Business Unusual (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 17

  Sir Seymour Puce stared down at him, for he was several inches taller than Bognor. It was the stare with which he quelled constituents who wanted him to do something about their drains or Labour MPs who tried to raise questions of gay or lesbian rights or equal opportunities. It was the way he looked at his employees whenever they were being difficult — which is to say whenever they said anything other than yes sir, please sir, three bags full. It conveyed menace, disdain coupled with an opaque, blank, flat lack of reaction which was far more alarming than anything as overt as a spoken threat or imprecation. Bognor had a sense of an eternal emptiness behind those pink, rheumy, porcine eyes. It was like contemplating an extra-terrestrial: the Kraken or Haploteuthis ferox.

  But Bognor did not quail.

  And after a silence broken only by the tolling of the cathedral bell for poor dead Reg, Sir Seymour said, ‘All right. Six o’clock. The Laurels.’

  Bognor watched the Roller ease away from the church, then turned back to his wife who was standing in the shelter of the Cathedral porch. He must, he told himself, try not to look smug. That would spoil everything. It was extremely satisfactory when one’s mate came scuttling back to the nest so speedily and with such docility, and one was naturally pleased. But one must not show it. Women did not like that sort of thing. He must appear contrite. He composed himself and walked towards her.

  ‘There’s no need to look so smug,’ she said. ‘You’ve got some sort of brown gunk on your tie.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked down at his tie and saw that she was right.

  ‘That’ll be a smidgeon of Fig Fruitybrown,’ he said, determined not to be put off by any hauteur in his wife’s manner. She would, he told himself, be bound to seem a little stand-offish. After all, she would not want to seem to be losing face. That was only natural. ‘It’s a very smart sort of yoghurt. Made by Ron Brown.’

  ‘You look an absolute fright,’ she said. ‘And don’t come any closer. I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘It’s awfully nice to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I wish I could say the same about you. I’ve only come back because Parkinson and I agreed it would be best if I did. For the sake of the Board.’

  ‘Parkinson? The Board?’ Bognor felt an unpleasant tingling at the base of the spine. There had been talking behind his back. ‘What do you mean? Why have you and Parkinson been talking?’

  ‘Because,’ she sighed, ‘although you may not think it, we both worry about you. We both know you are God’s own oaf and we want to protect you. Heaven knows why, but we do. We also, more to the point, want to protect other people from the harm you can do.’

  ‘Now that is unfair, it really is. I never hurt anyone.’

  ‘Not on purpose, I grant. Maybe. There’s no malice in you, Simon, but about as much sense and sensibility as a sponge. Anyway, we can’t talk here. I’m cold and I’m wet and we need to go somewhere private because I have something serious to tell you.’

  ‘It’s lunch time,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and have lunch.’

  ‘You think food and drink is the answer to everything,’ she hissed, shrinking into her Jaeger and hunching her shoulders. The headscarf and the hint of blue at the tip of her nose made her look like a foreign royal at the Badminton Horse Trials. ‘Let’s just go back to that tatty hotel. If you want lunch you can get it on room service, but frankly I should pass. You look as if you’ve been on a twenty-four-hour lunch seven days a week for a month at least. What you need is an Alka-Seltzer and some exercise. You make Cyril Smith look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.’

  ‘Oh Monica, honestly.’

  ‘Don’t you “Oh Monica” me. You ought to know me well enough by now to know when I’m seriously pissed off with you.’

  Bognor took a deep breath and appraised her, sidelong, trying not to meet her eyes. She was right. Now was a time to shut up. She was cross with him. Very. Understandably. She had come back. Despite everything. That was good. She was hooked, but she still had to be wound in and landed or whatever one did with fish. Call him a chauvinist if you like, but he could read his wife. Now was a time for saying nothing beyond the essentials.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk at the Talbot.’ And he trudged off through the drizzle. Shortly she fell in at his elbow, almost, though not quite, in step. They did not speak as they negotiated the bustle of lunchtime Scarpington with its insatiable shoppers. Even in the Sludgelode Centre they said not a word even when a Hare Krishna yobbo Buddhist handed Bognor a sheet of paper inviting him to a free vegetarian lunch at the local temple. It seemed to Bognor even less free than most free lunches and he would have liked to have said so. But one tentative glance at the set of his wife’s jaw and the unblinkingness of her eyes was enough to tell him to stay mute.

  Only in his room — their room — when they had taken off their sodden outer garments and the Jolly Trencherman do-it-yourself teamaker was plugged in and turned on, did Bognor dare speak.

  ‘Well?’ he essayed.

  ‘You’re such a prune,’ she said.

  He did not rise to the bait but broke open a couple of Earl Grey teabags instead.

  ‘It’s Wartnaby,’ she said, at last. ‘There’s no such thing.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He brings me breakfast.’

  ‘Whatever.’ She kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up on the bed. ‘He’s not a policeman and Parkinson has never met him in his life. Parkinson doesn’t know Chelsea porcelain from Tuppaware. Wartnaby is a chimera. He’s a grotesque product of the imagination. He doesn’t exist.’

  Bognor counted to ten under his breath.

  ‘Now come on, Monica,’ he said. ‘You saw him. You listened to him. You bandied quotations with him. You rather liked him. Now, since then he has twice brought me breakfast and he has convinced me beyond a peradventure that he is fighting a lone crusade against local corruption on a scale which you could hardly dream of. And which, to be honest, is of such a squalid nature that I do not think I could reveal it to you.’

  The kettle boiled. Bognor made two cups of Earl Grey. One bag, one cup. This was a true marital stand-off. They couldn’t even share a pot.

  ‘The fact is,’ Monica sipped her tea and wrinkled her aquiline nose, ‘to take one fact at a time, that when I mentioned the name Wartnaby and linked it to Chelsea china Parkinson did not react. Wartnaby rang no bell. Nor did Chelsea. He thinks Chelsea is a football team. Or the King’s Road.’

  ‘OK.’ Bognor tried to keep any strain or tension out of his voice. ‘Then how do you explain Wartnaby’s story?’

  ‘A combination of scrupulous research and massive chutzpah,’ said Monica. ‘Homework and nerve — the twin attributes of the con-man through the ages.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Bognor realised that he was beginning to pace. Always a bad sign. ‘So Wartnaby didn’t meet Parkinson when he was giving a lecture on Chelsea ware. So?’

  ‘So,’ said Monica, ‘he told a lie.’

  Bognor took too big a mouthful of tea, half choked, attempted to cover his confusion by staring out of the window, failed, turned back and conceded.

  ‘So he didn’t tell the truth. But he probably had an ulterior motive. He’s up against a very nasty conspiracy here: the mafia of middle England. Only worse. You sometimes have to tell little lies to arrive at a greater truth.’

  ‘Oh ha bloody ha!’ If Monica had been smoking still she would have exhaled an Olympic concentricity of interlocking rings through both nostrils. ‘Parkinson rang the Fenlandshire Constabulary. Do they have a DCI Wartnaby on their books. Do they hell!’

  ‘He’s been suspended,’ said Bognor, ‘so he’s not on their books. And so they would deny all knowledge, wouldn’t they? You don’t seem to understand. We’re talking corruption here. Corruption from the neck up. This is not your cosy, comfy, Golden Age, after-you-Claude, decorous, English by numbers drawing-room comedy of errors garbage. This is genuine nastiness: sex in the afternoon; death after dinner. And the top cops are all part of it. T
hey hate Wartnaby. He threatens them. Be your age. They’re trying to use you.’

  For a second Bognor thought he detected a tremor of common sense. But then she asked, in all seriousness, ‘What makes you think he’s who he says he is?’

  ‘Oh God!’ He needed something stronger than Earl Grey.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘Sir Seymour Puce is a bad lot. Every single thing that I’ve learned since arriving in this Godforsaken dump confirms that view. He makes Al Capone look like Mother Theresa. Surely you accept that?’

  Monica, incredibly to him, showed every sign of being as exasperated with him as he was with her.

  ‘I don’t think you are listening to me,’ she said, very slowly. ‘I am telling you that Parkinson, your boss whom you respect, telephoned the Fenlandshire Constabulary, that is to say the local police force here in this part of the world, and they deny all knowledge of anyone answering to the name of Detective Chief Inspector Wartnaby.’

  ‘And I,’ said Bognor, ‘do not believe you can have been listening to me. I have tried to explain to you that the city of Scarpington is a moral cesspool dominated by the Artisans who turn out to be a very nasty semi-secret society of which everyone in town who matters is a member. The dominant figure in the society is Sir Seymour Puce who is a villain. Every time I uncover some new unpleasantness Puce seems to be at the bottom of it. The Chief Constable is just one among many who are in Puce’s pocket. He is blocking the investigation into who killed Reg Brackett and into who killed Freddie Grimaldi and he has had Wartnaby taken off the case and suspended.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  For the first time Bognor almost faltered.

  ‘Because Wartnaby told me,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly.’ Monica’s expression said ‘I told you so’.

  ‘And how do you know otherwise?’ It was, in Bognor’s eyes, one person’s word against another’s. And he knew who he trusted.

  ‘First, because Parkinson denies ever having met Wartnaby or knowing anything about porcelain. And second because the police say he doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Of course the police say he doesn’t exist,’ said Bognor. ‘They’re totally corrupt, like everything else in town. He’s an unperson because he has dared to meddle in the affairs of the Artisans and he is getting too close for comfort. So they’re closing ranks.’

  ‘Then how do you explain Parkinson?’

  ‘Parkinson’s getting old. It’s time he moved over for a younger man. He must have forgotten.’

  Monica stood up and put her shoes back on. ‘God, you’re impossible,’ she said.

  ‘You too.’ Bognor was not going to put up with this, he really wasn’t. She had not been sleuthing round Scarpington like he had. She had not seen The Laurels. She had not caught the malodorous stench of corruption which clung to Puce and which penetrated everything he touched.

  ‘Your trouble, Monica,’ he said, ‘is that you just can’t bear to be proved wrong. You see. We’ll have the definitive answer soon enough. Once Wartnaby confronts Puce in his lair all will be revealed. He won’t have a leg to stand on. Between us we’ll solve the murders and clean up the Augean stables too.’

  ‘Parkinson was also told that the post-mortem on Brackett showed nothing to suggest that he didn’t die from a heart attack,’ said Monica, ‘and Grimaldi died as the result of smoke inhalation. The police say there’s no reason to suspect foul play.’

  Bognor was almost ill with exasperation. ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they?’

  Monica was almost beyond speech. Her moan of anguish was not in the dictionary though its meaning was quite clear. Then, composing herself, she put on her mac and scarf and started for the door.

  ‘And I can’t think what makes you assume that there is ever going to be any kind of confrontation between Wartnaby — always assuming that’s his real name — and Puce. My very strong suspicion is that your friend Wartnaby is simply going to vanish into thin air.’

  ‘That’s just where you’re wrong.’ Bognor played his ace with a sang-froid which he knew would irritate but which he could not resist. ‘As a matter of fact I have engineered just such a meeting for this very evening. Six o’clock at The Laurels. Gin and tonics at dusk. It should be very revealing.’

  Monica looked at him but Bognor had seen the look before and remained standing.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked as she placed her hand on the doorknob.

  ‘Out,’ she said, and was gone.

  There was nothing so bleak, in Bognor’s experience, as a hotel bedroom with only one person in it. Particularly if the surviving incumbent was in the right. Which he always was. How could one’s wife be so wrong? Why were women so perverse? Why was it that when the writing was on the wall only he could read it? Why, oh why?

  He fished out the piece of paper with Wartnaby’s phone number on it. A curious sensation, knowing that there would be no answer to his call but that Wartnaby — or the man calling himself Wartnaby — would be sitting there watching the receiver, listening to the rings, counting. But not answering.

  He dialled ‘9’, waited for the outside line and dialled the Wartnaby number, waited, heard it ring, let it sound six times, then crashed the receiver back into its cradle. Message delivered. Six o’clock at The Laurels, Wedgwood Benn Gardens. There and then all would be resolved.

  There was an afternoon to kill and he wasn’t sure how to kill it. Sleep was the obvious answer. He needed rest if he was to be on tip-top form and yet, perverse as always, his brain was awash with adrenalin. How often when he had needed to be alert had he been let down by human biology and vice versa? Too often in his career he had been comatose when under threat and on tenterhooks when safe. What was it about him that made him always in the wrong place at the wrong time? Sometimes he felt that he was not cut out for life. Or not, at least, for life as it was lived in this last quarter of the twentieth century. Born a couple of hundred years too late, that was his problem.

  His eyes traversed the room. The Gideons’ Bible? What’s On in Scarpington? The telephone directory? The telephone directory. Why was it that one so often overlooked the obvious? One spent so much time teasing the impossible from the inscrutable, barking up the wrong monkey puzzles, constructing abstruse hypothetical formulae to explain flawed alibis or contradictory motives. One, well, some, were trying to harness the computer for forensic motives, logging into Californian data banks, accessing Scotland Yard, doing things with modems. And then there was DNA and genetic fingerprinting. But so often sophistication merely obscured the simple facts that stared you in the face. In matters of deduction and detection Bognor knew there was no substitute for toil and sweat and never overlooking the bloody obvious when it was sitting there right under your nose. It was too easy for one to be too clever by half.

  He sidled over to the phone book. Just suppose, he said to himself, that Wartnaby, as Monica suggests, does not exist. Then he will not be in the phone book. He could, of course, be ex-directory but that wouldn’t be in keeping with his persona as presented thus far. All open and above board, that was the DCI Wartnaby he had come to know and, no, love was wrong. But admire, yes. One always admired a crusader.

  He flipped the pages. There were a lot of Ws. It was a popular letter. W was for Water Board, now privatised, W was for Warren and Waterbed … Waterbed, now there was a — hang on, he’d gone too far … W was for Wartnaby and Glory Be, W was for Wartnaby and not just for Wartnaby but for Wartnaby O. He could hear the voice of his boss and mentor Parkinson, disembodied, speaking to him from the long long ago. ‘Back to the basics, Bognor, back to the basics.’ And here he was back at the most basic tool of his trade, the boring old basic first essential tool of the investigator’s trade. The phone book. Wartnaby O. 35 Magnolia Avenue. 342.1743. Battle of Dettingen, 1743, he remembered. The last time an English king had led his troops into battle. How tenaciously the least wanted facts of one’s education hung around in the mental attic!

  He referred to the cr
umpled paper on which Detective Chief Inspector Wartnaby had written the number for him to ring. It was, as he had half expected, a different number altogether. Curiouser and curiouser.

  342 Dettingen seemed to ring for ever. He was on the verge of giving up when a woman’s voice answered, thin and quavery. ‘Three four two one seven four three, the Wartnaby residence.’

  ‘Is that Mr Wartnaby’s home? Mr Osbert Wartnaby?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘May I speak to him, please?’

  ‘He’s still having his nap.’ The woman sounded as if Bognor should have realised this. Reproof infected the information. ‘If it’s very urgent I could see if he’s awake. Or perhaps you’d prefer to call back.’

  ‘If he’s awake,’ said Bognor, ‘I’d prefer to talk to him now. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘One moment.’

  She sounded like a housekeeper, not a wife. But why on earth would Wartnaby behaving a nap? Well, a one-off nap was excusable, but a regular daily nap was odd. Wartnaby didn’t strike Bognor as the sort of person who would need daily afternoon kips. Rather the reverse.

  ‘Wartnaby’. This voice was thinner and more quavery than the housekeeper’s. Quite unlike the brisk, cheery tones of DCI Wartnaby.

  ‘Mr Osbert Wartnaby?’

  ‘Mr Osbert Wartnaby speaking.’

  Bognor was confused. Perhaps this was his Osbert Wartnaby’s father.

  ‘I’m sorry, but are you by any chance the father of Detective Chief Inspector Wartnaby?’

  He realised as soon as he had said it that if the Osbert Wartnaby to whom he was speaking was not aware of his police namesake then the question would sound odd.