The Revenge Game

by Gerald Hammond

  Chapter Nine

  The remorseless advance of autumn brought the next dawn in colder. There had been frost in the night, and summer’s colours were faded. Yet it was to be a day that Keith would long remember as being warmed by passions, each emotional interlude contributing its piece to the puzzle.

  The day began calmly enough. Since it was Saturday, and the back of the work being broken, Keith had decreed a day for his helpers to go about their own businesses. He left Ronnie to do the housework and then to dump the burned motorcycles from his Land Rover outside the canal shed, and drove himself into Newton Lauder.

  At the shop Keith kept an early appointment with Cantley, the insurance assessor. They were now in a state of cold war, and they wrangled for an hour over the damaged guns. ‘All right,’ Keith said at last. ‘We’ll get an independent valuer for these five. I suggest you drop them in to Joe Quaich on your way home. If he sets the total value above mine, you pay his fee; otherwise, I’ll pay it. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  The shop telephone had been reconnected. It rang. Keith paused with his hand on it. ‘And you’ve got the quotes for the building damage?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  Keith picked up the phone. It was the ward sister at the hospital. ‘Mr Calder? Dr Jamieson would like to see you as soon as possible.’

  Keith’s heart swooped down, and met his stomach coming up. ‘Tell me why,’ he said. The words stuck in his throat.

  The sister sounded unconcerned. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘But the doctor will be here until twelve.’

  Keith left Cantley standing forlornly in the middle of the devastated shop and ran for the car. Never a patient driver, he seethed with frustration as he coaxed the unhandy vehicle up the steep curves. He dragged it at last to a slithering halt astride the line separating the parking places reserved for two senior specialists and dashed into the hospital. As he went, he swore an oath to himself. If Molly died he would find her killer and destroy him, horribly.

  Dr Jamieson met Keith in the ward sister’s office. The doctor always reminded Keith of a fox-terrier, but his habitually angry expression was milder, as if he had caught a rat or bitten the postman. ‘Come in, Mr Calder, and don’t look so haunted. On police instructions we’ve been keeping it very quiet, but your wife’s started waking up from time to time and I think she’s over the worst. Sit down before you fall down,’ the doctor added quickly.

  Keith lowered himself down carefully into a hard chair and let the shakes come over him. The doctor visited a cupboard and handed Keith a beaker. ‘Drink this, and then put your head down between your knees.’

  Keith tasted the contents suspiciously. The liquid looked as if it might be somebody’s sample, and doctors have been known to make mistakes. The sample turned out to be brandy, much diluted. Keith did as he had been told. Muffled by his hunched position, he said, ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Who’s ever sure of anything?’ From force of habit, the doctor took Keith’s pulse. ‘A colleague told me yesterday that I’m fit, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t drop dead tomorrow. I’m as sure as I reasonably can be that she’s going to be all right. She’s certainly improved her chances by a thousand per cent, in the last twelve hours.’

  Keith sat up. This time, his head did not swim. ‘How’s her memory?’

  ‘It’s patchy, but it’s coming back. Her first remark was that you wouldn’t know where to find your clean socks.’

  ‘I found them.’

  ‘I’m sure that’ll ease her mind. Now you can go in and see her in a minute. Let her sleep if she wants to or talk if she wants to, but don’t ask her any questions at all. I don’t want her racking her brains just yet. I’m not letting the police ask her anything. I’ve already asked one or two questions on their behalf, very gently, and that’s quite enough for today. So don’t force it. You understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘I’ve got you,’ Keith said.

  The fair-haired W.P.C. who had been carrying the carton past Munro’s office was on guard in Molly’s room. She was standing against the window. A ray of sun had broken through the cloud and was sparkling in her hair. The police uniform showed no silhouette of her figure against the bright background; Keith, whose bad habits were slow to die, glanced once and felt a tiny twinge of disappointment.

  Molly was sleeping peacefully. ‘How is she?’ Keith asked softly.

  ‘Only the doctor could tell you that,’ the girl said impersonally. ‘To me, she seems better.’

  ‘What’s she said so far?’

  ‘She wanted to know about you, and about someone called Tanya.’

  ‘That’s the dog,’ Keith said.

  ‘Oh? I’m not allowed to ask her any questions, but I was here when the doctor questioned her. She has very little recollection of the attack, she doesn’t remember letting out any firearms on sale-or-return, and any dead records should be in the bottom right-hand drawer of your desk.’

  ‘Which they weren’t. Munro got what there was.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir.’

  Keith grimaced. ‘Don’t call me that. It makes me feel very old when girls call me sir.’

  She looked him in the eye. Was there or was there not a smile in the blue depths of hers? ‘And what would you like me to call you . . . sir?’ she asked.

  Keith hesitated. He very much wanted to know more about the pistols which had been recovered from the bed of the canal. While he searched his mind for a reply that balanced delicately between propriety and flirtation, he tried to send out little body-language messages to her subconscious.

  The girl’s eyes shifted to the bed. Keith turned. Molly’s one visible eye was open and looking at him. He crossed the small room in three strides and dropped into the bedside chair. Molly’s lips opened. Her voice was faint but firm. ‘Keith,’ she said. ‘What happened to your face?’

  A surge of relief drove through Keith like a sword. He picked up Molly’s hand and held it against his cheek. ‘Nothing to get fashed about,’ he said. ‘I know it’s a stupid question, but how do you feel?’

  She tried to smile. ‘A bit rough,’ she said, ‘and I’m as weak as a kitten, but I’ll do. You must’ve been worried.’ She closed her eye and seemed to doze for a few seconds, and when she woke again her voice was stronger. ‘Tell me how Tanya’s doing.’

  ‘The vet says she’ll be all right.’ Then the significance of her question struck him. ‘Why do you ask about Tanya?’

  ‘He kicked her,’ Molly said. ‘What kind of a brute would kick a spaniel?’

  The W.P.C. was standing at the foot of the bed. Keith caught her eye. He turned back to Molly. ‘Who –?’ he began, and checked himself.

  He need not have worried. Molly answered without the least effort. ‘I couldn’t see much about him,’ she said. ‘He had a mask round his face, something like a silky scarf with a Chinese sort of pattern. He’d a blue anorak on, and jeans. He looked enormous, but then he would, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Probably,’ Keith said. Attackers are usually remembered as being larger than their true size.

  ‘He may’ve been quite small.’ Molly’s voice faded away again.

  Keith looked up at the W.P.C. ‘You got that?’

  She nodded.

  There was a long silence. Then Molly’s eye flicked open again. ‘Somebody was asking about the records,’ she said. ‘They should be in the study. If they aren’t, I can’t think . . .’

  ‘Don’t fret,’ Keith said. ‘They’ll turn up. Probably when we’re looking for something else.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Molly said.

  She slept again after that, and only awoke as Keith was preparing to go. ‘Are you and Ronnie managing all right?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re doing fine,’ Keith assured her. ‘Ronnie’s staying with me, and we’ve got a woman comes in. She’s not coming over the weekend, though. We were thinking of making a rabbit pie. But you usually give us the stock. Your books say “stock�
��, but they don’t tell you what it is,’ Keith said peevishly.

  ‘Stock?’ Molly said. ‘Let me think . . .’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Keith said hastily. ‘We’ll manage.’

  Molly’s eye closed.

  ‘Cream of chicken soup,’ said the W.P.C.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Open a tin of cream of chicken soup. For stock. It’s good in a rabbit pie.’

  ‘Oh.’ Keith looked at Molly. Her eye was still closed. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t care to–’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Are you behaving yourself?’ Molly asked suddenly.

  Keith jumped. ‘Of course I’m behaving myself,’ he said. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I don’t know why you wouldn’t,’ Molly said, ‘but you never do. Just promise me, Keith, no more affiliation orders.’

  ‘That was years ago,’ Keith said hotly. ‘And I thought you were supposed to be having trouble with your memory.’ But Molly had drifted off to sleep. She was smiling faintly. Keith thought that it was probably because she had had the last word again.

  ‘There was never only the one,’ he said to the smirking W.P.C.

  *

  Keith emerged from the hospital with a confused feeling that Molly’s improvement should have left him free to attack his problems with an unclouded mind, but that he felt like doing anything but think. He wished that he had accepted Sir Peter’s invitation, or that he was the sort of person who could find relief at a football match.

  He detoured by the canal bridge, slowing to a crawl and turning his head to look at the canal buildings. Somewhere in the town, quite possibly in the cottages that hid behind the big shed, there lived a man who had tried to burn down his shop, who had even tried to murder Molly. But this was remote in his mind, dwarfed by his relief.

  A lorry was grinding up the hill behind him. Keith drove on, turned in the mouth of the canal road and stopped on the crest of the bridge again. He could see Wallace down on the canal bed, working on the barge’s bottom. Keith drove on.

  At Ronnie’s cottage he could see his brother-in-law in the garden, but he drove past quickly. He was in no mood for company yet. He parked in the square and, like a wounded animal bolting for home, let himself into the flat.

  It took a second or two before the congested state of the flat reminded Keith that he no longer lived in it. Wallace had been winning himself some living-space, and Keith found an unoccupied sofa, flopped down and put his face in his hands. After a few minutes he got up and washed his face in cold water.

  When Janet arrived, he was making coffee. ‘Molly’s coming round,’ he blurted out.

  Janet took in his appearance. He was puffy around the eyes, which were too bright. She kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘Sit down. I’ll pour the coffee.’

  When she joined him on the sofa, Keith was himself again. ‘You want to talk about Molly?’ she asked.

  Keith shook his head. ‘I think I’ve said it all.’

  ‘I saw your car in the square,’ Janet said, ‘so I came up to tell you something. I don’t know if it’s important, but Mum gave George Frazer a lift back from Edinburgh last year. She was coming back from an aunt’s funeral, which makes it the twenty-fourth of August. Does that help?’

  Keith leaned back against the cushions and smiled. First Molly coming round, and then a piece of information that might make the gun-register irrelevant. This was going to be one of those days for missing a widgeon and hitting a goose. Or losing his balance and landing on a girl. ‘It helps,’ he said. ‘Can you get her to go to the police with it?’

  ‘I’ll work on it,’ Janet promised. ‘She said that he seemed to have something on his mind.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘She couldn’t tell. But she said it was the first time in thirty years he’d been alone with a lady and hadn’t made a pass at her.’ Janet sounded shocked. Mothers are different. ‘She waited for him to do an errand in the square, then dropped him off at Rowan Close.’

  ‘That’s a bit off his way, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s where he wanted. Maybe he had friends there.’

  ‘Probably,’ Keith said. ‘Well, well, well!’

  ‘Keith . . .’ Janet hesitated and then plunged into the real reason for her visit. ‘Keith, how does a girl really attract a man?’ Her mother’s description of George Frazer as a charmer had shaken her daughter’s faith in the lady’s judgement. It did not occur to Janet that, unless her mother had at least some knowledge of the subject, she, Janet, would never have existed.

  ‘By being a girl,’ Keith answered absently. Part of his mind was adjusting the new information into its place in the pattern.

  ‘No, seriously. How does she turn him onto herself as a particular girl?’

  If Janet had used any other expression but ‘turn him on’, Keith might have divined exactly what she wanted to know. Keith was almost sure that, despite her manner, Janet had remained a virgin. Without being more than vaguely conscious of where he was and who he was talking to, Keith launched into a discourse which was the essence of the wisdom acquired during his earlier years as the Casanova of the rural Borders and parts north. Only a lingering sense of the occasion restrained Keith from condensing his subject into terms which would have sent Janet scampering to her mother.

  Janet, going pinker by the minute, listened in petrified fascination. She would have been content with a little guidance as to why a man should choose one girl rather than another for a dance. Instead she was being regaled, and from the lips of a master, with an inspired analysis of human sexual response from the initial, tacit challenges, through the delicious excitements to sophisticated erotic games.

  Janet had every intention of storming out in disgust, but not until she had learned from the master. Her lips parted, and she felt a warm, comfortable glow through her body.

  Each of them was, in their own way, in a highly emotional state and thinking of somebody else. Moreover, Keith and Janet had a long relationship of barbed but innocent flirtation. It was natural for Keith to put an arm around her shoulders, and for Janet to lay her head against him.

  Keith finished his peroration at last, and turned his head. Instead of Molly’s dark hair and brown eyes he saw a blue-eyed blonde. And there seemed to be a lot of very pretty leg on display. Their eyes met. Keith knew when a woman was ready to melt.

  This, Keith thought, was one hell of a way to celebrate his wife’s improved prognosis. He unwound himself, got up and went to look out of the window. ‘Keep it confidential about Molly,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My wife. We don’t want whoever tried to kill her to know that she’s recovering and likely to talk. Now, you’d better run along and give aid and comfort to that young man of yours.’

  *

  While Keith was lecturing to Janet on the ways of a maid with a man, Wallace James, his work on Merganser finished for the moment, was returning from a walk along the towpath during much of which he had been reproaching himself for his cowardice in the face of Janet. She might look like something from the pages of a glamour magazine, he told himself, but, after all, she was only a girl. Girls expected to be wooed, didn’t they? So why did he lose his nerve? All right, so she was beautiful. Then she could hardly object to being told as much. Or, if his tongue should let him down, surely she could hardly mind if he should touch her hand.

  He was brought out of his reverie by the need to pick his way across the breach in the canal-bank. He sighed, resigned himself to the fact that his love would remain for ever unrequited, and looked around him for the first time. A thin autumn mist was creeping up the hill, fading out the scattered masonry and sandbags from the canal-bank and from emergency attempts to plug the gap. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, with two of the leather-jacket trio and some casual labourers, were at work, but they seemed to have declared a rest-break to coincide with Wallace’s passing. Wallace blinked at the scene.

  Tweedledee bustled up
the hill. ‘There’s nowt for you to see here,’ he said. ‘We can do fine without any unpaid clerks-of-works.’

  Wallace nodded, and walked past the stout man. But he looked again at the scattered debris. ‘How very odd,’ he said to himself.

  *

  From the shop, Keith walked. There are some places where it might be indiscreet to leave a car. His way was through small, residential streets. The area lay just below the canal, but there had been no flooding. This was the ‘best’ part of the town, and the canal seemed to have known it.

  Jacinthe Matheson and Keith had been brought up closely, almost as brother and sister. Indeed, it was not impossible that they were indeed half-siblings, for Keith’s father had been just the same amorous, amoral devil, and they had the same lean, athletic build, dark and gipsyish good looks and total refusal to be bound by even the loosening conventions of the time.

  Keith’s relationship with Jacinthe had been unique. In their teens, they had introduced each other to the delights of physical love. A man of Keith’s attractiveness and love of women had inevitably had many affairs, but in addition to being his first love Jacinthe had been his sixth and eleventh, after which they had both lost count. While other women had come and gone, with emotions ranging across the emotional spectrum, Jacinthe – Cin – had been prepared to pick up or drop the baton without more than a passing sigh. Her brief marriage to one of Newton Lauder’s more prosperous sons had come as no more than a brief hiccup in their relationship. Then she had run off with a notorious jet-setter and had disappeared from the ken of Newton Lauder for several years during which, Keith gathered, she had been the mistress of a succession of the very rich on their yachts in the Mediterranean. Be that as it may, she had returned at last to Britain and, after a selling spree around the top-class jewellers and furriers, had come home to Newton Lauder and settled down without showing any signs of having to work for a living. Nor, contrary to general belief, was she a practising tart; she had resumed her amateur status.