Play to the End (30 page)

At Seven Dials, I took a squint at the timetable displayed on one of the bus stops, according to which there was an 11.50 service to the Old Steine. Cold, footsore and limping on account of my strained thigh, I decided to wait there.

Fishing in my pocket for the pound fare, I winced as something sharp pricked my finger. I pulled out the offending article: Derek Oswin's Captain Haddock brooch. I'd jabbed myself with the pin.

I stared at the enamel face of the cartoon captain in the amber light of the nearby street lamp. I'd forgotten till then that I'd picked it up from the doormat at 77 Viaduct Road on Wednesday night. I must have dropped it into my pocket without thinking.

Another memory floated back to me then, of Derek confiding in me that he'd nicknamed Wickhurst Manor Marlinspike Hall. He'd made a point of telling me that though Tintin lived at Marlinspike in Herge's books, Captain Haddock was the owner of the house. And there was some kind of coincidental connection with Roger Colborn's ownership of Wickhurst Manor. I couldn't remember exactly what it was couldn't be sure Derek had even told me but he'd certainly mentioned one. Emphasized its existence, indeed.

I imagined the scene as Derek was dragged down the stairs and out through the door of number 77, presumably by Sobotka. How had the Haddock brooch ended up on the floor? Had it simply been ripped off as they passed? Or had Derek deliberately torn it from his coat .. . and dropped it there ... in the hope that I would find it? Was Captain Haddock his typically bizarre choice of messenger to me?

The idea was absurd, yet irresistible. I was clutching at a straw.

But, as a drowning man, what else was I to do? I had Derek's keys. I could go to Viaduct Road easily enough and check whether there really was something I'd missed, some clue Derek had contrived to point me towards that would unlock the mystery. Besides, no-one would guess I'd gone there. As a hiding-place, it would take some beating. And, arguably, I did need a hiding-place.

I left the bus stop and headed north-east from Seven Dials, downhill towards Preston Circus and .. . Derek Oswin's home.

Nothing had changed at 77 Viaduct Road, except for the arrival of an electricity bill. I moved it off the doormat and pinned the Haddock brooch back onto Derek's abandoned duffel-coat, covering the tear. Then I went into the kitchen, hoping against hope that I might find something alcoholic to drink. I certainly needed something a lot stronger than cocoa.

A search of the cupboards turned up a half-empty bottle of sweet sherry. Valerie Oswin's tipple, perhaps. Or maybe Derek was a trifle addict. But I couldn't afford to be choosy. I poured some into a tumbler and took it with me into the sitting room.

The Secret of the Unicorn was the book in which his heroes finally moved to Marlinspike Hall. I dug it out of the slew of Tintin books on the floor and sat down to look at it. The blurb on the back referred to a sequel, Red Rackham's Treasure. I dug that one out as well.

The Tintin characters were vaguely familiar to me, but the stories hadn't left the faintest trace in my memory, though I'd read a good few in my childhood. I began to flick through The Secret of the Unicorn, gleaning the plot that underpinned the visual game-playing as I went.

It didn't take long. Soon, I was able to move on to Red Rackham's Treasure. The story, as the titles imply, amounts to a treasure hunt, at the end of which

Tintin and Captain Haddock are able to move from their humble lodgings to Haddock's ancestral home, Marlinspike Hall. A voyage to the Caribbean in search of the buried riches of the pirate Red Rackham draws a blank and Haddock is actually only able to buy Marlinspike thanks to some money his friend Professor Calculus comes into by selling a valuable patent. Not until after taking possession of the house do Tintin and Haddock finally discover the treasure, hidden in a marble globe in the cellars.

I sat back and took several sips of sherry, though, like Haddock, I'd much have preferred whisky. A sense of futility, and, worse, stupidity, swept over me. What in the name of reason and sanity was I doing poring over Derek Oswin's childhood reading matter while my life was unravelling around me? Poor Olga had probably already had her cheek slashed to bolster the case against me, while Leo had doubtless decided to sack me from the production of Lodger in the Throat and never employ me again. I was staring scandal and disgrace none too steadily in the face. Maybe I should have taken Colborn's offer when it was on the table. I didn't like to think what had happened to Derek because of my refusal. I liked even less to think what was going to happen to me.

The worst was that there was nothing I could do to prevent it. The idea that the Haddock brooch was some kind of message from Derek had been born of sheer bloody desperation. There was no message, no clue, no key, no hope, no globe waiting to spring open to my touch, revealing

"Bugger me," I said aloud, sitting suddenly upright. "The globe."

It stood on the desk in Derek's bedroom, in front of the window: a one-foot-diameter mounted globe, presumably given to him by his parents during his schooldays. Certainly the USSR hadn't yet dissolved into its constituent republics in this representation. I revolved the globe slowly, wondering whether I really was on to something, or had just been suckered by meaningless coincidence.

The Oswins hadn't stinted their son. That was clear. The globe was an illuminated version. I noticed the wire trailing down to the plug behind the desk. I stooped to the socket and switched it on, but nothing happened. Then I spotted the rocker switch on the wire itself and tried that. Still nothing. The bulb inside the globe must have blown. Derek hadn't bothered to replace it.

But that, I knew, wasn't Derek's style. He bothered. He would have replaced it. Unless, of course, it hadn't blown. Unless, that is, he'd removed it. For a reason. For a very good reason. Red Rackham's treasure had been hidden inside a globe.

I picked the globe up and shook it gently. Something inside was sliding to and fro. I noticed a catch of some kind on the spindle at the north pole. I prised at it, releasing a pin inside the spindle and allowing the globe to be lifted off its base. As I manoeuvred the globe out of its sickle-shaped mount, something fell through the hole at the south pole and landed on the desk.

It was a microcassette, identical to those I've been using. But on this one there was a small paper label stuck to the front, with a date written on it in spidery ballpoint: 7/10/95. Whatever was on the tape had been recorded a month or so before the death of Sir Walter Colborn in the autumn of 1995.

Where there was a cassette, there had to be a machine to play it on.

That stood to reason. I checked the drawers of the desk. And there it was, at the back of the bottom drawer: a machine somewhat larger and probably a good few years older than the one I'd left at the Sea Air, but doubtless still working. The take-up spindle whizzed into action when I pressed the play button. There was plenty of charge left in the batteries.

I loaded the cassette, stood the machine on the bedside cabinet and sat down on the bed. Then I pressed the play button again.

There were two voices: a man and woman talking to each other. The man sounded old, gruff and querulous, the woman younger, softer-toned, more distant. At first, I couldn't tell who they were. Then, as their identities became apparent, ignorance turned to disbelief. These two people couldn't be conversing in October 1995. It just wasn't possible, and yet they were. I could hear them. I could hear every word.

Man: Ann?

Woman: Yes?

Man: Is that really you, Ann?

Ann: Yes, Walter. It's really me.

Walter: It doesn't.. . sound like you.

Ann: I'm speaking through another. Besides, it's been a long time for me as well as you. Well, not time exactly. But long. Yes, it's been that. And I've changed. I'm Ann.

But not the Ann you remember. Not quite. Although, of course .. .

Walter: What? Ann: I never was. Not really. Not the Ann you chose to believe

I was. You know that, if you're honest with yourself. As I hope you are. As I hope .. . contacting me like this .. .

proves you are.

Walter: How can I be sure it's you? Ann (chuckling): Still one for certainty, aren't you, Walter?

Plain and unvarnished facts. You can live by them. But you can't die by them. Walter: I just want.. . to be absolutely Ann: I remember the look on your face when you came into my room at the maternity hospital and saw Roger bundled up in my arms. I remember it exactly. Do you?

Walter (after a pause): Yes. Of course. Ann: What do you want of me, Walter? Walter (after another pause): The truth, I... suppose. Ann: The truth? Walter: Yes.

Ann: But you already know it. Walter: No. I don't.

Ann: You mean you don't wish to.

Walter: You left no note. No .. . explanation.

Ann: A note would have become .. . public property. Studied by the coroner. Entered on the record. Would you really have preferred that?

Walter: All these years, I've wondered. Ann: What have you wondered?

Walter: Why? Ann: I couldn't stand the pretence any longer, Walter.

It's as simple as that. It became ... unendurable. It didn't have to be. You made it so. Walter: Me? Ann: It doesn't matter. I forgive you. I forgave you even as I

drove the car over the edge. It wasn't all your fault. I was partly to blame. You could say I started it. Yes, you could, Walter. In fact, why don't you? Why don't you call me some of the names you used to, when you were drunk and . burning with the shame of it? Walter: I didn 't really mean .. . any of that. Ann: Yes, you did. I don't blame you. It was a hard blow for a proud man to bear.

And you've always been .. . so very proud.

Walter: Not any more. Ann: When did you change? Walter: It started ..

. when you left. And lately, as I've grown older .. .

Ann: You've thought about death. Walter: Yes. Ann: Face it with a clear conscience, Walter. I advise you, I

implore you, free yourself of guilt. I ran away from my guilt. Don't make the same mistake. Walter: You didn't have so very much to feel guilty about,

Ann. Ann: Oh, but I did. I helped make you an un kinder man than you might have been. Walter (after a bitter laugh): Roger's taken after me in so many ways. There's irony for you. You made him .. . a likeness of me. You have no idea how unkind we've both been. A lot of people

.. . have suffered. Ann: I'm here for you only, Walter. It's impossible to explain.

I feel nothing. But I understand everything. Whatever wrongs you've done, it's not too late to put them right. Walter: I'm afraid it is.

In most cases, far too late. Ann: But not in all cases? Walter: No.

Not all. Ann: Then attend to those. Without delay. Walter: Like you always urged me to? Ann: You weren't listening then. Walter: I'm listening now. Ann: I loved you once. But you drove love out. And all the ills of my life and yours rushed in to take its place. Walter: What am I to do?

Ann: Love again. That's all. Make peace with the world. Walter: I'll try. I truly will. But .. . there's something else.

Roger. Oh God. (A cough.) Did you tell him, Ann? Did you .. . before you .. . ? Does he know? We've never spoken of it, he and I. And I've always wondered .. .

whether he might have guessed, or ... I just need to be certain, Ann?

Ann (in a whisper): He knows.

The recording ended there, with the last word cut off so abruptly that it was easy to believe there was more to be heard in some other, fuller version of this strangest of exchanges. Sir Walter Colborn, talking to his dead wife, barely a month before his own death. It had to be a seance of some kind. Sir Walter had said Ann didn't sound like herself. That was because she'd spoken through a medium. He'd gone to someone who could call up her ghost, her spirit, her .. . whatever he believed it was. I'd have said Sir Walter Colborn was the last person to fall for that sort of thing. But what would I really know about him? Or about his relationship with Ann? Or about Ann herself, come to that?

I listened to the recording again. If the medium was a charlatan, as I had every spiritualist down as, she was a smart one, no question. Sir Walter was convinced he was talking to Ann for the first time in thirteen years. You could hear the certainty of that growing in his voice. The reference to something no-one but she would be able to remember clinched it for him. And it lured him into discussion of some secret they'd long shared, about .. . Roger. "Did you tell him, Ann?

Does he know?" Yes. Ultimately, he had her word for that. And so did I. "He knows."

But what does he know? What is it that he and his father never spoke of, but both knew, without knowing that the other knew? And did anyone else know? Was anyone else in on the secret?

"What about you, Derek?" I said aloud. "Is this what you've been getting at all along?"

I lay down across the bed, my head resting against the wall, and stared up at the shadow-vaulted ceiling. A dog was barking somewhere not far off, the sound echoing in some backyard similar to the ones I'd see if I opened the window and looked out. Then a police or ambulance siren challenged the noise and swamped it as it drew closer.

I sat up, suddenly and irrationally certain that they were coming for me. But no. They were taking some other route, bound for some other destination. The wail of the siren receded. The dog continued to bark. I was safe here, for the moment. But that was all. For the moment. The rest of tonight. Part of tomorrow. That was as much of a chance as I could carve out for myself of bringing Roger Colborn's world tumbling down around him. And the tape, hidden by Derek Oswin in a place where just about nobody except me -might find it, was my only hope of doing so.