Crooked Herring

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Henry.

  For the first time I got the impression that Henry thought I was onto something important. Except I wasn’t.

  ‘The problem is that it’s not terribly likely,’ I said.

  ‘No?’ said Henry. He had clearly rather liked the idea. I suppose the whole business of doping somebody to abduct their friend was one of his standard plot devices. The death threat too and the strange text message – he’d have used those. But even as I had spoken the words, I had realised how improbable it was that anything like that could have taken place. But then what had happened?

  ‘Or maybe the text is real and it’s all some bizarre game of Crispin’s,’ I said. ‘Agatha Christie’s disappearance was after some row with her husband. Maybe Crispin’s playing the same sort of game. He and Emma were not getting on well.’

  Henry nodded thoughtfully, staring at the wet road ahead.

  ‘Emma throws him out and he tries to get one back at her,’ he said.

  ‘I think he just left her,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she threw him out.’

  ‘But maybe something like that,’ said Henry. ‘A faked disappearance for whatever reason.’

  ‘In which case,’ I said, ‘today’s trip is unlikely to yield much by way of evidence. Still, Didling Green is said to be the prettiest village in West Sussex, so our journey will not be wasted.’

  ‘Absolutely. And it’s possible that walking over the Downs will bring back all sorts of memories.’

  ‘Though it’s more likely we’ll just get soaking wet. I hope that Barbour of yours is waterproof.’

  My smile was confident, but I still glanced again at the mirror. There was currently a large black Mercedes right on our tail. It stayed there all the way to the Chichester ring road, when it shot past us and vanished off into town. We went left at a more cautious pace and continued on our way to Didling Green and whatever evidence it might hold.

  The track that rose steeply to the top of the Downs was no better than last time – if anything the rain had made it more softly glutinous and hidden the giant flints more cunningly. Once or twice the wheels spun alarmingly in the creamy mud and we almost ended up in a hedge. But we bounced and slid our way up to the small car park, where we got out and breathed in the cold, damp air that is peculiar to remote hillsides in the dead months. The winter landscape smelt of decay – black and bitter. The grass, long-since flattened by the wind and the frost, lay lifeless and still. The tree branches waved only half-heartedly, as if calling for help that would never come.

  Henry stood in his Barbour, surveying the scene. The coat, I noticed, was too big for him. Perhaps when buying it he had forgotten his relatively modest size; or maybe he simply liked to wear a roomy topcoat over multiple layers of clothing. Sherlock Holmes would doubtless have looked at it and made instant conclusions about his profession or his state of mind. But I am not a real detective. To me, he was simply a small writer wearing a large coat. I turned my attention to more important matters. My last trip here had been to hunt for dead bodies; this one was apparently to jog Henry’s memory.

  ‘Do you remember that area of woodland?’ I asked.

  Henry shook his head. ‘I do remember the village,’ he said.

  ‘It’s on lots of postcards,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes, but I remember the green and the cottages on the far side. I also remember the row of council houses on the outskirts, which wouldn’t feature in most guidebooks. Even without the photograph of me in the pub, I’d be certain I’d been here before.’

  ‘It would have been pretty dark.’

  ‘There was a moon.’

  I looked at the landscape, dark green and burnt ochre under a winter sky. It was, if nothing else, remarkably peaceful.

  ‘Look, Ethelred, would you mind terribly if I strangled you?’

  ‘Sorry?’ I said, emerging from my reverie and wondering if I had misheard.

  Henry took out of his Barbour pocket a length of rope, holding it at about the height of my neck. Just for a moment the jacket seemed not ridiculously large but rather a practical and well-designed means of concealing a range of lethal weapons. Then Henry laughed. ‘This is the rope I found in my car boot. If I really did use it up here, then perhaps re-enacting things might help me recall what happened …’

  I took the rope from him and examined it. It was about as thick as my little finger, originally white with a blue fleck, but now grubby and bleached by the sun – the sort of thing you might find washed up on the beach. I grasped it firmly in both hands and gave it a tug. It was old but still strong enough. Even so, the idea of Henry strangling somebody up here on New Year’s Eve was ridiculous.

  ‘You could try it on your own neck if you’re that interested,’ I said, handing it back.

  ‘That clearly would not have been what I did.’

  I sighed and allowed Henry to wander round behind me, gathering up the rope in his hands as he did so.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘if I creep up behind you like this and give the rope a double twist …’

  The rope was cold and slightly damp round my neck. I felt it rasp against my skin as he pulled the ends. I could scarcely breathe. The rope tightened again. Of course, if I resisted now, I had little doubt I could overcome Henry, but could I still do so in another thirty or forty seconds? How long until I passed out? I’d told him he could do it. Was I going to die because I felt that it would now be impolite to ask him to stop?

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I heard him say behind me, ‘I’m not going to pull it really tight …’

  Actually it already seemed tight enough. It occurred to me that my face must be turning an interesting shade of red. I doubted that I could speak even if I wanted to. It struck me that Henry had more strength than I had given him credit for. Of course, he was twenty years younger than I was. Then at last I felt the rope slacken and slip from my throat.

  I suddenly realised how relieved I was. It was a lonely spot. Today even the woman with her dog was absent. Nobody would have heard my final frantic call for help.

  ‘Did that assist in some way?’ I asked, rubbing my neck gently.

  Improbably Henry said: ‘Yes. It did. Thank you very much.’

  ‘And you recalled doing it before?’

  ‘Quite the reverse. If I murdered somebody, it wasn’t standing here.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘What now?’ I asked. I hadn’t hoped for much from the trip, but I had hoped for more than this: a bit of pointless play-acting. I waited for him to do something else with the rope – make it vanish up his sleeve, say. But his attempt to strangle me was the only trick he had.

  ‘Perhaps I should have a stroll round,’ he said. ‘Which bits of the wood did you check before?’

  ‘There and there …’ I indicated two broad areas with a wave of my hand.

  ‘Fine – I’ll take a look along that path there if you would very kindly check around those holly bushes.’ But, as I approached the bushes, Henry changed his mind and sent me off to inspect a more promising patch of brambles. All in all, we spent a fruitless half-hour poking into the vegetation, with several abrupt changes of strategy on Henry’s part. Had I been expecting to find anything, I might have objected to the randomness of his approach, but it was always clear to me that this was going to be a waste of time. By the end of it, we were both wet and muddy and one of us was distinctly fed up. Only the memory of that review kept me from terminating the search much earlier. Henry finally seemed satisfied, but I had no idea what we had achieved today that I had not accomplished earlier.

  Henry had thoughtfully removed his Barbour and flung it into the boot of my car to stop it soiling the seats. I kept mine on as I climbed into the car by his side. A bit of mud would brush off. My Volvo descended the hill with due caution and no alarms.

  Henry declined my suggestion that we should visit the pub in the village. He said that the photograph was enough proof that
he had been there. I looked at the warm, yellow glow shining through the leaded windows on a grey world outside and sighed inwardly. Then we set off again on the long drive home.

  The feeling that it had indeed been a completely wasted day was reinforced by Henry’s abrupt farewell as we reached my house.

  ‘Thanks, Ethelred,’ he said, opening the passenger door. ‘I owe you one.’

  I watched him sprint over to his Jaguar as if expecting imminent sniper fire from the bushes of April Cottage. He was driving away within thirty seconds or so of our return.

  I got out of my own car and walked slowly over to the house in the cold drizzle. I unlocked the door. There was no post on the mat and there were no messages for me on the answerphone.

  As I say, a tedious afternoon completely lacking in incident, if you don’t count my strangulation. And yet, while I didn’t realise it at the time, I had done things that would place me in greater danger than I had ever known. All of the warning signs had been there. It was just that I hadn’t noticed them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘So, Crispin appears to be alive and well,’ I said to Elsie. ‘If that’s a genuine text message.’

  I had travelled up to London that morning to do some research in the British Library. Relevant stuff – not Norman fonts. Having mentioned it to Elsie, she had told me that by a strange coincidence she too would be in the library that morning. We could have coffee together and I could consult her on my investigations.

  We were now sitting in the cafe, surrounded for the most part by students, lolling over their computers with half-drunk lattes dangerously close to the keyboard. Elsie had ordered a cappuccino and a pain au chocolat, claiming that she could not remember if she had had breakfast.

  ‘You think it wasn’t really him?’ she asked. She looked again at the message. ‘That’s not how you spell “no longer”, she said. ‘As a writer he ought to know that.’

  ‘It’s only a text message.’

  ‘He would have had to obstinately ignore his spellchecker.’

  ‘It’s still only a text message.’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘It was genuinely his phone – whoever sent it.’

  ‘You’re certain of that?’

  ‘Henry said it was the right number.’

  ‘And you just took his word for it?’

  ‘No. I lent my phone to Henry a few days ago to make a call to Crispin. He didn’t get him obviously – he just left a voicemail. So I also checked my call records. I’ve sent a text back to Crispin, by the way, but I’ve had nothing more from him. I suppose he’d said all he was planning to.’

  Elsie had been thinking.

  ‘You signed your reply “Ethelred”?’

  ‘I usually would.’

  ‘You don’t think that Crispin thought that your number was Henry’s, since Henry had used your phone to leave a voicemail? In other words, that was a text for Henry rather than you? If so, he might not reply to the text from you because he hadn’t intended to contact you in the first place.’

  ‘It’s possible. And the message began “Hi”, not “Dear Ethelred”.’

  ‘Ethelred, nobody begins text messages “Dear Ethelred”.’

  ‘Don’t they?’

  ‘No. Nor do text messages end: “I beg to remain, sir, your most obedient servant”.’

  ‘If you say so. But, thinking about it, that does seem more likely, doesn’t it? It’s a real message for Henry and Crispin is alive, albeit that he can’t spell.’

  ‘That’s my guess.’

  ‘I’ll tell Henry.’

  ‘When you do so, you can also thank him for the latest glowing commendation of your oeuvre. Did you see the Telegraph this morning?’

  ‘Another review from Henry?’

  ‘Another review from Henry.’ She took the paper from her bag and passed it to me. ‘You have a fine literary style, apparently. It’s on page twenty-seven. He is turning into your biggest fan – not a high hurdle to jump, but he’s making the effort.’

  I finished reading and placed the paper back on the table between us, trying to avoid the croissant crumbs.

  ‘That will be worth quoting on the cover of my next book,’ I said.

  Elsie nodded. ‘If playing at murderers up on the Downs gets you this sort of publicity you should do it all the time.’

  ‘I don’t think it was just that. Henry said he genuinely liked my books.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure?’

  I tried to remember exactly what Henry had said. Maybe not quite that, but something that undoubtedly implied it. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘OK, you’ve made some progress, but you’re no closer to knowing where Crispin actually is or what Henry did on New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘Crispin said he’s no longer in England.’

  ‘That leaves a lot of the world where he could be.’

  ‘True. You’re right, though. Each discovery we make simply raises more questions. I don’t know why Crispin seems to have gone into hiding. I don’t know what Henry did after leaving the club, except that he went to the pub in Didling Green. And I don’t know who threatened to kill me.’

  ‘A nutter.’

  ‘A well-informed nutter. There are so many things that almost fit together but don’t quite. There’s a letter from somebody who clearly knows what is going on and who tries to sound threatening, but succeeds only in being weird. There’s the text from Crispin that says almost nothing – whether it’s intended for me or Henry. One moment the tension is being ratcheted up – the next we’re back to where we were before. It’s as if I’m living in a badly plotted novel.’

  ‘You should feel right at home then.’

  ‘But that is what it feels like,’ I persisted. ‘Even the weird bit of play-acting that Henry went in for on the Downs. I think I’m about to be murdered then, no, I’m not. And the story just moves on.’

  ‘That’s just Henry,’ said Elsie. ‘But I agree somebody seems to be having a laugh at our expense. The question is: who do we trust?’

  ‘Maybe I should go and talk to Emma again,’ I said.

  ‘Do you really need to go to Brighton? Couldn’t you phone?’

  ‘I have questions that it would be better to put to her face.’

  ‘I understand completely.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘If it’s not what I think, why should you think I’m thinking that?’

  ‘I just need to see her in person.’

  ‘Planning to shag the information out of her this time?’

  ‘I’ll ignore the fact that you said that.’

  ‘It was a serious suggestion. It’s an old and trusted technique. Think of Mandy Rice-Davies.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good precedent.’

  ‘Ethelred, there are literally billions of good precedents for having sex with somebody. If you have sex, trust me, you won’t be the first to do it.’

  ‘But I have no intention of doing so. And, for the record, I never have had sex with Emma Vynall.’

  ‘No? Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I was in Brighton signing some books and I remembered that there were, in fact, three books I’d promised to lend Crispin. So, I thought I’d just drop in. That’s OK isn’t it?’

  ‘As long as it’s not urgent,’ said Emma. She looked at me over the top of her wine glass. There was a smudge of lipstick on the rim. My glass, in front of me on the kitchen table, was as yet untouched. I couldn’t afford to get too drunk if I was driving home. I knew, of course, that I ought to be driving home. I knew that if I didn’t drive home my life was going to get a lot more complicated. But then, as Elsie had said, what was I doing here?

  ‘You’ve heard nothing more from Crispin?’ I asked, picking up the glass.

  ‘Not since he flounced out of the house just before Christmas, leaving me with a family-sized turkey in the fridge. You?
’

  ‘A text,’ I said.

  I watched her face carefully. She showed no surprise and strangely little interest.

  ‘There you are, then,’ she said. Her words were slightly slurred. She was taking her post-break-up drinking seriously.

  ‘I suppose so. It was just that it was a slightly odd message. I wasn’t sure whether … well, maybe somebody had got hold of his phone …’

  ‘Why on earth would he let anyone do that?’

  ‘I mean, hackers can do anything, can’t they?’

  ‘No idea. I’ve never knowingly met one.’

  Emma topped her glass up in what was almost a reflex action. She put the bottle down then, realising that she wasn’t drinking alone today, picked it up again and nodded towards my glass. I shook my head.

  ‘You’re not implying that I sent that message, are you?’ asked Emma.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t seen him or his phone since he walked out.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why Crispin left,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have to. It’s not your problem, Ethelred.’

  ‘Sorry – I don’t mean to pry.’

  ‘No, pry if you want to. I suppose it will all come out eventually. Crispin’s likely to tell all his mates, after all. I’d better give you the full story, even if I don’t come out of it as well as I might. It’s like this. On the day concerned I’d accused him of sleeping with one of our friends – you don’t have to know who. Crispin denied it and, in the end I sort of believed him; but the whole Crispin infidelity thing had gone just a bit too far for me to want to drop it. So I didn’t. Well, you don’t, do you? Eventually he said if that was how I felt, he was clearing off. So he marched noisily upstairs and started packing – throwing stuff around the bedroom just in case I hadn’t noticed. Anyway, after another couple of glasses of wine, the thought occurred to me that it would really screw up his plans if I decided to go off in the car. So, I drove round the corner to the friend I’d accused him of sleeping with and we got completely drunk. The following morning I drove back and Crispin was gone. As far as thwarting his plans were concerned, I’d left taxis and buses out of my calculations, though hopefully I’d really pissed him off when he dragged his cases downstairs and found no BMW on the gravel drive. But the downside was that I missed out on the bit of the break-up where he says I’m going somewhere where I don’t have to put up with this shit – here’s the address of that particular place if you are interested to know. Of course, I expected him to be back. I wrapped his presents and put them under the tree. I actually cooked the turkey on Christmas Day. But there wasn’t even a phone call. On Boxing Day I took his presents to the Oxfam shop and ate turkey for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You’ve no idea how big a turkey is until you have to eat the whole thing yourself. It’s obscene.’