The End Game (10 page)

“Don’t touch the gin,” he said. “Dan makes it in his bath. The Scotch and the vodka are good.”

They drank the Scotch and the vodka alternately. Watterson was showing all the signs of a man who is not an alcoholic, but is only one stop short of it. He put down his first few drinks at a galloping pace, fiercely and with no apparent pleasure. Now he was slowing down. Although he had taken three drinks to David’s two, without appearing to note the discrepancy, he was not drunk. Possibly, thought David, the concentration of ethyl alcohol in his bloodstream was already so high that adding enough to it to put a moderate drinker under the table made little appreciable difference. “Which makes nonsense of breathalysers and blood tests,” said David.

“Pardon?”

“Just a passing thought.”

“You’re an odd character. I knew that as soon as I set eyes on you. What are you doing in this setup?”

“Turning an honest penny.”

Watterson seemed to be having a fit. David prepared to administer first aid and realised that what was convulsing his drinking companion was laughter. When he had recovered his power of speech, Watterson said, “Honest? You did say honest, didn’t you? Yes. I thought you said honest.”

“It looks straight enough to me.”

“Straight. Straight as a corkscrew. Straight as a spiral staircase. Straight as—” Here Watterson’s imagination failed him.

“Where’s the twist?”

“I don’t know exactly what they’re up to. But stands to reason they must be up to something, doesn’t it? They couldn’t buy tram tickets with the money they make out of those tours. They give the customers five-star treatment at one-star prices. That’s why they’re so bloody popular.”

“Then what’s the sideline? Some sort of smuggling, I suppose.”

For a moment Watterson looked wholly sober. He said, “I’ll give you some advice, son. If you want to keep the job, don’t ask questions. Keep your mouth shut, and it’s a good job. I ought to know. I had it for three years, and they still want me back when there’s a rush on. The chap who had it before me, man called Moule—”

“Mole?”

“Right. Like the little creature who digs down under your lawn, only spelt with a
u.
He started digging. They put the hard boys on to him. End of Moule.”

“What did they do to him?”

“They made faces and said, ‘Boo,’ and he scuttled off down the nearest hole. Poor little Moule.”

“He doesn’t sound like a very heroic person.”

“Mind you, I think he’d started mainlining by then, and that’s not something that builds up the character. The only time I saw him since then—he was coming out of a doctor’s surgery, down near the Surrey Docks. Dr. Ram Jam something-or-other. One of the people you could get to prescribe the hard stuff. If you were prepared to pay. He’d have done better if he’d stuck to drink. Drink in moderation never hurt anyone.”

David took the hint and had both glasses recharged. At that point one of the crew-cut ladies took a swing at a bearded artist. By the time peace had been declared the room was a lot emptier, and David brought the drinks over to a table in the corner.

He said, “Let’s sit down for a bit. I want to hear about Moule.”

“Why?”

“He did the job before. If he ran into trouble, I’d like to know about it, then I can dodge it.”

“Nothing much to tell you about him. He did the job all right, for a bit. Then he started on drugs. Reefers to start with, I’d guess. He was an educated man. Bit of money behind him, too. I believe he used to be an accountant with quite a good firm.”

“Not really a big firm. But an old, established one. Martindale, Mantegna and Lyon, in the City.”

“If you never met Moule, how do you know that?”

“The long arm of coincidence. I worked in the same firm for a time. That’s how I got this job. Rayhome are one of their clients. Only in a small way. Most of their work is done for Blackett and his group of companies.”

Watterson put down his half-empty glass on the table. His face, normally red, had become mottled. He said, “Are you talking about Randall Blackett, by any chance?”

“That’s the one. Do you know him?”

For a moment David thought that Watterson wasn’t going to answer him. His eyes had a fixed look, as though he was staring at something a long way off. Then he said, “Certainly I know Blackett. Not like people know him nowadays, with Saville Row suits and a big car and a chauffeur and everyone saying, ‘Yes, sir. No, sir.’ I’ve seen him without his smart clothes on. Almost, you might say, with no clothes on at all.”

He swallowed the rest of the drink and sat silent. David said nothing.

“The first time I saw him, he was wearing a strip of sacking round his beautiful young body and a big smile on his beautiful young face. The sacking was the normal dress in a Japanese working camp. The smile was unusual. Why was Lance-Bombardier Blackett smiling? He was smiling because it was his nineteenth birthday and he’d had a lovely birthday present. A special meal of rice and real meat with a glass of sake to top it off. The Commandant gave it to him. Blackett had paid for it by selling him his lovely white body.”

On the last word Watterson fell forward. His head hit the table with a thump. Dan came out from behind the bar and propped him up. Watterson’s face was red and sweating. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes were shut.

“Seen them go like that before,” said Dan. “Nineteen drinks and sober as an archdeacon. Number twenty and they go out flat. You got a car here?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Never mind. I’ll get a cab. I know where he lives. I’ll look after him.”

“That’s very kind of you. I’d better pay for the cab.”

“Don’t bother,” said Dan. “I’ll get it out of him next time he comes.”

The second Italian trip started on the same lines as the first one. The Rayhome coach, every seat full, made its leisurely way through France and Switzerland, crossed the frontier at Domodossola and spent a night at Bologna before crossing the Apennines by the beautiful Via Stradale and descending on Florence. Here the party was due to stay for five days.

David could not decide whether there really was something different about Collings’s attitude or whether he was imagining things based on the suggestions put into his mind by Watterson. He was no more offensive than usual, but seemed to be more tense and to be watching David more closely than on previous trips.

The situation became clearer on the third night in Florence. The party was staying at a large pensione in the Via Solferino behind the Opera. As usual, David had been allotted a room with Collings. He was sitting on his bed, watching Collings prepare himself for an evening foray. He had shaved for the second time that day and was now rubbing on some powerful after-shave lotion. When he had finished he said, “Any objection if we make it a twosome tonight?”

“A twosome?”

“Look round the town together. You speak a bloody sight better Italian than I do. Seems, from something you said to one of the pussies, you’ve been here before. Is that right?”

“Once or twice,” said David cautiously. “But I would imagine that you have been here many more times than I have. Is it not one of your regular stopping places?”

“Maybe. But not speaking the lingo you don’t get round to what you might call knowing the people. You pick up a girl and all she says is ‘Ten thousand lire’ when you meet her and ‘Ta-ta’ when you go.”

“Hardly an intellectual conversation,” agreed David. “If we both go out together would it not be better, do you think, to leave the bag in the hotel safe?”

“It’s right enough where it is,” said Collings. He indicated the corner cupboard which was a solid construction. “I’ve got the key. No one’s going to bother to break that down.”

“All right, then. Let’s have an evening on the tiles together. Have you any idea of where to start?”

“There’s a place behind the Market. You can usually get what you want there.”

“Depending on what you want.”

“That’s right,” said Collings with a grin.

They went on foot, through the small dark streets that led to Central Station and across the piazza in front of it, dodging the scurrying taxis. Collings seemed, for once, to be in a talkative mood. He said, “Tell you the truth, Morgan, this place gives me the creeps. Very picturesque, no doubt. But look at those houses. And those bloody great wooden doors you never see open. What’s behind them?”

“The Middle Ages,” said David.

“You’re dead right. You put your finger on it. They’re still living like they were five hundred years ago. Daggers and poison and Borgias and things like that. I bloody near got done myself in one of those rat-holes. Mind you, that was over a girl. When I was going away, her ponce turned up and tried to double the price. When I told him what he could do, he pulled a knife.”

“What did you do?”

“Kicked him in the crutch and scarpered.”

“Sound tactics,” said David.

At the far side of the piazza was the Via S. Antonio, full of bakeries and sweet shops, still open although it was after nine o’clock.

The place they were making for was on the north side of the market and was a surprise. David had imagined that, if it suited Collings’s objectives, which would be drink, more drink and girls, it would be a fairly sordid place. In fact, the Toscanella turned out to be well lighted and cheerful. There was one large and noisy party in the corner by the bar, but most of the tables were occupied by couples drinking red and green liquids out of long glasses and minding their own business.

Collings ordered a bottle of Pernod and a jug of iced water, and they started to drink, not rapidly, but steadily. Between drinks, Collings continued to talk. He was not a practised conversationalist and soon started to repeat himself. David prodded him along with an occasional question and wondered what it was all in aid of.

They had got a long way down the Pernod when Collings noticed the girl. David had seen her some time before. She had light hair, more red than blonde, unusual in a city of black-haired girls. She was not young, nearer thirty than twenty, David guessed, and undeniably attractive.

“Quite a dish,” said Collings. His voice had suddenly got thicker.

“I think she’s waiting for someone.”

“She’s waiting for me.”

“Do you know her?”

“I know her type.”

“She doesn’t look like a tart to me.”

“I know more about tarts than you’ve forgotten,” said Collings. He lurched to his feet and swaggered across to the girl.

She was too far away for David to hear what Collings said to her, but the meaning of her answer would have been clear at any distance. Collings sat down in the empty chair, put his elbows on the table and said something else. The girl gave him a look which would have stopped a charging buffalo. Collings grinned, leaned forward and grabbed her wrist. The girl wrenched herself free and scrambled to her feet.

By this time the noise and clatter in the room had died down, and attention was concentrating on Collings and the girl. She said in clear but clipped Italian, “Take your hands off me, you filthy, drunken pig.”

A big man with curly black hair had detached himself from the party in the corner. He reached Collings in three quick strides, said, “English filth. Leave our girls alone,” and smacked his face.

Collings jumped up, grabbed the chair he had been sitting on and hit the man with it. A second man from the party surged across the room. Collings swung the chair again, lifted it too high and brought down the light above the table, and in doing so fused all the table lamps.

By this time the proprietor had reached the street door, just ahead of half a dozen customers who had decided to get out and were now blocking the exit.

David had kept his eye on the girl. She had backed away from the fight and was standing against the wall. David moved across, touched her on the shoulder and said, “Come with me.”

He pushed her ahead of him, through the door which led into the kitchen. He walked quickly through, ignoring a protesting lady in a black dress and a frightened-looking youth in a chef’s hat, opened a door at the far end, crossed a cluttered courtyard and found himself in an alley full of dustbins.

As they came out, they heard the wah-wah of a police car approaching the front of the restaurant.

“Down here,” said David, “and let’s hope it leads somewhere.”

The alley led to another alley, then to a third. David remembered Collings’s description of rat-holes and daggers and was glad to see lights ahead. They emerged from under an archway and out into the Via Guelfa.

David said, in his best Italian, “Might I perhaps get hold of a taxi to take you home“It’s very kind of you,” said the girl, in perfect and upper-class English. “It’s hardly worth a taxi. We live in the Via Zanobi. The second turning across the road.”

“Then let me escort you as far as there.”

“You got us out of that place very skilfully.”

“The first thing I do in any strange restaurant, I locate the way out through the kitchen.”

“It sounds as though you have a very adventurous life.”

“Not at all. It’s just that I’m an expert at running away.”

By this time they had reached the front of a tall, gaunt house in the Via Zanobi. A stone staircase led into upper darkness.

“You’ve got to come up and meet my husband, Carlo. He’ll want to thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain. He is an architect and a very fine one. Some day the name Carlo Aldini will be known through the whole of Italy. Through the world, perhaps. I’m afraid there’s no lift.”

“Excelsior,”
said David.

On the third landing they stopped again. The girl said, “I warn you. He will be repentant. Violently repentant. Carlo does nothing by halves.”

“Repentant for what?”

“He was to have met me at the Toscanella. We were going to have a drink there and a late supper at Piero’s. He is engaged in an important project and will have forgotten all about it. You’ll see.”

They reached the fourth floor. The girl inserted the key in the lock and opened the door. Immediately, from the room at the far end of the hallway, came a sound halfway between a roar and a scream. It reminded David of the mating call of a gorilla. The door was flung open, and a young man with a mop of black hair hurled himself out, fell on his knees in front of the girl and clasped her round the ankles.