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  Contents

  Victor Canning

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Victor Canning

  Queen's Pawn

  Victor Canning was primarily a writer of thrillers, and wrote his many books under the pseudonyms Julian Forest and Alan Gould. Among his immediate contemporaries were Eric Ambler, Alistair Maclean and Hammond Innes.

  Canning was a prolific writer throughout his career, which began young: he had sold several short stories by the age of nineteen and his first novel, Mr Finchley Discovers His England (1934) was published when he was twenty-three. Canning also wrote for children: his The Runaways trilogy was adapted for US children’s television.

  Canning’s later thrillers were darker and more complex than his earlier work and received great critical acclaim. The Rainbird Pattern was awarded the CWA Silver Dagger in 1973 and nominated for an Edgar award in 1974.

  In 1976 The Rainbird Pattern was transformed by Alfred Hitchcock into the comic film Family Plot, which was to be Hitchcock’s last film. Several of Canning’s other novels including The Golden Salamander (1949) were also made into films during Canning’s lifetime.

  Chapter One

  Andrew Raikes stood checking his hotel bill. The girl behind the desk watched him, liking what she saw … the crisp white shirt, and just the right shade of blue in the silk tie to go with the small-patterned herring-bone tweed suit. The blue of the tie was almost the blue of his eyes; nice eyes, crow’s-feet crinkling them a little at the corners as he scanned the bill. Tallish, well-built, he’d be well into his late thirties, she guessed. In imagination she ran the tip of her finger down the line of his jaw, across the firm, hard, sun-tanned skin. He had the kind of face she fancied, square, honest and with a lot of intelligence. The lips were generous and the mouth long and firm. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to hold the impression of the face, but the whole suddenly became misty. A good face, but hard to carry in the memory. She couldn’t know it, but it was one of Raikes’s minor assets.

  Raikes filled in a cheque and signed it—John E. Frampton.

  The girl made out a receipt and stuck it to the bill.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Frampton. I hope you’ve been comfortable with us.’

  ‘Of course. Thank you.’

  He smiled. Suddenly she felt the day lift up, pleasure spring in her, and knew that she would like to do something for him, would like to share something, anything, with him. That was another of his assets. She couldn’t know, though, that if the circumstances warranted it—which they never had yet with anyone—he would have killed her without a touch of remorse.

  Raikes picked up his case and went out into the London sunshine. A nice girl, he thought. In a way she was unique. She was the last person for whom he was ever going to write a bad cheque. Today was the end of almost twenty years of careful, efficient cheating, twenty years untouched by conscience, untouched by suspicion. Andrew Raikes who had stood for so long behind all the false names was now consigning them into limbo. With him now was the satisfaction of having done what as a youth of nineteen—as the red Devon soil had rattled, dry from summer drought, on to the oak lid of his father’s coffin and he had watched the grave diggers spit on their palms to grip their shovels—he had sworn he would do.

  It was a beautiful day, hot, with a warm smell of tarmac coming up off the road. A pigeon planed down the narrow chasm of the street, dropped its flaps, braked, and touched down a few yards ahead of him. Its neck feathers were lacquered with oily iridescence in the sun. Cock bird, blue-chequer, silver ring on its leg, wanderer from some backyard loft, no true-bred London vagrant.

  He turned into St. James’s Street and moved, unhurried, towards Pall Mall. At home the river would be high and coloured with recent rains. No use for a fly. He wanted some more Mepps and a few small Tobies for spinning. Hardy’s was just round the corner. Just spinners, he told himself. No wandering around the place letting his eye be taken by some expensive rod or reel. A man should keep his mania within bounds. The big sea trout were in the river. A good run this year. A six pounder leapt and line went whipping off the multiplier with a thin, heart-stopping whine. A young girl in a miniskirt went past him quickly. The movement of her bottom lifted and swayed the skirt like an ice-skater’s. He watched her legs, unmoved. The girl was quickly lost in the crowd. Brown tan shoes, skin-coloured tights, yellow miniskirt, a small stain marking the bottom right-hand edge, white blouse and sloppy green cardigan, black hair, lank, no shine, neck length, height around five-foot three, weight a hundred and twenty odd. Five years hence if something reminded him of her he would be able to recall every detail. Life was all detail. Detail was survival.

  He went happily into Hardy’s. The assistant who usually served him was whipping a backing on to a line. He gave Raikes a grin. He wandered the length of the shop. A soft amber light came off the racked rods. He ran a finger down a length of Palakona split bamboo, took down a small brook fly rod, handled it, felt it, moved it, sensing the play from butt to rod tip. The assistant looked across at him and nodded. From under a low arch of alders he flicked a pheasant tail upstream to the edge of an eddy, and tightened smoothly to the hungry take of a Taw trout. Always hungry, but not always foolish … the brown torrent like pale beer, and upstream a dipper flirting his white waistcoat on a moss-covered boulder.

  He bought some Black Fury Mepps, some four-gram golden Tobies, and the rod. He made out the cheque from another book on his Exeter bank and signed it—Andrew Raikes. The bank had had a Raikes account since it was first established in 1790.

  He walked across the road to the R.A.C. for coffee. Berners was waiting for him. They sat at a small corner table, and Berners produced the final papers, the completed statements, the meticulous summing up and balance sheet and profit distribution of fifteen years of work between them. Unequal partners. Seventy-five per cent Raikes, and twenty-five Berners and both of them well content. Berners was not his real name. Raikes did not know his real name. It was the name that Raikes had given him when they had first met. Berners would never know why he had chosen it. In return Berners had given him the name of Frampton. Of Berners he knew nothing except their work together. He did not know whether he was married, where he lived or what he intended to do now. Neither of them had ever shown the slightest curiosity about the real identity of the other.

  Berners said, ‘All you have abroad has been moved into a Swiss account. I know the number naturally.’

  ‘I’ll change it in the next few days.’

  Berners tapped his folder. ‘Over the years we’ve had an average growth rate of just under sixty per cent.’

  Raikes grinned. ‘We’ve taken bigger risk than most business men.’

  ‘By the way, I sent an anonymous donation to the Prisoners’ Aid Society.’

  ‘How much?’

  �
�Two hundred and fifty.’

  ‘I hope it’s not tempting fate.’

  ‘We could have gone on to bigger things.’ Berners smiled. ‘ We’re young and—’

  ‘Know when to stop. Never be too greedy.’

  Berners shrugged and began to tidy the papers away into the folder. He did it neatly. That was Berners; neat, methodical, nothing ever overlooked; a head that held and processed figures, facts and possibilities like a computer. A small, round-shouldered man, narrow-chested, but with big strong arms, oddly out of proportion with the rest of his body; white-faced, with a dull marble shine to the skin; grey cloudy eyes; blue serge suit, black tie and a striped shirt; fair hair with a crescent of baldness running across the high brow, he looked like nothing. Somewhere, he had another life, slept, ate, dreamed, and knew people. But where or how had no concern for Raikes.

  Berners, fidgeting to go, said, ‘I suppose we should have a bottle of champagne or something?’

  Raikes smiled. ‘ It’s a bit late for us to start being conventional.’

  ‘Then that’s it.’

  Raikes stood up, taking the file. They went out together and stood in the entrance while the porter went to find a cab.

  Berners shuffled his feet a little, and Raikes waited for what he knew was coming. Knew because it was in himself, too.

  ‘What happens if anything goes wrong in the future?’

  Raikes shrugged his shoulders. ‘We handle it on our own. From now on you don’t exist for me.’

  The taxi drew up and Raikes went towards it, Berners lagging with him a little. No goodbye, no firm handshakes. A partnership had ended, the books had been closed.

  To the cab-driver and for Berners to hear, Raikes said, ‘Charing Cross station.’ The porter opened the door for him and he got in, half turning for a moment to smile and nod at Berners. Then he was away. As the taxi took the corner to swing into the Mall, Raikes slid back the glass behind the driver and said, ‘Not Charing Cross. Paddington.’

  He was in Taunton by mid-afternoon, walked to the garage for his car, and drove the forty miles home without hurry. He lived alone in the house. There was Mrs Hamilton from the village who came in and looked after him when he wanted her. She’d left a note that she would be up at six for an hour to prepare his dinner. He went upstairs to change into old clothes, looking forward to a couple of hours on the river. Car tyres slewed over the gravel outside and a horn blew. Through the window he recognized the car. He went back to his dressing table, heard the front door open, the sound of shoes in the hall, the opening of other doors as she searched for him and then the hard trot of her heels on the polished oak boards of the stairway.

  She stood in the open doorway and said, ‘Why didn’t you shout?’

  ‘I wanted you to have the pleasure of finding me. Where are you off to?’

  ‘Meeting in Barnstaple and then dinner afterwards.’

  He moved to her and took her hands, looking at her, grinning.

  At once she said, ‘ Oh, no you don’t, Andy. That’s why you didn’t shout. To get me up here.’

  ‘Any room would have done. Mrs Hamilton isn’t here.’

  He lifted her suddenly, kissed her, and carried her to the bed.

  She said, ‘You going to carry on like this when we’re married?’

  ‘Why not? Only more often.’

  She shut her eyes, smiled, and sighed, ‘Good.’

  She came from this county as he did. Her father owned three thousand acres, eight hundred of it woodland and moor. All that would go to her brothers and meant nothing to him. She had the right name. She moved with the right people as he and his family had always done. She was right. She was what he wanted and had been prepared to wait for. There were twelve years between them. They had known each other for seven and he had made love to her four days after their first meeting on a pile of bracken, six hundred feet up on Dartmoor with a moon brighter than any golden guinea in the sky. Her father had a two-inch entry in the Directory of Directors. Once, he and Berners had defrauded a group whose board her father was on for three thousand pounds. He had spent some of it on a diamond-set watch for her and put the rest in English China Clay shares which now stood him in at a handsome profit. If he didn’t love her it was a matter of no importance. The feeling he had for her was as near to love as he would ever come. Mary Warburton. A good sound, honest name. Good breeding, good background. She would throw the kind of children he wanted.

  She pulled off her dress, swearing as some button or hook caught for a moment in her hair. As she lay back he caressed the soft inside of her right thigh and unslipped the fasteners of her girdle. He came to her, ready as he always was once his hands had touched the soft hidden places of her body, and they made love with the vigour of two healthy animals.

  Lying with her afterwards, close, yet detached, he said, ‘You name a date. Next year some time.’

  ‘Why next year?’

  ‘Because I’m taking possession of Alverton Manor from the New Year. That’s always been the place I wanted to take you to.’

  She leaned over him, touched the hollow of his upper lip, and said, ‘You mean that’s the place you’ve always been going back to. In a way you’ve never left it.’

  ‘Maybe not. Keep the Alverton Manor part to yourself for a while.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want it that way. I want it to be something you and I can get used to … the idea of it … on our own for a while.’ He slid his hand across her stomach, let it rest lightly on her pubic hairs and said, ‘Was it all right?’

  She said, ‘As though you didn’t know. Sometimes I think the top of my head is going to come off.’ She looked at her watch, the one he had given her. ‘Christ, I’ve got to make Barnstaple in thirty minutes. I’ll phone you tomorrow morning.’

  He watched her dress, using his hard brush to tidy her dark hair, and he liked everything he saw. She was almost as tall as he was, her body brown-skinned from a recent trip to the Bahamas; good, firm breasts, no scragginess … you put your arms around her and you knew you were holding something worth having. He lay there, completely relaxed and hardly knew it when she kissed him and ran down through the house and roared away.

  This, he told himself, was the real beginning. He was back. John E. Frampton and all the others were dead. Enter Andrew Raikes, a gentleman of the County of Devon; a man of substance and property. Christ, it sounded like something from a Victorian novel. Well, let it. He was going back to Alverton, and soon he would carry a bride over the doorstep, a wife who would give him children, sit beside him when he chaired the local Conservative meetings, hunt with him, shoot with him, and manage the luncheon basket at point-to-points.… Yes, it was pure Victorian. But that’s how he wanted it. So far as he was concerned the twentieth century had only provided the means for return.

  Chapter Two

  Two months later—mid-November and the fishing season over—he came back late in the evening from a walk by the river. It was the river where his father had taught him at eight to tie on a fly, to cast, to switchcast and to Spey roll and had hammered home the lesson that impatience had never unravelled any line tangle.

  He walked back to the house knowing that he would have missed Mrs Hamilton, moving leisurely in the dusk that was spreading indigo shadows under the trees. Going up the drive a little owl suddenly screamed in the orchard below the house.

  A car was parked on the gravel under the broad cone of light from the lantern over the front door. It was a blue Rover 2000, the TC model. Looking inside he saw that the driver must be a woman. There was a pair of comfortable women’s driving shoes down by the control pedals. A half-length suede jacket was thrown over the back of the driving seat. On the dash shelf was a bottle of nail varnish, some emery files, and a small packet of tissues. Going up the house steps he saw that there was a light on in his sitting room.

  The sitting room door was six inches ajar. The car had a Kent number plate. MKE 800F. The woman had to be a stranger. H
e didn’t like strangers in his house.

  Moving up to the door he saw her hand resting on his small chairside table, the long fingers toying with the fluting of a cut-glass tumbler which was half full of whisky. No rings. A long, slender-fingered hand, the nails painted a dark cerise.

  He went in. She sat in a chair facing him. For a few moments they looked at one another without speaking. She had a long, pale face, attractive, but coarsened by the thick lining of lipstick and heavy eye-shadow. The hair was auburn, faintly wavy, and drawn heavily to one side so that her left ear and the pale sweep of left temple seemed over-isolated, vulnerable. She wore a single row of pearls around her neck, a plain white jumper and a green skirt that came well above the turn of her knees. The shoes she wouldn’t wear while driving were white leather with long, thin heels.

  She stood up, almost as tall as he was, and said, ‘ I hope you don’t mind. Your Mrs Hamilton let me in to wait as she was going. Also … well …’ She gave a nervous laugh that went with the voice, a little coarse under the careful manner. ‘I helped myself to some of your whisky. You are Mr Raikes, aren’t you? Andrew Raikes?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘I’m Belle Vickers. At least, I’ve always been called that. Mabel exactly. Ghastly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s quite a nice name.’ He gave her a smile and sensed the nervousness begin to drop from her. He went round her to the sideboard, poured whisky for himself and, siphon in hand, said ‘What can I do for you, Miss Vickers? Please sit down.’ He waved her back into her chair and then splashed soda into his glass.

  She sat down, sipped at her drink and said, ‘Well, it’s just that I’ve sort of got a message for you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He came round, facing her in the chair.

  Suddenly, she said, ‘Christ, this is awful. I don’t like doing it at all. He just said that I was to give you the message and also this which was to make you understand that it was all genuine.’