An Untidy Death

by Simon Brett

  ‘You weren’t wearing body armour?’

  ‘No, we were slacker about that stuff back then. Cameras were heavier too. I found it much easier to carry and manipulate mine without being weighed down with body armour.’

  ‘What about Ingrid?’

  ‘She was wearing it. BBC were quite strict about people in vision wearing all the appropriate kit. And in Ingrid’s case, well, I think it was part of her image actually, the way the Great British viewing public liked to see her. In her body armour, with the strap of her leather satchel across the front. That was what they paid their licence fee for, and she played up to their expectations.’

  ‘Yes. I remember her doing news reports like that. It was quite a potent image. She looked totally fearless.’

  ‘Oh yes. Of course, she wasn’t. Nobody was. We were all shit-scared most of the time. But you got better at hiding the fear. Every day you survived, you felt, well, maybe I can cope with another day. The drink helped too.’

  ‘And that famous leather satchel of Ingrid’s?’ I asked. ‘What did she keep in it?’

  ‘Everything.’ The cameraman shrugged. ‘Nowadays, of course, it’d all be electronic stuff – mobile phone, satellite phone, laptop, tablet, whatever. You forget how primitive the technology was back then. No mobile phones in the 1980s, no laptops. Very primitive metal detectors. Satellite communications, yes, but not very portable. Telex – God, telex was used a lot. Ingrid favoured old-fashioned spiral-bound notebooks. That was the archetypal image of the Press – intrepid reporter scribbling away in a notebook. Like Tintin and all the others.’

  ‘So … going back to the car bomb … I’m sorry if that’s painful …’

  ‘It’s OK. I can cope.’

  ‘When the thing went off, you’re saying that Ingrid was partly protected by the body armour?’

  ‘Yes. Except for her face, of course.’

  I had a vivid image of the deep dent I had seen in her forehead. It must have bled a lot when it happened.

  Phil went on, ‘Like I said, the reporters were encouraged to wear body armour if they were going to be in vision. Made them look as if they were taking responsible precautions … though what constituted responsible precautions in a war zone was a matter of considerable debate.’

  ‘Ingrid was going to be in vision at that moment? Were you actually filming her when the bomb went off?’

  ‘We were setting up to film. Ingrid was about to do a piece to camera.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About one of the hostages who was being held out there. I don’t know if you remember, but there was a journalist called—’

  ‘Paul McClennan,’ I interrupted, beginning to see where all this might be leading.

  ‘Yes. Ingrid was very excited. She’d somehow managed to make contact with his captors. She had some deal going on with them.’

  ‘Deal?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly what it was. Maybe get an interview with one of the men holding him? Maybe actually get an interview with Paul McClennan himself. That would have been television gold-dust. And the militias were getting increasingly canny about media manipulation. You remember all those videos they circulated? Hostages with copies of newspapers with dates on them? Hostages spelling out their abductors’ demands. It was only a short step from that to one of the hostages actually being interviewed. And if there was any reporter out there capable of getting that kind of coup, Ingrid was the one. As I say, she was really excited about something that day. Kept telling me that all the details, passwords, maps and what-have-you, were in the leather satchel.’

  There was a silence while I took in the implications of this. Then, very gently, I said to Phil Dickie, ‘Look, I’m sure you don’t want to be taken back to that moment, but would you mind telling me exactly what happened when the car bomb detonated?’

  He rubbed a hand hard against his forehead, as if he could somehow erase the memory. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should be over this now. We are talking more than thirty years ago.’

  ‘If you’d rather not talk about it …’ I offered him an exit, hoping to God he wouldn’t take it.

  Fortunately, he didn’t. But even the thought of that time brought a glisten of sweat to his forehead. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘The moment the bomb went off, you were standing facing Ingrid, about to film her piece to camera – right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then – what? The blast knocked you over.’

  ‘Yes, sent me smashing forwards. Fortunately, I was too far away actually to fall on to Ingrid. But, as I went down, I saw the shrapnel hit her forehead, saw this fountain of blood come spurting out. She fell like a stone. I was worried she was dead.’

  ‘So, you were still conscious at this point?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think Ingrid was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see anything else before you passed out?’

  ‘Yes. There were people rushing around, though I heard them rather than saw them. People running away from the site of the bomb, people coming to help the victims. Total chaos.’

  ‘Nobody came to help you?’

  ‘Not then, no.’

  ‘So, what did you see?’

  He seemed about to say something, then checked himself. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered slowly. ‘Like I say, it was all confusion. I remember my last thought before passing out was – seeing the amount of blood she was covered in – that Ingrid was dead.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Mind you, I thought I was dead too,’ said Phil Dickie. His expression turned very grim. ‘Sometimes think it might have been better if I had been.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  I’d managed to find a parking space directly outside Phil Dickie’s studio and, when I got back into the Yeti, I checked my voicemail. There was a message from Alexandra Richards. I rang her.

  ‘Have the police been in touch with you?’ she asked immediately.

  ‘Not since you and I talked on Monday,’ I replied.

  ‘They’ve just been to see me.’

  ‘Ah. Unwin and Gupta again?’

  ‘Yes. They asked if I’d ever used sleeping pills.’

  ‘Really?’ To my mind, the detectives had been rather slow in getting to that question. ‘So, what did you say?’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t deny it. If they’d got a search warrant, they would have found packets of Zopiclone in my bathroom cabinet.’

  ‘I thought Walt had made you stop taking them?’

  ‘He keeps telling me to manage without them, and I am trying. But I like still to have a supply there, in case … you know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unwin and Gupta took the Zopiclone. They put the packets in an evidence bag.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good, does it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It depends on what they think the Zopiclone would be evidence of.’ I may have sounded a bit dense, but I didn’t want to push Alexandra into saying anything that she wasn’t ready to volunteer.

  ‘There’s only one thing they could be thinking,’ she said quite logically. ‘That the Zopiclone ground up in Ingrid’s whiskey had come from this house.’

  I was glad she had said it rather than me.

  ‘But Unwin and Gupta,’ I asked, ‘didn’t talk about anyone being charged with murder, did they?’

  ‘No. They didn’t talk about it, but surely the implication was there, wasn’t it?

  I was glad she’d taken the implication on board. Alexandra Richards was naïve, but she wasn’t that naïve.

  ‘Oh, I wish Walt was here.’ There was a note of desperation in her voice. ‘He’d know what I should do.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked, remembering I’d left a message for him to call me.

  ‘He’s out on a call, fixing someone’s laptop in St Leonards. Oh, life is sometimes very difficult, isn’t it, Ellen?’

  I wasn’t about to argue with
that, but I wondered where the question was leading.

  ‘You know,’ she went on, ‘when you have to keep secrets because you love someone.’

  ‘You mean when that someone has asked you to keep something secret?’

  ‘Yes. Exactly that.’

  I could imagine quite a few things that Walt might have asked her to keep secret but, though I asked her very directly, Alexandra wouldn’t tell me any more.

  Before we finished the conversation, I did say – sounding rather pious, I’m afraid, ‘All I would advise is that you don’t start lying to the police. That’s only going to create trouble for you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said miserably.

  No sooner had I switched my mobile off than it rang. Synchronicity. Walt returning my call.

  ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ He sounded as cocky as ever and I was amazed how quickly my dislike for him could be reignited.

  ‘I wanted to talk about the night Ingrid Richards died.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ He didn’t sound surprised. ‘Have you talked to Ally about it?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘So, you know I was in Brunswick Square that night?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t know why you were.’

  ‘Ah. Well, you know Ally and me are, like, “an item”?’

  I could visualize him putting mimed quotation marks round the words. Suppressing an inward ‘Yuck’, I replied, ‘Yes, I had pieced that together. You’ve mentioned it enough times.’

  He didn’t seem aware of the edge on my remark, as he went on, ‘I have discovered, over the years, Ellen, that what’s really important in a relationship’ – oh yes, like you’re the guru of relationships – ‘is complete honesty. No secrets from each other.’

  Why, when I would have agreed completely with the principle put forward by someone else, did I feel so inclined to disagree with Walt Rainbird voicing it? I restrained the instinct.

  ‘And,’ he pontificated on, ‘I feel that is particularly true when you’re starting out on a new relationship. Complete honesty is essential.’

  Again, I didn’t argue.

  ‘I have learned, from bitter experience, that any other approach can be very painful and destructive.’

  ‘Bitter experience?’ I echoed.

  ‘Yes. In a previous relationship, I had the misfortune – well, I say “misfortune” but the outcome was fortunate – to discover that my partner was cheating on me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘With someone else.’

  That was another detail I could have pieced together for myself, but I didn’t say anything.

  ‘And it became clear to me, after some weeks of Ally and myself being “an item”, that there was an area of her life that she was keeping secret from me. I refer to her visits to Hove.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘At least, at first I didn’t know it was Hove she was visiting.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘She claimed that these unexplained absences were for meetings about this charity she’s involved in. Bloody donkeys. She’s obsessed with bloody donkeys. I think that’s an area of her life that may need some changes. I’m not sure that I want a girlfriend of mine to be involved in a donkey sanctuary when—’

  ‘Could we get back to her visits to Hove?’

  ‘Very well. I must confess I was suspicious. About these charity meetings. It seemed to me strange to have charity meetings during the evening. And I’m afraid, after my previous bitter experience, the idea that Ally was cheating on me developed and, kind of, festered in my mind. I gave her the opportunity to offer an alternative explanation of what she was doing, but she stuck to her story which, increasingly, I knew to be false. So, one evening, when she said she was going off to one of her charity meetings, I followed her in my car.’

  ‘This is before the night when Ingrid Richards died?’

  ‘No, no, it was before that. So, I followed her and, once I was in Hove, I saw which building Ally went into and I’m afraid I put the worst possible construction on what she might be doing there.’

  ‘You thought she was seeing another man?’

  ‘I did. As I said, bitter experience. Once bitten, et cetera. I didn’t stay. I drove straight back to Hastings. But when Ally got back that evening, I challenged her, and she persisted with the lie about the charity meeting. So, I decided to take more positive action.’

  ‘What were you going to do?’

  ‘Next time she went to Hove, I would once again follow her, but this time I would go into the building after her and find out who it was she was seeing.’

  ‘So, you met Ingrid?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I got delayed by some roadworks on the way from Hastings. Round Polegate it was. Ally’s car had just gone through when the light went red. By the time I got through, I had lost sight of her. Then I took a wrong turning and got to Hove … I don’t know, probably some quarter of an hour after Ally did. And, in fact, when I got there, she was just leaving the building in Brunswick Square.’

  ‘So, you must have realized that, if she had been going there for a sexual encounter, it was just a quickie?’ I suggested.

  ‘That was not my immediate thought,’ Walt said rather grumpily.

  ‘So, did you stop Alexandra then and ask her what she had been doing?’

  ‘No. I waited to see what she would do next.’

  ‘And what did she do next?

  ‘Ally got straight into her car and drove off … drove, I later discovered, straight back to Hastings.’

  ‘So, did you follow her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I thought I’d watch the building, see who came in and out.’

  ‘Trying to spot your rival?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And did you see him?’

  ‘No. I should have trusted Ally. But, as I say, bitter experience. I was possibly a little bit hypersensitive and paranoid.’

  I would have said that was something of an understatement. ‘So, when did you leave to go back to Hastings?’ I asked.

  ‘Round midnight.’

  ‘And you had it out with Alexandra then?’

  ‘No. I didn’t go back to her place.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I still have a flat of my own. In St Leonards. I went back there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was still angry with Ally. For keeping secrets from me. I wanted to make her suffer.’

  You nasty little tick, I thought. Not for the first time.

  ‘But then,’ he went on, ‘the next morning, Ally texted me. Told me her mother – the mother I didn’t know she had – had died. Then, obviously, we met up again, and she explained everything.’

  ‘And now you know about Ingrid’s existence, the fact that she had a mother, why do you think Alexandra didn’t tell you about her earlier?’

  ‘I think she thought it might affect the purity of our love.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, in a state of wince.

  ‘Everything was so perfect. Ally and I had found each other. I don’t think she wanted our happiness to be clouded by the presence of the woman who had made her whole life a total misery.’

  ‘I see.’ I wondered again whether it was more a case of Alexandra not wanting her mother to see what a creep she’d ended up with. But, as I had many times during this conversation, I kept my reactions to myself. My lip was beginning to feel the pain of being constantly bitten.

  I did ask, though, why Walt had taken the trouble to call me back.

  ‘You left a message. Simple politeness,’ he said smugly.

  ‘Surely there was more to it than that?’

  ‘Well … Ally texted me to say the police had been in touch with her. She sounded worried. I thought you might know what they’re up to.’

  ‘Whether they’re suspicious of her, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If they are, you can easily stop that, can’t you?’

 
‘How do you mean?’

  He really wasn’t very bright. I spelled it out for him, ‘The fire that killed Ingrid Richards started – or was started – late on the Tuesday evening or in the early hours of the Wednesday. You witnessed Alexandra leaving Brunswick Square … what time? Before eight, anyway.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, all you have to do is to tell the police that. I’m sure Alexandra has got the number for Unwin and Gupta, and she’ll be off the hook.’

  ‘Yes,’ Walt said. ‘Yes, I can do that for Ally. Set her mind at rest.’ Instantly casting himself as the knight errant rescuing the damsel in distress.

  ‘You said, incidentally,’ I continued, ‘that you didn’t see your rival coming out of the building in Brunswick Square?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted.

  I couldn’t stop myself from saying, ‘Which was hardly surprising, given that he didn’t exist. But, more interestingly, did you see anyone else enter or leave the building?’

  And Walt Rainbird finally told me something that almost justified his existence on this planet.

  Having finished the two telephone calls, I was still, of course, parked in Dorking. I started the Yeti to drive back to Chichester.

  But I was stopped by a tap on the window. Phil Dickie, on his crutches, was alongside me. I opened the window.

  ‘I saw through the window that you were still out here,’ he said. ‘Were you planning to make a return visit to the studio?’

  ‘No. Sorry. Just doing a couple of phone calls.’

  ‘That’s serendipitous perhaps.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking, after you left, of something I didn’t tell you … about when the car bomb went off in Beirut … about Ingrid.’

  ‘What didn’t you tell me?’

  And Phil Dickie revealed something that, along with what I’d heard from Walt, made a whole lot of details fall into place.

  TWENTY-THREE

  It was dark by the time I left Dorking. And I didn’t go towards Chichester. There are times when being on one’s own, with no kids or pets or husbands living at home, is a positive advantage. I was now so emotionally caught up the mystery of Ingrid Richards’ death that I knew I had to go straight up to London.