Business Unusual (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Mmmmm!’ he said.

  ‘You like it?’ enquired Ron.

  ‘Very interesting.’

  ‘I’ll send a crate round to your hotel. You are staying at the Talbot, aren’t you?’

  Bognor hadn’t reckoned on this, but what could he say? Perhaps he could pass some on to Wartnaby at breakfast.

  ‘You were saying …’ said Ron as the door closed behind Maeve.

  ‘About poor Reg.’

  ‘The heart attack. Well, yes, I mean I can only assume. Dr Dick said as much and we all knew the history so one can only conclude.’

  ‘But there would have been a post-mortem?’

  Ron waved this aside.

  ‘Of course. Things have to be done properly, but it’s just a formality. I don’t think there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind.’

  The doubt in Bognor’s mind was, of course, that the one person who benefited from Brackett’s death was Ron Brown, the new President of the Artisans — Lyndon Johnson to Brackett’s Jack Kennedy. Or was that stretching a point? He wondered if Ron would be wearing his presidential chain of office to the funeral. Difficult point. It could be thought tasteless. But not to wear it might be considered lack of respect. To ask him would almost certainly be considered a hostile question. Bognor decided to go softly to catch this particular monkey.

  ‘I need to know about milk,’ said Bognor.

  Ron brightened.

  ‘You couldn’t have come to a better place,’ he said. ‘I’ll start at the beginning.’

  And he did. After fifteen minutes they were still on milking equipment. Bognor’s brain was whirring with facts and figures about the suspended bucket system and herringbone rotary parlours and automatic cluster removals and digital flow meters for automatic milk yield recording and cow identification technology. Then they were on to cows themselves. The Common Market. Foreign competition. Did Bognor know that the French had six million cows, one million goats and 800,000 ewes and that this enormous herd produced sixty-eight million litres of milk a day?

  Bognor did not. But his pencil raced across the page of his notebook. He would knock Parkinson cold with statistics like these just as he was being sandbagged himself. There was no question Ron knew his stuff.

  ‘The French are very dangerous and unscrupulous competitors,’ he continued, ‘but luckily for us they’ve come unstuck with this listeria scare. We’ve now got the public alerted to the idea that the French are exporting killer cheese. And as eighty per cent of all their milk is processed into cheese and similar products we drink we have them on the run. Particularly as we ourselves are well ahead of the game with pioneering products like our Fig Fruitybrown here. We’re the brand leaders in this part of the world with our new additive-free cottage cheese stabilised with wholly natural milk proteins. And we’ve even started to take on the Frogs at their own game by building a brand new plant at Sir Seymour’s industrial estate beyond the Bog where we’re manufacturing a revolutionary French-style yoghurt. I’ll make sure you get sent some of the prototype packs. We’re calling it “Le Brun”. Clever, eh? “The flavour of France from the Garden of England”. We’re getting that bloke from “’ello ’ello!” to do the telly commercials. He comes on with this bird in a tutu and black lace stockings and they’re both eating a Le Brun yoghurt and he says, “A little bit of what you fancy does you good! Ho Ho Ho!” And she winks. I think they’re going for that Linda Lusardi to play the girl. These advertising chaps think of everything.’

  He paused for breath and Bognor scribbled frantically. This was, in truth, what he had come to Scarpington for.

  Eventually they were through. It seemed to Bognor that there could be nothing about dairies in general and Brown’s in particular that he did not know. Many might have found this boring, but not Bognor who prided himself on his open and enquiring mind. Like John Buchan he had always believed that the talk of an expert on his own subject was the best kind of conversation. Others dismissed it as shop, but not Buchan, nor Bognor.

  Ron looked at his watch, a fob handed on, Bognor guessed, through generations of Browns, like the dairy itself.

  ‘Crikey,’ he said. ‘We’d better go, or we’ll be late for the service. And I’m reading a lesson.’

  Striding through the crowded streets, Bognor said, shooting in the dark, sensing that there might be a target in the black though by no means certain what it was, ‘Reg had an MBE.’

  ‘For Community Services,’ said Ron. ‘They come with the rations. Not that Reginald didn’t deserve it. He deserved it more than most. But even he would have been made to pay like the rest of us.’

  Bognor digested this for a moment. They were walking fast and he was slightly breathless. Thought was therefore easier than speech.

  ‘You mean Reg would have had to pay for his MBE?’

  ‘There’s another way.’ The corners of Ron’s fishy mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. ‘You obviously haven’t been in Scarpington very long.’

  ‘No,’ said Bognor. ‘Only a few days.’

  ‘Well, Mr Bognor, in Scarpington honours are paid for according to a clearly defined scale. Cash or kind both acceptable. Reg began paying cash and then ran out of money, so he switched to shares. Or so he told me. “Kind” can be any kind of kind. Personal favours, shares, invitations to one’s Jamaican villa. Whatever. My deal has been strictly cash. It should come through in two years. New Year’s Honours.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Bognor, who had for some years been harbouring a modest ambition in the Honours department. In Whitehall the Order of the British Empire was the inevitable consequence of long service, however undistinguished, and Parkinson had, on occasion, let it be known or at least inferred that if Bognor kept his nose clean, didn’t blot his copy book etcetera etcetera, his quarter-century at the Board of Trade — now fast approaching — might be rewarded by a modest pink ribbon with gong attached. But Honours could not be bought. Surely not? Only a lifetime of mediocrity could qualify one.

  ‘“Contributions to party funds” is the polite way of putting it,’ said Brown, ‘though we all know it goes straight into the personal pocket.’

  ‘So,’ asked Bognor, ‘what’s the going price for an MBE?’

  They were nearing the ‘cathedral’ now. It was, as Monica had suggested, no more than a glorified parish church, ecclesiastical acceptance of the Industrial Revolution with its concomitant population explosion. Not specially impressive, but a House of God nonetheless. It seemed sacrilegious to be discussing Mammon quite so cynically when you were almost at its portals. The tipsy, faded gravestones set in the grass outside seemed united in a stiff rebuke.

  ‘Twenty thou, I think, and that’s a single one-off payment. If you spread it then it’s like any Hire-Purchase Agreement. Financially, that is. The crucial difference is that you don’t take delivery until you’ve made the final deposit. It’s not like buying a fridge.’

  ‘But,’ Bognor paused, ‘I’m not sure I understand properly. I mean, I know a bit about how the system works. I know that honours no longer flow directly from the monarch except in a few very special cases — the Royal Victorian Order and that kind of thing. But it’s … I mean there’s a system … and committees. It’s all regulated. You can’t just buy them.’

  He might just have been the head of a provincial dairy, but Mr Brown now allowed himself the luxury of appearing thoroughly superior. It was agreeable, after all, to be able to patronise, all in one go, a Londoner, an Oxford graduate and a government inspector. Artisans seldom got opportunities like that, even after ten years of Thatcher.

  ‘Surely, Mr Bognor,’ he said, standing almost under the drip of a carbuncular gargoyle which leered out from the guttering by the cathedral’s flying buttresses, ‘you weren’t born yesterday. Here in Scarpington every man has his price. Down south you may indulge in empty lies and hypocrisy, but up here we know that if you want something you damn well have to pay for it. And if you want letters after your name then you pay for that too.’
r />   ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us,’ said Bognor, shocked not for the first time by the revelations of provincial life. ‘Just for a riband to stick in his coat.’

  ‘My view,’ said Ron, ‘is that if I want a riband to stick in my coat and I’ve got the money to pay for it then pay for it I will. We have a saying of our own in this part of the world and maybe you’ve heard of it down south. Where there’s muck there’s brass. Where there’s muck there’s brass.’

  And dead on cue there was a gentle purring of expensive motor as a new Rolls-Royce with the numberplate PUC 1 came to a halt just alongside.

  The uniformed chauffeur alighted, raised and extended a St Moritz Toboggan Club golfing umbrella and opened the passenger door. Out stepped Sir Seymour Puce MP (Cons.) for Scarpington, a vision of power and prosperity in tailored overcoat and hand-stitched funeral gear. He even carried a silk top hat. The aura of Corona Corona and Penhaligon’s after-shave shimmered about him like ectoplasm or dry ice.

  ‘Or vice versa. Where there’s brass there’s muck.’ Bognor turned, but Brown of Brown’s Dairy had disappeared into the church to take his place in the Artisans’ pew. Bognor shrugged. Looking back he watched the broad back of Sir Seymour follow in self-conscious splendour. Truly a man of brass. Bognor shivered. The original, Talus, a creation of Vulcan, used to make himself red-hot and then hug his enemies to death. Sir Seymour, guessed Bognor, would be quite capable of emulating the feat. He must be careful not to get too close.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her’

  MONICA HAD BEEN RIGHT about the banners. They were vile, garish papal yellow rags stitched by the Scarpington Townswomen’s Guild by order, obviously, of some unspeakable trendy Dean. Bognor made a mental note to write to Gavin Stamp, the architectural journalist and scourge of the progressive clergy. He would enjoy reading Stamp’s splenetic verdict on Scarpington, the Sludgelode Centre, the Bog, the Talbot and the Townswomen’s Guild’s banners in the cathedral. In among them, cobwebbed with age, were several hundred years of the regimental colours of the Fenlandshire Fusiliers. The First Battalion (the Countess of Scarpington’s Own) had more battle honours than any other unit in the whole of the British Army. Their nickname was ‘The Maids of Honour’ and their regimental motto ‘Till d’eath do us part’. They had begun life as the private army of the d’eath-Stranglefields, spreading dismay and distaste wherever they went. There was a terrible poetic and historic justice in their being upstaged by the banners of the Townswomen’s Guild.

  Bognor slid into a pew at the back of the church, immediately under the memorial citation to an eighteenth-century divine of otherwise total obscurity but evidently near-miraculous powers of learning, beauty of countenance, breadth of charity and all-round lightness of being.

  He only just had time for a speedy agnostic prayer (just in case there was a God and just in case he had noticed) before the organ ceased and a wattling voice — the Bishop’s, he guessed — intoned, ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’

  Oh good, he thought. At least Brackett was going to be buried according to the old rites. The lurid banners were false harbingers.

  The grey outdoors made it grey within and there was not enough daylight to more than faintly illuminate the Victorian stained glass. Only a few wall lights broke the crepuscular gloom of the cathedral as Reg Brackett’s coffin began its long, slow progress down the nave. Bognor had half hoped for Artisan pallbearers, but these looked like professionals. The Artisans were gathered up front in pews of honour, Puce and the Earl, inevitably to the fore, with Ron Brown also unusually elevated and the other Artisans gathered round.

  It was a good turn-out. Not full, but crowded. Enough to justify the phrase in Harold Fothergill’s report tomorrow that ‘Others present in the large congregation included …’. Up towards the front Bognor caught a glimpse of police uniform. Senior stuff. A lot of scrambled egg, swagger stick, leather gloves. He wondered if it could be the corrupt Chief Constable, yet another of the Scarpingtonians in Puce’s pocket, the man responsible for taking Wartnaby off the case. The back of the man’s head gave nothing away.

  ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.’

  Was it as simple as that? Bognor asked himself. Had the Lord stretched out a strong right hand and stopped Reg Brackett’s ticker? Wasn’t Reg Brackett a bit beneath the attention of Almighty God? Wasn’t Almighty God busy with more important matters? Wasn’t it more likely that a jealous dairy owner lusting after Brackett’s post as president had fixed his drink while he was in the loo? Or a power-crazed MP anxious to get his hand on the laundry? Or the brewer of Old Parsnip, who, after all, had a barman’s friend with which to do the deed? Or Piggy, the Earl, beating off a blackmailer? Or the dead barman, acting as the agent of the Artisans United? Or a member of the Bridge Section who lusted too much after the deceased’s wife Muriel?

  There was a rustle of hymn book pages. Reg Brackett was now lying in his plain oak box just below the altar and the congregation were looking for Hymn 584. Bognor too looked and found and then the organ swelled and the sons and daughters of Scarpington flung back their heads and bellowed out the words of the hymn the Artisans had made their own:

  Sons of Labour, dear to Jesus

  To your homes and work again

  Go with brave hearts back to duty

  Face the peril, bear the pain.

  Bognor sang along with the rest. He was good at singing along even when he didn’t agree, which he didn’t. Keep your head below the parapet, sit at the back, never volunteer. It wasn’t his fault he was always getting into scrapes, it really wasn’t. Had there been a time when the Artisans really were the sons of Labour? Maybe, but long ago. The early Browns and Bracketts and Puces and Moultons might have been horny-handed clog wearers, but they had long since risen to positions in which the most appropriate response to poverty was to grind its face.

  Sons of Labour, think of Jesus

  As you rest your homes within

  Think of that sweet babe of Mary …

  Steady on, this was pushing hypocrisy to dangerous limits even by the standards he had come to recognise as peculiar to the Artisans.

  Sons of Labour, pray to Jesus

  Oh, how Jesus pray’d for you.

  Not to much avail. This lot were beyond prayer, beyond redemption. Bognor gazed towards the ranks of dark suit and veiled hats and old fox furs and sighed. Not a pretty sight.

  Sons of Labour, be like Jesus

  Undefiled chaste and pure

  And though Satan tempt you sorely

  By his grace you shall endure.

  Bognor gulped hard, but the rest of them went on singing as if they believed every word, as if they really did hanker after chastity and purity and not other people’s husbands and wives on waterbeds in Wedgwood Benn Gardens. To hear them singing you would think they did want to put Satan behind them and not pay him thousands of pounds for an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list.

  Till this night of sin and sorrow

  Be for ever overpast:

  And we see the golden morrow

  Home with Jesus, home at last!

  Then there was a stentorian ‘Amen’ and to Bognor’s huge relief the hymn was over, hymn books were snapped shut and everyone took to their knees. As Bognor himself creaked down on to his hassock with an ominous snapping of joints he was aware of someone sliding into the pew beside him. He did not need to look up, for the aroma of flowery English eau-de-Cologne, of a sort of Hunter Dunnish hockey team perspiration (not in the least unpleasant), of pot-pourri and gardens and first-class railway carriages and old learner, was unmistakable. He would know his wife anywhere, blindfold and without benefit of touch.
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  ‘Monica!’ he hissed.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake, have a bit of respect. You’re in a bloody funeral, you appalling person.’

  He bit his lip, feeling an enormous surge of relief. She was back, just as Wartnaby had predicted.

  Several times in the subsequent course of the service he attempted to engage her in conversation. Once during One Corinthians Fifteen (‘Why stand we in jeopardy every hour’); once when the priest said that man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery; and a third time in the final hymn when they were all singing:

  God be with you till we meet again;

  By His counsels guide, uphold you,

  With his sheep securely fold you;

  God be with you till we meet again.

  Every time she shushed him up. Then, after Brackett had passed back down the nave followed by a weeping Muriel and a bevy of lachrymose female Bracketts and stiff-lipped male Bracketts he suddenly realised that duty called and that before he could kiss and make up with his adored wife he absolutely had to grab hold of Sir Seymour Puce and make an appointment if it were humanly possible.

  He got to him just as he was about to re-enter PUC 1.

  ‘Oh, I say, Sir Seymour, I am most extraordinarily sorry to bother you at a time like this. Simon Bognor, Board of Trade, I did enormously enjoy last night and it was extremely good of you to ask me, but I wonder if we might pursue our discussions for just a moment longer. There are one or two things about which I’m not entirely clear and if I’m to get Scarpington and its business community absolutely right then I do feel it would be of the most enormous benefit if we could fit in another little chat. Not more than a quarter of an hour or so, though if it were possible to make it later today, perhaps immediately after working hours, I mean, I wonder if, say six o’clock would be convenient and I wonder, since I’ve heard so much about it and it does seem to be so much an integral part of the business community here, if perhaps, well, not to mince words, I wonder if it would be possible if we were to meet up at The Laurels on Wedgwood Benn Gardens so that, perhaps we could well, well …er … well.’