Murder on Page One

by Ian Simpson

  Ten minutes later, her phone rang. ‘It could be worse. His room stinks like a distillery, but he’s awake and sensible. And he’s got plenty of peppermints. He’s not keen on breakfast and says he’ll meet us in the hall in three quarters of an hour.’

  ‘See you for breakfast in a few minutes?’

  ‘You bet. It’s the best bit about staying in a hotel.’

  Fuller than she normally was when starting the day, Flick drove the car to the front of the hotel, where a pale-faced Osborne was taking deep breaths and puffing at a cigarette. ‘Good morning, Flick,’ he said in a cheery voice, as if the previous evening had not happened.

  By arrangement with Jane, using mobiles, the police entered the hotel and went straight upstairs while the suspects were having breakfast. From the dining room, McCrone’s voice could be heard. ‘Five point five metres. That’s eighteen feet tae dinosaurs like me. Donald McBean jumped that and escaped wi’ his life no’ half a mile frae here. Nane of Bonnie Dundee’s men dared follow him.’

  ‘Cammy’s telling them about the Soldier’s Leap,’ Jane explained once they were in one of the front bedrooms. ‘There’s a walk from the end of the hotel garden to the car park. It’s a National Trust property, and you can go down a steep path to the rock from where a government soldier jumped right across the River Garry to safety. 1689, I think it was, after the battle of Killiecrankie. Have you heard of Bonnie Dundee? No, well he was killed in the battle.’

  ‘How’s Cammy?’ Flick asked.

  ‘He went AWOL yesterday, but he’s fine this morning. He was stuffing his face with black pudding with the others when last I saw him. Why?’

  ‘No reason. How are things going?’

  ‘Very well, after an awkward start. Sidney Francis got a phone call that upset him last night. I think it was about his children. He’s still with us, anyway, and will fly down with the others late this afternoon.’

  ‘Do you suspect anyone in particular?’ Osborne asked.

  Jane shook her head. ‘We’d rather not say anything until we’ve seen what they’ve written, but we have some ideas. Tara should be up soon with their essays.’

  ‘Essays?’ Flick asked.

  ‘“The most emotional day in my life.” It can be fact or fiction, about five hundred words. I hope that will show us right inside their psyches.’

  ‘Do they write them out longhand?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. We asked them to bring laptops if they could, but we have a few old ones to lend out if necessary. Liz is good about letting us use the hotel printer.’

  A knock on the door startled them.

  ‘Who is it?’ Jane shouted.

  ‘Me, Tara.’ Her manner hesitant, she came in carrying a sheaf of papers. ‘They’re all here. Cammy will be up shortly. He ordered more toast. Mr Maxwell’s just behind me.’

  As she set down the essays, Fergus entered quietly. He gave a shy smile that lingered over Flick then sat on a wooden chair in a corner.

  As the officers waited, Jane and Tara began to read the essays. Ten minutes passed then McCrone swung the door open. He went straight up to Osborne and shook his hand. ‘Good morning, old freend. How are ye today?’

  ‘Well, Cammy. Very well.’

  Flick kept silent. She went to a window that overlooked the front door. It was a stunning morning. A heavy dew glistened in weak sunlight and the trees swayed gently in the breeze. Beneath her, Rachel Lawson held the front door for Wallace then bumped him down the low step on to the gravel. They spoke briefly then went towards the drive, Lawson striding ahead as Wallace struggled to push his chair over the shifting stones.

  Behind them, Dalton and Pargiter emerged wearing coats, and set off briskly across the lawn towards the bottom of the garden. As they reached the end of the grass, Francis came onto the front step and stared after them. Flick could see his chest heaving as he gulped fresh air into his lungs.

  Jane tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Do you mind if we leave you here and go into the next-door room to discuss things amongst ourselves? Tara’s gone downstairs to order coffee and fetch the Sunday papers for you.’

  The next hour passed slowly. Flick read the rugby pages while Peters took the football reports. Fergus had the news and Osborne closed his eyes. Peters soon gave up. ‘Scottish,’ he muttered, offering the pages to Fergus.

  There was a knock on the door and Jane came in. She handed an essay to Flick. ‘In view of something you said about Cilla Pargiter, this might be of interest,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave it with you.’

  Flick read it carefully.

  THE MOST EMOTIONAL DAY IN MY LIFE

  CILLA PARGITER

  Hi! My name is Mandy and I had a twin. I’ve never told anyone the whole story, but I want to tell you, my reader. Your anonymity makes it easier to unburden. A bit like a confessional, I suppose, though I’ve never been in one.

  Three years ago, in the summer, Marsha, my twin, and I had finished second year at uni. Mum was living with a man called Hector. We, Marsha and I, didn’t much like him, but he was good to Mum and he took us all on holiday to Skegness. There was a restaurant, Bernardo’s, where we had dinner the first night.

  A young waiter called Sandy worked there. Marsha and I couldn’t take our eyes off him. We liked tall, brooding men. He had incredibly sexy, hooded eyes that were as deep and brown as a pool in a mountain stream. We waited outside the restaurant till he came out, and we both chatted him up. He walked us to our hotel and we swapped mobile numbers.

  The evenings were really boring. Marsha and I took turns to meet Sandy after restaurant service was over. We’d go for a walk and a snog. To make it more of a game, I’d pretend I was Marsha, so he thought he was going out just with her. We were totally identical, as you’ll have guessed. We’d pulled that stunt before, with other guys. It was a right laugh, but we had to be really careful, specially when using the phone. After each date, we’d have a de-brief, so the other one wouldn’t make a mistake the next night.

  On the last day of the holiday, Marsha and I were sun-bathing on the beach, and we started talking about Sandy. To cut a long story short, we both wanted to shag him. We knew he was up for it, as we’d both had to fight him off. It was part of our game that we wouldn’t go the whole way till we’d worked out which of us it would be. There was a bay where, quite far out, there was a rock we called the Pirate Rock. We were both strong swimmers and Marsha challenged me to a race to the Pirate Rock and back. The winner would meet Sandy that night and shag him. It was Marsha’s idea, and we could both do the swim, I promise. It wasn’t that stupid.

  It was late afternoon when we set off. I was just ahead at the rock and I turned for home. Marsha was about five metres behind. But the tide started going out, so it was tougher than we’d expected. I was fine but I heard a shout behind me. ‘Cramp’ was all I heard. I turned back. I swear I did, but she was gone, so I saved myself.

  You won’t understand how I could keep the date with Sandy, who’d heard a girl had been drowned, but never suspected it was the girl he was supposed to meet.

  Marsha and I were really close. One knew what the other was thinking, feeling. It was uncanny. For the rest of that day it was as if we were back together in the womb, living yet not living. That evening, Marsha was still with me. And I knew, with total certainty, that she wanted me to keep that date. She wanted to live again through the child I would conceive that night.

  I lied to Sandy, of course, said I was on the pill when Marsha and I always insisted on condoms. But not that night. Three times, Sandy and I did it. At the same place on the beach where Marsha had challenged me hours earlier. And I felt her presence. Her spirit sort of floated in the air as my body ground into the sand. Each time we did it, I tried to draw his seed deeper inside.

  Marsha was born nine months later. Everyone says she’s just like me, but to me she’s my sister having a second go at the first twenty years, my daughter and my twin.

  Fact or fiction
? Flick asked herself as she stood at the window. Fergus came to stand beside her. Below, Johnson stood on the front door step, sucking smoke into his lungs as if his life depended on it. Suddenly, he froze then dropped to the ground. A split-second later there was the sound of a shot. ‘He’s dead,’ Fergus said. ‘He didn’t put his arms out to save himself.’

  23

  Baggo smelled salt on the cold air whooshing in the driver’s window, keeping him awake. He checked his speed then glanced to his right. A short distance down the Forth, the gigantic metal tubes and girders of the railway bridge were recognisable the world over. Painted a dull red, with some parts bandaged in white sheeting, it was solid, iconic, in a way reassuring. Certainly more reassuring than what Ron Doran at the car pool had told him about the much newer road bridge he was now on: ‘You go over a big suspension bridge, like the one at San Francisco, only if you hear it pinging, start saying your prayers, ’cos the threads of the cables ’olding it up are breaking.’

  Up till that point, Scotland had been a disappointment: small, green hills and unremarkable houses, fields and industrial sites. As he crossed safely into Fife, Baggo felt a surge of energy; he was on the last leg of his journey.

  The last forty-eight hours, since Chapayev had burst into the CID room shouting in Russian and English and waving his arms to make his point, had been hectic, and it was more than twenty-four hours since he had slept, but he had the final pieces of the jigsaw in his hand ready to fit into place.

  Despite the hangover it gave him, Thursday evening with Olly Norman had been the break-through. His tongue loosened by whisky, Olly had told him a lot about Chapayev. ‘He’s a ruthless, amoral criminal,’ he had exclaimed. ‘About the time he defected, a big consignment of Russian weapons, Kalashnikovs and things, went missing. No one could prove anything, but the Russians put two and two together, and we think they were right. Since then, Chapayev has done everything he can to make a nuisance of himself to the Russians, plus money laundering, arms dealing as a middle man, etcetera. He spent a lot of time in the South of France, where the Russian Mafia are strong, and we know he helped the Chechens. This book he’s written is a mix of truth, exaggeration and lies. Of course, some people will take it seriously. Mind you, it’s absurd to suggest the Russians killed that woman. Her death has publicised the book wonderfully. And it hasn’t put off publishers. I heard someone else in Swanson’s office has sold it for a bigger advance than she was hoping for. Chapayev has twisted things to his advantage. It’s no surprise that the Russians wanted to keep an eye on him, and sometimes they do use South Ossetians for under-cover work if they don’t want the embassy involved. Now that’s a funny bunch, very secretive, don’t welcome inquiries.’

  With this new perspective, Baggo had waited till Chapayev’s bluster had abated then told him about the retreat. ‘Oh yes, Inspector Osborne has his eye very firmly on one of them, his prime suspect,’ Baggo carried on. ‘You can see he has written on the board that Johnson could have killed L.S., your agent. But Johnson is just a hired thug. When he arrests him, the Inspector will most definitely concentrate on the Russians, and their role in this, and he will get the truth out of Mr Johnson, the whole truth, and everyone will get to know it. You can be sure of that.’

  Chapayev looked thoughtful, nodded his thanks and left. A brochure for The Pride O’ Atholl Hotel, which Baggo had left prominently on Osborne’s desk, was no longer there. Baggo went to the window and watched Chapayev reverse his black VW Golf out of its space with a savage twist of the wheel then drive aggressively out of the car park, forcing Palfrey to give way at the entrance. Out of habit, Baggo noted the number. ‘Clean streets demand dirty hands,’ he muttered to himself, gazing at Johnson’s face on the whiteboard and feeling no conscience.

  For want of anything better to do, he looked at the photographs relating to the Harvey Nicks murder. He went through them systematically, arranging some on his desk like a jigsaw, trying to work out why each item was where it was. Something resembling a dark, elongated sausage drew his attention. It lay on the surface of the bar, just to the right of where Swanson had sat. He found the item with the other productions that the first investigating team had bagged. A fountain pen. Using gloves, though he was sure any prints would be gone, he pulled off the cap.

  At first, he thought there was no ink in it. He shook it, and clear liquid appeared on the nib. Carefully, he tried to write on a piece of paper, and left letters that were almost invisible against the white. He touched the writing with his index finger and put it to his lower lip. He felt an unpleasant, tingling sensation and rushed to the toilet to wash. When he returned, he put the cap on the pen and sent it off to the lab with a note: ‘Test for fingerprints and aconite. Very urgent.’

  A poison pen had been left at the scene. Now the Harvey Nicks murder had all the hallmarks of a Crimewriter killing.

  The tingling in Baggo’s lip had given way to a dull numbness but his hangover had receded. He thought he might risk a sandwich and some juice. As he got up to go to the canteen the phone rang. Inspector Cummings had moved fast. Armed with a warrant, he had executed a dawn raid on Lionel Parker, recovering several files and accounts from both his office and his home. After tracing and speaking on the phone to the relatives of a number of dead authors, it was clear that Ramsay’s suspicions were well justified, even if the final proof, from the off-shore accounts, would be slow in arriving. Cummings was about to interview Parker, and thought it good tactics to have someone investigating Noble’s murder present and asking questions. When Baggo told him Sergeant Fortune was unavailable he did not conceal his disappointment, but told Baggo to get himself to Guildford ASAP.

  Before setting off, Baggo munched an egg and cress sandwich as he looked through the Noble file. He wished he felt sharper. It was a big thing for a DC to interview a murder suspect, let alone a high-profile one, and he didn’t want to make a fool of himself.

  Cummings was waiting for him when he arrived at Guildford. A tall, thin man, prematurely bald and with rabbit teeth that caused him to spit as he talked, his manner was cold and precise. Baggo wondered about his relationship with the Sergeant. More old ice-cubes than old flames, he concluded.

  Parker was waiting in an interview room, his solicitor, a Mr St Clair, beside him. A prosperous-looking fifty-something, he ostentatiously consulted his watch and noted the time on his legal pad when Cummings and Baggo entered the room. He looked at Baggo and curled his lip as if inspecting a bit of dead bird dragged in by the cat.

  At first, the taped interview went badly. ‘It is very difficult to trace the legitimate heirs of dead authors, and I have acted in good faith throughout. Beyond that, I have nothing to say,’ Parker read from his lawyer’s pad. If the words were brave, Baggo was struck by the deflation of the solicitous friend of the deceased and his widow. Now, his face twitched, his eyes darted round the room and his hands were never still. For half an hour, Cummings questioned him about payments he had received and payments not made to heirs but Parker kept a straight bat, either saying nothing or repeating the mantra he had been given. At length, Cummings turned to Baggo.

  ‘Did the affair you were having with Vanessa Noble extend to sexual intercourse?’ Baggo asked.

  The two men on the other side of the table combusted simultaneously: ‘I refuse to discuss …’; ‘This is quite improper’, they barked.

  ‘It’s a perfectly proper line of inquiry,’ Cummings snapped, ‘But my colleague might have started by asking if Mr Parker was having an affair with Mrs Noble. Were you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We have evidence you were seen secretly kissing,’ Baggo said. ‘I will ask once more, were you having an affair with her?’

  St Clair nudged Parker and whispered something to him. Looking daggers at Baggo, Parker said, ‘No comment.’

  ‘Are you sure the late Mr Noble did not ask you about the old lady from Manchester, Miss Morris, or her grandfather’s book, Walks Round North Wales? We do
know she wrote to him, saying she had received no royalties.’

  ‘As I said already, that was never discussed.’

  ‘If he had suspected you of embezzling, that would have been a motive for murder, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Please don’t invite my client to speculate,’ the lawyer purred.

  ‘We all know someone is targeting literary agents, and you can’t catch them,’ Parker spat out.

  ‘How many of the victims’ clients have gone to your agency?’ Baggo asked quietly.

  ‘This is nonsense …’ Parker said.

  ‘That’s an absurd question.’ St Clair sounded genuinely angry.

  ‘But you had three motives for killing Mr Noble, did you not?’ Baggo leaned across the table, thumping it with his fist as he made each point. ‘One, he might expose your dishonesty; two, you were having an affair with his wife; three, you were trying to stop him putting money into a family trust that you wanted to go towards a New York office?’

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ Parker hissed.

  ‘And you were one of the few people who would definitely have known when and where Mr Noble trained for the marathon.’

  ‘He was always Twittering about that.’

  ‘But you knew the lie of the land. You knew about the drainage ditch. You knew that, at first, suspicion would fall on Crimewriter. You killed him, did you not? I know you did. And did Mrs Noble help you?’

  St Clair slapped the table with his pad before Parker could say anything. ‘This junior officer is both badgering my client and raising new matters which we must discuss. Please suspend the interview.’

  ‘Interview suspended.’ Cummings’ tone was clipped. He switched off the tape and walked out, nodding to Baggo to follow. ‘You have a lot to learn. Wait here,’ he said when they reached the foyer.

  Ten minutes later, the lawyer emerged from the interview corridor and, ignoring Baggo, asked the desk sergeant if he might speak to Cummings. He was duly ushered somewhere.