Poison At The Pueblo Read online

  ‘Funny,’ Contractor said thoughtfully, ‘I’d never have credited the PM with a sense of humour.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Contractor. ‘Nothing at all. Except congratulations. It couldn’t have happened to . . . well, let’s just say “it couldn’t have happened” and leave it at that shall we?’

  Bognor regarded him beadily. He had a keen eye and ear for insubordination but he decided to put his immediate reaction on hold. He had Contractor’s number and Contractor, he suspected, knew it.

  ‘But you didn’t come here to discuss my title?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Contractor, not sounding at all as if he meant the second three-letter word. ‘I’ve had a very interesting chat with my oppo at the Guardia Civil in Madrid. Carlos seems to think that they have an interesting British corpse on their hands. Died of a surfeit of mushrooms. Likely to be known to us as Trubshawe.’

  ‘Trubshawe,’ said Bognor ruminatively, ‘not “Jimmy” Trubshawe?’

  ‘That’s the fellow,’ said Contractor, ‘Jimmy Trubshawe. He was found in some sort of chalet in the hills outside Salamanca. Food poisoning. Ate some dodgy fungus. No known antidote.’

  ‘Your oppo being a teniente?’

  ‘Carlos Azuela. A teniente. Very bright. He specializes in Brits. Particularly crims on the run in the Costas.’

  ‘Like Jimmy Trubshawe, also known as Don Jones, Greg McDonald, Bert Simkiss and many other cognomens.’

  ‘That’s the guy,’ said Contractor. ‘Gang leader, drug dealer, super-pimp, all round bad hat. Escaped from the Scrubs five years ago and rumoured to have been in Spain ever since.’

  ‘I’ll deal with my oppo,’ said Bognor with a hint of self-importance. ‘The Admiral. Juan what’s-his-name.’

  ‘Picasso,’ said Contractor. ‘Quite an easy name to remember. From Barcelona. A political appointment. My spies say he’s not particularly good.’

  ‘No relation to the painter,’ said Bognor, miffed at the criticism of his contact, ‘but I wouldn’t say your friends are correct. He comes across as a bit of a buffoon but there are no flies on Juan. Not many anyway. There’s not much that the Admiral misses.’

  ‘Well, Teniente Azuela says that Trubshawe’s snuffed it,’ said Contractor.

  ‘Or whoever he is.’

  ‘Was,’ said Contractor. ‘“Was” not “is”. Trubshawe is now past tense. But, yes, whoever he is, he’s dead.’

  ‘Murdered?’ his boss wanted to know, and Contractor hesitated. He had a good enough university degree to be uncertain about certainty. A proper education sowed doubt. This was one of the many attributes he shared with Simon Bognor. To themselves, as well as the average outsider, they were poles apart, but actually they were quite alike. Contractor, however, was less adroit about concealing his intelligence and qualification. It made him seem more of a threat while actually making him less of one. The reverse of Bognor.

  ‘The Guardia Civil are unhappy,’ said Contractor. ‘They don’t seem to be saying that it’s murder, but they are saying the death is suspicious. Trubshawe carried a lot of baggage; he seemed perfectly fit for a man of his age and taste. Death was . . . well . . . unexpected.’

  ‘Bloody lucky he wasn’t bumped off ages ago,’ said Bognor with feeling. ‘He almost makes me want to bring back the death penalty.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘I’ll talk to the Admiral,’ he said eventually. ‘Maybe I’ll even treat myself to a little Spanish trip. Lady Bognor, that is Monica, is very partial to Spain – a tapa or two, a chilled glass of Manzanilla, mosques, markets. And it’s time the British criminal community on the Iberian peninsula got some sort of firework up their collective bottom. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  The younger man nodded and smiled. He had obviously noticed how much his boss savoured the words ‘Lady Bognor.’

  ‘Remind me though,’ Bognor said, ‘the man Trubshawe or whatever. He did a bunk after a road rage incident. That’s him isn’t it?’

  ‘He was on remand in Wormwood Scrubs,’ said Contractor, ‘and was sprung by some mates with a ladder. Easy-peasy. Inside job. They had screws on their side.’

  ‘Loose screws in the nick,’ said Bognor, smiling thinly, ‘dodgy proposition, very. But I am right, aren’t I? The man Trubshawe was an old-fashioned mobster in the Kray style, operating south of the river in the Tooting–Colliers Wood area, enjoyed violence at a personal level, dealt in people-trafficking, drugs of every description, friends in high as well as low places, political party benefactor. All-in-all, the unacceptable face of the twenty-first century.’

  ‘That’s him,’ agreed Contractor. ‘Alive and well in sunny Spain and cocking a snook at the forces of law and order back home.’

  ‘Not alive and well any longer,’ said Bognor, sounding pleased.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like it,’ agreed Contractor. ‘Sounds dead to me.’

  Bognor pushed back his chair, stood and walked to the large window overlooking the River Thames, which flowed sluggishly below his headquarters. ‘Water under the bridge,’ he thought morosely. He had been watching Old Father Thames ebb and flow ever since starting at the Board of Trade the best part of a lifetime earlier. Every morning on his way to work; every evening on his way home. For much of his life in that drab building his office had no window at all. Eventually he graduated to a window, but only one looking out over the railway line which ran west from Waterloo. Since his elevation to the directorship he now had a sofa and a window overlooking the river. These were the symbols of authority. A room with a view and somewhere to sit with a visitor. By such tokens was a man’s career measured out. Sofas and windows signified. And now he had a knighthood to go with them. How were the mighty risen! Almost without trace. Who would have predicted it? Not his teachers; not his contemporaries; not even Lady Bognor; least of all himself.

  He sighed.

  ‘Trubshawe must have made a lot of money,’ he said, softly.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Contractor.

  ‘And done what he set out to do?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Enjoyed the respect of his peers.’

  ‘If you can call them that,’ said his assistant. ‘They’re just a load of crooks.’

  ‘That’s not how they see themselves,’ said Bognor, ‘nor the world at large. Not these days. Being a successful villain is rather desirable. Time was when you would have been despised and vilified, but not any longer. Courted by cabinet ministers, interviewed by personalities, invited on to reality game shows. What price honesty?’

  ‘Isn’t that unduly cynical?’

  The boss gazed out at the grubby river and thought what a wasted opportunity it was. Once it had been a great artery, bearing the nation’s commerce and the great and the good of the day, even while it was doing service as the national drain. Now it was nothing. The capital city had turned its back on it; men, women and goods went about on wheels. Excrement and other detritus disappeared down holes into sewers. The Thames no longer even had the guts to create a big stink. The river paralleled the nation: a gradual, turgid, unlamented decline.

  ‘I’m feeling cynical,’ said Bognor. ‘It’s age. It’ll come to you one day. One moment you’re bright-eyed and bushy tailed; the next minute you’re unsound in wind and limb, and have but a short time to live.’

  ‘Oh give over,’ said Contractor. ‘I mean, “with respect”. “Sir”.’

  The Director continued to gaze out of the window, surveying the gun-metal-grey river and the city beyond. When he was young it had been ‘Swinging London’. Whenever you expressed distaste for what it had become, ignorant critics parroted Dr Johnson’s adage about a man who is tired of London being tired of life. But that was a quite different city in a quite different life. He, Bognor, had had enough of it. Maybe life as well. He was disillusioned by both. Only half-amused by his knighthood, and not at all amused by the elevation of men like Trubshawe to a sort of Pantheon for the undeserving.
He didn’t get it; was glad Trubshawe was dead, but sensed he would be obituarized in the national press. And for that he was more than irritated.

  ‘Know Spain well?’ he asked Contractor.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Contractor, ‘so-so.’

  ‘Well,’ said Sir Simon, ‘you’re about to get to know it a great deal better. I’m taking you along as chief bag-carrier and bottle-washer. You can keep Lady B. company and do the dogsbody stuff. Keep an eye on me, too. As is your wont.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Serious crime investigation. Possibly murder. But fun as well. Which is the way I like it.’

  Ain’t that the truth, thought Contractor.

  THREE

  The Bognors were dieting as usual. It had been the same formula throughout their marriage, founded loosely on a popular regime of the 1960s or thereabouts, when it was known as ‘the drinking man’s diet’. It was right up there with the Royal Canadian Air Force Exercises which was designed to keep fit those, like the Bognors, not much given to exercise in conventional forms. The diet seemed to consist of very dry gin Martinis, as much dry white wine as you could manage – though not too much red – smoked salmon, steak, spinach and mouth-puckering fruit, preferably pineapple.

  The evening meal therefore consisted of smoked salmon, a rare entrecôte with puréed spinach, and cubes of fresh pineapple. This was accompanied by Clare Valley Riesling with the fish and an amusing Wine Society Minervois with the steak, the whole preceded by stonkingly dry Martinis mixed by Sir Simon.

  This was what he called healthy living. Both Bognors were appalled by supermarket-snackers who grazed on chocolate bars and crisps. Obese, them? Just a teensy bit overweight but nothing a serious sauna wouldn’t sort.

  ‘Fancy a few days in Spain?’ enquired the new knight of his beloved.

  ‘Why Spain?’ Monica was in two minds about Spain. She was opposed to bullfighting and cheap package flights – being against blood sports on sound liberal grounds and drunken yobboes on grounds which she supposed were elitist and snobbish, but were a part of her upbringing and make-up that she was no longer going to pretend to deny. On the other hand she loved the climate, the long lazy lunches, Goya and El Greco.

  ‘Why not?’ asked her husband, pouring cocktails from the shaker. He favoured a twist, his wife an olive.

  ‘Don’t answer a question with a question,’ she said.

  He smiled. She had been saying this ever since they married more than forty years earlier. The refrain had all the persistence of a cracked gramophone record but had never irritated him. Despite continuing to pay little or no attention to the request he found it oddly reassuring. The older he became, the more comfort he obtained from its repetition. Habit, he supposed.

  ‘I have to go to Spain on business. I thought you’d like to come too. It’s somewhere in the hills near Salamanca. I thought you could spend time there and we could meet up for a long weekend. Longer maybe. A day or two in Madrid. Toledo. Train to Zaragoza or Barcelona. A break.’

  ‘What’s the business?’ Monica accepted the proffered dry Martini and glared at her olive.

  ‘Villains abroad,’ said her husband. ‘I’m getting rather fed up with it. The Costas have become a sort of retirement home for our undesirables. I think we should flush them out. One of the most significant of them has just been found dead in the mountains. I want to go and see for myself and try to round up some of his subordinates and bring them home to face music.’

  ‘You mean the braying tones of hanging judges in sentencing mode?’ Monica would have made an intimidating judge herself. She had a face which was more like a horse than a button, and a voice to match. No more musical than bagpipes or the braying of a hanging judge.

  ‘That would be ideal,’ Bognor sipped appreciatively at the ice-cold gin, ‘though one of their leaders has had his comeuppance already. A man called Trubshawe. Sometimes, that is. Sometimes he was called Trubshawe. More often something else. He’d done a bunk to the Costa-something. Just been found dead. Very.’

  ‘I remember him,’ said Monica, who missed very few tricks. ‘Sprung from the Scrubs and then stabbed someone to death in a road rage incident on the South Circular. Vanished, believed to be on a permanent package holiday with a new identity. Several identities in fact.’ She took a ruminative taste of cocktail. ‘Very nice, darling.’ She smiled approvingly. ‘One of your better ones. Plymouth?’

  ‘Naturally,’ said her husband. ‘Funny, isn’t it,’ he went on, ‘how crooks of one sort or another are all the rage. Honest indigence is passé. Ill-gotten gains are flavour of the month. Suddenly all the world loves a spiv. If you’re still travelling on public transport when you’re over twenty-five then you’re a sad failure. Saints are saps.’

  ‘I blame Thatcher,’ said Monica crisply. This might or might not have been fair, but it was predictable. Monica blamed everything on Baroness Thatcher, from the weather to the war in Iraq.

  ‘But is it true?’ asked Bognor holding his cocktail glass up to the light and peering at the twist of lemon peel to see if there was any pith still attached to it. There was not. The potato peeler had done its stuff and his hand was obviously steadier than he thought. ‘My father’s generation thought it was bad form to discuss money and not really done to make much. Genteel poverty was the fashion. Nothing as extreme as bankruptcy or bad debt, though that was probably preferable to making a fortune on the black market. Know what I mean? But that’s no longer true. We live in an age of “rich lists”, peerages for cash, million pound bonuses, vast salaries for jobs ill-done. All apparently condoned or even welcomed by the powers that be.’

  ‘That your sermon for the evening?’ asked Monica.

  ‘I don’t see why telling the truth should be a sermon,’ he said. ‘I’m particularly offended by a whole load of crims poncing around in sunny Spain at the taxpayers’ expense and apparently with the tacit approval of Her Majesty’s Government, the Fourth Estate and received opinion almost everywhere. And I think I should sort it out before I finally retire.’

  He swallowed gin and grimaced. It burned the back of his throat. Dry Martinis were, he thought, an oddly masochistic drink. No wonder it had been Bond’s favourite drink. Or was that a vodkatini?

  ‘I hope you’re not suffering from delusions,’ said his wife, trying not to pull a face as she also took too big a gulp, pretending that she had swallowed too much on purpose. ‘Just because someone in silly little Gavin’s office has got the wrong person for a knighthood. Don’t take it too literally. Doesn’t mean to say you’ve acquired shining armour and turned white overnight.’ Bognor was, normally these days, a mild puce colour. Even he was prepared to admit to pink.

  ‘I’d like to be remembered for something,’ said Bognor seriously. ‘Cleaning up the Costas would be a good grabby theme for the obits. “Bognor will long be remembered for his successful campaign to prevent British criminals from successfully seeking sanctuary in the Iberian peninsula. In a series of extensive investigations promoted by the sudden death of the south London villain, James ‘Jimmy’ Trubshawe, Bognor . . .”’

  ‘Don’t be so vainglorious,’ said Monica, puckering her lip in acknowledgement of the cocktail’s strength. ‘You’ve done perfectly well just being you. Your achievements are positively Widmerpudlian. You have a knighthood. You run a government department. You have, more or less and in a manner of speaking, your health. You have an adoring wife. What more do you want?’

  ‘I want to be remembered for something,’ he said petulantly. ‘I don’t want to be just another Whitehall jobsworth with a flukey gong and an inflated pension.’

  ‘You sound like Tony Blair,’ said Monica, ‘and look what happened to him. Just be content. Rest on your laurels like everyone else.’

  They finished their drinks in silence and then adjourned to tackle the smoked salmon. They did themselves very well in a finicky way. The salmon was none of your supermarket rubbish, but came from a mail order company in West Cornwall who smoked it o
n the premises. The brown bread was organic and came from a Polish baker round the corner. Bognor liked to think that the Board of Trade had done more than its share for Polish bakers round the corner. Cornish fish smokeries too, come to that.

  The Bognors had an old-fashioned separate dining room where they sometimes entertained quite formally, and where they tended to eat their evening meals when at home alone. One or two adequate but undistinguished family portraits hung on the walls and there were odds and ends of family silver salvaged from both sides of their ancestry. They took breakfast in the kitchen but seldom supper. They never ate in front of the television, and even though they would have thought it laughable to actually dress up for their evening meal they recognized that they were in this, and perhaps other respects, old-fashioned, even conceivably quaint.

  Bognor remained in a retrospective frame of mind.

  ‘It’s different for women,’ he said, tasting the white wine in a manner which he hoped was efficient without being pretentious. He hated the idea of being considered a pseud when it came to food and drink, but there were those who thought him overenthusiastic on both counts. In defensive mode he sometimes explained it away by the fact that he had never had children. This was not a deliberate decision on the part of either himself or his wife. It was just something that had happened. Or not. They both slightly regretted it, while acknowledging that they were both too selfish to have made much of a fist of parenthood. On the other hand it was difficult to know which came first; the lack of fecundity or the slight selfishness.

  The Riesling was cool and flinty. The Bognors had visited the Clare Valley once and rather enjoyed it. Likewise Penryn where the fish had been smoked. They liked to source what they ate and drank.

  ‘Why different for a woman?’ Monica wanted to know.

  ‘You’re not subject to the same sort of pressures,’ said Bognor in the lofty manner which so infuriated her. ‘Males are constantly being judged and measured by their teachers and their peers. It’s a sexual hazard. Women aren’t judgemental in the same way.’