Let Sleeping Dogs Die (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 19

  ‘What if I escape from the … compound?’ he asked.

  His captors laughed in unison. ‘Surely you saw,’ said Coriander. ‘It’s like a stockade. No one could get out of that. Not even an Olympic pole vaulter and, Simon dear, you’re scarcely that.’

  Eagerly spoke again. ‘It shouldn’t take long unless you resist, in which case I suppose it could be painful. They’ve been trained to go for the throat. One bite and you’re gone.’ He chuckled again. ‘Forget the boundary fence, Mr Bognor,’ he said. ‘If you get as far as that the dogs are a disaster, and believe you me, they are not a disaster.’

  ‘If that’s all,’ said Coriander, ‘I think we ought to be off. I’m rather peckish.’

  ‘What if I make a break for it now?’ asked Bognor, knowing the answer would be gloomy.

  ‘You’d get about a hundred yards if you were fast off the mark,’ she said. ‘Edgar has staff even if you haven’t noticed them.’

  He tried to collect his thoughts as they walked down to the landing stage. Alongside there was an open dory with a searchlight in the bows which Eagerly turned on. Within seconds they were chugging slowly across towards the island. He sighed. It was only a few hours ago that he had been rowing across the water on the other side of the Atlantic. Then he had been on the point of a great triumph. Now he was on the point of death. It was a dramatic and depressing transformation, and he could think of nothing except the reactions of his friends and colleagues. He wondered how many would be sad at his going.

  There was another jetty on the far side and they moved there. It was about a hundred yards away. The three of them stepped ashore, Coriander and Eagerly almost jaunty, Bognor limp and tired. Ahead was a square wooden hut, and Eagerly pointed his heavy torch towards it. ‘They’re in there,’ he said unnecessarily, for a bloodcurdling howling and yelping now came from the building.

  ‘They’ve heard us,’ said Coriander. ‘Edgar calls them Haldeman and Erlichman. He’s a Democrat.’

  Inside the building the two animals were in separate compartments. They were heavy, well-muscled beasts with massive heads, yellow eyes, stumpy tails and, as Eagerly had said, webbed feet. Already their muzzles were flecked with white foam and they snarled at all three of them from the other side of their iron bars.

  Bognor wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and was only vaguely surprised to find that although the night was now cool, his hand came away covered in sweat.

  ‘Since you’re swimming,’ said Coriander, ‘I’d take all your clothes off. We can give them to the dogs for scent.’

  ‘All?’ snapped Bognor, his voice rising several octaves. ‘All?’

  ‘Don’t be so British,’ said Coriander, starting to undo his tie. ‘You can keep your underpants on.’

  He did as he was told, pushing her away as he undressed. He felt desperately ill, as if he was going to be sick. Perhaps, he thought, if he just threw a fit and lay gibbering at their feet they might relent. But no. He could see from their expression that they were enjoying it too much. Bloody sadists. He retched noisily as he pulled of his socks, then stood flabby and forlorn in his aertex Y-front pants.

  ‘Goodbye, Simon,’ said Coriander. ‘You have about fifteen minutes. Make the most of them.’

  Eagerly was throwing his tweed suit to Haldeman and Erlichman as he left the hut and ran to the lake. He was shivering as if he had malaria, and still felt sick, but as he hit the reedy water his head cleared and he seemed to wake. Breast stroke was all he could do, but in his panic and terror he swam fast and reached the bank without mishap. He struggled out and sprinted off, panting heavily now, partly from fear but more because he was chronically unfit. Behind him he could still hear the frustrated sound of the dogs. They could not have been released yet. He had no idea what he was doing, so he ran, his bare flat feet finding the springy grass quite comfortable. Somewhere at the back of his mind was the thought that if he could only reach the boundary barrier some miracle might occur, but the miracle came early.

  Just as the baying of the dogs changed key, to an undoubted noise of pursuit in which he could distinguish human cries of encouragement, his foot twisted on something soggy and furry, and he stumbled, then sprawled full length. He reached out to see what it was and picked up a small, dead animal. It smelt putrid. Behind him he could hear splashing and fevered whining. The barks were approaching. He looked down at the small animal and wondered absurdly what it would be. A rabbit? A marmot? Hell, it didn’t matter. It was meat. He clutched it in one hand and staggered on, breath failing. Behind he heard the barking change pitch again. They must have emerged from the water. Not long now. He held fast to his salvation. What had they said? They went for the throat. He groaned and tried to coax more speed from his aching muscles. The dogs were gaining rapidly. He could hear the thundering of their feet, and the panting of their breath, then as he sensed the warmth of their bodies immediately behind him he let out a great shriek with all that remained of his breath, hurled the dead rodent wildly behind him and sprinted. There was a sudden cry from the pursuers which degenerated into a scuffling snarling and growling and the unmistakable sound of bone being broken. He stole a glance behind him and saw to his intense relief that his stratagem had worked. Haldeman and Erlichman each had one end of their trophy in their jaws and they were, he sensed, about to fight bitterly for it. He turned back and charged on. Suddenly without warning he cannoned into the barrier. It almost knocked him unconscious and he lay there for a second listening to the dreadful growlings behind him. Then he stood and reached up. If he stretched he could just reach the top of the fence. Above it, he knew, was wire, but …

  After several jumps he secured a handhold. After a period of rest he managed to clamber up until he could touch the wire. He recoiled instantly with a shriek. The electric current was running all right. Behind him the dogs were still fighting. He smiled with grim pleasure as he realized the interpretation that Coriander and Mr Eagerly would be putting on it. No doubt they would be eating their trout and filling their minds with horrid imaginings of his body being torn apart. He shuddered and leapt back at the fence. He could dangle from it, but he could get no higher. If he raised his legs he might just evade the clutches of a leaping dog. But not for long. He returned to the ground to wait for the dogs to catch him. It could not be long now. So near and yet so far. Oh God. He started to gibber unintelligibly. The lake water was making him cold; he was exhausted; he was terrified. And, as he listened, he thought he could hear the dogs coming towards him. He leapt back at the fence and as he did, heard a second miracle. It was the spook-like sound of a siren and it was approaching at speed. He dangled. Beneath him he heard the dogs—or was it just one? It sounded weary and half bored too. He hoisted his legs as high as he could and prayed. The dog snarled and sniffled. The siren got louder, stopped. Away to his right he heard voices. Quite distinctly the word ‘name?’ came drifting across the grass in a thin metallic voice. The dog snarled again with renewed menace. He took a risk, sucked as much air as he could into his drained lungs and shouted again and again ‘Help … help …’ Shortly afterwards he must have passed out. Later he remembered more voices. Shouting. Shots. A crash. Another shot. And finally a policeman, unlike any policeman he’d met before, in a flat peaked cap and shirtsleeves, and he was looking up at him from behind a very powerful torch, and he was chewing gum sardonically, and all he said as he looked at Bognor hanging dripping from the stockade in his underpants, all he said as he kicked at the canine corpse with the toe of one heavy black boot, was, ‘Hi, Mac.’

  After that he remembered nothing until the moment when he woke in a neatly laundered hospital bed. As he focused he hoped he would see a beautiful nurse at the end of the bed. Or at least Monica. Instead, to his horror, it was Parkinson.

  He recited the stock, clichéd questions about who, why, what and where and waited as Parkinson explained that he was in an infirmary in Utica, New York State, and would be returning next day.

  He began to apol
ogize and Parkinson cut him short. ‘Save it for your girl friend,’ he said. ‘She told me where you’d gone. I rang New York and mentioned Eagerly. They went spare. They’ve been after him for years for drugs. They’d also intercepted a highly suspicious telephone call from our friend Handyside. It’s my fault. I’d no idea we were looking for narcotics, I thought we were simply dealing with some bloody shaggy dog story.’

  Simon Bognor closed his eyes and smiled a sad, simple smile. ‘I suppose you could say we were sold a pup,’ he murmured.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Simon Bognor Mysteries

  Prologue

  ESCOFFIER SAVARIN SMITH, KNOWN to his friends as ‘Scoff’, made a neat incision in the nectarine’s velvet skin and began to peel. Thirty seconds later the covering lay coiled on the plate in one single piece. He regarded it for a moment with a look of scarcely perceptible satisfaction and then took a slow sip from the long-stemmed, narrow-fluted glass. He swilled the liquid round, swallowed, and smiled.

  Mr Smith was sitting at a table in the kitchen of his celebrated restaurant in the unfashionable London suburb of East Sheen. It was a regular habit of his to sit thus, white linen napkin tucked into his shirt front, and to have a little pick-me-up after everyone had gone. This morning it was half past one, which was a little later than usual, and in front of him were two full bottles of Krug, which was a great deal more than usual. There was also an envelope, just to the left of the second bottle, which was addressed in very thick, black, Gothic handwriting to ‘Gabrielle’.

  All around him was the formidable batterie de cuisine which, together with a dominating and gregarious personality, had made him one of the greatest restaurateurs Britain had ever known: copper mixing bowls and saucepans, garlic presses, hachoirs, mandolines, bains-marie, whisks, skewers, knives and forks and strange devices of his own design. Mr Smith surveyed it lazily and drank three glasses of champagne in quick succession. That accomplished, he walked to the range, crouched down to examine the blue cylinder at one side, and turned a switch before making a brief inspection of the doors and windows to ensure that the electrician’s tape he had just applied was securely in place.

  Afterwards he returned to his seat and began, thoughtfully, to consume the nectarine.

  It was not until after breakfast that Gabrielle arrived at the Dour Dragoon to begin the day’s work. When she entered the kitchen she found le patron sprawled forward across the table, head resting between the two bottles, now empty, and one hand against the plate on which the peel had been joined by the stone of the nectarine. Escoffier Savarin Smith’s napkin had fallen, unaccountably, to the floor, and he was, of course, extremely dead.

  1

  SIMON BOGNOR OF THE Special Investigations Department of the Board of Trade was a man ill-equipped by nature, upbringing and experience for the painstaking and sensitive job in which he found himself. His position was, indeed, one of recurring embarrassment both to himself and his superiors and stemmed from a simple, but apparently irretrievable, misunderstanding during his interview many years before with the Appointments Board at Oxford University. ‘There is another branch of the Civil Service,’ the man had said, and Bognor, absent-mindedly assuming that he was talking about the Treasury, had somehow become embroiled in a recruitment process which he was too lazy and incompetent to reverse.

  Like others doomed to a job which was not only beyond him but which was also seen to be beyond him, he took some solace in food and drink. He and his girlfriend, Monica, frequently ate out, and when they did they ate well. When they ate in they tended to spend more time, effort and money on the preparation of their meals than would generally be thought quite decent. As a result Bognor was plump and florid, knew the difference between a Château Bel-Air and a Château Belair, could rescue a curdled aioli and make his own curry powder. His boss, Parkinson, knew all this and therefore summoned him on the morning of Escoffier Savarin Smith’s death.

  Bognor, as usual during these interviews which were invariably painful, stared fixedly at the portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth which dominated the wall behind Parkinson.

  ‘Fancy yourself as a gastronome, isn’t that so?’ asked Parkinson.

  ‘I enjoy my food, if that’s what you mean,’ said Bognor, recollecting his unhappy spell on attachment in Canberra. He had never eaten so badly in his life, and it would be typical of Parkinson to re-assign him there or to some other gastronomic wilderness simply out of spite.

  ‘Your modesty ill becomes you,’ said Parkinson.

  Bognor said nothing, but continued to stare at his monarch. After a moment’s silence Parkinson continued, ‘So you will know all about Escoffier Savarin Smith?’

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact Monica and I are going to his restaurant tonight. He does the most extraordinary chocolate omelette, and it’s the only place in London where they know how to deal with guinea fowl.’

  ‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said Parkinson. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Good God.’ Bognor was shocked. ‘We were only there about a couple of months ago. He seemed fine then. What happened?’

  ‘It looks like suicide. I gather there was a note. He appears to have sealed off the kitchen with Scotch tape or something and then turned on the gas.’

  ‘I thought North Sea gas …’

  ‘This wasn’t North Sea gas. It was the emergency supply. They kept a spare cylinder for power cuts and emergencies. It was perfectly effective.’

  ‘Do we have any idea why?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Parkinson smiled. ‘I’m not even one hundred per cent certain it was suicide. Of course it may have been. I’m just not quite convinced.’ He paused and frowned at his subordinate. ‘You knew he was one of ours?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Bognor was perplexed as always by the ramifications of the Board; and it occurred to him that any association between Parkinson and Smith was about as unlikely as his own involvement.

  ‘I mean,’ said Parkinson, ‘that he helped us from time to time. Provided us with information, tip-offs, odds and ends. He was surprisingly well informed.’

  ‘Really.’

  Bognor now saw where this was leading. He just prayed that Parkinson was not going to ask him to masquerade as a waiter or a chef. Parkinson had a habit of asking him to go in as an undercover agent in the most unlikely and humiliating circumstances. He would never forget his futile attempts to pass himself off as a newspaper reporter after the murder of St John Derby of the Daily Globe—though that had not been as chillingly ghastly as Collingdale’s last case. Collingdale had had to sign up as a novice friar at Beaubridge and had been found strangled in the potato patch. Bognor shuddered.

  ‘Where did he get his information?’ he asked. Whenever he had seen Smith at the restaurant he had seemed too jovial and disorganized to have gleaned much during working hours. If he had had to put money on anyone being involved in the sort of amateur espionage that Parkinson was suggesting, he would have plumped for Smith’s partner, Gabrielle, the Eurasian. She was a Mata Hari figure, while Smith was a fat food buff with a fading reputation as a Lothario, hypochondriac tendencies, and a widely acknowledged drink problem.

  ‘You know the place,’ said Parkinson. ‘You must have seen the sort of people who went there.’

  Bognor laughed. ‘I hardly think we’d have much use for the sort of things Lady Aubergine would have access to. Or Aubrey Pring. And Nuala O’Flaherty is only a sort of champagne provo. Not the real thing at all. Her name’s actually Norah. Norah Wills. Did you know that?’

  ‘I did not.’ Parkinson’s icy tone made it clear that he didn’t care either. ‘Do you recognize either of these two?’ He passed a couple of photographs across the desk. One showed a dark, shaggily suave person around forty-five; the other a Madison Avenue type with a button-down shirt and spectacles, who looked a little like Elliott Richardson, the ex–American Ambassador.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact,’ said Bognor. ‘They were both there one night for some sort of party.
I’m not sure it wasn’t Smith’s birthday or something. I remember it being spectacularly boisterous.’

  ‘And you remember them?’

  Bognor flushed slightly. ‘I have a good memory for faces, and it was a very noisy party. Not the sort of party you would forget.’

  ‘But you don’t know who they are?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Parkinson sighed. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I shall have to enlighten you. The one with the hair and the Slavonic features is Dmitri Petrov, the so-called Managing Director of the Soviet Synthetics Consortium. The more presentable one is Anthony J. Ebertson III, a so-called cultural counsellor at the American Embassy. Are you beginning to see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘They’re so-called impostors,’ said Bognor, heart sinking yet faster. ‘Mr Ebertson knows nothing about culture and Mr Petrov knows nothing about synthetics, and they’re engaged in some form of espionage at which I can only guess.’

  ‘Which in the circumstances makes me suspicious.’

  ‘I can see that, but how precisely?’

  ‘I’m not able to be precise,’ said Parkinson. ‘That’s what you’re employed for—to give precision to my half-formed notions and incipient suspicions, which is what I would be obliged if you would do now.’