Game of Stones

by David Maughan Brown

  ‘Well, this is Yorkshire after all,’ Cameron said, trying to ignore the racing of his pulse. ‘Harriet can charge them to expenses.’

  ‘Lawyers don’t base their bills on the cost of incidentals like beer glasses,’ Harriet said, ‘they base them on how much grief their clients cause them.’

  ‘In Cameron’s case, quite a lot I imagine,’ Brian said. ‘Anyway, I found them in The Sportsman, large as life and both very well oiled. Van Zyl must be covering their expenses very generously. Hudson wasn’t on duty but came in his uniform and sat in the car in the carpark as back up. After about an hour they both got somewhat unsteadily to their feet and headed out of the door via the loo. I collected Frogs Pool’s glass easily enough, but our friend Jacques had taken his glass with him. Either he’s a lot more street-wise than Frogs Pool, which is entirely possible given his even shadier past, or he’s a kleptomaniac. Very slick he was too. I’ve no idea where he secreted the glass. Mind you, he had been drinking wine, so making it vanish would have been a lot easier than it would have been with a beer glass.’

  ‘Bit of a bummer,’ observed Cameron. ‘So your plan didn’t come together after all.’

  ‘Any good Plan A always has a Plan B as back-up,’ Brian said. ‘I activated Plan B which was helped by the diversion to the loo. Hudson was Plan B. I signalled to him that he needed to spring into action….’

  ‘Not quite my idea of a springer,’ Cameron said.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Brian conceded, ‘but he can move surprisingly quickly when he wants to. He got out of the car and stood in the shadows as near as possible to the white Volvo we knew Jacques would be driving. Hudson waited until Jacques opened the car door and climbed into the driver’s seat and then, before he had time to start the car, Hudson materialised beside the car and ordered Jacques to get out.’

  ‘Arresting him for stealing the glass?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Much cleverer than that,’ Brian said. ‘What would he have done with someone he’d arrested while off-duty wearing a uniform he shouldn’t have been wearing? No. He made Jacques breathe into a breathalyzer he had taken along for the purpose. Jacques was way over the limit, as we knew he would be, and should not have been anywhere near a car. So Hudson confiscated his car keys, told him he could collect them from the police station in the morning, and told him to walk home. Jacques, who had been reaching for his wallet to try a bribe, couldn’t believe his luck and set off as rapidly as his limited ability to stay upright would allow. So, first thing the next morning, Hudson was off to his friend Dominic armed with an empty beer glass teeming with Frogs Pool’s DNA and covered with his fingerprints, a breathalyzer mouth-piece with Jacques’ DNA all over it, and a set of car keys with Jacques’ fingerprints. Fait accompli. Bloody clever I’d say.’

  ‘Ever modest, is what I’d say,’ Cameron said. ‘But bloody clever, I’ll agree, if it worked. Did it?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Brian asked.

  ‘For God’s sake, Brian, just tell me,’ Cameron said. ‘Are you trying for the Booker Prize for story-telling suspense or something?’

  Cameron’s heartbeat was pounding in his temples and he could feel himself sweating, which made him wonder fleetingly about his blood pressure. He had an odd sense that he could detect the smell of the disinfectant from the toilet, which must be his imagination as there wasn’t a toilet anywhere near.

  ‘Put the man out of his misery, Brian,’ Harriet said. ‘Give him the good news.’

  ‘Why would I say “I love it when a plan comes together” if it didn’t work?’ Brian asked.

  ‘Because your television viewing tastes are stuck somewhere in the mid-1980s, the A-team was your favourite programme, and you fancy yourself as Hannibal Smith?’ Cameron suggested.

  ‘Of course it worked,’ Brian said. ‘Hudson took the exhibits off to Dominic, as planned, and Dominic – also working off-piste – analysed them for him. The fingerprints and DNA on the car keys and breathalyzer matched the ones on the Lidl bag perfectly. So our conjecture was right – Jacques stole your gun, using the Lidl bag. Although we don’t yet have the evidence to prove it, it must have been Frogs Pool, wearing a pair of gloves, who pulled the trigger – as we thought.’

  ‘So what does that all mean?’ Cameron asked, wound up too tight to have any sense as yet of relief at the outcome. ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘There’s more,’ Brian said, pausing for dramatic effect before going on. ‘The unused evidence disclosed to Harriet indicated that the only DNA found on any of your three Go stones was from that one blood smear. There were said to be no fingerprints – apart from the blood, the stones had been wiped clean. But that wasn’t true. Dominic had found, and reported, that there was part of a fingerprint, and attendant DNA, on the stone with the blood. Whoever cleaned the stones must have been so anxious not to wipe the dried blood off that he didn’t clean the rest of the stone properly. Dominic was able to match the bit of fingerprint and the DNA to what he found on Frogs Pool’s beer glass. The fact that the DNA was still there to be analysed meant that the stone had been handled by Frogs Pool relatively recently – he probably wasn’t wearing gloves when van Zyl handed the stones over to him.’

  ‘So where do we go from here?’ Cameron repeated his question, his mouth dry.

  ‘You haven’t asked about Lynn,’ Harriet said.

  ‘You know I try to avoid thinking about Lynn,’ Cameron said. ‘But I’m so certain that the blood on that stone must have been hers that I don’t need to ask.’

  ‘It was hers,’ Harriet confirmed. ‘She has no idea how it came to be on the stone. She’s still pretty fragile when it comes to van Zyl, as well she might be, so I didn’t share with her your suspicion about how it got there.’

  ‘So, at the third time of asking, where do we go from here?’

  ‘Harriet and I have been talking about that,’ Brian said. ‘There are a number of possibilities, which Harriet will outline, but it boils down to how badly you want to go on pissing off the South Yorkshire Police. Is it just a passing phase or do you consider it your life’s work?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Harriet said. ‘There are a number of factors and people we need to consider. One option is to go to Sinclair, tell him what has come to light, and suggest that he should move with all speed to arrest Jacques and Poggenpoel and bring them in for questioning. The other is to go over Sinclair’s head to the CPS and give them the information, in which case they would be likely to come down on Sinclair like a ton of bricks. If I were to add in a complaint about his failure to follow up on the information I gave him, not to mention his failure to disclose all relevant unused evidence, it could well be several tons of bricks. The first option gives Sinclair a chance of saving face with the CPS. It might also take some of the heat off Hudson and Dominic, both of whom have been way out of line in assisting us without authority.’

  ‘I don’t think Hudson would give much of a damn,’ Cameron said. ‘I don’t know Dominic, although by Hudson’s account he wouldn’t care much either – but I wouldn’t want them to be in danger of losing their jobs just for helping me. But what about van Zyl?’

  ‘As things stand at the moment, we don’t have anything on van Zyl,’ Harriet said. ‘It is obvious that he has been pulling the strings all along, but we don’t have any evidence of that. His fingerprints are all over it, so to speak, but he hasn’t left any literal fingerprints or DNA on anything. We couldn’t prove that he was responsible for the phone-calls or that he is Carter George – and so what if we could? None of that was illegal. We don’t know who the cameraman with the chocolate buttons was, or what his connection with van Zyl is. What’s more, although Lynn’s blood is on that Go stone, we couldn’t even begin to prove that van Zyl had anything to do with it.’

  ‘Clever bastard,’ Brian said. ‘One of the things Harriet and I have been worried about is what happens when Frogs Po
ol and Jacques are arrested. What is to stop van Zyl doing a runner?’

  ‘Perhaps the fact that he is in a wheelchair, for a start,’ Cameron suggested. ‘We don’t know why he is in a wheelchair, but if he had to rely on Poggenpoel to push his wheelchair to the court for my arraignment he must be very dependent on other people for help. I very much doubt that he will have made many friends in Sheffield who would be prepared to take over in the absence of Poggenpoel and Jacques.’

  ‘All the same,’ Harriet said, ‘he was at least partly responsible for Mutoni’s murder, and he was wholly responsible for what happened to Lynn.’

  ‘Where Lynn is concerned, the South Yorkshire police wouldn’t be remotely interested,’ Cameron said. ‘In fact they would probably quite like a bit of that themselves.’

  ‘Sometime in the dim and distant past, before you made a habit of getting yourself locked up in this police-station,’ Brian said, ‘I seem to remember telling you that they aren’t all the same. I would have thought that Hudson and Dominic had proved my point.’

  ‘OK, point taken,’ Cameron said. ‘I was thinking of the Sinclairs, Scotts and Evanses of the world – Hudson is certainly very different.’

  ‘We can’t let van Zyl get away with it,’ Brian said. ‘As soon as his side-kicks are arrested he is bound to try to make a break for it – from what you have said about him, Cameron, he is bound to have a back-up plan. Hudson has found out which hotel he is staying in. Before the other two are arrested someone is going to need to get there and keep an eye on him – perform a citizen’s arrest if necessary. Once they have been arrested, how long is it likely to take before Frogs Pool and Jacques spill the beans on him?’

  ‘Anyone might think from the fluency with which the jargon trips off your tongue that you read too many cheap detective stories,’ Cameron observed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Brian asked, sounding nettled.

  ‘Too many side-kicks making breaks and spilling the beans,’ Cameron said. ‘I don’t think Poggenpoel would be remotely likely to incriminate van Zyl. They go back far too far together. My guess is that the blood-tie and the shared sense of the loss of the land given by God to their people would be too strong. But with Jacques it would be another story entirely. My guess is that if he thought there was anything in it for him it would take him about five seconds to decide to spill the beans, as you put it. If I could just get out of here, it would be my great pleasure to be the one to make a citizen’s arrest on van Zyl.’

  ‘Which brings me to the question of bail,’ Harriet said. ‘If we can throw serious doubt on the grounds on which you are being held without bail, I can make a new application. I expect that Sinclair and company would still oppose it, just for the sake of being difficult, but, where difficulties are concerned, I think it would be even more difficult for a judge to refuse bail in the face of unequivocal evidence that someone else committed the murder for which you are due to be tried.’

  ‘Why would there still be any question of bail if we can demonstrate that I didn’t do it?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘There’s no way we could really expect them to grant you an unconditional discharge until the police have sewn up the case against Poggenpoel and Jacques,’ Harriet replied.

  Cameron would have expected to feel some kind of soaring elation at the prospect of being let out of his box of a cell at long last. The thought of being able to escape the malignant presence of the stainless steel toilet squatting toad-like in the corner should, surely, have made him feel ecstatic? But he just felt an unutterable weariness and a profound skepticism that the cloud that had been hanging so heavily over him was about to lift.

  ‘You don’t seem as pleased about how well the plan came together as I hoped you would be,’ Brian said.

  ‘Of course I’m pleased,’ Cameron said. ‘It was a great plan. Thank you. I do appreciate all you have both done, but right now I don’t have the energy to jump for joy. I just feel tired and flat. Perhaps when I step out onto the pavement and feel the wind on my face, if I ever do, I’ll really believe that all this is behind me.’

  ‘We’ll have you out of here very soon,’ Harriet said. ‘I promise. I’ll go back to the office now to complete the folder of evidence I need to present to Sinclair, and to prepare a bail application for the judge. But I’ll keep you company back to your cell first. If all goes well it should be for the last time. Please wait for me outside Brian.’

  ‘The last time until he head-butts someone again,’ Brian said, smiling. ‘Off you go, I’ll wait for you. Cheers, Cameron.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Cameron said as he stood up, ‘thanks again for your support.’

  Cameron and Harriet walked back to the cell in silence behind their escort, pausing for the ritual unlocking and relocking of the gate and then the unlocking of the cell door. One could develop a severe allergy to locks, Cameron thought. He wondered why Harriet had wanted to accompany him back to the cell. The answer came as soon as the door was shut behind them.

  ‘You look as if you are in serious need of a hug,’ Harriet said, unexpectedly wrapping her arms around Cameron – the last semblance of armour cast aside.

  Cameron would have expected from Harriet’s military bearing that a hug from her would be characterized by a kind of amicable rigidity – the head teacher giving a school-leaving hug to her departing head girl. But being hugged by Harriet wasn’t like that at all, it was yielding and warmly comforting, to the point where Cameron felt a strong urge to lie down with her arms around him and go to sleep – without it mattering too much if he didn’t wake up.

  ‘You’ve got good taste in friends,’ Harriet murmured in Cameron’s ear after a short while. ‘I really like Brian.’

  ‘He’s got good taste too,’ Cameron said, extracting himself gently and standing back. ‘He’s right, of course. While it wasn’t exactly a plan, I would have liked to get to know you much better when I got out of here. But I’m glad you’ve got together. Brian’s a good friend and a good man.’

  ‘The more I see of Lynn, the more I like her too,’ Harriet said. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to regard all this as over until things are sorted out between the two of you.’

  Cameron felt the same sudden stomach-gripping spasm of anxiety he’d experienced when, as a child, he had been prone to acute stage fright.

  ‘Where is Lynn?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know how things can be sorted out if she doesn’t want even to see me. Much too much water has passed under the bridge, and there was a lot of very nasty matter floating on much of it.’

  ‘She’s staying with me, which has been a great help with getting the twins settled. There was certainly a lot of nasty matter, as you put it, to begin with,’ Harriet said, ‘but we’ve been over that before, and I still don’t think either of you is to blame for any of it. But that was more than twenty years ago and those twenty years have been wasted – through all those years the water that has been flowing under the bridge could have been flowing calm and clean where the two of you are concerned.’

  ‘Well, if you can persuade Lynn that there can’t be any harm in seeing me, I’ll be happy to give it a try,’ Cameron said. ‘I’ve been saying that all along. But I don’t expect anything to come of it.’

  ‘First things first,’ Harriet said, turning to go. ‘And the first thing is to get you out of here. I’ll go back to my office and get started on that. I hope to be back with good news sometime tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Thanks for coming back in here with me,’ Cameron said. ‘You were right – I did need a hug.’

  Chapter 21

  What constituent parts could possibly lump together to make twenty-four hours drag themselves past so slowly? By way of an exercise to keep his mind stirred and consume a tiny fraction of the vast store, Cameron worked out that the answer was 86,400 seconds. Harriet had said she would be back ‘sometime tomorrow morning’. Most of the daytime seconds w
ere spent on the ceiling, or somewhere way above the ceiling, watching himself moving restlessly around the cell, giving the toilet as wide a berth as possible, trying unsuccessfully to make the slow, fat seconds feel as though they were passing more quickly.

  When the light outside eventually started to fade and the glass blocks darkened, Cameron expected to find that he was far too wound-up to sleep, but he watched himself lie down on the bench without undressing and pull the thread-bare blanket up to over himself anyway. Even if he couldn’t sleep, he could at least try to rest. It would have been better if he had stayed awake watching himself not being able to sleep.

  As he slipped down from his dissociated height into the darkness, Cameron found himself walking through a darkened building along interminable corridors that smelt of disinfectant and were lined on both sides with closed doors. He was looking for something, but all the doors he tried were locked. When he eventually found a door that wasn’t locked, he opened it carefully and walked into a lighted room with a stainless steel toilet in one corner and a shower cubicle in one of the other corners. Cameron could hear the hissing splash of the shower and see the unfocussed outline of a body through the frosted glass door. The noise of the water stopped and a naked woman slid the shower-door back and stepped out with a white towel in a turban over her head so that he couldn’t see her face. Although she hadn’t had time to dry herself, she wasn’t wet – and she had no breasts. Where her breasts should have been she just had ugly, jaggedly lumpy, scars.