Blame The Dead

by Gavin Lyall

  The windows were closed and the room was full of dry, warm, dusty air faintly spiced with pipe-smoke. Civil Service air. They mix it up in a secret plant just south of the river and pipe it out to all the offices all over London. You can see the pipes running along the underground tunnels next time you're in a train. It's good for you. Breathe enough of it and you lose all anger, all pity, all concern. And you never die; you only fade away like the red ink on an old forgotten file.

  I took a deep breath and it tasted familiar, almost reassuring, then let it go again slowly. There wasn't anything to be said. So I just shrugged.

  He sipped coffee from a thick crock cup and leaned back in his chair. 'Why d'you go in for these outside jobs, buster?

  You're doing all right on the security consultancy, aren't you? Why not stick to it?'

  'That's three questions and you don't expect me to answer any of them.' I got up and reached over and helped myself to one of his sandwiches. Cheese, just as he'd promised me, and the bread tasted of bread, so maybe his wife made it herself. 'You sound just like my solicitor.'

  'I'm surprised you've got a solicitor. Why pay for advice if you don't take it?'

  I sat down again. 'What's the over-all situation? – about Fenwick?'

  He sat forward and clasped his hands. 'The Yard's been asked to look up his background – and yours. Apart from that, Arras thinks it was probably a British murder that just happened to happen in France. They're rather niggled: seem to think it breaks some rule of exporting.'

  'They could be right. So, what now?'

  'Just keep your name out of the papers, buster. Think of yourself as on probation.'

  'Thanks, Jack. Think of yourself as getting stuffed.'

  'What are you up to now?' he asked calmly.

  'Asking a few questions here and there.'

  'I should leave that to professionals.'

  'It's a free country.'

  'Thank God that at least isn't true,' he snorted. 'But if you wanted to find out what it was all about, why didn't you stick it out in Arras?'

  'Because there wasn't anything I could tell them. And for Christ's sake, I'd've…'

  'I know: you'd be in the freezer. Well, you deserve it, you knew you were breaking their laws, and you were being paid for it. Butif you'd stayed, then we'd have some case for prodding them into action. You were in the business long enough to know how the Foreign Office works": it just needs to express concern that a British national got himself murdered over there and would they kindly get their fingers out? And we'd have done it, too.'

  'For a Lloyd's underwriter, driving a Rover and with an address like Kingscutt Manor. I mean not a bus driver on a package tour.'

  He looked at me in a growly sort of way. 'Are you getting class conscious in your declining years? Never mind. But what happens if the FO expresses concern now? – the Arras rozzers express concern right back that the only witness has scarpered to Britain and what are we doing aboutthat? HM Government really doesn't like its citizens getting bumped off abroad, underwritersor bus drivers, so don't bother to read the next Honours List too carefully, buster. You aren't on it.'

  'You can't have been breathing the air in here too much recently.'

  'Iwhat?'

  'Skip it.' I stood up. 'Was that the Order of the Day, then?'

  'It was. Now get out and let a man have a working lunch in peace.'

  'I can't until you've signed my pass. And I'm not supposed to walk these corridors unguarded.'

  He scribbled a signature and threw the little green slip back at me. 'Find your own way out. Call it an initiative test.'

  I looked back with my hand on the doorknob. He was hunched over his desk, munching savagely at another sandwich and sorting a bunch of loose papers with sharp flicks of a finger. Above him on the wall was a neat framed notice saying Don't leave until tomorrowwhat you can get some other poor sod to do today.

  I said, 'Arras is right, you know. They're only where it happened. And I'll tell them when I know why.'

  Without looking up, he took off his glasses, clenched his eyes, and squeezed the bridge of his nose with forefinger and thumb. 'When we want to see you again, buster, you'll hear the sirens first.'

  I closed the door behind me as gently as I could, but the click echoed like a gunshot in the tall corridor.

  Eight

  At near half past three I was winding up Harrow Hill in a convoy jammed behind a heavy truck. As far as I could remember, I'd never been up there before; I was sure I'd never visited the school, but just assumed I'd know it when I saw it. I didn't.

  The road turned into a winding village street of cafés and shops that all seemed to sell only hunting horns, and then huge houses that looked as if they'd been built by Victorian and Edwardian tycoons. After that the slope started down the other side. Oh, dammit! – the one thing everybody knows about Harrow School is it's on top of a hill. I squeezed over to the side and waved on a big white Vauxhall that immediately started hooting behind me.

  There was a pure-looking young man in a shabby raincoat trudging along carrying a squash racket. I leaned across and called, 'Excuse me – can you tell me where the school is?'

  He looked blank, then said, 'Well-here.'

  I nodded at the tycoons' village. 'What, this?'

  He glanced up and down the road. 'Yes, every building you can see is part of the School.' Then he grinned. 'It is a bit odd. What house did you want?'

  'Cundall's.'

  He pointed; it was only twenty yards away, a solid flat-faced red-brick affair, four storeys high. 'Thanks. Do you teach here?'

  'For the last three years – I still get lost myself. And I teach geography.'

  I parked in a tiny gravel forecourt that was already mostly full of a small estate car. Before I reached the door – a stone-framed item borrowed from a Robin Hood movie – it opened, and Hawthorn himself came out.

  Well, it had to be; you'd've known him for a schoolmaster at half a mile in flat darkness. Tallish, thinnish, a bit stooped, with a close-cut fringe of white-grey hair, a moustache that was just a bristle patch of the same colour, and a camouflage-coloured tweed suit that looked as if he'd collided with it rather than put it on. Horn-rimmed bifocals and a pipe, of course.

  We introduced ourselves and went through into a big room that was more or less furnished and overlooked a big garden at the back. There was a small coal fire burning in a big fireplace and it wasn't winning. I chose a chair close to it.

  Hawthorn spent a little time doing open-cast mining on his pipe, finally Ht it, and made a harrumphing sound.

  'This is a rather odd sort of occasion. I thought I'd seen most things as a housemaster but not this before. You must have a rather, ummm, interesting job.'

  I understood: he was immigration control. But fair enough -that must be part of his job.

  I made it friendly and chatty. 'I spent sixteen years in Army Intelligence. A lot of it was learning the, latest interrogation procedures; you know the sort of thing – how to talk a man into talking, sizing him up, deciding what to believe and not. And a few years practising it.'

  Now he got it. He gave me a resigned, but quite friendly, little smile.

  I owed him more than that. 'Most of my work is advising on security: stopping industrial espionage and so on. All this electronic bugging gear – eavesdropping devices – was first invented for the real espionage services, so I'm fairly well up in it. I don't do a bodyguard job very often.'

  He said, 'Ummm,' and then, 'Quite so,' and then, 'You seem to have been rather an innocent bystander, on this occasion.'

  'That's a fair summing up. I didn't know what was going on and I still don't.'

  'You didn't, ummm, interrogate Mr Fenwick by the latest procedures?'

  I grinned. 'No.'

  He puffed smoke at the high ceiling and stared after it. 'I have a double problem here.' He looked down at me again. 'I'm talking about the boy, of course. In the first place, ummm, his father doesn't seem to have been qu
ite such an innocent bystander – or am I wrong?'

  I shrugged as delicately as I could. 'He knew more than he told me. He damn sure didn't know he was going to get shot at, just like that. But obviously he was involved in something."

  He nodded, jerking little puffs of smoke from his pipe. 'Quite so. The boy was rather close to his father, I'm wondering if that sort of surmise would be, umm, helpful.'

  'I might be the one who brings the bad news from Ghent to Aix; I couldn't be the one who stops it. There just ain't no way. The police in both countries are involved now.'

  He harrumphed again and looked sternly at the mouthpiece of his pipe. 'Quite so. But my second problem – you might well appear a rather glamorous figure to young Fenwick. The pistols and so forth, at his age. On the other hand-' he suddenly smiled at me '-I don't think you do glamourize yourself.'

  'Who knows? Why am I in this job? '

  'Quite so.' He glanced at his watch. 'He'll be free from four-fifteen. You can either talk in his room – he shares it with another boy – or go out to one of the cafés on the Hill.'

  Til leave it to him. How old is he? '

  'Just fourteen. Rather a bright boy; he's in the Classical Remove now. That doesn't mean he's a classic, by the way. In fact, he's obviously going to be a historian.'

  'You said he was close to his father. D'you mean he wasn't close to his mother?'

  He cleared his throat and frowned at nothing. 'Ummm…'

  'I've only met the lady twice. Have you?'

  'Not yet.'

  'She gives him rather a lot of money. That's usually a sign that she isn't giving him much else.'

  'You don't think Fenwick and his wife were breaking up?'

  He said carefully, 'We usually learn about such things because they're reflected in the boy's behaviour. No, I can't say I've seen any of the, ummm, usual warning signs.'

  There was a sound like distant thunder. Hawthorn smiled gently. 'The young lions have returned to their lairs. I'll have him shouted for.' He went through to the hall; I followed. He opened a door on the far side and the noise swept in over me. Hawthorn told a few people to shut up, then sent an older boy off down the corridors, shouting, 'Fenwick! A visitor for Fen-wick!'

  'We appoint a few specific "shouters",' Hawthorn explained. 'If one makes it a privilege, they stop the rest of them shouting.' He smiled wryly. 'They'll probably entertain you rather more lavishly on the boys' side. Come back and see me on your way out – if you want to.'

  A boy in the standard uniform of blue blazer, black de, and grey flannels came galloping up, then stopped dead when he saw me. He was thin, pale, tall for his age – maybe five-eight -and rather better-looking than I remembered his father. Delicate features, large brown eyes, dark hair that kept falling into his eyes and kept being swept back again.

  'Mr Card?'he asked.

  'James Card.'

  'I'm David Fenwick, sir.' He held out his hand, long and slim, and I shook it. 'Would you like to come up to our room, sir?' His voice was very polite, very controlled.

  I followed him along a tall, dim corridor, up two flights of stairs, along another corridor, and into a small square room that was surprisingly bright and well furnished. Mrs Fenwick's money, maybe? Anyway, you could see that the school cash had run out with a couple of iron bedsteads folded up against the wall, two small desks and chairs, and two elderly chests of drawers. Private enterprise had brought in two slim Scandinavian armchairs, elegantly shaded table lamps, a fan heater, and some sprawling indoor plants. Probably the school hadn't provided the prints of armoured fighting vehicles, either, nor the big publicity picture of some Italian actress coming up out of the sea having lost almost everything except weight.

  A second boy jumped up from a desk where he'd been working on a plastic model of a tank. A Russian T-34,1 think. David introduced him as Harry Henderson: shorter, stocky, with a cheery red face and wild fair hair.

  Harry said, 'I'll push off now,' and waited for David to say No. David did and Harry cheered up and turned back to me.

  'Would you like a drink, sir? We've only got vodka and sherry at the moment, I'm afraid.'

  He picked up a couple of dark bottles off the mantelpiece; one was labelled 'Liquid Plant Manure', the other 'Metal Polish'. 'We have to keep them in these to stop the monitors and old Hawthorn suspecting."

  Hawthorn had mentioned 'lavish entertainment'; hadn't he? 'I'll take vodka, please.'

  He poured me a healthy dose of plant manure. 'I'm afraid we're out of tonics, but half an Alka-Seltzer tablet makes-'

  Til have it straight.'

  We all sat down. Harry turned suddenly serious and stared at me, then at his feet; David just went on looking pale and controlled.

  I said, 'Cheers. Well, you rang me. Here I am.'

  David said, "Could you… well, would you mind sort of telling me what happened?'

  So I told it again. When I'd finished, he nodded and asked, 'Do you think it hurt him?'

  'Not much. A bad…" I looked at him, wondering if he could take it, decided he could. 'A bad bullet wound gives a tremendous amount of shock. You can't feel much through that.' But it's pain that gives shock.

  Harry asked. 'And you couldn't get a shot at them at all, sir?'

  'Not a hope. They were behind a pillar and they took off Just about the moment they'd fired. If I'd run after them, I might, but your father…' I looked back at David.

  He nodded again. 'And you don't know who did it, or why?"

  'No.'

  1 spoke to the solicitor, Mr Underbill. He said you wanted to find out – is that right, sir?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why, sir?'

  I stood up and walked around my chair. 'I don't know, really. Just inquisitiveness, maybe. A feeling of loose ends. Maybe no better reason than I hope I'll find out I couldn't have done anything more, anyway.'

  David suddenly smiled for the first time. A nice, sympathetic smile. 'I think I understand, sir. Would you… would youfind out for me, too? Can I hire you?'

  I came to a dead stop, staring at him.

  Harry said cheerfully, 'It was partly my idea, too, sir.'

  'Look,' I said slowly. 'I'm not a proper private detective, I haven't got much experience in civilian investigations.'

  David said, 'But you want to find out anyway.'

  'Yees.' I sat down again. 'There's still another point. I don't know what I'm going to find-if anything. But it might turn out that your father was – well, mixed up in something.'

  He was pale and serious again. After a while, he said quietly, 'I think I'd like to know, anyway. Will you do it, sir?'

  'There's also the legal position…'

  'You mean that I'm under age, sir? As I understand it, that means you can't enforce a contract against me. But if I paid you in advance, you'd be safe.'

  'To quote your housemaster – umm. If Oscar Underbill finds out, he'll want to have me pinched for stealing by trick, defrauding a minor, and false pretences."

  David smiled politely. 'Then you needn't tell him, sir.'

  'I needn't tell anybody – in fact, ethically I couldn't – without your permission.'

  'He's going to do it!' Harry squeaked.

  Hell, it did ratfter look that way. Certainly I needed a client. His father's fee hadn't run dry yet – I'd been paid in advance and cash, which is usual for bodyguard jobs – but pretty soon I'd have to be drumming up work on the security advice side and letting things slip on the Fenwick front. And he was supposed to have too much money from Mother, wasn't he? I just hoped 'too much' was enough for me.

  David reached into an inside pocket and took out a wad of crumpled fivers. 'There's fifty pounds here, sir – that's all you can get from the post office bank in one lump. I'll be able to get more from my real bank when I go through town again. Probably-' he paused and swallowed '-for the funeral.'

  The casual way he handled the notes cheered me up a bit. 'I don't know how much it'll take, but I'll give you a strict account weekly
.'

  'Probably quite a bit,' he said thoughtfully, 'if you have to follow where Daddy went.'

  'Like where?'

  'H^'s been in Norway recently; he sent me postcards from Bergen. But I don't know what he was doing – except that his syndicate rather specialised in Norwegian shipping.'

  Harry added, 'It's the fifth biggest merchant fleet in the world. I think so, anyway.'

  I nodded. 'Well, I won't start charging off to Norway until I've got a better excuse. Tell me one thing: did your father commute up from Kent every day?'

  'Oh, no. He had a flat in Saint John's Wood. He spent most of the week there.'

  With or without the willing Miss Mackwood? I took out my notebook – in fact a last year's diary; I buy them by the dozen, cheap, at this time of the year – and wrote down the address. 'You wouldn't have a key to the flat, would you?'

  'Yes.'

  'D'you mind if I go along and burglarize it a bit?'

  Instinctively, he did mind – but he saw the sense of it. He took out a key ring and started working the key off it. Harry just sparkled: this was what private eyes were supposed to do -go busting into people's flats and turning them over.

  David asked, 'Have you talked to any of the members in Daddy's syndicate, sir?'

  I dodged. 'Who d'you recommend?'

  'Well, there's Mr Winslow, he's rather cheerful, and of course Miss Mackwood. She ought to know what was happening.'

  Her name didn't seem to have any particular echo, the way he said it. But tried a little more, just in case: °You've met her, then?'

  'Oh, yes. When I've visited Daddy at Lloyd's.'

  He just might have said something about her turning up at a weekend, somewhere. So I just nodded and wrote down the name Winslow. I planned on trying just about everybody in the syndicate, if I needed to – but not until I knew more myself.

  The interrogator's biggest weapon isn't rubber truncheons or bright lights or electrodes on to the balls or anything – it's knowledge. Just that. The more you know, the more you can use as a lever to pry loose the rest.

  I said carefully, 'How about your mother?'