Brought to Book (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 14

  ‘I suppose’, he said lamely, ‘that I do mean that.’

  ‘Although,’ said Monica, ‘she was terribly upset by Vernon’s death. I know. I had to comfort her.’

  ‘Shock,’ said Warrington. ‘Guilt. Hemlock’s death was the beginning of a new life.’ He dabbed under his monocle and there was a catch in his voice. ‘A new life for both of us. Suicide’s unthinkable.’

  Bognor thought Danvers Warrington an unspeakable old ham but he was also inclined to think he had a point. He refilled their glasses and they all stared into them. Outside, the owl hooted again and the dogs barked. A door opened and they could hear the Major’s voice, thin and tetchy, telling them to ‘for God’s sake put a sock in it’. Acting under orders again, thought Bognor. Andover Strobe had as much capacity for putting the fear of God into people as his old rival, Hemlock. The Major’s footsteps sounded on the gravel, paused, then retreated. A few bars of the ‘British Grenadiers’ came grating up through the window, off-key, somewhere between a hum and a dirge as if offered up by a human bagpipe. The door shut again and silence fell, punctured only by a steady drip from a blocked drainpipe somewhere close.

  ‘It’s all very complicated,’ said Bognor, with feeling. ‘What’s your view, Danvers? You don’t mind if I call you Danvers?’

  Danvers Warrington shook his head and said, ‘Pas du tout.’ Then he assumed an expression of rapt concentration as if engrossed in a particularly difficult piece of blind tasting and remained silent for a full minute.

  ‘Well,’ he said, at last, ‘since you ask, I’m bound to say that having regard to all the available evidence I can only suggest that—’

  Whatever it was that the wine sage was about to suggest was drowned in an ear-splitting whine that drove Bognor instantly back to the chaotic meeting at the Royal Institute of Letters. It was the sound of a loudspeaker that didn’t work – an eardrum beater pitched just below the noise bats make. It was coming from the gardens and whereas the RIL’s microphone had had only the indoor resonance of small arms fire this was heavy artillery. All three of them instinctively set down their glasses and cupped hands to ears. Seconds later the whine stopped abruptly and a prissy, bossy, fussy voice came winging through the dark against a background of barking guard dog. Bognor recognised it at once. Amplified Bumstead.

  ‘This is the police!’ he whinged. ‘We have the Haven completely surrounded and we are armed. I want all of you to come out on to the terrace with your hands above your heads. Mr Strobe, we know that you’re in there and we have reason to believe that you are holding a representative of Her Majesty’s Government against his will. I’m asking you to come out on to the terrace in an orderly manner, in which case no harm will come to you. Otherwise I shall have no alternative but to send in men of the anti-terrorist squad from Police HQ in Bradleigh.’

  There was a longish silence.

  ‘Hello, Mr Strobe! This is DCI Bumstead speaking. I say again, DCI Bumstead speaking. You and your accomplices are completely surrounded by armed police. Please come out on to the terrace immediately and no harm will come to you. Over!’

  The three in Coleridge crossed to the window and looked out. There was nothing to be seen. DCI Bumstead and his men were lurking out there in the dark. Bognor wondered how many there were. He and Monica must have been followed. Glatt, probably. Or someone might have noticed by chance. Or someone might have acted on a hunch. Not so likely. Chance and hunch were Bognor propensities. Others were more methodical.

  The floodlights still illuminated the Haven. A perfect target. But even as they watched the lights went out.

  Seconds later two strong searchlights about a hundred yards away snapped into action, bathing the terrace in white. DCI Bumstead wasn’t entirely defective. He was quite prepared. Or Glatt had prepared for him. It wasn’t quite such an all-embracing illumination as before but still effective. It didn’t last long. Two shots. Rifles, by the sound of it. Shattering glass. Darkness again and, seconds later, from behind the house the sound of clattering engine.

  ‘Helicopter!’ said Bognor.

  ‘Yes,’ said Warrington, ‘he came in on it earlier. The Rolls was here already.’

  Bumstead’s voice cut in again above the helicopter din. ‘Mr Strobe, that was extremely ill advised. You give me no alternative. I’m sending my men in with orders that they are to shoot to kill if they encounter the slightest resistance. I repeat: “shoot to kill”.’

  The guttural throb of the chopper almost drowned him out. The machine seemed to hang for a second just over the house, then banked sharply and headed off to the north. They listened to its ‘pocketa-pocketa’ dwindling into the distance. Bognor shivered slightly as the silence slipped back. Even the dogs were quiet. Victims of the anti-terrorist squad from Bradleigh, he supposed.

  ‘Look out! Duck!’ shouted Warrington suddenly. There was a tall monkey puzzle tree away to the left of their window and something swooshed out from it, clattering onto the roof just above their heads. Seconds later, as the three of them cowered back behind the bed, there was a smashing of glass and a tall, lean figure came swinging through the window, dropped lightly to his feet, skidded slightly on one of the Turcoman rugs and said: ‘“Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not/who would be free themselves must strike the blow?”’

  ‘“It is – it is!”’ echoed Monica, sardonically, ‘“the cannon’s opening roar!”’

  ‘Trust Glatt to breeze in mouthing Byron,’ said Bognor rattily.

  ‘You all right?’ asked the poet, who was wearing a black leather jumpsuit and whose face was covered in black grease. As far as the Bognors and Warrington were concerned he was just moving darkness – the night made flesh. He detached a heavy rubber torch from his belt and swung it round the room.

  ‘You must be Warrington,’ he said, dwelling for a second on the oenophile’s canary calves. ‘You may well be under arrest as soon as friend Bumstead gets here. He’s in a white Range Rover having the time of his life. What about Glopff and Hastings? I suppose they got away with Strobe in the helicopter. The Major’s downstairs, I trust. He’s one of ours, as you must have guessed. And Capstick’s with him, no doubt. Capstick will be under arrest as well, I shouldn’t wonder. Not to worry, though. We’ll sort Bumstead out in due course. But in the meantime it’s a case of “every dog at last will have its day”. You’ll just have to humour him.’

  The beam of his torch fell on the Chateau Magnol label. ‘Aha!’ he said, ‘a nice, unpretentious little Cru Bourgeois. The Major keeps a very tolerable cellar, as I’m sure you’ll acknowledge, Warrington.’

  Just then the lights came back on. Glatt poured himself a glass of wine and sat perched on the radiator. He looked very pleased.

  ‘I thought friend Strobe would show his hand sooner or later,’ he said; ‘overplayed it of course. Which was always on the cards.’

  ‘You think Strobe’s at the bottom of all this,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Not as simple as that,’ said Glatt, ‘but he’s near the bottom.’

  ‘And now he’s given you the slip.’

  ‘I told Bumstead he’d have wings as well as wheels,’ said Glatt, ‘but the DCI is not one of life’s listeners. He knew best. I wanted to go in ahead and scout round. Easy enough to clip his wings. Still, no real harm done. We’ll pick him up ere long. Cheers!’

  From below they could hear staccato commands and a scuffling on the gravel. Presently they heard the stairs being taken two at a time by someone with steel caps on his toes and/or heels and DCI Bumstead entered without so much as a by-your-leave. He was looking very chic in uniform with a dressy peaked cap, a swagger stick and a pair of leather gloves. A little man’s finest hour, thought Bognor.

  ‘Well done, Glatt,’ he said. ‘Mrs Bognor’ (a stiff incline of the head to Monica); ‘Warrington’ (ditto to Warrington); ‘Bognor’ (a very curt nod to Simon).

  Two young plainclothes men in footballers’ suits followed. ‘Warrington,’ said Bumstead, ‘you’re under arrest. Hutchinson
and Collins here will caution you and take a statement. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Merde!’ said Warrington ‘whatever for?’

  ‘I’m holding you for false VAT returns,’ said Bumstead, ‘but there’ll be more in due course.’

  Warrington went very pale at the mention of Value Added Tax. Bognor guessed that most Big Books authors were less than scrupulous when it came to VAT. He also guessed that Bumstead would not have known this and that Glatt would. A sideways glance at Glatt’s truculence told him that he was correct. He didn’t like Glatt any more than he liked Bumstead. But at least Glatt had a brain.

  The two constables left with Warrington between them. Warrington said to them, ‘Kindly keep your hands to yourselves, gentlemen, I’m coming quietly.’ And to the Bognors, ‘Arrivederci, my dears.’

  ‘Surely some mistake?’ said Bognor, when they had left.

  Bumstead glowered. ‘Any mistakes in this case have been the result of outside interference and of my paying attention to amateurs.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bognor. ‘So now you’ve got it all sewn up?’

  ‘It doesn’t help,’ said Bumstead, ‘when people like you come muscling in on my patch and then get yourselves kidnapped. It doesn’t help at all.’

  ‘I do see that,’ said Bognor. ‘On the other hand one doesn’t expect to have American keep-fit ladies ambushing one in the main street of English seaside resorts. Especially out of season. And at least we led you here.’

  ‘Up to a point,’ said Glatt, ‘but as I told you, the Major is one of ours. We knew what was up. We were going to stage a dawn raid but after consulting with your Mr Parkinson at BOT HQ we agreed to come early in case anything happened to you. Mr Parkinson was quite adamant and I’m sorry to say he pulled rank. Personally I’d have waited.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Bumstead.

  ‘Your man Parkinson wants a word, by the way,’ added Glatt. ‘We’ve sealed off Hemlocks so you’ve got a room in the Goose and Goblet annexe. Tomorrow morning it’s back to London, p.d.q. We’re all agreed on that. Nothing more for you to do down here.’

  ‘Except get in the way.’ Bumstead smiled at Glatt. It was the smile of a would-be conspirator. Equal to equal.

  Glatt did not respond.

  SIX

  PARKINSON WAS HIS USUAL lugubrious, unamused self.

  ‘A crippled publisher in a magenta tracksuit, eh?’ he said; ‘made his getaway in a helicopter, whereupon a poet in a black leotard came swinging in from a nearby monkey puzzle tree crying out “Me Byron! You Bognor!’”

  ‘You’re exaggerating,’ said Bognor.

  ‘I’m exaggerating, laddie,’ Parkinson’s voice could have corroded copper, ‘I’m exaggerating. Baron Munchausen to you too. Listen, Bognor, this was a routine low-key exercise. You were required to produce a Mauve Paper on the Publishing Industry, not a Yellow Book. You are a Board of Trade minion, a penpusher, a low form of life. Yet you come to me with a tale of two murders. You tell me you have been hit on the head outside the Russian Embassy, that one of our bestseller writers is about to blow the gaffe on the sainted memory of Daisy Butskell-Godunov, casting aspersions on half White’s, Trinity and the Brigade or Guards at the same time, and now you give me a space-age wheelchair which whisks this limbless pornographer into a CIA helicopter and off to the flight deck of the USS Brontosaurus from which doubtless to the very Oval Office itself. “Aw, shucks, Bognor.” Isn’t that what the President of the United States will say next time you bump into him? Dear God, what have I done to deserve you?’

  ‘There’s no need to be like that,’ said Bognor, none too amused himself.

  ‘I’ve had that tiresome little man, your old friend Weinstube, trying to wheedle his way past the secretaries every hour of the day and night. He appears to think that a junior minister is entitled to do that. A very junior minister indeed. But I have to tell you, Bognor, that I have had senior ministers on the telephone to me about this one. Very senior ministers indeed. Not to mention the Cabinet Secretary herself. The Dame is not amused. Nor am I. I want you back in the office a.s.a.p. Then I shall have you chained to your desk and deprived of the telephone. There are mountains of correspondence relating to petty fraud in the postal service. That should keep you gainfully employed until you take early retirement.’

  ‘But there are murders to be solved,’ protested Parkinson’s Special Investigator. ‘A Mauve Paper to get out. A book to write. Work to be done.’

  ‘Not by you, sunshine.’ Bognor’s boss was at his most adamant. ‘Your time is finally up. I want you back here under lock and key. There are quite enough people involved already. We appear to have the police and the security authorities all charging around the countryside attempting to solve crimes. It’s my view and the minister’s view that this is no longer a Board of Trade matter. My purpose in life has long been to ensure that this Department has gravitas and what the political commentators like to call “bottom”. It has to be said, Bognor, that on present form you seem to have neither gravitas nor bottom. It is painful for me to have to say these things but I will not shrink from the truth.’

  ‘I do see that,’ said Bognor, ‘but I’ve been with this thing since the beginning and I want to see it through.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just one more day.’

  ‘I said no.’

  ‘Not even a few more hours?’

  ‘You are trying my patience, Bognor.’

  ‘Then just tell me one thing – is Glatt one of ours?’

  ‘Just what precisely do you mean by that curious phrase?’

  ‘Exactly that,’ said Bognor. ‘I mean is he playing for us or the opposition?’

  ‘These are grey areas,’ said Parkinson. Bognor thought he discerned a marginally less adamantine tone. Parkinson’s voice had, as it were, softened from diamond to flint. ‘The good book tells us that he that is not for us is against us. It’s a useful maxim for life, Bognor. You’d do well to heed it.’

  ‘He doesn’t work for the Americans?’

  ‘My information’, said Parkinson, picking words with the careful fastidiousness of a hiker crossing a stream on stepping stones, ‘is that he is on the books of Five.’

  ‘Is that good information?’

  ‘This is an open line, Bognor.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, but I need to know.’

  ‘Let me put it this way,’ said Parkinson, still picking his way through the language with care. ‘Five think he works for Five. I have other information which suggests – only suggests, mark you – that Six believe him to be working for them.’

  ‘I see.’ Bognor did not see clearly but a shape was beginning to emerge.

  ‘Are…I mean…would I be altogether wrong in thinking that Five and Six are, as it were, at sixes and sevens?’

  There was a long, choleric pause. Eventually Parkinson, his voice shaking with an emotion at which Bognor could only wildly surmise, said, ‘I want you back in the office by lunchtime or I’ll tell that Bumstead creature to clap you in irons and have you frog-marched here.’

  A dull click and he was gone.

  Bognor swore, several times, quite loudly.

  Monica smiled sympathy. ‘Parkinson in one of his moods, darling?’

  ‘He thought I was trying to be funny. Why on earth can’t I get him to take me seriously? Nobody bloody well takes me seriously.’

  Monica demurred. ‘I take you quite seriously. Often.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Bognor ran a hand through thinning hair and shook his head as if trying to dislodge something alien that had got stuck in it. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that…well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She did, too.

  ‘I feel, you see,’ he said, groping somewhat, ‘that we’re within an ace of solving this one. But I do wish it were more like a classic Hemlock Big Book. You know. Good Guys, Bad Guys, never the twain
shall meet. Also, beginning, middle and end. There are too many ambiguities here and broken conventions. The Americans, for instance. They’re supposed to be on our side.’

  ‘So they are,’ said Monica, ‘with the exception of Marlene Glopff.’

  ‘But even Marlene Glopff, said Bognor, ‘may think she’s on our side.’

  ‘She has a funny way of showing it. Sticking her itty bitty little gun in your ribs. With friends like that who needs enemies?’

  ‘She may be serving a Greater Truth.’

  Monica smiled. ‘She may think she’s serving a greater truth. Do you think she killed Hemlock?’

  ‘Somehow I doubt it,’ said Bognor. ‘It seems to me that no matter how tight Hemlock’s contracts may have been they could always be got out of. If Glopff’s aim was to get control of British publishing for the Americans she could have done it without killing Hemlock. With Megaword money Andover Strobe could have made any Big Book author an offer he couldn’t refuse and that even Hemlock couldn’t match.’

  ‘I wonder if they’ve found Strobe and the others.’

  ‘The helicopter range can’t be that great. On the other hand he’s bound to have getaway cars.’

  ‘Bit silly, shooting the lights out like that.’ Monica shivered at the memory. ‘Guns and things. Terribly unBritish. An admission of guilt, too. He’s had it now – long-term.’

  ‘That was the Major. Carrying out orders.’

  ‘I thought the Major was one of ours after all?’

  ‘Yes, but he couldn’t let Strobe know that. If he hadn’t shot out the lights, Strobe would have guessed.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  It was late. One in the morning. They were tired. The annexe of the Goose and Goblet was draughty and spartan but the bed was sprung and the sheets were clean. The Bognors undressed and washed, got into the bed, turned out the lights, but could not sleep.

  ‘The Midgelys, Ann Belgrave, Capstick, Warrington, Arthur Green, Romany Flange,’ said Monica.

  ‘And Hastings,’ said Bognor, ‘if you’re running through suspects.’

  ‘And Hastings. Funny sort of butler.’