Red Herrings

by Tim Heald

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Monica.

  ‘Well,’ said Bognor. ‘I managed to get her out of the room and slipped another disk into the second disk drive and made a copy. This is the copy.’

  ‘The marvels of modern technology,’ said Monica. ‘Are you sure you pressed the right buttons?’

  ‘We do have computers at the Board of Trade,’ said Bognor. ‘And I went on that course at Bracknell.’ This was true. He had not been a star pupil but he had learned the basics.

  ‘Well,’ said Guy, grudgingly, ‘there’s no harm in putting it into one of our machines in Whelk and getting it on to a screen. But it seems rather far fetched to me.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Bognor, ‘it may be far fetched but the fact that that particular company name crops up at Miss Carlsbad’s, just after we’ve established that Peregrine Contractor is its chief executive and Sir Nimrod Herring is its president is, to put it mildly, suspicious.’

  ‘I think it may be time we had a word with your friend Mr Contractor,’ said Guy.

  ‘He’s out,’ said Bognor, hurriedly. For the moment he preferred to steer clear of the manor. He didn’t want Dandiprat muddying the waters with his compromising photographs. ‘So was Sir Nimrod Herring when I called earlier. He’s the one I want to talk to. All that long confession about Naomi’s parentage and Wilmslow being a blackmailer. And never a word about Dull Boy Productions. It’s very suspicious.’

  ‘The one thing that is becoming clear,’ said Monica, ‘is that the late Mr Wilmslow was a pretty bad apple. Sir Nimrod claims he was trying to blackmail him; Bhagwan Josht says he suggested fiddling the VAT returns. Sounds to me as if he got what he deserved.’

  Guy Rotherhithe frowned. ‘I wouldn’t have said either of those two were very reliable sources,’ he said. ‘It seems to me just as likely that Wilmslow was a thoroughly conscientious VAT inspector doing a difficult job as well as he could. That’s not an easy path to popularity. If Herring’s accounts were in the unholy mess I imagine they were then of course he’d resent Wilmslow. And the swami’s obviously a rogue. I don’t think we should jump to too many conclusions.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ said Bognor. ‘You’re sounding just like Lejeune of the Yard.’

  ‘Well maybe,’ said Guy, ‘but there’s a lot to be said for caution and proper procedures.’

  Bognor looked at his wife and winked. ‘What I suggest,’ he said, ‘is that we have a Ploughman’s Lunch or whatever anaemically pretentious equivalent they offer here. Then we can check out Herring and Daughter and then go into Whelk and ring this stuff up on the computer.’

  Guy did not look especially enthusiastic but did not offer any alternative. He had a lot of waiting to do – waiting for forensic to tell him what they had discovered after cutting into the remains of Mr Wilmslow, waiting for other men to tell him if they had discovered anything at all from scouring Gallows Wood, waiting for someone to come up with a phoney alibi, waiting for someone to make a false move.

  ‘I’m playing,’ he would say to impetuous creatures like Bognor, ‘a waiting game.’ It was surprising how often it worked. Apparent inactivity on the part of the police frequently seemed to unnerve the criminal mind, catalysing it into unwise and unplanned activity.

  So they lunched. It was a surprisingly good meal of home-baked wholemeal bread; organically grown celery and tomato; home-made chutneys and a selection of real cheeses including Single Gloucester, Colwick, Cotherstone and Cornish Yarg coated in nettles. For once they did not talk shop but gossiped instead about old times and cricket. Despite the matter in hand and the various undercurrents of attraction and hostility it was a meal the Bognors always remembered with affection. The village green was so ridiculously English; the blazing heat so ridiculously un-English. And the second pint of bitter brought on a marvellous lethargy, an almost blissful euphoria.

  This feeling that everything was rosy in the garden of England was threatened at the village stores and totally destroyed at County Police Headquarters in Whelk. At the shop they found Naomi quietly loitering under the gumboots. She seemed wan and worried.

  ‘It’s not like him,’ she said. ‘He always tells me where he’s going and when he’ll be back. I mean it’s different if it’s just a quick trip into Whelk but he’s been gone all day and not a word. And he hasn’t been himself recently. Not since that bloody VAT inspector started snooping round and making a pest of himself.’

  She sniffed.

  ‘You’ve no idea who it was on the phone?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘Not a clue,’ she said.

  Guy folded his arms across the be-blazered chest and looked magisterially policemanly. He didn’t fool Bognor.

  ‘Does your father have any enemies in the village, would you say?’ he asked.

  Naomi Herring sniffed more noisily than before and dabbed at an eye. ‘I’m not sure about him and Mr Contractor,’ she said.

  ‘You mean because Mr Contractor bought him out of the ancestral home?’ said Guy.

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ said Naomi. ‘I don’t think Daddy really liked living in the manor, not after Mummy fell in the moat. No, it was when Mr Contractor got himself elected chairman of the Conservative Association and chairman of the Parochial Church Council. I think Daddy could have stood one or the other but not both at the same time. And when Dandiprat took over the poppy fund I think it really was the final straw.’

  ‘Dandiprat?!’ Bognor was astonished. ‘The poppy fund. You mean Dandiprat is in charge of poppies?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Naomi, ‘he’s the village representative of the Earl Haig Memorial fund. He lays a wreath on the war memorial every Remembrance Day.’

  ‘He never!’ exclaimed Monica.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Naomi. ‘Daddy says it’s a scandal. He says Dandiprat was a conchy.’

  Even Bognor who was pacifically inclined and also too young to have been conscripted was still mildly appalled at the notion of a conscientious objector in charge of the village’s homage to the wartime dead.

  ‘Dandiprat was in the pioneer corps,’ said Guy. ‘Never heard a shot fired in anger of course. He was cashiered too. Did time in the glass house at Shepton Mallet.’

  ‘You’ve been keeping that very quiet,’ said Bognor resentfully. He was uncomfortably aware that Dandiprat was beginning to seem a disturbingly villainous fellow. Not the sort that one wanted to have a hold over one. Even if one thought one could extricate oneself with a bit of fancy footwork. ‘What was he in for?’ he asked.

  ‘Some sort of black market lark,’ said Guy. ‘Got very pally with the GIs. Cigarettes, nylon stockings and chewing gum on the one hand. Sex on the other.’

  ‘Stockings and sex.’ Monica frowned. ‘That’s getting a bit close to Sous-tous,’ she said. ‘Are you implying he’s more than just a butler?’

  ‘It was all a long time ago.’ Guy shrugged. ‘And he’s been clean ever since. No known form.’

  Naomi sighed. ‘I knew I didn’t like him. I do wish Daddy was back.’ She sniffed.

  ‘Yes.’ Guy was embarrassed. He had a very English dislike of displayed emotion. ‘We’d like him back too. There are one or two things we’d like to ask him about.’

  Naomi Herring sniffed. ‘I’m not stupid,’ she said. ‘He’s in trouble isn’t he?’

  She looked enquiringly at the chief inspector. The chief inspector looked at Simon Bognor. Simon Bognor looked at his wife. Monica smiled at Naomi Herring.

  ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,’ she said, wearing her soothing expression. ‘But when he does, perhaps you could let us know at the Pickled Herring. Or call the chief inspector in Whelk and if he’s not there leave a message.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Bognor, ‘what sort of car does he drive? And do you have the number?’

  Naomi put a hand to her forehead in a mildly dramatic manner. ‘A Morris Minor. Green. RLK 887. It’s rather old. But why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh you never know.’ Bognor shuffled his feet. ‘If we pass
an elderly Morris Minor with the number RLK 887 we’ll flag him down.’

  ‘Oh.’ Naomi Herring stared at the bacon. She seemed perplexed.

  Outside on the green Bognor said to Guy, ‘I think you ought to put out a call to all cars. I have a nasty hunch the old boy may be in more trouble than we realise.’

  ‘I don’t like your nasty hunches,’ said Guy. ‘But it might be a sensible precaution. This whole place is becoming more peculiar by the minute.’

  ‘“Ill fares the land, to hast’ning ills a prey,”’ said Monica softly. ‘Where wealth accumulates and men decay.’

  The two men looked at her suspiciously. ‘I beg your pardon,’ said her husband.

  ‘Oliver Goldsmith.’ Monica frowned. ‘You remember,’ she said, ‘surely? “The Deserted Village.” Didn’t you do it for “O” level?’

  Bognor shook his head. ‘“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”,’ he said, ‘Chanticleer and all that.’

  ‘I was only thinking,’ said Monica, ‘that the English village has never been the same since enclosures in the seventeenth century. That’s when the rot started. Villages haven’t been the same since.’

  ‘Villages have never been the same,’ said Bognor sagely.

  ‘Least of all this one,’ said Guy.

  Guy drove them to police HQ in Whelk. He should really have had a police driver but his title had given him Bennite notions of how to behave in order to ingratiate himself with the working class. He believed that by driving his own car he could, in some mysterious way, identify with the bobby on the beat. In matters of substance he tended to be almost depressingly orthodox along the lines laid down by his ultra-conventional old chief at the Yard. The command structure was rigidly defined and he did not tolerate insubordination. Lip service was paid to the idea that everybody should participate in discussions but it was only lip service and stiff upper lip service at that.

  The car was a newish Rover, unmarked. Had he really been true to his spasmodically expressed egalitarianism he would, naturally, have driven a modest Panda car or ridden a bike. But he was only an egalitarian when it suited him. The truth of the matter was that he liked driving himself and was an appalling back-seat driver.

  Monica sat in the front and held on to the door handle as they cornered occasionally on two wheels. Bognor, reclining behind, gazed at the blurred hedgerows and thought of England. No one spoke except Guy who put out an urgent call to all cars to be on the look out for Sir Nimrod’s Morris. Although he said it was an urgent message he managed to suggest that the urgency was of a fairly low priority. And once the message had been delivered he lapsed into aphonia until, drawing up before the blue lamp of County Police Headquarters in Whelk, he announced, gratuitously, ‘We’re here.’

  This was the home of the police for the recently created metropolitan county of Mid-Angleside. Mid-Angleside had previously included parts of no less than five ancient English counties but these had all been abolished and realigned in the interests of modernity, change, and progress which had been, until a year or so ago, all the rage. This mood had now changed and the clocks were going back all over Britain. Before long the metropolitan county would be abolished and the old counties reinstated leaving the great new concrete and glass metro-police headquarters as an expensive white elephant until such time as the prevailing mood changed again and it, in turn, was reinstated or, perhaps, turned over to some interesting form of ‘community use’.

  Guy stopped the Rover on a double yellow line just under a No Parking sign and the three entered the building. Bognor noticed and was impressed by the deference that hung in the air, not always very obviously expressed but nonetheless palpable for that.

  ‘Come up to the office and we’ll sort that tape,’ said Guy taking the stairs ostentatiously two at a time as both Bognors puffed in his wake. By the time they were in his office which was large, functional and bare he was already talking into the magic box on the scrupulously neat desk top. Bognor absorbed the contrast with his own desk which invariably looked as if he was playing Pelmanism with his correspondence.

  ‘Simon.’ Guy looked across at Bognor who had plonked himself down heavily on one of the utilitarian plastic chairs. He appeared to be on the verge of clicking his fingers and Bognor was aware again of the rise in Guy’s self-importance now that he was on home turf, ‘Do you have that tape?’

  ‘Tape?’ Bognor frowned. ‘You mean disk.’

  ‘Tape, disk, you know what I mean. The thing you copied off Miss Carlsbad’s computer.’

  Bognor handed it over. Seconds later a plain girl in a Marks and Spencer dress came in and Guy said: ‘Mary, take this straight down to the Computer Room and wait while Mr Jones has it printed up. It shouldn’t take a second. ‘She smiled nervously, took the disk and hurried out. Guy pressed some buttons on the desk. ‘Dr Vernon?’ he said bossily, ‘Rotherhithe here. Do you have anything on Wilmslow yet? The man we found at Herring St George full of arrows.’

  Dr Vernon’s voice came back amplified by the box on Guy’s desk. It sounded Pakistani.

  ‘Death was due to alcoholic poisoning,’ he said. ‘His blood contained approximately six times the legal limit for a motorist. I would hazard a guess that he had consumed two full bottles of whisky or its equivalent.’

  ‘Dr Vernon.’ Guy sounded impatient and disbelieving. ‘At what time do you think he actually died?’

  ‘It’s difficult to be certain.’ Vernon’s voice was distorted by the crackle of static. ‘I would say between midnight and two o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘The arrows had nothing to do with it?’

  ‘The arrows would have killed him anyway. But they were …’ here Dr Vernon gave an arid little titter ‘… superfluous to requirement. One passed straight into the heart and another the neck. In my judgement either would have been sufficient to kill him. But they didn’t.’

  ‘Listen, Vernon, we know that our man was more or less stone cold sober at around nine-thirty. Could he have drunk two bottles of Scotch between then and midnight?’

  ‘Anyone can drink two bottles of Scotch in two and a half hours,’ said Vernon. ‘It might kill them, it might not. Your friend Wilmslow, on the other hand, didn’t drink two bottles of Scotch.’

  ‘But you just said he did.’ Guy was looking a dangerous pink about the top of his ears.

  ‘As a matter of fact that’s not quite what I said. I said that his blood alcohol level suggested that’s what he had consumed but he didn’t drink it voluntarily, he was force drunk.’

  ‘Force drunk?’

  ‘Same as force feeding. He didn’t ingest the alcohol of his own volition – it was poured down him. As far as I can make out his nose was held with something like a clothes’ peg and his arms were tied. There’s extensive bruising on both wrists and mouth and nose. Also it was done somewhere else. The soles of his shoes are pristine and there’s a lot of damage to the undergrowth around where he was found. Not all of it was inflicted by the people who found him. My guess is that his assailants poured whisky down his throat and then carried him into Gallows Wood so that the Clout marksmen could finish him off.’

  ‘Can you prove any of this?’

  Vernon hesitated. ‘It depends what you mean by proof,’ he said eventually. ‘In a court of law any defence lawyer would say that the deceased had evidently consumed a large quantity of whisky and wandered, insensibly, into the woods, lain down and died.’

  ‘And the bruising?’ asked Guy.

  ‘It could be consistent with falling about in the undergrowth.’

  ‘The clean shoes?’

  ‘It had been very dry,’ said Vernon. ‘It could be argued that the shoes would not be much marked in any case.’

  ‘But you would argue otherwise?’

  ‘Yes I would.’

  ‘You’ll let me have your report in writing.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘But why …’ Guy drummed fingers on the desktop, ‘would a near teetotaller suddenly go out and drink thro
ugh two bottles of spirits?’

  ‘That’s your problem,’ said Vernon. ‘I’m not a psychiatrist. But if that Scotch was self-administered then I’m a virgin.’

  The door suddenly opened and the plain girl in the Marks and Sparks dress put her head round it. ‘There’s an incoming call, sir,’ she said. ‘Urgent.’ She was clutching a sheaf of computer paper and was looking pinker and plainer than before.

  Guy held out his hand and she gave him the paper, then retreated briskly and discomfited. He began to scan it half-heartedly while dismissing Vernon with, ‘Sorry Vernon, must dash. Incoming call. Let me have your report as soon as poss. I’m most grateful.’ Then he flicked another switch and said, crisply, ‘Rotherhithe.’

  This time the flat, nasal accents of rural Mid-Angleside flooded the office. ‘Sergeant Mitcham, traffic division, sir. That car, the green Morris Minor, registration number RLK 887, I’m afraid it’s turned up, sir. End of a lane down Roman Bottom over towards Mailbag Corner by the junction of Watling Street and the Whelk-Nottingham road. Woman out walking her dog came across it. One occupant; elderly gentleman by the name of Nimrod Herring Bart according to his driving licence. Dead, I’m afraid. Engine running. Piece of hosepipe attached to the exhaust. Carbon monoxide poisoning.’

  ‘Any notes?’ asked Guy. As he listened he read the computer print-out his secretary had brought in. His eyes, it seemed to both Bognors, were definitely bulging.

  ‘None that we could find, sir.’

  ‘Any reason to suspect foul play?’

  ‘Only that, sir.’

  ‘What?’ For a man who is being informed of the death of one of the leading characters in a murder enquiry, Chief Inspector the Earl of Rotherhithe seemed oddly abstracted.

  ‘The fact that there were no notes, sir. The normal thing with suicides is notes.’

  ‘They sometimes put them in the post,’ said Guy, still reading the print-out. He was turning quite pink.

  ‘Not this time,’ said Bognor. ‘He left in far too much of a hurry. Poor old sod. If you ask me this is fitting a pattern. Murders contrived to look like suicides.’