Our Game

He was examining the assay marks on the back of his coffee spoon, comparing them with the spoon from the empty place next to him. "Broken set," he muttered. "Extraordinary thing." He was crestfallen. "Hell did that happen? Ask Ma Peters. Bloody careless."

"You said they, Jamie," I said.

"What's that, old boy?"

I put a hand on his sleeve. "I'm sorry, Jamie—I may have misheard. I thought you said they. Do you mean Larry didn't come alone? I don't think I quite got that bit."

" 'They' is correct." He was still studying the spoons.

My head was racing. Checheyev? The associate in Macclesfield? Or Larry's chum from Hull University?

"So who came too?" I asked.

To my surprise, Jamie gave a superior and very salacious smile. "Pettifer brought an assistant. Dolly girl is what I would have called her. Assistant was going to be his intermediary, he said. Do the brainwork. Mathematics not up Larry's street, but this girl—mustard. Brighter than Larry by a mile, when it came to numbers."

I was greatly amused. I must have been, for I gave a jolly laugh, though the inside of me was frozen in alarm. "All right, Jamie. Don't hold out on me. She was Russian. She had snow on her boots."

His superior smile would not let go of him. He put down the offending spoons. "Wrong. Decent English girl, far as you could tell. Decently dressed. Spoke the Queen's English well as you and me. Wouldn't be surprised if she was the moving force. Given her a job here any day.”

“Pretty?"

"No. Not pretty. She was beautiful

. Word I use very seldom, matter o' fact. Hell she was doing mixed up with a shit like Pettifer, God knows." He had entered the territory he loved best. "Figure to kill for. Lovely little bottom. Legs all the way up. Sat right there in front of me, swingin' 'em at me." He struck a philosophical note. "One of the most extraordinary things in life, Tim, and I've observed it over and over. Pretty girl, have anyone she wants, who does she go for? A shit. Pound to a penny Pettifer beats her up. She probably likes it. Masochist. Same as m' sister-in-law, Angie. Money to burn, looks to kill, Angie goes from one shit to another. Lucky to have any teeth left, way they treat her."

"Did she have a name?" I asked.

"Sally. Sally someone." One side of his mouth slipped down in a terrible smirk. "Jet-black hair, all pinned up on the top of her head, waiting for you to let it down. Absolute fatal weakness of mine. Love a black bush. Whole of womanhood there. Gorgeous."

I was hearing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. I was behaving and collecting and recording. That was all I was doing in the world, while Jamie looked sad and old and nodded at me and slurped his port.

"Have you heard from him since?"

"Not a peep. Neither of 'em. Rather think they got the message. Not the first time we've shown a con man the door. Or his moil."

I had five minutes left by the ship's clock.

"Did you pass him on to someone? Suggest where he might go?"

A frightful grimace, a last charge. "We're not very clued up on that type of business at Pringle Brothers, thank you. Used to be a little outfit up the road called B.C.C.I. that handled stuff like that once upon a time. One gathers they're under a bit of a cloud."

I had a penultimate question. I sent my rent-a-drool smile with it, and a lot of good fellowship and grateful savouring of the port.

"And you didn't think, Jamie, when he'd gone--or they had—to pick up the phone to whoever it was I used to work for and tip them the wink about Larry? Now that I'm no longer at that desk? Larry and his girl?"

Jamie Pringle fixed me in a bull-like glare of outrage.

"Rat on Larry? Hell are you talking about? I'm a banker. If he'd strangled his dear mother and bunged her in a bucket of acid, I suppose it's just conceivable I'd pick up the phone to somebody. But when a fellow Oriel man comes in here to discuss a banking proposition with me—which, all right, I happen to think stinks to high heaven—I am sworn

to absolute and total secrecy. You want to tell 'em, that's your business. Help yourself."

It was achieved. Only the terrible hurdle remained. Perhaps it was the self-torturer in me who had decreed that, after forcing the question too hard upon the police and Pew-Merriman, I should this time hold it back until the very end. Or perhaps it was simply the field man, telling me to gather in everything else first, before going for the crown jewels.

"So when, Jamie?"

"'S'at, old boy?"

He was half asleep.

"When? When did they descend on you? Larry and his girl? They came by appointment, presumably, or you wouldn't have given them lunch," I suggested, hoping by this means to encourage him to look in his diary or pick up the house phone to Pandora.

"Grouse," he announced loudly, and at first I thought he was telling me that he or Larry—or even Emma—had lodged some sort of complaint.