"Hi, Tom. I was just asking Bert if Chris was around. I"m supposed to be meeting him."
"Story of your life, waiting for Chris, it seems. Like waiting for G.o.dot. He was here earlier, I think. Pull up a chair till he shows."
"Thanks. Don"t mind if I do."
He sat down and nodded a greeting at Rowe and Surtees, both of whom regarded him narrowly, but there was nothing about them which suggested the jitters. He guessed that after Rowe had reported that, contrary to expectation, Sixsmith was still sniffing around this morning, King Rat had a.s.sured them there was nothing to worry about, he"d now make absolutely sure that any potential problem was nipped in the bud. Way their minds worked, seeing him here not walking on crutches probably meant he must have accepted a sackful of banknotes from the ProtoVision petty cash.
He decided to encourage this misconception. Dipping into his back pocket, he pulled out the YFG"s notes, which still managed to retain some of their crispness.
"Buy you gents a drink?" he offered.
"Thanks, Joe, but not allowed, not till you"re a member," said Latimer. "But let me get you one. Bert!"
The steward materialized at the table.
"Joe?"
"Thanks. I"ll have one of them ice coffees."
"Wise man. Alcohol and sun don"t mix. Thank you, Bert."
"You not having any more?" said Joe as the steward moved away.
"No, these will do us. Such a lovely evening we thought we"d play a few holes shortly. Can"t do a full round, more"s the pity. Arthur and I have a meeting at eight."
Now he felt their eyes hard on him, looking for his reaction.
He said negligently, "This that discipline thing? Chris mentioned it. Shame, but rules is rules, that"s what I say."
He almost felt Latimer and Rowe relax, but Surtees with his lawyer"s cynicism liked his judgements handed down signed, sealed and bound with scarlet ribbon. He emptied his gla.s.s and said, "Better get going or it"s not going to be worth it."
He wants to get away from here and as soon as he"s out on the golf course with no one in earshot but the other two, he"ll get his mobile out and check with King that I"ve been truly n.o.bbled, thought Joe.
By then it probably wouldn"t matter. If Woodbine had got his finger out, they"d be trawling through the lock basin now, and once they found Waring"s body in Rowe"s bag Willie would be all over them like galloping shingles. Surtees" legal nimbleness might keep him clear for a while, but Joe would have put his own money on Rowe crumbling like meringue and spreading the blame like runny b.u.t.ter.
On the other hand, if the police didn"t find Waring ...
But they would find the body, Joe a.s.sured himself. What else could the evidence possibly mean?
He pushed aside all the previous examples of fatal misinterpretation which came swimming out of his past. No time for a faint heart now. He had to be true to himself. And when this bunch of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds got what was coming to them, he wanted to be there and he wanted it to be in public. Had to think of a way of delaying them here, certainly of keeping them in sight.
Latimer said, "You"re right, Arthur. Joe, what about you? Why don"t you keep Chris waiting for a change and join us for a few holes?"
He was taking the p.i.s.s, like they"d all done from the start. In their eyes he was a sad little snoop who"d probably let himself be bought off for what in their eyes was a pittance. Joe didn"t mind. The brightest and the best had often discovered the price of justice was humiliation. And in any case he"d made it clear from the start he was a c.r.a.p golfer with a zero handicap.
He said, "Sure, why not?"
They looked at him in amazement which rapidly turned to amus.e.m.e.nt.
He added, "But I don"t have any gear. Last time you said you could kit me out. That still on?"
His thinking was that he could probably drag out the process of being kitted out long enough for Woodbine to get in touch.
Latimer said, "No problem. In fact, it might give the rest of us a bit of a chance if you have to play with borrowed clubs, eh?"
They all laughed. There was malice in their laughter. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are really enjoying themselves, thought Joe. It made him uneasy. Seeing a bad golfer play badly couldn"t be all that funny, could it?
In any case, he had no intention of actually trying to hit a ball!
He glanced around the terrace, hoping to see Porphyry with the look on his face that said Woodbine had rung to say their search had turned up a body. But there was no sign of him.
Latimer was urging him to his feet and next moment they were walking down the steps from the terrace in the direction of the pro"s shop.
It was now that Joe began to feel his will and muscle power melting. All he had to do of course was say, Hey, let"s end this farce; you know who I am and what I"m doing here, and before very long you are going to be in deep doo-doo.
But somehow he couldn"t utter the words. No great gambler himself, he recalled Merv Golightly, who would bet on the next bit of bird c.r.a.p to hit his windscreen, saying, Never show your hand till the last card"s dealt. Did that really apply here? Maybe, maybe not. All he knew was that his thoughts were flitting like a bat in a cellar trying to find a way out and coming up against stone walls and locked doors in every direction.
In the shop, Chip Harvey looked slightly puzzled to see Joe in Latimer"s company, and even more puzzled when the vice-captain explained what was happening.
Latimer said, "Joe, I"m just going to go and get my own gear together. Chip, don"t go digging out any fancy clubs for Mr Sixsmith. He"s scratch, you know, so we want to give him every disadvantage."
He moved away, laughing.
Joe looked after him with a distaste that unusually for him bordered on loathing.
"Real funny guy," he said. "Why do they say "scratch" anyway? Because guys like me would be better off not starting? Or maybe because the way we play looks like scratching around?"
Chip ignored the question and said anxiously, "Joe, what"s going on?"
"It"s OK, Chip," said Joe, feeling sorry for the boy. "Really, everything"s going to be sorted soon. Nothing for you to worry about. You just do as Latimer said, get me kitted out, but you needn"t rush the job, OK?"
The a.s.sistant pro brought him a selection of golf shoes which he tried on, some of them twice, till he found a pair that felt more comfortable than his own slip-ons.
He stomped around the shop in them, then selected a club at random from a display rack and waggled it about.
Chip said, "You"re left handed then. That"ll make things a bit harder."
"No," said Joe. "I ain"t a leftie."
"You"re not? Well, that"s a left-handed club you"ve got."
"Is it? Thought it felt kind of funny."
He picked up one with the head facing the other way. It felt only slightly less funny.
Chip had been watching him with growing unease.
Now he burst out, "Joe, are you really scratch?"
"Yeah, unless you can get worse than scratch, in which case, that"s me."
The young man let out a pained sigh and looked heavenward like a curate who"s just been told that the ten commandments only apply where there"s an F in the month.
He said urgently, "Joe, you"ve got it so wrong. Being scratch means you"re a very good golfer indeed. The worse you are, the bigger your handicap. So if your handicap"s, say, eighteen, it means that a scratch golfer would give you a shot start on every hole!"
"No, that can"t be right," said Joe with confidence.
The door opened and Tom Latimer called, "You about ready, Joe?"
"Coming," Joe replied. "Just choosing my clubs."
"OK."
The door closed and Joe repeated, with less confidence this time, "That can"t be right. Can it?"
"You"d better believe it," said Chip in a low voice as he set a couple of golf bags before Joe. "You ever play golf before? Ever?"
"Once went on a putting green in the park," said Joe, adding as he sought desperately for evidence that he was misinterpreting the young man, "You trying to tell me that scratch means you"re good?"
"It means you"re very good. Very very good. Very very very good."
There"s no arguing with three verys.
"Oh shoot," said Joe.
"Never mind," said Chip, unhappy to see the distress he had caused. "It"s really not a difficult game if you stick to the basics. Eye on the ball, head still, swing easy. Piece of cake."
It was clearly well intentioned, but to Joe it sounded like telling a man bound to a stake before a firing squad to watch out for flying bullets. He picked up the golf bag. It weighed a ton, but that didn"t make much difference when your legs felt they were anch.o.r.ed in lead. Suddenly his determination not to get anywhere near the first tee blotted out everything else in his mind.
He emerged into the bright sunlight. He worked out that if he turned left and moved quick, he could be back at his car and using his phone to ring Woodbine and ask him what the shoot was holding him up before the Triangle noticed his disappearance.
But Tom Latimer was waiting for him just outside the door.
"This way, Joe," he said. "Thought we"d play the first two then cut through the woods by Jimmy Postgate"s house and play ourselves in over the last three. See if you can carry the corner on the sixteenth like Chris sometimes does."
The mockery was almost open now.
b.a.s.t.a.r.d! thought Joe.
The adrenalin surge of the hatred gave him strength to move forward with the man down a steep pathway towards what he guessed was the first tee. Surtees and Rowe were there already. They watched his approach with smiling bonhomie. It should have been a comfort to think that soon they"d be getting their comeuppance, but somehow he"d lost all confidence in his theories. He suspected that the only reason Willie Woodbine was going to make contact with him was to vent his fury.
"Now how shall we do this?" said Latimer as they reached the tee. "High-low takes, that all right with you, Joe? Means you"ll have to carry me, but that"s the penalty of excellence. OK by you?"
Joe didn"t answer. He was staring down the tree-lined fairway which stretched away to a green so distant, he had to screw up his eyes to make out the flag.
Then he heard a murmur of voices and a ripple of laughter and, looking up, he saw to his horror that their path had taken them round the side of the clubhouse and the first tee was positioned right beneath one end of the terrace where so recently he"d been sitting sipping iced coffee. Directly above him, the ornate bal.u.s.trade was lined with spectators, drinks in hand, like Romans in the Emperor"s box, waiting for the gladiators to start the slaughter.
"By rights it should be low man"s honour," said Latimer. "But as it"s your first time here, Joe, we"ll let these bandits show us the way, shall we?"
Joe looked at him blankly. Now was the time to have his heart attack, but somehow the presence of all these people looking down from above, while making it even more imperative that he put a stop to this farce, made it even harder to do so.
Rowe was on the tee. He placed a ball at his feet, then without ceremony and with very little evidence of effort, sent it soaring greenwards. It took one mighty bounce, a couple of skips, then rolled for ever and finally came to a halt right in the middle of the fairway at a distance which Joe"s good eye reckoned as two eighty or two ninety yards.
There was a ripple of applause from above.
Surtees took his turn. More methodical than Rowe, he had three studied practice swings before cracking his ball away to finish some fifteen yards behind his partner.
Now it was Latimer. He was a real fusspot, standing behind his ball as if taking very precise aim, before doing some stretching exercises followed by half a dozen practice swings. Above someone yawned audibly and there was a snort of quickly stifled laughter. Finally he addressed the ball and after staring at it for what even to Joe, who was happy to wait forever, seemed a h.e.l.l of a long time, he swung.
It wasn"t a bad hit; a bit misdirected, so that at first it looked like it was heading towards the left-hand trees, then it curved back into the fairway, bounced, ran to the right-hand edge, and came to a halt some thirty yards back from Rowe"s ball.
"Sorry about that, Joe," said Latimer, shaking his head in rather stagy disappointment. "Lucky I"ve got you to put things straight."
Joe advanced on to the tee. Each step was the last before his dodgy knee buckled beneath him. Each second was the one before he had his seizure. But somehow he kept taking the steps and somehow the seconds kept ticking by. Perhaps it was his certainty that he physically couldn"t do this that kept him going. Why fake illness when any moment now you really were going to collapse in a heap?
But the collapse never came and finally here he was, adrift in s.p.a.ce, looking down at that little white orb so many light years away, and waiting in vain for a black hole to open and swallow him up.
The silence was absolute. Not a sound from the terrace above. His three companions stood behind the tee still as statues. Even the birds had stopped singing.
But there was sound in that silence. Now he could hear it, though he doubted if anyone else could. The sound that Porphyry had told him about, the sound that was less intrusive than the music of the spheres to normal human hearing but disruptively cacophonous to the golfer, destroying all his powers of concentration and co-ordination.
He could hear the roar of the b.u.t.terflies in the adjacent meadow.
Time for the farce to end. All he had to do was step back and say in front of everybody, Listen, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, you may have st.i.tched poor Chris Porphyry up, but you ain"t going to make a fool out of me.
He took a deep breath and tried to persuade his feet to take that step back. Nothing happened. Oh shoot. Collapse was one thing, petrifaction was another. Maybe they"d all just tiptoe away and leave him be. Maybe in years to come people would pay cash money to come and see the famous statue of the man who turned to stone at Royal Hoo.
Maybe ...
He said a prayer, but he doubted if it could be heard beyond the stars, so loud now were the b.u.t.terflies.
But somehow it got through, for from high above he heard a voice reply.
"Joe!" the voice called. "JOE!"
He looked up and wouldn"t have been surprised to see a circling dove or two.
There were no doves, but he beheld an infinitely more welcome sight.
It was indeed the voice of G.o.d, a Young Fair G.o.d, holding up a mobile phone.
Yes, still young and fair, but now Christian"s face was the face of a very vengeful deity.
"They found him, Joe. They found him. They"re on their way."
Even as he spoke, Joe realized that the faraway sound that had so paralysed him wasn"t a roar of b.u.t.terflies or anything else. It was the high-pitched, rhythmic wail of sirens, still a long way away but approaching fast, and now detectable by the terrace spectators, who broke their own expectant silence with speculative chatter.
Joe turned his head and looked at the Triangle. They too had heard and their faces were twisted in fearful speculation.