The Players And The Game (13 page)

‘And what happened?’ Vane muttered. ‘I didn’t hear that.’

‘Alice was doing a part-time job then. She came back one day and found us.’

‘How old was Sheila?’

‘Twelve.’ He added in a voice almost inaudible, ‘That was the only other time I swear, the only time.’ He put his head on the table. His shoulders shook with weeping.

Paling wrinkled his nose. Such scenes were disagreeable, but one had to soldier on. His voice was very gentle. ‘What about Louise? Tell us about her.’

Vane raised his tear-stained face. A tic worked in his cheek. ‘Nothing about Louise Allbright, I hardly knew her, I kissed her good night once, how many times do I have to say it?’

Paling got up, moved behind Vane. Plender got up too, and moved behind him on the other side. Hazleton wagged his finger again, but this time in a cheerful admonitory way. ‘Temper, temper.’

In the next moment Plender put his dark curly head close to Vane’s ear. ‘That’s not what she said to her parents. She said you wanted to make love and she didn’t.’

Hazleton leaned over. ‘Kissing isn’t your line, is it? You wanted to show her all you’d got, even though it didn’t amount to much. That’s what put her off, right?’

‘You got a woman to help you out,’ Plender said. ‘You thought three would be better than two, stir you up a bit. Then it went wrong.’

Vane turned round and screamed at his tormentor. ‘No, no, it wasn’t like that.’

‘Right then, tell us what it was like, how it happened.’

‘That isn’t what I mean. I can’t do it, I haven’t been able to for years, I couldn’t do anything if I wanted.’

Paling quietly opened the door and went out. The cat-and-mouse process of interrogation was one he had never cared for, although he knew it to be necessary. When he went back more than an hour later, however, Vane had made no admission. His tie was to one side, his elegant dark suit had lost some of its shape although he had not been touched, the mark of dried tears was on his face. Paling thanked him for his co-operation and sent him home in a police car.

‘He doesn’t smell like a killer to me,’ Hazleton said afterwards. ‘There’s a stink, but not the right stink. By God, it’s hot.’ He had taken off his jacket, and there were sweat marks at the back of his shirt and under his arms.

‘There’s the typewriter.’

‘Yes. So what do we do?’

‘We go on keeping an eye on him. All the time. If a girl or woman is involved he must meet her somewhere, some time. And put on a little pressure, let him know he’s being watched.’

When Paul Vane got home, Alice was playing through a bridge hand from a book. She was smoking one of her little cigars, and three stubs were in an ashtray. He told her that he was being sent on a special course on the following Monday, and also that he had been down at the police station answering questions.

‘I just don’t want to know. There was a time when I would have been interested, but not now.’

‘I tell you I’m liable to lose my job.’

‘You’ll get another.’

‘The police accused me of killing that girl. And the Services’ au pair. More or less, they accused me.’

‘It’s a hot night.’ She took off her dress, stood in bra and briefs. ‘Do anything to you?’

‘You know I didn’t touch her, you must know that.’

She shrugged and sat down again. ‘I believe you can only make this contract if you leave the lead with dummy and finesse the club.’

‘Alice.’

‘Why should you say I know? I don’t know anything about you, you don’t know anything about me. If you’re going to the kitchen you might get me a glass of lemon squash. I’m thirsty.’

That was Thursday evening.

I look at the last notes I made and ask again the question: who are these words written for? Answer: myself. Yes, but for an audience too. I am addressing
somebody,
and I do not know who it is. My Ideal Reader will understand all, forgive all. Yes, I am in no doubt that there are things to forgive.

But most of all the Ideal Reader will appreciate my cleverness. A Game well played, he will say, and I see him burst into applause. People do not know my cleverness. That galls. The Master said:

This fame, which all the wide world loves,

I touch with gloves,

And scorning beat

Beneath my feet.

Yet Friedrich Nietzsche too longed for the appreciation of a friend, one friend. Consider those chapter headings in
Ecce Homo:
‘Why I Am So Wise’, ‘Why I Am So Clever’, ‘Why I Write Such Excellent Books’. Like the Master, I write for one person who will understand. That cannot be Bonnie. She is a fool, a tool, nothing more. She serves sensation. I use it, rise above it.

Last night Clayton appeared to me in a dream, as he has not done for years. We went swimming together, the water deep deep blue (I knew the water was blue although I could not see it, I have never seen a colour in a dream). I was swimming underwater and I could see Clayton’s legs waving like pale fronds. Then they disappeared. Something fastened round my neck. I knew it to be Clayton’s hands, fought and thrashed to be free. At last I woke, shivering uncontrollably and with my pyjamas wet.

I thought of Clayton, my beloved brother. The clever one.

In our room at the top of the house, the attic room with my bed tucked under the sloping ceiling so that I bumped my head if I sat up quickly, Clayton tormented me with riddles.

Question:
Would you sooner be a bigger fool than you look, or look a bigger fool than you are?

Answer:
Both are impossible.

Clayton knew dozens, hundreds of riddles. I was so silly that I always tried to answer them. But at school, and when other people were there, he protected me and was kind. You must look after your little brother, they said, and Clayton said yes. You must obey your brother, they said, and I said yes. Clayton protected me. When I was seven, boys were tormenting me in the lavs, two holding me, two playing with my thing. Then Clayton appeared, sudden and terrible like a god. Clayton scattered them, kicking and punching.

Clayton like a god. If I was seven, he was nine. A nine-year-old god.

Like a god, he demanded worship. Kneel down, Clayton said, and I knelt. In the attic room I worshipped him with my hands, my mouth. He was a cruel god. Sometimes I kissed his feet.

How can one kill a god? It is impossible.

From his position above me on the cliff, secure on a ledge, Clayton looked down. I was stuck, and cried. ‘Cry baby,’ he said. ‘Stupid little cry baby, frightened of the rocks.’

The sea was blue below.

‘Cry babies have to be punished. Cry babies must learn to climb.’ He came down three or four steps on the rocks, easy and graceful, stretched his hand to help me up. I took the hand and pulled.

A piece of rock broke away and dropped down slowly. Clayton’s feet scrabbled. He let go of my hand and I saw him pass me. He made no sound. A god does not cry. I saw his body in air.

Why did he not take me with him? Because he was a god. Why did I afterwards scramble to safety quite easily?

Did I mean to pull him down? They thought so. They did not speak to me for a week after the funeral. The attic room was mine. There were no more acts of worship. Clayton died when he was twelve years old. There was no blood.

It is the instinct of man to destroy his gods. But they are indestructible, in some form or other they always return.

Do I hate women? No. But I have in my mind not only the Ideal Reader but the Ideal Woman, lovely and obedient. For a woman the man must be her god, as Clayton was mine.

I imagine this little Pamela who has written to me. Her features are small and delicate like her fingers, her hair is fine as that of a Rhine maiden. Most of all she has understanding, her vision sees beyond what is trivial, she is searching for a communion of minds. She desires the flesh, but through it sees the spirit.

Bonnie does not live upon this plane. Her mind is intent always upon the lower things. All she wants is blood, there is nothing else in her mind. I may have to protect Pamela from her as Clayton protected me from those rough boys long ago. Then Pamela will make her act of worship. She will kiss my feet.

Bonnie has no conception of the infinite. She does not understand the Game, at times she treats it as a joke. Bonnie is my lower nature.

Detective-Constable Billy Paterson was twenty-three, a tall, cheerful, ruddy officer whose interests were rugby football, beer and girls in that order. He was the best front-row forward in the police team, and one of the two hardest drinkers. He was not noted for his subtlety, and he was an ideal man for the task of making himself conspicuous.

On Friday morning he was waiting with a colleague at the end of the road when Paul Vane came out of the house in his car, which he left at the station. Paterson was dropped off there, and travelled up in the same compartment as Vane. During the morning he made his identity known to the doorman at Timbals and sat in the entrance hall reading comics. At lunchtime Vane went out to a pub, ate a sandwich and drank two large whiskies. Paterson was round the other side of the bar nursing a pint of bitter, and Vane noticed him for the first time. On the way back to the office he looked round to see if Paterson was following.

Paterson made a bit of a variation in the routine by spending most of the afternoon in a coffee bar opposite the office. He had obtained a fresh stock of comics, which he found irresistibly amusing, so that he was not bored. It did not take much to amuse him. Indeed, his only worry about this particular job was that he believed Friday to be his unlucky day for tailing suspects. The worry was based on the undoubted fact that he had twice lost suspects he had been tailing on that day.

Vane left the office at a quarter to six, and Paterson trailed after him. Again he sat in the same compartment. As they left Rawley station Vane stopped as though about to speak, and then walked on. A squad car was waiting for Paterson, and they followed Vane home. They saw him go in, then parked down the road.

‘You staying?’ Paterson asked.

His companion was Tiny Noble, a saturnine figure in his thirties who was disappointed that he had missed promotion. ‘No need for two of us to waste our bloody time. I’ll be back at ten to relieve you.’

He was collected five minutes later. Paterson settled down happily with another comic.

The house was unwelcoming. Cigar butts lay in the ashtrays, the washing-up had not been done, there was nothing in the oven. Alice was evidently playing bridge. Paul Vane looked out through the front window at the car parked down the road. He felt as uneasy as though some small animal were crawling over his skin. He looked in the larder for something that could be heated for supper, but could not face the thought of doing it.

The note was on the living-room table.

Paul

I am going away. Sorry, but it’s the only way. If the police are going to ask questions about those girls I can’t take it, why should I? That and everything else. I have tried, though you may not think so. I don’t think there’s any use in trying to pick up the pieces. We’re just incompatible, that’s all.

Didn’t have time to cook anything for you. Suggest you go out and eat at that new place you mentioned the other day.

Alice

PS Have told Jennifer. She wasn’t surprised.

He read the words with the disbelief people feel for something contemplated so often that they have become sure it will never happen. Alice never played jokes, yet he felt that some sort of joke was being played here and that he would find her working out a bridge problem – perhaps in Jennifer’s bedroom? He actually went in there and looked round. Then he went into their own bedroom, looked at the empty dressing-table and, as though unconvinced, opened drawers, flung cupboards dramatically wide. Clothes had been taken, but not everything had gone. He found a kind of comfort in the fact that she had made the beds. Would she have done that if she were not secretly intending to return? Perhaps she had put the clothes down in the cellar to add to the shock he was receiving? Perhaps the suitcases were still down there.

He went down to the cellar. The suitcases had gone.

Zook-zlook
-glook
, said Porgity Bear as he saw the swaying rump of Lavinia May moving down the High Street. Holy
daggity,
he thought as she turned into Charlie Beast’s, where Bolo Bunny was playing Big Chief Firewater for the mineral rights on Sharkfire Island. Porgity Bear ran up the wall, peered in the window at Charlie Beast’s. Dumbfounding doggerel, he cried. What he saw inside made him relax his hold on a drainpipe. He teetered over space.

What had Porgity seen? Billy Paterson turned the page in delight. He was suddenly aware of an alien sound, and in the next moment Vane’s Cortina moved past him and made a left turn with a shriek of tyres. Cursing, he started the engine, which did not fire until the second attempt, turned the car, and followed down Burgess Road. The Cortina was a quarter of a mile ahead of him, and had made another left turn.

Paterson looked at his watch. Twenty forty-three, and the light was beginning to fail. He drove with one hand, lifted the telephone with the other, made radio contact and gave his position. To do this he slowed down fractionally as he made the left turn into Cary Avenue. He was appalled to see that there was no Cortina ahead. Roads led off Cary Avenue to left and right, and he had to cut his speed to look down them. He did not see the Cortina. The end of Cary Avenue ran into London Road one way, Manholt Place the other. Cars were passing. He did not know which way the Cortina had gone.

He spoke to HQ. ‘Paterson. I’ve lost contact.’

The duty officer was a short-tempered man named Pink. ‘You’ve what? You were parked outside his bloody house.’

‘He shot out like a bomb. By the time I’d turned–’

‘You’ll have a bomb under you, lad, when the chief gets word of this. Give me his number. Then cruise around, keep in touch, try not to fall asleep at the wheel.’

Tailing a man on Friday, Paterson thought, I might have known. He folded the Porgity Bear comic, the cause of his trouble, and was about to throw it out of the window. He tucked it into his raincoat pocket instead, and started to move down London Road.

The tobacconist’s was shut, like the other shops in London Road. There was not much traffic. It was almost dark. Sally said, ‘He’s not coming.’

‘It’s only just nine. Don’t be so fidgety, sweetie pie. If Abel Giluso appears there are two of us to deal with him.’

‘Have you got the letter?’

‘Of course.’ She took it out of her large fabric bag. ‘I shall produce it, say, “You are Abel Giluso, my name is Pamela Sexpot and I claim the right to move on to a higher plane of pleasure.” I mean, did you ever hear anything so corny?’ Pamela’s make-up was smooth as enamel, her hair glinted golden, her miniskirt showed elegant legs.

‘I don’t know about corny. It frightens me.’

‘You haven’t seen my magic protector. I don’t mean the pill.’ She delved into the bag and came up with a police whistle. ‘One blast on this and Abel will take to his heels.’

‘There’s something funny about this road.’

‘Oh, sweetie, be your age. It’s a perfectly ordinary road, so ordinary it’s boring.’ Two boys on the other side whistled, then crossed. A passing car slowed momentarily, speeded up again.

The boys were about sixteen. Their small cunning faces looked out from a forest of hair. One of them said, ‘What’s up?’ and the other, ‘If you’re looking for it I’ve got it.’

Sally was not used to being accosted by the vulgar. She turned her back on them. Pamela said, ‘Sorry, boys, I’m waiting for a man.’

‘What’s he got that I haven’t?’ the first boy said. He put a hand on Pamela’s arm. ‘Come on, and I’ll show you.’

‘Just a minute.’ She produced the whistle from her bag. ‘Shall I blow it?’

The boys stared disgustedly. ‘You must be out of your mind,’ one of them said. They slouched off down the road.

‘It’s a quarter past. I’m going home. You come back too, Pam, and have supper.’

‘You don’t suppose one of them was really our Abel, do you?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care. I hate this. Come back with me, there’s a spare bed.’

‘Just give it five minutes. Don’t you want to see what he looks like? What’s the betting he’s a hunchback, or can’t get out a sentence without stuttering? Would you fancy being done by a hunchback? I mean, it might be different.’

Most of the time Sally admired almost everything about Pamela – her sexual freedom, her outspokenness, the whole way she lived – but just occasionally she felt disgusted, as she did now. She began to walk away.

At the corner she turned. Pamela was standing beside the shop, lighting a cigarette. She waved and blew a kiss.

Five minutes later the car that had slowed when the boys were talking to them came round the corner, slowed again, and stopped. Pamela went to the window. ‘Mr Giluso?’

‘You’ll be Pamela.’ He leaned over, opened the front door. She got in. He drove away.

‘You’re not at all as I thought you’d be,’ she said.

He looked at her briefly. ‘Neither are you. At least, I don’t think so.’

‘I mean, no hunchback.’

‘Hunchback?’

‘Just a joke.’ She became aware that somebody was in the back of the car, turned. ‘It’s a little party, is it? Where are we going?’

‘Why did you bring somebody else with you?’

She turned back towards the driver, and so never saw the pad that was pressed firmly over her mouth and nostrils from behind.