dummy hanging from it.

  But he didn’t see that at all!

  What he did see was that there were two men standing in the archway, although one of the men seemed only to be standing by virtue of the fact that the other was holding him up. And the man who needed assistance had a noose around his neck – a noose which was connected to the buttress by a length of rope.

  The man who could stand unaided looked around him, and then threw the second man off the ledge. For just a moment, the second man was in free-fall, then he ran out of rope, and came to a jerky halt.

  The audience, who had not been expecting anything as spectacular as this, gasped in amazement. And then slowly, they began to realize that this wasn’t part of the show at all – that this was a real hanging, and the man who was now swinging slowly from side to side – like a malfunctioning pendulum – was probably dead.

  ‘Oh, my God, how terrible!’ Jo gasped. ‘Hold me! Please hold me!’

  But she was talking to empty air, because Baxter was already sprinting towards the wall.

  Twenty-Five

  Baxter was running at a speed which would have surprised him if he’d stopped to think about it. But he didn’t stop – and his mind had other things to ponder on.

  In all his years on the
Force, he’d never actually seen a murder being committed, but less than a minute earlier, all that had changed. The nutter from Whitebridge had struck again, and this time the bastard had had the gall to do it on his patch.

  The wet grass squelched under his feet, but he did not worry about slipping and falling. He had never felt more sure-footed. He had never felt fitter. He would catch this killer if it was the last thing he did.

  He reached the abbey wall, and sprinted round to the other side – the back-stage area, where the murderer had used the scaffolding to carry his victim up to the point of execution. Cast and crew were milling around. Some of them seemed well-aware that something had gone wrong, but still had no idea what it was. Others were only too aware of it, and at least three of this latter group looked as if they were about to be sick.

  ‘Did anybody see where he went?’ Baxter bellowed, without even bothering to explain who the ‘he’ was.

  A man in a black beret – who was probably the director – took a couple of steps forward.

  ‘It’s … he was …’ he stuttered.

  ‘Just point, you bloody fool!’ Baxter barked.

  The man in the black beret raised his hand, and pointed with a trembling finger into the darkness which lay between the ruins and the boundary wall.

  Baxter looked up at the scaffolding. ‘Can the fellers working the spotlights hear me?’ he shouted.

  The men called back that they could.

  ‘Then swing the bloody things round so I can see where the bastard’s gone,’ Baxter told them.

  The lights were swung, and the strip of land between the abbey and the boundary wall was suddenly as bright as day. And there was the killer – running as fast as he could towards the wall, but in an awkward lop-sided way, as if he’d injured himself climbing down from the scaffolding.

  Baxter dashed after him. The best he could hope for – given the lead the other man had – was to catch him half-way over the wall, grab his leg, and drag him back down again. But even that hope quickly faded. The killer had already straddled the wall, and while Baxter was still at least twenty feet from it, he dropped over the other side.

  The wall was around twelve feet high, and the chief inspector took a flying leap at it. He felt his hands make contact with the top of the wall at the same moment as his sternum slammed into the brickwork. He was winded, but his hands maintained their grip and, gasping for breath, he heaved himself up.

  From the top of the wall, he heard an engine roaring to life, and saw a black van pulling away. He dropped to the ground, and immediately stepped out into the middle of road.

  Several cars were approaching the spot, but a souped-up Cortina – travelling at well above the speed limit – was much closer than the rest. The driver of the Cortina saw Baxter standing there and waving his arms, and pulled hard on the steering wheel to slue the car to the right. His intention was clearly to get past this maniac as quickly as possible, but when the maniac moved in the same direction himself, the driver realized that was not going to happen, and slammed on his brakes.

  The Cortina came to a skidding halt just three feet from where Baxter was standing.

  The driver, trembling with a mixture of fear and anger, stuck his head out of the window and screamed, ‘What do you think you’re doing, you bloody moron? I could have bloody killed you!’

  Baxter advanced a couple of feet, holding his warrant card in front of him. ‘Police!’ he said.

  It was a magic word which instantly drained away the driver’s anger – though not his fear. He pulled his head back into the car, and said, ‘I swear to you, officer, I’m perfec’ly sober.’

  ‘I’m commandeering this vehicle,’ Baxter told him.

  ‘Commandeering? What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I need it – and I’m taking it.’

  ‘Are you allowed to do that?’ the Cortina driver wondered.

  Baxter opened the door. ‘Out!’ he ordered. ‘Or I might just see if you really can walk in a straight line.’

  The man climbed out the car, and Baxter quickly slid into the driver’s seat. He gunned the engine, and, with a screech of protest from the tyres, the Cortina shot forward. As it disappeared into the distance, the owner found himself praying that he would get it back in one piece.

  Baxter no longer had visual contact with the van, so he was going to have to guess where the killer would be heading. If he was in the man’s shoes himself, he thought, he would want to get away from Dunethorpe before the police had time to react and started setting up road blocks. That meant he would probably be heading for the by-pass – and chances were that he didn’t know all the short cuts that a local man did.

  A route – almost as straight as the crow flies – was already taking shape in Baxter’s mind. He took a sharp turn to the right, and plunged into an estate of Victorian terraced cottages.

  He drove down the narrow streets with his lights flashing and his hand almost permanently on the horn. He took corners on two wheels, praying as he did so that no one had parked illegally close to those corners – because if they had, he would go right up their arses.

  He saw that his recklessness had been rewarded as he reached the mile-long, sloping slip-road which led down to the dual carriageway. There was the black van, just ahead of him. The driver was getting as much out of the engine as he possibly could, but it was no match for the souped-up Cortina.

  The road was wide enough for the Cortina to overtake the van – but only just. If the van chose to swing out as he was passing it, there was a fair chance that, with its superior weight, it could knock him off the road, and send him hurtling down the embankment to the fields below. Clearly then, his brain told him, the safest thing to do – the only sensible thing to do – would be to simply keep following the van until they reached a safer place to overtake. But even as these thoughts were going through his mind, his foot was already pressing the accelerator right down to the floorboards.

  The van had been picking up speed as it went downhill, and now it was moving almost as fast as the Cortina. When Baxter drew level with it, he could see the van driver looking down at him, and read in the man’s eyes that at any moment he intended to swing the van out.

  He needed a diversion, Baxter thought. Any diversion!

  He pulled his pipe out of his pocket, the bowl in his hand, and pointed the stem towards the van driver. It didn’t look much like a gun, but at that speed – and in those conditions – it was close enough to fool the killer for a second. The Cypriot ducked his head, and Baxter was past him.

  The Cortina had soon pulled a couple of hundred yards away from the van. It was now or never, Baxter decided. He hit the brakes, and pulled hard on the wheel. His vehicle slewed across the road, its tyres screeching, its gearbox almost swallowing itself. The Cortina came to a rocking halt, with its wheels no more than a few inches from the edge of the embankment.

  Baxter flung open the door, and dived free of the Cortina. He went into a roll, and only stopped when seven or eight feet clear of the vehicle. As he scrambled to his feet, he could see that the black van was still heading towards him.

  The driver still had time to slam on the brakes and put the van into reverse gear, if that was what he wanted to do. But he showed no signs of any such inclination. Instead he seemed to be concentrating on coaxing every available ounce of energy out of his engine.

  ‘He’s decided that if he turns back now, he’s finished,’ Baxter thought.

  And the van driver was right in that assumption. The only chance he had escaping now was ramming the Cortina out of his way.

  The van hit the car with a sickening thud. The Cortina rocked, and even moved a little.

  But not enough!

  Nowhere near enough!

  The van’s engine bellowed like a dying animal, and then – but for a hiss of stream and the creaking of twisted metal – it fell silent.

  Baxter ran around the car to the van. As he wrenched open the van door, he was expecting resistanc
e. But there was none. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel – and it didn’t take a doctor to see that he was dead.

  Mr Forsyth sat in his room at the Foreign Office, looking at the secure-telex machine which had been spewing out ribbons of information for quite some time.

  ‘So the Cypriot’s dead,’ said Barrington, who was reading the same information over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Forsyth agreed.

  ‘Then all your troubles are over, aren’t they?’

  Forsyth swung his chair around, so that he was facing the man who he had come to regard as his protégé. ‘You disappoint me,’ he said.

  ‘Do I? Why?’

  ‘Because a few gothic murders, in a part of the country that none of us would ever visit through choice, have never really been of much concern to us. Our primary interest has always been in covering up what went on in Cyprus seven years ago.’

  Barrington flushed, like a cocky schoolboy who had suddenly and unexpectedly had the full extent of his ignorance revealed.

  ‘I appreciate that,’ he said, ‘but I would have thought that now the killer is dead, the murder investigation would no longer have the impetus to …’

  ‘Monika Paniatowski is still in Cyprus,’ Forsyth interrupted him. ‘Furthermore, she seems to have been making unexpectedly good progress in her inquiries, so that while she’s not yet discovered the awful truth, she’s getting rather close to it.’

  ‘Then she should be pulled out immediately,’ Barrington said.

  ‘Indeed, she should,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘And how, exactly, do you think we should go about doing that?’

  ‘We should contact someone in the military with the authority to rescind her privileges.’

  ‘General Doyle, for example?’

  ‘Yes, he would be a good choice.’

  Forsyth sighed. ‘General Doyle is spending the night with his mistress. She is a woman of rather bizarre sexual tastes, and she seems to suit him perfectly. He thinks I don’t know about her, and I want him to continue thinking that until the Service is in real trouble, and we desperately need his backing. Which means that for tonight at least, we cannot contact him.’