The Herring Seller's Apprentice

by L. C. Tyler

  We must have been well past the Dartford Bridge when I turned to Ethelred and said: ‘If you did bump Geraldine off, then, however you managed it and whenever it was you did it, I’ll say you were with me in Hampstead. I’ll say you were in bed with me, if it would help.’

  ‘That really won’t be necessary’ he said. ‘I was in France and not in bed with anyone.’

  ‘Just so long as you know the offer is there. For that evening or any other,’ I said. I was shocked to realize that by ‘any other’ I meant future evenings as well as past.

  Thank you. But I won’t need it,’ he said.

  At that moment his face was lit up by the headlights of an oncoming car. I saw him clearly only for a second or so, but he had a broad grin on his face. He really was quite pleased with himself. You silly tart, I thought, what are you playing at?

  It was no surprise to me when the police took him away.

  Once inside the flat, however, my mind started working fast. The more information I had, the easier it would be to help Ethelred. What he wouldn’t tell me, I had to find out for myself. The last time I was in his flat I’d had an hour or so to find what I wanted. This time I reckoned I had thirty years, less time off for good behaviour. Still, there was no harm in making a start.

  The first thing to decide was who might have information that I didn’t. A quick flick through Ethelred’s address book turned up the Office Boy, Darren Oxtoby. On the journey to Feldingham I had wheedled a little bit of information out of Ethelred about young Darren. I knew that he had worked for Geraldine for a while and that he was a writer (or at least wanted to be a writer), which might work to my advantage. It was a bit after midnight, so what would a keen young writer be doing? Burning the old midnight oil and working on his masterpiece, obviously. So it wasn’t too late to call him.

  The phone rang for a bit and then a slightly confused voice answered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry, Darren, did I disturb your writing?’

  ‘I was asleep. Who is that?’

  So that’s writing a masterpiece or sleeping – obviously. Still, I’d got his attention, which was all I needed.

  ‘I’m Elsie Thirkettle. I’m a literary agent.’

  ‘The agent Mr Tressider knows? Are you phoning about the novel?’

  Even in his current befuddled state he could not quite believe that respectable agents phoned out of the blue in the middle of the night to talk literature. In a moment he would be fully awake, so I needed to work fast if I was to pump him for information.

  ‘Yes, Darren. Mr Tressider has told me a great deal. But first I need you to answer some simple questions.’

  ‘Questions? Sure. Well, I’ve been writing for about two years. I had a short story published in Granta last year and—’

  ‘No, Darren, not those questions. Different questions, like when did you start working for the Bitch?’

  ‘Mrs Tressider, you mean? About four months ago.’

  ‘OK. Now think, Darren:Who might have had a motive for killing her? Who really hated her guts?’

  ‘Nobody that I know of. Lots of people phoned the office who were very upset.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, she owed them money. Builders. Office supplies. The people who owned the office building. The newsagents. Everyone, really. I had to tell them that their bills were being processed and that they would be paid soon. If they came to the office I had to tell them Mrs Tressider was out.’

  ‘Newsagents don’t often murder their customers. Who else was there?’

  ‘There were the shareholders in the company too – like Miss Turner.’

  ‘Geraldine’s sister?’

  ‘That’s right. There were four or five of them.They kept phoning up. They wanted their money back. But I don’t think there was any money.’

  ‘But they all stood less chance of getting their money with Geraldine dead than with her alive. Keep going. Who else?’

  ‘Nobody much. Mrs Tressider was working on a new project – houses in the East End.’

  ‘Was this a serious project?’

  ‘Yes, she used to have meetings with Dennis Rainbird about it. They met up quite often. For a while I wondered if there wasn’t something going on between them.’

  Dennis Rainbird? It was a bit like Charlotte when confronted with Pamela Hamilton-Boswell.I knew I knew the name, but who on earth was it? Ah, yes, of course: Elizabeth’s husband. That was who Dennis Rainbird was.

  There was a stunned silence at my end of the phone, then I said, ‘Elizabeth’s husband?’

  Newtonian physics dictates that when there is a stunned silence at one end of the phone there will be an equal and opposite stunned silence at the other end of the phone, a silence terminated in this case by Darren saying, ‘You what?’

  ‘Dennis Rainbird. I know him,’ I said.‘Sort of. Was this just a business relationship or was there more to it than that?’

  ‘I think they were quite good friends.’

  ‘I bet,’ I said.

  ‘But you know him, too?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Small world,’ observed Darren, with that writer’s ability to get straight to the heart of the matter.

  ‘Do you have Dennis Rainbird’s work address or telephone number?’ I demanded.

  ‘No, but it would be at the office. I can’t get in any more. Mr Tressider took my key.’

  ‘Never mind, I should be able to manage that.Thank you, Darren, you have been most helpful. I’ll let you get back to sleep now.’

  ‘But my novel …?’ A note of concern was creeping into his voice. Had he just been stitched up? Well, yes, of course.

  ‘Send me the synopsis and the first two chapters. And don’t forget to enclose the return postage.’ I gave him my address, but not my telephone number.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Darren.’

  I could have phoned Elizabeth’s number to try to get Dennis at home, but it was now half past midnight and I expected that I would not get the most friendly of receptions, even when I pointed out that I was in a position to blackmail him. (Probably.)

  I got out a book of maps – Europe this time. Strasbourg turned out to be up in the top right-hand corner of France and not a million miles away from Switzerland. Which was sort of interesting.

  I decided to get some kip. After all, tomorrow could be a long day, depending on whether I headed for Switzerland next or back to Essex. I wouldn’t want you to get the impression that I wasn’t worried about Ethelred or anything, because I was, but I’ve never had any trouble in getting off to sleep. It’s having a clear conscience, I guess.

  I don’t know what time I woke up but it was still dark. I was just thinking how odd it was that I had woken up at all, when I realized that I had been disturbed by the noise of somebody moving around in the flat. It took me a few seconds to work out where I was, which meant that I didn’t have time to worry about burglars before Ethelred’s long, pale face appeared round the door. He grinned at me.

  ‘How did you break out of jail?’ I asked.

  ‘No problem,’ he said.

  ‘What did the police want anyway?’

  He paused for a moment, then said, ‘It was nothing much.They found my fingerprints on the suicide note. They just wanted to know how they got there.’

  ‘So how the hell did they get there?’ I demanded.

  Fifteen

  ‘Because it is my writing paper,’ I said.

  This was not one of the answers that they were expecting.

  ‘Your paper?’ asked the inspector. As the senior officer present he generally got the best lines. Except that, for the next few minutes, I knew all the best lines were going to be mine.

  ‘Certainly.’ I picked up the plastic folder and turned it round so that they could read it more clearly. ‘All that is left of the address is N1, which might have led you to think that it was an I
slington address and therefore Geraldine’s paper. If you were to compare this with a sheet of my wife’s writing paper, you would however see that the characters did not match up with the postcode there. That is because the complete postcode on this sheet was BN14 OTF. If you check, you will quickly discover that this is my postcode here in Sussex. And if you look very closely at the sheet of paper, you will notice that you can still see a small bit of the B just before the N.’

  They looked. They saw. There was a small bit of a B.

  ‘But you said that you hadn’t seen the paper before,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘No, I said that I had not seen the suicide note. When I last saw this sheet of paper, it would have been blank, and indeed would have had the address intact.’

  ‘But how,’ said the inspector, screwing up his eyes and squinting at me, ‘did Mrs Tressider get hold of your paper, if that’s what you’re telling us? You said that you hadn’t seen her for years.’

  ‘Again, I fear that I must correct you. I said that I had not seen my wife for some time. Four or five weeks, I would think. Well, before I went to France, anyway.’

  ‘But I thought—’

  ‘—that I had not seen Geraldine since our divorce? It is true that for some years after we split up we did not see each other at all. It must have been seven or eight months ago, however, that she turned up quite unannounced at my door. She said that she was passing through and thought that she would look me up. She felt that, after all that time, there was no reason why we should not be friends. We had lunch together. Afterwards she wanted my telephone number. I gave her a sheet of my writing paper – doubtless the one you have there – which had both my full postal address and my phone. I have no doubt that she tore off the bit she needed albeit rather carelessly, losing an N1 in the process but with the phone number intact, and then just put the rest aside as scrap paper.’

  ‘Which she later used for a suicide note?’

  ‘So it would seem. She probably didn’t even remember where she got it.’

  ‘You think it was a coincidence?’

  No, I thought.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Pure coincidence, Inspector. If I were going to fake somebody else’s suicide note, why would I do it on my own headed paper? I’m a writer, for God’s sake. My flat is full of virtually untraceable plain white A4. I’d have used that, wouldn’t I? And I would have left no fingerprints. I am a crime writer, after all.’

  ‘So, let’s get this straight. You saw your wife quite often in the year leading up to her death?’

  ‘Not that often. Say a dozen times. But I’m not denying we were friends. It was what Geraldine wanted and I have always found it easier in the long run to go along with whatever Geraldine had in mind.’

  ‘Mr Tressider, I have already warned you that withholding evidence is a serious offence.’

  ‘I understand that, Inspector, but I have answered all of your questions truthfully. Whether I last saw my wife a couple of weeks or a couple of years ago is scarcely a matter of any significance to you. The fact is that I was in France at the time of the murder. Nor, I can assure you, will you be able to come up with a motive for my murdering my wife, try as hard as you wish. If I have withheld anything, then I have merely withheld the fact that I was on excellent terms with Geraldine almost up to the day she disappeared.’

  The two policemen looked at each other. The inspector coughed. ‘Somebody else had handled the paper as well as you, but none of the prints were good enough to enable us to identify them. If these later fingerprints were your wife’s – and our guess is that they are – then that would largely support your story.’

  ‘There you are then,’ I said.

  The inspector turned abruptly to the recording machine and said very distinctly, ‘Interview terminated at twelve thirty-seven.’ He pressed a button and the whirring noise stopped. I smiled at him. He did not return the smile. The sergeant unplugged the machine without looking at either of us.

  ‘One other thing that you may like to know: Your wife’s car has shown up,’ said the inspector. ‘She sold it – cash obviously – for a suspiciously low price to a punter who now finds himself in possession of a car that a finance company also believes that it owns. Had your wife lived, we would have had a number of questions for her.’

  ‘I don’t think that she was planning to hang around to provide answers,’ I said.

  ‘Nor do we. Her passport, driving licence and credit cards are still missing. So is the luggage that she would have had with her. Our serial killer did not leave any identification on other bodies, however. It’s something else that ties your wife’s murder in with the others. That, and the fact that she was blonde and attractive and happened to be in West Sussex.’

  ‘So, it’s back to the idea that it was a serial killer?’

  ‘It always would have been if you had simply told us the truth.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Not the whole truth.’

  ‘Can I go now?’ I asked.

  ‘Is there anything else that you should be telling us, Mr Tressider?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘Such as?’ I asked. ‘Ask away. I am a mine of useful information on the social history of the late fourteenth century. I also know a reasonable amount about the practice of oral and maxillofacial surgery and medieval church architecture.’

  The inspector rubbed his eyes. It was turning into a long night for him as well. ‘Do you know anything further concerning the murder that we are investigating?’ He spoke slowly and menacingly, but he was beaten.

  ‘I promise that I have told you everything I know about that.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said the inspector. ‘I do so very much hope so.’

  My suggestion that a squad car might drive me home rapidly and with the lights flashing was politely declined and I was obliged to walk to the railway station and try to pick up a cab there. I was back in Findon before two, which was not bad going. It could have been worse. Much worse.

  It seemed best to give Elsie a reasonably truthful account of the night’s work. She had a way of ferreting out things, and minor discrepancies always caused her to jump to conclusions. She would not approve of my having seen Geraldine, but that was scarcely her business. She took it quite well, however, and I was obliged to suffer intensive verbal abuse for no more than ten minutes or so.

  The she dropped her own little bombshell.

  ‘Dennis Rainbird?’ I asked.

  ‘I wondered if you already knew,’ she said, very pleased with herself. ‘Clearly not.’

  ‘Why should I know something like that?’ I asked.

  Elsie shrugged and gave me a funny look.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK. I didn’t tell you I had seen Geraldine, but that really wasn’t relevant to anything.’

  She gave me another funny look, but funny looks only get you so far. I’d told her all I was telling her.

  ‘Dennis the Menace. Another prime suspect,’ said Elsie.

  ‘Really? Who else is on your list?’

  ‘Smith.’

  ‘Scarcely a killer,’ I said, ‘though I must admit that I really cannot think what induced him to part with his money and hand it over to Geraldine.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Elsie. ‘She was shagging him, obviously.’

  Elsie can sometimes be a little wide of the mark. ‘Smith?’ I said. ‘Oh, I would scarcely think so. Not really her type.’

  ‘Ethelred. Can we have a reality check here? I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but your ex-wife slept with anything in trousers. She was the sort of woman that your mother warned you about. All right?’

  ‘You never really knew her,’ I said.

  ‘So you’ve told me before.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said.

  Elsie gave me one of her pitying looks but she was wasting her time, because I really did know Geraldine better than she did.

  ‘When are we going to see Dirty Den?’ she asked after a bit.

  ‘As soon as I can ar
range it,’ I said. ‘Dennis is not somebody you just drop in on. I’ll phone his secretary and make an appointment.’

  ‘Don’t we lose the element of surprise?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but we aren’t going to need it. Even if we did need it, Elizabeth will have already told him that we have been round asking questions.’

  ‘So, what’s next?’

  ‘I’m a writer. I’m going to get some sleep, then I rather thought I should get on with some writing.’

  ‘Fairfax?’

  ‘Fairfax.’

  ‘That’s OK then,’ said Elsie.

  Sixteen

  In the summer of that year Fairfax worked in an office that looked across the river and the water meadows to the tree-capped hills beyond. The water in the river was brown and sluggish and there were cracks in the mud on each side where the level of the river had fallen. Cattle came down to the water to drink and churned up the mud with their hoofs, but the meadows were dry and the grass was scorched and dusty where the cattle passed on their way to the river.

  Between the police station and the river was a road, and lorries went by and the dust that they raised powdered the leaves of the bushes. At night you could listen and hear the lorries rumble under the window and watch the way their headlamps lit up the bushes and shone off the dust on the leaves. The branches rose and fell as the lorries passed, and sometimes a warm breeze blew though Fairfax’s open window. But the breeze was cool only in the very early morning, when the grey-blue hills were just visible again and the river was a thin milky line across the dark meadows.

  That summer Fairfax knew for the first time that he was old, a thing that is not a matter of having lived a certain number of years, but rather of having only a certain number of years still to live, and also a matter of knowing that there were people you had loved that you would never see again and that there were things that you had done that you would not do again.