Our Game

"Only you see, sir, the Doctor doesn't appear to have a wife, a companion, a significant other, nobody," the moustache was lamenting. "He is highly popular with the students, who regard him as a card, but ask his colleagues in the Common Room about him, you meet what I call a blank wall, be it contempt, be it envy."

"He's a free spirit," I said. "Academics aren't used to that."

"Pardon me, sir?"

"He's used to speaking his mind. Particularly on the subject of academics."

"Of which body, however, the Doctor himself happens to be a member," said the moustache, with a cocky lift of his eyebrow.

"He was a parson's son," I said unthinkingly.

"Was, sir?"

"Was. His father's dead."

"He's still his father's son, though, sir," said the moustache in reproof.

His phoney unction was beginning to act like an insult on me. This is the way you think we ignorant coppers should be, he was telling me, so this is the way I am.

A long passage hung with nineteenth-century watercolours leads to my drawing room. I went ahead, listening to the clip of their shoes behind me. I had been playing Shostakovich on my stereo, but without conviction. I switched him off and in a show of hospitality poured three glasses of our '93 Honeybrook Rouge. The moustache murmured, "Good health," drank, and said amazing to think it had been grown right here in this house, as you might say, sir. But his angular sidekick prodded his glass at the fire in order to examine the colour. Then shoved his long nose into it and sniffed. Then took an expert bite and chewed while he peered at the exquisite baby Bechstein piano that in my madness I had bought for Emma.

"Do I detect a certain hint of a Pinot in here somewhere?" he demanded. "There's a lot of tannin, that's for sure."

"It is a Pinot," I retorted, through gritted teeth.

"I didn't know a Pinot could be ripened in England.”

“It can't. Not unless you have an exceptional site.”

“Is your site exceptional?"

"No."

"Then why do you plant it?"

"I don't. My predecessor did. He was an incurable optimist."

"What makes you say that, then?"

I mastered myself. Barely. "Several reasons. The soil is too rich, it is poorly drained and too high above sea level. My uncle was determined to ignore these problems. When other local vineyards thrived and his did not, he blamed his luck and tried again next year." I turned to the moustache. "Perhaps I might be allowed to know your names."

With a due show of embarrassment, they pushed their passes at me, but I waved them away. I too had flourished passes in my day, most of them fakes. The moustache had tried to telephone me in advance, he said, but discovered I had gone ex-directory. So happening to be in the area on an unrelated matter, sir, they decided to take a liberty and ring the bell. I didn't believe them. Their Peugeot had a London registration. They wore city shoes. Their complexions lacked the country glow. Their names, they said, were Oliver Luck and Percy Bryant. Luck, the coffinhead, was a sergeant. Bryant, the moustache, was an inspector.

Luck was taking stock of my drawing room: my family miniatures, my eighteenth-century Gothic furniture, my books—Herzen's memoirs, Clausewitz on war.

"You read a lot, then," he said.

"When I can."

"The languages, they're not a barrier?"

"Some are, some aren't."

"Which aren't?"

"I have some German. Russian."

"French?"

"Written."

Their eyes on me, all four of them, all the time. Do policemen spot us for what we are? Do they recognise something in us that reminds them of themselves? My months of retirement were rolling away. I was Operational Man again and wondering whether it showed and where the Office was in this. Emma, I was thinking, have they found you? Grilled you? Made you say things?

It is four in the morning. She is seated in her attic studio, at her rosewood kneehole desk, another extravagant gift I have bought for her. She is typing. She has been typing all night long, a pianist who has formed an addiction to the typewriter.

"Emma," I entreat her from the doorway. "What's it all for?" No answer. "You're wearing yourself out. Get some sleep, please."

Inspector Bryant was rubbing his hands straight up and down between his knees, like a man separating wheat. "So then, Mr. Cranmer, sir," he said, his smile set to invade, "when did we last see or hear from our doctor friend, if I may make so bold?"

Which was the question for which I had been preparing myself day and night these last five weeks.

* * *

But I didn't answer him Not yet. Determined to deny him the interrogator's rhythm, I favoured a leisured tone in keeping with the fireside atmosphere we were sharing.

"Now, when you say he had no companion ..." I objected.

"Yes, sir?"

"Well, for heaven's sake"—

I laughed—"Larry always had someone on the go, surely."

Luck cut in. Rudely. He was a stop-or-sprint man, no middle gear. "You mean a woman?" he blurted.

"Whenever I knew him he had a stable of them," I said. "Don't tell me he's turned celibate in his old age."

Bryant weighed my words.