Business Unusual (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  The doctor reached the slumped Reg, loosened collar and cuffs, then felt for a pulse. Bognor and Monica, like everyone else in the room, tried to see what was happening without, somehow, being seen to look. A typical British predicament. Bognor felt like telling the quack not to waste his time. A woman, presumably Mrs Brackett, was sobbing noisily and was led away by two others. A small crowd of top-table dignitaries gathered round the corpse.

  Now the toastmaster took a hand, banging his gavel with three mighty whacks.

  ‘Your Grace, My Lord, ladies and gentlemen,’ he bawled, half-way between Pavarotti and a Guards drill sergeant. ‘Pray silence for the Rt Honourable Sir Seymour Puce, Member of Parliament for Scarpington.’

  Sir Seymour was — very unusually for him — brief and to the point.

  ‘Dinner’s over,’ he said. ‘No more speeches, but the bars stay open till half eleven. I know Reg wouldn’t want to interfere with anyone’s fun but we’d like the room cleared as quick as possible. Sorry about the curtailment. Good night and God bless!’

  A general scuffing back of chairs greeted this announcement. Bognor walked round to his wife.

  ‘Drink?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t see why not. We don’t have to drive anywhere.’

  This was true. The Bognors were putting up at the Talbot. Their room was not exactly splendiferous but it was the best hotel in town. Staying there gave Bognor a status he would have been pushed to pretend to if he had gone to the bed-and-breakfast suggested by Parkinson. Parkinson was motivated by penny-pinching, pardonable in view of pressure from above, and a desire to humiliate his subordinate, which was unpardonable from any perspective whatever.

  The main bar of the Talbot was labelled the St Moritz, partly because St Moritz carried connotations of class which a three-star hotel in a little-known middling English city badly needed and partly because Sir Seymour had, in early middle age, taken to holidaying in the Alps and going down the Cresta Run. His Who’s Who entry included ‘Cresta Run’ under Recreations and ‘St Moritz Tobogganing’ under Clubs. He thought this smart. So did many of his self-made colleagues on the Tory back benches. He was not aware that those whose smartness he really envied were inclined to snigger.

  Naming the bar after that prestigious — in every sense — Alpine watering hole had no effect whatever. The bar was still known throughout Scarpington and the surrounding district as Freddie’s, after the head barman, who had been an institution for more than thirty years and appeared, to Sir Seymour’s irritation, to be unsackable. Freddie was never entirely sober and yet had never been seen to be quite drunk. Like many barmen he was a sympathetic and discreet receiver of confidences and an occasional dispenser, if not of wisdom, of tips and inside information relating to the 2.30 at Haydock and the immediate prospects of South American tin on the market. He was probably Scarpington’s leading Mr Fixit and he knew more of the city’s private life than any Scarpingtonian alive. He could have made a comfortable living from blackmail, but chose not to.

  Freddie’s bar had undergone a modest tarting up when the Jolly Trencherman chain acquired the Talbot from the private company headed by the Earl of Scarpington. There had been a ferocious boardroom battle over that and the Earl and Sir Seymour had been the best of enemies ever since. The Earl had even resigned his presidency of the Conservative Association. The old flock wallpaper had been replaced with tasteful beige and cream stripes; the gilt bracket lamps had made way for concealed spots; and the hunting and sporting prints had been replaced by Alpine and tobogganing scenes. For a few weeks it had almost lived up to this new image, but Freddie, in his stained maroon jacket and ill-tied black bow, knew that part of the secret of his bar’s success was its sleaze. Before long he had managed to make the St Moritz as louche and grubby as it had been in the old days when there had simply been Gothic print on the door saying ‘Bar’.

  Within moments of Sir Seymour’s perfunctory closure of proceedings Freddie’s bar was full to the gills with Artisans and their wives. The Artisans, for the most part, ordered beer or Scotch while their wives drank lager and lime or bitter lemon. Perrier had made a hesitant appearance in Scarpington at a young people’s wine and pick-up bar called the Brasserie Donovan. Badoit was still unknown.

  Bognor and Monica found themselves pressed hard against Harold Fothergill of the Scarpington Times. Mrs Fothergill was also part of the scrum. Fothergill was almost the first person on whom Bognor had called. He was a slight, ferrety figure who had inherited the paper from his father. Father was of an old school, given to green eye-shades, carpet slippers, braces and a dank, half-smoked cigar permanently anchored to the middle of his mouth. He could still be found lurking about the Times office, complaining about the new technology installed by his trendy son.

  ‘Well, it’s Mr Bognor,’ he said, elbowing his way towards the bar. ‘May I buy you a drink? This is my wife, Edna.’

  Edna smiled, sourly. Her husband looked like a man with a roving eye. He gave Monica a smile which Bognor considered lecherous.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Bognor. ‘I’ll have a pint of Old Parsnip.’ This was Moulton and Bragg’s strongest, most expensive and most real. ‘This is my wife, Monica.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Monica,’ said Harold, somehow managing to grab a hand and kissing it. Monica seemed unimpressed and said she’d like a Hine cognac.

  ‘Why don’t you girls find a quiet space in a corner?’ said Harold, ‘and we’ll get the drinks and join you.’

  The girls did as they were told, though there seemed no reasonable prospect of finding such a thing as a quiet corner.

  ‘Reg looked dead to me,’ hissed Harold, when the wives were out of earshot.

  ‘I wasn’t close enough to see properly,’ said Bognor, ‘but there didn’t seem much sign of movement.’

  ‘He smoked too much and he lived on his nerves.’ The man in front turned round with two fistfuls of drink and barged past. Harold dived into the gap and tugged Bognor in with him. ‘Evening, Fred!’ he said to the barman, who nodded in the lugubrious, timeworn manner he always affected. ‘Two Parsnips, a large Hine and a ginger wine, when you’ve got a moment.’

  He turned back to Bognor.

  ‘Entre-nous,’ he hissed into Bognor’s right ear, ‘things hadn’t been going too well at the laundry. There was talk.’

  ‘Talk?’

  ‘Customs and Excise were having a hard look at the books. Or so my spies tell me. And there were one or two of the big boys nosing around. Mr Clean and Bleach’n’Starch to name but two.’

  Freddie came back with the drinks.

  ‘Sorry to hear about Mr Brackett,’ he said, accepting Fothergill’s proffered tenner. ‘Very sudden.’

  ‘Very sudden,’ said the Editor. ‘Didn’t even have time to deliver the punch-line.’

  ‘You mean Mr Clean and Bleach’n’Starch were thinking of a takeover?’ asked Bognor. ‘He didn’t say anything about it to me. Not even by implication.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? He probably thought you were doing a snoop on behalf of the VATmen.’

  ‘I’m Board of Trade,’ said Bognor with asperity. ‘Nothing whatever to do with VAT. That’s Customs and Excise. Quite a different matter.’

  Mr Fothergill narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s all government,’ he said. ‘Those of us in the Fourth Estate tend to lump all you boys together. It may seem unreasonable to you, but for a committed, responsible journalist it has to be a question of Them and Us. I’m “us” and you’re “them”.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bognor, accepting a pint tankard and a brandy balloon.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ said Fothergill. ‘Some of my best friends are in government, but it has to be an adversarial relationship. Doesn’t mean to say you can’t meet over a meal or a drink, but fundamentally we have different aims.’

  ‘I’m not sure I entirely agree.’ Bognor started to shove his way back through the throng of Artisans. ‘But then I’m an essentially non-confrontational sort of person.
I like compromise. A quiet life. I’m sure we all want the same thing in the end.’

  ‘You people all say that,’ said Fothergill, sipping the froth off his Parsnip to stop it spilling on their way to the quiet corner, ‘but when the chips are down it just ain’t true.’

  They hit a patch of relatively open space.

  ‘You were saying, though’ — Bognor was aware that they had been diverted — ‘that Brackett was in trouble. And a takeover target.’

  ‘I have a well-placed friend at Bleach’n’Starch,’ said Fothergill. ‘Let’s just say that when they had a run through the books they weren’t happy with what they found.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘No.’ Fothergill smiled. ‘If it was a fact the Times would have printed it. But my guess is that it’s probably true. And if you really are interested in the truth about trade here in Scarpington I think you’d do well to have a word with your friends at Customs and Excise about the affairs of Bracketts Laundry.’

  They rejoined the ladies who had found a relatively quiet haven under a portrait of the first Lord Brabazon of Tara.

  Monica was, implausibly, giving Mrs Fothergill the gist of her way of dealing with squid — a light rolling sauté in chateau-bottled olive oil with chopped shallot, red chilli, and garlic, finished off with a splash of white Rioja. Mrs Fothergill did not give the impression of dealing much with squid herself and Bognor had a strong sense of a subject newly changed.

  He wondered what.

  ‘Well,’ said Fothergill, raising his glass and getting Parsnip froth in his moustache, ‘here’s to poor old Reg.’

  ‘I liked Reginald,’ said Mrs Fothergill.

  ‘Liked?’ Her husband eyed her with what looked like disbelief.

  ‘Yes, liked. I was fond of him. He was a nice man.’

  ‘Why the past tense?’

  Mrs Fothergill sighed. ‘You saw him, Harold. He’s in the past tense. Poor man was white and limp as a codfish. He’s not alive any longer.’

  This was, the Bognors knew, true. Reg had gone to God, to the Great Round Table in the Sky, to the Ultimate Laundry where everything and everybody were whiter than white. As Edna Fothergill suggested, there was no more life in him than in a fish finger. Bognor remembered the terrible old school pun which lumbered out every Friday lunch, the one about the piece of cod which passeth all understanding.

  It was bad that his mind turned to flippancies at moments like this, moments of death and drama where a gentleman was supposed, in a metaphorical manner of speaking, to remove his hat and place it over his heart while standing to attention.

  ‘Edna, whatever else he is — or may have been — Reg Brackett is — or was — not a nice man. If he has survived, his prospects of becoming nice are non-existent!’

  ‘Come along now, Fothergill, De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Brackett may be dead but he’s not even cold yet, much less buried. Bit of respect, if you please.’

  The speaker was Sir Seymour Puce who now stood four-square before them, a magnificently solid presence, all jowls and jangling watch chains.

  ‘So he is dead?’

  Monica fixed the Member for Scarpington with one of her beadiest.

  Puce glared back. Hate at first sight.

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,’ he said.

  Nor likely to, thought Bognor, admiring, not for the first time, his wife’s forthright manner.

  ‘Monica Bognor,’ said Monica, ‘and this is my husband Simon. Of the Board of Trade. Whitehall.’

  ‘Special Investigations Department, actually,’ said Simon, offering a hand which Sir Seymour did not take.

  ‘I heard someone from Whitehall had been ferreting around,’ he said. ‘Yes, Madam, I’m afraid Mr Brackett has gone to join his maker. Fothergill, I’ll be writing a tribute myself. You shall have it by lunch tomorrow. Five hundred words. You’ll carry a photograph, of course. Three columns at least, but an inside page. Brief news story on the front. “President of Artisans passes away after masterful oration”. You know the sort of thing. Now I have business to attend to. Delighted to have met you, Mrs Bognor. You too, Mr Bognor.’

  And he was gone as speedily and totally as he had come.

  ‘I didn’t realise Puce ran the Times,’ said Bognor before his wife could stop him.

  Harold Fothergill looked thunderous. ‘He doesn’t,’ he said.

  You could have fooled me, thought Bognor, but this time he kept the sentence to himself. Tact was not his strongest suit, but he could see that any intimation that Fothergill was not the Murdoch of his own newspaper would be ill received. Nevertheless it gave him pause for thought.

  It was obvious that Puce was a bully, but it took two to be bullied. Interesting to find that Fothergill made a pair with Puce — particularly as Fothergill so obviously bullied poor Edna.

  They drank up and left.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Bognors at Breakfast

  ‘YOU’RE BEING GRATUITOUSLY MELODRAMATIC,’ Monica eyed the runny yolk of her fried egg and debated the odds against salmonella. Dammit, she liked egg yolks and she was in the prime of life. It was only infants and the old who died of it, anyway.

  A thought struck her.

  ‘Maybe he’d eaten a bad egg.’

  ‘There were no eggs on the menu.’ Bognor was trying to dissect a kipper without much success. It was a dried-out bit of fish, overcooked and, even by the standards of kippers, excessively bony.

  ‘A very slow acting egg,’ said his wife. ‘A time bomb of an egg. Perhaps he ate it for breakfast but it didn’t go off till after dinner.’

  ‘It would have to be off when he ate it,’ said Bognor. ‘It can’t go off once you’ve eaten it.’

  ‘Time bomb, stupid. “Off”, as in bomb … explosion … bang. Not as in egg … rotten.’

  Bognor shook his head and eyed The Independent which led with a story about opinion polls. He read the headline twice but couldn’t understand it any more than his wife’s wittering. Ambiguities confused him these days. The advancing years demanded black and white simplicity.

  ‘I don’t care what you think,’ he said. ‘My view is that Brackett was done in. And I think the post-mortem will prove it. But there’s no point in arguing. It’ll all come out when they analyse the contents of his stomach. Or whatever.’

  ‘Simon, please. Not at breakfast.’ The egg yolk had been runnier than she had realised. Swallowing it was not an altogether happy sensation. ‘There’s absolutely no reason to suppose Brackett was done in, as you so elegantly put it. It’s perfectly straightforward. Happens all the time. He was obviously overweight. Drank too much. Quite possibly smoked. Worked himself up into a fearful paddy over that ridiculous speech and “pouf!” the old ticker simply couldn’t take the strain.’

  She allowed a gnarled waitress in a black outfit with a white pinny to remove her plate, then buttered and marmaladed some thin, charred toast.

  ‘I didn’t know you were an expert on cardiac arrest,’ said Bognor, buttering his own toast.

  ‘I only know what I read in the colour supplements,’ said Monica. ‘And common sense. I’d watch it yourself, if I were you. You’re beginning to look gross.’

  ‘I’m perfectly safe,’ said Bognor. ‘I haven’t made an after-dinner speech in over twenty years.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I meant the butter. And not taking any exercise.’

  ‘Now exercise would kill me,’ said Bognor. ‘And I am not being ridiculous. You were the one who said Brackett was killed by after-dinner speaking. I’m surprised more people didn’t die, in that case. It was boring enough.’

  ‘That’s in extremely bad taste.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bognor, abandoning the kipper. ‘Extremely.’

  Husband and wife glowered at each other in a silence interrupted a minute or so later by Henry, the head waiter, a functionary of the old, that is to say geriatric, school of head waitering. He was on the verge of retirement and replacement by
his number two, Carlo, who was of a newer persuasion. Henry had taken a definite shine to Monica.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, madam,’ he said. ‘There’s a gentleman to see you.’

  ‘A gentleman?’ Bognor was momentarily nonplussed. ‘To see me?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Monica, unlike her husband, had all her wits about her at breakfast. ‘Don’t be such a blancmange. Send him in, Henry.’

  Henry beamed, departed and re-emerged into the simmering silence with a small, middle-aged man whose plain clothes were as much of a uniform as a uniform could be.

  ‘Wartnaby,’ he said, flashing a smile and laminated ID. ‘CID. Mind if I join you?’

  This was unexpected. Bognor usually had trouble with the police. His experience of them was that they were everything that was alleged — uncouth, plodding and boorish at best; corrupt, bigoted and racist at worst. As he was not good at concealing this prejudice, his relationship with the law invariably got off to a bad start. Policemen tended to regard him as supercilious and slothful. This man Wartnaby, however — Detective Chief Inspector Wartnaby — seemed, apart from his suit, to be of a different order altogether.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Bognor. ‘I’m Bognor. This is Monica. Have a coffee.’

  ‘Heard a lot about you from your chief, Parkinson.’

  ‘Ah.’ Bognor’s hand, poised above the handle of the coffee pot, paused. Hearing things from the boss was not good. Wartnaby may have started by speaking with a silvery tongue, but if he had been listening to Parkinson it would almost certainly turn out to be forked.