Queen's Pawn Read online

  ‘Dead or alive I don’t want to be part of any bloody legend!’

  ‘You don’t have any choice. But as compensation you’ll make a lot of money.’ He raised his stick, and pointed it at Raikes. ‘I can guarantee you and Berners at least half a million between you.’

  ‘We don’t want any more money.’

  ‘You don’t know what you need. You’ve never faced it.’

  ‘I know exactly what I need. I need your files and photostats in my hands and you dead and then I can go back where I belong.’

  Sarling chuckled and rubbed the knob of his cane against the underside of his chin. ‘Haven’t you really learned about yourself yet? What do you think made you do what you did? To revenge your father, to get back the old family home, to have the roots of a family called Raikes dig still deeper in the ground? You really believe that?’

  ‘What I believe is my damn business!’

  ‘And mine. If you were free now you’d last two years at the most. Then you would take to the high seas again. You’re a plunderer, an adventurer—not a settler. And at heart you know it so well that you hate it. When the truth comes into your mind you overshout it with words like Alverton Manor, Mary Warburton, Devon and family. Even if you got rid of me there would be no escape for you. That’s why I picked you from all the men in my files. Because you’re like me … the big gamble, the big risk is the only thing that keeps you really alive.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘But of course. We both are. It’s only another way of saying that we’re not like ninety-five per cent of other men. We have different dreams. We belong not to life but to the legends it creates.’

  Raikes shrugged his shoulders. ‘All right. When do we start making this dream a reality?’

  ‘In a few months.’

  ‘And what is it to be?’

  Sarling stood up. ‘You’ll be told in time.’

  Sarcastically Raikes said, ‘It seems to me that all this talk of your love of risk really boils down to the fact that Berners and I will be taking it.’

  ‘Most of the physical part, yes. But you know as well as I do that risks are not just physical. There are risks a man can take in his mind, take by just talking over a telephone. To risk oneself, one’s soul, one’s destiny, one’s spirit—that is the real joy.’

  Raikes, suddenly bored at the dramatics, said, ‘You need treatment—and I know what mine would be, given a chance.’

  Sarling beamed, an ugly contortion of face muscles, and said, delighted, ‘That too. That is part of my risk which makes me more alive than most men can be—knowing that I only have to make one mistake and you will kill me. I’m grateful to you for it.’

  ‘Don’t bother with the gratitude. Just make the mistake and I promise you that the day I murder you I will feel more alive than most men ever can be.’

  Sarling gave a little nod of his head and went, and Raikes sat there thinking about his words. For Christ’s sake, an adventurer, not a settler. Putting oneself at high risk in order to get an adrenalin kick. The man was crazy. But denying Sarling in his mind, he was conscious of having to do so more vigorously than should have been necessary. To forget about Sarling’s words, he concentrated on the problem of getting rid of Sarling. Earlier that day he had met Berners in the R.A.C. where they had had a long discussion over the preliminary details they now held and had sketched between them a rough outline of a plan. No final plan could be made until they had solved the problem of the locks to the two strong rooms.

  Just before Berners had left, Raikes had said, ‘Did you find out about the gas in those canisters?’

  Berners nodded.

  ‘Yes. You’d be surprised how much information there is in the public domain—if you know where to look for it.’

  He went on to tell Raikes about the gas. In the past year there had been a conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, held in the Bonnington Hotel, London, sponsored by the J. D. Bernal Peace Library—this was an educational trust set up to collect material and provide information of assistance in the struggle to ensure the realization of the fullest potentialities of science in building a world prosperous and without war. The aim of the conference had been to assess the present level of development of chemical and biological weapons and to discuss the ethical responsibility of scientists in relation to their development and use. All the papers read at the discussion had been published in book form.

  ‘I just took a chance,’ said Berners. ‘I rang them and asked what they knew about a gas called Z/93. GF1. They said it was a nerve gas. What the Americans call a V- or G-agent, known as CMPF, or in full—cyclohexyl methylphosphonofluoridate. Used in the open it’s for riot control, knocking a man out in a few seconds … colourless, odourless. It dissipates very quickly. Used in a confined space, where it could persist for more than a few minutes, it’s lethal. Any doctor, not knowing the gas had been used, would ascribe death to heart failure. In fact that’s what it would be. Some nice scientists around, aren’t there?’

  And they had a crate of it! He remembered how the sheep had gone down. And the old ewe. She’d caught the full sweep of it.

  He got up and fixed himself a drink. Suddenly, he felt tired, played out. When Belle returned, she saw at once that he was surly and a little tight; an ashtray full of stubs on the floor by his side, one hand balancing the whisky glass on the arm of his chair. He looked up at her and said, ‘Tell me something good. Say he’s fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.’

  ‘It wouldn’t help if he had. There’s still the files and the photostats.’ She came over and kissed him lightly on the forehead. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just waiting to wake up.’

  ‘I know.’ She went into her bedroom, took off her coat, and repaired the lipstick on her mouth.

  Reflected in the mirror, through the open bedroom door she could see him sitting in his chair, one hand coming up, scrubbing for a moment at the back of his head, a movement of exasperation, indicating the frustration in him. She knew how he felt. There was an anticipation growing in her now of his moods. She knew his gestures and movements and frequently knew what they shadowed in his mind. That was something which had never happened between her and any other man before.

  She went back to him, sitting on the arm of a chair, knowing she looked good, noticing how even in his absorption his eyes followed the crossing of her long legs and then came up to notice, but not to comment on, her new orange-coloured dress. She wrinkled her nose at him and he gave her a slow wink.

  She said, ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  ‘I knew you had.’

  ‘Clever dick.’

  ‘You’ve found out something about the safe.’

  ‘Mind reader.’ She was pleased, liked to feel that there were these intimate currents of understanding between them. ‘Yes. He was at home most of the day. He used it twice and I managed to watch him and get a good view. He slides the top plate across with his right hand, just using two or three fingers on it. But for the plate underneath he raises his left hand and puts his thumb on it. Like this.’ She imitated the movement. ‘He keeps it firmly there for a few seconds and then slides the plate across with the tips of his fingers against the edge of the plate. After about five seconds the door swings open. It’s clearly something to do with the way he puts his thumb on it.’

  ‘Did you try it yourself that way?’

  ‘Yes. After he’d gone. But nothing happened for me. I put my left thumb on the plate and pushed it over and waited. But after about five seconds it just came back into position again. Don’t you think that’s odd?’

  He sat forward. ‘Yes, I do. But that’s just what it’s meant to be.’

  ‘I did something else, too. He’s had Meon Park for a long time, but we’ve only been in Mount Street for four years. He had a lot of work done on the place before he went in. Having that strong room put in was one of the things. All the bills for the work on the house, like everything at Meon Pa
rk, household accounts, fuel bills and all that … well, they’re kept. That’s part of my job. So I went right back over them—and guess what I found?’

  He smiled, reached out and drew the tip of a forefinger down the front of her right leg. The touch was like a small electric current going through her.

  ‘You found the bill for the installation of the strong room.’

  ‘Yes. It was put in by a London firm. Finch and Lyle, Lock and Safe Company. They’re in Fitzroy Square. The account said to installing etcetera and etcetera as per specification of existing strong room at Meon Park. The same firm did them both.’

  ‘No details of the lock mechanism?’

  ‘No. Something else too. Finch and Lyle are a subsidiary of one of his bigger companies. I don’t know whether that means anything, but I thought you’d like to know. It was quite odd to watch, you know. All this time with him and I’d never really taken all that much notice. He just put his left thumb on it, pushed it over and it opened. What kind of lock is that?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.’ He stood up, drew her to him, kissed her and said, ‘ What would I do without you?’

  ‘Find someone else?’

  He raised his right hand and touched her cheek with his knuckles, an affectionate kneading of his skin against hers, sensation moving deep down into her.

  ‘You know why you say that, don’t you?’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes. We both want to get out. To get out I’d do anything. Use anyone. I’ll be honest. Right at the beginning I did decide to use you. Be nice to you and get you on my side … But no matter how it started—that’s not the way it is now. And you know it. You know it when I put my arms around you, when I’m in bed with you, or when we’re both sitting quietly in our chairs reading, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so—’

  ‘Don’t suppose any longer.’

  He pulled her to him and kissed her. He felt her cling to him, her body trembling with pathetic, undisguisable need for him. He strained her to him as though the same need existed in himself! But in the cold, remote laboratory of his mind he knew that a stage had been reached when she could be counted on as a constant factor, unshakeably on his side, a modulus that would be utterly reliable in his and Berner’s calculations until Sarling was gone—and then she would have to go. Against his cheek he felt the warm touch of a happy tear from her, as he considered the best way to tackle this Finch and Lyle thing. It wasn’t something, he need bother Berners with yet.

  Raikes, under another name, booked a room at Brown’s Hotel in Dover Street. From there he rang Finch and Lyle and spoke to the sales manager. He explained that he was a partner in a firm of architects in the north of England who were the designers of a new factory to be put up by a nationally-known firm of carpet manufacturers in Northern Ireland. He, Raikes, was approaching various firms about the supply of certain hardware for the proposed factory. Chiefly he was interested in door fittings, locks, handles, and safes. It was a contract that would run into thousands of pounds … The sales manager rose hungrily. He had the feeling he got on the river when a winter grayling came hard up from four feet below, grabbed the fly and turned down with it.

  The following morning he spent two hours at the offices of Finch and Lyle going over their catalogues and inspecting samples of their products and then took the sales manager out to lunch, preparing him with three large pink gins and easing him into a state of goodwill and bonhomie with a bottle of burgundy and two brandies with their coffee. Raikes let slip that he was lunching the next day with a representative from another firm—‘Naturally, old man, one has to survey the field, but your stuff looks just the job for me’—knowing that a touch of anxiety made a ready victim readier. He lunched the man again and this time spoke without much enthusiasm of the other firm he had seen, and hinted that if Finch and Lyle got the contract—strictly on a competitive basis, old man, you know, with a wink—then there wasn’t any reason why a little something on the side mightn’t be managed if things went well. Two days later—spent ostensibly in a trip to the Midlands—he had the sales manager out to dinner. He cemented their friendship with food and drink and then commented that the chairman of the carpet company wanted a small strong room off his office. ‘Colourful type, always after something new, like to find something that would really please him, something he could boast about.…’ Spent, played out, belly turning as he was drawn nearer the net, the fish let itself be landed.

  ‘You know, we might have just the thing. Not in production yet, but we have made a few prototypes. Damned ingenious. Really on our secret list. Fact, tell you who’s got a couple. Chairman of our Group. Trouble is getting costs down … you know, for a general market.’

  Into Raikes’ lap was poured all he wanted. At midnight he put the man in a taxi, the parting of true friends—Raikes to return up North. Two days later, with Belle playing the secretary first, Raikes came on, sadness and anger alternating, saying that the whole bloody project had hit a snag, trouble with the Northern Ireland authorities over the site and finance, not definitely off but the look of it not liked. ‘ I’ll give you a call the moment anything breaks.…’ The call, of course, never to come.

  Settling back with his drink, Belle busy in the small kitchen, he knew that it was the information which they needed to send Sarling neatly and cleanly out of this world and put the photo-stats at Meon and the files at Mount Street safely into his hands. A thumbprint lock. Provisional patents already approved, but the thing itself—while no dead secret—still not ready for general production. You put your thumb on the shiny metal plate, making a nice clear print. You slid the plate into its recess and somewhere in there a little photoelectric eye scanned the whorls and convolutions, matching the new thumbprint with the master one already installed. If the match were right, then other impulses slid back the great locking bars and rods and the door swung open. Put an alien thumbprint on the plate and the inhuman eye within the recess rejected it at once and pushed the plate back, wiping it clean automatically, and the door remained shut. Berners had been fascinated when he had told him. It was the kind of device Berners loved, no matter how much he preferred the eighteenth to the twentieth century. From now on the rest was routine. Sarling would die. He and Berners would be free and, when they were, they would have the comparatively minor problem of Belle, fussing now in the kitchen, humming to herself, content, as though they had been married years.

  In the kitchen, preparing to cook, Belle leaned over the small table on which the cookery book lay open, humming gently to herself, two lines of thought, running clear in her mind. The book below her said, ‘Simmer the scallops in white wine for ten minutes, then cut them in quarters.…’ He had said, ‘It opens with his thumbprint. I don’t entirely understand the technical side of it. But that’s how it works.’ And the book, ‘Toss them in butter with shallots, mushrooms and parsley. Stir in a little flour and enough of the cooking liquid to make a thick sauce.’ God, why didn’t she have the knack of cooking like other women? What did toss them in butter really mean, swirl them round? He was changing. No doubt about it. And it had been honest of him to say what he had. Use her. She’d known it. But not now. Something was happening. ‘Cook all together for a few minutes.’ And let’s hope to God it all turns out right, the scallops and this thing between us. White wine? What kind of white wine did they mean? Sweet or dry? She straightened up, pushing her hair back from one eye. She had both. Better mix it, half and half.

  Berners sat at the window, papers and photographs, notes and plans spread before him on the small Queen Anne table; The midday was hazy with the old gold light of a low winter sun. Tomorrow, thought Berners, he would go to Meon Park, to see on the ground what lay before him now in the photographs and plans. Park Street he already knew, could shut his eyes and move through it with the sureness of a cat in the dark, could have gone into the dining room and without a glimmer from the outside street light have reached out to the sideboa
rd and picked out the sherry decanter from the port unerringly. Meon Park already was coming to life for him, but until he had actually seen it from the outside with his own eyes he knew that he would not possess it completely. He sipped at his hock, full of a mild pleasure, a pleasure curiously that he had not known since he had retired from business with Frampton.

  Methodically, he went over the broad plan which he had built up since he had been told of the thumbprint lock. The operation would have to start at Meon Park. (This, simply because there were fewer servants at Park Street than at Meon, and the fewer servants in the place the less risk of observation or disturbance would there be for the final phase of the operation.) Sarling had to be at Meon, surprised and taken, the strong room opened with the print of his left thumb.… Sarling gagged or unconscious. Sarling knowing exactly what lay before him, seeing in a flash their plan and his own helplessness. He was glad that there were so many complexities in this. There would have been no pleasure, only tedium, in a task which could have been easily achieved. The strong room at Meon opened and the photostats in their hands Sarling would have to make a change of plan, call for a car and announce that he was going to London. Eccentric, self-willed, stumping down the great oak stairway, out to a waiting car with Miss Vickers to drive, the rear lights moving down the elm-lined drive, a wisp of exhaust fume like floating hoar frost wreathing for a moment behind it … Only it wouldn’t, couldn’t be Sarling. It must be him. Height and build were much the same … There was no fear or apprehension in him at this thought.

  Somewhere the car must stop for the real Sarling and Raikes to be picked up. He let his mind run on, seeing it all, teasing now and then at some point of procedure, the inevitable dovetailing and search for flaws. The gas canisters made no great noise when they exploded, but the fragmentation would have to be contained. Dead or alive Sarling’s thumbprint would work at Mount Street … Ingenious the thumbprint lock, but it carried its own dangers. Every lock did. There was no lock that man could not break or cajole. Memory slipping into his deliberations brought back the picture of a lock he had once seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He searched for the maker’s name. An antique detector lock … Yes, Johannes Wilkes de Birmingham … He’d always liked the de Birmingham … Johannes Wilkes de Birmingham Fecit. Well, the death of Sarling could soon be under-written Aubrey Catwell Fecit; Sarling dead, mortality mixing with sleep, the raw, red, blotched and ugly face a stiff mask to the dawn as a manservant drew the curtains, stared down at the counterpaned lump that had once been life and felt shock but no pity, no sorrow, for men like Sarling had no way to the hearts of other men.