Dangerous Games

by Sally Spencer

  ‘I’m not sure I’m following you,’ Rutter admitted.

  ‘And then there’s the rule about fires,’ Rosemary Bygraves said hurriedly. ‘We can have fires in the garden, but only in the autumn, when there are a lot of leaves to burn. And even then only on Saturdays.’

  ‘And this isn’t autumn, and yesterday wasn’t a Saturday,’ Rutter said, catching on.

  Rosemary Bygraves nodded. ‘As soon as Tom had left, I went into the back garden and doused the fire. Isn’t that terrible? My husband had gone, and all I could think about was what the neighbours would say about me breaking the rules.’

  ‘We all do that,’ Rutter said. ‘We all worry over the little problems because we can’t face the big ones.’

  But though the sympathy in his voice was real enough, it was all he could do to restrain himself from pushing the woman aside and rushing straight into the back garden.

  The first two men, who DC Colin Beresford had already ticked off on his morning list of visits, had been of absolutely no help to him at all.

  ‘Yes, I remember Pugh and Lewis vaguely,’ one of them had said. ‘But they had their own mates, just as I had mine.’

  ‘When I read in the paper that a Reg Lewis had been murdered, the name did ring a bell,’ the second had told him, ‘but I never thought for a minute that it might be somebody I’d been in the army with. To tell you truth, I doubt if I could even put a face to the name, after all this time.’

  The third man on Beresford’s list was called Martin Murray, and he lived above his model shop on one of the quaint twisty old lanes in the centre of Whitebridge that the planners hadn’t quite got around to gleefully pulling down yet.

  The shop itself re-awakened the child in Beresford. Models of Second World War bomber and fighter planes, all of them beautifully painted, hung from the ceiling, as they re-fought old battles. Soldiers made of lead, and wearing uniforms from the Peninsular War, stood to attention on the numerous shelves which ran around the walls.

  But it was the model railway, which took up most of the floor space between the counter and the door, that was the true marvel. There were tunnels and stations, signal boxes and level crossings. As the train made its slow graceful journey around the track, tiny figures watched it from the doorways of tiny houses, and little white sheep – no doubt frightened by the roar – seemed caught in the act of running away across painted fields.

  ‘It’s taken me six years to make,’ said Martin Murray, noticing Beresford’s fascination. ‘Six long years, working way into the night, and all through the weekends.’

  ‘It was worth it,’ Beresford said, admiringly.

  Murray smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  The man was probably still only in his late twenties, Beresford thought, but he looked a lot older. His face was round and pasty. His white curly hair had already started to desert his pate. His shoulders – perhaps due to spending so much time bent over his model railway – had developed a stoop. And if his eyesight had been as poor a few years ago as the thick lenses in his glasses seemed to indicate that it was now, he’d never have been accepted into the army in the first place.

  ‘I want to ask you about Terry Pugh and Reg Lewis,’ Beresford said.

  ‘They’re both dead,’ Martin Murray told him, as if that were all he needed to know.

  ‘Were you a close friend of theirs?’

  ‘Who’s to say? We think we know people, but we don’t really. We think we know ourselves, and then something happens to show us that we couldn’t have been wronger about that.’

  ‘Something happens?’ Beresford repeated wonderingly. ‘Like what?’

  ‘It could be anything,’ Murray told him. ‘For example, you might think you love somebody – that you’d do anything in the world for them – but the moment the relationship becomes difficult for you, you find excuses for yourself and cast them aside.’

  Beresford thought of the problems he was having with his mother – and shivered.

  ‘Is that what happened to you?’ he asked.

  Murray shook his head. ‘No, I’ve never really loved anybody, and nobody has ever really loved me. My personal revelation came more out of hatred than it did out of love.’

  ‘Can I ask you what you mean by that?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘You can ask,’ Murray replied. ‘But I won’t answer.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why Terry Pugh and Reg Lewis should have been murdered?’ Beresford wondered.

  ‘Because it was meant to be,’ Murray told him. ‘Because once they had set their feet firmly on a particular road, there was only one possible destination.’

  ‘What road are we talking about?’

  ‘Do you know why I like spending so much time with my model railway?’ Murray asked.

  ‘No, but that’s not really why …’

  ‘It’s because it creates a world of its own, a world which is both understandable and ordered. The train will go around this track, without mishaps, for ever. None of the cars will break down on the railway crossing, and be smashed into by the train. There’ll be no bombs detonated on the station. The little people who watch the train are happy to go on doing just that. They feel no urge to go on the rampage with a Sten gun, killing everybody in their path.’

  ‘It is only a model,’ Beresford felt obliged to point out.

  ‘Is it?’ Murray countered. ‘It seems to me to be much more than that. For me, it is an inspiration – a golden city to which we should aspire, in which evil and ugliness have no place.’

  ‘What exactly happened in Cyprus?’ Beresford demanded.

  ‘In Cyprus? The train came off the track – and none of us who saw it happen have ever been able to put it back again.’

  ‘You’re not being very helpful,’ Beresford said exasperatedly.

  ‘Why should I be helpful?’ Murray wondered. ‘I don’t have to answer to you.’

  ‘Then who do you have to answer to?’

  Murray smiled. ‘To the model maker, of course.’

  The rubbish heap was at the very end of the Bygraves’ garden. It was a couple of feet high, and Mrs Bygraves had been right when she said it contained mostly leaves and grass cuttings.

  If Tom Bygraves had bothered to set it alight properly, it would have burned out completely by the time his wife got back to it. But he’d been in a hurry, so he hadn’t made a proper job, and though he was no expert on fires, Bob Rutter guessed that it had only been at the smouldering stage when Rosemary had poured the water on it.

  Rutter squatted down, and began to carefully remove the blackened grass cuttings.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ he heard Rosemary Bygraves’ voice ask behind him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.

  Anything near the surface of the heap would probably have been destroyed, he thought, as he continued his painstaking work. But something that Bygraves had considered important enough to burn would also have been important enough to hide properly – deep down in the heap.

  He found what he was looking for under a pile of orange peel.

  A letter.

  A typed letter.

  The fire had damaged it, but parts of it were still legible.

  Rutter stood up. ‘I’m going to ring the police laboratory,’ he told Mrs Bygraves, ‘and I think you’d better come with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  Because I don’t trust you not to mess with evidence while I’m away, Rutter thought.

  ‘Because it will be better that way,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Have you … have you found something that will help to find my Tom?’ Mrs Bygraves asked tremulously.

  No, Rutter thought, but I may have found something that will help explain why he went away.

  Nineteen

  The Real McCoy Taverna was situated on the sea front in Larnaca. As the army Land Rover pulled up in front of it, Paniatowski noted that there were already a number of customers sitting at the tables outside the establishment, and that their main activity s
eemed to be gazing idly across the palm-lined promenade to the deep blue Mediterranean Sea which lay beyond it. They looked thoroughly contented with life, she thought – and why wouldn’t they?

  Inside, the taverna was darker and cooler. There were examples of local pottery on display in several niches in the walls, and photographs of visitors – apparently having an exceedingly good time – were stuck to the long mirror behind the counter. Heavy brass ceiling fans whirred overhead, and delicious smells of cooking wafted gently from the tiny kitchen which lay beyond the bar.

  Ted McCoy himself was a large man, with broad shoulders and eyes as blue as the sea which was his neighbour. The eyes twinkled as he shook hands with Paniatowski, and beneath them a welcoming smile filled his broad face. It was hard to imagine that this man had once been a fearsome sergeant, the terror of new recruits.

  ‘Are you here on business or pleasure, Sergeant?’ McCoy asked from the other side of the bar, as he served Blaine and Paniatowski their drinks.

  ‘Business,’ Monika said. ‘My mate Bill here thinks you might be able to help me with some information on men you might once have served with.’

  McCoy’s body was suddenly parade-ground stiff, and a steely look had entered his blue eyes.

  He turned slightly, to face Bill Blaine. ‘Is that right, Lance Corporal?’ he asked in a voice which could have stopped a tank. ‘You think I may be able to help with information? About men I once served with?’ The look on Blaine’s face told its own story. The sudden dramatic change from Ted McCoy the genial host to Sergeant McCoy had left him completely pole-axed.

  ‘Is that right?’ McCoy repeated.

  ‘I … well, you know …’ Blaine mumbled.

  McCoy turned his attention back on Monika Paniatowski. ‘And suppose I did give you some information,’ he said. ‘Would I be getting any of the lads I mentioned into trouble?’

  ‘Far from it, Mr McCoy,’ Paniatowski promised, and though she hadn’t flinched as Blaine had, she’d certainly wanted to.

  McCoy opened the fridge behind him, and took out a bottle of Fix beer. There was a bottle opener lying to hand, but instead of using it he forced the metal cap off the bottle using only his thumb. It was a neat trick which was designed to impress – and it did.

  ‘You’re sure I wouldn’t be causing them any grief?’ he asked Paniatowski, before raising the bottle to his lips.

  ‘Quite sure,’ Paniatowski confirmed. ‘In fact, by giving me information on them, you might just be saving their lives.’

  Ted McCoy almost choked on the beer. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ he asked, when the liquid had finally found the right channel and drained away.

  ‘I wish I was,’ Paniatowski told him.

  ‘So how is anything I can tell you likely to prevent some poor bugger from getting the chop?’ McCoy wondered.

  ‘I’m afraid that at this stage of the investigation, I’m not at liberty to say,’ Paniatowski replied.

  ‘Suppose I was to say that unless you briefed me on what this was all about, I’d tell you nothing?’

  ‘Then I’d be very disappointed.’

  ‘But you still wouldn’t tell me?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  McCoy was silent – and deep in thought – for at least a full minute.

  Finally, he said, ‘One of the things about being a sergeant for as long as I was one is that you learn to trust your own judgement about people. And it seems to me that even if you won’t tell me what’s going on, you’re what the Yanks would call a pretty straight arrow.’ He paused to take another swig of his Fix. ‘So what do you want to know?’

  Woodend looked down at the letter which officers from the forensic unit had rescued from the rubbish heap in Tom Bygraves’ garden, and which was now sitting, safely and snugly, in the see-through plastic envelope. The right-hand side of the letter had been lost to the flames. The left side had been soaked by the water Rosemary Bygraves had poured on the heap in the interest of good-neighbourliness. Even so, the boffins had done a fine job, he thought. If he’d tried to do the same thing himself – with his ham-like hands – the bloody thing would probably have disintegrated.

  He scanned the letter for the fifth or sixth time, then laid it on the desk, so that Rutter and Beresford, who had examined it a good few times themselves, could see it too.

  READ THIS LETTER CARE …

  SEVEN YEARS AGO, YOU …

  RESPONSIBLE FOR A TERR …

  BEAR THE FULL CONS …

  BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU …

  HAS COME TO TAKE YOUR …

  WHITEBRIDGE POLICE HEAD …

  DO NOT DO SO, THERE AR …

  WILL BE USED.

  WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

  ‘Let’s take it line by line, shall we?’ Woodend suggested. ‘The first one’s easy enough, isn’t it?’

  Rutter and Beresford nodded.

  ‘Read this letter carefully,’ Colin Beresford said, putting both their thoughts into words.

  ‘The second line talks about ‘seven years ago’,’ Woodend said, ‘an’ I’d be willin’ to bet my pension that what lay beyond the charred edge was: you were in Cyprus. Third line?’ He grinned, despite himself. ‘It could say: you were responsible for a terrapin, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Could it be: You were responsible for a terrible accident’?’ Bob Rutter suggested.

  ‘Certainly a terrible somethin’,’ Woodend agreed. ‘And whatever it was, the writer’s askin’ Bygraves to take the full consequences.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t do it voluntarily, there are ways to make him do it?’ Rutter wondered.

  ‘In the light of what’s happened to Pugh an’ Lewis, I think it’s more likely he was sayin’ there are other ways to make him pay,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Do you think he threatened to hang them?’ Rutter asked.

  ‘He may possibly have mentioned the prospect of hangin’,’ Woodend said, ‘but I don’t really think there’s enough space on the line for that kind of threat. Anyway, how would that fit in with the last few words that precede it? There are ways of makin’ you – hang’?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Rutter agreed. ‘It isn’t likely at all.’

  ‘But there’s no question about the last two lines,’ Colin Beresford said. ‘They have to be warning Bygraves that he should surrender himself to the police while he still can.’

  ‘There’s no have to about it,’ Woodend cautioned. ‘Given that half the letter’s missin’ we could have completely misinterpreted the whole thing.’

  ‘Misinterpreted it?’ Beresford repeated.

  ‘Aye. For all we know, the complete letter could have said somethin’ like, “Read this letter carefully. Seven years ago, your company sold me a sofa. I have not misused it, so you are responsible for the terrible condition it is in now, and must bear the consequences, because of what you promised …” He trailed off. ‘You get the general idea, don’t you?’

  ‘But we don’t believe that is what it said, do we?’ Rutter asked.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Woodend agreed. ‘We believe that this is a letter from a cold-blooded killer to a man who might well have become his latest victim by now. But does it help us at all? Does it get us any further on in our investigation than we were before it came into our possession?’

  ‘Not really,’ Rutter said gloomily.

  ‘Do you remember a man called Terry Pugh?’ Paniatowski asked Ted McCoy, as they faced each other across the counter of his bar.

  ‘Terry Pugh? Came from Lancashire, like you sound as if you do yourself,’ McCoy said immediately. ‘Good with his hands. Was engaged to a girl from his home town, I think.’

  ‘I’m very impressed,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Oh, it’s not that difficult to recall the details, especially with a man like Private Pugh,’ McCoy said modestly.

  ‘From what I know of him, I wouldn’t have thought he was really that memorable,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘No, not for himself,’ McCoy
agreed. ‘But, you see, he was a member of Matthews’ Marauders.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Paniatowski wondered. ‘Some kind of special unit?’

  McCoy laughed. ‘Oh, it was special all right, but not officially, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ Paniatowski admitted.

  ‘What made it stand out from the others was Jack Matthews himself, who was the finest non-commissioned officer it’s ever been my privilege to serve with.’

  ‘Who else was in the unit?’

  McCoy scratched his head. ‘Let me see now. There was Terry Pugh, as I’ve already mentioned, Reg Lewis, Tom Bygraves, Martin Murray, and, of course, poor bloody Mark Hough.’

  Mark Hough! Who’d never once mentioned Matthews’ Marauders in their conversations with him, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘In what way was the unit special?’ she asked.

  ‘In the only way a unit can really be special in the army – it got involved in some bloody awful engagements with the enemy, and it survived the experience.’

  ‘But that must have been true of many other units as well.’

  ‘You’re right. But no other unit got into as many engagements. And no other unit came out of them as unscathed as Matthews’ Marauders did.’

  ‘Unscathed?’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘What do you mean by that? Without casualties?’

  ‘Partly that,’ McCoy agreed. ‘But there are other ways of being wounded, apart from being hit by a bullet.’ He paused to take another swig of his beer. ‘You can’t really imagine what it’s like to be caught in an ambush, unless you’ve experienced it yourself. You feel shattered when it’s over. You know for a fact that your nerve’s gone, and you don’t think you’ll ever get it back again. You usually do get it back, of course, but that takes time. Which is why I’d never even think of sending a unit out on patrol again for at least a week after an ambush – unless that unit happened to be Matthews’ Marauders.’

  ‘They were that impressive?’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘They were the best. But they also had what Napoleon thought was the most important quality in his generals.’