The Game

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Yerse, mum,’ came Charlie’s voice.

  Within a few minutes he brought in a ledger-like tome and a folded sheet of print-out. ‘Will you be long with the diary, mum?’ he asked. ‘We need it.’

  ‘Start another one.’

  As the door closed behind Charlie, Keith got to his feet. ‘Can I see that?’

  She closed the ledger on the print-out. ‘No you bloody well can’t,’ she said. ‘Sit down where you are. We’d lose ninety per cent of our clients if we weren’t absolutely confidential.’

  Keith resumed his seat. ‘Yes, mum,’ he said. He turned to Wallace, who was looking slightly shocked at this lèse-majesté. ‘Are the real identities of the clients known?’ he asked.

  ‘Some,’ Wallace said. ‘Losh, some of them pay by cheque or credit card. Some want a quarterly account to their homes. But a majority use false names and pay cash.’

  Mrs Heller looked up from the print-out. ‘We often do know who they are,’ she said. ‘Emergency phone calls. Lost property. Photographs in newspapers. We never let on that we know. One M.P. still thinks we think his name’s Blenkinsop. Right!’ She closed the book, locked it with the print-out in a drawer of her desk and spoke from memory. ‘The man in Number Sixteen called himself Don Donaldson. Hilary didn’t know him and I don’t recognise the name. Probably it was his first time here, but I’ll have a check made on the name. It could even be real.

  ‘The reservations were made by the other man. He called himself Harold Fosdyke. That won’t be real. Some of them pick oddball names because they’re easier to remember. Fosdyke stayed with Annette in Fifteen. Both girls had other appointments, so that Donaldson and Fosdyke were left in Sixteen and Fifteen respectively, to recover,’ this was said without the least expression, ‘and to leave in their own good time.’

  ‘Now comes the bit that I don’t like much. The two men arrived together by car. There was only one man in the car when it left.’

  Wallace winced and Keith pursed his lips in a silent whistle. ‘Has Chalet Fifteen been cleaned yet?’ Keith asked.

  ‘It should have been,’ Mrs Heller said, ‘but I doubt it. The girls are supposed to tidy up after every visitor, but there isn’t always time. Annette went off next morning with another girl, to act as hostesses for a week on some industrialist’s yacht. Hilary should have tidied up, but she’s a lazy monkey at times and I don’t suppose she bothered. You two can go and take a look.’

  ‘You’re not coming?’ Keith asked.

  ‘I’ve got more to do with my time. Come back and tell me all about it later.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘Is that your car opposite the front door?’

  ‘No,’ Keith said. ‘Don’t you want cars parked there?’

  ‘I don’t give a hoot where you park, but if you leave a car under that tree the little birdies’ll crap all over it.’

  As they went through the hall, Charlie, the porter, was speaking into his microphone. ‘Miss Lynn to Chalet Twelve, please. Your visitor is on the way. Miss Lynn to Chalet Twelve.’

  They retraced their steps past the yard, past the excavation for the swimming-pool. As they came within sight of the now deserted tennis court Keith said, ‘This place seems better organised than most car plants.’

  ‘So it should,’ Wallace said. ‘I taught them myself.’

  ‘You mean my respected partner’s management consultant to a whorehouse?’

  ‘Was,’ Wallace said. ‘Was.’

  ‘Was respected?’

  ‘Was consultant. I set up most of the administration, but Debbie caught on amazingly. Inside a fluffy-minded scrubber there was a born manager-accountant screaming to get out.’

  ‘She seems hard on the girls. Women can’t always cope with power.’

  ‘Don’t let her fool you. If one of the girls is in trouble, Debbie’ll fight like a tigress for her. Out of business, they’re her friends. In the boardroom, they’re fellow-directors. But in that room they’re employees, and they’d better not forget it.’ They turned off their previous path. ‘Oh God!’ Wallace said. ‘I don’t think that I want to know any more.’

  ‘Mrs Heller wants us to investigate.’

  ‘And what Debbie wants, Debbie gets. Sometimes I worry about what I’ve done to that girl, turning her from a tart bubbling with fun and affection into a sort of animated computer. Makes me feel Svengalish.’ They stopped outside Chalet Fifteen and Wallace spoke into the hidden microphone. ‘Let us into Fifteen, Charlie, please.’

  The lock clicked. They pushed the door open. ‘Shit!’ Wallace said. ‘I was hoping it’d all turn out to be a bad dream.’

  Chapter Three

  Back in Debbie Heller’s office the atmosphere, despite the solace of tea and biscuits, was far from convivial. Mrs Heller had the ledger and print-out open on her desk again, and sat poised, calm and in control. Hilary, her hair wrapped in a towel, sat nervously on the edge of her chair and tried not to fidget. Wallace looked as if he wished himself far, far away.

  Keith used the voice which he reserved for telling a customer that his gun was beyond repair or had failed proof ‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it at all,’ he said. ‘The smell of black-powder-smoke was still hanging on the air. And there had been blood spilled. The chair must have stood close to the fireplace; the tiles have been wiped over, but you can still see pink traces in the joints. And where the back of the chair would have been, the carpet’s still damp.’

  Mrs Heller’s face remained calm but her fingers made the papers rustle. ‘It could still be a frame,’ she suggested, ‘but more elaborate than you thought.’

  ‘I found some fragments of a percussion-cap,’ Keith said. ‘The evidence is piling up. I think you’ve got to call the fuzz.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Mrs Heller said. She met Wallace’s eye for a moment. ‘If we run over it from the beginning, putting in all that we know or can infer, we may get a better picture.’ She looked down and compared the print-out with the log-book. ‘I’ll make a start. On Wednesday of last week there was a phone call from the man who called himself Fosdyke. He had been here seven time in the past two years, never on his own. The staff think that he’s a fixer, entertaining potential buyers or clients, or buying some influence. Nobody recognised any of his companions, but the general impression was of men of a certain status.’

  ‘Is there any record of who introduced him?’ Keith asked.

  ‘None. And no clue to his real name or identity. He asked for an appointment for himself and a friend for Saturday evening. That was impossible – we were busy as a Gorbals pub on the first night of Glasgow Fair – so he accepted a booking for Sunday.’

  ‘Did he ask for particular girls?’

  ‘He asked for Hilary by name for his friend’(Hilary put her hand up as if to touch at her hair) ‘but said that he himself would take his chance. “Pot-luck” he called it. It seems to have been purest chance that he got Annette. Their appointment was for seven p.m. They arrived at the gate at six fifty-four.’

  ‘Any car number?’

  Mrs Heller shook her red-gold head regretfully. ‘White Granada estate, that’s all we know. Now, Hilary.’

  Miss Hilary sat up straight in front of the headmistress, gripping her alligator bag for comfort. ‘I went to Number Fifteen early, to be sure it was tidy,’ she said virtuously. ‘The men arrived about seven and Annette was a minute or two behind them. They’d ordered dinner for four over the phone, and Bert brought it down.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Mrs Heller said. ‘You were first at Number Fifteen. Was it all spick and span?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Did Bert let you in?’

  Hilary’s mouth made a pink O while she thought. ‘It was Bert,’ she said at last. ‘But I heard old Lucy’s voice when she let Bert in with the dinner. We left the door open after that, because it was so hot in the chalets.’

  ‘Any drinking before dinner?’ Keith asked.

  ‘The men had a dram or two. I just took a tonic water.’ For th
e first time, Hilary began to look animated. ‘For dinner, we had –’

  ‘That’s all in the record,’ Mrs Heller said firmly.

  Hilary subsided. ‘It’s just that I hadn’t had any lunch,’ she said, ‘being busy.’

  ‘Would you say that the men were sober?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Not to say sober, nor drunk either. Just drink taken, and they’d blown some pot. They were in control of their bodies,’ Hilary said judiciously, ‘but their minds were beginning to fly – my one more than Annette’s.’

  ‘Describe them,’ Mrs Heller said.

  Hilary looked surprised. She saw many men, without ever really looking at them. ‘Annette’s one, Mr Fosdyke, he’s big and heavy, with a pot on him and lots of muscle. Like I said –’

  ‘As you said.’

  ‘As I said, I’ve met him before. He’s . . . not very nice. Do you want to know –?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s relevant at the moment,’ Mrs Heller said. ‘Go on describing him.’

  Hilary thought hard. She seemed to feel that she had described everything that she could be expected to notice. ‘He had sandy hair, and little sandy curls all over him. And a snub nose,’ she finished triumphantly.

  ‘And the other one?’

  ‘Smaller. Quite light, really. He was nice. Polite and considerate.’

  ‘But what did he look like?’ Mrs Heller demanded.

  ‘I only met him the once.’

  The others uttered a collective sigh. ‘You’d be hurt,’ Keith said, ‘if he couldn’t remember your face.’

  ‘He’d be more likely to remember the back of my neck,’ Hilary said.

  Mrs Heller put on a pair of glasses, thickly horn-rimmed, and looked at Hilary over the top of them. ‘That kind of remark is not funny,’ she said severely. Hilary quailed. ‘Go on with the story of the evening.’

  ‘We finished dinner about eight,’ Hilary said in a subdued voice. ‘Mr Fosdyke was getting amorous, so Don and I split off We went to Sixteen. He was all done in a few minutes and he couldn’t get started again, so we just dozed off on the bed until Bert called me just after nine-thirty to remind me about my next appointment. I’d just showered and dressed when he called again to say that my next gentleman was at the gate. I said that Mr Donaldson was still with me in Sixteen, and Don sort of groaned that he wanted to rest a bit, so Bert said to go to Number Four. Bert worked the door for me, and Don said to leave it open because he was hot. He was snoring his head off in the chair before I was even out of the door. I can’t think of anything else. And, please, my hair’s not finished and I’ve got an appointment soon.’ She sounded almost tearful.

  ‘All right,’ Mrs Heller said. ‘You can go for now. Remember, not a word to anybody or you’ll catch it from me.’ She watched the girl to the door. ‘You’re putting on weight,’ she said suddenly. ‘Do you want me to put you on a crash diet?’

  The girl shook her head dumbly.

  ‘Then cut down and get some exercise. Play tennis with Dawn – she’s developing a bum like an elephant and you can tell her I said so. Out!’

  The door closed very gently against a sigh of relief.

  Debbie Heller pushed her glasses back up her nose. They made her look very young, but there was nothing of youth in the calm assurance of her manner. ‘I’ll have an abstract made of the entries that could be relevant,’ she said. ‘But so far they seem to check out, at least as far as doors are concerned. The trouble is that although we could usually check anybody’s movements by the need to have doors opened, that happened less than usual on that night.’

  ‘Because it was a hot night?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Yes. And the fans make rather a noise.’

  ‘So they closed doors if they were about to – er – sing a few rousing choruses of “I used to kiss you on the lips, but it’s all over now”,’ Keith said delicately, ‘but otherwise doors were left open?’

  ‘Exactly. However, there’s one entry that bugs me. It’s in Bert’s writing – he was on until midnight. He starts with a star – that’s the symbol for the system being triggered by a noise. It takes half a second for the system to warm up, so if it’s a short noise you don’t hear it. The entry reads, “No 15 Man. Says let door slam”. That’s all.’

  ‘Terse,’ Keith said.

  ‘It is. But,’ Mrs Heller said, ‘in all fairness, the log’s mainly kept as a check on customer’s accounts. If the audio system gets triggered and the reason seems harmless, a very brief entry’s quite acceptable. But it’s timed 10.21, and there’s no record of the man asking for the door to be opened again. The white Granada left before midnight.’

  ‘It c-could have been the bathroom door,’ Wallace said.

  ‘Note the wording,’ Mrs Heller said. “Man. Says let door slam”. Says. The bathroom and kitchen doors are in full view of the camera. The outside door isn’t. Nor is the position where you say the chair was. So if there was a shooting, it was at 10.21.’

  ‘I don’t want to say “I told you so”,’ Keith said, ‘but I told you so. You’ve got to call the police. It fits together too neatly. Two men arrive, dine with the two girls and separate to two chalets. The girls have other engagements and move on, leaving the men to recover. The men were half-pissed and had been smoking pot.

  ‘It’s possible but unlikely that one of the men left and was replaced by somebody we don’t know about. But, to keep it simple, let’s assume that the action’s confined to the same duo.

  ‘One of them, probably the man in Chalet Sixteen, decides that he needs a weapon. Maybe it was a delusion stoked by drink and pot – in that sort of a state, a man can get his motives muddled and still be competent to handle physical problems. On the wall of Chalet Sixteen he sees a whole lot of antique but workable guns. From somewhere he produces powder, ball and a percussion cap. You tell me that nothing like that’s kept around here, but you could check on your staff’s hobbies. More likely, one man or the other was an enthusiast for muzzle-loading guns, and there was gear in the car.

  ‘He was trying for a pistol which could take a lead ball that he had with him. He tried first for the Queen Anne flintlock, which wouldn’t even have needed a percussion cap, but he couldn’t get it off the wall. So he settled for the duelling pistol.’

  ‘Do people really still shoot those things?’ Mrs Heller asked.

  ‘Good Lord, yes. A muckle part of the shop’s business is built around muzzle-loaders. Originals and reproductions, flintlock and percussion. And the accessories. Flasks, horns and pouches, bullet-moulds and so on. They have something on at Bisley almost every month, and clay pigeon events, local challenge trophies, inter-club challenge matches and the lot.’

  ‘Sorry I asked.’ She smiled disarmingly. ‘Go on about what happened.’

  ‘He loaded the pistol. And here’s where we begin to pick up wee crottles of evidence. He didn’t have the ramrod, because Wal keeps them locked up against souvenir hunters. You can’t push the ball down easily with a screwdriver – the ball tends to roll and the blade jams against the wall of the barrel. So he used the handle end. You can see the marks of the screwdriver blade under the arm of a chair in Number Fifteen. That must have been the chair that he swapped over. You can also see the mark of the blade on the ball, which would’ve been him giving it a last push after it was seated.

  ‘Next, he needed a percussion-cap.’ Keith noticed that Debbie Heller was looking dazed. Trying to keep from his voice any suggestion of Listen With Mother, he went into more detail. ‘That pistol, you’ll understand, dates from after the flintlock era but before the arrival of the breech-loading gun with cartridges. It was still muzzle-loaded, but to set it off there was a copper cap on a nipple, to be struck by the hammer.’ Keith nearly apologised for the word nipple, but remembered where he was. ‘The nipple on that pistol would take a twenty-six cap, which is in common use but not universal.

  ‘I thought he’d be damn lucky to find a pistol in that collection which could take both the ball and the cap
that he had available. And I’d noticed a trace of sticky guck around the nipple. So I had a hunt around the floor of Number Fifteen, and sure enough I found some fragments of copper. Those caps are only too prone to fly to bits at the best of times, and I guessed that a misfitting cap would be almost a certainty.’ Keith tipped some fragments of copper out of a twist of paper.

  Wallace bent over them. ‘Chewing-gum?’ he suggested.

  Keith looked at Mrs Heller. ‘Does Hilary chew gum?’ he asked.

  She waved a vague hand ‘It hardly matters. The bedside table in each chalet’s kept stocked with everything a man could suddenly want, from paper tissues to cough-drops. Including chewing-gum.’

  ‘Right,’ Keith said He poked at the metal fragments with a matchstick. ‘There’s a number of sizes of nipple, and caps to match. Generally speaking, the bigger the gun the bigger the cap. These bits were certainly never a twenty-six. More like a “military top hat”. It’s called that because of the shape,’ he explained.

  ‘I had sort of guessed that,’ Mrs Heller said ‘Let’s hear the rest of it.’

  ‘There’s not a lot more to say. He stuck the too-big cap onto the too-small nipple with chewing-gum, and he walked from Number Sixteen to Number Fifteen. We don’t know whether he wanted the pistol for defence or offence, or whether he intended to commit a hold-up or whether he was doped to the eyebrows and hallucinating. Whatever the reason, the shot was fired.

  ‘The system came on. The chair was close to the fireplace. That would be out of view of the camera?’

  ‘The chair, yes. The man, too, if he slumped down.’

  ‘He wouldn’t sit up very straight with a bullet through his neck. And the door?’

  ‘Yes, the door’s out of camera in most chalets.’

  ‘So he could have fired from the door, or he could have hidden the pistol and sat down in the other chair before he fired. There’d be nothing for the porter to see but smoke, if it showed up at all. How long would he watch an empty room for?’