Red Herrings

by Tim Heald

  ‘Who said anything about Perry and Sam being under suspicion?’ Monica was snappish. She did not at all like the Pickled Herring and had been all for going home to the London suburbs. Bognor had seemed so miserable when she said this that she had melted and remained. She had married him for richer for poorer, for better or worse and she supposed she ought to stand by him, tiresome though it might be to be holed up indefinitely in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Guy,’ said Bognor. ‘Guy says that everyone must be regarded as under suspicion until proved otherwise. He says this is a very suspicious village. He says he’s had his eye on it for some time, mainly on account of the swami’s outfit. Not that I’m inclined to believe what Guy says. He really is a bit of an ass.’

  Bognor had had a brief but relatively inconsequential encounter with the chief inspector earlier in the morning shortly after his conversation with Parkinson. The two men had agreed to meet for a drink around six in the lounge bar to discuss tactics. Bognor was not much looking forward to it.

  ‘I think Guy’s right for once,’ said Monica irritatingly. She had always rather fancied Guy in the old days and the hint of grey he now had at the temples rather enhanced his appeal. ‘Personally speaking it gives me the creeps. There’s something spooky about the place. I know you think Phoney Fred is just a joke but I think he’s positively dangerous. Some of his so-called acolytes can’t be more than twelve. All junked out of their minds by the look of it.’

  The swami, otherwise known to villagers as Phoney Fred, had taken over Herring Hall five years ago. Ever since, rumours of drugs, sex, drink and all round zombie-ism had abounded.

  Like so many modern mystics the swami was exceedingly rich, exceedingly hairy, and exceedingly attractive to nubile young women. All of this annoyed Bognor who was none of these. He could have grown a beard if he had wanted but the wealth and sex appeal were depressingly elusive. The swami drove around in a series of vintage motor cars, mainly Bugattis. He was almost always accompanied by a wife. He had an enormous number of wives, known formally as the Brides of the Chosen. The wives wore white. The swami, naturally, wore saffron and sandals as well as a leather strap about his neck from which there hung a leather pouch. This contained small pieces of blank coloured paper which he was accustomed to present to people with a wide smile and a mumbled blessing. The bits of paper were supposed to be very lucky. One purporting to be autographed by him had fetched several thousand guineas at auction.

  The villagers of Herring St George tolerated the swami and his followers with a long suffering scepticism. This was reasonable enough for generally speaking they kept themselves to themselves and paid the rates. They did not patronise the Pickled Herring nor did they attend church. When they first bought the hall from a property developer who was unable to obtain planning permission for an Olde English Theme Parke it was widely thought that they would try to take over the community rather like that other, not wholly dissimilar, sect in Oregon. But as the weeks passed the villagers realised that the swami was not going to stand for the parish council or try to convert them to whatever it was that he believed in. The swami’s people (the Blessed Followers of the Chosen Light, to give them their English title – there was another in Sanskrit) had a regular weekly order from the village shop and Sir Nimrod never conquered his disbelief about the amount of grapefruit juice they drank. When Naomi Herring called to sell poppies in aid of the Earl Haig fund just before Remembrance Day the swami personally wrote a cheque for a hundred pounds and kissed her on both cheeks. She said later that he smelt terribly of joss stick.

  ‘I think he’s pretty harmless,’ said Bognor. He had a curious optimism even about proven villains. Had he been around in the thirties he would have been inclined to think Hitler and Mussolini ‘pretty harmless’.

  ‘He’s no more a swami than you are,’ said Monica. ‘Underneath all that face fungus and filth he’s as white as us.’

  ‘I didn’t say he was real,’ said Bognor. ‘Obviously he’s a fraud. I bet he’s a Balliol man. At least I bet he claims he was at Balliol.’ He paused. ‘Fraudulent, sticky fingered and over-sexed; but there are plenty of people like that. It doesn’t make them killers.’

  ‘I don’t understand why it couldn’t have been an accident,’ said Monica. ‘Chap gets very drunk, goes to sleep in Gallows Wood and is riddled with arrows by the villagers before he wakes up. QED if you ask me.’

  ‘According to Parkinson, Wilmslow hardly touched alcohol,’ said Bognor.

  Monica smiled. ‘All the more reason for him to go to sleep under the old oak tree. He obviously didn’t have a head for it.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have drunk it in the first place.’

  ‘But he did, didn’t he?’

  Bognor pursed his lips and nodded a touch glumly, ‘They reckon so. We won’t know until the tests come through.’

  Monica sighed. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You and Guy think he was murdered because he was drunk and being drunk wasn’t in character. That’s a bit flimsy. Anything else?’

  Bognor scratched the back of his head where the hair was thinnest. ‘I’ll know more when the files arrive. Parkinson’s having them sent down by courier. We don’t really know what exactly he was investigating but Parkinson implied that it was a lot more than simple VAT irregularities. If we can find out exactly what or who he was on to, then we’ll have a motive and a suspect.’

  ‘Does Guy have any ideas?’

  ‘He’s going through all Wilmslow’s things. Presumably he’ll turn up some sort of notebook. Some of those sort of people use portable computers. There may be a disk.’ He walked over to the window and looked out on to the green, so perfect an example of British Tourist Authority England that it could have been run up by Disney. It didn’t go with corpses, not at first glance, but Bognor had always been suspicious about countryside. In his view cities were much safer.

  ‘I still think it was almost certainly an accident,’ said Monica. ‘The trouble with people in your line of work is that you’re so melodramatic. You always subscribe to conspiracy theories. You always find niggers in woodpiles. You always make life complicated when it’s actually incredibly simple. It’s so boring of you.’

  Bognor shrugged. ‘That may be so in everyday life,’ he said, ‘but in my line of work, as you perfectly well know, it’s always wise to look on the black side and believe the worst of everyone and everything. I believe in original sin and universal guilt, and …’ he broke off for a second ‘… if I’m not much mistaken I think I see a ministry motorcyclist heading this way with a whole load of bumf from Customs and Excise.’ The thunder of Japanese horsepower cut through the somnolence of late afternoon, reached a crescendo and then suddenly stopped very cleanly, leaving a silence more silent than before.

  Bognor called down to the despatch rider, a burly man in late middle age.

  ‘Do you have a package for me – Simon Bognor, Board of Trade?’

  The messenger looked suspiciously at Bognor, hesitated and then decided to make no reply. Instead he rummaged in one of his panniers and produced a large brown padded envelope. Without looking up again he walked towards the front door of the Pickled Herring with an air of considerable gravitas.

  ‘Oh, God, I hate motorcyclists,’ said Bognor, furiously.

  ‘He may not be for you,’ said Monica. ‘He may be bringing truffles hot foot from Perigord or the first of the season’s grouse as felled by Viscount Whitelaw.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Bognor was not amused. ‘It’s not even August. Of course it’s for me. It’s one of the office messengers. I’ve seen him countless times in Whitehall. He knows perfectly well who I am. Stupid oaf!’

  He stomped out, slamming the door. Monica stared after him bleakly, then flopped full length on the bed and began to read a rude novel by Wendy Perriam. She supposed she loved her husband but he could be an awful bore. His time of life, she supposed; she personally believed men went through just as bad an emotional crisis in their early forties
as any woman at any stage in her life. Bognor was like a passed over major or a perpetual curate. He had no serious prospects of advancement and yet he had to soldier on until he took early retirement and a pension. Quite a grim prospect, she could see that; but there was no need to be quite so beastly so often. She would have to talk it over with him. Woman to man.

  It was a quarter of an hour before he returned pink and bothery but definitely triumphant. He held the very large brown envelope which he had already opened, messily, so that the kapok stuffing was spilling out all over the very expensive, dense, macaroon-coloured carpet.

  ‘God, what a palaver!’ he said. ‘Identification in triplicate; four signatures. I’m surprised he didn’t want a birth certificate or a reference from the vicar.’

  ‘Personally,’ said Monica, ‘I’m rather pleased. It’s nice to have some secure security for a change.’

  ‘Don’t be pompous,’ said Bognor. ‘He knew perfectly well who I was, he was just being difficult.’

  ‘That, if I may say so,’ said Monica, saying so, ‘is the sort of attitude which led to Burgess and Maclean and that man Prime at GCHQ.’

  ‘Now you really are being pompous,’ he said, falling into a fussy chintz armchair and removing a wad of papers from the envelope. ‘There is absolutely no similarity whatever between me and Guy Burgess or Geoffrey Prime.’

  ‘I do so hate it when you deliberately misunderstand me,’ said Monica. She glowered briefly and returned to her Wendy Perriam.

  Bognor too began to read. There was an awful lot of stuff, much of it quite irrelevant and footling. Like so many of his colleagues, Wilmslow had been a tree not a wood man. Or, more accurately, a twig man. His papers were full of triumphal discoveries of restaurant bills where the fifteen per cent of VAT had been added before rather than after the service charge; of phone bills where businesses had been trying to claim back VAT on what were clearly personal private calls; of zero ratings being claimed on invalid imports; of muddles between input and output. Wilmslow would not have had a chance, reckoned Bognor, of seeing Birnham Wood for the stage props. Never. His eyes never strayed from the small print taking care of the pennies while the pounds took care of themselves. Bognor, who had good grounds for believing that some large and clever companies were perpetrating genuine frauds on a massive scale was outraged. It confirmed everything he had always believed.

  The Herring St George papers were not the only ones there and for a while, as he riffled through the pile, Bognor even wondered if they had been omitted altogether. That too would have been bloody typical.

  He found them in the end, however. Like the earlier stuff they were a mixture of typing and Wilmslow’s characteristically tiny, punctilious handwriting. A nitpicker’s hand. Not many people in the village were registered for VAT. It required an annual turnover in excess of eighteen thousand pounds and although the character of the place had changed drastically in recent years the new affluence was not, on the whole, self-employed. Moreover the weekenders, of whom there were several, were registered in their town homes and would be visited by Wilmslow or a colleague in London.

  The first few names were exactly as Bognor had expected: The Society of the Blessed Followers of the Chosen Light, PLC (SBFCL), Herring Hall. He knew perfectly well that the swami’s lot had considerable international holdings, not least in North Sea Oil.

  The Village Stores, Herring St George. This was a very different story but even though Sir Nimrod’s profit margins were undoubtedly modest, VAT was a turnover tax, not an income tax.

  The Pickled Herring, Herring St George. Larger profits here for Felix and Norman, though not yet vast.

  Fashions Sous-tous PLC, The Manor House, Herring St George. Bognor knew that although Peregrine Contractor employed no fashion staff – either production or design – at the Manor it was nonetheless the base for all his operations thanks to the wonders of modern computer technology.

  There were just two other VAT registered people, one of whom he should have thought of. Doc Macpherson was a high enough earner, even under the National Health scheme, to qualify. But the final entry was quite unexpected: Emerald Carlsbad, author and self-employed therapist.

  ‘Emerald Carlsbad!’ he said out loud, ‘Who she?’

  On the bed Monica, immersed sulkily in her novel, did not reply.

  ‘Emerald Carlsbad,’ repeated Bognor, ‘The New Maltings, Herring St George. I wonder where that is. Means nothing. Funny name and funny occupation. Not much need for therapy in Herring St George even in this day and age.’

  He turned the page and found photostats of old VAT returns from the various registered parties. No great surprises. The swami and Peregrine Contractor were turning over hundreds of thousands of pounds every three month tax period. Doc Macpherson was doing nicely thank you and must have had a sizeable private practice to supplement his income. Poor Sir Nimrod was all input and very little output. Desperate attempts to get the Excise to reimburse seemed to have failed on every occasion, usually as far as Bognor could make out because the wretched squire emeritus had failed to fill in the form properly. Indeed to add insult to injury he had been fined quite heavily for ticking the box marked ‘exempt outputs’ when he had meant to tick ‘bad debt relief’. It was obviously too much for him.

  ‘Village stores seem to be in a pretty parlous state,’ he said.

  ‘So would you be if you sold nothing but gumboots and Grape-Nuts,’ said Monica.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Bognor had not been to the stores. ‘It’s a village post office and general shop. That sort of place sells everything: gobstoppers, safety pins, cat food, Bird’s Custard, cod liver oil.’ Bognor’s eyes glazed. He was remembering his childhood.

  ‘Au contraire,’ said Monica, ‘gumboots and Grape-Nuts. Nothing else at all. I went in there for Alka Seltzer after that first evening at the Contractors. No Alka Seltzer. No Fernet Branca. No Paracetamol. No Prairie Oysters – not even an egg, let alone Worcester Sauce. No Aspirin. Nothing but gumboots and Grape-Nuts. Oh, and some very old bacon with curling rind and just a hint of mildew and verdigris.’ She shrugged and subsided on to the counterpane.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. The gumboots are suspended on lengths of string, though they probably call it “twine” round here, and the Grape-Nuts are in crates. He’s probably got the left overs from the Everest Expedition.’

  ‘Horrible things to have for breakfast,’ said Bognor with feeling. ‘So gritty. They stick in your teeth. But surely he has sugar and milk to go with them?’

  ‘Rien du tout.’ Monica pouted. ‘It’s a disaster. They can’t be making a bean. In fact if you ask me it’s amazing he can afford to eat or drink. Nobody shops there any more, they all drive in to Whelk and go to the mall.’

  Whelk, the county town, had one of the most modern shopping precincts in the country. You could buy everything from a whole sheep butchered specially for your freezer to enormous economy packs of loo paper which people stored in their nuclear fallout shelters. And there was Muzak.

  ‘I should have thought Naomi would have managed to get the place ticking over,’ said Bognor. ‘She seemed moderately normal. The old boy is more or less barking I grant you but surely she could run a village shop?’

  Monica did not reply, and Bognor continued to study Wilmslow’s papers frowning at the small print, the fiddly handwriting and, above all, the endless figures. He had always disliked maths and been sceptical about finance. No doubt there were secrets hidden away in all these forms and bills and receipts but Bognor was not optimistic about teasing them out. It would take a man like Wilmslow to do that – the sort of person who could spot a falsely calculated percentage at a glance and knew by instinct that ‘Box 1 + Box 2 + Box 3 should equal Box 4’ and that ‘Box 4 – Box 7 should equal Box 8 (if tax is due)’. Bognor was not like that, not at all; and so it was not long before he put the file down promising, half-heartedly, to attack it again after dinner, and walked to the window, humming a t
enor aria from one of the Mozart operas whose name he had temporarily forgotten.

  ‘It looks like straightforward VAT stuff to me,’ he said, gazing down on to the green.

  ‘No such thing,’ said Monica.

  ‘As what?’

  ‘Straightforward VAT stuff. It’s always convoluted. Never what it seems. That’s why it was invented in the first place. It’s an excuse for spying on us. VAT inspectors can come into your house without so much as a by-your-leave, beat the place up, steal all your papers and there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. They can get away with murder.’

  ‘Not Wilmslow,’ said Bognor sourly. ‘Wilmslow was one VAT inspector who didn’t get away with anything.’

  ‘Which still doesn’t mean he was murdered,’ said Monica.

  Bognor frowned. ‘I have a funny feeling,’ he said, ‘that we’re not going to have a lot of trouble coming up with motives. In fact I’ll bet you dinner at Tante Claire that there are at least three people in Herring St George who would have liked to see Wilmslow dead.’

  ‘You have to do better than that,’ said Monica, ‘I don’t like VAT men and I’d happily see most of them dead; but that doesn’t mean I’d actually murder one. The motive has to be really strong. Not just disgruntlement. Has to be passionate loathing or pathological fear.’

  ‘Passionate loathing or pathological fear,’ agreed Bognor, a touch grudgingly.

  ‘Then you’re on,’ said his wife.

  Chapter 3

  GUY ROTHERHITHE DRANK PERRIER water. ‘He would, wouldn’t he?’ thought Bognor as he ordered a large gin and tonic from Ben, the barman in the small dark bar which used to be the Snug and which was now called Popinjay’s. Ben mixed a drink called a Popinjay which was a gin sling made with strawberry liqueur topped with a miniature fruit salad and one of those small bamboo parasols. Monica had tried one and pronounced it ‘interesting’.