Queen's Pawn

by Victor Canning

  He sat down, resting his elbows on his knees, nursing his glass in both hands, watching her fiddling in her bag.

  She handed him an envelope, thick manilla, sealed with red wax in five places, the cover plain.

  ‘I don’t know what’s in it. I have to hand it to you, sealed like that, and also’—she was fumbling in her bag again—‘I’ve got to have a receipt from you that it was delivered with the seals unbroken. Here.’

  She handed him a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. He put them down on the side table and broke open the envelope. Inside was a small sheet of white paper. On it was written—John E. Frampton. He stared at it for a while, then he lifted his glass and drained it. Miss Vickers watched him nervously.

  He got up and went to the fireplace. With his lighter, he set fire to the paper, held it by the corner as it burnt away and then dropped the ash into the fireplace and stirred it with a poker. He came back, signed the receipt and handed it with the pen to Miss Vickers. She avoided his look. He gave her a warm smile and took her glass.

  ‘I think we could both do with another drink, don’t you?’

  She nodded and started her clumsy fumbling in the bag again. This time for her cigarettes and lighter. He let her get on with it and refilled her glass. Nervous Miss Belle Vickers. One day he was going to kill her.

  He brought her drink back. She gave him an apologetic smile, her hand shaking a little as she took the glass.

  ‘And the message?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning I have to drive you to an appointment. It will take us about three hours.’

  ‘I see.’

  The shock was deep in him, but he was handling it easily, the long years behind him, all training for this moment which he had hoped would never come; would have wagered could not come, because he and Berners had been so careful. Somewhere there must have been a conjunction of time, place and personality which they could never have foreseen.

  ‘I’ll call for you just after nine.’

  ‘Where are you staying tonight?’ For a stupid moment he entertained the idea that if a thing were to be done then it should be done quickly. At once he rejected the stupidity.

  ‘At Eggesford. At the Fox and Hounds.’

  She smiled. She was easier with herself now. One hand went up and smoothed the sweep of auburn hair. Then, less from sympathy but, he felt, almost claiming some kinship in misfortune with him, she went on, ‘I’m sorry I had to bring the news. Don’t think I don’t know how you feel. At least I think I do. Something like it happened to me.’

  ‘It’s a man, of course?’

  ‘Yes. But don’t ask me questions about him. About anything. I just have to take you to him. Maybe it won’t be anything like as bad as you imagine. I mean … well, with me it wasn’t. In some ways it was a good thing, except …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Well, except that ever since—no matter how good parts have been—I’ve never been my own person. Me, I mean. But maybe it will be different with you. You’re a man, and men aren’t easy to possess, are they? Not like a woman. In a way, it’s almost what we want to be … Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’m just talking. Knowing how you must feel. Seeing that it was me, too, that had to come here.’

  She was trying, to comfort him. He didn’t need it. He was right out of the range of comfort. It was a waste of time. There was only the future sliding towards him and he standing, preparing for it, knowing he was going to bend it his way.

  He gave her his warm smile, automatically, knowing that she would think he had been grateful for comfort, and he reached down and helped her to her feet.

  ‘Don’t worry about me. But tomorrow, don’t come up here. I’ll be on the road down below, waiting for you.’

  He walked out to the car with her and opened the driving door. As she bent to get in, the nape of her neck was below him defenceless and vulnerable. One hard chop with the side of his hand could kill. But it would do no good now. She was not the one, not the first one.

  She reached for the ignition key, her head turned sideways to him, the pale, over-dressed face sympathetic and she trotted out for him the comforting clichés which she thought would help. ‘ I really do know how you feel. Not that men show it like women. With me there was almost a panic. But it was all right in the end. Anyway, better than it might have been.’

  He watched the car clear the drive and then went back into the house.

  She lay in the hotel bed, remembering him and the room. At first she had thought she wasn’t going to like him. He’d looked at her and it was all there. Not liking or, maybe, not approving of her. She knew his type, knew that voice, the way they were so sure of themselves, that something they had right from the beginning which even when they came down in the world they never lost though you might meet them serving behind a grocery counter. But even so, she had been sorry for him. He was probably having a horrible time at this moment. Didn’t she know, hadn’t she gone through it herself? Anyone in his position would have to be afraid. If he were to come into her room now, she would take him into her bed and give him the comfort of her body and the warmth of a few minutes’ oblivion. Then, moving her long legs under the sheets, she knew that she was a liar. To hell with comfort and oblivion … She would have liked him here as a man. What she wanted was the hardness of a male, the long, rapacious spasms of passion. He was her kind of man. He had to be to be in this fix. He wasn’t the first she had handed a wax-sealed envelope to. But he was the first that had taken it without showing one moment of weakness. Yes, he was different, and because he was different, she knew that there was a lot she would like to give him. She thought of the hard, contained length of him, the blunt, composed, intelligent face, that smile that slowly embraced you, and the steady, seldom blinking blue eyes.

  She sat up, switched on the light and found a cigarette. Smoking, she stared at the untidy dressing table, seeing herself in the mirror.

  Mabel Vickers. Born, 7th February, 1945. (That made her Aquarius). Today in the Daily Mail her horoscope had read, ‘There is harmony in the air; you will make new friends and cement old ties.’ She didn’t care a damn about cementing old ties, but new friends were always welcome if they had something to give, something one wanted.

  Her father—a gunner in an A.A. regiment—had been killed in a lorry accident in Italy a month before she was born, which was a good thing really because, much too late for her ever to care about it, she had learned that he wasn’t her father. Still, she thought of him as her father, though he was only a name and face in photographs and a lot of vague and contradictory chat by her mother. Her mother had married again in 1947; a vigorous, full-bodied woman with little thought in her head for anything which did not concern herself; a cheerful, happy woman, the life and soul of any party that revolved around a crate of stout and a couple of bottles of gin. She’d married a publican and they’d moved to a small pub at Headington, just outside Oxford. From there, when she was seventeen, after some indifferent schooling and six hard months at a secretarial college she, Belle then for many years, had gone to work as a typist in the Morris Cowley Works. Six months afterwards her stepfather had taken to coming into her bedroom at night, usually a little tight, talking to her, teasing her with happy horseplay that had slowly turned into mucking about with her. When she had complained to her mother, her mother, highly amused, but wanting no trouble, had given her fifty pounds out of the till money at the end of a week, and she had gone to London.

  During 1962 she had shared a flat with two other girls and worked at the Prudential Assurance offices in Holborn and had begun—she didn’t know why—to do a little shoplifting in her lunch hour. It had been at Marks and Spencers and Woolworths at first because they were easy, and then the more expensive stores. She had sold the stuff mostly to her flat mates and their friends, explaining that she had contacts in the trade and got things cheaply. She had never been caught. Her first really complete and satisfactory sexual relationship had been with a ma
rried man at the beginning of 1963. He took a room at a West End hotel once a week, arriving at six, stripped, did his exercises in front of the window, and then made love to her until seven o’clock. Between them, in the next quarter of an hour, they drank half a bottle of whisky, and then he went. He thought her shoplifting a great joke, had encouraged it, and had taken over the marketing end. In the middle of 1963, she had changed her job and gone to work as a secretary in the City offices of the Overseas Mercantile Bank in Cannon Street. A month later she gave up shoplifting because she suddenly discovered that she had a head for figures and accounts and a right hand that was extraordinarily facile at forging. Her married lover was delighted with her new talent, rewarded her by staying one complete night a week at the hotel and, every two months, a long weekend at Brighton. Between them they set a target of twenty thousand pounds and then they were to leave for the Lebanon where he had contacts. He was a little annoyed when she insisted on keeping her fraud-gained money in her own account. During this period she was frequently unfaithful to him, mostly from curiosity and a feeling that a woman’s experience should not be narrowly limited. Love she knew nothing about, but she was growing up fast. At the beginning of 1964 the married man had disappeared off the face of the earth. (She had always thought, still did, that this had something to do with Him, but she had never been able to confirm it.) Him, among other, many other things was the Chairman of the Overseas Mercantile Bank. He had called her into his private office, locked the door, and complimented her on her skill with figures and accounts, and the talent she possessed in her right hand. Her moments of panic had not lasted long and she had accepted the contract offered to her. The endorsement had been made, after she had removed her panties, on the thick pile of the office carpet and was witnessed by a long line of photographs of past chairmen of the Bank from the panelled walls. It had not occurred to her to take, even for a fleeting moment, the other alternative which meant the simple picking up of the office telephone by him. She was promoted to be his private and personal secretary—one of many—and changed her place of work. From then, until now, she had served him efficiently and faithfully, submitted to him when he needed her, and had seldom paused to consider whether she was happy or otherwise. For the last four months he had shown, no need of her body, but his consideration, affection and discipline over her remained the same. He was not the kind of man to throw away anything that still might have some use.

  Tomorrow she would take Andrew Raikes to him. She might never know what contract would be made between them, but she knew that Raikes, whatever he thought he was now, would never be the same again.

  He met her on the road below the house just after nine. She wore now a navy-blue dress with tan collar and cuffs. Pinned above her left breast was an old silver two-franc piece converted into a brooch. She was still too heavily made up.

  She drove fast but well and he watched the roads, knowing them all. No attempt was being made to conceal their destination from him. Somewhere, a long way east of Exeter, he said out of the blue, over the low sound of the car radio which she had switched on when their desultory conversation had withered, ‘What do you know about me?’

  ‘Very little. Your name, where you live. Before I came, a few photographs … description. But really of you, nothing.’

  ‘Whoever he is, I imagine he’s waited a long time?’

  ‘Probably. It’s a kind of talent in him. Knowing and waiting.’

  A passing signpost gave him the name of Winchester somewhere ahead. He had a picture of chalk streams, waving weed beds, ranunculus, stiff water celery stalks and the bulge of a brown trout nymphing just below the surface. Fishing, of course, had been his pocket nirvana. He had always known that. Something to shut some part of the world out. With his father it had simply been the gentle pursuit, the mild and happy complement of a country life. His father, a gentle old man, had let the world take and cheat him, and had then done what had to be done, dispossessed himself and, that over, had quietly died. Not from shock, or a broken heart, but out of pure contempt for a world that no longer held anything for him.

  An hour later, from a side road she turned into the open gates of a secondary driveway. Far away, over parkland, he caught a glimpse through elms of a large, grey stone mansion. He saw her look at her wristwatch. She had an instruction to have him here on time. Ahead of them a small lake appeared. She drew in at its side. The surface was dense with water lily pads. Ten yards from the a water hen jerked its way between the pads.

  She said, ‘There’s a waterfall at the end of the lake. You go up the steps at the side. At the top there’s a summer house. He’ll be there.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I shall be here when you come back.’

  He got out and moved away, pushing his hands into the pockets of his tweed jacket. Going up by the waterfall, the sunlight making a small rainbow in the mist of the spray, he felt the flick of water on his face as the slight breeze fanned it over the steps. The summer house was built with a pagoda style roof. A teak verandah ran along its face.

  He went across the verandah and stopped just inside the door. The whole floor plan was one large room. Windows broke all four walls and in the spaces between them were murals, one long design running the full lengths of the walls; a tropical landscape, green, blossom-thick jungle, the blue, yellow and red of macaw and parrot, the chocolate pelts of monkeys and the tawny hides and black-and-white stripes of animals. A glass-topped table supported on white-painted wrought iron legs filled most of the centre of the room. A smaller, similarly designed table stood against one of the side walls, holding bottles, glasses, a pile of magazines, a brown-paper wrapped parcel, and cigarette and cigar boxes. An electric clock, large faced, with bronze hands and bronze stars for the hours faced him from high in the wall opposite. His eyes went round, taking everything in, recording, filing, never to forget.

  Standing near one of the side windows, watching him, was a man about five feet high. He wore a white silk shirt, blue linen slacks and white shoes. The man’s face was ugly, the skin red, the features squashed as though at some time an immense hand had been clamped on it to screw and deform everything. Parts of the skin had a high, glabrous shine, and both ears stood well out from the skull. The hair was a grey-white fuzz, cut short and laid evenly over the top of his large head like a cheap, dirty carpet, white once, trodden flat and worn filthy now. Breaking the distorted planes of his face was a large, untidy, scruffy, brown moustache, theatrical and comic. Under one arm he carried a slim, yellow leather brief case.

  Without moving, he said, ‘ Sit down, Mr Raikes.’

  Raikes sat down on a chair at the end of the table. The man opened his brief case and slid a folder over the glass top to Raikes.

  ‘You can study that while I get you a drink.’

  Raikes said, ‘ Who are you?’

  ‘The name is Sarling. John Eustace Sarling. You’ve heard of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we needn’t bother with any more for the moment. As a name it is a good name. It’s a pity that it carries such an ugly face. Just look through the file. You usually drink brandy and ginger ale at this time of day—correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sarling’s voice was quiet, evenly-paced. He could have been a doctor tactfully and skilfully allaying the rise of alarm in a patient.

  Raikes opened the file. There were some sheets of lined foolscap inside clipped together. The first page was covered, in red ink, with a neat handwriting, widely paragraphed.

  Raikes read—

  Andrew Ferguson Raikes. Third and only surviving son of Anthony Banks Raikes and Margaret Raikes (née Ferguson). Born 14th May, 1930, at Alverton Manor, Eggsford, N. Devon. Prep. school. Dragon, Oxford. Pub. school. Blundell’s, Tiverton.

  It was all there, baldly laid out. Two elder brothers, both killed in the Second World War, Royal Navy, Submarine service. Death of mother, 1945. Sale of Alverton Manor, 1947. Death of father, 1948. He read it all, mechanica
lly, not letting memory or emotion play any part.

  A brandy and ginger was put at his elbow. He read on, glancing up once to see Sarling sitting at the other end of the table, a glass of milk in front of him.

  The last paragraph on the page read—

  Two years with investment analysis department of Grubb, Starkes & Pennell, Moorgate. Left Jan. 1950, voluntarily. From this point never in legitimate employment or business again, and never used his real name for any operation.

  Raikes flipped through the following pages. Each one was headed in block letters with one of his aliases or the name of one of the companies, businesses or projects he had set up. Martin Graham, the P. P. Trading Company (that had been mail order stuff), John Hadham Properties (that had been only a short time after he had brought Berners in), Felix S. Snow, Beauty Pack Ltd., John E. Frampton, Billings, Hurst & Brown, Silverton Suppliers (that had been their first venture in the wine business), Angus Homesteads … almost the whole roll call came up before him, and with it the memory of one-man offices, rented warehouse space, derelict, vacant lots with Berners going down first thing in the morning to stick up a phoney notice board and he arriving in the afternoon with some client who had been lunched and wined well and thought that he was chiselling him into a cheap option. At one time they used fifteen different lots without the slightest claim or title to them.

  Without a glance at Sarling, he went back and read in detail one or two of the accounts. Somebody had done a good job for him. He read the John Hadham Properties details. Berners’s name was mentioned, but no information about him was given. He moved on, checking the others. Berners was mentioned again and again, but no comment was made against his name, no biographical facts given. Almost as though Sarling had been reading his mind, his voice came from the end of the table—

  ‘I have a separate file in here of Berners.’ He tapped the brief case in front of him. ‘ Take your time, read it all through.’