Spurious Games

Jenkins David

Description

When a local chess player is discovered dead, Detective Inspector John Logos of Cornwall's St Borstal Constabulary is called in to investigate what turns out to be a serial killer running amok in the sedate world of Cornish chess. The detectives quickly find themselves as pawns in the game of an arrogant mastermind calling himself 'The Turk' who taunts them with chess-related clues. Baffled, they call in Caradoc Pritchard, an eccentric Welsh Professor, and together they must work against the clock to predict the killer's next move.A literary novel of ideas masquerading as a whodunit, Spurious Games exhibits a consistently droll sense of humour that belies its essential seriousness as an extended riff on authenticity. Despite its roots in chess, there are a number of important 'side shows', all treated with equal ironic irreverence.

Sujets

• Cornualles
• Cornwall

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838598259
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 David Jenkins

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.


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ISBN 978 1838598 259

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For Christina, a very present help.
You have been my inspiration, support, most perceptive critic and faithful companion throughout the journey of this debut novel.


With thanks to my dear friends the Cornish chess players.

‘You’re so vain
I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you?
Don’t you?’
Carly Simon, ‘You’re So Vain’

‘The secret of success is authenticity;
fake that and you’ve got it made.’
Traditional joke in multiple versions

‘You must take your opponent into a
dark deep forest where 2 times 2
equals 5 and the path leading out
is only wide enough for one.’
Grandmaster and world chess champion Mikhail Tal
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
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20
21
22
23
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26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
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37
38
39
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41
42
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Part One
The Pieces


1
Detective Inspector John Logos of Cornwall’s St Borstal constabulary regarded himself as a busy man, although it was not the kind of work that he felt suited him greatly. He was confined by indifferent health to working at the station in what he dismissively described as a desk job with nothing much more exciting than recording the last known whereabouts of the Beast of Harrowbarrow that made a regular appearance every year at the start of the tourist season. In the unlikely event of a member of the big cat family reported up a tree, he would phone the fire brigade but not take part in the rescue himself, a bit like Polruan’s binocular-wielding volunteer coastguards, typecast as ancillary help and forbidden to join any emergency action, even at the foot of the local cliffs. Once an advanced driver licensed to engage in high-speed chases, John’s early police career had been at the wheel of an iconic Rover SD1 ‘jam sandwich’ patrol car. Nevertheless he was grateful to have been kept in the force at all, given his serious health problems.
Over recent years, his eyesight had steadily deteriorated due to diabetic retinopathy resulting in his retaining little peripheral vision beyond a kaleidoscope of spots, cobweb strips, and blank areas of grey in the daytime, fading to almost nothing beyond a swirling velvet mist at night. He got by largely by turning his head sideways in company to make use of an optical sweet spot, giving him the appearance of a conversing parrot. The Chief Constable and his own local boss, Superintendent Polgooth, had been sympathetic but firm, transferring John to bureaucratic duties and warning him at the same time that if the projected government plans to institute police fitness tests were to become operational, then they would no longer be able to protect him and he would be expected to walk into the sunset with credits rolling.
Thus restricted, his world became an old-fashioned wooden desk in a nondescript office at the St Borstal police station in a gated compound off Bugle Road. He had previously used the designation ‘desk job’ as a term of contempt, but it had lately come to feel almost worthwhile, privileged even, the last lifeline tethering him to gainful employment, aided by magnification software that gave him access to his computer. It did little, though, to assuage his deep-rooted hunger for the kind of forensic investigation commensurate with his talents. Occasionally he was called in to offer advice to his police colleagues, but understandably most wanted to run their own show.
John had admittedly gone somewhat to seed. His belly bulged over his regulation police belt from which once dangled a now redundant truncheon, while his laboured breathing suggested even to himself a lack of general fitness. Since his marriage had disintegrated in the manner of a punctured Pirelli tyre on a Formula One car, due in both cases to built-in weak bonding, he looked after himself with partial success in a small St Borstal flat, alternating between gourmet cooking and junk food. Perhaps surprisingly for a washed-up desk officer, DI Logos possessed an unusually impressive backstory. Following first class honours in Linguistic Philosophy and Syllogistic Logic at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, he had worked briefly in the city as a successful futures trader before unaccountably joining the cops. Historically his two hobbies had been spread betting and chess, although his financial resources had reached a point where they could no longer support the former. Temperamentally, however, he remained a betting man.
A formidable chess player, the inspector had played board two for the Kenilworth Chess Club, where his large pebble glasses were as familiar as the pair worn by the Irish snooker player Dennis Taylor. Since coming to Cornwall he had occasionally represented the St Borstal club in the Roberts Cup but had declined to put himself up for the Cornwall county team and played most of his chess on the Internet. Although still potentially the most intuitive and imaginative of players, with a taste for baroque complexity, he had for a long time consciously subordinated his earlier flair to a strict commitment to what he called ‘following the logic of the position’.
Much of his brooding resentment at his straitened circumstances sprang from his having no routine access to the kind of detective work requiring in-the-field investigation, where his formidable powers of deduction could and often had made a difference. Although he did not know it at the time, it was precisely in this area that his life was about to change. It began with a telephone call.
‘Logos speaking. Can I help you?’
John always called himself ‘Logos’ when answering the phone, leaving out the detective inspector bit. He thought ‘Logos’ was an apt name for a philosopher, even a tad canonical (‘In the beginning was the Word’). He had been rather taken by Professor Welch in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim and his grandiose opening gambit ‘History speaking!’ and saw his own telephone response as an equivalent trope.
The phone call was from Detective Sergeant Colin Woodman, recently promoted following years on the beat in the Lostwithiel area. Woodman’s elevation from foot soldier was unusual in that he was unable to drive, having failed his test on no fewer than seven occasions, but for some reason this handicap was not on file and nobody made the telling inquiry at his interview. On the other hand he was an accomplished cyclist with road racing form and his unrivalled experience of the suburban and rural rabbit runs around St Borstal often saw his red Ridley Orion road bike first on the scene before the snarled up squad cars arrived. Woodman was easily recognisable, with a face hollowed out by wind and rain and two missing front teeth where he had ridden at speed into the back of a council garbage truck. Now he was phoning in to report the discovery of a corpse in a local watering hole, an unusual occurrence involving an as yet unexplained death.
‘Colin here. I am in the Ship Inn at Lerryn, where a body has been found slumped across a desk at a computer terminal in the back bar. The immediate cause of death is unclear, but most probably a heart attack or drug overdose, possibly even some kind of accidental poisoning as those present reported death throes that were both dramatic and noisy with hoarse rattling sounds, hands clawing the air and convulsions that caused the body to jackknife. We have already called the pathologist‘s office as there will certainly need to be a postmortem.’
‘Has there been any provisional ID?’
‘Yes, and funnily enough I think you may know the victim, informally identified as Richard Rooker, an accountant at Wetherspoon’s Bars and Restaurants and a member of the famous Carrick Chess Club that meets in Carnon Downs Village Hall. A recent winner of the Cornwall County Chess brilliancy prize, they say. Rooker was considerably overweight, I suppose with all that access to food and drink, although he was quite fit in a sumo wrestler kind of way. I was told that his nickname at the club was “The Chubby Checker”. I get the impression that most chess players are either grossly overweight – it is unavoidably a sedentary occupation – or shriveled by perpetual anxiety into gaunt angular figures, with no body type in between.’
‘Touché, but let’s get back to business. Do you have any immediate leads?’
‘Not really. There’s no reason I can see to suspect foul play, but it is my first unexplained