“And a few minutes later, I knew I had the divine seal of approval.
“The post van which I’d watched for five mornings on the trot the previous week showed up within the usual fifteen minute range. And about five minutes before it turned into Northumberland Place, it parked in its usual spot outside a block of flats. The driver got out with an armful of letters and packages and went into the building. On previous evidence he would be in there a good five minutes, sometimes longer. Perhaps someone gave him a cup of tea, or something. I moved forward, checked there was no one watching me, opened the van door and leaned inside. There were several bags filled with mail. I pulled a couple of envelopes out of the nearest one. I was really on a divine providence roll, for they both bore Uncle Harry’s name and address! As I’d anticipated from all I’d read about him, the world was so overcome with joy at the great man’s eightieth birthday that his numerous gifts and greetings merited a separate bag.
“I dropped my packet into it, closed the door and went on my way.
“I thought of hanging around to listen for the bang, but there was no way of foretelling how long it would be before he opened his last present, and I didn’t want to be picked up on CCTV loitering in the area. So I came home and waited for the news to come over the airwaves. Famous writer killed by bomb on 80th birthday. That must make the headlines, surely?
“Instead after nearly three hours just as I was getting really impatient, the doorbell rang, I opened the door, and there you were holding up your ID, and I knew things had gone seriously wrong.
“But not so wrong, Detective Inspector Gospill, that you need to treat me as a terrorist! So why not get that out of the way, then perhaps you won’t need to sit here any longer waiting for this Commander Grisewood who seems to be such a very bad time-keeper.
“You could start off by telling me exactly what’s happened. And where did it all go wrong?”
After my arrest, I’d been brought to Scotland Yard and left sitting in an interview room for well over an hour with a blank faced constable for company.
Finally DI Gospill reappeared, the constable left, and I waited for the interview to start. When nothing happened, I asked him what the hold-up was. He said that we were waiting for his superior, Commander Grisewood, who was returning from a conference in the Midlands. I said surely there must be enough senior officers sitting around on their thumbs in Scotland Yard for one of them to deal with the matter. What was so special about this man Grisewood anyway?
And that was when he told me, in a tone of some irritation not totally aimed at me, that Commander Grisewood was in charge of the unit which dealt with terrorist acts by British nationals and that for reasons best known to himself he wanted to conduct my interview personally, to which end he had given strict orders that nothing was to be done until he arrived, which should have been half an hour ago.
I might have been amused by the thought that Gospill was clearly missing a very important date because of this, but one word had caught all my attention and there was nothing amusing about it.
Terrorist!
That’s what had launched me into my long defence and justification.
Gospill tried to interrupt me a couple of times, presumably to point out that the tape wasn’t on and I’d have to say it all again. But once I got started, out it all came, and finally he sat back and listened. He never switched the recorder on but after a while he did start making notes.
When I finished he made no attempt to answer my concluding question but sat with furrowed brow in complete silence.
Then his phone rang.
He listened, said, “Jesus H. Christ!” and switched off.
I said, “What?”
“Accident on the motorway,” he said, not really in answer to me but in accusation against some malevolent fate. “Twenty-mile tailback. Jesus!”
Then he picked his notes and without another word rose and left the room, to be replaced by the silent constable.
Another hour went by. I tried to provoke the constable to speech by requesting a drink. He went to the door and bellowed, “Tea!” and that was all I got for my effort at social intercourse, except for a cup of tea so foul there’d have been a riot if it had been served in India. By the time Gospill returned I was feeling very irritated and ready to be extremely uncooperative.
“Now listen, inspector,” I said. “Either you start answering my questions or you’ll get no answers when you start asking yours.”
To my surprise he smiled.
“Certainly, Mr Lachrymate,” he said. “Now let me see. I seem to recall the last question you asked me was, where did it all go wrong? Where indeed? My problem is knowing where to begin. You made more mistakes than Tony bloody Blair! But let’s start with the biggest one of all, shall we? You clearly didn’t stop for a moment and consider who it was you were dealing with!”
I said weakly, “Sorry, I don’t understand. . . .”
“Clearly! Well, listen and learn. Now, I like watching detective series on the box as much as the next man, and I’ve read quite a lot of crime novels too, and I can tell you, from a professional point of view, they’re mainly very ripe farmyard manure. What most of them writers know about real detection you could write on the end of a gnat’s cock without arousing it.
“But this Mr Keating, he’s different. He’s been at it so long, there’s stuff he could teach us! So there he is, on his eightieth birthday, opening his prezzies, and he sees this package from India. Or at least it looks as if it’s from India. Except that he can’t see a Customs Declaration.
“Funny, he thinks. So he looks closer. Now he gets a lot of mail from India, does Mr Keating. He’s big out there, it seems. And he’s got lots of young relatives and friends who collect stamps so he takes note of the postage. So here’s what his sharp detective mind gets puzzling over. He knows the Indian Post Office Speedpost rates to the UK are 675 rupees for the first 250 grams and 75 for each additional 250 grams. So why should a package which weighs about 1200 grams only have the basic 675 rupees postage on it?”
He paused. If his intention was to alleviate his own irritation by making me feel foolish, he was succeeding. Seeing this, he smiled malevolently and pressed home his advantage.
“But there was something else, something much more basic. The very first thing that attracted his keen detective eye was the fact that you got his name wrong.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said indignantly. “I’m absolutely sure I didn’t misspell Keating.”
“No, you got that right,” he admitted. “It was the initials you cocked up. It’s HRF, not HRS.”
I checked my memory bank which is usually pretty reliable. It definitely printed out Uncle Harry’s initials as HRS.
“Are you quite sure?” I asked.
“Dead sure. Look for yourself.”
From his pocket he produced one of the Keating paperbacks I’d bought and dropped it on the table.
He was quite right.
HRF Keating.
“I don’t know how I got that wrong,” I muttered disconsolately.
“I do,” he said smugly. “As soon as we were alerted to this attempt on Mr Keating’s life, we contacted our colleagues in Mumbai to check if the postmark was genuine and to ask if they might be able to throw any light on the outrage. They got back to us about forty minutes ago. And it was the thing about the wrong initial that put them on to it. Very efficient record keepers, those boys. It seems that about thirty years ago, in 1973 to be precise, they had their eye on a suspected con man who was using the name Keating. Our Mr Keating’s name was already getting to be well known in literary circles over there, and this fellow was obviously trying to cash in on it by implying that he was the distinguished British crime writer, without actually saying it. By using the famous three initials he put the idea into people’s minds, but by changing the last one from F to S (which sounds very much the same if you say it fast) he put himself just out of reach of a charge of personation. Clever that.
Of course from what you say, in your parents’ case it probably didn’t matter as they don’t sound the types to be interested in anything so worldly as detective novels.”
“No, I’m pretty sure they thought Agatha Christie was a nun,” I burbled as I tried to come to terms with what he’d just said. “I’m sorry, inspector, but are you telling me that HRF Keating the writer isn’t the same man as HRS Keating, my Uncle Harry, the con man?”
“Of course he’s not, you moron,” snapped Gospill. “Do you think a man like Mr Keating would go around conning people out of money? In any case, what happened to your father happened in 1973, right? Well, it’s on the record that our Mr Keating didn’t make his first visit to India till a couple of years later!”
“No, that can’t be true,” I objected. “From the dates on those books of his, he’d been writing about Inspector Ghote for a whole decade by then. How could a man show such an intimate knowledge of a country without visiting it? Who’s to say he didn’t make an earlier trip before this official one he admits to?”
“You are,” he cried triumphantly. “You mentioned it was your birthday, your sixth birthday, on the day that your father let Uncle Harry con him out of them rupees. And that would be the nineteenth of May, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, by one of those quirks of fate which protect good innocent people and put toe-rags like you in jail, Mr Keating, who is a meticulous record keeper, was able to tell us exactly where he was on that date. He was at a Crime Writers’ Conference in Harrogate on the weekend of Friday 18 to Sunday 20 May 1973, and he was able to give us the names of several other writers of unimpeachable character and unfaultable memory who were delighted to confirm what he said. So there it is. You picked on the wrong man, stupid!”
I was beginning to be seriously annoyed by his attitude. I mean, I might be a murder suspect, but there was no need to be rude!
And in any case, now I thought about it, I wasn’t actually a murder suspect, was I? From the way he was talking, the attempt must certainly have failed.
For the sake of certainty, I continued to ignore his rudeness and asked, “So Mr Keating is all right, is he? I mean, from what you say, the bomb didn’t go off?”
“Yes, I’m glad to say Mr Keating is alive and well and at this very moment no doubt entertaining his friends at his birthday party with the story of the idiot who tried to blow him up. Of course, what he doesn’t know yet because the bomb squad only confirmed it an hour ago was that he never was in any real danger. Don’t know where you got your recipe from, Mr Lachrymate, but the experts say there was as much chance of your bomb going off as there is of Mr Keating’s birthday cake blowing up when they light the candles!”
I suppose I should have felt relieved, but all I felt at that moment was an utter incompetent fool.
“So,” I said wretchedly, “I got the wrong man and I made a dud bomb.”
Then cheering up a little because it’s not in my nature to be down for long, I went on, “But if my bomb wasn’t really a bomb and no one actually got hurt, I can’t have committed a crime, can I? Certainly not a terrorist crime. In fact, nothing more than a slap on the wrist, ASBO, two weeks community service kind of crime!”
He laughed.
If Bloody Judge Jeffreys laughed as he was handing down sentences, it probably sounded like that.
“Never believe it, sunshine. We’ve got you bang to rights. That’s another little error you made. A pro knows that you burn all the stuff that could be evidence against you as you go along. But with you we’ve got the lot. All them notes you made planning out the attack, the hard disk from your computer showing the terrorist sites you accessed, not forgetting the bomb itself. OK, it might be a Mickey Mouse device with as much chance of working as a chocolate teapot, but it’s got your prints all over it. This government may not have done much but they did pass some legislation that makes the intention as culpable as the deed. As the very old bishop said to the actress at the third time of asking, ‘it’s intent that counts, darling’. Way people feel about terrorist threats these days, I’d say you’re looking at ten years minimum.”
The shock nearly made me faint. It’s intent that counts. That’s what my dad used to say about sin. I never knew it applied in law too.
Ten years . . . I’d be fifty by the time I got out . . . I’d be an old man!
Gospill’s phone rang.
He growled, “Yeah?”, then suddenly sat up to attention and said, “Yes, Commander! I’m with him now, Commander. No, I haven’t started the interrogation. Definitely not. Yes, I’ve collected all the physical evidence, and I’ve put it on your desk so that you can take a look at it before you start. Yes, sir, it’s confirmed the device is quite safe. Commander, can I suggest . . . yes . . . what I meant was . . . thank you, sir. See you soon. Look forward to it, sir. Goodbye.”
I got the impression the Commander had cut him off short and the last few phrases were for my benefit.
He caught me looking at him and snarled, “That’s happy hour over, Lachrymate. Commander Grisewood’s just coming into the building and he’ll be along here soon as he checks out the evidence bags on his desk. And that’s when your troubles are really going to begin, believe me.”
I believed him. So much so that for the first time since I was a child, I found myself saying a little prayer to God. To Dad’s God. Something on the lines of, “OK, God, after the crap you heaped on my mum and dad, you owe the Lachrymate family. I’d really appreciate it if you could come through now.”
My lips must have moved.
Gospill said, “What?”
I said for the want of anything else to say, “So how did you get on to me so quick?”
“Easy,” he said. “That sermon title you pasted on the lid of the box. Divine Retribution by DLP Lachrymate DD. Not many Lachrymates in London, believe me. In fact, you’re the only one. With the same initials in a different order. And as soon as you opened the door, I saw you were our boy.”
He looked so smug and self satisfied, I offered another little prayer, this time for a thunderbolt to come down and destroy him.
At the same moment we both heard a distant bang, like a birthday balloon being punctured. Perhaps God had taken aim and missed.
For a moment nothing happened, then came the distant shrill of an alarm bell.
Gospill sat looking at me for a moment then he rose.
“Wait there,” he commanded and went to the door.
He closed it firmly behind him but I didn’t hear a lock click.
After a little while I stood up, went to the door and opened it a crack.
I could see Gospill at the end of the corridor. He was talking to a uniformed sergeant who had a phone to his ear.
I opened the door a little further so I could hear them.
“What’s going on, sarge?” I heard Gospill ask.
“Not sure, sir. Just checking it out. Think there’s been an explosion.”
“I gathered that!” snapped the DI. “Where?”
“Hang about, sir, I’m getting something now . . . yes . . . yes . . . you’re sure? So no evacuation . . . that’s good . . . that’s very good . . . OK, thanks.”
He switched off his phone and said to Gospill, “It’s OK, sir, Seems a device went off, and there’s been a bit of a fire and quite a lot of damage, but it’s all been confined to one room and no one’s hurt. So no panic and we can stay put. Reckon someone’s head’s going to roll though. Doesn’t look good, letting a bomber get right into the heart of the Yard!”
A pause, then Gospill asked too casually, “Whose room?”
Even at a distance I could here the tremolo in his voice.
“Not absolutely sure, sir, but they think it was Commander Grisewood’s. Made a right mess from the sound of it. All those lovely water colours his missus did and he was so proud of, they’ll have gone. Oh, someone’s in real trouble, believe me!”
I closed the door quietly and went back to my seat.
&nb
sp; Things were looking better. I’d been very stupid but there wasn’t a commandment saying Thou shalt not be stupid. And now with nothing of what I’d said so far on tape, and all the physical evidence against me probably burning merrily away with the Commander’s desk, all I needed to do was continue to look stupid and say nothing.
Thank you, Dad’s God. You came through!
The Ghote novel Gospill had produced still lay on the table.
I picked it up and looked at the author photo.
No longer could I see much resemblance to the plausible crook who all those years ago had touched on my family’s life then gone on his way. Probably he’d been dead for years.
IN SOME COUNTRIES
Jerry Raine
The day’s work was over and the sun was sinking on the horizon. Inside the kitchen Woody Granger was eating supper on his own. He usually ate with the Cutter family but he’d been late coming back from the field where he’d been fixing fences all day and the family were next door in the living room playing cards. Woody preferred eating on his own though. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Never had been, never would be. He was a sixteen-year-old orphan drifting through Tennessee, getting work where he could.
He finished his cup of coffee and carried his dishes to the sink. The living room door opened and Harold Cutter came in. He was a large red-faced man with thick hairy arms and a belly that hung over the belt of his jeans. Woody was a bit scared of him because he could never tell what kind of mood his employer would be in. Sometimes they would joke together, and other times, when either the work was too hard or the sun too hot, they would nearly come to blows.
“Do you want to come with me tonight Woody?” Harold asked, as he made his way to the pantry.
Finishing his dishes, Woody said over his shoulder, “Okay,” when he really wanted to be going back to his room.
Harold came out of the pantry carrying a bucket with a chopper and two large knives inside. Woody’s heart dipped. He dried his hands and Harold pointed to a lantern that was sitting on the table. “Carry please,” he said, then they walked out into the yard.
The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries Page 58