Blame The Dead

by Gavin Lyall

  'What book are you talking about?'

  'Oh, for Chrissake!'A spurt of involuntary anger that just couldn't have been Norwegian. 'You know what I'm talking about. Now I'll tell you how to get it to us.'

  I had to remember to sound unworried, not knowing he had anything on me. So, in a merry, insouciant voice: 'Up you, mate, and double upyour mate. I'm not a travelling library service. Any time you-'

  He overrode me: 'Or we'll tell the local coppers to check with London on who owns that Mauser HSC they found in Steen's office.'

  I counted a silent one-two-three to show implications sinking in, then said cautiously, 'I knew he was dead. I didn't know about the gun.'

  He chuckled. 'That's right – yours. Remember the number?' He told me the number.

  Another one-two-three to be appalled in. Then, quick and hopeful. 'They'd never believe I did it.'

  'You might even be right. I'd say it was six to five on. But either way, you'll spend a nice long time here while they make up their minds. Now d'you feel any different about that book?"

  Had I heard the voice before? I thought it was the one down in the underground car park while I was getting pumped full of Pentathol, but I could be just assuming the probable. Certainly that lot had latched on to my Mauser.

  I asked, 'What guarantee do I get that you won't tell the cops about the Mauser anyway?'

  He sighed, I think. 'Now, Major – you've been out of the Army long enough to know no blackmailer ever gives a real guarantee. He can't, can he? Whatever it is he knows, he can't just stop knowing it.'

  'I'll give it you back in London,' I said.

  'You'll give it tonight!'

  Thank God he'd insisted.

  He calmed down. 'Now. I'll tell you where. Are you listening?'

  'I'm listening.'

  Nineteen

  I'd hardly got away from the phone when it went again. A voice that was soggy but sharp, like wet salt: 'Mr Card? I am Inspector (First Class) Vik. We met this afternoon.'

  'Of course. Are you coming round?'

  'If you please. Will you wait there? – I will be only a few minutes.'

  He was less than one minute, so the bastard must have been ringing from the lobby. Maybe he'd hoped to catch me still swallowing the plans of the fort., He was wearing the same creased brown suit, and carrying an old overcoat in some loose-woven pale-green stuff with several strands sticking out and the lining hanging loose at the bottom. If you'd met that coat on the street you'd have given it five pence for a cup of coffee and kept at arm's length while doing so.

  I held up the bottle of Teacher's. 'Does the superintendent let you drink on duty?'

  He sniffed loudly. 'I can say it was medicine. No water, please.'

  I passed him a good medicinal dose.'Skol.'

  'Skol'He gulped. 'To be a superintendent in Norway you must have a degree in Law. I will never be asuperintendent. I had a war instead of a university course. Then…' He shrugged and looked at me with bleary thoughtfulness. It hadn't been self-pity: it was just a gentle, roundabout warning that he didn't believe in legal niceties.

  Then he said, 'I have talked to your Scotland Yard…'

  I nodded. That would be pure routine, of course; but their answer hadn't been.

  He asked, 'Do you have a gun with you?'

  'No.'

  He emptied his glass, stood up. 'Do you object if I search? I have no… you call it a warrant.'

  I shrugged and held my arms out ready.

  He sat down again, satisfied. If I was ready to let him search then there wasn't anything to be found. It told me something about what the Yard had told him, but maybe even more about him.

  He held up his glass and I poured him another and looked at the level in the bottle. 'I'll have to start travelling again soon.'

  'Skol. But not too soon, please. Do you have a point-two-two-of-an-inch pistol?'

  'I've got four – at home. Was that what shot him?'

  He just nodded, then got outa handful of Kleenex and started excavations on his nose. 'Now – why did you come to see Steen?'

  And so I gave him the story. About being with Fenwick when he got shot, about wanting to know why, about getting hired to find out, about Fenwick having visited Bergen before, about Steen's letter to Mrs Fenwick. All I left out was various guns, Mockby, Bertie Bear, truth-drugs, and Miss Mackwood having me tailed. Maybe it made it all a bit duller, but at least it came out shorter.

  Of course, the Yard might have told him I'd been carrying a gun when Fenwick got killed, but he wouldn't expect me to admit that sort of thing anyhow.

  'What did you believe Steen would tell you? '

  I thought about that. 'What it was all about, I suppose.'

  'You truly do not know?'

  'Something to do with ships – I'd guess. Steen surveyed them and Fenwick insured them; that's the obvious connection. There could be others.'

  'Such as getting murdered, perhaps?'

  'That, too. By the way – Fenwick was shot with a nine-millimetre Browning, I was told. I don't know what model.'

  He nodded appreciatively, shaking a small cloud of moisture from his nose. 'Thank you.' He made a note about it.

  I said, 'D'you knowwhen Steen got shot, yet?'

  'Doctors never know. He was alive until at least three o'clock. He telephoned to an agency that does secretary work for him. Why do you ask that?'

  'A twenty-two isn't a cannon, but it isn't a typewriter, either.'

  He nodded again. 'He – they – held up a cushion against the head and fired through it. The doctors found threads in the…, the wounds. I believe it makes a good silencer.'

  I'd heard the same myself, though never tried it. And you can't fit a proper silencer on a gun like the Mauser, where the slide comes right to the muzzle.

  I asked, 'Did you find the gun?'

  'No. And he even took away the empty shells – unless it was a revolver and that I do not expect. He was most careful.'

  Friend, you have no idea of just how careful he was. I wanted to ask about the condition of the bullets – could they be matched to the gun? (I doubted it: a lead bullet going through bone isn't going to show many clear rifling marks afterwards). But I'd pushed the talk of guns far enough, even for somebody with my built-in interest.

  He asked, 'Have you telephoned to your friends in England yet?'

  'I tried. Couldn't get through.'

  'How long will you stay in Bergen now? '

  'It's getting a little difficult to justify, isn't it? Anyhow, how much work are y ou going to let me do? '

  He considered this and then, knowing exactly what I'd meant, asked, 'What do you mean? '

  'Talk to people. Like that secretarial service. And his wife and friends. Parents.'

  There is no wife. And only his father is alive. He lives near Oslo.'

  'You haven't answered me. Can I ask questions without you jumping all over me?'

  He swilled the last of the whisky around the glass and gulped it down in a rather formal gesture. 'Perhaps, if the family permits.' Then he stood up. 'But perhaps tomorrow, it will all become very simple. Something will appear from his papers, his private letters – and we need not worry about your strange mysteries.'

  'Do you really think so?'

  'I do not know. With this murder, there was a very great hatred – or none at all. That careful cushion, the picking up of the shells. I think perhaps you know of the world where one does not need hatred to kill. We will see.'

  I shrugged – and shivered a bit, inside.

  He picked up his overcoat, gave me one serious but damp look, and went his way.

  Twenty

  I looked at the bottle, then decided not. The evening wasn't over yet. So I drifted down to the ground-floor Grill, which turned out to be one of those places with candlelight and wooden pews and all the old chop-house atmospherics. And I'd honestly – or stupidly – forgotten about Draper and Maggie Mackwood until they sat down on the other side of my table.

/>   Draper grinned, yellowish in the candlelight. 'Mind if we share this with you? '

  I half got up, awkward against the high-backed wooden bench. 'Go ahead. Nice flight?' – to Maggie.

  She sat stiff and upright, breasts jutting towards me, but not as if she were asking me to make her an offer; just the prim attitude of somebody with a good posture or a bad back. That apart, she had on a dark suede skirt and a blouse of what looked like raw sail canvas: all pockets and heavy stitching. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back into a neat bun, her face arranged in a wary but neutral expression, like a good secretary awaiting dictation.

  'Very pleasant, thank you.'

  An elderly waiter with clipped iron-grey hair arrived and handed out menus.

  'And something to drink,' Draper said.

  'I'll send the wine waiter, sir.'

  'Just send a Scotch and a gin and tonic.' Draper looked at me. 'How about you?'

  'Are you buying?'

  He snorted with laughter. 'All goes on expenses.'

  Maggie put on a forced smile. I shook my head: no drink.

  The old waiter said patiently, 'I'll send the wine waiter, sir.' He went away.

  Draper snorted again. 'Posh sort of pub, this. Cost you a packet, does it?'

  I shrugged and the wine waiter arrived and took the order. Draper pulled out a long thin cigar and the waiter did a fast draw with a book of matches.

  But Draper shook his head. 'I'll just chew it a while. Don't last so long if you light 'em – ha-ha!'

  The waiter looked at him, puzzled but getting the message that Draper wasn't directly related to Royalty.

  Maggie said formally, 'I suppose I ought to apologise for asking Mr Draper to follow you.'

  'That's all right. You can send as many as you like if they're no better than he is.'

  'Thanks, chum,' he said bitterly. 'Maybe someday I can doyou a good turn.'

  I said, 'But what did you expect him to tell you, anyway?'

  'Oh…' she fiddled with the silverware; '… just what you were doing."

  'You knew bloody well what I was doing. Trying to find out who killed Martin Fenwick.'

  She looked up at me quickly. 'Well, that's what yousaid, but…'

  'You were worried about what else I might find out?'

  Maybe she blushed, maybe not. Damn interrogations by candlelight. 'Well, I don't know… And Mr Mockby said you'd taken the parcel Mart-Mr Fenwick was carrying…'

  'That's something I meant to ask you: why was he taking it to France?'

  Draper said quickly, 'You don't have to tell. Not a thing, you don't.'

  I said, 'I'll get around to you in a moment. Behave yourself until then.'

  'Shove it up.'

  But just as his employer was giving him a prim look, the wine waiter arrived with their drinks. Both grabbed and gulped, but then Maggie caught my eye and looked briefly shamefaced about it. Probably remembering the last – and first – time we'd met, when she was getting smashed out of her little pointed mind.

  'Now let's get back to why Fenwick was going to France.' But then the table waiter arrived to take our orders. Damn interrogations over dinner tables. I took prawn cocktail and half a grilled lobster – after all, we weren't much more than a quarter of a mile from the fish market on the edge of the quay. And Iwas on expenses.

  When the waiter had gone, I said to Maggie, 'Well?'

  But she'd had too long to work out her reply: it was just a half-shrug, half-shake of her head.

  I turned to Draper. 'Fenwick hired some enquiry firm – that was Herb Harris, wasn't it?'

  'No.'

  'Too fast.' I tried to look reproving. 'The right answer should be "Don't know". You wouldn't know every job Herb took on, would you? And why shouldshe go to him? She doesn't know about private detectives; natch, she'd use the one her boss had used. So now, what were you trying to find out for Fenwick?'

  This time it was Maggie looking at him apprehensively. But he just took the chewed-up cigar out of his face, spat a bit off his lip, and said, 'Stuff it up again.'

  I shook my head sadly. 'I really am going to have to have a word with Herb about you.'

  'I've met some slimy creeping bastards in my time-'

  'And now you've met another. Come on.'

  He rammed the cigar back in his mouth, glanced at Maggie, and growled, 'He was being blackmailed. Wanted us to find out who.'

  'Blackmailed about what?'

  He shrugged, and his voice seemed lighter and more confident now. 'He never told us. Something personal, he said. Not business.'

  'What about notes and so on?'

  'No notes. All done by telephone.'

  'You didn't have much to go on.'

  'You're bloody right, there. Didn't bloody get anywhere, either.'

  Then our first course arrived, and I found I'd been right about being close to the fish market. Those prawns actually tasted of something besides the sauce. Can you imagine that?

  So for a time, I just ate.

  When I'd finished, I asked Maggie, 'What was he being blackmailed about?'

  She stiffened. So she knew. That was the important step.

  I said, 'Well?'

  Draper was leaning on one elbow and looking at her curiously.

  I said it again.

  She put on the voice she would have used for getting rid of beggars and life-insurance salesmen. 'You really don't think I'm going to discuss Mr Fenwick's private life with a… a merebodyguard, do you?'

  I pulled the pin out of my temper, counted to three, and let it blow. 'Just tell me what in hell gives you the exclusive rights to the late Martin Fenwick, underwriter, will you? He had a wife, a son, he had partners and friends – as well as a silly little secretary with a schoolgirl crush on the boss. And maybe some ofthem want to know why he got his guts blown in even if you don't care a damn!'

  I was projecting fine, just fine. Maybe La Scala in Milan had heard better, but never the Grill at the Norge. Several groups at nearby tables were giving me snowbound looks, and the wine waiter was teetering on his toes, praying I'd stop before he had to stop me.

  Even Draper was looking a bit shook, making shushing movements with his hands. 'Here, cool it off, chummie-'

  I snapped at him.'And you, unless you want your tits kicked through your trapezium!'

  And probably that about covered the situation. The trouble with all those years of interrogation procedures is that by now I can't tell how honest my anger really is. But for the moment, it seemed good enough.

  Maggie had a definite flush now, and tears sparkling in her eyes. She finished her gin at a gulp. 'All right, all right. It was… I was… having an affair with him.' And she glanced at me quickly, then back to her plate.

  Draper was looking at her speculatively, probably wondering whathis chances were. About one in infinity squared, I'd say.

  I said, 'All right, so now we know. It happens all the time.' Though it doesn't, you know, not as much as everybody seems to think. In most firms, the one person youdon't start ring-a-dinging is your own secretary. It changes an important business relationship into something else, and the board room doesn't like it. It's a good way to find yourself promoted manager of the North Greenland branch.

  Which makes it a better blackmailing point than you might otherwise think, of course.

  'And that leaves us,' I said, 'with the question of what he was being blackmailedfor. What they wanted from him.'

  I knew it was a bloody stupid remark the moment I'd finished it. She stared at me, tears spilling from suddenly widened eyes. 'Well, you ought to know. You've got it.'

  Fast, now. 'What did he tell you?'

  'Just that it was evidence about a claim.'

  'Well – could you identify it again?' Oh, a crafty one, that.

  But: 'No -1 never saw it. It was sent to his home, I think. His flat.'

  Yet without leaving any traces around the flat, like covering letters. Unless the party of the other part had nicked them before I'd g
ot there.

  'Did he tell you what claim? – what ship?'

  'No, I never knew that.' Not true, darling. I can tell.

  'You didn't have to write any letters about it?'

  'No.'

  'He didn't talk in bed much, did he, your Fenwick?'

  Her eyes filled with fresh tears, and Draper looked at me and said, 'You know, you're a bit of a right sod.'

  At the time, I almost agreed with him.

  The old waiter wheeled up a trolley with the next course, giving me a couple of suspicious looks free and with the compliments of the management. He'd long ago formed a private view about Draper, but after my concerto for unaccompanied bad temper he was getting a second opinion on me, too.

  Still, whatever he felt hadn't transferred itself to the lobster. It was just firm and white, with little golden trickles of melted butter, as simple as a million dollars. Usually when I feel up to affording lobster I overdo it and ask for itàla everything on the menu and curried cheese besides. Under all that, what I get for lobster is left over from last summer's staff tennis dance.

  I must have looked the way I was feeling, because Draper asked, 'D'you usually eat lobster in these pads? '

  'Only when there's an expense account in the month.' I looked back to Maggie, nibbling her filleted sole. 'I forgot to ask – how did Fenwick get this… evidence? Who did you say sent it?'

  'I didn't…' but she was trying to remember what shehad said, and Draper was glaring sideways at her. 'From Norway, anyway. Bergen, I think.'

  'You mean Steen?'

  'I… er…' and both Draper and I knew she meant Steen. Suddenly she realised this. 'Well, youknow, don't you? Isn't he the man you came to see? What did he tell you?'

  'Him? – nothing. Somebody shot him just before I got there.'

  Her surprise was real. The piece of fish on her fork went slowly on into her mouth and got chewed up and swallowed and her eyes were looking at me but they were listening to something over the hills and gone.

  I looked back at Draper. He put his knife and fork gently back together on the plate and asked, slow and careful, 'Dead? – why?'

  'Basically because of a couple of twenty-two bullets. After that I'm guessing. I guess it was because of something he was going to tell me, but that could be just pure conceit.'