The Only Game

by Reginald Hill

  He didn’t, of course. There were gaps big enough for a man to fell through.

  ‘They asked you about Oliver and the money. What did you tell them?’

  ‘The truth.’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘What else would I tell them with Noll asleep in the next room?’

  ‘And they believed you? About not having any way of contacting Beck?’

  ‘Of course they believed me. I let that bastard rape me, didn’t I?’

  ‘And then Thrale told you to go and confess to killing Noll? Didn’t you ask why? Didn’t the others say anything?’

  ‘Me, I was past asking questions. The woman wondered if it was a good idea to let me loose. Thrale said something like, the more distance there was between me and Noll, the less likely I was to act stupid. Also it would give someone called … Trent I think it was … something to worry about.’

  ‘Trent? Could it have been Tench?’

  ‘Maybe. I can’t remember. That fat slob Trent, I thought he said.’

  That did it. But what the hell did Thrale know about Tench’s involvement? The rest was easy to figure. Thrale had been quickly convinced that Jane had told him all she knew. He’d leaked the story to the press to get publicity to attract Beck’s attention. Tench had responded by upping the ante and hinting via Parslow that the child might be dead. Thrale had then contemptuously dropped Maguire back in his lap with a confession, which move Tench had countered by turning her loose on bail.

  Bait, that’s all she was, tossed around between two predators, each with a disturbingly accurate picture of what the other was up to …

  Dog’s mind was getting dizzy. Sometimes a man can get so snarled up working out possibilities, he loses sight of the cards on show.

  And there was one problem still unresolved.

  He said, ‘This place they took you to, what was it like? Furniture, lay-out, decor, anything.’

  Her face screwed up with effort. She wanted to believe his questions were significant. She said, ‘It’s hard, I didn’t pay much attention … It was pretty smart, I think … newish … but neutral. Mushroom emulsion, brown upholstery, that sort of thing …’

  ‘Noll, then. What was Noll wearing?’

  ‘Pink pyjamas,’ she said promptly. ‘And I noticed some striped dungarees draped over a chair. I remember thinking they were a bit girlish then telling myself not to be so stupid, that buying Noll clothes meant they didn’t intend harming him …’

  She was begging him to approve her judgement, but the rising panic in his mind washed away kindness.

  ‘You said Noll kicked you when you were talking to this Gosling woman,’ he snarled. ‘What happened to your torn tights?’

  ‘I dumped them in a litter bin,’ she said, baffled. ‘Bought a new pair at a corner shop. But why …?’

  ‘No reason. Look, pour yourself another whisky. I won’t be a sec. There’s a call I need to make.’

  He went into the bedroom and dialled the station. Asking to be put through to Charley Lunn, he found himself talking to a DC called Mawson.

  ‘The sarge isn’t here, guv. You just missed him,’ said the man.

  ‘Shit. Look, you’ll do, Mawson. I want you to contact the Registrar, the Health Authority, the Child Benefits office, anywhere else you can think of, for any record they’ve got of a girl called Tobin, Polly Tobin, that’s probably Mary or Pauline on the birth certificate, aged four or five, address Flat Thirty-four, Rhadnor House.’

  He’d been aware of would-be interrupting noises from Mawson as he spoke but had ridden right over them. Now the constable said, ‘Yes, guv. But listen, I’ve been in the sarge’s room for the last half hour and he’s been doing that already, checking round just them places from what I heard. And I heard him mention Tobin. Do you still want …’

  Dog cut in. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  ‘No, guv.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’ The extrovert Charley Lunn was unlikely to make a quiet exit.

  ‘Yes, guv. One of his jokes, though I didn’t really get it. He said, “You know, Pete, there’s a lot more than home-cooking that crusty old bachelors miss.” Then he laughed and went off. About those calls, guv …’

  ‘Forget it,’ snapped Dog, putting down the phone.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Jane Maguire anxiously.

  She was standing in the bedroom doorway.

  He said, ‘Scared I was turning you in again?’

  She said, ‘I need to know what you’re doing till I can understand why you’re doing it.’

  ‘Fair enough. OK, what I’m doing now is leaving you here. I’ve got to go out.’ He let his mind run quickly over his call. How much had she heard? ‘I’ve got to see my sergeant. He may have some information. Probably not, but worth checking.’

  She regarded him suspiciously, but she must have missed his mention of the child or she surely could not have held her peace.

  ‘You’ll wait till you hear from me?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word carried no conviction but there was no time for persuasion.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. Make yourself at home.’

  He pulled on his coat and left without further words from either side.

  It wasn’t till he was sitting in his car that he recalled he’d left the computer print-outs on his dining table.

  Shit! He hesitated, but only a moment.

  Live with your mistakes, said Uncle Endo. Tidying up usually just fucks up your next play.

  He turned the ignition key and forced his way aggressively into the heavy afternoon traffic.

  7

  Click!

  Charley Lunn in mid-stride.

  Click.

  Charley Lunn pausing at the entrance to Rhadnor House, scuffed briefcase in hand, like an absurdly young Chancellor on the steps of Number Eleven.

  Click.

  Charley Lunn disappearing inside.

  The man in the blue Sierra put the camera down and reached for his radio mike.

  ‘You there, sarge? There’s a geezer just gone in. Looks familiar. I think he’s a DS from Romchurch nick. Instruct, please.’

  ‘Wait.’

  The man yawned. Poured himself a cup of coffee from a flask, drank, grimaced, lit a cigarette.

  ‘OK. Wander over there, check out what’s his game, but don’t make contact.’

  ‘Right.’

  He got out of the car and strolled towards the flats. Five minutes later he was back.

  ‘He’s knocking on doors, letting on he’s selling encyclopaedias.’

  ‘Jesus. Clever idea like that, they’ll make him Head of CID in a fortnight. Wait.’

  Time for another fag.

  ‘OK. Let him be. He’s not official. He can’t do any harm and when he gets back to his nick, that prat Parslow will really chew his bollocks off. Out.’

  Charley Lunn would have made a good salesman. In the interest of verisimilitude he had worked his way steadily towards his goal along the top floor and had twice had to accept cups of coffee and interest in his alleged product or blow his cover. The second coffee maker, a parti-coloured blonde, hinted she was more interested in barter than purchase and Lunn only avoided a down payment by promising to return when he’d canvassed the whole building.

  ‘Well, you’ve finished on this floor,’ she said sulkily. ‘Next flat’s empty, and the one at the end, they’ve gone out.’

  This was the Tobins’. He said, ‘Oh yes. Any kids? So I’ll know if it’s worthwhile coming back.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be worth your while,’ she said.

  ‘I meant, for a sale.’

  ‘A little girl, I think. I only saw her this morning as they were going out. They’ve not been there more than a week.’

  Lunn managed to take his leave, was watched to the stair head, then doubled back when the door closed. At least it made his mind up for him. There was no point in hanging around debating legalities. He took a quick look at the lock, delved into his briefcase, selected a b
unch of adjustable keys and after a little trial and error, found a combination that turned.

  Slowly he pushed back the door. The flat lay before him, empty, innocent.

  He went inside.

  When Dog Cicero arrived there was no time for the man in the Sierra to get a snap.

  ‘Sarge! That Romchurch DI, the one with the frozen face, who was here this morning. He’s back! Drove up like a bat out of hell and has gone in at the run. Instruct.’

  ‘Wait.’

  He waited, sensing trouble.

  ‘OK. Enough’s enough. Get them both out quietly as you can. Jesus! What a pair of plonkers! Out.’

  He got out of the car and stretched. Life would be so much easier if it was just the boyos you had to deal with. He began to walk slowly across the road.

  There was a lift but Dog ignored it. There was too much adrenalin burning through his veins to tolerate that sense of boxed-in nowhere. He went up the four flights of stairs without slackening speed. As he hit the top floor, he shouted, ‘Charley!’ He couldn’t have said where this imperative to speed came from, but he obeyed it absolutely, like a man who knows against all reason that the next card will fill his inside straight.

  The Tobins’ door was ajar. He burst through it and skidded to a halt on the polished tiles of the narrow hallway. Relief drained the strength from his muscles as Charley Lunn’s head appeared round the half-open kitchen door, his mobile features rounded like an Allegory of Surprise.

  ‘Dog. What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for you,’ gasped Dog, leaning back against the wall. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Me? Easy! I got to thinking, crusty old bachelors can’t tell boys from girls, not without the help of big tits and a squeaky voice. So I started checking out the Tobin kid and came up with zilch. I reckon little Miss Maguire could have been telling the truth, Dog. This place is empty. I mean really empty, not just gone away on holiday empty.’

  ‘OK, Charley,’ said Dog. ‘Now just come out of there and we’ll hand the flat over to Forensic and ourselves over to Mr Parslow.’

  ‘Oh God. Will we get a lecture?’

  ‘At the least. Come on!’

  ‘OK. Just a moment.’

  He turned, moved out of sight. Dog heard him say, ‘What’s the difference between a drippy super and a dripping tap? You can turn off a dripping tap.’

  It took a split second to sink in.

  Then Dog Cicero screamed, ‘Charley, don’t touch …’

  The blast came funnelling across the kitchen, tearing the door off its hinges and smashing it against Dog, who slid slowly to the floor. Behind it came a huge tongue of flame spitting shards of glass and metal and wood and stone. Half conscious and not yet feeling pain, he struggled to move the door … beside him the car burnt, the woman in the driving seat was a Guy Fawkes doll, the only sound above the crackle of flames was his own voice screaming … then hands were under his shoulders and, cursing and grunting, the man from the blue Sierra dragged him out of the reach of the fire into the smoke-filled corridor.

  Part Three

  1

  Jonty Thrale dreamt he was questioning Oliver Beck and woke with a throbbing erection.

  Only Bridie Heighway understood the physical bonus his work for the Cause brought him. It would have been good to find her on the narrow hotel bed by his side but she had other work to do. Relief was only a brief friction away, but though the anti-orgasmic beatings doled out by the watchful Fathers at his boarding school had often been counterproductive, the associative guilt was deep grained in his soul.

  He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Prayer and cold water was all that a growing boy needed for salvation. But a man needed to add works to faith and, as he took back control of his body, his mind focused on the current operation.

  The old men across the water might be saying that things were falling apart, but that was why they were sitting on their arses in O’Connell Street, unable to raise much more than their voices. They it was who’d insisted he took Billy Flynn on board. From time to time they elected some dickhead wild boy flavour of the month because he reminded them of their own imagined youth. Well, Billy Flynn’s balls-ups were well documented. He’d been told to follow the woman to work and sit outside the Health Centre till she came out again. Instead he’d wandered off God knows where, come back at her normal leaving time and found the bird had flown. So there they were in the public domain from the start and instead of being able to sit quietly and wait for an unsuspecting Oliver Beck to drop into their laps, suddenly they had to contend with that tricky bastard, Tench, and his storm troopers. Not forgetting Cicero. Not that he was any danger, but when God made you a gift of a bit of unfinished business, you didn’t throw it back in his face!

  But first things first. Oliver Beck and three million dollars was the prize. Miss out on that, and those wanked-out warlords in Dublin wouldn’t be interested in blaming Billy Flynn. He’d made too many of them look foolish over the past few years. There’d be a lot of private rejoicing behind the official regret if Jonty Thrale failed.

  He smiled to himself. He didn’t intend to fail.

  He came out of the shower, dried himself, got dressed. Finished, he studied himself in the mirror, checking focal points. It was Bridie who’d taught him that technique. It wasn’t possible to be totally unmemorable, so you had to make sure you gave potential witnesses something positive to fix on. Henry Ward, commercial, from Ipswich, had a gold filling in an upper left incisor and a small mole under his chin. He wore a chain store suit, a club tie, and a slightly peeling ‘gold’ watch. This last was pure stage dressing. Jonty Thrale had never needed a watch. He had an inner clock which let him go to sleep when he wanted, woke him when he needed, and permitted him to ignore most normal temporal cycles of activity. For instance this afternoon, after thirty-six hours without rest, he had allowed himself two hours’ sleep, and now the peeling watch confirmed the accuracy of his inner alarm.

  He picked up a scuffed plastic briefcase, and went out.

  The girl on reception took his key and flashed him a smile as meaningless as the token tinsel which fringed the desk.

  He glinted his gold tooth back at her and went out into the night.

  There was a feel of snow in the air. The bookies would be shortening their odds on a white Christmas. Not that he would be tempted. He wasn’t a gambling man, despised those who were. Not for him the artificial thrill of betting on the turn of a card, the stride of a horse. Not while he still had the will, sinews and heart to play that first and only game which others palely imitated – the grand old game of death.

  Only Bridie had ever heard him talk like this. The others thought of him as a cold fish, a man whose deadliness came from the ice water in his veins. They didn’t know how his blood sang and his heart exulted as the bombs he planted exploded, the bullets he fired struck home, the enemies who thought they had him in their grasp fell back in confusion and disarray.

  There was a telephone box ahead. A man entered it, tried the phone, banged it down in disgust and came out.

  ‘Knackered,’ he said to Thrale. ‘Like everything in this fucking country.’

  Thrale watched him out of sight then went into the box, removed the tiny pin with which he had short-circuited the cable earlier, and dialled.

  He got a reply almost instantaneously.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Chaotic. Maguire’s loose again. We checked out the college where her mate lives and found her dead. Tench has put it down to you.’

  There was a question in his voice.

  Thrale said, ‘The transfer to Warwickshire, that went OK?’

  ‘Fine. There’s a twenty-four-hour team on them. Look, Tench is still holding off but if he decides to go with what he’s got, I can’t guarantee …’

  ‘Leave me to worry about that. No sign of our main man yet?’

  ‘No. We’ve got the ports and airport
s plugged tight and round-the-clock on the old girl in Northampton. Anything stirs, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘You’d better,’ said Thrale coldly. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘An explosion at Rhadnor House. One of the Romchurch plods bought it.’

  ‘Cicero?’

  ‘No. A sergeant. Cicero was there, injured but he’ll survive. He’ll maybe wish he hadn’t when Tench gets through with him.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘At the hospital. Tench has gone to see him.’

  ‘Right. I’ll keep in touch.’

  He put the phone down and went on his way. A police siren sounded in the distance, approaching fast, but he neither turned his head nor altered his pace as it swept past. He was the model of the good citizen who knows the forces of law are on his side. As indeed they were. The idea made him smile. Tench thought he was using Jonty Thrale’s bait to capture Beck while the truth was, he was using Tench’s eyes to spot the bastard first. And if he couldn’t get hold of him alive, he would at least make sure Tench got hold of him dead. Though that would be a pity. He was looking forward to asking Beck a few questions. He was a slippery bastard but he wasn’t going to slip out of this one.

  And Cicero. Unimportant. No danger. But another slippery bastard, or, just as bad, a lucky one.

  He’d survived twice.

  Though he was not a gambling man, Jonty Thrale resolved as he walked the bright Christmas streets that for Dog Cicero, third time was going to be unlucky.

  2

  ‘You’re a very lucky boy, my son. A very lucky boy.’

  Dog continued fastening his shirt across his bruised chest. It was a painful process but he didn’t wince. He deserved the pain.

  ‘Charley Lunn’s dead,’ he said in a low voice.