The Players And The Game

by Julian Symons

  ‘She was excited. I don’t know what about.’

  ‘How well did you know her?’

  ‘Better than anyone else in the class, but that doesn’t mean much. She’d been coming for two terms, so I’d seen a bit of her. She was unhappy at home, you know that? Her father was an awful bastard. She wanted to get away.’ She chewed her lips. ‘I told her she could move in with me if she wanted.’

  Were Lesbian inclinations being suggested? ‘But she didn’t.’

  ‘No, she was keen to get to London to live. So she said. She had some sort of vision of herself doing what she thought were romantic things in the big city. You know, most of them come to class because they’re overweight and think they can cut down by exercise while they go on stuffing themselves with pastries. Bloody fools. But Louise did it because she wanted to have a perfect body. She was a bit thick in the hips. She once said to me that she’d like to be a striptease dancer. The point is she wouldn’t – wouldn’t have liked it, I mean. Basically she wanted romance, not sex. She liked to think of herself as bohemian, but she was respectable as hell.’ This time there could be no doubt about the meaning of her tight-lipped smile.

  ‘Any boys around? Did she ever talk about one in particular?’

  ‘Talked about them. I don’t know if it went any further. This term it was one called Ray something. Journalist, I think.’

  ‘Those gym slip things they were wearing. Do they bring them along?’

  ‘Yes. They have holdalls, small cases, that kind of thing.’

  ‘No lockers? No? All right. Anything more you can think of that might be useful? No idea what she was excited about on Monday?’

  ‘The odds are it was a man.’ Miss Weston’s smile was tight. ‘That doesn’t mean a man was poking her. She was a timid girl who wished she was different, is that any help?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ Plender said cheerfully. ‘But thanks all the same.’

  Hazleton’s office was bigger than Hurley’s, and cooler, partly because an electric fan hummed in it. Hurley’s shirt was sticking to his body, and he envied Hazleton the electric fan. The DCI’s voice on the telephone had been sharp, but Hurley faced him with the imperturbability of the lazy man who feels sure that he has covered any tracks indicating possible negligence.

  ‘These two disappearances. What have you been doing about them?’

  ‘We only heard about the second one yesterday. Plender’s been looking into it. So far he hasn’t come up with much. The girl had been talking about becoming a striptease dancer.’

  ‘And the first case, the French au pair? Why wasn’t I told about that at the time?’

  The DCI was a big man with a face that appeared to be all knobs, two for his cheekbones, another for his nose, and an outsize knob for his formidable chin. When he was moved emotionally the knobs all shone, and they were shining now. Hurley saw that he had better choose his words with care.

  ‘Didn’t seem necessary to worry you with it specially. Most likely thing is she’s gone off to try her luck in London. She wasn’t on very good terms with the family she worked for.’

  Hazleton liked to say that he could smell when something was cooking, and he smelled it now. Perhaps the dish might be of interest to Charlie Hazleton? Well, perhaps, but still his prime emotion was of anger at something approaching slackness. ‘A girl disappears, doesn’t take her clothes, doesn’t leave any message, and you do nothing about it. I think very little of that, Inspector.’

  ‘With respect, sir, we did do something. We talked to everybody involved. And she’s on Missing Persons.’

  ‘You did the least you possibly could.’ His glare did not invite a reply. ‘Now another girl’s gone. I want you to find out where this second one has got to, you understand? What did she do after she left this Keep Fit class, did anyone see her later Monday night, did a car pick her up, was this row with the journalist more serious than he makes out? Treat it as possible rape or murder. And one more thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t let that journalist get to hear about the French girl so that he can splash it in the Enquirer. If the time comes to make a statement we’ll do it ourselves.’

  The investigation turned up one thing of interest immediately. Louise had been seen after the Keep Fit class ended. At eight-fifteen she had attended a meeting of the Film Society at the Institute. She was a member, but had been only once before durng the term. The secretary knew and recognised her, but beyond saying that she was there could not be much help. She had been at the film show, that was all, and had come in and gone out alone. There had been a horror film showing, part of a season that the Society was running, and it had been well attended.

  After the show ended at nine forty-five another girl who knew Louise said that she thought she had seen her in company with a woman just outside the Institute gates, but she could not be sure. She had only seen their backs and could not even be certain that it was Louise, except that she had the same sort of long hair. After that she had disappeared completely. And why had she gone to the show at all? Because she was specially interested in horror films? To meet somebody? Apparently not. To fill in time? It hardly seemed likely.

  Two days later her disappearance made headlines in the national press, when a blue holdall was found on top of a London bus in Charing Cross Road. The finder took it to the Lost and Found department. The holdall contained a gym slip and shoes, and also a handbag with the usual impedimenta in it, mirror, handkerchief, powder, cigarettes and matches, a key. The holdall and bag were sent down to Rawley, and the Allbrights identified them as belonging to their daughter. The key was the key of the front door. Only one unusual thing was found in the handbag. A fragment of an envelope had been caught in the lining. The material of the envelope was similar to what could be bought in a thousand shops. On the back of this fragment, however, somebody had printed in ink ‘E 203’. That, for what it was worth, was the only tangible clue to Louise Allbright’s disappearance.

  Chapter Ten

  Job Enrichment and Lavatories

  Bob Lowson always spared ten minutes from dictation, when he travelled up to town, to look at the morning papers. On this morning he said to Sally, who travelled up with him, ‘Didn’t you say something about a girl named Louise Allbright? At the tennis club.’

  She usually read the paper herself in the car, but on this day she had spent the journey looking out of the window. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I never forget a name,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘She’s disappeared. Look at this.’

  The headline said HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

  Below it was a smudgy picture of Louise and an account of her disappearance. Sally barely glanced at it.

  ‘You don’t seem much interested.’

  ‘I didn’t know her well.’

  ‘Isn’t she the girl you were playing doubles with last weekend? When you said there was a bit of an argument, and Paul was mixed up in it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I should have thought you’d be interested. You do still live in Rawley, you know.’

  ‘He took her home that evening. Paul Vane.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Her father’s porcine good humour had disappeared.

  ‘Nothing. I was just reminding you. Since you’re interested.’

  ‘Then you can just shut up about it. The less said about that kind of thing the better.’

  The paper on Paul Vane’s desk, done in neat facsimile typewriting, was headed: ‘Job Enrichment at Timbals Plastics. A study in Deliberate Method Change Planning. By E K Malendine, PhD.’ Esther Malendine was the woman he had mentioned to Alice, who had been appointed as his deputy. After getting a degree in Logic and Social Science from a fashionable university she had gone straight out to the United States, where she had worked for some enormous corporation. At the time he had been rather in favour of her appointment. It had sounded a good idea for him to have a woman deputy, although he had been disconcerted at first sight of Esther, who wo
re glasses with enormous smoky lenses and had a formidable academic manner. Since then he had realised his mistake. Now his heart sank as he looked at the first couple of pages:

  The belief expressed by Weinstein, Bauer and other Behavioural Scientists in the potentialities of job enrichment has proved fully justified by the results obtained in the American multi-level PJC Corporation among others… job enrichment is essentially participatory, it is unitary and not divisive, it implies the fulfilment of individual potential without losing the advantages of mechanisation and computerisation, it might be called an individual shaping of mechanisation… Deliberate Method Change (DMC hereafter) applied within a structure like Timbals would involve teams from each area of our operation devising its own scheme for Work Simplification… the philosophy of job enrichment can be summarised in Seven Movements…

  He settled down to read the whole thing, and when he had finished went along to Esther’s office. She was talking into a recorder, and he heard the phrase ‘avoidance of infinite variables’ before she switched off. He decided to be pleasant.

  ‘I haven’t had a chance yet to go through your paper in detail, Esther, but it looks like a fine job of work.’ She gazed at him through the enormous glasses. ‘I just wonder whether it isn’t going to be a bit above the heads of some of the people who read it.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Job enrichment is a familiar concept in most big firms now. The problem is to get the Board to accept it.’

  ‘You don’t feel it could be put more simply? It seems to me job enrichment just means getting people to use a bit of initiative. We’re trying to do that all the time.’

  ‘Rather an over-simplification. But in any case that implies DMC. And a preliminary would have to be the setting up of work-study groups.’

  He retained the pleasantness of his manner, although with some difficulty, ‘Esther, I knew you were preparing a memorandum, but this is more like a thesis. If you were going to do something on this scale you should have had a word with me first, and we could have talked about it in detail.’

  ‘Brian Hartford suggested I should prepare it. He’s very interested in group-communication method-projects.’

  It was like talking to a multi-syllabled computer. Back in his office he spoke to Hartford.

  ‘I think you might have had a word with me first, I must say. She’s my assistant, and this must have taken up a lot of time. We’re under considerable pressure already.’

  ‘I’m sorry if you think I’ve infringed protocol,’ Hartford said. ‘I believe actually she wrote most of it at home. But she’s come up with some interesting ideas, don’t you agree?’

  ‘A good deal of it is hot air, and most of the rest we knew already.’ He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel like that,’ Hartford said neutrally. ‘We’ll be considering the report at a Board meeting next week. I shall look forward to hearing your views.’

  Paul sent for his secretary and began to dictate some letters, but found that he was repeating himself and stumbling over words. In the end he left her to answer most of the mail herself.

  Sally was working in the Sales Division (Toys) for a few weeks. After that she would go on to Sales Division (Domestic) and then to Sales Division (Foreign). The people she worked with knew that she was the managing director’s daughter. Sales Manager (Toys) treated her almost with deference, and most of the other people in the Division kept out of her way. She had only one friend, Pamela Wilberforce, who wrote copy in Publicity. They met as they often did, in the Rest Room.

  Pamela was twenty-five, a self-assured blonde whose toughness was part of her attraction for Sally. She had already, as she was fond of saying, mislaid one husband, and meant to try out a lot of men before taking on another.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘You look like a bit of classroom chalk.’

  ‘Louise has disappeared. It’s in the paper.’

  ‘Who the hell’s Louise?’

  ‘That girl at Rawley, you remember I told you I’d shown the mag to her and she was fascinated. She wrote a letter to that man, the one who wrote to you.’

  ‘So. What then?’

  ‘The day she disappeared, I don’t know, but I think she was going to meet him. Oh Pam, suppose something’s happened to her through me.’

  ‘Of course nothing’s happened.’

  ‘What do you think I ought to do?’

  ‘Sweet FA. Just don’t get in a tizzy.’

  ‘I’d never forgive myself if anything had happened because of me. You know, I used to laugh at her a bit. I planted her on that journalist.’

  ‘You mean the one you said had hands like wet gloves.’ Sally felt better after listening to Pam. It was nice to be with a girl who never lost her cool. ‘Look, sweetie pie, you’ve got to calm down. And it just so happens I’ve got a calmer with me.’

  At first Sally refused the joint, because she had only tried them a couple of times and was not at all sure that she liked the effect, but in the end she accepted it, and it was blissful. They sat in their cubicles talking, taking puffs, getting up to pass it over. Then Pam called, ‘Hey, Sally. Come and look.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In here.’ Sally went in. ‘Look. Filthy.’ There was certainly a line of dirt round the wash basin. ‘And no lav paper.’

  ‘So there isn’t. Perhaps someone’s pinched it.’

  ‘Disgraceful.’

  ‘It is disgraceful.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is, they don’t look after the loos properly any more. Let’s look in the others.’

  In two compartments out of seven there was no lavatory paper. In one the lavatory bowl was choked with it. ‘Disgraceful and disgusting,’ Pam said. ‘You have to do something about something, do something about that.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You’re the old man’s daughter, you’ve got influence. You’ve always said.’

  ‘I do have influence. Dad listens to me.’

  ‘You ought to talk to him.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  Pam tore half a roll of paper, stuffed it down a lavatory. Make it good. And sweetie pie–’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You talk to your old man about that flat. We’d have fun, I tell you, real humming fun.’

  When Sally got back to the office she rang her father at once. He was out of the room, and she spoke to his secretary. Five minutes later he rang back. He was not pleased, asking what all this nonsense was about dirty lavatories. She still felt as if she were treading on clouds, but they had cleared a little. She spoke carefully, hearing her own words.

  ‘It isn’t nonsense. They’re awful. In three of them there’s no paper.’

  ‘Then go and tell the head of your department.’

  ‘All the girls think it’s awful. They don’t like to say anything.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I don’t believe – don’t believe they’re ever cleaned now.’ She closed her eyes. She could have fallen asleep easily. She murmured, ‘Thought I should tell you.’

  Her father said in a slightly mollified tone, ‘I’ll have it looked into. But I don’t want you running to me with tales out of school, you understand.’

  He spoke to his efficient secretary. After lunch he found on his desk a complete report on the lavatory situation. In ten toilets there was no paper, and four of them were not working for one reason or another. The general cleanliness of the washrooms left something to be desired. It was suspected that a little mild vandalism had been going on, in the form of stealing toilet rolls or stuffing them down lavatories. Cleaning had been done daily until three months ago, when it had been changed to every other day. The change had been made on instructions from the Personnel Department. Lowson spoke to Paul Vane.

  ‘Paul, did you give instructions for lavatory cleaning to be cut down?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Not surprisingly, he sounded startled. Then he said, ‘That’s right.’

&n
bsp; ‘What was the idea?’

  ‘We had a memo round about cutting expenses. I put this up as a possible cut, and it was accepted.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to be working out too well. There’ve been complaints about the state of women’s washrooms, and in some cases they seem to be justified.’

  ‘They ought to have come to me.’

  ‘I just happened to hear about them.’

  ‘If Personnel has the responsibility for looking after wash-rooms, then complaints should be made through heads of departments. And they should speak to me, not go behind my back. Has Brian Hartford got anything to do with this?’

  To his astonishment Lowson heard a note of hysteria in the Personnel Director’s voice. ‘Brian? Of course not. What made you think that?’

  ‘I just thought he might have done, that’s all.’

  ‘There’s no question of going behind your back. Or of blaming you, either. This was a reasonable attempt to cut corners that seems to be causing a bit of trouble, that’s all. Can we go back to the old system from next week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let’s do that. The saving doesn’t justify causing staff trouble.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it.’ Before Lowson could hang up he went on. ‘Have you seen Esther Malendine’s paper? About job enrichment?’

  ‘It’s on my desk. I haven’t looked at it yet.’

  ‘I understand Hartford asked her to do it. She produced it without consulting me. I should like to make clear that it’s purely a personal view of her own. As Personnel Director there’s very little of it that I go along with. And I do resent the fact that it’s been produced behind my back.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me,’ Bob Lowson said. The remark was the reverse of the truth. It was all trivial stuff, complaints by and about Paul Vane, but the total effect was a little disturbing. He riffled the pages of the report, and started to glance through it.