by Tim Heald
“In what sense?”
“He’s just too obviously innocent,” Contractor said perversely. “Married. Lives in Bromley. Rotarian. Thousands like him. Regular little pooter—salt of the earth and all that. Telegraph reader.”
“So we have a gay factotum who sounds deeply suspicious, but who you maintain is innocent; and an innocent seeming Bromley man, who you perversely consider high on the list of potential perpetrators?”
“If you put it like that, then I suppose so, yes.”
“Good God, man! Have you no respect for the rules of evidence?” shouted his boss. Then he calmed down. “That’s what I should be asking,” he explained, “but I know you too well. And I trust your instinct. Anyone else?”
“Loads,” said Contractor, “but that’s my short list. In a manner of speaking. Up to a point. Ingrid is obvious. You have to include Trevor even if only because he has to be on everyone else’s list. Eric has to be in because he’s on mine even if he doesn’t feature elsewhere.”
“Eric Swanley?”
“You’ve read my report,” said Contractor. “Good.”
“What about the other suspects?”
“Everyone hated Silverburger. It went with his territory. But those are the only people worth considering. There are plenty of other candidates who will be glad he’s gone, but no one who would have sent him there. If you get what I mean.”
“Such as?”
Contractor smiled. “Oh,” he said, “the postman; the Polish couple who ran the deli; the neighbors, especially the amputee next door on the left; the vicar; the woman from Citizen’s Advice; the lollipop people from outside the school; the man in the blue overalls who spent so much time under the car.” He paused. “I could go on.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Bognor. “Ingrid Vincent, Trevor, and Eric Swanley. Does Trevor have a second name?”
“Not so as you’d notice,” said Contractor, “but I can find out. Ingrid Vincent is Romanian. Ingrid is sort of half right; only it’s something like Inge. And her second name is Pupescu. If my name was Inge Pupescu, I’d change it. She took Vincent because her first British boyfriend was the
Oxford University hooker.”
“And he was a member?”
“Right.” Contractor was impressed but tried not to show it. “And don’t tell me Eric Swanley isn’t his real name.”
“He was christened Eric all right, but his name should be Braun. His parents came from Germany. Leipzig, I think. Swanley was the nearest appropriate place to Bromley so they called themselves that.”
“As one would.”
“Well,” said Contractor, “why not? Better than Braun.
Particularly spelled that way. Wie geht es, braun Kauw?”
“Cow in German is ‘Kuh.’”
“I know that,” Contractor said testily. “Unless it’s part of a meal in which case it’s probably Rindfleisch.”
“Or steak,” said Bognor. “Medium-rare-steak-mit-chips-und-horseradish and whatever the German for mustard is.”
“Senf,” said Contractor. “Französicher Senf or Englischer Senf but, for some reason, never Kraut Senf. Odd that. You’d think the Germans would be rather good at mustard.”
“In any event,” said Bognor, “I’m not the least bit surprised that old man Braun changed the family name to Swanley. Was he an accountant, too?”
“Worked in the docks,” said Contractor. “Snuffed out by a Doodlebug toward the end of the war. Some sort of office job. Paper shuffler. Nothing as glorified as accountancy, but it probably had to do with figures.”
Bognor had a mental picture of the sad refugee Braun who had become Swanley and fathered Eric before Braun senior was done in by a doodlebug minding other people’s business in the docks.
“Sad,” he said.
“And now little Eric is working for a guy called Silverburger,” said Contractor. “Makes you think, eh?”
“Doesn’t pay to think too much,” said Bognor. “Makes you depressed.”
“You should know,” said Contractor. He was being playful in a mindless way.
“So,” said Bognor, “you think we should tell Italy that we’ve identified three potential suspects: Ingrid Vincent, née Pupescu; Trevor; and Eric Swanley, né Braun.”
“Why not?” Contractor asked rhetorically.
Bognor picked up a pencil from the desktop and began to tap it ruminatively about the palm of his left hand.
At length, he said, “Because there are countless, literally countless, people in the city who would like to have shot Irving Silverburger and killed him. They believed that the world would be a better place without him, and I’m bound to say that they had a point.”
He paused.
“We, on the other hand, have whittled down the list of suspects to just three. When I say whittled, I use the word advisedly, for the whittling has been done as it were by the seat of one’s pants. All three had good reason for wishing the deceased dead. On the other hand, you could argue that they also had good reason for keeping him alive. He paid, or was in a position to pay, their grocery bills, their mortgages. They owed their livelihoods to him. And yet he must have been excessively tiresome to have around and especially to be beholden to.”
He continued to hit his hand rhythmically with the pencil, starting to hum as he did so. For no particular reason, the tune he hummed was the Italian national anthem, that interminable piece of sub-Verdi that suddenly took on a new lease of life just as one was resuming one’s seat. It was the tune they played whenever a Ferrari won a Grand Prix. Which was often. Or before a rugby union international, which Italy lost just as often, despite large numbers of Australians with hitherto unsuspected Italian grandmothers.
“Originally written in 1847. Words by a twenty-year-old poet named Goffredo Mameli and set to music by Michele Novaro. It was adopted as the national anthem just over a century later. They used to play the march of the Royal House of Savoy before that. Il Duce had a lot to answer for.”
“Not many people know that,” said Bognor, deriding his subordinate’s apparently bottomless fund of useless information. “But I don’t care. I like it.”
“Me, too. Bit heavy on Italia, but still a good tune.”
“So you’re going with the three suspects?”
“If you insist,” said Contractor. “But my hunch is that none of them could be bothered to travel to Venice, acquire a crossbow, and shoot Silverburger in the back. They could just as well have done it here. Slit his wrists or given him arsenic.”
“Good way to kill,” his boss said thoughtfully. “I mean if one had to go prematurely, it’s quite a smart way of shuffling off. Wouldn’t have known anything about it. Instantaneous. One minute, you’re in a sleek motorboat heading down the
Grand Canal; the next, pouf! you’re God knows where.”
“His departure had a lot more style than anything else he did,” conceded Contractor. “Better than anything in his films.”
“Maybe,” said Bognor. “I wonder if Signora Pupescu would agree. Or Trevor. Or Mr. Braun.”
“Does your friend have good suspects?” asked Contractor. “I bet it was an Italian job. Brits don’t have that sort of bravura.”
Bognor demurred, “We’re talking about a German, a Romanian, and Trevor. I’m assuming Trevor is British.”
“Sorry,” said Contractor. “Latvian. A Balt anyway. And Trevor isn’t his real name, either.”
“No,” said Bognor, “of course not. So we have a German, a Romanian, and a Latvian. In Venice with a crossbow. And the deceased was an American national, but with a name like Irving G. Silverburger you’re not, I hope, going to pretend that he was a Native American.”
“No Navajo he,” agreed Contractor. He was apparently on the verge of thinking better of this but sensibly decided against it and shut up.
“Get me Venice,” said his boss.
5
“Michael,” said Bognor, not only speaking into what appeared to be thin air
but, courtesy of something called Skype, which he didn’t understand but seemed to work and to cost nothing, addressing a picture of his old friend on a screen in front of him. Flat. Thin. State-of-the-art. Courtesy of Contractor.
“Simon,” Dibdini was looking a little pale, puffy, almost peaky. Too much grappa and improbably small and chemically damaged fish from the Adriatic. Bognor knew he really must give up cheroots but had seldom felt better. Positively bounding with bonhomie and good health.
“The Silverburger case,” said Bognor, coming straight to the point. “We’ve whittled down the field and come up with three possible suspects.”
Michael nodded but said nothing.
“His live-in factotum, a young Latvian called Trevor; his accountant, Eric Swanley, originally Braun; and Ingrid Vincent, née Pupescu, a not-as-pulchritudinous film actress as she would like.”
Bognor was mildly irritated with this lapse, lulled into a sense of complicity by the tweed. Michael didn’t do pulchritudinous.
“No English?” complained the Italian.
“We don’t do English any longer,” said Bognor, “though that sounds like a BNP line. Which I am definitely not.”
“I would like to have one English villain,” complained Michael. “Silverburger, also. I am sure he always had an English villain in his pictures. An odious person from what you still think of as the top drawer, stroking his waxy mustaches and talking through his nose.”
“Down his nose, not through his nose,” said Bognor. “No chin and he would probably not have been to Eton. Chucked out of somewhere inferior for something grubby to do with lead off roofs or possibly some shopgirl from the town. Have you identified some good Italian criminals?”
His friend had the grace to laugh.
“Italy has the world’s best criminals,” he said. “Most come from the south and work in the United States. In the north, our criminals are not in the same league. Good but not really world class. We gave the world the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, and respect, not to say respectability. It is one of our gifts to the world.”
“Silverburger was some kind of Balt. At least his ancestors were,” said Bognor. “But that proves nothing. Balts don’t have the monopoly on crummy B-list movies any more than you have a monopoly on crime. The British do a good line in murder, and we have some top-whack hoodlums. The Krays were good.”
“The Krays were average,” said Michael, smiling. “Not in our league. The only area in which the British are world class when it comes to crime is in the cad. Your George Sanders is top of the class. A world leader.”
“So what,” inquired Bognor, “do you have when it comes to the Silverburger murder?”
“First,” said Dibdini, splaying out fingers and seeming to count, “there is Benito, the sexy gondolier. I do not believe he is a killer, but he has to be on our list. Then there is Sophia, also a professional and one Mr. Silverburger acquired professionally. She was, is, some kind of Russian I believe. Many Russians come to Venice for professional sex. Then there are Gina and Bernardo, who were going to put money and talent into Limoncello, or The Lemon Peelers, whichever you prefer, and were the main reason for Mr. Silverburger coming to our city. Oh, and Father Carlo.”
“Father Carlo?”
“Sì. Father Carlo is very interesting. Your friend Mr. Silverburger went to confession heard by Father Carlo in the Frari. Father Carlo is a Franciscan. Well, maybe. He has a reputation in the city. Little boys; little girls. He is extremely corrupt, very bad, but clever and very interesting. He enjoys whiskey, and Silverburger presented him with some Johnny Walker Blue Label, which is Father Carlo’s favorite drink. He has Blue Label for breakfast, lunch, and tea, but he is never drunk. Tipsy maybe, but not drunk. He finds young people who have no money and no morals, so I have him on my list. He plays the fiddle. He gives lessons in music. He plays very well. Maybe he is Italian, but I am not sure. He is very difficult to touch because he has friends in what you refer to as high places. Cultivated and corrupt. A very bad man indeed. I would like to have him put away, but it is exceedingly difficult. Impossible to pin anything on him. He is slippery as a serpent.”
“Eel,” said Bognor.
“What?” asked Michael. “I said serpent. Snake, perhaps. He is a snake that likes to hide in the long grass; his bite is fatal; his taste is catholic but depraved. He and your friend Silverburger became very close very fast. As you would say, they hit it off.”
“He was not my friend,” said Bognor. “Eel. Slippery as an eel. Old English saying.”
“Not snake?”
“Not snake,” said Bognor. “Not in colloquial English. Eel. Father Carlo is slippery as an eel. He is Calabrian. Not one of us.”
“From Reggio,” confirmed Dibdini. “His father had a shop. Father Carlo is expert in films.”
“So,” said Bognor, “you have Benito, the gondolier; Sophia, the Russian tart; Gina and Bernardo, the film financier and his would-be actress wife; and Father Carlo, the Machiavellian priest. Got anywhere with any of them?”
Dibdini looked like everybody’s picture of frustration. The correct answer was nowhere, but that wasn’t for want of trying, nor for lack of corroborative evidence. The crucial fact, however, was that one needed to prove that one of the suspects had gone out in the middle of Carnival armed with a crossbow, which he—or she—had used to kill Mr. Silverburger as he presented a broad-backed target in the back of the water taxi. This was difficult for there were no witnesses and, short of a crossbow turning up at the home of one of the suspects, no evidence. Even a useless murderer would surely have disposed of the weapon.
“No,” he finally managed. He had tried. God knows he had tried, but he had failed.
“Gina and Bernardo,” said Bognor. “Gina and Bernardo who?”
“Gina and Bernardo Ponti,” said Dibdini. “They are well known here.”
“Not here,” said Bognor. “World famous in Venice. Maybe in Italy. Unknown here. They obviously don’t travel.”
“But, yes. They are often in England. Southampton. Northampton. Easthampton. Westhampton. Hampton Wick. Hampton Court. Something to do with Hampton. They have an apartment in the country. Bernardo likes to be the English gentleman. Gina is the English lady.”
“Sounds like Northamptonshire,” he said. “Cut-price Cotswolds. You can pick up a flat in a listed pile for a song. No dance needed. And the locals don’t know any better. They probably think Bernardo is some sort of Italian aristo; Gina a contessa. Silverburger would have cut quite a dash there. Not many in Northants have ever been to Riga. There was a Balt car company there for a while. Russian-German. Went belly-up in the early twenties.”
“Silverburger had been with Gina and Bernardo in the English countryside. With Trevor. His catamite.”
“He wasn’t his catamite,” Bognor said stiffly. “He was his gentleman’s gentleman. A sort of butler.”
“Another Balt.”
“Trevor was Latvian,” said Bognor, as if that were different.
“Most Balts are Lithuanians or Latvians,” said Dibdini, as if he had known this forever along with every schoolboy. He had actually only known about it since delving into Silverburger’s ancestry. “The point is that the Pontis were impressed by the film business and they were impressed by the English. So when the two came together as they did with Silverburger then they were doubly impressed.”
“But Silverburger made rubbish films,” said Bognor, “and he wasn’t English.”
“The Pontis didn’t know that. As far as they were concerned, he was both. He took them around the Saint James’s district of London. He took them to the film studios at Ealing and at Pinewood. Everywhere he went, he seemed to be accepted. The English are like that. They remain polite, though perhaps it is some sort of fear. Perhaps they are frightened of foreigners, of those who are, as you say, all mouth and no trousers. They are scared of those who boast because they would like to be the same. Instead, they are understated. They never blow trumpets, never brag. Someti
mes they never seem to know who they really are, even to themselves.”
“So,” said Bognor, “you’re telling me that the Pontis invited Silverburger to their pad in Northants because they thought he was an English gentleman and because they assumed he was Cecil B. DeMille. Interesting combination.”
Dibdini said he supposed so and that the corollary was that when in Venice they paraded him around town as their English friend, a brilliant filmmaker, friend of everyone who was anyone, and so on. In return, Silverburger thought he might touch Bernardo for some of the millions that he didn’t really have. The price of the investment was an involvement in the new project for Gina on account of the looks and the talent in which she alone believed. The whole affair was the doomed building of one artifice on top of another. It was bound to end in failure and recrimination based on discovery. But murder? That was something else.
“Maybe,” agreed Bognor, “but the problem is that this is in some ways the perfect crime. Let’s say that the Pontis, or one of them, were the killer; that the motive was revenge, even that they benefited in some way. Then how can you prove it? You need witnesses; you need the crossbow. Even an Italian court needs evidence.”
“Italian courts,” said Dibdini, “were dealing in evidence when your people were still grappling with Magna Carta and thinking that the jury system was democratic and fair.”
They often argued about juries, adversarial systems, Roman law, and suchlike. The disagreements were profound, extreme, and unresolved.
“I don’t like Gina and Bernardo,” said Dibdini.
“Nor do I,” said Bognor, “but that doesn’t make them murderers. I don’t like the idea of Silverburger, and the odds are that he was killed by someone nice for all the right reasons. That doesn’t make the murder right. Sorry. Maybe it should but justice isn’t like that. It’s not about punishing the nasty for doing something in character to victims we like. More often the reverse. Our job is still to establish the truth.”
“Sometimes,” said Dibdini, “I do not care for the truth.”
