Child's Play (11 page)

'Negotiations have been opened,' he said. 'They are a matched pair when it comes to bargaining, Windibanks and Huby. I'm only glad they're not working in concert. Still, I don't doubt we will reach an accord. Which leaves only one question to be considered by the learned judge hearing our suit. Is there any mathematically significant possibility of Mrs Huby's son turning up to claim his inheritance? That's what I'm here to ask you, Mr Thackeray. I presume Mrs Huby was assiduous in pursuit of evidence that her son was alive, and no doubt she confided the results of her researches to you.'

'You mean you would like to use Mrs Huby's efforts to prove her son was alive in order to prove he must be dead?' murmured Thackeray. 'Now,
there's
ingenious. Still, for once I see no harm in frankness. Do you know about the advertisement?'

Goodenough shook his head.

'Well, it happened like this. Three years ago, Mrs Huby had a serious stroke. For a while, it was thought she might die, but in fact she made an excellent recovery, in body at least. Mentally, there was a little vagueness, plus, and this was the significant thing, a strong delusion that the stroke had been deliberately provoked by a malicious demon, masquerading as her son!'

'Good God!' exclaimed Goodenough.

'Don't worry,' smiled Thackeray. 'The will had been in existence too long before this for the question of unsound mind to arise. But she was now convinced that the devil in all his black malice was bent on striking her down so that she would remain alive but be incapable of pursuing the search for Alexander. Therefore she devised an advertisement to be placed in the papers in the event of another stroke. I helped her to a form of words I thought likely to provoke fewest fraudulent replies. She'd advertised before, of course, and I dare say spent a pretty penny in buying useless information from mountebanks. This time, respondents were instructed to get in touch with me. The advert gave her name, said that she was seriously ill and not expected to recover, and was placed in all the main Italian papers.'

'Just Italian.'

'Yes. She wanted it worldwide, but I persuaded her to limit it to Italy. That's where her son went missing and that was where she was convinced he'd remained.'

'Did you get any replies to the ad.?' asked Goodenough.

'A few. All quite obviously frivolous or fraudulent. Then at her funeral, a man appeared . . .'

'What kind of man?' demanded Goodenough.

'Sunburnt. Lightweight Italian suit. The same rather square face that John Huby has. He knelt at the graveside and cried out
Mama!
It caused quite a stir, I can assure you.'

'I can imagine,' said Goodenough, enthralled. 'What happened.'

'Nothing. Well, many things, but nothing as far as the mysterious stranger was concerned. He just disappeared in the confusion. No one saw him again and I think we'd all decided he was best forgotten. Until yesterday.'

'Yesterday?'

'That's right,' said Thackeray. 'I found him here in this office. He claimed he was Alexander Huby. He didn't stay long. He seemed strangely nervous, or perhaps it wasn't so strange after all. He promised to return with proof positive of his identity. Well, he has not yet reappeared. But the significant thing from your point of view, Mr Goodenough, is that before he left, he had said enough to persuade me that he could present a case to be answered. Impostor he may be, but unprepared he is not, believe me!'

Chapter 9

Deputy Chief Constable Neville Watmough sat in the bar of The Borough Club For Professional Gentlemen and sipped his sherry. This of all places in the world was where he felt most at home, and he didn't exclude home. Here he was in the true power centre of the city. Only a few yards away sat Councillor Mottram, local magnate and, more importantly, chairman of the Police Committee who would shortly be interviewing him. He had greeted Mottram warmly, as a fellow clubman, but not overeffusively, and made no effort to join the councillor and the young man who was his guest. Mottram, he hoped, would appreciate this refusal to do anything which might smack of canvassing support.

But that he would receive it, he had no doubt. Was he not, after all, known to the man as a respected fellowmember of the Gents, long-time committee man, and soon to be President-elect? He must surely also be regarded as Chief Constable-Elect! Everyone knew that Tommy Winter had been demob happy for nigh on two years and he, Neville Watmough, had been running the show single-handed. He had missed no opportunity of expressing his frank and unqualified belief in police accountability. Liaison with the Police Committee had never been closer and no opportunity had been missed to urge upon its members the high quality of policing in Mid- Yorkshire, its smooth traffic flow, its efficient administration, even its above-average detection rate. If you want to see my memorial, look around you! thought Watmough grandiloquently.

And you need not look too far either. It was one of his most laudatory though least advertised triumphs that when some ill-advised and irresponsible members had proposed Dalziel for the Gents, Watmough had black-balled him without a second thought.

Here perhaps was the last safe place. Here he could sit in peace, contemplating the sunlit heights of a political future as he waited for the guest who was going to help to pilot him there.

That guest entered the bar at that moment, a small dark man in his mid-thirties, his every movement eloquent of that restless energy which was his most obvious characteristic.

'Neville! There you are!'

'Ike! Nice to see you again.'

Ike Ogilby, editor of the
Sunday Challenger
, shook Watmough's hand warmly, then gestured to the young man who had followed him rather diffidently into the room.

'Neville, I hope you don't mind, but I brought one of my bright young things to meet you. Henry Vollans, Neville Watmough, Deputy Chief Constable and soon to be Chief, we all hope!'

Casting an anxious look towards the chairman of the Police Committee who happily seemed not to have heard this perhaps over-confident assertion, Watmough shook the young man's hand.

'Let's have a drink,' he said. 'Ike, your usual? Mr Vollans, you'll join us?'

'No, really. I was just going to be in the area seeing a colleague on the
Evening Post
this lunch-time and Mr Ogilby thought I should meet you. I've got to dash now.'

'See you back at the factory, Henry,' said Ogilby.

'Yes, sir. It'll probably be late. I'm going back via Ilkley, remember.'

'Yes, fine. Cheers.'

Vollans left. Watmough ordered Ogilby a Scotch and soda.

'Pleasant young chap,' he said. 'Grooming him for the big time, are we?'

'Not particularly,' smiled Ogilby. 'I just like to put my boys in direct touch with the real power sources wherever I can. Never know when your name might come in useful. He could be parked on a double yellow at this very moment!'

The two men laughed, but both of them knew that what they were joking about was a basic truth.

Their liaison went back several years. On an official level it was easy to justify on both sides. The
Challenger
got the news and the Force got the image. Everyone was happy.

But each of the men nursed other, longer-term motives.

For the present, Watmough relied on the paper to give him a good neutral press, giving offence to neither the Arcadian Squirearchy to the North of his area nor to the People's Republic to the South. But once the Chief's job was his, then he wouldn't care who he offended! He intended to become a national figure. Four or five years of pontificating on Law and Order via the media in general and the
Challenger
in particular would see him ready for the next big step - Westminster!

Ogilby didn't much mind how Watmough's career developed. To be going on with, there was a constant stream of inside information which could be more inside still if he made Chief Constable. And if he then ended up in Parliament, well, no journalist ever objected to have a close relationship with an ambitious MP. Even if his dreams came to nothing, Ogilby reckoned there'd still be a nice juicy series of memoirs for the
Challenger
to serialize.
Top Cop Tells All.
Watmough would have been surprised to know how closely documented were all the off-the-record juicy bits imparted to Ogilby over the years, ready as an aide-memoire for his chosen 'ghost'.

Meanwhile they consorted like lovers in a space-capsule, each certain he was on top.

'Good of you to come so far,' said Watmough.

'Not at all. It's only forty minutes and I wanted to pop into the
Post
anyway. Besides, I always enjoy eating here.'

Privately Ogilby regarded the Gents as something Dornford Yates might have invented on a bad day or P. G. Wodehouse on a good one, but he lied with the ease of occupational practice.

'Good. Let's go through, shall we? Bring your drink.'

They made their way out of the bar and into the long, rather chilly dining-room which had something of the smell of a school refectory.

Here Watmough halted so suddenly that Ogilby got jammed beside him in the doorway.

'Sorry,' said the DCC in the voice of one who has drunk and seen the spider. 'No, George, could we stay up at this end, please?'

This last was to the catering manager who was trying to usher Watmough to his usual privileged window table, but he had no desire whatsoever to sit there today, for at the next table along slumped the huge bulk of Andrew Dalziel.

He looked up now, saw Watmough and waved the lamb chop he had just impaled on his fork.

'I see the cabaret's arrived,' he said to Eden Thackeray.

Thackeray glanced towards Watmough and nodded his head, perhaps in greeting, perhaps in agreement. He was adept at such ambiguity, and he recognized the dangers of both alliance with and opposition to Dalziel.

The two men had known each other professionally for a long time and though superficially they were poles apart, they had discovered in each other a sound core of realism and common sense.

Dalziel emptied his wine glass, Thackeray emptied the bottle of
Fleurie
into it and waggled it at the caterer, who a moment later advanced with a new one.

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'Now we've established that I'm in profit even if I've got to tell you to sod off, what is it you want?'

'I have a problem,' said Thackeray. 'Does the name Huby mean anything to you? Gwendoline Huby.'

'Let's see,' said Dalziel. 'Weren't she that daft old bird who left her brass to a son who got killed in the war? I read about it in the papers.'

'That's the one. Now, the thing is, yesterday a chap actually turned up at my Chambers claiming to be the man.'

'Oh aye? How much brass is there?'

'Getting on for a million and a half, depending on the market.'

'Jesus!' exclaimed Dalziel. 'With that kind of money I'm surprised you haven't had queues like the January sales.'

'Yes. There have, of course, been several quite obviously crank letters. But the thing about this chap is that at first sight he is extremely plausible. And frankly, Dalziel, I find myself in a quandary as to how to proceed.'

Dalziel regarded him steadily.

'Me too,' he said.

'Really?'

'Aye. Shall I start calling you Thackeray if you call me Dalziel? I don't mind, but it doesn't come easy off my tongue.'

Thackeray looked bewildered, then began to smile.

'Would Eden come any easier, Superintendent?'

'Andy,' said Dalziel. 'Now we've got things on a proper friendly basis, see if you can tell us what you want without going all round the houses.'

'I'm not sure. Let me put it this way. My main concern as Mrs Huby's solicitor and as executor of her will is to see that her wishes are carried out.

'Now, this man turns up and claims to be the heir. I am practically certain that he cannot be the heir, yet he has contrived to sow a seed of doubt. It would be easy for me to say to him, no, go away, you are fraudulent unto such time as you prove you are not. I could put all the obstacles of the law in his way and force him to choose between abandoning his claim or setting out on a long, tedious and extremely expensive path to a very doubtful conclusion.'

'I'm with you,' said Dalziel. 'You don't think that's your job, right?'

'My job is to carry out my client's wishes, and I have serious doubts as to whether that would be the nearest way to doing that.'

'Bugger me,' said Dalziel. 'I never thought I'd hear a lawyer wanting to do what was nearest rather than what was dearest.'

'I am full of surprises. You're probably wondering how you can help me, Dalziel - sorry; Andy.'

'No. I'm wondering how you imagine I can help you,' said Dalziel with the easy confidence of a man who could without embarrassment reject the appeal of a molested maiden if something important, like opening time, diverted his attention. 'And while you're choosing your words, I think I saw there was mum's trifle on the menu. I'm always in a better mood for a slab of mum's trifle.'