by L. C. Tyler
‘Did Vane have anything in the magazine? It would be good to be able to quote from it.’
‘I’m not sure. I’ll look through the old copies and scan anything that looks interesting. I’ve got your email address.’
‘Thank you. Do you know anything about an erotic poem that he wrote while he was here?’
Mr Thwaite flinched as if I had struck him. ‘I’ve never read it myself,’ he said.
‘Do you know who helped him distribute it?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea. I think we were talking about Dr Slide? As I say, the boys were not kind to him. He struggled on for a while but eventually he was sidelined into admin.’
‘Careers advice,’ I said.
‘Was it?’ asked Mr Thwaite with interest. ‘I didn’t know that. On the other hand – yes, I can see how that might have fitted in with other things …’
I waited for him to expand on this last point, but he didn’t.
‘Well, admin obviously suited him,’ I said. ‘I suppose these days you could put him into marketing,’ I added mischievously.
‘Not really. Our head of marketing gets almost as much as I do, including performance bonuses. The sad thing was that the school was Dr Slide’s life. He’d been a pupil here, on a scholarship. As soon as he’d won his doctorate, he returned to teach. Then he was offered his own House. He’d have expected to go on and become headmaster somewhere. But it was not to be. After he retired the staff in his old department kept in touch – monthly visits to Putney – tea and crumpets, watching the rowers. Slide had been quite a good oarsman in his time. Just missed a Blue.’
‘What subject did he teach?’
‘Latin. That’s why there’s not much point in having him back. He wouldn’t really fit in.’
‘Quite a few people must remember him … and Roger Vane.’
‘Oh yes, they remember Roger Vane all right. Badly though they treated Dr Slide themselves, a lot of them resent the way Vane treated him.’
‘I can see that. There must be one or two old boys who would have preferred it if Roger Vane had remained dead.’
‘There are some who would happily return him to that state today.’
‘Are there many?’
‘Six phoned me this morning alone. But hopefully most of them weren’t serious. People say things they don’t really mean. More tea?’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Sex?’
‘Not at the moment,’ I said.
‘When, then?’ asked Roger Vane.
I realised that I had got myself into a difficult position.
‘Mr Thwaite implied that there had been what he described as romantic friendships in the past – that relationships had existed between pupils and staff. But that there was nothing of the sort now. Or indeed in your day.’
‘That’s all he knows,’ said Vane. ‘I had more sex at school than at any other time in my life. Lost my virginity on a school trip to the seaside.’
‘Can I quote you on that?’
‘You bet. I’ll give you names, if you like. And I’ll let Thwaite know how his school works when he’s not looking. That’s the problem – you get in some snotty little grammar school boy like Thwaite, with his M-bloody-BA from some dump like …’ (he named the most prestigious business school in the country) ‘… and they imagine they understand a great public school. Not in a million years. He’ll get the A-level results, but he’ll kill an ethos that has taken almost seven centuries to develop.’
I wondered if Vane knew that I was a snotty little grammar school boy. Probably.
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said. ‘But I imagined it would rather please you … the changes … making it more modern … I mean, you’ve rather distanced yourself from the place as it used to be. I thought somewhere you’d said that private education was outmoded and should be abolished.’
‘Yes,’ said Vane. ‘I probably did. That’s my right because I know what I’m talking about. I was there. Those who don’t know should shut up about it. None of their bloody business. Now, what can I help you with today, Ethelred?’
I opened my notebook. On the page in front of me were the questions concocted by Elsie, Tim and Cynthia. I wasn’t at all sure this was going to work. I drew a deep breath.
‘Maybe we could begin with what happened in Thailand – if you feel up to it.’
For some reason I’d expected him to find some reason for not doing so, but Roger Vane nodded. Looking into the distance he began his recitation.
‘It was like this,’ he said. ‘Tim and I had been arguing since we left Heathrow. One thing after another. Well, that afternoon we went for a walk. Tim challenged me over a perfectly innocent chat I’d had with the boy who cleaned the swimming pool. I told him not to be an idiot. Sounds simple, but we made that one last about half an hour before we’d exhausted all of its possibilities. We walked in silence for a bit, then he started on about something else – or maybe it was the same thing. It doesn’t matter. He got pretty abusive, anyway. I told him I did as I chose – anyway the pool boy was well out of his league – at which point he actually lashed out at me with his walking stick or pole or whatever it was. It had a metal spike on it, anyway. It ripped my T-shirt and cut me quite badly. I tried to grab it off him and he hit me again. This time he knocked me down a bank by the side of the path. I rolled for a bit – quite painful rolling over some of that stuff – most jungle plants seem to have spikes or thorns. Anyway, eventually I came to rest by a tree and just lay there regaining my breath.
‘He called down to me and told me that I wasn’t hurt, which was only his opinion. I opened one eye and could see him watching me, so I decided that I didn’t want to go back up there for him to take another swing at me. I pretended to be stunned or dead; I wasn’t sure which, but it involved not moving. After a bit he called down again to say he was going back to the hotel and I could stay there if I wished.
‘When I was sure he’d gone I sat up and leant against the tree and wondered what to do next. The gash on my shoulder was bleeding quite badly and I knew that it would be getting dark soon. I didn’t fancy the climb back up the slope but then I noticed, just below me, another track, almost hidden by the foliage. In the days when they were logging in that area, the whole mountainside must have been criss-crossed with paths of all sorts – roads for the lorries, tracks used by the workers to get home at the end of the day. Most had become overgrown – takes just weeks out there for an unused path to vanish – but this one was clearly still used by somebody and, I reckoned, had to lead back eventually to the main path and the hotel. I inched down towards it and set off on what seemed to be the right bearing. But my sense of direction never was that good. As the track wound slowly downwards, I realised I was completely lost. Eventually I stumbled on a group of young men in a makeshift hut. I had no idea exactly what they were doing there, but I doubted somehow that it was legal. There was, in fact, a flurry of activity as I opened the door, but they didn’t quite manage to clear up the crime scene as well as they might. There, on the table, sat a grubby, unlabelled bottle of the local hooch. Later, once I got to know them better, they conceded it was just one of a couple of hundred they happened to have with them. They were the proprietors of a small factory producing it in bulk, fifty yards down another path that led into the forest. They were waiting the necessary thirty-six hours or so that it needed to mature into something that didn’t take the back of your throat off. Tomorrow, they said, they’d feed a bit of it to the dog. If the dog was still alive by the evening, the batch had passed quality control and could be shipped and sold.
‘They proved to be very hospitable once they realised I had nothing to do with revenue enforcement. I stayed for a couple of days. The second afternoon we heard police helicopters overhead, which worried my new friends a bit, but they assured me they’d bribed all the right people and had avoided detection before. That evening they gave me a lift in their lorry – I sat at the back with a consignment of one-li
tre plastic containers of dog-endorsed alcohol, and they dropped me off in a village on the coast. It wasn’t the sort of place tourists go to. I rather liked it. I stayed there for a few weeks, sold my watch, bought some new clothes in the market, then headed along the coast one night into Cambodia, courtesy of some nice smugglers – I think I’ve told you that bit before. Later I went upriver into Laos. Lived in various places. Eventually, I shacked up in Vientiane with a young man who looked rather like the pool boy from the hotel. Never really saw the point in going home. Not until I heard they were going to have me declared dead, in fact.’
He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
‘Can I quote all of that?’ I asked.
‘As far as I’m concerned you can,’ he said. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said.
Without taking his eyes off me, he started to unbutton his shirt, then yanked the collar downwards and to one side. Across his shoulder was an old scar. ‘One wound, inflicted by my former partner,’ he said. ‘Is that OK with you?’
‘Perfectly,’ I said.
‘You can touch it if you like.’
‘I’m good,’ I said.
‘What next?’ he asked, slowly rebuttoning his shirt.
‘Maybe we can go back a bit,’ I said. ‘Your brother was quite a fan of your writing?’
I knew I was jumping about all over the place, but I was trying to do it subtly.
‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘If he thought it was shit, he’d have probably told me. Brothers don’t spare each other’s feelings.’
‘You got on fairly well together?’
He looked at me oddly. ‘Well enough.’
‘Did you spend Christmases together?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Mainly. He was the closest family I had.’
‘I suppose you had the usual family rows at Christmas?’
‘Not many.’
‘I mean, families often do.’
‘Is that what yours did? Sorry to disappoint you but we didn’t. Drunken family rows at Christmas are a bit common, don’t you think?’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. I flicked to the next page in my notebook, cursing Elsie and seeking a more promising line of enquiry.
Then I heard Vane add: ‘Of course, there was that Christmas when I told Cynthia that there was no Santa Claus.’
I looked up suddenly. ‘Did you?’
Vane smiled benignly. ‘Oh, there was a bit of a fuss over it and I didn’t get any Christmas lunch, but it all blew over. Pobble forgave me.’
‘Pobble?’ I asked as innocently as I knew how.
He smiled. ‘Cynthia used to call herself that,’ he said. ‘I doubt if she even still remembers. She actually gave me a little Boxing Day present to make things better – one or two of her Christmas chocolates in a small box that she had made and coloured, just for me. It had a smiling Santa Claus on it. I was deeply touched, I don’t mind telling you. I kept it for years. That was the sort of kid she was … in those days.’
I scribbled a note or two.
‘How did you get on with your sister-in-law?’
‘Margery? All right. I noticed she wasn’t at my memorial service. She should have been. Missed a good do.’
‘To be fair,’ I said, ‘you shouldn’t have been there, but you were.’
‘Even so …’ he said. ‘Dead brother-in-law … I rather thought she liked me. Well, she did once.’
Falling out with people appeared to be one of Roger Vane’s key competences. I waited to see if he would add to what he had said, but he didn’t.
‘What sort of car did you drive then?’ I asked eventually.
‘Car? I thought we were talking about my brother and his love of crime fiction. Or my absent sister-in-law.’
‘Sorry – just running through the questions in the order that they occurred to me.’
‘That’s the order, is it? Christmas. Margery. Car. Well, I had all sorts of cars over the years – a Triumph, an old MG Midget, a Jaguar. How does that fit into anything you need for the book?’
‘I’m just curious,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Now about the MG—’
‘Or is it that somebody else is just curious?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Roger Vane shook his head. ‘Do you remember that I told you that Cynthia had been quizzing me to see if I was the real deal? Well, her questions felt a lot like the ones you’ve just asked me. Do I remember this? What colour was that? What was your first car? All the standard tests except my mother’s maiden name and my favourite author. She hasn’t put you up to this, by any chance?’
The truthful answer was: ‘No, it was Elsie’. I abbreviated that.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Of course not. You wouldn’t act as her dupe, would you? You’re not that stupid. Or then again … So, have I given you enough information for you to report back to my niece?’
There was a long silence. I looked again through the questions. Sometimes, when you have been rumbled, the best thing is to press on regardless. You’ve got nothing at all to lose.
‘That will all be very useful for the book,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you could also tell me a bit about—’
‘No, Ethelred, I can’t. That’s it for today. You’ve used up all of your minutes on dear little Cynthia’s questions. And your trick has been rumbled. Game over. And tomorrow I shall be out most of the day, unless you fancy a breakfast meeting. But, purely out of interest, did I pass? Do I get my diploma in Roger Vane Studies?’
It seemed churlish to deny him that.
‘With distinction,’ I said. ‘Summa cum laude.’
‘Idiot,’ said Elsie. ‘I ask you to do one thing …’
‘They were your questions,’ I reminded her. ‘As you said, all I had to do was read them out. That’s what I did. Now you have his answers. Anyway, I at least hope that it removes any remaining doubt from your mind that the man we have is the real Roger Vane. He was pretty well word-perfect.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ she said.
‘But you told me that these were things only the real Roger Norton Vane could possibly know about. His description of the events in Thailand matched what Tim told you almost exactly. And he knew all about that Christmas argument. And Cynthia’s nickname. And the car. How many hoops do you want him to jump through?’
‘Just because he can jump through hoops doesn’t mean he’s not fishy. Dolphins do it all the time.’
‘Dolphins are aquatic mammals,’ I said. ‘Not fish. If it helps, I don’t much like him myself. He’s an arrogant snob with little concern for anyone except himself. The only extenuating circumstance is that Cordwainers probably contributed a lot to developing him into what he is today. He is a victim of his upbringing. But he is who he says he is. Ask Cynthia about the box – that’s something that only the two of them could possibly know about.’
‘And Cynthia’s mother,’ said Elsie.
‘Yes, I was forgetting that. Margery and Roger used to be quite close, apparently. But not now. She’s had no contact with Roger since he got back.’
‘You mean she’s had no contact with the imposter.’
‘Well, that’s something on which we’ll have to agree to differ.’
‘Yes. Until I prove you wrong. Then you’ll have to agree with me. I’ll get some more questions for you to ask him.’
‘No, you won’t. Today cost me a perfectly good session with him – I did have some genuine questions for him. Or don’t you want the book written by the ridiculous deadline that you agreed? You can ask him yourself, if you wish. I’m not wasting any more time.’
‘So, you won’t help me? Not even a little bit? After all I’ve done for you?’
‘I pay you commission. That’s what you get in return for what you do.’
‘That’s commission as in fifteen per cent of nothing?’
‘Elsie, I’m happy to do anything that�
��s in the contract. But there’s nothing there saying I have to make myself look a complete idiot just in order to please you.’
‘Are you sure there isn’t?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fine. Then I’ll have to sort it out myself, as usual. One of us, at least, has the ability to be a detective in real life.’
I tried to think of any occasion when Elsie had sorted things out. Her attempts to be a detective usually ended in her own arrest for breaking and entering, or various degrees of humiliation for her or me. Mainly the latter.
‘Don’t even think of going to his flat,’ I said.
‘But you told me: he’s out after breakfast tomorrow – all day.’
‘That won’t make it legal.’
‘Look, I won’t have to break in. Tim still has a set of keys. Unless Roger has changed the locks. Then I admit it might have to be slightly less legal than I’d like.’
‘Stealing somebody’s keys doesn’t make it more legal than if you break the door down.’
‘I bet it does. Otherwise why is it called breaking and entering?’
I sighed. ‘Have it your way. Legally it’s not theft if you don’t actually break the door down. What are you hoping to find?’
‘Well, he’ll have a passport, won’t he?’
‘He said it was in a false name.’
‘Interesting to know what name though, eh? And he may have a driving licence or letters or credit cards or anything. You can’t get through more than a day or two anywhere without using something with your name on it.’
‘He said he’d lost his driving licence in the jungle.’
‘He also says he’s Roger Norton Vane. So let’s not jump to too many conclusions about what we’ll find.’
‘You’ll get caught,’ I said.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll have a good story prepared. If push comes to shove, I’ll just claim I’m following up your visit. What have you and he talked about lately?’
I thought for a bit. ‘Sex and drugs,’ I said.