The Dying Diplomats Club

by Matthew Benns

  ‘Precisely,’ said Nick, who had casually sauntered to the head of the table behind the Prime Minister. ‘Perhaps you would all be so kind as to empty your pockets and put the contents onto the table.’

  As he spoke, Nick darted forwards past Monaro’s shoulder and swiped the pistol from the table. Karen jumped as the pistol was snatched from next to her. Armand remained completely still while Anne-Sophie and Charlotte next to her both let out startled gasps. Nick took two quick steps back and said ‘Baxter!’ The beagle had already sensed the shift in atmosphere and had circled back to be by his master’s side. Now he growled at the Prime Minister. Hayden and Brett exchanged an uneasy glance.

  ‘Really, was there any need for that, Nick?’ asked Monaro disappointedly. ‘And do I need to remind you again that I was a captain in the SAS? I hardly think a knee-high beagle is going to stop me from taking that gun back off you if I want to.’

  ‘Prime Minister, I think you have a very good point,’ said Nick quietly. ‘But I’ll still feel a lot happier if I have the gun. One body is quite enough excitement for tonight. Now could you please empty your pockets?’

  Monaro put the contents of his pockets on the table – wallet, pen, black hide-bound notepad, coins, keys – and then followed Nick’s instructions to lift his trouser legs to show the top of his socks and prove there was nothing secreted there.

  Armand was next. ‘I am always ’appy to ’elp, Monsieur Nick, but I think you may be barking up the wrong tree. Anyone who could take on and overpower that man knew what they were doing.’

  His wife did not wait for Nick to prompt her and already had the contents of her bag tipped out on the table next to her congealing coq au vin. The other guests followed suit.

  Sir Aiden pulled out a keyring that had a tiny Swiss Army knife attached. ‘I use it to slice apples,’ he said. ‘It’s not big enough to attack people with.’ Nick looked at the tiny blade and was inclined to agree. There was no other knife among the other items that had been put onto the table.

  ‘Perhaps I can have my gun back now,’ said Monaro. ‘It seems we are no nearer to finding the blackmailer or the killer.’

  Reluctantly Nick handed over the Glock and took his seat by La Contessa. ‘I don’t know about anyone else but I’m famished,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should re-heat this delicious repast and see if that helps jog our minds into action.’

  ‘Certainly, darling,’ said La Contessa, picking up both their plates and heading to the kitchen and the microwave. Nick followed close behind.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling, I can do this,’ said La Contessa. ‘You need to stay out there and watch for tell-tale signs of guilt.’

  ‘Oh yes, and just what might they be, my Davoli diviner?’

  ‘You know, darling – twitchy eyebrows, furtive glances, guilty gazes at the door of the bathroom where poor Alex is lying, shifty eyes, sweaty brows,’ said La Contessa. ‘I don’t need to tell you. But there is something you can tell me: why did you grab the gun only to give it straight back?’

  ‘I wanted to shift the power and see how people would react,’ explained Nick. ‘What young Taylor and the modern tech gurus call a “disrupter”. I thought it might spook the killer into making a run for it.’

  ‘I see. And if they did make a run for it you wanted to have the gun,’ said La Contessa, thinking hard as she pressed the microwave button to add another 30 seconds of rotating heat. ‘Or were you worried that Robert might be the killer?’

  ‘I knew it was someone with a decent punch from the way he or she laid me out outside of the bathroom,’ said Nick. ‘Good to be prepared when you know whoever it is can take care of themselves.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t slip?’ said La Contessa. ‘Who would do that?’

  ‘Frankly, at this stage it could be anyone in there,’ said Nick. ‘Look at the motives that have already emerged for the blackmail attempt. Taylor’s obvious anger at Rob campaigning against and closing down her dad’s dodgy factory, Charlotte’s desperate need for cash, Hayden’s rage over the whales — not to mention whatever happened in Iraq or Mrs Prime Minister’s long-ago affair, or even just Brett’s perpetually empty pockets.’

  ‘You think if we find the blackmailer we find the killer?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Nick, reaching over to a plate and pulling off a piece of chicken as La Contessa took an outraged breath to reprimand him. He quickly bent down and delivered the chicken to Baxter, who had been sitting patiently, eyes fixed with laser focus on the workbench, hoping for a titbit to fall.

  La Contessa gave him a look that said, ‘I forgive you but don’t try that again in a hurry buster,’ and said aloud, ‘So what do we do next?’

  ‘I think we need to draw on your special skills,’ said Nick, casting a quick glance at the kitchen door. The three of them were still alone. ‘I want you to slip away and have a look around the house.’

  ‘Of course, darling, how exciting,’ said La Contessa before pausing. ‘What exactly am I looking for?’

  ‘First of all, I want you to find a telephone,’ said Nick, putting his hand in his pocket and pulling out the card Detective Inspector Cleaver had given him with his new number. ‘And call Cleaver.’

  ‘Call Cleaver?’

  ‘Yes, tell him what has happened and that he needs to get here,’ said Nick. ‘But not through the front gate. I don’t want him to raise the alarm and scare off our killer. I need him nearby and on hand if things get tough.’

  ‘All right, I’ll find a phone. What else am I looking for?’

  ‘That’s just it: I’m not sure. I think you will know it when you see it,’ said Nick. ‘There must be some clues, records, something that will reveal to us just what this is all about.’

  The microwave pinged and La Contessa took the first steaming coq au vin out.

  ‘Try not to draw attention to yourself,’ said Nick quietly. ‘Slip away when there is a distraction.’

  CHAPTER 11

  Feeling Blue

  ‘I really don’t know how you can sit there eating when there is a body – poor Alex – sitting just there in the bathroom. Dead! It’s horrible,’ said Taylor, twisting her 1200-thread-count Egyptian linen napkin around and around in her hands.

  Patricia sat alone at the head of the table, head bowed, staring with unseeing eyes at her untouched meal.

  ‘Oh no, it’s not horrible at all – quite delicious actually,’ said La Contessa, bringing her own reheated meal to the table. She stopped and looked across at Patricia, put the plate down on the table and went to sit by her old friend in the dead diplomat’s unoccupied chair. La Contessa placed a caring hand on her friend’s forearm. Elsewhere the mood was sombre and the other guests were engaged in quiet, shocked discussion. La Contessa and Patricia were in a tiny bubble of their own.

  ‘I never thought this would happen,’ Patricia said quietly. ‘Not to Alex.’

  ‘I’m sure Robert had no idea anything like this could happen when he set tonight’s train of events in motion,’ said La Contessa gently.

  ‘But Alex,’ said Patricia again. ‘He was so lively, so full of life, so full of mischief . . .’ Her voice trailed away and the two friends sat in silence, their minds running through memories of the diplomat and former soldier.

  ‘I will always remember him dashing up the front steps to our old house, just bursting to see you. Blue eyes sparkling and laughing away,’ said La Contessa. ‘Do you remember that time when he arrived and thought I was out, and he threw you on the sofa and had his trousers around his ankles when I walked in?’

  Patricia’s cheeks reddened at the memory and she smiled. ‘Trust you to remember that,’ she said.

  La Contessa gave her arm a gentle squeeze. ‘That’s it, cara mia,’ she said. ‘Brava facia, stay strong. We need to get to the bottom of whatever is going on here and then we can remember and grieve for Alex properly. In a way he would have liked.’

  ‘Over a glass of Champagne, you mean.’

  ‘Exactly,�
� said La Contessa, getting to her feet and walking around Patricia, trailing a solicitous hand across her shoulders as she did so, before returning to her own seat at the middle of the table. ‘Did you know it is National Champagne Day?’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ asked Nick. ‘And what prompted that thought to pop into your head? Could it possibly be your empty glass?’

  ‘And people say that men are just not empathetic,’ said La Contessa. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Not at all, my Oristano oenologist,’ said Nick, getting up and heading out to the foyer and the dripping ice carving. ‘We are, after all, a man down in the designated wine-waiter department.’

  La Contessa gave Nick the frosty glare she reserved for his more tasteless and flippant comments. The other guests had returned to the table and were making desultory small talk as Nick returned carrying a bottle of Dom. He popped the cork and stood frowning at the table.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ asked La Contessa, giving the Champagne bottle, forgotten in Nick’s hand, a long meaningful look.

  ‘We appear to be two wine waiters down,’ said Nick, staring at the empty chair between Brett and Patricia at the opposite end of the table. ‘Has anyone seen Charlie lately?’

  ‘Not since before we found Alex’s body in the bathroom,’ said Brett. ‘He said he was going outside for some air.’

  ‘That’s interesting timing,’ said Nick, rubbing the contusion on his head before standing the bottle on the table and heading to the verandah doors. ‘Which way did he go?’

  Brett pointed through the doors and got up to follow Nick outside. The others streamed out after him. No one noticed La Contessa slipping quietly in the opposite direction back into the house.

  ‘OK, stay in pairs and fan out across the lawn. Baxter, you are with me. Here, boy,’ said Nick. ‘Remember he may be dangerous.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ asked the Prime Minister. ‘Obviously I know he is dangerous. It’s there right in front of us: Charlie killed Alex. But I cannot believe that a man like Charlie Johnson, who has served his country with honour, could be a blackmailer and a killer. A killer of one of his dearest friends. He would put his life on the line to save any person here. Any stranger in fact. Charlie Johnson has always been a hero and a man of honour.’ Monaro shook his head, his eyes bleak.

  ‘I am sure you are right, Prime Minister,’ said Nick. ‘But he is also missing. Not only is he missing, he is missing at the precise moment we find his fellow diplomat and member of your SAS squad dead from what might be a blow to the head. I just don’t want to take any chances.’

  Baxter was already on the move. Nose down to the lush grass, white tail upright and quivering like an antennae, he appeared to be moving in a random pattern, circling back on himself and then heading off again. He was on the scent. Nick watched him patiently as the others set off in pairs across the lawn calling out Charlie’s name. Suddenly Baxter picked up speed, the circling stopped and he headed south, before stopping next to a discarded dress shoe. Its partner was a metre further away on the lawn. A bow tie was lying next to a dinner jacket. Baxter followed the trail of clothes – shirt, cummerbund, braces, trousers, socks, Calvin Klein underpants. Nick trotted behind the dog, who then let out the bark familiar to English gentry who ride with hounds in pursuit of hapless foxes. Baxter firmly had the scent now and headed directly for the large fig tree 15 metres south of the main house. The intrepid beagle did not break stride as he disappeared into the tangled, low-hanging branches and root system that make figs so popular with adventurous children, and started barking wildly.

  ‘Somebody grab a torch,’ shouted Nick. ‘Baxter has found something. Good boy, Baxter.’

  Moments later, Monaro jogged up with the high-powered LED torch Nick had seen earlier in the kitchen. ‘Shine the beam in here,’ Nick instructed, clambering through the undergrowth. The light played across the bare brown dirt and then across Baxter’s white and tan hide to stop on an outstretched hand. Nick, crouched almost double, reached Baxter’s side and gestured for the Prime Minister to shine the light further to the right. The beam played across a naked male body before coming to rest on Charlie Johnson’s face. There was a red, almost metallic, froth around the man’s lips. For the second time that night Nick reached out with two fingers of his right hand and placed them on a diplomat’s throat to feel for a pulse. He shook his head as the other guests came running up at the sound of the commotion and stood peering through the undergrowth.

  ‘Oh my god, is that Charlie?’ said Patricia. ‘He’s . . . he’s blue.’

  ‘Oh no, not again,’ cried Taylor. ‘He looks, well he looks, like a . . .’

  ‘A Smurf,’ said Nick sadly. ‘Yes, a big, human size but utterly dead Smurf.’

  ‘Dude, that’s hectic,’ the social influencer said before passing out in a swoon, crumpling gently onto the grass.

  ‘Help me get her inside,’ her husband said to Brett. The two men bodily lifted the young woman and carried her into the house, laying her on one of the cream, cushion-covered sofas in the corner sitting room.

  ‘What do you make of it, Doc?’ Nick asked Charlotte, who had crawled into the natural hollow at the base of the fig tree and was examining the dead diplomat’s body.

  ‘The body is still warm,’ she said. ‘He’s been dead less than an hour. It looks like he has been poisoned.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Nick. ‘Toxic shock. I have seen it before. Tearing his clothes off to try and get air, irrational behaviour and then collapse.’

  Charlotte Ngo sniffed at the red spittle on the dead man’s lips. ‘It’s obviously red wine but there is something else in there that I cannot place,’ she said. ‘It’s not arsenic – that is virtually odourless unless it is heated, which makes it smell like garlic – or cyanide, which smells like bitter almonds. And there is no hint of that. It has an almost metallic kind of tang.’

  ‘Ahh,’ said Nick, nodding to himself. ‘I think we should leave his body here for the New South Wales Police to examine properly and go inside to discuss this further.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s cover him to keep away any unwanted attention from members of the Kirribilli rodent community and then we can go and see if my theory is correct,’ said Nick. ‘Can somebody bring a ground sheet or something to cover poor Charlie’s body?’

  Minutes later they had covered the diplomat’s body with a tartan blanket retrieved by Patricia from a sofa in a second downstairs sitting room and scrambled out from beneath the branches. Nick held out a chivalrous hand and helped Charlotte to her feet before brushing the dead leaves and twigs from the knees of his dinner suit.

  ‘It is almost becoming a habit,’ he said conversationally as they walked back. ‘Finding dead Australian diplomats dotted around the place. Like an exclusive club.’

  ‘Not a club you would really want to join,’ said Charlotte. ‘How many other diplomats do we have here tonight?’

  ‘Well there’s Armand Dieudonne, the French Ambassador, and Karen Knight, the Foreign Minister, which is a role that involves a great deal of diplomacy even if she is not actually a diplomat,’ said Nick. ‘They had better be careful.’

  ‘You are not serious?’ said Charlotte. ‘Do you really think their lives could be at risk?’

  ‘No, I cannot see why,’ said Nick. ‘But then again, when I accepted this dinner invitation I had no idea I would be dealing with two dead bodies before 10pm.’

  ‘Well, that’s it. Now we simply have to call the police,’ said Sir Aiden firmly. ‘We cannot wait any longer. Had we acted sooner, Charlie Johnson may well have still been alive.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s entirely correct,’ said Nick, stepping through the verandah doors behind Charlotte. The guests were mostly standing around a sofa where Taylor was laid out. Hayden was perched uncomfortably on the edge, fanning her with a copy of a biography of former US President Donald Trump that had been sitting on the coffee table. Patricia bustled in with
a cold wet face cloth and folded it and placed it carefully on the young woman’s forehead.

  ‘How can you say that?’ demanded the Governor-General firmly.

  ‘It’s only a hunch at this stage, but I’m guessing that Charlie had been poisoned before we found Alex’s body in the cloakroom,’ said Nick.

  ‘But who would do such a thing?’ demanded Sir Aiden angrily. ‘Charlie was a patriot. He served his country and stood for all that was good, proud and correct about Australia. There can be no reason at all for wanting to kill him.’

  ‘Who, I cannot say,’ said Nick. ‘But I have a good idea as to how.’

  At this, the murmurs of conversation around the room stopped and the focus sharpened on Nick.

  ‘Awfully dry in here,’ he said. ‘Might need to make a martini.’

  ‘Dammit, man, we need to know what happened,’ fumed Sir Aiden. ‘And then we need to call the police.’

  ‘Don’t be so hasty, Aiden,’ said the Prime Minister gently. ‘I think Nick is right and, trust me, the evening is still under control.’

  Sir Aiden snorted derisively. ‘Under control? You call having two of Australia’s top diplomats murdered under your roof as under control? Two men from your regiment, your own command no less. I don’t call that under control. I call it a dereliction of duty when you don’t bring in the appropriate authorities.’

  ‘That’s a bit rich coming from you,’ shot back the Prime Minister sharply. ‘I think we at least have time to let Nick explain his theory.’

  ‘Very well, and to show my versatility I will do it without a martini in my hand,’ said Nick. ‘Keeping the members of the Wesleyan Methodist League of Abstainers among our congregation happy to boot.’

  The Foreign Minister tutted under her breath at that, while opposite her, Armand took the opportunity to top up Anne-Sophie’s and Charlotte’s glasses. Near the sofa, Hayden and Brett were also clearly relying on the wine to get them through, while Taylor once again appeared to have zoned out of her immediate surroundings.