The Game

by Gerald Hammond

  The officer’s voice was becoming increasingly hostile. ‘Would you care to tell me how you got injured?’

  ‘No,’ Keith said, ‘I would not.’

  ‘My orders are to bring you to Newton Lauder.’

  ‘I’m going there anyway,’ Keith said patiently.

  ‘Just come with me, please.’

  ‘If you insist. Molly, get hold of Mr Enterkin for me. Tell him that they refuse to tell me anything.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Tell him that I’m saying nothing until I know what it’s about. And tell Janet.’ Janet, Keith hoped, would have the sense to get a message to Mrs Heller. ‘And before I get out of the car, take a look at their warrant cards for me.’

  Chapter Ten

  They made good speed and no conversation. Keith passed the time by keeping mental track of their progress, but he was still placing them at the top of Soutra Hill when they made the sharp turn off the main road towards Newton Lauder. Keith’s own house was somewhere off to the right. The sound of the car changed as they entered streets. They pulled up in the square.

  One of the policemen took Keith’s arm, and not, Keith thought, out of consideration. It was the constable who had done all the talking; Keith knew the gruff voice. Keith made what use he could of his blurred vision as they climbed the low step and entered the police building.

  Mr Enterkin’s voice was like the barking of an angry terrier. Keith could imagine the fat little solicitor scampering dog-like around the tiled corridors, snapping at heels. ‘Which of these men did that to you?’ he demanded.

  Keith was sorely tempted; but medical examination would show that his bruises were sixteen hours old. ‘I had a fall in the hotel bathroom,’ he said. ‘What sort of speed did Molly drive at, to get here first?’

  ‘She phoned. You’re not saying that because you’ve been intimidated?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have they been keeping you from getting medical attention?’

  ‘I don’t need a doctor,’ Keith said.

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

  Keith could feel hands pulling at him and he managed to make out the thick-set form of Sergeant Ritchie. ‘Chief Inspector Munro wants to see you right away,’ Ritchie’s voice said.

  ‘Not without me,’ Enterkin said.

  ‘Mr Munro wants to see him alone first.’

  ‘I can keep my trap shut,’ Keith said.

  ‘I’m coming along to make sure of it.’

  ‘No you are not,’ Ritchie said firmly. ‘Come along now, Keith – er – Mr Calder.’

  Ritchie pulled one of Keith’s arms. One of the visiting officers jerked at the other. Keith let himself stumble. He was playing for time and a psychological advantage. He meant to save himself, but when Ritchie let go of his arm the other policeman held on. Keith swung round and as he fell he hit his nose on the counter. The blow was slight, and although it set his bruises pulsing he had many a time suffered worse in friendly tussles with Molly’s brother. He need not have produced such heart-rending groans . . .

  Mr Enterkin rounded on a stout woman who had been arguing over a summons for a chimney-fire. ‘Madam, you were witness to that assault.’

  She nodded happily. The police seldom find friendly witnesses within their own portals. ‘Aye. Right coarse it was,’ said the lady, ‘and done on purpose too.’

  ‘You’ll testify to that?’

  ‘So help me God.’

  ‘Mrs McHarg, isn’t it?’

  Keith was on his knees. While Mr Enterkin and Mrs McHarg held their dialogue and Sergeant Ritchie protested the accidental nature of the mishap, he felt his face. The knock had set his nose bleeding and he managed to transfer some of the blood to his swellings. He could have done with a mirror, but by touch alone he was confident that he was presenting the sort of picture that Mr Enterkin could best use. ‘I think I’ll be all right,’ he murmured bravely.

  ‘The poor laddie!’ said Mrs McHarg. ‘See what they’ve done to him!’

  ‘Come along now, Keith man,’ said Ritchie. His careful officialese was slipping under pressure. ‘You’re no’ sair skaithed, an’ it was just a mishanter. Come away and see Munro. And nae lawyers, for the love of God.’

  ‘If you separate me from my client even for one second,’ Enterkin said grimly, ‘I’ll be back with a press photographer and a reporter before you can start to clean him up. The Borders Advertiser has an office just up the road.’

  *

  Chief Inspector Munro found himself very much at a disadvantage. In the circumstances he could hardly prise Keith forcibly out of Mr Enterkin’s tenacious clasp, and having got Keith at last into his office he was forced to release him again, albeit temporarily, first into the washroom and then for the attention of a doctor who, to Munro’s stark horror, expressed privately to the chief inspector his anxiety as to whether either blow, and he stressed ‘either’, might not have caused serious injury. The doctor mentioned detached retinae and intercranial haemorrhage among other horrors, and Munro took little comfort from the fact that the doctor was a notorious prophet of doom. Nobody, Munro felt, could be wrong all the time.

  Even when he had got rid, for the moment, of the doctor and had seated Keith and Mr Enterkin in his room together with a constable to take shorthand, he found his visitors more anxious to discuss a personal suit against himself than the reason for Keith’s enforced return to Newton Lauder. Almost as bad, he found his mind distracted by a concern, which he would never have admitted, for Keith. When they had first met, Keith’s amorous bachelorhood, disrespect for the police and preoccupation with firearms had combined to give Munro an acute dislike of him, but over the years Munro had come to know Keith and to hold him in reluctant but firm respect. This was not going to be easy.

  ‘Very well, then,’ Munro said at last, testily. ‘We have discussed it long enough. Either you are going to sue or you are not. Which is it to be?’

  ‘These things can’t be rushed,’ Enterkin said. ‘They take time. Evidence must be gathered, precognitions taken, counsel’s opinion sought. Your own conduct during the remainder of this interview may well have a bearing. So far we have only discussed the assault which was carried out, we believe on your orders. We have yet to touch on the matter of wrongful detention. My client has been here for an hour and in the hands of your officers for twice as long, and he has still not been told the reason. His time is valuable, and mine is far from cheap.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll remind you that I’m –’

  ‘If,’ Munro said violently, ‘you ever again tell me that you are a respectable businessman now, I think that I shall give you far better ground for litigation than you have at present. Or,’ he added, ‘if you say again that you are a happily married man.’

  ‘I hardly think that my client’s married status comes into this,’ Enterkin said.

  ‘Why not?’ Keith asked. The imp of mischief that lived forever behind his shoulder had been tickled at Munro’s discomfiture, and Enterkin had been quick to catch on and help to keep the policeman off-balance. ‘He drags my past sins –’

  ‘Alleged sins,’ said Enterkin.

  ‘–alleged past sins into everything else. I don’t know why he’s so determined to believe that I still stray from the straight and narrow. I’ve got a fine wife in good working order. I tell you, Munro, I resent these constant slurs. Enterkin, could we not get an interdict restraining him from uttering slanders?’

  ‘Probably. Would you like me to raise an action?’

  Munro pulled himself together and towered over the two men, who were lounging at ease in his hard chairs. ‘I made no slurs,’ he said, ‘and if you tell me what you were doing yesterday I may, just may, be able to let you walk out of here without a charge.’

  ‘All day yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Enterkin said. ‘We can walk out of here any time that you like.’

  ‘Unless
he charges me?’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘But he’s given me no idea what he’s on about.’ Keith switched his attention to Munro. ‘I see no reason at all to tell you all about my day yesterday when I don’t know what you’re enquiring into.’

  Munro thought, in Gaelic:

  This is not going to be easy. When this son of an unmarried lady uses that tone of voice, he is as slippery as an eel.

  But there is something going on and he is a part of it.

  Men are coming and going as never before.

  Two men injured and hanging from a tree, and the sound of a shot.

  Two men were seen, they seemed to be watching Millmont House. They sound like the same two men.

  I will start with the two men.

  ‘Have you ever been to Millmont House?’ he asked.

  Keith nearly jumped. ‘Mind your own damn business,’ he said.

  ‘I think you did. On business? Your business? Or theirs?’ When Keith sat silent, Munro went on. ‘But you will be saying that I am making slurs again. Yesterday, just before noon, two men were found handcuffed to a tree. One of them had a broken kneecap. A witness saw you driving away. What have you to say to that?’

  Keith thought furiously:

  Witness?

  Farmer attracted by sound of shot?

  I never shoot around there. Nobody local would know my face. Did he get my number? If so, did he just see me driving by?

  Better not produce my alibi if I don’t have to.

  Would that bleeder Bardolph have talked? Named me?

  Not on purpose. That sort hold their tongues.

  Under an anaesthetic? Wouldn’t hold up as evidence.

  Without Bardolph pressing charges, there’ll be no case.

  Not if I keep my trap shut. Sit tight.

  ‘I just want to say –’

  ‘One moment,’ Enterkin broke in. ‘Better to say nothing at all than half a story. What you don’t say can be revealing, or misleading, or downright dangerous. So wait until we’ve been allowed to discuss the implications in private.’

  ‘I was only going to say that talking to the police never did an innocent man any good, let alone a guilty one. But I don’t want to hang about in here waiting for a case to be brought.’

  ‘You’re not charged with anything yet. If you want to walk out of here, start walking. I could get you bail on an assault charge. Mr Munro, did your witness know Mr Calder?’

  Munro set his lips firmly. ‘You can’t expect –’

  Enterkin rose to his feet, very lightly considering his rotundity, beckoned to Keith and then realised that Keith was not responding to gestures. ‘Come,’ Enterkin said irritably.

  ‘He identified him,’ Munro said.

  ‘If he didn’t know him beforehand, how did he identify him?’

  ‘From a photograph,’ Munro said. (Keith said later that the words came out with as much eager spontaneity as if he’d been shitting coke, and Molly said that if Keith didn’t bolt his food he wouldn’t know what that felt like.)

  Mr Enterkin gently pushed Keith back into his chair and resumed his own seat. ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘There goes any chance you might have had with an identity parade. The local sheriffs have strong views about policemen who show witnesses photographs of the accused and then put him in a line-up. What a pity,’ he added.

  ‘We shall see,’ Munro said. ‘Mr Calder, why were you making for Turnhouse Airport when the officers stopped your car?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Mr Calder has nothing to say,’ Enterkin broke in. ‘But I am advised by Mrs Calder, who was driving the car, that she was about to pass the slip-road for Turnhouse when the police car overtook her and she was signalled to stop. Naturally, she turned down the slip-road.’

  ‘That is not what the two officers say.’

  ‘Then no doubt you will take disciplinary proceedings against them. A car which had been following my client’s turned down the slip-road after them and the driver, according to Mrs Calder, slowed down and took a good look at the tableau. He had three passengers.’

  ‘Did Mrs Calder get the number of the car?’ Munro asked.

  ‘Unfortunately no. But no doubt the Police National Computer –’

  ‘From a description?’ Munro sounded half-relieved, half-disappointed. ‘I hardly think it practicable.’

  ‘A lime-green Rolls,’ Enterkin said. ‘How many of those do you think the computer would cough up?’

  Chief Inspector Munro made no answer. His mind, reverting to its native Gaelic again, was racing away.

  I will ask Edinburgh to have those two men boiled in oil.

  I hope he was not heading for the airport, but I wanted to know. Either way. They were to see him into the airport. Or past it.

  And I will make Ritchie very sorry that he showed that photograph. An identity parade would achieve nothing now.

  Why would Ritchie have a photograph of Calder? They know each other well. Did Ritchie show the photograph to the witness so that the identification of Calder would not stand up in court?

  It was Ritchie who spoke to Edinburgh.

  If I thought . . . But no. I would not act without proof And I will not get proof now. I must watch Ritchie in future. Especially in any case which involves Calder.

  These two men will not let anything slip. I must fire the big gun.

  ‘There will be no bail on a murder charge,’ he said. ‘Do you deny that yesterday you killed a man?’ He thought: It is hard to read the expression on a swollen face, but I think that he is amazed. And yet she seemed so sure.

  Keith felt his stomach swoop down, and he clenched his buttocks in case it went all the way. Nobody ever died of busted kneecaps. Or did they? He turned towards Enterkin.

  ‘Deny it,’ the solicitor said.

  ‘Certainly I deny it. Who’s dead?’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me that you don’t know?’

  ‘I am telling you. I’m giving you my positive assurance that I’ve no bloody idea.’

  ‘And you’d swear to that?’

  ‘I’d put it to music and sing it.’

  ‘I doubt the court would find it of great evidential value,’ Munro said. He scratched his chin. ‘I will put it to you straight,’ he said suddenly. ‘Keith Calder, do you deny that yesterday you killed your partner, Wallace James?’

  Chapter Eleven

  Keith’s mouth was bone dry, and his stomach, which had ceased its churning, resumed its gyrations. He heard Enterkin gasp.

  ‘Wallace is dead? Keith said at last.

  ‘Please record,’ said Enterkin, ‘that Mr Calder’s tone was interrogatory.’

  Through a haze of grief, Keith thought:

  Wallace is dead? What do I tell Janet? How?

  He must have met Warrender.

  If it happened in Lewis, they wouldn’t think I did it.

  Between the Angus Hotel and Riverside Drive?

  How can I drop Warrender in it, without dropping Mrs Heller and her little friends as well?

  Mr Enterkin was asking, ‘Has the body been identified positively as being that of Mr James?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ Munro said. Even through his bemusement, Keith recognised the evasive tone. He came alert.

  ‘Then,’ Enterkin said, ‘my client is not saying another word. You can’t seriously expect him to make any statement in the face of vague, unspecific and unsubstantiated allegations.’

  ‘An honest man –’ Munro began.

  ‘The most honest man in the world,’ Enterkin said firmly, ‘yes, even a man as honest as my client, could talk himself into trouble if he let himself be drawn into that sort of trap. Do you, in fact, have a body?’

  ‘Not as yet,’ Munro admitted. ‘The inshore lifeboat is doing a search of the Tay and the frogmen are out. But we do not need a body.’

  ‘You do before you can come to court,’ Enterkin said. ‘God knows how many years it is since a Scottish court entertained a murder charge w
ithout a body.’

  ‘We can prove death in other ways, and the circumstantial evidence is strong. Mr James left here yesterday to meet Mr Calder in Dundee. They had quarrelled because Mr Calder was using his time and the firm’s money to build up his own collection of antique guns. Mrs James has not heard from her husband again, and Mr Calder is heading for Turnhouse Airport. To that, add Mr Calder’s long infatuation with Mrs James . . . Hard evidence will follow, if he did this thing. Forensic evidence, such as bloodstains in the boot of his car.’

  Keith, fortunately, was dumbstruck. There was a certain distorted truth in each of the points made. Except that he had never had an affair with Janet, only a five year flirtation that neither of them had ever taken seriously. As to forensic evidence in the boot of his car, Keith wished them joy. His car had been used to transport hares, rabbits and roe-deer, not to mention, at a rough count, eleven different quarry species of birds.

  ‘Has Mrs James signed a statement?’ Enterkin asked.

  ‘She has indeed.’

  ‘Accusing Mr Calder of murdering her husband?’

  ‘Implying just that.’

  Keith’s mind came unstuck.

  Why would Janet want to frame me? A woman scorned? I never scorned her, so’s you’d notice.

  Wal could have told her about the collection, but he’d never have called it a quarrel.

  I told Wal I’d got my face bashed up. He’d have told Janet before he left. But why’s she left the fuzz thinking that it happened in a fight with Wal?

  There’s something twisted here, something to do with that damned civil engineer, that builder of roads and sewers.

  I’ve got to be all right.

  Just so Wal comes back. But – St Bilda of Rhodes and Suez! – suppose he meets Warrender over in Lewis and ends up buried in the heather!

  Molly knows he was o.k. after I got marked. The hotel staff know when I came in with lumps on my face. The pilot knows Wallace was all right at that time.

  Better make sure they remember.

  But why?

  Somebody hates me? There’s no point unless it’d stand up in court.