The End Game (11 page)

“Carlo, get up at once,” said the girl. “This is—”

“David,” said David.

“He rescued me from a very embarrassing situation.”

“Caused by my atrocious, my criminal forgetfulness.”

He jumped to his feet and pumped David energetically by the hand.

In ten minutes David had found out all about them. The girl was Clarissa Hope-Masters. He remembered the name. It was something to do with merchant banking. He guessed that it was her money that was supporting the household whilst Carlo made his way. Carlo showed him some of his work. He knew too little about architecture to do more than make appreciative noises. They had a drink and then another one. It was nearly midnight when David said goodbye. They seemed genuinely sorry to see him go.

When he was leaving, Clarissa said. “If ever you’re in difficulties about somewhere to stay, we’ve got a spare bedroom. Our telephone number isn’t in the book yet. I’ve written it down for you.” Carlo seconded the invitation. They sounded as though they meant it.

As David walked home through the streets, empty of pedestrians but still plagued by the unwearying, unceasing motor traffic, he was thinking about his hosts. He had known a number of Anglo-Italian marriages, some successful, some not. He had liked both the young people and wished them well.

When he reached the pensione, the entrance hall was deserted and the night porter was not at the reception desk. Also, the key of his room was missing from its hook.

His room was on the third floor. There was a lift, but David decided to use the stairs. From the point where they emerged on the third-floor landing he could see the door of his room. There was a strip of light showing under the door. He stood at the head of the stairway and thought about it. He could not believe that Collings had succeeded in disentangling himself from the situation at the Toscanella and got back to the hotel by midnight. He remembered turning the light out before they had left. It was not the sort of hotel where maids came in and turned down beds.

He heard the click of the handle and saw the bedroom door opening. He took a step back to the stairhead.

He had a clear view of the two men who came out. They turned out the light, closed the door and locked it. Their movements were unhurried. The taller of the men had a long, sad face topped by a bush of hair and a chin so deeply cleft that it might have been cut by a sword. The second man was smaller and rounder and had square, executive-type glasses. Both wore dark suits and might have passed in the street for businessmen; but not in that deserted corridor, and not at that hour of the night.

After a moment’s hesitation, which brought David’s heart into his mouth, the men turned to the left and made for the lift. He stayed where he was, listening to the whine of the lift going down, the clang of the gate opening, footsteps on the tessellated pavement of the hall and the sound of the front door shutting. Only then did he make his way down the stairs. His room key was back on its hook, but there was still no sign of the night porter.

David studied the row of hooks. Most of those for the first and second floors were empty of their keys. These would be the rooms of the Rayhome contingent, energetic sightseers and early bedders. A few of the third-floor keys were on their hooks. David’s room was 317. The next two rooms, 318 and 319, were, he thought, empty. He pocketed his own key and key 318 and was turning to go, when a door behind the reception desk opened and the night porter appeared.

“I thought I heard someone,” he said.

“You were right,” said David. “It was me, but it might have been a thief.”

“We are not much troubled with thieves.”

“No? Did you see the two men who went out just now?”

The porter blinked his red-rimmed eyes and seemed to be debating the question. Then he said, “No, sir. What men? I saw no one.”

“One tall, one short and stout with glasses.”

“They would be visitors to the hotel, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” said David. “Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

When he got back to the third floor, David went along to room 318 and opened the door cautiously. The bed had been stripped down, and the room was plainly unoccupied. There was a key in the corner cupboard. David extracted it and returned to his own room. As he had hoped, the key from 318 worked equally well in his own corner cupboard. He took out the black bag, unlocked it and tipped out the contents on to the bed.

“Now, friend of my travels,” he said, “let us see how well Italian food suits you.” He got out the fisherman’s scale, put the hook round the handle of the bag and held the dial up to the light. “A diet of spaghetti and pasta is said to be fattening. And Jesus, so it has been! You have gained more than a kilo since I weighed you last. My goodness, you will have to watch your waistline!”

He put away the scale, took out his ruler and made some careful measurements.

The right side of the bag was the interesting one. He pressed it gently and listened.

“So! Now what is the way in? It can only be by the top.”

The lips of the bag were formed by thick strips of steel. The strip on the left held the bag’s locking apparatus. The one on the right, the slot into which the tongue of the lock fitted. It did not take him long to discover the catch which controlled the right-hand strip and enabled it to slide. Inside the cavity formed by the outer and inner walls of the bag were six flat cellophane envelopes. David opened one of them, tipped a few of the tiny crystals on to the palm of his hand and touched them with the tip of his tongue. Then he tipped the grains equally carefully back into the bag, resealed the envelope, replaced it, closed the cavity, relocked the bag and put it back in the corner cupboard, being careful to position it exactly as he had found it.

When he had relocked the cupboard, he returned the key to room 318, relocked that door and, after considering the matter carefully, left the key in the lock. He hoped that anyone finding it there would assume that the last person using the room had left it there by mistake.

Then he went back to his own room, undressed, put on his pyjamas and opened the window. Collings had not encouraged this practice, not being a believer in fresh air, but Collings would be sleeping somewhere else that night.

He leaned on the windowsill and looked out. The sky was full of stars. He could hear the traffic on the Lungarno, far enough away to be a soothing background to his thoughts.

A number of things were becoming clearer.

Small wonder that the Chevertons had not worried about the profit on their coach tours. Two pounds of pure, high-grade heroin would net them twelve thousand pounds. The retailers, at curb-side prices, would make twice as much. Pull that off once a month, and you were doing all right. There was little risk. Rayhome Tours were a well-known and respected outfit. Their coaches had been crossing to the Continent for years, coming back crowded with happy, middle-class passengers clasping souvenirs from France and Italy. And suppose they had been searched. First, the searchers would have had to be clever enough to find the carefully concealed pocket in the courier’s bag.
And if they had found it?

David was suddenly conscious of a cold feeling. He had just grasped the meaning of the transaction with Egbert Smiles. He had himself signed an order for a “special” bag. He had paid for it himself in cash. The receipt had gone back to the Chevertons. There was not a scrap of evidence that David had not ordered the bag with the hidden pocket to indulge in a little private smuggling on his own. Smiles was working with the Chevertons and was no doubt handsomely paid to keep his mouth shut.

“Sod the lot of them,” said David. He got into bed and lay awake for some time, thinking. One thing was clear. They did not mean him to be caught, and it was very unlikely he would be caught. With that comforting thought he went to sleep.

Collings arrived back after breakfast the next morning. David was in the front hall when he was driven up in a smart car. The chauffeur was a tall man with a bush of hair and a deeply cleft chin. The man sitting at the back with Collings wore square executive glasses. Collings had a small bruise on the left side of his chin, and his hair was combed forward, possibly to hide a cut on his forehead. Otherwise he looked his normal surly self.

He said to David, “You made yourself scarce, I noticed.”

“No point in both of us getting involved. What happened to you?”

“The caribs picked me up.”

“And let you go?”

“I’ve got friends. They fixed it.”

“Friends are always useful,” said David.

The next day the party left for England. There was no trouble at the French customs and none at Dover. The coach rolled sedately home through the fields of Kent. The arrangement was that the passengers were dropped at various points in London, and by the time they drew up at the Rayhome office it was nearly dark and David and Collings were alone in the coach.

The normal routine was observed. Collings took charge of the leather bag and disappeared with it into the Chevertons’ office. David parked himself in the small room at the end of the passage and waited.

It was ten minutes before Bob Cheverton appeared. He was smiling. He said, “That seems to have been a successful trip. We’ve already had one pair on the blower, telling us how much they enjoyed it. We’re adding a small bonus to your pay.” He pushed across an envelope.

“Well, ta very much,” said David. “I enjoyed it myself.”

When he counted the money later that evening, he found that the small bonus was fifty pounds.

When Susan arrived at the office of Sayborn Art Printers at nine o’clock on the Monday after her Salisbury visit, it seemed to her that there was an unusual air of activity in the place. Martin Brandreth, who was not normally on view until ten o’clock, had evidently arrived early for once, and she could hear his voice from the inner office. He was delivering a harangue.

Presently the door opened, and the red-haired Simon appeared. His face was whiter than usual, and he seemed to be walking in his sleep. The bell on Susan’s desk rang, and she picked up her shorthand notebook and went in.

Brandreth was standing with his back to the window, looking pleased with himself. He said, “Apparently we shan’t be having any more trouble with young Mr Simon Wales. Which is a good thing, because we shall be working against time for the next few weeks. I spent most of Sunday with Blackett. It appears that Merry and Merry have been getting their skates on. It’s going to be a close finish. They’re planning to put forward the opening of the Peppo campaign by four days, which gives us four days less to produce the goods.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage it,” said Susan.

“We shall have to reorganise the whole of the printing schedule. I’ve called a meeting of the department heads for eleven o’clock. We’ll draw up a co-ordinated programme for each of the machines. It’ll mean overtime working, and we shall have to agree on special rates for that. I’ll have a word with Lambie as soon as we’ve got the outline arrangements sorted out. Ready?”

He started dictating. Susan admired the clarity of his thoughts and the precision of his language. No doubt this was what working under Blackett’s whip did for you.

It was a busy morning. At half past one the pace slackened sufficiently for her to be able to think about getting something to eat.

The normal lunch break was at one o’clock. She was surprised to find one of the girls still at her desk in the outer office. As Susan appeared she got up and said, hesitantly, “If you’re going out to lunch, would you mind very much if I came with you?”

“Of course not,” said Susan. The girl was called Eileen, and she knew her vaguely. She had once caught her reading Lyne on economic fallacies, and suspected her of going to night classes.

They fought their way into an overcrowded restaurant in the High Street and were lucky enough to find two stools round the far end of the lunch counter, where their nearest neighbour was a stout man who was ingesting oxtail soup into a cavity under a walrus moustache.

Under cover of the noise he was making, Eileen said, “I didn’t know who to talk to about it, but I had to talk to someone.”

“Try me,” said Susan agreeably.

“It’s about Simon. We’re—well, we’re not exactly. But you know what I mean.”

“An unofficial arrangement.”

“That’s right. Well, it was what happened on Saturday. He was going to the dogs.” Eileen smiled and suddenly looked less intellectual but a lot more attractive. “I mean the races. The afternoon programme at Dagenham. I don’t really care for that sort of thing, so we arranged we’d meet at my place for a concert we were going to that evening. He didn’t turn up. He’s usually very conscientious about things like that. I telephoned his house. He lives with his mother. He hadn’t come home. She was terribly worried, and we wondered if we ought to tell the police, only it sounded so silly. Well, anyway, we thought we’d wait. I telephoned about an hour later, and his mother said, yes, he’d come home, but wasn’t at all well. He was in bed. So I said, fine, I’m glad he’s back. I’ll look him up tomorrow. She didn’t seem keen on the idea at all. She said, leave him till Monday. So I said, all right, I’d do that. And this morning—well you saw him. He’s not himself at all. But when I asked him about it, he said I wasn’t to ask questions. Just like that. Don’t ask questions. He needs help. I’m sure of it. But I can’t help him unless I can find out what it’s all about. I wondered if you—it’s a lot to ask, I know.”

Susan said, “All I really know—and that’s no secret—is that he was refusing to operate his machine without an assistant and now he’s changed his mind, much to Mr Brandreth’s relief.”

“But what
made
him change his mind? Something happened to him on Saturday afternoon. I’m sure of it.”

“Dog tracks are rough places. Suppose he got involved in some sort of trouble. He looked to me as if he might be suffering from delayed shock.”

“Is that something he ought to see a doctor about?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Time’s the best cure. Look, why don’t you give him a day or two, and he’ll probably be himself again.”