Deadline (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 14

  They arrived at the Kirkbrides eventually. They were the last, of course. But dinner had barely started. He had explained to the police, who had eventually and grudgingly sent for Sanders. Sanders had explained to him, roughly and gracelessly, that they had been half expecting something of the sort and that the caretaker had been briefed to report any stranger heading for Derby’s flat. Bognor, tactlessly, for by then he had been very angry, had upbraided the caretaker for not noticing the real intruder and the police for not discovering the secret hiding places in the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanacks. There had been an ugly row. The words ‘amatuer’, ‘buffoon’, ‘incompetent’ and ‘bungler’ had been freely bandied and there had been oaths. They had not parted on friendly terms.

  On his return to the flat he had attempted further explanations but Monica had been no more receptive than the boorish Sanders. She used many of the same words as Sanders and there were more oaths. But eventually they arrived at the Kirkbrides, where they had a vile dinner and Bognor was bored rigid.

  7

  BOGNOR BEGAN THE NEXT day with the boundless optimism of a man who has known so many recent disappointments that, on the law of averages, they must come to an end. Unfortunately in Bognor’s case the law of averages did not apply. At the beginning of the day however he was in high spirits. As he drove over Hammersmith Bridge the sunlight caught the waters of the Thames which sparkled back merrily. The tide was high and oarsmen in singlets skiffed about in improbable vessels. Church bells tolled for morning service and Bognor sang. His mouth was very much less painful today and the words were easier to pronounce and, better still, easier for others to understand. He sang flat but he sang happily:

  Olim fuit monachorum

  Schola nostra sedes

  Puer regius illorum

  Fecit nos heredes.

  Once upon a time he had known what the words meant but he had long since forgotten. The words themselves had stayed embedded in his subconscious. It was hardly surprising since they’d been beaten into it by prefects at school.

  Hoc in posteros amoris

  Grande dedit signum

  Sonet ergo fundatoris

  Nomen laude dignum.

  Then came the chorus, much more easily memorable and rather silly, ‘Vivat Rex Eduardus Sextus, Vivat Vivat Vivat, Vivat Rex Eduardus Sextus, Vivat Vivat Vivat.’ His car was drawn up at traffic lights by the Red Lion pub when he noticed the driver of the next car looking at him peculiarly. Bognor realized that his discordant singing had been extremely boisterous. He wound the window up and felt hurt. The first shadow across his cloudless day.

  At Rosslyn Park he realized why he had regurgitated the words of the old school song. The place hadn’t changed since the days when he and his schoolfriends had chanted it on the touchline during the national schools’ seven-aside competition and for adults the setting was evidently similar. The people, for instance, were identical. In the old days he had assumed that they were parents but now he saw that they were just rugby fans. Men with gum-boots and cloth caps pulled down over their foreheads, woollen scarves and briar pipes stuck permanently in the corners of their mouths. Women with shooting sticks and harsh voices and a tendency to shout upsettingly violent advice during games: ‘Tackle him low, Lorimer’, ‘Use your feet, Anstruther’ or in moment of severe anguish ‘Screw him, Lorimer’ or’ Knock him over, Anstruther’. Once when Bognor had been playing he had heard someone scream ‘Have his balls off, Bognor’ and was certain it had been a female voice. It had been embarrassing.

  The cars parked in erratic lines tended to be old rusty Rovers or spanking new Volvo Estate cars but it was down by the main pitch with its dingy corrugated iron stand and its functional brick pavilion and its old men selling programmes that Bognor noticed the most evocative reminder of his youth and the most profound difference. The first was the beer tent behind the goal posts at the far end, a dingy grey marquee through whose portals he could see barrels on trestles and men in duffle coats, elbows purposefully bent as they put back the first pints of the morning. The second were the posters. All over the place: ‘The Daily Globe Rugby Sevens’, ‘The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth’, ‘The Samuel Pepys Column the truth about people is here’, ‘Rex Shuttle, the Globe trotting man of Sport is here’, ‘Give the Globe a Sporting Chance Read it now’. And so on. Bognor frowned. It was supposed to be an amateur game. This sort of thing was all very well but …

  He wondered where the press tent was. It had been agreed that they would convene there before being allocated specific tasks. He wondered if Milborn Port would have recovered his temper enough to put in an appearance and whether Eric Gringe was well enough to come. There should be no problem with any of the others, though he wondered what Viscount Wimbledon was going to write. ‘I score the winning points in tear-jerking cliffhanger’, he supposed. Musing thus, he almost bumped into the Viscount.

  ‘I say, hello,’ he said. ‘Are you going to the press tent? It’s round the back of the beer tent. They’re all there. I’m just going to warm up.’

  Bognor looked at the blond tracksuited figure and frowned more. The young peer looked revoltingly athletic. The track suit was pale blue with a white trim and at his neck he wore a silk scarf nonchalantly knotted. He didn’t look to Bognor like a man who was going to get his knees dirty.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’ll go and find them. And good luck.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he smiled boyishly, ‘I’ll need it.’

  Bognor turned and shuffled off towards the beer tent, his spirits momentarily dampened by the apparition of glorious youth which conjured up visions of his lost past. Not, to be honest that Bognor had ever looked anything but overweight and middle-aged. Nevertheless ten years ago when he was the Viscount’s age he had looked less overweight and middle-aged.

  There was a profusion of bunting around the beer tent. Seedy much used bunting, it still gave a touch of gaiety. Bognor pushed back his shoulders and pulled in his stomach and then decided to pick up a pint on his way to the official tent. He stepped gingerly across some guy ropes, past a gaggle of schoolmaster types in striped scarves and almost upset the frothing pint which ‘Sir’ Milborn Port was raising with an unsteady hand.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Port nervously, ‘I thought I ought to have a word with you. I’ve been putting two and two together. Have a drink.’

  Bognor saw that he was drinking neat whisky and washing it down with beer. He looked dreadful. His face was puce and puffy and his eyes rheumy. His outfit was more suited to a day’s racing than a day’s rugby but not of a distinguished sort. He wore a belted brown overcoat, a bedraggled brown trilby and from his neck there cover a battered binocular case festooned with the tickets of innumerable racecourses rather as extrovert travellers cover their baggage with airline stickers. From the folds of his voluminous overcoat there protruded a pair of cavalry twill encased legs and two down at heel suede desert boots which had recently been through a puddle.

  ‘I’d like a pint.’

  The pint came and Milborn gave it to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Mind if we go over there for a chat?’ He winked as he said it and nodded in the direction of a table in a corner where the tent canvas flapped in the wind.

  ‘OK.’

  At the table Milborn put down his glasses and extracted a packet of cheroots and a packet of mints from the folds of his greatcoat. Bognor took a cigar but declined the mint and eventually with much difficulty caused by the trembling of his hands and the draughts coming through holes in the canvas Milborn managed to ignite the cigars.

  ‘You’re on to me, aren’t you?’ he said, leaning across the table and coughing out cigar smoke, ‘I’m rumbled.’

  Bognor wondered what he was talking about. It was clear he wasn’t well and he was rambling. He leant even further across the table and Bognor recoiled involuntarily from the stench of mints and alcohol and tobacco and simple primitive halitosis. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘honour between thieves. I k
now your game.’

  ‘What game?’ said Bognor. He didn’t like the way this conversation was developing. He looked about the tent anxiously for help but the faces were universally strange.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ Mr Port tried to tap his finger against his nose and missed, waving thin air pathetically. He tried again and managed more successfully.

  ‘Know what?’ Bognor imagined he was talking about his grubby liaison with the Russian Embassy.

  ‘Vodka,’ he said, as if it was a password, ‘Ivan the terrible, blinis.’

  Bognor realized that he was doing an impression of the Spy Who Came In From The Cold. He decided to humour him.

  ‘You mean I know that you have, shall we say, dealings with Russian intelligence.’

  ‘Not so loud,’ hissed Mr Port, looking furtively at the flapping canvas and the knots of stolid rugby enthusiasts. ‘You have to be careful in this line of country.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Bognor, ‘silly of me.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Milborn took a swig of whisky and then filled his mouth with beer before swallowing both together, ‘you think I’ve sold out.’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

  Milborn shook his head vehemently, and dropped his voice almost to the point of inaudibility. ‘That’s what they want you to think,’ he said ambiguously. ‘I give them a lot of duff information. I’m more what you’d call a double-agent.’

  ‘Oh I see,’ said Bognor gently. ‘In that case it doesn’t matter. I mean I’ll keep quiet.’

  ‘You’d better do that. Hardly anyone knows and if anyone found out it could be very dangerous.’

  ‘Ah.’ The only thing that impressed Bognor was that Milborn appeared to have rumbled his true identity. He doubted whether it was a piece of individual detection. Much more likely to have been a tip from his friends at the Embassy. In which case he was definitely rather flattered. It meant he was acquiring a reputation.

  ‘Now,’ Milborn was jabbing his finger about and speaking very slowly, ‘I think this St John business is a deliberate attempt to frame me. They’re trying to get me out of the way.’

  ‘They?’

  The secret agent looked self-consciously secretive and jerked his eyes heavenwards.

  ‘Oh I see,’ said Bognor, not seeing anything but sensing that he should continue to humour him. ‘Was St John blackmailing you?’

  For a moment a yellow look of animal cunning flashed across the drunken face. ‘He thought he was,’ he said. ‘I used to pay him a bit to keep his mouth shut. Otherwise he’d have given the whole game away.’

  It sounded to Bognor like an accurate description of blackmail but he didn’t say so. There didn’t seem any point. ‘So,’ he asked, ‘who do you think killed him?’

  The papal claimant shrugged expressively. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he said, portentously, ‘that we’ll ever know.’

  Silly old soak, thought Bognor, and found his private thoughts being echoed out loud.

  ‘Silly old soaks,’ said Molly Mortimer, ‘I said you’d be in here. Come on, for Christ’s sake, before Granny has a coronary.’

  Miss Mortimer was dressed entirely in fur fur boots, fur coat almost to her ankles and a fur hood. Very little of her was showing, but what was smiled indulgently at Bognor. He wondered if Monica could have been right. She’d make an exquisite blackmailer. Could it have been her in the flat yesterday? Perhaps Milborn Port had been right in his maddening way. Perhaps he would never know anything.

  Molly put a furry arm through his and suggested they walked along the duckboards which had been arranged like stepping stones, to keep the elegantly shod out of the grass and dirt.

  ‘There’s an atmosphere,’ she said. ‘No one has been forgiven for anything and everyone is mysteriously to blame for everything. Your bruises have gone down. Willy promises he’ll buy you a drink when the games are over. He really is sorry.’

  ‘Hmm. I saw him. He looked rather pleased with himself.’

  ‘Don’t be beastly. I said I’d make it up to you.’ She-gave Bognor a conspiratorially sexy look and marched into the press tent with a swagger.

  The headquarters of the Samuel Pepys column for the day was one end of a plain trestle table. At the other end were specialist sports writers and a news reporter. Granny Gringe sat at his end with the temporary secretary whose skirt had ridden even higher exposing fleshy goosepimpled thigh under the stockings. He seemed distraught, twitching in all directions and with discoloured purple disfiguring his otherwise pallid complexion.

  ‘Ah there you are, Bognor. I want you to cover the outside pitches before lunch, with Molly. They’re up by the golf course. Plenty of zip and colour and keep an eye open for anecdotes and celebrities. Most of the celebrities will be round the main pitch this afternoon but a few may, er, sneak in this morning. And if we can have some copy at lunch that will help.’

  There were typewriters on the table. The same antiques that featured so prominently in the Globe offices. Gringe had a telephone too, a primitive object connected to the world outside the tent by a thick cable.

  The rest of the world’s press had a single table and two telephones between the lot of them. It was well known in Fleet Street that while dog didn’t eat dog, dog didn’t scratch other dog’s back either. Therefore whenever one newspaper sponsored an event they made sure that their rivals were accommodated in the most inferior manner possible. Each newspaper at the table had a stiff wooden chair to itself and a cardboard sign in front giving the name. Bognor saw that the only other journalist present was an elderly gentleman sitting in the space reserved for the Press Association. A zipper bag lay at his feet and on the table in front of him there was a tartan thermos flask and a packet of sandwiches. He was reading a paperback.

  ‘They kick off in five minutes, so look sharp,’ said Gringe, ‘and please someone try to produce a usable item. Remember, Bognor, Lord Wharfedale’s words. Flair. I should appreciate some flair today if it’s possible. More flair and less drinking in bars with Mr Port. But above all, please some copy.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ he said. He had no idea what he was going to write about.

  Up by the golf course the teams were already lining up. There were two pitches, both improvised for the occasion and therefore sloping and rutted in a way which introduced an unusual element of chance into the proceedings. Bognor, to his pleasure, recognized the distinctive magenta and gold hoops of the Terrapins on the pitch nearest him. He decided to watch the performance of Viscount Wimbledon, while Molly, reluctantly, wandered to the ground next door where a team called the Druids were engaged with one called the Bosuns.

  The wind was blowing fiercely from the north, tearing at the corner flags and the spectators’ caps and making it difficult to kick the ball with any degree of accuracy or even to catch it. It would be interesting to see how young Willy performed. The game was tailor made for someone like him with, Bognor guessed, a turn of speed and a lot of dexterity. As it only lasted a quarter of an hour sheer rugged stamina was not important, and sheer brute strength which was vital in the full sized fifteen-a-side game which lasted an hour and a half, was almost an impediment. This was a game for the fleet of foot and the Terrapins looked just that. Beside their opponents, a gang of burly flatfoots from Cornwall, they looked distinctly flimsy but Bognor guessed they would have little difficulty in demolishing them.

  The referee, a dapper figure in green, blew his whistle and the Cornish kicked off into the wind. The egg shaped leather hovered in the air and gyrated in the wind as it descended. The Cornish charged after it, elbows swinging and heads down. Bognor saw that the man underneath the descending ball was Willy Wimbledon. He caught it clearly and with a neat jink evaded the leading Cornishman and ran swiftly up-field. Just as a second opponent seemed on the point of flattening him the Viscount hurled the ball to a team-mate standing ten yards from him. This, Bognor sensed, was the Terrapins’ ‘flyer’ and so it turned out. With a devastating sprint the man hurtled succ
essfully over the Cornish goal line and dropped the ball for a try. Four points to nil. There was an outbreak of clapping from the few hundred spectators and some shouts of ‘Played Terrapins’, ‘Good run, Bagley’, and one from a distinguished fifty-year-old man on a shooting stick near Bognor. ‘Well out, Willy,’ he called approvingly. It was an intelligent piece of approbation. The Terrapin sprinter had scored the try but it was Wimbledon who had made it possible with the neat catch, the clever sidestep and the beautifully timed pass. It was Wimbledon who took the conversion kick. Effortlessly he nudged it between the uprights and over the bar. Two more points, more clapping, a shout of ‘Kicked, Willy’, from the man on the shooting stick. The Viscount ran back to join his team-mates with a modest wave of acknowledgement. Bognor found himself disliking him intensely.

  The rest of the game was sadly one-sided. The Terrapins’ tactics were simple. With some dexterity, mainly from Willy, they manoeuvred the ball to Bagley on the wing who was several yards faster than any Cornishman and cantered over for tries with relentless regularity.

  Wimbledon then kicked the conversions with deceptive ease. Bognor knew that in the gale force wind it was a difficult task. Eventually the Terrapins scored thirty-six points. The Cornish scored only once in a manner which he found significant. Willy had kicked off and the ball was caught by the Goliath of the Cornish side. Scorning refinement this bulldozer of a man put his head down and charged straight at the Viscount. He presented a terrifying spectacle and for a moment it seemed as if Willy would be trampled under foot, but it was not to be. In an instant he had blundered past leaving Willy spreadeagled but apparently undamaged. Despite his lack of pace he still outstripped his pursuers, of whom Willy was not one, and scored under the post.