Queen's Pawn Page 5

  ‘The Zephyr station wagon.’

  ‘Nice to get that off me hands. O.K. Some fire, eh? Got to get rid of the rubbish.’ He gave her breast a squeeze. ‘Save us a slice of that for tonight, love.’

  She thumped him in the middle of his broad back and he went into the rear of the garage. He washed up in the toilet, straightened his red and white spotted bow tie and slipped on his jacket. He jerked a little more of his breast pocket handkerchief into view and gave himself an approving nod in the mirror. Good old Georgie, nice little business, always a wallet of fivers to flash in the pub, have a drink everyone and meet the wife but keep your hands off her, not that I mind normally, but we’ve just come back from Majorca and she’s a bit over sunkissed in places.… The Zephyr, eh? Three hundred and fifty quid, perhaps; stood him in at two-seventy. Anyway, not a penny less, than three twenty-five.

  He shook his head, chiding himself in the glass. You’re doing too well, Georgie; eating too well; hardly pushing forty yet and putting it on. Must be the beer.

  The man was standing by the station wagon. Nice enough looking bloke. Gent. Shouldn’t think he was pushed for a hundred quid ever. No crumbly haggling and fencing with him. Some of them were the limit, cutting it down in half-crowns at the end and wanting you to take in a couple of old perambulators and a Lambretta in part exchange, and then what about hire purchase arrangements? Lived beyond their income they all did, keeping up with the bloody Joneses. Colour television in No. 1 at the beginning of the month and there was colour television all down the avenue by the end. The women shopping round the supermarkets for twopence off, bloody harassed, working themselves up for a good scream at the kids when they got in from school. Yes, a bloody hard life for some, and mostly their own fault.

  ‘Mr Gilpin?’

  A good voice, educated. That’s something you can’t buy late in life.

  ‘That’s me. Not a bad looking bus, eh?’

  ‘Smith’s my name.’ He put out a hand.

  ‘Glad to know you, Mr Smith.’ He pumped the hand briefly. ‘Kind of thing you’re looking for? Not a lot on the clock. But you know and I know what that means sometimes. However, we’ve been right over her. Nothing wrong.’

  ‘Could I try her?’

  ‘Why not? John o’Groats and back if you like.’

  Chuckling, George Gilpin removed the placard from outside the windscreen which read—GILPIN’S BARGAIN OF THE WEEK. £400. ONE OWNER ONLY.

  They moved off, Mr Smith driving.

  George Gilpin chatted away. Mostly you had to because there was usually something to hide and you wanted to take the customer’s mind off things. But it wasn’t necessary with this car. Habit kept him at it.

  ‘Only one owner, you know. Schoolmaster in Watford. Looked after it like a baby. His school was just around the corner, so he hardly ever drove it, ’cept once a year he used to take it abroad for a month. Great camper. Used to sleep in the back.’ He was going to add, ‘Probably with a different French tart each night,’ but decided against it. This bloke wasn’t that kind.

  They went up the road towards Hemel Hempstead, then swung away left-handed, George Gilpin giving a direction now and then, and finally hit the common at Chipperfield. George nodded at the pub on the edge of the common and said, ‘Hot morning. Care for a jar? They keep good beer in the Two Brewers.’

  ‘A good idea.’

  Ah, he was all right then. Not too toffee-nosed to drink with the hoi-polloi.

  Mr Smith sat on a bench in the garden of the pub, and George Gilpin went and fetched the beer. He raised his glass to Mr Smith and said, ‘ Well, here’s how.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘What you think of her?’

  ‘It’s quite a reasonable car. But not at four hundred.’ Mr Smith smiled and went on, ‘If I really wanted her I’d give three-twenty or thirty. No more. But I don’t want her.’

  ‘You don’t want her? Then why—’ What had he got here, some screwball, an awkward customer, wasting his time?

  ‘What I really wanted was to have a quiet talk with you—well away from your wife and the garage.’

  ‘Oh. What about?’

  ‘About you.’

  ‘That so?’ He was cautious now. Nobody had anything on him, and his record was clean, and the garage was clean—that was one thing he had determined on from the start. But this bloke suddenly gave him an unquiet feeling: Sitting there, easy in his tweed suit, pulling out a silver cigarette case and lighting up, and in no hurry at all.

  ‘You used to live in Wolverhampton, didn’t you, Mr Gilpin?’

  George Gilpin decided to play it politely until he knew what it was all about. ‘That’s right. I was a bloody good engineer. Still am. What’s your business with me, Mr Smith? Time’s money, you know.’

  Mr Smith nodded agreement, and said, ‘I imagine you remember a firm called Nardon Baines Ltd., in Birmingham. Paint and varnish manufacturers.’

  ‘Name seems familiar. But I didn’t know Brum well.’

  ‘You should do, Mr Gilpin. There was Harris and Leach–Distributors Ltd., and the West Midlands Furnishing Company.’

  A moment of panic struck George Gilpin and he could feel the beer turning sour in his stomach.

  ‘Here, what the hell you getting at?’

  ‘You were a good engineer, Mr Gilpin. Good at anything with your hands, engines, clocks, fuses—and explosives. The three firms I’ve mentioned all went up in smoke over a period of a year. Nardon Baines was the last one. That went wrong. Only three-quarters of it burned. The caretaker and a fireman lost their lives in the blaze, and one of the three devices you made to start fires in three separate places at once failed to work.’

  George Gilpin stood up. If there was fear in him, there was too much else also for him to bother about it. He said, ‘You’re asking for trouble, Mr Bloody Smith. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do know this—so far as I’m concerned I’ll take you back to your car at the garage and after that, if I ever see you again, you can take the consequences. You’re a nut case.’

  Mr Smith shook his head. ‘Sit down and don’t draw attention to yourself. The Birmingham Police still have your little device and also very good records of the fingerprints on it. You were such a good craftsman, Mr Gilpin, you would never believe that anything you made wouldn’t work—so you didn’t wear gloves. I know you haven’t got a record—I wouldn’t be here otherwise—but all I have to do is to give the police an anonymous call and you’d be in trouble. Just you, because the man who hired you and worked with you is dead. Finkel was his name. Herbert Finkel. And you never knew who he worked for. You were just anxious to collect two thousand pounds for the three jobs and come south to start your garage.’

  George Gilpin sat down. He was a practical man. He recognized spilt milk when he saw it and didn’t bother crying over it.

  He said, ‘You’re playing a bloody dangerous game. How much?’

  Mr Smith smiled. ‘I want about two days, maybe a little more, of your time—and I’ll pay you five hundred pounds for it and then forget that you ever existed.’

  ‘You’ll pay me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No thanks. I’d rather pay you. I got a good business, nice wife, plenty of friends. I don’t do any jobs. Fact, I never did any but those three and I think I was crazy to do them ’cept I wanted some cash to start with. I hope Finkel is in hell.’

  ‘You’ll do a job for me, Mr Gilpin. Not a fire-raising job. Something quite simple. And you get five hundred.’

  There was no way out. He knew that. One phone call would bring the police and that would be the end and he didn’t want any bloody ends. There was a lot of years of kick left in him yet and he meant to have them. He said quietly, ‘Well, it looks like you got me, don’t it? What’s the job?’

  ‘Let’s drive back. We can talk in the car.’

  Two hours later George Gilpin and his wife were sitting in the living room of their flat over the garage, a bottle of whisky on th
e table between them. George Gilpin was in his shirt sleeves and had jerked his bow tie free and opened his collar.

  ‘I tell you, old girl—I don’t know anything about the job or him. He’s going to phone me when he’s ready to put me in the flaming picture. All he says is, get a Land-Rover, Army type, paint it khaki green and muck it about a bit.’ He tapped a sheet of paper on the table in front of him. ‘And then he wants all these numbers on it, and them markings. Royal Artillery they are. I’m going back in the bloody army.’

  ‘Oh, no you’re not. You know what you are going to do, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do! I’m not having him on me back for the rest of my natural. First this job and then another. I know his kind. I’m going to do the bugger. He may make me do this job, but he won’t ever make me do another.’

  ‘George—you got to be careful. How you going to do it?’

  ‘Dunno. I got to think. Depends how things are. But I’ll do ’im.’ He drained his whisky glass and pushed it to her to refill.

  She shook her head. ‘You’ve had enough.’

  ‘Maybe. Comes of feelin’ sorry for oneself.’ He got up and went to her, standing behind her. He slipped his hand down the front of her blouse and massaged one of her big, loose breasts. ‘Don’t worry, old girl, Georgie will fix him.’ He bent and kissed the top of her head. ‘Wonderful, ain’t it? Bloke can be right down in the dumps, but one good feel of you and the world’s a good place.’

  That evening, Belle Vickers came back to the flat just after six. Raikes was sitting by the window. He gave her a nod, watching her go into the bedroom to take her outdoor clothes off. The bird’s nest hair do had gone in favour of her old style. After a while she came back to the room and went to the sideboard to get herself a drink.

  ‘Would you like one?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet, thanks. Where’ve you been—Sarling?’

  ‘Yes, I took the files back. I’ve also found a lock-up garage where we can keep the car. It’s got a small loft over it with one of those sort of ladder affairs … you know, that come down from the trapdoor when you pull a rope. I paid six months’ rent in advance under the name of Smith. It’s a turning off the Edgware Road. A bit of a walk.’

  ‘Good. How was Fu Manchu?’

  She looked at him in surprise for a moment, and then laughed. ‘That’s how you see him?’

  ‘Why not? He’s not real, is he? Some green fluid instead of blood in his veins.’

  ‘He wanted to know which man you picked.’

  ‘Did he? Well, I don’t intend to tell him.’

  ‘You mean, you want to protect him just in case he isn’t a man of his word?’

  ‘Could be. Could be just bloodymindedness.’

  ‘Could be both. Though from what I’ve seen of you it’s more likely the last.’

  ‘That’s how you see me?’

  She sat down and sipped her drink. ‘ Now and then. I don’t mind. Suppose I must seem the same sometimes. We’re both hooked—that makes us touchy, difficult.’

  ‘If I asked you how he hooked you, would you tell me?’

  ‘Not now. Sometime I might. What about you—would you ever tell me?’

  ‘No. Anyway, you know enough about me. I was all set to stay where I was—then you came along with a sealed envelope. All that back there in Devon is my real life. This’—he stood up and waved a hand round the room—‘is the nightmare. And it’s a nightmare that will last so long as Sarling and his files are around.’

  ‘And the photostats.’

  ‘Where does he keep those? In the country, at Meon Park?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you ever consider leaving him … just disappearing?’

  ‘I suppose I have. But it wouldn’t work. I gave up thinking about it. Some day he’ll die.’

  ‘Rich people can live for a long time. They’ve got the money to buy time from doctors, servants … places in the sun. For some people, death should be hurried.’

  ‘You’re not … well, sort of serious about that?’

  He turned, standing above her. The glass in her hand was silvered with bubbles coming up from the tonic water; the hand that carried their wedding ring, a broad, dull band of gold. There were times when just the way she spoke, her ‘ supposes’ and ‘ well, sort ofs,’ irritated him, when just the sight of her roused dislike in him. But all this had to be suppressed.

  He needed her.

  He said, ‘You’ll see how serious I am. You think he doesn’t know what kind of man I am? You know he does. He’s even said it to you, hasn’t he?’

  She didn’t answer.

  He put a hand down and took her chin, the grasp firm, turning her face up to him. ‘Hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then—let’s be honest about it. I want him dead. Just that would be easy. But I want those files and those photostats. All of them. I want to see them burn. Killing him without them would be useless.’ He smiled. ‘Do you like your nice cage so much?’

  ‘It isn’t all that bad. Particularly now that he doesn’t come into the cage and muck about with me. You’re not really serious are you, though?’

  ‘About wanting to kill him?’

  ‘No. About thinking that I would … well, sort of help.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you? It’s the obvious thing to do.’

  His surprise was genuine. She could tell that. Suddenly, she had a sense of sheer fright that came from looking at him, seeing him there, tall, hardset, all strength and health, talking of death—no, for God’s sake, murder—as though he were discussing the day’s racing form. Given security about the files and photostats, he would kill. Swat Sarling out like a fly against the windowpane.

  She said alarmed, ‘But it would be murder.’

  ‘You want to stay tied to him until he dies naturally? He’s a bit crazy now. He could get worse. You might find yourself having to do something which could end up by destroying you. Anyway, I wouldn’t be asking you to do much. Just a little information.’

  He went to the sideboard and began to mix himself a drink. She watched him. Everything he said was true. Sarling had changed since she had first known him. God knew she wanted her freedom. But even for that there could be too high a price. That was where she was different from this man. He wanted freedom and he didn’t care how much he paid, or what he did. That came from the self-confidence in him, the hard certainty of his own strength and intelligence. Why, she thought, did I ever put my hand out and take that first tin of talcum powder from Marks and Spencers? A first wrong move, and me blissfully ignorant of where it was all going to lead.

  She said, ‘ What would I have to do?’

  ‘Very little.’ He came over and gently drew the back of his knuckles across the long line of her chin. He was deliberately working on her. She knew that. Deep down, she wanted him to work on her … she had nothing, nobody … only a kind of urge in her, drawing her guts out, to surrender to somebody, somebody who would take her in, wrap themselves about her and give her peace.

  ‘First of all we’d have to be loyal to one another.’ He gave her his warm, fear-chasing smile. ‘Put ourselves in one another’s hands. Seem reasonable?’

  ‘Well … yes.’

  ‘You’ll do it then?’

  ‘I don’t know. What would I have to do … I mean apart from being loyal to you?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be much. It could mean your freedom. Don’t think’—he laughed—‘that I’m going to ask you to poison his milk or stick a knife in him. You wouldn’t know anything about that kind of thing.’

  She stood up suddenly, drink slopping over her glass.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more. What you’re talking about is murder!’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘ Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Let’s forget it. You’d better mop up that stain on your dress.’

  She looked down at the mark the drink had made, and then went into the bedroom, closing the door.

  Nothing c
ame easily, or quickly, he thought. Anything that was too easy had to be suspect. But she would come his way. The outburst marked a stage. She had to have time to get used to the idea of murder. She’d come round, she’d help him, and Sarling would be murdered … and after Sarling, she would have to go. Back in Devon, Alverton and Mary were waiting for him. His country, his birthright, his woman, waiting to have his children sired on her … his destiny, marked out more surely in his mind than anything else. Only Sarling stood in his way.

  Chapter Four

  He left early the next morning to drive to Brighton. Aubrey Catwell, No. 3, Princess Terrace. He would never be able to think of him as anything but Berners. He remembered their first meeting. He had been sitting in the American bar at the Dorchester one evening, having just wound up one of his fake property option deals, when Berners had come over to him. Fifteen years ago, Berners much younger then, with only the shadow of that crescent of baldness beginning to eat into his fair hair. Without any introduction, with only the hint of a shy apologetic smile, Berners had said right out of the blue, ‘I should guess you’re the kind of man who could put his hand on two or three thousand pounds.’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘If you were prepared to pay me ten per cent I could show you how to make a fifty per cent profit on three thousand within the next two weeks.’

  ‘If you could show me, I might be interested.’ Already he’d marked Berners down as a confidence trickster, some gentle, hesitant shark cruising through the rich waters of the Dorchester.

  Berners knew a company, importers and exporters of chemicals, offices in the City, whose shares stood at thirty shillings. Within the week a take-over bid would be made and the company, since the directors held the majority of the shares and wanted to be taken over, would accept the bid, which would be made at forty-five shillings a share. All Raikes had to do was to buy now and sell when the shares moved up on the announcement of the bid.

  Afterwards Raikes realized that Berners had been with him less than ten minutes, given him finally the name of the company and had gone, saying, ‘If you do it I’ll be here in two weeks’ time. This day, this time. If you’re not here, of course …’ It was the first time he’d seen that vague, amorphous smile and the gentle, hesitant movement of shoulders and hands expressing resignation. No names had been exchanged. Berners had picked him, trusted him, and had gone. Later he was to know how shrewd a judge of men Berners was. He could sum up their qualities in exact percentages, accepting or rejecting them with the detachment of a computer.