Spend Game (16 page)

‘Well, if you insist . . .’

Sometimes I think I’m pathetic. I watched her trek along the lines and vanish down a tunnel. I climbed slowly to the top of the embankment. The car seemed friendly, safe. Funny how you get these anthropomorphisms.

I was waiting for her when she came out at the far side. She was slightly breathless and indignant.

‘There are
creatures
in there, Lovejoy!’

‘What kind?’ My voice must have sounded strangled.

‘Oh. Only scuttly ones, little things. Bats, I suppose. The squeaky sort.’

Her natural sciences were on a par with mine.

‘No sign of any digging? No bricks loose?’

‘I didn’t see any. Nothing recent, anyhow.’

That was Scratton tunnel. A disused old railway structure with no signs of tampering. So why did Doc Chase come all this way so often to look at a tunnel, and do nothing?

Moll did her face with lipstick and all that. I drove the car the three miles or so to Mount St Mary. The motor seemed to stop outside the Three Tiles of its own accord. Even now I don’t know if it was a mistake, but I told Moll about Leckie and the time he blew the bridge. She kept her gaze on me as I drove.

‘Why didn’t you say you were frightened?’ she asked as we got out in the pub’s coachyard. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

That irked me. ‘Who said I’m frightened?’ I demanded. ‘What’s there to be scared of in a rotten old tunnel?’

‘Sorry, Lovejoy.’ She caught the keys I threw her.

‘I’m just careful,’ I said, in a huff. ‘Careful’s not frightened.’

‘Sorry, dear.’ We went into the pub, marching frostily side by side. ‘I didn’t actually mean frightened,’ she said, ‘I really meant careful.’

The usual midday rural mob was in, a score of workers tanking up for the afternoon’s assault on the land. I ordered for us and started my patter instantly with an agile geriatric in hobnails.

‘Bet it doesn’t seem the same round here without old Doc Chase fishing, eh?’ I said, grimacing ruefully. I jerked my head towards the road. The curve follows the bend of the river. Sane friends and spouses watch their loved ones from beside the bar’s fire during fishing contests in winter.

‘Who?’ He looked blank. A couple of others pricked up their ears.

‘Doc Chase. My old pal,’ I lied easily. ‘Always seemed to be fishing when I drove through.’

‘He means the Champ,’ an old geezer cackled. They fell about at that, even the barman laughing.

‘We called him that, God rest him,’ I was told.

‘Was he that great?’

That was the signal for convulsive hilarity. The old gaffer practically had apoplexy and spilled his pint. Moll had to bang his back to get him breathing again. He wiped his eyes.

‘Lord love ye, young feller,’ he gasped. (They really talk like this. I’m not putting you on.) ‘Never caught a fish all the time we seed him at it.’

‘Aye,’ another chipped in. ‘Forgot the frigging worm, often as not.’

‘Never remembered his maggots!’

They rolled on the aisles while I tried hard to grin.

‘Forgetful old bugger,’ the first old cock rasped. ‘Knew no better than to sit among those nettles on the wrong side!’ I had his glass topped up while we laughed at Doc Chase’s hopelessly bad angling technique.

We chatted some more before leaving. I learned that Chase’s favourite place was on the opposite bank. ‘The same spot,’ Nurse Patmore had told me. I gave Moll the eye. We drank up and were waved off.

Moll drove. A few hundred yards homeward I told her to stop. We were on the upward slope, where the road turns away from the river to run towards our distant town.

This river has three bends. The first lies between barley fields, and straightens before the Mount itself is reached. The third is further inland, beyond the actual village, and consists of a gentle curve with woods crowding densely along both banks. It was the second that interested me.

It is double. The river courses across the small plain where the village houses cluster. There is the inevitable gaggle of thatched roofs, the flintstone church with its impressive spire, and the ornate Early English stone bridge. It all speaks of the wealth of the mediaeval wool trade and commerce channelled by the dour Christian zeal of those days. The Three Tiles pub is at the crossroads near the bridge, lying snugly on the outside bank of the curve. Doc Chase’s favourite fishing spot was almost directly opposite the tavern. I could see birds flashing into the sandy patch.

‘Sand martins.’ Moll pointed. ‘Maybe he liked to watch them.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. But you can see them better from the other bank. If you sit on the same side of the river
as the sandy mounds you have your back to them all the time.

The Mount stands on the pub side of the river. It’s tall, as East Anglian hills go, but nobody else would think so, except perhaps a Dutchman. From where we stood, though, it seemed spectacularly large, maybe because there, are no other hills thereabouts. A house or two shows on the inland side of its lower slopes. On this side, however, there is only a dense low scrub of broom and grass with humps of small hillocky bushes here and there. People put the odd sheep out on it sometimes but that’s about all.

A cloud darkened the sky as we stared at it. The sunshine was slowly caressed from the Mount’s face in a gradual sweep. I couldn’t help thinking what a bloody place to stare at for day after day, month after month, as Chase must have done from his vantage point across the river. Had he fished from the tavern bank he’d have had plenty to look at – the village, the road, the downstream flow of the river and the lovely old church. As it was, he’d only faced the empty hill.

‘I hope they didn’t pull his leg too much in the tavern,’ Moll said, smiling. ‘He must have been the world’s worst fisherman.’

‘So he must,’ I said. It makes you think. Too bad, in fact. Even a hopeless angler will catch something sooner or later.

I got her to pull in as soon as we saw a phone box. I pretended my arm was stiff so she came pressing in with me and did the dialling. She was a bit mistrustful, but it was very pleasant.

‘Hello, Pat, darling!’

‘Get off the line, Lovejoy,’ Nurse Patmore snapped. ‘Medical calls only.’

‘About Dr Chase,’ I said. ‘Tell me how many fish he caught on his days off. On average.’

‘Well, it was a bit of a joke with us, actually.’ She sounded on the defensive. ‘He wasn’t very lucky.’

‘You mean none,’ I said.

‘It’s not a very good river.’ She was smiling. Isn’t loyalty wonderful? ‘I think he had rather a soft spot for the fish. He used to say, “Lucky again!” Meaning they’d all got away.’ She paused. ‘Why are you asking all this, Lovejoy?’

‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘Keep taking the tablets.’

Moll and I drove back to the cottage. She told me my hands were quite cold when we got there and our fingers accidentally touched. I blamed her motor, said it was full of draughts.

M
OLL LEFT AT
about eight that evening, but I have to tell you about something that happened after she’d gone. It was unexpected. I’d not planned for anything so frank, which only shows how stupid I can be most of the time. The trouble is that when you start finding things out and events finally go your way you start assuming that you’re driving the bus. In fact you might only be a passenger on the wretched thing.

Moll got ready to go. We were in one of our epidemics of politeness. She kept asking if I’d got her phone number in case I wanted anything and I kept checking it was written down right.

‘You’re all alone here,’ she explained. ‘You can’t shout out for help if anything happens.’

‘It’s quite safe,’ I assured her, like an idiot.

‘Do lock your door, won’t you?’

That nettled me. ‘I’ll be all right. I’m not scared.’

‘I know,’ she said swiftly. ‘Of course you’re not. But I’m worried your crash was deliberate.’

She thought Jake and Fergus sounded bad people just from their names. That’s just typical of the sort of illogical allies I usually get. Efficiency’s always on the side of the wrong people. I finally
waved her off, dishing out profuse thanks for a day’s help.

The story pieced neatly together. Neat, but disturbing. An old village quack, interested in local history most of his life, stumbles across a valuable rare find. It’s near Mount St Mary. Aware that maybe others would not only become interested but could nick his precious Item before he could get his own clutching hands on it, he starts some evasive tactics. He zooms over to the Scratton tunnel to mislead followers. Then he goes to Mount St Mary where he sits working out where his Item is buried, or maybe just merely keeping an eye on it. Being a kindly old geezer, he hates the idea of hooking fish for nothing so he pretends to be the universe’s most forgetful and useless angler, to everybody’s merriment.

You couldn’t help but admire him. He remained true to his collector’s instincts and stuck to his act. It worked. He deceived everybody, including Black Fergus and his crew. Nodge had said that whatever was hidden in the auctioned items would explain where in Scratton the precious thing was hidden. Nodge had said Scratton, not Mount St Mary. So they must have followed him ye still been misled by Doc Chase’s feint. The clever old sod. Nothing in the tunnel at all, thank God.

But I knew something they didn’t. The little disc-shaped railway pass did not refer to the Scratton tunnel at all. Moll had examined it and found nothing. So the disc was a pass for a non-existent line to Mount St Mary. Doc Chase had hidden it to prevent his gem of worthless information falling into the wrong hands. Being wise he’d concealed it behind a Bramah lock in a cheap old piece of crummy furniture, knowing no true
collector would miss that. Maybe he’d actually told Leckie about it. Either way, Leckie had successfully bid for the stuff.

I took out the pass and examined it again. It looked the same, and I was no wiser. Yet there was something making me uneasy. You get these feelings.

For the next hour I pondered the problem, trying to look up auction catalogues and filing notes away. I stared at maps of the area. It was hopeless. I finished up having a glass of cider and doing nothing. I was on the wall in the garden, ruminating, about nine with dusk coming on. That was how they caught me.

I heard the car stop in the lane. A door slammed. I never thought it would be Fergus and Jake. I especially never thought they would have two tearaways with them. They came crunching up the gravel. Fergus was beaming. ‘Convalescing, Lovejoy?’

‘I’m better.’ I hadn’t the sense to run in and slam the door.

‘You don’t look it.’ He puffed up and plonked himself down beside me. ‘Nasty accident, I heard.’

‘Nasty.’

‘Nodge bought it,’ he said sadly. His grin never left him. Jake and the goons stood silently by, listening. Their eyes were on me.

‘Shame,’ I said.

‘You did it, didn’t you, Lovejoy?’

I looked about, realizing I was caught. ‘If you say so Fergie.’

‘Save yourself, Lovejoy.’ His persistent bloody cheerfulness was sickening. ‘Give me Chase’s thing.’

‘Thing?’ I decided to be dim.

‘Wilkie told us how you went back for some wood. Give it us.’

I’d have to have a word with Wilkie. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Fergie.’

‘Do him,’ Jake said.

One of the goons kicked my leg, right against my shin. I yelped and stood up to hop. That brought the end goon between me and the one who kicked me. I cracked my cider glass on the wall and scagged his face open, all in a single sweep of an arm.

‘
Jesus!
’ The goon stepped back; dabbing his face and looking at his bloodstained hands in horror.

‘Mind your new suit, Jake,’ I told him. It was maroon, today’s fashionable colour. I held the shattered glass lightly by the handle.

‘Lads, lads,’ Fergus reproved, sorrowfully shaking his head. The bastard was still sitting down. ‘This is no way to behave.’

‘They the best you can do, Fergie?’ I tried my best to sound scornful but I felt shaky. ‘Where I come from they’d starve.’

Jake and the healthy goon were separating, watching me. They had knuckledusters on now. Even if I set off running I’d not get far.

Then, mercifully, Moll’s car pulled in.

‘Hello, Moll,’ I yelled, drenched in a sudden sweat of relief.

‘Get rid of her, Lovejoy.’ Fergus gave his bleeding nerk the bent eye. He stepped back, hands and hand-kerchiefs to his face.

‘No. She’s a copper’s wife.’

‘Hello, Lovejoy.’ Moll saw the blood and my broken mug. ‘I came back to . . .’ She glanced at Fergus, me, the two men. Jake was softly giving instructions to the undamaged goon.

‘It’s time for tea, love,’ I said brightly.

‘Go away, lady.’ Fergus rose and nodded to Jake. ‘Put a match to it, Jake.’

‘Eh?’ The goon had a petrol tin. The bastards were going to fire my cottage. He was moving towards my open doorway.

Jake gave an unlikely yelp of glee. ‘We’ll warm your beer, Lovejoy.’

I was stepping forward with my puny glass to do the best I could when Moll sorted it all out.

‘Stop that!’ Her voice cut through the dusk like a ray. We all stopped where we were, more surprised than anything. ‘I shall phone the constable.’

‘Leave off, lady.’ Fergus chuckled. ‘I’ve a dozen witnesses who’ll say we’re miles away.’

‘Very well, then. If that’s your attitude.’ Moll rummaged in her handbag. Believe it or not she handed me a small purse and then a powder compact while she searched feverishly. I stood there holding them, feeling a right lemon. We all waited from curiosity, wondering what the hell she was going to bring out.

‘Get on with it, Jake,’ Fergus was just saying, when we learned what Moll had brought.

The goon with the petrol tin was starting forward as Moll finally gave a satisfied murmur. She pulled out a blued Smith and Webley. There was a sharp sound like silk tearing. One of my windows crashed and my eyes were momentarily blinded by the explosion. The nerk howled with fright and Fergus swore.

‘There!’ Moll said breathlessly. She was holding this howitzer out as if offering somebody dessert. ‘There now. You must stop,’ she instructed, ‘or take the consequences. I won’t have this kind of behaviour.’