The Games Keeper

by Jack Benton

  ‘Who was that?’ Slim asked.

  ‘Don’t you know? Come on, Slim. That was her, wasn’t it? She wanders about from time to time. These dolls aren’t a message from Dennis. They’re from his mother, Shelly.’

  59

  Clora said the large rain coat had belonged to Dennis. It certainly kept the rain off and would make him harder to spot from a distance. Afraid of being seen by Croad, Slim cut through the woods to get to Harton, the journey killing too much time, but when he arrived, the small library was still open. He headed straight for the collection of local papers, going back a few years and trawling through them for anything he had overlooked before.

  It was amazing, he thought, how something so obvious could remain in plain sight without being seen, but even though he felt sure the pieces were falling into place, he still didn’t know how he could land a killing blow and close the case once and for all. Too many questions still burned.

  The journey back to Scuttleworth was a long and arduous one. Slim, buoyed by his discoveries but still weighed down by a healthy dose of fear, had been unable to resist buying a small bottle from the village shop before starting the journey. Now, as he slogged up the hill to Scuttleworth, he was drunk and soaked through.

  The village presented a mythical tapestry of buildings slowly emerging out of the fog. Slim went first to Cathy’s shop, but the lights were off and a CLOSED sign sat in the window. The lights in the house behind were also off, so Slim headed for the community hall. Here, lights blazed through the windows, and a crack in the curtains revealed a badminton game in full flow, its players no one Slim recognised. Feeling as alone as he ever had, he walked away from the indication that life would go on long after his investigation was over, heading for the church.

  As he approached Shelly’s tent, for the first time Slim was glad he was drunk. He hoped that she might recognise a kindred spirit in this drunken, failing man, but if not, he kept his hands up just in case, wary of any further projectiles.

  ‘Shelly, it’s Slim,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I wanted to say thanks for bringing me those dolls. You helped me a lot, and I hope some good might come of it.’

  No answer. Slim took a couple of steps closer, reaching out tentatively for the tent flap. He held his free hand across his face as he lifted it, allowing the glow from a street light on the churchyard’s edge to search inside.

  On a camp bed against the back wall Shelly lay, her hands under her face, a blanket covering her body. She looked for all the world as though she were sleeping, except that her eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly out at the churchyard, seeing something in death that may have been her last view in life.

  60

  Slim heard the sirens as he stumbled through the woods in the rough direction of Ozgood Hall. He had felt it his duty to make an anonymous call, but had gone off-road to avoid being seen by any police or medical services.

  His phone buzzed. Don’s voice was crackly, on the verge of cutting out.

  ‘Found him. Thomas Croad, made a few dozen appearances for QPR’s reserves between ‘85 and ‘89. Never quite made the cut, and lost his contract for ‘90. I could find no further trace after that.’

  ‘Thanks, Don.’

  Slim hung off before the poor reception cut him off anyway. The rain had returned, and as he slipped and slid down the leafy slope in near darkness, Slim soon found himself scratched and soaked. His sense of direction was long gone, helped only by the sound of the occasional car on the lanes through the trees.

  He wasn’t sure how he found Den’s old car, but somehow he did. He leaned against the rusted remains of the bonnet to catch his breath then pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  The tiny light was barely an improvement on the darkness, but it was something, and after a few seconds of letting his eyesight adjust, it seemed brighter than a regular torch.

  Pushing aside the undergrowth, he climbed through the open door and sat down on the passenger seat, wincing as what was left of the sponge released its water load to soak his back and upper legs.

  No matter. The brandy would keep him warm.

  He leaned across to the driver’s side, pulling up the seat and shining his phone light on the space below. As he had expected, he saw a device attached to the springs, a little switch activated by compression, leading to a wire feeding out through the floor, most likely to a set of speakers hidden a short way off into the woods. Of course, it had long since broken, the wire rusted through, but the little device activating a faint microphone must have worked long enough to put the fear of god into the local kids, long enough for a player of games to have his fun.

  Slim switched off his phone, slipped it back into his pocket, and leaned back, letting the rain soak him.

  ‘Come on, Dennis,’ he said. ‘I know you’re out there. I’ve heard you following me. No point hiding any longer. We’re fast coming up on the end.’

  At first the crunch of footfalls was barely audible over the patter of the rain. Then a silhouette appeared by the bonnet of the car, outlined against grey sky visible through the leafless trees. Not a ghost but certainly a man as it felt its way around to the driver’s side.

  Slim heard soft breathing as the man climbed in beside him. He stared straight ahead into the gloom then pulled the bottle out of his coat, jostling the trickle of brandy left inside.

  ‘I saved you some,’ Slim said, holding the bottle up.

  The figure shifted beside him. ‘I don’t drink,’ a man’s voice said. ‘Like a lot of things, it’s a fool’s game.’

  There was a rustle of movement then a thud, and as Slim toppled sideways, his vision wavering, he became aware that something hard and blunt had struck him in the side of the head.

  61

  The first thing Slim realised upon waking was that the rain had stopped. The second was that it was no longer night, and that the sun was far overhead.

  He tried to move but his hands were tied behind him, and from the numbing ache all over his body it was clear he had lain motionless for several hours. His bladder was bursting and one side of his body felt damp and warm where he had lain on the water soaking his clothes. The upper side, where they had begun to dry in the cold sun, was achingly cold.

  ‘It didn’t have to be this way.’

  Slim shifted to look in the direction of the voice. Oliver Ozgood sat at a foldout table nearby, smoking a cigarette and apparently reading a newspaper.

  ‘I gave you the chance to walk away. All you had to do was leave.’

  ‘I’m surprised to see you,’ Slim said. ‘I still thought there was a chance I was hunting Dennis Sharp. After all, I know you never saw him dead. You were just trying to scare me, keep me in line the way you attempted to keep the whole of Scuttleworth in line. I know, because you weren’t even in the country at the time of the crash.’

  Ozgood rolled his eyes. ‘A great detective at work, eh? You pulled my bank records.’

  Slim shook his head. ‘I searched the tabloids. You were a little more popular six years ago than now. The public used to care about you. Pictures of you on your holidays, sitting on your yacht. Like a proper famous person, eh?’

  Ozgood shrugged.

  ‘And what else, in your mastery, did you figure out?’

  Slim craned his head, trying to see around him. It appeared he was lying in the clearing outside the hut he had mistakenly assumed was Dennis Sharp’s hideout.

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’ he said.

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  ‘You can’t just leave me here.’

  ‘Why not? It was hard enough for a military man like you to find this place. You could lie here for years without being discovered.’

  ‘Why not just let me go? Nothing I have on you would stick.’

  ‘I did tell you that, didn’t I? I could make it all go away.’

  Slim decided to change tack. Ozgood held all the advantage. All he had was his old military negotiation skills, but
even back in the day they had been rudimentary at best.

  ‘I didn’t prove to be a great detective, did I?’

  Ozgood shook his head. ‘To be fair, I expected better. I also suspected that, like your life, you might deviate. That’s why I stuck around. To keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Dressing in Dennis’s old work clothes to create a little confusion if I spotted you.’

  Ozgood shrugged. ‘There were some left in the old workshop, and I had nothing I wanted to get dirty. And we were about the same size.’

  ‘Why did you kill those kids? They did nothing to you. Colin would have died soon anyway.’

  Ozgood stood up. He marched towards Slim, his face darkening. Slim knew he was pushing his luck, but part of him was interested to see how far Ozgood would go. He sensed that he’d already be dead if that was Ozgood’s plan.

  The kick was hard enough to wind Slim, but then Ozgood stepped back, circling around, smashing at the undergrowth with his hands.

  ‘If you had a family name you might understand,’ he said. ‘But you, you don’t even have a proper first name.’

  ‘No one was around so you went in there and set that fire, didn’t you?’

  Ozgood stared at the ground. ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Ozgood didn’t turn around. His shoulders lifted and fell, his breath coming in huge, ragged gasps. ‘I went there looking for Shelly. She was late on her rent, as always. I knew not to waste my time pestering Dennis, because he didn’t care.’

  ‘So that explains things. You went in there to rough her up a bit. You, an ex-marine, and Shelly a sickly old hippy. Tough guy, aren’t you?’

  ‘Says the man tied up on the ground.’

  ‘You scared the kids upstairs then set the fire.’

  Ozgood turned around. His eyes glistened with tears. ‘You think you know so much, don’t you?’

  ‘Then tell me, Oliver. Tell me what I don’t know.’

  Ozgood stared at the ground. He grimaced, his lower lip trembling, his brow furrowed as though his face might suddenly crumple and fall to the ground like an autumn leaf.

  ‘The house was old,’ he muttered. ‘I thought … I thought it would teach Shelly a lesson not to screw my father around. The fuse box was a mess. It only took a couple of sparks. I was in and out in a couple of minutes.’ He looked down at his feet, clenching his fists, his chest heaving with sobs. ‘I didn’t … know … they … were … there.’

  Slim closed his eyes a moment, feeling a heavy lump of sorrow landing on his chest. Then, remembering everything else this man had done, he opened his eyes and fixed Ozgood with a stare.

  ‘And you blamed Dennis for not rescuing them? For not being there when he should have been there, because he had sneaked off to hide another infected animal carcass?’

  Ozgood said nothing. He was still sobbing. Slim didn’t think he’d ever seen anything more pathetic.

  ‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Revenge on Dennis Sharp. You gave him an alibi because you knew the police couldn’t pin anything on him, plus you thought it might help your own reputation. Then later you forced your daughter into accusing him of rape because you thought you could see him punished that way, but that failed too because your daughter actually loved him. And when he died for real you let it get whispered around the village that you were responsible, as you wish you had been.’ Slim couldn’t help but smile despite the futility of the situation. ‘And now this. Ordinarily a man in your position would laugh off such an attempt at blackmail. But with Sharp’s name attached, it’s a whole different thing. You’re treating it as though by some miracle Dennis Sharp might still be alive. You know he’s dead, don’t you? It took me a long time to come to that conclusion, but I don’t think any man has ever been more dead than Dennis Sharp.’

  Ozgood lifted his head. A slow smile spread across his face and a maniacal gleam appeared in his eyes.

  ‘I have to make sure,’ he said.

  ‘But you know he had nothing to do with the blackmail, don’t you? He’s dead, you damn idiot.’

  Ozgood was still staring straight ahead. ‘What would you know?’

  Slim wanted to laugh. ‘Because out of everything, I figured that part out.’

  Ozgood’s smile dropped. ‘You figured what?’

  ‘The identity of the blackmailer.’

  ‘Who?’

  Slim left a dramatic pause before he whispered a single word, but the reaction was not the one he had expected. He had expected a wry smile or perhaps a look of incredulity. Instead, there was a momentary look of sheer horror before Ozgood lifted his face to the sky and howled like a dying soldier being strafed with machine gun fire.

  ‘No…!’

  62

  ‘Goddamn you bastard, move!’

  Whether he felt Ozgood had the nerve to go ahead and use the hunting knife the man periodically pressed into his back, Slim wasn’t sure, but Ozgood’s voice had taken on a note of desperation that suggested now wasn’t the time to run a test. It wasn’t easy to jog through the forest with his hands tied, particularly with the recent rain turning even the slightest slope into slithering mud, but he found if he concentrated solely on the next step, he could maintain Ozgood’s pace.

  Seemingly intent to get all the way to the drop-off point using forest trails, Ozgood was becoming increasingly flustered as the sky darkened, the minutes ticking by.

  ‘Just leave me behind,’ Slim said. ‘Tie me to a tree or something.’

  ‘No!’ Ozgood shouted, jabbing Slim hard enough this time to draw blood. Slim winced as he felt a warm trickle run down his back. ‘You think I’ll give you a chance to get away after everything you’ve done? If Ellie dies, you die.’

  Ellie.

  To take his mind off the numbness in his arms and the growing pain in his back from the stab wound, Slim recalled how he had finally figured it out.

  The first two notes had been a teaser, with suspiciously neat handwriting and a literary prowess far more fitting for an educated young lady than someone with seemingly little education, with neat turns of phrase and unnecessarily complex words, but the third, with its crudely hidden message, had been the key. There were the clues Slim was yet to confirm, including that it had been Ellie, a besotted teenage lover during the last period of Dennis’s life, who had helped him write the ledger, then there were the ones already solved.

  The background: Ellie had studied cryptology as part of a mathematics course at the University of York, evidenced by a note in the local paper of her graduation—despite what Kenny Kent had claimed, Ellie had passed after all—along with a picture of a young girl with a beaming smile in a robe and mortarboard. Cryptology, the study of ciphers, their origins and creations, the kind of degree she would have had no use for in a pseudo-managerial position at Vincent’s, but one that might have led her to begin the letters, a way to exercise her skills while freeing at last some of the anger she held toward her father.

  Then there were the dates. September 6th, an easy one—Ellie’s birthday—the missing of which had been petulantly alluded to in the second letter. October 2nd, the date of her graduation ceremony, a date on which—according to tabloid newspaper reports—Ollie had been sojourning in the Caribbean. And the one that sealed Ollie’s coffin of fatherly neglect, November 9th, 2018, six years to the day when, likely cajoled by her father in his quest to soil Dennis Sharp’s name, Ellie had made her initial statement to the police.

  ‘How did you find out about Ellie and Dennis, Oliver?’

  ‘Shut up and move!’

  The knife again left a minor impression, this one a little deeper than before. Slim stumbled on a rock, just managing to keep his feet.

  ‘Come on, Ollie, tell me,’ he said. ‘You spied on her, didn’t you? You bugged her, just like you bugged me. I missed one, didn’t I? That’s how you knew when I went out.’

  ‘In the frame over the front door,’ Ozgood said. ‘No one ever looks up long enough, do they?’

/>   ‘Is that what you did with Ellie? And Dennis?’

  Ozgood’s silence felt like a confirmation.

  ‘It must have been horrible to see her go off to university,’ Slim said. ‘Three years out of your control. You knew it was only a matter of time. Children are meant to fly the nest.’

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ Ozgood shouted, and this time an elbow connected with the side of Slim’s face, making him stumble. ‘Don’t push me. Don’t … push me!’

  They reached a dirt road. Ozgood, breathing hard, paused to pull out his phone. He held it up into the air then gave a wild cackle. He pressed a button and held it to his ear.

  ‘Pick up, damn you … pick up!’

  With a howl of frustration he slammed his phone against his leg then kicked at a nearby bush.

  ‘Ellie … come on….’

  He tried again, but the reception was either too poor or the girl was ignoring him.

  ‘It’s getting dark,’ Slim said. ‘I’m slowing you down. Leave me behind.’

  ‘No!’ Ozgood shouted. He turned around, eyes blazing. He threw the phone to the ground and advanced on Slim, the knife held up. For a moment Slim feared the worst, then Ollie gave the knife a petulant swing towards Slim’s shoulder, as though too afraid to go for a killing blow. Slim heard his clothes shred then felt a deep, aching pain.

  ‘Next one’s your last,’ Ozgood said. ‘Now move.’

  With each step the pain in Slim’s shoulder worsened, and blood from the wound was soaking his arm, but Ozgood had been clever to leave his legs unharmed. Despite a growing dizziness, fearful of worse, Slim quickened his pace, moving in an awkward stumble as Ozgood came behind, the prodding knife a constant reminder to keep moving. By the time he saw the glimmer of street lighting through the trees up ahead, he was at the end of his strength.