Let Sleeping Dogs Die (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your Kennel Club friends promise that he’s there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Brigadier Willoughby, whom I remember incidentally as a pompous pedant, claims that the Raffles here is merely some heavily camouflaged substitute?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if you succeed in capturing the real Raffles?’

  ‘I’ll bring him back here and confront them.’

  Parkinson scribbled on his blotter. It looked from where Bognor sat as if he was putting headings under a plus and a minus but eventually he gave up.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said his boss, flinging his pencil down on the top of the desk. ‘It can’t do any more harm than you’ve done already. Just remember that anything remotely controversial has to be done by the Danish authorities. Not you. Not you at any price. I’ll tell them you’re coming. Make your own arrangements and stay no more than one night. The budget won’t stand it.’

  ‘Mean sod,’ thought Bognor as Parkinson left for lunch in an ostentatious flurry of documents and paper. He returned to his own room to contact Watherspoon.

  By 3.30 he was airborne. He rather prided himself on the speed of the operation, though certain formalities could be curtailed when one was travelling on government business. The nonsense about checking in hours before take-off, was dispensed with altogether. It was made easier by the fact that he only had one case, a small black leather job, specifically designed for fitting under aeroplane seats. Not that it often did, since the undersides of aeroplane seats never conformed, but the square tag on the case which said that it complied with regulations meant that he could always take it as hand baggage.

  Watherspoon, too, had done his work admirably. When Bognor first spoke to him he promised to telephone Copenhagen and make the necessary arrangements with Jorgen Winterfeld. By the time Bognor reached the airport they had already been made. When he rang a second time from the departure lounge Watherspoon was able to tell him that Winterfeld would meet him in the bar of the Hotel King Frederick in Vester Voldgade at about six. Better still, he would book a room for him in the same hotel. Winterfeld would be reading a copy of the Berlinske Tidende, on condition that Bognor carried the Financial Times. He hoped to entertain Bognor to dinner.

  He was almost contented as the plane settled down to cruise above the cloud line. So much so that he ordered a quarter bottle of champagne. The events of the last few days receded along with the English coast and he amused himself by studying the legs of the air hostesses.

  By the time they began their descent to Kastrup airport he had become sufficiently detached to run over a few salient features of the case so far. It was, he conceded, a muddle. So far he’d had two human deaths, one of which was more or less accidental and the other of which could not be proved to have anything to do with the smuggling ring. He didn’t believe that Rose had been murdered by a passing maniac—well, not by a maniac who just happened to be passing—but he knew he would have a job proving it. As well as these two he had a rabid dog, assuming medical reports on the Duchess’s dog proved positive, and another of which the cause of death could not now be proved. He also had a kidnapped dog and a suspected case of substitution at the Dog-lovers’ League Show. Mixed up with all this there was a great deal of subterfuge and clandestine goings-on, much of which he suspected was done merely to cloud the issue. He had a very definite feeling that people like Coriander and the Duchess, as well as Pocklington and Handyside, rather enjoyed subterfuge and deception for their own sakes. Furthermore he had a still firmer impression that one or two of them, most particularly Coriander, enjoyed confusing him not for any ulterior motive but simply because she enjoyed seeing him confused. And he was still confused. Of that, there was, alas, no question. He recognized too that if ever he were able to locate the real Raffles, not all would be solved. First of all he would have to prove that it was Raffles. That wouldn’t be too difficult, but how to prove that it was the dog Handyside had shipped out on Sunday? He was still, he realized glumly, in the realms of speculation. Another bottle of champagne would have been pleasant but instead he merely tightened his seat belt and looked out of the window at the grey Danish sea coming up towards him.

  After disembarking he travelled for an apparently interminable distance along a horizontal escalator before finding a taxi to the town centre. This was further than he had realized and the regular ‘tick tick’ of the meter clocking up yet more kroner made him uneasy. He had only brought £25 and his credit cards. He hoped it would be enough.

  The King Frederick was near the town hall, opposite a large square, thronged with people and buses, and alongside the burnt-out remains of the Hotel Hafnia. It seemed comfortable enough and reminded Bognor vaguely of the old Mitre in the Oxford of his undergraduate days. He thought vaguely of checking in but instead went straight into the bar, which was dark, panelled and full of middle-aged men reading the Berlinske Tidende. Self-consciously he thrust his pink London paper under his elbow and stood still in the centre of the room. After a few seconds one of the newspaper readers, an immaculate individual with thinning grey hair and a pearl grey suit to match, stood up and advanced on him.

  ‘Doctor Bognor, I presume,’ he said, apparently seriously. ‘I’m Jorgen Winterfeld. Welcome to Copenhagen. I hope you have had an excellent flight and the weather was good. Would you like to go to your room to freshen up or can I get you a drink?’

  Mr Winterfeld’s English, though stilted, was as immaculate as his appearance. Bognor said he’d like to have a drink before he freshened up and Mr Winterfeld suggested a ‘gin-tonic’. Bognor agreed and the two of them sat down at a table.

  ‘I hope you like fish,’ said Mr Winterfeld. ‘I find that many of my English friends are extremely charmed by our excellent fish. It is quite a speciality of ours in Copenhagen. I say it myself, I know, but they are usually doing it very well in this restaurant I shall take you to. As you say in England, it is done to a turn.’

  Bognor said he liked fish.

  ‘Prosit … cheers … skol,’ said Mr Winterfeld hitting his glass against the side of Bognor’s. ‘This is your first visit to our beautiful city?’

  Bognor agreed. Over the first drink they discussed generalities. Then Bognor went to his room, bathed and changed. Downstairs they had another drink, though Mr Winterfeld had obviously used the interval to have several more. The talk turned inevitably to blue movies of which Mr Winterfeld, slightly to Bognor’s regret, professed a vehement disapproval. He considered that the pornographers had given clean living Danes like himself a bad name, and that Lord Longford had made himself and the country ridiculous. Not, of course, that he was opposed to sex, but …

  It was not until they had arrived in the restaurant that Bognor was able to start on the subject of dogs. The restaurant was by the side of a narrow cobbled street overlooking a canal and above its entrance a simple neon light signalled the message: ‘Fisk’. It was indeed a fisk restaurant of an immediately recognizable style. Plain white table cloths, plain wooden chairs and plain matrons in black with white aprons. Bognor ordered a fish soup followed by eels and boiled potatoes. Mr Winterfeld asked for the soup and a whole sole, to be preceded by a litre of beer each and a glass of Aquavit.

  ‘You’ve seen the dog?’ said Bognor, tentatively.

  ‘Ah yes, the famous dog. I have seen it,’ said Mr Winterfeld portentously. ‘Mr Larssen has asked for five thousand pounds of English money to be paid to a bank in Switzerland. It was this which made me suspicious.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of the bank?’

  ‘No. It was a very long name. I am more interested in the dog.’

  ‘And you’re sure the dog is Raffles?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Mr Winterfeld looked serious. ‘There is no doubting. You will see for yourself. I have arranged for Larssen to meet with my associates tomorrow in the city. He will have the dog with him. Then you shall judge.’

  The soup arrived, thick with crustaceans, redolent of
fennel.

  ‘What sort of man is Larssen?’

  Winterfeld slurped soup from his spoon, tore a segment from his bread roll and said, ‘He is a weak man. As you English say, he is easily led. He knows a little about dogs and he travels sometimes to England. He breeds, how shall we say, satisfactorily. But he is not a great breeder.’

  ‘So there is no question of this bulldog being his own production?’

  ‘None at all. He makes very little pretence of it. He is acting as agent.’

  ‘For Percy Pocklington?’

  ‘I would imagine. But tomorrow you will see. Do you like the soup? It is a Danish speciality.’

  Conversation now drifted away from things canine and Bognor allowed himself to enjoy his meal. It was, in an entirely simple and unpretentious way, an excellent meal. By the time they’d finished Bognor was replete and exhausted.

  ‘I think, if you’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘I’ll go to bed fairly early.’

  ‘But of course,’ said Mr Winterfeld. ‘But it is not far to walk and if we make a little detour I will show you Stroget. You have heard of Stroget?’

  ‘No. I am afraid not.’

  ‘It is our famous walking street where there is no traffic. It has many of the finest shops in all Copenhagen; there is glass and furniture and porcelain. It is like your own Bond Street in London, although sadly it is being spoilt with many vulgar novelties. Even in Stroget there are “Live Shows” and “Porno Shops”. It is too bad. In a few years I think there will be no Stroget like today. It will be more like your Soho than Bond Street.’ He laughed sourly.

  Outside it was crisp and a light breeze cut up from the canal making Bognor’s eyes water. It was dark here, though the stars were bright, but within a few minutes they were at the end of the Stroget, where there was enough neon to see clearly. They walked slowly, stopping every few yards for Mr Winterfeld to point out the delights of the Royal Danish Porcelain shop, or Illums Bolighus. Occasionally a more garish shop front would appear under the sign ‘PORNO’ and Bognor would have a fleeting glimpse of trusses and dildos and magazines portraying naked sex of every description. Mr Winterfeld hurried past these shops averting his eyes.

  Half-way up the street, Bognor saw a cinema showing Deep Throat, the American blue movie which had, amidst much publicity, been banned from Britain. As they drew alongside Mr Winterfeld once more quickened his pace, though Bognor tried to linger and stare, not altogether idly, at the pictures of Linda Lovelace outside the place. He was trying to look censorious rather than prurient when the swing doors of the cinema opened and out came an over-dapper figure with a spiv-like moustache and a dark blue, velvet-collared overcoat. For a second Bognor stared at the man, then swiftly looked away and hurried after Winterfeld.

  ‘Quick,’ he said, ‘let’s hide. I’ve just seen Percy Pocklington.’

  Mr Winterfeld reacted swiftly. They were just passing a bar, and without further prompting he stepped inside followed by Bognor. Only after he had ordered two brandies did he say anything.

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Coming out of the cinema. The one showing Deep Throat.’

  Mr Winterfeld made a face. ‘I have often supposed that he was that sort of person. Did he see you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Mr Winterfeld sighed. ‘It would be unfortunate if he did see you. It might put him on the alert. But it is unlikely. He will have been preoccupied.’

  Bognor wondered if Percy Pocklington’s eyes had indeed been blinded by lust and decided, regretfully, that sex-crazed though he might have been, he was not the sort of man to miss him.

  ‘I have a nasty feeling he saw me,’ he said, ‘and that he recognized me. And that he will have realized why I’m here.’

  ‘Courage, Mr Bognor,’ said Winterfeld. ‘Let us hope you are mistaken.’

  Next morning Mr Winterfeld sent a large white Mercedes to the King Frederick, and in this Bognor was conveyed to an office in Hans Christian Andersen’s Boulevard. The journey took three minutes and covered no more than a few hundred yards. Mr Winterfeld was clearly trying to impress. Or perhaps he was paving the way for disappointment.

  His host was waiting for him at the entrance to the office block, as affable and impeccable as he’d been the night before.

  ‘Larssen and the dog are due here at ten o’clock,’ he said. ‘We have coffee now and you shall meet my colleagues.’

  Upstairs the colleagues, presumably (though it was not made entirely clear) the directors or senior management of the advertising agency, were gathered together round an oval table. A small stage was brightly lit and under the focus of a television camera. Two closed-circuit receivers hung from the ceiling.

  ‘We intend putting Raffles—or whoever he may be—through his paces,’ said Mr Winterfeld, introducing the men, all similarly in anonymous grey, in a mixture of Danish and English. They all creased into instant smiles of greeting only to relapse into a gloomy discussion in their native language.

  ‘If we are all satisfied that the dog is Raffles we have a problem,’ said Mr Winterfeld. ‘What I suggest is that we pay the money required by Mr Larssen and retain the dog for tests to be made. It is always possible to stop the cheque.’

  ‘If you think he’ll agree to relinquish the dog.’

  ‘Oh yes. There will be no choice.’ Winterfeld seemed adamant and Bognor, still unsure, drank his coffee in silence. Winterfeld went to speak to one of the Danes and left Bognor to ponder. The others seemed to have accepted his presence among them with surprising equanimity. He had no idea how Winterfeld had explained him. There was an ultra-modern digital clock with four faces on the middle of the boardroom table, and it showed 9.55. He tried not to let it mesmerize him but he was beginning to have doubts about the materialization of the Excelsior Chewing Gum Dog.

  At ten o’clock the others began to look expectant. A technician tested the camera while one of the executives stood on the stage smiling self-consciously. It seemed to work. At five past the expectancy had become nervous. Feet were being shuffled, papers riffled, cigarettes smoked with a hint of exasperation. At ten past the irritation was palpable and unmistakable. Still no sign of Larssen and the dog. After another five minutes the senior man spoke to Winterfeld peremptorily, pointing several times to his watch. Winterfeld shrugged helplessly and picked up the phone on the table, waited and asked for a number. Bognor picked out the word ‘Odense’ in his request and assumed that he was ringing Larssen’s home.

  Everybody was watching him now. Eventually he started to talk to someone, very politely at first, then in shorter and shorter sentences until with a crisp expletive, he smashed the receiver down.

  ‘He must have seen you last night,’ he said to Bognor. ‘That was Mrs Larssen. She says her husband went away at dawn taking the dog with him. She had no idea where he was going, but she says he was very agitated last night when there was a phone call. He has changed all his plans.’

  He turned back to his colleagues and splayed his arms in a gesture of frustrated impotence. There followed a fairly acid exchange in Danish which ended in the disintegration of the meeting.

  ‘So,’ said Winterfeld, gathering up paper and stuffing it into a briefcase, ‘your dog has flown. It will be impossible to find now.’

  ‘I can ask the police,’ said Bognor, desperately.

  ‘They’re too busy catching criminals,’ said Winterfeld, ‘they will not be interested in a dog. Besides the dog has probably fled abroad already. I am sorry.’

  ‘Oh bloody hell,’ said Bognor. ‘It must have been that little creep Pocklington. He must have seen me last night and tipped Larssen off. You’re perfectly right. We’ll never catch them now. With their capacity for disguise and subterfuge they’ll have turned the bulldog into a Chesapeake Bay or a Belgian waffle hound by now and it’ll turn up in some dog show in Ankara or Addis.’

  ‘The Emperor Haile Selassie has some remarkable bulldogs,’ said Mr Winterfeld. ‘You may be right.’

&n
bsp; They were out in the street now, and it had turned cold. Bognor hunched his shoulders against the chill breeze.

  ‘And now,’ asked Mr Winterfeld, ‘what will you do now?’

  Bognor looked blankly at the pavement. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I have no alternative but to go back to my office and admit to failure. Then start all over again. I have the impression they may be rattled.’

  Mr Winterfeld raised his eyebrows. ‘Au contraire,’ he said, ‘it is my opinion that your enemies are in danger of over-optimism. They may over-reach themselves. It is perhaps best for you to return empty-handed. As you say in England “it may mull them into a sense of false security”. However, I must go now. Can you arrange your return? The car will take you to the hotel and they will be sure to make the necessary bookings. There are usually empty places on the flights to London.’

  They shook hands and Bognor returned in the Mercedes utterly dejected. Once more the trail had gone cold and he had no idea how to continue. The thought of Parkinson’s reaction appalled him.

  He picked up his bags at the King Frederick and asked the hall porter to book him on a flight home. While he waited he read the Herald Tribune and watched the gentle ebb and flow of international business executives in and out of the lobby. He was reflecting on the uniformity of this class of person when another hall porter called over to him.

  ‘Mr Bognor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is a parcel.’

  ‘Parcel?’

  Bognor walked over to the desk and the man produced a very small oblong package wrapped in brown paper. It was addressed quite distinctly and neatly in block capital letters to ‘S. Bognor, Esq., King Frederick Hotel’. The lettering was in biro and Bognor knew enough about forensic science to realize that it would be impossible to detect its origins. He took the parcel back to his chair and unwrapped it. Inside there was a packet of Excelsior Chewing Gum and a note on Basildon Bond writing paper. It was written in the same anonymous biro capitals and said, ‘Chew over this and think of wafers made with honey.’ He sat and stared at it for a few moments, turned it over, held it up to the light, thus confirming that it was indeed Basildon Bond, and couldn’t work it out. Handyside’s ransom note had been written on Basildon Bond but it was one of the most common writing papers in Britain. That proved nothing. Almost without thinking he extracted one of the slivers of gum from the gaudy red and yellow packet and began to obey the instructions by chewing. It didn’t taste in the least like honey and it had none of the consistency of a wafer. Like other chewing gum it was simply soggy mint. He was so engrossed in his mastication and rumination that he failed to notice the desk clerk’s further calls. Eventually he realized that a flight had been arranged and a taxi for the airport was outside. Reluctantly he picked up his luggage, thanked and tipped the clerk and left. All the way back to London he thought about honey and wafers and Basildon Bond, but it meant less and less the more he chewed. The only undeniable fact was that his antagonists were becoming, as Winterfeld had suggested, dangerously cocky. The chewing gum and its cryptic accompaniment were a tease, and if the gang was teasing him then, given a little more rope, it might well hang. Alas, for Bognor, he was well aware that Parkinson was most unlikely to allow more rope. He would feel that too much had been given already.