Herring in the Smoke

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘It wasn’t illegal.’

  ‘If you say so. In that case, you won’t object to its inclusion in the biography. Copyright probably prevents my quoting actual lines – if, as I suspect, it was co-authored – but I can paraphrase. It sheds an interesting light on your early career.’

  ‘Do you think I really care?’

  ‘Yes, I do, bearing in mind how carefully you manage what gets into the press and what doesn’t. It will probably amuse a lot of people.’

  ‘Have you told anyone else about this?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘How much are you asking for to keep quiet? As long as the sum you mention is reasonable, then I shall ensure it is transferred into your bank account this afternoon. Or I can write a cheque now, if you prefer.’

  ‘I knew your opinion of me was not high. Had I realised it was so low, I would have given some thought to how much I might ask for. A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? More? I think I saw that your wealth is measured in billions, so you’d hardly notice the odd quarter of a million. A missed opportunity for me but a small financial saving for you.’

  ‘So what do you want then?’

  ‘As I say, I want you to be my grass. I need information on Dr Jonathan Slide. Ogilvie was quite happy to sacrifice him. You won’t be alone, by any means.’

  Davies swallowed hard. ‘All right. What do you want to know about him?’

  ‘Is it true that he recruited for MI6?’

  ‘So they said. I would have thought that your friends in the police could establish that.’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know what MI6 can keep secret these days. It’s all a lot more open than it was before. But maybe not the names of their contacts. Could he have recruited Vane?’

  ‘He did recruit Vane. Or that’s what some of us thought. It’s not something you actually get told. If so, Vane was a strange choice – not good at keeping secrets – not subtle in any way. And it didn’t stop him ridiculing Slide in his books. There was always a streak of cruelty in Roger Norton Vane. He was a nasty piece of work, when you think about it. But, yes, rumour was that he joined MI6.’

  ‘So Vane was a secret agent?’

  Davies laughed. ‘Do you know the best bit about all this? If he was, it’s pretty much the most interesting thing about the man. And you won’t be able to use it. If you try, you’ll be stopped in your tracks – and not by me or Ogilvie.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Tim. ‘I mean, I often thought that might be what he was doing. He travelled round a lot – book tours, he said. The British Council arranged them. China. Eastern Europe. One to Iran, when nobody went there. I mean absolutely nobody. A couple to Iraq, where the market for police procedurals isn’t great. Sometimes he’d get a call and just dash off without telling me what it was. It was one of the reasons we argued, if you really want to know. I thought there might be somebody else … Of course, he could have been in MI6 and had somebody else on the side.’

  We were in Elsie’s flat, mugs of coffee in front of us. I had explained to Elsie and Tim what I had discovered from Ogilvie and Davies. Elsie made a pretence at not being impressed, but for the most part she listened in silence.

  ‘So,’ I asked, ‘was he working for MI6 on that last trip to Thailand?’

  ‘There was something odd about it. You know he rewrote his will just before we left. It was almost as if he didn’t think he was coming back. And then for a week or two before we left he was so nice. It was quite unlike him. Once we were in Thailand, though – actually on the plane going out – he suddenly started to get really difficult. It was as if he was deliberately starting arguments, building up to something …’

  ‘Building up to a staged disappearance?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tim. ‘Staged is precisely the word I would have used. On that walk, when we stopped at the point he disappeared, he seemed to be trying to get me to hit him. Then, when I hardly touched him with my stick, he fell over and rolled down the slope. I’m not saying he was working to an exact script, but I think the plan was always that we would go out, have an argument and that he would storm off into the jungle. Afterwards people would say, yes, we’d seen them shouting at each other over breakfast – it’s what we expected …’

  ‘Then you said it took some time for a search to get started?’

  ‘Precisely. Even at the time I wondered if that was because the authorities knew where he was. For years after, I expected Roger to suddenly pitch up and explain what he’d been doing – then, when he does return, he comes up with this extraordinary story that he’s been an English teacher in Laos.’

  ‘Except,’ said Elsie, ‘one of us has established that he never went to Laos.’

  ‘Two of us,’ said Tim. ‘I helped check the sitting room.’

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘our working hypothesis is that Roger was working for MI6, who needed him to vanish for reasons we don’t entirely understand. He took a trip to Thailand where he was spirited away, possibly with the aid of the Thai authorities. When he returns he has a fake scar, perhaps because he still needed to maintain some pretence around the reasons for his disappearance. Having returned, he receives a threat and shortly after is found beaten to death.’

  ‘A bit like Jim Thompson,’ said Elsie. ‘Except that Thompson was American. And vanished in the Malaysian jungle. And never came back at all. And there’s no Roger Norton Vane Silk Shop at Bangkok Airport, though in all honesty they probably don’t need another silk shop at Bangkok airport. Still, in many other respects the two cases are not dissimilar.’

  ‘The problem is,’ I said, ‘that the whole MI6 thing is only a hypothesis. We don’t even know that Roger was recruited to work for them. The same with his disappearance – it all looks planned but we can’t be sure.’

  ‘He definitely wasn’t in Laos,’ said Elsie. ‘Fact.’

  ‘Wherever he’d been, he’d changed,’ said Tim. ‘The person I saw wasn’t the Roger that I knew.’

  ‘It had been twenty years,’ I said. ‘We’ve all changed in that time. Anyway, how long did you actually see him for?’

  ‘It was just the once,’ said Tim. ‘When he threw me out.’

  ‘It’s the small detail of the scar on his shoulder that strikes me as really odd,’ I said. ‘I mean, you might fake something like that for a few weeks or months – but not if you were coming back for good. And then he was harassing his agent to get in as much cash as he could as quickly as he could …’

  ‘Nothing very unusual about that,’ muttered Elsie.

  ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘it’s as if he wasn’t planning to hang around longer than he needed to. The gift to Cynthia is much the same – he might have just included her in his will, but it had to be done straight away. On the one hand he’s trying to gather together as much money as possible – on the other he simply hands over a very large sum in cash, almost as if he doesn’t need it any more.’

  ‘So are we back to Cynthia blackmailing him?’ asked Elsie.

  ‘But about what?’ I said. ‘I think we’re close to resolving this puzzle – there’s just a missing piece that I can’t quite find. Maybe Dr Slide has it in his possession. He’s back in Putney now, I think. I should just have time to get over there and back in time for the last train home.’

  ‘If you’d given me more notice I would have provided you with dinner,’ said Slide. ‘You don’t mind my eating mine while we talk?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Slide had piled a tin of beans onto four slices of buttered toast. By carrying the plate with care to the table he was able to avoid spilling any onto the floor. The skill with which he tilted the plate whenever the sea of tomato sauce threatened to overflow the plate one side or the other suggested long and diligent practice.

  The rain beat against the window, as a bitter wind swirled across the wide, empty expanse of the Tideway. Through the streaming glass,
on the edge of the dark river, I could make out the gleaming low-tide mudflats, streaked with yellow from the street lights, and, further off, the grey silhouettes of the moored barges, far out in the stream.

  ‘I love that view,’ said Slide. ‘The tidal Thames. Winter or summer. Never looks the same two days running. Always something going on. Something to look forward to. I never think about the past. Never. Some people might dwell over how they’ve been wronged. How they’ve been betrayed by those they trusted most. How they’ve never been properly rewarded while other people have made money they didn’t deserve. Pots of money from television. Go on and on about it until they bore people rigid. Some people do that. Not me. Never think about it. Never talk about it.’

  During this last speech he had been cutting into his toast with grim determination. He looked at the results of his work and then stuffed a mangled mess of bread and beans into his mouth.

  ‘I won’t keep you long,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to check about your work for MI6.’

  Slide paused, his fork halfway to his lips. ‘Who says I worked for MI6?’

  ‘It seemed to be reasonably well known at the school.’

  ‘Was it?’ Slide seemed pleased rather than otherwise. ‘It wasn’t true, of course.’

  ‘I was told you recruited for MI6?’

  Slide looked down at his plate, as if trying to remember what he had been doing when he was interrupted.

  ‘Oh that … I was careers master. I suggested all sorts of trades and professions to the boys. Finance. The Diplomatic Service. The Bar. Mainly those three, now I come to think of it. But a few seemed suitable for intelligence work and I knew where to direct them. I suspect a lot of careers masters did. At least, those at the better schools.’

  ‘And you directed Vane?’

  ‘If Vane joined MI6 it would have been from university. I’d have had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘But it’s possible?’

  ‘Possible. But unlikely, I’d have said. Can’t think of many people less suitable for the work. Complete liability.’

  ‘There was something odd about Vane’s disappearance, though … Do you remember Jim Thompson?’

  ‘American businessman. Ex CIA, I think – something like that. Lived in Bangkok. Very successful in the silk trade. Vanished in the Thai jungle, didn’t he? Body never found. Lots of conspiracy theories.’

  ‘It was the Malaysian jungle, but otherwise that’s right. Vane’s disappearance seemed a bit like Thompson’s …’

  Slide shook his head. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree there. Lots of people vanish in the jungle without any intervention from the security agencies. Look, Mr Tressider, I knew Roger Norton Vane. Knew him much better than you did. No agency in its right mind would have sent him on any sort of mission. Asking for trouble. But storming off in a fit of pique – yes, that’s the Vane I knew. Nasty child. Badly brought up. Unpleasant parents too: complaining that we’d taught him a few useful motoring skills – casting aspersions on my relationship with my pupils – wanting to report me to the police, if you don’t mind! Thank goodness we had a sensible headmaster in those days – not like the idiot who writes the school’s business plan now. You know they’ve stopped teaching Latin, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me a moment, I need to heat my spotted dick. I’d offer you some, but I’ve only got the one. I might have some biscuits somewhere if you’re hungry.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’d better be going,’ I said.

  ‘I hope you’ve got an umbrella,’ said Slide. ‘It’s not very nice out there at the moment. Not very nice at all. You could catch your death if you’re not careful.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ‘This is completely unofficial,’ said Joe. ‘I’m not telling my bosses I’ve dropped round to see you. The idea of a policeman working side by side with an amateur detective is strictly for crime fiction.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Still, it’s been helpful getting your perspective on things as Vane’s biographer, so I thought I’d just bring you up to date. It seemed only fair. We’ve had some news from Australia.’

  ‘Have you tracked down Johnston, then?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. My Australian colleagues have spoken to a few of his friends. It would seem that he told a couple of them that he was going to England and wasn’t planning to return. He’d been renting a flat in Melbourne. He gave up the lease about a month ago. He’d been staying with a friend just before he left.’

  ‘Did he say what he was going to do in England?’

  ‘No, but he hinted that he was going to be very rich.’

  ‘How was he going to achieve that?’ I asked.

  ‘Not by mugging Vane in an alleyway,’ said Joe. ‘Forty or fifty quid max. Hardly pays the taxi fare in from Heathrow these days.’

  ‘Are you saying that some money was stolen?’

  ‘There was loose change in Vane’s pockets. No notes in the wallet, but there were two very new credit cards untouched – could have made a few thousand out of them. Odd they didn’t take the cards, if it was just a mugging. Odd they took the cash if it wasn’t.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t have any on him,’ I said. ‘A lot of people don’t carry much cash these days.’

  ‘Possibly. Under these circumstances the best advice is always to take the simplest explanation.’

  ‘Which is what?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure yet. We’ve also had news of Cynthia, by the way.’

  ‘You know where she is?’

  ‘Again, no. But we had a sighting. She was seen talking to Vane at the hotel by one of the cleaning staff, shortly before Vane was killed. Vane was looking worried, Cynthia apparently said to him: “I wouldn’t if I were you. What can he do, anyway?”’

  ‘Who were they talking about?’

  ‘Oddly enough, the cleaner didn’t think to stop and ask them. You have to take that sort of thing with a pinch of salt. People rarely remember conversations as well as they think they do. Still, the guy was certain it was Vane and Cynthia – picked them straight away from the photos we showed him.’

  ‘But you’ve no idea where she is now?’

  ‘No. She’s vanished every bit as much as Johnston has.’

  ‘You mean they’ve gone off together?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. And why would they? Remember that thing about the simplest explanation? It doesn’t have to be a plot. Anyway, how is the biography progressing?’

  I told Joe about Ogilvie and Davies and their possible motives. He was distinctly sniffy that either might have murdered Vane, though not as sniffy as he was over Vane’s possible MI6 links. It clearly wasn’t, in his view, the simplest explanation.

  ‘Secret mission in the jungle? All a bit complicated for a simple copper like me,’ Joe said. ‘So, the British and Thai authorities would have to be complicit in some way? And maybe the Lao government?’

  ‘We think he was never in Laos,’ I said. I decided not to explain exactly why we thought that. It was possible that Elsie had left few enough fingerprints to get away with it.

  ‘Yes, we were coming to much the same conclusion,’ said Joe. ‘For all sorts of reasons. The police in Vientiane have still to come up with records of anyone like Vane. The British Council doesn’t know of any English teacher matching his description – and the expat community there isn’t that large. If he’d been in Laos for twenty years, somebody would have heard of him. Sounds like that was a straight lie.’

  ‘Maybe MI6 might tell you if he had ever been one of their people?’

  Joe laughed. ‘They might tell you, if you knew somebody there and they owed you a very big favour. But I doubt they’d tell me. Not for something as routine as murder.’

  I was heading for Oaklawn Studios, but I had time for a short detour. The clock in the village church was striking nine as I pulled up outside Margery Vane’s cottage. Somebody else was there before me – a white van wit
h the name and telephone number of a thatcher painted on it. Margery was in the garden talking to a man who I assumed must be the owner of the van. She excused herself and came down the path to meet me.

  ‘Sorry, are you busy?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, as you can see.’

  ‘So, are you having the thatch repaired? I thought it was too expensive.’

  ‘I decided that I could afford to have some of it done, after all,’ she said. ‘Did you have more questions about Roger? I’m not really free at the moment. You should have phoned before you came. You’ve had a wasted journey.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I just dropped in on my way up to London. It wasn’t out of my way. I’m still trying to get in touch with Cynthia – I wondered if she’d called you?’

  ‘She’s not here, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘No. I didn’t say she was. I just wondered if she’d contacted you since we spoke?’

  ‘I said I would let you know when I had anything to report.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Look, I don’t want to worry you but—’

  ‘You’re not worrying me – just stopping me talking to my builder. I’ve told you and I’ve told the police – I simply can’t tell you where she is. But I’m sure she’s fine. She’s been very busy at work lately – she’ll probably give me a call at the weekend.’

  ‘Maybe if you texted and said you were concerned …’

  ‘I’m not remotely concerned. You and the police are concerned. I’m trying to get my roof fixed. You text her if you wish. Is that all, Mr Tressider? If you are on your way to London, I’m sure you don’t have time for aimless chat with an old woman. So, I repeat, is that all?’