Blame The Dead

by Gavin Lyall

  David was only half listening. 'But how could they blackmail him? Do you think he was having an affair? '

  Willie made a strangled coughing-gulping noise. I tried to look uninterested.

  David said, as much to himself as anybody, 'I suppose he might have done… but with whom? Anybody we know. It could be Miss Mackwood, couldn't it, and that was why she was involved?' He glanced at Willie, who did a good job of not having heard of Fenwick, Maggie, or fornication, either.

  I said firmly, 'But at least we got a solid identification out of it. According to Draper, this Kavanagh's a bit of a hard case. Herb apparently fired him for trying to bribe a juryman, and before that he'd left the police in something of a hurry. Sounds like one of those times when they say "Oh, he's a terribly nice chap, he'd never do a thing like that," and privately tell him to resign in six months, or else.'

  David's eyes opened a little wider. 'Do they do that?'

  'Every organisation does it, what?' said Willie, glad to find something new to talk about. 'Including the public schools. But what are you proposing to do about Kavanagh? – tell the police?'

  'Whose? The Steen case is closed; I never reported the truth-drug business over here, and as for Arras-'

  I stopped. David had gone very white and his clenched fists were bouncing nervously on the edge of the table. His eyes glittered at me. 'Do you think,' he said in a thick voice, 'that he killed my father?'

  I wished I'd seen where I'd been leading. Smearing as much calm consideration on my voice as possible, I said, 'We know there weretwo men in Arras; from what we now know of Kavanagh he could have been one of them, and I'm going to get the word to Arras – indirectly – to check his name in hotels and any cross-channel passenger lists they can find. Not that such things exist much nowadays.'

  I wasn't looking directly at him, but from the edge of my eye I could see he was cooling down. I went on with my lecture. 'Meanwhile, Draper's doing some quiet work trying to find out what Kavanagh's been doing recently – remember, we've got an advantage that he doesn't know we know him. But also, he's not working for himself and we don't know who he is working for.'

  David was staring down at his plate, nodding gently to himself. In the corner, one fifteen-year-old voice said, 'And don't tell me that was a director's film. Two directors walked off it before he got there.'

  Another voice asked, 'Have youseen the film?'

  'No, of course not. What are film reviews for?'

  Tve often wondered that.'

  Closer to home, Willie lit a cigarette carefully and said, 'But it does rather bring up the question of who the other side is in all this.'

  I said, 'First, does Mrs Smith-Bang's story hold up? About engine trouble and the log proving it?'

  'Yes, it sounds pretty possible, you know. Could be an important point, all right. Though to my mind, it doesn't so much prove the Prometheus Sahara officers are liars as that their radar set must have had a screw loose. And that's rather a worse offence, in fog. The courts expect the odd tall story, you know; most collisions take place between two stationary ships ten miles apart both hooting and firing off rocket signals, if you know what I mean? But trusting a duff radar set – that's serious.'

  I grinned. 'Fine. So the Sahara Line's got a good case for wanting that log suppressed.'

  He sighed. 'Yes, but… they're a big, solid company, you know. They don't do the sort of thing like… like Arras.'

  But David took it calmly, this time.

  I said, 'That's bunk, Willie. As you said yourself, all organisations do, and the bigger the oftener. Were you and your Lancers ever in the Middle East?'

  He shook his head.

  'Well, halfour work in Intelligence out there was finding out if the oil companies were going to start a revolution, never mind the Russians and Egyptians and our friends in the CIA. It's never the chairman of the board who does it, of course, and he may not even know, but somewhere down the line somebody else gets the idea that the boss is interested in results and not methods, and a few more steps down somebody picks up a gun and goes bang. Somebody hired Kavanagh and others to get that log; he wasn't working on spec.'

  Willie nodded sadly and we sat silent for a while. Then he said, 'Of course, I don't suppose it would do any good, but you could always ask Paul.'

  David said, 'D'you mean Mr Mockby, sir?'

  'Yes. He's a director of the Sahara Line, you know.'

  Twenty-eight

  The pubs were just open by the time Willie and I started back, so we stopped at one halfway down the Hill and he phoned around to find Mockby while I washed away the taste of that tea. He didn't tell me what Mockby had said, apart from come and see me at home at half past six, but his expression showed the fat man hadn't undergone any injections of Christian charity on my behalf. Well, I could live with or without that from Mr Paul Mockby.

  It was getting dark and the outbound traffic was the usual bad-tempered, many-eyed snake plus a few kamikaze pilots -as usual. Willie drove thoughtfully and quietly, his slightly melted Greek-god profile outlined against the passing headlights.

  After a time, he asked, 'Do you really think Paul could be… ah… well, you know?'

  'I don't know, but if there's a profit in it and he wouldn't be caught, I'm sure the answer's Yes. Am I right?'

  'Probably, I'm afraid.' He said nothing for a distance, and then, 'I didn't want to mention it with David there, you know – but do you have a real idea why Martin was being blackmailed?"

  'Well, hewas having it off with Maggie Mackwood. Didn'tyou know?'

  'Er… but how did you find out?'

  'She told me herself.'

  'Good God Almighty.' But he said it gently, mostly to himself. 'I suppose youdid have to mention blackmail to David?'

  'I think so. It's the keystone of the whole thing, as far as I can see – Fenwick's vulnerability to a divorce.'

  'Oh, I don't know… They aren't too old-fashioned about these things at Lloyd's.'

  Til bet they're pretty old-fashioned about an underwriter suddenly losing most of his deposit – and that's what would have happened. Give a divorce judge a nice clear-cut case where the man's been set up in business on what was his wife's money and then the breakup's all his fault… Christ, Fenwick would have come out of court with his bus fare home and a bob for the meter to gas himself with.'

  'Yes – I suppose a judge's decision would override everything else,' he mused.

  The prisons are full of people who disagree.'

  'But of course, youai eassuming Lois would have divorced him. She might not.'

  'Yes…' After all, Mrs F herself had as near as dammit told me she believed Fenwick was taking a horizontal opinion of Maggie. 'Probably it was that he couldn't affordany risk of divorce, it would have been so final for him. So he was vulnerable to any threat at all.'

  'I suppose you must be right…' He did a neat piece of light-jumping that brought us out ahead of a Rolls-Royce. Headlamps flashed angrily behind us. 'What do you make of this business of Maggie having you followed to Norway and so on?'

  'That she was damn fond of him – didn't want me raking up anything to discredit him. And maybe her as well.'

  'But she then went and told you about it.'

  'Yes – when I was bound to find out anyhow. And I'd suspected it before.'

  'Ah. I say, how much would it cost her to hire him?'

  T calculated. The Rolls's headlights were still throwing broadsides after us, making Willie's rear-view mirror flash like a warning lamp. 'In case you hadn't noticed,' I said nervously, 'you're about to be rammed by a Cunarder abaft the starboard lug-hole.'

  He grunted. 'Some damn silly little East European ambassador.' But he pulled over and we rocked in the wake of the big car whooshing past.

  I said. 'With sea and air fares, she must have spent at least two hundred pounds on that jaunt.'

  'Probably more than we've spent on you, so far, what?'

  'Certainly.'

  'Impressive, ra
ther.'

  'Maybe it just proves she was in love with him. Sex hardly proves that, these days.'

  'Bit cynical, what, old boy?'

  I just shrugged again.

  The houses in The Bishop's Avenue have just two things in common, they're all set back from the road, giving room for nice big lawns and a good piece of driveway, and people like you and me couldn't afford them in a million years. These aspects apart, each house is different – and intended to be. Not just Stockbroker's Tudor and Banker's Georgian, but everything from the Third Gothic Age to North London Château of the Loire via green-tiled Haciendaàla Rudolph Valentino and Plantation Scarlett O'Hara.

  This last was Mockby's: a square-cut block of the deep South in red brick with a white Grecian portico and a flood of wide steps sweeping down to the green tarmac drive. Willie found a bellpush in among the brasswork of the double front doors, but the house was too big and solid for you to hear it ring inside.

  After a cold wait, one side of the doors opened and the big chauffeur I'd met at my flat looked stonily out.

  Willie said pleasantly, 'Mr Mockby's expecting us.'

  The big one nodded at me.'And him?'

  I gave him a friendly smile. 'Passed your finals in robbery with violence yet? Or d'you want some more lessons?'

  He bunched his fist. Willie looked at me reprovingly. Then, from somewhere inside, Mockby bellowed, 'Don't fart about, Charles! Let 'em in!'

  We went through an inner set of french doors, along a big hallway with enough furniture to start a chain store, and into the lounge.

  It was a big room but with an odd confined feeling. There must have been windows somewhere behind the gold silk drapes, but you wouldn't bother with them: there was too much to look at inside. The place was jammed with furniture; usable stuff like fat wing chairs and sofas and couches, unusable bits like tiny tables covered in silver photo frames, carved benches, embroidered footstools. Even the flock wallpaper was put up in panels, and each panel with a gold-framed still life of dead pheasants and careful beads of moisture on every grape.

  Willie must have seen it all before, but I thought I heard Mm give a little sad sigh.

  Mockby was standing in the middle, wrapped in a vast red velvet smoking jacket with green lapels.

  'Hullo, Willie,' he called, 'What are you doing with that blackmailing bastard?'

  Willie twitched like a nervous horse. His faith in me wasn't even skin deep, after all: he'd taken me more or less on David's trust.

  'Blackmailing?' he asked warily.

  'Of course,' said Mockby. 'Trying to sell us something that belongs to us already.'

  I said, 'You mean the Skadi's log?'

  'That's what I mean, sonny.'

  Willie said, 'Oh, that,' and looked vaguely relieved. Even he couldn't believe I was fool enough to try and sell Mockby something I hadn't got.

  Mockby seemed puzzled, but recovered fast. 'Well, have you come to do business now?'

  I shrugged. 'Anything could happen.'

  'I suppose you want a drink first.' He strode over to a bookcase that turned out, of course, of course, to be a cocktail cabinet lined in rose-tinted mirror glass (one of these days I'm going to market a cocktail cabinet that turns out to be a bookcase; there must besome secret readers in The Bishop's Avenue).

  'Scotch? And you, Willie?'

  'Ah – pink gin if you could.'

  'Oh, Christ,' Mockby said impatiently. 'Mix your own.' He strode back with two big cut-glass tumblers and shoved one into my hand. Willie went and started necromancing with the little bottle of bitters.

  Mockby and I drank; then he said, 'Well, now are you going to hand it over?'

  Willie called, I've never seen this thing. Which log are we talking about?'

  Mockby swung round. 'Deck log – chief officer's log. Not the rough one that went with the bridge, but the fair copy they kept below.'

  'Ali, yes.' He went on blending.

  'Well?' Mockby asked me.

  'What does it prove? – the log, I mean.'

  'You've had it long enough, haven't you?'

  Willie was zigzagging elegantly among the furniture towards us. 'I don't suppose Mr Card reads Norwegian sea-going terms frightfully well, what?'

  You know, it's damn silly, but maybe it was hearing all those Norwegians talking perfect English that had made me forget they'd write up their logs in Norwegian. I'd somehow imagined Fenwick skimming through the book and saying, 'Aha! – the Captain's butler did it!'

  'Did Martin Fenwick read Norwegian?' I asked quickly.

  Mockby and Willie looked at each other; Willie sipped his pale-pink mixture and shrugged delicately. Mockby said, 'Bit, I think. Not much.'

  So Fenwick must have got an explanatory letter with the log. Or phone call. But if you're parcelling up the log, you'd add a letter as well anyway. Would Fenwick have kept that? Say, in the bureau at his flat? And would an interested party have swiped it before I got there?

  Mockby was staring down into his glass, baby features crowded into a slight frown.

  I said, 'So, what did he tell you the log showed?'

  He stretched his big chest with a deep breath. 'Oh, something about whether it invalidated the policy or not.'

  Willie stared at him.'Invalidated it? Did he really say that?'

  Mockby got angry. 'Of course he did. I just said so.'

  I said, 'If you do pay out in full on the collision, how much? – it'll be pretty big, won't it?'

  Mockby heaved his shoulders in a big shrug. 'The whole claim comes to about half a million – plus bloody great fees to every lawyer that can get his greedy great gob into the honey-pot. We had a line of seven-and-a-half per cent. It'll cost us about forty thousand quid.'

  I frowned. 'That doesn't sound too bad… I mean, it does to me, but…'

  'Two per cent of turnover on the year. We pay out over ninety per cent in the best years; it's been over a hundred. That's insurance.'

  'But the Prometheus Sahara must've been worth a lot more than any ofthat?'

  Willie said, 'About ten million, I'd imagine. These liquid-gas jobs come expensive. All that stainless steel and whatnot, you know?'

  'But if it's your side's fault, aren't you responsible?'

  Mockby looked contemptuous. 'You really think we write policies like that at Lloyd's? Just because we're all gentlemen, it doesn't mean our heads are full of horse-shit. Since there're no salvage costs, the most we can pay on this one is the cost of the Skadi-about a quarter of a million – plus the same again to the other side. Half a million, like I said.'

  'Who pays the rest, then? The ADP – if they're to blame?'

  'Limitation,' he barked. 'You don't know bugger-all about marine insurance, do you? The owner applies to the courts to limit the liability; the figures get a bit fancy, but it comes out that you can't owe the other side more than the value of your own ship – about what the Lloyd's policy covers anyway.'

  Willie said mildly, 'It was originally to protect the small shipowner – make sure he couldn't be ruined by a single accident. They didn't want to create a monopoly situation such as you've got with the airlines these days, you know? And after all, you don't usually get a dinghy sinking the QE2.'

  'Just bad luck when it does happen, eh? Incidentally, how could a small boat like the Skadi sink a big tanker? '

  'She had a strengthened bow – almost an ice-breaker. They'd been using her on the Saint Lawrence Seaway trade.'

  I nodded. 'But there's still nine-and-something million to be found. Who pays that?'

  Mockby said, 'The Sahara Line's insurers. Lloyd's again, but not the same syndicates. Not us, anyway.'

  I thought about this 'limitation', and the more I thought the more I liked it. Maybe they could extend it to make sure smalltime security adviser/bodyguards didn't go out of business.

  Then I asked, 'And ADP willget limitation – even if the collision was their fault?'

  'If it was the fault of the ship or crew – if they were sailing ba
lls-out in the fog – yes, the owner gets limitation. But if it was the owner's fault, likeordering them to sail balls-out in fog – then no limitation.'

  'Just a bill for ten million,' I said dreamily.

  Willie said, 'And some of that could be paid by a Mutual Club. Sort of protection society among shipowners, you know? But anyway, none of that arises in this case. Nobody's trying to prove that Ellie Smith-Bang gave orders about going full ahead in fog. She wouldn't, anyway.'

  I said carefully, 'Just whatdoes arise in this case – if the Lloyd's policy is invalidated? Like you said.'

  Willie looked at Mockby and Mockby looked at his Scotch. Then his voice was a bit hesitant. 'Well, yes… that was just what Martin said, though.'

  'Before he went to Arras, of course. And you knew he was being blackmailed about that log?'

  Another brief pause. 'He told me that, too.'

  'And you let him go?'

  'Christ! – how could I stop him? It was his cock on the block. And I didn't knowyou were going to let him get killed!'

  So then Willie had to help. 'Maggie told Mr Card about… about her and Martin having an affair.'

  Mockby stared at him, his face melting from surprise into vague disbelief. 'Christ. Gabby little bit, ain't she?' Then he turned to me and became the prison-camp commandant again. 'And how many people haveyou told?'

  I just sipped my drink and for a while nobody said anything. Then I asked politely, 'And your interest has nothing to do with being in the Sahara Line as well."

  'No, of course not!' But I wasn't sure if I believed his eyes.

  'I had to ask. It could represent a conflict of interests.'

  'Get them every day in the City, if you're on enough boards.' Then he swung on Willie and exploded, 'Isthat why you brought him along? Little bloody ray of sunshine, ain't you?'

  Willie looked genuinely embarrassed. 'Well, old chap… I mean, Mr Card rather insisted, you know? '

  I could have done with something stronger than that. Mockby turned sourly back to me. 'Oh, he's a bloody marvellous insister, he is. Pity he's such a lousy bodyguard. Well?'