Never Send Flowers

by John Gardner

  ‘I already know Herr Lempke,’ Flicka said somewhat distantly.

  Lempke gave them a smile which reminded Bond of the kind of greeting he might expect from an idiot, for the man’s face had about it a lumpish, peasant look, his lips splitting into a wide curving clown’s mouth.

  ‘So,’ he said in uncertain English, the voice gruff and flat, with little enthusiasm. ‘You are what my friends in the Metropolitan Police call “funnies”, yes? Read that once, “funnies”, in a spy yarn, and never believed it until my British colleagues said it was true, what they called you.’ He laughed, mirthless and without the smile.

  All in all, Bond considered, Bodo Lempke was the most dangerous type of policeman. Like the best kind of spy, the man was totally grey, lacking any colour in his personality.

  ‘Well,’ Bodo continued, ‘you wish to view where the deed was done, yes? Thoughsir f ble there’s nothing interesting about it. Few clues; no reasons; except evidence which gives us the name – or assumed name – of the killer.’

  ‘You have a name?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Nobody tell you this?’

  ‘No.’ This one, Bond thought, was as tricky as a barrelful of anacondas. His type was usually described as one who had difficulty in catching the eye of a waiter. Mr Lempke would have had problems catching the attention of a pickpocket, even if he had just flashed a wad of money and crammed it into the sucker pocket at his hip.

  Flicka rode up the chair lift with Inspector Ponsin, while Bond drew the heavy Bodo Lempke who certainly carried enough weight to tip the double set of chairs slightly. It was a beautiful, short ride up the slope during which Lempke remained silent except to remark on the cause of death.

  ‘You were told of the tetrodoxin, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’ Fight innocuousness with blandness.

  ‘Exotic, no?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Very exotic?’

  ‘Exceptionally.’

  ‘So.’

  At the First viewing point, several policemen, uniformed and plainclothes, were doing what Bond presumed to be yet another careful search of the area which was marked off with more crime scene tape. A small group of men and women stood beside the long, log hut which was the restaurant. They looked dejected, as well they might: with the chair lift closed, their usual business would have dried to a trickle of probably discontented policemen looking for they knew not what.

  The air was fresh and clear, while the view from this vantage point was almost other worldly. Bond had his own reasons to feel overawed by mountains. For him, their grandeur – an overworked word when people described the peaks and rocky graphs of the world’s high places – was tempered with respect. His parents had died on a mountain and, since childhood, while he was often moved by the beauty of the crags, bluffs and jagged outcrops of stone reaching towards the sky, he was also aware of the dangers they represented. To him they were like wanton beautiful women beckoning – sirens waiting to be conquered, yet perilous, requiring deference and care, like so many of God’s great wonders.

  In spite of the warm sun, he shivered slightly, turning to see that Flicka had come from the chair lift to stand close beside him. She had said he would feel something strange and frightening in this place, and she had been right. Sites of sudden death, or evil, often gave off signals of fear, just as old places – houses, stone circles, ancient churches – seemed to hold good or evil vibrations trapped in walls like inerasable recordings. Flicka’s eyes gave him an I-told-you-so look, and Bodo Lempke coughed loudly.

  ‘I show you where the body was found, yes? Where murder happened. Always good for the laugh.’ He treated them to his mirthless smile and set off, guiding them between the tapes that marked a pathway to a small enclosure. The screens which the police had originally set up around the body were still in place, and signs of sudden death remained – two gashes in the soft springy turf where Laura March’s shoes had scarred the ground when her legs had involuntarily shot out and stiffened as the deadly capsule poured the poison into her bloodstream.

  ‘We have snapshots.’ Lempke reached into the pigskin folder.

  ‘They’re not exactly your average holiday snaps, are they?’ Bond leafed through the stack of eight by ten glossies, all of which showed Laura March in death,’ Flicka whispered.outhing at this very spot. Apart from an unnatural rigidity, she looked oddly peaceful.

  ‘Sleeping beauty, yes?’ Bodo took back the photographs.

  ‘Dead beauty,’ Bond corrected, for, in life, Laura March had been undoubtedly attractive. He felt irritated by Bodo’s seeming callousness, but tamped down his anger. Cops the world over seemed to develop a hard second skin when it came to sudden death.

  Lempke turned and pointed up the smooth green slope, towards a small outcrop of rock. ‘When the forensic folk examined the body first, they drew my attention to the bruise on the back of her neck – I have snapshots also of that. We took some bearings from the position of the body, worked out a possible trajectory. It’s up there, sniper’s hide.’

  ‘But you had no idea that the bruise came from something fired at the victim.’

  ‘This also is true. Could have been inflicted from very close, but there were no signs that anyone else had been in this spot. I used brain.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘I watch sometimes the television of that detective, Hercule Poirot, by Agatha Crusty . . .’

  ‘Christie,’ Bond corrected.

  ‘That’s the one. Yes, he calls the brain his little grey cells, no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then also that’s what I use. Little grey cells, only I think mine are possibly pink. I have a liking for red wine. Okay?’

  There was really no answer to that, so Flicka and Bond simply followed Bodo up the neatly marked track, rising towards the little outcrop of rock, which was also cordoned off by crime scene tape.

  ‘This is where the sniper laid his eggs.’ Bodo made a small gesture to the area immediately behind the rocks.

  Laid his eggs? Bond thought, and knew in that moment his first impression of the man had been correct. Bobo Lempke, with his slept-in appearance, and feigned naïveté, coupled with a disarming misuse of the English language, was as sharp as a razor blade. He almost certainly suspected everybody of being guilty of something until he, in person, proved otherwise.

  ‘You see,’ Bodo continued. ‘You see how the marksman had a clean shot. Straight down, sixty metres: a good clear shot with plenty of cover.’

  ‘How do you know? Did the shooter leave a calling card?’

  Bodo gave his blank stare, followed by the imbecilic smile. ‘Sure. Of course. People like this always leave the visiting cards. Part of their stork in trade. They like you to know they’ve been here, and this one for quite a long time was here. Overnight, in fact.’

  ‘Overnight?’

  ‘Came up as one person. Went down as someone completely different. It rained, quite hard, like dogs and cats even, on the day before Miss March died. The shooter got wet and cold, then dried out the next day when the sun came out and when his victim rode up on the chair lift. See, the ground here was softened by rain. He left perfect marks of his body.’

  Behind the little cluster of rocks there were indentations which undoubtedly showed that someone had lain there for a considerable period.

  Lempke gave them his fast humourless smile. ‘Come,’ he said, with a conspiratorial wink.

  He led the way up the rise to a small clump of bushes, also corralled by crime scene tape. At the base of the bushes was a shallow hole, around two feet square and a foot or so deep. ‘Maybe he planned to come back for his stuff, but we got here first. I the break-up vething have it in my car.’

  ‘You have what in your car?’ from Flicka.

  ‘Everything he needed – except for the weapon, of course, and the other personal items he took down on the following day.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You don’t believe me? You think I’m oaf of detective. Come, I will even buy you lunch at on
e of my favourite restaurants here. Captain Bond, you accompany the pretty lady, I’ll follow. Meet you at the bottom, I have to get these flatfooted policemen out of here. They want to open up the chair lift this afternoon so that the crowds can come up and admire the mountain view.’

  ‘And gawp at the place where a lady got herself killed.’

  ‘What is gawp?’ Bodo kept his mouth open, waiting for the reply.

  ‘A lower-class British term for stare. Like gawping at me with your mouth open.’

  ‘So. Good, I learn something new. Gawp. Is a good word.’

  ‘You don’t like him much, do you?’ Flicka asked as they sat, swaying down on the chair lift.

  ‘Cunning as a fox, and he knows far more than is good for him.’ Bond reached out and took her hand. ‘Am I forgiven yet?’

  ‘Maybe. Wait and see. I’ll tell you tonight.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What interests me, James, is that this policeman seems to know much more than we were led to believe.’

  ‘Bozo Lempke.’

  ‘His name is Bodo, I think, James.’

  ‘I know; but I like the name Bozo better. Bozo the clown.’

  Lempke drove like a short-sighted racing driver well past his prime. Rarely had Bond felt so insecure in a car, and Flicka looked both white and shaken when the policeman finally pulled up outside a small, Mom and Pop restaurant a few kilometres outside Interlaken.

  Being Sunday, when Swiss families tend to eat out, the place was full, but Bodo was known, and they soon found themselves in a private room behind the main restaurant. Lempke waved aside all question of Laura March’s death until after they had eaten. ‘You go into a church to pray,’ he muttered, ‘so you go into a restaurant to eat. This is well-known fact, and I enjoy eating.’

  This became all too clear over the next hour and a half as he efficiently put down two helpings of raclette, that simple, yet wonderfully aromatic, dish of cheese melted over potato, served with pickled onions and gherkins. He also ate three succulent rainbow trout to Bond’s two and Flicka’s one. Two extra large slices of cherry tart, heaped with cream, followed, and he drank the best part of a bottle of red wine with the meal. It was only when coffee was served that Bodo looked satisfied.

  He gave an eccentric wink, rubbed his hands together and announced that they should now get down to business as he really did not have all day to waste.

  ‘My superiors tell me that, as the officer in charge of this case, I am to afford you as much help and information as possible.’ He looked from Bond to Flicka and back again, as though waiting for questions.

  ‘So what did you find hidden up there, in the hole under the bushes, Bodo?’

  ‘Everything he couldn’t take back down the mountain. Particularly as he wanted to go down as a different person.’

  ‘What d’you mean by everything?’ Flicka leaned forward to light a cigarette.

  ‘Everything he couldn’t carry down. It was all stashed up there.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as a large canvas holdall. Very dampened by rain and from its contents.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘Waterproof camouflaged coverall with hood and gloves, battery-warmed waterproof sleeping-bag, the remains of food – from what the military call a ratpack – and a thermos flask. Also one spare CO2 cartridge, so we know what he was using: a high-powered gas-operated rifle. He also left some special attachments for his shoes. Make himself look taller with them.’

  ‘And he came up with it? Anybody see him?’

  ‘Sure they saw him. Coming up and going down. One of the men operating the chair lift has identified him, even though he looked quite different both times.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How what?’

  ‘How did he look so different?’

  ‘His tallness, or shortness, depending which day you’re talking about. Here, I have artist’s impressions.’ He delved into the pigskin folder, which had obviously been restocked since they were up on the mountain, and placed two photographs of line drawings on the table.

  The first was of a middle-aged man, slightly oriental in appearance with a short drooping moustache and thick-lensed spectacles. As the legend at the side of the drawing told them, he was a little over six feet in height. The raincoat looked very English, probably Burberry, reaching down to lower calf length. This man carried a canvas holdall and a thick walking stick.

  Lempke touched the drawing with a stubby index finger. ‘Came up a tall man, wearing a raincoat.’ He touched the second drawing. ‘Went down as a cleanshaved man, around five feet eight inches tall, in black cords and a rollneck, carrying a small rucksack. Too small. If he’d bothered to bring a larger size he could have taken everything back with him.’

  Certainly the drawing showed someone quite different. Much younger, the face more open. The only thing he had in common with the first drawing was that he also carried the heavy stick.

  Lempke smiled, producing a third drawing which he laid between the first two.

  ‘This how he was identified?’ Bond’s mouth tightened.

  ‘Of course. By his walking stick. Very thick, sturdy, with a brass handle shaped like a duck’s head.’

  ‘You think that was the weapon?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’ Lempke gave another of his mirthless laughs. ‘I even know the man’s name, for it was the real person who went down – or as real as we’ll ever get. They identified him at his hotel. An Englishman by the name of David Docking. They had his passport details, as did the local police, which is the law. Arrived on the Friday night, dressed as you see him there.’ He touched the second drawing. ‘Only luggage was the rucksack – quite small – and left on the Saturday morning. The head porter of the Beau-Rivage, where he stayed, saw his air ticket. He was due to fly from Zurich on a British Airways flight on the Saturday evening, so it won’t surprise you that nobody called David Docking was on that particular flight. Mr Docking left the Hotel Beau-Rivage at ten o’clock on the Saturday morning, and has not been seen, or heard of, since.’

  ‘So, Mr Docking went up the mountain on Thursday morning . . .’

  ‘Afternoon. Around four in the afternoon.’

  ‘Went up on Thursday afternoon, looking like a middle-aged man with a walking stick. Holed up there overnight, and came down, as himself, on the Friday, when he booked into the Beau-Rivage.’

  Lempke nodded slowly. ‘That’s how he did it. One of the men who help people into the chairs noticed the unusual walking stick on the Thursday. He was also on duty during the Friday afternoon, and his eye caught the stick again. “Hallo,” he said to himself. “A lot of people are going around with thick sticks with brass duck’s head handles.” ’

  Bond grunted, thinking, yes, there was an elderly man with a stick just like that in Washington only two days before Laura March died. Mentally he made a note to check out flights. Could the elderly man with the stick and the funny hat, caught on film near the White House on the Wednesday, have been the same man who took the chair lift at Grindelwald on the Thursday? The timing would work, and he had little doubt that it could be done easily.

  ‘You see, my little pink cells have worked overtime. The man was already waiting for his victim, and he was quite prepared to suffer minor discomfort – like a night out in the rain on a bare hillside – to get her.’

  Flicka spoke. ‘You think she was a definite victim? The target? You don’t think she could have just got unlucky? That David Docking, or whatever he’s called, waited for the first good random target?’

  ‘Even in the rain there were quite a lot of people up there on the Thursday, Fräulein von Grüsse. No, this joker – is right in English, joker? – waited for one person. He waited in cold and rain for Laura March.’

  ‘Then he must have been pretty certain that she’d turn up,’ Bond mused.

  ‘One hundred per cent certain. My pink cells tell me she was the target, and he waited for her only. He knew she would turn up.’
>
  ‘As you are the police officer in charge of the case, d’you think you’re ever going to catch him?’

  ‘Docking, or whatever his real name is? Oh no. No, I won’t catch him. Already I think he has long left Switzerland. In any case, I am to hand over my report to your Scotland Yard people, Captain Bond, so that they can take the case forward. As soon as the inquest is over, tomorrow, I act only in an advisory capacity. Had you not been told this?’

  ‘No. There was some anxiety in certain quarters that Scotland Yard should be kept out.’

  Lempke nodded ponderously. ‘So, yes. Yes, I understand this, but all is changed as from a very short time ago. The instructions were waiting for me when I came down from First. Really I’m talking to you as a little favour. I pretend I don’t get the new orders until I return to my headquarters.’ Once more the small conspiratorial look. ‘This, I suppose, means you don’t know either.’

  ‘Don’t know what?’

  ‘Don’t know that you also are off the case.’

  ‘Off the . . . ?’ Bond began. ‘How in blazes . . . ?’

  Again, Lempke touched his nose with his right forefinger. ‘I consider myself a judge of good character. Just thought you should know what I know before you are sent into whatever oblivion is prepared for funnies like you. Now, I think I should drive you both back to Grindelwald, so that you can collect your car. Then I can discover they’ve taken you off the case, and show my own contrition and surprise.’

  ‘You think they’ve taken both of us off, for real, James?’ They were driving back to Interlaken, with Flicka at the wheel.

  ‘If that’s what Bodo says, then it’s probably true, though I can’t figure him. Why would he want to pass on all that information if he knew we were already being cut out of the loop?’

  ‘Maybe he’s concerned that someone’s trying a cover-up.’

  ‘Who’d want to do that?’

  ‘Your sister service? MI5?’

  ‘They haven’t got the clout. My Chief wouldn’t go for it. Could be they’re furious with me for losing the letter, or maybe there’s some kind of danger in our being left in the field.’