Game of Stones Read online

  The only solicitor Cameron could think of was a woman he had met at the opening of a print-makers exhibition. He wasn’t particularly into prints but had been invited to the opening by one of Brian’s passing fancies whose hobby happened to be printmaking, and felt he owed it to Brian to show willing. Cameron had been standing admiring a series of particularly well-executed anti-foxhunting cartoons when a pompously plummy voice just behind him – strongly reminiscent of the voice-over from a 1950s Pathé newsreel – had announced to the world that his six-year-old granddaughter ‘could have done better than that.’ Cameron had felt an unexpected surge of anger. The man obviously had no idea what he was talking about, was almost certainly a devotee of fox-hunting himself, and had no need to try to humiliate the printmaker who was standing just a few feet away.

  ‘Actually she couldn’t,’ Cameron had said, turning to face the man and speaking loudly enough for those nearby to hear. ‘You have no idea what you are talking about. So why don’t you just jump back on your horse and gallop off in hot pursuit of the uneatable?’

  The man had bristled and turned a purply-veined shade of pink, but thought better of getting into an argument with Cameron. Instead, he just turned abruptly and left.

  ‘A perfect example of the unspeakable,’ someone just behind Cameron said in a perfectly modulated voice with no discernible accent. ‘Well said.’

  Cameron turned and found himself facing a painstakingly groomed and expensively dressed woman with an oddly military bearing, probably attributable to strong features and a tight, helmet-like hairstyle from which not a single hair was allowed to escape. It was difficult to guess her age – somewhere between thirty-five and fifty. They had spent several minutes chatting over glasses of a surprisingly good Sauvignon Blanc and Cameron had discovered that she was a solicitor – evidently a successful one from the way she dressed – and that her name was Harriet Johnson. But he didn’t know how to contact her.

  The police car drove into the receiving bay at the police station and Cameron was led through to the charge office. There was a different custody officer on duty, but one of the other policemen behind the counter had been there before, recognized him and whispered something to a colleague who was sitting with his back turned to the counter. The second man turned round to look at Cameron and then turned away again, smiling. His smile was trivial in itself but it seemed to represent the extent of what he was up against. Cameron felt drained and helpless.

  The check-in ritual at the counter varied substantially from that of the previous occasion. Not only did he have nothing apart from his watch to sign for – no belt, shoe-laces, or wallet – but this time the custody officer took the trouble to mention his rights. As one of those was the right to make a telephone call to let people know where he was, Cameron gave him Brian’s number and asked to be put through.

  Brian’s grumpiness at being woken so early – it was only just getting light – was perfectly understandable, but his obvious lack of surprise at hearing that Cameron had been arrested and was phoning from the police station seemed vaguely offensive.

  ‘What have you done now?’ Brian asked, ‘Head-butted a policeman?’

  ‘I did think about it for a moment or two,’ Cameron admitted, ‘but I resisted the temptation. I don’t know what the hell I am supposed to have done. They just smashed my front door in and stormed up to my bedroom and arrested me.’

  ‘They must have given you some reason,’ Brian said.

  ‘They just said I had been arrested for “terrorism” – which can cover almost anything – but refused to give me any details.’

  ‘That’s bloody ridiculous,’ Brian said.

  ‘Bloody ridiculous or not,’ Cameron said, anxious to get to the main point of the phone-call before this particular right ran out, ‘I am going to need a solicitor. The only one I know, and I don’t know her very well, is called Harriet Johnson. I met and talked to her at the opening of an exhibition. If the way she dresses is anything to go by, she looks as if she must be successful, but I don’t even know which firm she works for. Could you please Google her, or look her up in whatever equivalent of the Yellow Pages solicitors list themselves in – I don’t think they are allowed to advertise – and ask her if she would be able to represent me?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ Brian replied, ‘but I am unlikely to be able to get hold of her before the solicitors’ offices open, and that is still several hours away.’

  ‘Harriet didn’t look to me like a clock-watcher who arrives in the office on the stroke of nine,’ Cameron said. ‘My guess is that she probably gets to work a lot earlier than that, so if you can get hold of the number to phone you might get lucky.’

  ‘You might get lucky,’ Brian replied. ‘I’m not the one who has managed to get himself arrested. Ciao – take care.’

  Whatever the heck ‘taking care’ of oneself meant when one was enjoying the hospitality of Her Majesty’s constabulary.

  Once he had been signed in, Cameron was led down the corridor and ushered into the same cell he had spent the day in after head-butting the cameraman. The policeman who was escorting him clipped the tie off his wrists and locked the cell door, leaving him gently massaging the bruised places on each wrist where the tie had all but cut through the skin.

  Assault could, at worst, have landed him with a stiff fine and cost him his job, but that depended on the person he had assaulted laying a charge. The Sig Sauer could land him in prison for five years, would certainly cost him his job, and depended only on the strength of the police’s desire to see him prosecuted. There wasn’t a snowball’s hope in Hell that they would forgo the opportunity of getting their revenge for his very public criticism of their responsibility for Hillsborough’s deaths and disinformation.

  It felt as if the walls of the cell were closing in, the space getting smaller and smaller. The thick glass-brick apology for a window allowed enough light through for Cameron to see that it was past daybreak, but he had no idea what the time was. His wrist felt even more naked than the rest of him – taking his watch had been pure vindictiveness. The cell wasn’t cold – they obviously kept the heating on much longer into spring than was necessary – but that didn’t stop him feeling very vulnerable in his pyjamas. Refusing him time to get dressed had also been vindictive. They obviously didn’t think they needed to get him out of the house before the terrorist bomb he had been putting together in his kitchen could explode. If they had really thought he might be assembling a bomb they would have evacuated every house within half a mile.

  And now? They would keep him waiting before questioning him – just to wear him down with nervousness. Whatever they thought they were looking for, or were pretending to look for, it wouldn’t have been the Sig Sauer – but that would certainly be the focus of their questions. Cameron could feel his heart racing and the prickling of sweat. Deep breathing and trying to meditate might help, even if sitting on a blue foam cushion in a police cell didn’t provide the ideal ambience.

  The deep breathing helped a bit – his could feel pulse rate slowing – but meditating was impossible. No matter how hard he tried to empty his mind, an acute awareness of where he was and what might happen next kept seeping back to fill it. The attempt was brought to an abrupt halt by the arrival of a policeman with a small tray carrying a paper cup of water and a sandwich in anonymous cardboard packaging – its egg and bacon filling presumably being their gesture towards breakfast.

  More waiting, more deep breathing, some pacing backwards and forwards in the cell, not managing to clock up much in the way of mileage, and eventually Cameron heard more footsteps and the key turning in the lock. The cell door opened and Harriet Johnson stepped in. The cell door closed behind her.

  Harriet was wearing a dark suit with the same gold treble-clef brooch on her lapel that she had been wearing when they met. Her hair-style was still helmet-like, with every hair still precisely ordered, very much in ke
eping with her slightly aloof bearing. Seeing him still in his pyjamas immediately disturbed the aloofness.

  ‘Didn’t they give you time to dress?’ she asked, not bothering with a formal greeting. ‘That’s a bit unusual.’

  ‘Should they have?’ Cameron asked. ‘I’ve no idea what my rights are in that respect. I’m beginning to think I need to know rather more about my rights in UK than I thought I ever would.’

  ‘How so?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Under apartheid in South Africa we used to point to the UK’s policing and justice systems as models South Africa would do well to emulate. How naive we were. Thanks very much for coming at such short notice. What is the time? They’ve taken my watch.’

  ‘11.30,’ Harriet answered. ‘There was no more need for them to take your watch than there was for you to be brought here in your pyjamas. Brian told me that you have taken up the cause of the Hillsborough 96 and appear to have succeeded in irritating the South Yorkshire Police in the process. Not the most tactically sensible thing to do by the look of it.’

  ‘What else did Brian tell you about me?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Harriet answered. ‘But he did tell me that you have been clinically diagnosed with PTSD and that you have an extremely short fuse. He said he hoped I would be able to keep a lid on that, as it could get you into trouble. I got the impression from what he said that it might already have done so – but he didn’t go into any details.’

  ‘Brian had no business to tell you about the PTSD,’ Cameron said, ‘I would obviously have told you about it myself.’

  ‘I’m sure he told me with the best of intentions,’ Harriet replied. ‘It sounded to me as though he is quite worried about you.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to be – I can look after myself,’ Cameron said. ‘If I could look after myself where the apartheid Special Branch was concerned, I can do so with this lot. What Brian was referring to was a day I spent in this very same cell not so long ago after I had head-butted a Mossad agent who had insulted Mandela. The agent refused to lay charges but they kept me locked in here all day regardless. Have you spoken to them about what I am supposed to have done this time?’

  ‘They just said they had arrested you on suspicion of terrorism,’ Harriet replied, ‘but they weren’t forthcoming when I asked for more details. How do you know the man you assaulted was a Mossad agent?’

  ‘Who else would go to the trouble of trying to photograph every single member on a Palestine Solidarity Campaign protest march along a route that was covered by CCTV? MI5 and the police certainly wouldn’t have needed to.’

  ‘That does sound like a reasonable deduction,’ Harriet said. ‘Before they question you, is there anything I need to know about what the police might have been looking for when they searched your house? They told me they would be ready to start questioning you this afternoon, which must mean they expect to have completed their search by then. They must have had some good cause for the raid – or at least some cause that they could argue was good cause. A raid like that costs a great deal of money and they wouldn’t do it just for the hell of harassing you.’

  ‘I really have no idea,’ Cameron replied. ‘But I wouldn’t put it past them to invent a reason to harass me. It could just have been a training exercise like Forest Gate.’

  It wouldn’t have been the Sig Sauer they were looking for because they didn’t know he had it. At some point he would need to explain to Harriet why he had kept the gun under his mattress, but that would involve telling her what it had been used for, and he was sure the cell would be bugged. It wouldn’t help his cause for the police to know.

  ‘OK,’ Harriet said, ‘I must go now. They will call me when they are ready to question you. They will probably keep you waiting longer than they need to, but don’t fret – it doesn’t sound to me as though this is going to be at all difficult.’

  Except that you don’t know about the gun, Cameron thought as Harriet smiled at him and turned away to knock on the cell door to be let out. Her departure left him feeling even more alone, and the feeling stayed with him through the hours that followed. Hours he couldn’t measure, punctuated as they were only by the arrival of a paper plate of soggy fish and soggier chips at what he presumed must be their normal lunch time.

  Eventually Cameron heard footsteps along the corridor and the key turning in the lock again. A uniformed policeman he hadn’t seen before came in, held out a pair of handcuffs for Cameron’s still tender wrists, and ushered him into the corridor where another uniformed policeman fell into step beside him. Cameron’s mouth was dry and his pulse was throbbing in his temple again. The best he could hope for was that they would release him on bail to await prosecution for possession of a prohibited weapon. But they might well insist on keeping him in custody until they could put him on trial.

  Chapter 10

  In almost all respects Cameron found it reassuring to have Harriet sitting beside him in the interview room. Her response to his account of the head-butting incident had been studiedly neutral, but she had clearly been taken aback by finding him in his pyjamas. Having her there made him feel less vulnerable – and refusing to allow him to get dressed had obviously been all about making him feel vulnerable. She hadn’t said much, but it hadn’t taken more than a few minutes for him to feel sure that she knew what she was doing.

  The one respect in which Harriet’s immaculately dressed presence beside him made Cameron feel uncomfortable was one he was acutely conscious of being able to do nothing about. He hadn’t had time to have a shower or put any deodorant on before being marched unceremoniously out of his house. He had been sweating on and off since early morning and fervently hoped that wasn’t too obvious.

  The preliminaries of introductions and the switching on of the tape recorder did not last long. The police were clearly taking this seriously – the two men on the other side of the table were both Inspectors. Detective Inspector Sinclair was a Gorbachev lookalike – if he’d been born a couple of decades earlier he would just have needed a bit of lipstick to imitate the birthmark on the broad expanse of his forehead and he could have moonlighted as one of Gorbachev’s doubles. Inspector Tyssen was taller and thinner and had more hair but otherwise had no distinguishing features. Out of uniform he would have had a much better chance of passing unnoticed in a crowd than his plain-clothes counterpart would have.

  Once the preliminaries were out of the way, Sinclair reached down into a briefcase beside his chair, pulled out an evidence bag containing a handful of Go stones, and pushed it across the table towards Cameron.

  ‘Would you mind telling me what these are Mr Beaumont?’ he asked.

  ‘Dr Beaumont,’ Cameron said.

  ‘I said “Would you mind telling me what these are Mr Beaumont?”’ Sinclair repeated more loudly.

  ‘Dr Beaumont, Sergeant, Dr Beaumont not Mr Beaumont,’ Cameron said quietly.

  The policeman didn’t reply, he just sat looking at Cameron. Silence was clearly one of the go-to tools in his interrogation toolkit. Cameron felt Harriet put her hand on his knee. Her general air of aloofness ensured that there was no chance of her being misinterpreted. She was suggesting that he should calm down and avoid antagonizing them unnecessarily. But Cameron didn’t think he needed to calm down. He had the odd sensation of looking down as an interested observer on a scene he hadn’t scripted that featured himself as the main actor. It was a sensation he occasionally felt when he was lecturing – usually when he wasn’t feeling too confident about the material he was lecturing on.

  ‘Those are Go stones, Sergeant,’ Cameron said. ‘Some are black stones and some are white stones.’

  ‘I can see that some are black and some are white, thank you Dr Beaumont. But what are they for?’ Sinclair responded.

  One minor skirmish won.

  ‘They are for playing Go with,’ Cameron replied. ‘What else do you imagine Go stones
might be for?’

  ‘That is what we are interested in,’ Inspector Tyssen chipped in, ‘I have no idea what Go is, please explain.’

  ‘Go is an ancient board game which came originally from China but was subsequently developed by the Japanese. It is a war game whose aim…’

  ‘A war game?’ Sinclair interrupted. ‘In what sense is it a war game?’

  ‘Not in any sense that a policeman needs to get excited about,’ Cameron replied. ‘In the same sense that chess is a war game, and chequers is a war game and draughts is a war game. Games that involve capturing one’s opponent’s pieces, or taking over one’s opponent’s territory, or both, are called war games. In the case of Go, the main aim is to seize and consolidate territory, but some of one’s opponent’s stones are almost always killed or captured in the process.’

  ‘Killing and capturing sounds violent,’ Sinclair said. ‘Could this game be said to promote or encourage violence?’

  ‘No more than chess does,’ Cameron replied. ‘If everyone who felt inclined to commit violence turned his attention to playing Go instead, the world would be a damn sight safer and better place.’

  ‘What else can those stones be used for?’ asked Sinclair.

  ‘Why on earth would anyone want to use them for anything else?’ Cameron asked. An image of a glass vase in which a whole bowlful of black Go stones was being used to hold a bunch of faded silk flowers in place came vividly back to him.

  ‘You might as well ask what else you could use chess pieces for,’ Cameron went on, talking to override the memory. ‘Not much I wouldn’t gave thought. Some are carved out of stone and some are made of metal, so you could probably use those ones as paperweights. I suppose you could do some damage if you were to throw chess pieces like that at people, but you couldn’t do much damage with Go stones, even the ones made of slate are too small and too light. Mind you they would be good if you happened to be trying to shoot birds with a catapult – they would fly much truer than randomly shaped stones, and if you were accurate enough they would be lethal.’