by Simon Brett
‘Have you plumbed?’ asked Miles.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Plumbed the depth of the swim. You’ll never catch anything if you don’t do that. You see, what the angler has to do with his bait is to make it imitate as nearly as possible the conditions of nature. In nature things don’t dangle awkwardly in the water. They flow, carried along by the current, a few inches above the bottom. Depending on the season, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Would you like a plummet? I’ve got one.’
‘No thanks. I’m trying to give them up.’
Miles was silent, preoccupied with opening his latest piece of equipment. Proudly he stripped off the packaging and screwed a limp length of fibreglass to the end of his sleek fibreglass rod. Charles looked on with an expression of distaste which Miles took for admiration. ‘Swingtip.’
‘Ah.’
‘Best sort of bite-detector for bottom-fishing.’
‘Ah.’ Charles reflected how Miles always talked out of books. His son in-law was the least spontaneous person he’d ever met. Nothing came naturally; it all had to be worked at. Whatever interest he took up, he would begin by a painstaking study of the language and then buy all the correct equipment, before he actually did anything practical. Fishing was the latest accomplishment which Miles thought the young executive should not be without.
Again Charles found himself wondering about Miles and Juliet’s sex-life. Had that been approached in the same meticulous way? ‘Well, here we are on our honeymoon, Juliet darling. What I will do, when we are in bed and an atmosphere of mutual trust and relaxation has been established, is to practise a certain amount of foreplay. This is likely to begin with a kneading or massaging of the breasts in an accelerating stroking motion. This will be followed by manual clitoral stimulation…’ The idea was intriguing. Charles wondered if he was becoming a dirty old man. But it was intriguing. Guiltily, he disguised his interest in a standard father-in-law question. ‘Miles, have you and Juliet thought of having a family?’
Miles sat up with irritation. He’d just been trying to squeeze a split-shot on to his line and it had popped out of his fingers. ‘Yes, Pop, we have. We reckon in about four and a half years I should have gone up at least a grade, so, allowing for the usual increments, and assuming that the mortgage rate doesn’t rise above the present eleven per cent, I should think we could afford to let Juliet stop work then.’
There was no answer to that, so Charles sat and looked out over the water to Steen’s bungalow. Nothing. It was very cold. The air stung his face and he felt the ground’s iciness creep into his feet through the soles of Miles’ relegated gum-boots. His body was stiff and uncomfortable. Always got like that when he sat still for a long time. He felt his years. A sure sign he needed a drink.
Miles had now completed the cat’s cradle at the end of his line, and had loaded the perspex tube of his swim-feeder with a porridgy mash of bread and maggots. Two favoured maggots squirmed on the end of his size twelve hook (hooked, no doubt, as the books recommend, through the small vent in the thick end). Miles rose to his feet and fiddled with the knobs of his gleaming fixed-spool reel. ‘The important thing,’ he quoted almost to himself, ‘is to remember it’s not brute force with a fixed-spool reel; just a controlled flick.’
He made a controlled flick. The line jerked and maypoled itself around the rod. The contents of the swim-feeder sprayed from their case like shotgun pellets and landed with a scattering plop in the middle of the river.
Charles didn’t say anything, but controlled his lips and looked at his float. As he did so, it submerged. He struck, and reeled in rather a good perch.
Four hasty pints before the pub closed at two saw Charles through lunch, and there was a bit of wine too. ‘Le Piat Beaujolais Primeur,’ said Miles ‘-young, robust and slightly petillant, ideal with meat dishes.’ (Obviously he had read a book on wine too.) The combination of alcohols anaesthetised Charles so that he could even watch the holiday slides of Tenerife without excessive pain.
They were not very varied-‘Juliet in front of a shop… and here’s Juliet in this bar place… and this one’s of Juliet sitting on a rock… and here’s Juliet in a boat-that was the day we went for a boat trip…’ Obviously Miles did not trust her with his camera or there might have been a matching sequence of ‘Miles in front of a shop… Miles in this bar place…’ etc. References in the commentary to shutter speeds, and exposures and lenses demonstrated that Miles had read a book on photography too. Charles let it all flow over him. Time was suspended, and he was too fuddled for darker thoughts.
The peaceful mood lasted until he stood alone on Goring Bridge. Miles and Juliet had offered him a lift to Pangbourne Station, but they’d got some people coming and were very relieved when he said he’d get a minicab to Reading. Miles had been dropping heavy hints about how difficult it was to get petrol and how he intended to use the Cortina ‘for emergency uses only’. (By moving up from the level of salesman in his insurance company, he’d sacrificed a firm’s car and was rather careful about using his own.)
When the cab came, Charles left in a surge of family effusiveness, and then, feeling like the hero of some of the terrible thriller films he’d been in during the fifties, he told the driver to go to Steen’s home instead. As they approached Streatley, he lost his nerve and asked to be dropped by the bridge. The driver, with the predictability of all motorists over the last few weeks, commented on the petrol crisis, overcharged grossly, and drove off into the night.
The bridge at Goring is long and narrow; there are two spans to an island in the middle; one side is Streatley, the other Goring. Charles stood on the narrow pavement, leaning on the wooden parapet, and looked down into the water, which seemed infinitely deep in the darkness. Somewhere the church bells rang in the distance, calling the faithful to evensong. Their old-fashioned domesticity seemed incongruous as his thoughts darkened.
The pressure which had been building up all weekend was nearing some sort of explosion. The Steen business had to be sorted out that evening. Charles felt an uncomfortable sense of urgency. It was now nearly a week since Bill Sweet’s death on Sunday 2nd December, and Jacqui was still in great danger. Charles had known the full implications of the situation for only twenty-four hours, but he had a sick feeling that time was running out. A sense of gloom blanketed his thought as he looked down to the dark water and heard the hiss of it rushing over the invisible weir ahead of him. Somewhere down in the depths, he felt certain, lay Marius Steen’s gun, thrown away after the murder was committed.
He’d wasted the day. The fishing, the slides of Tenerife were all irrelevant; he should have been dealing with Steen. It was one of the most important responsibilities of his life. And this was one he couldn’t shirk. It must be done straight away. He looked at his watch. Nearly seven. The pubs would soon be open. Just a quick drink for a bracer and then it must be done.
It was twenty past nine when he left the cosy fireside of the Bull. He was braced to the point of recklessness. Two hours of sipping Bell’s and listening to the quacks of the local Scampi and Mateus Rose crowd made the whole issue seem much simpler. If Steen was there, Charles had only to tell him the truth; if he wasn’t, then he could leave the photographs with an anonymous note explaining Jacqui’s innocence. He couldn’t think why it hadn’t occurred to him earlier, as he marched briskly (after a bit of trouble with the door latch) out of the pub.
The moon was fuller than the night before, but its light was diffused by cloud. He could see quite clearly as he climbed the hill out of the village. It didn’t feel as cold as it had done earlier in the day. He stopped to relieve himself into the roadside bushes and almost lost his balance as a car screeched round the corner in a clatter of gravel. He zipped himself up and strode onwards. A strange sense of purpose filled him, even a sense of honour. Sir Galahad nearing the end of his quest. Marius Steen, the giant who seemed to have been looming over his life now for a week was about to be confr
onted. A fragment repeated itself inappropriately like a mantra in Charles’ mind. ‘My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.’
He was almost disappointed when he reached the gates. He’d expected a great brazen trumpet hanging, with a legend in outlandish characters-‘Who dares to brave the giant’s wrath, let him sound this trump.’ And in the trees, clattering sadly, the armour of those who had dared, and failed in the combat. He turned to look at the trees, but they were bare. And the only sound was the wind breathing on their branches.
Charles leant unsteadily against the gate-post and pressed the fluorescent button. He didn’t wait for any response, but pushed open the heavy white gates with a scrunch of gravel. The bungalow again seemed to have grown in the moonlight, and was now a Moorish temple, where the infidel foe lurked. A light shone through a chink in the curtains of a window above the garage door.
No one appeared as Charles approached the front door, but he felt as if he was being watched. Suddenly the night had become very silent. He beat a tattoo with the door-knocker, and again its reverberations filled the whole world. But no one came. The quarry was lying low.
Charles pushed the door but it was very solid. He backed away and looked along the front of the house. The windows appeared to be shut firm. Garage? He walked heavily down the ramp and grasped the handle that should lift the door up and over. Locked.
But he had reached a pitch where he couldn’t give up. He stumbled round the side of the house, through the flower beds, feeling the windows. All were tightly locked.
Round the back of the bungalow he was suddenly aware of the slow wash of water at the end of the lawn. There was no other sound and no light was visible on this elevation. But he knew Marius Steen was inside.
There was a small door which corresponded with the back of the garage. He walked up a crazy-paving path and tried the handle. Braced for a shove he nearly overbalanced when the door gave inwards.
It was very dark. He blinked, trying to accustom his eyes to the change, but still couldn’t see much. There were no windows and only a trickle of light came in through the door behind him. From what he could see, it illuminated a pile of boxes. Perhaps he was in some sort of store-room rather than the garage. He moved slowly forward, groping ahead with a breast-stroke motion.
But discretion was difficult in his alcoholic state. There was some thing in the way of his foot, then an object with a sharp edge fell agonisingly on to his ankle. Whatever it was precipitated an avalanche of other objects which thundered down around him as Charles fell sprawling to the ground.
He lay frozen, waiting for some reaction, but there was nothing. It was only his tense state that made the crash sound so loud. Gingerly he reached forward, found a wall and levered himself up against it. Then he felt along to a door frame and followed its outline until he found a light-switch.
The sudden glare was blinding, but when he unscrewed his eyes, he could see he was in a kind of windowless utility room. There was a washing machine, a spin dryer, a washing-up machine, a deep-freeze and rows of neatly hanging brooms and mops. Above these was a cluster of meters, fuse-boxes and power-switches. Deep shelves on the opposite wall contained boxes of tinned food and crates of spirits. There was a spreading honeycomb of a wine-rack, full and expensive-looking.
And on the floor Charles could see what had caused his fall. A pile of boxes lay scattered like a demolished chimney. He knelt down and re-piled them. They were heavy, as he knew from the numbing pain in his shin. He looked at the writing on the boxes. ‘Salmon’, ‘Trout’, ‘Strawberries.’ ‘Do not refreeze.’ Marius Steen certainly knew how to live.
When he had finished piling the boxes up, Charles looked once more round the room and his eyes lighted on the very thing he needed at that moment-a torch. It was a long, black, rubber-encased one, hanging from a hook by the back door. He took it down, switched on, turned off the light and opened the door into the rest of the house.
He was in the garage. It was large, but dominated by the huge form of a dark blue Rolls-Royce. Remembering a detail with sudden clarity, Charles knelt down and looked at the left-hand side of the front bumper. There was a little dent, which he’d lay any money corresponded to the dent in the back right-hand wing of Bill Sweet’s Ford Escort. The door of the Rolls was not locked. Key in the ignition, nothing in the glove compartment and the petrol gauge read empty.
Charles moved round the great car, looking for any other clues it might give. He felt his foot slip under him and sat down with a jarring shock, landing uncomfortably on a spanner and a piece of plastic tubing. Fate seemed determined to translate his dramatic mission into slapstick.
He found the door which led to the body of the house. Along a corridor and into the large hall. All the walls were hung with hunting prints which were anonymously expensive, bought on advice by a man without natural taste. Two enormous china Dalmatians stood guarding the front door. They seemed to reflect more of their owner’s personality. They were Steen the showman; the prints were Steen the man who wanted to gatecrash high society, the man who wanted a knighthood.
There were no lights in evidence, except for a slight glow from the top of a short flight of steps, which must lead to a room above the garage. The room whose light Charles had seen from the front.
He moved purposefully up the stairs and began to feel faint. The drink was telling; he felt his energy wane. He had to get the interview over quickly.
The first room he came to was a kind of study, equipped with telephones, typewriters, and copying machines. The walls were covered with framed photographs of stars from Marius Steen’s shows, scribbled with effusive messages. It was a sentimental showbiz touch that again didn’t fit the man’s character. What he felt was wanted, rather than what he wanted. Bernard Walton’s face grinned patronisingly down from the wall.
The study was empty; the light came from the adjacent room. Charles switched off his torch with a dull click and moved towards the half-open door. Through its crack he could see a plush bedroom, dominated by a large four-poster bed. Curtains obscured his view, but the shape of the covers told him that the bed was occupied.
As he entered the room, exhaustion threatened to swamp him, but still he moved forward. Now, in the light of a bedside lamp, he could see Marius Steen lying back on the pillows asleep. The great beak of a nose, familiar from countless press photographs, rose out of the sheets like the dorsal fin of a shark. One large hand lay, palm upward, on the cover.
‘Wake him, tell him and go.’ Charles formulated his thoughts very simply with desperate concentration. He staggered forward to the bedside and stood there, swaying. As he reached for Steen’s hand, he heard a car drawing up outside the gates. He clutched at the hand in panic, and felt the coldness of death.
IX
Interval
Charles woke as if his body was being dragged out of a deep pit, and memory returned slowly to his pounding head. He didn’t like it when it came. He could see Steen’s face in its pained repose, and felt certain that he was up against a case of murder.
He was lying in bed in Miles and Juliet’s spare room. Vague memories of getting there. The rush from Steen’s bedroom out through the garage and utility room, as he heard a car stopping on the gravel and footsteps approaching the garage door. Then he remembered skulking breathless behind the bungalow until the car was safely garaged, a rush through the gates, staggering along the road till a police car stopped, warnings-‘Had a few too many, haven’t you, sir? Still, won’t charge you this time. But watch it’ — and ignominious delivery on Miles and Juliet’s doorstep.
He heaved himself out of bed and limped downstairs. The bruise on his ankle was cripplingly painful and he felt his forty-seven years. Too old to be involved in this escalating round of violence.
Juliet stood staring at him as he made it to the kitchen chair. She appeared not to have inherited Frances’ forgiving nature. ‘Really, Daddy, what a state to come home in.’
‘I’m sorry,
love.’
‘Miles was furious.’
‘Oh well.’ There were more important things than Miles’ sensibilities.
‘I mean, the police coming here. What will other people on the estate think?’
‘You can tell them the police weren’t coming for you or Miles.’
‘They wouldn’t think that!’
‘Miles can tell them it’s just his drunken father-in-law.’
‘I don’t think they’d find that very amusing.’ She turned away to make coffee. ‘Honestly, Daddy, I don’t think you have any concept of human dignity.’
That hurt. ‘Listen, Juliet darling. I think I probably have more knowledge of the really important things that give a person dignity than…’ But it wasn’t worth explaining; she wouldn’t understand. ‘Oh, forget it. Shouldn’t you be at work?’
‘I’m not going in till after lunch. There’s not much to do and
… well, I was worried about you.’
It was the first softening Charles could ever remember hearing from Juliet. It warmed him. ‘Thank you.’
‘Honestly, Daddy, I don’t know what you’re up to half the time. That peculiar phone-call yesterday morning, and now all this. What on earth were you doing in Streatley anyway? I thought you had taken the cab to Reading.’
‘Yes, I know. The thing is, I had to change my plans. It’s all rather involved, but…’ He paused, and all the boiling thoughts inside him strained for an outlet. He had to tell someone. Why not Juliet? ‘Marius Steen is dead.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Her answer was cool and unconcerned.
‘How do you know?’
‘It was on the radio this morning. On the Today programme.’
‘What? How did it say he died?’
‘Heart attack, I think it was. Here’s your coffee.’ As she placed the cup in front of him, Charles looked at his daughter, wondering if she could be involved in this grotesque business. But in her face, as easily read as her mother’s, there was nothing devious; she was telling the truth. ‘Anyway, Daddy, why do you tell me that? Was it Steen you went to see last night?’