Yet Another Death in Venice (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  It was still misty by the Thames, but the rain had stopped, and a pale sun was even trying forlornly to penetrate the gloom. Ducks and swans fought in a desultory way over crusts and the ends of sandwiches thrown into the river by mainly foreign lunchers.

  Contractor bought a couple of pints of Courage Directors Bitter, paid for them himself, promised to claim them back on his expenses and joined the boss on the wide towpath. There seemed nothing to say and they both said it; staring morosely over the froth at the top of their drinks toward Twickenham on the opposite bank. Bognor guessed it would be sunnier in Venice. It nearly always was. At least in his mind’s eye.

  “I think we should have a word with Trevor the Balt,” said Bognor, nodding in the direction of the thin chauffeur’s suit sipping a Virgin or maybe Bloody Mary on his own. “He looks as if he could use company.”

  Contractor grinned, and the two men walked over to Trevor where they introduced themselves. Trevor’s response was noncommittal. He wasn’t cold, let alone frosty, but he wasn’t warm, let alone welcoming. Neutral.

  “It’s a free country,” he said when Bognor asked if he would mind dreadfully if he and his colleague were to ask one or two questions.

  “Meaning Latvia wasn’t?” Contractor said sharply.

  “I didn’t say that,” Trevor said equally sharply. “But since you ask, no. Not when I left. Far from it. And I will always be grateful to Irving for his help. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d never have made it. Or I’d be living rough in Wisbech, picking tulips for a subsistence wage. Or cockling near Morecambe Bay.”

  “Silverburger helped with your visa?” asked Bognor.

  “It’s all past history now. And the situation’s changed. Latvia’s not the same. None of those places are. Stag parties. I’ve been back. Not a problem. When I first came, there was no going back.”

  He took a sip of his tomato and repeated, “No going back.”

  “So you were old friends?” This from Contractor.

  “Not at all,” said Trevor. “Didn’t know him from a bar of soap. Noticed his name in a fleapit in downtown Riga. He rolled around on the credits, and I’d liked the movie. Sort of. So I wrote to him, and to my amazement he wrote back.” Trevor smiled. “So I’ll always be grateful despite, well, despite …”

  “The film,” said Contractor. “Which one was it?”

  “There only ever was one really,” said Trevor. He looked wistful. “The Coffee Grinders,” he said.

  “So,” said Bognor, “I’m going to have to watch that ghastly film?”

  Contractor smiled. “I’m afraid so, Boss. We can book a viewing theater if it would make it any easier. Or just get a DVD.”

  “Book a theater.” He didn’t often go for the extravagance to which his job and title entitled him. Indeed, he belonged, if not to the hair-shirt style of boss at least to the bicycling variety. Had he been a king, he would have traveled at the back of the bus and been roundly vilified by those who believed that monarchy was largely to do with pomp and circumstance. Basically, Bognor was neither into pomp nor circumstance. Faced, however, with the purgatory of having to watch a movie, which he dimly remembered having to sit through on a previous occasion, he felt he was entitled.

  The encounter with Trevor had yielded nothing beyond formalities. Indeed, Bognor could scarcely say that the funeral generally had thrown up anything new in terms of evidence unless one counted the realization that, to a very select few, Silverburger was not such a bad egg after all. Indeed, there were those, mostly in the crem that morning, who thought Silverburger was rather a good egg. Or at least they knew which side their toast was buttered.

  Had it not been for Irving G., Trevor would still be in Latvia or under a hedge in Wisbech. Instead of this, he was buttling in Belgravia, lapped in luxury with nothing much to do except serve the man who had released him from a life as a Soviet serf.

  In his Latvian life, he had been Artis Dombrovskis. There were lots of sibilances in Latvian life, mostly at the end of people’s names, first and second. A Latvian Fred or Bert would have been Freds or Berts. Dombrovkis was the name of the prime minister, but Artis, aka Trevor, was no relation. He should have been Trevors and he should have been subjected to more rigorous questioning. Some other time perhaps.

  Meanwhile he had been to Venice; he had been staying at the Danieli, albeit in a broom cupboard while his employer had a suite. And while he had done some servanting, he had been on a longish leash. Much of the time, he had behaved like any other tourist from a Baltic state: badly and independently.

  That was the extent of Trevor’s revealing admission. He had been in Venice at Silverburger’s expense and in a sense at his beck and call. He, therefore, had the opportunity. He had not been in the same water taxi and was not on the same flight, which in the case of Silverburger was a scheduled British Airways flight for which he had a first-class ticket. He was a frequent flier with BA.

  “I suppose,” said Bognor, “there was a motive.”

  “Sorry, Boss,” said Contractor. “You’re suggesting our man was killed for no particular reason.”

  “Well,” said Bognor, “kicks, if you call that a reason.”

  “You mean someone went and killed him because they liked killing people.”

  “Happens,” said Bognor. “Happens all the time as a matter of fact. Doesn’t get reported for two good reasons. One is that it would alarm people. The second is that such a vague motive makes it very difficult to solve.”

  “Motiveless murder?” Contractor mused. “Seems a bit of a waste when there were so many good reasons for wanting Silverburger dead. Random killing accounts for the good, not the evil. Really unpleasant people such as Silverburger don’t happen to get done in. They’re murdered on purpose.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Bognor. “Why shouldn’t some fruitcake with a crossbow just wander out one day with murder on his mind and find that our friend presented the ideal target? I feel like that sometimes.”

  Contractor looked at his boss with a new and different eye. He had not previously thought that he could be working for a killer.

  “Let’s face it,” Bognor warmed to his theme, “if we thought we could get away with it, many more of us would be murderers. That’s why I’m glad there are sanctions. Otherwise, I might have murdered Monica. Several times. And vice versa. And in the fullness of time, I’d have regretted it. So, I think would she. Ditto Parkinson, my boss in former times. I daresay you could have cheerfully killed me from time to time. I could certainly have killed you on numerous occasions. But, on balance and up to a point, one would have regretted it in the morning.”

  “Yes.” It was Contractor’s turn to be fazed. He had heard of Parkinson. Frequently. He sounded like a dry, old stick and very much of his time. Maybe another law of life was that one grew into one’s boss. He shuddered and hoped not.

  “What has emerged from our end,” he said, “is that Silverburger was not as nasty as he appeared. Or rather that he had people who appeared to be quite fond of him. Not many but genuinely fond. We have a short list of such people and we now know that Trevor and the Swanleys were in the Venice area at the time of Silverburger’s death. On the other hand, there seems to be less and less reason for the Swanleys or Trevor the Balt to have killed him. Not only did they like him but he was a goose laying golden eggs all the time. Why would they want to kill him? He was their emotional friend and their financial benefactor. Two good reasons for wanting him alive. Dead and the first vanishes and the second does so effectively as well. Whatever money there may have been goes back to the American Midwest, never to be seen again. So Trevor and Swanley are up a gum tree in every conceivable sense.”

  “Which leaves La Vincent.”

  “Which leaves La Vincent,” agreed Bognor. “She was at the funeral.”

  Bognor recalled an anonymous figure in a black coat, some sort of animal around her throat, and a theatrical veil attached to a black hat with a big brim. There was a lot of sni
ffing of a theatrical nature, which seemed to say, “Look at me, I’m suffering,” and he hadn’t see her by the Thames at the wake. No car. She had probably used public transport. He knew nothing about her apart from what he was about to discover from his viewing of The Coffee Grinders.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “The Pontis sort of come within our remit,” said Contractor, “in their Northamptonshire incarnation.”

  “I’ll talk to Michael about them,” he said, and asked Contractor when he could arrange a viewing of Silverburger’s film. Silly question. The answer was the day before yesterday. Contractor knew people. He could fix a little place in Wardour Street; no problem getting a print; was Sir Simon doing anything this evening? Perhaps Lady Bognor would like to come. He would see if Sam was up for it. They could have a meal afterward. Could be quite fun. They should make something out of it. The movie couldn’t be that bad.

  “Yes, it could,” said Bognor. He had seen a fair number of spaghetti-nothings. He knew how bad they could be and he feared the worst.

  8

  The surroundings could be compensation, though, and the Global Moviedrome in Wardour Square was a case in point. The tiny theater was not a lot bigger than Bognor’s office at SIDBOT, but it contained a dozen or so armchairs and armrests with room for food and drink. There was a pretty blonde at the front of house to take their coats and dish out big gin-and-tonics with loads of ice clanking against the sides of crystal. The chips were handcrafted from root vegetables other than potatoes. If one had to watch films such as The Coffee Grinders, then this was the place to do so. Perhaps, he thought, that was why so much execrable celluloid was unleashed. Critical faculties were suspended. Distribution was about the size of one’s gin and the depth of the armchair. Nothing to do with the film.

  Monica was present; equine, adorable, love of his life, tiresome, difficult, argumentative, but his wife. Sam was also there. She fulfilled much the same role for Contractor and the two women shared a disdainful, eye-rolling love of their men, which meant that they gravitated to each other and were the bane of everybody’s lives (not least of their husbands’, both of whom adored them to bits but were damned if they would acknowledge this, particularly in public). Sam was socially grander than Contractor, just as Monica was out of a higher drawer than Bognor. Sam was also white, unlike her husband. This sometimes caused problems but less and less so. In some quarters, it was thought positively chic, whereas the monochrome Bognor union was regarded as sadly old-fashioned.

  The four of them were the only audience.

  Bognor supposed he had seen the film before. It was bad in every possible respect from the tin-eared script to the myopic camerawork, the plywood and balsa-wood acting and the resolutely mundane special effects. There was nothing special about these and nothing out of the ordinary about the movie as a whole. It didn’t even have the guts to be truly ghastly but came in at a bad beta in every respect.

  Bognor wondered if he could sleep through the thing but was afraid he might snore. It was bad enough not to be alert throughout the performance but beyond redemption to prevent the others from nodding off. The distaff side, for instance, had no professional reason for being present. They were only there to support their husbands.

  It was a bad print, flickering and speckled with orange spots. The credits said “Introducing Ingrid Vincent,” which was a bit of a laugh as she had never needed an introduction in real life and had not, as far as he was aware, followed up the introduction with any further forays in her professional life. Once introduced, she had apparently languished like a thespian wallflower. He supposed she could have had vampish parts in elderly drawing room comedies in seedy rep companies, but he suspected she would have drawn the line at such stuff of the theatrical art. She was not a trouper, just a tart.

  He was thinking along these lines when she was “introduced” for the first time, wearing an absurdly tight roll-necked sweater that showed off her ample breasts. He wondered idly if they were artificially enhanced or if they grew big naturally in Cluj-Napoca, where she came from, according to her file, which was thin and which he had read several times from cover to cover. She was working a huge, hissy Gaggia machine in an old-fashioned coffee bar, somewhere ill defined but probably British.

  She did not have many words, which was just as well as she was not easy to understand. However, she was not there to speak but to flutter her Barbara Cartland–style eyelashes, pout prettily, and bare her ample bosom. Actually, she wouldn’t bare her bosom because had she done so the movie would have been denied a certificate. Also she would have prostituted what she liked to call her “art.” She was not going to do either but simply fluttered, pouted, and said as little as possible while silhouetted provocatively behind the suggestively steamy coffee machine.

  The film had a plot of sorts. It involved a murder, maybe more than one. There were cops, good guys, and bad guys. The bad guys were very bad and very visual about it, wearing black and affecting thin false mustaches and mock Italian accents. The good guys had lantern jaws and piercing blue contact lenses of a kind nobody wore in real life. Nobody could act, which was just as well as it was not required and would have been noticed and thought poncy and pretentious. Nobody could speak properly, which was just as well as the only lines were clichés.

  Ingrid was a moll, but no one, including Ingrid, seemed entirely sure whose moll she was. She was either a good guy’s girl or a bad guy’s Sheila; either had a heart of gold or of stone. But nobody seemed to know. This was acceptable, but no one cared, which was worse. And it didn’t seem to matter, which was inexcusable.

  From time to time, however, when words failed her, which was often, she kissed whatever male was in the vicinity. She was good at this and had obviously had practice.

  During one particularly steamy embrace behind the Gaggia, Bognor let out a sudden squeal of recognition.

  “Freeze,” he said. “Stop the film. I know that person. He’s not supposed to be here. Not yet. But I know him.”

  It was Trevor. Trevors. Or Altis Dombrovskis. The Baltbutler. The manservant from Latvia. He was younger than this morning, and he was wearing winklepickers and tight trousers. Like Ingrid, he was a mean kisser. They were in a clinch that looked as if they meant it. In fact, it was the only meaningful part of the film

  “Who is he?” Monica whispered loudly, and said nothing when he explained, simply ate another peanut and looked at her husband wistfully. Bognor told the projectionist to unfreeze the frame and go back to forward. Trevor duly vanished never to be seen again, killed offscreen by one of the bad guys who was eventually apprehended and duly swung, the film being set in a country where they still had capital punishment. Still, the man in the clinch was Trevor. Of that much, Bognor was certain.

  So Trevor from Riga was in the United Kingdom when he shouldn’t have been, when he said he wasn’t, and long before he admitted to having met Silverburger. And he was a good kisser. On-screen and when the object of his tendresse was an older woman. None of this made him a murderer. It made him a liar for reasons as yet unknown. It made him a decent kisser who presumably knew Ingrid Vincent. Not that the knowledge may have been more than skin-deep as it were. La Vincent, after all, was an introducee, which was the next best thing to a star, whereas Trevor was little more than an extra, a walk-on kisser. The characters they portrayed may have known each other intimately, but the actor and actress may not have known each other at all. They were simply creatures that kissed on screen. The rest of the film told Bognor nothing new about Trevor, aka Artis, for the good reason that his appearance was fleeting, if sensuous. It should have told Bognor a lot about the pulchritudinous Pupescu, but although he managed to stay awake throughout the movie, he didn’t learn a great deal about Ingrid except that she looked good and reacted enthusiastically to the attentions of males. She was, in an old-fashioned phrase, “a sex kitten.” She resembled former film stars such as Anita Ekberg and Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was well endowed, keen on sexual contact, had a su
ltry foreign accent, which contributed to her mystery and allure, and she couldn’t act.

  “Is that Ingrid’s own voice?” he asked innocently.

  There was a chorus of incredulous disbelief in which the implied subtext was that he was someone who didn’t understand film and was out of touch.

  “Natalie Wood’s singing voice was dubbed in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn’s in My Fair Lady,” said Bognor. “They looked good, but they couldn’t sing. So they used their voice coach. She looked like the back of a bus, but she sang like a lark.”

  “Ingrid doesn’t sing,” said his wife.

  “But she talks,” said Bognor, “and she can’t. If you see what I mean.”

  “Oh, Simon,” she said. “Honestly!”

  Bognor still thought his question was valid, but the others were so derisory that he shut up. They all obviously knew much more about film and its conventions than he did. He was not, he was the first to concede, a cinematic animal. He understood books, the theater, and old-fashioned stories in a general, traditional sort of a way. He liked beginnings and middles and ends, plausible characters and recognizable plots. Being entertained and kept on his toes was part of the game and he liked to be stretched even if the stretching was comfortable in the style of a Times crossword rather than the rack. He was not there to be improved but he was not interested in escapism, either.

  Film performed this function though not, on the whole, modern film. He enjoyed John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and if asked to name his favorite movies of all time, would probably have settled for Casablanca, High Noon, or most of the films from the Ealing Comedies series. His tastes were therefore conservative but not stupid. The Coffee Grinders was modern and mindless and therefore he hated it.