by Tim Heald
“I’m delighted to hear it,” he said, insincerely, “but how long had you been, er, brothers?”
“Irving started to spend more time in this country about a decade ago. I met him almost at once, and he became a client.”
“And a brother?”
Swanley did not respond, and after a moment or so of stewing time, Bognor continued. “Do you mind telling me how you met?”
“Of course not,” said Swanley. “We met through a mutual friend, an actress. Ingrid Vincent. She was in one of Irving’s films.”
“The Coffee Grinders,” said Bognor.
“Yes,” agreed the accountant looking ever so slightly surprised.
“Client?” asked Bognor. “Yes.”
“And sister?”
Mr. Swanley ignored this but said, “I tend to specialize in what people vulgarly call showbiz. I was with a bigger company—McPhersons. I seemed to look after their more creative clients. Then when we parted company, one or two came with me.”
“I see,” said Bognor. “When you say ‘parted company,’ what exactly does that mean?”
“Mutual consent,” said Swanley, not looking guilty. “I know what you’re implying but it was exactly as I describe. Entirely mutual. Our interests no longer coincided.”
“I wouldn’t dream of suggesting anything else,” said Bognor, who was quite prepared to believe the worst, even if it was mutual. “But tell me about Ingrid Vincent.”
“She’s a client,” he said. “A valued client. Came to me from McPhersons.”
“But not particularly busy?” he asked. “Not apart from The Coffee Grinders.”
“I look after her finances, not her acting,” the accountant said crisply. “I understand she’s resting at the moment but, generally speaking, her income is healthy.”
“Hmmm.” Bognor frowned. He got the impression that Ingrid Vincent spent a lot of time “resting.” She was a lady of leisure.
“Do you have many of your old clients from McPhersons days?”
“Not so many. To be absolutely honest, Irving kept me on my toes. Once I’d taken him on, it became difficult to do justice to anyone else. Even old friends from McPhersons days.”
“Like Ingrid.”
“If you insist. Like Ingrid.”
Bognor decided on a change of tack.
“Venice mean anything to you?” he asked innocently.
“It was where Irving was murdered,” said Swanley. “And oddly enough, it was the last place I saw him. He hosted a lunch at the new place on the other side of the canal. Near that hotel named after the architect. The Palladian. Lot of pillars. The wife and I had never been, and then suddenly these tickets came through the post. A cheapo airline but perfectly okay and a hotel room thrown in. All found. I didn’t put two and two together until the lunch, and then I realized it must have been Irving. He was given to gestures like that. His idea of an office party. A sort of Christmas thrash except that it wasn’t Christmas.” He smiled wanly, “Irving was a bit like that. Quixotic, you could say. That was what Ingrid said. She said not to ask questions.”
The coffee was good. The proprietor, Mr. Illy, had been mayor of Trieste, which was, in a sense, next door to Venice, but a lot less glamorous and, to Bognor, almost preferable. Jan Morris had written about it affectionately, categorizing it as “nowhere” but approving it nonetheless. In fact, that was precisely why he liked it. No pressure. Nothing to see. Venice was almost too much.
“I’d been storing it up,” said Mr. Swanley. “Top of my list. Not too far but full of all sorts of goodies. I mean I’d love to see the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef, but I just can’t see the wife and me making that sort of journey. Not at our age. So Venice was, as I say, at the top of my list. In fact, I had it earmarked as a sort of retirement reward in a few years’ time, but poor Irving beat us to it. I’m really sorry about what happened, but I’ll always be grateful, too. And in a peculiar sort of way, there’s no better place to go, wouldn’t you agree? And I don’t suppose he knew much about it. Here one moment, gone the next. And the last he will have seen was that wonderful place. I mean we all have to go sooner or later, and I’d rather it was in broad daylight in a boat in Venice than after hours in a National Health ward with tubes stuffed up every known aperture. Know what I mean?”
Bognor knew exactly what he meant, but that wasn’t the point.
“So Irving paid for your tickets and your hotel?”
“I assume so,” said Swanley. “Helen and I didn’t … well, you know it wasn’t like that. I assume he paid for the others at lunch. For Ingrid and for Trevor. Only he wasn’t really Trevor, seeing as he was some sort of Balt. Came from Latvia. Somewhere outside Riga. I don’t know what they’re called there. Not Trevor anyway. We were all at the lunch. Us and the Eyeties.”
“The Eyeties?”
“Irving’s native friends. Benito, he was Italian, came across in a boat, I believe. And Sophia, only she was Russian. And the Pontis—Gina and Bernardo—and Father Carlo. I took a bit of a shine to Father Carlo. He was a Manchester City fan. Trautmann’s old team. Know what I mean?”
Bognor knew what he meant. At least he thought he did. Any Mancunian worth his salt preferred the Sky Blues to the Red Devils, who were Manchester only in name, exercising a universal appeal whereas City, for all their foreign squillions—Thais, Svens, and now Saudis—were in some curious way, local. God knew why.
He was about to ask what they had eaten and drunk at Harry’s Dolci but thought better of it. They would have drank some form of alcoholic peach juice since that was the Cipriani’s stock in trade, and Silverburger and the restaurant would have ordered for them, which would have meant something safe but delicious, along the lines of a prosciutto or carpaccio panino and a meringata or chocolate torte. It would have been good but international. Nothing wrong with that but not the sort of food Brunetti would have had at Donna Leon’s behest. Not Venetian but the sort of thing you could have got anywhere. At a price. That was Silverburger’s style. Safe like McDonald’s, only expensive. The best steak, the best frites, the best ketchup. Same everywhere he went: always the best table but always the same table.
“So it was friends of Irving Silverburger, old and new.”
“You could say that,” agreed Swanley. “Irving was like that.
Always open to new experiences, new ideas, new people but amazingly loyal to those he trusted.”
“Like you?”
“In a way like me, yes.”
“But he paid.”
Swanley went pink. “Yes,” he said. “He paid and he paid well. But it wasn’t like that. I would have gone to the wall for Irving. He knew that and I knew that. But it had nothing to do with money.”
“Nevertheless,” said Bognor, “he always paid his bills. And he was always on time. If he hadn’t …”
“It didn’t arise,” said the accountant. “Like you say, Irving always settled immediately. On time. In full. No tick. It was part of what made him special.”
Part of Bognor could not help wondering if it was the main thing that made the deceased special. But he didn’t voice his suspicions.
“So Irving hosted lunch; and you think Irving paid for Trevor and Ingrid to come to Venice just as he paid for the two of you.”
“That’s a reasonable supposition,” said Swanley. “But you make it sound grubby, mercenary. It wasn’t like that. We all liked Irving. Liked him a lot. And he liked us.”
Bognor made a mental note not to be so cynical about everyone having a price, but these were mercenary times and he had lived through them. He would like to believe that those who lunched at Irving Silverburger’s table in Venice liked him because of who he was and not because of what he gave them. All the same, he was suspicious. He believed that Silverburger’s popularity was only paper thin and that the paper in this instance came in the form of bank notes. Or, because of where they were and who, the popularity was just so much pink plastic. He hoped he was wrong. In any case, he h
ad to prove that the plastic was lethal and had a cutting edge. Also, that there were two sides to the card.
“Did you see Silverburger in Venice apart from the lunch at Harry’s Dolci?”
“Absolutely not,” said Swanley.
Did he say this a shade too quickly? Did he lack conviction? Bognor was not sure, but he felt uncomfortable.
“And Ingrid and Trevor? Did you know them? See them?
Or the Italians?”
The accountant shook his head and looked as puzzled as Bognor was feeling. He seemed genuine enough, though and Bognor found himself feeling guilty for thinking otherwise. Swanley must have been good at his job, but had Bognor worked for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, he wouldn’t have believed a word he said. Not a word. “Thanks for the coffee and the chat,” he said. “I’ll see you at the funeral.”
And he let himself out, shaking Mr. Swanley by the hand and inclining his head to the spinster crouched over the computer screen. She acknowledged him, just, with the slightest suspicion of a smile.
The funeral of Irving G. Silverburger was at the crematorium. It was raining. Actually, it was not rain in the acceptable tropical sense of a child’s picture book with individual drops being thrown from an angry sky, but the thin apology that the English called, with a touch of xenophobia, Scotch mist. Bognor turned up the collar of his mackintosh and wondered why it always seemed to be foggy with damp whenever he came to the crem.
The coffin of Irving G. Silverburger was wheeled in professionally. The corpse of Irving G. Silverburger, which lay within, had been flown back from Italy and stayed in the fridgelike local morgue for some days waiting till today. After the usual more or less meaningless obsequies, the body would be burned and the alleged remains returned to the next of kin in a casket. They would then be taken home to the United States and disposed of. The dead man’s only real memorial would probably be The Coffee Grinders, which didn’t count for much. It would probably turn up as a tricky University Challenge question in a few years’ time. A latter day quizmaster with a piercing stare and a strangulated voice would ask a pimply youth who had produced The Coffee Grinders, and he would answer, “Irving G. Silverburger.” There would be wild applause, and the trophy would duly make its way to some dim college in a new university of which few people knew as much as they did even about the works of the late and unlamented Silverburger.
Bognor sat at the back. This was his preferred position on occasions such as this. It had the combined benefit of rendering him less noticeable if not actually invisible and enabling him to watch. He was not a participant. He seldom was. His role in life was, he thought, essential, but also peripheral. It always had been and though this had worried him and more obviously Monica in earlier years he had become used to it, as had his wife, though less obviously so.
This time, he was with Contractor. Apart from them, the congregation, which was thin, consisted almost entirely of the usual suspects.
He recognized Swanley, aka Braun, who was accompanied by a sniveling woman, presumably his wife, and wore the same suit but a different tie. At least, thought Bognor, it looked like the same suit but Swanley was the sort of man who would have a number of identical-looking suits not wishing to seem different for fear of frightening the horses. It was almost as important for Swanley to be unobtrusive and unthreatening as it was for Bognor. Bognor recognized this but also sensed that it suited Swanley’s temperament. Swanley was the sort of man who did not like to be the center of attention.
There was no escaping it this time for he gave one of the two addresses. One was from a cousin who had come from the American Midwest and was anonymous in a wholesome way, but the other was Swanley.
“I never knew the G stood for Giovanni,” Bognor whispered to Contractor. “Italian blood would explain a lot. If Silverburger was Italian … the Tuscan Silverburgers … the Calabrian Silverburgers … Silverburgani.”
“His parents probably just dug opera,” Contractor said prosaically. “Nothing in Idaho except potatoes and seventy-eights.”
“Who said his people came from Idaho?” asked Bognor. “I thought it was Iowa. Or somewhere else.”
“Somewhere between the Eastern seaboard and California. It’s all much of a muchness. I think a family love of opera is more likely than Italian blood. Sorry.”
They sang “Cwm Rhondda.” At least the organist played “Cwm Rhondda,” and the choir on the DVD accompanied her. The congregation shuffled from foot to foot, looked embarrassed and in a very few cases hummed. It would be pushing the envelope to claim that anybody actually sang.
After “Cwm Rhondda,” there was a reading from the Old Testament by someone Bognor guessed was the factotum from Riga who styled himself Trevor. He read satisfactorily enough, in the manner of one who had studied English as a foreign language under the tuition of similarly taught foreigners at a language school in a seedy resort on the impoverished East Coast. His mastery of English was greater than that of many natives, but it was obviously not his own mother tongue, something he had picked up along the way and that he made use of because it suited him.
The clergyman had obviously not known the deceased and didn’t care. He was the ecclesiastical equivalent of a lawyer provided by Legal Aid. He would draw the miserable minimum and go through the miserable minimum motions. He stumbled over Silverburger’s name and rattled through the formulaic prayers with all the passion of a peanut. Bognor should have felt sorry for the man, but felt only contempt. He wasn’t even doing his job.
To say that Swanley lifted proceedings would have been overstating the case, but he did at least give the impression that he knew who the dead man was and that if not exactly sorry that he had died would at least have preferred him to have been alive. Perhaps that was no more than professional self-interest, but Bognor felt it was slightly more, and he was moved by the man’s evident sorrow.
“There’s no point in pretending,” he began, and looked around the bleak little room, his gaze lingering for a moment on the box in which the remains of Irving G. Silverburger lay ready to enter the flames of the industrial furnace fueled at council expense, consuming all manner of folk. “No point in pretending anything very much, least of all that our friend, Irving, was the most popular of men. Had he been widely loved and appreciated, had he been the life and soul of the party, had he been generous and selfless then, perhaps, there would have been more of us present to mark his passing. And yet there is something to be said for the paucity of numbers. We who mourn Irving are an exclusive band. There are not many of us.”
This was obviously true. There were the paid, namely the vicar and undertakers’ people; the family, a handful of embarrassed folks from the American Midwest who were there out of a sense of duty and obligation but had no feelings of real loss or sorrow; and the friends. Heaven alone knows what the friends were feeling and it would have been odd if they felt anything approaching the same. Each one had his own memories. Some might have been genuinely fond of Irving, though Bognor found this hard, on what little evidence he possessed, to believe.
Swanley was still speaking. “Many of us,” he said, “were present at that last lunch. We did not realize at the time that it was to be a last lunch any more than the disciples realized that the meal with Our Lord was to be the Last Supper.”
Bognor, who had been brought up in a correct, if unbelieving, Church of England fashion, felt a tremor of embarrassment. It was the height of bad taste to mention Jesus Christ and Irving Silverburger in the same paragraph. Not accurate, either. Or called for.
Some members of the congregations of his youth would have walked out.
“I don’t think Irving thought it was a last lunch. Instead, he wanted to celebrate friendship. No more and no less. That is what he would wish us to do today. For as the writer said, ‘He is not dead but just gone into the next room.’ It’s the same with Irving. He is with us and we are with him. He is not dead but sleepeth. We hear his laugh; we feel his handshake; we sense his love.”
And that was it.
“Bad theology,” said Bognor. “Death means what it says. Everyone agrees about that—the pope, Richard Dawkins. It’s not an issue to serious theologians.”
“Dawkins isn’t a theologian,” Contractor hissed in protest. “Oh yes, he is,” said Bognor. “He’s just an atheist theologian.”
They sang “The Day Thou Gavest,” which they would have made sound more dirgelike than usual if humming could be thought funereal; then a weedy cousin, jet-lagged, overawed, mouthed banalities and said the family would be happy to see friends for a drink and a sandwich at a pub on the riverside at Richmond-on-Thames five minutes’ drive away and then the on-duty priest rattled through a few banalities before Silverburger’s box went trundling through the curtains into the all-consuming flames.
Production line, thought Bognor in a thought he did not share even with his subordinate. He had no idea how he wished to be disposed of though, as he wouldn’t be alive to take part, he didn’t feel he was entitled to particular views on the subject. But he did not wish to go like this: burial at sea, scattered from a balloon—anything but a ritual burning with a rent-a-priest and a bored congregation present out of a misplaced sense of duty and the hope of a free drink and a tired sandwich.
No, he thought, that was unfair. There was, surprisingly, a decent amount of genuine grief. There were people here who were sorry to see the last of Irving Giovanni Silverburger. One of them had probably, possibly, killed him, and he or she was also doing a passable imitation of sorrow. But then one did. They could be crocodile tears, but Bognor’s experience was that not only did killers cry, they wept tears of genuine regret. The murder hurt them more than it hurt the victim.
They hummed “Thine Be the Glory,” and the organist played some sort of all-purpose theme on a tune by Bach. Well, it was a rent-a-fugue. Outside, it was still raining or still wet. The damp enveloped the crematorium and the surrounding cemetery in a thin pall of dank mist, lowering spirits that were already ankle-low. Bognor and Contractor walked slowly to the waiting Rover, one of the last made in Britain, a sort of misplaced flamboyance, which sent out all sorts of wrong message. Comfortable though. Bognor told the driver to drop them at the riverside, have something for his own lunch and pick them up after an hour. Contractor said nothing, just did as he was told. This was not a time for dissent or even discussion.