Deadline (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  He walked back to the Globe in a trance. It was so plain. Bertie had told him that his father wanted to sack Derby because he thought he would find out anyway, but had he let on that he had been defending the indefensible he would have laid himself open to suspicion. So he pretended that the Union had objected to his sacking. It was a plausible enough theory, and with the welter of other suspects he could reasonably reckon to get away with it. Dammit, thought Bognor, he nearly has got away with it.

  Clearly his father had told him that he was on the point of overruling him and firing Derby. And he knew that the instant Derby was fired he would blow the gaffe on the deal that Bertie had arranged with Elliston Gravelle. Those must have been the terms of the blackmail. Derby would keep quiet about the deal so long as he remained on the paper, despite his obvious inadequacies. And it was up to Bertie to make sure he wasn’t fired. Not a bad deal.

  He wondered how he had discovered the agreement and found himself laughing. Old St John was obviously a better journalist than most people had thought. The trouble was his talents had been deployed on extra mural activities. And then there was poor Anthea Morrison. She must have got in the way somewhere …

  ‘You’re late.’ It was Molly Mortimer. He had forgotten. They had a lunch date at the Montegufoni. What was it that she’d said? He’d been too preoccupied to notice. Something about cricket. Cricket? Wisden Cricketers’ Almanacks. He gave a little gasp of hope.

  The Montegufoni was a lunch club rather than a restaurant and it overlooked the Thames near Dolphin Square, more than a quarter of an hour’s drive from Fleet Street. The clients were principally showbiz types, the decor gilt and velvet, the food expensive prawn cocktail and scampi. They sat in a window and looked out at the mud. Until the steaks, which were expensive, uncompromising but identifiable as beef and not instantly re-heated spun protein, they talked about nothing. Bognor wished he didn’t find her so attractive.

  Finally she said: ‘It was me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who locked you in Derby’s flat.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘What else could I do?’

  ‘Maybe, but why were you there?’

  ‘To remove the evidence. I thought the police might have it but they’d obviously been too stupid so I thought I’d do everyone a favour.’

  He was suspicious and showed it. On the other hand he was sufficiently infatuated to phrase the question kindly. ‘When you say “do everyone a favour”, you don’t mean “do yourself a favour”?’

  She chewed a piece of gristle. ‘You don’t mean … Oh Simon. For Christ’s sake I’d no idea you had such a suspicious mind. I’m a nice lady. I don’t do that sort of thing.’

  ‘But how did you know where to look?’

  ‘I told you I rumbled Derby once and I had an affair with him, in the old days before he went over to sleeping with poor little rich boys.’ She gave an elegant snort of disgust. ‘I just knew where to look.’

  ‘And …’

  She chewed more steak. ‘Bloody tough, this,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’ve burnt most of it. Not without reading it I hasten to add. Bloody marvellous stuff it was too. No wonder he was so stinking rich. There was enough there to keep the News of the World in stories for years. And bring down half a dozen governments. He was good at his job, I’ll say that for him.’

  ‘But not good at his other job. At the Globe.’

  ‘That wasn’t a job, that was a front. Anyway I said “most of it”. I’ve kept one little document because the more I looked at it and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was probably what you wanted. I may be wrong, but I think not. Intuition’s my strong point.’

  She reached down to her handbag and pulled out a photostat of a legal document. Bognor ran his eye swiftly down it to the signatures. The two principals were The Honourable Bertie Harris and Elliston Gravelle, and the witness below Harris’s name was Anthea Morrison. It provided for the acquisition of the Wharfedale Empire by the News Group. There were some face-saving clauses but that was the gist of it.

  Bognor gave a little whistle of triumph. ‘I adore you,’ he said, ‘you’re magnificent.’

  She shrugged. ‘You agree with me then?’

  ‘Yes.’ He told her about his interviews with Wharfedale and with Elliston Gravelle. Then he looked despondent. ‘Doesn’t prove anything on its own though,’ he said. ‘The case against Granny Gringe is just as strong; and it’s not bad against Milborn or Willy when you come to think about it.’

  They drank cognac. ‘You take that to Wharfedale,’ she said, ‘and see what happens. If that doesn’t flush him out nothing will.’

  They had more cognac. ‘You’re right,’ he said and went to telephone. A few minutes later he came back, pleased. ‘His secretary says five-thirty,’ he said. ‘Do we have time for another cognac?’

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I put our names on the notice board with the phone number. They can get hold of us if we’re needed.’

  They had yet more cognac.

  Outside in the blustery freezing afternoon he kissed her. He was full of drink, lust and gratitude in equal quantities. Then, suffering from a surfeit of gallantry he stepped into the road to look for a taxi. He was more drunk than she, perhaps because she was used to it. She was lucid and level-headed and observant. He wasn’t.

  As he was standing peering vacuously towards Pimlico he heard a powerful car accelerate towards him. He paid no attention until suddenly he heard Molly shout his name and then felt her strong arms reach out and heave him back so that he fell heavily onto the pavement. At the same time he heard a snarl of speeding engine, felt a rush of hot air and was vaguely aware of something pale blue whipping past only inches in front of him. Immediately over the spot on which he had been standing an instant before.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, sitting up and gazing after the rapidly disappearing sports car. ‘Bloody idiot. He might have killed me.’

  ‘We were right,’ said Molly. ‘He meant to. That was a Porsche. Remember who has a pale blue Porsche?’

  ‘Christ,’ said Bognor, ‘I feel sick.’

  Lord Wharfedale looked more like a maniacal monkey than ever. The cigar was still there, though it appeared to have grown during the day assuming the proportions of a large brown banana, and around it his mouth was set in a petulant snarl.

  ‘You have until Thursday morning, Mr Bognor,’ he said. ‘Is this interview entirely necessary?’

  ‘I believe so, yes sir.’

  ‘The police have arrested Mr Gringe. Do you think it likely he perpetrated the slayings?’ There were times when his Lordship sounded like an American paper of the prohibition era rather than a British one of the seventies.

  ‘Emphatically not,’ said Bognor.

  ‘I concur,’ said Lord Wharfedale.

  ‘I have a theory,’ said Bognor tentatively.

  ‘I run a newspaper, Mr Bognor, not a think tank. We deal in facts.’

  ‘Very well then. I’ll give you the facts.’ And he told him about St John Derby’s nasty habit of blackmailing people, and about Bertie Harris’s strange failure to mention that it was he not the Union who prevented Derby being sacked, and about the agreement to sell out the Globe to the News. At this point Lord Wharfedale’s teeth clenched in such a way that Bognor feared he would bite the end off his cigar. But he said nothing.

  ‘You told me,’ Bognor concluded, ‘that you would have sacked Derby on Thursday morning at which point your son would have been revealed as a secret negotiator with the opposition. So, Derby had to be removed before he could incriminate, and he was. Then Bertie became panicky and remembered that Miss Morrison had been a witness to his signature though I bet he never showed her exactly what it was she was signing so he decided to make quite safe by pushing her under a train.

  ‘And incidentally he tried to run over me in his car this afternoon. My guess is that Elliston Gravelle had tipped him off. He knew I was on the scent.’

&nbs
p; Lord Wharfedale said nothing for a long time and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. He evidently didn’t like what he had heard because his eyebrows were knotted in a black frown and he was trying to grind his teeth round the cigar. Finally he said, ‘Please wait outside until further notice.’

  Normally it would have been a pleasure to wait outside with the lovely blonde secretary dimpling prettily in her white canvas, but today Bognor was apprehensive. As a parting gesture he had left the incriminating photostat on Lord Wharfedale’s desk and he now realized that if family ties proved sufficiently strong the father and son could burn it and any proof would be gone for ever. And Gringe would be sentenced to life imprisonment.

  He was about to despair of any development when Bertie Harris entered. He passed straight through the anteroom without looking to either side.

  ‘Looks as if he’d seen a ghost, doesn’t he?’ remarked the secretary conversationally.

  Presently they could hear voices. They were raised voices but the walls and the doors of Lord Wharfedale’s office were so thick and impenetrable that only the occasionally angry shout could be distinguished and even then the actual word was muffled. Bognor looked at his watch. It was after six. He guessed that there might be no Samuel Pepys column tomorrow. Most of the staff had too much else on their plates.

  Suddenly the shouting reached a crescendo. Bognor and the secretary looked at each other in alarm and then just as they were about to comment there was a sharp explosion.

  The secretary stood up, alarmed. ‘That sounded like …’

  ‘A shot,’ said Bognor, ‘I think you’re right. I have a funny feeling there may be another one in a minute. So sit tight.’

  She didn’t have to because as he said the words there was another bang.

  ‘You’d better ring the police,’ said Bognor coldly. ‘I wouldn’t go in if I were you.’

  He’d had enough. He was sorry they were dead. If they were dead, which seemed a fair assumption. But he’d had enough. He wondered what Parkinson would say. Or Sanders. Or next morning’s Daily Globe. ‘Lord Wharfedale dead in tragic shooting accident’ he expected. So much for ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God’.

  In the front hall he met Molly Mortimer, sexy as ever in a cocoon of fur and suede.

  ‘Well?’ she asked.

  He took a last look round the grandiose hall with its mad extravagant copper mural and its flamboyant motto.

  ‘All finished,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it some other time.’

  She pouted in disappointment. ‘I was hoping you might come back to the flat,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got some making up to do.’

  She was very alluring. Then he remembered loyal homely Monica and the safe comfortable basement at the Board of Trade. Also two lines of Chesterton.

  And there comes no answer in arch or dome

  For none in the city of graves goes home.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ and he kissed her sadly on the cheek. ‘But I think it would be safer if I went home.’

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Simon Bognor Mysteries

  Prologue

  IT WAS SCARCELY DAWN as Champion Whately Wonderful of Three Corners, better known to his friends as Fred, pushed an anticipatory muzzle round the front door of his kennel. Pausing outside, he peered about him, sniffing the cool Home Counties air. It was too early yet for his owner, Mrs Ailsa Potts, also of Three Corners of Surblington, Bucks, to be about. Too early, too, for the kennelmaids. Champion Whately Wonderful stretched his hind legs and sniffed at the high barbed wire. There had been a noise of some sort and there was a smell which was appetizing. He loped to the wire netting and sprang up on his hind legs, leaning his front paws in front of him for support. Standard poodles didn’t come finer than Whately Wonderful with his shining black coat cut in the regulation French style, his high domed head and clear intelligent eyes. Success in next week’s Windsor show would make him one of the half-dozen top dogs in Britain and a leading contender for next winter’s Cruft’s.

  The dog got down from the netting and started to pace round the perimeter of the run. Somewhere he could smell meat, and he rolled the skin back off his teeth and gave a low whine as he set about his search. It was scarcely light yet and none of the dogs in the adjacent kennels had stirred. In itself that was not surprising. Champion Whately Wonderful was a notoriously light sleeper. He continued pacing along the wire until he turned the second corner, the one nearest the entrance to the kennels, and froze. There, on the grass about two feet inside his territory, was a large slab of raw sirloin steak. For a few seconds he sniffed round it warily, for Fred, being a champion, was an intelligent animal and poodles are intelligent dogs. Nevertheless canine intelligence has limitations while canine greed has none and before long he had started to eat the steak. At first he had done so slowly, savouring its succulence, but then he began to bolt it, scarcely chewing at all.

  Two hours later the keenest kennelmaid, a stout pink girl named Rose, came walking briskly down the path and noticed a sleek black shape stretched out at the corner of one of the enclosures. In an instant she knew that it was the champion of Three Corners, the son of Champion Whately Winner and Champion Connemara Cutie and the finest dog ever bred in Ailsa Potts’ kennels. A few seconds later she was inside the cage, kneeling beside him. He was, of course, extremely dead.

  1

  AILSA POTTS HAD BEEN in poodles all her adult life. She’d toyed with Yorkshire terriers just after the war and in the early fifties had been duped into promoting the introduction of Irish water spaniels. Throughout both experiments she had remained loyal to the poodle, particularly to the full-size variety, which, as she constantly told everybody, she regarded as more ‘virile’ than its diminutive forms.

  On the morning of the death of Champion Whately Wonderful Mrs Potts had porridge for breakfast. Porridge followed by bacon and egg and sausage, followed by thick slices of toast and butter and dollops of sweet, transparent marmalade. Mrs Potts had the reputation, throughout the canine world, of being a ‘fine trencherwoman’ and a ‘good doer’. As a consequence she was quite remarkably fat and had grown fatter with the meals. She had little time for clothes and cared nothing for her personal appearance. As a result she never seemed to meet in the middle, for the grey skirts and pastel cardigans which constituted the whole of her wardrobe had been bought years before when she was under twelve stones. Safety pins held the cardigans together under her gigantic, drooping bosom and more safety pins aided her skirts. Where the holes had appeared in her garments she had occasionally sewed a large button, though more often she left them. Recently as the skirts were becoming impossible she had purchased two pairs of dark brown corduroy trousers which she tied at the waist with string. Once upon a time she had been pretty, in a cuddly way, and hidden among the folds of flesh and under the piles of sloppily applied face powder you could still see it. But it had been a long time ago.

  That morning she was consuming her third piece of toast and was brewing up a second tea-bag when a hysterical kennelmaid rushed into the room.

  ‘It’s Fred,’ she cried, ‘Fred’s dead.’

  Mrs Potts had a mouthful of toast and marmalade and a handful of tea-cup. For a moment mouth and hand remained immobile. Then, slowly, she swallowed the toast and replaced the cup.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  The kennelmaid was weeping noisily and uncontrollably. Mrs Potts got up, wiped crumbs from her wobbling chin and walked to the corner cupboard. From it she produced a bottle of Grand Seigneur ten star brandy and poured two fingers into a china cup.

  ‘Drink that, girl,’ she said, forcing it down the maid’s mouth. The maid coughed extravagantly but stopped crying. Mrs Potts poured another measure of Grand Seigneur into the cup and drank it herself. Then she lit a cigarette.

  ‘Now. What did you say?’

  ‘Fred. He’s dead.’

  Mrs Potts exhaled.

>   ‘I was afraid that was what you said.’ She sat quite still for five seconds and momentarily it seemed that the fat face might pucker into distress as uncontrolled as the kennelmaid’s. Instead she took another drag at the cigarette and brushed the suspicion of a tear from her left eye.

  ‘We’d better have a look then.’

  It was sunny outside but still chill. There was a heavy dew. Mrs Potts, strapped uncomfortably into a navy blue duffel coat, walked purposefully down the asphalt path, striking out at encroaching nettles with her stick. Rose, tears still streaking her cheeks, followed a few strides behind. The kennels were fifty yards from the house, on the other side of a patch of wasteland which had once been a herbaceous bordered lawn. Mrs Potts walked through the gates and glanced unseeingly at the dogs who came running to the front of their cages to wag good morning. Instead she walked on to the far corner where, in the Number One kennel, Whately Wonderful had lived.

  Two kennelmaids were standing in grubby brown overalls staring down at the dead dog. They were doing nothing but stare. Mrs Potts spoke sharply.

  ‘No use crying over spilt milk,’ she said. ‘There’s still work to do. You’re not buttering parsnips like that. You too, Rose.’

  When they’d gone back to routine, Mrs Potts knelt down beside Fred’s body. He was very obviously dead. His jaws sagged open and his eyes gazed blankly into the distance. Mrs Potts shut them with unexpected gentleness and then picked up his left front paw. For fully a minute she held it in her hands, then she let it fall back on to the earth. She stood and dusted herself down, her face settling into an expression of resolution.