Queen's Pawn

by Victor Canning

  The next morning he checked the company. The price of their shares was low compared with their price-earnings ratio so there was no loss in buying them anyway.

  Two weeks later, in the bar, he handed Berners two hundred pounds in notes.

  Berners said, ‘It can’t be more than a hundred and fifty.’

  Raikes said, ‘How much a week do you make now?’

  Berners said, ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘In the offices of Allied Chemicals Ltd.?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Making so little that you couldn’t afford to speculate on this yourself? What’s the point? The extra fifty is your first week’s salary with me, and I’ll also make you a partner—twenty-five per cent share. The work is congenial, interesting, but entirely unorthodox. I don’t want to know your name. I’m not going to tell you mine. Just hand me back fifty pounds if you’re not interested.’

  Berners had put the two hundred into his pocket. They had had dinner together, become Berners and Frampton, and had set up their first operation together. He had never asked how Berners had got the take-over details about his company. They worked together and that was all. They knew no more about each other than was necessary for their work. But now he was going to see a man called Aubrey Catwell. He resented it because it would be like looking on the nakedness of a stranger.

  Brighton. The sunlight cat-dancing on the blue sea beyond the pier. The horizon a smoky smudge marrying sea and sky. Along the oatmeal coloured stretch of shore the waves, dirty olive, foam and froth meringued, spilled themselves upon the smooth sand lick, teasing at the plastic containers and the dark mess of dead seaweed. Above it, topping the parade and the tamarisk- and veronica-studded gardens, was Princess Terrace, a creamy, elegant white cliff holding out its arms to the sea, the sky and the winter sun. No. 3 had little red-and-white striped metal awnings over its first-floor windows to throw shade on the narrow balconies. The door was white, flanked with black-painted curves of ironwork to mark the rise of the steps. The letterbox mouth was highly polished brass and so was the number three. Nothing of the polish had so much as touched the surrounding white paint. He rang the bell. After a long interval, a woman opened the door. She was in her sixties, black dress high about the neck, her flesh firm, her hair grey with a thin interweaving of white, and she stood on the threshold in exactly the same way as Hamilton would have stood, polite and prepared and, no matter what came, never to be shaken.

  He said, ‘ If Mr Catwell is in and free, would you ask him if he would be kind enough to give Mr Frampton a few moments?’ He handed her one of his old cards.

  A few moments later she was showing him into a sitting-room on the first floor. She closed the door on them and Berners turned from the window. Except for the clothes it was the same Berners, the same bald crescent, the mild and, even now, expressionless face, the faded grey eyes and the overall feeling of almost mournful gentleness. But the anonymous, ill-fitting clothes had gone. He wore a dove-grey suit, a rich claret waistcoat, a pearl-coloured tie over which the sheen of reflected sunlight in the room moved as he came forward. On his feet were brown suede shoes … Berners who had always worn black, heavy soled shoes.

  Berners said, ‘I’ve just opened a bottle of hock, which I usually do at this time of day if the weather’s bright. Angers will be glad if you share it. She thinks a bottle is too much for me alone.’ It was the same voice, but the arrangement of words, their cadence, and his control over them were all different.

  He went to a small pie-crust side table which held a silver tray, the bottle of wine and a tall Venetian hock glass. Seeing there was only one glass he turned to a lacquered cabinet which stood on a carved gilt stand and opened it. The inside was full of the sparkle of crystal.

  Raikes said, ‘I regret this very much.’

  Without turning, polishing with a napkin the extra hock glass he had taken from the cabinet, Berners said, ‘Let us enjoy our wine first. And do sit down.’

  Raikes, who knew a great deal about furniture from his own buying to refurnish Alverton, sat down on a shield-backed mahogany elbow chair which he was prepared to bet was Hepplewhite. The ornamental centre struts of the back were worked with a wheat-ear design. Close to the chair was a Regency mahogany drum table. Against the far wall, facing the window, was an English lacquer commode, the design on the front matching that of the cabinet which held the glasses.

  Berners brought him his wine and they drank. Berners, after his first sip, made a movement of his head taking in the room. ‘You like it?’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’

  The chandelier hanging from the moulded ceiling was probably from Murano and old, the polychrome glass flowers throwing back the sunlight in coloured reflection on to the ceiling.

  Berners nodded. ‘ True. I was brought up in a council house, and I lived in pitiful bed-sitting rooms up to a year after I met you. I always promised myself I’d have something like this … a house and furniture and decorations, all by craftsmen, by men who loved what they made. Don’t tell me that you’ve come to say I might lose it?’

  ‘No. But you’ve got to protect it. You and I have not quite finished working together. If I could have done it on my own, I would. But it was out of my hands. We have to protect our selves—but to do that means that two people have to be killed. Does that spoil the taste of your hock?’

  Without hesitation, Berners said, ‘ Why should it? If the police were to ring the doorbell I would kill myself. So would you. If one can take one’s own life, then it is an easy step down to take the life of someone else.’ He moved away and sat in a chair by the window.

  ‘Before I tell you about it, if you’d like me to, I am prepared to tell you about myself, my real name and background.’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘You may find it out … there are other people involved who do know.’

  ‘Then I shall find it out. But let it rest like that. Would you like to stay to lunch? I ought to let Angers know.’

  ‘No. It won’t take long. What about Angers?’

  ‘I got her from an agency five years ago. She’s been in service all her life. She’s honest, loyal and sometimes belligerent on my behalf. She knows nothing about Berners, only her Mr Catwell. Help yourself to more hock when you want to.’

  Raikes began to tell him the Sarling story, the story of the red ballpoint mark alongside a spinning rod in a catalogue, the business of the raid on the depot … everything, his relationship with Belle and why she had to be used, and Berners sat and listened, asking no questions … sat just as he used to in the old days when Raikes had worked out a new proposition and put it to him, listening, no questions, until everything was laid before him.

  When Raikes had finished, Berners sat thinking for a moment or two. Finally he said, ‘First things first. What about this Army depot affair?’

  ‘I’ve got it all worked out. I’ll meet you in the flat on the day. Before then there are a few things I want you to get me. Here is a list.’ Raikes handed him some notes he had made.

  Berners read them slowly, then nodded. ‘There is no trouble there. You can put me in the picture when I let you have them.’ He put the list in his pocket. ‘What’s your reading of Sarling?’

  Raikes stood up. ‘I think he’s quietly mad. When he unfolds his big plan I’m willing to bet it’ll be some cockeyed, hair-raising scheme that doesn’t stand a hope in hell. He’s got to go. But before he goes we’ve got to have those files and the photostats.’ Raikes, moving about in the room now, stopped by a picture. It was a quiet, placid river scene in oils, a slow barge moving downstream under sail, a church tower veiled in early summer morning mist in the distance. The tranquillity in the picture, the comfort of being close to Berners again, gave him a more complete feeling of ease than he had had for days.

  Berners said, ‘Delightful, isn’t it? It’s a John Varley. I bought it at a country sale two years ago.’ Then running on, the real current of his thoughts flowing smoothly away from triv
ia, he said, ‘I agree. He’s got to go. I’ll begin to work on him, but there’s a lot I want to know—from your end. You’ll have to get most of it from Miss Vickers. How much time have we got?’

  ‘I don’t know. A couple of months at the least, I’d say, from the way things are going. I couldn’t set up anything big in less.’

  ‘How far do you trust Miss Vickers?’

  ‘She’s afraid of him, and wants to be free. But she doesn’t like the thought of murder.’

  ‘Most people don’t.’

  ‘She’s going to. But that’s my job. Don’t you worry about it.’

  ‘I won’t. But eventually we’ve got to have a lot of basic stuff from her.’

  Carefully, he went through all the things he would want to know. Meon Park. A complete layout of the house and grounds. Numbers, names and habits of staff. Sarling’s routines down there. Safety precautions, burglar alarms, location of safe. And then the same for the house in Park Street. In addition he wanted a complete list of the principal items in Sarling’s wardrobe. His preferences in shirts, ties, cravats, his eating habits, details of his health, illnesses and recurring ailments. Eccentricities. His doctor and his dentist. His office routines. Names of his principal directors, his other secretaries. Entertainments. Habits with women. Types he preferred. Did he sleep well or badly? Languages spoken, travel abroad, houses or fiats owned abroad.… Everything. For him Sarling was a big question mark, and until there was no question left to be answered, he knew that he could not be murdered. To murder a man, he had to be known, almost loved, and then guided easily into death leaving no tell-tale ripple behind. Yes, he, Berners—for with Frampton here he could not think of himself as anyone else—knew all this because murder was no stranger to him. A year before he had approached Frampton with his financial proposition, he had similarly picked a stranger in the Dorchester bar. The man had taken him back to his flat, interested, so Berners thought in the deal. There, the man had drugged him and assaulted him sexually—he, Berners, who was neither homo nor heterosexual, just nothing, neuter and contentedly egoistic—and then had thrown him out. For the violation, the diminution, no matter how slight, of self, Berners had, unknown to his attacker, studied him in detail and depth for two months. One night he had returned at the exact moment of time when all circumstances, facts known, observations taken, made murder secure. He had walked away afterwards and settled with bun, coffee and the Evening News in the nearest café, conceding himself only that vanity, ten minutes more near the presence of murder, before the ghost of the man’s last anguish went for ever from him. For Sarling, the process must be the same; Sarling, the complete man, known, loved in his mind as any study so final, so detailed had to be loved, and then Sarling made nothing, so that he could return here and inhabit paradise again.

  He said, ‘When you’re sure of her, get her a Minox camera. I want photographs of everything and from all angles. Particularly of the safe at Meon and the one in London. Tell her never to take a photograph when he is in the house with her. Tell her never to carry it on her when he is about, not in bra or stocking top. He’s a man with appetites. He doesn’t want her now but at some moment the sight of her, some movement of arm or leg, some innocent exposure, might turn him on her. She must never carry it when with him.’

  Raikes said, ‘I’m sorry about this. Just that bloody little red mark in the catalogue.’

  ‘It could have been me. A little ink tick in a Sotheby’s catalogue. The biggest betrayer in the world is a man’s mania. You never noticed our office pictures when the front had to be good?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They were never reproductions. I’ve even got a couple of them still in this house. Given the right conjunctions, they could have been betrayers.’

  Raikes gone, Berners had his lunch, lightly grilled sole and fresh spinach—no canned or frozen vegetables were used in the house. He ate from one of six plates of a dinner service made at the Russian Imperial factory in 1843, painted with a surrounding wreath of multi-coloured flowers and butterflies and with an exotic bird for centre-piece. He had bought the incomplete set in France three years before. He remembered, with a vividness that was almost elemental, the moment when he had turned a plate and seen through the glaze the green initial N and the surmounting Imperial crown of Nicholas the First. Caught up in a reverie, spurred by the word imperial echoing in his mind, he considered the richness there would be in having a large house (not something small and distinct, unique in its perfectly miniaturized proportions). A grand house with parkland; a small world that one could own, a house and terrain where one walked, not jostled by an aimless flow of seaside visitors, but alone across a landscape, knowing that if the landscape displeased it could be altered and reshaped. A man like Sarling could afford that. How, he wondered, was Meon Park furnished? In time he would know because some of this girl’s photographs would show it. Curious about Frampton and his fishing. How could that give a man any satisfaction? But as he thought it there was no overtrace of feeling in his mind that Frampton, through his mania, had set them this problem. Of all the people he had ever known well, and they were few, his relationship with Frampton was the least troubled, the most assured.

  When he got back to the flat, Belle Vickers was out, but Sarling was sitting in a chair by the window waiting for him. He wore a starched wing collar that cut stiffly up into his neck skin, giving the impression that it helped to support his large head. The pepper-and-salt dark suit looked stiff, unflexible, the creases down his thin legs unyielding over his bony knees. The light from the window, striking the side of his face, gave the contorted flesh the colour of boiled veal.

  Raikes, after they had tossed the shadow of nods at one another, said, ‘You’ve got your own key to this flat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You think you should come here?’

  ‘Why not? A hundred people come in and out every day. One of my directors has a flat on the top floor. Not that he uses it much. You’ve been to see Berners?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  ‘If it spoilt his lunchtime hock he didn’t show it.’

  ‘You discussed getting rid of me?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And your decision?’

  ‘We deferred it—to our next meeting.’

  Sarling laughed. ‘Let me know what you decide. Meanwhile what have you arranged about the Army depot?’

  ‘It’ll be done.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I think it’s better if you don’t know. Miss Vickers will let you know when the crate is in a safe place.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘When you have the crate, how long will it be before you need us for the final job?’

  Sarling pulled at his moustache. ‘ You have a free hand for this job and, quite rightly, you won’t tell me about it. I can’t tell you anything about your final assignment.’ He stood up and retrieved from the side of the chair a malacca cane with a silver knob.

  Raikes said, ‘How did you know about this crate?’ He didn’t expect any firm reply. He was talking him out of the flat, moving to the door to open it for him.

  ‘It just came up in conversation once. You, of all people, would not be surprised at the indiscreet way men in authority can talk when they have been wined and dined well. Generals, brigadiers, colonels, naval captains, commanders, police commissioners, chief constables … they’re all men, and many of them have loose, flabby mouths. Not like us, Raikes. We give nothing away. How otherwise would we ensure success? Don’t tell me that part of your pleasure in your past career didn’t come from the contempt, you feel for most men and women?’ He paused in his move to the door. ‘That’s where our strength is, Raikes. In our contempt for them. Just see that Miss Vickers informs me immediately when the crate is in safe keeping.’ He contorted his face into the ugly travesty of a smile. ‘And go on hating me, Raikes. That’s how I like you … and I really mean like you … a dangerous animal that mus
t obey the ringmaster’s whip, waiting for the one moment of inattention to fly at his throat. You really would like to kill me one day, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’ He smiled. ‘But, of course, I don’t underrate the difficulties.’

  Sarling chuckled. ‘I never for one moment imagined that you would.’ Then, putting up a hand to stop Raikes from opening the door for a moment, he said, ‘Since I know you will open the crate to see what is in it, I must ask you to handle the contents with care.’

  Sarling gone, Raikes dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. Dangerous animal … and Sarling the ringmaster. That’s how he saw himself … manipulating, dragooning his creatures. That’s where his pleasure was. How the hell had he got like that? Because of his face and gnomelike figure that made people turn from him? People hated the physically odd. There was something unholy about it for most of them. But none of the people who turned from Sarling could know how much he was hating in return. It had not been enough for him that in everything he had touched, industry, finance and commerce, he had dwarfed them. He wanted more than that … had to have more than that. God knew what … but it was there inside that large skull, tormenting him.

  He had to get rid of Sarling. For that he needed Belle; needed to make her his creature, not Sarling’s. She was the first big fish he had to land. The thought made him smile … and memory flooded in of one of his earliest lessons of the patience, thought and stubborn will needed to land the wanted fish. It had been on the Haddeo river that ran down into the Exe near Dulverton, a river not fished much, narrow, overgrown, and the trout running small, three or four to the pound. It had been August with the water low and gin-clear. Himself at fourteen, with his father, and he had been grumbling at the poor fishing, anything of size seeing him a mile away, even a long belly-crawl to the bank giving no results. The old man had said that there were big trout, two-pounders, to be had if you knew, if you had the patience, if you were a fisherman worth calling that. Bad conditions make good fishermen. How often had he heard him say that? With the dusk coming, the old man much lower down the river, he had stood solitary for an hour behind an oak, watching a pool and then seen on the far side, deep down, the brief old gold flash of turning flank and belly. He was angry with ambition to land a big one. To prove he could do it against all the odds. Just as some men, because they were there, had to climb the big ones, so he wanted to land the big one. The fish rose once to something but he was slow to see what it was, and there was no hatch, no fly on the water, that he could imitate. The water told him nothing. The fish told him nothing. He knew that one cast, switched from around the tree, and one rejection by the trout would put the fish down. Give the bugger something big to rouse him, make the bugger think he’s only got one chance at a rare mouthful. He’d been a great one for swear words in those days. Hadn’t Hamilton tanned his ass for it more than once? He put on a White Moth, tied by his father with wings from a white barn owl, a large cream hackle, and the body white ostrich herl … a real mouthful.