Only a Game (3 page)

Jim Capstick smiled the rare, satisfied smile of the man who knows that his ego is being massaged but has the confidence to enjoy it. ‘I'm afraid you'd find it rather dull, my dear. One has to go through the motions and listen to different views from one's own. So long as everything eventually goes the way you want it to, that's all that really matters.'

They breakfasted together. He enjoyed this quiet part of the day, this pleasant, unthreatening domesticity. In your own home, you could switch off your awareness to every nuance of speech, you could cease wondering what motives lay behind the words and how you should measure your own responses and your own initiatives. Home might be this big nineteenth century mansion, built by a cotton magnate and now the preserve of a more modern mogul, but it was still home, a place where you could relax.

Outside it Jim measured every word he said before he uttered it. Now, as he spread marmalade on his last piece of toast and poured them both fresh cups of coffee, he surprised himself by the spontaneity of his words. ‘I wish we'd married earlier, Helen. When we'd been young enough to have children.'

It was a kind of love-making. She knew it for that immediately. Men were sentimental creatures, even men like Jim Capstick, but they were appealing when they dropped their guards and made themselves vulnerable like this. Helen was glad she had kept on her dressing gown for breakfast. It was surprisingly elegant for such a garment, with blue silk matching exactly the colour of her eyes, yet it gave a touch of intimacy to the meal which had fostered this thought in him.

She reached across the table and put her hand on top of his. ‘Don't let's dwell on things that can't be, Jim. We can't turn the clock back, so let's not try.' For a moment, Helen wondered what it would have been like to have children. In truth, she'd never really wanted them, hadn't felt the yearning in her womb she was supposed to feel as her biological clock ticked on inexorably. She couldn't see how they would have been anything except a disaster in her complicated life.

She gave Jim the kind of smile which told him she was grateful for what she knew had been a loving and complimentary thought. ‘At least we're spared the agonies of taking kids through their adolescence. Everyone with children seems to find that hell. Let's make the most of what we've got, love.' She was even using the Lancashire terms of endearment now, she noticed. She didn't mind that; indeed, she was pleased that the word had come to her lips so spontaneously.

As if moving consciously away from his moment of weakness, Jim glanced at his watch and said, ‘Wally will be round with the car in a minute. I've a meeting in Birmingham at eleven thirty. What are you doing today?'

Wally Boyd was his driver, who lived in a self-contained flat over the big triple garage. Boyd was a squat man with a face which might have been cut from granite. He was also Jim Capstick's bodyguard, but that was never acknowledged, even between husband and wife. Helen said, ‘I'm going over to Manchester. Meeting an old friend, Lucy Graham; I don't think you've met her. We'll have a good gossip, then maybe go into the shopping centre and hammer the plastic a bit.'

He wondered sometimes about the closed book which enclosed the years before he had known her. They chatted about it from time to time, but he never got her to reveal much. He controlled the impulse to find out what part this Graham woman had played in his wife's former life. ‘Do you want Wally to drive you? I'm happy to drive the Bentley myself.'

‘No need. I enjoy driving the Merc, as you know, and the parking is easy enough at Lucy's place.' She didn't want that silent, watchful presence at her side, recording her every action and passing an account back to the man who paid him. It would inhibit her freedom of movement.

The offer had been genuine, but Capstick was glad when she refused. He needed his man beside him as an insurance against any physical threat in the nation's second city. ‘Enjoy your day, then.' He kissed her lovingly upon the lips. She responded, then used her paper napkin to remove the lipstick carefully from his mouth before he left her and went out into the world.

She liked being Helen Capstick, she told herself once again. She waved to Jim as he climbed heavily into the big car, then went upstairs and into her dressing-room, deciding unhurriedly on the clothes she would wear for the day.

Twenty minutes later, the big blue Bentley was on the M6 and heading rapidly south. Jim Capstick sat in the back and stared unseeingly at the papers he had taken out of his document case. In the intimacy of their marital exchanges, he had almost told Helen about what he planned for Brunton Rovers Football Club. He was surprised at himself when he realized that. On the whole, it was better that he hadn't, he decided. Yes, definitely better. Women were such natural gossips. It was better not to trust even women like Helen with his thoughts about the future.

DCI ‘Percy' Peach enjoyed his day off. He had never been one for the long lie-in, but he breakfasted with unusual leisure, enjoying the ecstatic pleasure of bacon, egg, tomato and that anathema of the healthy eating lobby, a slice of white bread fried in bacon fat. His fiancée had lately introduced him to the
Guardian
. He passed hastily over the latest gay rights controversy and found the writing on the sports pages pleasantly illuminating.

When he was working in the CID section at Brunton nick, the weather rarely mattered to him. Today, he was pleased to see blue sky and high clouds, for he had arranged a golfing four-ball with friends at the North Lancs Golf Club in the afternoon. It was March now, and the sun was getting higher. He felt a little warmth in it as it shone upon his back in the hour of unaccustomed gardening he undertook to compensate for his breakfast indulgence.

He hadn't played golf for a while, and was a little wild at first. His companions said knowledgeably that his little-used golfing muscles must be stiff and he did not quibble. He was still fairly new to golf, but he had learned early that its practitioners were never short of an excuse for their eccentricities on the course. In the context of amateur golf, Percy Peach was still a young man at thirty-nine; the average age in the club was fifty-seven.

After a distinguished cricketing output as a quick-footed batsman in the Lancashire League, Percy had retired whilst many felt he was still at his peak. He had then taken up the challenge of golf. After three years, his handicap was a pleasing eight, and everyone assured him that there were possibilities of further improvement. He was stocky and compact, and his simple, powerful swing already had a consistency envied by all but the best golfers in the club.

His companion was a good golfer in the inevitable decline which age brings to any sportsman. Harry was in his seventies and had to make up for his disadvantage in length with his excellent short game around the greens. Their two companions had thought the old man the weakest of the four when they gave him to Percy Peach, but the two proved an effective combination, with old Harry coming in on the holes where Percy faltered, securing a score with his excellent chipping and putting.

This still very competitive elderly golfer was delighted when they won the modest stakes on the sixteenth green. He seemed to notice the weather for the first time, calling attention to the glorious sunset over the coast thirty miles to the west of them. As soon as they reached the clubhouse, he arranged a return match for Percy's next midweek day off, pointing out that very soon now the hour would be changed and it would be light until after seven. Spring was surely at hand; old Harry offered them that thought as he gleefully pocketed the losers' cash.

They had tea in the clubhouse. It was only then that Peach learned that Harry had been a coroner's officer for fifteen years before he retired. It was before Percy's time in Brunton CID, but it gave them a common bond. It also allowed Harry to expand on the past, as men of his age normally love to do. Even after their two companions had drunk their quota and left, the two exchanged anecdotes about bodies and villains, and the various tricks which had come to light when subjected to the rigorous procedures of the Coroner's Court.

Percy stopped drinking after his quota, as he knew he must, but his new companion came from a generation which was dangerously relaxed about the dangers of drink and driving. Harry went on enjoying his victory and his companionship well beyond the legal limit. Moreover, he was a much-loved elder of the club, a member for forty years and a winner in his prime of numerous competitions. Two of his former course companions deposited whiskies at their table, which were downed with relish by old Harry.

‘You can't drive,' said Percy, when he eventually prised him out of the bar and into the cloakroom.

Harry urinated with a contented sigh and assured him with the inebriate's confidence that he would ‘be all right'.

Percy wasn't having that. ‘You won't. Even if you could drive, you'd be well over the limit. How would you get to the golf club if you lost your licence and couldn't drive?'

That harsh thought brought Harry up short, but by the time he left the golf club, he was still assuring his companion that he would drive carefully and wouldn't be stopped. Percy was about to offer the final argument, the one no policemen wants to use because it draws attention to his calling. He would have to tell Harry that he mustn't get into the driving seat of his car because a Detective Chief Inspector couldn't stand by and watch the law being broken.

Then fate intervened. As they went through the exit door of the clubhouse, the cold night air hit Harry and he reeled dramatically sideways until his hand fell upon the bonnet of a car and he steadied himself. ‘Perhapsh you're right, Pershy,' he said, slurring his words for the first time. ‘I'll get a taxi.' He swung round vaguely and almost fell over again.

‘No need for that,' said Percy resignedly. ‘I'll run you home. You can get your wife to bring you back to collect your car tomorrow.'

‘She'll do that,' said Harry with the wide affectionate smile of the sentimental drunk. ‘She'll give me a bollocking for being pished, but she'll run me up here tomorrow. She's a good woman, but don't tell her I shed so.'

Percy had led him to his own car and opened the passenger door for him. He fell laughing on to the seat and said with apparent surprise, ‘You're right you know, Pershy. I am a bit pished!'

They had a mercifully quiet journey to his house. Percy realized after a couple of miles that the passenger he had fastened into his safety belt was fast asleep, with a smile on his face as innocent as a baby's. He accepted Harry's effusive thanks when he deposited him at his gate, watched his erratic progress until his wife opened the door and he lurched safely into his home.

Harry hadn't taken Peach very far out of his way, but he now had to drive back through the centre of Brunton to get to his ageing semi-detached house. He was negotiating the familiar labyrinth of the town's one-way system when he came upon the incident.

Three uniformed coppers and two gangs of youths. Whites and Asians; he knew that would be the case before he even looked at the participants, before he wound down his window and registered the shouted taunts and insults. With a rising Asian population and a recession in the economy to accentuate resentments, these confrontations were now almost a nightly Brunton occurrence.

The police were outnumbered as usual. There were just three of them against around a score of young men. Two men and a woman; you had to call them all police officers now, irrespective of gender.

Percy didn't want to stop. He was plain clothes and off duty, long past dealing with skirmishes like this. But it didn't seem long since he'd been a young copper himself, treading the beat and feeling the fear he could not show in dangerous situations like this. He could not say afterwards whether it was a fact that there was a woman in the trio which made him tread fiercely upon his brake pedal.

He climbed reluctantly out of the Focus and moved reluctantly back towards the screamed obscenities and the more measured warnings of the police. He brandished his warrant card as he arrived, well aware that the chief inspector rank would not be registered by young men intent upon a fight.

But his reputation went before him. The oldest man among the white contingent had a record and he recognized an old adversary. ‘It's that bastard Peach!' he shouted to his companions, waving an arm with BNP tattoos towards the new arrival. ‘Get the fuck out of it, or the bastard'll throw the fucking book at you!' With that warning, he and his British National Party companion forsook the group and raced away into the shadows.

It was a temporary relief. The group of Asian youths, whom the three police constables were holding back with linked arms, now saw an advantage in numbers. They surged forward against their ineffective cordon, so that the girl, losing her balance and her hat, almost descended beneath their advancing feet. Percy caught her involuntary cry of alarm in the same instant that he glimpsed the glint of steel in two places in the advancing horde.

Knives! The weapons the modern beat copper fears now more than anything, the deadly steel which can be suddenly evident in even minor incidents, often in the hands of young men who panic easily.

This incident was not minor. Percy flung himself upon the raised arm which held one of the knives, heard the yell of agony as he twisted it, even before he heard the clang of metal upon the pavement. ‘You're nicked, sunshine!' he yelled at the top of his voice.

Peach thought that it must be his shouting of the formal words of arrest which had sobered the rest, but he should have known better. The blare of the police siren rang in his ears as he finished his warning, followed an instant later by the flashing blue lights of the car and the arrival of the much-needed police support the young coppers had summoned before his arrival.

The two rival gangs vanished as quickly as water through a colander, but the three uniformed officers who had been here from the start cut off the retreat of the two who had brandished knives and one other vociferous man, who seemed to be the leader of the Asian contingent. The three were stowed away in the police van with warnings against further resistance.