Play to the End (15 page)

The waitress came over to clear Jenny's cup. As she did so, the spoon fell out of the saucer and clattered down onto the table.

"Sorry," she said.

"Me too," I murmured.

I was still slumped over the dregs of my coffee some minutes later when my mobile rang.

"Toby, it's Brian Sallis. How are you feeling this morning?" "Much the same as last night, Brian. How are you?" "Rather shook up, actually. But I, er .. . just wanted to ... check you were OK."

"I'll be on stage tonight. You don't need to worry."

"I didn't mean that. I meant.. . generally."

"Generally? On the grim side of OK, I suppose."

"This has knocked the wind out of everyone's sails, Toby.

I've been .. . notifying people all morning. There's a lot of ...

distress."

"Denis was a popular guy."

"So he was. Look, on that subject, could you do me a favour?"

"Try me."

"I spoke to Denis's brother earlier. Ian Maple. He's coming down here today. He wants to know what happened and, well, you know more than anyone."

"You want me to talk to him?"

"I'm meeting him off the train and taking him round to the undertaker's. After that, I'm not sure what he'll want to do. Could I ring you this afternoon and fix something up?"

"Sure."

"Thanks. I appreciate it. It's shaping up into a pretty bloody day, to be honest, with the press to handle and .. . everything else.

Melvyn's gone back to London, by the way. I mean, that was the plan all along, but '

"We wouldn't want Melvyn to have to change his plans."

"No." Ordinarily, Brian would have sprung to our director's defence, but he didn't seem disposed to make the effort this time. "Thanks again, Toby. I'll be in touch later."

It was close to noon when I left the Rendezvous, dashing from shelter to shelter through the rain to the Cricketers, where the foul weather had kept custom to a minimum.

Rain or shine made little difference to Syd Porteous, however. He was already installed with a pint and a crumpled newspaper. He greeted me with a frown of concern and a solicitous pat on the shoulder.

"Sorry to hear you've lost one of the company, Toby. Bit of a facer, that."

I looked at him in some dismay, unprepared as I was for the news to have spread so fast. "How did you know?"

"It was on the local news this morning."

"What did they say?"

"Nothing much. Denis Maple was his name, right? Understudy. Heart attack, apparently."

I nodded. "So it was."

"The name rang a bell. Tell me to mind my own if you like, Toby, but was it him you had to rush off and meet last night?"

"Yes." I had no choice but to admit it.

"So .. . what happened?"

It was a fair question. I couldn't have supplied a complete answer even if I'd wanted to. Syd already knew more about my affairs than was good for him. Far more than I knew about his. Some judicious pruning of the facts was called for. "Denis was obviously upset when I spoke to him. He was probably already feeling unwell. He'd keeled over by the time I got to him. There was nothing I could do."

"He was the bookie in Long Odds, wasn't he?" Syd asked.

"You have a good memory."

"Names and faces." He tapped his forehead. "They've always stuck. Aud and I were sorry you had to dash off like that. If we'd He broke off as the door opened behind me. "Watch out. Here's Gav." Then he added, in a hasty whisper, "Best not mention the untimely to him, hey?

Might jangle his nerves."

I was still puzzling over Syd's reasoning when he commenced a grinning introduction. Gavin Colborn failed to reciprocate with a grin of his own, my impression being that he'd need lessons before attempting one.

His narrow, bony face was set in sombre lines beneath a jutting brow.

He was as thin as a rail and slightly stooped, dressed in a frayed grey suit and black roll neck beneath the sort of raincoat Harold Wilson used to wear. He'd lost most of his hair and the only similarity to his nephew was to, be found in the bizarrely beautiful sapphire blue of his deep-socketed eyes. The idea that we needed to worry about making him nervous seemed utterly absurd.

"Great to see you, Gav," Syd enthused irrepressibly between the practicalities of ordering drinks. "It's been too long. Far too long."

"I don't get out so much these days," said Colborn, a gust of sour whisky reaching me on his breath.

"You'll have seen To He's face on the poster at the Royal."

"I've not passed that way recently. I'm no theatregoer, Mr. Flood."

"It's not everyone's cup of tea," I responded, speculating idly on what Gavin Colborn's cup of tea could possibly be.

"I gather you want to discuss my nephew."

"Small talk's never been Gav's speciality," said Syd as we carried our drinks to the fireside table that was rapidly becoming our regular berth. "I've told him it's the key to success with the ladies, but he takes no notice."

"I assume you're a busy man, Mr. Flood," said Colborn, lighting up a cigarette. "I don't want to bore you."

If this remark was meant as a put-down, it signally failed. "We're on first names here, Gav," said Syd. "Isn't that right, Toby?"

"Yes, Syd," I said with self-conscious emphasis.

"Well, then .. . Toby," said Colborn, 'let me see if I understand the situation. Syd tells me you're seeking to assess my nephew Roger's suitability as a husband for your ex-wife, about whose welfare you're still... concerned."

"That's right."

"You've met him?"

"Yes."

"How did he strike you?"

"They didn't come to blows, Gav," put in Syd.

Colborn said nothing, letting his question hang in the air while Syd got a chortle out of his system. "He's obviously intelligent," I eventually replied. "And charming. Attractive to women, as well, I imagine."

"Yes," said Colborn deliberatively. "He's certainly all of those things."

"But is he honest?"

"That's the essence of your inquiry, is it ... Toby?" (He still didn't seem at ease with my Christian name.) "Is Roger an honourable man?"

"Well, is he?"

"What do you think?"

"I'm .. . inclined to doubt it."

"So you should."

"Any .. . particular reason?"

"Several. But I must declare an interest. Or rather a grievance. I have Roger to thank for my present situation. Penury's a miserable experience and it grows more miserable with age. You can be poor, happy and young. So they tell me, anyway. But poor, happy and old?

That you cannot be."

"You should have backed more of my tips over the years, Gav," said Syd.

"You've got to speculate to accumulate."

"I wouldn't need to if Roger hadn't shafted me." There was bitterness in Colborn's voice now. He was no doting uncle.

"How did he do that?"

"By manipulating his father my elder brother, Walter -who took over the running of the family firm, Colbonite, when our father stepped down. He thought he could do a better job without me on board. I was ... eased out." A rough calculation suggested that Roger could only have been a child at the time Gavin was describing and in no position to manipulate anyone, but I didn't contest the point. Soon enough, I sensed, we'd come on to meatier stuff. "I had some company shares, held in trust during our father's lifetime and subsequently mine to do with as I pleased. The same arrangement was made for our sister, Delia. They weren't worth a lot. Or so I thought. Roger went straight into Colbonite from university. In the mid-Eighties, he ... persuaded me to sell him my shares. He chose his moment well. I was .. . going through a bad patch. I needed the money. I found out later he'd pulled the same trick with Delia. What neither of us knew was that he'd already started encouraging Walter to wind up the business.

Closing Colbonite down freed them to sell the company's most valuable asset- a dyeing patent. That set Roger up very nicely. Having bought Delia's shares as well as mine, his slice of the pie was that much bigger. And Delia and I got no slice at all. Do you know what he said when I confronted him? "It was nothing personal, Uncle," he said. "It was just a matter of business." A matter of business? The bastard. It was a matter of two and a half million pounds."

"Christ!" Syd choked on his beer. "I never knew it was that much."

"You know now."

"No wonder you were seriously disc huffed "I had no legal claim, you understand, Toby," Colborn went on. "I could only ask for what Roger described as a hand-out. I could only .. . beg. Which I did. To no avail. He wouldn't pay me a penny."

"What about your brother?"

"Walter said it was up to Roger. After all, it was Roger who'd bought my shares. So, Walter settled into a comfortable retirement at Wickhurst Manor, Roger slid off to Jersey to dodge the taxman and I ...

got by as best I

could."

"Delia too, presumably."

"No. Delia got lucky. She met a rich man and married him.

It was wine and roses for her too. I was the only one on bread and water. Still am."

"Roger more or less admitted he hadn't been above a bit of sharp practice in the past," I said. "He claims to be a reformed character since meeting Jenny."

"The love of a good woman can work miracles," said Syd with a sickly smile.

"Believe that if you want to," Gavin retorted. "Roger will certainly want you to. He was an evil child. And he's grown into a devious, self-serving man."

"We're into leopard-and-spots territory here, are we, Gav?"

Syd enquired.

"Put it this way." Gavin's voice dropped to a sandpapery rasp. "If Roger's suddenly developed a soft centre, how come he's failed to put right any of the strokes he's pulled? A hand-out to his impecunious uncle wouldn't go amiss, considering how he ripped me off sixteen years ago, but there's been bugger-all sign of it. And what about all those poor sods who've had their lives shortened by working for Colbonite?

What's he done for them, eh?" Gavin made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. "That's what."

"Are you talking about .. . the cancer victims, Gavin?" I tentatively asked.

"You're better informed than I thought," he replied, treating me to a meaningful stare.

"I mentioned them," said Syd.

"I wasn't aware you knew either." Gavin's stare swivelled round to his old school chum in a less than chummy fashion.

"I keep my ear to the ground and my nose to the wind. It's amazing what you pick up." (Especially if your girlfriend's secretary to an oncology consultant, I reflected.)

"Is there a definite connection between these cancer cases and Colbonite?" I asked.

"Not as a scientifically proven certainty, no. Walter and Roger hired a chemistry boffin at the University to tie the argument up in knots.

Most of the people affected are dead now anyway. There'd be their next of kin, of course. If they could make the case stick, they'd be entitled to compensation."

"Stacking up to more than two and a half mill?" put in Syd.

"No doubt a lot more. As I understand it, the carcinogen was a curing agent used in a dyeing process. The patented method required its use in a dangerously unstable form. Inhalation of the fumes over a period of years ... was a death sentence."

"Did Roger and your brother know that?" I asked.

"I suspect so, yes. Not at the beginning. But before the end. They sold the patent and closed the company down not because it was unprofitable but because they were afraid the cancer scare would slash its value. Technically, Colbonite didn't go into liquidation. It was sold to a shell company that was wound up shortly afterwards. Roger's idea, I'm sure of it."

"You're going to have to explain that ploy to us high-finance duds, Gav," said Syd.

"It means that even if a case for compensation was made out, Roger couldn't be billed for it, because the responsible party, Colbonite, last belonged to somebody else."

"So he's in the clear?" I asked.

"Not quite. If he knew about the risk and failed to disclose it to the purchaser of the patent, he's guilty of fraud."

"And who was the purchaser?"

"A South Korean conglomerate."

"Who'd be just as anxious to dodge compensation."

"That's true."

"So they're hardly likely to sue Roger."

"No. But a criminal case could be brought against him in this country."

"Theoretically."

"I admit it's .. . improbable."

"Looks like you'll just have to dream on, Gav," said Syd.

"Indeed. But that's hardly the point you're interested in, is it ...

Toby? You wanted to know the moral calibre of the man. Now you do."

"Think this'll put the missus off him, Toby?" Syd asked.

"If she believes it, yes."

"Then I hope you can convince her," said Gavin.

I looked enquiringly at him. "Some proof would help." Then I remembered The Plastic Men. And Roger's stubborn refusal to read it.

Maybe there was proof, in the least expected quarter.

Gavin, of course, knew nothing of Derek Oswin and his painstaking history of Colbonite. But that didn't mean there weren't any pointers he could put my way. "I don't know what kind of evidence is likely to sway your wife. Roger has a gift for deceiving people, as I've learned to my cost. She probably wouldn't believe anything I said. You could ask Delia to speak to her, I suppose. One woman to another. But Delia's grasp of the facts is ... limited."

"How could I contact her?"

"I'll give you her telephone number." He reached for Syd's newspaper, tore an edge off the front page and wrote a name and number on it, then handed the scrap to me. "If you do speak to her, send her ... my regards."