Game Without Rules (10 page)

“This looks like the one,” he said. “Do you know exactly what it is we’re looking for?”

“We’re looking for a name,” said Sand-Douglas. “A name out of the past. And I do believe—” he wiped a hand across to clear the sweat out of his eyes “—yes, that’s it. I’ll have to use your telephone. I think we’ll risk an open line this time.”

Professor Gottlieb looked round the table. There were four men there. Commander Elfe of the Special Branch he knew; and he had met Mr. Fortescue once, and was aware that he was connected with security. The other two were a thickset man whom they called Mr. Calder, and Mr. Behrens.

“I don’t think,” said the professor, “that they could do anything more horrible than they did this morning. It was a mistake. Since there is nothing worse they can do, I have no motive not to speak. When I came to this country in 1940, I brought with me a secret of which I was bitterly ashamed. I am not a man of action. I could never have arranged my own escape from Prague. I should not have known how to start. It was arranged for me. When I told my story to your interrogators, I said that it was arranged by the Czech underground. That was a lie. It was arranged by the Germans. They bartered my escape with me for some information I was able to give them. I didn’t know why they wanted it – that’s no excuse. It led to the execution of two of my colleagues in Prague University. I thought, for a long time, the secret had died with them. I still have no idea how anyone could have found out.”

“The man who interrogated you,” said Mr. Fortescue, “also dealt with other compatriots of yours. He heard a rumour from them, and was able to verify it after the war from German sources. But please go on.”

“There is no more. Seven years ago, when I began to be well known here, and well paid, the blackmail started. For seven years I have paid away about a third of all my income. Lately the demands were increased. I dug in my toes. Different forms of pressure were applied. I could do nothing to stop them. I was afraid that if I complained the whole truth would come out. I see now that I have been stupid. I should have spoken at once. But it is difficult to see these things when you are on your own.”

“Have you any idea at all who the blackmailers were?” asked Commander Elfe.

“None at all. I never saw them, or spoke to them except on the telephone. I drew the money every month in notes and sent it to what I imagine was an accommodation address.”

He paused, and looked round the table at the four men. Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens were looking impassive. The burly Commander Elfe had a scowl on his face. Mr. Fortescue was looking out of the window. He had a cold and clinical glint in his eye. It reminded Professor Gottlieb of a surgeon he had once watched, weighing up the chances of a delicate and critical operation.

“And that’s really all I can tell you,” he said. “Do you think there is any chance of catching these men?”

Mr. Fortescue swivelled his head round so that he was looking directly at the professor.

He said, “Oh, yes. We have found out who these men are, and where they operate from. It would be comparatively simple to render them harmless. But if we are actually to catch and convict them, we shall need a lot of luck – and your help. . .”

“I am glad that my worst suspicions were wrong,” said the Prime Minister, “and I apologise for them.”

He had invited Ian Maver, the head of DI5, to dinner and they were sitting together over their brandy.

“Not so far wrong,” said Maver. The apology and the brandy were working on him. “Most of them are either ex-MI5 or ex-policemen. The leader is a man called Cotter. I knew him quite well. A guardsman. A very able officer, an excellent linguist and a good organiser. A bit ruthless for peace-time operations. He left us in the mid-fifties. I think he was disappointed over promotion. Then he set up this private inquiry organisation, Cotter’s Detectives. We’ve been using him quite a bit lately ourselves. Guarding VIPs and that sort of thing.”

“And it was his men who were put in charge of Nicholson?”

“That wasn’t very clever,” said Maver, “but if they keep us short of policemen it’s bound to happen. Businesses use private gunmen to look after their payrolls now. Private watchmen patrol building estates. Private guards for VIPs? It was a logical step.”

“How did you find out about him?”

“We went right back to the record of Gottlieb’s first interrogation. Cotter was the man who conducted it. We got a cross-reference when we found out that Cotter and one of his men, Lawrie, had been the two ‘referees’ given by Smythe when he got his job in our Records Department. That was a bad slip, and it was entirely my fault.”

The Prime Minister was aware that the head of DI5 was offering him his resignation if he chose to take it. He rejected the offering. His opinion of Ian Maver had changed in the course of the evening.

He said, “Everyone’s allowed one mistake. Even in politics. What are you doing about Smythe?”

“For the moment, we’re leaving him where he is. He happens to form rather a useful channel of communication. One of his jobs is to monitor the Records room. If we want to get a piece of information across to Cotter, without appearing to do so, all that’s necessary is a little calculated indiscretion between two of our men when searching the files.”

“Do I gather from that,” said the Prime Minister, “that some definite action is contemplated?”

“Mr. Fortescue has the matter in hand,” said Maver.

“It’s not going to be at all easy,” said Mr. Fortescue, “but we have three points in our favour.”

He ticked them off with one finger of his right hand.

“First, they have no reason at all to think that we suspect them. And of course they must continue in this happy state of ignorance. Secondly, we can, if we are careful, leak information to them through Smythe. Third, and most important, I think they are bound to react to Professor Gottlieb. Like all bullies, if one of their victims rebels and they do nothing about it, other victims will follow suit. I am arranging for Professor Gottlieb to show fight.”

“They might go for his daughter,” said Elfe.

“I had thought of that myself,” said Mr. Fortescue, and Elfe looked up sharply.

“Do I understand that you’re going to use the girl as bait?”

“It seems to me the simplest of a number of possible methods,” said Mr. Fortescue. “We’ll keep the professor in town, and put such a ring fence of guards round him that they can’t touch him. As a preliminary precaution, the girl will be sent into the country. Not too far. I had in mind the Thetford area in Norfolk. The army used it at a battle school during the war, and parts of it are still quite deserted.”

“And you’re going to let them know she’s there?”

“It will come to their ears in about a week’s time.”

“I don’t like it,” said Elfe. “It’s too risky.”

“Any plan will be risky,” said Mr. Fortescue. “This plan will, I think, have less risk than most. I always prefer to play a match on ground of my own choosing.”

“Who are you going to send with her? Calder – or Behrens?”

“If I sent either of them, it would be stupid of Cotter to go near her and Cotter is not a stupid man. No. I had in mind that Nicholson’s secretary, young Redmayne, would be the man for the job. They know each other and are, I believe, good friends. They’ll be suitably chaperoned, of course.”

Harwood Farm lay at the end of a mile of lane. It was a pleasant, rambling, yellow-brick building with two vast barns. It had been empty for some months, since the last tenant-farmer had moved out. Its fields were now farmed by a man who came over occasionally from Tunstock.

One of the pleasantest features of their stay, thought Richard Redmayne, had been the efforts they had made to bring the place back to life. For a fortnight, he and Paula and the dour Mrs. Mason had washed and scrubbed and scoured and sandpapered and painted. Paula had revealed several unexpected skills. First she had dismantled and cleaned the engine and dynamo which supplied them with electricity. Then, with the aid of a car-load of technical stores from Norwich, she had stepped up the output, so that bulbs which had previously shone dimly now glowed as brightly as though they were on mains.

“My father taught me not to be afraid of electricity,” she said. “It’s just like water. You see water coming out of a tap. A nice steady flow. Halve the outlet, and you double the power. Like this.” She was holding a length of hosepipe in her hand, swilling down the choked gutters in the yard. As she pinched the end of the hose, a thin jet of water hissed out.

“All right,” said Richard, ducking. “You needn’t demonstrate it. I understand the principle. I didn’t know it applied to electricity, that’s all.”

“Tomorrow,” said Paula, “I’m going to get Mrs. Mason to stoke up the boiler, and I’m going to run a hose into the big barn. I’ll use a proper stopcock, and we’ll build up the pressure. Then you’ll see what steam can do. Did you know that if you got a fine enough jet and sufficient pressure you could cut metal with steam?”

“For goodness’ sake, don’t try it,” said Richard. “We shall blow ourselves up.”

“You’re a coward,” said Paula. “By the way, did you see the
Times
this morning? It’s got something about Daddy in it.”

It was a paragraph on the Home News page. It said that Professor Gottlieb was confident of finishing his final revision of the White Paper on Planning before the end of the month. The professor had held a news conference, in which he had said that certain minor technical difficulties which had been holding him up had been satisfactorily disposed of.

“He’s trailing his coat,” said Paula.

“What do you mean?”

“You must think me an idiot if you imagine I don’t know what’s going on. He’s provoking those people to attack him, isn’t he? And that’s why I’ve been stowed away here, to be out of harm’s way.”

“Well—” said Richard.

“And you’re my guard. There’s no need to apologise. I’m enjoying it – when I stop worrying about Daddy.”

“He’ll be well looked after,” said Richard.

Better looked after, he couldn’t help thinking, than Paula herself. He recalled the single afternoon of instruction he had been given – on the range in Wellington Barracks – with the automatic pistol which he now carried tucked under his left armpit by day and placed under his pillow each night. It was comforting to have a gun, but he was still far from certain that he could hit anything with it. Mrs. Mason, he knew, was connected with Fortescue’s organisation, but if real trouble developed. . .

“What are
you
looking so serious about?” said Paula.

“Nothing,” said Richard. “I was working out what we had to do to the bam now that we’ve got the house in order.”

Visitors to the farm were few but regular, and already their visits had fallen into a pattern. The grocer from East Harling delivered on Tuesday and Friday. The fishmonger and butcher came out from Diss on Thursday. Twice every day the little red post van came bowling down the lane with letters and newspapers. And on Friday the dust-cart arrived to carry away the week’s rubbish.

Mrs. Mason, doubtless acting on orders, allowed none of them near the house but went out to the gate to collect their offerings herself. To Richard they were blurred faces seen behind a windshield, except for the rubbish collectors, whose names were Ernest and Leonard and with whom he had exchanged local gossip.

The postman was a plump, cheerful man. He operated from Diss, and had taken over the round which included Harwood Farm on the day before Richard and Paula arrived. He lodged in a back street and, although apparently a temporary, carried out his work in an efficient manner.

Indeed, so conscientious was he that in the evenings, after his rounds were completed, he would often take the van and tour the district, memorising roads and lanes, houses and farms, and the position of telephone kiosks and AA boxes.

That Thursday night, when he returned to his lodging, he found a postcard propped up on the mantelpiece. The front showed a stout lady in a bathing dress, whose toe was being eaten by a crab. On the back was written: ‘Uncle Tom and the three boys planning to start for country tomorrow.’ It was signed ‘Edna,’ and the name was underlined three times.

“Three-line whip,” said the postman to himself. He went across to the cupboard and took out a violin case. But what he took out of it was certainly not a violin. . .

Friday was a perfect day. The sun rose through a cloak of early morning mist, scattered it and sailed in majesty across the heavens. Life at Harwood Farm pursued its unexciting course. The grocer came with groceries, and the postman on his morning round stopped for a gossip with Mrs. Mason. He seemed to do most of the talking. Mrs. Mason contented herself with nodding. She was a woman of few words. Her only relaxation was the
Times
cross-word puzzle which she regularly finished in the kitchen when they had given it up in the drawing room. In the afternoon Paula rigged her steam hose, a fearsome contraption of plastic pipe and chromium fitting, and cleaned out the cow stalls at the end of the barn. The thin scalding jet stripped the filth of ages from the floors and wooden walls with the speed of a rotary plane.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon when the dust-cart drove up. The driver reversed the lumbering vehicle in the space in front of the gate. He did it clumsily, crashing his gears, as if he was unused to driving it. Three men got out of the back. They walked quickly through the yard, ignoring the two dustbins, and pushed into the kitchen.

Mrs. Mason jumped up, saw the gun in the hand of the leading man and said, calmly, “What do you want?”

“Take it easy,” said the man, “and you won’t get hurt.”

As he said this the second man walked round behind her and smacked her across the back of the neck with a leather-covered cosh. The third man caught her as she fell forward.

“Put her in that cupboard,” said the leader. “There’s a bolt on the outside.”

Mr. Calder, turning the post van in at the top of the lane, saw signs of the ambush. The surface of the road was broken where the heavy dust-cart had lurched to a halt, and the hedge was broken too. Mr. Calder jumped out to investigate, and found Ernest and Leonard in the ditch, their elbows and ankles strapped and their heads in paper dust sacks. He undid them and they sat up, swearing. Mr. Calder cut them short.