Brought to Book (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  Monica sipped and screwed up her nose and eyes. This indicated thoughtfulness and an attempt at recall.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I. was too busy enjoying the show.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ she giggled. ‘The Hemlock contingent marched off in a state of dudgeon. Lots of writerish-looking people kept saying what an absolute disgrace the whole thing was and that nice little man I trod on bought me a drink and offered to see me home.’

  ‘You declined?’

  ‘I accepted the drink but said I could see myself home.’

  ‘Dirty old man.’

  ‘Not at all, he was a perfect gentleman.’

  Bognor wondered if he might swing his feet off the bed and try standing. He thought better of it, however. If it was after 11.30 there was no reason to stand up. He told Monica the story in so far as he could remember it.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ she said, when he’d finished. ‘Audrey Hemlock rang about half an hour ago and wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Well,’ Monica looked puzzled, ‘I wasn’t entirely clear. She sounded distressed. She said she’d found some papers and letters and things. She said she didn’t want to show them to your policeman friend because she didn’t trust him.’

  ‘Didn’t trust him?’

  Monica put out a hand and soothed his fevered brow.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘that’s the wrong way to put it. She obviously thinks you’re a superior intellect and would understand the significance of whatever it is she’s found. The point is that apparently it’s all tied up with Romany Flange and Arthur Green. There was some terrible row going on over Green’s newest book. That’s why the catalogue had got held up.’

  ‘Say again,’ said Bognor, ‘only slowly. Not the bit about Bumstead being a dimwit, the bit about the row and Flange and Green. And I’ll have a top-up.’

  ‘You shouldn’t. You’re not well.’ Monica made as if to remove the drinks but relented and poured him one. This was appreciably more modest than the last. ‘Audrey wants to talk about it properly tomorrow but, as far as she can see, Arthur has been working on some book which will almost certainly infringe the Official Secrets Act. Romany gave him the go-ahead but when Hemlock got wind of it he went bananas and vetoed it. But by that time Green was well into it and Romany had seen a draft and she was so excited about it that she was threatening to take it elsewhere. Or something. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Bognor. ‘You don’t know exactly what it was about? Not third, fourth, fifth or whatever men we’re down to now.’

  ‘No.’ Monica grinned broadly. ‘That’s what really does make it quite entertaining. Apparently it’s called The First Lady.’

  FOUR

  THEY RETURNED TO BYFLEET-NEXT-THE-SEA by train. The thought of having to make some conversation with Capstick and Flange during a long journey even in the Rolls Royce was too awful to contemplate. Monica called Capstick’s London number and gave his secretary a distinctly lame apology. Her only consolation was that Capstick probably didn’t relish their company any more than they did his. As for Romany Flange, who knew? Questions would clearly have to be asked but not just yet. And not in the back of Capstick’s Roller.

  The train journey was also fairly depressing to contemplate. So-called InterCity as far as Bradleigh Parkway, where they changed on to the local for the last forty-five minutes. The InterCity’s buffet was out of service due to ‘operating difficulties’ and the train was forty minutes late at Bradleigh due to ‘leaves on the line’ and ‘a points failure at Swindon’. Swindon was more than a hundred miles from Bradleigh Parkway but a points failure there was enough to throw the whole of British Rail into a state of feral dementia.

  Because of the delay they missed the connection at Bradleigh Parkway, which at least meant they could get a beer and one of the tastefully wrapped BR sandwiches while they waited.

  ‘Tastes just the same as the old ones,’ complained Bognor, ‘only the cardboard’s brown and they’ve chopped a gherkin into it.’

  ‘I can’t open mine.’ Monica tore at the clingfilm with her fingernails. ‘They must be wrapped in Spain.’

  The Bognors had once had an entire self-catering holiday on some Costa thrown into jeopardy on account of their inability to cope with Spanish packaging.

  ‘I wonder’, said Bognor, ‘how Bumstead’s making out. I’d like to talk to his forensic people if poss. Did you notice that Warrington’s bed hadn’t been slept in?’

  ‘You’re just guessing, Simon.’ Monica finally penetrated the package and let out a squawk of annoyance as she bit into the sandwich and mayonnaise sprayed all down her front.

  ‘At least it’s not Heinz,’ she said, wiping it off with the paper napkin. ‘I wonder if there are prawns in it as well. How few prawns before I can complain to the ombudsman or the Advertising Standards people?’

  ‘Any prawn at all makes a prawn sandwich, I would guess,’ said Bognor. ‘I don’t think Warrington slept in his own bed that night.’

  ‘He’s very fastidious,’ said Monica. ‘It’s much more likely that he made it quite beautifully as soon as he got up. In any case, what are you expecting? Do you suppose the forensic people are going to put a toothcomb over every bed at Hemlock’s to see if Danvers Warrington slept in it?’

  ‘Well, no, I suppose not.’ Bognor was not at his best. His head still throbbed and as so often happened in any case in which he became involved it got more difficult before it got easier. It was like the old canard about scandal. If you were to pick up the phone and call every number in the country with the simple words: ‘All is discovered! Flee!’, all the docks and airports would be jammed before breakfast. Same thing with the Hemlock murder. Before Vernon was done in no one suspected any of his authors of anything at all, certainly nothing to warrant police or prosecution. Now just because one man was dead everybody was under suspicion and skeletons were emerging from every cupboard in sight. Yet for all but the murderer himself nothing had changed. It was most unreasonable.

  ‘Split a Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut?’ Bognor wanted something to take away the taste of gherkin.

  ‘I don’t somehow think Warrington did it,’ said Monica. ‘Even if you’re right and he was carrying on with someone he shouldn’t have been. I don’t see a real motive there. Nor do I think he was being ripped off seriously enough. He’s obviously doing fine financially. And he’s famous. If it wasn’t for Hemlock he’d be nowhere. Hemlock made him; Hemlock fed him; whatever he had Hemlock gave him again.’

  They worried away at Warrington over the Fruit and Nut and then had a cup of filthy coffee from a kiosk while conducting another post-mortem of the night before. The most obvious first explanation was, of course, that Bognor had just been another statistic in the capital’s grim mugging statistics for the year. But a mugger would have made off with cash, keys and credit cards unless a psychopath (impossible – the blow to Bognor’s head was far too clinical) or unless he had been disturbed. If he had been disturbed he would hardly have managed to load Bognor into a car and get him back to the house in Hammersmith. And why go to such trouble to get him to safety?

  ‘Mistaken identity?’ mused Monica.

  It was possible. His assailant could have assumed he was someone else in the dark. But it required a particularly guilty conscience to go to all the trouble of delivering him home. He must have felt very well disposed or fantastically guilty to bother with that. A positively Raffles-like piece of criminal chivalry.

  And if the motive was not theft then what could it have been? The only possibility either of them could entertain was that there was some connection with Romany Flange and Arthur Green.

  ‘Just suppose’, said Bognor, ‘that someone else at that RIL meeting was suspicious of Romany Flange and whatever plot she was hatching with Arthur Green. Now just suppose that person decided to follow them…’

  ‘With you so far.’ Another British Rail delay
was announced on the crackling Tannoy. This was due to ‘unavoidable circumstances’ but BR very sweetly apologised for ‘inconvenience to passengers’.

  ‘Was that the Byfleet-next-the-Sea train?’ asked Bognor, but Monica hadn’t heard properly and the ticket collector he asked next just looked at him as if he was off his head.

  They went back to their bench.

  ‘So Mr X followed Flange and Green but found that he was actually following you following Flange and Green…’ Monica nodded. ‘Makes sense,’ she said.

  ‘And then,’ said Bognor, wincing at the memory, ‘he finally decided that the only way he could get close to them was by eliminating me.’

  ‘Simon, that’s a good theory. But who was he?’

  The station, one of the new BR efforts stuck out in the country in an effort to persuade people to ‘Park ‘n’ Drive’, was littered with other stranded travellers. They had the forlorn look of refugees with their down-at-heel suitcases, their string bags of oranges and chocolate biscuits and tartan thermoses full of strong sweet tea. Huge advertisements invited them to travel to Brussels and Paris in incomparable style and for incomparably low prices. But nothing told them how to get out of Bradleigh Parkway that desolate lunchtime.

  The Bognors sighed in unison. Away in the distance a car door slammed and businesslike shoes clomped across the newly laid marble of the showpiece station. They watched idly as a long-haired man of about thirty strode into the middle of the forecourt and paused by the W. H. Smith bookstall. The man kicked an old Coke can irritably and peered round the station.

  ‘Came to meet his old mum and she’s missed the train,’ said Simon.

  ‘Train missed her more like,’ said Monica. ‘Hasn’t been one for over half an hour.’

  Suddenly the man’s expression brightened and he began to walk towards them. Something about him triggered caution in Bognor’s mind and he started to get to his feet.

  ‘Monica!’ he said. ‘Don’t look now, but I think I know this man. And I have a nasty hunch that he knows me.’

  ‘Please don’t get up, Mr Bognor.’

  Leather jacket, thought Bognor. Leather jacket, old red wine, stale cheese, 10.15 in a dark street between the Czech and Soviet Embassies.

  ‘Mrs Bognor.’ The man inclined his head and smiled. He was good looking in a faintly Slavonic way with wispy fair hair, very high cheekbones, slanted brows and pale blue eyes. The eyes had the not inconsiderable virtue of looking as if they could be smiled with. A writer, guessed Bognor, but not a Hemlock man.

  ‘Glatt,’ he said, flashing a laminated card not unlike Bognor’s Board of Trade number, ‘Special Branch.’

  ‘Not Merlin Glatt!’ exclaimed Monica, “The Dartington Rhymes”, “Box”, “New Year’s Day, Richmond Ice Rink” – not that Glatt!?’

  Glatt smiled with his mouth, keeping the eyes in neutral. ‘I’m very flattered, Mrs Bognor. Yes, some of the time that Glatt. Today, “Glatt, Special Branch”. Very occasionally, both at the same time.’

  ‘Poets in Special Branch,’ said Bognor sceptically. ‘May I check that card?’

  ‘Certainly.’ Glatt handed him the plastic which Bognor scrutinised. He was unable to fault it.

  ‘I’m extremely sorry about last night,’ said Glatt.

  ‘Likewise,’ said Bognor.

  ‘I’m on my way to Byfleet-next-the-Sea,’ Glatt picked up the Bognors’ case, ‘and I have a car and driver. May I offer you a lift?’

  ‘How did you know we were here?’ asked Bognor.

  Glatt laughed. ‘I did say “Special Branch”. To be honest I hadn’t expected you to leave the house so early or I’d have driven you all the way. In the event I had to arrange some train delays. No problem there, luckily. It’s amazing what half-baked excuses the travelling public will put up with. Even no excuse at all works perfectly well. Had to be done. I wanted to catch you before you had your interview with Audrey.’

  ‘Audrey?! How did you know about Audrey?’

  Glatt pulled a face. ‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘you’d hardly expect our people not to check your phone calls under the circumstances. We’re all on the same side, after all. No secrets between team-mates, surely?’

  ‘As Blunt said to the Prime Minister.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, please. I really am very sorry about last night.’

  ‘Quite a team,’ said Monica. ‘You, Simon and DCI Bumstead.’

  ‘I agree. Mr Bumstead could be a nuisance. A great one for seeing things in black and white, by all accounts. Not a lot of grey matter. Lots of enthusiasm and self-importance and he’s read all the books. Dangerous man to have on one’s own side. Hop in.’

  The car was an Anglo-Japanese job in dark blue, two years old and frayed at the edges. Anonymous from outside but quite sophisticated within. Reinforced windows, anti-terrorist devices, and above all a V-8 engine.

  ‘Old crate can do 160,’ said Glatt. ‘I love it.’

  He swung out of the station forecourt and lit himself a Gauloise, managing the manoeuvre with a dexterity which finally convinced Simon and Monica that he must indeed work for Special Branch or something similar.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Cards on table.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ said Bognor.

  Glatt did not respond. ‘You probably know I’ve signed a contract with Andover Strobe,’ he said. ‘Rude bestiary. That makes me persona non grata with Hemlocks except that I’ve been having a little thing with Romany Flange. Not that Miss Flange gives much away.’ He spoke with feeling. ‘Never known such monosyllabic pillow talk in my life.’

  The countryside through which they were passing was very flat. Pretty villages with houses half timbered in white clapboard; squat Anglo-Saxon churches; pub signs swaying lightly in the drizzle. On a clear day the sky would have been an upturned bowl. Today the mist hung drab over vast fields of beet and the rain streaked the sides of buildings which wept from leaky guttering and high slanted roofs. Today there was no sky.

  ‘In any case, Romany was also Hemlock’s mistress as you no doubt know already. That put me even further out of court as far as the old man was concerned.’

  He overtook a slow-moving baker’s van and slid back in deftly, just avoiding a Spanish-registered artic which flashed its lights. Bognor bit his lip.

  ‘Anyway, we got a tip just over two years ago that Arthur Green had got hold of some dodgy classified stuff and was working it up into some sort of factoid blockbuster.’

  ‘Which was about the time you started romancing Romany Flange,’ Monica said with a certain flat, feminist hostility.

  ‘You can’t have too many scruples if you work for Special,’ said Glatt, ‘even if you’re on the Literature Panel.’

  Bognor supposed not. Sex with him had never been a weapon, though it had sometimes been an Achilles’ heel.

  ‘How much have you found out about Green’s project?’ he asked.

  ‘Precious little,’ said Glatt. ‘In fact what Audrey Hemlock told you over the phone last night, Mrs Bognor, is about the best lead we’ve had so far. I was also able to confirm their major source last night. At least I think I was. Hemlock’s murder has certainly speeded things up.’

  ‘You think one of them killed Hemlock?’

  ‘Neither know nor care,’ said Glatt. ‘From our point of view it’s a mixed blessing. It seems he was keen not to publish Green’s “First Woman” book. Quite why, I don’t know. That suited us. We’ve had enough dirty washing in the last few years. British Security Services are already regarded as Comic Opera. Not that that’s wholly detrimental. Being underestimated can be an advantage.’

  They passed through a tiny hamlet called Miles Kington. A pub, a stores-cum-post office, a green with a tethered goat, pond with two white ducks, row of council houses, modest manor, old rectory, end of village. A signpost said Sheridan Morley 5, Byfleet-next-the-Sea 11.

  ‘Major source,’ Monica repeated.

  ‘The Soviets,’ said Glatt. ‘I thought as much. Got
fairly conclusive proof through Canadian contacts when I did a reading at Harbourfront in Toronto just after the PEN Congress in New York. But Green’s been very circumspect up until now. He has contacts in our world of course. Always has done – just like all the others who write that sort of bestseller. But most of the contacts are superannuated old hacks who are way out of date. And most of the stuff is pure invention – even the best of it. Particularly the best of it. The reality’s often dull beyond belief. But the buzz on this latest effort was that he’d got some real gen. Out of character. I know Romany was excited by it. She never said so but it was pretty obvious from the way she wasn’t talking about it. You learn a lot from people’s silences in this game. Like poetry.’

  ‘You mean’, said Bognor, ‘that they actually went to the Russian Embassy last night?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Glatt shook his head in disbelief. ‘Hemlock dying really has made them terribly cavalier all of a sudden. I assumed they were going there or to the Czechs as soon as they started moving east from Notting Hill Gate but I needed to be sure. That’s why I had to get you out of my way. You were obstructing my vision. Sorry about that.’

  Bognor felt any further comment superfluous.

  ‘How did you enjoy the meeting?’ asked Glatt, changing the subject.

  Monica said she had found it hugely entertaining though she did feel that for the RIL to ask someone like Capstick was a bit off-beam, though on the other hand when all was said and done a book was a book was a book and letters were, as it were, indivisible. She described one or two individuals and Merlin was able to identify them, observing as he did that she had excellent powers of observation. This caused Bognor to prickle slightly but he wisely kept quiet. Glatt said that he himself was beginning to be worried. He had had a huge advance for the erotic bestiary from Strobe and there was talk of a Channel Four series based on the Richmond Ice Rink sequence. He was afraid this might damage his street cred. And while he wouldn’t mind Capstick’s cash he could do without Capstick’s reputation. In any case he earned enough from poetry and espionage to live comfortably. He didn’t want a yacht.