Dangerous Games Read online

‘I assume I’ll be flying from Manchester,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Then you assume wrong,’ Woodend told her.

  ‘But there’s no way I can get down to London in only five hours.’

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed Woodend, ‘but you’ll not be flyin’ from there, either. You’ll be goin’ from RAF Blackhill.’

  This was not just a rabbit, Paniatowski thought. This was a positive flock of white doves.

  ‘However did you manage to talk the RAF into that, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘I used my charm,’ Woodend said, smiling.

  ‘Your charm?’ Paniatowski repeated, incredulously.

  ‘That’s right, Monika. You know me – I can charm the birds down from the trees, if I really put my mind to it.’

  Tom Bygraves had no idea of how long he had been in this derelict cottage in the middle of the moors. He didn’t even know how he’d got there in the first place, or even who had taken him there. All he did know was that his hands had been tied together and then attached to an old ceiling beam, and that the only way his feet could touch the floor was if he stood on tiptoe.

  It had been a mild early evening when he’d regained consciousness, but now darkness was beginning to fall, the temperature was dropping, and he was starting to shiver.

  There were other discomforts to deal with, too. His head hurt from the blow it had received earlier, his wrists and feet ached from being trussed in such an unnatural position.

  He had wanted to urinate from the moment he came round. At first he had resisted the temptation, then he had simply given way, and allowed the hot piss to trickle down his trouser leg.

  But none of these things were what was really worrying him. He would have immersed himself in ice cold water if he had to, endured being strung up for days on end, urinated until his thighs were as degradingly sticky as fly-paper – as long as the fear would go away.

  But the fear wouldn’t leave him. It was in his eyes and in his ears, in his brain and in his heart, in every tiny nook and cranny of his entire body. Because he knew that he was in the power of a madman – and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it!

  He heard the sound of a engine, growing louder with each second, and by twisting round he saw – in what little light of the day was left – that a dark van was approaching the ruined shell in which he was being held.

  He prayed that the new arrival would be the police, in an unmarked vehicle. Or, if not them, a neighbouring farmer who would not expect to find him there, but would release him the moment he did.

  He prayed – but even as he was doing it, he did not believe.

  A man, carrying a torch in his hand, climbed out of the van, and walked towards the ruined building. As he stepped through the doorway, he shone the beam of the torch directly into his prisoner’s face.

  Tom Bygraves closed his eyes, but the light was still blinding. He turned away from it as far as he could – pirouetting on his toes like a ballet dancer – and that made it a little better.

  ‘So you are not asleep any more, my friend,’ said a voice with a heavy foreign accent.

  ‘Who … who are you?’ Bygraves gasped.

  ‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’ the other man suggested, removing the light beam from his face.

  Bygraves swivelled back to his previous position, but he could still see only the bright lights before his eyes. Then, slowly, his vision returned to something like normal, and as it did he saw that the other man was shining the torch on his own face.

  ‘Well?’ his captor asked.

  ‘I’m … I’m not sure I know you.’

  ‘Think back. Imagine me seven years younger. Imagine me happier.’

  ‘I’m afraid I still don’t …’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ his capture said in disgust. ‘All Cypriots look alike to you, don’t they? They are only Mediterranean monkeys.’

  ‘I never thought of you like that.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, it is. I promise.’

  ‘Liar! I remember you – all of you – even if you do not remember me. I know how you treated us – how even innocence was no protection from you.’

  ‘It wasn’t me! I swear that whatever you’re thinking of, it wasn’t me!’

  ‘It was you!’ the Cypriot said firmly. ‘You and your little band of friends. Tell me, how many of you were there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not even sure what you’re …’

  ‘How many?’ the other man demanded. ‘Tell me, or I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Six!’ Bygraves screamed. ‘There were six of us.’

  ‘Yes, six,’ the other man agreed. ‘And now there are only three.’ He paused. ‘Tell me about the game.’

  ‘I don’t know which game you mean.’

  ‘Yes, you do. And if you do not speak now, I will cut out your tongue, and you will never speak again.’

  ‘It was called ‘”What if?”’

  The Cypriot nodded. ‘And how did it work?’

  ‘You must know already, or you’d never have …’

  ‘How did it work?’

  ‘We’d sit around and wonder what we’d do if something bad happened to one of us.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, for example, we’d say, “What if one of us had his arm blown clean off by a roadside bomb?”’

  ‘And what did you decide?’

  ‘We decided that when we got back to England, the rest of us would each give him a tenth of whatever we earned for the rest of our working lives.’

  The Cypriot laughed. ‘How … how cosy. Is that the right word, Mr Bygraves? Cosy?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the right word.’

  ‘Or do I mean sentimental?’

  ‘It could be that, too,’ Bygraves told him.

  ‘You’d agree with me whatever I said, wouldn’t you?’ the Cypriot asked him, in disgust. ‘“Testicles! Is that the right word?” “Yes, it is.” “Shit! Is that right?” “It’s perfect.” You want me to like you – but I never will. You want me to pity you – but that is impossible.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘What do you think is going to happen to you?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t know?’ the Cypriot repeated. ‘How can that be, when you do know what has happened to the others?’ He paused for a moment, as if turning the question over in his mind. ‘Oh, now I see,’ he continued. ‘You are thinking that if I was going to hang you, I would have done it already. Is that right?’

  ‘Please …’

  ‘I hung – or is it “hanged”? I am never sure – Terry Pugh from a bridge, and it created quite a sensation. Is that the right word – sensation?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tom Bygraves sobbed. ‘I d–don’t know.’

  ‘But if I had hanged – or is it hung? – Reg Lewis in the same way, people would not have been as much shocked. So I used a crane instead. Each time more impressive, you see.’

  ‘You can’t mean …?’

  ‘Your death will be even more impressive still. But the machinery for your hanging will not be ready until tomorrow night. If you had not run away from home like a frightened rabbit, I would have allowed you one more day of freedom. But you did run, and forced me to act much earlier than I had planned.’

  ‘You … you can’t hang me,’ Tom Bygraves blubbered.

  ‘Instead of complaining about your fate, you should be counting your blessings,’ the Cypriot told him harshly. ‘You will die tomorrow, it is true, but if justice had truly been served, you would have died long ago.’

  There was no physical barrier which prevented the ‘ordinary’ civil servants from walking down that particular corridor on the third floor of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. There wasn’t even a sign in evidence to prohibit such an action. Yet the drones and minor bureaucrats who worked in the building steered well clear of the area, because although they only had the vaguest idea of what was going on there, t
hey had long ago decided that a vague idea was more than enough.

  The man bent over his desk in the room at the far end of the corridor was still hard at work, even as Big Ben rang out the chimes of midnight in the near distance. He was in his middle fifties. He had short grey hair which always looked as if it had recently been trimmed, and his long slim fingers showed evidence of a regular manicure. He was wearing, as he habitually did, an expensive herring-bone suit, grey woollen socks, and black Oxford shoes. He went under a number of names, depending on the situation, but in this building he was usually known as Mr Forsyth.

  The gentle tap on his door served as a switching mechanism for his keen mind, temporarily closing it off from the problem he had just been dealing with, and preparing it for the one which was undoubtedly soon to present itself.

  The bearer of the new problem entered the room. His name was Barrington, and while he was younger than Forsyth, he was just as ambitious and probably nearly as brilliant.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, but a name’s just been flagged up which I believe may be familiar to you,’ he said in a voice which was deferential, but in which that deference rested on a solid foundation of self-confidence.

  ‘And what name might that be?’ Forsyth asked.

  ‘Woodend. Chief Inspector Woodend.’

  Forsyth smiled slightly. ‘Cloggin’-it Charlie! Yes, I do know him. I came across him during that rather unpleasant business at Haverton Camp.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  Forsyth thought about it for a moment. ‘Tenacious,’ he said. ‘Dogged. Bloody minded.’ He paused. ‘What’s Charlie done now to make us take an interest in him?’

  ‘He’s investigating the murders – or perhaps executions might be the more appropriate word – of some ex-servicemen living in the North.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘All these servicemen did a tour of duty in Cyprus. In ’58.’

  ‘I still fail to see why that should concern us.’

  Barrington extracted a single sheet of paper from his jacket pocket, and laid it on the desk. ‘You will when you’ve read this.’

  Forsyth quickly scanned it. ‘Ah, now it’s starting to make sense,’ he admitted. ‘But Whitebridge is a long way from the Med, you know, and I doubt if even a sharp chap like Charlie could reach a conclusion which we might regard as unfortunate without him actually going to …’

  ‘One of his team’s on the way to Cyprus, even as we speak,’ Barrington interrupted.

  ‘And do we have a name for this team member?’

  ‘She’s a Sergeant Paniatowski.’

  Forsyth smiled again, quite fondly this time. ‘Monika!’ he said. ‘Quite a formidable lady, in her own way. Down at Haverton Camp, she facilitated the death of …’ He pulled himself up short, suddenly aware that Barrington might not have been briefed on that particular incident. ‘The details don’t matter,’ he continued. ‘Suffice it to say that quite an important personage died as a result of Monika’s deliberate actions.’

  ‘And she was allowed to get away with it?’ Barrington asked, surprised.

  ‘Indeed,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘As it happened, her quasi-homicidal tendencies turned out to be quite convenient for us.’ He frowned. ‘But it is a problem that she’ll be in Cyprus.’

  ‘So what are we going to do about it?’ Barrington asked.

  ‘For the moment, I suspect that, since the secrets she’s attempting to dig up are buried very deep, we need do no more than monitor her progress.’ He paused again. ‘They are deeply buried, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, I believe they are,’ Barrington said.

  ‘Very well, then, the chances of her uncovering anything are minimal. But if she does look as if she’s getting close, we’ll have start applying a little pressure, because though we all like to see justice done whenever possible, we don’t necessarily want to see it done in this particular instance.’

  Seventeen

  The Blackburn Beverly C.1. transport plane was ninety-nine feet long and had a wing-span of a hundred and sixty-two feet. Its maximum weight for take-off was nearly a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It could reach a top speed of two hundred and seven knots, fly at sixteen thousand feet and had an operating range of one thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine miles. It had seen service in military operations in the Middle East and Far East, and was generally agreed to be one of the most successful planes of its kind ever built.

  Monika Paniatowski had known none of this when she had entered the tail boom through the parachute doors, but a young flight lieutenant, who was the only other passenger, had been more than willing to fill her in on all the details.

  He had a great deal to say about Cyprus, too.

  ‘We’d occupied it since the latter half of the nineteenth century, as a result of the Treaty of Berlin,’ he said, ‘but it wasn’t until the end of the First World War that it became an actual colony, and even then, it was almost by default.’ He paused, and grinned sheepishly. ‘I’m a bit of a history buff,’ he admitted.

  Paniatowski smiled. ‘I think I was beginning to gather that,’ she said.

  ‘I kept it to myself at first, but then my mother found out about it, and she’s had me lecturing to half the Women’s Institutes in the Home Counties, when I’m home on leave. But there isn’t any reason you should have to endure it.’

  ‘It’s no hardship at all,’ Paniatowski protested. ‘I really am interested. And I’ve got a question I’d like to ask, if I may.’

  ‘By all means, go ahead.’

  ‘If we got Cyprus mainly by default, why did we make such a fuss about giving it its independence?’

  ‘Ah, that was because conditions had changed in the meantime,’ the lieutenant said. ‘In 1954 we pulled our forces out of Egypt, and, for want of any real alternative, it was decided to make Cyprus the military headquarters of our Mediterranean zone of operations – and that was as good as saying that we intended to keep it as a colony for ever.’

  ‘But the Cypriots didn’t like that?’

  ‘You can’t really talk about the Cypriots as such, you know,’ the lieutenant said.

  ‘You can’t?’

  ‘Absolutely not. There’s the Greek Cypriots, who make up about eighty percent of the population, and the Turkish Cypriots who make up the other twenty percent. The Greek Cyps wanted the island to be united with mainland Greece, which is all of five hundred miles across the Med. The Turkish Cyps looked on Turkey as their homeland, which is not really surprising, considering that it’s a mere forty-three miles away.’

  ‘But it was the Greek Cypriots, rather than the Turks, who were actually fighting us, wasn’t it?’ Paniatowski asked, feeling slightly ashamed that she was so vague about something which was still very recent history.

  ‘That’s right, it was the Greek Cyps, though they did occasionally take time off from fighting us, so they’d have the opportunity to have a go at the Turkish Cyps as well. The organization that actually led the terrorist campaign was called EOKA. The name comes from the Greek words …’ the lieutenant closed his eyes, as if he really needed to concentrate, ‘… Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Aguniston.’

  ‘And that means?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘The National Organization of Cypriot Fighters. They were led by a chap called Grivas, who’d been a colonel in the Greek Army during the war, and had led a pretty heroic resistance campaign against the Germans. And all the skills he’d learned in that war, he turned on us. There couldn’t have been more than a few hundred guerrillas at most, but it needed more than 40,000 British troops to even contain the insurgency, never mind defeat it.’

  ‘So in the end, we just gave up?’ Paniatowski suggested.

  The lieutenant looked quite shocked. ‘Great Britain never gives up,’ he said, then seeing the sceptical look in Paniatowski’s eyes, he continued, ‘But in 1960 we did … er … decide to compromise a little, by granting the island its independence, as long as the new government was prepared to guaranteed us two Britis
h bases in perpetuity.’

  ‘What’s the island itself like?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Small by the standards of some islands in other parts of the world, but quite big for an island in the Med.’

  Paniatowski smiled. ‘And what does that mean exactly?’

  ‘It’s a hundred and forty miles long, and – if I remember correctly – it’s fifty-nine miles in breadth, at its widest point.’

  ‘Is it mainly flat?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s a very mountainous place, with the Kyrenia range in the north, and the Troodos massif to the centre and west. It was in the mountains that the guerrillas hid out in the early stages of the conflict, though later they moved into the towns.’

  ‘So, no beaches?’ Paniatowski said disappointedly – though she had no idea why she should feel disappointed, since, as Woodend had pointed out, there’d be no time for sunbathing.

  ‘There are some very fine beaches,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Look out of the window, and you’ll see for yourself.’

  Paniatowski did look out of the window – and realized immediately it was a mistake. This was her first ever flight, and up until that moment she’d pretty much been able to ignore the fact that she was in a big metal tube, high in the sky and with no visible means of support. The sight of the island below made such self-denial no longer possible, and with slightly trembling fingers she opened her handbag and took out her cigarettes.

  The flight lieutenant shook his finger at her in a slightly chiding way. ‘There’s no smoking on RAF flights,’ he said. ‘Didn’t they tell you that when you were on the ground?’

  Of course they had, Paniatowski thought – but she’d managed to very conveniently forget. And the last thing she needed right at that moment, she told herself, was a bloody flight officer – who seemed to have no fear of the situation at all – reminding her of the regulation. Still, she supposed that rules were rules, even if it was the last rule she ever lived to obey.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, slipping the cigarettes back into the handbag.

  The plane’s smooth downward progress was suddenly interrupted by a series of rapid bounces.

  ‘Nothing to be alarmed about!’ the flight lieutenant said. ‘We just hit an air pocket.’